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The Mass Effect 3 single player DLC train is just starting to gain steam, which means we're probably going to be returning to the Normandy sporadically over next few months. If DLC isn't going to be enough to slake your thirst for stories from the Mass Effect universe, Mass Effect: Paragon Lost is a feature-length anime detailing the backstory of your favorite new crew member, James Vega. It doesn't take long to see that, while the world is populated by Asari and Krogans, the movie feel like a serious (and interesting) departure from the world we've come to know.

And there you have it, the Shepard arc of the Mass Effect series has finally ground to a halt, that is unless fans can whine it back from the dead yet again. The free, somewhat revisionist DLC Mass Effect 3: Extended Cut dropped today, attempting to flesh out the endings of the game to appease a complaining fan-base. If you don't want to see the endings in-game where they belong (which requires replaying about an hour of the game's most difficult combat sections), the new endings are all up on YouTube, and you can check them out below. There be spoilers, obviously.

Whether you think it's a necessary re-contextualization of the awkward and much-protested Mass Effect 3 ending, or a dangerous assault on the authorial agency, Mass Effect 3: Extended Cut, the free DLC intended to flesh out the series' conclusion, is coming on June 26th. Unless you have a PlayStation 3 in Europe; then you have to wait until July 4th. We've known about this for a while, since BioWare caved and announced they'd release an addition -- not a revision, but an addition -- to the game's end, later clarifying that it would come out this summer and be free. Now it has a date, and it's very close. It's up to you whether or not you want to risk getting your hopes up.

While Bioware is off not standing by its ending to Mass Effect 3, EA is making it clear that it does stand by the presence of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) characters in its games, most notably Mass Effect 3 and Star Wars: The Old Republic. This progressive, sticking-to-its-righteous-guns move comes just after EA was awarded the Consumerist's Worst Company in America award of 2012. For the past few weeks, EA has been receiving thousands of letters complaining about the games' same-sex options and now, perhaps at a calculated moment, EA's made a point of telling dissenters exactly where they can shove their complaints.

Short of playing the new content itself, we've finally reached the end of the Mass Effect 3 ending debacle. Bioware already announced they will be releasing ending DLC for Mass Effect 3, but now we know some details. It's called Mass Effect 3: Extended Cut, it's coming this summer to the Xbox 360, PS3, and PC and it will be free. It will not change the much derided Mass Effect 3 ending, but it will fix the much derided lack of closure by including epilogues and additional cinematics designed to make your story's ending feel more personalized. Who knows if it'll work, but it's a start.

After a massive fan backlash, Bioware cofounder Ray Muzyka has announced that the Mass Effect 3 team is now working on "a number of game content initiatives that will help answer the questions" so many fans complained about having. While Mass Effect 3 garnered mostly positive review scores, many fans were disappointed by the endings, specifically their lack of variety and lack of closure. Initially, Bioware stood behind the Mass Effect 3 endings 100% percent, and although this announcement doesn't suggest that Bioware has changed its opinion on the original endings' integrity, it makes clear their desire to please the fan base. In short, complaining Mass Effect 3 fans may have finally gotten what they wanted.

Mass Effect 3 was the first Day 1 game purchase I've made in at least 5 years, possibly my only one ever. I can't remember. I desperately wanted to avoid all influence, spoilers, reviews, comments, and play the game in a vacuum to get my own take on the conclusion of a series I've come to love ravenously. That, of course, proved impossible and when I heard talk of a petition to change its ending, I started getting seriously worried. Now that I've finished it, I can confidently say that the endings were bad, they were stupid, they were avoidable, but they did not retroactively ruin the franchise or rob the previous games of their value, and if you feel like they did, it's probably as much your fault as it is Mass Effect 3's.

It should go without saying, but there be massive spoilers a'comin'. For all three games in the series, and possibly for ME2 DLC.

If you had any doubts as to whether or not Mass Effect 3 could live up to its epic potential as a gut wrenching tale of the depressing, messy fight for -- at best -- a Pyrrhic victory against a foe so overwhelming as to be unbelievable, this trailer should clear things up for you. If you still have doubts, just watch it again. Of course, the trailer didn't include any comedy, but I trust that won't be absent from this game either. That is, unless, everyone funny bought the farm in your playthrough of Mass Effect 2. I'll miss you, Mordin.

In order to drum up some excitement for Mass Effect 3 -- as if there weren't quite enough already -- Electronic Arts has engaged in an interesting little publicity stunt: They're launching a few copies of Mass Effect 3 into space. Well, near space; the kind of space you can get to with a weather balloon. Space travel aside, the important thing to note is that these copies will come to Earth before the official launch, and if you can find one, you'll be able to play it.

This weekend, Spike TV ran the Video Game Awards. All in all it was a pretty tepid affair, but it did give studios a chance to show off their forthcoming titles with a slew of exclusive trailers. We gathered all of them up and were just going to present them to you, gentle reader, but the embedded videos looked so lonely there, and we figured we were as qualified as anyone to have opinions on the Internet, so we added our compressed thoughts about each trailer into a single sentence. (Most of the time.)