Mass Effect 3 pops up for pre-order on EA Store

“your only hope for saving mankind is to rally the civilizations of the galaxy” for the third time, since they keep forgetting you’re the guy who saved the galaxy twice already.

I’m hoping this will be better than ME2. By that I mean, more RPG, less Halos of War.

LOL Bioware are absolutely the worst company when it comes to keeping secrets and teasing games :X

FUCK YEAH!!!!!!!!

Well, it was bound to happen one day.

12

I hope this time they will make a decent RPG game or decent shooter, but not something in between. OK, Bioware?
And this time make something original in the story, not something from other masterpieces :3

If not, get out of here.

It’s already been pulled.

People disliked ME2? Damn…ok i agree, it definitely missed something ME1 had. But damn if i didn’t enjoy ME2.

I forgot to click the link though, so did it show any boxart?

ahhhh…party pooopers…now we know that it will be ME3.
I just played the 1st one and there you couldnt land on the earth…funny…in 1 & 2 you explore the galaxy and in the 3rd one you are on the earth XD

Earth is a really cool idea actually. But i can’t imagine how they can show the earth… Maybe 1 small piece of one city.

Earth is big and Mass Effect has a nice Sci-Fi setting behind it.

Shepard: “So now it’s Earth? Well geuse what: fuck you guys. No really, I’ve been telling you people about the goddamn Reapers for two years now. And would you listen? No, no you diden’t. Nobody did. And I was left to clean up your shit, twice.
So fuck you verry much. I’m done. You deal with it, I’m going to Thessia.”

@7 Naw. Just a standard placeholder with Mass Effect 3 sprawled across the front.

Here’s screen grabs: http://www.blogcdn.com/www.joystiq.com/media/2010/12/me3-ea-store-platforms-580.jpg

http://www.blogcdn.com/www.joystiq.com/media/2010/12/me3-ea-store-580.jpg

I’m just glad it’s not another game, cause that would have meant we had to wait much longer for ME3. I wonder what release date they’ll anounce. I can’t wait to continue the ME story.

@12 I’m sure it’s 2012 January or March :3

couldn’t they have waited for one more day? seriously, thats stupid. :S
but i’m glad to hear that the reveal tomorrow will be ME3 (obviously) and not some other game.

“Earth is burning. Striking from beyond known space, a race of terrifying machines have begun their destruction of the human race. As Commander Shepard, an Alliance Marine, your only hope for saving mankind is to rally the civilizations of the galaxy and launch one final mission to take back the Earth.”

Sounds like Dragon Age.

@ 13

Ah well, plenty of amazing games next year anyway, so that’s all fine. But what did you dislike about ME2?

@16,

1) Story (while it was a very nice story and had really great characters. Everything was ripped off from Babylon 5, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica. Setting and narrative story was just a Rip Off from these movies. No original ideas)

2) Gameplay (1st game had a decent RPG system with lots of sad issues. They didn’t improved them, but improved shooting mechanics and shooterized RPG genre. In the end it was something in between: Not a good shooter and not a good RPG game. Just something in between.)

3) Repetitive mini games. Especially with planet mining.

4) Crappy dialog system. there is no depth in your choices. Blue – good. Red – Evil. In the middle – Neutral.

5) Mission variety of your crew – boring. In most cases you do one thing: shoot shoot and shoot. Yeah there are two guys from the crew who have better missions with variety, but in most cases you do only one thing: destroy the shit out of anything.

6) Not the best graphics because of the engine. Yeah, loadings are much faster… Facial details are awesome. But everything else even on PC looks ok.

the bottom line is that it’s not a BAD game, but it’s not a great game. It’s just a game.
Fans of the sci-fi universe will like it like the next Jesus because of great voices, great camera angles. But thats it.
Opinion.

CE pc version of mass effect 3 for me no questions asked.

@ 17

I never watched Babylon,Star Trek and BSG, so i didn’t know. Kinda cheap and too bad that they didn’t come up with a story of their own then. So the whole story about the reapers and protheans etc is all taken from those shows?

