I don't tend to do a lot of videogame discount posts because I have a mortal fear of enriching my backlog, but when I see the entire Mass Effect trilogy and all of its expansions for around the price of a slightly aristocratic sandwich, I am compelled to share. The Legendary Edition of BioWare's ravishing sci-fi RPG series is 90% off on Steam until 13th May. That translates to 6€, $6 or £5 for all three main games and 40 DLC packs, plus bells and whistles such as 4K Ultra HD and beefed-up character models. If you haven't played a Mass Effect game before, this is a pretty good place to start.
]]>If 2023 is remembered for one thing, it's that it was a 100% critical success year for the RPG. Role-players across the land have been feasting exceedingly well these past few months, what with the stonking success of Baldur's Gate 3 (and to lesser extents, Starfield and Diablo 4), so we thought it was about time to celebrate your favourite RPGs of all time. Your votes have been counted, your comments have been sorted, and the cream of the RPG crop has been assembled. But which of the many excellent RPGs have risen above all others? Come and find out below as we count down your top 25 favourite RPGs of all time.
]]>I'm not a very big enjoyer of horror games. On the very rare occasion that I do boot up a horror game, a chemical change seems to occur in my body. The part of my brain responsible for going "holy mother of hell get me away from this scary thing" is dampened. I expect to be scared, and therefore I'm more resilient to said scariness. I might just not be very good at getting into the horror games mindset. My brain is too busy battening down all the hatches and readying the engines of war against the oncoming spookies and ghosties.
The times I've been most scared playing a game are when I don't expect to be scared. And what better way to lull myself into a false sense of security this Halloween than to play an otherwise not-so-scary game, with just one particularly horror-esque moment?
]]>The wag behind videos editing Austin Powers into Mass Effect and Mr Bean into Cyberpunk 2077 has returned to the shagadelic font. Just as Shepherd was reborn for Mass Effect 2, Powers rises again in the new video retelling BioWare's sci-fi RPG sequel with England's greatest secret agent. It remains funny and silly and an unexpectedly good fit.
]]>Welcome to The RPS Time Capsule, a new monthly feature we're putting together where every member of the RPS editorial team picks their favourite, bestest best game from a specific year and tells us why that game above all else deserves to be preserved in our freshly minted time pod. It might be that it's the best example of its genre, or it contains a valuable lesson for future generations. This month, we're travelling back to rescue eight games from 2010, and cor, what a good year that was. Too bad almost all of them will end up in the lava bin by the time we're done.
]]>Amazon Studios are "nearing a deal" to develop a TV series based on Mass Effect, according to a recent Deadline report. Excellent stuff. I'm all for it! If Mass Effect were to be adapted into anything, I'd much rather it be a potentially long-running series rather than a film so it has enough time to establish its excellent sci-fi setting. However, we need to talk about what story Amazon could potentially take from the games. To me, it seems likely they'd follow the trilogy, which I reckon is the right move. But I don't think we need to see more of Shepard's side of things, you know? They should put Liara front-and-centre instead.
]]>The geth have begun launching seemingly random attacks on human colonies. Rumours are circling that ancient machines will soon emerge from darkspace. There is only one man equipped to deal with these threats: Intergalactic Man Of Mystery, Austin Powers. Someone has made a video editing Mike Myers' 60s spy into Mass Effect and I'm astounded at how well it works. I don't know what else to say. This is Mass Effect in its ultimate form. Please watch it, it's the best minute I've spent all week.
]]>Last night, BioWare released a fun infographic with stats about player choices in the Mass Effect Legendary Edition. Most of it is pretty unsurprising, with players mostly choosing to be the good guys, opting into peace and Paragon points. But it also has info about what backgrounds and classes players chose. And I have to know, in a game where you're able to play as techno wizards and space sorcerers, why did 40% of you decide to play the class in which your only special skill is "has several guns"?
]]>It's a wonder why I enjoy Mass Effect so much considering I think third-person games are a bit rubbish. Would it be the perfect game if it were all in first-person? I don't know, but someone has made a mod that adds a first-person mode to each game in the trilogy in the Mass Effect Legendary Edition, so now we can find out.
]]>Last night, the Mass Effect Legendary Edition got a new patch, nerfing Commander Shepard's bank account and reducing the noise from those deafening Mass Relays. Sure, it got some performance tweaks here and there, but more importantly, you'll now find an imported Shepard from Mass Effect to Mass Effect 2 might have considerably fewer credits than before. Perhaps it's all linked to the Mass Relays, I wouldn't be surprised if Shep splashed out for some sound proofing on the Normandy.
]]>Leading up to the launch of the Mass Effect Legendary Edition, I was looking forward to comparing the decisions I made when I first played the trilogy in 2013, versus the decisions I would make now, so many years later. How much could my opinions have changed? Surely things wouldn't be too different, but I imagined there'd be at least some nuance to my actions.
Alas, much like playing the sneaky archer in Skyrim, I have immediately fallen back into old habits. But you know what? So be it. They're all the correct choices, and you can't make me change them. You're not my mum.
]]>The Mass Effect Legendary Edition has been out for nearly two weeks now, and modders are already making some handy changes to the remastered version of BioWare's space RPG trilogy. Someone has made a mod that lets players bring up the in-game console in the ME1 and ME2 remaster, allowing them to give themselves a cheeky XP or Paragon/Renegade points boost, clip out of bounds, and even add in items and powers.
]]>Mass Effect Legendary Edition received its first big update last night, bringing some helpful calibrations to BioWare's freshly remastered sci-fi RPG trilogy. Oddly, some of the changes include improved textures and lighting, which I thought was the point of the remaster in the first place. Other tweaks include achievement-tracking fixes and cutscene improvements, but the patch notes are pretty vague - especially for a patch some players report was an 11GB download.
