BioWare Unveils Mass Effect 3: Earth

[Andy Chalk]

BioWare Unveils Mass Effect 3: Earth

The newest Mass Effect 3 multiplayer DLC will arrive later this month.

We first heard about this back in June [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/117845-Mass-Effect-3-Multiplayer-Ending-DLC-Details-Leak], but BioWare has now made it official. Earth, the latest multiplayer add-on for Mass Effect 3, will bring the usual mix of new stuff to the party along with a brand-new difficulty level for those who find the current top-tier a little too soft for their liking. And best of all, it's free.

The "new stuff" category includes three weapons, the Piranha assault shotgun, the Acolyte pistol and the Typhoon assault rifle, plus six new human N7 classes, the Destroyer Soldier, the Paladin Sentinel, the Demolisher Engineer, the Slayer Vanguard, the Shadow Infiltrator and the Fury Adept, each with new abilities and melee attacks. Three new Firebases are included with the update - Rio, Vancouver and London - as is the presumably tougher-than-nails Platinum difficulty level.

Mass Effect 3: Earth drops worldwide on July 17 for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC, except for PS3 owners in Europe, who for some inexplicable reason must wait an extra day. To find out more (although there's really not much more to find out), have a look at the BioWare Blog [http://blog.bioware.com/2012/07/11/earth/].


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[toomuchnothing]

The "new stuff" category includes three weapons, the Piranha assault shotgun, the Acolyte pistol and the Typhoon assault rifle, plus six new human N7 classes, the Destroyer Soldier, the Paladin Sentinel, the Demolisher Engineer, the Slayer Vanguard, the Shadow Infiltrator and the Fury Adept, each with new abilities and melee attacks. Three new Firebases are included with the update - Rio, Vancouver and London - as is the presumably tougher-than-nails Platinum difficulty level.

It will also add new weapon mods some which simply add effects that weren't available to those weapons types up to this point (ex omni blade bayonet for assault rifles)as well as combo mods like heavy barrels that do bonus dmg as well as armor penetration all in one mod slot but at the cost of increasing the weapons weight. In addition there will be a new objective where players on wave 3/6/10 will have to escort a VIP to an extraction zone although it hasn't been made clear if the VIP will be a player designated at random or an NPC.

edit: here are the textures for the new mods http://minus.com/m9oODlCCo/4g

 

[Noble_Lance]

PS3 has to wait because of some PSN issue, that's what always happens with those updates.

 

[Bolt-206]

If anyone plans to do platinum difficulty... Good luck,
I'm not going near it. :/
(who wants to bet the first event after this DLC will be a Platinum Extraction...)

 

[Fappy]

I don't know anyone who plays ME3 multiplayer anymore

 

[Fr]anc[is]

Huh, I didn't think they had anything else to pull out of their ass after they added the Vorcha.

 

[Blindrooster]

Me and my friends play often, and Gold was pretty easy once you know what to do. Glad they added this plus new stuff.

 

[pandorum]

No more multiplayer DLC come on focus on single player DLC,the first 2 were single player only and were amazing, wasting time on multiplayer is what put us in this predicament in first place less dialogue options somtimes entire cutscenes with out trees, come on stuff the wider audience give two shits about the fans that made the series so popular.

 

[Lethos]

Bioware is reeeeeally trying to build back their rep. I almost feel bad for them.

 

[McMullen]

You know, in the old days, if a game series this well-liked was this mistreated by its makers at the end, there was always the option for a group of talented fans to just hack in better dialogue or scenes, whether it was legal or not. And hey, if volunteer hackers could do a better job than the developers, I say screw the law.

With voice acting, that's less of a possibility now.

At least, it will be until the technology to synthesize real voices is made practical. Maybe some day long in the future someone will be able to rewrite ME3 into what it could and should have been.

 

[AnarchistFish]

Surprised how fast they're adding all this stuff. You'd think they'd space them out more so that they get interest in the multiplayer back up each time.

 

[Radoh]

Dial back the humans, we have enough of them.
Seriously, give me a Quarian Destroyer, that would be fun.
Either way, this is nice I guess, more free stuff might eventually make me go back to it for a third playthrough.
In fact, I have been thinking about making a new Paragon Fem Shep...

 

[Eri]

I DON'T CARE. Give me single player DLC. If you want to make multi and single fine, but stop taking resources from single and making multi. People don't flock to Mass effect just for multi.

 

[Terminate421]

They're all humans? Awww......

I was hoping for a light weight Turian that can dive.

 

[mad825]

Bioware is reeeeeally trying to build back their rep. I almost feel bad for them.

I don't think so, while I'm on the forums sometimes, People are claiming complaining they've wasted a good few hundred dollars because of the buggy "marketplace".

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

while it's interesting that the multi is actually decently polished now...i'll give them props for that,

but

why in the flying fuck are they trying so hard to force multiplayer on a fanbase that clearly has been buying their games for the single player portion? not to mention did anyone ask for this?

certainly not adam jensen, but come on, fuckin EA.

 

[Falterfire]

Well, I was interested until I realized there are no new game modes. Come on Bioware, the reason most of us who were playing the multiplayer quit was because there was never anything new. Once you got tired of hoping the next pack would contain a new class instead of your 17th Turian Sentinel there was really nothing left.

If they added a new game mode (Or possibly even just a completely new enemy set), I would come back and play some more. Until then, there's just no point.

Also: I love how they've managed to get brownie points for 'free' DLC from people despite it being the most expensive DLC ever released. You pay $2 for a chance at possibly getting one piece of it. You can in theory get everything for free, but it's far more likely you'll get bored long before then. And if you're interested in just using the new stuff? Have fun spending easily $100+ with no promise of actually unlocking the character you actually wanted to play with.

They've managed to create a system that simultaneously punishes both free and paying users, and for that they deserve applause. Such a feat should not rationally be possible.

 

[ShinobiJedi42]

Yay, six new classes I will never get. Looks like I'll have to settle with my new color unlock for my useless Batarian Sentinel.