So, Pax East has come and gone yet again. I’ve come a ways since last year’s Pax East, which was my first time I attended a video game convention. I’m blessed with being able to write about games, although it’s not a paid position it helps me stay focused and work on improving myself. This year I was able to schedule a few appointments to check some of the  higher profile games as well as get some hands on time with around some of the smaller titles sandwiched in the convention center. Along with checking out  the games, I had the pleasure of meeting up with friends at the yearly tweet meet up. As you might have guessed, a few of us got into a rousing debate about the Mass Effect 3 endings and of course, MMO talk in general. Even with all that, Pax East almost never happened for me this year.

When I got in Thursday, I was shocked to have found out that something was amidst with my credit card that I was using to pay for the hotel. One thing lead to another and the money that I needed to check-in with was locked away until Saturday morning. I was very close to losing out on my reservation and would have been left waiting or at least scramble around looking for a place to stay. The ultimatum would be to turn tail and head back home because of my stupid mistake.

Fortunately, Steven, one of Jason’s buddies that I was rooming with could cover the costs when he arrived late in the night until I had access to my digital stash of greenbacks. After that, everything went smoothly but needless to say, I wish I had a better Thursday night.

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In a nice closed off area, I had the chance to sit down and get some one on one time with Mass Effect 3.

Mass Effect 3 brings some new features to the table. They improved A.I tactics, introduced new enemy types, new melee combat mechanics, and re-tooled classes.

I started off having to choose my class, the Soldier, the Engineer, or the Sentinel. I choose the Engineer and it came with quite a few tricks to play with – some old, some new. The Engineer has always been known as a distraction class with the use of the combat drone that stunned enemies and made them susceptible to gun fire and the various tech and biotic powers. Now I have a turret that does the same thing in conjunction with the combat drone leaving enemies open and interrupting their tactics.

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Anticipating the exclusive announcement from Bioware about Mass Effect 3 I tuned in to the Bioware livestream to see Casey Hudson and Jennifer Hale address the crowd. He start taking about how they received a lot feedback about showcasing more of the female version of Commander Shepard in some of the promotion materials. “We’re going to some really cool things with female Commander Shepard with the run up to Mass Effect 3,” says Hudson. So now I’m thinking they are finally going to give more details about what they are going to do with her since we already know she’s getting a trailer of her own as well sharing Box time with male Shepard on the Collector’s Edition.

To my surprise however is that Bioware is asking the playerbase to help decide what the iconic female Shepard should look like. They have a gallery on their Facebook page where players can view six different concepts and ‘like’ the one they think should be the iconic Shepard. I personally choose #3 because in my eyes that look suites Jennifer Hale’s voice the most. I should also mention that it also looks a lot like Cindy, my good follow video blogging friend. No idea what they are going to do after perhaps some further tweaking of the concept.

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