|
Mass Effect |
|
||||
|
Studio: |
BioWare |
||||
|
Designer(s): |
Casey
Hudson / Preston Watamaniuk |
||||
|
Part of series: |
Mass
Effect |
||||
|
Release: |
November 20, 2007 |
||||
|
Main credits: |
Lead writer: Drew Karpyshyn
Lead programmer: David Falkner Art director: Derek Watts |
||||
|
Useful links: |
Paragon
playthrough (22 hours 34 mins.) |
Renegade
playthrough (22 hours 46 mins.) |
|
|
|
|
Basic Overview This review, written
during a tumultuous period in world history and, by extension, in my own
life, is dedicated to all the brave heroes of Ukrainian resistance in their
own war against the Reapers, and to all my good Russian friends, steadfast in
their struggle to resist their own brand of Reaper indoctrination from fascist
state media. Mass Effect is a pretty personal experience, so bear with me for a while as I lay down the I-me-mine groove on yʼall. Itʼll get better eventually, I promise.
Odd enough, I cannot properly recall what exactly prompted
me to return to the game — or at which particular point my initial
indifference turned to addiction, intoxication, and that particular kind of
feeling which drives players all around the world to write things like «I’ve
lived two lives — my fake, boring real one and my true existence in the Mass Effect universe». For a while, Mass Effect became the single
«druggiest» video game franchise for me since Quest For Glory in the early 1990s, and even today, I remain a
bit afraid of starting it up once more, lest everything else goes to hell
until I have completed the entire trilogy. (One of the reasons, actually, why
I still manage to hold out on the remastered Legendary Edition). And I know for sure that I am not alone in
this — the feeling of personal intimacy with the franchise is evident in a
lot of stuff people say about the games, and it goes way beyond collecting
action figures of Commander Shepard or celebrating International N7 Day with
your friends. Formal rituals are silly; true empathy with fictional art is
priceless. So what was it, specifically, that made Mass Effect so outstanding in a
veritable sea of RPG, adventure and action-based video game franchises? The
most natural benchmark for comparison here would probably be BioWare’s own
history. By 2007, the studio was already one of the leading giants in the
CRPG universe, having established its reputation with the Baldur’s Gate franchise, expanded and
defended it with critical successes such as Neverwinter Nights and Jade
Empire, and then carried it on a whole new level by taking over the
sci-fi genre with Knights Of The Old
Republic. As I wrote in my review of Baldur’s
Gate, easily the most important secret of BioWare’s success was their
ability to humanize the CRPG
experience — leave in all the combat fun and all the tricky stat business,
but add up the feeling that you are invested in the lives, actions, and
feelings of actual people, rather than simply playing a chess game of
strategy and tactics. Fans loved and got attached to the characters,
empathizing with them stronger than they would empathize with actual people —
letʼs face it, real
people, as a rule, tend to suck, and you can hardly ever count on them to
match your hopes and ideals, whereas a well-designed travel companion in a
RPG is precisely like that perfect
friend you could never afford in real life. For all their excellence, though, those early BioWare
games still had their limits, both technical and substantial. On the
technical front, the graphic design left a lot to be desired — the isometric
perspectives of Baldur’s Gate and Neverwinter Nights left way too much
for the imagination if you really wanted to fall in love with your
characters, and the still-too-crude 3D polygons of Jade Empire and KOTOR were
an insufficient, if important, step forward. In the substance department, the
games still suffered from a lack of realism — the dialog was largely
situation-based, centered around player quests rather than focused primarily
on immersing the player into a believable environment. If you so wanted, and
if you really put your mind to it, you could
make the Sword Coast into your second home. But it took effort. Yet the most important deficiency — even though some
hardcore RPG fans would rather call it an advantage — was the blank slate
state of your main playable character. Other than a few insignificant
biographic details, these guys never had much of an in-game personality,
offering you complete freedom to fill that one in with the aid of your own
imagination, subtly directed by the sets of choices made throughout the game.
Nobody at BioWare could be blamed for this: the designers were, after all,
just loyally following the classic RPG formula, in which having a blank-slate
protagonist, built by the player from the ground up, was one of the essential
ingredients, separating it from the «adventure» genre in which the name,
physical appearance, and biography of your character were set in stone from
the start. Mass Effect was the first BioWare game to dispense
with that — not as radically, perhaps, as CD Projekt RED’s The Witcher from the same year, in
which pre-game customization of your playable character was eliminated
completely (Geralt is Geralt, right?), but radically enough to create an
entirely new type of RPG experience. Your character had a preset name
(Shepard), a preset military rank (Commander), several finite and quite
concrete variations on his or her backstory, and, most importantly, a
well-defined sense of purpose. Choices still mattered, and Shepard’s
personality could be cosmetically shaped by the player in different ways, but
ultimately Mass Effect was a
specific story, set around a specific character. Freedom of player’s vision
was significantly sacrificed in favor of player’s empathy and involvement — a
tactic that must have turned off quite a few of those hardcore RPG fans, but
bought BioWare millions of new admirers, including those that would not
previously touch an RPG with a 10-foot steel pole (damage 1d8 +3 crushing,
THAC0 -2 bonus). Yet if the player’s vision was somewhat limited by the
game’s design, the designers’ vision was anything but. Mass Effect was BioWare’s first — and best — out of two major
franchises (the second one being Dragon
Age) built upon a completely original foundation, rather than a «rented»
one like the Forgotten Realms for Baldur’s
Gate or Star Wars for Knights Of
The Old Republic. Two persons deserve our primary gratitude for this:
project director Casey Hudson, who thought that creating a sci-fi universe of
its own would be a proper development step for BioWare after the success of KOTOR — and Drew Karpyshyn, the main
artistic mind behind the creation of the Mass
Effect lore and the storyline of the first game in the series. By the
time of Mass Effect 2, Karpyshyn’s
role in the game would already be seriously diminished, and by the time of Mass Effect 3, he would no longer be
involved with the project at all — a factor which, as some would claim,
contributed to the deterioration of the writing — but the Mass Effect universe as a whole was
fathered by Drew, and so, naturally, Drew’s influential shadow and all the
threads that he set in motion would be reflected in each of the franchise’s
installments to come. This circumstance is actually more important than it
looks, since conventional gaming critical consensus for the past 10 years has
tended to separate the three parts of the trilogy with a narrative that looks
something like this: (a) the original Mass
Effect was where it all started and established all the major lore, but
now looks somewhat dated and underdeveloped; (b) Mass Effect 2 is where it’s really at, the best game in the
series and one of the best video games of all time; (c) Mass Effect 3 is an okay continuation to Mass Effect 2, but thoroughly ruined by its inept and offensive
ending. I understand the logic behind each of these opinions, yet strongly
disagree with every single one of them — and in my reviews of the trilogy,
will try, to the best of my limited ability, to show why. Most importantly, in my opinion, the Mass Effect trilogy is precisely what
it is — a trilogy, a single, logical, wholesome, and well-rounded story told
in three installments, being the ideal video game equivalent of what The Lord Of The Rings is in the world
of literature and (the original) Star
Wars is in the world of cinema. If you, too, are a novice and want to ask
the question, «where should I begin with Mass
Effect?», the logical — in fact, the only adequate — answer is to begin
at the beginning; do not be a clueless noob by listening to brainless advice like
«well, the first game may be too rough about the edges for a modern gamer,
and all critics agree Mass Effect 2
is the best game in the series, so...». At the same time, just like each of the three parts of The Lord Of The Rings have their
stylistic and atmospheric differences, so would it be ridiculous to deny that
the same goes for Mass Effect. After
all, each game in the series was designed and produced by its own team in its
own time interval, with different sets of writers, programmers, and artists
who took into consideration both technological progress and fan feedback —
plus, even though Hudson and Karpyshyn had planned Mass Effect as a trilogy right from the start, it only takes a
single attentive playthrough of the three games to understand that there was
nothing like a wholesome, unified conception of what the story would be all
about when the original Mass Effect
went into actual development. (Rule #1 for any long-term project: always take care of the start and the end from the beginning, and
fill in the middle as you go — alas, only a miserable share of such projects
takes this rule into consideration). Seen from that perspective, the original game — Mass Effect — was, indeed, the most
«lore-oriented» of the series: one of its main purposes was to introduce, in
as much detail as possible, Karpyshyn’s vision of the Milky Way galaxy circa
2183 A.D., with all of its star systems, planets, races, technological
advances, and civilizational risks. Mass
Effect 2 would concentrate far more on the «buddy» aspect of the game,
being a bit more chamber-like in format and downplaying the grand scale of
the conflict in favor of personal melodrama. Finally, Mass Effect 3, with its Reaper invasion theme, would finish
things on an overwhelmingly epic scale (much like The Return Of The King), bringing in a completely different set
of emotions. Yet not one of the three parts is completely autonomous or
self-sufficient; not one of the three parts summarizes all the best about Mass Effect without flaunting some of
its worst; not one of the three parts can be fully and satisfyingly
appreciated outside of the context of the other two. Together, all their
deficiencies notwithstanding, they probably represent the single most
grandiose artistic achievement in the history of videogaming — not likely to
be topped in the near future of the medium, definitely not if it continues to
evolve along its current lines of evolution. |
|||||
|
Content evaluation |
|||||
|
Plotline
To
be quite honest, I am still not entirely sure if the Mass Effect saga could be completely excused and exonerated from
succumbing to the same temptation. Many things about its central plotline —
the fight against the giant, omnipotent, mysteriously Lovecraftian Reapers in
their crusade to eliminate organic civilization — did not make sense back in
2007 and made even less sense upon the completion of the Trilogy. But some ideas
work better when simply felt up your spine rather than when subjected to cold
intellectual analysis; and with Mass
Effect, BioWare’s designers showed a level of unprecedented ambition that
deserves unequivocal respect even if you still reserve the right to ridicule
Karpyshin & Co.’s concepts. One
such type of daring plot decision is giving you, the player, essentially no
time to familiarize yourself with this brand new world of 2183 A.D. before it
already finds itself on the eve of
destruction. The game seemingly begins slow and humble — as Commander Shepard
of the Systems Alliance (a.k.a. ʽEarthʼ, really), you have been directed to
proceed to the remote colony planet of Eden Prime in order to retrieve and
protect a recently excavated artefact, apparently left behind by the elder
race of the Protheans, whose nature and purpose are to be ascertained by
scientists. Even before you set foot on the planet, things begin to fall
apart when the Eden Prime colonists and soldiers are attacked by a mysterious
enemy — the robotic Geth, who are themselves guided by an even more
terrifying and baffling opponent that looks like a giant squid-shaped spaceship.
