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Mass Effect 3 |OT| Space Jesus Returns (tag all spoilers)

It sucks that you can't change your gender with new game plus. I don't understand why they couldn't just add that in..

What? Just start a new Femshep. Would probably mess the game up if you romanced Thane as a woman in ME2 and suddenly, you're a dude. Total non-issue.
 

ShaneB

Member
I need this work day to be over and the weekend begin. Will be a marathon session of ME3. Not knowing and not being able to discuss what's behind all these black bars is killing! lol
 
I need this work day to be over and the weekend begin. Will be a marathon session of ME3. Not knowing and not being able to discuss what's behind all these black bars is killing! lol

Awww yeaaa, wife goes to work at 7 AM and comes back around 8:30 PM tomorrow and Sunday.

Fucking.ME3.marathon.
 
I need this work day to be over and the weekend begin. Will be a marathon session of ME3. Not knowing and not being able to discuss what's behind all these black bars is killing! lol

Yeah, I kinda want to just zoom through all the story missions, I've been mainly doing side quests, but I want to hop into that spoiler thread, but I don't want the ending spoiled for me....etc.
 

pakkit

Banned
I was having trouble getting From Ashes to activate...it downloads up to 50% and then the download just stops as if it's corrupt. So...worst 10 dollars ever spent.
 

ShaneB

Member
Awww yeaaa, wife goes to work at 7 AM and comes back around 8:30 PM tomorrow and Sunday.

Fucking.ME3.marathon.

I'll likely be working a few hours tomorrow, so that kinda sucks, but no big deal.

Yeah, I kinda want to just zoom through all the story missions, I've been mainly doing side quests, but I want to hop into that spoiler thread, but I don't want the ending spoiled for me....etc.

Ehhhh... I want to take my time and enjoy the game and go at my own pace, so I'm not going to change how I play the game for that. It'll just be nice to see the spoilers and opinions of folks on specific story things.
 

X-Frame

Member
Ugh pretty sure the 1 sidequest I had left just bugged on me.

Had to (later game spoiler)
go to Dekunna for the elcor ambassador to help evacuate their people
but I never got a mission prompt for the planet and couldn't land or scan it. Pretty sure I picked up some asset from it earlier but this seemed like a real mission.

Anyway I went back to the guy and talked to him and Shepard finished the quest, got xp and everything. So I think I missed out on going to a cool planet :(

Same bug happened to me. :(
 

thetrin

Hail, peons, for I have come as ambassador from the great and bountiful Blueberry Butt Explosion
Did Russia ever get invaded though? :S

Are you serious?

Not done with the game yet, but would it be wrong to compare Earth in this game to Russia during WW2?

So wait, would that make the Batarians Poland? And the Turians England? (Largest fleet in the galaxy, but get hit hard by bombing). The moon of Palaven is the Turian equivalent of the English Channel.
 
Man, Javik is so cool, but, he could be a bit of a jerk. I would be more upset if he was terrible and had no dialogue or importance, but, at least Bioware gave him crew interactions and didn't just throw him in there. Protheans were pretty cool it seems. I'm glad we got a ton of info on them. I guess for a casual fan Javik would be meaningless, but, for any ME fan Javik is kinda important if you cared about the lore.
 

suracity

Member
I had all three options available to me and selected the control option. When the Normandy crashed landed on that planet, Joker got out with Liara. Then as the camera panned away, EDI got out of the ship.

I watched the other two endings on Youtub and they're pretty similar. The destruction option has Joker getting out of the ship with Liara again, and then Garus behind her. And then the Synthetics ending I watched had Joker getting out with EDI, but this time EDI put her arm around Joker and they walked a bit towards the horizon. And then Liara came out and the camera panned out.

I was a bit disappointed that the mass relays get destroyed with all three decisions. One of the reasons I went with control is so that life as everyone knows it, wouldn't change, minus of course the reapers. However the relays are destroyed so what does that mean? Basically back to square one, right? I mean without that technology, all the races can't travel as far and since so many of the races were at Earth fighting, I guess that means they're now trapped there?

The citadel closed as well, at least for my 'control ending' so I guess no more living there either?

Really confused with the ending in terms of how life goes on afterwards. I mean, I guess that means anyone on the Normandy is pretty much trapped on this new planet as they were in a relay stream when shit went down. Speaking of that, why were they in a relay warp?? It wasn't long since EDI was guiding missiles from the Normandy so you'd think they would have been some where near Earth. Ugh, so many unanswered questions.

