In the gaming world, franchises or series are becoming the bread and butter of developers’ and publishers’ work. New IP is rare amidst the flood of sequels, prequels and companions. Some call it a lack of creativity, and in some cases it definitely is, but for some series it’s a mark of a gaming experience that deserves far more than just one outing. The iconic example of this is the Mass Effect series.
For those that don’t know, Mass Effect is a series set in the future (about 200 years ahead of today) where humans have recently discovered that they aren’t alone in the galaxy. There are a large number of galactic races with deep histories and cultures to explore. There are hundreds of different planets (and space stations) with their own pasts and quirks. When talking about games, we often talk about the universe in which a game exists as being immersive and full – Mass Effect has this in both the literal and figurative sense. Another important aspect of Mass Effect is the titular technology available to the people of the galaxy. Science discovered that mass effect fields, similar to electromagnetism in concept, could be manipulated to various levels. These fields can be extremely powerful, and are used in “mass relays” which are essentially teleportation devices across the galaxy. They can also be used on an individual basis, by people who are known as “biotics”. This manifests itself in different ways, but in gameplay gives characters special abilities to defend themselves or attack enemies. These two story features make a game world that is as interesting to explore as any out there.
It’s this that was one of the things that first attracted me to the series. Before Mass Effect 2’s release, I hadn’t really heard that much about the series, apart from that the first game was considered in pretty high regard. I was a PS3 owner, and the Mass Effect series was an Xbox exclusive at the time – so perhaps I can be forgiven. My interest was piqued about this new game by one of IGN’s many podcasts I was fond of at the time. The particular one was Three Red Lights, which was an erratically scheduled and delivered Xbox podcast, and the hype from them about the next Mass Effect was contagious. They talked about a game where your individual choices matter in a game universe that is as fleshed out as you could imagine. Apparently the gameplay from the first game wasn’t the best, but everything else was uniquely brilliant. Even though it would require another console, I began to consider it.
Then the reviews came out along with the game in January 2010 and declared it the best game of the generation. Scores weren’t quite as high as for my beloved GTA IV, but I reckoned that was because of the scale of the game. My interest grew further.
So in March, for a variety of reasons, I finally took the plunge and bought an Xbox 360. Although the first game I popped in was GTA: Episodes from Liberty City (another game that I hadn’t played because of exclusivity at the time), I remember vividly my first time playing Mass Effect 2 the next morning.
I had some idea of what was going on in the story. I’d watched IGN’s Mass Effect in 5 minutes video to get some idea of what had happened in the last game, and read up a little about things I didn’t understand. I consider myself as someone that can pick things up pretty quickly, but as the opening cutscene of the game unfolded I was beginning to get lost in the terminology. People I hadn’t heard of, places I hadn’t heard of and what I assumed where races I hadn’t heard of came thick and fast. I was beginning to get mired in confusion when the opening of the game threw a curveball at me that I could understand. The spaceship on which my character, Commander Shepard, was travelling was savaged by an unknown enemy – and I was left floating in space with a punctured suit. Barely five minutes into the game, and the main character was dead. I knew that this game was going to be brilliant.
Of course Shepard didn’t stay dead, but was revived by a shady organisation known as Cerberus. The bulk of the game revolves around building up a team of the best and the brightest in the galaxy to fight the enemy, the “Collectors”, that attacked your ship and then went on to abduct human galactic colonies. This was the main thread, but there was so much more to it.
Mass Effect games aren’t open-world in the mould of Bethesda’s Fallout or Elder Scrolls games or even Rockstar games. There is a certain set linearity to them with the ability to explore in a little more detail. I was worried going into the game that the amount of things to do would be overwhelming, and while I was never at a loss with my time in the game, Mass Effect did a great job at ushering you through the narrative.
Why Mass Effect 2 will go down as one of the best games of all time is that it told a great story that had some brilliant personal touches. The general gist of the game was that you would do a mission to recruit a character, and then later you’d be given the option to do a mission for them which is tied to their personal lives. Doing so would earn their loyalty. These missions really set the game apart. Whether it was finding out about Jacob’s “lost” father, helping Thane stop his son from following in his footsteps as an assassin or helping Grunt become a “man” in the eyes of his people – they had an emotional resonance that was rare for a game. And there were many of these moments.
