Mass Effect 3 Previews

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Written by Brother None on June 15th, 2011

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Mass Effect 3's powers and abilities are a little more in depth than its predecessors as well. The old system is still visually present, as players can spend points on characters to further improve the level of their power. A separate menu shows a branching system of ways to expand upon and evolve these abilities. It's not clear whether or not experience points need to be shared for both ability leveling and branching. Like previous entries in the series, combat can be handled in many ways. Your team can use biotic or tech powers to overload shields and suspend foes or use the tried and true strategy of flanking.

Shepard and Anderson continue to move through the rubble of buildings as dozens of Reapers continue to drop from orbit and methodically destroy everything around them. Eventually the game forces them into a last stand situation against Husks and the Normandy arrives just in the nick of time. As Shepard boards the starship, Anderson elects to stay behind and help with the evacuation of civilians, reinstates Shepard as Commander, and orders him to leave. The mission is clear: Rally the various races across the galaxy to give mankind a fighting chance to thwart the Reaper invasion. With Shepard's orders in place, the Normandy starts to pull away as the game starts to play out a tragic scene. The young boy we saw earlier in the demo boards an evacuation transport and a Reaper tears it apart, sending the ship crashing into the ocean. It's clear that BioWare is not pulling any punches about how dangerous and merciless the Reapers are going to be in Mass Effect 3.

Hudson showed us morsels of story, with Shepard caught between two warring factions on a rescue mission. He issued commands to squad mates Garrus and Liara, briefly showed us new Power uses and a new hand grenade that's in the trailer too! that Hudson says expands the combat experience and the role-playing aspects of this Mass Effect.

And we saw a customization Bench at which we could upgrade and modify Shepard's weapons through the game. Those mods will be collected and swapped in to suit a player's particular style, adding new layers to how every player's Shepard fights.

Melee moves make their way into the battlefield. In Mass Effect 3, melee moves seem to be little cinematic melee attacks rather than straight out melee attacks that you can spam like you would in a Halo game. Every class has a different melee move. For example, the biotic adept controls the crowd with an area of effect melee that stuns all nearby opponents.

The level takes place on the Salarian homeworld (home planet of the fast-talking Dr Mordin, who also puts in an appearance) and has you trying to get a female Krogan to safety off planet. If our memory of Mass Effect lore is correct the violent Krogan race was made infertile due to a virus created by the Salarians in order to stop them overrunning the galaxy. So presumably Shepard is trying to get them onside by helping out the female.

The enemies were once again Cerberus troops, presumably since the Reapers have a vested interest in keeping the galaxy disunited. The basics of the combat work the same as the previous games, or indeed any third person shooter, but Shepard is now able to flip from cover to cover instantly, which makes movement a lot more fluid.

Presented as the pinnacle of the Mass Effect experience and after eight years of intense hard work, this ambitious series reaches its climax in 2012. Commander Shepard's new mission is to enlist the help of key personnel scattered across the galaxy, retrieve critical war assets, and liberate facilities in an effort to save Earth from the malicious Reapers, who are determined to harvest the green planet's resources and subsequentially destroy it.

A new system called blood haze replaces the veins from the previous games, and towards the end of the demo we got to see how the games hook together, with the beginning of the third game neatly linking to the final DLC from the previous one.

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