And apparently that scene after the credits isn't the 'real ending'. In order to get that you need like 5000 EMS or something? And apparently you can only get this much EMS by grinding multiplayer or doing a new game plus? I can't even find the 'true ending' online yet, on Youtube. The scene I got after the credits was some old guy telling a story of the stars and 'Shepard'?

I agree. There are so many unanswered questions. One major question: how can reapers retreat after all mass relays are destroyed in the "control end"? Actually when the "child" appeared I was so surprised and thought ME changed its genre from sci-fi to fantasy... It is just so unpredictable. :p

Someone argues that the purpose of existence of reaper is to avoid "Technological singularity". Because of mass relay, every sapient species will learn from it and the development trend of science and technology is predictable. After the destruction of all mass relays there will be no limitation of development. Based on current technology it will come up with many possibilities. I think that is what the catalyst means. The peace will not last long. Someday organic will invent super AI and there will be war between synthetic and organic, like geth and quarian. So the child warned you if you destroyed reapers there will be no one to stop the war.
 

thetrin

Hail, peons, for I have come as ambassador from the great and bountiful Blueberry Butt Explosion
Man, Javik is so cool, but, he could be a bit of a jerk. I would be more upset if he was terrible and had no dialogue or importance, but, at least Bioware gave him crew interactions and didn't just throw him in there. Protheans were pretty cool it seems. I'm glad we got a ton of info on them. I guess for a casual fan Javik would be meaningless, but, for any ME fan Javik is kinda important if you cared about the lore.

I like Javik. He's got an interesting colonial mindset. The protheans remind me a lot of the British Empire (or maybe the Roman Empire?)
 
Any deals for PC other than Green Man? (can't buy from them with my card)

UPDATE: Does the Best Buy digital download for PC just give you an Origin key? Might go with that, I have credit with them
 

senador

Banned
Priority quests are main story quests. If it doesn't say Priority, then you can do it without fear of it expiring the side quest timer.

The side quests have timers? They expire?

So, I don't want spoilers, but what is the premise of the game? I don't like playing and learning after a play through how it works only due to trial and error and because they didn't explain it to me well enough.

ME2: get squad, get loyalty, save IFF for late in the game, and don't enter Omega relay until the end when you are ready. Is there a similar trend for this game? How does the galactic readiness thing work? Do missions in those areas and balance them out to get them all up to 100%?
 

Jobias

Member
What exactly does reputation do?

In previous games, certain dialogue options were gated depending on how much Paragon/Renegade score you have. Here, some decisions are gated by an overall score, which is calculated by adding Paragon + Renegade + Neutral. This is the Reputation score.
 

ironcreed

Banned
Finally got my copy yesterday and played for about 4 hours last night. I just
got the Turian Primarch Victus
and felt that this was really where the game finally started to feel compelling. The visuals suddenly took a big leap forward on that mission as well. Pretty hit and miss so far on that front.

I was surprised at how long it took before I was actually able to start exploring the Normandy, using the galaxy map, etc. Because of this, the start felt a bit dragged out and some of the plot seems a little too convenient so far, but I am enjoying it. I am sure it will only get better, as I am really just getting started.
 
Hey, it's not our fault your education apparently sucked. :)

Oh I meant how you all have delicious Mass Effect 3 and I don't. Been a while since I did World War II, and I genuinely only remembered Germany fighting Russia at the borders.

But yeah! No ME3 for me 'till Monday. Might as well play the Amalur demo to get the second item.
 

thetrin

Hail, peons, for I have come as ambassador from the great and bountiful Blueberry Butt Explosion
The side quests have timers? They expire?

So, I don't want spoilers, but what is the premise of the game? I don't like playing and learning after a play through how it works only due to trial and error and because they didn't explain it to me well enough.

ME2: get squad, get loyalty, save IFF for late in the game, and don't enter Omega relay until the end when you are ready. Is there a similar trend for this game? How does the galactic readiness thing work? Do missions in those areas and balance them out to get them all up to 100%?

Side quests, scanning and main quests will add fleets, platoons, powerful allies to your military strength. They each have a value.

A reporter might have a value of 5. A fleet might have a value of 250. A Shadow Broker Wet Squad might have a value of 100. Basically, as you collect each of these assets for your war, they add up to a total.