One of the very first things that the plot does is send you straight-on into
raging combat, and it is only after you have been properly baptized by fire
that you actually get a chance to look around and thoroughly immerse yourself
in the game’s universe. For me on my first playthrough, this was a turn-off,
what with my liking to take things slow at first and all; later, however, I
learned to enjoy the game’s prologue as an artistic decision rather than
simply a clever excuse for an early combat tutorial. As
a video game rather than a movie franchise, Mass Effect can afford itself the luxury of not being completely
anthropo-centric. The Milky Way Galaxy circa 2183 A.D. is supervised by a
Council run by three races, none of which is human — the «philosopher» race of
the formally gender-less (yet still strikingly feminine) Asari; the
«military» race of the Turians, each of whom looks like a cross between a
praying mantis and a Roman centurion; and the «nerdy» race of the Salarians,
nicely evolved lizards with a Thomas Edison fetish. The main residing
location of the Council is the Citadel, an interplanetary marvel of
technology that was originally discovered by the Asari — who somehow decided
to turn it into the galaxy’s central hub of operations even despite not completely
understanding how the whole thing works (somewhat similar to a tribe of apes
deciding to establish lodgings at an abandoned nuclear power station, but
whatever). The Citadel eventually becomes a harbor for all races — including
humans, the last species to discover the wonder of interstellar travel, but
also one of the most impatient to grab a proper seat on the Council and
impose their nasty Western capitalist-colonialist ways on the peacefully
grazing (not really) alien civilizations. Somewhere
at this point, Mass Effect still can’t
help falling back upon anthropocentrism, and, frankly, I do not blame it.
Although Commander Shepard may be customized as male or female, have
different backgrounds, class specializations, hair colors, and neck shapes, one
thing s/he may not be is not human
(in stark contrast, mind you, to most of BioWare’s previous franchises where
you could freely pick the race / species for your character). This is a
plot-required limitation: Mass Effect
is, first and foremost, a game about humans and the kind of change they bring
to whatever balance of forces they encounter upon their arrival. When, later
on, it becomes apparent that the giant squid-like spaceship first seen on
Eden Prime is Sovereign, the avantgarde sentry of the Reapers who appear on
the world stage every 50 thousand years or so to wipe out all advanced
organic civilizations... well, one might very well ask oneself the question
of just how coincidental it is that
this particular 50-thousand year cycle came to an end right at the very
moment that humans — and no other
race in particular — have appeared as an active force among the Milky Way’s
many cultures. Clearly, humans are special — and Commander Shepard is the
most special human of them all, the only one with whom Sovereign actually
condescends to have a brief conversation. Given
the rising tide of political correctness in the 21st century, one will regard
this message as either astonishingly retrograde and bigoted, or surprisingly
defiant and independent. I tend to gravitate toward the latter option — not
because the creators of Mass Effect
dared to promote colonialism, but rather because the entire agenda of Mass Effect is about posing questions
without giving unambiguous answers. In what might be one of the greatest
video game innovations of all time, the game utilizes the classic RPG
choice-based mechanics for much more than simply shaping the biography and
psychology of your playable character: it lets you shape the «moral course of
history» without explicitly praising you as a cosmopolitan hero or condemning
you as a nationalist villain. In Baldur’s
Gate, for instance, you nearly always had a choice between heroic and
villainous resolution of presented issues — save ’em all just because good
boys go to Heaven, or kill ’em all just for the mwahaha fun of it. But the famed morality system of Mass Effect is something completely
different altogether. From
the very start of the game, you can begin to shape your Shepard along the
«Paragon» path — marked in blue — or the «Renegade» path — marked in red; you
can also try out a mixed approach, but the game will try to penalize you for
that (some of the Paragon options are only open to you if you already have
enough Paragon points through choosing earlier Paragon options, and the same
symmetrically goes for Renegade). Many players, out of the naïve
goodness of their hearts or due to the old Dungeons & Dragons influence,
mistakenly think that «Paragon» equals «Good» and «Renegade» equals «Evil», which
is really only right if you consistently apply the exact same dichotomy to
Democrats and Republicans. More precisely, the «Paragon» path is the Henry
Fonda way of doing things, whereas the «Renegade» path is the Clint Eastwood
one (the ends justify the means, don’t be afraid to go all gung-ho when
circumstances demand it, the works), and the game rarely, if ever, castigates
you for choosing one over the other... at least, not directly: indirectly, going consistently
Renegade predictably results in a higher body count, which automatically
excludes you from certain interactions or further choices due to the
character becoming unavailable. In
the ultra-grand scheme of things — the war against the Reapers, which, in the
first game, takes on the shape of defeating Sovereign and his chief minion,
the rogue Turian agent Saren — going Paragon or Renegade does not make that
much of a difference; but it does matter a lot in your pursuit of the game’s
many secondary quests, such as meddling in the conflict between the nomadic
Quarians and their synthetic creations, the Geth, or in the fate of the
Krogans, a race of barbaric warriors condemned to «genophage» (artificial
sterilization) for the safety of the galaxy. Pretty much every small side
mission in the game has a Paragon or Renegade solution, and, much to the
honor of BioWare’s writer team, the game never pretends to judge you for your
actions — you, the player, always remain as the ultimate judge for all of
them. Most of the choices you can make have reasonable motivation, and many
will have you deliberating for quite a while before settling on one specific
part of the click wheel. (My own simple way of escaping the pains of doubt
was to play out a complete Paragon path and a complete Renegade path — but
admittedly, this is not nearly as fun as completely identifying yourself with
Shepard and making all the decisions precisely the same way you would make
them in real life). One thing about Mass
Effect is clear: while most of the questions it asks of you are
relatively simple, choosing the «right» answer is anything but. A
good example of BioWare’s subtlety in designing choice-based mini-scenarios
comes early on in the game during Shepard’s (optional) exploration of the
Citadel, when s/he comes across a pregnant woman and her brother having a heated
discussion on what is to be done with her unborn child. Apparently, her
husband was killed in action, and the baby, according to genetic scans, has
inherited from him a serious genetic defect that could lead to an early
demise. With the technological advances of the 22nd century, it is possible
to cure that defect while the baby is still in the womb, but with a small,
almost negligible, yet non-zero risk of severe consequences for the organism.
The brother urges the woman to take the treatment; the woman, naturally,
resists. It is up to Shepard to make his judgement and offer a «Paragon»
solution — the mother is always right — or a «Renegade» one — cold logic
should be obeyed. Obviously, if we act in accordance with the dominant moral
code of today, we should opt for the «Paragon» solution; yet the «Renegade»
answer is worded just as reasonably ("your husband’s death was not your
fault; but if you refuse the therapy, your child’s death could be") —
and hey, in the age of Covid and anti-vaxxer frenzy it actually takes on a
whole new level of convincing force. And
therein lies the magic of the story of Mass
Effect. Typical of video games, its plot twists and substantial themes
are not at all new — in fact, much has been written about how freely the saga
borrows from sci-fi and fantasy classics all over the place, starting with
the obvious nod to 2001: A Space
Odyssey (the mysterious Prothean beacons that evoke the alien monoliths
of the Firstborn) and ending with Battlestar
Galactica, much of the aesthetics and conceptuality of which was
appropriated for Mass Effect
without any scruples. What is new
is Mass Effect’s ultra-heavy
reliance on choice and non-linear storytelling — one reason why there is no
way it could ever be properly transferred to the medium of a movie or TV show
(unless they invite David Lynch to turn it into a wormhole-like extravaganza
filled with doppelgängers and shit). Of
course, the choice mechanics does not advance nearly far enough to truly make
your head spin. Shepard is never really given the option of turning to the
dark side (no matter what all those who hate taking the «Renegade» path might
say). Intermediate villains like the Thorian and Matriarch Benezia have to
die no matter which path you choose. All of your companions on board the
Normandy will always stay by your side regardless of whether you treat them
like pals or like dirt. Even so, the amount of branching options introduced
in the game was staggering by the standards of 2007 — especially when players
realized how important choices made early in the game could be for events
that would take place much later. Perhaps more than any other game released
before or since, Mass Effect gave
you the ultimate illusion of truly being able to bend the fabric of the
universe to your will, of creating your own timeline and imposing your own
values and strategies upon mankind. When
thinking about this from a cold analytic perspective, you do realize, quickly
enough, that it was only an illusion. On an objective scale, any classic RPG
game with random event generation — e.g. early Elder Scrolls titles — offers the player much more freedom, since
any runthrough of such a game will be uniquely different from the rest. For
all the variety of choice in Mass
Effect, the overall number of potential scenarios to be played out is
still finite, and each possible issue, want it or not, has been pre-planned
and pre-programmed for you by the game designers: those guys saw everything there is to be seen (apart from
glitches and bugs, of course) before you did. But herein lies the big dilemma.
