It may come as a surprise to those who know me, but there was a chunk of time where I didn’t play video games at all! After early childhood I was bogged down with school assignments and general life to be even thinking about gaming and what was I missing. One of the first games that brought me back to gaming, years after the third game’s release, was Mass Effect. And in a way I am glad that was the case as I was able to devour all 3, one after the other, in a frenzy of excitement and desperation to know what happens next.
This was a series that reignited my love for video games and RPG/ story-driven games and it is one I have come back to time and time again. My love for the games never lessens with each playthrough, in fact it is often a comfort, a return to good memories, nostalgia and that feeling of “home” that often accompanies that with which we are familiar. For me, the Mass Effect series is a strong argument for the advocation that video games can be art, the same way that literature, film and music are; making us experience a variety of emotions, care about characters and get lost in the story.
Mass Effect made me a fan of sci-fi, a feat I thought impossible, and brought me round to shooting games I had previously avoided. I did want to preface that this piece is subjective and some fangirling will no doubt make an appearance! As I am no game critic by any means, this article will just break down what I loved about the series and what I didn’t love so much! I will try to avoid spoilers so I won’t be going in to great depths in terms of the story, just my own personal experience of the games. Let’s begin!
Ok, I’m kidding. Kind of. Well not really. We’ll get to that later!
The Mass Effect series has an incredibly detailed, well-thought out and interesting story. We are Commander Shepard and it is our role to defeat the threats of Saren and the Geth in the first game, the Collectors in the second game and the main threat across all 3 games in the third; the Reapers!
And that is the story in a nutshell. But it really doesn’t do it justice as there is so much more to it than that, with all the side missions in the games and introduction of other important races. The backstory of Mass Effect is also huge, with the history of each species going back thousands of years including all the wars, the creation of the council and everything in between. The story is so rich and so epic, there is not one boring moment in the game. You are gripped from start to finish. I have never experienced anything like this from a game before. There is always something happening and always something to learn and the responsibility you have, of saving the galaxy, is huge. It is truly a masterpiece.
The threats escalate with every game; preventing the reapers from invading, a suicide mission in the second, every mission becoming a suicide mission in the third! The pressure and the tension are ramped up with every instalment that you start to worry whether you can even pull this off and save the galaxy. The odds always seem stacked against you.
And if intergalactic warfare isn’t enough for you, you also have to become a mediator for the different races, trying to find a way to get them to put their differences aside and band together for the survival of the galaxy as we know it. This is often easier said than done!
We can choose our Shepard’s origin, such as being a spacer who is brought up on ships or being an orphan raised in the gangs on earth. You can also decide if you want to be a good guy (paragon) or bad guy (renegade) with paragon/renegade interrupts being introduced in the later games to comedic effect. Ever wanted to headbutt a krogan? Punch a reporter? Well now you can!
Mass Effect also likes to throw in some ethical dilemmas for you. What are your thoughts on genocide? Should you ever sacrifice a few to save many? Do you risk a rash so you can shag that Turian bad boy you like? Wait What?
By the time the trilogy ends, you feel like you have literally gone to hell and back. You feel drained, sad, and hopeful. It doesn’t get better than that.
If the story doesn’t sell it to you, then the characters should.
Your squad across all 3 games is made up of a number of the races that we meet in the Mass Effect universe. We have Humans, Turians, Krogan, Drell, Asari, Salarian and even Geth. If you don’t know what these races are then sort your life out and get playing! The beauty of having such a diverse squad means that you get to know about the history and culture of these races and makes things interesting if you try to go the Xenophobic route in your dialogue choices!
The best thing about the characters however is that they are so well-written and their individual story’s and character arcs grow and evolve across all games. You get to witness your friends becoming badasses, important people in galactic civilisation and realising their goals. You get attached to these people who fight by your side through tough battles and are loyal to you through every single shitty thing you go through.
You can look out for your friends but also in certain cases you can betray them……and if you’re someone that did that, we know what that means…… you’re a C**T. Go sit in the corner and think about what you did.
You can also romance certain members of your crew across all 3 games so if you’re looking for love or ready to risk a bit of chafing for that for special someone, you can absolutely do that. You can carry on your romance across all 3 games or you can break it off and try someone new.
