Mass Effect Andromeda: To Boldly Go

[Psyren]

Spoiler: Dragon Age Stuff

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Ah, but just because others are doing it doesn't change my statement. The original point of contention was that it was harder to justify guns in a fantasy setting, when, in fact it is hilariously easy to justify guns in a fantasy setting. Just because very few people do it doesn't change how easy it is to justify.

Your definition of "easy" appears to merely mean "guns are something they could technically implement and historically justify." Which ignores the third aspect, "and this is something our core audience would receive positively enough to be worth the effort." Unfortunately for you, that third consideration is the most important one, and it's the one people (including myself) are thinking of when we say "it's hard." I mean, you could with a few strokes of a pen establish and justify guns in Hyrule and Cyrodil too, that doesn't make it a good idea to do.

Now, with that said, I could see guns entering Thedas as a plot point. The Qunari have gunpowder (gatlok) after all; maybe they begin proliferating their war machines, or the dwarves get their hands on it and they do it, and we see the end of an age as firearms finally put the common folk on equal footing with mages and demons alike. Or maybe instead there is one character who, like Varric, has a very special and unique weapon that only he (or she) can use - a gun rather than a mechanized crossbow.

One thing I really don't want? ME1's inventory system. By all means, bring back omni-gel... but not the horribleness of a Quartermaster MOS.

There will be crafting and scanning, so I expect at least more inventory that we had in ME3. After all, they have to give you a reason to drive around on all these worlds.

[Dienekes]

Spoiler: Dragon Age Stuff

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Your definition of "easy" appears to merely mean "guns are something they could technically implement and historically justify." Which ignores the third aspect, "and this is something our core audience would receive positively enough to be worth the effort." Unfortunately for you, that third consideration is the most important one, and it's the one people (including myself) are thinking of when we say "it's hard." I mean, you could with a few strokes of a pen establish and justify guns in Hyrule and Cyrodil too, that doesn't make it a good idea to do.

Now, with that said, I could see guns entering Thedas as a plot point. The Qunari have gunpowder (gatlok) after all; maybe they begin proliferating their war machines, or the dwarves get their hands on it and they do it, and we see the end of an age as firearms finally put the common folk on equal footing with mages and demons alike. Or maybe instead there is one character who, like Varric, has a very special and unique weapon that only he (or she) can use - a gun rather than a mechanized crossbow.

Spoiler

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I think Zelda has a lot more free than you make it, considering one of their last games had a train. But Zelda always tries to be childish, dark, but childish, where even their bombs and explosives (both of which are by the way far out of the normal fantasy mold) are given a coat of color and fancy about them to make them palatable to the game, which guns tend to be harder to do. I also think Japan tends to not focus on guns, just in general with their games.

Cyrodiil I'll be honest, I don't know much about. Skyrim was one of those exploration games where I did, as I said earlier, explored for about 5 minutes and got bored, because I just didn't care what was over that next hill. 90% of the time it was just another hill. And the 10% of the time it wasn't it was just some bear or a skeleton lord that was just sitting there right outside of town for some reason, or a giant. But, I will say, I did get some amusement out of how high that giant launched me.

But all this is still side-stepping the point, that fantasy itself can quite easily justify, not just guns, but quite a lot of random concepts. Now they may not all be of interest to every player, but hell, that's the case currently. I still have about 0 desire to play as a mage, for example, but fantasy settings in general still can be created to cater to a very wide range of interest and experimentation. From the hyper realistic Calradia to the childlike Hyrule, to the grim and somehow still cartoon-y World of Warhammer which is full of guns, and weird nonsensical magic.

It's just the choices of the game makers. And if anything, the ridiculous popularity of World of Warcraft shows guns in fantasy can thrive, and show they can be easily justified and accepted, provided the they fit the tone of the game (which I would argue they definitely would in Dragon Age) and they are presented in a way that fits the setting. Which honestly in most cases should just be, they're there, why wouldn't they be? But for some reason people like explanations like "a dwarf made them" I don't know, people are strange that way.