]]>In celebration of the Mass Effect: Legendary Edition release, a big group of the trilogy's voice actors, writers, and producers got together to answer questions from fans and tell old stories over the weekend. Spearheaded by femshep voice Jennifer Hale herself, you can also hear the voices of dudeshep, Tali, Liara, Joker, Samantha and more all together in the same nostalgia-ridden video call.
There's talk of the developers' kids now playing the games for the first time, actors hugging lots of fans, and getting a little emotional in the recording booth. It was honestly just swell to hear the team talk about the joy of working together, whether or not you're planning to jump back in for the remaster.
]]>The snazzy new packaged up and fancied up version of the original Mass Effect trilogy is now out, so I imagine there are plenty of you who clocked double digit hours into it over the weekend. As they do, modders spent the weekend remastering the Mass Effect: Legendary Edition even further. There are a good handful of mods available for the new edition already, utilities and reshade presets and all.
]]>Striking up a romantic relationship with a character in Mass Effect 3 will earn you a lovely picture of their face that sits on the desk in Commander Shepard's quarters. It's a nice touch, but for Tali romancers it's particularly special, because it means you actually get to see her face without her helmet on. Unfortunately, in the old ME3, that picture of Tali was a stock photo of a model edited to look a bit alien. But now in the Mass Effect Legendary Edition, BioWare have swapped it out for a much more "realistic" pic.
]]>It's here! It's here! Put on your best space shoes, it's time to chat up some aliens. Mass Effect Legendary Edition is out right now, remastering Commander Shepard's trilogy of adventures, and bringing back all your extraterrestrial pals with some spruced-up graphics. It's been a long while since I last explored BioWare's epic sci-fi RPG series, and I can't tell you how excited I am to zoom off into the Milky Way again.
]]>Bioware have taken great pains to show off all the swanky new visual enhancements coming to their remastered Mass Effect Legendary Edition tomorrow, including support for 4K resolutions, ultrawide monitors, revamped lighting, sharper textures and loads more. The difference is plain to see in screenshots and their before and after comparison video, but in terms of being able to fiddle around with those settings yourself in the game's PC settings menu... well, what's the equivalent of an intergalactic tumbleweed?
]]>We're but a mere eight days away from the release of the Mass Effect: Legendary Edition. In writing that, it's just dawned on me how close I am to seeing my hi-res alien pals and bombing around in the improved Mako. To tide fans over until the remaster's launch, BioWare have released a free content package containing loads of Mass Effect's iconic music, as well as digital art books and comics. They've also created an online tool that lets you select your favourite squadmates to make some personalised cover art.
]]>Mass Effect: Legendary Edition has the tough job of upgrading the visual appearance of games originally built to run at 720 or 1080p on an Xbox 360. That's a mammoth task even if it was just one game and not the entire Mass Effect trilogy.
A new trailer and blog post on the remaster's official site breaks down how BioWare went about upscaling 30,000 textures, and shows exactly how the results look.
]]>I've twice tried to get into the Mass Effect series and both times I've given up a few hours into the first game. 'That's where it starts to get good!' my friends tell me, while also saying that Mass Effect 2 fixed a lot of the first game's problems.
I'm therefore pleased to learn of how Mass Effect Legendary Edition will tweak the first game to make it more consistent with its sequels. A new blog post on the RPG remaster's official site goes into detail on how they're tuning combat, boss fights and the Mako "without outright scrapping the spirit of the original games."
]]>He's Superman, Geralt Of Rivia, and now it looks like Henry Cavill might be a Mass Effect fanfiction writer to boot. Yesterday, he posted a picture on his Instagram of some unassuming blurry text, with a caption teasing a "secret project". As it turns out, that text is actually from a Mass Effect 3 Wikipedia entry. So, is he studying for a secret live-action Mass Effect role? Could he be lined up to voice a character in the new Mass Effect game? Nah, he's definitely writing fanfic.
]]>The adventures of Commander Shephard, legendary hero and shopper, will return revamped on the 14th of May in Mass Effect: Legendary Edition. BioWare today announced a launch date for the remaster of their sci-fi RPG trilogy, which is coming with new prettiness and character customisation options, plus a whole heap of old DLC. No multiplayer, though. Have a gander at the refresh in the new trailer below.
]]>I can hardly believe my eyes, but BioWare just revealed a teaser trailer for the next Mass Effect at The Game Awards - and Liara was in it. Blue space-wife Liara from the Mass effect trilogy was in the new Mass Effect teaser, exploring a snowy planet and picking up a discarded piece of N7 armour. What does this mean for Mass Effect 5? Will it be set in the Milky Way after all? Is Andromeda done? Who knows! Watch the trailer below and come be excited with me.
]]>If you fancy having a go at Mass Effect's daft hacking minigames without loading up BioWare's big old space RPG, then look no further. Someone has made a virtual museum with recreations of the hacking puzzles from both Mass Effect 1 and Mass Effect 2. It's inspired by the virtual lock picking museum I reported on a few months back - a post in which I said the exact words: "I’d love to see a hacking museum with all the awful minigames from Mass Effect."
]]>Hello and welcome to the corner of the RPS Treehouse where we sit and chant, "Mass Effect! Mass Effect! Mass Effect!" to will news about BioWare's sci-fi series into being. This week, our dark magic has summoned three (3!) new images of some lovely artwork for the next Mass Effect game, which the developers revealed they were working on during their N7 Day celebrations.
Oooh but what can we decipher this time? Well, I already said it about the first teaser image, but I reckon these new ones even further suggest that Mass Effect 5 will be a sequel to Andromeda.
]]>Whether you prefer wizards, sword-and-board warriors, the irradiated wasteland, vampires, or isometric text-heavy stories, the RPG is the genre that will never let you down. Accross the dizzing number of games available where you can play a role, there's something for everyone - and we've tried to reflect that in our list of the best RPGs on PC. The past couple of years have been great for RPGs, so there are some absolute classics as well as brand spanking new games on this list. And there's more to look forwards to, with rumblings of Dragon Age: Dread Wolf finally on the horizon, and space epic Starfield in our rear view mirror. Whatever else may happen, though, this list will provide you with the 50 best RPGs that you can download and play on PC right now.