These two types of missions, both being brilliant fun to play, were interspersed with skirmishes with the Collectors that were epic and challenging. Then there was a final trip to the Collectors’ hidden base to defeat them once-and-for-all to end their threat to the galaxy. All the way through the game, I was making choices through Commander Shepard about who should live and who should die, which race should be helped and which shouldn’t and even which crew member I preferred over another. These all came to a head in the Collector base where you make further decisions, and where the people you spent the whole game with could die based on your actions. This was so much more compelling to play than games where everything was pre-determined and you were just unravelling more of the already spun story as you played.
Mass Effect 2 was a great game from start to finish and my hopes were set high for the always promised Mass Effect 3. Although I didn’t play the first game, the choices you made in that game could be imported into 2 and affect some of the storylines and characters involved there. The same was true going into 3. From the get-go the series was designed as a trilogy. This also helped make the series so much more than what other game series are. Each game was a very real extension of an over-arching story, rather than just a rehash of something that proved popular. That over-arching story was the invasion of the “Reapers”, a race of sentient machines that purge the galaxy every 50,000 years of advanced civilisation. The threat was there in both of the first games, and both enemies in the first two games inherited the mystique and overbearing fear of the Reapers, which they both revered. These machines had wiped out every civilisation ever found, and were as powerful and dangerous as the largest of spaceships. As far as enemies go, the Reapers are as overwhelming as you would ever find.
With the Reapers being the enemy in Mass Effect 3, and a conclusion to the trilogy promised from the third game – my excitement for it was immense. And it delivered, for the most part.
The combat is Mass Effect 3 is perhaps some of the best of any third-person game out there. It’s not a game where the gunplay is the primary draw, so it doesn’t need to be perfect. But in Mass Effect 3 there is a perfect balance of fluidity, weapons that are different and fun to use as well as the signature biotic powers of Shepard and his squad mates.
The story for Mass Effect 3 has many amazing touches that made it a roller-coaster journey the whole way through. As hard as it was to believe, some missions provide as much of a tugging on the heartstrings as the loyalty missions did in the previous game. Seeing the history of the Krogan race, meeting up with old squad mates and sometimes seeing them die provide something that was more powerful than I thought possible. Again, spending time with these fantastically crafted characters makes them seem almost real, and seeing them go through hardships truly made you care. Although the Reapers were a massive, soulless enemy – you felt for Shepard in his struggle to defeat them for the good of his friends, Earth and the whole galaxy.
The ending is what everyone was gearing themselves up for in this game, and although a major improvement to it was made via DLC a few months after the game’s release, the original ending to the game, and the trilogy, was lacklustre. Without spoiling things too much for those of you that haven’t played the game, the ending came from left field, featured gaping plot holes and, worst of all for a game that based its story on previous decisions, ended based on a simple choice of three paths with little discernable difference between them. The endings may have had different significances, but they were all far beneath the story-telling standard which the other two games and the vast majority of the third held itself to. The Extended Cut DLC and Leviathan DLC released later on, with the first one being free, added to the experience and made the ending much more bearable. With the Extended Cut, I was happy with the ending to Commander Shepard’s war with the Reapers. Whether it is just because it was better than before, though, I’ll never know.
Ending aside, as hard as it is to say, Mass Effect 3 is probably the best all-round game in the series. But Mass Effect 2 is the one that I’d recommend most.
My expectations are just as high for the next adventure around the Milky Way. Bioware have been less than secretive about the fact that the next game in the franchise is well into development, announcing that the game is in a playable state last December, and that work on motion capture had begun in January, which would suggest a launch towards the end of this year, or more realistically at the start of next year.
I’m hoping to find out more about the next Mass Effect at this year’s E3 conference in June. Until then, though, the anticipation for what will probably be the game that launches me into the next-gen will remain speculative. So in the immortal words of Commander Shepard: “I should go.”