Would you rather have to choose between such unique, unrepeatable,
specially-tailored-for-you quests as «the Duke of the province of Shabdallum
has asked you to save his daughter from the vicious goblins of the caves of
Boogagah in exchange for the magic Sword of Destiny?» and «the Lord-Mayor of
the city of Turiel has offered you to save a diplomat from the ice giants of
the mountains of Hullabaloo in exchange for the Amulet of Truth?» — or would
you rather prefer to deliberate as to whether you should or should not
exterminate the last representative of an archaic, intelligent, uniquely
endowed, but mortally dangerous species in a morally significant choice, but
one that is non-uniquely shared between you and millions of other players? In
some sense, this is similar to asking if one would prefer a huge,
mind-boggling, widely spaced open world setting, only to find that most of
this huge open world is empty space — randomly generated and verbally
repetitive NPCs walking around miriads of houses with locked doors — or a
smaller, more compact setting which offers far less space to roam, yet each
pixel of that space is worth exploring. Which brings us to yet another
important «anti-RPG» feature of Mass
Effect: although formally the game does belong to the class of «open
world games» (after Shepard becomes Spectre and captain of the Normandy, the
entire galaxy is free for him to explore), it still psychologically railroads
you into a more or less linear plot. The side quests of the game, even if
sometimes they do present you with interesting moral choices, are little more
than temporary distractions and diversions, offering you a quick break from
the main series of events — to catch your breath and level up. It is possible
to ignore them entirely and still have a complete and satisfying playthrough,
as opposed to, say, Baldur’s Gate,
where most of the actual fun was tied to simply roaming the environment and
picking up whatever mini-quest you could find. The
main plot of Mass Effect is not completely
set in stone: your three major missions (rescue the Asari scientist Liara in
the lava-ensconced ruins of Therum; defeat the mind-controlling Thorian and
rescue — or not rescue — the colonists on Feros; face Saren’s aide, Matriarch
Benesia, and rectify the consequences of a catastrophic biological experiment
on Noveria) may be pulled off in any order, and a belated fourth one (destroy
Saren’s laboratory on Virmire and face Sovereign himself in an intimate
face-to-face chat) can be started up right after any two out of three have
been completed. But these are essentially four semi-autonomous events of a
single plot, and moving them around each other makes about as much difference
as moving around any several out of Hercules’ twelve labors. There are funny,
albeit insignificant, consequences for those who, contrary to laws of common
sense, would want to hold out rescuing Liara until the very end — other than
that, your choices mostly matter within
each separate chapter of your adventure rather than in between them, and
that’s OK. The
plot as such is only mildly creative; this is not where the real strength of Mass Effect lies. A huge plant-like
monster busy mind-controlling and «vegetating» its victims; the last remnants
of an aggressive, super-intelligent species which stupid people try to turn
into biological weapons; a special agent gone rogue and allying himself with
the Dark Side «for the greater good of the Galaxy» — these are all
well-explored sci-fi / fantasy tropes, and I don’t think Karpyshyn or any
other Mass Effect writer could ever
pretend to introduce new philosophical ideas or unpredictable plot twists
into these genres. The good thing is that most of these plotlines are
generally believable, and, apart from an occasional cringe-inducing line of
bullshit pathos, generally well-phrased in dialog terms. One
scene in particular — Shepard’s defiant exchange with Sovereign during
their short face-to-face (or, rather, face-to-hologram) meeting on Virmire —
has acquired near-legendary status in the gaming community, though not
everybody can properly explain what it is precisely that makes the scene so
outstanding in a legion of "big-hero-taunts-big-baddie" moments in
various artistic media. Karpyshyn’s ambitious idea was to literally devise
the biggest-threat-of-’em-all — not just one of those boring megalomaniacs
with evil-empire-building goals, but a mystical force that challenges Life
itself for reasons well beyond Life’s limited comprehension. As charismatic
as Evil can be in books, movies, or games, its face-to-face confrontation
with Good is normally supposed to leave Good with at least some sort of moral
victory; in his/her exchange with Sovereign, however, Shepard’s moral victory
is impossible simply because his system of moral values is incompatible with
his enemy’s, whatever that system might even be. All the hero can do is
weakly generate truisms like "You’re
not even alive. Not really. You’re just a machine. And machines can be broken!"
and get deservedly roasted in response: "Your words are as empty as your future. I am the vanguard of your
destruction. This exchange is over." Although
the Reaper menace as such, especially visually, was clearly influenced by the
likes of Cthulhu, the most significant part of it was the enigma — the
inability to comprehend who the Reapers are, why they are doing what they are
doing, and if there are any possible means at all to thwart the threat they
represent. The next two games in the series would attempt to somewhat
de-mystify that enigma (we shall eventually try and decide just how
detrimental that decision was), but the original Mass Effect plays around it pretty well, though, come to think of
it, the ending, in which the way of taking down Sovereign turns out to be
fairly conventional after all, is a bit disappointing. You could, in fact,
argue that the ending is precisely where Hollywood takes over innovative
artistic vision — the kind of compromise that mars quite a few other BioWare
games — but you do not really play Mass
Effect in order to get to its ending; on the contrary, if you are a true Mass Effect player, you shall want to
put the ending off for as long as possible. There
are, after all, all those other
assignments to do, in addition to the major parts of the mission, during
which you get to explore various parts of the galaxy, stock up on your lore,
level up your character, and dabble in a lot of small, but challenging moral
choices. Put down or convince to surrender a crazy, murderous ex-military man
turned cult leader? Negotiate with or eliminate a renegade warlord
threatening the economic welfare of the Alliance? Save the hostages during a
major terrorist attack on a remote asteroid, letting the terrorists escape,
or wipe ’em all out while sacrificing the lives of the hostages (the plot
line of the excellent, if short, Bring
Down The Sky expansion pack)? You do see a pattern emerging here — soft
and peaceful solutions for Paragon, gung-ho bloodshed for Renegade — but the
missions feature plenty of small, but colorful characters with their own
mini-personalities to make up for the rather uniform arrangement of options.
Some of the assignments are more straightforward — roll in, shoot ’em up,
collect the loot, get out of there — yet on the whole, the small side
missions in Mass Effect are more in
line with similar missions in earlier BioWare games than any such missions in
Mass Effect 2 and 3 (that is, if you count the
«personal» missions related to your team members in Mass Effect 2 as parts of the main plot rather than auxiliary
side assignments). As
always in a BioWare game, Shepard can always set aside some time to pursue a
romantic option — even if the game offers surprisingly little choice,
avoiding same-sex liaisons (this would naturally be corrected in the
following games, as time went by and mores became more progressive) and
essentially just making you choose between an alliance with a member of your
own species or a «sexless», but still fairly hot Asari. Romance in the first Mass Effect game is handled with a bit
more intelligence and subtlety than it is in Mass Effect 2 (where the whole thing was seriously sabotaged by
too much fan service), but on the whole, romance in the game is fairly
independent from the plot as such and has more to do with the general idea of
bonding with your teammates, so we should probably come back to it in the
«Atmosphere» section. All
in all, while the plot of Mass Effect
in general is hardly its strongest point, it is solid to the point of me being
able to take it seriously. As I already mentioned, the first game — for
better or worse — has more to do with world-building than philosophy, but
there is enough story here to keep you intrigued and occupied, with great
attention to detail and rationality, even if, as befits an RPG, things are
incredulously romanticized at all times, and Commander Shepard quickly
becomes a figure more comparable to some legendary Indian warlord with
supernatural powers from the Mahabharata
rather than an actual military commander from some foreseeable period in
humanity’s future. (Still ten times more believable than any action hero in
any given Japanese RPG, though). |
|||||
|
Action
The
combat itself is not too complicated, though. Gone for good are BioWare’s
early-day AD&D mechanics, when opponents could hack at each other for
hours while waiting for a lucky roll that would never come. Luck has
virtually no place in Mass Effect;
all it takes is a bit of strategic thinking and taking care not to engage in combat
with enemies ten times as powerful as you, and you are largely in the clear
even on high-difficulty levels. Speaking of overpowered, because Mass Effect is — at least formally —
an open-world game, the majority of the enemies that you will encounter at
the end of your run will be more or less the same that you encounter at the
beginning. Synthetic Geth that come in simple and advanced varieties; berserk
half-ursine, half-reptiloid Krogan warriors; biotics-wielding, fast-moving
Asari warriors; generic human mercenaries — all of them you shall encounter
early on, and all of them will get progressively easier to overcome as you
level up, until, by the end of the game, you just toss ’em all aside like the
ragdolls they are. In other words, this is a classic example of the «generic
RPG difficulty curve»: tough as hell at the beginning while you’re wimpy,
easy as heck at the end when you’re Superman. Combat
mechanics of the first game has often been criticized for not being as
well-developed as in the other two, but while I do agree that some things
could have technically been designed better (worst of all is the decision to
have Shepard take cover automatically whenever s/he is in the vicinity of
cover — this means that you often find yourself glued to the nearest wall
when all you wanted to do is charge ahead), there are a few things in it that
make it uniquely and experimentally non-generic when compared to all
predictable shooter patterns (amusingly, the exact same thing is observed for
the first part of The Witcher
trilogy, Mass Effect’s equal in the
fantasy world, which also came out in 2007). The
most unusual thing is that Mass Effect
is an ammo-less shooter: according to the lore of the universe, each gun in
the game shoots not with bullets, but with tiny chips of metal accelerated to
supersonic velocity by decreasing its mass in a mass effect field. This means
that you always have a limitless supply of ammo, no matter what you shoot, but this comes at the expense of heat
buildup — so every once in a while you have to slow down your firing process
so as not to let your gun overheat (if it does, you’ll have to wait a long time for it to cool down, or
switch to a different weapon). This creates a quirky, possibly unprecedented
combat mechanic which conservative players, for some reason, totally failed
to appreciate — leading to the designers having to return to more traditional
ammo-based mode of combat for the next two games (with a clumsy and
unconvincing «explanation» added to the lore). Squad-based
combat functions pretty much as it does in any other BioWare game — you can
give yourself and your teammates orders in real time if you wish, but it is
more convenient to pause the game and bring up the command HUD, which gives
you the option to change weapons and exercise your special powers on the
enemy in peace and quiet while the action is frozen in place. (The PC version
makes real-time combat a bit more palatable since you can map a lot of your
own — but not your teammates’ — special powers onto keyboard shortcuts, which
is great by me since I think freezing the game with the command HUD during
combat really breaks up psychological immersion). That said, my personal
impressions are that your teammates, two of whom you can select for each
mission from a maximum pool of six, are there usually more for a show of
support than anything else — at least, when it comes to shooting in the early
parts of the game. Some of them have highly useful special powers which you
can exploit at will, but on their own, they are just as prone to distracting
you as they are to assisting you. As they level up along with you, they
progressively become more useful, but on the whole team-based AI would
certainly be much improved in the subsequent two parts of the trilogy. Speaking
of special powers, Mass Effect
introduces quite an ingenious system of classes for characters: projecting
the classic Fighter / Wizard / Thief trichotomy onto the science fiction
genre, they give you a choice of following the Soldier / Biotic / Tech Guy
path, with each of your companions having a fixed specialization from the
outset. The Soldier is essentially the equivalent of the Fighter — with lots
of blunt force and the ability to specialize in all weapons and wear heavy
armor, a brute (and somewhat boring) tank. The Biotic is Mass Effect’s version of the Wizard: if Shepard’s backstory
involves being irradiated by the mysterious «Element Zero» in the hero’s
childhood, you get awesome supernatural powers where you can shield yourself,
throw your opponents around, lift them in the air, or lock them helpless
inside a «singularity field» by harnessing the forces of the universe. The
Tech Guy (Engineer) is the weakest of the lot (few people like to play that
class, in all honesty), but at least he’s got a major advantage over all of
his/her synthetic enemies, whom he can hack, sabotage, or short-circuit in a
jiffy after a bit of practice. Then there are the mixed classes — my favorite
is the Vanguard, the game’s equivalent of the Battlemage, part Soldier, part
Biotic, an unstoppable killing machine who, when properly levelled up, can
throw around an entire enemy host and machine-gun them while they’re floating
