Mass Effect 3 is making a lot of people feel quite angry. In addition to the day one DLC controversy, there's been an outpouring of bitterness from players upset about Mass Effect 3's ending. A group has even gone as far as to petition Bioware to change the final act to meet their specifications. We won't drop any spoilers in this post, but there will be some through the links below, so take care if you're still playing through ME3.

As Edge report, the campaign has garnered plenty of support. The Take Back Mass Effect 3 campaign has 25,000 likes on Facebook, 3,000 Twitter followers and 40,000 backers in a Bioware forum poll.

All this noise hasn't gone unnoticed by Bioware. Mass Effect 3 director and executive producer Casey Hudson spoke to Digital Trends about what the team were aiming for with the finale. "I didn’t want the game to be forgettable, and even right down to the sort of polarizing reaction that the ends have had with people–debating what the endings mean and what’s going to happen next, and what situation are the characters left in," he says.

"That to me is part of what’s exciting about this story. There has always been a little bit of mystery there and a little bit of interpretation, and it’s a story that people can talk about after the fact."

The good news is that Child's Play has unexpectedly gained a lot of support form the movement. The Retake Mass Effect Child's Play page has so far raised $32,502.60 for the charity. The campaign organisers say that they started the drive to "bring positive attention to our petition for an alternate ending to the fantastic Mass Effect series."

"We would like to dispel the perception that we are angry or entitled. We simply wish to express our hope that there could be a different direction for a series we have all grown to love," they add.

The likelihood of Bioware making another ending for Mass Effect 3 is ... very small. However, it's possible that the campaign will have an affect on upcoming DLC misisons, as Casey Hudson mentions: "We have some really great multiplayer content and some really great single-player content coming over the air, and their feedback will become part of how we design that."

Personally I was never happy with the ending of Citizen Kane. It was severely lacking in bears. The story of one man's corruption at the hands of his own ambition would have been much improved with a bit of unarmed man-on-bear combat. As such I'm petitioning Warner Brothers for a full re-cut of the final third. Is it what Wells would have wanted? Pfff, who cares. What do you reckon, should Bioware change the ending?

Mass Effect 3's From Ashes DLC caused controversy the moment it was announced. Fans wanted to know why they were paying extra for the new character, weapon, mission and companion outfits. Bioware's Mike Gamble insisted that the bulk of the DLC was developed "by a separate team (after the core game was finished) and not completed until well after the main game went into certification.”

Since then Mass Effect 3 has been released worldwide, giving PC gamers the chance to dive into Mass Effect 3's files. Some players found evidence of voice files, animations and character models for the From Ashes companion character on the Mass Effect 3 disk, leading many to believe that, contrary to Bioware's statement, the DLC had been developed alongside the main game.

Gamble took to Twitter to explain the files. "Because the plot of ME3 is so richly interwoven with the character interactions and moments, you simply cannot use a DLC module to ‘insert’ a new character," he said. "As we've mentioned before, that character has to be planned and the framework has to be established ahead of time for us to build off of with the DLC module."

He also mentions that elements like the character selection screen can't be overwritten with DLC, so spaces had to be left for the DLC character from the start. "certain elements of the Javik appearance and some of the VO needed to be included on the disc. That is a fact," he admitted. "But that doesn’t mean the content was created, and then removed. It is a necessity of adding a rich character presence in our game."

"Certain elements of the Javik appearance and some of the VO" wouldn't amount to a functioning character, you'd have thought, but a video has appeared online showing how a seemingly combat ready version of the DLC squad member can be unlocked, apparently by changing a line of code.

"The DLC is over 600 mb," Gamble explained. "The DLC data holds the mission itself, the cinematic flashback moments, the cinematic dialogue interactions with Javik, his weapon, the appearances for squad members… everything that makes the adventure a cohesive experience."

"'From Ashes' is not Javik’s character model. It is the story of finding the last remaining Prothean, and how his tale interweaves with Commander Shepard’s as he struggles to destroy the Reaper threat." If you want that interweaving tale, it'll cost you 800 Bioware points.

On Friday night, I suddenly, desperately wanted to play Mass Effect 2. I’d procrastinated all the way up to the release of Mass Effect 3, and finally snapped out of whatever was holding me back. No problem: digital distribution makes the PC the best-suited platform to satiate sudden cravings. ME2 is on Steam, but since ME3 is exclusively on Origin, I figured I’d buy it there so the two games could snuggle up together in my library. That arbitrary decision was a huge mistake.



In Steam, when a game finishes downloading, it’s ready to play (unless any prerequisites need installing, but that’s generally painless). I assumed Origin would work the same, and the service's FAQ claims it does: “Installations are easy, as Origin technology enables instant play after a successful download.” But when Mass Effect 2 was finally on my hard drive, the download button turned into an install button. No big deal...until I clicked on it.



