The Mass Effect series is one of missed potential. A series that started off so strong would end up a complete mess by the end of it. It's a series I think back to often on what made it so great, and what EA and Bioware did to salt the earth and ensure no one could do anything interesting with this franchise. As of writing this, Bioware are already working on a new Mass Effect game, but the enthusiasm the series had more than a decade ago is just not the same. To understand why that is, I think it would make sense to go back to the beginning and see why this series was so beloved and where it all went wrong.
Mass Effect is set in the 22nd century. They discover an artifact on Mars called a "mass relay", which allowed faster than light travel. This allowed humanities technology hundreds of years into the future. After a hostile first encounters with the alien species known as the Turians (which led to the First Contact War), relations eventually cool down enough for humanity to be allowed in the greater galactic community. You play as Shepard, who is tasked with recovering a Prothean beacon from an excavation site. The mission goes sour fast as the Geth attack the colony where the beacon was found, led by the traitorous Saren. Shepard is then tasked with taking him down while trying to bring Saren to justice and uncovering his plans.
Right off the bat, I'd say the game's biggest strength is its setting. It's always impressive to see such a detailed world populated by a variety of different alien species, with their unique designs, cultures and attitudes. I'd wager to say that the alien species that litter the Mass Effect universe are some of the most unique and memorable aliens we've gotten since Star Trek. I think there's a reason why original sci-fi is less common in the AAA space. Unlike in say fantasy, where they have the works of Tolkien as a solid foundational ground to work from, sci-fi I feel doesn't have that one foundational work to go off of. Not to say that Mass Effect doesn't take inspiration from other works. Like I alluded to earlier, it's easily apparent that Mass Effect takes a lot of inspiration from Star Trek, going as far as to litter cameos across the trilogy from Star Trek alumni. All this is to say that Mass Effect put a ton of effort and thought into the world building of its universe.
What really helps sell the setting is the games' soundtrack. Perhaps a controversial opinion, but the orchestral tracks never really appealed to me. Perhaps this is a retrospective opinion, as the series would lean more and more into its orchestral pieces to match its more dramatic and action packed tone, but the electronic and synth heavy tracks are the ones that I found to be the most representative of the series. The Main Menu and Galaxy Map theme are the tracks that, to me, embody the Mass Effect series. They give off the feeling of discovery and curiosity to the galaxy at large, and have a more contemplative tone to them. It's a shame that this tone would slowly get chipped away as the series progressed, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
Mass Effect is a series that is defined by its characters, particularly your squad mates. If you're starting from the first game, you might be confused as to why. Not to suggest that your squad mates or even that they are poorly defined. It's just that they mostly exist as a means to flesh out the setting, and not necessarily to flesh them out as people. Characters such as Tali, Garrus, Wrex, Liara and Kaiden serve a mostly utilitarian role by giving more insight to the world of Mass Effect, rather than getting to know them. They're still well-defined with pretty clear personalities, but the things that make them beloved by fans won't crop up until later in the series. Funnily enough, the one squad mate that I think buck this trend is Ashley Williams. Often maligned as "the racist one", she's the one squad mate that feels the most well-rounded. She offers insight into humanities relationship with other aliens and into her own insight as someone who grew up in a military family, hopping from colony to colony, and how that shaped her as a person. Her story is also the most thematically relevant in the game, where you get to challenge her on her position that humanity should stick up for themselves rather than cooperating with the other races to form a more unified galaxy.
While the main cast may be lacking in ways that the sequels would improve, the one aspect it did nail were its antagonists. Saren starts off as your generically evil villain motivated by his racism towards humans, but as you confront him, you learn that he's misguided in trying to align with the Reapers, an ancient race that were believed to have wiped out the Protheans 50,000 years ago. He truly believes that by allying with the Reapers, he can save life in the galaxy, but he eventually unravels as the flaws in his plan are pointed out to him. Saren by no means is a good person, but there is a tragedy to a character that tried to do good by the galactic community be misled and manipulated. On the subject of the Reapers, Sovereign still stands as the best twist in the series. What was once thought as simply a spaceship, you eventually learn that it's actually a live Reaper. All of a sudden, we get a nice dose of Lovecraftian horror, as we're put face to face with a threat that we can't possibly comprehend. Surely this will be something that the series won't squander, right?
