As of this writing (Monday morning) I’ve played Mass Effect 3 for twenty hours. That’s obviously not enough to complete or even properly enjoy the game, so I thought I’d have some early impressions ready when all the other sites reviews go live on Tuesday. I’ve set aside a big chunk of time with week to finish it, so expect a full review by (hopefully) Thursday. Neither these impressions nor the review will spoil party members or significant narrative events.
The first couple hours of the game had me worried. In the sequence we all saw at E3 2011, Mass Effect 3 kicked off with Shepherd on Earth awaiting trial for the events that transpired in The Arrival. A Reaper invasion occurs and chaos ensues. For the player that translates to a basic tutorial segment where Shepard learns the basic fundamentals of movement and a couple new tricks, such as leaping across chasms. As far as movement Shepard felt a bit more nimble than he did in Mass Effect 2. Running is still a bit rigid and in the heat of battle moving backwards to safety can cause some problems, but there was a noticeable change in his general maneuverability. Shepard also has an expanded melee set that grants him a combo, although I haven’t been using it too much with my particular play style.
Shepard also seemed to be reloading faster, but that perception could have been assigned to Mass Effect 3’s overhauled weapon modification system. Modding weapons was cumbersome and overbearing in Mass Effect 1 and almost completely absent in Mass Effect 2. For Mass Effect 3, weapon modding (and loot in general) have arrived at a happy medium. Everywhere you go you’re bound to pick up a mod that increasing damage, stability, and a host of other stats for a particular weapon class. You’ll also find some that reduce weapon weight, which factors into Shepard’s load out. As a Vanguard I was free to carry as many weapons as I wanted, but at the cost of my ability to recharge my biotic powers. For example, lugging around all five of my weapons resulted in my biotics charging 200% slower than they normally would. It was also possible for different weapons in the same class to have vastly different weight based on their own attributes, which gives way to the intense customization so many fans were begging for. Additionally there doesn’t appear to be any restriction to the amount of weapons or mods you can have in your inventory, which is amazing news for anyone annoyed to death by Mass Effect 1’s inventory limits.
Customization also applies to armor. While you do have the option to buy full sets of Cerberus Armor or Inferno Armor at shops on the Citadel, you can also mix and match pieces of your basic armor. There doesn’t appear to be any crossing of the streams, meaning all Cerberus Armor stays as one unit, but there are also a ton of parts to mix and match for Shepard’s regular N7 attire.
I was also pleased to find that when Mass Effect 3 imported my Mass Effect 2 (nee Mass Effect 1) Shepard, it also brought over his character level. I don’t know if that information was public before, but it really surprised me. Both my Shepard and my immediate party members started the game at level 30 and were free to distribute points into abilities. My Vanguard had a new ability called Nova that sacrificed Shepard’s shields to form a charged blast, but other than that my abilities remained with Charge, Pull, Shockwave, and Cryo and Incendiary ammo. Previously the last bar of the skill tree would branch into two divergent options, but in Mass Effect 3 the last three bars each branched into distinct abilities. One of Pull’s, for example, had the option of doing 25% or damage or affecting multiple targets.
Learning all of that was cool, but I was not one of those people who found fault with the way either Mass Effect handled its combat. What had me worried was the particular method in which Mass Effect 3 chose to handle the baggage I was bringing into the game. Every single crew member, from Tali to Kelly, survived at the end of my Mass Effect 2. Furthermore, I completed all of the DLC and had both Kasumi and Zaeed aboard. Eleven (eleven!) party members could have been dead at the end of Mass Effect 2 and potentially written out of Mass Effect 3. Coupled with Wrex, Liara, and Ashley/Kaiden that leaves a ton of potential variation in regard to anyone’s Mass Effect 3 experience. The depth at which Mass Effect games explore their characters is unrivaled, and I couldn’t be sure if Bioware would let their development time be consumed by events and characters that might not even exist in a particular play through.
