I like to call it, "a good game with elements of both third-person shooters and science fiction role-playing games."

Because, what the fuck, guys. Why not.

I think this one will be just a shooter.

As long as there is interesting dialogue and it plays well I could give a shit if it's a rpg or a shooter.

I don't even really care, I just want to play it. 
 
If I could make any request it would simply be for deeper skill trees, and I believe they already said this would be the case.

@pornstorestiffi said:

@Mikemcn said:

Mass Effect 2 was so damn fun, less RPG elements really wouldn't hurt anything.

I kind of disagree. I love RPG elements and watching Bioware pick out more of those elements, make me die inside a little each time. At this point there aren't really many left. If the game had been a full blown action game with dialogues from the get go i might feel different about it. But i kind of feel they need to make up their mind, cause in my mind the game is having a hard time deciding what it want's to be.

I agree, I liked the Idea that I wasn't playing a shooter in Mass Effect, it was a true hyrbid of genres, I liked the way that you could even game the system so your gun didn't overheat. I't just felt a lot more freeform and sandboxy. Mass Effect 2 felt like you were being controlled by the creator, to ultimately complete a defined amount of levels and get a very defined amount of XP.

The days of the RPGs that we are used to are likely over. Turn-based, DnD rule sets, etc. are flying out the window in favor of more action filled hybrid genres like what Mass Effect has been doing. Lots of hybrid games have been making appearances in case you haven't been paying attention. Fallout 3? New Vegas? Borderlands? I'm sure there are many more examples but those are the first to come to mind. You can't call any of those straight RPGs or straight shooters. They are a marriage of the genres. Get used to it guys.

Oh, and the explosive space frisbees were one of the most stupid things I've ever seen. I'm very glad they got rid of it. I'm still pumped for ME3 because I haven't been given any legitimate reason not to be, and neither have the rest of you. We can speculate all we want but we don't truly know anything about the game until the few weeks before and up until it is released. Game design is in constant flux.

The line is drawn arbitrarily. Considering what people call RPGs now, the Heretic trilogy retroactively shifted from being a bunch of shooters with RPG elements to being "modern RPGs". Cus innovation now is mashing popular genre x with RPG elements.

Mass Effect 2, even being more streamlined, was more of an RPG than most RPGs that have come out in the last 5 years.

i just hope it'll be good. thats all. 
i could care less if there are more rpg elements or more shooter elements, as long as the game turns out to be fun. 

(love me2 replaying it on the pc for the fourth time , me3 has to raise the bar, otherwise people might lose faith in bioware. da2 was good... but not da:o good. 

I wasn't concerned about ME3 at all . . . until I played Dragon Age 2.  I'm just worried some suit at EA has decided that bringing in new players is worth alienating the fanbase that has been with BioWare for 15 years.

When it comes to Mass Effect, I say "Fun game is fun"... Literally don't care how it plays, the story is too damn good to give a shit.

Mass Effect's gameplay wasn't good, but the characters and story more then made up for that.

Mass Effect 2's gameplay and characters were great, so much so I forgive Bioware for the less then awesome story.

I'm hoping Mass Effect 3 is a perfect marriage of the two, Bioware IMO has never failed to make interesting characters in any of their games(other than maybe that Sonic DS game) so I'm not afraid of that.

I'm going to say that it's a shooter with RPG elements. It's amazing how much that game has changed since the first one, they completely tipped the scale, probably to appeal to a broader audience, which I don't mind

I say it's BOTH, meaning it's a hybrid between the two genres. 
 
It really flabbergasts me that so many people claim that the original ME had incredibly deep and well thought-out RPG mechanics though.

Even if the combat is more shooter-like, the exploration and character interactions are definitely something from an RPG game.

I never really viewed mass effect as a 'traditional' rpg in any capacity so I wasn't surprised or bothered by the streamlining of 2 and in fact had much more fun with it than the original.  I did enjoy the story and characters of the first much more though.

Why is it so important to label games nowadays? People seem to have become obsessed with arguing over things like "game X is more of an RPG than game Y". I still fail to see why it matters in the slightest.

Shooter with dialog trees.  ME2 was a good game but I don't understand they they had to remove so many of the RPG aspects or simplify them to the point of non-existence.

Shooter with RPG elements definately. I like Mass Effect, but i take it for what it is. A casual RPG. I play it because i like its universe. Not its gameplay much.

They're making the shooting better as well as increasing the depth of the RPG elements when compared to ME2. I think that's a win/win.

The Mass Effect games are probably my favorite series of all time. I bought every scrap of DLC (except the costumes), and eagerly await 3. That said, I'm a little concerned about the new trailers. Bioware obviously has a responsibility to sell as many copies as they can by broadening the appeal, but so far the third one is being marketed like CoD: Space Ops. I loved the better cintrons and shooting in part 2, but like most other people wish they hadn't trimmed down the inventory and customization as much as they did. Money talks though, and if the ad campaign for 3 is telling me anything, it's that this new one is going to focus even more on combat than exploration and customization. I'm not going to go as far as some people and say they're "ruining" it or dudebro-ing it up, but I hope they take the criticisms toward DA2 to heart and find a happy medium between 1 and 2 instead of going even more action oriented. I'll buy it no matter what, so time will tell I suppose.

People have a weird definition of what a "role playing game" is. Mass Effect 2 gave you tons of it, not ony through the conversation but also through the different abilities you and your crew gained and how you can use and combine them. Somehow it's only considered RPG if numbers go higher and I think that's a superficial look on it.

