Mass Effect is the Star Wars of Our Generation

The idea of a story driven game where your choices affect the course of the story is the ultimate power trip for a young man. Now Mass Effect took that to the extreme by allowing your choices to affect the course of the story over 3 games. This is insane.

My First Playthrough

When I first purchased Mass Effect 1, I started playing it on a Friday night after work. I figured I would play it for a couple hours and then head out to the bar as I normally do. I booted up my Xbox 360 and, like Star Wars, see the following scroll

I get chills. This game immediately piques my curiosity and I know next to nothing about it. I merely picked it up on a whim for like $7. I play the initial mission and it feels fairly standard. Lackluster gameplay. Ok visuals, but the story and the writing give me reason to overlook any flaws. Then this happens…

Shepherd, the protagonist, activates an ancient beacon which sends a cryptic vision full of mystery. Time is flying by as I fall into the immersion of Mass Effect. Great writing that hooks you immediately. Interesting characters that you can talk to with multiple choices for dialogue. Space exploration. Multiple interesting species. And “codex” entries to learn all the lore of Mass Effect.

I don’t make it out to the bar that Friday night. In fact, the only time I leave my penthouse the entire weekend is when I reach a decent stopping point and go for a cigarette outside. Later that night, I come to meet one of the greatest villains in all of video games. Sovereign. The loud bassy voice pounds through my Polk Audio speakers rattling my apartment. “There is a realm of existence so far beyond your control, you can’t even imagine it.”

Your first interaction with him is a brief dialogue over a commlink where he derides you and your entire galaxy with phrases like “You exist because we allow it. You will end because we demand it.” This is chilling. Just listen to this!

I play this game all day, Saturday. I eat breakfast and nothing else because I’m that immersed in the game. I lose track of time and am shocked to find it is dark when I go out for a cigarette. This isn’t just a great video game. It’s a love letter to all the sci-fi influences that Mass Effect draws on. Media like Star Wars, Star Trek and Battlestar Gallactica. In fact, after beating Mass Effect 1, my routine night would involve playing Mass Effect 2 until I got tired and then watching an episode of Battlestar Galactica.

I played Mass Effect all night Friday, all day Saturday and all day Sunday. I miss 4 meals over that weekend, only eating breakfast on Saturday and Sunday. The story, the characters, the choises… its all so immersive that I lost track of reality. I wound up beating the entire game over the course of this weekend. I am told that this is impossible because the game is at least 30 hours long. I put in at least 30 hours that weekend and yes, I did most of the side missions.

The game even ends on a fantastic high note with multiple options for how you stop the game’s villain. You can talk him down or try to, or most like, simply fight him. There is an epic space battle happening and it truly feels like the fate of the galaxy is at stake. Not to mention the banger of a hit that plays during the credits.

All of this is pretty shocking when I barely ever play sci-fi or RPG games.

Mass Effect and Social Commentary

This game made some bold choices in allowing the player to decide how to handle ethical grey areas and truly tough decisions. The idea of the genophage being the most obvious. Which choice do you make here? A race of violent and brutal Krogan are overtaking the galaxy like locusts so they are infected with a disease making 99% of them sterile to control the population growth. Do you undo this holocaust, allowing them to breed uncontrollably possibly leading to war in the future?

This game feels epic in scope thanks to the diversity of species you find in the universe. There are all sorts of aliens that truly feel unique and even some cyborgs and robots, called Geth. The backstory even involves a race, the Quarians, creating said Geth and then getting into a massive war with them a la Battlestar Gallactica.

The villains in this game, the Reapers, are these gigantic machine beings that look down upon all these different races as if they are little bugs ruining their picnic. They are essentially gods. And by channeling their inner H.P. Lovecraft, they claim humanity has such a feeble grasp of the universe that we are insignificant and destined to be destroyed in their anhelation of the galaxy.

“Organic life is nothing but a genetic mutation, an accident. Your lives are measured in years and decades. You wither and die. We are eternal. We are the pinnacle of evolution and existence. Before us, you are nothing . . . Your civilization is based on the technology of the mass relay, our technology. By using it, your society develops along the paths we desire. We impose order on the chaos of organic evolution. You exist because we allow it. And you will end because we demand it.”

