I see where you're going with those titles and those games did really touch me on an emotional level (well, The Longest Journey). I just think the execution is really hard to pull off in a game. I see games mostly targeting the same things as a book, immersion-wise, but a book has so many more things going for it that a game can never hope to achieve. Effects and cinematics in a movie will be so much better than what is possible in games for a long time. So, it's hard to put down a convincing reality in a game that does not come off as cheap. Complicating things further, a game also has to focus on other aspects and find a balance therein.
Going back to Mass Effect, I enjoyed the gameplay much more than most well-received shooters. I enjoyed the RPG aspects of it (dialogue, story) more than most recent RPGs. It will not receive any literary awards, but I enjoyed it. That's important.
What, am I? I thought my comment was pretty tame and a bit lame if anything, because that was all the effort I could bother to expend in response to your dullness. I'm flattered you thought it was a result of long training!
While we're talking about Mass Effect and sci-fi, space opera and fantasy, has any one of you read, yes read, anything by Ursula K. Le Guin, the grand dame of science fiction? In her books, The left Hand of Darkness and The dispossesed, she examines how a society would be if it were x, yz or x for instance... This just to say that there are sci-fi writers out there who does something original and creative.
Out of curiosity, Essaliad, are you English by any chance?