As much crap as BioWare has taken over Mass Effect 3 (and Dragon Age 2 and Star Wars: The Old Republic), we sure as hell pay attention to every little thing they do. Yesterday, producer Mike Gamble and director/producer Casey Hudson tweeted a couple of promotional images from the upcoming Mass Effect 3 DLCs.

Spoiler Alert: Consider this fair warning that spoilers and speculation about the upcoming ME3 “Citadel” DLC is ahead.

The Hudson image is the easiest of the two to decipher so let’s start there. The image that Hudson tweeted appears to be a promotional image for the upcoming Citadel DLC (which I broke down in December) given the density of people and traffic in the picture. Obviously, the big sign indicates that this is a casino which is the first time we’ll have visited a proper casino in the series. Sure, there was the nightclub/gambling den Flux in ME1 in which you could play quasar but that wasn’t a full-on casino.

More interestingly are the two guys near the middle of the picture. See the krogan and human standing near the tree below the casino sign? That krogan sure looks like Wrex and the human bares a passing resemblance to a default male Commander Shepard.

Anytime that we get to visit with old friends is a good thing. My question is what happens if you don’t have Wrex around at the point in time you play this DLC. You can kill him on Virmire in ME1. In ME3, you can off him if you lie to him about curing the genophage. In the first instance, Wreav is around but if Wrex is around in ME3, I’m fairly certain Wreav dies on Tuchanka during the Shroud facility mission. If both are dead, who will take Wrex’s place in this mission?

Including Wrex does tie back to Sam Hulick’s suggestion that there may be tears as a result of the DLC. A lot of rooms got a little dry when Mordin and Legion were killed off in ME3. I wondered how they were going to do it again with the Citadel DLC but it looks like they’ll try it with an old squadmate, even if you previously thought that their story/reunion was wrapped up.

The Gamble picture has prompted quite a bit more in terms of varied assessments. Given that it was released on the same day as Hudson’s promo photo tweet, the early speculation was that this was also a part of the upcoming Citadel DLC.

However, closer inspection changed that opinion. The background architecture looked asari in origin suggesting that this was either on Illium or Thessia. The fact that it’s a krogan would make the possibility that this is a preview of the upcoming Reckoning multiplayer DLC more likely as there are no proper Krogan enemies in the single-player campaign.

A leak posted on Reddit suggested that a new krogan kit would be added in the Reckoning DLC. The armor is reminiscent of the cloned krogan armor from the Grunt recruitment mission of ME2 so the reuse of older assets would fit with the multiplayer component (which reused/shared a few single player assets in its making). The addition of a melee weapon (jokingly called the Gravity Hammer by the BSN) to a new character is also something we’ve seen a few times in the multiplayer with the ex-Cerberus characters, the Slayer and the Shadow all getting melee weapons.

No official release dates are yet known for the Citadel or Reckoning DLCs. However, I’m fairly certain that I’ll get getting each on their first days of release. Unless they charge $20 for Citadel. I’ll just review some YouTuber’s Let’s Play if they try to gouge us on DLC prices again.

Sources:
@CaseyDHudson
@GambleMike

Related:
BioWare is Going “All Hands on Deck” for Next ME3 DLC
Mass Effect 3 Omega: How Much Is Too Much For DLC?
The Mass Effect 3 Controversy: What Went Wrong And Why It’s Not Entitlement