Yes the controls were much better, better cover, better shooting, better moving. I agree about the choices, there seemed to be more of those in the first one. However, without any spoilers…near the last part of ME2. Not a VERY sad choice? i’d say it is

Personally i didn’t mind the mining much, but if they can come up with something better and enjoyable, i’m all for it.
It definitely felt more third person shooter than RPG , i agree but i still enjoyed it alot. And i absolutely loved the graphics, especially certain environments. But that’s all a matter of opinion.

“So the whole story about the reapers and protheans etc is all taken from those shows?”

Yup. A lot of people who watched these masterpieces felt the same. Even some characters are not that original to be honest.
the bottom line is that if you never watched these movies or never read too much Sci-fi books, Mass effect is a very good alternative. Can’t argue with that.

“And i absolutely loved the graphics, especially certain environments. But that’s all a matter of opinion.”

graphics are great. No doubt about that, it’s just some parts they could improve from the first game a little bit. They made faster loading times, but sacrificed them for copy paste levels.

@10
you should add “And I’ve been killed and revived by a secret pro-human organization while I was cleaning up your shit.”

@19, clearly the exact plot of Mass Effect hasn’t been ripped from elsewhere, but there are a lot of themes and ideas that have clearly been “borrowed”.

You mentioned the Protheans, well the concept of an Ancient technologically advanced race who mysteriously disappeared a fuckload of a long time ago leaving little but scraps of their technology scattered all over the Universe – pretty much the premise of StarGate.

Geth? A race of mechanical beings who developed sentience/intelligence, rose up against their creators and all but wipe them out, forcing the survivors to become a rag-tag fleet of space-refugees. That is pretty much your Battlestar Galactica right there, it’s actually almost a perfect matchup – on the surface.

And to round that off you’ve got the Normandy, the most badass ship in the fleet under the command of a young and talented officer who shot through the ranks. Explore the galaxy, go where no man has gone before, lead away missions on hostile planets. Can you say USS Enterprise? James T. Kirk?

But you know what? These parallels are what I LOVE about Mass Effect. No one has ever really done a game that was really fucking good out of any of those old series. And you know what? I don’t think they can, because although they all make for good TV SHOWS individually they lack enough to make an epic GAMING experience.

To have a truly awesome engaging large-scale sci-fi RPG you need to borrow the best of everything else and merge it into something that kicks mother fucking ass.

Bioware did that, and they called it Mass Effect.

@Moonwalker1982: Don’t listen to Erthazus. While the Battlestar Galactica thing might be true -although I think the premise in BSG was much better than the Geth/Quarian thing, because it was not your standard Singularity-influenced robots vs humans story- I really can’t see that much Star Trek in Mass Effect, and I have watched them ALL. Haven’t really gotten around to Babylon 5 (yet), so I really can’t say anything about that one. Maybe Parallels between Shadows and Rachni? Or Vorlons and Quarian?

But in my opinion the ME Universe, despite being of course influenced by other works of SciFi, has enough depht of its own, my problem is, that the game itself mostly presents this universe to you in form of codex entries instead of diving right in through missions, dialogues, etc.

This whole earth thing ties in with the teasers for the big Bioware VGA reveal. The teaser heavily hinted at London as a setting; so perhaps the multiplayer portion of the game is a alliance resistance against the the reaper invasion. I’d wager that reaper indoctrination creates a human army to subjugate the population with one team as humans and the other as husks and the indoctrinated -and it won’t have to be explained away as a sim or training program like AC Brotherhood.
Furthermore it could be set parallel to the single player story line -with humanity trying to delay the reaper advance long enough for Shep to assemble alliances to assault the reaper fleet. Oh and you heard it here first!

“Don’t listen to Erthazus.”

” – because i’m butthurted right?”

Listen kid. I will give you few ideas that were borrowed from Babylon to Star Trek so you could shut up, m, kay?

Lets get started then, shall we?

1) Giant stations with giant Citadel and with council – Star Trek, Babylon 5
2) and they seek ancient civilizations – Stargate and over 9000 books
3) and they fought with syntetic lifeform from – TERMINATOR, Battlestar Galactica
4) and reflected invasion of the ANCIENT EVIL!11 – Berserker series from Fred Saberhagen

Here you go. Zero original ideas. ZERO. So, can you shut up your uneducated little mouth? Thank you.

