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 Kanluwen wrote:
Leviathan is out right now on the Xbox 360.

It's 1.65GB, 800 Microsoft Points.

Doesn't come out till tomorrow over here
For ps3 at least

I know what I'll be doing tonight!

I'm already playing it.

So far:
I'm liking it. I got some weapon mod, the "SMG Mass Pulse Recoil System" but cannot find it to equip it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Multiplayer Balance Changes are up!

Ald, we are gonna be loving these...

Eric Fagnan wrote: Gold and Platinum Difficulties
- Enemy shield/barrier damage gates on weapon damage reduced from 90% to 75%, which means
25% of the remaining weapon damage will pass through to health.

Medigel maximum capacity increased from 5 to 6 due to the success of Operation Alloy

Falcon Assault Rifle
- Encumbrance decreased from [2.0-1.4] to [1.75-1]

Geth Pulse Rifle
- Damage increased from [24.1-30.1] to [27.4-34.2]

Hawk Missile Launcher Power
- Rank 3 damage bonus increased from 20% to 30%
- Evolve 1 shield penalty reduction increased from 15% to 25%
- Evolve 2 damage bonus increased from 30% to 40%
- Evolve 3 missile refire time reduction increased from 25% to 35%
- Evolve 5 damage of split missiles increased from 50% to 75%
- Evolve 6 damage bonus increased from 100% to 150%

Leviathan up on Origin for PC players (in the UK at least).

Okay, so.

I finished Leviathan. No spoilers, but...

The implications are staggering.

 Kanluwen wrote:
I'm already playing it.

So far:
I'm liking it. I got some weapon mod, the "SMG Mass Pulse Recoil System" but cannot find it to equip it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Multiplayer Balance Changes are up!

Ald, we are gonna be loving these...

Eric Fagnan wrote: Gold and Platinum Difficulties
- Enemy shield/barrier damage gates on weapon damage reduced from 90% to 75%, which means
25% of the remaining weapon damage will pass through to health.

Medigel maximum capacity increased from 5 to 6 due to the success of Operation Alloy

Falcon Assault Rifle
- Encumbrance decreased from [2.0-1.4] to [1.75-1]

Geth Pulse Rifle
- Damage increased from [24.1-30.1] to [27.4-34.2]

Hawk Missile Launcher Power
- Rank 3 damage bonus increased from 20% to 30%
- Evolve 1 shield penalty reduction increased from 15% to 25%
- Evolve 2 damage bonus increased from 30% to 40%
- Evolve 3 missile refire time reduction increased from 25% to 35%
- Evolve 5 damage of split missiles increased from 50% to 75%
- Evolve 6 damage bonus increased from 100% to 150%

Hmmm, missile launcher buff. That's pretty nice. Perhaps I will have to try a missile launcher build now that my Soldier is level 1 again.

Just finished Leviathan.

Was pretty interesting.

It's still not showing up on the PSN for me.

Aha! It has appeared though now I can't buy it because the govt still hasn't paid my jury travel expenses back

Woohoo! 64 hours of gaming later (not all of it spent actually playing) and I have finished my insanity run of ME2

Now to finish my normal run on ME3 and then start an insanity run for that too

Ald I think you, Mackey, and I are going to have to run some Golds this weekend.

September 4th is coming soon, and I fully expect an announcement before the end of the weekend about a new MP DLC.

Edit: Whoops, wrong thread

And yes, I think we do need to run some Gold games, but I need to rebuild my team. Currently it's in pretty sad shape after I promoted everyone for the event last weekend. My Soldier and Adept are at level 15ish, and I think my Sentinel is around level 10, but everything else is below that by quite a bit.

We can knock out some Silvers to level your goons up, I guess.

Well I've been doing that myself, and to be honest I won't have a lot of time to play this weekend because I'm working straight through, but I will be off on Monday, and I'll likely be playing most of the day until people show up for Pathfinder.

Sounds good to me. I have to take a test for my class this weekend anyways.

I'll be playing Saturday evening and Sunday evening as well. Since I don't work Monday, I can be up late on Sunday night.

