Games of the 7th Generation: Mass Effect

I no longer possess the memory nor the industriousness to sort this list by correct date, so from now on, the games will be in basically random order.  The next game on the list?  Mass Effect. 

Mass Effect was, for me, the first great RPG of this generation.  By this point in my gaming career I was getting tired of Japanese role playing games, mainly because I tend to feel like the story loses something in translation.  I also didn't happen to be a very big Oblivion fan. I played the game for like 60 hours and wondered why the hell I'd wasted all that time (sorry, I realize I'm probably in the minority here)

Mass Effect was something else though.  The hype for the game was unbelievable, I have to admit I was something of a Microsoft fan prior to the release of the X box 360, partly because I had so much fun with the original X box, partly because of Microsoft coming out of the gate first, and Mass Effect was one of those Next Gen titles that made me go "holy shit" with its first few trailers. To be fair at the time I was working for Pandemic, and Bioware had actually merged with Pandemic not too long after announcing Mass Effect, so we got to see some stuff early before the audience.  That only served to whet my appetite. 

Mass Effect was a sprawling space opera, the likes of which hadn't really been seen since Star Wars.  Halo scratched some of the space opera itch, but as a series it tended to focus on one location at a time.  In Mass Effect, I had a ship and a crew and a galaxy to explore.  Star Wars isn't a great comparison for Mass Effect because in practice, it's much more like Star Trek.  Shepard is a hero, to be sure, and is able to perform many heroic deeds, but he still seems limited to normal human standards, much like Captain Kirk from Star Trek.  There can be an element of the Han Solo to him if you choose the renegade path, but Shepard and his crew reminds me much more of an updated Star Trek.

Most of the action takes place on foot or in your rover.  The ship mainly serves as a place to get to know your crew, no amazing space battles, but I never felt like it was missing.  As my friend pointed out, Mass Effect isn't really hard Science Fiction due to The Mass Effect, but given the Mass Effect, Bioware does a great job of explaining the rest of the science in the game. 

The first Mass Effect had somewhat janky combat.  Bioware hadn't mastered how to make RPG combat make sense with a progression curve while still feeling like a fun shooter.  Despite this, once you got the knack of the combat, it rarely got in the way of fun, and I still managed to have some epic moments running with my pistol and mowing down enemies.

The key to Mass Effect was the story.  The game started with a simple premise, Shepard is the first human S.P.E.C.T.R.E and Humanity's chance to enter the galactic conversation in a big way.  He is paired with people who don't necessarily trust him or humanity.  Along the way he learns of the Galaxy's dark secret, the Reapers.  The cast of characters is fantastic, and the side stories are equally amazing.  The Genophage, the Quarian mistake with the Geth.  All of these side stories make the universe feel far larger than most game worlds.  Shepard may not have really had much character growth, but the surrounding characters go through pretty great arcs.  I feel like the original Mass Effect is Bioware at the height of their narrative powers.  I don't feel like the next two games hit this same mark.

Graphically, Mass Effect was, to my eyes, the first really great looking Bioware game.  Baldur's gate looked decent, but not really impressive.  Knights of the Old Republic actually looked somewhat rough, but Mass Effect really sparkles.  They create a fantastic 70's SF Novel style, and everything is clean lines, and idealized future.  Really great art direction, paired with Unreal, arguably the most powerful engine available at the time.  This combination ended up being a visual Tour-de-force, with some of the best video game faces up to that point. 

All in all, a fantastic story wed to fantastic graphics made for a truly amazing experience, and one of my games of the generation.