I'm fairly hesitant to label any sort of game as a "proof of concept" or "exists so better games can exist later", but in the case of Mass Effect, I don't feel too bad putting it down like that, at least a little bit. Especially since at the exact same time, it's a conceptually decadent and ambitious title; it's just those ambitions seem to mostly comprise of a) can BioWare make a cinematic RPG with meaningful decisions, b) can they build themselves out of their primarily CRPG branding, and c) can they make a Halo RPG out of that RPG framework they're largely familiar with? And did they succeed? No, kind of, and just barely (respectively). But it's kinda fuckin' awesome anyways? Like corny dialogue sputtered out by characters that barely scrape by in terms of likeability, nonsensical plot progression that was clearly smashed into the plot so that there were "big choices" to make (seriously, most of the big choices in the game don't even parse as natural dilemmas), and increasingly nasty post-9/11 politics aside, it somehow works.

Though from the outset, the presentational and narrative cracks are glaringly obvious: BioWare still hasn't quite figured out how to make humans in HD games not look like they're from the Hall of Presidents at Walt Disney World, none of the characters in the tutorial level act like actual humans (my favorite is the guy who dies two seconds into the story because he ran in front of a laser and then the characters are really sad about it later), AND we're introduced to the main attraction of the first Mass Effect game: extensive environmental asset reuse!!! The last one I suppose is a nitpick, but it's def pretty nauseating at times. Sometimes it gives off this charming early sixth gen console vibe (particularly in the "lower levels" of the Citadel with the mood lighting), but like, surely we can do better than Halo: Combat Evolved when it comes to natural corridoring...

And it's not even like the corridors necessarily benefit the combat, since 50% of the terrain is buggy as fuck and doesn't even effectively work as cover a lot of the time. Not to mention enemy attack patterns are either obnoxiously timid to the point you're better off running up to them behind their cover and punching them to death instead, or so aggressive that I'm genuinely not sure what you're supposed to do in some combat scenarios except hope you can kill all the big guys before they walk up to you and fatally bludgeon you, all while not being evaporated by one of the many one hit kill projectiles that exist in the game. The party member AI also makes Donald and Goofy seem genuinely well programmed, but I honestly don't even care I think it's funny watching Wrex and Garrus shoot at ceilings.

There was a point towards the end of the game where I just said fuck it and switched to casual mode because I was tired of the kitchen sink approach to combat design that made every encounter in the endgame a slog. It's not even like you haven't already fought these guys a billion times already; literally the only enemy types in the game are geth and zombie dudes. Even the shitty car levels that they forgot to put meaningful gameplay expression into have you fighting the geth almost exclusively. Which kinda makes sense when you finally realize that outside of the beginning and the end of the game, pretty much nothing happens. That sort of shortcoming isn't exactly unique to this entry of the series in particular, but every piece of content and setpiece fails to distinguish itself enough to overcome it. There isn't even what I'd consider meaningful character development outside of maybe Wrex and Garrus (does Ashley become not racist, I forget).

And really, it just never escapes that "elongated prologue" feeling, and maybe that's not fair to say, especially if you were to treat Mass Effect 1 as a sort of "lesser" A New Hope -- but even then in the same way A New Hope was a later retitling of the original Star Wars, the first Mass Effect only gains purpose through its sequels. I've played this game multiple times, and I still get Feros and Noveria's plotlines confused -- because they're mostly just the same thing (corporation fucks up and deadly lab experiments get loose and also the geth are there for some reason too. Though in Feros's defense, BioWare copied the Halo 2 bridge level to mix that one up). That isn't to say the planets in the main story don't have their standout moments, but they all kind of blur together into a frustrating mush of nouns and philosophical concepts and the worst Halo: Combat Evolved warthog levels you could ever imagine. The Rachni Queen part is pretty cool though, even if it's preceded by one of the flattest scenes in the game between Liara and her mom. Yeah, uh, totally feel the familial connection between these two (???). At least it makes me laugh every time?

