Mass Effect 3 will be out on the 6th of March in the US and CAN, and on the 9th of March in Europe - or at least in Denmark, I believe.

Chris Priestly announced today on the Bioware Social forums that there will be a ME3 demo coming out - on Valentine's Day e.g.

February 14th 2012. Why this is, I don't know. Even for the demo, you will be required to use Origin to get the demo. [Not sure if the demo will go up on other sites, though].

Needless to say, on the BSN boards as well as on the boards on rpgwatch.com we've had a rather lengthy debate over Oigin - and Steam. I'm not to sure about what the whole deal with Steam is about, but I bety it has something to do with money.  On the other hand, many people on the BSN boards seem to have positive experiences with Origin, saying that the Origin client can be shut down while playing; Steam need to to running - as a tray application - all the time.

The problem for me is what if every publisher did this.... or Heaven forbid....every tv-manufacturer did this. It would mean that you could only see certain tv-shows on your Apple TV, see other shows on your Samsung or Philips or SONY TV. Or watch DVDs from these companioes if you only had a Philips or SONY Bluray or SONY system.

Now they are releasing DLC with the Mass Effect themed action figures that will be released soon:

Source

If you read what Eurogamer has to say about it, it sounds like a very bad thing. They promise powerful new characters & equipment, for multiplayer, thus effectively allowing people to buy power. 

Originally Posted By Fnord (24 JAN 2012 5:36am)

Now they are releasing DLC with the Mass Effect themed action figures that will be released soon:

Source

If you read what Eurogamer has to say about it, it sounds like a very bad thing. They promise powerful new characters & equipment, for multiplayer, thus effectively allowing people to buy power. 

North america only?! I hate regional differences 

A free copy of Dragon Age

I'll keep you posted how good or bad it is, t-minus 9 days w00t 

Originally Posted By markornikov (28 FEB 2012 2:11pm)

I'll keep you posted how good or bad it is, t-minus 9 days w00t 

I'm not convinced enough to buy it yet (not to mention owning a graphics card that's likely on the raggedy edge of running it), so I'll definitely be interested to hear what you think of it.

Caution for anyone who cares about ME3's story.

It's been leaked and there are people out there that are ruining the ending of the game for people (like the whole Harry potter ending when it was leaked).

If you care about the storyline I'd suggest going a bit "dark" until you finish it, don't google for story things or read forums on it, you might end up reading the spoilers and that would suck so much for this game, Mainly because many people are invested so much into the storyline that spanned two games now going into three.

I'm currently finishing up my ME2 playlthrough , 28hours in so far, hopefully not too far left.

thanks for the warning. 

But they can't spoil it all. It's almost like the butterfly effect, even the tiniest detail can influence something much later on.

Just yesterday i was baffled that things went totally different just because i took another crew member along on a mission.

Even after my fifth playthrough of the first Mass Effect, I still discover new things.

god, i'm so clueless these days... i had no idea this game was coming out now! :|

anyway, I have a sort of traumatic story with ME, as a year ago I lost the save files from both games, meaning I would have to play them again to progress with my story in ME3. Seeing, I don't have much time to play at present, I would have to start this game with a new character, and throw away all my character's history development  

but I'm sure the game will be great!

Ines, I went from playing ME1/2 on the xbox 360 and moved to the pc with ME2 (yes this is my second play through) and now 3.

I was afraid when I made the switch I'd be lost, all of those choices I made and would haev to play through ME1 again up to now.

However you don't, there are a couple of great sites for this exact thing.

http://www.masseffectsaves.com/

http://www.masseffect2saves.com/

you can look through their saves, and find pretty much any single type of character you want paragon/renegade, romance options, etc.

On top of this even if you can't find the "perfect" one like you remember your choices in ME1, you can use Gibbed's save editor in ME2 which allows you to take an ME2 save and select with plot choices oyu want to make so you have everything how you want.

It's a great work around and will be super easy if you don't want to go back throuogh ME1 or 2.

Originally Posted By Inesrocks (5 MAR 2012 12:18pm)

god, i'm so clueless these days... i had no idea this game was coming out now! :|

 

anyway, I have a sort of traumatic story with ME, as a year ago I lost the save files from both games, meaning I would have to play them again to progress with my story in ME3. Seeing, I don't have much time to play at present, I would have to start this game with a new character, and throw away all my character's history development  

esp. with Kaidan! 

