Mass Effect 3 Demo Finally Arrives!

The new default face for Female Commander Shepard.

The demo for Mass Effect 3 has finally arrived and it includes the opening mission where the Reapers begin their attack on Earth and contains a later mission where Shepard, with squad mates Garrus Vakarian and Liara T'Soni rescue a female Krogan with the help of Urdnot Wrex and Mordin Solus. The characters appear here regardless of what background you decide to give Shepard, a new feature for first-time players that will determine which squad members are alive, choosing whether to kill Ashley Williams, Kaidan Alenko, or the majority of the ME2 squad members. As far as who lives by default is a good question, but at least 1 of them must survive in order for Shepard to survive the ending of ME2.


General changes  since Mass Effect 2 after the break.

For starters, Shepard can now do sideways and backwards rolls at any time. Shepard's dash is much improved and the control is much better as well. The overpowered M-8 Avenger is no longer an automatic assault rifle, but I assume that weapon modifications can fix that, since they are returning for the first time since the original game. The level up system has also greatly improved, becoming more like a skill tree rather than choosing to give a power more force or more range. Bioware has already confirmed that levels will carry over from ME2 and that the level cap in ME3 is 30 levels higher to compensate for this. I'm quite glad to hear this, because it will make going though the beginning of the game much easier for people who are already familiar with the controls.


New to Mass Effect are 3 non-standard difficulty options: Story, Action, and Role-Playing. In Story Mode, the difficulty of battle is even easier than the easiest difficulty for people who are only interested in dialogue options. In Action Mode, all dialogue options are pre-determined based on Shepard's background and play out like cutscenes. Role-Playing Mode is the traditional Mass Effect experience. In standard difficulty settings, all difficulties below Hardcore have been bumped 1 grade and Veteran has been removed so that ME3's Normal is equivalent to ME2's Veteran.


All classes can now use all weapon classes, meaning that Soldiers can now use submachine guns, Infiltrators can use shotguns, and Adepts can use Assault Rifles. Because of this, the classes are now more widely separated by their powers, and not by what weapons they can bring, a major drawback to using certain characters in ME2. Probably the biggest change in powers is that the Vanguard has a new power called Nova, which allows it to voluntarily sacrifice the entire biotic barrier and use it as an area bomb with a timer entirely separate from other powers, meaning it can be used immediately after the biotic charge.