-        Sovereign

Space Exploration

The Mako is the space rover that you drive around in on side quests. It’s basically the Tumbler from Batman but given machine-god like abilities. It can drive up mountains, hover and tell physics to fuck off. It should be considered a massive flaw in the game, but its so charming and fun that it is one of its greatest joys. It also has a cannon for fighting off giant space worms a la tremors.

There is something in human DNA that craves exploration. Sadly, we’re born to late to explore the Wild West and born to early to colonize the planets. Though Elon Musk seems intent to test this. So driving the Mako around all these foreign worlds is a truly beautiful thing. And even though the “story” of the side missions is largely a text adventure, it’s still oddly satisfying. I just love the Mako. It gives no fucks.

Mass Effect may be a bit dated now, and it’s had a few flaws. Namely the choose a color ending and the other safe choices that they put into the game. But man did Mass Effect 1 have some soul. And Mass Effect 2 added a ton of polish to the game, fixing most of its flaws. Although it took away the Mako for some point and click space exploration. This is nearly unforgivable, but its an otherwise near perfect game.

We Don’t Go to Andromeda

Whatever you do though, stay away from Mass Effect Andromeda. I went in with the best of hopes for the game but it’s completely and utterly pointless. They took away the weight of your choices so it’s essentially a crime to call it “Mass Effect.” More like “Minimal Effect.”

Not to mention the writing suffers from SJWs getting their hands on the game. Where the old games had true diversity in interesting characters that were human, cyborg, robot and alien, this game eschews all that in favor of ham-fisted modern progressive “diversity.”

The game starts off with one standard masculine male, and like most recent Hollywood trash, they kill off anyone afflicted with traditional masculinity. They then saddle you with this Justin Bieber lookin soft chinned soyboy to be bossed around by some bitch with a let me speak to the manager haircut. You’re basically the whipping boy for the new strong female type that’s allergic to shampoo. Picture Poe Dameron being talked down to by Admiral Holdo.

And the story is literally pointless to the Mass Effect franchise, so you truly are missing nothing by skipping it. It’s a big chase for a McGuffin. A pointless villain who is evil because reasons. And the pacing is horrendous in that it doesn’t really exist. The Mako replacement is actually phenomenal and clearly what the original was meant to be. I have no complaints about it or the gameplay itself. But where the original trilogy had me skipping meals, I couldn’t even be arsed to finish this game. I watched the end of it on YouTube and it was even more disappointing than I expected.

Synthetic vs. Organic

The ultimate theme of Mass Effect boils down to the argument of Synthetic life vs Organic life. Much of the first game involves battles between various alien species and the Geth, though they are being controlled by the Reapers, another Synthetic life. Legion, a Geth character even corrects a human who called him “artificial life.” Legion prefers the term, “synthetic life.”

This basically boils down to the argument of Order vs. Chaos. The Reapers, giant cold calculating machines mean to impose order on the universe and the diverse races of species found throughout the galaxy seek to maintain the chaos they accept as normal life.

This paragraph is a spoiler for the 8 year old Mass Effect 3. This is a brilliant theme that is discussed time and time again across the course of the Mass Effect Trilogy, especially when dealing with the Quarian vs Geth plotlines. The added irony of the Quarians created the tools that led to their own destruction. A warning against real world artificial intelligence. Yet, as the story wraps up, they hit this too much on the nose. They cast aside all your decisions and the “Star child” simply asks you what color ending you want? Order? Chaos? Or synthesis which is such a lame half step.

Now people are quick to get upset over the way something they love ends, but that’s missing the point. despite the simplicity and lack of balls of the ending in Mass Effect 3, this is one of the greatest stories of our time. Mass Effect is the Star Wars of our generation. The many nights I spent playing these games. The replays of Paragon and Renegade. The entire weekend I lost when I first discovered Mass Effect 1. It is all so memorable and it has left such an impact on my life. It is a shame that Andromeda was such a colossal misstep but maybe there is still hope for a brighter future. Either way, I’m happy for the memories of this game that I have. And for the love of God, if you haven’t played these games, go out and check them out now!