Game Spotlight: Mass Effect

Warning: This entry contains spoilers for the Mass Effect trilogy.

Back in 2012, when I had finally finished Mass Effect 3 (after I had downloaded the Extended Cut… I waited), I told myself that I had no reason to go back and play the entire series over again from the beginning. I am one of many who wasn’t satisfied with the end of ME3, a big reason is because it didn’t give me any motivation to go back and replay over 100 hours of content since many of the choices I made would ultimately do nothing to affect the overall outcome of the ending of the trilogy… there was just no point.

However, during the period of time at the end of the year and start of the new year, I often get the urge to go back and replay games I had already played. Last year it was Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn which took somewhere over 100 hours to complete back to back. This year, I had the urge to go back to Mass Effect after my nephew had told me that he had bought the first game but couldn’t figure out how to get pass “the first part” and that “there was too much talking” …ugh… he’s a Call of Duty type of fan, go figure. Not only that, but I also wanted to give the trilogy another chance after the mess that was Mass Effect 3, and while I have been highly critical of many aspects of the Mass Effect games, I still feel that there are many things throughout all three ME games that deserve a lot of praise. I wanted to remember all of those great moments throughout the series, even if it came with the sour taste of the not so great and downright horrible things that happen to the series as well.

I installed all 3 games onto my Xbox 360 and downloaded all the story DLC (played in their appropriate place chronologically) for each game. I was committed to go through the entire trilogy and play 100% of the content (that I could achieve on a single playthrough of each game), back-to-back, from start to finish in one huge marathon run. The entire process took over 120 hours (30+ hours for Mass Effect, 40+ hours for Mass Effect 2 and 50+ hours for Mass Effect 3) to complete all three games. By the end of it all, I had been through one hell of a ride all over again, though I was left emotionally exhausted after the Mass Effect 3 ending, and perhaps mildly depressed.

Now, here we are, at the start of a Game Spotlight for the first Mass Effect game. Later on I will release Game Spotlights for Mass Effect 2 and 3 as well a final article regarding my thoughts on the trilogy as a whole… so, enjoy!

I don’t really consider myself to be a “BioWare fan” like some of my friends tend to be. Aside from playing Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic once a very long time ago, I didn’t really have much experience with the developer. In fact, I had very little experience with western RPGs in general… the RPGs I had played in my childhood were pretty much always console based Japanese RPGs, so Mass Effect was the game that really got me into western RPGs at a later time in my life. While my friends raved on about BioWare and then Mass Effect when it came out, I wasn’t really motivated to try it out.

That changed when EB Games Australia advertised a bundle for the Xbox 360 Elite which included a combo pack of Kung Fu Panda and LEGO Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures as well as Halo 3… and Mass Effect. It was an offer I couldn’t refuse and one I’m glad I went for since it was the thing that got me to buy Mass Effect as well as many other great games for the Xbox 360.

This is my Shepard

As soon as I started Mass Effect for the first time, I remember spending about an hour on the character creation screen making a Commander Shepard that most resembled myself. I absolutely hate the default male Shepard design and the thought of making a female character didn’t occur to me (though I do often select the female option in other games when it strikes me as the correct option for that particular game) since this was going to be a representation of ME in this game, plus I hadn’t yet discovered the cult of femShep… and besides, this science fiction story needed to feature a dashing Indian, not another white guy. While the design for the awkwardly named “Lynk Shepard” wasn’t perfect, I am still impressed with just how well it turned out. It’s pretty close to me, but not really… actually, when I think about it now, the Shepard I created is kind of a mix between myself and my brother… strange.

For this new, second playthrough, I recreated the character I made the first time around. No need for any changes or improvements… none were needed. This is the Commander Shepard of my Mass Effect canon, the only one that matters.

Class and personal history

When I originally played the game, I naturally ended up choosing the Soldier character class since I didn’t really know what to expect from the other classes and chose whatever was at the top of the list. Soldier was the safest option and it has served me well throughout the three games, especially since my preferred weapon tends to be the assault rifle, especially during Mass Effect 2 and 3.

For my pre-service history, I chose the Spacer option. I liked the idea of a character not born on Earth or any colony, my Shepard spent his entire life aboard starships, travelling from one place to another. It’s the kind of origin that I would like to have for myself if I was born in a time when humans have become a space faring civilisation.

