Mass Alex: Mass Effect 3 - Part 06

Nice.

I played through the Omega DLC last year and loved it. The assault design of the whole mission reminded me a lot of Vanquish, making it one of the best action missions in the trilogy.

Still haven't done Citadel. I must!

Man these animation glitches and during an unmissable cutscene no less. Not to point fingers at anyone here (because that's been done enough) but I guess a lot of this makes sense when you consider the Omega DLC was done by the same studio that went on to do Andromeda. DLC is good overall though, just... rough.

So in that reactor scene there's a paragon interrupt that's exclusive to Engineer characters where Shepard just rerouts the power right away without endangering Aria and Nyreen.

As Vinnie said in the video, I have a feeling a lot of the jank has to do with the loads of mods they installed. Or maybe it's something with the PC version in general? I never ran into the glitches they are seeing in either of my playthroughs on Xbox.

I dunno, I had those exact glitches on Xbox 360 in every playthrough (talking about Aria's speech scene here). It was also being widely discussed around release, AND you'll be hard pressed to find footage of said scene on Youtube without the goofy spinning, so definitely not caused by mods. It's in every vanilla version of the game.

To this day, I think this is the only video game I’ve ever 100% completed, including every piece of DLC. And I have absolutely no recollection of playing this mission. I keep waiting for the “ohhhh right, now I remember” moment and two episodes in, I still haven’t had it. It’s weird because I thought I remembered everything in the game so clearly.

It might just be that I haven't played this in a very long time, but I don't think I remember importing a character from 2 so dramatically catapulting you up in terms of level tbh. You're like already just 20 away from hitting max level I think.

It's a real bummer they missed out on Grissom, it's one of my favorite parts of ME:3. Honestly one of the most annoying parts of the ME franchise is how ready and willing they are to lock you out of good content without anything equally good to replace it with. I get it's about "choice" and "impact" but at least don't make it feel like there's only one "proper" way to play and otherwise you just fucked up.

I....dont understand why youre so confused by aria using biotics? lol

I just remembered I did read the Omega Mass Effect comic, those chtulhu things jugged my memory. This is some beefy DLC though.

I'm Commander Sheppard and this is my favourite show on Giant Bomb.

@noval: Grissom doesn't become unavailable until Cerberus attacks the Citadel.

@wiseblood: I thought it was after 3 missions and Omega is like 5 or something? There's one guy in the last episode's thread that's playing along with them and Grissom was destroyed for him after finishing Omega.

Another great job, Commander! Really like how this DLC comes together in the end. Now onto Grissom Academy! I really fucking hope they didn't get locked out of it because everything I've read said it only expires once you start Priority II: Tuchanka.

@noval@wiseblood it looks like there's a lot of sources that say *in theory* Grissom isn't on a timer that Omega can run out, but there are several player testimonials around the internet that *in practice* playing Omega before Grissom results in Grissom failing

I haven't been able to find anyone who says they played Omega first and then were still able to play Grissom, but FWIW that's probably because the vast majority only go to Omega much later on

Wanted to give a heads up for a mod related bug I ran into playing this a couple years ago on PC that I’ve been meaning to bring up since you started. I had, I think literally all the same mods you guys have installed including the game pad mod. When I was playing one of the later Leviathan missions late in the game a bug triggered that rendered the game unplayable. Again, it’s been long enough ago now that the specifics are fuzzy to me but the end result was me having to specifically uninstall the game pad mod to continue playing. Even after wrapping up the Leviathan mission I remember reinstalling the mod wasn’t an option. I also want to say that this was an issue specific to the mod. Having said that, I don’t know if this issue has since been fixed. Apologies for not having a lot of specifics but I just wanted to make you all aware of this in case you run into issues of your own.

If they had to, could they theoretically mod the game so Grissom Academy is un-failed because that would be unbelievably stupid if the game counted what is ostensibly one, long DLC mission against you as multiple missions in determining whether or not you're locked out of Grissom even though everything I've read says that shouldn't happen because the trigger is a later mission.

There's already so much about this game I dislike compared to 1 and 2. This just adds possibly another burning log onto the pile honestly.