Despite all the praise I've given it, unfortunately the game is held back by its gameplay. Some elements get improved upon and future games, while others remain the same throughout. For starters, the combat does not feel great to play. Even with the improvements made in the Legendary Edition, it remains very awkward and floaty to play. There's a lack of feedback and punchiness to it that makes it really odd to play. It wants to play like a third-person shooter, but it's not nearly polished to feel good to play. The one saving grace is that depending on the type of character you build, you can become absurdly powerful. Adepts, Mass Effect's equivalent to mages, are insanely fun to play and the way they take control of the battlefield is something that the other classes can't hope to match.
This issue is made worse by the uninteresting level design. While the main quest avoids this issue for the most part, side quests are littered with re-used and uninteresting levels. Which is a shame because a lot of the side quests have really good stories attached to them, and do a great job at fleshing out the world. Get used to going through the same ship, bunker and lab layouts over and over.
Finally, I'd be remiss to not mention Mass Effect's most defining and influential features, the dialogue wheel and the Paragon/Renegade system. When these were first introduced, it was seen as a breath of fresh air. Gone were the text boxes and binary morality of old, and what came in to replace it was a responsive and snappy dialogue wheel and a morality system that in theory was meant to act as a way to more appropriately act and react to different situations. The reality was very different, sadly. The Paragon/Renegade system still felt like a good and evil system, with many Renegade actions coming off as comically evil for no real good reason. It also didn't help that the system was designed in such a way that you'd get punished for trying to mix and match your answers. You were heavily encouraged to stick with one alignment or another, otherwise you could be locked out of making some very consequential story choices down the road. The dialogue wheel was an attempt to make conversations flow more naturally in a console environment, when in truth it actually limited what the player could do. Sure, you'd still get the ability to investigate a topic in more detail, but it also meant that the devs were limited in the actual choices one could make given the limited real estate the wheel provided. This is unfortunately a problem that would only get worse as the games would progress.
While far from a perfect game, the first Mass Effect game provided a great starting point and blueprint for future instalments. The future looked bright for Bioware, as this was the game that launched the studio to a level of prestige it had yet to see. In three years, they would release Mass Effect 2, a game in which many elements from the first game were improved, but also a game where the cracks began to form, and set the course of the series in a direction it would never truly recover from.
Mass Effect is set in the 22nd century. They discover an artifact on Mars called a "mass relay", which allowed faster than light travel. This allowed humanities technology hundreds of years into the future. After a hostile first encounters with the alien species known as the Turians (which led to the First Contact War), relations eventually cool down enough for humanity to be allowed in the greater galactic community. You play as Shepard, who is tasked with recovering a Prothean beacon from an excavation site. The mission goes sour fast as the Geth attack the colony where the beacon was found, led by the traitorous Saren. Shepard is then tasked with taking him down while trying to bring Saren to justice and uncovering his plans.
Right off the bat, I'd say the game's biggest strength is its setting. It's always impressive to see such a detailed world populated by a variety of different alien species, with their unique designs, cultures and attitudes. I'd wager to say that the alien species that litter the Mass Effect universe are some of the most unique and memorable aliens we've gotten since Star Trek. I think there's a reason why original sci-fi is less common in the AAA space. Unlike in say fantasy, where they have the works of Tolkien as a solid foundational ground to work from, sci-fi I feel doesn't have that one foundational work to go off of. Not to say that Mass Effect doesn't take inspiration from other works. Like I alluded to earlier, it's easily apparent that Mass Effect takes a lot of inspiration from Star Trek, going as far as to litter cameos across the trilogy from Star Trek alumni. All this is to say that Mass Effect put a ton of effort and thought into the world building of its universe.
