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Oh and I got the Art of the Mass Effect Universe book. It's great! And it revealed a couple of things I would have preferred not to have been revealed! Such as a couple of the squad members I'll be meeting!

Yay!

Mark Meer is really good in this demo. He's closed the gap with Hale completely, and may well be the better voice actor. Astonishing. He's come a long, long way from his wooden, awful delivery in ME1.

Demo did its job of getting me to pre-order. Nuff said

I was too disappointed when kid went bye byeit was like 'hi again' then 'oh, bye'.
In honesty, they could have stretched it out a lot longer for emotional impact. They didn't.

Multiplayer demo is up. It's pretty goddamn fun, actually. I don't think it's great, but it's been done competently. Human Engineer is definitely my class: Overload/Incinerate/Combat Drone is the holy trinity of powers. (Unless it's Overload/Sabotage/Combat Drone.)

If the 'Horde mode' is as good as I've heard, and some of my friends get it, and they would want to play it... I might actually consider picking it up.

So I've finally figured out what's been bothering me about the multiplayer (and no I haven't played it which already puts me in a great position to give opinions). It's not that the multiplayer exists - practically every other game out now has a successful multiplayer mode - it's the fact that it can influence the single player story. Yes I know that you don't need to play the multiplayer to complete the single player, but in that case why not make it completely separate and just have it as skirmishes against the Reapers while the main story carries on?

I'm shoehorning this into the personal theory I want to be true, so bear with that.

This is the first video game in the Mass Effect universe that is not told through Shepard's (or Shepard's crew) POV. This is a way to start shifting the idea that Mass Effect == Shepard, since until now that's always been true.

Doing this will blunt the reaction somewhat when they announce the Mass Effect MMO and/or the Mass Effect tabletop RPG. (They did credit Bioware's MMO team in the ME2 credits, and Bioware has released a well received tabletop RPG for Dragon Age, so either are more than possible...)

I like the multiplayer a lot. It greats really interesting when you're corned by a large group of enemies. I want to use the word "epic," but that word has been sullied by this point. I'm a huge fan of how you unlock items. It was a pain in the ass unlocking paint jobs for the Human Soldier FOUR TIMES IN A ROW, but getting new gear like the Mattock rifle filled me with glee. I can you can equate it to pulling a sweet Mythic from a Magic booster or something.

My one problem, however, is that classes are a tad unbalanced. I mostly play as an Engineer, so I'm forced to blast through shields and armour before I can take down targets. Most of the time, however, a Vanguard teleports in out of nowhere, uses Nova, and hogs all of the glory. That irks me somewhat.

I have been playing for the last few days, and I have to say my class of choice is Infiltrator. Tac Cloack with an M-98 Widow makes each shot I fire with some degree of accuracy a kill shot against almost all class of Cerberus baddie. It's nice to be able to kill an Atlas by myself.

@Zethyr: I can see what you are saying about the Vanguard. My brother's class of choice is the Vanguard, and he usually just jumps in, kills everything, and then jumps again to kill more things. I don't even want to know how many kills he has stolen, but I'm guessing quite a few.

Well I just saw the new "Take back the earth" trailer, and now I remember how much I wanted mass effect 3, touche Bioware.

Armies of Makos and Hammerheads. If we do not see a similar cutscene in the game I will be le dissapoint.

Also did I notice a bit of Dragon Age II soundtrack at the start of the trailer?

Aha! Found this old election trailer which had to have been an inspiration.

So, day one DLC has been announced. Genuine question: Why am I supposed to be annoyed about this? From the looks of it it's basically like the Kasumi DLC (which while I really liked it, it wasn't integral to the plot) and so they're asking you to pay more for extra, which is fine by me.

It'd be like if they released a new novel on the same day as the game was released, I wouldn't expect to get the novel for free, so why should I get this free as well?

You mean the Prothean? Yeah I was surprised it's DLC. It was in the art book so I thought it would be there from the start.

Usually, people dislike day one DLC because it's stuff that could have been included in the game and wasn't, so it looks like price-gouging in a way that releasing a novel at the same time doesn't. Especially when the DLC is things that people expected to be in the game from the start.

I don't personally have strong feelings about it, but that's the logic as I've always understood it.

The prothean DLC is in the collector's edition, I think.

So, like Mass Effect 2 and Zaeed Massani it's a way to encourage people to buy new copies of the game and not get them second hand?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lG-kEaI ... ure=relmfu The Live-Action trailer.
It could be better but it successfully makes me care about the stupid smelly humans on planet earth. It's hard to care when virtual models gets obliterated by ancient machines, but when it's live-actors it's hard to hold back the internal empathy drives.
The CGI and live action bits are a bit jarring. Particularly the husks.
It was made by the same people who do some special effects on Doctor Who btw.

Geoff_B wrote:So, like Mass Effect 2 and Zaeed Massani it's a way to encourage people to buy new copies of the game and not get them second hand?

Probably. From what I've read, the Prothean is in the vanilla game as a plot point, all the DLC does is turn him into a party member.

I can sort of understand their reasoning for doing day 1 DLC but if it's to give a party member who's already part of the story then yeah that's probably not the best way to do it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bG2mdZ23eP8

Mass Effect 3 launch trailer. The most awesomest thing I have seen for a while. Plus the background song is Protectors of Earth by Two Steps from Hell.

I think I'll be watching this once or twice

Doctor Who death series music.

Also made me almost cry. I think it was the scene with the whole army rising up against the Reapers.
<3 Garrus.

I hope new comers to #3 who cba with 1 and 2 are able to understand this game. It's not going to be Gears of War...

Geoff_B wrote:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bG2mdZ23eP8

Mass Effect 3 launch trailer. The most awesomest thing I have seen for a while. Plus the background song is Protectors of Earth by Two Steps from Hell.

I think I'll be watching this once or twice

I see that trailer and raise you the hidden trailer with space battle?
*kind of a minor spoiler in the fleet composition*
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhQtb4RH ... h_response

Couple of races missing from that one...

I doubt it's the ultimate ending may even be a rather bad one. *spoilers*

That fleet was only Human, turrian, asari and quarian
Also rather awesomely 9 assari destiny ascention class dreadnaughts and 3 quarian liveship dreadnaughts

And seriously how many cruisers do the quarians have must be hundreds.

And that before Salerian, rachni, geth and others even get involved. and think how epic the ground forces will be.

Though the entire fleet seems to have had Thanix cannons installed and well we saw what those can do to a collector ship.

So, you know that really well put together "Take Earth Back" CGI trailer that came out a week or so ago? They recut it with Femshep in it.