Not only did I have the Hungarian version of the installer, but it was encountering an error which I couldn’t read. That’s pretty damn absurd, but I wasn’t going to give up so easily. I really wanted to play Mass Effect 2, and hey, I’m a resourceful PC gamer! I can fix a simple localization mix-up! So I poked around in the installer's directory and discovered the installation configuration ini. A simple change to the file name loaded the installer in English. Easy. Now what was that error?



I reopened the config file and saw that it does reference file locations in terms of discs. It's apparently a known problem, and the solution I found claimed it was caused by a corrupted download. That meant my only option was to redownload the game with my fingers crossed. I had too much resolve to give up there, so I went ahead and redownloaded the game, but at a much faster rate and without crossing my fingers...



I'd chastise myself for feeling entitled to instant gratification, but instant gratification is the main benefit I get from buying digital editions. I spent two hours downloading a broken product and another hour trying to fix it. I was done. Because Steam was there to save the day, I finished Mass Effect 2 in time to have a fresh save ready for Mass Effect 3 before the weekend was over (yes, I played all weekend).

I know it's a bit late to jump on the Origin hate bandwagon, and I never really wanted to—at least, I never expected to rant about it here (what is this, r/gaming?). But it shouldn't fail at its core function: delivering games. I don't think every game needs to be on Steam, and I'm not just cheerleading for Steam. I know EA won't abandon its platform, so I want it to work well and succeed. I don't hate Origin, and maybe this was just a fluke, but it doesn't give me confidence.

It's not news that Origin has problems, but maybe this post will spare someone my specific frustration: if you need to catch up on Mass Effect 2, I don't recommend acquiring it on Origin. Buy it on Steam, and your save will port over just fine when you play ME3 (which did install fine on Origin).


-------------------------------------------------
UPDATE (Mar 13, 2012)

Here are a couple updates from conversations I had with EA today:

Clarifying the FAQ, which states that “Origin technology enables instant play after a successful download,” EA Dev Relations Account Manager J Eckart explained: “Games older than Origin use the old ‘click to install’ method simply because they were shipped (and their installers built) before Origin’s tech existed. In those instances Origin is simply a delivery mechanism to get an image of the disc down to your HD.”

Regarding my specific issue with the ME2 installer, John Reseburg, Senior Director of Corporate Communications, added: "We’ve been able to pinpoint an issue around the experience you had – it’s exceedingly rare, but we’ll be taking steps to ensure it is resolved."

Remember the big flashy CGI trailer that Bioware released a few weeks ago? Remember how it starred the WRONG Shepard? Worry no more, the correct version has arrived. It's similar in almost every way, except the generic stubbly bloke who was in it has been replaced by the red-haired female Shepard that fans voted for.

This seems like a good time to point out that Mass Effect 3 is out on March 9 in the UK and Europe. Wait. That's TODAY. What on earth am I still doing here? Let me distract you with these shiny postcards of Mass Effect 3's prettiest planets while I make my escape. So long, friends. I'll see you in SPACE.

Some players have importing their Mass Effect saves into Mass Effect 3 and found that, while their decisions and personality survived the transition, Shepard's face did not.

Bioware are on the case. Chris Priestly has posted on the Bioware forums to let fans know that a fix is on the way. "We are aware that some players are having issues importing the faces of characters from Mass Effect 1 or Mass Effect 2 into Mass Effect 3," he says. "The issue is likely in how faces were detected when imported from Mass Effect 1 into Mass Effect 2, and we’re working on the best way to correct it for affected players."

In the interim, he recommends a fan-made mod program, Mass Effect tools, as a possible solution. Otherwise, players can soldier on with a brand new face, or painstakingly try to recreate their old one manually, though there's always the risk of getting something slightly wrong and then having to spend the next 30 hours going slightly mad as your mind latches onto every imperfection. A disturbing fate. Might be better to wait for that patch instead.

For more on Mass Effect 3, check out our Mass Effect 3 review and our look at how multiplayer will affect your story's ending.

Mass Effect was a space RPG about killing a flying robot god - a Reaper. Mass Effect 2 was about stopping one from being built. In Mass Effect 3, they've warped in from darkspace in their hundreds.

And that's all I'll say about the plot. This review will be spoiler-free even for those of you who've avoided the trailers and the demo.

In all three games, your time is split evenly between persuading people to help you and shooting people who won't. The original's strength was its main quest: a chase that felt both personally motivated and galactically important. Mass Effect 2's plot was muddled and brief, but livened up by an exotic cast of new characters with interesting side stories.

Mass Effect 3 tries for the best of both worlds: an urgent and galaxy-critical plot that directly involves the entire crowd of oddball personalities the series has built up. And it works.

Inside of 20 minutes, you have a crucial goal and a clear route to achieving it. And unlike the previous games, every sidequest and adventure along the way is connected to that. The war gives everyone a reason to need your help, and everyone you help has reason to join the war.