[Morty]

There will be crafting and scanning, so I expect at least more inventory that we had in ME3. After all, they have to give you a reason to drive around on all these worlds.

Disappointing, but not surprising. I trust them to at least streamline and organize it better than the DA:I crew did.

[Psyren]

Spoiler

Show

I think Zelda has a lot more free than you make it, considering one of their last games had a train. But Zelda always tries to be childish, dark, but childish, where even their bombs and explosives (both of which are by the way far out of the normal fantasy mold) are given a coat of color and fancy about them to make them palatable to the game, which guns tend to be harder to do. I also think Japan tends to not focus on guns, just in general with their games.

Cyrodiil I'll be honest, I don't know much about. Skyrim was one of those exploration games where I did, as I said earlier, explored for about 5 minutes and got bored, because I just didn't care what was over that next hill. 90% of the time it was just another hill. And the 10% of the time it wasn't it was just some bear or a skeleton lord that was just sitting there right outside of town for some reason, or a giant. But, I will say, I did get some amusement out of how high that giant launched me.

But all this is still side-stepping the point, that fantasy itself can quite easily justify, not just guns, but quite a lot of random concepts. Now they may not all be of interest to every player, but hell, that's the case currently. I still have about 0 desire to play as a mage, for example, but fantasy settings in general still can be created to cater to a very wide range of interest and experimentation. From the hyper realistic Calradia to the childlike Hyrule, to the grim and somehow still cartoon-y World of Warhammer which is full of guns, and weird nonsensical magic.

It's just the choices of the game makers. And if anything, the ridiculous popularity of World of Warcraft shows guns in fantasy can thrive, and show they can be easily justified and accepted, provided the they fit the tone of the game (which I would argue they definitely would in Dragon Age) and they are presented in a way that fits the setting. Which honestly in most cases should just be, they're there, why wouldn't they be? But for some reason people like explanations like "a dwarf made them" I don't know, people are strange that way.

WoW also has computers, submarines, starships, teleporters, lasers, and all kinds of other anachronisms that make absolutely no sense in Dragon Age. It's a wildly kitchen-sink setting and thus not a good analogy.

I agree with you that it's a designer choice not to include them in DA, but I feel it's a justified one.

Disappointing, but not surprising. I trust them to at least streamline and organize it better than the DA:I crew did.

So how the scanning supposedly works is that your sibling (i.e. the gender you didn't select) will be stuck on the ship, due to some currently unknown issue that happens when you're both being thawed out. My current guess is that they'll be filling in the "EDI" role for you of being the expositional voice in your ear when you find things, in lieu of an AI. Anyway, when you identify resources on various planets, they will assist you with cataloging those and possibly with picking them up. I don't know that we'll necessarily have to wander the surface with pockets stuffed with Iridium (which is probably a good thing, considering.) It's all up in the air at this point really.

[Dienekes]

WoW also has computers, submarines, starships, teleporters, lasers, and all kinds of other anachronisms that make absolutely no sense in Dragon Age. It's a wildly kitchen-sink setting and thus not a good analogy.

I agree with you that it's a designer choice not to include them in DA, but I feel it's a justified one..

Spoiler: more damn dragon age stuff

Show

That's kind of my point isn't it. The original question was why Biowares fantasy is more stagnant. You said it was harder to justify things in fantasy pointing out guns. I countered that guns are actually ridiculously easy to justify. That Bioware decided not to include them is their own issue. That other settings exist with far wilder things than guns pretty much proves my point you can justify a whole hell of a lot in fantasy if you want. I think we agree on that, which is I think an admittance of a more nuanced starting point from fantasy is more restrictive to Bioware fantasy decided to restrict themselves.

From there we basically just go into a discussion of personal taste. Personally, putting guns into DA would feel a straight natural progression to me, to the point that I find it silly that some version hasnt been invented yet, considering there are magic runes that can imbue items with fire and electricity with seeming no fuel. It should be a synch for someone to use that to make guns or gun like objects.