For the first few hours of Mass Effect 3 I wasn’t running into any of these people and I was slightly worried they were being paired down to bit parts. After twenty hours, I can happily report that I was wrong. Mostly. Some characters join your party, some are woven into missions, and all I’ve encountered have played a role in helping Shepard broker a deal with various planetary and cultural factions in defending the universe from the Reaper threat. Is it satisfying? That depends. I really want to name drop whom I have seen and what they have done for me but that would be spoiling so much of what makes Mass Effect 3 so damn cool. Everywhere I go I seem to bump into someone, and typically it’s not a one-time-only encounter. Better yet, I simply can’t imagine how parts of Mass Effect 3 would play out if you left Mass Effect 2 with a Normandy full of body bags. The amount of potential variation is crazy, and it makes me wish I had a completely destroyed Mass Effect 2 save just so I could play 3 under a completely different perspective. I absolutely will not reveal the members of my current available party other than to say one took me completely by surprise.
Missions are handled a bit differently. Mass Effect 2 was rigidly defined by acquiring characters and then another mission that required earning their trust. In Mass Effect 3 you’re trying to get every single race and planet you can in order to fight off the Reapers, and every missions is designed to aid in that fight This is measured in the War Room, where you have all kinds of charts and meters to measure your readiness, so to speak. Everything you do contributes to readiness. Solving galactic problems obviously pulls more weight than smaller personal issues, but so far Bioware has done a pretty decent job at rationalizing fetch quests in the midst of universal apocalypse.
Plot-advancing missions are given the “Priority” tag while others simply list the city in which they were acquired. A new way to obtain missions involves walking past people and overhearing their conversations. For me all of these have happened at the Citadel, and they either involve finding or buying an item there, or traveling to other systems and scanning planets. Yes, planetary scanning returns, but in a much different manner than its employment in Mass Effect 2. In Mass Effect 3 you simply hum around the start system blasting your scanner and once it picks up something you highlight that planet, play the old scan minigame once, and then you’re done. The whole time you’re also under threat of the Reapers who will appear and game over your ship if they get into contact, but typically that’s a threat that can be avoided. Back to the smaller missions, it’s often unclear what exactly needs to be done to complete them and most I’m getting done by sheer coincidence. This leads me to believe that either I’m missing something (likely) or maybe more work could have been done in communicating information to the player.
It may not seem like that big of a deal, but I really like they way maps have been redone. Clicking in the analog stick brings up a map, and the map lists any and all party members or quest givers in the vicinity. This is especially helpful in the Normandy, as your party members are no longer confined to one area and appear in different spaces throughout the ship. In fact, they all seem to explore the Citadel whenever I’m there as well. Speaking of which, while not quite as large as it was in Mass Effect 1, the Citadel returns to being a vast facility. Separated into five different areas there’s a lot to do and see, and it all has that ultra clean feel. One area in particular, the loading docks, is interesting in that it’s a make-shift shelter for the loads of refugees arriving by the day. There’s even a picture wall with photographs of missing loved ones, adding a nice touch of familiar humanity to an otherwise alien facility.
Combat thus far has been fine, if not bit better than Mass Effect 2. Mass Effect 3 is content to drop in brutes and other advanced baddies as a means to close out missions. A Nemesis is super quick and has a sniper that will ruin your life, and another one called a Banshee is quick specializes in melee attacks. Cerberus’ Combat Engineers can deploy turrets and those things will rip everyone to shreds. Seriously, early in the game armored turrets were responsible for 90% of my deaths until I learned the proper way to manage them. Mass Effect 3 may be blunt with its lessons, but thus far nothing has felt outright impossible.
And that’s all I’ve got for now. After our multiplayer sessions Monday afternoon I’ve got two days blocked off to play nothing but Mass Effect 3. I suppose I could mainline the game, skip all the side quests, and do a bang-up job with the review, but you wouldn’t want that, would you? Unless it’s a 60 hours beast we should have a full review up by Thursday.
