If my real-world girlfriend had been sitting on the couch beside me, it would have been difficult to keep playing. Not because there’s anything wrong with romancing a group of on-screen polygons but, if somebody who knew me was watching, I would feel obliged to do and say the same things in-game that I usually do and say in real life. And that, I realised, is not what RPGs are about.
The clue is in the name right? ‘Role playing’ game. I had been playing Japanese RPGs for 12 years at that point but I’d never understood the moniker. Used to story-heavy Japanese fantasies I had assumed that the only thing tying videogame RPGs to their table-top origins were stats and collecting or upgrading loot. Mass Effect changed that.
It wasn’t the first western RPG I played. With Oblivion and Fallout 3 I had discovered the emergent gameplay at the heart of western design - the ability to influence story, to tackle quests in an individual way, to determine whether your character was good or evil. None the less, the choices those games presented were often black and white. Before Mass Effect it hadn’t occurred to me that role playing meant one could take on any persona just to see where it would lead.
What set the game apart were the shades of grey that shrouded each decision. Many of the interactions between the characters existed solely to allow the player to create your own ideal Shepard. Reacting to racism, to other character’s views on religion and nationalism, or responding to the amorous advances of friends and crew members, allowed for something rarely found in videogames: character development. How those characters reacted to your decisions provided another gaming rarity: a context for those actions.
By providing freedom of choice but tempering that freedom with consequence, developers Bioware achieved something that I previously hadn’t found in video games. All eyes are on you in Mass Effect; those of crew members, superiors and journalists.
That game did so many things right that I’m willing to overlook its being one of the worst pieces of game code I ever had to endure.
- Frame rate and sound quality issues
- Physics bugs
- Repetitious vehicle combat
- Poor enemy and squad AI
- Difficulty spikes
- All that time spent going up and down lifts.
Worst of all, was the complete absence of a quick-save system. Mass Effect was one of the most frustrating games I’ve ever played. The confused chaos that constituted the game’s combat system highlighted Bioware’s failure to create an engaging action RPG interface. The Benezia encounter in particular... well just don’t get me started.
But the things Mass Effect did right are the things I’d been waiting for games to do all my adult life. The promise it presented, of sequels where every decision made wouldn’t just persist, but would shape your story was a hook unlike any other. And even better, they have delivered.
