So about that Mass Effect 3

[Dr Snakeman]

...

I... I'm at a loss... I have been waiting for so long, and now we finally get some news? I can't wait until this game is relaeased. I will be so happy.

Although, how is it "a battle for Earth"? Isn't the entire galaxy threatened by the Reapers? Maybe they just called it that as part of the advertisement in order to evoke our allegiance to our species, and thereby get people unfamiliar with the game to buy it.

And now I've started rambling. Anyway, yeah, Mass Effect 3, good.

 

[the clockmaker]

snip

Calm down mate, its a science fiction game with science fiction elements. I mean why don't we go into the implausability of the translation system while we're at it. It could be released in 'mass effect, nitpicky edition', where you can't understand what any of the races say unless you spend five years on a 'masters degree in quarian' sidequest, it takes hundreds of years real time to get anywhere, there were no interspecies romance sidequests, commander shepeard died for good at teh end of 1 and you spend the whole game pressing a single button and combat consists of pressing a button and waitng a week for a blip to appear on your screen.

Sometimes you need to step back and alow the story to work on its own rules, enjoying iy for what it is, rather then trying to force real science on it.

 

[badgersprite]

Awesomesauce!

I'm betting we'll finally get to see the homeworlds of the other races too, because there's no way the Reapers wouldn't wipe out the turians, asari, geth, quarians etc. too. They can't leave any races behind while they wait for the next cycle to start, right?

I wonder if that's where keeping allies alive becomes important. Saving the quarians is impossible/really hard if Tali died. Saving Thessia is impossible if you don't have the influence of Samara/Morinth to help unite them. Come to think of it, that does sound pretty interesting, to be honest.

 

[FirstOne617]

Personally, I've wanted to see future Earth since the beginning, but when it wasn't available to explore in ME1, I kind of figured it would be a huge reveal in ME3, and probably central to the plot. I doubt it will be totally Earth-centric, but I'm sure either the first act or the third act will feature large doses of our good ol' rock.

 

[Dr. Paine]

Awesomesauce!

I'm betting we'll finally get to see the homeworlds of the other races too, because there's no way the Reapers wouldn't wipe out the turians, asari, geth, quarians etc. too. They can't leave any races behind while they wait for the next cycle to start, right?

I wonder if that's where keeping allies alive becomes important. Saving the quarians is impossible/really hard if Tali died. Saving Thessia is impossible if you don't have the influence of Samara/Morinth to help unite them. Come to think of it, that does sound pretty interesting, to be honest.

Reapers kill off all advanced life- low level sapient creatures (early hominids and below) are spared, but that's it. So yes, this really is a battle for the entire galaxy, not just Earth.

And god yes, I hope for more homeworlds, especially the hanar and/or turian ones

 

[Manoose47]

So, what's the Renegade path going to be? Since I'm guessing the alliance with the other civilizations won't be so easy if you're being a jackass, I'll wager a guess that the ultimate evil path you may take is to become a servant to the Reapers.

Renegade =/= Evil.

I know that. Still, somehow I just don't see it happening that the game ends with the Reapers fucking up everyone's shit and that be it, unless the player is somehow involved with that ending in some way that doesn't include him dying.

I'd prefer it if the renegade ending is you finding a way to defeat the reapers that also results in you becoming supreme overlord of the galaxy and forcing everyone else to be humanity's slaves forever, and possibly carving out a planet (the turians' homeworld?) into a giant effigy of yourself.

Hells yes Grand emperor of mankind; jerk version! let the ridiculous law making commence!

 

[shado_temple]

So, what's the Renegade path going to be? Since I'm guessing the alliance with the other civilizations won't be so easy if you're being a jackass, I'll wager a guess that the ultimate evil path you may take is to become a servant to the Reapers.

You simply become the greatest threat to galactic civilization after killing the previous one.

 

[badgersprite]

Awesomesauce!

I'm betting we'll finally get to see the homeworlds of the other races too, because there's no way the Reapers wouldn't wipe out the turians, asari, geth, quarians etc. too. They can't leave any races behind while they wait for the next cycle to start, right?

I wonder if that's where keeping allies alive becomes important. Saving the quarians is impossible/really hard if Tali died. Saving Thessia is impossible if you don't have the influence of Samara/Morinth to help unite them. Come to think of it, that does sound pretty interesting, to be honest.

Reapers kill off all advanced life- low level sapient creatures (early hominids and below) are spared, but that's it. So yes, this really is a battle for the entire galaxy, not just Earth.

And god yes, I hope for more homeworlds, especially the hanar and/or turian ones

Yeah, exactly. I'm starting to think that I might be right about this, because you have party members from pretty much all of these different places across the galaxy, so it's only natural they'd take you there at some point. I bet you'll have the responsibility to save entire races from genocide, but either through bad choices or the characters' deaths in ME2 you might get them completely wiped out. I'm also guessing the Council races are going to break apart and stop communicating, since each species will doubtlessly try to maintain self-preservation.

