5 Niggling Things: Mass Effect 3

I’ve been a huge fan of the Mass Effect series ever since 2 arrived on PlayStation 3 in 2011; with its deep world, imaginative and detailed characters and ever-refined action, it has become one trilogy which I always go back to despite playing it several times to completion. But of course every game has its irritating moments and now it’s time for the controversial third game to go under the microscope. Before you ask me in the comments, no I’m not talking about the ending or any of its story components. I like to think that we all moved on from that debacle years ago; it’s better to put that to rest. For now, here are five niggling things in Mass Effect 3.

1. A lack of new gameplay scenarios

As the final act of the trilogy, a lot of focus was placed on the ending to Commander Shepherd’s story and the more action focused gameplay in marketing. In and amongst the enormous hype that built up, long-term fans were concerned that Bioware wasn’t adding very much to switch up the overall gameplay. Upon the game’s release in 2012, this section of the fanbase was met with a fair bit of disappointment and so was I after playing through the game multiple times. While the game itself is still really enjoyable and the new refinements such as evasive rolls add new tactics to combat, I can’t help but wish Bioware had been more ambitious; if they had been given more time to develop the game, they could have come up with some awesome ideas. Space combat anyone? There’s plenty of it in Mass Effect 3 that’s restricted to cut-scenes; rather than getting a game over, the Normandy could instead enter a 3D environment to take on the Reaper ships which may or may not succeed depending on the upgrades you purchased for the ship. Other gameplay traits have been ironed out in a bid to appeal to a wider audience; as strange as it may sound, I miss the hacking mini-games in Mass Effect 2. These could have been given more urgency; what if you took control of EDI for a short duration and had to break into secure systems, only this time with enemy forces attempting to stop you. Mass Effect 3’s action focused gameplay was a blast to play, but for the next game Bioware should work to better balance this with some solid RPG systems.

2. A general sloppiness to the multiplayer

Say what you will about Mass Effect 3’s multiplayer being a complete grind; the chance to play as the new characters and races were motivating enough for me to plough through the mostly samey horde mode matches. My issue lies with the little things that make multiplayer rather irksome at times. Connection problems often occur, more so when I’m joining, rather than hosting a match; I’m not sure whether this is down to net code, peer-to-peer servers (when players share in-game resources) or personal connection but it can interfere with a game, especially on higher difficulties. The issue of kill-steals is also bothersome as well; the balance of weapon damage and time-to-kill could be polished up, giving the kill to the player who dealt the most damage. Lastly there’s the issue of waiting for other players which messes with the menu system. Once a match has concluded, you’ll often have to wait a few moments for all the players to return to the lobby; this can cause you to completely skip over an opportunity to assign skill points if the lobby enters into another match. In the end, Mass Effect 3’s multiplayer is a good first try, but I’m hoping that Bioware has the time and resources to polish it up for the next game in the series.

3. Diana Allers (aka Jessica Chobot)

It was pretty questionable for many fans and it’s questionable for me as well; just what was Jessica Chobot doing in Mass Effect 3? Why does her character model look nowhere near as detailed as any of the others? These questions and many others have never been answered three years on; I’ve never had anything against her personally, but her inclusion in Bioware’s RPG series left me scratching my head. True, players do have the option to allow her to contribute to the war assets by carrying out interviews but honestly, she’s probably the most underdeveloped character in the entire series thus far. I would have rather had Emily Wong, who is nowhere to be found in Mass Effect 3, despite having a presence in the previous games. 

Mass Effect 3: Vindicated, a brilliant and incredibly comprehensive document that redesigns many aspects of Mass Effect 3 (Take a look at it here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/200900804/MassEffect3Vindication-v1-1-16-14-GerryPugliese) has proven that minor characters such as Khalisah Bint Sinan al-Jilani can be integrated quite well into the overall narrative, so why not replace Allers with Emily Wong? It would make for an interesting moral choice; do you go with Wong (Paragon), a reporter who would stick to the facts? Or do you choose Khalisah (Renegade), a tabloid journalist who would definitely do much to make an evil Commander Shepherd look better in the eyes of galactic society? I believe it would go a long way towards maintaining the player’s immersion in the world, rather than random real world individuals intruding into it.

4. The war assets and their basic purpose

Over the course of Mass Effect 3’s campaign, you’ll be collecting war assets by scanning planets and of course, making tough choices over which races to support; these all carry numeric values which feed into effective military strength (EMS) and in turn this determines the ending you’ll get. But outside feeding into your effective military strength, what exactly do these collectables do? Disappointingly, they really don’t factor into much else; all they are at the end of the day is static images with point totals that don’t really offer much incentive for collection besides getting the best ending. If Bioware had been given more time to develop Mass Effect 3, the war assets could have played a far greater role. Imagine if you were charting a course through No Man’s Land in the final mission and came across an obstacle; what if a military asset such as the Volus bombers could be commanded to fly in and clear it out at the risk of losing it? The same could also go for the space battles mentioned earlier; if the Normandy is overwhelmed by the Reapers in one system then a fleet could be called in at the risk of it suffering damage to its point value. That would make the missions far more open-ended and dynamic in the way the war assets may or may not survive certain encounters depending on the readiness rating and EMS. It would take a lot of programming and some really creative minds to make something like this work in Mass Effect, but it could really change and expand the series.

5. A knock on technical presentation

Mass Effect 2 was an incredibly polished title; aside from an annoying save bug (which was remedied with a patch) and a few stiff animations, the game rarely booted you out of its absorbing world and story. So what happened with Mass Effect 3? The technical presentation, at least on the PlayStation 3 version took a big step back from its predecessor. There are many instances where the game pauses for a brief moment to load, character models take longer to load in and the loading screens are more widespread and less aesthetically ambitious. While the technical issues aren’t as bad as those in Mass Effect 1, it is a noticeable drop in polish; the game even crashed on several occasions, most notably the end of the Cerberus Coup and the final stretch of Cronos Station. Again, this is down to development time; Electronic Arts gave Bioware two years to develop the game, as opposed to three for Mass Effect 2 and this left little time to iron out the remaining technical issues. Here’s hoping the same mistake isn’t repeated for Mass Effect 4.