<\/div>On my first playthrough of this game, I’d lost my Mass Effect 2 saves in a computer migration and so I had to use the default world state, in which Jack is dead<\/a>. If we make the assumption that anyone using the default character is new to the seriesWhich is not remotely a guarantee, but it’s probably a better policy than just assuming all players are returning ones.<\/span>, then this actually makes sense. Jack is a tricky character and it would be awkward to try to explain who she was in the second game just so the player could appreciate her transformation here in Mass Effect 3. <\/p>\n But this series is based on a full play-through of all three games, and so I got to see the different ways BioWare handled the fact that most of your Mass Effect 2 crew might be dead. They put a lot of work into it, and it really does make for a better world if you take the time to import the saves.<\/p>\n Here at Grissom Academy, Jack has somehow joined the teaching staff. She’s trying to clean up her potty mouth and has ditched the nihilism and random violence in favor of being a mentor to young adults. <\/p>\n I feel like I should complain about this transformation, since I gave the Mass Effect 2 writer a hard time for doing the same thing to Liara<\/a>. But here the transformation feels a little less extreme, and a little better supported by the events of the previous game. She actually did soften a bit in her character arcAssuming you did her loyalty mission<\/span>. I suppose it helps that New Jack is just as interesting as Old Jack, while the same can’t be said of LiaraLiara’s transformation took a really unique character and turned her into another swaggering hardass, and the story is already brimming with hardasses.<\/span>. Moreover, you can still see Jack’s old personality poking through. Her evolution is a continuation of changes begun in the previous game, and not an out-of-nowhere off-screen re-write. Also – and maybe this is the most important difference – the transformation is properly acknowledged in dialog. <\/p>\n Jack also gives us yet another, “Wow, you were really stupid to trust Cerberus!” conversation. That wasn’t a lot of fun when we had it with Kashley a couple of hours ago, and it has not been improved through repetition.<\/p>\n Once again we come back to the problem of trusting the writer. In the last game, the plot revolved around working for Cerberus, which a lot of players thought was thematically wrong, an obviously bad idea, and poorly justified. They spent the whole game shaking their head saying, “This is dumb and I shouldn’t be forced to do it.”. <\/p>\n And then when we come to these arguments. What do we assume the author trying to say?<\/p>\n 1) Yes, the Cerberus plot of Mass Effect 2 was poorly justified. As an apology, here is an acknowledgement of those problems in dialog.<\/p>\n OR:<\/p>\n 2) Ha ha! Fooled you! You thought working for Cerberus was a good idea and you got pwned by TIM!<\/p>\n I want to believe #1 is the case, but the writer doesn’t make it easy. Shepard never acknowledges how trapped he was, or how he thought it was a bad idea, or anything else to show that he saw this coming. He can either express regret that he messed things up, or he can arrogantly shut the other person down. But he never uses the one defense that would match how the player feels, which is that he did it because it was the only course of action available to him. And in this argument Jack, not Shepard, gets the last word in. The writer has already passed on a lot of opportunities to patch over problems with the Cerberus plotLike claiming that The Alliance \/ Council was working on the Reaper threat, but couldn’t tell you. Or patching in some good Cerberus deeds to explain the pro-Cerberus people you meet. Or making sure the plot of ME2 had some kind of meaningful payoff here in ME3.<\/span>. Maybe<\/em> the author was trying to fix the mess of Mass Effect 2, but it feels like they’re just taunting the player for “falling” for their all-too-obvious Cerberus betrayal. If that’s the case, then this is a giant middle finger to those fans. (Which for the most part are fans of Mass Effect 1.)<\/p>\n I’m not sure how justified it is for the Alliance to hire an infamous, dangerous criminal (remember you bust Jack out of prison in Mass Effect 2) who has “worked for Cerberus” as the most recent item on her resume. But then, the Alliance is all over the place in this game and don’t seem to have an identity. Admiral Hackett’s practical military Alliance is very different from the bureaucratic “we can’t be bothered to look after our abducted colonies because we have to polish our ships” Alliance, which is distinct from “We can’t talk to you because you have Cerberus cooties” Alliance which doesn’t mesh well with the, “Hey! You’re a barely sane biotic! Wanna teach our kids? No swearing, though!” Alliance. <\/p>\n One part of the Alliance put Shepard under some sort of arrest for maybe working for Cerberus, and another part of the Alliance put fellow Cerberus alumni Jack and Joker into prestigious positions. If nothing else, the Alliance has a massive, untreatable case of multiple personality disorder that needed lampshading. <\/p>\n In any case, Grissom Academy feels a little Mass Effect 1-ish. The dialog wheel is still pretty lean. If it were up to me, I’d love to have some more details filled in on this place. But the students certainly qualify as peasants<\/a> – which I mean as praise in this context – and it’s really nice that we get to meet them instead of just step over their corpses on our way to the next gunfight, like on Mars. These students have names and relationships with each other and histories and opinions, which are all revealed organically over the course of the mission. <\/p>\n I also really appreciate that the vehicle section isn’t mandatory. <\/p>\n So we’re off to the secret Salarian research outpost on Sur’kesh. The Salarians have a single fertileThis game really can’t figure out if the Genophage is a sterility plague or not.<\/span> Krogan female, thanks to the genophage cure cooked up in Mass Effect 2. <\/p>\n
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<\/div>Sur’Kesh<\/h3>\n
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