Mass Effect 3 – Issues and Success

The recent release of Mass Effect 3 has been met with a some success and some issues for the team at Bioware.

There have been complaints about the From Ashes DLC which was released on the same day as the full game itself, there has been issues with transferring save files but despite this Bioware still have done better out of Mass Effect 3 than both the previous Mass Effects! Read on for more detail!

First up: the main problem with the From Ashes DLC is quite simply the fact that it IS DLC. Being released on the same day as the full game has put a fair number of fans and critics into a bit of a rage as they believe that if content is ready for release when the game is ready, surely it should be released as part of the game.

While developers at Bioware have asked that people take the content at face value, judging it on it’s content rather than when it was released and an ex-employee from Bioware has gone as far to say that people are not “producers”. While I do agree that judging the DLC itself should be done simply on the merit of it’s content (and I imagine I will be getting it when I’ve actually managed to get home to my copy of ME3) I don’t entirely agree with some of the other sentiments of the ex-developer.

First off, as the game is something aimed at the general public it is well within our right to rant about and disagree with what publishers and developers do. Sure the arguments may be petty and childish an awful lot of the time but to me the whole “you’re not producers” statement seems to be fairly derisive and suggests that our opinions are not worth taking into consideration.

If you ask me, I do think that the fans do have a point. A whole extra section for Mass Effect 3 released alongside but not actually part of the game, making people spend more money. Obviously I don’t really understand the intricacy behind it as I’m not a producer but it does seem to suggest money grabbing. And this is coming from someone who worships the ground Bioware walks on… All in all, I think it might be slightly poor form from the devs.

Next: there have been issues with the save file transfer from previous Mass Effect games. It’s nothing TOO major as all the decisions and important data seems to be passing over okay (as far as I am aware) but it would seem that people are having trouble passing the actual face of their Commander Shepard from previous saves into ME3.

As someone who uses the basic model of Commander Shepard this wouldn’t be an issue for me but I do understand that if someone went to the time and effort of creating their own personal Shepard in the original Mass Effect but then can’t play him in Mass Effect 3 it would feel decidedly less like they were playing as “their” Shepard. If I were to change the appearance of my Shepard in Mass Effect 3 I’m fairly sure that actually it would bother me a fair amount, like it was a new character rather than the one I spent days of my life working on.

Well, Bioware have announced that they are aware of the face import problem and that they are doing all they can to fix it. So those of you who spent ages putting your own face onto Commander Shepard’s for now all I can say is that you play the waiting game.

Despite these two issues, the release of Mass Effect 3 has been an absolute resounding success. In it’s launch week it’s already climbed to the top of the selling list in the UK and has apparently destroyed the release week of both Mass Effect 1 and 2 combined! Even more, in the official release trailer it becomes quickly apparent that absolutely nobody can find flaws in the game with “over 30” perfect scores from various high-end reviewers.

I’m willing to bet there’s a reason behind all this… Game of the Year for 2012? I’m beginning to think so!