By Craig Pearson on February 13th, 2012 at 10:36 am.
What better way to set foot into the upcoming week than having me going: “Stop! You there, yes you, wearing the ‘I Heart FemShep’ shirt and hugging the plushie Thane. No, the guy behind you. Yup, you. Nice neck tattoo. I know you have work, but there’s an important thing you have to see over *coughMass* here *coughEffect* and you *cough3* really, really *coughfootage* need to see it. Really. Re-ally.’ *wink*? If you want me to me more explicit: there’s a 40 minute video of the opening of Mass Effect 3 a few centimetres below this paragraph, so please stop anything important, like work or cutting an umbilical cord, and watch it.
Bonus: you’re not here to hear me asking ‘who is that guy and what that guy wants and who is Shepard and why’d he punch that guy and why’s that dude singing Gilbert & Sullivan and where’s Martin Sheen?’. I, er, have only played five minutes of Mass Effect. I’m sure I don’t need to point out this video is a massive spoiler, do I? Clicking on this, you’ll get 20 seconds of the “Ve3tro” before the demo starts.
13/02/2012 at 10:56 Drayk says:
Must resist spoiling my fun by watching this!
13/02/2012 at 16:06 McDan says:
Same, so tempted to watch it… but then I think it’d be better experiencing it myself. With the real shepard.
13/02/2012 at 16:24 dontnormally says:
This is exactly what I thought. For about ten seconds.
Then I watched it.
It’s… quite the spectacularly-awesome intro. Of any multimedia medium.
13/02/2012 at 17:30 JoyChiro says:
This vid is a spoiler, if only you count spent shell-casings as some. Also this was the E3Intro (Ve3tro) for ME3, which was…err…leaked.
13/02/2012 at 10:58 talon03 says:
Spoilers.
Edit: Actually, hold on, I may be having a valid point argument here. Why do I want to watch someone else play a video game for forty minutes, spoiling the story for myself in a month?
13/02/2012 at 11:15 downgrade says:
Exactly this.
I kept away from all promo videos this far, I certainly won’t watch the complete opening now.
I want the game to surprise me when it’s actually out.
13/02/2012 at 13:22 Screamer says:
What he said! XD
14/02/2012 at 02:22 DigitalSignalX says:
Ditto. Will not watch. Or even read many comments :)
13/02/2012 at 11:03 BULArmy says:
I really like the original and the sequel for the story, not so much for the game mechanics, but I really can’t get hyped for ME3, every time I look at a screenshot or some kind of trailer, somethig always seems wrong to me.
13/02/2012 at 15:08 MichaelPalin says:
That it has become another insufferable action movie?
13/02/2012 at 11:14 GallonOfAlan says:
LOOK AT THE BRISTOLS ON THAT THING.
13/02/2012 at 11:15 Stevostin says:
I did play ME1 & ME2 and liked them (well M1 was good, M2, was missing the exciting story but still ok). I thus can hardly get why anywhone would be wanting to see any footage of ME3. I mean basically it’s the same game (and it’s the point, so I am not blaming them) as ME1 with new content. So why spoil the content, considering that it’s the only thing to see ? ME is as good as the story is. Combat are very weak, even compared to Beth’s stuff, and relies heavily on luck (you can do them twice in a row with exactly the same strat and entirely different outcomes depending on… AI randomness, especially your allies).
Now, unless they’ve seen the light and there are new interesting stuff to show gameplay wise, I can’t see any reason to watch any video. I hardly can care less about the multiplayer stuff (they do realise it’s a poor shooter and poorer RTS, do they ?), I’ll obviously miss the lack of open world and free roaming, sidequest, traffic, whatever 3X – still I get why it’s to big of an addition. And I’ll buy the game as soon as it’s 50% off ok.
But watching a video ? It would be like watching a video of a middle episode of the next season of your favorite TV shows. Spoiler, nothing more. No ?
13/02/2012 at 12:10 SanguineAngel says:
“relies heavily on luck (you can do them twice in a row with exactly the same strat and entirely different outcomes depending on… AI randomness, especially your allies)”
I think that’s a good thing. Especially in an RPG. I quite liked the mechanics.
