This is what Mass Effect 3 should be about

[Louis]

This is what Mass Effect 3 should be all about. I will do my best as to describe everything this game desperately needs to be considered the best game ever since Mass Effect 2 among other personal opinions of mine regarding several key aspects of the deep plot this game possesses.

Firstly, no more squad building nor loyalty missions this time around. ME3 will be all about bringing the several species of the galaxy together (no matter the cost).

FACTIONS

Humans and Turians must place their differences aside, and for this Shepard and Garrus will work their asses off. There are three ways to approach for a solution:

• 1) Garrus kidnaps (with Shepard's acknowledgment) the highest ranking Turian military person from their planet and Shepard goes for the rescue, risking his life, and upon success all Turians show their absolute respect for humans from then on and both races reach a common ground;
  
  2) Shepard in disguise kidnaps (with Garrus acknowledgment) the highest ranking Human military person from Earth. The entire mission consists of Shepard with a few of his crew members making their way off planet with their hostage, while at some point Garrus intervenes and fake kills Shepard saving the human's life. For this all humans from then on show their absolute respect for Turians from then on and both races reach a common ground.
  
  3)For Female Shepard Only: Garrus and Shepard marry each other, putting a stop to the Turian/Human differences. This is not easy however since it requires a very high Paragon/Renegade score to either persuade or force a priest to marry them. There's also a list of required goods for the marriage to take place which must be collected across the galaxy via Planet Scanning/Mako (more on this below) and sidequests;

The Krogans and Salarians must put their past behind them and work together. For this, there are three different ways to reach a solution:

• 1) Shepard and Mordin must cure the genophage and for this they infiltrate the Salarian's Special Tasks Groups headquarters so that the cure can be retrieved. The team has to make their way through several floors of the facility where the cure is kept safe, facing the deadliest Salarians known to man, which have been trained for the sole purpose of combat. Upon success Mordin cures the Krogan and for that both Salarians and Krogan start working together for the sake of the universe;
  
  2) Shepard and Grunt must force the Krogan to aid the other races and for this they infiltrate Tuchanka and must convince (either by persuasion or force) all the clan's leaders to fight if not for themselves then for Shepard at least this once. Upon success Grunt becomes the supreme Krogan warlord and he swears that their people will do whatever it takes to stop the Reaper menace. The Salarians are very pleased that the Krogan have finally come to terms with each other and both species start working together;
  
  3) Renegade Shepard Only: Shepard strikes a deal with either species leader and eradicates the other, gaining full support of the remaining race. This course of action requires a very high Renegade score;

Likewise, the Quarians and the Geth must put their differences aside and work together. There are four ways to solve this quest:

• 1) Shepard and Tali work together to convince the Quarian admiralty board to stop their war with the Geth. For this Shepard can either persuade every member of the admiralty board (through a series of individual quests) to stop the war (Paragon), or kill each of them (through a series of individual quests) and place Tali in control (Renegade) of the Migrant Fleet. The Geth are later informed of the Quarian's change of heart and their willingness to work together;
  
  2) [This is only available if Legion was recruited]: Legion and Shepard will rewrite the Geth to stop their hostilities against Quarians. For this they will need to sneak into several "Geth hubs" throughout Geth controlled space and manually reprogram each node through a hacking mini-game. The catch is that each hacking mini-game must be completed correctly on the first try or else the quest is lost, unless Shepard has previously acquired the Cerberus Rewriting Tool which is available on the Collector's Edition version of the game;
  
  3) [Male Shepard Only] If Shepard marries Tali, this automatically gains Quarian quarian support albeit losing the Geth's trust for good. Marrying Tali is only available if Tali was Shepard's love interest in ME2 and if the player successfully completed the romance plot with Tali on the previous game and didn't break up with her after the suicide mission.
  
  **(The good part about this scenario is that Tali fans will not be able to "complete" the game with everyone being pleased should they marry their favorite alien fuckbot, causing increased levels of butthurt )**
  
  4) Alternatively Shepard can kill Tali to gain the Geth's support. There will be several ways to accomplish this, all depending on the character's Renegade score. Some of the available options include leaving Tali behind in a desolated planet, airlocking her, strangling her, poisoning her, shooting her, throwing her into the Vorcha's pit in Tuchanka...