Though probably the most dire aspect of the first Mass Effect's plot focus is how much it focuses on humans and the borderline phrenological differences between the other species in the galaxy. Like, I get it, the aliens in Mass Effect are effectively just BioWare's own amalgamation of space-flavored DnD and Star Trek races, but the characters are REALLY pigeonholed into their individual archetypes in this one. Krogans are stupid jocks, quarians are nerds who love bionicles (I'll give this one a pass), and asari were clearly designed by the type of dude who gets performatively horny when he sees two women kissing (my tummy hurts after typing that one out, but it's true I fear). Turians and salarians are really the only race to be given multiple facets, and those facets at least make some amount of sense within the setting since they feel largely cultural and not a preordained natural order of sorts. I know the future games do a lot to alleviate these complaints, but it's still super weird going back to the first game and seeing Wrex talk about how there aren't krogan scientists. Like, that makes no fuckin' sense for a relatively advanced species that requires its own modern needs to not have scientists!!! I'm not even like, mad, it's just goofy as hell. lol

And I guess that leads me into the politics of Mass Effect, which I know, fucking yawn. But it's so interesting how much of the 9/11-era zeitgeist is slathered all over this game. The funniest/saddest example is when terrorists (a specific race of aliens who are always terrorists/slavers) hijack an asteroid (lol), and Shepard has a philosophical debate with their leader where they talk down to them about how violence isn't the answer (there's also an option to blame them for their own oppression, wow!). And I mean, Shepard is technically right in the context of Mass Effect's universe, the batarians are seemingly biologically predisposed to be evil slavers! But like what does that even fucking say, it's so boring. How did they make an asteroid being hijacked boring. I don't know, I'm not smart enough to talk about the broader real world implications of mid-to-late 00s military video games' political inclinations, but I am a 32 year old woman from the Midwest, and I grew up in that era where entire countries of people in the Middle East and Asia were considered ontologically evil by the adults around me -- it's such a sickening way to view the world, and even the Bush-era liberals who probably made this game had their brains poisoned by that rhetoric (though it doesn't help that this was also the era where Halo was bigger than Mario, and Halo might actually be way worse about it from what I remember).

Okay, time for that obligatory part of my review where I talk about gay shit. It's disappointing that the remaster didn't find a way to implement more gay romance options, MLMs are completely fucked here, but honestly the romance options in this aren't great for anybody. I def know some women who are prolly into Kaiden, but even if I was feeling desperate enough for a het romance, he's just such a cold cheese sandwich of a person that I'm super turned off by him. Liara's romance is so unnatural and awkward, and it sucks that it's the only meaningful WLW option in the trilogy until the third title (I'm going to complain so much about Jack not being romanceable by femshep in the Mass Effect 2 review). I haven't actually talked to Ashley since my first playthrough in like 2012 or whatever, but I'm sure there's plenty of weird racist dudes who love that they can date a Fox News host in their space adventure game. Honestly like, I won't pretend Tali is much more interesting than Liara in Mass Effect 1, but I really would've been down to have her as a romantic option for femshep. Mostly unrelated, but is Tali transfemme-coded in anybody else's brain. She'd def be on twitter.com with "she/it" in her profile. Maybe I'm too far gone.

Though really, there ain't nothing quite like this game, or this series; at least until Baldur's Gate 3 came out last year and proved that AAA game devs can do this sorta thing again under the right conditions. Even if the game is a mess and its messaging is overwhelming problematic at times, and even if it's self-important in a grotesquely unearned manner, I can't bring myself to outright hate Mass Effect. Is it good? Nope! Is it bad? Yeah, a little bit, especially when you look at the abysmally implemented side quest content -- everything in this game feels like it's DLC, is the only way I can think to describe it. But, I don't know, it kinda rules. In my fucked up and terrible mind, this is a game I'd say people should play with an open mind, cuz they really ain't getting this sort of experience from any other series out there.

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i was originally gonna do the entire legendary edition in one review, but i have so much to say about these games that I'm opting to separate them. and like, even though i'd never consider them among my favorite games, there's so many ways in which they could've been among my favorites