around, completely helpless. Better
still, in stark contrast with today’s «advanced» shooters, giving you a
miriad of options, parameters, angles, displays, stats, and visual
pyrotechnics, Mass Effect keeps it fairly
simple. Winning a battle does require some work from the player, particularly
if you are playing on a challenging level, but combat never feels particularly
technical — having mastered the simple basics, you can just let yourself go
with the flow, instead of having to keep track of five million different
modifiers and statistics floating around the screen. (On lower difficulty
levels, you can actually relax and have your companions do most of the dirty
work for you — although, as I already said, on higher levels they become more
of a liability than a relief). Yet even if, on the whole, your combat
strategies are fairly limited, combining your talents with those of your
companions is a bit of an art; just like in BioWare’s earlier games,
defeating a powerful opponent usually takes a well-thought out plan of
action, rather than brute force and unlimited firepower. Classic
RPG elements that still managed to survive into the game include leveling up
by means of gathering XP, increasing your attributes as you level up, and
looting weaponry and tech upgrades from storage units or your enemies’ bodies
as you go. Interestingly, the amount of XP one can harvest in the game is
limited, since enemies defeated on various planets do not respawn and the
number of XP-yielding quests is quite finite; this pretty much eliminates the
very idea of «grinding» from the game, although maximizing your spoils still
requires quite a bit of tedious work (such as collecting all the minerals on
each planet you visit). Looting is also fun until a certain point, since in
the big scheme of things most of your common-grade weaponry is
interchangeable, and once you have completed the hunt for advanced-grade
equipment (which begins to pop up after you have achieved a high enough
level), your inventory will be clogged with endless tons of junk
(fortunately, all of it can be recycled into «omnigel», a useful substance
that helps you repair your equipment). Not all of this is perfectly well
balanced, but the overall system is, I would say, an intelligent compromise
between the strategic complexity of classic RPGs and the simplistic
straightforwardness of classic shooters. Other
than «clunky combat» (pish-posh), most of the gameplay criticism used to be
addressed at navigation across the various planets of the galaxy, most of
which, if you really want it and have plenty of time, can be done on foot,
but is usually supposed to take place in the M35 Mako, a six-wheeled
supertank thing which, in addition to giving you massive firepower, can move
through all sorts of rugged terrain — everything but water, in fact. The main
problem with it was the frustrating control system, which constantly used to
wrestle control out of the player’s hands, sending the Mako into series of
paroxysmal spins whenever you tried to brave a mountain peak (which was
fairly often, since a huge percentage of the landscape in the game is
occupied by dizzying mountain ranges). But while it might be true that this
aspect of the game suffered from a little less playtesting than there should
have been, the common answer to the problem was obvious — don’t use the Mako to brave mountain
peaks, try to circumvent them whenever possible. Sometimes the road takes a
little longer that way, but you probably do not traverse the Himalayas right
across the peak of Mount Everest, either. Just do not get it into your head
that the Mako can do everything (it
cannot scale a completely smooth wall of rock, for instance), and you’ll be
fine. (I also like the idea of penalizing the player’s XP while fighting in
the Mako — to get maximum reward, you always have to deliver at least the
final kill shot while on foot, which greatly adds to the challenge). As for the overall pace of the game, this is something you are completely free to set for yourself. Even if Commander Shepard seemingly has to hurry up in order to uncover and neutralize Saren and Sovereign’s evil plan, in practice you have no limits whatsoever, and can happily waste away as much time as you want on completing various side missions, hanging out on the Citadel, or just driving your Mako around randomly chosen planets, taking in the sights and sounds. Plot-wise, this does not make much sense, but no genuine RPG can survive without its sandbox aspects, even if, as I already said, Mass Effect does its best to reduce and compress them (and subsequent games would go even further). The quests themselves are fairly simple, featuring almost no «puzzles» as such — other than somewhat annoying mini-games of «decryption» where, in order to bypass locks and stuff, you have to guide your cursor through a series of spinning wheels to reach the center (ah, if only decryption were that easy in real life...) — but they do provide precious XP for leveling up, as well as teach you valuable combat strategy which you can then efficiently apply in the main quest, so skipping them is by no means recommendable, even if you do sometimes get to wonder what the hell you are doing here, shooting down packs of mercenaries or clearing out random dens of husks, when you are really supposed to be chasing down the bad guys who want to destroy the Universe as a whole. Oh, well. Less wondering, more shooting... |
|||||
|
Atmosphere
Mass Effect’s remedy to the challenge was simple
and efficient — if the building blocks of your universe are in danger of
feeling silly or annoying to the player, make it so that the player does not
even begin to concentrate on them. Instead, get the players involved, as
quickly as possible, inside the plot and the general tension; make the players
feel, as quickly as possible, as if the fate of the entire Milky Way really depended on their success. This
plan is put into action already at the very start of the game, when, through
the eyes of Commander Shepard, you are introduced to the wonder of the Mass
Relay — at this point in our future history, it is really little other than a
regular fast transit hub from one point in the Galaxy to another, but the way
it is presented, in a cut scene with as much atmospheric build-up as in a
regular Hollywood sci-fi blockbuster, makes you feel like a witness to
something truly phenomenal. Better still, at this moment you are Commander Shepard, making your way to the cockpit of the
SSV Normandy, so there is an immediately established equivalency between you
and your character (something that CD Projekt Red, for instance, did not get
quite right with the first Witcher
game from the same year). This
does not mean that Mass Effect has
no «atmosphere» outside of the interaction sphere of its characters. Quite on
the contrary, the combinations of visuals, cinematics, music tracks, and
sound effects chosen for each single location are nearly always impressive —
on the whole, more impressive, it could be argued, than in either of the
following games, because one of the chief goals of the first game in the
trilogy is to immerse you in Drew and Casey’s vision of our future. This
means great attention to detail in their world-building (there is, for
instance, a ton of printed lore for each of the planets in each of the star
systems you visit, including those on which the game does not even allow you
to land), even if you only really get to see a tiny fraction of that world up
close. Yes, most of the planets on which you and your Mako are allowed to
land will be lonesome and barren, with no cities, next to no infrastructure
and only occasional landmarks to draw your attention — but even so, rolling
through that landscape, with the camera gently panning around you, the music
setting a summer or winter mood, and the subtle lighting pushing you into
dawn-or-dusk territory, can be a beautiful experience; in fact, I have more
than once caught myself wondering about the potentially untapped wonders of
the real universe at large while letting myself be overwhelmed by the
artistic imagination of the BioWare guys. (And, for the record, this kind of
experience is only available in the
first Mass Effect game — 2 and 3 would be so much more story-oriented that Mother Nature would
largely sit them out). All
of the locations in which the main action takes place have distinct
atmospheric images of their own. Therum, the place of Liara’s imprisonment,
is a lava lover’s paradise: red, dry, dusty, and every bit as inhospitable
and unfriendly as it takes to get yourself out of there as quickly as possible.
The moribund colony of Feros, a curious mix of futuristic technology and
retro-futuristic archaeology, is drab, grey, dirty, and a great reminder of
humans’ irksome propensity to colonize even the shittiest spots on the map as
long as they stand to gain something. Noveria places that technology-drenched
infrastructure inside an immense, overwhelming ice palace — yet another
reminder of the same follies. And Virmire, the site of Saren’s dreadful
biological experiments, is a lush jungle where you can always step aside and
take the time to smell the roses before wiping out your next batch of Geth;
too bad you cannot ever revisit it in the aftermath of the battle (unlike
Noveria and Feros, where you can return any time you like until the beginning
of the final mission). Then,
of course, there is the Citadel, the central hub of the universe, where you
shall find yourself pretty often to pick up new missions, stock up on gear,
and learn the latest news. Programming and resource limitations have
unfortunately prevented it from looking as busy and lively as Karpyshyn would
probably have liked it to be — and unlike The
Witcher, whose NPCs all seem to have a dynamic life cycle of their own,
people in Mass Effect are, for the
most part, static, just standing or sitting in one place all through the
game; some of them are programmed to have a bit of dialog with each other
once or twice, then they just shut up once and for all. (On the other hand,
this at least saves them from all sorts of embarrassments resulting from poor
AI programming, like the infamous glitches of The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion). Even so, the vistas, the music, the
panoramic perspectives all make the Citadel — essentially a romanticized
version of the O’Neill
cylinder model — into a place where one can simply lose oneself for half
an hour or so, before coming back to reality and wishing you hadn’t. The
key word for most of these environments is ‘majestic’ — the panoramas, the
camera angles, the music, the sound effects, the perspectives all conspire to
make you feel a certain personal insignificance in light of the overall
overwhelming impression of the universe at large. A detailed tour of all the
available planets in the Mass Effect
galaxy would be a great bonus for those of us who enjoy reading up on popular
cosmology, astrophysics, and geochemistry and subsequently realizing that man
is not really the center of the universe, but, at best, a lucky random
spectator from the aisles. There is a quirky paradox hidden somewhere in
here, of course, since Commander Shepard is actually one of those men (or
women) who is endowed by Fate with some serious agency — but that agency
feels practically non-existent whenever you are driving your Mako across some
red-hot volcanic territory or through a heavy blizzard on an ice-covered
planet whose only inhabitant is an occasional Thresher Maw monster who likes
to have Makos for breakfast. Still,
as emotional and/or thought-provoking those vistas might be, Mass Effect’s major attraction lies in
the design of and interaction with its organic constituents, rather than its
natural and technological beauties. In general, Karpyshyn’s and Brennan’s
take on the magical 22nd century does not stray too far from the «epic-romantic»
take of most of our beloved sci-fi sagas — perhaps it is just a slight touch
more grounded in realism than Star Wars,
but in a world where most of the people dress up with a serious nod to
Renaissance nobility, interact with each other in exquisite literary language
(blame it on the automated translation services if you want), and make
advantage of the newly opened worlds by dashing through them in
swashbuckling, Wild West fashion (hello, Firefly
influence!), you will not be troubled by too many similarities with our own
pesky, mundane, boring-as-hell existence. Yet neither is the living world of Mass Effect just a collection of
recycled clichés and stereotypes — derivative as it is, there’s plenty
of imaginative power here to keep you surprised and intrigued. Most
of the races of Mass Effect do
behave in relatively strict accordance with their racial stereotypes. The
Asari move around and converse in gracious, elegant, eloquent manners,
holding up their roles as the wisest — and, subsequently, somewhat
condescending — overseers of the galaxy. The Romanesque Turians are
code-bound — stern, stuck-up, gruff, and just. The big and rowdy Krogans are
the proverbial burly dock workers from whom wimps like us prefer to stay away
(until, by some weird chance, you manage to get under some of their skins and
see them for the big babies they really are). Then there’s always the next
step in the advanced cogwheels of one’s imagination — races like the Hanar,
who look like jellyfish, talk like David Byrne on a Brian Eno-produced
record, and worship their deities (the ‘Enkindlers’) with all the verve of a fundamentalist
sect. Or like the Volus, who look like little badgers, wear protective suits
which distort their voices, and perform the classic sinister literary
function of «international Jewry» with their shady financial dealings. Or
like the Elcor, who, although they play a very small role in the overall
story of the saga, quickly managed to become one of the most beloved races of
them all due to their particular manner of conversing. Speaking
of the Elcor, I would just like to point out that they are perhaps the most
transparent example of how Mass Effect’s
world-building often (not always, but often enough) tries to ground cultural
particularities in scientific explanations — the Elcor, according to the
lore, have evolved in a very specific high-gravity environment, which has
conditioned their large bulk, sluggish behavior patterns, and minimal
physical activity. The Elcor speech, in particular, is presented as a dull,
toneless, monotone chain of sound whose emotional modulation is so subtle
that no other race can perceive it, which in turn requires the Elcor to
preface their every uttering with an adverbial note on its emotional nature
("genuine enthusiasm: I delight in
telling the history of my people"... "chastising rebuke: your tone is inappropriate", etc.).