The Asari should also be convinced to give their support to stop the Reaper menace. Shepard will be confronted with the two following possibilities:

• 1) Marry Liara. This will automatically grant the Asari's support. However, this option is not available if Shepard helped Liara become the Shadow Broker in the Lair of the Shadow Broker DLC in ME2. Should the player seek this course of action, note that you must have romanced Liara in Mass Effect 1, you should not have romanced any other character in Mass Effect 2 nor made Liara the new Shadow Broker. It's advisable to not complete the Lair of the Shadow Broker in ME2 to follow this resolution for the Asari's Loyalty Support quest. Beware through that not completing this DLC in ME2 will greatly affect the course of the game in ME3;
  
  2) [Full Paragon/Full Renegade Only]: To successfully gain the Asari's support, the player must have followed either the Paragon or Renegade paths in both games in accordance to their previous choices. That is - Shepard must have followed the Paragon path in both previous games or Shepard must have followed the Renegade path in both previous games. Depending on the character's alignment, the Supreme Matriarch of the Asari will deem Shepard worthy of performing a specific quest for each alignment option so that Shepard can prove his worth. Note, however, that each quest's availability will depend on the version of the game purchased, that is, the Archangel Edition for the Paragon quest or the Illusive Man Edition for the Renegade quest;

The remaining races are not important and will not be dealt with.



GAMEPLAY

To please the fanbase of both Mass Effect 1 and Mass Effect 2, the following changes will be implemented in Mass Effect 3.

Weapons will no longer have thermal clips and will once again feature upgrades ala Mass Effect 1, which are acquired throughout the game or in specific shops. The weapons will not have heat management though, since the new generation of weaponry available for elite military personnel is equipped with self cooling mass effect reactors that shoot projectiles at incredible speeds. Ammo is only required for "the big guns" that were introduced in Mass Effect 2.

The full array of armors present in ME1 with varying properties will return in Mass Effect 3. To balance their usefulness however, each armor will only be able to sustain a certain amount of damage before collapsing and leaving the player with his/her default armors, unless they're repaired regularly by authorized Citadel armorers. The Quarian Edition of the game will feature a portable repair kit which allows Shepard to fix armors in the field.

Also, since many fans were disappointed with the removal of the Mako for planetary exploration in favor the the planetary scanning mini-game, Mass Effect 3 will please both crowds with a new, innovative system. In ME3 players will now scan the several (more than 200) planets throughout the Milky Way. Should anything pop on the Normandy's sensors, the player will simply click on a planet's hotspot which brings a zoomed in scanner interface. On this interface a topographic display of the planet's area is displayed with all points of interest (minerals, unique items, relics, etc). The player then marks where he wants to land on this map, and launches the Hammerhead to explore the area just like in ME1. There are up to ten different "landscapes" available per planet for the player to explore. Note however that the Hammerhead has a limited fuel supply and must be refueled regularly on fuel stations along with the Normandy.


ROMANCES

All previously romanceable characters from ME2 will be romanceable in ME3, with the return of Kaidan or Ashley, depending on the player's choice of the suicide mission in ME1, along with Liara as a full party member as long as she wasn't made into the new Shadow Broker in ME2.

As an added feature, the characters Jack, Miranda, Jacob and Thane will be fully romanceable by both female and male Shepards although this requires a very high paragon/renegade score check for each character.

• Garrus: Female Shepard Only;
• Grunt: Male Renegade Shepard Only (he craves for a fierce warrior);
• Jack: Male - only if previously romanced in ME2 //// Female - requires a high renegade score and the player must pick the "Shut up and munch me, you fool!" dialog option;
• Jacob: Female - only if previously romanced in ME2 //// Male - requires a high paragon score and the player must pick the "I've heard you can dismantle a firearm like no other." dialog option;
• Kasumi: Male Paragon Shepard only. Must have preserved Kenji's Box in ME2;
• Legion: Renegade Shepard Only. Must not have used the medical bay to repair his or her face in ME2;
• Miranda: Male - only if previously romanced in ME2 //// Female - requires a high renegade score, must have preserved the Collector's Base in ME2 and requires picking the dialog option "I can bite your tongue off with my mouth closed. If you catch my drift." dialog option;
• Mordin: Is too smart to be romanced and is not a romance option;
• Morinth: Although she can be romanced by either a male or a female Shepard like in the previous game, she will still kill you if you try to have sex with her although you can convince other characters to have a three way adventure with her and have them killed instead. This option requires a extremely high paragon or renegade scores to be feasible though;
• Samara: Only romanceable if the player previously attempted to romance her in ME2, both male and female;
• Tali: Male only and requires being fully romanced in ME2;
• Thane: Female - only if previously romanced in ME2 //// Male - requires a high paragon score and the player must pick the "Snipe me if you can, you handsome frog." dialog option;
• Zaeed: Female only. Requires that the player to have killed Santiago back in ME2 for his loyalty quest;
• Liara: Only available if she was previously romanced in ME1 and wasn't made into the new Shadow Broker in ME2;
• Kaidan/Ashley: Whichever survived the suicide mission in ME1. Also requires that the player romanced either character and has not involved him/herself with another character in ME2;

It's also hinted that Doctor Chakwas will be fully romanceable in a future DLC.


