Today June 26 is ME3 Extended Ending Day
Just a quick reminder that the long awaited Mass Effect 3 Extended Ending DLC is due to drop tomorrow here in North America although the actual time it is being made available is different depending on what service you are using. According to tweets from Bioware the 1.9 GB DLC should be dropping for Xbox 360 users around 5am in the morning while Playstation owners get it sometime in the afternoon. Those on PC are scheduled to get it through EA’s Origin service at around 2-3pm in the afternoon.
Players who intend to quickly see what has changed are advised to have a save game available which puts them right before the assault on the Cerberus Base. If you aren’t sure what you have as long as you saved the game after the ending credits you should be fine since it basically dumps players right before the Cerberus Base mission.
Although it hasn’t been confirmed one hopes that Bioware has provided additional cinematics that take place either during the Cerberus mission or the London levels that attempt to flesh out the story and provide additional exposition instead of merely cramming a ton of cutscenes after the Catalyst.
Gamers should also note that though the War Asset/Galactic Readiness scores are still needed that Bioware seems to have dropped the requirements a tad to ensure people will be able to get all the different permutations. As an example to get the “best” ending one previously needed a score over 4000 but now it has been reduced to 3100. That’s a pretty significant drop which should enable most players to get all the different choices presented by the Catalyst.
Still, if your war assets are really too low it might be wise to spend a bit of time tonight doing some planet scanning/multiplayer/ME:Infiltrator to raise it to a significant level.
Scouring the web it is interesting to read quotes from the Bioware team talking about this extended DLC as well as the obvious warning to fans that the goal here is not to make everyone happy. Additionally, there’s a very telling quote from Casey Hudson who basically comments that many fans automatically thought the ME universe was screwed beyond repair and that everyone would be dead either through Mass Relay detonations or through starvation and that this was never the intent of the Bioware team. I think it is fair to say that part of the DLC will address this issue.
I’m not crazy enough to stay up to 5am in the morning just to download and play this DLC but I will definitely be writing something about it in the days to come. On a personal note I’m certainly curious how much I got “right” in my own analysis article and whether or not Bioware has successfully answered all the apparent plot contradictions or merely created new ones.
As for the majority of the fans I still have a feeling the Extended DLC is going to result in something like this:
© 2012 The Galactic Pillow