Now does their absense really bother me? No not really. Or at least not as much as the fact no one seems to know what a damn spear is.

Fight like a Spartan, my ass.

[Rodin]

So how the scanning supposedly works is that your sibling (i.e. the gender you didn't select) will be stuck on the ship, due to some currently unknown issue that happens when you're both being thawed out. My current guess is that they'll be filling in the "EDI" role for you of being the expositional voice in your ear when you find things, in lieu of an AI. Anyway, when you identify resources on various planets, they will assist you with cataloging those and possibly with picking them up. I don't know that we'll necessarily have to wander the surface with pockets stuffed with Iridium (which is probably a good thing, considering.) It's all up in the air at this point really.

My big concern is that we wind up with hunter-gatherer stupidity. It was a major issue I had with Inquisition - the quest objective is 3 hills over, so I have no problem walking over there and duffing up some bandits on the way...but ALSO on that path is 15 patches of moss of various varieties, as well as a dozen veins of ore. I spend a load of time gathering all this crap, complete the quest and turn it in...and the next quest objective is 4 hills over in the same direction...and all that moss and ore has respawned. Meaning I gotta pick it up again. If I ignore it? The game is jumping up and down and waving this huge crafting system at me, telling me I could have awesome weapons and armor if I would just complete enough of this busywork.

It's tiresome but justifiable in MMOs, because they're trying to delay you because of the subscription model. For a single player game it's infuriating.

And with Mass Effect, we have the spectre (heh) of the Suicide Mission. Mine 500 Thorium veins to upgrade the Mass Effect drive, or your favorite squadmate gets blown up in a cinematic!

..Come to think of it, maybe my day one buy isn't as assured as I thought. Plot isn't a factor, but gameplay design surely is.

[Dienekes]

My big concern is that we wind up with hunter-gatherer stupidity. It was a major issue I had with Inquisition - the quest objective is 3 hills over, so I have no problem walking over there and duffing up some bandits on the way...but ALSO on that path is 15 patches of moss of various varieties, as well as a dozen veins of ore. I spend a load of time gathering all this crap, complete the quest and turn it in...and the next quest objective is 4 hills over in the same direction...and all that moss and ore has respawned. Meaning I gotta pick it up again. If I ignore it? The game is jumping up and down and waving this huge crafting system at me, telling me I could have awesome weapons and armor if I would just complete enough of this busywork.

It's tiresome but justifiable in MMOs, because they're trying to delay you because of the subscription model. For a single player game it's infuriating.

And with Mass Effect, we have the spectre (heh) of the Suicide Mission. Mine 500 Thorium veins to upgrade the Mass Effect drive, or your favorite squadmate gets blown up in a cinematic!

..Come to think of it, maybe my day one buy isn't as assured as I thought. Plot isn't a factor, but gameplay design surely is.

Aye you got to worry about the reviews on that one.

The reviewers will say that the games depth and expansive size is chalk full of goodies to discover.

What they'll actually mean is that each map has about 20 pointless gems that clutter up your compass.

[Psyren]

Spoiler: more damn dragon age stuff

Show

That's kind of my point isn't it. The original question was why Biowares fantasy is more stagnant. You said it was harder to justify things in fantasy pointing out guns. I countered that guns are actually ridiculously easy to justify. That Bioware decided not to include them is their own issue. That other settings exist with far wilder things than guns pretty much proves my point you can justify a whole hell of a lot in fantasy if you want. I think we agree on that, which is I think an admittance of a more nuanced starting point from fantasy is more restrictive to Bioware fantasy decided to restrict themselves.

From there we basically just go into a discussion of personal taste. Personally, putting guns into DA would feel a straight natural progression to me, to the point that I find it silly that some version hasnt been invented yet, considering there are magic runes that can imbue items with fire and electricity with seeming no fuel. It should be a synch for someone to use that to make guns or gun like objects.