@robpigott: I don't have much experience with PC games so I just operate on the assumption every game has console commands and you can just change everything you want with no repercussions or cascade problems, so I'll say yes they should definitely look into modding Grissom if it turns out it's failed

Hopefully, in the same way @alex and @vinny brought back Tali, they can go in and mod Grissom if need be because if they actually get locked out of it after doing just 1 DLC mission and not because they genuinely ignored it and didn't care, that's just so... mean, I guess, for the game designers to punish a player like that honestly.

@robpigott: It also wouldn't be that much extra work to reload a save from before they went to Omega, do Grissom next week, and then offscreen just blaze through Omega again for about ~3 hours.

Or just reload to before Omega, do Grissom, and then never do Omega again, cuz completing Omega doesn't affect anything except for the handful of unique War Assets (just points, and the game gives more than enough of those). Post-completion, Aria is even still in Purgatory with all the same pre-Omega dialogue options.

@thepenguin55: If you're referring to the ladder animation bug in the 2nd mission there is a way around it in the game. You have to angle your camera upwards while using the ladder to fix it. I'm playing through the game now with the same ALOT textures mod but I was still able to beat that mission. I think it was a bug on launch of the DLC.

Totally! I don't know if Alex would want to do Omega again or if Vinny would even suggest that because it sounds tedious as hell but sure. They could totally do that if they wanted.

I think the only reason I'm harping on this so much is Grissom Academy is a great mission. It fulfills the character arc of a ME2 character, it's fun and engaging and full of great dialogue and it would be a shame if Alex (who will only play this game once) misses out on that mission because of bullshit that's no fault of his own honestly.

@robpigott: Absolutely agreed. It's a particular shame because I think Alex would really like that character's development, so missing out on that is much more of a bummer than if it were any other character *cough*jacob*cough*

Don't get me started on how they handle most of ME 2's characters in ME 3. It's a goddamn shame. Jacob, Miranda, Thane, Grunt, Samara. Only Mordin and Tali really got fulfilling arcs. Jack got a decent arc but still overall could have been stronger. They all deserved better. Really hope Grissom Academy isn't failed.

Vinny and Alex's version of this game seem to be having a lot of problems during cutscenes. There must be a lot of mods installed?

Damn, someone should tell Alex that he can shoot the guardians through the sight hole on there shields

@alex Grenades basically go where your crosshair is pointed, and Shepard works out the throw strength on her own. You keep aiming past the enemies thinking you need to account for an arc like in most games, but you don’t in ME3. Should help with your grenade aiming, it’s actually much easier in ME3 than in most games.

Also, to use a squadmate’s power the enemy has to have the red outline around them. The smoke was obstructing your view, so that’s why her power wasn’t working. Earlier in the game the issue was that you kept toggling James’ ammo power, like Vinny mentioned. I’m sure your dpad is fine.

There wasn't an email and Traynor didn't say anything about failing Grissom so I'm hopeful it's still there next week!

wow i forget how janky these games were and not just aria the cerb troopers getting stuck in air and the nemesis snipers just standing there not doing anything. its kinda sad...

I wish brightness was a variable that could be modified as part of the GB's video player. Some of these dark scenes, I'm having a tough time making out what is happening. But I'm also old and my eyes aren't great, so maybe it's a user error (cataracts).

@vinny and @alex are such a good pair for this series. I miss @austin_walker and wish they could convince him to do a surprise appearance in this series. Perhaps his capital ship was away and he is now just entering earths atmosphere in his mech, ready to play Mass Effect 3. :D

@youeightit: Same here. I played these games over and over, DLC included in every playthrough and I don't remember any of this. I'm questioning if I actually missed it somehow back in the day...

@chaosnovaxz: Right, I was wondering that too. It’s either that I actually didn’t play it at all, or maybe it was such a looooong not super engaging mission that I just erased it from my memory.

Even as someone who really doesn't care for the returning character like, at all, missing out on Grissom Academy would be a huge bummer

@alex@vinny In case you missed it, you can absolutely shoot those Cerberus shield guys through their shield's little window opening at their head-level to take them out super quick. If you've got a scope, it's an easy headshot every time.

Either that, or an ability like Lift or Singularity will work (but not lift grenades or other biotics) will cause them to drop the shield.