]]>Look at this official Mass Effect PC case. I love it, but I hate that it's a Mass Effect case. It's as though NZXT thought: "What would Commander Shepard herself play video games on?" But they should not have done that because - for as amazing as she is - Shepard clearly has boring taste.
Shep's casual clothes are like, what, an N7 logo hoodie, an N7 logo leather jacket, or *checks notes* an N7 logo bodycon dress. All stylish clothing items, obviously, but to follow that pattern for a PC? No! It should look like a spaceship.
]]>It's been seven years since the original Mass Effect trilogy ended, and even now modders are working on all kinds of additions and improvements to Commander Shepard's adventures. During the N7 Day celebrations on Saturday, BioWare announced the official Mass Effect remasters, but the modding community also took it as a chance to show some of the unofficial upgrades they've been working on over the last year.
They made a video to showcase it all - and it even has a cameo from DudeShep himself, Mark Meer.
]]>Three years after Mass Effect: Andromeda failed to ignite a new sci-fi RPG saga, developers BioWare today announced they are working on "the next chapter of the Mass Effect universe." Huh! Sure, everyone expected them to announce remasters of the original trilogy today (because chat about them has been leaking for months) but this was a surprise bonus. BioWare give no hints about the new Mass Effect's plot, setting, or anything, simply saying they're in the "early stages" of development. While I imagine it's yonks away, I'm quite excited.
]]>Talk about the worst-kept secret in the galaxy. After months of rumbling and speculation, BioWare today announced the Mass Effect: Legendary Edition, bringing all three (quiet, Andromeda) Mass Effect games into one remastered collection next year. While not full remakes, the Legendary collection spruces up Commander Shephard's ageing space saga with better visuals, smoother performance, and all the extra DLC packed into the Normandy's cargo bays.
]]>N7 Day, or Mass Effect day as you might know it, is right around the corner. This Saturday, a couple of BioWare devs and a load of the original trilogy's voice cast are holding a "very special" panel to celebrate. Now, there are suspicions and whisperings of what may or may not be said at this panel - it would be baffling if all this fanfare wasn't to reveal the long-rumoured remasters of Commander Shepard's adventures. But what if! What if they threw a complete curveball and announced Mass Effect 5?
]]>Ah, N7 Day. A time for Mass Effect fans to come together and be sad because there hasn't been a new game in the series since 2017 (even then, we don't particularly like talking about that one). This year could be different, though. On Saturday the 7th November, a couple of BioWare developers and a bunch of voice actors from the Mass Effect trilogy are holding a "very special" panel.
]]>Everything's delayed this year, even the games no one actually announced. The oft-rumoured remasters of the original Mass Effect trilogy have been delayed, according to a new rumour, though this isn't too surprising/disappointing given that we don't know for certain they're actually real. Rumours had said EA were revamping the first three Mass Effect games for release this October, or at least by March 2021, and the latest whispers say Mass Effect: Legendary Edition come in early 2021. I mean, given that EA still haven't even announced any such project, I'm not surprised that it wouldn't be coming next month.
]]>Though EA's notE3 showcase has come and gone with nary a mention of a remastered Mass Effect trilogy, rumours persist. Now they're being stoked again by an Amazon listing apparently revealing an expanded version of the art book, The Art Of The Mass Effect Trilogy is coming in March 2021. Which makes some fans wonder: why expand the art book now? Hell, we all need something to believe in.
]]>Science, the most difficult of the arts. We are trained from toddlerhood to respect and fear the products of scientific advancement, such as the selfie sticks or mechanical pencil. The unsurpassed boffins who create such devices are worthy of admiration. But there is one realm in which science is not such a gentle guardian of the people. That’s right, it’s videogames. In games, scientists are treacherous, evil, stupid, murderous or some genetic concoction of all the above. Here are the 9 worst scientists in PC games.
]]>Say those three words and I'm yours forever: Mass Effect remaster. The rumour mill has lit up today following a titbit of news from EA stating that a HD remake or remaster of one of their games is planned to release sometime this year. VentureBeat claim it's going to be a remaster of the Mass Effect trilogy. Or maybe a remake. The article uses both words which is a little misleading.
But, what would we actually want from a Mass Effect remaster? I think it's an important distinction to make that these games don't need to be remade. But at the same time, there are plenty of things I would love BioWare to fix.
]]>The greasy realm of the videogame is not always the best place to look for good writing. For every Disco Elysium there are roughly 800 Detroit: Beyond Humans. But it is a good place to look for wondrous, over-the-top nonsense. I’m talking about character dialogue so flamboyant and exaggerated, you could insert some line breaks and it would instantly become a verse in a glam rock anthem. Here are the 12 most extravagant, exuberant, and intense lines of dialogue. In games, subtext is just whatever’s written on the side of the nuclear submarine.
]]>"Is it friendship? Or is it something more?" goes a common sentiment, particularly on days like today, when we celebrate the anniversary of Captain Cook getting stabbed to death. Well, that's a stupid question, because there is nothing more than friendship.
Games are, for once, not much worse than other media at depicting and exploring themes of friendship. In fact, some of the best stories about it are in games. But since society is still too backwards to give those relationships their own day, I'm hijacking this tiresome profit-motivated holiday in their name.
What are my favourite games about friendship then? Well, they're below, obviously.
]]>Happy love day, you disgusting piece of filth. Got you. That was an example of what today’s young people call “neggling”. This is when you are nice and nasty in such quick succession that the body becomes inexplicably aroused. Spasms of lust take over both neggler and negglee, resulting in a paroxysm of extramarital sex and, subsequently, the degeneration of humanity. This is just one of the signs of an unhealthy relationship. But there are many more examples in videogames. Here are the 10 most toxic couples out there. Don't worry, you can argue fruitlessly in favour of any of them. That's the point of these articles.
