But when it comes time to seal the romantic deal in a BioWare game, do things really need to be so awkward? Because damn, things have gotten weird. As Tom Bissell puts it in his Grantland critique of the game—"In fact, could we, as gamers, maybe politely band together to convince BioWare to can the sex scenes entirely, at least until the technology exists to make a non-hilarious one?"

I'm with Tom on this one. Every sex scene I see in a BioWare game (or in most games, for that matter) is goofy on a fundamental level that needs to be addressed. Well, every scene except one.

I'm not a programmer, but the problem here seems to come down to a difficulty rendering contact between two characters. In every Mass Effect game (including 3), scenes of physical intimacy wind up looking like two weird puppets attempting to dance together. Arms wrap around torsos but remain six inches from making contact, faces weirdly bump together in a pantomime of a kiss.

These scenes become an exercise in artful omission—in Dragon Age: Origins, sex scenes were a series of carefully composed shots separated by fades to black, with kissing blocked by the back of a head, most physical contact taking place just out of the frame.

Eventually, every BioWare game fades to black. And thank goodness for that! I love Allistair and Morrigan, but I don't want to watch my avatar explore their "uncanny valley," for any longer than necessary, ifyaknowwhatImean.

And yet while the fade-to-black represents an awareness on the part of the developers that their tech isn't quite up to the level of even portraying basic physical contact convincingly, they almost always wait too long to cut away. We see just a bit too much, we're jarringly reminded of the awkwardness what we're seeing.

But one game got it right—Jade Empire. I actually have a firmer memory of the culminating romance scene in this game than any other BioWare game, and it's not because I saw some hot ripped abs or some steamy side-boob. It's because the scene was actually somewhat romantic, and it didn't show me too much. (I believe Baldur's Gate did something similar, though that game wasn't rendered in nearly as cinematic a style.)

Furthermore, and this is a bit granular, but look how that Jade Empire kiss operates, for lack of a better word. Her hands actually touch his back, and the whole thing feels like two people actually going in for an old-school style cinematic kiss. It's not perfect, but the illusion is at least convincing. And then… fade to black. Did we really need to see more? Would the story have been improved in any way by seeing Sky and the protagonist mashing their weird half-naked bodies together?

No, I don't really think so. The technology does exist to make these scenes work: Look at this genuinely hot scene from Uncharted 2 between Drake and Chloe:

(Skip to 3:15.) Here, a scene in which two video game characters are in the same room and actually appear to be touching. Probably because they were—the Uncharted games are now famous for shooting their mo-cap scenes with the actors voicing their lines as they act out the scenes.

I think there's something to be said for leaving those scenes on the cutting room floor until BioWare is ready to make them look less laughable. As Jade Empire demonstrated, a video game love-scene can have a sweeping, enjoyable bit of romance. It doesn't need to be grimace-inducing or embarrassing.

After all, if this (Spoiler-filled, incredibly NSFW) Mass Effect porn tumbler tells us anything, it's that fans of these games do just fine if left to their own imaginations.

Godwin's Law states that "as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1." As basically all video game discussion takes place online, let's just cut to the chase and give der fuehrer's take on recent events.

Hitler finds out that Toadette is not playable in Mario Party 9

DICE Informs Hitler about the Battlefield "Close Quarters" DLC

"Hitler planning the Minecraft griefer has been stole his things"

SPOILERS: Hitler Reacts to Mass Effect 3's Ending

Writer Tom Bissell, who might be one of the most insightful critics in gaming today, published a great piece over at Grantland today about Mass Effect 3.

Here's an excerpt (though you should totally read the whole thing):

A lot, finally, has been made of the fact that the male Commander Shepard can have a homosexual relationship in Mass Effect 3. It's an undeniably welcome development that gay and straight gamers alike can push a video game's male hero outside the heteronormative perimeter. In a similar vein, I found myself oddly moved when a male member of Commander Shepard's crew mentioned his - that is, the crew member's - husband. Video-game enthusiasts are, in many ways, the most reactionary and emotionally conservative audience out there. For that reason alone BioWare should continue to give gamers the chance to meet and interact with incidentally gay characters. (This is what more meatheaded gamers call "shoving the gay agenda down our throats!!") That said, BioWare's talented storytellers desperately need to rethink their curious devotion to the video-game sex scene, gay or otherwise, which, even at its best, remains as polygonally unconvincing as digital representation gets.