As someone who never got the DLC it's pretty exciting to finally see how all this stuff played out.

For what it's worth, I've played through ME3 twice and the graphical jank was never this bad. I'm guessing it has something to do with the mods you installed.

Yeah, those are not Mod-Glitches ... I played ME3 4 or 5 times to completion on PC without mods and those glitches always happen on the exact same spots.

@scrollcourier said:

Yeah, those animation glitches were there since the beginning, and are pretty easy to reproduce (kind of crazy they never fixed them). In fact, I had a bug with checkpoints that forced me to repeat Aria's speech several times, and every time it glitched in different ways. It was never that bad outside of the DLC

Omega was definitely the lowest point in terms of polish and content among the DLCs (unless you are really into the combat)

Alex using the heaviest weapon in the game, picks up a new gun "this one is heavier"I think they are reading the weight meter backwards? Also upgrade your skill that gives you better cooldowns to also benefit from carrying a heavy weight gun.

On the one hand, I enjoy the power fantasy they're currently having with OP Shepherd on normal difficulty. On the other hand, it kind of deflates the impact some of the enemies have. I mean, those adjutants, and especially the Banshees later on, freaked me out when I was playing it for the first time. On higher difficulties they become pretty tough. To be fair, just by being more bullet spungy, but still...

Also, I had to count to ten when they missed that couch, but I was prepared for it. They're running past a lot of things. Granted, most of it is not particularly vital.

Looking forward to the Citadel dlc. Hope they save it for the very last.

I keep saying "it's a cover shooter, dude" to this video.

Omega is a tedious DLC, it's very combat focused and the character interactions are definitely the weakest. The only highlight is Nyreen, the first female Turian we've seen in Mass Effect.

The cutscene glitches here are worse than in the retail game, that big Aria speech at the end was missing all the music which really took the wind out of it.

I think it's probably the worst of all the Mass Effect DLCs, but at least you've done it now so you don't have to do it again.

There is a long play on youtube from this dude ninjaflips where he does all the Omega DLC, responds to Miranda's email and *then* does Grissom so it has happened where Omega comes before Grissom. (Note: dude is a bit on one politically, but he does a real good job with character gameplay builds.)

As someone who never played 3 due to it being on Origin and the fact that I made an arbitrary decision about that a long time ago, I cannot help but notice that the crescendo of this sidequest is the basically meaningless immolation of (if I recall the previous Mass Alex 3s correctly, which perhaps I do not) the only arguably-queer presenting major female character we've met so far. Likely the "main justification" for this was to avoid having to generate assets for her to participate as a sidekick in the rest of the game, but gross?? I stopped watching there and it wasn't Alex or Vinny's fault at all, I guess I'm just disappointed because overall it seemed like the writing had somewhat improved between 2 and 3 as it arguably did between 1 and 2. Great job as usual, Bioware. I'll probably watch the next episode of Mass Alex in any event, good series.

Reapers have always been Cthulu monsters, adjuncts are reaper tech Cerberus tried and failed to control.

I'll put this in a spoiler block, even though #1 happened at near the end of this particular episode (I invite you to skip ahead and watch this.) But tl;dr - that wasnt the only character like that in ME3

#1: As shown in the end of this video, Cortez is gay and is mourning the loss of his husband.
#2: Samantha Traynor is a lesbian and available only as a romance option to a female Shepard
#3: Kaiden is revealed to be a romance option to a male Shepard.

@hostyl1: I appreciate your reply, and I guess that illustrates the gap between probably most people watching this, to whom all of this is old news, and me, who has never seen any of this one. Maybe my real problem is that it's hard to forget the train wreck that is 4. If I could toggle off my memory of their first and only trans character dead-naming herself (maybe the first time you meet her?), again I didn't play it myself, it would have been easier to take this in stride.

There are a couple reasons why the game feels easy the imported character brings a massive amount of points so you will reach the level cap before you get halfway though the game. Most of the guns your using are from the DLC so there kinda OP for the normal difficulty. It's to late now but I would of used a save editor and put you level to 1. The only thing you can do is raise the difficulty which you can do at anytime I do recommend doing that unless you like fighting things with almost zero challenge.

This DLC was even worse than I remember it being.