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Originally Posted by Ryuukishi Just for perspective and because it's interesting, here is a jumbo dump of unused text found in Mass Effect 2 game files. Ranges from slight tweaks to scenes and conversations that remained in the game, to entire missions that were dropped. Notably, an outline of a completely different loyalty mission for Zaeed, and a squadmate conflict between Mordin and Grunt, complete with Shepard's dialogue wheel choices. And that's only the stuff that remained in the final retail product, doubtless many other bits of unused content were pruned out earlier in development.

That's an interesting read to see what was left on the cutting room floor. Some of it doesn't make any sense at all, though that's not a surprise since it didn't make much sense.

The Mordin/Grunt conflict would have been a nice addition to the Legion/Tali and Miranda/Jack ones we had. The dialogue trees were well-done, so it sounds like it was ready to go. Not sure why it was dropped.

The alternate Zaeed loyalty mission didn't sound too bad in comparison to the one you go on in ME2. Might've been nice as an added mission for him post-loyalty.

Originally Posted by Ink.So.Well. I'm glad they grew enough balls to address this. Regardless of the outcome come March they have earned a small shred of respect back from me for responding. Appreciate the perspective btw Sal. My view on the situation however hasn't changed much given what little content is available in the demo. If the doc was limited to those two missions + mp this wouldn't have been a big deal. I pray they tweaked quite a bit since that initial draft because there's a particular moment of deja vu so to speak that will piss off a LOT of fans if the outcome is unavoidable (a great moment of drama though). Same with one of the endings if it isn't thoroughly explained and set up properly.

I think they had to nip this in the bud very quickly, since it's bad press the beta went out by accident and worse that someone pulled out a crap-ton of info about of it, vestigial or otherwise.

If the demo was as rough as Bioware claims it was, I'd think that there should have been quite a bit of changes in the storyline and dialogue options between that and the finished product. From the random skims I made in it, there's a lot in there that I could see remaining behind in finished product.

Thank God for Skyrim to distract me soon. It seems the whole plot is going to be known soon.

Just a heads up for everyone:

Apparently the leet haxors have extracted a new data dump from the beta files, and this time it is a complete or near-complete script. Everything is now on the table. Even I'm staying away from this one!

Yeah... I didn't even read the complete source of the original leak at all. I'm staying as far away from the new one as humanly possible.

Originally Posted by Ryuukishi Just a heads up for everyone: Apparently the leet haxors have extracted a new data dump from the beta files, and this time it is a complete or near-complete script. Everything is now on the table. Even I'm staying away from this one!

Originally Posted by Ink.So.Well. Yeah... I didn't even read the complete source of the original leak at all. I'm staying as far away from the new one as humanly possible.

Someone please read it and tell me if Conrad survives!

Ha! Conrad. You know, I don't think I ever ran into him in ME2. Man, it's been a while. Was he even in the sequel? I need to fire that one up again for my canon-run in prep for ME3.

Originally Posted by chubbyninja1319 Ha! Conrad. You know, I don't think I ever ran into him in ME2. Man, it's been a while. Was he even in the sequel? I need to fire that one up again for my canon-run in prep for ME3.

He was in it, but there was a bug (actually a bug in the ME1 save output file, so nothing an ME2 patch could fix) where he always acts as if Shepard was mean to him in ME1.

BioWare may tweak the Mass Effect 3 story based on feedback to leaked script

Dope. I'm not expecting any serious tweaks at this stage of the development, but any is better than none at all. Especially for those who are playing this for the lore and not much else.

Yup. My guess is that the doctors are slightly overselling how much that document is "in flux"-- I think this is more to appease people who hated what they read and think it needs to completely change. Of course some major plot elements are likely to change, and small points will be probably be tweaked right up until release. But my (uninformed, still trying to stay away from the specifics ) opinion is that that document was probably 80% finalized.

The idea of fan feedback-driven changes is a little scary though. I'm picturing a 5-hour character creation sequence where you make minute adjustments to 100 pages of stats and levels, followed by an epic, 20-hour Tali romance scene. And the game's title is changed to Mass Effect 3: Baldur's Gate III.

I'm sure they can continue tweaking the code up to within a couple weeks of release, so there's still some time to go before we see it locked into golden state and sent to manufacturing.

I'm curious what the fan reactions have been that have pushed them towards this "change in flux" to the script/plot.

I didin't read any of it. Was it really that bad? Like worse than "we made a human reaper lol"?