What really helps sell the setting is the games' soundtrack. Perhaps a controversial opinion, but the orchestral tracks never really appealed to me. Perhaps this is a retrospective opinion, as the series would lean more and more into its orchestral pieces to match its more dramatic and action packed tone, but the electronic and synth heavy tracks are the ones that I found to be the most representative of the series. The Main Menu and Galaxy Map theme are the tracks that, to me, embody the Mass Effect series. They give off the feeling of discovery and curiosity to the galaxy at large, and have a more contemplative tone to them. It's a shame that this tone would slowly get chipped away as the series progressed, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
Mass Effect is a series that is defined by its characters, particularly your squad mates. If you're starting from the first game, you might be confused as to why. Not to suggest that your squad mates or even that they are poorly defined. It's just that they mostly exist as a means to flesh out the setting, and not necessarily to flesh them out as people. Characters such as Tali, Garrus, Wrex, Liara and Kaiden serve a mostly utilitarian role by giving more insight to the world of Mass Effect, rather than getting to know them. They're still well-defined with pretty clear personalities, but the things that make them beloved by fans won't crop up until later in the series. Funnily enough, the one squad mate that I think buck this trend is Ashley Williams. Often maligned as "the racist one", she's the one squad mate that feels the most well-rounded. She offers insight into humanities relationship with other aliens and into her own insight as someone who grew up in a military family, hopping from colony to colony, and how that shaped her as a person. Her story is also the most thematically relevant in the game, where you get to challenge her on her position that humanity should stick up for themselves rather than cooperating with the other races to form a more unified galaxy.
While the main cast may be lacking in ways that the sequels would improve, the one aspect it did nail were its antagonists. Saren starts off as your generically evil villain motivated by his racism towards humans, but as you confront him, you learn that he's misguided in trying to align with the Reapers, an ancient race that were believed to have wiped out the Protheans 50,000 years ago. He truly believes that by allying with the Reapers, he can save life in the galaxy, but he eventually unravels as the flaws in his plan are pointed out to him. Saren by no means is a good person, but there is a tragedy to a character that tried to do good by the galactic community be misled and manipulated. On the subject of the Reapers, Sovereign still stands as the best twist in the series. What was once thought as simply a spaceship, you eventually learn that it's actually a live Reaper. All of a sudden, we get a nice dose of Lovecraftian horror, as we're put face to face with a threat that we can't possibly comprehend. Surely this will be something that the series won't squander, right?
Despite all the praise I've given it, unfortunately the game is held back by its gameplay. Some elements get improved upon and future games, while others remain the same throughout. For starters, the combat does not feel great to play. Even with the improvements made in the Legendary Edition, it remains very awkward and floaty to play. There's a lack of feedback and punchiness to it that makes it really odd to play. It wants to play like a third-person shooter, but it's not nearly polished to feel good to play. The one saving grace is that depending on the type of character you build, you can become absurdly powerful. Adepts, Mass Effect's equivalent to mages, are insanely fun to play and the way they take control of the battlefield is something that the other classes can't hope to match.
This issue is made worse by the uninteresting level design. While the main quest avoids this issue for the most part, side quests are littered with re-used and uninteresting levels. Which is a shame because a lot of the side quests have really good stories attached to them, and do a great job at fleshing out the world. Get used to going through the same ship, bunker and lab layouts over and over.
Finally, I'd be remiss to not mention Mass Effect's most defining and influential features, the dialogue wheel and the Paragon/Renegade system. When these were first introduced, it was seen as a breath of fresh air. Gone were the text boxes and binary morality of old, and what came in to replace it was a responsive and snappy dialogue wheel and a morality system that in theory was meant to act as a way to more appropriately act and react to different situations. The reality was very different, sadly. The Paragon/Renegade system still felt like a good and evil system, with many Renegade actions coming off as comically evil for no real good reason. It also didn't help that the system was designed in such a way that you'd get punished for trying to mix and match your answers. You were heavily encouraged to stick with one alignment or another, otherwise you could be locked out of making some very consequential story choices down the road. The dialogue wheel was an attempt to make conversations flow more naturally in a console environment, when in truth it actually limited what the player could do. Sure, you'd still get the ability to investigate a topic in more detail, but it also meant that the devs were limited in the actual choices one could make given the limited real estate the wheel provided. This is unfortunately a problem that would only get worse as the games would progress.
While far from a perfect game, the first Mass Effect game provided a great starting point and blueprint for future instalments. The future looked bright for Bioware, as this was the game that launched the studio to a level of prestige it had yet to see. In three years, they would release Mass Effect 2, a game in which many elements from the first game were improved, but also a game where the cracks began to form, and set the course of the series in a direction it would never truly recover from.