Mass Effect 3: Leviathan

In my experience, most of those who played and finished Mass Effect 3 did not make the effort to play the recent free Extended Cut story content nor the game’s highly addictive and constantly expanding multiplayer.

As such, I can’t see many folks bothering with Leviathan, the game’s first paid story DLC since launch day’s From Ashes (which was blatantly ripped out of the game at the last minute so gamers would have to pay extra to experience it). Honestly, they aren’t missing much.

This 2-3 hour chapter promises to reveal more about the origin of the Reapers and the titular Leviathan. I suppose it does deliver on this but in a flat manner and it ultimately doesn’t impact on the overall Mass Effect 3 story.

It does at least have a higher production value compared to most of Mass Effect 2’s DLC offerings. There are couple of unique and interesting set pieces including an impressive-looking though very brief walk on the bottom of a seabed. There’s also a detailed laboratory area you’ll be visiting on the Citadel at several points. However, this is probably the dullest part of Leviathan as it tries to crowbar in adventure game detective elements that boil down to running up and hitting ‘A’ on everything you see.

Bioware at least managed to bring back the principal cast to reprise their roles as your Normandy squad mates. Too many times in Mass Effect 2 were their characters omitted from cutscenes because they weren’t hired back to record extra dialogue. The script here is noticeably less believable and well written than the main game, however.

I think Mass Effect 2’s most successful DLCs were those that focused on its core characters. Lair of the Shadow Broker was an outstanding multi-part story with a new game play segment and Kasumi’s Stolen Memory took the form of a heist mission while introducing an interesting team mate. Though Tricia Helfer’s EDI plays a big role here, acting as your Commander Data through the sleuthing segments, the focus is not on her nor any returning favourites.

Perhaps the uninspired final product is a symptom of the fact that Shepard’s fate is already set in stone and there’s very little wiggle room afforded to Bioware in terms of pre-ending story content. That could be proved wrong if the rumoured ‘take back Omega’ DLC turns out to be true.

Whatever the case there, Leviathan is one chapter you can safely skip. If you’re still interested in the lore of Mass Effect take 30 seconds to read the ME wikia page on it but save your 800 Microsoft Points / £6.85 for something more worthwhile.