Just be aware that if you get told that someone doesn’t want to be with you now, and you move on, that person may come back and call you a cheat. That person needs a bump on the head. Kaiden.
Just try not to get too attached to anyone……it won’t end well.
In terms of the gameplay, unpopular opinion time, but I absolutely LOVED the Mako in the first game and driving across planets in it, trying to drive up mountains that gravity shouldn’t allow! Yes, it was clunky, but it was also extremely fun! In particular when trying to avoid a Thresher Maw! Don’t look that up by the way, you’ll get nightmares.
I loved the RPG elements in the first game; being able to change armour and weapons for my crew, the skill tree system and the different classes and specialisations you get to choose from. You can play as a typical soldier or instead be a tech specialist or biotic specialist, able to throw enemies in the air!
In the second and third games, they kept the skill tree but scaled back on the customisation of your squad mates and Shepard’s armour and weapons. However, combat was hugely improved on with the third game in the trilogy being quite smooth and easy to use. The game also got more beautiful and richer, but that is not a surprise given the 5-year gap between the first and the third. For me personally, all 3 games have stood up well to the test of time and are certainly still playable by today’s standards. Despite the first game being 13 years old, I still couldn’t recommend it enough to those who haven’t played this incredible series.
Andromeda.
Ok, maybe that isn’t fair. Andromeda deserves its own post really because it just doesn’t stand up to the original 3. It can’t stand up to them, because its legs fell off. They fell off from being so god damn broken that it is stuck in the piss gutter. Where it belongs. Naughty Andromeda.
I’m kidding! *Not kidding*
So, what in the original 3 pissed me off? Combat in the first game. “Let’s have an overheating weapon system where it overheats and shots are then wildly inaccurate after just 1 second of shooting, so you’ll have to save up lots of money to buy a decent gun if you want to really hurt anything” said no one ever. Except Bioware. And it SUCKS.
Thank the lord that they fixed this in the later games with heat sinks. But if you’re going to play the first game, just be prepared for that immense frustration.
In the second game, they introduced scanning planets to get resources to improve the Normandy’s defences, improve weapons, that sort of thing. You know what’s really tedious in a sci-fi space soap opera? SCANNING ENDLESS PLANETS. Element Zero, I know that’s important but now I’m sick of the fucking sight of it! There is actually an upgrade you can go for that makes scanning planets go faster! Even Bioware was like “Well this is shit, speed it up!”
And if you have OCD tendencies like me, it’s even worse. Because you know it’s boring, you know it’s tedious, but you just can’t stop until it says 100% and every planet is depleted or THE WORLD IS GOING TO END! At the end of these sections you know what was depleted? My fucking reason for existence.
Then there are certain characters that don’t always get on my good side. Like the Citadel council. Tell them about reapers. Have the Quarian play them a recording about reapers. Reaper flies onto the Citadel. Council fleet shoot Reaper. Council: THE REAPERS DON’T EXIST, THERE’S NO PROOF. How on earth can you see something with your own eyes and just go NOPE. Even in the third game, the reapers have invaded because the council did absolutely fuck all to prepare and when you go to them for help, they don’t want to because they only want to protect their own.
They are the most self-righteous, ineffective, incompetent and selfish, bumbling idiots and do not deserve to be on the council.
Then there is the character EDI. EDI was the ship’s AI in the second game and suddenly gets a body in the third game because. Yeah, I didn’t finish the sentence because I literally have no idea what the point of that was. I think it was just fan service as the voice actress is Tricia Helfer from BSG fame, but it literally just seemed like she was there to be a sexbot.
Yes, they tried to make her funny and tell jokes, but she was so unimportant in the whole story and apart from Joker it didn’t seem like she had meaningful relationships with the other characters.
In short, she’s kind of like that family member that comes to the big family gatherings but doesn’t really fit in with the group so just hangs around the periphery trying to get noticed by any means necessary. If that sounds a bit personal as a metaphor, it’s because I’m literally that person. The only difference is I don’t want the attention, I hate all those fuckers. I like looking in at the fuckery and never partaking in it.
