@Zenaxzd: @DeShawn2ks: Yeah, as Anderson says in the demo, Shepard was in trouble for some of his actions. Affiliation with Cerberus was a big deal, so it makes sense that they would force him into retirement. As for Cerberus, Shepard was a huge investment for the Illusive Man, and Shepard essentially gave him the middle finger. Of course, it seems there is much more going on there. I imagine that the Illusive Man doesn't want other species to be involved in the fight against the Reapers. If victorious by themselves, humans would be exalted above the other races. The Illusive Man was always against the Citadel, so you can imagine he doesn't want to cooperate with them.

My top question, though: Why didn't the elusive man give me that giant mech thing in ME2? That could have been very useful.

Other things I'm wondering about: What will Grunt's fate be? Will they let me recruit Thane? Please?

@RsistncE said:

Still controls (and plays) like a really shitty/mediocre 3rd person shooter.

The shooting feels way better than the Uncharted games and about up to par with Gears of War.

I really wish psn would update

Its exactly what I wanted the combats good and the missions they picked were interesting would have liked a bit more story but I can wait.

One thing I noticed was the audio seemed strangely off like the mixing wrong. Did anyone else get that ? Im guessing the demos from a pretty old build so that explains it.

The multiplayer is fine not needed but I can see myself sink a few hours into it, more relevent than dead space multiplayer anyway.

Seemed really cool except for the kid ("can't help me", runs away, dies, Shepard makes it out alive, kid shoulda stuck with Shepard), running with a gun out looks super silly and that the demo locked up in the second area. I haven't finished the demo yet because of the lock but I am excited about the game.

I wound up sitting in the end "boss" fight with one bar of health, no understanding of how to get more health back, and just dying over and over. Then I dropped down from the baseline "how Mass Effect is played" to the Story mode bit, and just creamed any enemy I came across. Maybe it's just rust from having played ME2 like two (?) years ago, but I felt kind of bad how poorly I was doing with the game set for how it's always been built.

@RsistncE: Well you are wrong , plays fine and even surpasses Gears Of War (or whichever 3 person shooter you wanna throw in) ... so you are idiot.

I havent been able to phe multiplayer but already pl trhough the demo 4 times. I absolutely love it and man I fell in love with the new Nova power for vanguards , already have an idea of how I will spec my Shepard on the retail version. Many people complained about the darker lighting (I like it tho) but in the options menu it can be modified , also the indicating arrows (for cover and ladders) can be disabled in the options menu. Tried the game in action as well , and it just takes away the conversations and the leveling up , so shooters fan will like that (altho I agree , why the heck they have that option is beyond me) . The story option also autolevels up but it is extremely easy (most enemies die of 2-3 shoots) , so people wanting to enjoy the story more wont have a problem. Obviously playing on insanity with the vanguard was the most fun. I never doubted Bioware , but I am glad that the leveling up system is more complex with the branching skills , also I also got teared up with the story.... what does it matter if it gets emotional? You duders just wan to be a bunch of cynical cold hearts :(

I wish I could say more about the multiplayer , bt alas havent been able to play it. But regardless this game is going to be awesome.

@Zenaxzd said:

@BoG: I will have to play through it again since I believe I missed that line (not turning on subtitles ftl!), but it makes me wonder how Shepard got in trouble or whatever. Last I left him he was flying around space not giving a fuck what other people thought. Bothers me I need to buy that DLC to see where things went from there.

The demo apparently leaves out some dialogue options (probably the Investigate options) that will be in the main game. I also noticed parts where it looked like it was about to pause and give me an option and just kept going with a neutral response, might also be there, too.

Why they would do that, probably easier to code together and get through cert (demos are usually made by B-teams), also limiting the dialogue options can cut down on the download size (It's 1.76 gigs and I think 360 puts the limit at 1.9 gigs).

@BoG: Maybe you missed the line of dialogue about 'every war has its traitors'. It's possible that Illusive isn't working directly with the Reapers, but various press releases have mentioned "Indoctrinated Cerberus troops". ... Granted, that could mean they were Cerberus troops who were against the Reapers but wound up indoctrinated (like the researchers on the dead Reaper). That would actually wind up as a great twist, that despite fighting against you the entire way, Illusive is actually working against the Reapers somehow. But I don't know how that would make any sense without knowing more plot details.