]]>Drew Karpyshyn is the next former BioWare developer to join the ranks at Archetype Entertainment, Wizards Of The Coast's brand new development studio. You might recognise Karpyshyn as one of the writers behind Mass Effect 1 and 2, Baldur's Gate and Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic. He's joining a studio that says they're dedicated to creating "epic story-driven role playing games" - and to be honest, it's shaping up to be a bit of a dream team.
It's a team that's geared towards bringing back the good parts of BioWare and steering away from what the studio became, as Karpyshyn says that they ended up so "corporate" they could no longer make the games they wanted.
]]>On Wednesday, EA raised the prices for a large portion of their game catalog on Steam. The increases seem to have affected most regional currencies outside the United States. Price changes are inconsistent, with some regions seeing small increases and others being slapped with 300% price hikes on certain games.
]]>It's been an eventful decade for PC games, and it would be hard for you to summarise everything that's happened in the medium across the past ten years. Hard for you, but a day's work for us. Below you'll find our picks for the 50 greatest games released on PC across the past decade.
]]>Minigames are the coffee Revel of videogames. They are harmless, infrequent and unpleasant to think about. We accept their presence, yet no one has ever eaten a pack of Revels and wished for more coffee nuggets. Nobody completed Final Fantasy X and thought: “Needs more Blitzball”. That minigames exist as a mild distraction inside the glowing guts of other games is itself ridiculous. Imagine you were on a golf course, and hole 12 turned out to be its own 8-hole pitch ‘n’ putt. “This is stupid,” you’d think, and then you would play pitch ‘n’ putt for the rest of the day in a mindless stupor.
Here are the 7 most gratuitous minigames - but do they all deserve to be here?
]]>All right, picture this. There's five podcasts tied to a train track, and you're on a train speeding toward them. On another track, there's just one podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show. Do you swap tracks and kill one podcast to save the other five? Or do you forge ahead? Take your time, it's a difficult moral choice - exactly our topic this week. Think hard about it. No, listen, you should think about it very carefully. No, listen--
I know, but--
You can't just p--
Ha ha, okay, stop the train. Joke's over.
Stop the train.
STOP THE TRAIN FOR THE LOVE OF GOD STOP THE TR--
]]>Face still feeling tired after the whole Mass Effect: Andromeda debacle? Well, the earlier, better games haven't stopped existing, y'know. Maybe revisiting them with a slightly more 2017 look will scratch your itch. For instance, with these mods that add over 3,000 replacement, higher-res, 4K-friendly textures to Mass Effect 2 & 3.
]]>Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
I know you're supposed to say the first one's best, but Mass Effect 2 is definitely my favourite in the series.
]]>Mass Effect 2 [official site], the game I'd say mmmight be my favourite of BioWare's fab sci-fi RPG series, is currently free through Origin. Grab it now and it's yours for keepsies. If you've not played a Mass Effect before and are curious now that Mass Effect Andromeda is due in March, here you go! You'll miss out from not having played the first game--I think a lot of ME2's best points are built upon the first game or are interesting in juxtaposition--but I'm sure you'll pick up what's going on. I see that clever twinkle in your eye.
]]>I'm a big fan of artbooks, which is quite lucky since not only are there plenty of them around right now, the quality of them has never been better. Forget the scrappy little affairs that used to be used to bolster out the Collector's Editions of games, much as concept art used to fill in for interesting secrets to unlock. Today's artbooks are typically huge, prestigious affairs, that come hardbound and printed on excellent quality paper. You might not put them on your coffee table, but they certainly look great on the shelf. This week, I thought we'd take a look at a few of the RPG ones that have found their way to mine - not all the recent ones by any stretch, but a few.
]]>Spoiler alert, RPGs are kinda ridiculous. Most games are, of course. While the Mythbusters may have shown that carrying Doomguy's loadout into battle isn't as bad as it might sound, there's a reason they've never done a follow-up about doing it after taking a few rockets to the face. Likewise, we can't know the effect of glugging down fifty health potions a day, but it must mean a lot of pauses for the heroic knight to hurriedly get his armour off for a quick pee-break.
Like a lot of things, there's a line here - on one side, things that are interesting to see a game justify, and on the other, things that are probably best handwaved. Where does that line lie?
]]>I have no flupping idea what to expect from Mass Effect Not-4, aka Andromeda [official site], given all signs point to it being a clean break from the Shepard saga. But the reveal that combat will be similar to Mass Effect 3's frantic shooty fare does start to make it a solid thing in my brain, rather than an entirely abstract concept with a few twinkly stars in it.
]]>Every Sunday, we reach deep into Rock, Paper, Shotgun's 141-year history to pull out one of the the best moments from the archive. This week, John's interview with voice actress Jennifer Hale. This post was originally published July 27, 2011.
Jennifer Hale has appeared in a great many more games than you probably realise. The person behind the voice of the female Shepard in all three Mass Effect games is also responsible for Metal Gear's Naomi Hunter, SOCOM's HQ, the spookily good British accent of KotOR's Bastilla, and even the grunts and groans of Metroid Prime's Samus, among literally hundreds of others in gaming, TV and film. We caught up with Jennifer as she drove through LA, to ask how she came to provide so many of gaming's iconic voices, the combination of anonymity and fame, and which of the Commander Shepards she's voting for to appear on Mass Effect's cover.
]]>Just a snippet about something that was more or less a given, but I think it's worth stating and knowing for the record that the next Mass Effect will entirely and definitely steer clear of Commander Shephard. The controversial outcomes of Mass Effect 3 do leave some room for 'what happened next?' investigations, but the three-game plot had tied itself in so many knots by that point that a totally clean break for the next set of Meffects is only sensible.