Now does their absense really bother me? No not really. Or at least not as much as the fact no one seems to know what a damn spear is.

Fight like a Spartan, my ass.

Again, when I say "hard to justify" I don't mean "difficult to explain in the lore" - rather I mean "difficult to sell to the majority of the fanbase." While I can only speak for myself for certain, I'd bet a sizeable sum of GP that a headline reading "Guns Added to Dragon Age!" would cause a substantial backlash, one they can easily avoid by not doing that.

You don't think it would be a problem and that's totally fine - we'll agree to disagree.

My big concern is that we wind up with hunter-gatherer stupidity. It was a major issue I had with Inquisition - the quest objective is 3 hills over, so I have no problem walking over there and duffing up some bandits on the way...but ALSO on that path is 15 patches of moss of various varieties, as well as a dozen veins of ore. I spend a load of time gathering all this crap, complete the quest and turn it in...and the next quest objective is 4 hills over in the same direction...and all that moss and ore has respawned. Meaning I gotta pick it up again. If I ignore it? The game is jumping up and down and waving this huge crafting system at me, telling me I could have awesome weapons and armor if I would just complete enough of this busywork.

It's tiresome but justifiable in MMOs, because they're trying to delay you because of the subscription model. For a single player game it's infuriating.

I 100% agree. Gathering is my biggest problem with most RPGs actually. Inquisition even had the solution - let me find the nodes first, then send my mooks out via the War Table to harvest later - but they made the scraps and crumbs you can get via this method so meager that it was barely worth clicking the button to send them out.

What I would like to do, and what I hope Andromeda does, is that you discover resource nodes instead of indvidual materials. The more you find, the bigger your income when you send the grunts out to pick it up. And then, if you're so inclined and you need a little extra, you can visit a node personally for a little boost - say all my foragers have come back and I'm only 500 platinum short of that cool upgrade, but sending out the troops to get more would take several IRL hours; rather than wait, I can just nip over to Planet Platinumopia myself and jetpack over to some nodes until I can gather that small deficit myself.

[Rodin]

Again, when I say "hard to justify" I don't mean "difficult to explain in the lore" - rather I mean "difficult to sell to the majority of the fanbase." While I can only speak for myself for certain, I'd bet a sizeable sum of GP that a headline reading "Guns Added to Dragon Age!" would cause a sizeable backlash, one they can easily avoid by not doing that.

You don't think it would be a problem and that's totally fine - we'll agree to disagree.



I 100% agree. Gathering is my biggest problem with most RPGs actually. Inquisition even had the solution - let me find the nodes first, then send my mooks out via the War Table to harvest later - but they made the scraps and crumbs you can get via this method so meager that it was barely worth clicking the button to send them out.

What I would like to do, and what I hope Andromeda does, is that you discover resource nodes instead of indvidual materials. The more you find, the bigger your income when you send the grunts out to pick it up. And then, if you're so inclined and you need a little extra, you can visit a node personally for a little boost - say all my foragers have come back and I'm only 500 platinum short of that cool upgrade, but sending out the troops to get more would take several IRL hours; rather than wait, I can just nip over to Planet Platinumopia myself and jetpack over to some nodes until I can gather that small deficit myself.

I like the sound of that, particularly if you don't need to get out of the Mako for the initial scan. Drive up, lock onto it, press a button, no progress bar - just "Yup, we know where it is now" and go. Then just have a resource chart on the ship that you can allocate workers to, and you steadily gain them throughout the game. The less time-intensive it is, the better.

[Psyren]

I like the sound of that, particularly if you don't need to get out of the Mako for the initial scan. Drive up, lock onto it, press a button, no progress bar - just "Yup, we know where it is now" and go. Then just have a resource chart on the ship that you can allocate workers to, and you steadily gain them throughout the game. The less time-intensive it is, the better.

Agreed. Physically going out to farm things should be a bonus activity, not a requirement to progress.

At the very least, if we must physically go out and pick flowers, they need to work the jetpack into that in some way, or the Mako Nomad.