Although this is just a flourish — the Elcor play no significant role in the
story whatsoever — it goes to show just how much thought, care, and humor was
invested in the designers’ vision of our future. It’s still magic vision
rather than realistic vision, of course, but the magic of Mass Effect is not cheap, fluffy
magic; even its most whimsical applications can still have a symbolic
significance. (And we might probably all gain something if we ever thought of
instituting a «talk like an Elcor» day or something). And
still that ain’t all — in fact, I have not even begun yet to talk about the truly major part of Mass Effect’s atmosphere. Roaming the
Milky Way may be a great source of melancholic excitement (or was that
exciting melancholy?), and interacting with all of its bizarrely-designed
creatures may be a great way to open up one’s creative and imaginative
boundaries, but above and beyond everything else, Mass Effect is a «buddy-oriented» game. The most important
characters around are the members of your multi-racial team, whom you will
gradually learn to like, protect, empathize with, and ultimately treat like a
part of your extended family — brothers, sisters, and (possibly) lovers. Although
BioWare had always focused on «team-oriented» RPGs, right from the very first
Baldur’s Gate game and onward,
arguably no other BioWare franchise placed as much importance on the players’
interaction with their party members. Unlike Baldur’s Gate, where you can choose up to five partners from a
huge pool of potential candidates, Mass
Effect gives you a strictly limited number of companions — two humans
(the biotic Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko and the gruff warrior lady Ashley
Williams), one Turian (the inimitable security officer Garrus Vakarian), one
Asari (the inquisitively intellectual Liara T’Soni), one Quarian (the
inquisitively tech-savvy Tali’Zorah nar Rayya), and one Krogan (Urdnot Wrex,
a big-hearted mercenary with equal passion for affection and destruction).
Although you can only choose two of these guys at a time to accompany you on
any of your missions — resulting in billions of hours spent by despairing
players trying to figure out the best candidates for the appropriate tasks — they
will still always be available in the hold of the Normandy for conversation,
and it is more likely than not that you will get to know each of them in
detail before the game is over. It
is not just that each of the companions is equipped with his or her
backstory, a full-fledged personality, and a significant role in the
unfolding of the main plotline. It is the extra care invested in their belonging to your personal sphere of
acceptance and responsibility that matters. Your chosen companions follow you
each step of the way, sometimes clumsily running into or skilfully avoiding
obstacles, sometimes randomly interacting with you or with each other,
sometimes making insightful or funny comments on whatever is going around —
and always ready to draw their guns at the smallest sight of trouble. They
issue warnings about approaching enemies, express genuine concern about your
welfare ("Shepard’s been hit!"
is usually the last thing I hear before I die), and are always ready to chat
you up whenever you feel like taking a break from the tension and excitement
of mission combat. When it comes to chatting, the writers for specific
characters took good care, in particular, to stay on a well-balanced fence
between strong, but not dumb and completely predictable, stereotypization, and
throwing in lots of personal nuances which, rather than diluting a
character’s individuality, end up somewhat sharpening it. Garrus Vakarian,
for instance, is introduced as a sort of alien Dirty Harry, his mind fully
bent on dispensing strict and stern justice by any means possible — yet he
also has a soft, shy, almost sentimental angle to him which instantaneously
makes the guy into a ladies’ favorite even despite his addiction to placing
well-targeted bullets in between his victims’ eyes. Wrex is a ruthless,
bloody mercenary who almost seems to enjoy blowing stuff up for the fun of it
rather than for the money, but he is also a tragic figure, doubly trapped by
the sorry fate of his entire sterilized nation and that of being one of its most intelligent — and, therefore,
one of its most unhappy — representatives. Tali, the Quarian, combines the
nerdy excitement of a tech-crazy young person with the deep resentment and
psychic trauma of an entire nation that had to pay a terrible price for its
oversights. And Liara, the Asari, is given the complex task of a young Sage
trying to psychologically fit in with a bunch of ignorant undergraduates
(amusingly, it is only when you decide to bed her that her high horse somewhat
naturally and inevitably melts away). With all those delicious aliens around, players
often tend to underestimate the value of Shepard’s human companions, Kaidan
and Ashley — an outcome that I prefer to ascribe to either the common exotic
ways of thinking ("aliens fun, humans bo-o-o-o-ring!") or liberal
guilt ("aliens all good, humans all bad!") rather than the writers’
fault, because both of these characters are fleshed out just as solidly as
their interplanetary buddies. Kaidan, introduced as a victim of the corporate
industry — he, like many others, had been intentionally exposed to Element
Zero in order to be trained as a biotic super-soldier — manages to overcome
all his traumas and act as the voice of reason and compromise throughout the
game; Ashley, on the other hand, comes across as more emotional, flippant,
and ruthless, not to mention religious (a big point is made of her believing
in God, though it is actually never specified which God) and xenophobic — traits that made her character fairly
allergic to a large number of players, with reactions of the "I hate
Ashley, she’s so racist" type being fairly common in the fan community.
This is, of course, uneducated bullshit: «racism» implies a belief in the
objective superiority of your own race over everybody else’s, whereas Ashley
Williams, from her military-family perspective, perceives the other races as
a potential threat to humans rather than a corrupted line of evolution — and
this makes her story arch particularly involving and instructive, as she
gradually warms up to her non-human companions and accepts that cooperation
should be preferred over conflict. One aspect of all this companionship which people
often overrate, I think, is your ability to influence, over the course of the
game, the personalities of your companions. For sure, there are a couple
strategies and decisions you can embrace that will directly influence their
fates — most notably, during the Virmire mission, where your personal history
with Wrex will determine his fate and where you also have to decide which of
your human companions is more suitable for a last heroic stand against
overwhelming odds. But fates are not personality trajectories, and there is
really very little you can do about those. You might, for instance, take a stand
with Garrus on his gung-ho mentality, or you might softly (or sternly) rebuke
him for being way more trigger-happy than necessary — but the farthest you
will get away with this is to hear a "I’m glad we’re on the same page
here, Commander" or a "Well, you’ve given me something to think
about, Commander" from his silky-soft vocal chords. Despite occasional
illusive moments like these, the characters’ personalities (unlike your own)
are, on the whole, set in stone; you may alter some of their actions, but their minds are largely set on a pre-fixed
path whose twists and turns are determined by the plot rather than your click
wheel. (Ironically, the only person whose mind you can actually influence and
change by the end of the game is your chief nemesis, Saren!). But in the long run, this does not really matter: in
fact, even if I am sure that this inability to change other people around you
was largely dictated by technical reasons (too much trouble incorporating the
consequences of too many significant choices), you could also argue that
Shepard’s companions are there not to serve as impressionable rag dolls, but
to surround the title character with strong, resilient personalities, against
which it is fun to try and employ different strategies of interaction (from
the Paragon’s respect and admiration to the Renegade’s irony and
condescension). No matter what you do here, the writers and programmers did a
great job of molding, over time, your potential «travel companions» into your
best friends — and it is no wonder that, above everything else, it is this aspect of the game which would
end up as the most improved and deepened in Mass Effect 2, ultimately becoming responsible for turning the
second part of the franchise into the most critically applauded one (a decision
which, as I already said, I can fully understand, even if I do not
necessarily subscribe to it). And thus it happens that, in the end, of all the
great sagas Mass Effect is probably
closer to The Lord Of The Rings than anything else — it is something like 40%
about the wonders and marvels of an imaginary alternate universe, and 60%
about the comfort and salvation one finds in genuine friendship. Oh, and, of
course, there is also that end-of-the-world moment on the horizon to be
considered; but just as it is with The
Fellowship Of The Ring, so does the first part of the Mass Effect trilogy mainly just hint at the inevitability of that
moment’s arrival. The warning signs are everywhere — in the form of the
horrifying dehumanized husks, the indoctrinated minds of the unfortunate
colonists on Feros, the disturbing conversations with Saren (= Saruman?) and
Sovereign (= Sauron?) on Virmire, and, of course, the climactic final battle
with Sovereign on the Citadel. But the climactic final battle still ends with
a Hollywood-style heroic victory, and the universe at large is still largely
oblivious of the mortal danger that awaits it, so even as you discover more
and more information about the genocidal cycle of the Reapers, your mind will
still be way too busy processing the visual and aural delights of the Milky
Way’s planetary bodies, and your soul will still be mainly devoted to
empathizing with your virtual human and non-human buddies. Some might, in fact, be disappointed with the
relative (I stress — relative) lack
of a strong sense of danger in the game. By the time you get to the final
battles on Ilos and the Citadel, for instance, you will probably be so
overpowered (provided you were diligent enough to complete as many side
quests as possible) that slicing through the thick enemy lines, most of which
will consist of creatures you have already fought multiple times anyway, will
be like slicing through exceedingly feeble layers of cake. (Even the last
boss fight, with a huskified Saren who has an annoying habit of overheating
all your weapons, always felt more tedious than exciting to me). But on the
whole, this hardly seems like a big problem because Mass Effect is not a
game about the end of the world; it
is a game about the beginning of a
world that, incidentally, somehow threatens to come to an end even before you
have fully finished exploring it. And that’s fine. It’s far more poignant,
anyway, to admire a chunk of beauty with the realisation that it is also your
duty to save it from extinction, than to simply admire it, period. Isn’t
it?.. |
|||||
|
Technical features |
|||||
|
Graphics The first thing one usually hears when discussing the visuals of
Mass Effect is the sound of heavy
sighing and the perennial cliché of «well, unfortunately, the graphics
of the first game have not held up as well as those of Mass Effect 2 and 3...»
