Mass Effect 3 - Preview Roundup

Archmage Silver sends in a handful of Mass Effect 3 previews we had missed.

From DeltaGamer:

Mass Effect 2 was a major overhaul in terms of gameplay from the first game, but this time around Bioware is content with the core mechanics they introduced in Mass Effect 2 and has iterated on them, rather than reinvent them. It’s still fundamentally a third person shooter with RPG trappings, but now they have improved the RPG elements of the game. Character skill progression has been expanded, and there is a lot more choice within the skills themselves. I played through the demo as the Soldier class, and I had around 36 points to spend on skills. I unlocked Concussive Shot – a knockdown ability and there was further progression within the skill itself. Spending more points allowed me to reduce the cooldown of the ability, increase the damage and knockback effect and then the tree branched out, with each level having two possible options, I could choose to widen the knockback radius or increase the force further and so on and so on. It’s a welcome change as Mass Effect 2′s progression system was a little bare bones in places.

...who also have a summary from a Gamescom Q&A session:

The CE Robot dog is possible to interact with aboard the Normandy, like having it follow you around, play fetch and it apparently has a story to it. No details on whether it’s combat able or not though.

Character creator will get a lot more hair styles and facial features in ME3. So expect the hairstyles from the femShep competition to make it into the CC.

They are considering an Uber achievement for all three games. What that is exactly is they don’t know, but they want to reward their long term fans.

All squad mates will get their story and closure for ME3 even if they might not be a permanent squad member.

GiantBomb also has a large roundup of material from Gamescom.

In related news, GamesFront reports the redhead has won the FemShep voting, for anyone who cares (thanks Blues).