In fact, could we, as gamers, maybe politely band together to convince BioWare to can the sex scenes entirely, at least until the technology exists to make a non-hilarious one? Then again, I'm a shameless hypocrite, because I spent an inordinate amount of time as Commander Shepard trolling my crew for sex. All I can say in my defense is that, when I know Liara's in the next room, it's hard not to get a hankering for blueberry, if you know what I mean.

Giving the player choices doesn't mean you have to give the player stupid choices. Over the course of the Mass Effect games, I've emotionally misled at least three members of my crew, cheated on two more, and seduced both of my female aides-de-camp. Why have I been allowed to play a game called Mass Effect: Shepard Gone Wild? I have no idea. Neither real-life nor video-game commanders should be allowed to seduce their subordinates; it's beyond blockheaded even to give the gamer the option of doing so, especially when it shatters the gritty, war-is-hell vibe the game so desperately attempts to evoke. This aspect of the Mass Effect franchise feels like lonely-gamer pandering at its worst.

It's hard to disagree. The sex scenes in BioWare's recent sci-fi role-playing game feel stilted and uncomfortable. I'm not sure why so many people seem to love them so much. Maybe there's just no better alternative?

Relationship Blues [Grantland]

Dear 82% of Mass Effect gamers,

I'm tempted to tell you that you're doing it wrong.

According to The Final Hours of Mass Effect 3, the superb iPad app from journalist Geoff Keighley, the people who make Mass Effect say that only 18% of gamers play as a female Commander Shepard.

And that's not even the worst of it.

Look, I've only played as BroShep during some demos of these games that were given to the press. Maybe he's awesome. Maybe he deserves to have been the face of BioWare's series since day one. So what if Jennifer Hale's voice-acting performance is hailed as one of the most wonderful things in the series! It's not like the New Yorker chose to write about her, not the guy who voice-acts for BroShep.

Fine. I'm in the 18%. We play as FemShep. We reverse our Mass Effect 3 box covers.

But even if you play as FemShep, it doesn't mean I'm not shaking my head at you. I play as a FemShep engineer.

Look at that chart from Keighley's app. 64.59% soldiers!

What is with all of you soldier players? Did someone tell you that the Mass Effect games are shooters or something? If you play as en engineer, which it seems that almost none of you do, you get to send little flying minions out into the battlefield to kill the bad guys for you. Who doesn't like having minions to do their dirty work? Or is that just my inner-editor-in-chief talking?

I'm checking with Geoff Keighley to find out if these stats are pulled just from Mass Effect 1, 2 or from some platforms or all. Whatever the case, they make me a little sad even as they satisfy my not-so-inner snob. Almost none of you play Mass Effect the way I do, which means that I can now feel that my experience in this branching, malleable series is all the more special, all the more personal, all the more mine.

But, really. If you're not playing as a FemShep engineer, you are missing out.

Sincerely,
Stephen Totilo
Mass Effect Gender-Bending Minion-Commander

P.S. You'll find more stats like this in The Final Hours of Mass Effect 3, which is available now on iPad and is coming to PC soon.

Welcome back to the Kotaku Game Club's discussion of Mass Effect 3. We'll be covering the middle portion of the game's campaign today, picking up where left off last week, after the mission on the Turian Moon of Menae, and looking at everything through the mission on Thessia. It's a lot of material, but some of you thought we weren't covering enough ground last week, so taking a bigger bite this time.

Since we're discussing the campaign again, remember that today's discussion will be full of spoilers. If you haven't been to Thessia yet, I suggest doing so before joining the conversation.

First time participating? Here's the deal: The Kotaku Game Club exists because no one wants to experience a game alone. Even if we're playing individually, it's always more interesting to share our thoughts and hear other peoples' perspectives. The Game Club picks a different game every month to play as group so we can meet to discuss its narrative and mechanical themes and reactions to them.

We meet on Kotaku every Thursday at 4pm Eastern, and our discussions take place in the comments section of designated Game Club posts like this one.

Here's today's jump-off question:

Is deciding the fate of entire species more or less emotional than deciding for your own characters?

Mass Effect 3 is supposed to be about making tough choices: The decisions Shepard makes may very well define the future of every living being in the galaxy. The weight of the world is on his or her shoulders. The question is, are you feeling the pressure, too?