That brings you into contact with just about every familiar face from the previous games, each of whom gets at least one fan-pleasing moment of bravado or violence. But the most remarkable thing about them is what makes Mass Effect 3 unique: they could all be dead.

By the end of Mass Effect 2, only one of your 13 former squadmates is certain to be alive. Those who are each play a leading role in a subplot of Mass Effect 3. Those who aren't have their stories invisibly trimmed out or rewritten with new characters.

These newbies are not just bland stand-ins, either. In some cases, a friend's absence is filled by someone with a radically different motivation, and new relationships with the rest of the cast. A Turian squadmate summed up his feelings for one of these replacement characters mid fight:

"I don't like him!"

It's an extraordinarily complex, reactive and futuristic bit of storytelling, and it makes Mass Effect 3 personal and unique for anyone who has a history with the series. If you're starting fresh, the game assumes the death of a few characters whose stories make less sense to new players, and leaves the rest alive.



Other than the colourful, beautifully designed characters, one of the main treats of a Mass Effect game is the colourful, beautifully designed planets. The large-scale problems you're facing in this third outing make your mission a whistle-stop tour of the key races' home worlds, their glowing sci-fi dreamscapes in the process of being stomped on by mountain-sized robot lobsters. It's spectacular, and it feels like exploring the heart of the gorgeous galaxy you've been skirting all this time.

Each away-mission to these places is a substantial, satisfying fight against one of several different factions. The combat feels another notch more impactful than that of Mass Effect 2. The classes are stronger and more distinct: the Infiltrator bursts heads with every sniper rifle shot, the Vanguard can slam herself into enemies over almost any distance or obstacle, and the Adept flings crowds of enemies into the air and rips them apart with biotic combos.

You fine-tune these powers as you level up, deciding between, say, a longer cloak duration or the ability to use one power without revealing yourself. And the weapons you find and buy give you interestingly different compromises between fire rate and stopping force - tweaked further with mods.

But the most radical and effective change to the RPG side of combat is the ability to choose your own balance between weapons and abilities. Any class can now take one of each weapon type into a fight, but the more you carry, the slower your powers recharge.

I gave my Infiltrator a heavy shotgun, meaning she could use Cloak less often but deal a chunkier slam of damage when she struck. Trying an Adept, I shelved everything but a featherweight sub-machinegun, letting her wub out Singularities and Warp Fields every second. It finally feels like the class system has lost the last of its arbitrary restrictions, and you can create your own play style.



It all mixes well with your squadmate's powers. I liked to stealth behind enemy lines, hack their turrets, then let my biotic friend lift people out of cover to float them into range of their own subverted weapon. Once, a lifted soldier was pelted over to us by his own turret's fire, and my Cryo ammo power caused one of our shots to freeze him solid. He dropped to the ground and shattered. I felt like applauding.

The fights have also become more complex and less repetitive, thanks to a lot of smart interplay between enemy types. Some give each other armour or shielding, or feed on each other's corpses, or burst out of each other when you shoot the wrong sac. Huge, fast, melee-only Brutes force an alarming change of pace from cautious cover shooting. And the Banshee, a tall, spindly horror that teleports towards you as it shakes with rage, is properly traumatic to fight.

The best way to deal with all of this varies with the arena it's found in - something Mass Effect 2 never managed. It's the difference between dreading the next prolonged combat sequence and relishing it.

The low points of the combat are the bigger boss fights, which too often involve one- or two-shot kills that hit you almost instantly and seemingly at random. If you have no pride, and lord knows I don't, you can always jam the difficulty level down to its new 'Narrative' mode for a moment: it's designed for non-gamers who just want the story, so it makes you virtually invincible.

The only unfixable problem, boss-wise, is a recurring character who's scripted to survive and escape your first few encounters. It's always painful to watch someone fail to shoot the bad guy in a cutscene. When it's my Shepard, a character I love for prematurely ending conversations with a bullet, it's downright agony.



I'll get the other irritations over with now. The spacebar - previously only used for sprinting, ducking, taking cover, using switches, talking to people and vaulting over things - is now also used for diving away from cover too. It makes an already maddeningly imprecise system utterly ridiculous. At least half my deaths were from the spacebar not doing what I expected it to.

We're on PCs. We have 128 keys. We can handle a separate button for taking cover.

The multiplayer is a cooperative survival mode - you and your friends pick a class and fight off waves of enemies. It's not switched on at the time of writing, so I can't tell you how that plays beyond what you can try for yourself in the demo. But the way it affects the main game is needlessly problematic.

In singleplayer, everything you do accumulates 'war assets'. When you finish the game, how many of these you have determines how good an ending you get: how well the final fight goes for your side. Success in co-op multiplies your war assets, up to twice their normal value. That means that if you only play singleplayer, or want to finish singleplayer first, you'll have to grind the living hell out of its most tedious fetch quests to get the best ending.