I dug leviathan too but I think we knew this stuff already from the ending Extended Cut.
Anyways, I think I accidentally killed someone in it because I was impatient... D'oh!

Well, the extended cut did go over some of the stuff, but what we DIDN'T know was that the Leviathans were not originally part of the wars that were causing their thrall races to destroy themselves. They simply wished to end those wars, because without the thrall races they cannot survive in any meaningful fashion. So they created the Catylist to preserve life thinking they were so far above the thrall races that they were infallible, and could not suffer from the same problems as those lesser races. Of course the plan backfired in the biggest way possible and Harbinger was born, and the harvest began.

So we got a motive as to why they created a synthetic to solve that particular problem, and an acceptable enough answer as to why they followed the logic they did. For my money, it most certainly cleared up my biggest problem with the ending, and the rest of it can be hand-waived away with suspension of disbelief.

The biggest question is "What happens after?"

The Synthesis ending should theoretically satisfy the Leviathans because if you choose that route, the Catalyst has served its final purpose. The wars between synthetics and organics end, and everyone has a new understanding of life in its various forms, thus life is preserved and there is peace throughout the galaxy.

Control puts the Reapers under Shepards command, but the problem has not been solved and ultimately Shepard would be responsible for wiping out races that become disruptive to galactic peace, which could very well include the remaining Leviathans since they need to enthrall races in order to thrive. If they ever wanted to expand, they would begin subjugating lesser races to rebuild their empire, and the Reapers would probably return to deal with them, sparking another massive war.

In the destroy ending, the Reapers are gone and their objective was never achieved. Theoretically this is complete failure for the Leviathans. Their creation never fulfilled its purpose and the wars continue. All tech is gone, but everyone eventually rebuilds and creates new tech and new synthetics, which perpetuates the problem. Additionally, there is nobody alive to oppose the Leviathans should they desire to rebuild their empire. Assuming there are enough of them alive to repopulate, they would enthrall the current races of the galaxy to do their bidding.

It's definitely an interesting addition to the game in my opinion. I find it amusing that everyone hemmed and hawed at the ending being so vague, forcing BioWare to release the Extended Cut, and then this DLC includes all of that information and more. Had we just waited for the first DLC, most of our questions regarding the ending itself would have been answered. I think that since BioWare obviously had this DLC in mind well before the game was released, they lost sight of exactly what the on-disk ending meant and how little context it actually gave with regards to Shepard and his team, and what happens to the galaxy afterward. It would have behooved them to consider the transition a little better, and make it clearer that there was more to the ending than meets the eye, but I presume that EA threw a release date at them and they could not do everything they wanted before that time elapsed.

I wouldn't say there is nobody alive to oppose them.

A person seems to need to spend time close to an artifact or a Leviathan itself for them to be able to exert control, so once the war is done all the races would have to do is destroy the artifacts and make the Leviathan's planet a no go area.

They seem to just want to be left alone and if they try anything you just get the Turians to annihilate them from orbit.

holy wall of spoilers Aldarionn, some of us haven't played Leviathan yet...

 FM Ninja 048 wrote:
holy wall of spoilers Aldarionn, some of us haven't played Leviathan yet...

To be fair, most of what he's discussing isn't actually "Leviathan" spoilers.

It's spoilers for the main game.

Yes, but once again all that is covered in the extended cut but I guess seeing is believing.

 FM Ninja 048 wrote:
holy wall of spoilers Aldarionn, some of us haven't played Leviathan yet...

This thread is FULL of spoilers for the entire game. My recommendation is if you do not want spoilers, do not visit Mass Effect related sites until you have played the content you want, or you risk seeing spoilers. I saw Leviathan spoilers on the bloody Multiplayer BSN page of all places. I used to post spoiler tags in here. I don't any more because frankly it doesn't seem necessary with the mountain of spoiler material already being discussed openly.

For what it's worth, I apologize if I spoiled things for you.

Raaaaaaage.
Final level? Check
Just killed the destroyer? Check
Cutscene with the crucible entering the solar system, then loads of talking starts? Check
Juddery as all hell, causing me to lose any immersion in the game? Check
Game freezes up, causing PS3 to need to be restarted as I start the final run towards the beam? Check, check and check.