Mass Effect 2 built tension by putting the fate of individuals in your hands. These were characters who you could look at and talk to. Mass Effect 3 asks you to make decisions on behalf of billions, most of whom you'll never see, regardless of whether they live or die. Does widening the scope of Shepard's decisions make them more difficult, or are the consequences so unimaginably large that you emotionally detach yourself from the situation?

Next week we'll be discussing the last leg of Mass Effect 3, including the game's ending. It seems like everybody has opinion about how BioWare closed the Mass Effect saga, so there should be a... let's call it a "lively" event. We'll be meeting here on Kotaku next Thursday, March 22nd, at 4pm Eastern.

Like radio, film, and theater companies going back hundreds of years, BioWare games often have a very familiar voice cast from one production to the next. A Dragon Age II player can't help but hear Varric's dry tones from the Male Trooper in Star Wars: The Old Republic, nor can a Mass Effect fan miss hearing Commander Shepard herself in, well, almost everything.

The voice cast of Mass Effect 3 is enormous, and ranges from the famous — like Seth Green, Martin Sheen, and Freddie Prinze Jr — to the utterly unknown. BioWare regulars pop up everywhere, alongside newer actors. Because of the branching nature of the story, which depends so much in part on the widely variable events of the first two games, it's literally impossible to see or hear everyone in a single playthrough. To go through every fan favorite and well-known guest star would be a million-word essay, but here's a look at a dozen of these hard-working behind-the-scenes folks, from the lead character to a few surprising, fun cameos.

UPDATE: We've corrected the image of Kimberly Brooks (Ashley Williams), which initially featured the wrong actress. Also, due to popular demand, we've added a few more comparisons and profiles to the gallery. Enjoy!

Mark Meer: Commander Shepard
One half of Commander Shepard is famous now, having graced game boxes and players' screens for five years. Meer's one of many familiar voices in the BioWare voice cast, appearing in the Dragon Age games as well as starring in the Mass Effect franchise. For those who have played Dragon Age 2, you can find him in the Blooming Rose brothel as Jethann the elf. Yes, really.

(This Shepard is courtesy of Twitter user @rihards.)

Jennifer Hale: Commander Shepard
It's a law: Jennifer Hale is in everything. She's like Nolan North that way. Lately she's best known as Commander Shepard, but before Mass Effect she was Metal Gear Solid's Naomi Hunter — and a whole lot more. She's been along for the BioWare ride for a decade, since the days of Baldur's Gate II and Knights of the Old Republic. Hale's been everything from Samus Aran to Cinderella and, in my personal favorite guest spot, one Avatar Kyoshi.

Raphael Sbarge: Kaidan Alenko
Sbarge has been featured as a character actor in countless television shows. And yet everyone who plays Mass Effect seems to say the same thing: "Hey, that's Carth! Carth Onasi! From Knights of the Old Republic!" And so he is.

Kimberly Brooks: Ashley Williams
Brooks hasn't had as many starring roles as some of the other Mass Effect cast, but she's been working in video games since the mid 90s. Like many of the ME3 cast, she appeared in smaller roles in Dragon Age: Origins and was most recently heard in Batman: Arkham City.

Update: we initially had a photo of the wrong Kimberly Brooks; there are two active actresses with that name and the trail of credits can be complicated to unravel. The correct Kimberly Brooks is now featured.

Brandon Keener: Garrus Vakarian
I have to give enormous credit to everyone's favorite turian. Okay, my favorite turian. Garrus is full of character and personality even when his decidedly non-human face isn't easy to read. Keener's been performing in video games since the mid-2000s, and outside of the Mass Effect series is best heard in L.A. Noire.

Alli Hillis: Liara T'soni
Hillis has been busy in video games in the past few years. Not only has she given voice and soul to Dr. Liara T'soni, but also she performed the role of Lightning in Final Fantasy XIII and XIII-2. She can also be heard on television as Emma Frost in the X-Men.

Ash (Liz) Sroka: Tali'Zorah vas Normandy
Sroka is a young actress, whose career is still in its early stages. She took on the role of Tali in all three Mass Effect games, taking the character through a strong arc of growth.