]]>Aw. I know not everyone was as charmed as I was by Mass Effect 2 and 3's scarfaced, cockney mercenary Zaeed Massani, but I found his no-nonsense, surly, partially malevolent geezerishness made him an essential part of my ME2 squad. His voice actor did great things in terms of turning, essentially, Dirty Den into a hard-bitten space bruiser, so I'm sad to hear that the chap behind those beyond-gravelly tones, Robin Sachs, sadly passed away on the first of February this year.
]]>We're still waiting for Call of Duty Black Ops 2 wot-I-think code here on RPS, but some punters who've already lain hands on the PC version of Activision's latest Manshooter Titan have found themselves equally unable to play the thing. But why? Had it been tampered with by the fugitive head of an anti-virus company? Had wolves eaten it? Would it not install until Mason told them what the numbers meant? No, none of those. Something for more eerie. Some purchasers have discovered that the second disc of their brand new foreigner-killing game was a copy of Mass Effect 2, that 2010 guns'n'conversation title from Activision's arch-rival EA. Conversation in the best-selling game of guns? Scandalous!
]]>I tend to lose my sense of connection to science fictional narratives once they get into the realm of prophecies and pseudo-deities, so the idea of a return to the Mass Effect universe that's only about the neat spaceshippy stuff and none of the Circle Of Destiny soapboxing appeals enormously. Frinstance, this unofficial mod for the TIGHT space strategy game Sins of a Solar Empire which plans to recreate the Normandy and its multi-species chums' war against the Geth, Collectors and Reapers.
]]>Jim's done singleplayer, I've done the From Ashes DLC, and now I take on Mass Effect 3's vaguely controversial four players vs AI-controlled enemy waves co-op multiplayer mode. I've been playing it what might be said to be a little too much over the last week, having taken several characters to level 20 and gotten righteously indignant that I keep unlocking pistols rather than sniper rifles. Allow me to explain.
I lay there, dying and enraged. My last surviving team-mate, a Salarian Infilitrator, stood right next to me. Actually, that's a lie, intended to cover my indignity - he was standing right on top of me, feet stomping on my face, taking wild potshots at a Cerberus Centurion hiding behind a nearby wall. All he had to do was press one button for a couple of seconds, and I'd be back in the fight, at his side, helping him to win this war and go home with the spoils of victory. I hadn't wired up a mic for this match, so I couldn't scream and beg at him. Still, what was required was beyond obvious - yet he would not do it. The seconds ticked away. My blood trickled away.
]]>Tomorrow (or Friday in blighted Blighty) is Mass Effect O'Clock, and the day when we discover whether or not the purported conclusion of Shepherd's adventures can live up to over a year of having enough marketing to make twenty Daikatanas a success fired continually at our exhausted eyes and ears.
Which means we have scant hours/days to ensure we get the ME3 we want. I'm in a tricky situation whereby the crew I wound up with at the end of ME2 is not the crew I'd want in ME3: is endlessly replaying the climactic ME2 suicide mission until the right folk make it out alive my only hope of rewriting my destiny? Nope! Mass Effect 2 spoilers and savegame-fiddling below.
]]>So I am busy playing through Mass Effect 3 at the moment, with my collected thoughts on the events, happenings, and systems therein to appear on Tuesday. I've been doing a bit of retrospective browsing over the first two games, too, and comparing events in those to the events in the third game. This process led me to wonder this: what has been your favourite event in the games so far? And why?
]]>God forbid we'd post yet another Mass Effect 3 trailer, but... well, here's another Mass Effect 3 trailer. It stars, at long, long last, the female version of Shepard, finally getting just a tiny fraction of the official marketing acknowledgment she deserves. You will, I trust, understand.
]]>It's going to be Mass Effect trailers from here until March I reckon, at which point we can finally play the game and enjoy the conversation as well as the guns. This new'un resolutely focuses on the latter, or more specifically giant space beasts at war as tiny ManShep legs it around a collapsing cityscape in their wake. Spectacular stuff, but scripted from here to eternity and all a bit Gears of Warsy.
]]>Bioware are releasing a whole new game after Mass Effect 3 is sent out into the big wide world. All we know, though, is that it's a new franchise, and this is the first screenshot of it, as bestowed upon the industry's number one chum GameInformer. We don't know a name, we don't know if the inclusion of buggies and deserts is a red herring (as was the Mass Effect 3 image they released for last year's VGAs), and we don't even know if it's an RPG, guns & conversation, shooter, or what. We'll find out just what it is at the VGA awards on Saturday.
]]>Jennifer Hale has appeared in a great many more games than you probably realise. The person behind the voice of the female Shepard in all three Mass Effect games is also responsible for Metal Gear's Naomi Hunter, SOCOM's HQ, and even the grunts and groans of Metroid Prime's Samus. And of course her spookily good British accent as KotOR's Bastilla. Amongst literally hundreds of others, in gaming, TV and film. We caught up with Jennifer as she drove through LA, to ask how she came to provide so many of gaming's iconic voices, the combination of anonymity and fame, and which of the Commander Shepards she's voting for to appear on Mass Effect's cover.
]]>Oh dear, there appears to have been some kind of mistake here. Bioware, as part of their long-awaited marketing acknowledgement of the female version of Mass Effect hero Shepard, have offered fans the option to vote for which of six new versions of FemShep (I really dislike that portmanteau for reasons I can't entirely pinpoint, but it seems rather too late to resist it now) will be added to the character creator options in Mass Effect 3. However, none of them look like the FemShep I know, and thus presumably you know. Mysterious! Someone must have uploaded some fan-art by mistake, right?
]]>We don't tend to do too much in the way of 'person x changes job' stories here, which is primarily because the knowledge that disgusting organic creatures are responsible for our beautiful, clean, matter-free digital worlds is a horrifying truth we can't accept, but also because... well, people do change jobs. This one stood out to me, however, due to both source and destination. The lead gameplay designer on Mass Effect 2 and 3, Christina Norman, has left Bioware - but to go where? Oh, that's right, it says it in the headline. Yeah, League of Legends dev Riot Games.
So, from a console-straddling mainstream RPG/action developer that's bigger than it's ever been to the young home of devoutly hardcore multiplayer PC games.
