Mass Effect 3 Wishlist
With the upcoming release of Mass Effect 3 next March, I decided it'd be a good idea this summer to restart a new Shepard, all the way back in the first game, and bring her up to the point that she's ready for importing into the third game. On the way back through both games, each of which I've fully played through at least six times, I saw a lot of conflicting choices made by the developers between the two games. ME1 has real-time combat, but its RPG systems heavily affect the action. It's got a terrible inventory system, but getting XP for every kill feels very RPG-like. Meanwhile, ME2 still has quite a bit of RPG progression going on, but it's laid out more like an action game, and nothing makes that more apparent than its "mission accomplished" screen that doles out XP rather than each kill giving you that bit of satisfaction. Let's talk about how BioWare can bring the best of both worlds together for the conclusion to the trilogy, shall we?
XP
Experience points are at the heart of nearly every good RPG, and it's no difference here with Mass Effect. Unfortunately, BioWare may have swung away from the RPG a bit too far with ME2 when they chose not to have kills bestow XP and wait to dole it all out at once when a mission was done, and that screen with the summary of what players did breaks up the immersion and reminds us maybe a bit too jarringly that we're playing a video game. The solution here would be to allow the player to look up a summary of a mission at their leisure, and to give XP for every kill as well as some for completing the mission. Everyone's happy!
Inventory
BioWare's inventory system in ME1 was kind of a mess, because we had armor sets for all of the races, plus piles of guns, weapon mods, armor mods, grenade mods, and all of that - and none of it felt different from any of the rest when it was equipped. With ME2and its vastly increased pile of squad members to manage, BioWare simplified things by only having you choose their talent points and weapons, which were now looted or picked up in a way similar to how a first person shooter would do it.
Having weapons each with vastly unique firing patterns, speeds, and even histories is important, but we need to be able to customize them how we want. At the same time, it'd also be nice to still be able to deck out each of our squadmates with gear - but we don't want to have to dig through hundreds of inventory items to make that happen. Perhaps the best choice is to have a wider range of outfits and special equipment for each squadmate, some of which are bought, some looted, and some even built from parts. Maybe by the end of the game, the player has made choices as to which character's equipment has been upgraded. That way, Wrex can still get upgrades to his Biotic Amp, but we don't necessarily have to manage a huge list of inventory items in order to do it. But for Shepard, though? If there's one character that should have the depth, make it the one that's playable. Give us tons of options and upgrades for the armor and weapons.
Weapon Skills
One annoying thing about ME1's combat was in the way that you had to level up character's skills with each weapon to increase the damage done with it. That's rather unrealistic when we're talking about guns, because the same bullet, fired from the same gun, hitting the target in the exact same spot, should be doing the same damage - and having leveling systems or RPGs fiddle with that can be frustrating. BioWare tried to address this in ME1 by keeping a good chunk of the damage and making the guns much less accurate at low skill. Unfortunately, this left people trying to use the sniper rifle in the early game very frustrated as Commander Shepard waved the gun around wildly as if she'd finished a bottle of whiskey just before leaving the Normandy.
ME2 took away weapon skills and instead gave us talent points that improved other areas, and at this point, I think this is the right way to go. Using powers that added special, new abilities to your weapon fire is fun, and you won't feel like RPG systems are holding back your damage - enemy biotic barriers and armor are doing that, and you need to use the proper powers and weapons to strip those off first.
Building a new Shepard
For those that didn't play the first game, starting fresh in ME2 was kind of weird. Gamers were aware that they were coming in halfway through, but BioWare seemed to not want to bore them with a long story to start off with. That's fine, but when we're talking about choices made in ME1 not even making a difference in the second game and then coming back for major repercussions in the third? Maybe it would be a good choice to allow characters to go back and make even those choices, yeah?
And that's what Genesis, the intro DLC that shipped with the PS3 version of Mass Effect 2 (and subsequently released for PC and Xbox 360) was for. But it was too little, too late; many of the smaller choices players could make in ME1 still weren't addressed, and it took way too long for this to be released. And charging for it? Ouch. This time around, BioWare should give ME3 players an optional, longer version of something like "Genesis" - built into the game, not as DLC - that allows them to go through every single choice from the first two games.
Scanning and Driving
The Mako in ME1 was awful to drive, especially on planets with rocky terrain. On the other hand, planet scanning in ME2 was very tedious, and there was pretty much no way for most people to avoid having to spend at least a good hour or two scanning - well, if they wanted every squadmate to live at the end, that is. The Firewalker DLC added a new hovertank that was a lot of fun to use, and its ability to jump-jet very high means it'd be perfect for new, open terrain, so I hope it returns in ME3 in some form.
