Mass Effect 3: What IGN Wants

After turning their attention to BioWare’s next non-spinoff Mass Effect installment, IGN has put together this two-page list of additions, tweaks, and other enhancements that they’d like to see in the game. A couple of examples:

Witnessing how decisions made in Mass Effect altered the world in Mass Effect 2 was easily the best thing about the game. Unfortunately, the divergences didn’t quite satiate our appetites. Successfully keeping Wrex alive in Mass Effect meant he returned as the leader of the Krogan clans, but he couldn’t join your party so his role seemed limited. For the other minor plot points there were only a few additional short side missions dedicated to showing players how their impact was felt on the world.

In Mass Effect 2, nobody was safe from death in the final mission so we need to see major repercussions for loss of those individuals in the third title. BioWare needs to make their deaths mean something instead of creating a bite-sized side missions related to them. Also, major events were influenced by Commander Shepard throughout the past two titles, so we need to see some extreme differences in the third title if BioWare wants to deliver on its promise.

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Run, find cover, shoot things, deploy biotic powers, shoot some more, run to the next area, watch a cut scene, rinse, repeat. A majority of the action sequences in Mass Effect 2 were sort of a bore. Can we have some combat that isn’t shooting and moving in what’s basically a straight line?

Don’t get us wrong, the adjustments to the combat mechanics and classes transformed the way the game played for the better, but it would be nice to have more open battlefields. Give us multiple routes and the opportunity for different strategies (that don’t require us to play as a different class). Maybe make stealth a viable option on difficulties other than easy and normal. But give us something more to keep us interested.

Yes, they were “sort of a bore” – and very, very predictable given the neatly organized crates and debris that suddenly appeared when enemies were headed your way. Too bad they didn’t find fault with the way combat sequences played out in their glowing review earlier this year.