Mass Effect 3 Preview and Details

The writers at IGN have a new preview on BioWare’s upcoming final chapter in Commander Shepard’s sci-fi trilogy, in which they call Mass Effect 3 “bigger, better and more evocative”. Here’s snip:

Once inside, Kirrahe and a new Salarian character Padok Wiks soften their aggressive stance with the group. After a short talk a familiar voice charms in and we see Mordins friendly face. It seems he is involved with this project. Perhaps he’s making amends for causing the Genophage that nearly wiped out the entire Krogan race, but before we can find out the reunions cut short. Cerberus agents storm the building, trying to acquire the experiment for themselves. They pour in from the sky, but Kirrahe quickly reacts by pulling out a small pistol like object that has a tiny, glowing and blue orb hovering on the front of it. He fires a round or two at them and the surprisingly large payload it delivers gives them a few seconds to get in cover. Hopefully Shepard get’s this new toy in the full game.

But right now he needs to take out a swarm of Cerberus agents who are after the Krogan. Combat has changed, and even the cover and movement system has been overhauled. This Vanguard Shepard can roll, slide around a corner, or vault over cover and put a boot in an opponents face. Follow that up with one of the new class-specific heavy melee attacks including the omni-blade or the Vanguard’s crackling blue energy and enemies will be sent flying. When someone is spotted in the distance he can get close with the charge ability that was in Mass Effect 2. He slams into them with incredible force and sends them stumbling before creating a new shot gun shell as lead shoots from the barrel of my weapon into his, her, or its chest. If for some reason that is not enough he can deplete his shields sending a shockwave into the bodies of anyone near him with the new Nova ability. It’ll do some massive damage and of course that heavy melee attack mentioned earlier, executed by holding down the melee button, is all that’s needed to do to send a soon to be corpse flailing into the distance.

All those tactics worked great, until two new enemy types are encountered. Agents are sent in with shields for protection, and Engineers that deploy heavily armored turrets that’ll keep him behind cover if he don’t want to die. From cover Shepard wastes a few thermal clips on the turrets and again gets up close and personal, using a shotgun for the kill. The shielded agents are a little more tricky. They don’t seem to take much damage from my heavy melee’s, Nova, or Charge tactics. So he instead goes with an old standard, shoots them in the foot and when they stumble, puts a few rounds in their chest.

In addition to that, a poster on the BioWare Social forums has rounded up some new details from a preview on German magazine GameStar. Here are some of the most interesting ones:

(1) On Mars, Shepard will be looking for a Prothean secret weapon which may be useful against the Reapers. Casey Hudson is quoted with saying that this doesn’t mean the story is about THE McGuffin what will win the war, but more about “searching the whole galaxy for pieces of useful knowledge and war assets”.

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(3) War assets can be all kinds of things from fleets to single people. Their contribution will of course be of drastically different sizes.

(4) If you enter Reaper-controlled territory, there’s a chance the Reapers will try to hunt you down and you must do something to avoid them. That’s referred to as a minigame.

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(6) Some missions are mutually exclusive. Which one you choose from a set of options might affect the fate of civilizations and the loyalty of NPCs.

(7) Some optional missions may become unavailable if you don’t finish them before certain story events happen. That might adversely affect your campaign.

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(9) All missions may influence your reputation with NPCs (unclear whether this only refers to team members). That in turn may influence your interaction with them in future. NPCs differ in what they prefer, some may be more impressed by Renegade decisions, some more by Paragon decisions, but all will be influenced by decisions affecting their species.

(10) If old team members are dead, different things may happen depending on the character. Sometimes a story arc will be completely lost, sometimes there will be a replacement character, sometimes the story will develop in a totally different way.

(11) There will be no “Reapers win” scenario, based on the reasoning that such an ending is unsatisfying for players and would lead to re-loading a saved game anyway. There will, however, be endings where whole species become extinct and many worlds are destroyed, including Earth.

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(18) EVERYTHING Shepard does will affect the war. Story missions, sidequests and even exploration minigames.