]]>This is a depressing year to be on the internet. And a doubly-depressing one to be a newswriter on the internet. The latest (but, let's not bloody kid ourselves, not last) game company to suffer the peculiar ire/amusement of hackers is Bioware. Fortunately, only a very specific bit of Bioware, so don't panic too much: their 10-year-old Neverwinter Nights forum. It actually happened a little earlier this month, but now Bioware are alerting everyone affected and opening up about exactly what details were compromised. You may have thought, following the initial talk of this hack, that it was no big deal for you, but if you used to play NwN you might well have left passwords, email addresses, phone numbers or CD keys in the information these imps have made off with. Credit card details are apparently safe, however. Full Bioware statement below.
]]>Despite admitting that they've yet to figure out any kind of useful multiplayer for Mass Effect, Bioware's Casey Hudson has said that the idea of an MMO in the universe "makes sense". Speaking to world-bestriding super-magazine Game Informer, he said: “Part of what you’re trying to do is save the universe so you can live in it. That’s part of the promise, I think, for any great IP. It has to be a world worth saving… I think Mass Effect has that quality to it. If you get rid of the Reapers and win that, wouldn’t it be amazing to just live on the Citadel or just take a ship to Omega? That makes sense.”
]]>Spoilers! Get yer spoilers 'ere! Only three quid a dozen! Howzabout that then ma'am, a punnet full of Mass Effect 3 details, yours for just a paaaaarnd.
Actually, I'm guessing these are not especially meaty ME3 spoilers, as rather than spoiling late-game plot stuff they document the status quo for Shepard and chums at the start of Bioware's next galactic opus - but if you really do want to go in totally blind you should look away now.
]]>I'm regularly taken aback by how quietly enormous Mass Effect is. While common conception is that EA's getting its mega-corp bottom kicked by Activision, it's got a breadth of franchises that it's CoD'n'WoW-dependent rival does not - and Bioware's sweeping space opera universe is one of the foremost of those. It's really doing the Star Wars thing, I guess, as there was perhaps a vast sci-fi fandom void waiting to be filled in the wake of Lucas' long-running exploitation/ruination of its galaxy far, far away.
So it makes perfect sense that Mass Effect would turn to other mediums - specifically, movies. Well, anime movies.
]]>Coo - want Mass Effect 2 for free? If you've bought Dragon Age II, then it's already yours for the taking. Indeed, even if you buy a copy of Dragon Age II now, before 30th April, you can get the superb space-RPG for zero dollarpounds as well. This is, BioWare say, how they're celebrating their having sold one million copies of DA2 in two weeks.
]]>Hmm, I'm not hearing great things about the Arrival DLC for Mass Effect 2, which turned up last night. The add-on is supposed to set things up for the third game, and is a mission in which you rescue a missing agent, who has news about the reapers. Doesn't sound like people are enjoying it that much - but maybe it's fine. Just fine.
So is anyone getting this? Or able to comment, having got it? Moreover, how many of you have actually gone back to ME2 to play all this extra stuff? I picked up the first few months of DLC, but I've not been back.
]]>Hungry-hungry news hippos VG24/7 have posted the date for the climactic last piece of Mass Effect 2 downloadable content, which will supposedly pave the way for Mass Effect 3. In case you missed it in the headline up there, beaming out at you like some kind of... big... date, it's March 29th. You want details? I've got details.
]]>I was all ready to put a positive spin on this, like "Thinking of replaying Mass Effect 2 with the latest bits of DLC? The second Alternate Appearance pack, with new outfits for Miranda, Grunt and Tali will be out on February 8th for 160 Bioware Points (abour £1.20)." But no, because I've noticed that Bioware are advertising this news with the slogan "Put the WAR back in your wardrobe!" Just- no. You leave the crap puns to us, Bioware, d'you hear? It's weird when you do it. Also, Grunt up there looks like he was an extra for Tron and changed back into his ME2 outfit without a mirror, so there. Thanks to Blues for the tipoff.
]]>It's true! No details whatsoever just yet, but it's coming. Bioware has announced that the game's daily Cerberus Network news updates will stop on January 24th, the one year anniversary of the service, but will resume a week before the final DLC pack and two weeks before Mass Effect 3, which should land this 'Holiday Season'. See those quotation marks, Bioware? You must imagine them as a pair of tweezers, plucking the American out of this story.
]]>What would it be like if Dragon Age's Morrigan and Mass Effect's Liara T'Soni met? I fed that question into the RPS supercomputer and it spat out the above image. I don't think it was trying very hard. Anyway as of yesterday both ladies have received their very own DLC, with DA's Witch Hunt and ME2's Lair of the Shadow Broker both available for download RIGHT NOW. Witch Hunt costs $7 and adds about an hour of play time (according to the Dragon Age wiki), while Lair of the Shadow Broker costs $10, lasts about two and a half hours and lets you have sex with Liara. One of these packs is a better deal than the other, I feel.
]]>Okay, so wrap your head around this. IGN have done a short feature where they talk to Bioware Executive Producer Casey Hudson about the studio's stat harvesting in Mass Effect 2. For their part, Bioware have revealed some of those stats, and some of them are genuinely mad. More people chose the Soldier class for Shepherd than all the other classes combined. Players skipped an average of 15% of the game's dialogue. Two PC owners finished their copies of the game 28 times.
Click through for the full list of stats, including some interesting differences between 360 and PC gamers.
]]>Catching up with the gaming news from my latest bout of travelling too much, I discover from VG247 that Bioware have released a trailer for the Lair of the Shadow Broker DLC out on September 7th. It's basically continuing Asari Liara's adventures involving that most shadowy of brokers, the Shadow Broker. It also promises to allow you to continue a relationship with her, which probably means do her. It costs 800 Bioware points, which translates as some money. And here's the trailer!
]]>Why change a winning formula? That's what I was left wondering after discovering that, on the one hand, Dragon Age sold better than any Bioware game ever as of November, and on the other, that the formula is changing dramatically for Dragon Age 2. It's worth noting that the PC version isn't changing as much as the console versions of the game. We will apparently retain "strategic combat", which is a good news, while console chums will be "playing to their strengths" with more actiony combat mechanics. Conversation will also now be handled via Mass Effect's wheel system. The biggest change, however, is that Dragon Age 2 will be getting its own equivalent of Shepard, with player character options reduced to the male of female versions of "Hawke" (pictured? I think). Bioware confirmed on their forums that you will have to play a human.
Mass Effect 2 is a game that some people thought was okay. If you haven't played it - and you might not have done, what with all that stuff you were doing - then it's a good time to play the demo. Demo? Yes. Here's what the digital mouth of EA/Bioware say about that "demo": "In the demo, players step into the role of Commander Shepard and must escape from a Cerberus space station under siege. Players can jump ahead to a later mission where they must rescue Subject Zero, a hardened, dangerous criminal from a heavily guarded prison ship. Once they play the demo, players will be able to create a save and carry over their character along with the experience points, story decisions, achievements and weapons earned into the full version of the game – picking up right where they left off." It's right here. It is 1.87gb.
]]>I left Mass Effect 2 in a similar mood to the way I left Dragon Age. I admired the craft, enjoyed it a lot but found myself dwelling on the question of “what next for Bioware?”. There's ribs of the old Bioware skeleton sticking out, but some of the changes in format feel – to me – like transitional ones, on the way to something else. This is about thinking about the something else.
]]>Bioware producer Casey Hudson, speaking to Videogamer, has revealed that the current line of DLC being produced for Mass Effect 2 will eventually bridge the gap between that game and its sequel.
]]>So, I sexed a lizard and saved the universe. A little later than everyone else, but not too late to share a couple of sets of thoughts. The first follows, as it's an area I don't think people have wrestled with enough. It's also as spoilery as spoilery can be.
]]>I came to Mass Effect 2 late, and after a couple of weeks of man-chat and man-shoot, finished it off last night. And so, I wandered off to Youtube to have a look for some of the choices I stepped away from and to relive my sexing of a mental lizard. At which point, I come across the make-up tutorials of UtopianDream (Who's affiliated with the splendidly-named gamer-model agency Charisma +2 ). Her initial Miranda Mass Effect 2 one seems to have been linked quite widely back in February - which I missed - but her later ones for Morrigan Dragon age and (RPS IRRELEVANT!) Bayonetta (er) Bayonetta have been ignored. UNTIL NOW. Do you do requests, UtopianDream? If so, SHODAN. Go on. You know you want to. Her tutorials follow...
]]>BioWare do seem to be having trouble keeping a leash on their DLC. The 6th April was supposed to be the day we were given a new character to join our team in Mass Effect 2, Kasumi Goto. The Kasumi DLC is out now! The tech-specialist enigmatic thief can be seen in her trailer below.
The Mass Effect 2 commercial extension modules are nearly here. Firstly there's some free DLC, in the form of the "Firewalker" pack which is out on the 23rd. This features five new vehicular missions, and a new vehicle: "The Hammerhead is a heavy assault vehicle that hovers over the battlefield at up to 120 kilometers per hour and features a guided missile system ensuring accuracy even during aggressive maneuvering." Then on April 6th there's Kasumi's Stolen Memory, which will cost, but has yet to be priced. Bioware say: "Players can get in touch with Kasumi on the Citadel, either in the middle of an ongoing Mass Effect 2 game or after the completion of the main story (lesson learned from Mass Effect 1 DLC!). Once recruited, Shepard aids Kasumi on a secretive mission of recovery, which requires a suave disguise and a run-in with an influential and predictably corrupt art collector."
]]>John's already thoroughly Wot-I-Thunked Bioware's rather splendid star-biffing RPG, which remains very much the RPS DEFIN-O-TAKE on the game, but I have these words about it lying around from something that's not ever going to be published. So I might as well quietly leave them on this table here and walk away whistling, really. It's also an indulgent excuse to do something with a meagre few of the 412 screenshots I've accrued whilst playing ME2. Pretty graphics are pretty! If you read this piece thinking "this doesn't sound very much like RPS", that's because it isn't. Basically. WE HAVE MANY VOICES. Some of which don't involve repeatedly referring to ourselves in the first or third person and making jokes about bears. It does at least contain the word 'nookie' and a William Shatner reference, however.
]]>First of all, to explain why this review is so late. We’d hoped for code well in advance, but sadly it wasn't sent to us until the release day. I have since played the game to absolute completion. Thus it is only proper to tell you Wot I Think. (You can safely assume this review contains enormous Mass Effect 1 spoilers, but I will not spoil ME2.)
]]>Everyone's playing it. I'm playing it. John Walker's playing it, even though he hasn't worked out how to heal. Your mum's playing it; she's romancing Garrus, and he's making her feel more alive than she's ever felt before. So - why aren't you playing Mass Effect 2? If the answer is 'I'm already busy playing Dragon Age: Return To Ostragar at bloody last, and it's frankly unfair of you to expect me to give every waking moment of my life to Bioware games' then very well. Otherwise, you should totally enter our competition to win one of 4 Direct2Drive copies of the shooty-spacey RPG. Apparently a lot of people quite like it.
]]>I tried to post this yesterday, but the blog's back end mysteriously ate all my words so I gave up in a huff. I believe it to be the machinations of Loki, the Norse trickster god, and villain of children's picturebook Thor #606, written by Karen Gillan and on sale now in all good Early Learning Centres. Anyway - like half the world I've been making first inroads into Mass Effect 2 this week. As I played the first game on -hisssss! - 360 rather than PC, I was resigned to not being able to import my old character. But Bioware mentioned there'd be a KOTOR 2-esque mechanic in which a few conversational choices established what I'd done in ME1 and made ME2's status quo broadly reflect it.