Finally, the last thing that pissed me off about the series…… the ending. *SPOILER*
“It won’t be an A, B or C type ending” they said. Instead they offered us a 1,2 or 3 ending! And if you’re wondering what the difference is, it’s called fuck all.
The original ending sucked on every level. Choose between destroying the reapers, controlling the reapers, or synthesising organic and synthetic life. All options mean death. Every race you’ve united in the fight is redundant because the only reason you are being given this choice is because the god-child allowed it so everything you’ve done was pointless. All Mass Relays will be destroyed.
Not only that, but the god-child straight up lied to you and said synthetics and organics couldn’t ever live in peace even though I brokered peace between the Geth and Quarians and both are fighting the reapers as we speak. And we couldn’t even disagree with him! Not to mention his logic was completely flawed.
They tried to fix it with a free DLC where you had further dialogue choices with the god-child, could argue with him and get more information, plus a better ending on what happens to the people you cared about, but it still wasn’t what we were promised.
Not to mention in the DLC, if you shoot the god-child he says “so be it” and the next thing you see is your squad mate Liara on a recording warning the next round of organics what to expect. This basically said that everything you had done over the 3 games, the armies you have gathered and united, all this is pointless anyway because you could never have beaten them anyway. You’re only winning because the god-child said so. A character we are introduced to in the last 15 minutes.
What a kick in the fucking teeth.
I believe that the only way they could have made the ending good with the extended cut was to either go with the indoctrination theory or change the whole thing altogether. I think everyone who’s played Mass Effect knows about the indoctrination theory so I don’t need to explain it all, but I genuinely think if they had taken this route it would have been the greatest end to a game in gaming history!
There are so many clues that the Reapers are trying to indoctrinate us throughout the third game. The ‘oily shadows’ we see in our creepy dreams which is exactly how the Rachni queen described their indoctrination in the first Mass Effect. The fight between Anderson and the Illusive Man, where if we allow him to kill Anderson it’s game over. Why? People have died throughout the games but it didn’t mean we failed the mission. If Anderson is the good in us then if we let the evil, the Illusive Man, kill him then we have been fully indoctrinated. Even the options at the end hint to the indoctrination theory. Saren wanted Synthesis and he was indoctrinated. The Illusive Man wanted control and he was indoctrinated. This implies that the destroy option is the only option that is not influenced by the Reapers.
In the clip the god-child shows us of our final options in dealing with the Reapers; we see Anderson destroying the Reapers and the Illusive Man controlling them. Anderson was never indoctrinated which makes me believe that this is the ending you are supposed to choose. The right ending. The ending where we win. The Reapers couldn’t succeed to indoctrinate Shepard so she got rid of them once and for all! Plus, this is the only ending where Shepard can survive. But sadly, the indoctrination theory wasn’t used.
If you want to look into the theory in better depth, I would recommend the below videos which are brilliant at explaining it:
So, if it’s not the indoctrination theory I would prefer they had changed the end completely for a few reasons. First of all, there’s no real happy ending. Even the one where Shepard lives isn’t great as everyone else believes that we’re dead (except our love interest perhaps) so there’s no real closure. I don’t need a massive dialogue between Shepard and Garrus about how much they love each other before going off to make Turian/Human babies but perhaps a little bit of closure there would have been nice! I spent so much time playing as Shepard and making choices as I really would that she is in some way a part of me. You spend all that time creating and fostering relationships in these games with your squad so a little closure here would have been nice. Not that they all think I’m dead and I’m separated from them and that’s it. But I guess that can’t happen as Joker ran away out of the system so I’ll never see them again as all the mass relays are broken. Shepard, enjoy your lonely life!
I know this last bit has been a bit harsh towards the Mass Effect trilogy. Almost like I completely changed my tune in fact! But I wanted to be honest and as much as I love Mass Effect, I had to talk about the things I didn’t like, that annoyed me or that just plain disappointed me. But despite all this I still believe what I said in the first half of this post. I really think that the Mass Effect games are the best games ever. I really believe that all 3 of them are a masterpiece. They’re art. And nothing is perfect, but despite their flaws I love them and will continue to play them over and over again……. until the Reapers wipe us all out at least.
