I'm looking to back up by saved games from Mass Effect 3, but I cannot locate them.
Where are the Mass Effect 3 saved game files stored?
Mass-effect – Mass Effect 3 saved games located on PC
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It depends on what you mean by "in-game". You cannot get to them while actively playing as your character, but you can get to them from the main menu when you start the game. They're under Extras->Accomplishments.
I'd say yes. The story evolves over the course of the previous two games, and there's really no way to watch/play even the introduction sequence of this game without spoiling some of the major plot reveals of the first.
Things that Shepard discovers in the first and second games are pretty much widely known at the beginning of the third, so the plot twists and turns of those games will be completely lost as people are going to be conversing about them at length even early on.
Some of the returning characters played major roles or were scarred by events in the previous game ("the Virmire survivor" comes to mind as being key), so attempting to talk to them without getting spoiled about the events of previous games is virtually impossible.
That's not to say that starting here will utterly ruin your taste for either of the previous games. I believe Bioware has tried to make this chapter accessible for newcomers, and the plot of the first two is nuanced and complex enough that you'd still gain from going back and playing the first two if you get engrossed in this game's universe.
However, if you're the type that values not being spoiled, starting with ME3 is going to really reveal a ton about the plot of the first two games.
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Best Answer
The default save location is in the
BioWare\Mass Effect 3\Savedirectory, inside of your My Documents folder. There will be individual folders for character you have, which contain all of the saves associated with that character.