Mass Effect
A strange thing happened to me yesterday. There I was, late at night, proud to have just finished Mass Effect. For the past few days I had already been planning my next character, since the game rewards multiple playthroughs not just with an Achievement, but also with the potential for new experiences. I knew I wanted to make a character who would be a contrast to the one I’d been playing as, to try and give myself as much room for variety as possible. So, I started a new game, played around with the sliders and settings to create the right face, and let the intro to the game play out. Then things got weird. Shepard, the guy on screen that I had just taken my time carefully crafting, spoke. But it wasn’t him. It was an impostor.
In that moment, I realised that I missed my character; the guy I had just been controlling on his 30 hour (I like to dawdle) quest to save the galaxy was gone, and had been replaced by someone I didn’t care for. Sure they still called him Shepard, he still spoke with the same voice, and I could’ve even taken all the same conversation choices, but it was startlingly different. It was then that I became aware of just how attached I had grown to my on-screen avatar, followed by the greater realisation that this is a shining example of what makes every single playthrough so unique. Having grown accustomed to playing as a single, identifiable character through a game, usually one I’ve been familiar with well in advance of actually playing, it feels remarkably different to become so attached to a face and personality that I have shaped myself. I’ve played games that allow you to choose from a selection of pre-made faces (BioWare’s Knights of the Old Republic, for one), or even been allowed to create the face of my character in ways that seem more detailed than what is present here (EA’s Fight Night, or the likes of Oblivion, both allowing for more finer modification), but ME seems more centred on letting you make a realistic face. Now I’m not going to pretend that this face creation is the sole purpose for my attachment, not even slightly. It’s the result of a whole group of factors, not least of which the fantastic writing and branching conversations, which allow you to shape your character as you see fit. The point I’m trying to make here is that, for me, this was the first time I had ever felt this much of a connection to a character that I had created. This is the face that I associate with the story and universe, but to someone else, it would be completely alien to use the same character. My advice is to skip the option of playing as a default, and take the time to make your Shepard.
The other important aspect of this character identification, as mentioned above, is the conversation system. As has become fairly standard in this kind of game, when you talk to someone in the game you are presented with a selection of responses that can range from polite to rude, as well as lines of inquiry for more information. The first point here is that, rather present you with complete lines of speech to read and interpret, you are instead given more the tone that your character will adopt, and the following speech reflects this. This allows for a more flowing and interesting conversation, and one that makes both parties worth listening to. Secondly, these branching conversations allow you to shape and craft your character. You can be rude or polite, and other characters in the game will treat you accordingly. Take things far enough, and you can end up punching someone out or shooting them. Take them the other way, and you can talk down a fight into a more peaceful conclusion if that’s your thing. The point is, this gives your Shepard a great deal of character and personality to identify with, and it’s all down to the choices you make. What’s more, it isn’t always left clear what is the ‘right’ response. It’s not that the game gives you a choice between hugging puppies or enslaving humanity, your goal is always to save the galaxy, but you get to decide how you want to go about doing this, and not every choice and repercussion are easily discernible. There are times when trying your best to do the ‘right’ thing may not always win you favour. The best way I can think to summarise it is that your choices are rarely easily divided into “right” and “wrong”, but are always treated appropriately.
As a sci-fi title featuring alien races and technologies in the year 2183, BioWare have clearly taken their time in settling on a solid style and atmosphere for the game. While we all may have been getting used to heavy-duty armour and rusty, bleak aesthetics, it’s been well-documented that the intention here was to adopt the clean, clinical style more common to sci-fi from the 60’s and 70’s, rather than the more familiar dirty, dystopian style that has followed since the likes of Blade Runner. In a move that I find somewhat ironic, the music draws heavily from the synthesizer of Vangelis, who is readily associated with the iconic, aforementioned, Blade Runner. Whatever the style, it works beautifully to create a perfect ambience. Again, everything just seems to fit into place and feels intrinsically right. The armours you find are never excessively huge, the weapons look comfortably portable, interiors mostly look clean and neat (appropriately, things don’t look immaculately spotless), and it is all the more refreshing for it.