But I also agree, why spoil the main draw by watching it ahead of time?
13/02/2012 at 14:21 Memph says:
ME combat is ‘luck’? So not so. Oh, so no.
Not even on Insanity.
13/02/2012 at 15:08 MSJ says:
It’s even more tactical in ME2, where enemies have multiple protection layers and each of Shepard’s class playing differently.
13/02/2012 at 16:26 Stevostin says:
lol, you guyz aren’t very demanding. Having each class playing “differently” doesn’t qualify for quality strategy in my book. It’s a given, I can’t even imagine discussing the strategic quality of ME without it.
I really think my test gives an objective measure of the quality of game design. Choose a strat, do it ten times, list the outcomes, choose a totally different one, do the same. If you can’t have a clear cut difference between the outcomes, it means strat choices have little impact, and all that matters is to do it again enough. Now that is the trick : most people when failing will do it again differently. As soon as it will work they’ll save and thought they did it right, no luck involved.
I really could have missed it myself without a few tough fight that I had to start over quite a few times. I realised more often than not I could have one team mate spending 75% of the fight doing very little because of IA issue (ah, crates, nasty buggers). Sometimes both of them, sometimes none. Basically a random variation of +/- 66% in auto attacks. Guess what ? In a tense battle, that is the difference between easy win and easy loss. Oh, and as giving orders tend to make it worse, it really is randomness. No skill can prevent it to happen.. all.. the… time.
13/02/2012 at 17:40 Inarborat says:
“It’s even more tactical in ME2″
If by tactical you mean, Overload –> Warp –> Shoot dudes in the face –> repeat ad nauseum…
After watching the video all I can conclude is Bioware must be huge fans of Michael Bay’s work. Some truly dreadful directing and writing. Hopefully, the full game isn’t this groan inducing.
14/02/2012 at 08:18 jjujubird says:
My biggest beef with ME1 vs. ME2 was that ME1 had some major AI flaws. In ME1 you can strafe back and forth constantly and almost never get hit by anything. The final boss (the evil shepard, iirc) I fought standing in the middle of the room strafing back and forth with ease, never getting hit. What I mean by this is the AI would always shoot where you WERE a half second ago and would never “lead” you. At least they fixed those kinds of problems in ME2. Although I thought the cover system was a dumb addition.
13/02/2012 at 11:23 The Godzilla Hunter says:
This is like indoctrination!
MUST….RE…SIST!!
13/02/2012 at 11:24 HisMastersVoice says:
I like the fighty parts, but the talky parts? I couldn’t stop wincing. It’s like the prospect of voice acting brings out the worst in writers.
13/02/2012 at 11:32 BrendanJB says:
I wouldn’t consider what is shown to be spoiler territory; if you’ve seen the trailer you know what the game is about, and that’s all you get shown in the first 20 minutes of the video – including setting up a new Shephard.
The last 20 minutes is a random mission – an extremely boring one, I might add – about 1/3 way through the game that once again spoils nothing; especially considering you might not even have those certain characters alive in your game. I guess some people might consider an aspect of the mission to be spoiler-ish.
If you do, you can watch the first 20 minutes of the video to see the new gameplay mechanics/movement system without spoiling anything beyond the premise of the game that has literally been said outright in every trailer and interview so far.
13/02/2012 at 11:42 Greg Wild says:
One thing to consider – even if there are massive spoilers, it’s not ruining the game too much, because as far as I can tell Shepard isn’t anywhere to be seen in them :D
13/02/2012 at 12:18 MonkeyMonster says:
Just one of those who isn’t an rpger but this does look nice and fairly slick – the auto aiming of the console would taxi me up the vertical divider however.
One that I would co-pilot with helping them to remember things or optiions… Much like final fantasys.
Oh and the prison boss from Oz and Roseanne’s hubby voicing parts did raise a smile.
