Mass Effect Trilogy Review - By Thingy

Under construction

In the year 2148, explorers on Mars discovered the remains of an ancient spacefaring civilization. In the decades that followed, these mysterious artifacts revealed startling new technologies, enabling travel to the furthest stars. The basis for this incredible technology was a force that controlled the very fabric of space and time.

They called it the greatest discovery in human history.

The civilizations of the galaxy call it... MASS EFFECT.
-Mass Effect 1 Intro Text



Mass effect is an action-RPG developed by Bioware and published by Electronic Arts (EA) games.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bioware were known for their great RPG's long before Mass Effect and Dragon Age. They combine solid RPG gameplay with a detailed story and great dialogue. This can be seen in Mass Effect.

The story and the world make up the creamy core of Mass Effect. At first glance, the story is nothing new. All major elements of the story have been seen before, sometimes several times. But what's really special is the execution. You can actually change the story with your actions, and your actions in this game will have consequences all the way into the final and 3rd game. Perhaps even in the Mass Effect games after the shepard triolgy! While this has been seen in smaller extent in some older games, it has never been done this good or in this extent. In those games, a couple of details would change or you could get some different dialogue depending on your actions during the game, but this one really takes the prize. Playing ME2 with a complete save game from ME1 and then playing it with another save game, one with different choices than the first, feels like playing 2 different stories.

Also, like in the KOTOR series, you have a moral rating. If you do good things (according to video game logic), you get paragon points, unlocking new paragon dialogue which you can use to increase your reward in some encounters with characters and from missions, and sometimes you will need that dialogue to complete a mission. It is the same with ''Renegade'' which is the game's definition of ''Success at any cost neccesary'', or ''The ends justify the means''. Your choice of morality will have an effect on this game and the next, like your other non moral related decisions. The moral system works like this. Let's say you meet a weapon's smuggler during an attack on a colony (the Alliance military has been overrun by the way). You can use the paragon option and convince him to give you some extra weapons and mods and tell you where his superior is by making him feel gulity for all the dead soldiers that would have been alive if he hadn't stolen some of their weapons and sold them. Or you can threaten to kill him if he doesn't give you all his stolen weapons and tell you where his superior is. Choosing the first will add points to the paragon bar, and the choosing the latter will add points to the renegade bar. If you choose a renegade option after choosing the paragon option in this scenario, your paragon rating won't go down, it will be unaffected, but the renegade meter will go up.

Mass Effect 2