Time for another Mass Effect Rumor Roundup!
Yeehaw! It’s been quite a week for Mass Effect rumors on the good old interwebs, and the teaser images released were just the start. It’s looking more and more likely that there are multiple DLCs incoming for the game, and we’ve got all the info to get you caught up to speed.
It all started on Monday when Executive Producer Casey Hudson posted a teaser image on his twitter feed, which seemed to strongly support the long running rumors of a recreational DLC expansion, based on the Citadel. Then a second image appeared, posted onto twitter by producer Mike Gamble. This image, featuring a Krogan warrior wielding an unfamiliar club-like weapon, seemed to come from the game’s multiplayer mode. But given the size restrictions on downloadable content, it was unlikely that an expansion from Bioware would feature both single and multiplayer components. So could we be looking at two DLC packs? If the rumors are true, then we almost certainly are.
Late Wednesday night, a patch for Mass Effect 3 was rolled out that, at first, seemed innocuous enough. Designed to fix an infamous multiplayer exploit in which players could spam infinite amounts of missiles, the patch was implemented with relatively little fanfare. But this is the internet, after all. And Bioware has a history of leaving (accidentally or not) juicy bits of information in the strangest of places. So the folks over at Clevernoob, who have made name for themselves by discovering secrets buried inside previous Bioware DLC packs, worked their magic on this latest patch. Clevernoob member TSA_383 not only found new weapons and mods heading to multiplayer, he also uncovered evidence that a rumored co-op multiplayer mode was a reality.
According to the sleuths over at Eurogamer, this co-operative mode is rumored to be a part of a multiplayer expansion called “Reckoning.” First unearthed on Reddit a week ago, Reckoning is described as an expansion that “brings six new never before seen co-op story missions to the game and new co-op gameplay modes. It provides four new maps to conquer and hazard variations of the Earth maps. It also enables reinforcement packs that offer new kits for the salarians, krogans, humans and volus. In-game reinforcement packs now include three new weapons (Chakram Launcher, Blood Pack Punisher and Adas Anti-Synthetic Rifle).” While confirming one rumor with another rumor is dubious at best, the information on Reddit does tie in with the additional weaponry TSA_383 found in the patch.
But wait, there’s more. This co-op multiplayer mode will, again according to TSA_383, pull information from your Mass Effect 3 singleplayer save files, including your paragon, renegade, and reputation points. Why it would do this is unknown, but it’s plausible to think that co-op missions might be modified to fall in line with the decisions you’ve made in the single player campaign.
It should be noted that the only aspects of this article that are real are the two screenshots, and the patch. Everything else is conjecture based on analysis based rumors based on dice rolls. Bioware’s own Chris Priestly has even denied that Reckoning exists. In other words, take everything I’ve written here with a grain of salt. Or many grains of salt. But it’s undeniable that the majority of the rumors that have swirled around Mass Effect over the last few years have turned out to be at least partially true. So I’d say the odds of us getting two DLCs in the near future, one for campaign, and one for multiplayer, are pretty darned good.