Since Mass Effect 3 was announced, I wanted it. But it’s not on Steam due to copyright issues. A day ago, had an idea to see if someone’s made a full walkthrough of ME3, so I can “play” it while watching someone else play it. And sure enough, there is.
As I watched, I liked what I was seeing. And that eventually lead me to buy it. Started playing yesterday evening.
The opening is alot different as I thought it would be. Basically, the Normandy is impounded and Shepard is detained due to what happened at the Alpha Relay. They know he didn’t have a choice but don’t want to start a war with the Batarians. But Earth calls of the incoming Reaper invasion, knowing Shepard has seen them and would know how to deal with them, before the Reapers wipe out the human race.
But we all know what it took to bring down Sovereign in ME1, and that was just one Reaper. Now it’s hundreds of them and their numbers are increasing, popping up on other homeworlds and showing no mercy. What’s worse, they’re making their own Husks. Fortunately from what I’ve seen so far, none of them are any harder than the ones in ME2.
As for repeating characters from Mass Effect 1 and 2, yes there is. So far I’ve seen Anderson, anyone that survived in the suicide mission at the end of ME2, the person you kept while the other gave their life in Virmire (Ashley or Kaidan), and even Wrex if you weren’t forced to kill him on Virmire.
There’s even a few people returning who used to work for Cerberus, that now want to work for the Alliance. But here’s the weird thing. In my last playthrough of ME1, I chose Anderson to be the Councilor for humans of the Citadel, yet Udiana is.
The Normandy has been redesigned (you find this out later on after doing the opening missions). All Cerberus markings have been removed to make it an official Alliance ship. The Lab is gone, and now you can get into the Shuttle Bay. It’s there where the Armory has been moved; just like the original Normandy.
The need for minerals is gone. So have ship upgrades (since there’s no need to upgrade anything). The minerals that were collected in ME2 are now being used for the supposed Prothean weapon against the Reapers. No one knows how it will help, but people grow desperate for any light of hope against this threat.
Wouldn’t you if you were trying to fight an unrelenting enemy with no known weaknesses?
There’s one thing I don’t like. In ME1 when it came to side quests, it told you the planet, system, and cluster the quest is in. Here in ME3, I have to use the wiki for quests that are all “Find and return” with little to no knowledge of where to go.
This wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t for the added risk of Reapers finding you when you’re searching by scanning systems, and you’re forced to complete a mission (not a “find this”) for them to leave. Eventually, I will run out of missions.
About ready to see if there’s a walkthrough that will disable this so I can find these things without the Reapers finding me.
I can also try to use this more often, as it has a list of all things that can be used for the final battle.
Anyway, I won’t subject you guys to any more spoilers. I’ll let you know what I thought of this, “shitty ending” everyone’s talking about. Even if it does make me regret paying the money, it’s done and I wanted ME3.
I also want Crysis 2, but that’s another future blog post.