I hate this game sometimes.

Now I'm not certain about how the saves work on PS3, but I had that happen on my 360 and when I re-loaded the game had auto-saved at the beam. I actually had it freeze just after killing Marauder Shields, so when I loaded back in I just had to kill him again and take the beam up to the Citadel. If you froze during the run to the beam, but before you get nailed by Harbinger, it should just be a reload and run again.

 Aldarionn wrote:
Now I'm not certain about how the saves work on PS3, but I had that happen on my 360 and when I re-loaded the game had auto-saved at the beam. I actually had it freeze just after killing Marauder Shields, so when I loaded back in I just had to kill him again and take the beam up to the Citadel. If you froze during the run to the beam, but before you get nailed by Harbinger, it should just be a reload and run again.

Agreed, theres a fair few auto saves around the end there, there should be one late enough that you wont have to do the whole run again...

Oh, it saved at the top of the crater thing, I just found it really irritating that I'd been playing for about 3-4 hours (uni doesn't start for another 2.5 weeks so I have loads of free time) with no problems, then the game builds towards its difficulty and emotional climax and... It breaks, meaning I have to shut it down, run a disk check and then try again, so there was an interval of about 20 minutes between destroying the reaper and making the final run, ruining almost all of the immersion.

Also, did anyone else go for the synthesis option? It was pushed quite hard by the catalyst, but the whole "everyone is now partially synthetic, you can tell because they have glowing green lines on" was kinda wierd.

I also thought that the fact that no-one in the entire galaxy freaked out over the fact that they now had green lines on their skin that were glowing kind of odd.

Ahhh good, at least you didnt have to go back to the whole 'shooting the missiles/surviving in the most awkward street ever' bit....

Know what you mean about the loss of immersion though, i had similar things happen to me across all 3 games at similar points (including a save point inside a wall in ME1....bloody clipping)

Agreed, i found it odd how everyone was fine with it. If it had really happened people would have lost their minds!

 Revenent Reiko wrote:
Agreed, i found it odd how everyone was fine with it. If it had really happened people would have lost their minds!

Exactly, I mean, I get that they're fighting for their lives against the reapers at this point and they've probably seen some pretty wierd stuff, but that doesnt mean that they arent going to turn around and go "HOLY F*** MY ARM IS GLOWING."
And another thing, why was it that the krogan who were fully encased in their armour had glowing lines on the armour? The armour wasn't organic, nor was it a synthetic life form, so why on earth (or tuchanka in this case) would it start glowing?

That is all.

 Goliath wrote:

 Revenent Reiko wrote:
Agreed, i found it odd how everyone was fine with it. If it had really happened people would have lost their minds!

Exactly, I mean, I get that they're fighting for their lives against the reapers at this point and they've probably seen some pretty wierd stuff, but that doesnt mean that they arent going to turn around and go "HOLY F*** MY ARM IS GLOWING."
And another thing, why was it that the krogan who were fully encased in their armour had glowing lines on the armour? The armour wasn't organic, nor was it a synthetic life form, so why on earth (or tuchanka in this case) would it start glowing?

That is all.

Yeah, im with you! TBH, there would be a difference between what you would see in the war (some pretty brutal stuff i would imagine) and then suddenly being part synthetic...i can tell you straight off the bat that would feth with my head....

I dont agree with the Krogan armour, i thought it was that everything was made partly synthetic...at least thats how i remember it, i may well be wrong.....

Ald...they are giving us the most bizarre operation this weekend.

Unexpected attacks have taken out several squads and damaged vital Alliance equipment. We will deploy drones to repair damage and investigate the nature of these attacks.

Individual Goal: Complete up to and including wave 10 on any difficulty without using a consumable (medi-gel, ammo, Ops pack or Cobra missile launcher)
Allied Goal: Complete 250,000 escort missions on any difficulty.
Special Circumstance: None

Individual Goal Success: All individual players awarded a Commendation Pack
Allied Goal Success: All players awarded a Victory Pack