That total is then multiplied by the galaxy's "readiness rating", which is a percentage of how much of the military you've collected is ready to fight the Reapers.

Your readiness rating defaults to 50%. Military Strength x readiness = Effective Military Strength, or EMS.

EMS is the value you have to pay attention to when getting close to the ending.

You can ONLY raise your readiness by playing multiplayer. You don't need to raise your readiness for the good ending, but it makes the SP easier.

Think of it this way. Let's say the best ending requires 3000 EMS. You can either do two things: Play only SP, or play both SP and MP. If you play SP only, you would NEED 6000 Military Strength to get 3000, since your readiness would be sitting at 50%.

Now, if you play multiplayer, your readiness increases by about 4% every time you finish a bronze (easy) difficulty battle. Readiness also decays at a rate of 1% per day. Which is fine, because playin a single bronze level per day means that you're gaining readiness faster than you're losing it.

So if you play enough MP to get to 100% readiness, you suddenly only need 3000 total military strength to reach your EMS of 3000. So that means doing less side quests, scanning for less assets, etc etc.

Does that make sense?

On the topic of side quests, side quests don't have an actual timer, but can be failed if you don't do them BEFORE doing priority missions in the same system. Priority missions are story missions, and they will move the story forward, which means circumstances will change in the galaxy as you propel the story.

Basically, it's a good idea to do side quests you can do before taking up story missions. That said, you WILL get side quests that you cannot do until a star system opens up for you via the story. It's a little annoying.
 

bitoriginal

Member
Newb question for UK peeps, got my N7 Warfare Pre-order bonus but the code doesn't seem long enough to be a standard Xbox code, IE it doesn't work when I click redeem code on the dash. Is there a way to redeem codes in game?
 
I won't be able to play until Sunday, so I've been keeping out of this thread and most of the info on ME3 as much as possible, but last night I heard that the games doesn't have the film grain option? Is this real?
 
Side quests, scanning and main quests will add fleets, platoons, powerful allies to your military strength. They each have a value.

A reporter might have a value of 5. A fleet might have a value of 250. A Shadow Broker Wet Squad might have a value of 100. Basically, as you collect each of these assets for your war, they add up to a total.

That total is then multiplied by the galaxy's "readiness rating", which is a percentage of how much of the military you've collected is ready to fight the Reapers.

Your readiness rating defaults to 50%. Military Strength x readiness = Effective Military Strength, or EMS.

EMS is the value you have to pay attention to when getting close to the ending.

You can ONLY raise your readiness by playing multiplayer. You don't need to raise your readiness for the good ending, but it makes the SP easier.

Think of it this way. Let's say the best ending requires 3000 EMS. You can either do two things: Play only SP, or play both SP and MP. If you play SP only, you would NEED 6000 Military Strength to get 3000, since your readiness would be sitting at 50%.

Now, if you play multiplayer, your readiness increases by about 4% every time you finish a bronze (easy) difficulty battle. Readiness also decays at a rate of 1% per day. Which is fine, because playin a single bronze level per day means that you're gaining readiness faster than you're losing it.

So if you play enough MP to get to 100% readiness, you suddenly only need 3000 total military strength to reach your EMS of 3000. So that means doing less side quests, scanning for less assets, etc etc.

Does that make sense?

On the topic of side quests, side quests don't have an actual timer, but can be failed if you don't do them BEFORE doing priority missions in the same system. Priority missions are story missions, and they will move the story forward, which means circumstances will change in the galaxy as you propel the story.

Basically, it's a good idea to do side quests you can do before taking up story missions. That said, you WILL get side quests that you cannot do until a star system opens up for you via the story. It's a little annoying.

THANK YOU for explaining this. So perfectly explained it should be in the OP!
 

Derrick01

Banned
Man this very late part is sooooo cheesy, but damn if I'm not eating it all up like the corny war movie it's mimicking.

Hope the actual end turns out well. I only ended up with 7000 EMS :\
 

thetrin

Hail, peons, for I have come as ambassador from the great and bountiful Blueberry Butt Explosion
It's bullshit that MP is the only way to increase readiness.

Not really. The MP is awesome. If you don't want to play the multiplayer, you can just play more single player. I don't really see the problem.
 