As for the psychological profile, I didn’t like the idea of being a war hero since, “wars not make one great” as Yoda would say. Ruthless was also not fitting for my Shepard since I would be playing the game using my best judgement and the ruthless back-story didn’t fit into my ideals. However, the Sole Survivor option was very attractive to me since it set my Shepard as a character who didn’t feel as though he’s done anything great as many people give him credit for, he just happened to survive something horrible that happened that took the lives of many others on Akuze.

It turned out that the choices I made for my class and personal history were all the right choices to make and would affect my story in subtle ways over the course of the three games.

My choices

While many would probably make an effort to make different choices throughout their subsequent playthroughs of the Mass Effect trilogy, I decided that I would try to recreate all the decisions I made the first time around.

However, I did make two major changes on this second playthrough. During my first playthrough, I decided to save Kaiden instead of Ashley, however for this playthrough I chose to save Ashley instead. Why did I make this change when I picked Kaiden the first time around? I never liked Ashley, but just as I was giving the trilogy another chance, I decided to give her another chance too. After experiencing all three games with Ashley instead of Kaiden, I feel that saving Kaiden the first time around was the right choice to make after all and I regret changing that decision… I just couldn’t warm up to her at all. The other decision I changed from the first time around the fate of the Citadel Council. I saved the Council during my first playthrough instead of leaving them to die during the final battle… despite playing mostly paragon the first time around, I ended up killing the Council just because they annoyed me so damn much… not a nice thing to do, I know, which is why I changed that decision in my second playthrough.

Going into detail about every choice I made throughout my playthrough is way too time consuming, so here’s a list of choices I made during Mass Effect that have an effect on Mass Effect 2 and 3 with the major decisions in bold.

• Recruited all squad members
• Aided Sha’ira on the Citadel
• Aided Samesh Bhatia on the Citadel
• Spared Fist on the Citadel
• Aided Emily Wong on the Citadel
• Aided Chorban on the Citadel
• Treated Conrad Verner well on the Citadel (not that it matters due to the glitch associated with this decision)
• Gave all paragon answers to Khalisah Al-Jilani during the news interview on the Citadel (and obviously didn’t punch her)
• Helped Rita regarding her sister, Jenna, on the Citadel
• Helped Dr. Chloe Michel on the Citadel
• Told Rebekah Petrovsky it was her choice regarding her baby on the Citadel
• Aided Nassana Dantius on the Citadel
• Spared the colonists and Shiala on Feros
• Aided Gianna Parasini on Noveria
• Spared the Rachni Queen on Noveria
• Romanced Liara
• Encouraged Garrus to be more paragon
• Helped Tali with her personal pilgrimage quest
• Collected Wrex’s armour
• Convinced Helena Blake to disband her criminal cartel
• Convinced Corporal Toombs to spare Dr. Wayne
• Completed all the Cerberus related missions
• Reasoned with Biotic terrorists and saved Chairman Burns
• Completed UNC: Rogue VI and UNC: Besieged Base
• Collected Matriarch Dilinaga’s writings, the Elkoss Combine license, and Gavin Hossle’s thumb drive
• Saved the hostages during the Bringing Down the Sky DLC mission (I didn’t have this DLC on my first playthrough)
• Spared Wrex on Virmire
• Captain Kirrahe lived through the Virmire mission
• Spared Rana Thanoptis on Virmire
• Saved Ashley (Saved Kaiden on my first playthrough)
• Saved the Citadel Council (Sacrificed the Council on my first playthrough)
• Chose Anderson for the Council

It’s pretty much a pure paragon playthrough, though, as I said before, I did kill off the Citadel Council on my first playthrough, though, this time I had the luxury of tailoring my choices for the best possible outcome and fixing some of the mistakes I had made in my first playthrough.

Oh, and finally, as for choosing to romance Liara… I hadn’t really followed any of the controversy that the game had received so I wasn’t really aware of the romancing thing aside from my friends mentioning it offhand. However, when Liara started expressing an interest in me during her conversations, I was intrigued… I mean, when it came to her or Ashley, Ashley didn’t even stand a chance since she’s a racist (…the religious aspect didn’t help her much either, to be honest). The idea of romancing an alien was very appealing because it wasn’t something I had expected to happen, but here it was right in front of me and I went for it.

I ended up using my thoughts on the issue to add much more depth to the story of my Shepard for Mass Effect 2 and 3. Here was a person who had grown up on human starships all his life, visiting alien worlds and such, but never really considering the possibility of having an intimate relationship with an alien throughout his life. The romance with Liara opened up a world of possibilities for my Shepard which would motivate him in later games. Now that I think about it after going through the same choices twice, I feel that I took my Shepard’s love life into the right direction by choosing Liara in Mass Effect.

