phew, there seem to be a lot of peeps who are dissappointed with the facial bug on the bioware forums

This comment i can agree with:

For me this is my Shephard...he is the guy / girl who has been on an epic journey for the last 4 years and is my story. It would be a bit like having Mark Hamill in the first two Star Wars films only to be replaced by a 'new' guy for Return of the Jedi.

Maybe I'll restart ME3 with a totally new shepard, and hope they'll fix things soon.

Still havne't been able to start it, as I'm still finishing up ME2 .

Trying to get 100% all missions (already full paragon). 

Have the N7 missions to do and Thane's loyalty, then I'm off to the IFF and wrapping it up, hopefully withint a day or two.

perhaps ME2 spoiler'ish:

Spoiler AlertI'm finding it hard not to cheat on Ashley with Tali. She seems so nice/good compared to Ashley, but there's supposdly consequenes in ME3 for doing such a thing and I don't want to. I was hoping you could make Ashley more nice in ME3, a bit less xenophobic. However Tali grew on me a lot throughout ME2, she is by far the nicest female  crew member/earnest.

Markormikov, can you tell me is it true that you don't take crew members with you as your visit some area's/cities? Heard someone mention this, thought for sure he wasn't telling the truth..

Originally Posted By Stiler (8 MAR 2012 8:38am)

Still havne't been able to start it, as I'm still finishing up ME2 .

 

Trying to get 100% all missions (already full paragon). 

 

Have the N7 missions to do and Thane's loyalty, then I'm off to the IFF and wrapping it up, hopefully withint a day or two.

 

perhaps ME2 spoiler'ish:

Spoiler AlertI'm finding it hard not to cheat on Ashley with Tali. She seems so nice/good compared to Ashley, but there's supposdly consequenes in ME3 for doing such a thing and I don't want to. I was hoping you could make Ashley more nice in ME3, a bit less xenophobic. However Tali grew on me a lot throughout ME2, she is by far the nicest female  crew member/earnest.

 

Markormikov, can you tell me is it true that you don't take crew members with you as your visit some area's/cities? Heard someone mention this, thought for sure he wasn't telling the truth..

I don't know the answer yet, I'm still early in the game, so i can't choose any crew members yet or explore the galaxy.

regarding Ashley: Spoiler AlertAsh looks a lot rougher in ME3, so i wouldn't mess with her feelings if I were you

Originally Posted By markornikov (8 MAR 2012 7:35am)

 meanie is my middle name. So i won't be toning down my enthousiasm  

 

But i did enjoy Deus Ex:HR a lot, so that's a very good alternative for ME3.

It's a shorter game but it also has a solid storyline and very detailed environments.

Meanie Markonikov.  That has a poetic ring to it. 

I played for a few hours, and my first impressions are still the same, it's the perfect sequel to ME2.

The one thing i hated in ME2 is gone, no more tedious scanning for minerals. They've added some new neat stuff that makes exploration much more interesting.

Now i managed to recreate my original Shepard manually, so i'm going to start over again from the beginning tomorrow 

I always try to make Shephard look as weird as possible, but the game doesn't let me go too far. The best I've found is really skinny with a pointy bald head. Sort of like a younger, more anorexic Jean-Luc Picard. It goes really well with the voice.

Getting a copy of this game pre-ordered here in the UK has been a real adventure in and of itself! 

Don't know if you've heard about the kafuffle, but if not... check it out, it's been quite an epic story.

I now have a copy of the game on order from play.co.uk and am expecting it to arrive early next week. Once it has, I'll be able to let everyone know my thoughts. 

Just as long as it's better than those over-hyped Dragon Age games, I'll be happy. 

I thought that Dragon Age 1 was quite good, but 2 was not (it was not a broken game, and it started quite alright, but then it just went downhill). The ME series has a better story than Dragon Age, even if its gameplay is a bit more actiony and less tactical. 

I heard about the issues with ME3 in the UK. But was that not just GAME that EA cut their ties with?

To me, DA: O was one of the best rpgs in the past decade, mainly thanks to the character design/interaction, Alistair/Morrigan really stood out.  DA2 was a huge letdown because of it's tight scope, repetitive nature (they resused so much, in an already SMALL space, it was just a rush job) it felt super-generic and had no charm or uniquness to itself like DA

Rather you want to say it's how Bioware is moving toward or blame EA, they are changing their games a bit.

