Mass Effect 3 Previews

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Written by BuckGB on February 3rd, 2012

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Mass Effect 3's first hour and a half does a lot to encourage this sense of personal responsibility. In a scene familiar from earlier demos, you see a kid blown to pieces along with a whole escape ship full of people as Reaper ships attach themselves to Earth like giant, poisonous, mechanical tics. The preceding scene, where you find the child hiding in an air duct and try unsuccessfully to persuade him to join you on the Normandy, involves you momentarily in his life for just long enough that seeing him die provokes more than the usual instantly-fleeting twinge of conscience. You know that his death is just one of thousands that day, and that knowledge steels you for the near-unwinnable battle ahead.

Mass Effect 3 kicks off in future Vancouver, home of humanity's Defence Council, and with respect to that city, we can't imagine that's the only Earth location in the cards. Though the early trailer depicting a Reaper attack on London may have been just for flavour, not a promise we'd be omni-stabbing Husks in Hyde Park, we'd bet on Earth turning up more than just once.

So, why is the combat better? It's very similar to the last game, obviously, but everything feels a little bit faster, a tad smoother in its movement, a mite more self-confident, even. Mass Effect 2 still had the occasional sign of being an RPG that had grown into a shooter, whereas this feels so close to the tropes of established Gears of War conventions, it's barely an RPG at all. Indeed, when you start a new campaign you're confronted with a trio of options that determine how the game plays and one of these more or less turns the game into a linear action experience. All NPC conversations are stripped of their interactive qualities, playing out instead as traditional cutscenes; presumably you don't even get a chance to determine whether you're Paragon or Renegade. At the other end of the spectrum is an option that focuses on story, dialling the combat difficulty down so far that your enemies all but shoot themselves.

Rather than simply level up a character's abilities by adding points to wide open categories, such as weapon proficiency or biotic powers, each has its own options. For example, Shepard's weapon upgrades forced us to choose between a faster reload speed or increased melee damage. Once you've made your choice you can never unlock the one you pass on, instead you're pushed onto another decision block.

It all starts however, as your correspondent recently discovered during a play through the game's opening hours, on terra firma. The setting is futuro-Vancouver, and it's the day that the Reapers make their dramatic return. Shepard and Anderson have been called to an emergency meeting of Earth's leaders, during which contact with other cities and colonies is gradually cut off. Suddenly the outside world erupts in white light, the room is filled with glass and blood and vast Reapers can be seen piercing the clouds. They soon stalk between the skyscrapers destroying all in their path - each one of them a strange mixture of laser-toting giant squid and upright vacuum cleaner. There's a palpable feeling of War of the Worlds throughout, aided and abetted by the unearthly 'ftang' noise the Reapers make just before they ignite their prey.

Racing through the atmosphere amongst waves of burning debris, Shepard, Ashley and Vegas are told by Joker to ignore a Reaper invasion they're powerless to fight, and instead turn their attention to matters elsewhere. They head to Mars, a recent site of Prothean research into a powerful weapon that could turn the tide of the war, lead by Liara T'Soni. Problem is the site has gone quiet, so it's up to the team to touch down and investigate.

Action mode offers you exactly the opposite experience, turning conversations into standard non-interactive cut-scenes, while providing you with a straight-up cover-based shooter, with no morality nonsense to get in the way of the headshots.

Role-playing mode, finally, is the traditional Mass Effect mode. If you're reading this, it's the mode you'll almost certainly end up playing. (If you're not reading this, what's on telly at the moment? Is it time for Diagnosis Murder yet?)

You're only on Earth for a few minutes, before being picked up by your spaceship, the Normandy, and sent packing off to recruit the rest of the galaxy to help fight the Reapers. Your first stop off though proves to be Mars, where potential (or existing if we had our save) love interest Liara has discovered some sort of super weapon blueprint.

A multitude of shooting sequences and standoffs later, and you realise that a familiar face is behind the mysterious deletion of station data - Illusion Man. The playtest ended with Shepard betrayed, on a serious back foot against multiple enemies and a serious incident that changes the shape of your squad irrevocably.

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