Hello, everyone!
A year or two ago I found this game called “Mass Effect” in a local EB Games store. It looked decent by the case, so I decided to buy it and see what it was like. It turned out to be really impressive! It’s a futuristic, third person role playing game situated throughout our own galaxy. You take on the life of Commander Shepard in the hunt to save not only humanity, but a whole host of interesting species, from being destroyed by a race of sentient machines called “The Reapers”. An unfortunate event that has to occur in this beginning to the series is that one of your human team members must die (during the lead up to this point, you build up alliances with many different species from the game’s universe).
What made this game, and series, stand out from most for me was its choice system – every choice you make, world you visit, and path you follow affects the outcome of the entire game and series. For example, depending on which team member you leave to die (as mentioned above), it can become more difficult to perform a set task in a later mission or some other part of the game may not be possible to complete. This choice carries through into Mass Effect 2 (if you choose to use the save file from Mass Effect 1), where you meet up with the team member you saved. It also, finally, carries into Mass Effect 3 (again, if you choose to use the Mass Effect 2 save file), in that your relationship with them is tested further.
The prologue scene in Mass Effect 2 introduces a new species into the galaxy. At that point, you don’t know who they are. However, you do learn that they are very powerful – by the end of the prologue, the space ship is destroyed and Commander Shepard ends up dead (literally – exposure to the vacuum of space isn’t pretty). Of course, that’s not the end of the series just yet. Commander Shepard is brought back to life by a company (mentioned many times during Mass Effect 1) called “Cerberus”. The rest of this game involves finding out about the Collectors (the species introduced at the start of the game) while building up a team to take them out (basically the same as in Mass Effect 1). During one mission, you find out that these characters are the remnants of the race from the last cycle of the Reapers called the Protheans. Yes, you read that right, the story goes that the same thing happens over and over – in particular, every 50,000 years.
The choice system gained an overhaul for Mass Effect 2 – there are many more choices to be made, which make larger differences to the game (and into Mass Effect 3 as well), and many more chances for team members to be killed. There was also an overhaul to the transport system. In Mass Effect 1, there is no concept of fuel when travelling between star systems. Mass Effect 2 changed this, by adding in fuel and probes (used to probe a planet for consumable resources). More additions to the series was team member loyalty (earned by completing the team member’s side mission) and upgradable weapons, armour, and ship parts. Some of these upgrades allow the crew to survive further into the final mission against the Collectors, where others only help with small matters.
Mass Effect 3 changed everything. At least, in my opinion it did. A lot of the game’s mechanics received a massive overhaul, the ship became darker and changed layout, transportation between star systems and worlds became more costly (rightly so, though – the Reaper forces are taking over in this game), and missions became harder. Even with all this change, I’m actually impressed with the result. Every choice you have made throughout Mass Effect 1 and 2 are presented to you in some way right from the first scene. I found it amazing how they put a very large part of the storyline up to that point into the one introduction.
The rest of Mass Effect 3 is based around attempting to gain the loyalties of the many different species in the galaxy, and hopefully save Earth from the Reaper invasion. To do that, Commander Shepard needs to help the rest of the galactic community to fight off the Reapers, as well as Cerberus operatives who are trying to undo all the hard work. Throughout this game, there are many, many opportunities for team members to die. In fact, in my own play through, I found a few places where there was no choice but to let the character die to help Commander Shepard’s cause.
The final mission was very interesting, though. The trigger point of it is much further back than I expected, and interestingly there is a sort of mini checkpoint in the middle where you rally the troops for the final battle on Earth. This lead up to the final battle was different to what I was expecting, but it wasn’t bad. I won’t spoil the final moments of the game, for those of you that are interested in playing it for yourself. However, I will say that the ending (at least, the one that I ended with – there are 6 in the released version, plus more in the update version) is very spectacular.
To sum all this up, I really enjoyed the Mass Effect series. It was definitely something different from most other games that I play, and has somewhat opened up my mind to playing more a little like it (eg. the Assassins Creed series). I would definitely recommend the whole series to those of you that think it seems interesting.
Thanks for reading this review.
Robert