[Morty]

That's a resource-gathering mechanic I could get behind, certainly. Whether or not Andromeda will have that is hard to say, but I hope so. DA2 already had a streamlined method for it, but then Inquisition back-pedalled.

One good part of an open-world design is that there are going to be fewer areas where you can't return to. In ME3, they had to introduce the option to buy weapons and upgrades you missed, otherwise most players would lose more than half of them on their first run. Seems like it'd have been easier to just not put those things in an easily-missed corner. If you can revisit an area over and over, it's less of a problem.

DA2 had two high-end resources required to craft the best runes and potions skittered away in side-rooms of areas you only visited once - Isabella's final personal mission and something else. So if you didn't meticulously check every nook and cranny, no best craftables for you.

[VoxRationis]

I have to ask why a weaponless Mako was a design priority. Our problem with the Mako as players wasn't the turret, and there's certainly no reason to think that the Andromeda expedition is sufficiently safe that it merits the active development of a weaponless vehicle.

Regarding resource collection: I too hope that that would be something left to minions. In general, I should hope that a game based around being the leader of an expedition meant to restart the human race in another galaxy should include a lot of strategic elements in the form of resource management and workforce distribution.

[5ColouredWalker]

You can do that right now actually (Asari Huntress + SMG.) But yes, I'm excited about classless too.

Are you really saying Multiplayer counts for that? In any case I meant single player, though I suppose you can technically do that if you pick a biotic power as your bonus one for Shepard, which'd give you a character with a mix of tech, guns and biotics, just limited of all three.

[Rodin]

I have to ask why a weaponless Mako was a design priority. Our problem with the Mako as players wasn't the turret, and there's certainly no reason to think that the Andromeda expedition is sufficiently safe that it merits the active development of a weaponless vehicle.

Regarding resource collection: I too hope that that would be something left to minions. In general, I should hope that a game based around being the leader of an expedition meant to restart the human race in another galaxy should include a lot of strategic elements in the form of resource management and workforce distribution.

True, but then you'd expect the Spectres to be more than just like, one dude. Seriously, how many do we meet? I'm coming up with around 3 or so, not counting the humans. And two of those were evil.

[5ColouredWalker]

I can name more.

Shepard, Bau, Saren, Tela, Nihlus and the Virmire Survivor.
*Checks*
And there's a whopping 2 more named in canon. Woo.

[Rodin]

I can name more.

Shepard, Bau, Saren, Tela, Nihlus and the Virmire Survivor.
*Checks*
And there's a whopping 2 more named in canon. Woo.

Ah, I forgot about Bau. Like I said, I wasn't counting the humans.

I hadn't even really thought about it before, but outside of Shepard and the VS, the Spectres are:

Saren - Evil.
Tela - Evil.
Nihlus - Red Shirt.
Bau - Red Shirt.

Truly, an elite organization. Given their performance on-screen, it suddenly makes sense why the Council is so hesitant to believe you.

[Haruspex_Pariah]

It all looks interesting. Unfortunately I'll probably need a hardware upgrade to run it. And that's not in the foreseeable future. Counting on my subscribed Youtubers to run a lets play when it releases.

I actually might prefer the "unproven" aspect of Andromeda's protagonist. Any backstory you picked for Shepard was just a bunch of text (with Paragon/Renegade points tacked on for ME1, ugh). Better to start as nobody and then move on from there. Classless system also sounds promising; may need some idiot-proofing so unwitting players don't derp themselves.

[Inarius]

Ah, I forgot about Bau. Like I said, I wasn't counting the humans.

I hadn't even really thought about it before, but outside of Shepard and the VS, the Spectres are:

Saren - Evil.
Tela - Evil.
Nihlus - Red Shirt.
Bau - Red Shirt.

Truly, an elite organization. Given their performance on-screen, it suddenly makes sense why the Council is so hesitant to believe you.