Courtenay Taylor: Jack
Taylor began voice acting in video games roughly a decade ago, and has amassed a considerable pile of credits since. In addition to the Mass Effect series, she's had roles in Fallout: New Vegas and Alpha Protocol, as well as — like so very many others — MMORPG Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Keythe Farley: Thane Krios
Farley does less voice acting than many other members of the Mass Effect cast, but works very often with video game productions as a voice director. He worked as a voice over director for all games in the God of War series, among others, before giving a uniquely gravelly voice to the drell assassin.

Keith David: David Anderson
Captain Councilor Admiral Anderson is a hell of a soldier, and always a moral support and even parental figure for Shepard. What he does not have is a sense of style, unlike actor Keith David. If Anderson's voice sounds familiar, it's because he has a list of film and TV credits dating back to the early 1980s. Child of the 90s that I was, my "Where have I heard this voice?" moment was me remembering his turn as Goliath in the late lamented animated series Gargoyles.

Armin Shimerman: Councilor Valern
Somehow, it never once occurred to me to look at the salarian councilor and wonder, "is that voice familiar?" More's the pity. Otherwise I'd have had a laugh knowing that Deep Space Nine's own profit-seeking Ferengi bartender Quark was behind that smug alien smoothness. Knowing Shimerman voiced the role makes me feel less annoyed about having saved the councilor's life. Twice.

Carrie-Anne Moss: Aria T'loak
Need a gangster who takes no crap from anyone and has the most violent scum in the galaxy firmly under her thumb? Then you need asari kingpin Aria T'loak, formerly of Omega. And who better to play a no-nonsense, take-no-prisoners leader than the biggest badass in The Matrix movies?

Martin Sheen: The Illusive Man

Sheen's career spans film and television going back to the 1960s. The versatile actor became famous with Apocalypse Now and has appeared in dozens of films since, and yet all the way through Mass Effect 2 I found myself thinking, "Oh, President Bartlet! Why so evil?

Michael Hogan: Armando-Owen Bailey
Canadian actor Michael Hogan's career goes back over thirty years, but to most of us nerd types he's the one and only Colonel Saul Tigh, from Battlestar Galactica. The voice is so familar that I keep expecting Commander Bailey to be bald and have an eyepatch. That head full of hair takes me by surprise every time I walk my Shepard into the C-Sec office. He also had a role in Fallout: New Vegas, where his character looked like desert doctor Tigh.

Seth Green: Jeff "Joker" Moreau
I always expect Joker to look more like Seth Green than he does, too, despite the fact that Green has been doing voice work for ages. Most popularly heard in Robot Chicken and Family Guy, Green lends much of the necessary tension-breaking humor to the Mass Effect series. Who knew spaceships benefited so strongly from being piloted by smartasses?

Tricia Helfer: EDI
One-time model Tricia Helfer seems to have found an unexpected niche portraying artificial life forms with genuine depth and emotion. After years spent playing many incarnations of Cylon model Six in Battlestar Galactica, she took on the role of disembodied ship-board AI EDI in Mass Effect 2. In ME3, EDI and her voice have rather more in common.

Freddie Prinze, Jr.: James Vega
I'll admit it: I actually forget to talk to Vega very often. I got into a Normandy-touring groove back in ME2 that only covered four decks, and I don't get my Shepard down to the suttle bay and armory as often as I should. It turns out, James is actually a pretty good guy, and Freddie Prinze, Jr. does a solid job bringing him to life. Although Prinze has been in a number of films, TV shows, and TV movies through the course of his career, ME3 is his first role in a video game.

Everybody knows that rapper/actor/Coco-lover Ice-T is a vocal video game enthusiast, right? Checking in on the game series that he's shouted out over the last few years—Call of Duty, Medal of Honor, Gears of War—it's probably safe to say that Ice-T's a fan of shooters, especially competitive ones.

So it's a bit surprising that the one-time gangster tweeted about picking up Mass Effect 3, which is part of a series renown for its involving plotlines. Is Ice planning to get caught up on series lore? Will he get caught up in the intergalactic political tensions, romance options and be awed by arrival of the long-looming threat of the Reapers? Your answers are below!

Okay, then! Listening to his discography, it's safe to assume that he's probably playing a full-on Renegade. But he plays a cop on TV, so maybe Paragon? So many questions!

BioWare's Montreal studio was developing a competitive first-person shooter called Mass Effect Team Assault in 2010 before transforming that effort into the third-person multiplayer mode in Mass Effect 3, according to a new behind-the-scenes iPad app created by gaming journalist Geoff Keighley.

