A Quick Look at Mass Effect 3 – Leviathan

BioWare’s latest Mass Effect 3 DLC, Leviathan, plunges Commander Sheppard into a new story of intrigue and perilous danger. The first flushed-out DLC since the augmented ending, will this DLC deliver a story to bring further closer to the ending or will it tear apart the fragile balance between BioWare and the Mass Effect community?

The Commander’s final mission is not yet complete there is still one mystery to solve, the legend of the Leviathan. The legend says that this Leviathan had destroyed a Reaper, Dr Garret Bryson who is desperate for more information turned to Admiral Hackett to receive additional help to investigate his findings. Following a communiqué from Admiral Hackett you are given the order to follow up on the discoveries made by Dr. Bryson and his team in an effort to solve the puzzle of who or what Leviathan is.

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The beginning of the DLC has you putting your investigative powers to work in a new location on the Citadel; it isn’t too hard to find what you need since it’s all in this new area. A good chunk of the story will have you undertaking several gofer missions, where you go for this and for that, to try and track down the other members of Dr Bryson’s team in the galaxy in an effort to help you determine the location of Leviathan itself. There is still plenty of action to be had in this DLC; the familiar cover areas will crop up rather abruptly signaling that there is an imminent battle to be had.

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The new content is not just limited to the story and locations – there are new mods for your weapons, new weapons and resources on planets that both add to your War Assets for the final fight and fill your coffers. The overall length of the DLC is only about 6 hours long if you want to hunt all of these new items down. This might be low considering the $10 price tag, but the story is what brings out the true value of the DLC.

The story does have its low points, especially when experienced players will see some obvious plot points as to what is causing some of the problems for Commander Sheppard and his team. The obviousness aside, the entire story is told fairly well and does not interfere with the ending; it does however add some insight into as to why the ending had reached the final conclusion that it did.

The new information in this DLC would have probably helped me and others understand why the ending happened the way that it did – I for one wasn’t happy with it – but if this information had been there at initial release I might have been less angry with it. The biggest complaint I have for the DLC is that it ends rather abruptly and to me it felt like BioWare didn’t know what to do at the very end, other than to tell a story with no input from the player, and for a game that is all about player choice, this was a very poor decision.

In the end, the Leviathan DLC adds new locations, new toys and new information to the final moments of Mass Effect 3 but it does not change it any way. The entire package is well worth the $10 and should be on your buy list if you are Mass Effect fan or if you wanted to understand more of the ending.