I can't actually check, but assuming my memory is right... fourteen Shepards are on my PC back home. Each is a completionist playthrough of both games, with varying romances and surviving crew member rosters by the end of ME2.
A Sentinel with Warp Ammo actually works reasonably well. I learned the following from my Insanity playthrough: If you've got Kasumi's DLC, get the Locust ASAP, but take assault rifle training and the Tempest SMG later on when those options become available. Warp, Overload and Assault Armor are your best friends. Treat them well.
The Shadow Broker had been after Shepard for some time, and had considerable wealth to spread around. Wilson, the Cerberus traitor you encountered at the beginning of the game, wanted more wealth for himself. Since Cerberus was unwilling to increase his salary, he secretly started working for the Shadow Broker, which seems to have culminated in him unleashing the mechs on the Lazarus Research Station.
Wilson's involvement with the Shadow Broker was confirmed in the Shadow Broker's dossier on Legion.
" haestrom is just natural universe phenomenon. nothing else. I don't think that there will be DLC for that. it is nothing to do with making a bridge between ME 2 and ME 3. so Bioware won't make any of it"
I dunno if you got something from Bioware on this, but Im pretty sure that Tali says that it might be a natural phenomenon, but the chicken aint sure. The Quarian you talk to at Freedoms Progress says that he took readings of the Collectors which was partly something about Dark Energy. The star on Heastrom was something about Dark Energy aswell. Considering how much room this star got Im saying this is Reapers cooking something up. And now I gotta take a shower for writing the nerdiest post Ive ever posted on any forum. "
That wasn't nerdy, but this post sure as hell will be. While the dark energy irregularities could possibly be a natural phenomenon, there was a series of blurbs from the Cerberus Daily News ticker that makes that possibility unlikely. There's a project in the Mass Effect universe to send a probe in close to a neutron star for scientific observation. The probe itself (dubbed TR-15 Letus) managed to get closer to a selected neutron star than any other vessel in history, thanks to an oddly-positioned Mass Relay and what the article refers to as "Dark Switches," a control mechanism with a previously-unknown use built into the Mass Relays. The galaxy's scientific community was highly skeptical of the project team's findings, due in part to the purported use of "unprecedented ... dark energy control." Basically, the story ties together the Mass Relays (which are Reaper tech) and dark energy anomalies. It's nothing definite, but it's there. Draw from it what you will. Relevant posts were on March 18th and May 18th.
Anyway, with regards to potential storylines leading up to ME3 (DLC or otherwise,) it should probably be noted that some elements of DLC has been hinted at in previous blurbs. Tela Vasir, the Spectre from LotSB, was mentioned way the heck back in blurbs featuring her assignments--specifically, the arrest of 200 slavers and an unrelated series of arrests on a hacker group who leaked economic reports against the Council's wishes. (Relevant posts were on July 21st for the slavers and February 2nd and 17th for the hackers.) With this in mind, it's not unreasonable to assume that some events (or at least characters) mentioned might make their way into DLC or something more significant than a few paragraphs.
The most likely candidates for DLC seem to be as follows:
The recent "Ghost Ship" incident. For those of you not following the story, it basically goes like this: An 8000-year-old ship ventured into Salarian territory and was detected by security forces, and it was shortly discovered that there was an advanced AI system onboard. Naturally, after concerns of a Geth attack died down, it asked them to calculate the value of pi to the first quadrillion digits, along with 20 (apparently random) questions. When it was satisfied, it was eventually revealed that the ship digitally housed the accumulated consciousness of about a billion individuals, and that the ship was slowly but surely running out of power. To sum up what happened next, the MIT scientist who was acting as the de facto ambassador had his consciousness swapped out so that a representative of the stored civilization could speak directly with the Council to negotiate a way to preserve the civilization. There seems to be a bit of controversy among the galactic community over whether or not to save the digital citizens, and it seems to set up a pretty good Paragon/Renegade option (assuming it isn't concluded within the news feed itself, seeing as it's ongoing.)
There's another possibility featuring the details of Binary Helix, Guanghui Solutions and Sonax Industries invading the planet Garvug for various economic reasons. The fighting seems to a have more or less stopped at this point with the corporations withdrawing their forces after having their collective arses handed to them by a planet full of Vorcha suicide-bombers and Krogan warriors, but there still may be something interesting involving Hailot Wrund, the effective leader of the resisting Krogan forces. Equally plausible is some sort of DLC featuring the Vallum Blast, where separatist Turians basically nuked a Hierarchy capital city on the planet Taetrus with a shuttle travelling at FTL speeds. The group responsible, Facinus, seems to be a mirror organization of Cerberus. It is organized into cells, is deemed a terrorist organization, and is very hard-lined and pro-Turian. I wouldn't be surprised if we saw them or another group like them come up sometime in the future.
There are also a few other stories that might impact the overall story of the ME trilogy, or may simply be amusing red herrings (such as the acting President of the United North American States, Huerta, who is a zombie cyborg; or the impostor who took over the lives of thirty deceased individuals just to have a good time (the latest of which was one Rolan Quarn.) Either of which would be amusing characters to encounter, given the way they were presented.)
But that's about enough speculation out of me, I think.
" Not everything has to be a derivative of something else, yanno. Borderlands didn't even have its cel-shaded look by the time this game's art style was decided upon. I'll grant you the StarCraft thing though, what with the former Blizzard dudes. "
Dood, the game is a cel-shaded shooter with inward moving HUD elements...just like Borderlands...and uses a font very similar to the Starcraft font for its logo as well as offer a world that looks very much like something from Starcraft. If it's one thing I can't stand, it's when someone lists two amazing games as a source of "this is what this game is looking like" and people complain that they are talking down about it or something. Dead Space is basically Resident Evil 4 and Event Horizon, and it's not a bad thing. Borderlands is Diablo meets Call of Duty, and that's not a bad thing. Monday Night Combat is Team Fortress 2 meets Defense of the Ancients, and that's not a bad thing. What's the big deal with someone saying "hey, this game is like this and that"? If anything, I wouldn't have known about this game at all if this thread saying it was like Borderlands meets Starcraft. Now I'm super interested. See how that "derivative" stuff can work out in a game's favor? "
Er... I never actually said that being derivative was a bad thing. Didn't mean to imply it either. Communication fail on my part, I guess. I just wanted to point out that the art design was apparently decided upon when Borderlands was still going for the full-on realism approach. (i.e. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSvTqfmv3DE ) That being said, I would happily concede that they probably grabbed the HUD concepts from Borderlands (or whoever actually did it first if it wasn't Gearbox.) I was assuming that the TC was making the analogy between FireFall and Borderlands due to the cel-shaded style they had going on rather than a mechanical reason. May as well say that Borderlands was derivative of XIII, which is kind of a weak claim.
Also, the font is not the reason I believe it to be derivative of StarCraft. I believe the font is derivative of StarCraft's font, but that has nothing to do with the game itself.
Not everything has to be a derivative of something else, yanno. Borderlands didn't even have its cel-shaded look by the time this game's art style was decided upon. I'll grant you the StarCraft thing though, what with the former Blizzard dudes.
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