Mass Effect - Retrospective @ Gamemoir

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Gamemoir takes a a look back at the Mass Effect series, and talks about what made it stand out from other games.

Mass Effect was announced on October 4th, 2005 and in retrospect the description afforded the game fell far short of doing justice to the product which was eventually released in 2007.

Team Xbox’s Brent Soboleski wrote:

“As the first human Spectre – sworn defenders of galactic peace – your mission is to halt the advancing armies of a legendary agent gone rogue. But as you lead your elite team across hostile alien worlds, you will discover the true threat is far greater than anyone imagined.”

It sounds so utterly generic, doesn’t it?

When players ultimately got their hands on the game those “hostile alien worlds” were found to be worth visiting time and again for the story BioWare had crafted and the species which populated those planets.

The characters which populated Shepard’s team proved to be so popular that Garrus and Tali both became love interests in the later games while Wrex returned as a squad mate for Citadel. Their conversations in the elevators of the galaxy’s heart of government, the Presidium, illuminated a universe with an ornate history dating millennia.

As time passed and gamers delved deeper into the overarching narrative of the trilogy, it emerged that Mass Effect’s past covered hundreds of thousands of years if not longer and as with the Halo series, the technology which powered the galaxy was built on the remnants of those who had come before.
More information.
 
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What made it stand out was Garrus. Oh, and Mako.
Everything else was kinda "meh". Except of course Miranda's backside, but noone should say that, kids are reading this.
 
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Garrus did make it stand out, yes :) But I also think some of ME2 characters are very well written - I actually liked most of them, even Jack. But yes, Garrus was consistently good throughout the whole series. And eh.. about Mako... I hope you meant it stood out in a bad way? I HATED it, that was worse than driving in Halo series.
 
I liked the Mako..

Well, not driving around in impossible terrain but the feeling of exploring alien worlds.
Looking up at a foreign sky and strange moons.

C

Yes, it generally worked well on the main quest missions where it was used. These worlds were better crafted and better suited to the Mako. The generic worlds often had terrain that made it bounce around like a rubber ball though, so that was rather annoying.

Honestly, fixing it would not have been a big deal, and I really would've preferred that to the planet scanning thing. Exploring different planets across the galaxy was a lot of fun.
 
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I liked Liara the most, I believe.

I agree that Mako exploration should have been expanded and improved, not taken away.

Then again, that's my opinion about a lot of things that happened after the first game.
 
I remember stopping in every new planet in ME1 to take pictures of the different alien skies, one of the more fantastic looking ones was one with a giant blue sun so close you can see the surface movements...
 
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Mako was fun as hell... I always thought they should have expanded its use instead of scrapping it. Too many folks complained about how lanky the controls were with a gamepad, though. Fuck them!

My favorite characters were Tali, Ashley, Jack & Garrus-- the rest were always left on the ship.
 
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I liked the Mako..

Well, not driving around in impossible terrain but the feeling of exploring alien worlds.
Looking up at a foreign sky and strange moons.

C

Starbound is a must try in that case.
 
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after playing through ME3 I had an urge to replay the whole series but was put off by the whole Mako exploring every planet. When I eventually relented, I found that it was a more rewarding experience than scanning the blumin' planets in ME2 or the sonar style ping of ME3.
 
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Mordin Solus.
Imho he is one of the best and most underestimated NPCs ever. His personal concert for Sheperd was outstanding. :D
But in earnest, I really liked his conflict, having created the Genophage and so on, now (perhaps) going to cure it, both being the correct logical decisions at the given time. Scientific mastermind, but in fact a simple person with simple goals.

Ahsley, Garrus, Liara, Tali, Wrex, Anderson, Mordin, Joker, Jack, Legion, Miranda, Thane (THANE!!!)… I really like them all. The game really made me feeling somehow close to them. So far I've experienced this only in books.
 
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