This week, one of the year’s most anticipated games hits shelves in the form of intergalactic space opera, Mass Effect 3. For those who’ve been following the series since its days as an Xbox 360 exclusive, it’s an incredible time – as Shephard’s trilogy will be coming to a close. With Mass Effect games able to import your saves from previous games, it’s doubly important – as choices made in the first game will carry through.
Which sucks for those of you who’ve put your saves on to Microsoft’s game-saving cloud – as Mass effect 3 is unable to import cloud saves. Thankfully, there’s a fix.
Here’s what EA has to say of the problem in a troubleshooting guide:
We are currently aware of an issue that may prevent Xbox 360 users from importing their Mass Effect 2 save game files into Mass Effect 3,
Mass Effect 3 does not support cloud saves from Mass Effect 2. This can cause it to not recognize save files that have been transferred via cloud to a device other than the one where they originated. Therefore, the following scenarios will result in no import functionality.
- Moving your save file from the hard drive disc to the cloud.
- Moving your save file to another X360 system via the cloud (instead of a memory card or other device).
And here are their solutions to the problem :
Solution to scenario 1:
- Move your save file from the cloud back onto the hard drive from which it originated, i.e. the Xbox 360 you originally created the save file on.
Solution to scenario 2:
- Move your save file from the cloud back onto the hard drive from which it originated, i.e. the Xbox 360 you originally created the save file on.
- Using a memory card, Xbox 360 formatted USB stick, or the Official Xbox 360 HDD transfer cable, transfer the save file to the new Xbox 360.
There you go. If you try to import your save on Friday and it’s not working – this should stop your tears. There is, however, a scenario which could you leave you pretty screwed: if you have ever moved your file to the cloud and the original system is not available to transfer it back to. As the 360’s had a few dodgy hardware issues, this isn’t a particularly unlikely scenario.
While some of you might suggest using one of those community sourced savegames or have edited your own, EA warns that “you may also experience importing issues if you’ve downloaded or used custom Mass Effect 2 saves, or have edited your own save using a community-created program.”
Last Updated: March 5, 2012
