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Mass Effect 3 single-player DLC to focus on Shepard
So, what's next for Mass Effect? Producer Mike Gamble showed off one picture of future Mass Effect 3 content in his panel at Comic-Con, and from what he told Joystiq it seems to point to more single-player DLC. "We want to do single-player DLC," he said. "We want to do single-player, maybe more multiplayer if people still play it."That single-player DLC, whatever it is, will still be about Shepard, not someone else in the universe. "Mass Effect 3 is Shepard's story," said Gamble, "so the single-player DLC for Mass Effect 3 will probably focus around Shepard."The Earth DLC pack for Mass Effect 3 will be the fifth update to the game since launch, following three other multiplayer updates, and the Extended Cut update that fans begged for. Mike Gamble and his team have learned a lot over the course of these updates, but he told us there were quite a few things that surprised them about the reception to Mass Effect 3 multiplayer."We see people who have everything unlocked all the way up to level 20 on everything, plus all the mods, plus all of the gear, everything," said Gamble. "It takes a lot of time, a lot of time to get that stuff, like hundreds and hundreds of hours of play to usually get up to that level. And some of these people had done it in the first month to two months."Gamble was also been surprised by the response to the Vorcha class, playable for the first time in the Rebellion Pack DLC. "I expected people to shy away from the Vorcha because they're Vorcha, but everyone seems to love to play with them."
Report: Mass Effect 3 face patch causing crashes for some folks
For those of you excited about dusting off the ol' ME1 Shepard and giving those Reapers what for, know that there may be one more hurdle between you and Mass Effect 3's intergalactic glory. Apparently, the patch that fixed the face import bug has broken things elsewhere – specifically, some players are experiencing crashes when connecting to EA's servers.Shepards encountering this issue are encouraged to post about it in this BioWare thread, where development is currently farming user data in order to better understand the problem and find a solution. The good news is that the error appears to be periodic rather than consistent, with some affected players able to connect via persistence and willpower. There are also reports that re-patching can resolve the issue, but for heaven's sake please be careful when deleting ME3's system cache from your Xbox's hard drive. Save files are precious, fragile things.
BioWare: 13% of Mass Effect players use default hero, 18% play female Shepard
We've already heard that the female Commander Shepard, voiced by the talented and busy Jennifer Hale, will be featured in Mass Effect 3's marketing, marking the first time in the series that BioWare has done so. But VG24/7 has more about the female version of the Commander, and just how many players have seen her and Hale's performance over the years. Turns out, according to BioWare, that 13 percent of Mass Effect players just use the default male Commander Shepard. 83 percent of players customize the hero in some way, and of those, only 18 percent use the female version. Director of Marketing David Silverman says BioWare doesn't have a "canon" version of the hero: "The beautiful thing about the Mass Effect series is the fact that the player gets to make choices that actually impact the game and make their entire game experience unique to them." For example, none of you have ever played with my Commander Michael Shepard, honorable Vanguard war hero, one of the coolest Paragons ever, and also incredibly handsome. Shame you've never gotten to meet him.
Mass Effect 3 will have gay romance option for male Shepard
Mass Effect Executive Producer Casey Hudson has confirmed that the final installment of the trilogy will finally allow a male Shepard to know the touch of another man. Hudson tweeted over the weekend that Mass Effect 3 will support "wider options for love interests," including same-sex for male and female characters "reactive to how you interact with them in-game." Previous installments of the stellar, interstellar saga allowed Shepard to participate in male/female, lesbian and Asari tentacle-head encounters. The omission of a gay pairing for Shepard became even harder to reconcile when BioWare's Dragon Age series allowed players the freedom to define the sexual orientation of their protagonists. In interviews, BioWare heads Drs. Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk have been responsive to the subject. "The team has its perspective," Muzyka told us during February's DICE meeting. "When they created the character, when they defined him. We're pretty open to how the team wants to define their characters. We go with what they like." It seems the team is ready to try something different.
Mass Effect 2 screenshots focus on new teammate for Shepard
Click above to see this character with a very-much-alive Shepard. Hey you, have we met before? BioWare has updated the Mass Effect 2 website with a few new screenshots, and we can't help but notice this green character unmentioned in the first game. Clearly he (she? it?) is of some importance, as BioWare has decided to showcase the character in not one, or two, or three or four screenshots -- but five. (Update: Readers have pointed out this character can be seen in this video and is named Thane.)This screen also shows a Krogan teammate, which we're assuming is Wrex because we totally didn't shoot him in the face.%Gallery-70022%
Commander Shepard probably isn't dead in Mass Effect 2
Following the release of the Mass Effect 2 teaser trailer, we've all been nervous wrecks about the assumedly unfortunate fate of the first Mass' protagonist, Commander Shepard. We really do not want him to be dead. We spent so much time molding him, as if from clay, to look just like us, only much more attractive.Fortunately, at the end of a recent Mass Effect 2 dev blog post, the game's executive producer, Casey Hudson, responded to the notion of Shepard's corpsification, saying he "better not be." He continued, "we had a lot of big plans made, so if someone's gone and killed Shepard then things are going to take an unexpected turn." So, there you have it. Either Shepard is still alive, or some unknown, shadowy agent murdered him without Bioware's noticing. Either way, we should know more about Shepard's status when we see the game next month at E3.
Mass Effect Shepard statue nears completion
Not to be out done by the Halo 3 and Gears of War action figures of the world, the sculpting crew over at Hyperchild have just released a teaser shot (seen above) of their near complete Mass Effect Commander Shepard statue. If you recall, this is the same $89 statue we mentioned back in November, but now fully painted and finalized for production. And even though Hyperchild has yet to do a big unveil, you can check out pictures of the final sculpt (minus the pretty paint job) in their fourth figure update right here. All in all, we'll admit the figure looks sexy enough, but the high price tag will probably prevent us from owning one. How we see it, we could totally purchase six Halo 3 or Gears action figures for the price of one Shepard and that's kind of tough to accept.