EatChildren

Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
Is there any time dilation when scoping as an Infiltrator? It must be toned down pretty significantly from ME3 as I don't notice it at all.
 

thetrin

Hail, peons, for I have come as ambassador from the great and bountiful Blueberry Butt Explosion
Is there any time dilation when scoping as an Infiltrator? It must be toned down pretty significantly from ME3 as I don't notice it at all.

There is, but from what I've heard, it's only like, 10%.
 

GorillaJu

Member
I won't go on MP because I'm afraid some asshat over the mic will spoil the ending for me. I have got my Readiness % up to 74% through the iOS game (Infiltrator) though.

Does a full green bar mean best ending? Mine has been full for awhile and I think I'm only about 2/3 or maybe 3/4 through the game.

It's bullshit that MP is the only way to increase readiness.

It isn't. The iPhone game raises your readiness.
 

Derrick01

Banned
Is there any time dilation when scoping as an Infiltrator? It must be toned down pretty significantly from ME3 as I don't notice it at all.

A bit but I think one of the mods can improve it. There's 1 that upgrades damage a tiny bit but something about sensory upgrades too. I haven't used it but the description sounds like it controls that aspect.
 

thetrin

Hail, peons, for I have come as ambassador from the great and bountiful Blueberry Butt Explosion
Does a full green bar mean best ending? Mine has been full for awhile and I think I'm only about 2/3 or maybe 3/4 through the game.

What is your EMS? Afaik, if you're over 2800, you're a-okay for the good ending. You need 4000 for the shitty post-credits extra ending thing which I don't give a fuck about.

My readiness is at 64%, and will probably rise again today because I'm going to be playing multiplayer with my roommate after a couple hour of playing SP. I really like the multi, so I don't mind that readiness is affected by it. It's nice that you don't HAVE to play MP if you don't want to, but I can relax a bit about my EMS because of the multi.
 

CAW

Member
So close. I ended my first play through with 5797 military strength and an EMS of 2898. I missed out on a few side quests and didn't scan every planet.

Is there info and/or a video of the 'best' ending that requires a high amount of EMS? Also,
is it just the scene after the credits that's different?
 
I just finished that first
Garrus moon
mission (early) and I'm really loving how pretty much EVERYTHING is contributing to the overall game. Even random convos in the citadel. Really makes me want to explore every nook and cranny.
 

vitaminwateryum

corporate swill
So close. I ended my first play through with 5797 military strength and an EMS of 2898. I missed out on a few side quests and didn't scan every planet.

Is there info and/or a video of the 'best' ending that requires a high amount of EMS? Also,
is it just the scene after the credits that's different?

They're pretty much all the same. The only thing that changes is whether or not Shepard makes the reapers fly away into space, or if the giant explosion is green or not. That's it.
 

thetrin

Hail, peons, for I have come as ambassador from the great and bountiful Blueberry Butt Explosion
I just finished that first
Garrus moon
mission (early) and I'm really loving how pretty much EVERYTHING is contributing to the overall game. Even random convos in the citadel. Really makes me want to explore every nook and cranny.

Explore the citadel thoroughly after every story mission. Ambient dialogue results in missions that can lead to war assets.

Also, a quick tip that might help:

Any Citadel mission that has the prefix "Citadel:" will require that you get the item they need either from an N7 mission (scan everything you see), or from the Spectre Terminal.

Any Citadel Mission that has a prefix like "Ismar Frontier:" or any other star system means that you will get that item by scanning the star system as you're flying around.
 

zonezeus

Member
Just finished it, what a joke of an ending.

Really Bioware, really? Three exactly the same 1-minute endings, only with different colored beams? 100+ hours of saving the galaxy and then it just ends like that? No closure on anything, no summary what happened after with Shepard, crew, Normandy, Earth, other races, Reapers, anything else? What about decisions I made, saves I transfered? This lazy excuse of an ending is all we get for buying all your games, DLCs and whatnot. Why not just send us a t-shirt with "I played the Mass Effect Trilogy and all I got is this lousy green beam" written on it? Or no, just keep the t-shirt, I'd probably have to pay 19.99$ for it anyway.

I'm done with BioWare.
 

RedSwirl

Junior Member
Doesn't change anything if you don't play multiplayer. Do all the sidequests without touching multiplayer and you'll still get the "perfect" ending.

I know I've already missed at least one because I didn't expect
the Citadel attack
. The way you acquire quests is kinda vague too.
 
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