@PatPandaHat: The medkit restores life once again like in ME1

Is it me or is the combat a lot harder then it was in ME2?

@Encephalon: Say, Thank!

The controls felt like ass on PC, space bar is basically the god key. Anyways, hurray for an hour and a half of the worst part of mass effect games!

@Skytylz said:

The controls felt like ass on PC, space bar is basically the god key. Anyways, hurray for an hour and a half of the worst part of mass effect games!

What are you talking about? The controls felt tighter than ever. I wish all third person shooters played as well... hell the controls were on part with some fps games.

Just kind of reminded me that I'm not really excited about anything Mass Effect 3 related.

@Irvandus said:

Is it me or is the combat a lot harder then it was in ME2?

Even on Easy the enemies seem a bit tougher. So definitely include me in that line of thought also.

Something was bothering me from the beginning. I couldn't put my finger on it. Then I realized what it was... Shepard is talking by him/herself. I have input on maybe 10% of what Shepard is saying rather than 100% as in previous games. This is just plain wrong. Shepard should only speak when I make a selection and he/she speaks. If I want to know more about what someone is talking about I choose to know more. If I want to say to Anderson that shit is fucked up I should choose to say it. The way things have changed in just the demo makes me kind of sick to my stomach.

I felt like I was being led by the nose from point to point in a way the previous games never did. It feels directed. It feels like a Gears game. Not to say that Gears is a bad game but it's Gears; it's not Mass Effect. Seriously this game feels completely different and not in a good way. It feels like it's being prepackaged for the polo shirt wearing bros in backwards hats. "Man I just wanna shoot up stuff! What does Investigate mean? I don't wanna talk I wanna shoot stuff"

I guess I should have known what I was getting into when I realized that the default option at the beginning of the demo was for "Action" mode where all the dialog is played out in cutscenes. Classic Mass Effect style gameplay is the second choice. The second choice? How? Why? You wanna know the difference? Every 10 or so lines of dialogue that Shepard speaks you get to choose either a paragon or renegade answer. No investigate choice, no middle ground and no player involvement. I didn't feel like I was moving forward and figuring stuff out. I felt like I was being dragged around by a kid high on pixie sticks who wants to show me all the cool toys he has.

My god... what have they done?

@SockemJetpack said:

Something was bothering me from the beginning. I couldn't put my finger on it. Then I realized what it was... Shepard is talking by him/herself. I have input on maybe 10% of what Shepard is saying rather than 100% as in previous games. This is just plain wrong. Shepard should only speak when I make a selection and he/she speaks. If I want to know more about what someone is talking about I choose to know more. If I want to say to Anderson that shit is fucked up I should choose to say it. The way things have changed in just the demo makes me kind of sick to my stomach.

I felt like I was being led by the nose from point to point in a way the previous games never did. It feels directed. It feels like a Gears game. Not to say that Gears is a bad game but it's Gears; it's not Mass Effect. Seriously this game feels completely different and not in a good way. It feels like it's being prepackaged for the polo shirt wearing bros in backwards hats. "Man I just wanna shoot up stuff! What does Investigate mean? I don't wanna talk I wanna shoot stuff"

I guess I should have known what I was getting into when I realized that the default option at the beginning of the demo was for "Action" mode where all the dialog is played out in cutscenes. Classic Mass Effect style gameplay is the second choice. The second choice? How? Why? You wanna know the difference? Every 10 or so lines of dialogue that Shepard speaks you get to choose either a paragon or renegade answer. No investigate choice, no middle ground and no player involvement. I didn't feel like I was moving forward and figuring stuff out. I felt like I was being dragged around by a kid high on pixie sticks who wants to show me all the cool toys he has.

My god... what have they done?

They took the bulk of the dialogue options out of the demo... or at least that is the story according to their official twitter.

@SockemJetpack said:

Something was bothering me from the beginning. I couldn't put my finger on it. Then I realized what it was... Shepard is talking by him/herself. I have input on maybe 10% of what Shepard is saying rather than 100% as in previous games. This is just plain wrong. Shepard should only speak when I make a selection and he/she speaks. If I want to know more about what someone is talking about I choose to know more. If I want to say to Anderson that shit is fucked up I should choose to say it. The way things have changed in just the demo makes me kind of sick to my stomach.

