Wow. It’s been….a long, long time, since I’ve been here, been part of this community, since I even gave Mass Effect a bit of thought. I moved on to other games as people do, but as with any fandom, there are many people who will always be here because it is so well loved. And while I can still say I admire it, I can no longer count myself as part of the fandom, simply because I have, since I recently gave it some more thought, realized that Mass Effect is not the Crown Jewel I thought (or wished) it was. And that’s why I’m here: I never reviewed Mass Effect. I never saw the point, I loved the series, so gushing over it would be pointless. But having stepped back, I feel there’s a lot that needs to be said, because I feel this is something that ultimately COULD have been a masterpiece, but ultimately wasn’t.
I am well aware that having been gone so long and these forums being as active as they are, everything I'm going to say has probably already been said by somebody at some point. So in effect this may all be pointless. But I'm doing it anyway, for me. I feel the need to compile all my thoughts into a coherent review, to determine once and for all my definitive thoughts on ME. As I have a lot, this will be rather long, which is why today I'm just posting Part one, which conerns the actual gameplay, which I consider to be the game's biggest flaw. When this thread dies I'll post more (or, if by some miracle it sticks around, I'll ptu up part two in a couple days) - I had no intention of this whole thing being so long but as I sat there typing what came to my head and the word count started approaching 10000 I figured there was no way I'm putting it all in one thread. However, for those who don't feel like reading all of it, the TL'DR of the entire review is right here at the top.
The TL;DR:
Mass Effect is not a bad game. But it’s not fantastic. It simply has too many narrative, mechanical and gameplay problems to make it so. I think these games get high review scores because unlike a lot of other games before them, they actually TRIED to have an epic story with extensive characterization and an awesome sci-fi setting. You can tell they were TRYING to make something that was truly one-in-a-million. But I think ME is being given points for effort rather than points for actually being that good – there simply aren’t enough games that try to do this kind of epic storytelling and many of us gamers, critics and consumers alike, eat it right up because we don’t have much else. However, if we really want video games to be taken as serious art, as they should be, then you have to hold your standards for what constitutes a good narrative to the same level as a book or a film or a tv show, and we simply don’t do that. We’re getting better, but we’re still too easily duped by flashy looks-like-its-epic stories like Mass Effect’s that are, in fact, quite flawed. No matter how attached you get to the characters, it doesn't hide the narrative's gaping holes and the critically flawed gameplay. Giving it top marks because you love the cast simply doesn't give the game the scrutiny it needs.
The Meat and Potatoes:
I wasn’t quite sure how to break this down: by game? I like to think of the whole trilogy as one big story, and in theory that’s what it’s supposed to be, but as it actually stands the story is so jarringly separated by each entry that ignoring discussion of the difference between each game is futile. How do I break down the many interconnected elements of the story and world interaction, like the story, the characters, the environment, the dialogue system and the morality system? They’re so intertwined it’s very difficult, and any given angle you approach it from may cause one to go off on tangents and find it difficult to get back on track with a jarring shift in the text.
Well, difficult as it may be, I’m going to try to break it down and focus my review, because otherwise it will turn into a disorganized, incoherent mess, I am quite sure of that.
The Combat:
Let’s get the worst of it out of the way, shall we? Despite everything I’ve said above, Mass Effect’s biggest flaw is not its story – it’s the moment-to-moment combat you slog through the game with. It doesn’t matter which game you pick, it’s never very good, though it must be admitted each game was better than the previous one.
Mass Effect 1 doesn’t appear to know whether it wants to be an RPG or Gears of War, and as a result features gameplay so banal, clunky and badly designed I now find it a chore to get through, and it makes playing Mass Effect 1 very difficult for me entertainment-wise. The shooting mechanics are clunky and strange, with Shepard being given all types of weapons and constantly picking up all kinds of weapons, yet being unable to hit the broadside of a barn with the ****** things until he levels up his skill with said weapon, making shootouts in the early part of the game, where the enemies have the same accuracy they always do, tedious at best since you have to get basically to point blank range or get really good at compensating for that ridiculous sniper rifle scope sway in order to kill anything. Isn’t Shepard supposed to be a combat veteran Spec Ops badass? Is that not why they pulled him in in the first place? The cover system is really quite bad, overly sticky and yet also entirely clunky and unresponsive at the same time.
