WatchPlayRead At Eurogamer: Mass Effect 3

How does the latest Mass Effect game fare and more importantly, will it allow for more all important interactions between Shepard and Wrex?What I got to play at Eurogamer looked like it was the demo shown at E3. Shepard and crew were working with Mordin to help a Female Krogan escape before Cerberus got to her first. For the purposes of the demo, there were plenty of upgrade points available.

The upgrade tree in Mass Effect 3 has been given a complete overhaul and from what I saw, they seemed like good changes. While there weren’t as many skills as in the first game, there is certainly more choice than in the second game. Now when you click to upgrade a certain skill, it opens a new dialogue tree than eventually branches out into various options. It means players get more choice between protection and damage when upgrading powers. Different upgrades also give different amounts of Paragon/Renegade points. From what I could see, Charm and Intimidate was gone.

The demo itself wasn’t that long and focuses purely on the combat side of the game. In that regard, not a whole lot has changed from Mass Effect 2. Everything felt very similar, only now there’s a few more Gears Of War esque moves from the use of the Omniblade to being able to roll in any direction. The power wheels have also stayed the same. In this demo there was one new weapon that seemed to be a new Assault Rifle and Shepard also had access to a power called “Adrenaline Rush” which basically activates temporary bullet time. Also, grenades are back, only now they’re on the power wheel. Nice to see them return though.

Another Mass Effect feature that’s back is weapon mods although from what I saw it was in a very simplified manner. There’s no loot (thankfully in my opinion) and there were a few choices between what to add to an existing weapon. In the demo there was an area where you could change the “loadout” so I assume those will be present throughout the game.

Other than that it was some basic combat with Cerberus soldiers and not a whole lot more. The only story hints in the demo are the mention of a Turian-Krogan Alliance to fight the Reapers (given the two races chequered history, by no means an easy feat) and of the Cerberus troops Shepard and crew fight being indoctrinated. Nothing solid that can pinpoint where Bioware are going with the universe but they have said that they don’t want to give away as much of the game’s story as they did with Mass Effect 2.

So in conclusion, not a whole lot different from Mass Effect 2, which isn’t a bad thing. If it can reintroduce the parts from the first game that were missing in the second while improving on the past games mistakes then it should be a fun conclusion to Shepard’s fight against the Reapers. All I know is that I came out of the demo thinking “sure is Mass Effect alright”.

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