I felt like I was being led by the nose from point to point in a way the previous games never did. It feels directed. It feels like a Gears game. Not to say that Gears is a bad game but it's Gears; it's not Mass Effect. Seriously this game feels completely different and not in a good way. It feels like it's being prepackaged for the polo shirt wearing bros in backwards hats. "Man I just wanna shoot up stuff! What does Investigate mean? I don't wanna talk I wanna shoot stuff"

I guess I should have known what I was getting into when I realized that the default option at the beginning of the demo was for "Action" mode where all the dialog is played out in cutscenes. Classic Mass Effect style gameplay is the second choice. The second choice? How? Why? You wanna know the difference? Every 10 or so lines of dialogue that Shepard speaks you get to choose either a paragon or renegade answer. No investigate choice, no middle ground and no player involvement. I didn't feel like I was moving forward and figuring stuff out. I felt like I was being dragged around by a kid high on pixie sticks who wants to show me all the cool toys he has.

My god... what have they done?

You realize they removed a lot of the dialogue stuff from the demo?

@Teran said:

@Skytylz said:

The controls felt like ass on PC, space bar is basically the god key. Anyways, hurray for an hour and a half of the worst part of mass effect games!

What are you talking about? The controls felt tighter than ever. I wish all third person shooters played as well... hell the controls were on part with some fps games.

It felt all right, but I guess my main complaint was the button layout. The space bar doing everything really irked me.

@Chop said:

@SockemJetpack said:

Something was bothering me from the beginning. I couldn't put my finger on it. Then I realized what it was... Shepard is talking by him/herself. I have input on maybe 10% of what Shepard is saying rather than 100% as in previous games. This is just plain wrong. Shepard should only speak when I make a selection and he/she speaks. If I want to know more about what someone is talking about I choose to know more. If I want to say to Anderson that shit is fucked up I should choose to say it. The way things have changed in just the demo makes me kind of sick to my stomach.

I felt like I was being led by the nose from point to point in a way the previous games never did. It feels directed. It feels like a Gears game. Not to say that Gears is a bad game but it's Gears; it's not Mass Effect. Seriously this game feels completely different and not in a good way. It feels like it's being prepackaged for the polo shirt wearing bros in backwards hats. "Man I just wanna shoot up stuff! What does Investigate mean? I don't wanna talk I wanna shoot stuff"

I guess I should have known what I was getting into when I realized that the default option at the beginning of the demo was for "Action" mode where all the dialog is played out in cutscenes. Classic Mass Effect style gameplay is the second choice. The second choice? How? Why? You wanna know the difference? Every 10 or so lines of dialogue that Shepard speaks you get to choose either a paragon or renegade answer. No investigate choice, no middle ground and no player involvement. I didn't feel like I was moving forward and figuring stuff out. I felt like I was being dragged around by a kid high on pixie sticks who wants to show me all the cool toys he has.

My god... what have they done?

They took the bulk of the dialogue options out of the demo... or at least that is the story according to their official twitter.

I sure hope that is the case. Already in Mass Effect 2, Shepard spoke far too much without my direct input, whereas in the first game s/he had one such line of speech that I can remember. This demo seemed to bring this design decision yet further, but if it really was edited then that is a relief. I'm not excited by some of the design decisions for ME3, but I'm sure I'll end up playing this game eventually anyway.

God, I hate talking about Mass Effect on the internet. Can we please just wait until the fucking game is out to cry about how everything about it is so shitty?

@Brodehouse: I guess that makes sense. I remember in one of the ME2 DLC campaigns that entire lab had been indoctrinated by the Reapers. I hope this means that we'll hear "ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL" more in ME3.

@Chop and @CL60

I didn't hear about that. Then again I'm not a Twitter guy. I guess that abates some of my nerdrage. However why bother doing that if there's an option right there for action mode? Why the bait and switch I wonder. I usually don't get all crazy over stuff like this but ME is one of my favourite franchises so I guess it's close to my heart. Thanks for the info.

I whine but I'm still buying the damn thing. We'll see how it turns out.

