I can’t talk details yet, I’ve been watching someone play a review copy over their shoulder. Also it MIGHT not be invisible, but that’s definitely the impression I got.
I don’t remember an overall invisible timer like on ME2 or Fallout’s water chip, but certain missions get emphasized as immediate distress signals, and I know those have disappeared for other players if not dealt with in time.
Maybe I can get you to respond since Tom and idrisz haven’t: can you confirm we’re able to change class after importing an ME2 save?
And if anyone sees gameplay impressions from someone playing after the broken street date, let us know.
Wait, there is an invisible timer on ME2?
Yes. After a certain point, if you dawdled, the game would kill off more team members.
idrisz
1667
Check your mom and pop store near you, I basically just go to one store, and they stock new games usually on Thursday and Friday before the release week, plus they give me a 10% discount now, better than Gamestop.
I didn’t import save because I never finished a mass effect on 360, all of my saves are on PC. I read somewhere you can’t change look or class if you import though. I think I lost a few people in mass effect 2 save anyways, the 3 default save is pretty good overall, one is losing ashley, one for losing alenko and one for losing a lot of people(not sure how many, it just said a lot).
I played on RP mode, basically the default mode, you fight battle and you make choice, there 2 other modes, Action: you just fight battle and game auto pick conversation for you, Story: battle is very easy, but you make the choice in conversation.
Played a soldier. no advance class in the game, I missed advance classes, and the machine gun you get if you are a soldier in ME2, I wonder if that carries over.
finished all of the sidequests(I know because I got an achievement).
the new planetary scanning is better than before.
Like the new citadel, less running than before, they need to make SWTOR like that.
Unfortunately about the gun choices, guns handles differently, but they don’t get more powerful, so I basically got a Mattock Assault rifle and Raptor sniper rifle and stuck with it throughout the game.
I must of missed something, but companion sidequests are pretty much non-existent(DLC maybe).
There have been multiple tweets from BioWare saying you can change your class.
That means it’s 50-50!
Oh well, I’ll find out tonight at midnight before I go to bed. Speaking of which, I’m kind of glad the intro is so bland. No rush to play through that again.
stusser
1671
Your ship’s crew, actually. You lose the entire crew except for the doctor if you let the completely invisible timer run out.
Problem is that the spot you need to go to rescue the crew looks like it may be an endgame-type situation, so you naturally try to clear out all your old sidequests first, and fail the timer you never knew existed. Crap design.
Someone elsehwere joked they’d like to see official twitter accounts for Jack, Mordin and Garrus:
I immediately had to come up with this (Note, this is NOT official, I’m having fun)
@STGMordin
Very important research. Found possible new countermeasure against Reaper indoctrination. Only problem is that it requires very rare
@STGMordin
chemical only found in Thresher Maw blood. Very hard to get. Thresher Maws do not appreciate needles. Still. Very encouraging. Wonder if
@STGMordin
Sheperd can be convinced to divert and gather more blood for tests. Already fought two. Last time got breeding proposals from Krogan. But
@STGMordin
don’t like this medium. Inefficient. Limited. Like trying to modify genophage with tweezers. Must try to design something better.Will later.
@GarrusArchAngel
Sorry, can’t help. I’m in the middle of some calibrations.
I know people that hit the trigger point and were stunned to learn that the timer screwed up their endgame, but I never thought it was a problem. It seemed pretty easy to avoid the main quest stuff and only do the sidequests for the bulk of the game. The planets that were essential to the story seemed telegraphed well to me and I never even knew about the timer bit until I read about it afterwards.
I also lucked out and had no one die on my initial run through of the end, but I chalk that up more to luck than any skill.
davidf
1674
Amen, they could have addressed this fairly easily in my mind. If they had taken pains to have the crew bicker about the fact that unless we leave right away we lose any chance to save them, and have them actually argue with shepard about it, so its clear, this a real and imminent possibility it would have been less amateurish design moment.
I would have been annoyed that I have to backtrack to the previous mission to avoid the ‘trigger’ and complete the remaining loyalty missions and sidequests, but its a lot better than playing the ENTIRE game to find out…wait WHAT! Again, if the design was consistent I would have no issues, but blindsided…
BDGE
1675
Yea, I even seem to recall the game explicitly telling you there is no turning back once you start down the endgame path. But really, what OCD gamer didn’t do all the sidequests before the endgame jump?
Only lost 1 character on my first attempt, Jacob convinced me that he could handle the ‘tube crawl’ assignment, so I gave him the chance. Poor guy went down a hero. My second attempt on a femshep run ended up with no losses. Game did clue you in pretty well as to whom could survive or not.
I thought Zaeed would do great on one of the assignments, but he died. He was my only casualty. Later I looked up which crew members were good for which assignment, and it turns out Zaeed was basically good for nothing. I just shouldn’t have used him at all if I wanted him to live.
Not that I care. I mean, come on, it’s Zaeed.
Except Mordin. Still no idea how I lost him.
“dwadled”? How is that even possible? I reunited all the members, did all the loyalty missions, did all the side quests I saw, did my share of planet scanning to upgrade the ship, in other words I didn’t “rush” in the game, and still didn’t reach the time limit.
Some people (well, okay, apparently a lot of people) did the mission that led to the timer trigger before they finished all the sidequests. Instead of rushing off to rescue their crew, they went around and completed the open quests, then went to go get their crew. I think it’s been said that you can basically do two missions before the game starts offing people.
It’s possible because it’s completely shitty design. As soon as you unlock the Omega 4 relay the timer starts. You get one mission (iirc; or maybe two as per Telefrog) and then if you do anything else before going through the relay (mission wise) you “miss” the window to save the crew.
It’s completely counter-intuitive because the Relay has very clearly been labled as “end-game” and the normal design behavior here is to signal this so gamers can spend time finishing side quests and stuff to taste. In some ways it’s worse than Fallout’s two time limits, design wise (at least there is no forced gameover, though).