These quests generally involve scouring the galaxy for a planet someone mentioned, scanning it, then returning to the Citadel. I did every proper quest I could find, but didn't play multiplayer and skipped most of these empty FedEx ones. The ending I got... I won't say how, but it could have gone a lot better.



In general, too, the end of the series is a mixed bag. Satisfying in some ways, nonsensical in others, and ultimately too simple. But the sheer scale of the adventure it's ending - and the music, which is gorgeous throughout - gives it an emotional impact that goes beyond its plot payload.

It left me feeling incredibly sad.

Shepard is the best game character I've ever played. She's been an ongoing improv collaboration between me and BioWare to build a hero that works for their plot, but suits my tastes. Since we composed her first inspiring speech to the crew when she took charge of the Normandy, a commanding, brutally effective woman has emerged through 60 hours of tough decisions. She's killed thousands who got in her way, hung up on the interstellar Council four times, punched the same reporter in three different interviews and shot people mid-sentence. But she has also formed conflicted, quiet, sometimes touching relationships with some of the alien weirdos dragged along on her mission. Relationships that gave her character a gentler side I didn't expect, but which made sense of the person I had in my head.

I'm thinking back through all that as the credits roll. At the end of them a box pops up. It says: "you can continue to build Shepard's legend through further gameplay and downloadable content" then reloads my last save.

So now I'm laughing instead.

Mass Effect 3 is out TOMORROW (in the US, Friday in Europe). Within a few days many Mass Effect fans will finally know how it all ends. It's the climax of a story that's taken Bioware five years to tell and the launch trailer suggests it'll deliver a finale we won't forget in a hurry. Hopefully Hollywood's trailer makers are watching, they could take a few tips from this one.

Also, a quick warning. If you're searching for Mass Effect 3 trailers, we'd recommend you avoid one called "The Invasion." It's thought to be an unofficial fan cut that includes scenes from the ending. If you're avoiding all spoilers, best steer clear.

A post on the Bioware blog describes how Mass Effect 3's reputation system has moved on from Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2's Renegade vs. Paragon setup. We'll still be able to unlock extra conversation options and satisfying interrupts, of course, but the adjusted reputation system should let us do this without feeling the need to commit exclusively to a Paragon or Renegade path.

"In Mass Effect 2, if you wanted to get the hardest Charm options, you had to play an almost completely Paragon character," Patrik Weekes explains. "We intended many of those Charms to be fun Easter eggs, but many players felt like they had to play pure Paragon to avoid being penalized by the loss of a dialog option. In Mass Effect 3, your Reputation score determines both Charm and Intimidate options, and that score is determined by adding your Paragon and Renegade scores together."

That should let us choose to act as a Paragon one moment, and go Renegade the next, making decisions based on the situation rather than a need to grind for maximum morality points. Many important acts in Mass Effect 3 will increase Shepard's overall reputation score without changing the Paragon/Renegade balance. In these cases "the bar on your screen will grow, but the Paragon/Renegade ratio will remain unchanged."

Mass Effect 3 will have one overall reputation measurement instead of two separate bars. New conversation options will unlock as your actions push the bar past four progression points on the bar. "If you see that you’re a bit short of hitting a new line, and someone has just said something like, “Let’s head down to and finish this once and for all,” it may be worth your time to go do a couple of side-quests first," says Meekes. You can see the new reputation bar on the left in this here screenshot.

The Earth is under threat. A fleet of Mass Effect 3 trailers are poised above the Earth ready to descend and convert us all into Mass Effect obsessed husks. It's already happened to Chris. He doesn't sleep anymore. He talks about Mass Effect, goes home, plugs into the mains to recharge and then returns to talk about Mass Effect some more. Only the game's release on March 6 (US)/March 9 (EU) will silence him, until then we've sat him front of the live action trailer above, which looks to have been leaked ahead of its TV debut on VG247. It's a bit like last week's Mass Effect 3 CGI trailer, except this one has more crying people, and shocking scenes of bridge destruction.

We recently mentioned Bioware's plan to send Mass Effect 3 to space and back by attaching copies to weather balloons and sending them into the stratosphere. According to the Mass Effect 3 in space page the first couple of balloons have been launched, but they've hit a bit of a snag, and by snag I mean tree.

A tweet from the Mass Effect twitter feed mentioned the problem, adding that this team of onlookers are "...currently trying to knock it loose with a baseball attached to string. Some just went to Santa Cruz for gear." Since then they appear to have gotten into some sort of fight with the tree in question. "It's foliage is foiling our plans!" they say.

An auspicious start for an ambitious campaign, It's going even worse than our initial predictions for the fate of those copies of Mass Effect 3. You can track the progress of each balloon using GPS on the Mass Effect 3 site.