Originally Posted by Anexanhume I didin't read any of it. Was it really that bad? Like worse than "we made a human reaper lol"?

If left untouched it would have made Dragon Age II's catastrophe of a main plot appear written by Shakespeare himself.

Originally Posted by Ink.So.Well. If left untouched it would have made Dragon Age II's catastrophe of a main plot appear written by Shakespeare himself.

For the life of me, I can't understand what peoples problem is with Dragon Age 2. I freaking love that game. If you follow the overall DA mythos, the plot of DA2 makes sense and is relevant to the big picture.

My problem with the plot has nothing to do with plausibility and everything to do with recognizing terrible writing and pacing when I see it. Dragon Age II sadly had plenty of both. The main plot and its supposed 'twists' simply happened to showcase the worst of it. The fact the developers were so keen to forcing how awesome they thought it was down your throat by sabotaging your party builds along the way didn't help either. Hell it was one of the main reasons I haven't gone back to the game yet and I actually enjoyed most of the changes. The argumentative, arrogant, sometimes downright condescending reaction of the dev team to fan feedback afterward was the final nail in the coffin for me.

The early ME3 leak script does bare some similarities but on a far worse scale (for me and many others) for different reasons. Most of which involved cheapening/negating key choices made in earlier games, forced squadmates taking up permanent slots, a bulk of the cast including certain LIs downgraded to minor cameos, Deus Ex Machina devices and scripted deaths you seemingly couldn't do a damn thing about. There was a lot to bitch about regardless of how old you thought the information was on that file.

Originally Posted by Ink.So.Well. My problem with the plot has nothing to do with plausibility and everything to do with recognizing terrible writing and pacing when I see it. Dragon Age II sadly had plenty of both. The main plot and its supposed 'twists' simply happened to showcase the worst of it. The fact the developers were so keen to forcing how awesome they thought it was down your throat by sabotaging your party builds along the way didn't help either. Hell it was one of the main reasons I haven't gone back to the game yet and I actually enjoyed most of the changes. The argumentative, arrogant, sometimes downright condescending reaction of the dev team to fan feedback afterward was the final nail in the coffin for me. The early ME3 leak script does bare some similarities but on a far worse scale (for me and many others) for different reasons. Most of which involved cheapening/negating key choices made in earlier games, forced squadmates taking up permanent slots, a bulk of the cast including certain LIs downgraded to minor cameos, Deus Ex Machina devices and scripted deaths you seemingly couldn't do a damn thing about. There was a lot to bitch about regardless of how old you thought the information was on that file.

I'm curious, since you're likely the only other person here that's even looked at the leaked stuff...is there a safe place online to find a synopsis of what's currently going on in it and/or discussion about it? I've seen at least two leaked files so far, and about all I've been able to get from them is the finale...but that's not much to go off of.

I unfortunately can't answer that as I opted out of info fishing soon after the initial leak. I'm positive Ryu is much more current than I am at the moment. You could chance browsing the last 10 - 20 pages of the Story Leak discussion thread on BSN if you're a gambling man. A 60 - 80% of time someone is responding to a mass quoting of summarized information. The problem is you'd most likely have to dodge meticulously detailed debates on every version of the script to find it otherwise. Thankfully some of them started camouflaging their spoilers before I stopped lurking a week ago. There's a no spoiler tag on it now so the choice is yours. Either way you should be able to find enough info to form a general opinion.

Originally Posted by Salamando3000 I'm curious, since you're likely the only other person here that's even looked at the leaked stuff...is there a safe place online to find a synopsis of what's currently going on in it and/or discussion about it? I've seen at least two leaked files so far, and about all I've been able to get from them is the finale...but that's not much to go off of.

Try the discussion tab of the spoiler social group on BioWare's forum. Just browsing the thread titles isn't too spoilery, so you can pick and choose what you want to read about and hopefully not get too spoiled on whatever you don't want to know.

Originally Posted by Ryuukishi Try the discussion tab of the spoiler social group on BioWare's forum. Just browsing the thread titles isn't too spoilery, so you can pick and choose what you want to read about and hopefully not get too spoiled on whatever you don't want to know.

Yeah, I stumbled across that earlier. Most of what I'm reading there syncs up with what I've read on my own inside the leaked files I've gotten my hands on. There's definitely a few decisions that went into the game that left me with a raised eyebrow asking myself "...really?". That's about all I can say about that without getting spoiler-y.