Mass Effect 3

[Anoat]

The Child's Play donation drive is over $65,000 right now. Yikes.

[Plow]

Semi Spoiler Link I guess

http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/to...index/10056886

Spoiler: show

Whether or not you enjoyed the conclusion to Mass Effect 3 (personally I feel
it tarnished an otherwise masterful series) please take a look at the
pre-release quotes below from websites and interviews with the game's
developers, writers and producers.

Does all that talk of meaningful player choice, multiple significantly
different endings and closure for the characters and series not seem,
at the very least, strange?

I believe Bioware can be legitimately accused of, at best, fudging the
truth if not outright deceit given the inconsistency between notions
of choice, closure etc. expressed before the game was released and
the ending as it currently stands.

In my opinion Bioware produced a badly written, ill-conceived shambles
of an ending riddled with plot holes and logical inconsistencies but
even if you loved the final moments of this great game do you really
think what was stated in the interviews below has been proved true?

Maybe Walters, Gamble, Hudson et al will be proved right when a decent
ending is released via (presumably free) DLC that explains the
original ending was just some sort of hallucination/indoctrination.
I'm not holding my breath waiting for that though.


Official Mass Effect Website
http://masseffect.com/about/story/

“Experience the beginning, middle, and end of an emotional story unlike any
other, where the decisions you make completely shape your experience
and outcome.”

Interview with Mac Walters (Lead Writer)
http://popwatch.ew.com/2012/02/28/ma...3-mac-walters/

“[The presence of the Rachni] has huge consequences in Mass
Effect 3. Even just in the final battle with the Reapers.”

Interview with Mac Walters (Lead Writer)
http://business.financialpost.com/20...all-audiences/

“I’m always leery of saying there are 'optimal' endings, because I think
one of the things we do try to do is make different endings that are
optimal for different people “

Interview with Mike Gamble (Associate Producer)
http://www.computerandvideogames.com...issing-in-me2/

“And, to be honest, you [the fans] are crafting your Mass Effect story as
much as we are anyway.”

Interview with Mike Gamble (Associate Producer)
http://www.360magazine.co.uk/intervi...erent-endings/

“There are many different endings. We wouldn’t do it any other way. How
could you go through all three campaigns playing as your Shepard and
then be forced into a bespoke ending that everyone gets? But I can’t
say any more than that…”

Interview with Mike Gamble (Associate Producer)
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...e-people-angry

“Every decision you've made will impact how things go. The player's also the
architect of what happens."

“You'll get answers to everything. That was one of the key things. Regardless
of how we did everything, we had to say, yes, we're going to provide
some answers to these people.”

“Because a lot of these plot threads are concluding and because it's being
brought to a finale, since you were a part of architecting how they
got to how they were, you will definitely sense how they close was
because of the decisions you made and because of the decisions you
didn't make”

Interview with Casey Hudson (Director)
http://www.gameinformer.com/b/featur...-effect-3.aspx

“For people who are invested in these characters and the back-story of the
universe and everything, all of these things come to a resolution in
Mass Effect 3. And they are resolved in a way that's very different
based on what you would do in those situations.”

Interview with Casey Hudson (Director)
http://venturebeat.com/2012/03/02/ca...ans-interview/

“Fans want to make sure that they see things resolved, they want to get
some closure, a great ending. I think they’re going to get that.”

“Mass Effect 3 is all about answering all the biggest questions in the
lore, learning about the mysteries and the Protheans and the Reapers,
being able to decide for yourself how all of these things come to an
end.”

Interviewer: “So are you guys the creators or the stewards of the franchise?”
Hudson: “Um… You know, at this point, I think we’re co-creators with
the fans. We use a lot of feedback.”

Interview with Casey Hudson (Director)
http://www.gameinformer.com/b/featur...ostPageIndex=2

Interviewer: [Regarding the numerous possible endings of Mass Effect 2] “Is that
same type of complexity built into the ending of Mass Effect 3?”
Hudson: “Yeah, and I’d say much more so, because we have the ability to
build the endings out in a way that we don’t have to worry about
eventually tying them back together somewhere. This story arc is
coming to an end with this game. That means the endings can be a lot
more different. At this point we’re taking into account so many
decisions that you’ve made as a player and reflecting a lot of that
stuff. It’s not even in any way like the traditional game endings,
where you can say how many endings there are or whether you got
ending A, B, or C.....The endings have a lot more sophistication and
variety in them.”

“We have a rule in our franchise that there is no canon. You as a player
decide what your story is.”


EDIT: Couple more interesting quotes I found, enjoy......or not.