— because, as you well know, 2010 is the year where civilization really took
off, while as early as 2007 we were still living in the Stone Age. On a
serious note, though, while the graphics
of Mass Effect may indeed have
still been technically inferior to the graphics of Mass Effect 2 (a problem well remedied by the numerous HD mods to
the original game, and in more recent times, by the texture upgrades of Mass Effect Legendary Edition), the art of the original Mass Effect was every bit on the
level, and in no way inferior to the artistic designs of its sequels.
That said, there is a sharp visual contrast in Mass Effect between «nature» and
«technocracy», and as far as the former is concerned, it is probably fair to
say that the team’s efforts in visualizing and animating the various planets
across the Milky Way were pretty much unprecedented for their time. The
landscapes that unfold before you as you traverse them in the Mako or on foot
are relatively minimalistic — but the lack of detail helps concentrate the
effort on making these landscapes realistic, and the transitions smooth as
butter. The rendering never looks too schematic or blocky; you know that the actual planets are
constructed from repeating constituents, because there’s no way any artist
would have drawn all those useless mountains, plains, and ravines, but you
never truly feel like it. Ride
across the lengthy perimeter of any of those planets, and while their overall
look will rarely change from one point to another, you will never get the
feeling of «oh, I’ve been in this exact spot two minutes ago» (unless you
messed up your compass and you really were
in this exact spot two minutes ago). Lest the landscapes, most of which fall under three similar
categories of «green», «snowy», and «sandy», eventually do begin to feel
repetitive to you, the artists took care to diversify them with various
tricks of lighting — depending on the specific physical and chemical
properties of the planets’ suns and atmospheres, the planets may be bathed in
various shapes of purple, violet, yellow, or amaranthine, and change color
depending on your position relative to the sun. There is no day-and-night
cycle (which probably made sense, since you are rarely supposed to spend too
much time in one place), but some of the planets are «day-time» and some are
«night-time» environments, which, combined with their «winter» vs. «summer»
properties, makes for a whole lot of various flavors. With all that
creativity, the lonesome colorful landscapes feel like living illustrations
to minimalist or ambient soundtracks — Brian Eno, Harold Budd, or Philip
Glass coming to mind — and every once in a while, you get really tempted to
forget all about the plot and just spend a little time rolling through those desolate,
solemn, serene landscapes, contemplating the mysteries of the universe. Things get entirely different when we get back to civilization —
not human civilization, of course, which seems to have adopted the Globalized
Galactic Standard by the time the events in Mass Effect are taking place, but the kind of civilization whose
styles and trends seem to be dictated by the Citadel, where, appropriately,
you are bound to encounter the latest and greatest in techno-fashion. Here,
Derek Watts, the art director of the game, is quick to acknowledge the
influence of Syd Mead, the famous visionary behind Blade Runner and lots of other stuff; Syd’s futuristic panoramas,
celebrating a bright,
glossy, cocoon-style existence for humanity in the future, at times do
seem almost borrowed, stroke-by-stroke, by Derek and his team to depict the
Citadel, as well as smaller, more specialized hubs such as the ice-bound
Noveria. Quite a few people, myself included, feel a bit uncomfortable with
this vision, in which nature has no place whatsoever, other than contributing
a few plastic imitations for nostalgic purposes; I do not really know if
Watts’ idea was to simply create a place of dazzling futuristic beauty or if
it was his plan all along to imbue it with a sense of discomfort and
underlying danger, but I’d say he fully succeeded with the latter, be it
intentionally or accidentally. For all its graphic beauty — the lakes and fountains on the
Presidium, the elegant trees with autumn-color leaves in the Council
Chambers, the lustful red lights of Chora’s Den — the Citadel is primarily
designed as a highly practical, ergonomic environment. Every single object is
polished and rounded, designed in the kind of minimalistic-industrial style
that is usually so revered among the intellectual parts of present day high
class (as opposed to the non-intellectual ones with their golden toilet bowls
and dazzling baroque grotesqueries on every corner). The same style,
curiously, is carried over to every single other planet — apparently, the
intergalactic IKEA delivers its furniture, as well as its wall panels and
automated doors, to all corners of the Milky Way, which would probably make
sense if at least the typical «rich man entourage» of the game was visually
different from the «poor man entourage», which it ain’t. This is most likely
a technical limitation, but the unfortunate effect is that pretty soon you
may be getting sick of the same style applied whenever you go. At least the
Prothean world of Ilos, where Shepard gets at the end of the game, is allowed
to have its own design — you don’t get to see a lot of it, but it does have
its own idiosyncratic, somewhat «Atlantis-style» outlook. In short, the Mass Effect
universe, from a purely visual perspective, is one I’d rather be glad to
visit than dwell in — too stuffy and claustrophobic when it comes to
civilization, too lonesome and desolate when it doesn’t. That’s OK, though;
it makes the idea of a Reaper invasion regularly cleansing the universe of
its organic-induced disentropy somewhat more palatable. I’d be sad and blue
if they were to destroy Notre-Dame de Paris, but the sterile, plastic beauty
of the Citadel does not move me nearly as much, so if this is the ultimate
fate of humanity, so be it. (Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams seems to share my
concerns: "they’ve built
themselves quite the lake...", she quips while traversing the huge
space of the Presidium, "wonder if
anyone’s ever drowned in it"). Where the game truly
excelled, however, was in its graphic representations of the characters.
Interestingly, for the first time ever in BioWare history Mass Effect included a genuine
character creation algorithm, allowing you to design your own Commander
Shepard from individual components, something that was supposedly impossible
to achieve with BioWare’s own older game engines such as Infinity and
Odyssey, but achievable with the licensing of Unreal Engine 3 (probably not
the only reason why BioWare, well-known for their original engines, this time
around decided to run somebody else’s software, but an important one). The
end result was not perfect — for some reason, while I was able to design
quite a few good-looking female Shepards, most of the male ones came out as
the result of way too much inbreeding, so in the end I always played the
default male character, based on Dutch model Mark Vanderloo. But what was perfect was the way the BioWare
team learned to animate their heroes. Be they pretty or ugly, the facial
dynamics, all the way from the twitching eyebrows to the playful mouth
movements, came out as extremely realistic — making Mass Effect one of the first 3D games, in effect, where it became
obvious that technology had finally triumphed, and that the 10-year journey
from the original Polygonal Nightmare to believable realism was finally
nearing its end. Generally speaking, the characters of Mass Effect, humans and aliens alike, look alive. Their mouths
seem to be articulating actual words (rather than just opening and closing),
their eyes reflect their emotional states, their gestures echo the intentions
of their messages. Even characters whose faces are permanently hidden behind
masks, like Tali or the Volus merchants, are able to convey extra psychological
detail through subtle twitching, shrugging, and fidgeting. While conversing,
characters sometimes move around, rather than become forever rooted to the
same spot; cut scenes feature plenty of cinematographic tricks, changing
scales and perspectives to produce an authentic movie effect. Of course, this
is nothing new in the 2020s, but the important thing is that it all still
looks good in the 2020s — even without all the graphic upscaling of the Legendary Edition, Mass Effect still produces a highly
realistic impression, and whoever would want to complain about the game «not
holding up» is well advised to load up Knights
Of The Old Republic and re-learn the true meaning of «not holding up» (note
that this is only a criticism of KOTOR’s
graphics, not the game itself). This level of realism is not so much «awesome» in itself (though
occasionally, it comes awful close to awesome) as it happens to be extremely
important in opening up the realm of the RPG to a lot of people who would not
previously even consider approaching the genre. As I already said several
times, Mass Effect made a giant
step forward into transforming RPGs from «dungeon-and-dragon chess» into
cinematic sagas, and without realistic, believable graphics this would have
been all but impossible. The visuals of Mass
Effect were designed to place you inside a movie and hold you there right
until the finishing titles. Maybe it was not the first RPG to employ that
strategy — but it was the first RPG able to fully capitalize upon it. In another
manner of speaking, it was the visuals of Mass
Effect, rather than any other aspect of it, that properly «sold out» the
RPG genre to all the noobs, laymen, and philistines of this world; and what a
lustful, shameless, delicious sell-out it was!.. |
|||||
|
Sound
The
answer to the challenge was quite ingenious. The core of Mass Effect’s soundtrack would be electronic — a dense forest of
harsh, if not overbearing, rhythmic loops, modern-sounding in terms of
texture but still rather inspired by the likes of classic Tangerine Dream
than Aphex Twin, I’d say. The key points in the story, however, would be
emphasized with monumental, pseudo-orchestral tension-raising compositions,
bringing on a John Williams vibe. To achieve that goal, Jack Wall’s work
would be complemented by additional compositions from newcomer Sam Hulick,
and by glancing at the individual credits for each track, I can tell that
Wall mainly worked on the technophile electronic loops, whereas Hulick was
more responsible for the epic orchestration — although the distinction is not
100% accurate, since quite a few numbers are credited to both. But yes, the
ambient ‘Vigil’s Theme’ is all Wall, and the Wagnerian ‘Sovereign’s Theme’ is
all Hulick, so I guess I’m on the right track here. In
any case, there would be no totally clear-cut separation moment between the
two styles, so you won’t ever get the feeling of listening to two completely
different soundtracks. Over time, as the trilogy grew more and more epic, the
pseudo-classical-orchestral vibe would eventually outgrow and overwhelm the
trendy-electronic vibe (no doubt owing to Hulick becoming the main composer
and Jack Wall leaving after Mass Effect
2) — but in the original Mass
Effect game, they complement each other in a very respectful and
democratic manner. And while most of the music themes lack the emotional
depth of Mass Effect 3, this is
perfectly all right because Mass Effect
is not supposed to be the most emotional game of the three. It is supposed to
be the most exotic game of the
three, introducing you to a whole array of sights and feelings that your
brain would not be fully prepared for, and the soundtrack respects that
concept and feeds off it. Nowhere
is the contrast between static and dynamic illustrated better than during the
first ten minutes after you boot up the game. The opening composition —
usually known as ‘Vigil’s
Theme’, since it later reoccurs during the important scene on the
Prothean world of Ilos, where Vigil, the hologram, recounts the entire
history of the Protheans — is a serene, meditative ambient piece, sounding
like Brian Eno under the influence of Sufi motives; set against a slowly,
smoothly shifting planetary background, it reminds you of the infinity of
space and the relative insignificance of man in the universe (duh!). But
then, as you get to the cinematic intro scene, the soundtrack shifts to a
more dynamic, subtly growing and intensifying set of electronic loops, out of
which, as if from a shell, eventually bursts out a full-fledged, grandiose
orchestral theme, perfectly synced with the introduction of the SSV Normandy
and the way its pilot guides it through the mysterious Mass Relay. You have
not even begun to play, and you already get the feeling that some tremendous
achievement has just taken place before your eyes... even if, when you come
to think of it later, absolutely nothing out of the ordinary has happened.
