Preface: I'm still not very far into this game. That's why this is an "impressions" post and not a review. My level of enthusiasm may change as I go deeper into it (though I doubt it).If you haven't played it, Mass Effect is set in a distant future setting in which mankind, having discovered alien technology, has catapulted to the stars and found itself as one of many races looking to co-exist (or not) in the cosmos. You're a military man (or woman) with the last name of Shepard (the first name is up to you). It's a mix of classic RPG elements (multiple character types, character leveling and development, epic story) and 3rd person action. But as I've been playing it, the comparison that comes to mind more and more often is Starflight (1986).
Starflight didn’t have any 3rd-person action shooter elements, but you created your captain and crew, took command of a fully upgradable ship and explored a multitude of star systems and planets in an attempt to figure out why stars across the galaxy were going nova and how it could be stopped.
In Starflight you direct your ship where you want, when you want, collecting hints and following-up on rumors as you go. As you travel, you can land on any world (that doesn't have crushing gravity) and use your armed rover to search for alien artifacts as well as biotic specimens and useful minerals that can be mined and sold. As you gained money, you could train your crew to improve at their jobs. For example, your communications officer would get better and better at translating ship-to-ship communications between alien races. You could also improve your ship and take on more dangerous areas of space. It was epic in scale, when you consider it shipped on a pair of 5.25" floppy disks. True, you needed your own imagination to fill in a lot of details, but that was true of most games of the time. (And I suspect my imagination filling in the blanks for those old games is why I still revere them so much.)Starflight was and remains one of my all time favorite games.
In Mass Effect you start off as a lone marine on an assignment that is very much on rails. But it's not long before you end up with a ship of your own, the autonomy to go where you will, and a team of party members that travel with you, allowing you to select any two of them as you adventure outside the ship. (Which crewmen you select can have a significant impact on how easy it is to accomplish your goals in a specific area.) The planetary exploration is incredibly reminiscent of Starflight (at least, so far). There are fewer star systems and fewer worlds, but if there's reason to do so, you can land on inhospitable alien worlds and find resources to be mined, alien artifacts and other unforeseen encounters. The main difference being that you can actually get out of your ATV and walk around a bit. (Plus, it uses more than 16 colors. Mass Effect is gorgeous.)
All that, however, isn't what makes Mass Effect the kind of game experience I've been looking for, for years. It's that the galaxy is allowed to breath. When you first arrive at the central world of Citadel, Mass Effect looks like it's going to be a pretty generic 3rd-person shooter with a little talkity-talk as you go. But as you explore the Citadel an entire galaxy opens up to you. The alien races all have incredibly rich histories. Every character of consequence has a deep personal history that offers clearly defined motivations for their actions. And the actions you take in the world have consequences in the world appropriate to their scale. (If you're just doing one person a small favor, they'll remember you. But if you do something big that gets everyone's attention, most everyone will comment on it.) With characters and cultures so well defined, it's easy to get lost in the world and get to the point where you actually give a shit what happens to the people in it.
Bioware has also done a marvelous job of investing you, as a player, in your own character. You can pretty much, if you so choose, make up a character in your own image, which is nice. There's a handful of character classes that allow you to specialize in three main areas or some combination thereof: combat, biotic skills (magic) and tech (decryption, electronics, etc.). But beyond that, the game also lets you select a two-part backstory involving how you grew up and a life changing event. There's only a few options to choose from, three for each of the two parts, I think. But the ones you choose are frequently reflected in the game. If you decided that your marine was the sole survivor of a disaster, for example, NPCs throughout the game will refer to that back story. Even if the options aren't as diverse as you might like, it was still very effective at investing me in my own character, something that I never got from Oblivion or Bioshock.Granted, this game isn't going to hit everyone's happy place like it did for me. There's every bit as much talking up NPCs and running fetch quests as there is intense combat. If you're not one who likes to read or hear a lot of dialog, or spend lots of time solving other people's problems, Mass Effect is going to be boring as hell for you. And it's not like Mass Effect breaks a ton of new ground. This style of game has been around forever. For all Bioware's crowing (before the console release of the game), your dialog options, in particular, really don't go anywhere we've not been before and your dialog choices don't often have the moral ambiguity or unknown consequences of The Witcher.
For me, though, I don't care. Mass Effect is hitting an itch that I haven't been able to scratch since the days of Black Isle studios and the Infinity Engine games (Baldur's Gate, Planescape: Torment, Icewind Dale), but it's doing it in a sci-fi setting that I've been missing since Starflight, more than 20 years ago. (Note: I still haven't played Knights of the Old Republic. Maybe I've just missed out.) Bottom line, if you like a good, old school, PC RPG that unfolds like a great book or movie, Mass Effect is well worth checking out.
Oh, and for what it's worth, I have yet to hit the infamous alien sex scene (perhaps I missed it?) that caused all the controversy last fall. I did, however, just find this YouTub clip that pretty much sums up my feelings about it. It's only 30 seconds, so give it a quick view:
