Hey all!

It’s been a few days, I know. The reason for the lack of postings is OMG I’m back in Washington state for the holidays! Yay! As per usual the plane trip was stressful, and I would be lying if I said it wasn’t a little bit due to me playing that disturbing mission in Modern Warfare 2 a week ago. I’ve always hated flying, and that just gave me one more reason. Bleh.

But there is good news to report as well. That is, that a teaser trailer has been released for Mass Effect 3. You can find the teaser on BioWare’s Mass Effect homepage. I recommend that you go watch the quickie trailer before reading the rest of this post to avoid (minor) spoilers to Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2, and the teaser.

— INSERT MASS EFFECT 3 TEASER HERE —

Okay, that was a teaser if I’ve ever seen one. And rather baller if I do say so myself.

The details about Mass Effect 3 are pretty sketchy now, but from the trailer we can surmise that it takes place after the events in Mass Effect 2. The Reapers were not able to jump immediately into the Milky Way Galaxy and absolutely destroy everyone, but it looks like that they’ve arrived at Earth and have begun the involuntary extinction of humans. It is unclear as to whether or not the Reapers are beginning their attacks with Earth alone, or whether their attacks are spread out across the galaxy. There are a number of Reapers destroying London in the teaser, so I kind of get the feeling that Earth is the primary target of the Reapers due to Shepherd’s foiling of the Reapers’ devious plans.

Another bit of Mass Effect 3 that can be gleaned comes from the fact that the soldier seems to think that there is help coming, and that implies that some of the other alien races may come to the aid of humans (or not, depending on Shepherd’s decisions in the previous games). The primary mission of the third game is most likely the recruitment of alien races to humanity’s aid.

I’ve read a bit about ME3 so far, and one thing that the developer’s have stressed is that ME3 has the opportunity for diverging paths much more so than the previous two games. Because the series was conceived as a trilogy, the first two games had to bring the story lines to relatively similar positions, regardless of whether the player made Paragon (Good) or Renegade (Not quite as good) choices. Now, with ME3, it’s the end of the story, so hopefully making Paragon or Renegade choices will affect the final outcome of the game even more to allow for added replayability. As with ME2, ME3 will allow the player to import a save game that has the numerous choices of the previous playthrough embedded within it, and affect where the story of ME3 goes, which is one of the coolest things ever for RPG games.

I realize that I need to write up my review of at the very least Mass Effect 2, which was occupying a lot of my gaming time early this Fall. However, I am working on an old, craptastic computer so it may have to wait until I return to Indiana.

Till then, try to avoid the indoctrination of the Reapers!

-S