They changed their minds. At the point where I'm pretty sure this conversation would have happened (an interview to check the [this word is spoiler-censored] Shepherd's got all their marbles), I was instead simply told what had happened. It wasn't what had happened. ME1 spoilers below, so skip right to the end if you've not finished that yet.
]]>A Mass Effect 2 trailer you say? But those are more rare than the freckled unicorn! I'd heard rumour they were even extinct. But no, it is real, it is yours to watch below.
Has any game received more trailers? Better question: has any game had so many good trailers? This latest, and perhaps even last, is absolutely stunning. 150 awesomes. The game comes out on the 26th in the States, and then because of the NO REASON WHATSOEVER reaches Europe by the 29th. Well, I suppose you can understand their decision to make sure their game is on all the torrent sites for three full days before making it legally available to buy for an entire continent. Oh no wait. [Please smash your head into bricks here.] But despite this continued idiocy, the video below is a corker.
]]>Below is the first part of our intricate guide for PC gaming in 2010. There's a horde of muscular-looking titles on the horizon, many of them likely to stop you and demand your money, like ludological bandits. Meanwhile, others that we expected to land, such The Old Republic, have already fled to 2011. Read on as the clouds in our crystal ball roll back...
]]>You may have noticed one or two trailers for Mass Effect 2 recently. One or two a day. And it's arriving very soon - the 29th of this month in fact. So we grabbed the opportunity to speak to lead gameplay designer Christina Norman to ask a few questions that have sprung up in the last couple of months. Below we find out a bit more detail about why certain combat decisions were made, why players might choose to die on purpose, whether Jennifer Hale will return as the female Shepard, and the possibility of lizards in bikinis.
]]>OK, we've posted rather a lot of Mass Effect 2's approximately 3178 different trailers to date and thus should restrain ourselves from hereon in, but I can't help but mention this one. Last year was fascinating/horrifying in terms of Bioware marketing - with Dragon Age and Mass Effect 2 both they alternated wildly between trying to appeal to the more traditional RPG fan and then to some sort of marketing-envisaged additional crowd, some mass of potential players who just needed a bit more unconvincingly-animated sexual intercourse and past-its-outrage-by-date goth metal and then they'd surely pour untold millions of Eurodollars into these games. Supremely easy to scoff at, but also supremely rational. Money makes the world go round, and we'd be fools to believe Bioware thought any differently. And yet the most recent clutch of Mass Effect trailers suggest a return to traditionalism- and the most recent even seems to be making amends.
]]>It's as if the holidays never happened. I'm back here posting sixty seven Mass Effect 2 trailers and wondering if I really should be invoicing EA for the advertising. But how can I help it when each trailer (since that one) makes the game look so tantalising? It's going to take a gear shift in my brain to remember that I'm okay with all the TPS action after spending the holidays in the warm, loving arms of Dragon Age, but if BioWare meet half their promises for this game it could be a real treat. So there's three more of the videos that have appeared since the Space Year 2010 began below, showing off Grunt and Thane some more (still no reveal on the Geth, Legion, being a party member, though it will happen), and a long cinematic trailer with them both at work.
]]>Another week, another Mass Effect 2 class revealed. This time it's the Infiltrator, and most specifically, his cloaking. Unlike previous class reveals, there's not a lot more detail about this than this. Although I guess being able to turn invisible is maybe enough. You can't heal when you're invisible, as we all know, and the same is true in the game.
]]>The Mass Effect 2 videos keep on coming. They can't be stopped. It's an AVALANCHE! A brand new one arrives to tell us about the new Sentinel class, and then there's the video showing off all the actors they've rounded up for providing voices this time out. It's an astonishing cast. You're compelled to watch.
]]>They keep making new Mass Effect 2 trailers, and I keep posting them. I'd be less of a schmuck about it, maybe bank them up and post a few at once, if I hadn't just restarted the original game this morning. Earth-born Vanguard Engineer since you ask. And as if the Sky Fairies were watching, so it is that BioWare releases details on the new abilities of the Engineer for the sequel. (Yes, yes, I'm only specialising, not actually an Engineer this time - look, you'll make the Sky Fairies angry.) And crikey, they've got some nice abilities. The freeze looks a lot of fun, as does having a personal upgradeable robo-orb buddy.
]]>Oh, tish and fipsy, my prediction for an unannounced new companion for Mass Effect 2 isn't today's. I'm telling you, one of the companions - and now I reckon it will be the last one revealed - is going to be a Geth called Legion. I base this purely on my own vivid imagination, rather than scurrilous industry rumouring. Oh, and all the images from the game's official gallery - a game in which the Geth are supposed to only play a minor role. But today we get to meet super-biotic Asari, Samara. Which is frankly going to get confusing, as my Shepard is called Samantha.
]]>I am so tremendously looking forward to Mass Effect 2. I wasn't for a while - I think I lost track of it all. I adored the first game when I played it, but as time's cruel countdown ticked away I found myself incorporating into my memory too much of how other people would describe it, and forgetting the details. "Oh, those elevators!" "The combat wasn't as good as it could have been." "The side quests were rubbish." Well, all of that is true, but goshdarnit, it didn't matter. It was a fabulous thing, and delving into all the details about for the sequel has reminded me why I enjoyed the original so very much. Which combined with what an absolute world-exploding classic Dragon Age proved to be, has me anticipating BioWare's sequel with fervour. It'd better be good, or there will be trouble. New videos are below.
]]>When I look deep into your eyes I can see your greatest desires. Don't be afraid. Ah yes, I see it now. You want three more trailers with in-game content for next year's Mass Effect 2. Well, hold my hand and join me beneath the jump where I have a little surprise for you.
]]>
.png?width=1200&height=630&fit=crop&enable=upscale&auto=webp "שחרורו של Assassin's Creed Shadows נדחה למרץ כאשר מועצת המנהלים של Ubisoft שוקל מכירת חברה")