Mike Gamble (Associate Producer)
http://www.nowgamer.com/news/1027650...n_bioware.html

Mass Effect 3 will shake up the player's moral choices more than ever
before, even going so far as allowing the Reapers to win the battle
for Earth, according to BioWare's community representative Mike
Gamble.


In an inteview with NowGamer at Gamescom, we asked if BioWare was taking risks with Mass Effect 3's
plot, including a negative ending in which the Reapers win. Gamble simply said, "Yes". We asked him again to confirm what he had just said and he said, "Yes".


Mike Gamble (Associate Producer)
http://www.nowgamer.com/features/122...y_details.html


"Of course you don’t have to play multiplayer, you can choose to play
all the side-quests in single-player and do all that stuff you’ll
still get all the same endings and same information, it’s just a
totally different way of playing"


Casey Hudson (Director)
http://gamescatalyst.com/2012/03/cas...ctive-stories/

“The whole idea of Mass Effect3 is resolving all of the biggest questions, about the Protheons and
the Reapers, and being in the driver's seat to end the galaxy and all
of these big plot lines, to decide what civilizations are going to
live or die: All of these things are answered in Mass Effect 3.”

Casey Hudson (Director)
http://www.computerandvideogames.com...y-good/?page=2

“There is a huge set of consequences that start stacking up as you approach the end-game. And
even in terms of the ending itself, it continues to break down to
some very large decisions. So it's not like a classic game ending
where everything is linear and you make a choice between a few things
- it really does layer in many, many different choices, up to the
final moments, where it's going to be different for everyone who
plays it.”

To be completely honest, I got to a point where I felt like I might have some more stuff to do, but I was ready to rush through and see the ending and worry about seeing anything I missed on a later playthrough.

It turned out though that there wasn't anything left to do anyway though, and I got the distinct impression that the devs had done the same thing... gotten to a certain point and just decided "fuck it time to do an ending."

Would seem to explain the rushed and incredibly incomplete feeling of the end.

[Kerberoz]

To be completely honest, I got to a point where I felt like I might have some more stuff to do, but I was ready to rush through and see the ending and worry about seeing anything I missed on a later playthrough.

It turned out though that there wasn't anything left to do anyway though, and I got the distinct impression that the devs had done the same thing... gotten to a certain point and just decided "fuck it time to do an ending."

Would seem to explain the rushed and incredibly incomplete feeling of the end.

Noticed that too... for the first 2/3 of the game, you get lots of side crap opening up after each story mission, then it kinda just... stops and you have the last 4-5 story missions with practically nothing new opening up. Wasted a good amount of time checking the Citadel for new quests/gear and finding nothing. Also reputation just kinda maxes out right before the Quarian/Geth section yet you keep getting tons of it. Do they expect us to just skip half the side-quests or something?

[payu]

Spoiler: show

How do you get TIM to kill himself? and how the fuck do I stop anderson from dying 100% readyness like 7200 assets maxed paragon. As hes about to shoot Anderson both my renegade and paragon are whited out So I have to renegade shoot the nerd.

[Xanthe]

Spoiler: show

How do you get TIM to kill himself? and how the fuck do I stop anderson from dying 100% readyness like 7200 assets maxed paragon. As hes about to shoot Anderson both my renegade and paragon are whited out So I have to renegade shoot the nerd.

Spoiler: show

You need to successfully paragon persuade TIM at each of your previous encounters with him, Mars, Thessia, and Cerberus Base, as well as all four of the paragon persuasions at the final encounter. Each persuasion is increasingly difficult, so you'll need a boatload of paragon reputation to pull it off.

[Slott]

So the Phalanx gun thing seems to definitely be a hack, the hosting player turns whatever it is on, and then it works for everyone on the team.

[Souj]

really wish people would learn that Wave 11 extraction, doesnt mean to immediately run right to the extraction point and wait for all the big mother fuckers to come right to us.

[Ragnus]

Yeah. I picked up on that one after about 5 games. Had a team get completely wiped by a Banshee and Brute one game because of that.

[Slott]

Yeah it's actually smartest to be as far from the extraction point as possible, since all the monsters do essentially is funnel in on where players are. 30 seconds left? run to the extraction point and wait

[Souj]

Vanguard is a fucking beast. I just took down two Brutes and a Banshee and a half my last game completely solo and I was only lv9.
Though we ended up losing on wave 10 because I was deactivating one of the thingies and then I found myself surrounded by a load of cannibles, brutes, walking rocket launchers (whose name I will remember one of these days!) and a banshee. and I died like 30 seconds into it. Fuck Reapers.
What should I do for last Barrier upgrade? 25%chance of no cooldown or increase barrier by 50% after. I'm leaning towards Barrier cause I do sometimes get shot a lot right after Barriering right into a crowd of enemies.

