Mass Effect 3: Omega DLC Reviews

The very first two reviews we have managed to round up for Mass Effect 3’s latest story-based DLC, Omega, couldn’t be more different in tone, offering decidedly mixed impressions on the piece of additional content.

Eurogamer, 4/10.

The hub area – a command post for Aria and Nyreen – offers a few side-missions: collectables to find while progressing through the main story. But it’s an entirely linear storyline, and once complete, Omega vanishes. Unlike Shadow Broker, you cannot return – BioWare does not even add the system to your Galaxy Map, despite you having been there. You can’t go back, you can’t even fly past. Re-enter the Citadel when you’re done and Aria is back sitting on the same couch where she’s been for the entirety of the game. It’s like nothing has changed.

And it hasn’t. Shepard is again given the illusion of choice – he can choose to save or kill in a couple of places, but in the end the decisions don’t amount to anything. Insultingly, the only real story branch dependent on your dialogue options is how Aria acts at the close of this chapter. If you’ve acted like a badass she might pucker up and give you a kiss. (If you’re wondering: I played as a Paragon and she didn’t.)

Some might moan that Omega should have been part of the main game. I’m glad it isn’t, although I do believe it would have worked better shrunk down to the length of a single mission. It’s refreshing to get to the point where BioWare doesn’t feel the need to address the main game’s faults yet again in its DLC (the Extended Cut and Leviathan’s story points were all conceived post-release) – but it’s also worrying because Omega has been planned for far longer. BioWare has had a year to get Omega right. It didn’t.

Kotaku is far more positive, and recommends playing it:

In the end, then, Omega is a worthwhile romp, entertaining in its own right and valuable for how it expands the world of the game it’s attached to, as well as the world before it. It does connect back out to the larger story of Mass Effect 3, even while remaining concerned entirely with itself. (A lot like Aria.) Afterlife always had its motif of flames by its entrance, a futuristic LED display mockingly leading its visitors to hell. When the actual station is on fire, and the galaxy around it burning too, its gaudiness feels eerily prophetic, a little too on-the-nose.

Shepard, too, sees the pattern of all things. When Aria mutters, “We can’t field an army large enough,” Shepard retorts, “Then we need to find allies. Hmph story of my life.”

The quest for allies is, indeed, the story of Shepard’s life. Aria, and the underclass of Omega, are as unlikely an ally as ever the space marine had. And yet, in two games, she makes good. Omega is Aria’s home and Aria’s story. We, and the good Commander, just get brought along for the ride.