13/02/2012 at 12:20 YanDaik says:
Freeman is more superior than Shepard. He can jump…
13/02/2012 at 13:16 InternetBatman says:
In Mass Effect humans have evolved beyond the need for silly jumping. They’ve had convenient waist-high box technology for so long that jumping just doesn’t make sense anymore. They even have smaller waist-high boxes to teach children to hurtle over things.
13/02/2012 at 13:24 JackShandy says:
I look forward to the day when humans will evolve to grow built-in chest-high walls out of their pelvis from the age of fifteen. The future has us covered, friends!
13/02/2012 at 15:07 food says:
Gordo also rocked a crowbar, which is the choice of champions, malcontents and champion malcontents everywhere.
Why is Shep’s silly light-glove-stabby bit a switchblade? It’s made out of lasers, there’s literally no reason for it to have a ‘hidden blade’.
13/02/2012 at 15:49 Hoaxfish says:
Somewhere in that evolution between jumping, and chest high walls, is butt-sliding across car bonnets.
13/02/2012 at 12:27 emotionengine says:
I watched til the bit until whoever was playing fiddled around in the menus and skipped all the potentially interesting stuff there and went straight into choosing BroShep. And then I stopped watching. I mean SRSLY man.
13/02/2012 at 14:47 HardcoreGamer12 says:
not gonna watch too much spoilers
13/02/2012 at 15:35 terry says:
Anderson became foulmouthed in his old age.
13/02/2012 at 17:20 Tychoxi says:
21:18 Clint Mansell!!
13/02/2012 at 17:30 westyfield says:
Sorry for being the ‘meh’ guy, but I’ll pass. I can barely contain my excitement for this game as it is, and if the opening’s anything like ME2′s, I don’t want it spoiled.
13/02/2012 at 19:31 Dhatz says:
there might be a point, to check if you have any unnatura l graphical glitches once you have it, plůus this sort of shit is already linear.
Turnos out it’s kinda revolutionary difficulty settings.
13/02/2012 at 20:52 Wonko the Sane says:
…oh.
Much as I wanted to like this, cutting straight to Earth being trashed with horrible histrionics makes me wonder if this was developed in the dev’s spare time. Can we have the game they were supposed to be working on, please?
13/02/2012 at 22:11 terry says:
Not to mention that the council still somehow don’t believe Shepard despite the events of the last two games. I was half-expecting a “facepalm/not this shit again” dialogue choice.
60 bucks for this? Laughable, and I say that as a fan.
13/02/2012 at 23:11 RakeShark says:
Ah yes, “reapers”.
13/02/2012 at 23:54 Ruffian says:
yeah it does seem pretty damned stupid that they still act like shepard’s some kinda conspiracy theorist dummy, when he’s saved everyone in the galaxies asses twice now.
13/02/2012 at 23:47 Ruffian says:
Urrgggh, Why does everything that’s came out about the game so far have to be about the damn genopage!!! It was one of the plot points of the first two I was most interested in (Mordin is the man) and they gotta go and spoil half of it, first in game informer and now, with this! Oh well, I’m sure there’s still plenty more that isn’t bein shown, just odd, and I can’t say I haven’t enjoy reading about/watching it. Definitely cemented me on buying it. Hopefully I’ll finally get to put together the dream team and play Wrex n Mordo in a party together.
14/02/2012 at 00:17 RakeShark says:
I really hate generalizing, but I swear I’ve played ME1, 2, and 3 in the 3 act Trooper storyline of TOR.
14/02/2012 at 03:16 ericks says:
I refuse to install Origins on my computer, so I wasn’t planning on buying ME3 and didn’t care for spoiling it. The video actually interested me. The combat looks just as generically casual as 2′s, and the story looks like it will still be cheesy sometimes, but it looks like it’s worth watching.
That said, I’ll be renting it for my PS3 and playing story mode, how it’s obviously meant to be played. The ‘boss’ at the end of the demo hardly lasted five seconds on ‘action’ mode, the hardest available (in the demo at least). Might as well just save myself the boredom.
15/02/2012 at 02:35 Enso says:
I thought it important to share this with you all. Sign of the times
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v260/n00bzilla/MassEffect3Demo2012-02-1502-26-11-14.jpg