There’s a petition to change the ending of ME3. Really?

This is the end, my friend?

So apparently there is a fan based campaign based on a petition to get Bioware to change the end of Mass Effect 3. WTF? I’m only about 10 percent through the game itself (and loving it) so have no idea what I’m in for. Are the Humans building a Halo installation of Prothean design? Who knows, who cares. For me , in an RPG, the journey is the point of the game. Not the ending. Sure it’s cool to have a good ending. Halo 3? Gears 3? The Sixth Sense?

Yep, but dear petitioners, where were you for that ME3 ending when you had to shoot the arms of a totally not scary Reaper? Where were you and your petitions when there was that lame as ending to Halo 2?

Perhaps I judged Christina Norman too harshly yesterday. She basically told fans to play the games and don’t tell producers how to make their games and it sounds like this petition is what she was talking about.

I read that ME3 shipped 3.5 million units of awesomeness. 20,000 random names on an internet petition hardly sounds like a real winter of discontent.

Without having finished ME3, I say man up, enjoy or get over the ending and save your pennies for the sequel / prequel ME4 and get ready start your bitching again…..

Gears of War 3 is half price right now!

Amazon has slashed the price of Gears of War 3.

Get it for half off today:

Me3 Face Import Patch on the way

A patch for the Mass Effect face import problem is on the way:

Chris Priestly of Bioware has said:

“We have fixed the issue of faces not correctly importing into Mass Effect 3. It will be included as part of the next Mass Effect 3 patch”

“The not completely good news is that I do not yet have a confirmed date for when the patch will be available.”

This is good news as I accidentally made my female Commander look like kind of a pretty monkey

What is the N7 that’s on Commander Sheppard’s logo all about?

What is the N7 that’s on Commander Sheppard’s logo all about?

N7 represents how far Sheppard has progessed through Interplanetary Combatives Training programme. What it means is that they are the best of the best at being a soldier.

Interplanetary Combatives Training (ICT) is the Systems Alliance’s premier school for leadership and combat expertise. The Interplanetary Combatives Academy, is often known as “N-School” or “the villa,” recruits officers from every branch of Earth’s militaries to partake in grueling courses at Vila Militar in Rio de Janeiro.

The highest grade of training, N6, provides actual combat experience in combat zones throughout the galaxy. If the trainee survives these scenarios in “admirable and effective fashion,” he or she finally receives the coveted N7 designation. N7 is the only ICT designation that may be worn on field or dress uniforms so it was sure amusing for Sheppard to find the Geth we know Legion wearing it in Mass Effect 2 – it was kind of an homage to the man.

If you’ve played through Mass Effect you’ll recall that James Vega was asked to go through the ICT programme.

Every ME3 ending has a silver lining

There is a silver lining to the fiasco ending of the Mass Effect 3 game.

All game producers will now be making damned sure their games have awesome endings, or at least one’s that make sense.

You can just imagine that every major video game that’s nearing completion will have ‘test screenings’ that they do for ‘fans’ (but not the zealot fans I hope) so they can avoid making mistakes. I guess the difficulty for that is production cycles and the like. It’s not like it’s very easy to ‘tack on’ a new ending. Well… Bioware might think so…..

There is now a risk that the hero will win everytime as that appears to be what the people want. I’m happy to let those people eat cake sometimes though. While it’s a crazy ending, I loved how ME3 went for something bold and utterly original.

I trust that Frankie and co have the Halo 4 ending well in hand – given Halo 4 will be the first in a trilogy, the ending of that game wont be as important to fans as the ME3 ending.

Bungie’s Final Multiplayer Stats

Today marks the day that Bungie no longer collects and manages the statistics for Halo multiplayer matches. 343 is now charged with this responsibility. That was the last official tie that Bungie has the the Halo universe. They can still have the glory for making the first 5 Halo games….

Bungie has made this wonder graph below which explains the stats related to the Halo multiplayer realm. It’s a monster and a half of goodness. How many of these numbers did you contribute to?

Screenshots from Assassin’s Creed III revealed

Assasin’s Creed 3 Screenshots revealed

Assassin’s Creed 3 in game screen shots have been released – check out what the next version of the blockbuster game series will look like. I’m sure you’ll agree these images are a vast improvement on the prior games – no doubt due to a new game engine….

Incredible Mass Effect 3 Cosplay from Pax

Incredible Mass Effect 3 Cosplay from Pax

It seems to me that Mass Effect cosplayers might be the best in costume play out there. Check out these images of the cos play action from the recent PAX event.

Tali

Samara

Mordin. No word on what the cosplayer sang…

Thane again and a certain doctor…

Check out some more Mass Effect costume players.

Missed out on your free Fallout Poster?

Image Source: http://www.fallout-posters.com

Say you run a fan site about Fallout that allows fans to download fall out posters…. say the IP rights holder is not happy and sicks the lawyers on to you….do you take them down?This happened to the administrator of Fallout Posters, Erling Anderson. In response to legal demands he stopped the posters from being able to be down loaded and has this to say.“Now, I’m not out looking for trouble. I set up the website out of pure ‘fandom’, and the last thing I wanted – or expected – was to be threatened with a lawsuit by Bethesda,” Andersen wrote. “What pisses me off isn’t the fact that they’re looking out for their trademark – as they have every right to do so. What I’m pissed about are large companies abusing their monetary power, hiring global law firms to go after a fan online, immediately threating with a lawsuit.Anderson then went on to say “Had they had the slighest bit of PR-savyness, they would have shot me a quick personal mail asking me to remove the (supposed) infringing content – and preferrably sent me some nice Fallout-swag as a nice gesture (yes, I am that corrupt).”

Erling wrote the lawyers back a sweet little letter on his blog but he’s had no response to date. I wonder if Bethseda will take it further given the publicity that’s resulted. What do you think? Should this fan art be allowed to stay on the interwebs?

Halo 4′s Neil Davidge is the lineman for the County

Halo 4 composer Neil Davidge has done an extended interview with Kotaku on the Halo score – how he got the gig, the music process and his favourite singer…..
Here’s a cut from the IV:

How far along are you guys? How’s it coming together?

We’ve clocked off about 4 hours of music. It’s a huge amount of material. I think we originally signed on to create 150 minutes worth of music, [laughs] we went over that in the first couple of months of working on the project.

Something that occurred to me the other day was that in the last 18 months I’ve probably written more music than I have probably written in the last 18 years working with Massive Attack. The process has been so painfully slow, in many ways I feel like I’ve been released, and allowed to just my instincts and follow my gut on this project.

343 have been amazing in that way, and very very trusting, and allowing me to experiment and just gently prodding me every so often when I kind of go off track. [laughs] Well sometimes not quite so gently, but… for the most part, they’ve applauded my wish to experiment and just to see where we can go with a particular theme or piece of music. And sometimes I go too far, and I’m very aware of this, but it feels necessary when trying to flesh out a whole new universe-this story is a progression, it’s a whole new story arc-it’s important to me to progress the music as much as the story’s progressed.

So, there was a lot of experimentation. They’ve given me a lot of free reign in that, and in return I’ve given them a huge amount of material from which they can then go and choose what is most fitting for the game. What’s most fitting for that particular mission or that particular character.