I had high expectations, and this could have been a great game. Although it received almost universally high ratings, I found it flawed in many regards. Is this “a new high mark for storytelling in games”, and are the RPG elements “outstanding”? Maybe to a typical XBox360 owner, but I would disagree. Of course, that’s not to say that I am not looking forward to playing the sequel. Based on what I had been told and the fact that they came from the same company, I was expecting Mass Effect to be Knights Of The Old Republic in a new universe. Rather, it is an FPS with RPG elements, and thus my natural comparison is against Deus Ex. Unfortunately for Mass Effect, neither it nor anything else has quite measured up.
First, let us discuss the story. It is difficult to write original space opera content when the ur-examples loom so large. A hive race of sentient machines that seem to exist for no purpose but to destroy organic lifeforms? It’s the Borg Geth of course. Small, elite order of warriors, respected by some but distrusted by others, who protect the galaxy? You must be talking about the Jedi Spectres. In spite of that, much of the setting and plot of the game is indeed new and interesting. The writers make some bold choices, and there are definitely emotionally moving moments. They try to stretch the setting such that it makes sense for the hero to be out on his own, answering to no one, and it sort of works; better than most games that just hand-wave this away.
The actual plot quests (“Missions”) are varied and interesting, but the main plot is only a small part of the game. The side quests (“Assignments”) are mostly formulaic: land on a planet, enter a small installation, kill everything, press a button at the far end, repeat. There are only a few different building designs, which make it seem even more repetitive. It makes sense that a single well-tested design would be fabricated and repeated throughout the galaxy, but this is a case where realism is boring.
I like the design of the combat system, from the use of overheating as a temporary limiting factor in the use of weapons rather than ammunition shortages, to making every weapon upgradeable. The first feature, combined with shields and health regeneration, mean that you never need to worry about optimally completing a battle and makes the entire experience very fluid. My first playthrough was as the default Soldier and I mostly found my companions’ uses of tech and biotic skills to be an annoyance. I plan to go through again in hardcore difficulty with a tech- or biotic-based character, and my expectation is that the battles will become more tactical and those skills will be useful. The economy is a definite weakness; the items that you find are almost always as good or better than those you can buy. The only purchases I made in the entire game were the prototype weapons available after the Rich achievement, the manufacturers’ licenses, and the upgrades that allow you to carry more grenades and MediGel. There are no unique items in the game, which means that you never get the excitement of finding a new, amazing item as there was in KoToR. I suspect the last two issues are related. The decryption minigame is annoying after you’ve done it a few dozen times, and driving the Mako around also becomes tedious when you yet again must find the spot in the mountain range separating you from your destination that is not so steep as to prevent your passage. Also, this is the second consecutive Bioware game I’ve played in which I had to solve a Tower of Hanoi problem. Surely they can come up with *some* other kind of puzzle.
This is, I believe, the first game I have played that includes Achievements. If their desired effect is to help wring replayability out of things that would otherwise lack it, it is working. I am going to play through a second time partially to see how a different class selection and wildly different personality and approach to solving problems will affect the game, but also partially to unlock more of them. For a completist like myself, such a shiny trinket dangling in my face is hard to pass by.
I saw the alien sideboob, and am glad to report it did not scar me for life. If you wanted to script a situation to show how absurd “think of the children” thinking and uninformed mass hysteria can be, you could not have come up with something better than the story surrounding this. It truly is incredible. (By the way, I noticed that the mother of the owner of the alien sideboob was voiced by Marina Sirtis. For nerdy young men of my generation that’s the original alien topboob, and it was on network television every week.)