Mass Effect 3 DLC: 5 Things We’re Hoping For In The Final Update

2. Familiar Faces

Zaeed_Massani

People care about the ME characters. That€™s both Bioware€™s greatest triumph, and their greatest problem. With so many different possible scenarios, it€™s difficult to account for every eventuality, and financially unrewarding to fund voice acting for a character who may well be dead in a lot of player€™s game files. Hence the unpopular choice for many DLC offerings (Overlord, Arrival and Omega) to feature new voice work only for Joker and Shepard €“ not for crewmates such as Garrus or Tali. Financially unrewarding such voice work may be, but it€™s also a necessary consequence of claiming to offer true player choice. Bioware simply can€™t justify their claims of empowering the players if all choices made throughout the game lead to the same ending, so they need to accept that some of the content they create won€™t be seen by all the players. That€™s the consequence of player choice. Most people buying this DLC will be committed fans (who may well enjoy multiple playthroughs to see all available content in any case), so let€™s reward them with a host of characters from all three games in the trilogy, regardless of their mortality. I mentioned before that ME2€™s main problem is that it really wasn€™t that relevant to the overall trilogy, and to a large extent this is due to how ME2 characters were handled in ME3. Not a single permanent squad-mate introduced in ME2 returned as a squad-mate in ME3, which begs the question as to why they were introduced in the first place, if they then do very little in the overall fight against the reapers. Characters like Miranda, Jack and Zaeed deserved more of a role, and it€™s gratifying to see Miranda at least appear in teaser images for the new DLC. Not every character from the trilogy requires a huge amount of content, but many who were seemingly ignored in ME3 deserve a true swansong - or failing that, at the very least a tip of the cap in recognition. It seems unlikely they€™ll get it unless we see it here. So let€™s finally give it to them. Which brings me to my final point...
Contributor
Contributor

Laurence Gardner was born in Canterbury, England. After moving around various cities during his childhood, and spending some time travelling in Europe and America, he studied English Literature at Oxford University. Since then, he’s been living abroad, teaching English, learning a range of languages, and writing in his free time. He can currently be found in Heidelberg, working as an English Tutor and Translator and studying at the University. If you liked this article, follow him on Twitter to get automatic updates on his work.