Mass Effect 3 Preview

The Guardian’s editors have put together a, by their own admission not completely spoiler-free, hands-on preview for BioWare’s upcoming sci-fi action-RPG Mass Effect 3, based on their experience with the first hour and half of the space opera threequel. Here’s a snip:

Once safely installed on the Normandy, we found Liara T’Soni, expert in Prothean technology from Mass Effects of yore. Earlier, while making their fond farewells, Shepard and Admiral Anderson had agreed that Shepard would head for the Citadel, to persuade the council of the need for all alien species to band together against the Reaper invasion. But Liara provided our first practical mission by volunteering the information that some form of blueprint for a Prothean weapon the only hope for taking on the Reapers had recently come to light on Mars. So we headed to the red planet.

There we found an unexpected enemy, human and heavily armed: Cerberus operatives. In Mass Effect 2, of course, Shepard was reconstructed by Cerberus and worked for the company, discovering uncomfortable truths about it. But normal service has been resumed in Mass Effect 3, with him once again in implacable opposition to the shadowy organisation. Here, the scene-setting cut-scenes at last gave way to proper, sustained gameplay. Albeit gameplay with a heavy focus on action we came across one puzzle, involving arresting a horizontally scanning pair of forcefields at a precise point to enable us to get through a door, and there were no safes to hack or characters with whom to converse. There was fighting aplenty, though, which confirmed that BioWare hasn’t been tempted to mess around with Mass Effect’s third-person shooting engine. Unsurprisingly, given that only Bethesda’s RPGs have come close in recent years to matching its accuracy and feel.

There were a few experience points on offer, but not enough to allow us to really start shaping Shepard’s abilities. Once inside the Mars compound, we had to activate a monorail to take us to where the weapon plans resided, then ride it through heavy Cerberus attacks. In the climactic stages, ammo (and especially grenades handy due to some enemies possessing shields) was in short supply, so we had to resort to the familiar weaponry and abilities wheel, encouraging our squad-mates to make use of their biotics. By this stage, we had acquired a decent array of weaponry including blaster, assault rifle and shotgun, but they were all thoroughly familiar from Mass Effects 1 and 2. After fighting through to our destination, we were rewarded by a holographic audience with the Illusive Man still apparently a central character and that was as far as we were allowed to play.