Mass Effect
Games are never the first choice of media as being able to tell a good story. In fact I’d go so far as to say they’re the worst. However, RPG’s are probably the only genre in gaming where the story takes precedence over any other aspect that makes up a game. I believe it was Cliff Bleszinski of Epic Games who said that gameplay was the most important aspect of a game, and whilst I disagreed at the time of hearing it, I have come to think that that is the main reason that I play games. It doesn’t hurt for a game to have an epic storyline either - in fact I think my most favourite games have got both brilliant gameplay and inspiring storytelling. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that Mass Effect has one of the best storylines in any video game ever made. It’s not the most original - I can think of at least another two very mainstream games (let alone films and TV series) that follow the same old “old race wiped out leaving awesome technology for humans/future civilisations to uncover”* storyline, but that’s not to say that it’s a bad thing. Some of the best stories are just old stories told in a new way, well.
I don’t like RPG games. Well, that’s a bit harsh - I don’t really like JRPG games. I was told that this game was a in lines with an action based RPG, and now that I’ve completed it, it definitely felt more like one. However, Mass Effect wasn’t without its faults. I originally started playing this game a year ago and I got a few missions through the game and gave up after having lost interest. What was different this time is that someone showed me roughly how to use the Equipment screen. I understand that the majority of RPGs are based on items and upgrading them, and then having attributes that should be upgraded when you “level up”. But the Equipment screen is like another non-favourite genre of game of mine - sports management games. They basically revolve around slightly more interactive spreadsheets - in fact I have had more pleasant experiences with some spreadsheets than having to use the Equipment screen in Mass Effect.
- Why is there a restriction of 150 on the number of items you can carry? It seems rather arbitrary?
- Why then do you have to manually go through the additional items you’re holding and turn them to omni-gel? It shouldn’t have to feel like work to play a game.
- Why isn’t auto-save implemented at more places and more conveniently. I’m not in 1996 playing a game on the PC, this is 2011 (or 2007 when the game was released - the same year as the “can’t manually save” Assassin’s Creed). The amount of times that I found myself dying and having to play another 15 minutes of game that I had just played was too many. Remembering to save a game should not be part of it.
The dialogue of the game felt like it was written by a professional screen writer, and more increasingly in gaming it is becoming more obvious when the person writing the dialogue is also the person who makes the tea. It would be wrong of me to compare the screen writing and voice acting to the very recent Portal 2, but you can see where games like Portal 2 have taken inspiration to do better. So I’ve heard recently on a podcast, secondary effects in games like sound engineering and lighting can actually affect your overall experience more than anything else. Dead Space is a game that springs to mind where the overall quality of the game is brought up several notches just because of the sound engineering. What I am trying to say is that the quality of the voice acting and the sheer volume of it in Mass Effect is second to none. The characters were entirely believable, and the conversation tree used to control of everything Shepard says made him feel like one of the most personal and relatable characters ever crafted in a game. It’s the game that first handed all the controls to you for you to craft your own character, even right down to their physical appearance and it’s for this reason that Mass Effect is historical in the gaming world.
I cannot express either how good the sci-fi was in the the game in general. The ideas and background given to other species and “incomprehensible” ideas such as the Reapers is phenomenal. I was reminded of Battlestar Galactica and the phrase “All this has happened before. All this will happen again.” when the storyline was developed a bit further, and it’s such an interesting topic I find I don’t stop thinking about it for hours. And that’s how I’ll remember this game.
* In case you were wonder what I was referring to: Metroid Prime, Halo series