I bet they give you an evil choice too, like where you have to decide whether to save Earth or save either an alien race or your squadmates, because Bioware is cruel like that. You might even have an evil choice to remove the genophage from the krogans to use them as your own personal slave army. I also think you might have to decide whether you'll save a squadmate, or accept help from someone evil who has a vendetta against them.

The possibilities are endless and exiting as hell to speculate about.

 

[Dr. Paine]

Awesomesauce!

I'm betting we'll finally get to see the homeworlds of the other races too, because there's no way the Reapers wouldn't wipe out the turians, asari, geth, quarians etc. too. They can't leave any races behind while they wait for the next cycle to start, right?

I wonder if that's where keeping allies alive becomes important. Saving the quarians is impossible/really hard if Tali died. Saving Thessia is impossible if you don't have the influence of Samara/Morinth to help unite them. Come to think of it, that does sound pretty interesting, to be honest.

Reapers kill off all advanced life- low level sapient creatures (early hominids and below) are spared, but that's it. So yes, this really is a battle for the entire galaxy, not just Earth.

And god yes, I hope for more homeworlds, especially the hanar and/or turian ones

Yeah, exactly. I'm starting to think that I might be right about this, because you have party members from pretty much all of these different places across the galaxy, so it's only natural they'd take you there at some point. I bet you'll have the responsibility to save entire races from genocide, but either through bad choices or the characters' deaths in ME2 you might get them completely wiped out. I'm also guessing the Council races are going to break apart and stop communicating, since each species will doubtlessly try to maintain self-preservation.

I bet they give you an evil choice too, like where you have to decide whether to save Earth or save either an alien race or your squadmates, because Bioware is cruel like that. You might even have an evil choice to remove the genophage from the krogans to use them as your own personal slave army. I also think you might have to decide whether you'll save a squadmate, or accept help from someone evil who has a vendetta against them.

The possibilities are endless and exiting as hell to speculate about.

I've seen speculation that you might have to make a similar choice to ME1- put priority to the Citadel or to Earth. Citadel priority would save it/the Council, but cause Earth to suffer devastating blows (but not outright destruction). Earth priority would save all of them, but leave the Citadel nearly defenseless or something. It'd be interesting, since you can make humanity love or hate you, same with aliens.

... and if it is like that, I would totally go with Citadel <_< Adrian's very much in support of the aliens xD

 

[Mr. Socky]

So, what's the Renegade path going to be? Since I'm guessing the alliance with the other civilizations won't be so easy if you're being a jackass, I'll wager a guess that the ultimate evil path you may take is to become a servant to the Reapers.

Renegade =/= Evil.

Honestly, I'm just guessing that the Renegade path will be the exact same thing as the other two games. Essentially, you're still the good guy and you'll win in the end, you'll just be a pro-human jackass till the end.
OT: I was gonna wait until tomorrow till get ridiculously overhyped. I guess it'll just have to start today.

 

[shado_temple]

So it IS the attack on earth by the reapers.


IT IS MASS EFFECT 3.

 

[Irridium]

Neat.

Although I wonder why the Reapers, a race of super-intelligent beings would "invade" Earth instead of just nuking it from orbit. Like any other logical construct would.

And if the Council says they "need more evidence" of a Reaper invasion of Earth, I will kill someone.

Spoiler: Rant!

I always wondered how the Reapers could traverse basically millions of light years and at the same time catch the Milky Way(Galaxies move through space at light speed, right?). They'd need to travel faster than light or find a relay and since it's impossible to actually enter the galaxy through a relay due to the Relay on the Citadel being deactivated then they really need to travel faster than light. I should remind the masses that traveling faster than the speed of light is impossible. So, the only way the Reapers could enter the galaxy would be if they used magic. Wait, I got it. Hah! Sneaky Bioware. You already introduced magic in the Mass Effect universe by creating something known as Mass Effect and I'm of course referring to that driving force that allowed the Reaper in ME2 not to crash into a neighbouring Star. I always hoped the series would rely more on partial realism rather than try and solve every impossible scenario through the use of magic.

There's also the problem of actually destroying the Reapers. Sovereign did get destroyed at the end of Mass Effect 1 but remember, it took the whole might of the Alliance and Citadel fleets and not even that would have worked. The only reason Sovereign was destroyed was because it made the mistake of forwarding its power into Saren so as to open up the relay. This doesn't make sense to me since not only do machines like that cannot make mistakes but how the fuck did its shields go down? The goddamn thing has a giant magic drive core that can fuel the propulsion system necesarry to lift that monster off the ground. Are you telling me it poured the power creating the shields that withstood fucking dreadnought attacks couldn't withstand bullets? Maybe the Saren platform didn't have what it took to process all that power and turn it into kinetic barriers but still, that gave no reasons so as to why Sovereign poured that much power into Saren giving that it knew it would be unable to withstand bullets. I know it might have been desperate but that thing is a machine, not a human being. It doesn't have feelings so it could have just as easily retreated, rebuild its forces or hell, team up with the Collectors and do their own thing and then come back, 2s company coupled with the entire might of the Geth rebels and the Collectors.

