The Mass Effect series has been near and dear to my heart ever since I first walked aboard the Normandy in 2007, but now with Commander Shepard’s story coming to a close, I’ve began feeling something bittersweet.
First and foremost let me bring you up to speed with my unrivaled love for Mass Effect. Ever since the first installment in 2007, I have been completely addicted to its deeply immersive cast and lore. I’ve become attached to all the characters in the series (Except Kaiden, nobody wants to be friends with Kaiden) and every heart-pounding moment has left me breathless and wanting more. This has been one of the most incredible and unforgettable journeys that I have ever embarked on in my gaming career. With that said, the pain that I felt when I began playing Mass Effect 3 was devastating.
It seemed as though Bioware didn’t put as much care into this title as the last two games in the trilogy. I noticed problem right from the beginning that really soiled the experience for me. I went to import my Shepard character which has been with me throughout the series thus far but a problem occurred. As I examined the screen in front of me, double checking all of my choices to make sure everything was right I took one glance at my commander Shepard and my heart dropped. What the hell happened? The game replaced my custom character with the stock Shepard. At first, I tried redoing it to see if maybe this was just a one-time glitch, but that was not the case. The stock Shepard was still showing up. I decided to run this by the Internet (Since the Internet has all the answers) and found that I was not the only one. Many people were not getting their customized Shepard characters imported correctly. Since this was day one of release and there was no patch coming any time soon, I reluctantly attempted to re-create my old Shepard and continue with my play through.
It took me quite a while but I finally got something halfway decent. He sort of resembles my old character, the difference weren’t too drastic. So I eagerly hit “Continue” and started the game. After the fantastic introduction i got one look at my characters face and shut my eyes in disgust. This didn’t resemble my old Shepard at all! It looked more like my old Shepard fell off a cliff a couple of time and opted for black market plastic surgery! But it was too late, I couldn’t go back now. Until Bioware decided to patch this up, I would be playing with this character for my Mass Effect 3 play through.
Once the characters began communicating with one another, something didn’t look right. The lip syncing. It was terrible. What happened? The first two games were fine, why did the lip syncing suck so bad? As this wasn’t too big of an issue for me, I shrugged it off and the tutorial mission to begin my journey.
The first mission was on Mars, I had to look for something of importance there (Sorry for the half-assed information, it was a while back) and leave in one piece. As I fought my way through dozens of Cerberus grunts, I found the combat system to be… Quite enjoyable. This was a lot of fun, I love what they did with it. Everything from powers to the fluid movement of firefights, it was very well improved. My hopes started to get raised a bit more, and I continued just a bit further passed that point.
Eventually, Bioware released an update that fixes the custom face issue and I restarted my game with the character I’ve known for roughly five years. My experience has been much more pleasant now and I am looking forward to completing the final chapter in a beloved trilogy.
Mass Effect 3, A (Romantic) Tragedy
