Mass Effect 3 Party Members: A Step Backwards?

[Woodsey]

However, my fears may be unfounded, since while writing this I forgot about the suicide mission. What if Garrus or Tali were killed? Who would replace them to fill up the six party slots?

Exactly. Both of them died in my ending, and that's my problem with ME2; I had no say over who died and who lived. Which inevitably resulted in my favorite characters all dying. "Like who you ask?". Well;
Legion
Garrus
Tali
and Thane
What's worse is that no one bats an eyelid when it happens. I think Garrus deserves better than his last words being screams as he's dragged away by giant mechanical flies. So what, because of that I now get two less characters?

Its pretty clearly stated in the game that people will die if you don't prepare, and its not exactly easy to get them killed through your choices in the final mission, given how sign-posted everything is.

OT: Are we sure its 6? And do we not get to choose anyone? I wish they'd let me kill Tali, she is mighty boring.

I also preferred the crew in the second game (although I did feel there was perhaps two members too many).

 

[Doclector]

Woah woah woah. No normandy? NO DAMN NORMANDY!? It's like firefly without serenity (The ship, not the film), Doctor who without the tardis, dukes of hazzard without the general lee, dammit, vehicles like the normandy become characters of their own! You just can't cut the normandy. You just can't.

Does this mean no Joker!? NO! NONONONONO! Bad bioware, bad! You're crushing my dreams!

Honestly, I was only a little disapointed with a lower amount of characters. But the normandy!? Gorramit, you shouldn't be taking the sky from me! I'm really not sure if I can be excited for it anymore. Call it childish, but exploring the stars was one of my favourite things about mass effect 2. That sense of being captain of your own ship, the connection to it you formed, it was awesome.

 

[RagTagBand]

Though I imagine a lot of players are happy to get "The old ME1 crew together" I personally feel screwed over because I couldn't give a shit about nearly ANY of the returning crew; Garrus is the only person from 1 that I played consistently with in 2 and wanted back in 3.

- Never cared about or ever really used tali
- Can barely remember Liara from the first, don't give a crap about her now.
- Never, not once, used Kaiden or Ashley - Boring and uninteresting the both of them. Flipped a coin to see which one died.

From ME1 I wanted to see Garrus and Wrex back, from ME2 I wanted Mordin and Jack. Or to put it tactically

- My ultra powerful Biotic
- My Tech
- My Up close and person brute
- My sniper.

THAT would have been perfect for me.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

Woah woah woah. No normandy? NO DAMN NORMANDY!? It's like firefly without serenity (The ship, not the film), Doctor who without the tardis, dukes of hazzard without the general lee, dammit, vehicles like the normandy become characters of their own! You just can't cut the normandy. You just can't.

Does this mean no Joker!? NO! NONONONONO! Bad bioware, bad! You're crushing my dreams!

Honestly, I was only a little disapointed with a lower amount of characters. But the normandy!? Gorramit, you shouldn't be taking the sky from me! I'm really not sure if I can be excited for it anymore. Call it childish, but exploring the stars was one of my favourite things about mass effect 2. That sense of being captain of your own ship, the connection to it you formed, it was awesome.

Sorry, I said that a little vaguely. The Normandy is still in the game, don't worry. But a lot of the characters from Mass Effect 2 aren't going to be hanging around on it.

 

[CrazyMedic]

I think there should have been a mix and match thing like give me 3 slots to take legion or thane over a me1 character

 

[Casual Shinji]

Good.

I'm glad we're not getting flooded with team members in ME3. It was one of my main gripes in the second game. Seriously, what did Samara, Jack, and Thane add to the ultimate conclusion of the story?

 

[TheTim]

Ashley and Miranda make me one happy player.

But it would be nice if they kept EVERYONE in there.

 

[Olorune]

Small crew in ME3? Sorry but, that's bullshit. If anything, every character should be back. The universe isn't exactly saved yet, so why would I let any of my crew go. That's actually making me not want to play the game. My second favorite character was Legion. I was going to get it first day, but it seems like it might be just like a Reach; an anti-climactic, disappointing final game.

 

[Richardplex]

While I did much prefer how much more developed ME1 characters were, and thought there would be too many in ME3, especially with all the dialogue options... 6? That seem's a little low, especially with the new guy inevitably serving tea on the Normandy for the entire game. I would of thought 8 would of been better, but... /continue to put faith in Bioware.

 

[llew]

Woah woah woah. No normandy? NO DAMN NORMANDY!? It's like firefly without serenity (The ship, not the film), Doctor who without the tardis, dukes of hazzard without the general lee, dammit, vehicles like the normandy become characters of their own! You just can't cut the normandy. You just can't.

Does this mean no Joker!? NO! NONONONONO! Bad bioware, bad! You're crushing my dreams!

Honestly, I was only a little disapointed with a lower amount of characters. But the normandy!? Gorramit, you shouldn't be taking the sky from me! I'm really not sure if I can be excited for it anymore. Call it childish, but exploring the stars was one of my favourite things about mass effect 2. That sense of being captain of your own ship, the connection to it you formed, it was awesome.