ME made the same kind of transition as DA, going from a more older style rpg (IE inventory management, loot for boht you and your party to a more action-oriented style game with limited loot (no more party loot in DAII nor ME2 aside from peraps an outfit or a weapon, nothing near what was in either first games of the series).

However where ME simply changed the gameplay but held on to it's scope/characters, DA Ditched those as well and traded in it's pair of Jordons for a pair of cheap gas station flip=flops instead.

The amount of loot has increased again in ME3 though.

Now you'll find armor, weapons and upgrades scattered around.

And instead of gathering 4 types of resources, you'll find all kinds of items and resources to help you on your quest.

Without going into details, in order to succesfully complete ME3. you'll have to find as much as you can to defeat the reapers.

 

Markormikov, can you tell me is it true that you don't take crew members with you as your visit some area's/cities? Heard someone mention this, thought for sure he wasn't telling the truth..

So far i've only been to the citadel, and yes I didn't have my crew members along with me during my visit, but they did hang around in various places though.

Originally Posted By walsh (8 MAR 2012 6:52pm)

I always try to make Shephard look as weird as possible, but the game doesn't let me go too far. The best I've found is really skinny with a pointy bald head. Sort of like a younger, more anorexic Jean-Luc Picard. It goes really well with the voice.

The "original" Sheppard is about the best you can get him to look  (from a dreamboat for a girl's perspective, that is 

I suppose a guy wouldn't mind him looking weird.  

This is one game where i actually kind of preferred having my avatar a male, because i really like the voice-actor's voice.

<==== no i find my shepard better looking then the original one, the ginger hair fits his renegade character ^^

the reason the "default" shep looks better then what you cna make in normal character creation is because it uses it's own unique textures not available in the character creator (that's why the other faces you can pick from look "plasticy" looking.

The way around this, for ME2 at least, was to use "headmorphs" that would basically take the texture/head of a characte rand let you mod details like hair/eyes/skin color, this allowed you to use other unique/more detailed faces from characters in the game.

IE -

Look at this user made face:

http://www.masseffect2faces.com/index.php?faceID=1425

It uses Kaiden's texture so it looks as high-quality as Shepards default face (and imo looks better) and doesn't have that fake/plastic look to it.

With ME3 though, no one can make use of those things as there's no Gibbed editor for it yet, hopefully soon.

I still havent started ME2, better get with it...now that ME3 is out, sure is good to see a great series of games continuing and continuing to get better and better...i loved the graphics in ME1, it was so exicting to see that huge space station for the first time..and so many of the locations were epic epic epic!!!  as a life long sci fi fan, it was a dream trip. Hope ME2 is as good or better. Now i have to juggle Skyrim and ME2-3

Originally Posted By Traveller (9 MAR 2012 12:15pm)

Originally Posted By walsh (8 MAR 2012 6:52pm)

I always try to make Shephard look as weird as possible, but the game doesn't let me go too far. The best I've found is really skinny with a pointy bald head. Sort of like a younger, more anorexic Jean-Luc Picard. It goes really well with the voice.

The "original" Sheppard is about the best you can get him to look  (from a dreamboat for a girl's perspective, that is 

  )    Believe me, I've tried to improve on him, but it's almost not possible.

 

 

You mean this one?

Seriously? He always reminded me of a college-athlete jock type, especially if you use the renegade responses. Too straight and regulation for me, but I can see why he would be attractive to some members of our ape-descendant mammallian species.

Mine looked kind of like this but thinner, and without the pretentious facial-hair landing strip:

Edit: Gah! Can't post pic of my character. Anyway he looked strikingly like Shinzon from Star Trek Nemesis, If you've seen that film: http://images.wikia.com/memory-alfa/images/8/81/Shinzon2379.jpg

I hope they'll let me make him look similar in ME3 when I get it.

Originally Posted By walsh (9 MAR 2012 8:01pm)

Originally Posted By Traveller (9 MAR 2012 12:15pm)

Originally Posted By walsh (8 MAR 2012 6:52pm)

I always try to make Shephard look as weird as possible, but the game doesn't let me go too far. The best I've found is really skinny with a pointy bald head. Sort of like a younger, more anorexic Jean-Luc Picard. It goes really well with the voice.

The "original" Sheppard is about the best you can get him to look  (from a dreamboat for a girl's perspective, that is 

  )    Believe me, I've tried to improve on him, but it's almost not possible.

 

 

 

You mean this one?