And yeah okay the smoke grenades were pretty sweet. There's my positive. Rant over.

They did a really good job of making Earth seem totally uninhabited and quiet. As the OP mentioned, this might be just a demo thing, but man. It's so devoid of the chaos I was hoping for... Yes there's reapers everywhere but they're attacking a generic Mass Effect map... not Earth. There's no one there! No screams, people running around all crazy-like. That's what struck me, anyway.

I'm not sure what it is about this Mass Effect that just isn't grabbing me like all the hype for 2 did. I like the look of the skill progression though. Really didn't play enough to make a proper judgement- just initial impressions.

Excited to play the demo some more and see the finished game.

Can I make a female shepard for looking at and not masturbating to in the demo? This is important

I haven't/won't be playing the single player campaign until the game is fully released. I've only been wetting my appetite with the multi-player for the time being. No doubt when the game is released in March, I'll want to run a prolonged marathon; but demo you such a tease!

@Aetheldod: So tell me, how much Kool-Aid do you have to drink to actually believe that it controls and plays as well as good TPS's?

I'm pretty sure this was the E3 demo they showed, for sure it could have used some extra texture work and testing. But overall I feel justified in my excitement for ME3 after playing the demo.

As for somebody who was playing ME2 just before I started to download the demo, the game looks much better (ps3). And we can assume this is not the most recent build of the game, which hopefully means they game will be a less bit choppy when released. The shooting and movement and just overall combat feels much much better, the weapons just sound more visceral.  Ok the child thing was a bit much but I can see what they are trying to go for, they want Earth to be in the shitter and I think they do an overall good job of it. So I liked the demo, and cannot wait for this game to come out .
 
I should note I didnt play the second half just to keep future plot stuff away

So i talked a little before about the multiplayer in this thread, but now that the servers are really working, I am genuinely surprised at how well done it is. Put several hours into it, made it to level 10 with just the soldier class, and still cant pass wave 3 on silver difficulty with a full group of non level one guys. That on top of multiple classes and races with unique abilities in the class, plus unlocks... wow. A ton of multiplayer content that is actually challenging and fun. In Mass Effect. Who knew.

It is weird to see a dichotomy of responses from the demo. The game play is almost the same as in 2, somewhat better IMO. The dialogue is not representative of the choices in the final game, they trimmed it for the demo

@Cronus42 said:

So i talked a little before about the multiplayer in this thread, but now that the servers are really working, I am genuinely surprised at how well done it is. Put several hours into it, made it to level 10 with just the soldier class, and still cant pass wave 3 on silver difficulty with a full group of non level one guys. That on top of multiple classes and races with unique abilities in the class, plus unlocks... wow. A ton of multiplayer content that is actually challenging and fun. In Mass Effect. Who knew.

I completely agree. They managed to capture the spirit of Mass Effect in multiplayer form, something I did not expect. Its pretty cool. I don't think it will be the next Call of Duty of anything but I'm sure it will end up with a group of dedicated people.

@AndrewB said:

@TripMasterMunky said:

@SpikeSpiegel said:

What the heck did they do to Ashley's face?

RIght? She looked more believable before. Now she just looks creepy - they tried to make her too perfect.

I feel the same way about Kaidan, too. The upgrade in graphics sure made some things take a major downgrade.

@Bocam said:

So Mordin, Garrus, and Wrex died in my play-through of the first 2 games... how are they going to handle that?

Of the announced squadmates, it's possible to be locked to just 3 people.

Wrex will obviously be easily worked around because killing him was an option in the first game. If you played the sequence in the demo with Mordin, you'd see that his role is easily replaced by another character, but that character may also have died in the first game depending on your actions. Garrus... how could you let Garrus die, man? Come on! He's fucking Garrus. The game should treat him as alive just because he's Garrus.

You mean the downgrade in graphics made some things take a major downgrade? The graphics don't look like an upgrade for the most part.

@Cronus42 said:

So i talked a little before about the multiplayer in this thread, but now that the servers are really working, I am genuinely surprised at how well done it is. Put several hours into it, made it to level 10 with just the soldier class, and still cant pass wave 3 on silver difficulty with a full group of non level one guys. That on top of multiple classes and races with unique abilities in the class, plus unlocks... wow. A ton of multiplayer content that is actually challenging and fun. In Mass Effect. Who knew.