Sorry, I said that a little vaguely. The Normandy is still in the game, don't worry. But a lot of the characters from Mass Effect 2 aren't going to be hanging around on it.

oh good, i nearly had a panic attack reading the quote! but less characters is taking the piss abit, have them all on the ship and get them to work in pairs, so have say, garrus and jack working on the left d-pad button and miranda and thane working on the right d-pad button, so the shit-ton of characters won't affect commands and choice too badly

 

[Gill Kaiser]

However, my fears may be unfounded, since while writing this I forgot about the suicide mission. What if Garrus or Tali were killed? Who would replace them to fill up the six party slots?

Exactly. Both of them died in my ending, and that's my problem with ME2; I had no say over who died and who lived. Which inevitably resulted in my favorite characters all dying. "Like who you ask?". Well;
Legion
Garrus
Tali
and Thane
What's worse is that no one bats an eyelid when it happens. I think Garrus deserves better than his last words being screams as he's dragged away by giant mechanical flies. So what, because of that I now get two less characters?

You did have a say over who died and who lived, it was based on your decisions. I don't understand how so many people seem to have had so many of their team die. Did you just neglect to do their loyalty missions or something?

 

[huser]

Well Legion appeared to be intended to have a larger role in ME2, just the Xbox required multidisc division of the game.

Which leaves me a little worried to how ME3 will be divided.

 

[evilneko]

Meh. I never liked most of the ME2 characters anyway. The only good ones were Mordin and Legion. I'd rather have my Liara-Tali-Femshep team back.

 

[Legion IV]

Is this a joke? Heres a better question, was there any point to Mass effect 2 at all. I never thought I'd be the one saying Mass effect 3 looks bad, i was looking forward to it, but this makes NO SENSE.

Just add them all, thats honestly what i thought they'd do, it doesn't matter if there abilities overlap, allow people to hang with there favorite characters. Every new announcement on this game makes it worse and worse.

Whats this! a new character!? Of wait just another bland same old human.

 

[s0denone]

It kind of makes the second game a waste.

I remember all the excuses about how part two was supposed to be boring so it could characterise all the players. But most of the ones we characterised won't return as major players. In the PC/NPC sense.

Haha.

I think that is how anyone halfway intelligent thought to themselves when playing through ME2.

"Ok, this game seems more polished, preentation is better, interrupts are awesome, but where is the story. Oh, there are 4 story missions, no real sidequests aside from some bartender poisoning humans and some random NPCs missing some item. Anamolies would be awesome sidequests, if only you didn't have to fly around the whole universe to find them, restricing them to the more hardcore fans, meaning they will not carry over into ME3. Oh, and these companions... Their personalities and missions make up around 70 percent of the game. Knowing that, however, obviously they will not carry over into the squad in ME3, as players could be left with a shite squad if they had all their allies killed.

In essence, it feels like this game is made up entirely of sidequests, aside from 4 story missions. And moral choice? Sure you can solve a bunch of crap loyalty missions diffently, but even the krogan cure will "save us a couple of years research", it is not a done deal. Hell, only loyalty missions I expect to have meaningfull effects on ME3 is Talis and Legions.

Up until the very end, and the very final choice (which is completely stupid) everything apart from aforementioned 2 choices, seem hollow and meaningless."

I may be projecting unto others my own perception here, but come on... The story of ME2 was absolute garbage. It was like 10 animé filler episodes put together, rounded off with one massive fight, before the actual story started from where it left off.

 

[huser]

Admittedly, in a narrative that appears to have such an obvious time constraint in regards to missing colonies and whatnot, loyalty missions could certainly be viewed as a weird RPG luxury.

 

[Something Amyss]

We don't know how the non-squadmates will factor into the game. Remember, Liara wasn't really a squadmate in the true sense of the word yet her Lair of the Shadow Broker is one of the best DLC's ever to exist. If every single character has a mission on par with that then I don't think there's anything to worry about at all.

So if everything is on par with a piece of DLC that was universally acclaimed, we'll be okay. That's setting the bar rather high and placing a lot on faith.

Especially when we spent the majority of the game getting to know characters who will have, by that logic, a single mission in a full game.

I may be projecting unto others my own perception here, but come on... The story of ME2 was absolute garbage. It was like 10 animé filler episodes put together, rounded off with one massive fight, before the actual story started from where it left off.

Can't speak for everyone, but it did feel like a lot of filler and very little content. I know people are still hoping that ME3 will be awesome, but it shook my faith quite a bit.

 

[maddawg IAJI]

At least we get Garrus

Unless he died. Then you don't get him. Same goes for Tali.

That said, Bioware probably has some new guys waiting in the wings for that...or they'll just pull a dragon age two on us and bring them back regardless of what happened.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

There are still about 6 months or so before release? We'll get more information of new party members and how exactly old ones will come back in the next few weeks/ months.

With that aside though, my main Shepards managed to keep everyone alive during the suicide mission. I think what they may do with ME3 may be similar to what they did with Liara in ME2: introduce someone like Grunt or someone in their own DLC at some point after release (or during kinda like they did with that one guy from ME2 I never got to use because I'm not giving Bioware $20 for 1 character and Cerberus Net).

My party will always consist of Shepard, Liara and, one other alien. Shepard is already one human too many for me.

 

[ManimalR]

I have a hunch that Grunt will be a permanent squad member, I mean ME and ME2 had a Krogan, why stop now and considering its definitely not Wrex...