Mass Effect 3 Overview

The first two installments to the Mass Effect series have turned out to be one of the most acclaimed sci-fi series that has graced our presence as gamers, and the incredible story that has been laid out uniquely by each individual player still hasn’t concluded. If my logic is correct, that certainly means that the third installment of the series that has many people waiting anxiously to get their hands on can only be even more epic.

To lay out some ground work of the what will be going down in Mass Effect 3 you would first need to know that Reapers are bad, very bad. On the surface they desire nothing more than control and the extermination of other races, human and alien alike, and in the first two games in the series they were an almost unknown enemy with awesome power. The attack of just one Reaper proved to be an immense challenge, an army of them needs someone like Commander Shepard whose fought them before to take them down. In the beginning of final installment of the series the Reapers have finally come in full force and many of the decisions that were made throughout the previous games will finally come to their climax and players will get to see how their very own unique story was crafted throughout their stay in the Mass Effect universe.  A quote from Casey Hudson, executive producer in an article with Game Informer magazine sums it up nicely “This is what we’ve been looking forward to the whole trilogy, if you think about the IP that we’ve built, really every one of the arcs we’ve got going are leading towards this long list of incredible moments, and that’s really what Mass Effect 3 is made out of.”

Some key differences from Mass Effect 1 and 2:

The Normandy space ship is still present in the game and under the control of Shepard, but it will be getting some different parts and more rooms and places to go looking around. The Normandy was the central hub for Shepard in between missions and exploring worlds where the players could relax and feed the fish in their room and listen to some tunes, chat it up with their teammates throughout the ship, and access upgrades for things such as the ship itself (shields, guns, medical bay, etc.) and also upgrades for character weapons and armor if the required resources were acquired.

The challenge of Mass Effect 3 as far as difficulty level goes will be greater than that of Mass Effect 2. It’s important that the difficulty however is still fun with the right balance of a challenge, and not overly frustrating. With that being said in the first two games there was a new game+ type feature where you could get bonuses for creating new characters after completing the game, and then a feature in Mass Effect 2 where you could continue doing other missions with the same character rather than starting over for extra bonuses. In Mass Effect 3 there will be a sort of hybrid of the two systems where you can continue on as the same character for added bonuses as well as some bonuses coming back around for a new character in a new game.

In Mass Effect 2 a very big part of the game was to go out and recruit specific individuals that would help you in your over arcing cause. In Mass Effect 3 the stakes are much higher, this time around Shepard must coerce anyone he can into helping him in an assault against the Reapers. This is where the Mass Effect series really shines. In the first two games there were many decisions that had to be made by the player that would shape the course of the game, and some of these decisions could potentially make a certain group of people or even an entire race hate you (Krogan Genophage anyone?). With all the different possibilities and outcomes from the first two games this makes for one hell of a combination of things that can happen in Mass Effect 3. What if you got all the races to unite together peacefully and exterminate the Reapers all fairy tale ending like. Or what if you sacrifice entire races and civilizations just so you could escape with your life and be the hero. One thing is for certain though, gaining the loyalty of a galaxy won’t be easy.

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Any gamers that played both of the first two games will know that combat was changed significantly from Mass Effect 1 to 2. This time around the combat won’t have such a huge overall, just more tweaks and things to refine it and make it the best it can be. Things such as a roll mechanic for Shepard will add a faster pace and more maneuverability during fights, also when jumping over low objects you won’t have to crouch behind them first anymore (which wasn’t big but annoying). Some of the more major tweaks include the ability for all classes to use any weapon type instead of being restrcited to only a few, and Shepard will be able to pick up defeated enemies weapons and use them. Each class now has its own unique type of melee attack, and melee fighting in general will play a larger role throughout combat. Shepard can shoot different parts off of certain enemy soldiers to slow them down or reduce their ability to fight effectively. Enemy AI has also been improved so now the enemies will be much more aggressive, use tactics other than just sitting behind cover popping up and shooting and they will work as a unit with each enemy playing a role. This will make for much more tactical fast paced combat as opposed to waiting for the enemy to pop up and shoot like it was for many of the the weaker enemies in the previous games. The developers wanted to focus a lot more on the player skill rather than the stat numbers behind the scenes that always present in traditional RPGs.   

Aside from all the action oriented game-play, RPG elements are still in full effect. This time around Bioware wants to give the player more options aside from assigning a few stat points and picking a skill. Unlike Mass Effect 2, in ME3 your powers will evolve the more you upgrade them. In Mass Effect 2 your powers did evolve for different effects, but only once and you only had 2 options to choose from at the end of that particular skills progression. This time they will upgrade and evolve multiple times the more you progress that particular skill, so like always in RPGs specialization pays off. Weapons also have many options added for customization such as different barrels and scopes and these upgrades will not only help in combat but will also change the appearance of the gun so players can craft their armory of weapons exactly the way they want them.

All of this is a lot to take in and there is surely more to tell, but one definitive fact about this final installment of Mass Effect is indeed just that it’s the final one. It is upsetting to think that something that players have invested so much time into has to come to an end, but it’s that very fact that make the games so meaningful. Without the finality of your choices throughout the games there would be no satisfaction because that is what we’ve all been working for in the Mass Effect universe, to save the galaxy and reshape it in our own way, and with this being the finale we have the potential to lose it all, and this is where Bioware has succeeded immensely. All of the players actions over the course of the 3 games will culminate into one finale that no one that witnesses it will ever forget. Don’t get too upset though, just because this is the end of this particular story arc doesn’t mean it’s the end of Mass Effect all together. With all this information swelling your brains already I leave you all with a quote from executive producer Casey Hudson in an interview with Game Informer Magazine about the future of the Mass Effect franchise that could potentially blow your mind.

“Within video games, a lot of people say they want to see an MMO, I think that kind of makes sense for this universe…part of what you’re trying to do is save that universe so you can live in it. That’s part of the promise, I think, for any great IP. It has to be a world worth saving…I think Mass Effect has that quality to it. If you get rid of the Reapers and win that, wouldn’t it be amazing to just live on the Citadel or just take a ship to Omega? That makes sense.”