Mass Effect 3 Message Board  

The layout has improved somewhat, but after travelling from system to system more times than I can count... well, they easily had the time to get rid of some of those blasted pipes.

The haphazard wiring and tubes along with the side doorway in CIC filled with crates... gives me the direct impression that everything just happened too quickly. Boom, Reapers show up and we had our pants down. Same goes for the crew on board. Most are there just filling in alternate positions because their original jobs were the retrofit team or analysts. Not nearly as professional and perfect as the hand picked Cerberus crew (and late in the game you'll see how they were hand picked).

I think the whole layout of the ship with the clutter just gives the feeling that "this is it, it's go time."

I think one of the best things about ME3 Normandy is the crew. They move! Okay, not all of them move, but Shep's crew isn't always in their static positions. Sometimes you'll go looking for Garrus and he's not calibrating weapons, he'll be somewhere else in the ship. The crew will often have good conversations with each other face to face or over the comm that you can listen in on and sometimes interact with. One thing that was a bit disappointing was the lack of chatter from the nameless. In ME2 you would walk by some guys, such as the ones between CIC and the ****pit, and they'd be chatting away. The only crew doing this now are the two guards between CIC and the war room. The rest of the ship is pretty silent. BUT, a huge bonus is that you can now RUN the whole length of the ship without being out of breath after 20 feet... WOOT!