).

 

but I'm sure the game will be great!

There's a dlc for ME2 that lets you 'build' a character through a comic, where you can choose all the major choices of ME1

Maybe they'll do the same for ME3, so you can save some time.

But i know how you feel, i too lost 2 saved characters and i already spent >40 hours rebuilding a single character :s

Originally Posted By Stiler (5 MAR 2012 12:56pm)

Ines, I went from playing ME1/2 on the xbox 360 and moved to the pc with ME2 (yes this is my second play through) and now 3.

 

I was afraid when I made the switch I'd be lost, all of those choices I made and would haev to play through ME1 again up to now.

 

However you don't, there are a couple of great sites for this exact thing.

 

http://www.masseffectsaves.com/

http://www.masseffect2saves.com/

 

oh this is very usefull too, thanks!

Especially for future characters. Because I'm starting to dislike ME1, the side missions and planet explorations are quite boring

Originally Posted By Stiler (5 MAR 2012 12:56pm)

Ines, I went from playing ME1/2 on the xbox 360 and moved to the pc with ME2 (yes this is my second play through) and now 3.

 

I was afraid when I made the switch I'd be lost, all of those choices I made and would haev to play through ME1 again up to now.

 

However you don't, there are a couple of great sites for this exact thing.

 

http://www.masseffectsaves.com/

http://www.masseffect2saves.com/

 

you can look through their saves, and find pretty much any single type of character you want paragon/renegade, romance options, etc.

 

On top of this even if you can't find the "perfect" one like you remember your choices in ME1, you can use Gibbed's save editor in ME2 which allows you to take an ME2 save and select with plot choices oyu want to make so you have everything how you want.

 

It's a great work around and will be super easy if you don't want to go back throuogh ME1 or 2.

Oh, Stiler, thanks a lot! I had no idea there was such a thing!

I'm going to try it in my ME3 play. 

I just have one question... if I use those save files, will I still be able to customize my character's appearance? My character was a woman... so if the save file refers to a male character, will I have to play as that?

you can filture through for Male or female shepards.

As far as looks go, I'm not sure with ME3, but in ME2 even if you imported your ME1 character, you still got to customize their looks and change it at the start. It wouldn't make much sense to tak ethat way for ME3 so I assume you will be able.

however I don't think they'll let you change sex, as there are storylines/missions that this affects (IE who you can romance or not).

I wonder how the game would react if you were to change the sex of your character by editing an old save. Would it bug out entirely, or just treat your gender specific quests as unfinished? 

*edit* Tried to download the demo, but whoever designed Origin should get a serious slap on the fingers. When I tried to register an account I just got stuck in a redirection loop. One would think that hitting "registrera" (Swedish for register) would take me to the registration page, but no, it does not. And localization of the site, it is horrible. At times it feels like whoever translated this got a kick out of making the language as patronizing as humanly possible. That, and there are spelling or gramatical errors in every second sentence. I'm not at all getting a good first impression. 

Also, Markornikov, is it true that you are stuck with french if you live in Belgium? I heard a person on another forum complain about not being able to use Origin it is set to french, and he can't change it (and wikipedia tells me that only about 40% of the population speak french). 

Originally Posted By Fnord (6 MAR 2012 3:02pm)

Also, Markornikov, is it true that you are stuck with french if you live in Belgium? I heard a person on another forum complain about not being able to use Origin it is set to french, and he can't change it (and wikipedia tells me that only about 40% of the population speak french). 

That's not entirely true, but you have to be careful when you download origin.

The default language of the site is french in Belgium, even when you switch to another page the site resets to french.

Can you give me the link to the forum, so i can help the guy 

Nonetheless, setting french as the default language is outrageous.

The language issue is a very touchy subject in my country, so it's a commercial blunder to annoy the majority of your target country. 

Originally Posted By Inesrocks (5 MAR 2012 1:16pm)

I just have one question... if I use those save files, will I still be able to customize my character's appearance? My character was a woman... so if the save file refers to a male character, will I have to play as that?

According to IGN you can change all the major choices of ME 1&2 when you create a new character in ME3.

I read about it over at the Paradox main forum, though you can sadly not post there unless you either have a game to register or have a 14 days or older (i think, not sure about the exact number)) account. 

