On MASS Effect 1 – Retrospective

    MASS Effect 1, a game not without flaws, is nonetheless my favorite current generation videogame. An RPG in the currently resurgent Western* style, it had a decidedly 80’s Sci-Fi epic look, feel and sound to it. Lots of gleaming, reflective surfaces surrounded you and your ears were treated to many Vangelis-styled electronic soundscapes. The plot, while nothing completely amazing to a dedicated science fiction reader, was really quite good for a video game; it involved the impending return of an inscrutible and unstoppable enemy called “the Reapers,” which apparently destroyed the galaxy-spanning precursor race called “the Protheans” many thousands of years ago.

    The universe of MASS Effect is like a clearinghouse of all the best Science Fiction ideas of the last thirty or forty years. Please, read on…

• Fred Saberhagen’s ‘Berserker’ series
  • The character Saren’s motivations and actions fill the role of any number of Saberhagen’s ‘Goodlife’ while the Reapers themselves could be likened to the his Berserkers
• Frederik Pohl’s ‘Gateway’ series
  • The Mars relay is presented much like Gateway station in terms of its role in history and cultural significance to the humans in MASS Effect while the Mass Relays’ mysterious ancient origins resemble Pohl’s Gateways themselves.
• J. Michael Straczynski’s ‘Babylon 5′ TV series
  • The Alliance and its relationship to the other races seem very much like Babylon 5’s Earth Alliance and the Citadel plays a role much like Babylon 5 itself did–though Citadel is not built by humans.
• Orson Scott Card’s ‘Ender’s Game’
  • The Rachni, an insect-like race in which individuals were mere appendages of the queens who never left their homeworld, are strikingly similar to Card’s Buggers
• David Brin’s ‘Uplift’ series
  • Protheans are said by some to have uplifted the current generation of races while the Krogen are specifically spoken of as being “uplifted” by the Solarians.

    While I would say that these inspirations were very clear, they were mixed together in unique ways that reminded me about just how cool these ideas were to begin with; and here they are made to work together quite well.
    Late in the game, as your “codex” of galactic data is growing full, you can put it all together and shake your head at how thorough and consistent the game designers were.

    In addition to these re-purposed ideas from Science Fiction past, the designers added their own unique elements. Elements like the balance between implant-based hacker “tech” capabilities and psi-ops “biotic” powers, both of which are a delight to use in combat.
    Other nice touches, like a weapon harness system which actually shows all your equipped weapons hung on your back at all times** lends the whole enterprise a plausibility level far in excess of the usual “where the hell does he keep THAT sword?!?” of RPGs in the classic videogame style. In addition, the game engine fully animates the process of deploying and switching between the various instruments of destruction in realtime, adding to the immersive nature of the space opera.

    And unlike any of the works of fiction I referenced earlier, MASS Effect allows you to make consequential decisions at many times throughout the game which alter the cast of characters and the ending you ultimately enjoy at the end of your experience. This capitalizes the oft-forgotten “R” in RPG.
    To begin with, you can design the appearance of your own character from skin complexion and facial structure to hair color and scars. You can play the game through as either a woman or a man and your protagonist’s hours of well performed spoken dialog was recorded in both a man’s and a woman’s voice.     Beyond this, the designers allowed fully fleshed out characters, complete with interesting back-stories and motivations of their own, to either be joined to your party early in the game and participate in the story significantly or to be completely avoided and shunned throughout the whole experience.
    You can choose to actually kill one alien team member after an emotional stand-off; a charged moment in which your actions AND your doomed friend’s motivations can both be justified. The same scene can be played out in multiple ways, and no matter the outcome you could see it as being either good or bad or both. This sort of moral ambiguity is pretty rare in the good-guys vs. evil heroscape of most videogame RPGs.

    The flexibility of the B-plots are pretty striking in other ways as well. In the case of one very attractive alien friend you can either meet them early on and fall in love with them by the end of the game (as a gay woman or a straight man) or wait until the last moment to collect her–at which time she is subjected to a hilarious staff meeting in which everyone chimes in with rapid fire exposition until her head spins.
    At one well-publicized moment you are forced to sacrifice one of two friends, and in the tumultuous aftermath you can choose to present your deciding factors as a noble and necessary act, a ruthlessly result-oriented choice or entirely motivated by your romantic interest in the survivor of the pair.
    The cumulated karma of your positive, negative or neutral actions and statements in MASS Effect are represented in the “paragon” and “renegade” meters, and these in turn can open or close certain side quests and color the way others see you.

    Which brings me to MASS Effect 2, which allows you to import your character from a finished MASS Effect 1 campaign, complete with the world-changing results of the key decisions you made in the end-game; a person you met in an optional quest in MASS Effect might remember you when you have a run-in with them during MASS Effect 2. A key character you killed in the first game might not be around in the sequel. And, I suppose, if you spent the entirety of the first game being a jerk then you might have a few more enemies and a crappy reputation in this second game. But that’s a story for another time.