But hey, never underestimate the power of music — particularly in BioWare games. Throughout
the game, the music is usually unintrusive; except for an occasional tense
orchestral swoop in climactic cutscenes, it will subtly influence your
emotional immersion into the game rather than command your undivided
attention. The default volume levels often tend to merge it in a sea of sound
effects (for instance, it is really hard to hear it if you are driving your
Mako through a blizzard), and sometimes the ambient soundtrack fades out
completely, only to reemerge after a new screen has loaded. But it does play a significant role all the
same, perhaps nowhere more so than during your lengthy, solitary drives
through all those lonesome planets, where Wall’s cold, unnerving, and
slightly mystical loops enhance the feeling of a huge, impassionate universe
in which you, the player, and your entire race are just a random accident. The
only place where the music goes over the top for my tastes is the only place
where the game goes over the top —
in its rather stereotypically adjusted Hollywood finale, where the good guy
(or gal) emerges as the savior of the universe (that scene where Shepard is
briefly taken for dead and then cockily re-emerges in Western fashion is
always more than I can take, unless you decide that you are supposed to take
it tongue-in-cheek... well, maybe that’s the only way out, really). The
triumphant orchestration in the sequence loyally matches the trope, somewhat
spoiling my overall impression of the soundtrack as a completely fresh and
innovative development in video game scoring. But that is not a really big deal: we all know, after
all, that even the best-of-the-best video games are not allowed to confound
our expectations all the time — a video game without a little cheese to boost
sales is like a pop hit in 15/8 time. As
important as the music is to the game, though, Mass Effect’s ultimate triumph was in becoming BioWare’s very
first fully voiced RPG — their previous games would only feature partial
voicing, and none of them actually provided voice acting for most of the
lines delivered by the protagonists. The latter circumstance was, in part, an
unavoidable side effect of the freedom of choosing the race of your
character: since you could be just about anybody in Baldur’s Gate or KOTOR,
it would have looked weird if you were always voiced by the same actor or
actress. Since, however, Commander Shepard is pre-defined as a human
character, the only real choice you have is to make the Commander a him or a her. This meant hiring no more than two different actors to
provide voice support for the title character, and the roles were assigned
respectively to Mark Meer and Jennifer Hale, both of whom had already done
work for BioWare (Meer was pretty much BioWare-exclusive, whereas Hale had
already been an established presence in video game voice acting before
BioWare even came into existence: her first role was that of Katrina in
Sierra On-Line’s Quest For Glory IV). Tons
of manhours have been spent in discussion on various Web forums over who is
the better Commander Shepard of the two — Meer or Hale — often resulting in
inevitable accusations of sexism (if you prefer Meer) or virtue signaling (if
you’re on Team FemShep). Personally, I happen to think that both were able to
create their own personalities for the title character, and one of the
beauties of the game is that you can replay it from Meer’s or Hale’s
perspective, as they often imbue the exact same vocal lines with completely
different shades of meaning. Meer’s general reading is a little warmer and
friendlier, as he usually portrays Shepard as your basic optimistic, helpful,
reliable neighbor from across the street, with just a tiny bit of military
roughness and straightforwardness thrown in for good measure. In contrast,
Hale delivers her Command-ess
Shepard in a much drier, colder, and detached manner, precisely fitting the
idea of how only a tough, iron-willed, naturally dominant woman could ever
happen to rise to the military rank of Commander, let alone become the Savior
of the Galaxy. Yet behind all that sternness still lurks a sensitive and
occasionally vulnerable human heart, and she gives us plenty of opportunities
to catch it in action — be it Shepard’s romance scenes with Kaidan or Liara,
or her (potential) acts of mercy toward the many sinners and general lost
souls scattered across the Milky Way. Still,
I confess that in my own playthroughs I always go for Meer whenever I stay on
the Paragon path, and for Hale whenever I feel naughty and go for full-on
Renegade. This is because Meer always sounds so cheerful and uplifting when
delivering his «neutral» lines — making the switch to cynical, sarcastic, and
downright mean Renegade tone quite jarring in a lot of places — and because
Hale, on the contrary, tends to sound so intimidating and controlling in her
own «neutral» phase, which makes for a perfect transition to her Renegade
actions. (I remember, though I cannot find the exact quote, Hale replying,
when asked which role she preferred, something to the effect of «Paragon is who I am trying to be in real
life, Renegade is who I’d really like to be», and believe me, it does show in her performance a lot). I dunno, I just
think that something like «Would you rather be a snitch or a
corpse?» sounds way more
convincing in Hale’s than in Meer’s voice. In the end, if I were really hard pressed to make a single
choice, I’d probably have to vote for Hale over Meer — just because her
Shepard is ultimately more nuanced and multi-faceted than Mark’s
comparatively stable and monotonous delivery. Then again, some people out
there think that Hale is sometimes overacting and exaggerating, while Meer is
staying more on the realistic side of things. In any case, both were great
choices for the role, and if you happen to be a male gamer, do take my advice
and alternate between a male and a female playthrough (you’ll most likely
play the trilogy more than once anyway); you really do not get the full
experience here until you’ve tasted all possible flavors. It
is difficult to overestimate the importance of what Meer and Hale did to the
game — along with The Witcher’s
Doug Cockle from the same year, their performances ushered in the era of what
might be called the «Adventure-RPG Merger», putting a lid on the blank-slate
approach to the title character in an RPG game and, one way or another,
making you accept their preset personalities rather than imagining your own.
Indeed, by doing so, they took away much of the «game» spirit of the RPG; but
they compensated for this by adding quite a bit of the «art» spirit, and I
can most certainly live with that. Throw in a lesser talent than Mark or
Jennifer, and the whole thing would have been horribly botched. Fortunately
for us all, Hudson and Co. made the right choices and came out with a winner,
even if they had to «sell out» an entire genre in the process. Naturally,
Meer and Hale are merely the top billed ones in a veritable sea of first-rate
video game voice performers. With the entire game designed to surround you
with realistically portrayed virtual characters, everybody does their best to
make them come alive — in fact, the voice acting is probably the one thing about the game that
could not have been improved in any remaster or remake. Even the minor NPCs,
sometimes with just a bunch of short replicas under their belts, often
establish their personalities with perfect clarity; and the big ones are
likely to stay with you forever. In
particular, the game made a hero of Brandon Keener, up until then largely a
minor, totally unknown episodic TV actor who seems to have been seriously
struggling to establish any sort of memorable screen presence — but whose
soft-yet-crispy vocal tone turned out to be an ideal match for Garrus
Vakarian, the coolly rational Turian security officer who somehow managed,
overnight, to turn into the proverbial videogame sex symbol for all the lady
fans of Mass Effect (you cannot
romance him in the first game, but, of course, the laws of fan service would
quickly command him to become a potential love interest in the second one). While
the world of art knows a multitude of cool, suave noble assassins, Keener’s
Garrus still somehow manages to stand out — perhaps by managing to
simultaneously include individual character shades of a rational, collected
bureaucrat, an expertly manipulative psychiatrist, and a romantic idealist
who’ll stop at nothing short of a nuclear war in order to make the world
around him into a thing of peace, love, and beauty. Over time, his suaveness
and braggart humor would slowly overshadow every other aspect of his
personality, but in the original Mass
Effect, they are all perfectly balanced. Another
of my (but, apparently, relatively few other people’s) favorites is Kimberly
Brooks as Ashley Williams — creating here yet another complex, multi-faceted,
and somewhat deceptive personality. Her Ashley can range from shrill, harsh,
and nasty (sometimes much shriller
and nastier than prescribed by the standard «tough military bitch» prototype)
to pensive, brooding, and caring, with a twisted mix of progressive and
conservative features and a vast range of emotional states to go along with
it. The surprisingly strong hatred which many players seem to have developed
toward the character shows that Brooks hit just the right spot (her male
counterpart, Kaidan, despite not having earned the same degree of
disaffection, usually goes around as the game’s «wet blanket» character; I’d much prefer to be hated instead) — one
of Ashley’s defining features is that she always gets by without trying to be
nice to anyone, so you know that if she is nice to you, you must have really
deserved it. As one of the finest written characters in the game, it’s good
to see her voiced so perfectly as well. Of
the other actors, special mention should probably be made of Ali Hillis as
the Asari scientist – and Shepard’s potential love interest – Liara T’Soni,
whom she manages to play with just the right combination of naïve
«girly» idealism and centuries-old accumulated experience; of Steven Barr as
Wrex, the burly and justice-thirsty Krogan mercenary, whom he built up from
the ground as the Voice of Mother Earth itself; and of Seth Green, arguably
the best known TV personality of the lot, as Joker the Pilot, who usually
acts as the game’s comic relief and is pretty much just Seth Green himself in
a galaxy far, far away. But really, like I said, there isn’t overall a single
patently bad choice in the entire lot. (Oh wait, there is. Marina Sirtis, no
matter how much we like Star Trek, decided
to completely overact in her role of Matriarch Benezia, playing some sort of
pathetic, Shakesperian-level Ice Queen which simply does not fit in Mass Effect’s overall setting; her
death scene – NO LIGHT? THEY ALWAYS
SAID THERE WOULD BE... – is easily the corniest moment in the entire
game, and I really hate applying the word «corny» to anything about Mass Effect. Sure, it’s also about
poorly written lines, but they could
have been delivered with a little more finesse, rather than this «tremble
before me, all ye lowlives and laymen» attitude). In
addition to significant characters, «minor» voice acting frequently helps the
world of Mass Effect come alive when random dialog from surrounding NPCs is
activated after Shepard’s party approaches their vicinity — unlike The Witcher and other RPGs, these bits
of dialog usually get triggered only once, which makes more sense to me than
having the same random dialog be spilled out over and over again in a
Groundhog’s-Day kind of cycle. The same praise, unfortunately, cannot be
offered for voiceovers during the game’s combat moments, which simply carry
on the tradition of Baldur’s Gate
by having enemies and friends alike recycle the exact same one-liners to the
point of choking (‘GO, GO, GO!’, ‘I WILL DESTROY YOU!’, etc.); at least
they could have used a little more diversity here, or recorded different
battle cries for different battles on different planets. This often makes
even the most tense battle scenes unintentionally humorous, and provides even
loyal fans with enough fuel to go on jabbing the game for years and years
after its release. But, of course, even so these are just minor quibbles; if
anything, such annoyingly funny details have their own function — to remind
you that the roots of Mass Effect,
after all, lie in a strategy game rather than in an artistic-cinematic
experience. And this gives us a good pretext to transition over to discussing
the mechanics and interface of the game before pronouncing final verdict. |
|||||
|
Interface As
expected, when compared to BioWare’s previous, largely AD&D-compliant
rules and mechanics (let alone hardcore RPG layouts from previous
generations), Mass Effect is
essentially child’s play — though, probably, still seriously convoluted for
those who are only interested in the story, or, conversely, only concerned
about pew-pew button mashing. Personally, I am always a fan of the «depth
over width» approach, and if it comes to building up an RPG character, will
always take fewer, but more meaningful, attributes over an enormous amount of
pointless sliders that create an illusion of diversity at the cost of getting
the inexperienced gamer hopelessly confused — which should mean that the
creators of Mass Effect were
targeting their efforts at precisely the kind of people like myself, for
which I suppose I should be grateful... but there’s still plenty of ground
left for grumbling, of course.
