Mass Effect 3 Demo Available.Follow

This is a ME3 thread. I understand spoiler tags for ME3 related stuffs, but ME1 or 2?

Anyone reading this thread would have played them at this point.

I'm confused. Who is femKaidan?

There are three possible companions on the Normandy at that point: Ashley, Liara, or Kiadan.

Ashley Williams is a human soldier that Shepard recruited into his/her squad on Eden Prime.
Kaidan Alenko was assigned to your crew from the start, and is a powerful human biotic.
Liara T'Soni is a powerful biotic Asari (so "Female") that you get later on in ME1.

One of those 3 will appear in the prologue. Which one depends on your gender and whether or not your romanced someone.

So what you are saying is that FemShep was there, but Ashley was the default? And the game couldn't have known about Kaidan because Genesis came after this?

It is odd that Ashley was shown then, assuming you were FemShep. It should have been Kaidan.

[EDIT]

Realistically, they should just have Genesis play from the start. But I suppose they wanted to make the opening scene as powerful as possible. Yeah, that does mean you can retcon part of the events you just saw, but it's a smaller price to pay in the grand scheme of things, I suppose.

Edited, Feb 23rd 2012 11:41am by idiggory

Interesting little bit of information that TotalBiscut has released. He does have a point, which is why I am going to avoid the game. It is essentially involving their launch DLC and how they are handling it.



TL;DR - Really ugly greed from EA that should stop with ME3 before it spreads to other games.

Good lord that's insidious. Hell, I'm fine with a lot of the things he isn't, but even I think they're going too far.

Not so sure I have the willpower to resist playing the game, but it's entirely possible I could skip buying it myself and just use my roommate's PS3 copy.

What angers me is that the reply is so clearly a lie. They discovered the character by unearthing dialogue in the DEMO files. That's proof that it was not developed separately from the actual game, like they are insisting it was.

I'm also pissed because there's decent reason to believe it would be a Vanguard, which is a huge tactical advantage for players with the DLC.

I was on the fence about buying the game to begin with. Honestly, the story isn't that great and I don't really care very much about what happens to the characters. I was only going to pick it up so the completionist in me would be satisfied. This blatant money grab has convinced me to to save my money.

Of course EA is not new to making really dumb decisions. Extra Credits did a good review of some of the retarded things EA has done recently.

http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/an-open-letter-to-ea-marketing

I thought Ashley with with armor on was a femKiadan, as my first time through ME2 I had no clue whom Ashley was since Kiadan was in my playthrough and I didnt play ME. Maybe it was Liara? IDK

To further confuse things. I'm pretty sure there's a choice in Genesis between letting Kiadan or Ashley die.

The load time for the HD pack for ME2 isn't too long on my rig, but still long enough to be annoying. It also stinks that a day after releasing a new driver thats promoted to maximize ME3, you have to uninstall the new physx driver and load the one that comes with ME2 in order to get ME2 to even bother to start. >.<

So you start the game with Kaidan and this guy name Jenkins. Jenkins dies before you even face your first enemy. SpoilerThen you meet Ashley, and she joins up (her squad was just killed, and you are a higher rank). She ends up being reassigned to your crew.

Later in the game, on Virmire (I think), Ashley and Kaidan are helping some Salarian forces as you attack Saren's stronghold. One is planting and arming a bomb, the other is helping the Salarians attack a wall (or something, I don't remember). Saren shows up and messes up the plan, and the Normandy only has time to make it to one location and escape before it blows (or something). So you are forced to leave one of your crew members to die, but that's your choice.

End result is that Ashley or Kaidan will survive to at least the early stages of ME3. But not both. And you will choose which dies.

Whoever DOESN'T die will be a companion in ME3. Kaidan is a biotic (sentinel in ME1) Ashley was a soldier.

The DLC at Launch isn't new for Bioware, they did the same thing for DragonAge (Although, if I recall correctly, you got the stuff just by pre-ordering and weren't forced to by the CE). CE includes the content this time, everyone else has gotta buy it.

Depends on which game.

In DA:O, Shale was available with all new game purchases. This was their anti-used tool, as everyone else needed to buy her (and she was certainly worth having).

DA2 used a very different system. The Black Emporium (which includes the Mabari) was their anti-used tool. And it's not a bad one, realistically--only place to respec, you get free damage from the dog, and you can get rez grenades. Never bothered with any of the gear myself, but I very rarely buy gear in an RPG.

Sebastian was free for anyone who pre-ordered (by January 11th, for the March release). That upgraded you to the Signature Edition, which was actually a great incentive for early adopters. It got you the DLC character free, plus the soundtrack, and a handful of in-game items that were useful early on.

I paid for Sebastian, and the Soundtrack. It would have been a much better deal, naturally, for me to pre-order. But I'm okay with not having done so. I very easily could have gotten both for free if I was willing to commit. There was a good 3 months to pre-order the Signature Edition, so it's not like I didn't have time.

So while I'm not really okay with that kind of at-launch DLC, I'm not abhorring it. Its purpose wasn't to ***** anyone over, it was to encourage early adoption. I was well aware the version existed, and chose to wait. Not okay, but not pure evil either. Sebastian was even more tied into the game than Shale was, so better to have (imo). Only thing he didn't offer that every other companion did was an armor upgrade.

ME1 had no DLC companions (and only 1/2 DLC was for a price, at least on the PC). ME2 included one companion in their new game system (Cerberus Network) who was a joke and poorly implemented. Another was released several months later, who was also a poorly implemented joke. Both were, quite literally, optional. You didn't miss out by not having them (unlike Shale or Sebastian).


This is very different. This is charging for a launch character DLC when you definitely developed him alongside the game. It's charging $10, which was what the cost of your new incentive DLC was (the multiplayer pass for ME3 is $10). The fact that he has game files in the demo proves that he was implemented from the start, so he's probably actually shipping ON THE DISC. And the art book proves that he was intended as a squad member from early development.

If they had done a Signature Edition deal, I wouldn't have complained. I essentially paid the CE cost for DA2 because I didn't partake in the SE option, but that was okay because I had another choice to get those things free.

That should have been the case here.

Honestly, this also feels like a push to get people to buy up the rest of the CEs. They're $20 more, but come with the DLC dog, the $10 From Ashes, and the soundtrack. A la carte, that's probably more than $20 right there.