Earthbound: Mass Effect 3's Next DLC Headed Home

After a long, bone-density-ruining day in space doing space things, it's only natural that you'd want to come back to Earth, kick back, and put your feet up on something familiar - say, a footrest, Big Ben, or the city of Vancouver. But, in Mass Effect 3's Earth DLC, you'll return home to find the place ransacked, with Reaper forces making a mess of everything and totally wrecking your perfectly organized Mt Rushmore collection. So it's time to fight back - with a handful of new classes, guns, modifications, and whatnot, of course. Such is the way of these things.

Three new maps - Firebase Rio, Firebase Vancouver, and Firebase London - are leading the charge, with humans getting the class spotlight this time around. Specifically, Reinforcement Packs will soon yield the Destroyer Soldier, Paladin Sentinel, Demolisher Engineer, Slayer Vanguard, Shadow Infiltrator, and Fury Adept. And what would this giant, civilization-extinguishing pinata be with new weapons? So you'll also nab the Piranha assault shotgun, Acolyte pistol, and Typhoon assault rifle. Meanwhile, a new Platinum difficulty tier rounds out the package, and you know that means it's more challenging than Bronze, Silver, or Gold because it's named after a shinier rock.

Admittedly, the screenshots still make it all look kinda space-y, which is a shame, given that a real change of scenery would be nice. But then, there are only a few of them, so who knows if they're actually representative? I've assumed that rounding up solid shots was child's play for publishers before, and I've definitely been wrong. So we'll see.

As per usual, it's all completely free - which is pretty great of BioWare, given how much some of its competitors charge for these sorts of things (read: more than free). The DLC's dropping on July 18, so prepare yourself according to your traditional customs. Unless those customs are weird or gross. No one likes that stuff, so stop it.