Despite its repetitive gameplay, Mass Effect marks a new era of gaming where gamers truly have the power
While some games choose one or another technique to suck players in, Mass Effect opts to take advantage of every single one of those. The game gives you total control over what your character is going to be like, both statistically and morally speaking; it launches players into a very well-constructed universe with so many details to read up on that getting to know the ins and outs of the universe on which the game takes place is half of the game itself; it eventually slows down, in the middle of its intergalactic action, to deal with and build relationships between its central characters to a point that growing emotionally attached to those beings is a question of when, and not if; and it effectively makes use of the hardware to visually craft such unique alien worlds that not being amazed by the attention to detail never comes to happen. However, the core difference between Mass Effect and all other games that have captured our brains in one way or another is not simply the fact that Mass Effect makes good use of all those techniques simultaneously in one gargantuan space opera, but the fact that it uses most of those strategies to a deep extent that had never been seen in the gaming world. And, despite all of the game's pacing issues, Mass Effect comes to thrive – and climb into greatness – exactly because of that all-out approach.
Mass Effect gives players so much control over what happens in it that even describing the game's central character is an impossible task. Commander Sheppard can be a soldier, an engineer, an adept, an infiltrator, a sentinel or a vanguard, with each specialization having its own effect upon the character's stats and how he will behave during combat. Even the man's backstory is not set in stone by the game, as he can be a colonist (a human born in one of the Earth's outer space colonies), a earth-born or a spacer; and his military history also happens to be up for grabs, since players can choose between giving Sheppard the burden of being the sole survivor of a traumatic space battle, a glorious war hero or a ruthless soldier. While those two last character and background choices have no effect on the captain's stats, they do affect dialogue through the course of the game as those events and characteristics are often mentioned by other characters with whom you will interact with. Some games branch out in the later part of their course, inviting players for an extra go, Mass Effect starts laying different paths in front of players from its very beginning, giving itself extra potential to play out differently according to what is chosen by players. And make no mistake, that potential is very well-used by developers.
Players' control goes beyond Sheppard's past, extending to his present actions, which will in turn bring different outcomes to his future. Throughout the game Sheppard will interact with an unbelievably huge array of characters, some of which are key to the story – big political figures, members of his own squad – and others who are marginal characters living their everyday lives while war is waged, but whether the dialogue is significant or not, Sheppard will never say a word players do not want him to. Every question, every piece of dialogue, is followed by a wheel of many options that range between the simple "Yes or no" to incredibly hard moral decisions. Interestingly, the words written on the wheel are not precisely what Sheppard will say, meaning that choosing "You did a good job" may lead him to reply "The mission was a success and you deserve to be congratulated for that", it is a nice little detail that adds a lot to the already fantastic dialogues. As an addition, some dialogue choices are only made available to players according to Sheppard's Charm and Intimidate stats, which will allow the use of either positive and very convincing answers or impolite rough remarks, depending on the way players want their own version of Sheppard to be seen by other characters. Saying that never has a game given players so much control over a character would be no exaggeration, and as a consequence, the game's long hours of dialogue become an absolute joy to navigate and control, making players to cling to every single word that is mouthed by all of the characters.
Regardless of how Sheppard is built, though, the intergalactic scenario on which Mass Effect takes place remains the same. By the year 2183, humans, powered by a fantastic alien technology discovered on Mars, have explored the vast reaches of space, building colonies, meeting a big array of extraterrestrial races and becoming universally relevant. Politically speaking, humans are no longer separated by nationalities or borders in a map, and have become organized in a political group known as the Human Systems Alliance, which represents humanity as a whole when facing political debates of – literally – intergalactic proportions. Political decisions are all made at the Citadel, a huge technological advanced city and the galaxy's center of power, where ambassadors from all races make their pleas to a three-alien-race council that is effectively responsible for commanding the known universe. Commander Sheppard is sent to a distant human colony to recover a beacon created by the Protheans – an alien race that has been long and mysteriously extinct – but things go sour on the mission when a Spectre – a special peacekeeper agent who works for the council – decides to turn against his duty, attack the colony to try to steal the beacon for himself. After his failure, Sheppard returns to the Citadel but is unable to convince the council that such a respected Spectre has become rogue, but receives permission to try to gather evidence of his unethical activities.
From this point on, Mass Effect becomes an epic intergalactic chase where Sheppard visits a few planets where suspicious activities have been taken place, and – as expected – a huge evil plot is uncovered little by little. If Mass Effect is flawlessly in the execution of its character interactions and degree of customization, it begins to fall apart a little bit when gameplay comes into question. The structure of the game's central missions is much to linear and there are little surprises to be found in the gameplay department, as most missions happen in pretty much the same way: Sheppard lands on a planet, does some investigation with the place's inhabitants, finds a lead or two, goes to a location where something fishy is going on, there is some combat along the way and everything ends with a boss battle that is never too surprising in the way its constructed. In other words, while the plots that orchestrate the background of the game's main worlds are very compelling individually, and outstanding on the way on which they combine to form a single tangled web of universal conspiracies, the gameplay that is brought to the center during all those space travels is surprisingly bland. To be fair, some of the combats do have a certain level of excitement to them, but what they have in explosions and weapons, they lack in variety.