@freedoms_Stain, Here you go all cliche stuff.

“Bioware did that, and they called it Mass Effect.”

More like Mass Rip Off.

@25
And… who cares?

They also made novels about Mass Effect. Surely there’s plenty in the story that is really Bioware’s own, right? Things they came up with themselves?

hell ****ing yes!

If this is indeed 2011 then 2011 may be one of the best gaming years ever. And yes I am aware that only 2 days ago i said it may not be but UC3 and this changed my mind XD

@25

There are no games with original idea, every form of modern media has been been inspired by previous works one way or another. SO your point is moot.

@25: WTF?

So just because there is a space station it’s a fucking Star Trek or babylon 5 Rip Off? You just said it yourself, Stargate and over 9000 books … nowadays it needs a lot more than just a few similar thing to be a rip off because almost everything has been done before in one way or another. By your logic you could say Star Trek DS9 is a 2001 Rip Off just ’cause both had a space station. And BSG and Terminator are just Rip Offs of Asimovs works, I mean come on, Artificial Life killing their masters, this ones been around for a very long time. The Quarian flotilla on the other hand, that’s one thing where I am completely on your side.

Number 2 and 4 are just ridiculous, I mean come on, destruction circles and ancient lifeforms. Those have been done over and over again, the Berserkers you mentioned … Replicators anyone. Or even the Cylons could fit. Just to point out, that there is in fact something called inspiration.

Spacestations, aliens, ancient evils, etc. are common themes in all of sci-fi and fantasy. Just because one show or book had it doesn’t suddenly mean nobody else can ever write about it ever again.

Putting two and two together i.e. it’s likely to be Mass Effect 3 (apparently Sony Russia did accidentally spill the beans that day) and stuff like this it is Mass Effect 3.

But it’s Mass Effect with multiplayer.
My reasoning is because EA said they won’t make single player games only anymore and with the whole Frank Gibeau interview of them saying that it’s going to be the future – ‘all EA games will have multiplayer’ that’s most likely to be the case.

@Freek,
“Spacestations, aliens, ancient evils, etc. are common themes in all of sci-fi and fantasy. Just because one show or book had it doesn’t suddenly mean nobody else can ever write about it ever again.”

Maybe you should first read or watch?
These things are not new, but they are RIPPED OFF with just a different names.

@PhoenixBlight,
“There are no games with original idea, every form of modern media has been been inspired by previous works one way or another.”

Except in Mass Effect they are ripped off (just different names they have). I’m not the only one guy that thinks about that. There are plenty of people.

I don’t know why people bother reading Erthazus’ posts, he only writes using words that already exist. Zero originality!

Aimless, stop being butthurted alright?
It’s my opinion and not only mine and you can always disagree with me, get back to your cave and pretend you are enjoying Mass Effect like for years. I said my opinion and through ME experience i knew the story from the beggining. It’s a B-SciFi-Movie at best.

I am not “butthurted”, I was treating your fallacious claims with the respect they deserved.

Nothing fits your definition of original, your argument being reductionist in the extreme. Indeed the quality of your reasoning is made immediately apparent as you scurry to hide behind the coattails of petty insults.

“Nothing fits your definition of original”

All right. Enough. Because you are wrong here. I don’t seek originality or whatever. I want original story that is not ripped off blatantly from other masterpieces.

and yes you are butthurted. As i said before this is my opinion. Want more of the same opinion? Go to http://www.rockpapershotgun.com or Kotaku.

“Indeed the quality of your reasoning is made immediately apparent as you scurry to hide behind the coattails of petty insults.”

yeah, your ass hurts A LOT, now get back to your cave and play Mass Effect and think that it is something new.

Whilst you might be an arse, Erthazus, I’m fairly sure that does not make you privy to the well-being of my own.

Thank you for reinforcing my points, though.

“Whilst you might be an arse, Erthazus, I’m fairly sure that does not make you privy to the well-being of my own.”

Ok. Whatever really. Because your first post was nothing more than a butthurted comment like: “why people bother reading his opinion?”
You know the answer: No one.

he never allows other ppls opinion..thats his problem