Maybe Bioware will just pull the "ultimate weapon" card which will turn Mass Effect 3 into a giant goose hunt around the galaxy akin to searching for the Conduit in Mass Effect 1 which isn't necesarely bad but that means it's going to have a bad to mediocre plot and not to mention that we've already experienced this shit.

Still, the most likely ending is that the motifs behind the cycle will be revealed and either the Reapers will willingly stand down and not anihilate the current generation or end up doing so with or without Shepards help because we all know the Reapers have got an eye on him. I'm guessing you're going to have to choose between not destroying the Reapers by using ancient weapon/huge ancient army/ancient anything and let them harvest the galaxy due to some altruistic bullshit about preserving the unique cultures of each race in an almost invincible machine due to most likely the incoming collision with Andromeda, aka the Paragon choice, or destroy the Reapers using ancient thing only to realize you've doomed every culture to come and every culture that ever was, aka the Renegade choice.

Also, why the fuck attack Earth? I understand humans managed to destroy a Reaper but that was because of the might of an entire fleet coupled with horrible and I do mean HORRIBLE mistakes made by Sovereign. The turians have a way more developed military than us and more dreadoughts which means if anything, they'd be the biggest threat to the Reapers but as long as they don't make ANY FUCKING ANNOYING MORONIC IDIOTIC BULLSHITTING MISTAKES they should be fine. Seriously, you've got a plan going on. You warp to the Citadel and then, using the databases in the main computer you destroy every single goddamn civilization.

Holy shit, did I just spoil Mass Effect 3? Either way, I liked Mass Effect 1 and I loved Mass Effect 2 but to be honest there are gaping plotholes and there will be gaping plot holes in the upcoming installment. Still, this will not impact my enjoyment. I enjoyed the 2nd and I sure as hell want to see the conclusion to the series.

Just wanted to say, thanks for ranting. Now I don't have to. As I said, it would make sense to just nuke the Earth from orbit, like they did with other planets that had massive craters where the cities were, plus those planet's atmospheres were destroyed. Instead of doing that to Earth and everyone else, they just do it the hard way.

Man the Reapers are stupid.

 

[teutonicman]

Yeah I just saw the trailer for it on the Spike VGA's... [long, loud school girl scream]. But the fall of 2011 is going to completely ridiculous and so far it's just Batman Arkham City and Mass Effect 3.

 

[SageRuffin]

So long as my Erika can keep her Widow, and Athena remains the biotic goddess she is, I'm satisfied.

On a more serious note, I hope some of the discrepancies in ME2 are worked out in 3 (like the
"thermal clip" system, the P/R choices having a situational percentage [which was retarded], and a few other gameplay inconsistencies).

And stop trying to railroad us into relationships! Goddamn...

 

[Frotality]

i really dont understand everyone's excitement... we all saw that loading screen in ME2 right?

well defending earth from evil aliens is about as boring and typical a sci if story as it gets, so i guess it makes a great advertisement blurb. considering dragon age's ad campaign, it probably has nothing to do with the actual game; i save my excitement for a real announcement.

 

[MisterShine]

Neat.

Although I wonder why the Reapers, a race of super-intelligent beings would "invade" Earth instead of just nuking it from orbit. Like any other logical construct would.

Unless of course their intention is not simply to destroy us. Or they need something from Earth/humanity before they do so.

 

[Irridium]

Neat.

Although I wonder why the Reapers, a race of super-intelligent beings would "invade" Earth instead of just nuking it from orbit. Like any other logical construct would.

Unless of course their intention is not simply to destroy us. Or they need something from Earth/humanity before they do so.

Probably. Hopefully its not as ridiculous like for our juices to turn us into a human reaper.

 

[revolutionaification]

Fuuuuuuu-

Much as I'm excited to see how it all ends, I'm also extremely disappointed that it will, I don't want the trilogy to be over so soon! Can't we do something along the lines of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy?!

Anyway... I am rather glad to see we'll get a look at Earth this time, the fact that it's the UK just adds to the awesome, but I'm hoping we don't spend all our time there. It'd seriously suck to suddenly have such an interesting and immersive galaxy shut off in favour of pottering about the sky over London.

 

[The Red Spy]

Trailer [http://www.gametrailers.com/video/vga-10-mass-effect/708362]

This is good news, both being invaded and the confirmation.

Spoiler: Probably the thing to play after that trailer