That and it’s always hilariously funny to see the crackling blue sexual energy she emits during the really badly done sex scene… gets me every time.

Story

It’s rare to find a compelling science fiction video game based in a universe where humanity has become a space faring civilisation, so when I finally got around to playing Mass Effect for the first time, it was great to see a game that gave me exactly what I wanted. The way the game opened, with opening text, the shot of a planet below and that oldskool science fiction sounding music really did a lot to get me excited about what I was about to experience. Hearing Anderson talking about my Shepard, about his life and past experiences made me feel like the choices I had made about my character’s personal history really did make all the difference… as naïve as that may seem now, that’s how I felt and BioWare did a great job of pulling you into the Mass Effect universe right from the very start.

As I went through my adventure the first time around, no matter if it may seem naïve to people now, I really did feel like all the dialogue choices I made throughout the game mattered. I was always careful with whatever choices I made throughout the game, thinking through some of the tougher decisions but also going immediately for other choices that just felt like the obvious choices to make based on my judgement. At the time I didn’t have any idea that BioWare had planned a trilogy of games, this was just a standalone game so I wasn’t really thinking of future games. I progressed through the story thinking of the moment, not of any possible consequences to the future of the galaxy or in a real-world aspect, to the future games that would come out.

When the end finally came and both Saren (got him to shoot himself through the Paragon option, of course) and Sovereign was defeated, I realised that I had been on many great adventures. Becoming a Spectre, gathering together a fine and diverse group of people from different races, all working together to go after Saren and the Geth, exploring the diverse cultures of the Citadel and wider galaxy, saving the colonists of Feros from the Thorian, confronting Benezia on Novaria and freeing the Rachni Queen, urging Wrex to stand down but losing another comrade in the process on Virmire and then ultimately discovering the threat of the Reapers, learning more about the Protheans and making the decisions that would affect the course of humanity and the wider galaxy itself. By the end of the game, I felt like I had been through one hell of a great experience. I remember the first time I completed Mass Effect, I felt a real high after finishing it and was looking forward to the now obvious sequel to come in the future.

Downloadable content

Both of the story DLC packs for Mass Effect are both pretty small in scale when compared to the DLC in later games, but they did add a couple more hours of enjoyment out of the game. I made sure to get all the high scores on Pinnacle Station and get the apartment as a reward for completing everything. As for the Bringing Down the Sky DLC, it was a nice little extra mission but there’s really not much to talk about. The pay-off only comes in a small moment you have in Mass Effect 3 depending on the choice you make at the end of the mission. Oh, also, I made sure to play through both DLC content packs at appropriate times during my playthrough of the main game.

Characters

I had been to many places in the Mass Effect universe and did many things, but arguably, some of the best parts of the game aren’t the places you go and the things you do but the company you keep. I met many interesting people along the way in my adventure, but the people I grew to like the most were the crew of the Normandy. Like many, we all have our favourite Normandy squad mates, the ones we chose to take on our missions over others, the ones we spent the most time with and the ones we wanted to talk to first. While I did romance Liara and was curious about her, I never really took her on any missions, though I did find it ironic that while in some way she was studying me, I was in turn studying her. I also enjoyed talking to Wrex on the ship but never found any use for him on the field… and I know there are many fans of Liara and Wrex around on the net, unfortunately I was never one of them. They’re both great characters I like to talk to in-between missions, but they weren’t the two squad members I took on every single mission.

As for Kaiden and Ashley, well, Kaiden is an alright guy, I never really had any complaints about him… and you already know what I think of Ashley, but despite that I wouldn’t have chosen either of them to go on missions after I had recruited other characters since I don’t like the idea of having such a human-centric look on the galaxy. I wanted to take members of other species on my missions to get their differing views on situations but also because my ideals favour racial diversity, so when your team is represented by the newcomer human, a council race species and a non-Citadel citizen species, it showed that I was travelling with a group from all over the galaxy with a common goal… which brings me to the two characters I took EVERYWHERE: Tali’Zorah nar Rayya and Garrus Vakarian.