It's even worse for the Lithuanians: only 5% speaks french over there, but still origin is only available in french and not in lithuanian or english. 

Why don't they just default things to English in any region that does not have a proper localization/where there is more than one major language? And why did they pick french fro Lithuania? 

Oh, and if Latvia has its default language set to Russian, or if they don't offer both Russian and Latvian language support, then I guess there will be hell there. Language and national identity is a very sensitive topic there, and there is a very large Russian speaking minority (roughly 30%) of which a large portion don't speak Latvian (somewhere in the region of 75%, was the number I heard when I was in Riga, a few years ago). On the other hand, many Latvians dislike Russia and by extension people who identify themselves as Russians. 

*edit* I did it! I actually managed to create an account. All I had to do was to go through the american site (which actually worked, and gave me no stupid redirection loops). But the whole ordeal did annoy me so much that I don't really feel like using the darn thing, but rather play something else. 

yeah i agree EA's behaviour is totally unacceptable.

But not seeing the end of my favourite movie trilogy, just because the movie theater uses fingerprint recognition, is not an option.

I've invested sooo much time playing the previous mass effects, i just cannot bear not knowing how all these events will affect the end of the mass effect universe.

oh, i see that my download has already finished  

I think i'm going to tell my employees i'm going to be an hour late at work , let's try this shit 

epic!!!! 

I played about half an hour and i'm loving it, they kept all the good stuff.

Gameplay wise it plays almost exactly like ME2, combat feels the same, levelling and upgrading is almost the same, the conversation trees haven't changed. Some minor things were added, like the invention of ladders and the addition of leap jumps. 

This makes the environments you fight in a bit more realistic.

The main difference is the setting and mood of the game, after a few minutes it's already clear this will be a much darker story. I almost let a tear fall for a moment. So beware this game is not something for the faint hearted , we're in the middle of a galactic war after all.

My only complaint at this point, is that i couldn't properly import my character, it did import the decisions i made but gave an error in the facial import. I'll look around for a solution, because no way i'm sticking with Mr Hamster face 

Originally Posted By Mr Innocent. (18 JAN 2012 11:07am)

I absolutely loved Mass Effect 2, but it looks like I won't be getting ME3.

 

Origin's current Terms of Service and EA's forum/account idiocy are unacceptable, and that's all there is to it.

 

If Origin becomes less intrusive, or ME3 becomes available for purchase AND play without requiring Origin, then EA can have my money, and not a day before.

 

Buy it and then "pirate" it. No Origin and no moral or legal qualms either, as you have a legal copy of the game and have give EA your money.

Apparently the facial import is a widespread bug across all platforms. Any Shepard that was imported from ME to ME2 will be affected by this bug. So everybody who did a full playthrough will be affected, it's weird this obvious bug wasn't noticed during a beta test.

Originally Posted By walsh (8 MAR 2012 4:27am)

Originally Posted By Mr Innocent. (18 JAN 2012 11:07am)

I absolutely loved Mass Effect 2, but it looks like I won't be getting ME3.

 

Origin's current Terms of Service and EA's forum/account idiocy are unacceptable, and that's all there is to it.

 

If Origin becomes less intrusive, or ME3 becomes available for purchase AND play without requiring Origin, then EA can have my money, and not a day before.

 

 

Buy it and then "pirate" it. No Origin and no moral or legal qualms either, as you have a legal copy of the game and have give EA your money.

 

Hmm, I'm starting to think I'll go this route.  Cracking my boxed legal copies of Steam games, which is what I've started doing now with my Steam games, is about the same thing anyway.  I'll wait and see for a good "crack" to appear, and in the meantime, i'll finish my ME2 which i never finished because i was going to buy some of the DLC first, which i never got a round to doing..  However, I'm starting to think i should just finish it without the DLC.

I've finally bought DE:HR also, just waiting for it to arrive, and looking for a crack for it.  I was going to start playing it the weekend, but i might end up carrying on with my ME2 game instead.

I don't have much time for gaming atm, so Skyrim has still been keeping all my free time occupied.  But, Markonikov is being a meanie, by peaking my interest in ME3 like this.

 meanie is my middle name. So i won't be toning down my enthousiasm  

But i did enjoy Deus Ex:HR a lot, so that's a very good alternative for ME3.

It's a shorter game but it also has a solid storyline and very detailed environments.