It'd be great if BioWare is able to take everything they've learned from player complaints over the last two games and start mixing things up: sometimes we scan planets, find a special area and pop down to the surface and discover a small free-roam environment, and also head down once in a while to partake in mini-missions that are more structured. Hell, we could even have a few custom-built, Mako-only missions in brutally cold areas with the excuse that the Firewalker seizes up at low temperatures. Combining all of these activities together as a comprehensive set of stuff to do when not out on a real mission should keep the tedium away.
PC Version
The first Mass Effect's PC port came late, but it was generally pretty damn good. The interface worked right, the visual fidelity (aside from pop-up textures, which were fixed in the second game) was solid, and everything worked nicely with the controls. The performance was a bit iffy on slower PCs - and ME2 generally ran faster on low-end computers than the first - but it had a few issues. Menus often didn't behave the way PC gamers expect, and the lack of tweaking options that the latest Unreal Engine is notorious for can be a drag. It's probably too much to expect a ton of PC tweaks for ME3, but there are a few places that things could be improved.
Reveals
There's a lot of stuff about the universe that hasn't been revealed in two games so far: what do Turian, Salarian, Drell, and Krogan females look like? What do Quarians, period, look like? Why did BioWare purposely refuse to show us the new council in ME2, assuming we let the past one die? Why do we only see such tiny snippets of the Citadel, and when do we get a really good look at the scope and scale of such an intriguing place? I get the feeling that BioWare is going to hold back some of these things even in the third game, but they really should be revealing a lot of these mysteries this time around. They've already said that Mass Effect will not end after the third game - it'll continue on, as new stories without Commander Shepard - so I suppose they have a long time still to reveal some of this stuff. But we've been wondering a lot of this stuff for years now. Let us have it!
Death
ME2's squadmate death issue was a bit perplexing in that it was very difficult for players to know what exactly was required to make and keep everyone loyal, and then choose the right people for the right roles during the endgame. On the one hand, I read about people who chose Samara to enter the tunnel and picked Jacob to put up the biotic shield, and I realize that gamers who refuse to read and make crappy choices like that need to have a real consequence in an RPG like this.
At the same time, if you didn't know to increase Shepard's class power early (to maximize Paragon/Renegade points) and then pick either a Paragon or Renegade path and stick with it throughout the game, then you were likely to lose the loyalty of either Jack or Miranda and get someone killed. There's an element of explaining the right way for players to do things and then giving them the opportunity to make a poor choice (and giving them appropriate consequences) that I think is important for any RPG, and then there's just "know this right at the start or you're going to lose someone". One's reasonable, one's not.
Obviously, none of this is going to matter quite as much in ME3, mostly because it's the end of the trilogy and there won't be any savegame to import into yet another sequel, but serious fans will still be looking for the "perfect" game and it'd be nice if we can do that without learning the hard way about some particularly strange or arbitrary systems that could kill it for us.
Squadmates
Once you add in the DLC, ME2 has a hell of a lot of squadmates when you count them all up. We've heard that the total number will be reduced and while nearly all characters are confirmed to return, sometimes the less-popular ME2 characters will have lesser roles than as squadmates. This sounds generally pretty good, and I feel like having deeper stories with the game's most central characters - Kaiden/Ashley, Liara, Tali, Garrus, Wrex, and then probably Miranda and Thane from ME2 - would be the right choice.
The Narrative
I'm not about to try and suggest anything to BioWare on how to finish Commander Shepard's story. Simply put, they've gone above and beyond my story expectations for both games so far, and I'm ready to fully accept anything they're dishing out. No wishlist here except to say that I'd love it if it's as least as good as the past two games.
In Conclusion...
Sometimes you can see where BioWare went too far in one direction for the first Mass Effect, and then too far in the opposite direction for the second. This should give them a good benchmark for finding middle ground, and even though EA has been asking BioWare to make ME3 more accessible, I'd like to point to the many millions-selling RPGs, on both PCs and consoles, as proof that people can handle some nerdy RPG depth while still enjoying explosive action around every corner. Hopefully, BioWare finds that balance with the third game, and even if they don't, it'll probably be a pretty badass game anyway. March 6th, 2012 is a long ways off, but I guess at least we'll have a great fall season of games to tide us over until then!
