Mass Effect 3 Extended Cut Release Date, Details Announced

Next week BioWare will release their addition to Mass Effect 3's much-criticized ending. Mass Effect 3 Extended Cut will be available free of charge and hopefully provide you with sufficient closure for the trilogy.

Extended Cut doesn't change the three endings of ME3. Instead, it adds new scenes and epilogue scenes to address players' unanswered questions. You'll be given an understanding of the impact of your decisions throughout the three games.

In order to access the Extended Cut, you'll need a save game from right before the attack on Cerberus' base. If memory serves, the game creates one of these for you when you beat it. Once you've loaded up this save, simply play through until the end to experience the new additions.

Extended Cut will be available for Xbox 360 and PC owners worldwide on June 26th. PS3 gamers in North America will get it on that date as well, while European PS3 owners will need to wait until July 4th. The DLC is 1.9GB in size.

ME3's ending was panned by critics and gamers alike for being too short and not reflecting players' decisions. Fans ultimately kicked off huge campaigns to convince BioWare to revise it in some way. I'm still a bit surprised that they agreed to do so. Hopefully, after all this crazy drama, the DLC delivers what gamers were craving.

BioWare also released a podcast interview with the development team and images of the Extended Cut production process. The latter is simply a collection of photos showing the team looking at monitors and whiteboards but maybe you're into that kind of thing.