The way powers are used is quite stupid. Biotics are supposed to be like ME’s magic that you’d find in fantasy RPGs, so why am I restricted to using them in very specific, one-shot ways? The reset timers on those are so long until you level them up that you find yourself shooting people with pistols most of the time rather than using your badass superpowers. Why aren’t biotics more active? Why can’t I telekinetically pick up a crate and start tossing it all over the room and smashing enemies with it? Why can’t I pick up enemies and do the same thing? Why can’t I ****** rip people in half? Why can I only stun them in place and then be forced to shoot them with my shitty ass guns? What the hell happened to the good ol’ mana bar? Same with tech abilities – why are these cooldown timers? Why aren’t they literal gadgets and inventory items I pick up and use? A system like that would allow for a lot more variety in tech gadgets as well. In fact, the general lack of interesting items in a supposed RPG, being limited to a fuckton of increasingly-powerful guns and armours makes the gameplay less diverse than it conceivably could be. OH, that would require giving you an actual inventory instead of the equipment slot system the game currently uses? Oh well golly gee Bioware I didn’t know you had no idea how terrible an idea your slot system is. Oh, you designed it for an Xbox controller and an inventory is hard to navigate with a controller? Well boo-****** hoo, I don’t care about the limitations of that shitty-ass console, I want good design, period.
Mass Effect 2 saw the combat go increasingly Gears of War, and also let Bioware’s trademark laziness rear its ugly head with regards to character progression. Rather than try to make the RPG mechanics work and give us truly diverse and interesting combat, they basically ditched almost all of it, reducing abilities to 3 or 4 per class, with a lot of overlap between them (the ammo types, for example). So basically it was Gears of War with a few superpower sprinkles on top. Except the shooting was nowhere near as good as Gears of War – it was floaty, still a bit clunky, and all the guns felt like you were shooting BB guns instead of firearms, both in terms of their actual handling and impact and in how they sound. Seriously, those are the most pathetic weapon sounds I’ve ever heard. All in all, the gameplay was dumbed down and simplified to the point of being utterly boring. It may not be as painful to play as ME1, but ME2’s combat is definitely still boring to partake in.
Mass Effect 3 has the best combat. It’s still not as good as Gears in the shooting department, not even close, but it is finally solid feeling. The guns still sound like peashooters but they have some weight to them when you shoot people (well, some do). Also, Shepard can finally hit the broadside of a barn. Killing things is meaty, it feels like you’re hurting enemies. The abilities are more varied, which is good, but you still don’t have an inventory, and you can’t use tech and biotic powers actively. At least biotics have rather quick cooldowns now, so I can spam them all over the place. Without a doubt, powers in ME3, while still rather limited, are far more fun to use (Nova, I’m looking at you – that should have been in ME from the beginning, it’s an excellent ability from a design AND gameplay standpoint).
A consistent problem I have with all the games is that you can never have more than two squadmates with you, even though everything would go much smoother and be much easier if everyone helped out. It would also build a better sense of team between all the characters. I know the control interface for that many teammates would be complex, but honestly, the squad control mechanics are dogshit anyway, so ditch those entirely and just have your squad follow you around on their own. Having Shepard and his posse roaming around, people talking with each other and commenting about where they are and what they’re doing would really do wonders for the sense of camaraderie that supposedly exists between them but is basically never shown because all but two of them are always on the goddamn ship.
The Environment:
Mass Effect’s combat areas are not very good, at all. They almost entirely consist of simple corridors, literal or figurative (thank you impassible doors and waist-high walls), where they place some enemies in front of you and you shoot them til they die. This continues through all the games, and it’s one of the things that Bioware simply never got good at. They don’t know how to design interesting levels for shooter gameplay, it’s as simple as that, and the gameplay suffers even more for it.
