I'll know for sure this weekend, but I have a feeling this game will be unfinished, buggy, and suffer from a lack of content, eventually switching to a free-to-play model, but once a year or so goes by it will be worth taking another look at. That seems to be Funcom's style.
It's a novel application of incorporating real toys into a meaningful experience within a game, but I've got to agree with Brendan on this. In the end it will just make it ridiculously expensive to be able to make full use of the product. It's like selling a 10-speed bike, then charging the rider if they want to be able to use the other 9 speeds. I detest DLC's in general though. I long for the days when games actually had , rather than short overpriced DLC. It used to be $20-30 for an expansion that gives 10-20+ hours of content. Now it's $10 for 2 hours of content if you're lucky. Only in rare cases are they worth it, like with GTA4.
I wonder how profitable selling items will be. 15% isn't a huge cut, so there's bound to be some people who take this to the extreme and turn it into their job. "What do you do?" "I'm a dental assistant. You?" "I play Diablo 3."
On the subject of monogendered species, there was a lizard species discovered in 2010 in Vietnam that is all female (Leiolepis ngovantrii). It reproduces by self-cloning itself. They may not be hot blue squidheads, but it shows such a species could be possible - at least so far as it's reproduction method is concerned.
This is a great decision by BioWare, no matter how much Gamespot wants to pretend the current ending was acceptable. It isn't sacrificing BioWare their integrity. They designed these games from the ground up to . They are trying to sell a product. They aren't a pack of starving artists who try to sell paintings on the street corner while bemoaning that no one "gets" them. Their desire is to create a story and universe that resonates with their fans - something they managed to do up until the ending. So they're fixing that. What Gamespot doesn't seem to get is that many gamers don't really have an issue with how the game ends - rather they take issue with how the game . Aside from Shepard's fate, there is no closure whatsoever. You get no indication of what happened to your crew, to the fleets stranded, to the systems that (should be) wiped out according to lore, etc. Basically all the choices you made and carried over for 5 years are completely thrown out of the window, and you don't get to see the consequences of those decisions. You can argue about it being art all you want, but it isn't art like a painting you stare at or a movie that you watch. It is meant to be interactive. The ending details can and will be added to, so you may as well get onboard. Or just keep on insulting your readers, the majority of whom seem to be for a new ending. I'm sure that will go over well.
@The_GooBear No, I am not high. What I am is someone who played Mass Effect 2's DLC "The Arrival" where I blew up a mass relay and saw the result on its star system. I'm also someone who paid attention to the content about the Geth and EDI, both of which were at odds with the "star child's" statements about synthetics due to the previous choices I'd made.
@Sakuban How was the ending satisfying? Your crew's fate is largely left unanswered, final events break already established lore, characters are inexplicably transported, and the consequences of your choice are never mentioned (even though choice has been the largest theme of Mass Effect series). The only way anyone could see this ending as satisfying is if they only care about the fate of Shepard.
BioWare doesn't need to change the ending. They just need to provide better "after" sequences to show what your choice resulted in, and what happened to your teammates. It is simply lazy to design an ending that has huge conflicts with the lore, then to say "We want gamers to talk about what happened." No, it isn't up to us to create the ending, that's the job BioWare didn't do. They can leave the future open-ended, but the consequences of your choice. That was the entire point of keeping your save file for the past 5 years, to see where your choices led to.
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