See I gotta dissagree about Tela a little. Nothing about the DLC she was in says she was an incompetent agent, its just that she went against Shepard/Liara and their plot armor. Sure she blows up a whole building to protect her sources identity, but the council tends to willfully ignore what the specters do as long as it produces results. Other than that we don't see a lot of other agents simply because its a big galaxy, there are under 100 agents and some of them work in non combat oriented fields.

[Morty]

Classless system also sounds promising; may need some idiot-proofing so unwitting players don't derp themselves.

There will probably be ready-made, auto-leveling packages, or something along those lines. And respecializing. Then again, the last one depends on whether we'll have free pick of all abilities, or we'll need to pick them at the start of the game.

[LibraryOgre]

On the hunter/gatherer method, I would kinda like a gradual weaning away from it, depending on the plot.

So, at the beginning, you're dependent on what you find, because you're a schlub. But, as you grow in influence throughout the game, you can delegate some of it. Problems with the gathering, not the gathering itself, becomes a source of sidequests. You might CHOOSE to gather. You might need specific rare things to seek out. But there's little reason why the Dragonborn should be smithing his own weapons when he's multi-thane with a number of retainers, leader of the Companions, and head of the College of Winterhold, and there's no reason why the Pathfinder should be digging Thorium out of the ground, instead of just placing a marker and leaving it to someone else to gather.

[Psyren]

I actually might prefer the "unproven" aspect of Andromeda's protagonist. Any backstory you picked for Shepard was just a bunch of text (with Paragon/Renegade points tacked on for ME1, ugh). Better to start as nobody and then move on from there. Classless system also sounds promising; may need some idiot-proofing so unwitting players don't derp themselves.

Indeed, I prefer both of these too.

My one fear though is that they will toss class-based dialogue or interrupts too. If I'm a biotic and another character is whining at me about how tough biotics have it, I want them to acknowledge that I know what that feels like. If I'm an Engineer and we have to hack a door or turret, I don't want to be forced to delegate to a squadmate or slather omnigel on it.

See I gotta dissagree about Tela a little. Nothing about the DLC she was in says she was an incompetent agent, its just that she went against Shepard/Liara and their plot armor. Sure she blows up a whole building to protect her sources identity, but the council tends to willfully ignore what the specters do as long as it produces results. Other than that we don't see a lot of other agents simply because its a big galaxy, there are under 100 agents and some of them work in non combat oriented fields.

Said building was also on Ilium, which is outside Council jurisdiction anyway (it's largely the point of the planet.) Even if she was discovered the Council would simply deny involvement and throw her to the wolves, and discovery would have been highly unlikely given her employer (if she were going after anybody but the aforementioned plot armor folks that is.)

[Dienekes]

What is an interesting (to me) little tidbit is that I'm willing to bet that even though our new untested protagonist will not be as well trained as Shepard, he'll at least be able to shoot straight at level 1.

God the accuracy mechanic in ME1 was horrible.

Jokes aside, I'm really interested in being able to build my own class. A heavy soldier / non-stealthy engineer character would be great.

[Rodin]

What is an interesting (to me) little tidbit is that I'm willing to bet that even though our new untested protagonist will not be as well trained as Shepard, he'll at least be able to shoot straight at level 1.

God the accuracy mechanic in ME1 was horrible.

Jokes aside, I'm really interested in being able to build my one class. A heavy soldier / non-stealthy engineer character would be great.

Indeed! My first playthrough was as an Engineer Femshep when I saw that chart showing that to be the least played class/gender combination. Unfortunately, Engineers kinda suck in both 2 and 3. Being able to customize to play the way you want to will be great.

[LibraryOgre]

Jokes aside, I'm really interested in being able to build my one class. A heavy soldier / non-stealthy engineer character would be great.

"I wear heavy armor so people don't shoot me while I am ****ing their **** up."

[dinovo29]

What an amazing, memorable game was MF2! Really waiting for this one. The only thing I hope they improve, is the 3rd person shooting and moving dynamics... it feels a bit too arcade. Wish it felt a bit more like gow4.