[Ragnus]

Does Nova still consume barriers?

[Souj]

not sure. Haven't even unlocked it yet lol. Description sounds like it takes away barrier and does dmg with it though

[Kiarax]

Imo restore 100% of shields when you charge is best. You can spec Nova to only use half your barriers instead of 100% too which is pretty nice, but you lose a good chunk of damage. I just spec it differently on Human Male/Female so if I can dick around with different builds on each.

[BadKarma]

not sure. Haven't even unlocked it yet lol. Description sounds like it takes away barrier and does dmg with it though

Nova is your bread and butter. Yes it consumes barrier but it shouldn't matter because charge will be back up after the animation and you're invulnerable during it

[Slott]

Vanguard is a fucking beast. I just took down two Brutes and a Banshee and a half my last game completely solo and I was only lv9.
Though we ended up losing on wave 10 because I was deactivating one of the thingies and then I found myself surrounded by a load of cannibles, brutes, walking rocket launchers (whose name I will remember one of these days!) and a banshee. and I died like 30 seconds into it. Fuck Reapers.
What should I do for last Barrier upgrade? 25%chance of no cooldown or increase barrier by 50% after. I'm leaning towards Barrier cause I do sometimes get shot a lot right after Barriering right into a crowd of enemies.

Spec vanguard with: (going off memory, don't have a skill list in front of me)
Charge: AoE, power increase, full barrier:
Nova: damage, reduced cooldown, more damage (piercing?)
In the 4th tree (not the fitness one) take more weight capacity and all weapons weigh 20% less
fitness just take whatever you can, shield cooldown doesnt really matter
0 shockwave

A vanguard should be nearly unkillable with this build in gold. Reason being is there is invulnerability in both nova, nova cancel, and charge, therefore taking the weight increase limit and decreased weapon weight reduces your cooldowns significantly (run with 1 weapon, not 2)

Learn to nova cancel: Start a nova, immediately sideroll. The "nova" sound goes off, isn't consumed, sometimes knocks your opponents back, but in this time you're invulnerable. Learn to roll cancel an actual nova: as you slam the ground there is a period in which you can roll, essentially removing the period of time in which you can perform your next action. Thing is, a roll can be cancelled into a charge. Charge, nova, roll, charge. This is done in less time than charge nova charge. Playing a vanguard is about stun locking and staying invulnerable. Hope this helps, and if you spec'd wrong, try respeccing and watch what a difference it makes

edit: side roll btw

[Ragnus]

If you're using Nova a lot, then I'd probably go with recharge on Barriers. If not, then extra barrier.

I'm running a Human Engineer in MP right now. Not sure if I made the right choice in not choosing explosive drone. I guess I'll need to hope that I get one of those retrain items in a Spectre pack or something if I want to change. =/

[Ragnus]

Spec vanguard with: (going off memory, don't have a skill list in front of me)
Charge: AoE, power increase, full barrier:
Nova: damage, reduced cooldown, more damage (piercing?)
In the 4th tree (not the fitness one) take more weight capacity and all weapons weigh 20% less
fitness just take whatever you can, shield cooldown doesnt really matter
0 shockwave

A vanguard should be nearly unkillable with this build in gold. Reason being is there is invulnerability in both nova, nova cancel, and charge, therefore taking the weight increase limit and decreased weapon weight reduces your cooldowns significantly (run with 1 weapon, not 2)

Learn to nova cancel: Start a nova, immediately sideroll. The "nova" sound goes off, isn't consumed, sometimes knocks your opponents back, but in this time you're invulnerable. Learn to roll cancel an actual nova: as you slam the ground there is a period in which you can roll, essentially removing the period of time in which you can perform your next action. Thing is, a roll can be cancelled into a charge. Charge, nova, roll, charge. This is done in less time than charge nova charge. Playing a vanguard is about stun locking and staying invulnerable. Hope this helps, and if you spec'd wrong, try respeccing and watch what a difference it makes

edit: side roll btw

Oh God. I need to try this.

[Pendulum]

[Slott]

If you're using Nova a lot, then I'd probably go with recharge on Barriers. If not, then extra barrier.

I'm running a Human Engineer in MP right now. Not sure if I made the right choice in not choosing explosive drone. I guess I'll need to hope that I get one of those retrain items in a Spectre pack or something if I want to change. =/

You get your barrier back from charge, theres really no need for cooldown reduction

[BadKarma]

Pend I want a shirt like your avatar