Two: Storyline and Lore
The folks over at BioWare are master story tellers. These days I am going through my first playthrough of Mass Effect. My character now has access to the first tier of spectre weapons. This has essentially made firefights a joke. Where I would have to try a few reloads and approach the battlefield with revised strategy, I now walk blindly into every combat situation knowing I will decimate and humiliate anything that comes in my path. That being said, the storyline in the game is so exquisitely constructed and so well executed that I can’t help but push forward, waiting for the next bit of lore and plot twist.
Instead of cookie-cutter stories that have shallow two-dimensional characters and plot devices, every game I have played from BioWare offers an unprecedented level of depth, structure and non-linearity in the story. The world feels alive, rich with a complex back story and dynamic, conflicted, flawed characters, each with their own agendas.