In addition, Mass Effect 1 suffers from an extremely bad case of copy-and-paste. I called the character building dumb-down an example of Bioware’s laziness, but it’s not the most egregious example. Bioware may put a lot of effort into ME, but they put it disproportionately into certain things and not into others. ME1’s “dungeons”, as it were – the random bases you fight in on planets for sidequests or exploration, or spaceships in space – are all EXACTLY THE SAME. There’s 4 types, and that’s IT. For the WHOLE GAME. It’s so lazy it boggles the mind how they could have thought it was acceptable game design. The repetition of fighting in the same ****** place over and over on dozens of planets makes sidequests utterly unbearable and is why I have never gotten to level 60 in a single runthrough of ME1 since the first time I played it: I simply cannot be assed to do the sidequests. They are painfully grindy, repetitive and boring. While combat may be the biggest flaw of the entire series, the level design of Mass Effect 1 is that particular game’s biggest, and ultimately most harmful flaw.
Another sign of Bioware’s laziness is how they handled their botched Mako concept. As terrible as the sidequests may have been due to the copy-and-pasted bases, and as barren as ME’s planets were (though to be fair, most planets really are just giant hunks of rock), exploring the galaxy and driving across vast planetscapes was one of the most awesome things in the game. It really gave you a sense of place and a sense of scale and amazement at the setting. Unfortunately, their programmers fucked up the Mako, and hard. We all hate the Mako. But the solution was not to AXE PLANET EXPLORATION YOU IDIOTS. The solution was to FIX THE MAKO’S CODING. JESUS. Talk about throwing the baby out with the bath water – or in this case, throw out the unpolished diamond. The solution is not to ditch the diamond, the solution is to polish the diamond. The lack of exploration makes ME2’s levels incredibly small and even more corridor-like. The sense of scale, which should be even greater since you’re out in the wild Terminus systems with plenty of uncharted worlds, is completely gone. Everything is claustrophobic, linear and cramped, even the Citadel, which didn’t need to be made smaller but was. Omega and Illium are missed opportunities for expansive and interesting hub levels, instead simply serving as glorified corridors along which you meet your questgivers.
The ME1 Citadel also had its fair share of problems, namely that it was barren and sparse and didn’t feel like an actual place with actual people in it, just a bunch of bare walls with simple boxes and whatnot scattered around and a bunch of static NPCs who never move and rarely ever talk, like a bunch of animatrons in a Wax Museum. In fact that was a problem with ME1’s non-combat levels in general.
ME3’s Citadel is probably the best. It’s still not that open and big, but it’s more open and big than ME2 and unlike ME1 feels like a place people actually live. The environments are detailed, people converse, people move (well, sometimes), and it generally feels more like a city than a hospital (that’s what ME1’s Citadel reminded me of – sterile, grey, everyone sitting around). ME3’s other levels aren’t big, but they at least LOOK big, using invisible walls and cliffs (it’s really fond of cliffs) rather than obstructing objects to box you in. You can now at least see the world around you, even if you can’t go there. The sidequest levels are also now UNIQUE – ME2’s were unique but they were so samey-looking because they environment was so tiny that it didn’t make them any less boring. ME3’s are each crafted to be different from each other and give you a sense of scale and place, even if they are still boring from a gameplay perspective.
Unfortunately ME3 also suffers from having terrible sidequests. Like TERRIBLE sidequests. ME1 may have been a chore to play, but at least you got to explore a location and experienced a little sidestory. 90% of ME3’s sidequests consist of “Hear random people talking about something they need, go find the thing they need on some planets using the ship’s scanner, go back to the Citadel and tell them you found it.” No exploration, no combat, no nothing. Just pick it up on the scanner. I thought about speaking about the Galaxy map too but ultimately that’s an irrelevant little nitpick that doesn’t matter much – well, except the mineral mechanic in ME2. Horrible. Simply horrible. It’s grinding, pure and simple, and it needs to be removed. Replace it with anything – XP, level, finding certain objects on sidequests, I don’t care, just get rid of this mining crap. It is boring beyond belief.
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In Part 2: The Story and Dat Ending
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