One
practical reason for such a decision may have been the resulting
impossibility for the player to reach the highest possible level in one
playthrough, necessitating a «New Game+» where you could start again at
precisely the level you ended at (actually, the reality is even more
complicated because in the original game, you could only reach Level 50 upon
your first playthrough; subsequent playthroughs removed that level cap, but
if you started a completely new game, you could still reach no higher than
something like Level 57 in one go, leaving you a bit short of the coveted
Level 60 watermark). However, I was never tempted to go for the «NG+» trick
for one simple reason — it is only available with the exact same character
you had just finished your game with, which is totally no fun, because the proper way to replay Mass Effect is, of course, to do it
with a completely different
character, changing gender, class, background, moral alignment, etc. So,
in the end, putting a fixed cap on XP levels by limiting your enemies simply
does more to remind you that Mass
Effect is a story-driven game — there is absolutely no point in returning
to the locations you have already explored a second time, unless you’re
simply pining to revisit the futuristic beauty of their landscapes. A more
traditional and formal outcome is that, even in an NG+, you shall not be able,
with all of your leveling up, to maximize all of your attributes: the
interface gives you about 12 slots in which you can invest points after
reaching your next level, and on an average playthrough, you will probably
reach maximum abilities in about half of them. Predictably,
the attribute system is mostly geared toward combat training, with just a
couple of exceptions such as the «Decryption» skill, which gradually allows
you to crack more and more complex lockers and safes, and the «Charm» and
«Intimidate» skills, which work as a combined analog of «Personality /
Charisma» parameters in classic RPGs and allow you to make bolder Paragon or
Renegade choices as you progress through the game. (More on that later). As
usual, you can decide for yourself if you’d rather be an average
Jack-of-all-trades in all the skills available to your class, or rather
concentrate on becoming a total boss in just some of them — the latter option
is probably the more fun way to go, especially if you are a Biotic (those
high-level things Shepard can do with his/her Throw, Lift, or Singularity
abilities look and feel really amazing on screen — I mean, it’s not even so
much about gaining a superb advantage in combat as it is about imagining
yourself as a totally badass wielder of the Force). On the whole, it’s a
pretty good system, and relatively well presented on the screen so that even
a total RPG noob can get the basic mechanics of it in just a few minutes. Although
the turn-based combat system of BioWare’s previous games is gone here, what
is retained is the ability to pause your game in combat by bringing up the
HUD (Heads-Up Display), giving you a chance to catch your breath, check your
stats, change your weapons (if necessary) and issue specific orders to your
squadmates. Unlike something like Baldur’s
Gate, where pausing your game is often vital to your survival, you can rip through Mass Effect without relying too much on the HUD — for one thing,
your squadmates usually work pretty well on autopilot, for another, you can
assign certain actions to keyboard shortcuts (at least if you’re playing the
game on PC). However, it is only through the HUD that you can properly master
any truly advanced teamwork, like setting up biotic-tech or tech-firepower
combos to disable and eliminate your opponents in all sort of badass ways —
although, truth be told, the «combo approach» to combat would only become a
priority in Mass Effect 2 and reach
its apex in Mass Effect 3; here, it
is more like a side effect of the game mechanics, but one that is quite fun
to pursue in hopes of discovering something new and unpredictable (and
possibly glitchy: with multiple options and visual effects inevitably comes a
window for bugs, such as when, for instance, you biotically blow away one of
your enemies under the floor and have no way whatsoever of finishing him
through the tiles). The
weapon and armor system in the game remains fairly complex: items come in
many varieties and will be available to you and your squadmates depending on
your class (e.g. Sniper Rifles will only be available to Soldiers or
«half-Soldiers» such as Infiltrators), race (certain armor types are
specifically «Krogan», «Turian», «Quarian», etc.), and level (higher level
armor and weapons will open up progressively as you level up your character).
As is common in RPGs, there will really be many, many more types of guns and
stuff that you’ll ever need, and while at first you can always sell off your
excess and older stuff, or convert it to omni-gel for repair purposes,
chances are that about midway through the game you won’t even be able to make
any more cash. Add to this the rather tedious safe-cracking minigames and
suddenly the looting process isn’t too fun any more, at least not after
several hours of playing — though, of course, Mass Effect forums will always remain full of people arguing the
relative flaws and advantages of preferring Ariake Technologies Level V armor
over Mantice VI and suchlike. Me, I confess to mostly selecting armor based
on its shape, color pattern, and classiness rather than actual protective
features. I mean, if you’re saving the galaxy and all, you might at least do
that in style, right? Outside
of combat-related stuff, the biggest innovation of the Mass Effect interface was, of course, the famous «click wheel»
for the dialogues. Earlier BioWare games just gave you a list of possible
choices for your interactions with people, usually coming in random order, so
that it was not always possible to tell from the way your answers were
formulated if you’d get a compliment or a slap in response. The «wheel»
introduced a clever and convenient system where, typically, you’d have your
«noble», Paragon-ish reaction in the top right sector, your «rude»,
Renegade-ish reaction in the bottom right, and your «neutral», emotionless
reaction in the middle; meanwhile, the left part of the wheel was typically
reserved for information-related interrogation, i.e. the regular dialog tree
with no immediate consequences for the player. It was a cute, nifty, a bit
Steve Jobs-ian touch that nearly everybody liked — though its integration
with the morality system of Mass Effect
did leave quite a bit to be desired, resulting in endless memes and parodies.
(Probably the worst consequence of it was that nobody ever used the blandly
«neutral» conversation options — which is why they were removed altogether by
the time of Mass Effect 3). Many
people also praise the game’s mighty Codex — a detailed encyclopaedia of the Mass Effect universe, which would be
constantly updated throughout the game as you meet more and more races,
explore more and more planets, and gain access to stranger and stranger
artifacts — but apart from the fact of all of itd main entries being voiced,
I have never been fascinated with it that
much; you can easily play the game without having to read a single line from
it, and my personal admiration for the world-building magic of Mass Effect comes from seeing and
feeling its textures rather than reading about them. (In all honesty, I
hardly ever took the time to read through all the books in Baldur’s Gate, either. With my day job
and everything, there’s only so much lore this poor head can accommodate).
Still, the addition of the Codex adds a whiff of monumentality to the game —
and Neil Ross’ solid voicing of it most likely brought on associations with
Leonard Nimoy’s voicing of Civilopedia in 2005’s Civilization IV, subtly implying that, once again, you were
holding the fate of the known universe in your hands. (Of course, Neil Ross
was also the narrator for all those late-period Leisure Suit Larry games, but that’s the big difference between
the 1990s and the 2000s in video gaming for you...). Summing
it up, the really good thing about Mass
Effect is that it is easily playable as either a story-driven, sensually
immersive experience where you can just let the game take its course without
having to poke too much under the hood — or, if you wish, as more or less a
traditional, if somewhat simplified, RPG experience where you get the best
results through careful calculation, balancing, and strategic thinking. The
former strategy is usually associated with romantic noobs; the latter — with
seasoned, experienced fans of video gaming in general and RPG / shooter
genres in particular. The good news is that the game managed to build up a solid
fanbase for both of these
categories — and one big reason for that is the clever, thoughtful design of
its base mechanics and visual interface. |
|||||
|
Verdict: One does not simply pronounce judgement
on Mass Effect...
And so this is as good a time as
any to forget the word ‘reason’ and remember the word ‘magic’, because this
is what playing Mass Effect felt
like — a wonderful, at times almost orgasmic experience for which reason and
science have not yet found a proper explanation. Just like a great rock
guitarist, playing all the same chords as the average rock guitarist, carries
you away to another dimension by infecting you with his spirit through the
subtlest of modulations, so does Mass
Effect, staying firmly within the boundaries of a sci-fi RPG pattern,
achieve a miraculous outcome that no other sci-fi RPG before or since has
managed to beat — «mass effect» indeed. It stimulates you to cherish and
admire the mysteries of the large-scale universe; it gently pushes you to
expand your mind beyond your everyday petty problems; and at the same time,
it makes you better understand the (rare) value of true friendship and
camaraderie here on Earth. It doesn’t do it in any sort of hip modernist or
post-modernist fashion, either; it’s perfectly happy to rely on age-old
tropes and moralizations which we all saw last time around... well, probably
around the era of Hollywood’s golden age. How the hell it manages to succeed
in its ambitious goal is something I tried to explain above — and most
probably failed.
|
|||||
