14 DAY TRIAL // Does anyone remember hacking in Mass Effect 2, that excessive simplification which gave the player access to a monetary reward as long as he was able to complete a rather simple yet engaging mini-game that involved matching code snippets based on color?
Clearly, the developers at BioWare no longer remember hacking or its lesser cousin, the bypass mini-game that was used to get through stubborn doors and some wall safes.
In Mass Effect 3 most doors are unlocked and some of them require Commander Shepard to simply stay in place for a while, sometimes under cover, while his omnitool breaches the lock defenses.
In some special cases a character needs to performs some unclear ritual to open a certain door and Shepard and the other member of the party need to defend their colleague from enemies for a few minutes.
Safes are apparently no longer locked and there’s nothing to prevent my character from liberating their content for the war effort.
Some see this as streamlining and welcome it, mostly because the hacking, bypass and even scanning mini-games were not wildly popular, but I see the cuts as a sign that Mass Effect 3 is a little too concerned with its story and its shooting and forgets variety is important to gameplay.
About 20 or so hours into Mass Effect 3, I realized that there were no breaks from shooting and narration, that everything I did in the game served to defeat enemies or to advance the story.
Hacking was a nice, short, well-executed diversion from saving the galaxy via words or weapons, and it gave players a little island to collect themselves, clear their heads and do something slightly different.
Now money flows easily, schematics for weapons are mostly found lying around the most unlikely locations, and mods are scattered all over the world, and I feel that Commander Shepard has lost options linked to his self-expression.