Leviathan review

"Or best case scenario, it's about as useful as the Rachni Queen."
-Me, regarding Leviathan.

First off: if you're stuck on a ladder on the second mission, aim as high as you can and walk forward. You'll get down eventually.

(By the way, between this and the face import glitch, you'd really think a company that cared about its clients would work out the bugs before they release stuff, right?)

Second off: this mission was available too soon. They kept Shadow Broker back for the second half of the game in ME2 for the simple fact that this was a darker mission. You were given Overlord right off the bat because at the beginning of that game you didn't trust Cerberus, and Overlord certainly gave you no reason to do so. But Shadow Broker and Arrival both really tear away Paragon!Shep's black-and-white approach to the galaxy, and so it's appropriate to leave them for later in the game as Shepard sinks into complacency regarding Cerberus and so on.

I would not have made this mission available until at least Act Two, when the synthetic/organic conflict really starts to take over the story. This is when the geth/quarian arc comes to the fore, and it would be really appropriate to get the Leviathan mission at this point.

Or alternatively, I would have waited until the fairly anemic third act to pad it out a bit (though in fairness, 3 is the only game in the trilogy with a very clear dividing line between acts 2 and 3; you could argue that ME2's third act doesn't start until the Reaper IFF comes online, and if you're aiming to save everyone, that won't happen until you only have two missions left).

Enough pedantry. What did I think of the DLC itself?

Well, the underwater segment was about as boring as the final minute or so of actual gameplay of ME3 itself, for pretty much the same reason. All you're doing is getting to the scene of the final confrontation very slowly. And before you spout off some nonsense about building tension, this is a video game. The moment Harbinger flew off and I regained control of Shepard, I knew that I wasn't going to have to fight a traditional final boss like that. The moment I realized the Underwater ATLAS didn't have any weapons, I knew I wouldn't be fighting Leviathan, either.

[Mild spoilers in the next paragraph]

Then there were the logical flaws. Like why in the hell Leviathan would have mind-controlled that one mining facility for ten freaking years. I thought the idea was that Leviathan was trying to stay hidden. Why not mind-control the people who found the artifact to "accidentally" rig a core meltdown? That would take care of all the evidence and let you get back to sleeping.

Shepard confirmed Dr. Bryson's theories? What? The whole thing in 2 was that nobody believed Shepard. If there had been somebody out there who thought the Reapers were real, wouldn't the Illusive Man have made an attempt to rope them into Cerberus? So now you're asking me to believe that Admiral Hackett has enough pull to pour a bunch of credits into a project to research something everyone else believes is a myth, but not enough pull to do some more poking around the Prothean Archives on Mars and find the blueprints for the Crucible?  ...actually, wait, that makes perfect sense. The government is just as stupid in 2185 as it is in 2012.

Sorry, editorializing there.

[spoilers in the next paragraph]

Or, um, why anyone else would trust Leviathan when it/they go around being all "We are the apex, you will all serve us." Remember, Act One of this game was all about the salarians freaking out about another war with an aggressive species once the Reapers were dealt with. What, does that not matter with this second race of space Cthulhus? Especially given Leviathan's relationship with the Reapers? Are they controlling everyone's minds already?

All right. What did I like about this?

Surprisingly, the recycled music. I ripped ME3 itself to shreds for this, and I still think I'm right there. But every re-mix here was appropriate. A slowed down version of "Prothean Beacon" as you investigate the lab, looking for clues about a long-dead civilization. A slowed-down version of the music from Jacob's loyalty mission as you wander around an area populated by people under the influence of mind control. A remix of the Overlord theme as Ann Bryson talks about her father (basically that theme now means "family, science, and tragedy." And let's be honest, it's one of the most beautiful themes in science-fiction history, and any part of the game that uses it appropriately gets a +1 from me).

The entire first level (minus the escort-the-drone part) was great, even though I'm still not sure how the Reapers always knew where to go. The whole tone of that was perfect, and the performances of the mind-controlled characters was appropriately unnerving. If you found the datapad from 10 years ago before the big reveal, more power to you. It was like finding the Prothean video log in 2 before you did the Collector Ship mission.

I liked that EDI and James had more to do, although it's not too surprising that they were the ones chosen for the investigation scenes. Garrus and Tali might be dead, either Ash or Kaidan will be dead, and there's been just a bit of backlash against Liara hogging the spotlight in so much of 3.

I loved the certain item you can take back to the Normandy with you.

Even though I wasn't particularly impressed by the attempt to build tension during the underwater segment, it did remind me of The Abyss, which isn't a bad thing.

And finally there's the final investigation scene, where Ann Bryson decides to act as a conduit so you can trace Leviathan. While I think she comes to the decision to let herself be mind-raped again way too easily, I love how that scene plays out.

So yeah, it's worth it.