From the moment I first met him, I liked Garrus, the C-Sec officer who had his own sense of justice and his own way of going about things. He’s clearly frustrated with the way C-Sec and the Council works and wants to do something about Saren on his own terms. When Garrus joined my crew, I was glad to have him and immediately started taking him on missions and around the Citadel as soon as I could after the little incident at Dr. Michel’s clinic in the Wards. I particularly enjoyed the conversations the two of us would had, especially since I ended up influencing him for the better in the end. The fact that you can influence Garrus in some small way made him a much more likeable person because he took to heart the things you talk about. And when he told me so himself in one of the later conversations, I started to see him as a friend than just a squad mate.

Now with Tali, I REALLY enjoyed talking to her and having her come along on all of my missions beside Garrus and myself. Everything about her, from Ash Sroka’s great voice acting to the back-story of her species and her own motivations, it all connected with me, and as it turned out, connected very well with the personal history I had chosen for my Shepard. In many ways, I felt that Tali and my Shepard shared a lot in common. They were both born, raised and lived their entire lives aboard starships, Shepard survived a horrible event in his life and Tali comes from a race that survived a horrible event in their history. Also, because of the masked suit she always wore, there was always a sense of mystery that surrounded her which made me want to know about her. Tali was always the first one I went to talk to after every mission to see if she had any new dialogue and I enjoyed talking about the Quarians and their history and even debating their treatment of the Geth.

For a very long time, I often wondered why Tali was never a romance option in Mass Effect. There’s so much about her that’s endearing, but I am glad that I ended up romancing Liara in Mass Effect since, due to the events of Mass Effect 2, it made the transition from Liara to Tali make so much sense in my mind. Plus, when you think about it, Tali is still, in her society, seen as a child who is on her way to becoming an adult. Later, that romance would flourish, but for now, I liked getting to know Tali and having her on my team. She’s definitely one of my favourite characters in the entire trilogy along with Garrus.

Gameplay

To be perfectly honest, Mass Effect is the weakest of the three games in the trilogy when it comes to gameplay, at least the action gameplay elements. While it does have a lot of great passive RPG elements to it, customisation of your character armour and weapons, conversations with NPCs and such, there were other parts of the game that I felt were lacking.

Combat

There’s a lot of third person combat going on in the game and because I had chosen the Soldier class, I felt that the weapon feel in the game was terrible. Aiming was difficult and often times you’d simply hope your shots were actually doing something. Of course, it helped that the game wasn’t using a finite ammunition system that more traditional shooters would have used. It’s probably the reason why BioWare used the cooling system instead of ammunition in the first place, though Overkill and other class abilities you get along the way helped out a great deal once you figured out how to use them. Despite that, I get the feeling that other classes had a much easier time with the first Mass Effect than Soldiers did. It really is one of the lower points of the game, but still playable despite whatever downside it represents to me.

Planetary exploration

Despite the challenges of controlling the M35 Mako, I spent A LOT of time exploring every part of every planet I landed on throughout the game, I’m a sucker for exploration in video games and spend much of my time looking around. I Scaled every mountain, even if it killed me with frustration trying to get the Mako up there and sliding back down helplessly, then eventually snaking my way up at strategic angles. I can’t believe I did it all again in my second playthrough too despite knowing exactly how bad it can be sometimes.

The liked the idea of heading down to a planet’s surface in an exploration vehicle and looking for abandoned camp sites and mining areas and such, but damn, it can really be a pain in the ass sometimes… especially when you’re collecting all of those resources and trinkets along the way.

Final thoughts

Although there are some small gameplay quirks that I didn’t like about the first Mass Effect, it was the RPG and storytelling elements as well as the character interactions themselves that had me loving this game and making it one of my favourite games of all time. When I look back on Mass Effect, I think of it fondly, as a game that started me on an incredible adventure that threw me into a universe filled with interesting people and places. As I said near the beginning, this was the game that would encourage me to explore other western RPGs as well as continuing my adventure in the Mass Effect universe in Mass Effect 2 and 3.

Despite whatever aspects of Mass Effect 3’s ending that soured my experience initially, I was glad to have gone back and experienced the original once more. While I think it is good to have a critical eye when dealing with such games that have a high standard of quality and a certain level of expectation, it’s always good to remind yourself to just let go and remember all the good parts of the game and to have fun with those moments that gave you the most pleasure. When I finally finished Mass Effect for the second time, I was glad I took the opportunity to give the trilogy another chance.

Perhaps one day in the future I will do another playthrough of the trilogy, this time playing as a renegade femShep. I don’t see that happening any time soon though, there are so many other games I need to play and besides… the only true Shepard is the one I created originally.