[Inarius]

Again, when I say "hard to justify" I don't mean "difficult to explain in the lore" - rather I mean "difficult to sell to the majority of the fanbase." While I can only speak for myself for certain, I'd bet a sizeable sum of GP that a headline reading "Guns Added to Dragon Age!" would cause a substantial backlash, one they can easily avoid by not doing that.

You don't think it would be a problem and that's totally fine - we'll agree to disagree.



I 100% agree. Gathering is my biggest problem with most RPGs actually. Inquisition even had the solution - let me find the nodes first, then send my mooks out via the War Table to harvest later - but they made the scraps and crumbs you can get via this method so meager that it was barely worth clicking the button to send them out.

What I would like to do, and what I hope Andromeda does, is that you discover resource nodes instead of indvidual materials. The more you find, the bigger your income when you send the grunts out to pick it up. And then, if you're so inclined and you need a little extra, you can visit a node personally for a little boost - say all my foragers have come back and I'm only 500 platinum short of that cool upgrade, but sending out the troops to get more would take several IRL hours; rather than wait, I can just nip over to Planet Platinumopia myself and jetpack over to some nodes until I can gather that small deficit myself.

Heh, that's pretty much the same thought I had after playing through Inquisition a couple of times. Basically just a fusion of DA2s system and DAIs system.

[ImperiousLeader]

Honestly, the lack of guns in DA is just the same as DnD ... for some reason fantasy and guns are considered not to be mixed.

Going to ME:A, I'm excited. I quite liked ME3, (yes, even the ending pre-update), and I'm psyched to go back to the Mass Effect universe. It's that lovely blend of the things I like most of Star Trek and Star Wars and Babylon 5 all fused together. In fact, this whole game is coming across like a fusion of elements from all the Bioware games. I like having a family, as I enjoyed the dynamics of DA2. I like that tone is the important part of responses, from DA:I and DA2. I like the concept of being an explorer, like in ME1 (full disclosure, I haven't played either ME1 or DA:O, I tried to get into both, but the gameplay felt really stilted after playing the sequels first). If the Nomad is really a fixed Mako, then I imagine I'll love using it, though I admit to be skeptical, I gave up on the Hammerhead expansion for ME2.

I still won't pre-order, but that's more of a general practice, I only ever pre-ordered one game, XCOM.

[Leon]

Indeed! My first playthrough was as an Engineer Femshep when I saw that chart showing that to be the least played class/gender combination. Unfortunately, Engineers kinda suck in both 2 and 3. Being able to customize to play the way you want to will be great.

FemShep Engineer was my first full play through from 1 to 3 and the class just got better with each game, i had previously done 2&3 with a Sentinel

[SorenKnight]

Hey, I happen to like the Mako.

You're the first other person I've encountered who does.

You can do that right now actually (Asari Huntress + SMG.) But yes, I'm excited about classless too.

It's worth noting that you can't have access to the Asari Huntress without spending hours grinding or participating in the micro transactions. That's a far cry from something that's likely to be available from level one.

Backup melee is a certainty given the usefulness of the omniblade for dramatic cutscene kills. I mean, shooting Kai Leng would have been nice and all, but straight up impaling him before the badass one-liner was easily far more dramatic.

Personally I didn't find any scene with Kai Leng in it to be at all dramatic or satisfying.

What would be interesting though is if an offshoot of the Geth show up. They're certainly popular enough to be kept around in the series, and they can also easily survive the trip. They can also propagate themselves endlessly if they just have enough hardware to live on.

It would be really cool if the Geth had their own separate project, so that everyone thinks their dead, but we discover their colony at some point in the game.

[Rodin]

Personally I didn't find any scene with Kai Leng in it to be at all dramatic or satisfying.

I tend to agree, but stabbing him and saying "No gunship this time, you son of a bitch!" was pretty damn satisfying. Great line delivered while shanking the most annoying character of the franchise.