I completely agree. They managed to capture the spirit of Mass Effect in multiplayer form, something I did not expect. Its pretty cool. I don't think it will be the next Call of Duty of anything but I'm sure it will end up with a group of dedicated people.

@PatPandaHat said:

I wound up sitting in the end "boss" fight with one bar of health, no understanding of how to get more health back, and just dying over and over. Then I dropped down from the baseline "how Mass Effect is played" to the Story mode bit, and just creamed my underpants.

@ReVamp said:

@RsistncE said:

Still controls (and plays) like a really shitty/mediocre 3rd person shooter. Why do people like this crap again? Oh wait, it's because most people are idiots.

Barring the fact I haven't played it, I think most people who play the game tend to not care about the shooting aspect.

The people who prefer Mass Effect 1 are the ones who don't care - the ones who prefer ME2 are the ones who care more about the shooting over basically everything else.

@RsistncE: Well I speak for over 25 years of gaming experience and I have played a huge arrange of games , from bad to good ones , so I have more than enough knowledge to discern when a games plays great or not.

Loved the demo and cant wait for March 6th. My only complaint is that there's way too much dialogue coming from Shepard without your input. So excited though!

@RsistncE

your post is to trolling what sarcasm is to wit.

@Marokai said:

@CL60: I haven't played through the demo yet (88% and counting!) but that still seems like a dumb decision regardless. It comes across as a fairly shameless attempt to fool the mainstream audience into thinking it's more of an action game than.. well, what it is as Mass Effect, and deprives most people around here, at least, of what they would probably be most interested in seeing.

Or they just wanted to keep the file size as low as they could, because it's already fairly large even with all of that stuff cut. It's not new that a demo will cut some stuff to keep the filesize low. The demo was mainly showing combat stuff. They didn't want to release a demo that spoiled parts of the game.

I feel like I should make a constructive post:

The demo did its job for me: The gameplay was entertaining enough, the character progression was deep enough, and from what I've seen of the multiplayer, it'll be entertaining. Hopefully the story will be a lot of The Shadowbroker and very little Pinnacle Station. Encouragingly, the banter between Wrex, Liara, and Garrus was heartwarming.

@Extreme_Popcorn said:

@r_eye: Or maybe it's an old build without the hacking minigame in it.

Or they ditched the stupid hacking minigame completely. If this is the case...thanks Bioware! Now if you 86'd the mining in Mass Effect 2, that'd be perfect.

The story telling (the main draw to the series) was cheesier than I remember, but I will probably be getting this on launch no matter what just to see how they "end" it.

The PC version is odd - textures sucked in the first part but where very good in the second (minus the backdrop, which was lower res than SWTOR)

@Sgykah said:

Encouragingly, the banter between Wrex, Liara, and Garrus was heartwarming.

I got the biggest smile when that part happened

@Skytylz said:

It felt all right, but I guess my main complaint was the button layout. The space bar doing everything really irked me.

Ohh, if your main complaint was the space bar I can understand that to a degree. It took some getting used to in ME2 but it didn't bother me much once I did get used to it. You can always remap the key though if that would help.

@TaliciaDragonsong said:

There's enough to be said about it, but it looks super cool and the combat feels...well...decent enough. I was even against buying it, and I'm a sick fan of this series, until I played the demo... Now I'm a believer! (But I still dislike EA!)

Yeah...fuck EA...I wish Mass Effect 3 was going to be available on Steam so at least Valve could take it's 30%, but sadly that isn't the case. I was considering waiting for an Origin sale to pick my PC copy up, but given the nature of my responsibilities on Giant Bomb, I need to play through the game as quickly as possible because big titles are usually spoiled for me within a week or release. Oh well.

@Zenaxzd said:

@Marokai: Speaking of this, has anyone chose one of the different "play styles" the demo offers you? I am curious if it's just a guise for different difficulties or if "Action" actually plays dramatically different than "Story".

Seems odd they's put it in the game. I mean by now any gamer worth they weight in salt should know what Mass Effect is all about. Seems a bit odd trying to satisfy new comers who can't handle a conversation. I think I'll just ignore some useless features.