Shooter with RPG elements definately. I like Mass Effect, but i take it for what it is. A casual RPG. I play it because i like its universe. Not its gameplay much.

It's just going to be a straight up shooter at this point.

as much as i want it to have a couple more rpg elements that were absent from ME2 (all the stats and skills and i also missed the mako). i feel as much of the people in this thread do that ME3 is walking down the road of 3rd person shooter appealing to the mainstream. There's nothing wrong with that, i just hope they don't fuck it up like they did with DA2

I so conflicted about what to think of th Mass Effect franchise now that I don´t have a clear opinion on it , the first game was definetivly aiming for a tactical RPG/shooter the gameplay was kinda there but not quite , Mass Effect 2 was a straight shooter you no longer need to spend your experience points in getting better at shooting I didn´t like that but the game was amazing and the combat a lot more enjoyable, but the skill/upgrading system (RPG elemtents) didn´t needed to be cut out but streamlined better. I´ve avoided anything about ME3 but the news of a possible mutiplayer mode its not giving me the best impression of what that game is going to be, Im still wating for it but I don´t know why Bioware choose this route for the franchise gameplay wise.

Well it's going to have multiplayer and turret sequences. I don't even know the answer to this question anymore, but I trust it will be good.

rpg for sure.

I want this game to be a deep ass RPG, but considering the direction of ME2, I don't think we're going to get that. It's going to be shooter with dialog choices.

I dunno, I don't think enough have been revealed to make this call yet. So far it doesn't seem like it's any more of a shooter than ME2 was, which did have a lot of Gears of War moments but kept it interesting, and RPG-like by having that great dialogue system and of course stats and upgrades.

Do people just want more numbers?

@Dany said:

Do people just want more numbers?

As long as they go up.

i have to admit i did prefer ME1 to ME2 anyday and i have my reasons

@Ninja said:

I am a big fan of the Mass Effect franchise and I thought that Mass Effect 2 was good at straddling the line between third person shoot and role playing game, though I enjoyed the first Mass Effect the most.

So as the Mass Effect 3 promotion cycle ramps up I find myself less and less being able to relate. I loved the world created in Mass Effect, the variety of armour (armor) that people in the world were wearing and the variety of clothing. I thought the comparison to Star Trek was very apt at the time with even some of the fashion looking rather like it came from the Earth 80s or 70s period, then in Mass Effect 2 the design was much more power armour-y. I mean I liked Mass Effect 2, the world just didn't feel as immersive as the presidium and c-sec or even the Normandy were in the first game.

Now with this new Omni-blade (effectively a gears of war chainsaw) and grenades rather than cool space explosive frisbees and alot of the action looking more and more like it could be any old sci-fi universe rather than distinctly from the Mass Effect franchise, I find myself more worried that this game will be even further from the original Mass Effect than Mass Effect 2 war. I feel though like my opinion is wrong but I can't help the way I feel, what does anybody else think? Is this franchise dumbing down some elements or are the changes just layers that make the game more appealing to everyone?

Less able to relate? I don't know if it's a good idea trying to relate to the games you play. They aren't people.

The variety of armor in Mass Effect 1 was purely an illusion. Most of it was simply a new paint job for a new name and ultimately there were only two or three pieces worth actually wearing... and that's including the piece(s) you wear for the appearance rather than statistics. I'd rather have fewer meaningful choices than a game that insults my intelligence.

As for your power armor-ey comment, it sounds like you didn't read the armor descriptions in the original. Most of that armor was powered in some way and many of the upgrades were adding even more powered components to the suit. I can understand liking one visual style over another but the armor in both games were and looked power-armor-ey.

As far as immersion goes, I think you're right... but I'm kind of relieved by that. I actually didn't play Mass Effect 1 before beating Mass Effect 2. I tried to play it before hand multiple times, but one person's immersion is another person going "wtf is with all these elevators". I liked that Citadel felt massive in ME1, but I didn't necessarily like having to walk from one end to another on 50 different errand missions. I think what I miss most from the original game was actually what happened when you left the ship... the voice announcing that the commander was off the ship and navigator Pressly was assuming command in your absence... something about that really resonated with me. It felt like my getting off the ship had meaning... it made me feel more in command of the ship.

I'm not sure if you're aware of this or not, but those plastic frisbees in the original were called grenades. They seem to look and function in a similar way in ME3 based on what little we've seen so I'm not sure what your complaint about that is based on. For the omni-blade, I think you're crazy. ME1 and ME2 should have had melee weapons. It made no sense at all to use your weapon as a bludgeon in the face of assaulting enemies especially when you were aware of their proximity. Actually in the case of the soldiers, vanguards, and infiltrators it made absolutely no sense for them not to have some form of close ranged melee weapon considering their role as shock troops or assassins. This is simply a correction that should have been put in place years ago.

You are contradicting yourself it's hard to tell what you really mean... first you say you want the frisbees in the game when they're shown clear as day in numerous trailers. Then you say the omni-blade is the gears of war chainsaw and could be from any sci-fi universe despite the omni-blade being very much in the spirit of Mass Effect in appearance.

Over all I think Mass Effect 2 presented a more interesting world to play in even though it felt smaller than ME1's. Both games have their strengths and weaknesses, but both are equally Mass Effect.

As the combat will be determined primarily by player skill rather than stats, it is more of a shooter than an RPG. The RPG elements in Mass Effect 2 were superficial (predetermined and shallow skill trees, the combat determined by the action mechanics, and no equipment to speak of), and having dialogue choices is not proof of whether a game is an RPG or not; otherwise all adventure games would be RPGs.