Mass Effect series Review + Retrospective #3.2: From Ashes
From Ashes is the first story expansion for ME3 and was originally released as part of the game’s special edition back at the initial release. It includes a single mission and a new squadmate, Javik, the last surviving Prothean.
Right off the bat, I think including a living Prothean is in itself kind of contrived and stupid from a story perspective. Adding to the stupidity, outside of Liara, there’s basically no characters that think this is a big deal? People just go, “huh that’s interesting” and move on.
However, I think Javik is a fantastic character. He is a powerful squadmate with great utility and strength in combat, and is pretty well-written. He has a lot more dialogue than ME2’s DLC companions, and he actually feels like a real character and a part of your team, rather than an underwritten tag-along. Javik also drops one of the rawest lines in the franchise with “Stand amongst the ashes of a trillion dead souls, and ask the ghosts if honor matters. The silence is your answer.”
The mission on Eden Prime is whatever, it’s cool to visit the first place we saw in the trilogy again, but it’s pretty short and nothing particularly interesting happens. The real focus of this DLC is Javik as a party member and character.
I think that this probably should have been part of the vanilla game. Not only does he actually feel like a real part of the cast and story, without the DLC, Liara is potentially the only biotic on your squad if you’re rolling with Ashley over Kaidan. I feel like a Prothean is important enough to be part of the default game.
This should’ve been part of the default experience, but nowadays most people are gonna be playing with the Legendary Edition, so it doesn’t really matter in 2022.
From Ashes is the first story expansion for ME3 and was originally released as part of the game’s special edition back at the initial release. It includes a single mission and a new squadmate, Javik, the last surviving Prothean.
Right off the bat, I think including a living Prothean is in itself kind of contrived and stupid from a story perspective. Adding to the stupidity, outside of Liara, there’s basically no characters that think this is a big deal? People just go, “huh that’s interesting” and move on.
However, I think Javik is a fantastic character. He is a powerful squadmate with great utility and strength in combat, and is pretty well-written. He has a lot more dialogue than ME2’s DLC companions, and he actually feels like a real character and a part of your team, rather than an underwritten tag-along. Javik also drops one of the rawest lines in the franchise with “Stand amongst the ashes of a trillion dead souls, and ask the ghosts if honor matters. The silence is your answer.”
The mission on Eden Prime is whatever, it’s cool to visit the first place we saw in the trilogy again, but it’s pretty short and nothing particularly interesting happens. The real focus of this DLC is Javik as a party member and character.
I think that this probably should have been part of the vanilla game. Not only does he actually feel like a real part of the cast and story, without the DLC, Liara is potentially the only biotic on your squad if you’re rolling with Ashley over Kaidan. I feel like a Prothean is important enough to be part of the default game.
This should’ve been part of the default experience, but nowadays most people are gonna be playing with the Legendary Edition, so it doesn’t really matter in 2022.