PARTY

In case of any party member dying during the Suicide Mission in ME2, they will be replaced in ME3 with an equivalent crew member to fill in the missing spots. Each character will have a unique replacement, fully voiced character. For simplicity's sake, Cerberus has installed a new device aboard the Normandy which allows these new crew members to communicate with their original party member's voice as to make Shepard's job a little easier and avoid confusion on the battlefield. All replacement members have also been fully briefed on whom they're replacing, turning them into fully capable crew members;

This is the list of replacements is as follow:

• Garrus: replaced by Turian Sniper;
• Grunt: replaced by Krogan Warrior;
• Jack: replaced by L5 Biotic;
• Jacob: replaced by Soldier;
• Kasumi: replaced by Thief;
• Legion: replaced by Geth
• Miranda: replaced by Hooker;
• Mordin: replaced by Salarian;
• Morinth: replaced by Ardat-Yakshi;
• Samara: replaced by Asari Justicar;
• Tali: replaced by Quarian Mechanic;
• Thane: replaced by Assassin;
• Zaeed: replaced by Mercenary;

The replaced characters are not romanceable however.



PLOT


Shepard must gather all allies possible to defeat the Reapers. For this he/she embarks into an epic quest to unite the universe and prepare for the imminent attack.

At the blink of battle where all his/her forces are finally ready to make their stand, a beam of light hits the Normandy and Shepard disappears. All hope is lost.

A dream sequence is played, and Shepard finds him/herself in a ghostly place. A person approaches Shepard, claiming to be his/her long dead ancestor. This person calls itself the Warden Commander, and tells Shepard that he is the last of the Wardens and that the Reapers are in fact Dragons in a spacesuit. Shepard is given the last of the Warden's Gryphons, fully armored for space flying with mass effect accelerated wings.

Back at the battle, at the blink of defeat, a white hole appears and Shepard comes out of it, mounted on his armored Gryphon, shooting tornadoes from his hands while the Gryphon (fully armored) shits black holes from its ass and obliterates the Reaper fleet. This last cutscene lasts for 20 minutes.

[spychi]

Um it's certain that there will be no need to gain loyalty of party members that were in ME2 and which will make it to the 3rd game

ME3 will focus on the final battle

BioWare lately on Facebook asked what kind of missions we would like to see
more coverty ops missions
more epic battles

people side with epic battle, so fuck yeah for huge battles

[Louis]

As proven (sort of) by WoL, underhanded covert op shenannigans (Breakout) are more entertaining than a gigantic base smash (2 and a half hours of Omega...)

I say "sort of", because the difference in genre is obviously important. But the creativity and improvisation factors been more fun than brute force is what counts.

[tam]

umm....hmm, while i admire your detailed work in putting this together, i would not say that everyone was disappointed with the thermal clip system, as actually they did run a poll and most people rather liked it

the exploration section i liked, put some nice thought into it, and as for the party suggestions, no...just no, it was a suicide mission for a reason, if you lost someone, you have to reap the consequences, not have a sudden magic fix, with a voice adapter to boot to make it feel normal.

as for the plot.....................yeah....no comment

as for more suggestions: i would definitely suggest the addition of space combat finally, i mean its been teased in the first 2 games, and we got a ship mini game in the second game, but we need some ship on ship violence in this one, that is, at least if they are planning the scale i am thinking of

also, i'de check ign's article they put up last week on what they think they should add to the game or fix, as i thought they did a good job of addressing some of the things i was thinking of http://ps3.ign.com/articles/113/1138514p1.html

[Roland]

I'm glad you have such a clear idea of what Mass Effect 3 should be, but Bioware may have some ideas of their own.

Your obviously a Bioware fan, can't you just let them handle it. And if you want to rewrite the plot, just go ahead and write a fanfic or something, but if the game ends the way you described, I will never be able to take Bioware seriously again. That's like if Jim Raynor summoned all the Alliance armies to fight they hybrids.

[Sheliek]

It's great, but you forgot the part where, when all seems lost, the turian councilor looks out of the Citadel tower at the reapers, and says 'Ah yes, "reapers".'

They will simply cease to exist. That is the immense power of his denial.

[Louis]

Oh god, I hated the council so much. I should have been consistent with my paragon character by saving them, but I just couldn't force myself to do that.

[spychi]

I like the council, they are soo cocky, it's like the laughable evil/good of the universe

I am against any kind of replacements, I want the whole team from both ME1 and ME2 to comeback, even Jacob , new characters are also welcome

Oh man lot's of great games comming... I said to myself that I will stop buying soo many games but hell...
Dead Space 2 Collector's edition
Dragon Age II
Duke Nukem Forever
Battelfield Bad Company 2 Vietnam
Crysis 2
Witcher 2 Collector's edition
Bulletstorm
+some Wii and PS3 games and meanwhile a fucking car...
oh fuck I will be broke next year

[Zeraszana]

oh fuck I will be broke next year

i feel ya man..

[DemolitionSquid]

ME3 needs only one thing to be the best game ever.