 

 

Seriously? He always reminded me of a college-athlete jock type, especially if you use the renegade responses. Too straight and regulation for me, but I can see why he would be attractive to some members of our ape-descendant mammallian species.

 

Mine looked kind of like this but thinner, and without the pretentious facial-hair landing strip:

 

 

Edit: Gah! Can't post pic of my character. Anyway he looked strikingly like Shinzon from Star Trek Nemesis, If you've seen that film: http://images.wikia.com/memory-alfa/images/8/81/Shinzon2379.jpg

I hope they'll let me make him look similar in ME3 when I get it.

 

 

Aaaw, c'mon!  That's about the worst pic of him you can take, at a very awkward angle...  i personally don't like the short hair all that much either, which is why i experimented with hair too, but the hair simply doesn't look good in ME 1 and 2.  (Well, it doesn't in most games, which is probably why they got clever and simply did no hair).

And yes, just as you men like women to have a nice, athletic, tight cut body, with just the right amount of musculature to make it shapely,  surprise surprise, guess what, we women enjoy the same thing on our male eye candy. 

Whereas most women I know don't enjoy overdeveloped gorillas, huge hunks, thin beanpoles our round balls, most of us enjoy a nice trim athletic looking body.  And yes, i personally like a nice pair of pecs and a six-pack.  Roll your eyes all you like, i roll my eyes right back at guys who prefer female avatars with either miles of cleavage or chest-rockets and/or size G bra-sizes. 

Luckily where the devs come short, the modders tend to make up for the variety in gamer's physical aesthetics' tastes.

Oh, so you were talking about the body? 

Ok, it's time for a first complaint, the quest log suffers the same problems as the one in Skyrim.

It doesn't contain a lot of info regarding your current quests, i've got 2 missions already that mention a certain, but the quest log doesn't state in which system those are located. There are quite a lot of systems to explore already so this isn't as straightforward as it was in ME2.

Secondly the quest log doesn't mention how previous missions have concluded, so there's no way you can review your previous actions.

Apart from that it's still an amazing game

Originally Posted By markornikov (10 MAR 2012 6:23am)

Ok, it's time for a first complaint, the quest log suffers the same problems as the one in Skyrim.

It doesn't contain a lot of info regarding your current quests, i've got 2 missions already that mention a certain, but the quest log doesn't state in which system those are located. There are quite a lot of systems to explore already so this isn't as straightforward as it was in ME2.

Secondly the quest log doesn't mention how previous missions have concluded, so there's no way you can review your previous actions.

 

Guess you're just going to have to start keeping proper pen-and-paper notes then.   Hahaha, gaming comes full circle..

@ Walsh:  well, how does his face make him look like an athlete-type jock?  

too bad Biowar has become hostage of such idiocy. The attempt to control disbribution ie monopolize..has been the bane of commerce for generations, and this is just another example. Sadly free trade which supports commerce just is too scary for the suits...and they want to try to grab more. I dont think it will work any better for EA than it did for Pierpont Morgan, and things will get sane again soon.

Wow, did anyone see this:

http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/323/index/9689886/1

Basically playing ME3 online, where the Host (not the player) has modified their game to give credits (you can easily mod files and play online with it, there's ZERO anti-cheat programs for online) it flags your game as also being modded.

Which in turn can lead to YOUR account being banned simpyl by playing online with someone who has modded their game.

HAving your account banned doesn't simply mean no more MP, it also means no more single player either.

So that guy got SCREWED by simply trying to play online and having the bad luck to be put into a game where the hosts had modded his game.

Did they not learn about the PR disaster that was the DA2 forum-banning? This is of course going to spread far and wide, and people who dislike/are on the fence about Origin will find yet another reason to not get it. And not implementing an at least half-decent cheat protection for multiplayer, that is just amateurish. 

Needles to say, I really don't feel safe about Origin. After all the issues I had with even registering, after all the talk about people getting banned for trivial reasons (participating in threads that got locked, even if they themselves did not do anything bad), and now this, I'm staying away from Origin. I just can't help but feel that they don't really know what they are doing. 

What I don't get is why on earth they don't SEPERATE forum and game accounts. I mean, getting banned ont he forum should have 0 affect on a game you buy.

It's bad business.

it's the equilivant of a car dealership taking back a car if you say something bad about the dealership.

That is nuts i am going to have to ask some people about this...it needs attention., I will ask someone i know at Biowar what they can do about it.