"The goal was simple," Keighley reports in The Final Hours of Mass Effect 3, "to create a standalone multiplayer experience in the Mass Effect universe that would mix the play styles of Unreal Tournament and Battlefield 1943 — and likely be released as a downloadable game."

The game was in development for four months and was presented, in March 2010, as the prototype seen in the images in this story. (Those images are captured from Keighley's app, which features video of the prototype.)

The powers-that-be at BioWare liked the idea of a multiplayer shooter, because it presented an added view of the wide-ranging war occurring during Mass Effect 3. The idea morphed into the development of a co-op mode for Mass Effect 3 itself. The main game's engine wouldn't allow gamers to play co-op in the main campaign of Mass Effect 3, but it would allow them to team up in a separate skirmish mode, which is what BioWare delivered in the sequel that finally came out earlier this month. As the BioWare developers shifted to that, Mass Effect Team Assault "was put on the back burner."

The Final Hours of Mass Effect is packed with stories like these (though maybe no others quite so juicy!). If you want to read a ton more about the making of Mass Effect 3, watch video interviews with the developers, check out deleted scenes from the game and even swipe through some panoramic photos shot inside BioWare HQ, grap the app from iTunes. It's iPad-only for now but will be released for PC in the next couple of days as well. (Look for an announcement on the app's official site.)

The Final Hours of Mass Effect 3 [iTunes, $2.99]

Actor D.C. Douglas, who played the role of Legion in Mass Effect 2 & 3, has posted an interesting look at the process behind bringing to life a character that doesn't have one set of dialogue, but many.

Given the character's introduction in the last game, and the possibilities inherent for him/it in Mass Effect 3, Douglas had to record three entirely separate dialogue branches depending on the player's reaction and past with Legion. While such things are common for all characters in the game, Legion's are even more bizarre given the fact he can be killed in the second game and then SPOILERS.

Douglas also played the roles of Tactus and the Geth Elder in the game. You can read his piece (which has videos showing his work in the game) at the link below, but be warned, there are some pretty major near-end-game spoilers in parts.

A Mass Effect of Fans [DC Douglas]

OK, just in case this needs spelling out, this will contain ENORMOUS SPOILERS. It's essentially all spoilers. But if you've already finished the game, or more importantly have not, will not and still want to see what all the ruckus has been about, read on!

This isn't a definitive guide on how to achieve them. If some kind of Google magic has led you here thinking otherwise, sorry. It's just a collection of the most important ones so you can arm yourself for one of the most passionate discussions about a game's ending we've seen in a long time.

There are, apparently, sixteen different endings to the game. Or, should I say, "different", because many of them are largely identical, sharing most animated sequences and differentiated only by changes to an effect's colour palette.

The endings you receive when completing the game depend on two things: whether you destroyed the Collector Base at the end of Mass Effect 2, and what your Effective Military Strength was when setting off on the game's final mission.

Many players when reaching the end of Mass Effect 3's playable content are given two options (either destroy or control the Reapers) with how to save/change the galaxy. If you'd passed certain criteria, you were also given a third, neutral one (synergy).

Since many of the clips are almost identical, I've included just the important ones (those showing the most dramatic differences) in the gallery above.

In the first one, you'll see one of the "best" endings (really just an additional few seconds shown after a regular conclusion, at the 4:31 mark), in which it suggests that Commander Shepard somehow survives the whole ordeal. Leading to the week's most popular conspiracy theory.

The best "Destroy" ending. All Reapers are destroyed, the Earth is saved, the Normandy escapes to an alien world. Head to 4:31 to see the SHEPARD LIVES moment.

The"Synergy" ending, in which all synthetic and organic beings somehow become one. Again, the Normandy escapes, and pilot Joker now has the added benefit of being able to knock boots with EDI.

The best "Control" ending. Shepard sacrifices his body to take command of the Reapers, flying them away from Earth. The Normandy once again survives.

The worst "Destroy" ending, in which you didn't get enough forces together and made some pretty crummy decisions. Reapers are killed, Earth is destroyed, everything is super depressing. It's even suggested the crew of the Normandy are DOA.

An average "Control" ending, in which for some reason the Citadel, which explodes in just about every other ending, survives.

And here are all the endings synced together. Just for shits and giggles.