One of the most harrowing thoughts is that we humans might be all alone in the Universe. When the Sun inevitably devours Earth, will there be no one left to experience the world and create stories? BioWare imagines a galaxy where the answer is NO in Mass Effect. This galaxy is buzzing with life and adventure. It’s rife with conflict and problems, but they’re not unsolvable. In fact, they’re waiting to be solved… by the right person.

To bring the Milky Way to life, Drew Karpyshyn and the writers gave it a rich history. In the events before Mass Effect, humans made their first steps outside the Sol system and began reactivating dormant mass relays. This is illegal under galactic law, so when the Turian military saw this, they attacked. Humans call this the First Contact War. But everyone else calls it the Relay 314 Incident, as if they’ve seen similar occurrences before. And they have. 2000 years earlier, some Salarian explorers foolishly and haphazardly opened a mass relay leading to the Rachni Wars. In the world of Mass Effect, events happen and groups react according to their cultures which causes other events to happen like in the real world. High schools could create AP curriculum based off of the detailed lore.

The Milky Way also has history waiting to be written and it will be written by the player character, Commander Shepard. When people talk about gameplay, they’re typically referring to combat systems. But the conversation system is a significant part of Mass Effect’s gameplay, perhaps the most significant part. This is because the lives of friends, the lives of entire species, and the future of galactic politics hinges on Shepard’s words.

Shepard making pivotal decisions was the main focus of Mass Effect’s marketing campaign. Some of these decisions are galaxy-defining. In one scenario on Noveria, Shepard has to choose whether to kill the last Rachni queen or not. Rachni have a reputation as malevolent killers from their actions in the aforementioned Rachni Wars. But this queen says she’s different. She tries to gain Shepard’s trust by giving them vital information on Saren’s (the primary antagonist) plans and stopping the Noveria rachni infestation. She also pleads ignorance on the Rachni Wars, as she was born thousands of years after. What will Shepard do? It’s up for the player to decide. They won’t get to see the effects of their decision (that will come in subsequent titles), but the fact that they can weigh the pros and cons and pull a lever gives them a strong sense of ownership over their Mass Effect story.

Some decisions are more personal. Halfway through the game on Virmire, Shepard has to choose between which crewmate, Kaidan or Ashley, to sacrifice in order to stop Saren from raising an army of krogan supersoldiers. Both have been loyal friends at Shepard’s side since the beginning. These decisions tend to have more tangible impacts. In this case, the sacrificed team member will be gone for the rest of the game AND the sequels.

Choices are rewarded with either paragon or renegade points. They’re similar to light side and dark side points from Star Wars: Knights of The Old Republic except renegade is more “get the job done at any cost” than “pure evil”. The more paragon and renegade points one has, the more talent points can be put into charm and intimidate skills respectively, which means more unlocked dialogue options. These options range from amusing (e.g. scaring smugglers into giving up their contacts) to character-altering (e.g. convincing a crewmate to stand down in a confrontation with Shepard). The paragon-renegade scale is one of the most recognizable gameplay features of Mass Effect, but it stifles role playing opportunities. Players are discouraged from splitting choices between paragon and renegade too much lest they lock themselves out of the most interesting and rewarding scenarios.

When Shepard talks to someone, the player chooses responses and questions on a dialogue wheel to advance the conversation. The wheel isn’t as expressive as other role-playing games like Fallout since there are only up to six options for any given wheel. The advantage here is that it becomes more feasible to give Shepard voiced lines making the experience more movie-like. Jennifer Hale and Mark Meer did well as female and male Shepard.

The writers did a good job continually raising the stakes in the main storyline. At the beginning, Commander Shepard goes to Eden Prime to pick up an ancient prothean beacon. This turns into stopping Saren, his Geth army, and his flagship Sovereign from razing the colony. They think that Saren just wants to genocide all of humanity. But then Shepard finds out that Saren wants to bring back ancient beings called Reapers to genocide all life in the Milky Way. BUT THEN, they find out that Sovereign is an actual Reaper and it is closer than ever to unleashing complete and utter destruction onto the galaxy.

Speaking of Sovereign, Shepard’s confrontation with it is awesome and chilling. Peter Jessop portrays Sovereign as callous towards Shepard because it has been harvesting organic beings for eons before and it plans to do so for eons after. Most conversations in the game end with Shepard declaring “I should go”. But here, the conversation ends with Sovereign’s volition.

Most characters provide for delightful chats, especially Shepard’s crew. Each crew member is a window into their respective species’ culture. And they’re not boring, regular windows. They’re fun, stained glass windows. Wrex is probably the most fan-beloved of the team. He’s a Krogan that has been alive for at least a millenia. That naturally means he’s got countless fantastical war stories. Every year of his life has been earned, but he feels there’s something missing because of the Genophage, a sterility plague developed by the Salarians, deployed by the Turians, and unleashed onto the Krogan. He fears there is no future for his people.

An underrated team member is Ashley. Many describe her as racist, but she would consider herself to be skeptical. I would consider her naive. Part of this can be attributed to the fact that she’s been denied the opportunity to interact with aliens. As granddaughter of the first Human general to surrender to an alien force, she’s been relegated to uneventful assignments below her level of competence. As her commanding officer and someone she looks up to, Shepard can influence her attitude towards aliens.

I will say that Tali wasn’t particularly interesting as a character. It’s tough to pick out her personality traits in this game since she feels more like the Wikipedia entry for Quarians rather than an actual person. Fortunately, that entry would be quite fascinating.

Since it’s commonly described as a space opera, Mass Effect would not be complete without a little romance. Male Shepard can court Ashley while female Shepard can court Kaidan. Both can woo Liara. I personally didn’t feel any emotional weight behind any of the relationships. They kind of just happen and the dialogue is mostly flirty instead of romantic. They were more like cute flings.

Something that isn’t cute is the combat. It’s especially dreadful on insanity difficulty. Inventory management is uninteresting when weapons all feel samey. The tech powers also feel samey. Sound design lacks punch. Party members don’t listen to commands well. Getting in and out of cover isn’t smooth. Shepard’s movement is sluggish. Every other enemy has the immunity skill and large health pools, so it can take literal minutes to kill one mook. Fights while driving the mako become overly drawn out because its cannon is a peashooter that can’t aim below 0 degrees, it has poor maneuverability, and health regeneration is slow.

Planet exploration in the mako is tedious and boring. It’s tedious because the mako does not handle well and planet terrain tends to be extremely jagged and mountainous. Every bump can potentially veer the vehicle off in unexpected directions. It’s boring because there isn’t much to see except rocks and prefabricated buildings. BioWare appears to have randomly generated landscapes for each planet and then sprinkled in a couple points of ‘interest’. The planet skyboxes are eye-catching, but it’s not enough to command attention that is taken by mako wrangling.

The level layouts are generally bad. Some are dull because they don’t facilitate varied approaches to taking fights like the tunnels on Feros. Others are unfair like the Geth armature platoon fight on Therum because there’s very little cover. In addition, side quests reuse level environments a lot.

To this day, 13 years later, people all around the world congregate to discuss their Mass Effect stories. This combined with the fact players willingly grinded their way through the combat and driving to get to the story and world building is a testament to how well BioWare captured the imagination of fans.

5/7

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