Now I’m going to take a break from this near-hyperbolic torrent of praise, because this game is not without its flaws and it would be frankly rude of me to ignore this. Mass Effect has issues. Maybe the most prominent is the ‘texture pop-in’ which occurs frequently, and much to the frustration of some. As seen in the likes of Halo 2 and Gears of War, in-game models frequently appear untextured until properly loaded in, which can look pretty jarring and breaks up the otherwise gorgeous visuals. This appears to be most prominent after loading a saved game any time, but does happen almost constantly through the game. It also has framerate problems, which become more noticeable when chaotic action kicks off, but only (as far as I was concerned, so take it as you will) got really bad at a couple of points. Coupled to that, there is some v-sync tearing which can get in the way sometimes.
There are also complaints about the combat system, where the game takes on the appearance of a 3rd-person shooter (bearing the familiar over-the-shoulder views of Resident Evil 4 and Gears of War), but is actually working away as an RPG in the background. As such, twitch reflexes and thumbstick accuracy aren’t necessarily the most relevant skills, since the game is constantly making dice-rolls in the background to determine how much damage you’re actually doing. Then again, I mostly used the shotgun for my ‘peacekeeping’ duties, so it was more a case of getting things roughly lined up and pulling the trigger. I found the AI teammates sometimes got in my way while trying to make effective use of cover, but this was more of a slight irritation than anything else. If it were to be billed as a 3rd-person action game then there may be an excuse for some disappointed faces, but I personally found it a good change of pace for an RPG. I found it immensely satisfying to stroll into a combat situation and set about ordering my teammates to wreak havoc among the unfortunate aggressors, sabotaging shields, overheating weapons, hacking AI, sending them flying helplessly into the sky for an easy target or any other multitude of really cool things. My standard approach to this kind of game is to assume the role of a tank, and to bring similarly-minded teammates along. Here, I found myself taking advantage of the full gamut of available options, since every one proved useful and entertaining.
There is also the lack of a real tutorial, and a lot of things that you have to learn the hard way if you don’t want to be reading the manual. In some ways, it’s nice that the game doesn’t patronise your character by sending you through some kind of refresher course even though you’re a seasoned veteran who’s been doing this all his or her life. In other ways though, it can throw you in at the deep end and watch you attempt to not drown (thanks Penny Arcade). Another point of issue is the mini-game that pops up every time you try to hack a terminal, open a secure container, survey ore, investigate some Prothean ruins or any of the other wreckage that is scattered liberally around on the many planets, which can get a little tiring. While I don’t have any problem with pressing the correct buttons to follow on-screen prompts, some variety in these wouldn’t have gone amiss, and would’ve helped bring some more logic to proceedings. Similarly, there can be a lack of variety in the locations for your side-quests, but this didn’t really bother me.
See though, here’s the thing. Like I said, Mass Effect has its issues, and I’m not going to pretend that they’re small or insignificant. They’re there from the first cutscene to the final set-piece, and they will always nag at you. But after about 5 minutes, I was too engrossed in the story I was unfurling, the characters I was interacting with and the one I was developing, and the universe that I was very much a part of. I found it to be one of those games where I just didn’t want to put the controller down, because there is always something more around the corner, always a new character to see, some more XP you can grab, another level to go up, new items to pick up, planets to explore (with some jaw-dropping vistas), or any other number of cool things to do. If you want to fight, there’s side-quests galore (which maybe can get a little tiring if you try to take on many of them back-to-back, but I liked keeping them as an option for when I felt like a fight, and they do often neatly branch off from the main storyline, which gives another nice feeling of consistency). If you would rather talk, there’s a plethora of characters to meet and converse with, and what must be obscene amounts of well-acted dialog to hear.
This review has likely gone on too long, so now I shall instead bring things to a close and wheel in the conclusion, as I could go on talking in great detail for a long time indeed. It’s already apparent that I love this game, and I hope the mass of text above goes some length to explain why. There are flaws which I expect a number of people will take issue with, and if that’s you then fair enough, it’s your decision. I would ask these people to at least consider renting the game first though, as they would be missing out on something special. Even now, just discussing stories from the game draws differing responses from anyone who’s played it, swapping tales of how you handled this event, what conclusion it led to, and how that affected things down the line. Did you manage to calm the situation by talking, or did you have to shoot first. It’s the issues that make it tough to flat-out recommend, since not everyone is comfortable with a game like that. However, I firmly believe that the majority of people would very easily fall under its spell, as long as they afford it the time it takes to get comfortable.