Being conditioned by the Japanese school of role playing games, it always seemed like a game would fall in the RPG genre by having experience points, hit points, and a save-the-world story, but playing Mass Effect opened my mind to a whole new aspect of these type of games, the actual role playing.
On my first play through, I imagined myself being the character that I had created so each choice taken was something that reflected my own personality. During the time spend in the game I became the main character, Commander Shepard, and I was the one deciding where to go, what to say and who to save or kill. The end result was a space born soldier with a 75% paragon (noble, cooperative, self-sacrificing) and 25% renegade (ruthless, aggressive, selfish) personality. You can’t turn completely evil and become one of the bad guys, but you can be rude and threatening in order to get to your goal.
The principal mechanic that enables you to really feel engaged in the story and in the interaction between characters is the choice-based dialogue. Every time Shepard speaks, you get to choose the overall tone of the reply by selecting one of the multiples abridged versions of the possible answers. What you select is not exactly what’s going to be said but the emotion you want to convey. It’s in this mechanic that you notice how great the writing is in Mass Effect, I might not be really good with words but the choices I took always sounded well coming out of my character mouth. This helps to keep the conversations interesting, since you don’t just re-hear your answer, the dialogue stays seamless and in context of the scene, you even come to wonder how Shepard is possibly going to react or say while making your choice.
This isn’t the only reason why you actually feel you’re role playing in Mass Effect. The way the story is structured and delivered, the fact that your decisions have a real immediate impact and the options you’re given aren’t just A-1 and A-2, but actually A and B, give you the sense that you’re making your own story. Furthermore, the order in which you choose to talk to people (in quests or in the main story), in what order you complete the missions and who you take along with you all affect how the story will unfolds before you. Using your charm or intimidation (requires allowing ability points in the respective skill) often result in avoiding combat or even resolving impossible situations. Of course the end of the path is somewhat the same for everyone, but the character development you’ll get and who’s going to end up dead or alive will be different for everyone.
Although the story isn’t the most original as a whole, the last two hours are really well crafted and deliver on all aspects. The zones you go through as the game comes to a end are some of the most impressive and memorable environments I’ve seen these past years. You’ll have to make tough decisions and the drama will climb up, but by the time the credits roll you’re not only going to want to see what happens next to your character, you’re also going to want to start a new game. Which is a great feat, considering how many games are asking to be played this time of the year.
If you keep yourself in the main track of Mass Effect it’s going to be a fun ride, but not everything is as great in the Milky Way galaxy. The fact that you don’t have to “grind” (the game will always adapt to your level), is a great thing and I really like it, but you come to wonder if the items you equip have any importance. The gear you’ll find in the abundance of crates and containers is usually as good, and in most cases even better than what the shops offer which in reaction makes the money you get almost useless. The game will always throw at you better gear for free. All that, added to the many types of ammo you’ll get which are probably only useful in the higher difficulty settings, coupled with a unintuitive inventory system make that particular part of the game unpleasant.
The other thing that I wasn’t much impressed with, is the uncharted-worlds side quests. Most of the time all you get as a reward, except for the usual exp and money, is just a window with text. Some of the bigger ones, like the character specific ones also reward you with text, a few cut scenes would had been enough to make them good. You’re also going to be running in deja vu all the time, every base, bunker, cave or spaceship you’ll explore is the same, the crates and containers are laid out differently but the architecture of the zones are identical. I recommend only doing the one named Rogue VI since it actually rewards you with something useful, but unless you’re willing to invent and imagine your own stories or want see the whole content of the disk you’ll prefer to stay on the main path.
Mass Effect is one of my favorite titles this year, and thinking that it’s just the first installment of a trilogy gives me high expectations for the next games. If they can take what they already made in this first episode, perfect it and build upon it, we’re in for something epic. So make sure you don’t miss out on this game, it should please both fans or 3rd person shooters and RPGs. I hope you’ll discover and enjoy the actual role playing as much as I did.
0 Responses to “Game Session: Mass Effect”