Mass Effect 3: A Shepard without a face

EDITOR'S NOTEfrom Eduardo Moutinho

I can report that my custom Shepard made it through the character-importation battlefield and is currently assembling the galaxy to fight the Reapers. But I really do hope that Bioware finds a solution to help those who haven't been as lucky. A.J. deserves to finish the fight with his Shepard.

Here we are. Mass Effect 3 is finally unleashed on the world. Having been a devout fan of the entire series, I was excited to finish the fight with my Commander Shepard. Having digitally pre-ordered the game on Electronic Arts' Origin platform, I immediately started a new campaign and selected my latest save file from Mass Effect 2.

Before me was a list of all the major choices I had made in the second game. The list contained who died, who I romanced, what I'd destroyed, and more. I clicked to go to the next screen and saw the following.

I panicked. I had backed up and restored my save. Having read about issues with importing saves from the cloud on Xbox 360, I thought this might be the cause. So I went to open the character in Mass Effect 2 and make a new save. Of course, I did not have the roughly four gigabytes of downloadable content I would need to load the save. So I waited an hour and a half, loaded my game, and made a new file.

Care to guess what happened next?

I was livid. After buying into Bioware's promise of experiencing the trilogy with the same character, I was dumbfounded as to how this issue could arise. After venting my frustration on Twitter, I searched for some sort of official response from Bioware or EA.

Official Twitter feeds offered nothing. All they had were various announcements regarding launch events. A quick Google search revealed scores of people with the same problem. The supposed root? If a character is imported from Mass Effect to Mass Effect 2 and then to Mass Effect 3, this error might occur.

Excuse me, what!?

So the people who are the most loyal and excited fans, who have been with the series from the beginning, are the ones potentially affected by this?

But here's the thing. I don't know if this is actually true. While Jeff Grubb asked me and several others to highlight the issue on GamesBeat, he still could find no official response from Bioware.

So now we have Twitter, message boards, and sites filled with news about how Mass Effect 3 is partially broken for some of its loyal fans. Meanwhile, the official Twitter feed progresses like it was programmed to tweet about various midnight launches.

In 2012, social networks allow for direct communication between developers and their fans. Ditto for gamers and journalists. So why has this issue never been mentioned, and why does it still need to be addressed? Every moment Bioware leaves this alone, more and more speculation builds.

And it's a shame. The game is absolutely fantastic. But I'm playing through it with someone who kind of looks like my Commander Shepard.

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Ed Grabowski

March 08, 2012

They took a great core action RPG, Mass Effect, and butchered, cut out, manistreamed and smashed everything that made the game great in order to turn it into a 40 hour shooter called Mass Effect 2. The fans cried, and Bioware didn't care.

They then proceeded to do the same exact thing with Dragon Age 2, only taking it a step further and cutting every corner in the book while creating new corners to cut. The fans screamed, and Bioware didn't care.

They then moved on to Mass Effect 3, continuing to ignore the fans wishes, they mainstreamed the game even more. Removing whatever little ounce of soul it once had left. The fans pleaded, and Bioware didn't care.

They added multiplayer to Mass Effect 3 when absolutely nobody wanted it. They were clearly taking away resources from the campaign and throwing in a tacked on multiplayer mode that nobody will play. They fans got frustrated, and Bioware didn't care.

They then announce day one DLC. The internet raged when they found out it was important story related DLC. Bioware stood firm, claiming they didn't remove anything from the game to sell as DLC. When the game launched, clever hackers find the DLC already on the disk. They had lied, and they didn't care.

Now we have what will surely become one of the most infamous glitches in gaming history. Your Shepard, the one you used in over 80 yours of gameplay to save the world, the one who you guided through the most difficult decisions in gaming history, isn't able to be brought in to your Mass Effect 3 game. The face that you spent all the time with, the face that you know as well as your own, is lost. The fans plead, and Bioware offers no updates, advice, or ballpark time tables.

The Bioware that once was has been dead for a while now. Their name has been tainted for a long, long time. I don't know anyone who thinks of Bioware in the same way they did when Mass Effect 1 launched. Back then, Bioware was the savior of core action RPG's. Now, they are they destroyer of the same. They don't seem to care about their fans or their wishes. I am by no means suggesting the fans have control over their game development...However, throwing your loyal fans a bone every once in a while is good for business.

Someone needs to tell Bioware that....Because mainstreaming Mass Effect 2 in order to appeal to a wider audience yielded no results...The game did not sell a ton more copies than Mass Effect 1. The fans warned, but Bioware didn't listen. You would think they would have learned their lesson, but the didn't. Sometimes, Bioware, fans do know best.

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Andre Miller

March 09, 2012

I enjoyed the changes made to mass effect 2. It made for a much more accessible and enjoyable experience for me. Certainly I wish the leveling was more profound, but that's about all.

I'm playing through ME1 as we speak, trying to get that coveted 1000 GS. I've pumped dozens and dozens of hours into it so I can transfer the content to ME2 (which I've played before). So it's all a matter of perspective. From my point of view, they fixed EVERYTHING I wanted fixed in 2.