Mass Effect 3 Demo (2012) (PC) (Bioware)
4If the original Mass Effect attempted to be a sprawling sci-fi epic and the second game was a neo-Western character-oriented action drama, the ME3 demo makes the upcoming third installment look like some kind of interactive Michael Bay movie - and I mean that in both good and bad ways. The most recent version of Bioware's notoriously fluid conception of what a sci-fi action RPG should feel like is clear enough from the demo's storytelling alone, but comes across equally well in the graphics and overall presentation. Whereas the first game distinguished itself by the sheer scale of its somewhat desolate environments and the sequel focused on delivering a slick noir-ish aesthetic, ME3's impressive opening scene has a much less subtle, more muscular emphasis on squeezing in as many polygons as possible on the screen at any given time. In scenes which remind me more of the Covenant siege on New Mombasa in Halo 2's similarily grand introduction than any previous Mass Effect moment, the ME3 demo starts out in a sprawling detailed cityscape with lots of moving parts (many of which are massive and alien in nature) and an equally large and unnaturally unruly body of water cramming an additional layer on top of an already busy and comparatively hardware-demanding background.
As for the writing and actual gameplay, it takes approximately three seconds for it all to reach Wagnerian levels of bombast where it stays for the entire duration of the introductory mission. Exactly what and how much of the full game content of these scenes have been cut down for purposes of the demo download is of course unclear, but in any case it provides a clear enough contrast to Eden Prime's oppressive sense of foreboding and even makes the dramatic space crash/death sequences of ME2 feel subtle and atmospheric by comparison. Within minutes of the demo's non-interactive beginning, ME3Shep starts spewing forth heroically monosyllabic rhetoric in what amounts to a Cliffnotes version of his/her climactic ME2 pep talk; just in time before the Reapers throw everything including the (no doubt exploding) kitchen sink at the Homeland. After that, it's Gears of War-ish traversal through dramatic scenery punctuated by action-filled choke points all the way to the dramatically effective Normandic extraction which ends the first part of the singleplayer demo. There's not a lot deep RPG stuff to be found here, for sure, but it sure is extremely polished and well-made for what it is...