During his missions, Sheppard will be able to face the dangers waiting for him with two other people. Commanding this squad properly, and balancing each of the characters' skills so that the team is properly prepared for the enemies ahead is key to making it. Each character has different levels of three distinct skills: combat, biotic – which in the Mass Effect world translates to sort psychic powers that allow characters to, for example, send enemies flying into the air for a short period of time – and tech, which lets characters mess with enemy equipment at will. During combat it is possible to pause the action and enter a menu in order to command your fellow soldiers to either attack, follow you, move ahead, take cover or to order them to use some of their special abilities. It is an interesting RPG-like mechanic, but one that also – unfortunately – occasionally breaks the pace of the action. Sadly, the game's AI is not very well-programmed, meaning that your enemies will often choose to take the most stupid combat options available – like leaving cover and walking straight into your fire – and your partners will also eventually do the same thing in favor of the enemies, something that will lead to some frustration for players that choose to take on Mass Effect on its highest levels of difficulty.
Mass Effect's main quest does not take too long to complete, ranging somewhere between twelve and fifteen hours, a number that is admittedly surprising for a game that seems to be as huge as this one, but a big part of the game's huge scope is waiting to be discovered on its sidequests. Just as a general idea of how huge is Mass Effect outside of its main story thread, the game's core plot takes Sheppard to about five distinct planets, but the game holds more than thirteen systems, each one having at least four planets waiting to be discovered. Truth be told, it is not possible to land and explore all of the game's worlds, as in some of them all players can do is send a scout team in so that they can return to your mighty ship with information and some resources the planet has to offer (such as minerals and other collectible items), but the fact remains that out there in the huge universe map of Mass Effect that are tons of stories, mysteries and action-packed sequences waiting to be discovered, all that it takes to reveal a new untouched tale is talking to the people living in the different parts of the Citadel or in any other inhabited planets of the galaxy.
Unfortunately, much like the game's core missions, Mass Effect's sidequests lack in variety. Most of the missions that can be discovered in the bustling Citadel will simply be resolved by talking to someone or going into a place where there is trouble for some shooting to happen, and while it is extremely appealing to find out about the stories of average-looking characters that in other games would not even have a name or a line of a dialogue, the missions are still weak in the way they are executed. The quests that do take Sheppard out into the big black vacuum also suffer from the same inflexible structure. Whether Sheppard has to locate a missing team of soldiers last contacted when exploring the mines on a distant planet, locating a piece of equipment from a damaged ship or busting a location where some sort of illegal business is taking place, the formula of the missions will be exactly the same. Sheppard and his peers will land on a hostile planet with their vehicle for terrain exploration, dots on the map will show places of interest and upon getting to those places the team will either discover stacks of minerals, scientific facilities or mines, to make matters worse, regardless of the planet you are on or the mission you are performing, all mines and facilities will look exactly the same and have the same structure, which will make all missions look a whole lot alike, with their only considerable difference being the always very good plot that powers them. If the creativity shown in the writing department had also been present in the stage design field, Mass Effect would be an untouchable masterpiece, but as it is, it is a game whose gameplay is too repetitive for its own good.
As a counterbalance to all the repetition found in the meat of the gameplay, Mass Effect shows prowess in its writing beyond dialogues and mission-accompanying plots. During the game, either by talking to characters or examining certain objects, players will acquire many of paragraphs regarding pretty much everything in the Mass Effect universe. Upon coming into contact with a new race, the whole political and economical history of that group of beings will be added to Sheppard's personal index of files, and the same goes for the discovery of a new planet or the finding of a new development in the Citadel or in one of the colonies. By the end of the game, players will have an extensive amount of files that – if read by those who really want to sink their teeth into this amazing world – will provide enough information for anyone to become an absolute expert on the universe's history starting from thousands of years in the past and eventually reaching its turbulent present. One could easily spend countless hours reading on all of the game's tiny details, and all that lore is a very respectable part of the game, which ends up building a lore and history that is easily compared to what the Star Wars franchise has gathered after many movies, studies, books and others forms of media that turned one vast universe into a big group of connected stories that when brought together make a whole lot of sense. In just one game, Mass Effect was able – through the stunning writing that it displays – to build a nearly unparalleled believable universe.
When compared to the current graphical standards, it is hard to deny that Mass Effect falls short of what is considered great, as character models – especially facial expressions – and textures have greatly evolved in the past few years, but – maybe helped by the writing – Mass Effect is still a very convincing game. The limited facial expressions that the characters sport is made up for with the stellar voice acting work that has been done. By taking into consideration that the game contains a huge amount of dialogue – all of which is voiced – and there are no big negative remarks to be made about intonation or how the characters are portrayed, Mass Effect quickly becomes one of the greatest achievements in voice acting of the gaming industry; not to mention its fantastic soundtrack that is easily comparable to what the biggest sci-fi movies have offered in terms of song writing.
In the end, it is impossible to say that Mass Effect is perfect. While its writing and its customization options will forever mark the point where players have taken full control of the course of a virtual adventure, its gameplay will always carry the stigma of being too repetitive and occasionally bland. Mass Effect is a game that can easily last thirty hours for those who will be energetic enough to pursue all of its extra missions and do some serious reading to become decently knowledgeably about this incredibly vast gaming universe. As if all those hours were not enough, replaying the game by building a whole new character will unlock some new possibilities, allowing players to even access some side missions that are not available to certain types of characters. All in all, there has never been an adventure game as free as Mass Effect, and it is hard not to be attracted by its inviting proposal of allowing players to flirt with all different kinds of possibilities.