It's an early start to a big weekend of Mass Effect 3 news. Today, BioWare and Electronic Arts confirmed that they are going to address the controversy-laden ending of Mass Effect 3's single-player campaign by releasing free DLC this summer that will add additional cutscenes to flesh out the story.
The announcement comes just before a weekend where the city of Boston will host PAX East, an event featuring a BioWare panel where more DLC announcements are expected. It is here we predict that Mass Effect 3 multiplayer DLC details will be revealed, or at least confirmed.
Allow us to explain.
As has become the norm, every weekend is host to an N7 Bounty Weekend where players can complete individual and community challenges to earn in-game rewards, or an N7 Multiplayer Weekend where players earn a bonus percentage of XP for playing, usually to level up characters for the following weekend.
It began with Operation Goliath where players had to fight off reapers and was followed up by a multiplayer weekend like this one in Operation Fortress where players earned 25% extra XP. Then there was Operation Raptor this past weekend where players were again tasked with specific goals to earn extra packs of items for their online profiles.
As BioWare announced on Tuesday, Operation Raptor was a success and the community met the goal of recruiting 150,000 characters, beating it by 200,000. Along with the announcement, they teased another event, Operation Beachhead, and essentially confirmed that every weekend will be an N7 weekend and that it'll likely alternate between bonus XP weekends and bounty weekends where additional content can be unlocked.
Operation Beachhead is now official with the following mission details:
Allied forces have matched krogan mercs and batarians with asari justicars for unconventional warfare. Their mission: to create resistance on Reaper-occupied planets to tie down local Reapers.
All N7 Forces will receive a +25% Experience Bonus for participating in Operations in any Theatre of War against any foe.
Note the mention of Krograns, Batarians and Asari Justicars. Sound familiar? They were exact same characters revealed through a leaked screenshot of a DLC pack. By name-dropping them now, they are confirming their inclusion in the game and they could be detailed/fully unveiled at the PAX panel this weekend and potentially available as soon as next week. Hopefully, this pack will be free or unlockable through completing in-game tasks if they're playing more make-fans-happy cards.
The extended event will run from 6PM PST Thursday April 5, to 5AM PST Tuesday April 10 and this one is actually open to PS3 players as well!
Mass Effect 3 is now available for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.
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