Spoilery thoughts on Mass Effect

[alias_sqbr]

Ok, first: THAT WAS AWESOME. I may flirt with fantasy bur scifi is still my first and only true love. Spaceships! Huge epic battles across space! Giant explosions! Random astrophysics nerdery!(*) *squees happily*

(*)Every time you check out planet they give little bits of info about it's chemical makeup and orbit etc. When I got stuck at one point I just explored the galaxy checking planets for minerals etc, it was fun ^_^ (I was planning on majoring in astrophysics until I got distracted by computational mathematics)

And from now on: SPOILERS.

In case you somehow missed the SPOILERS warning, some only mildly spoilery thoughts to begin with.

In the end, while you have some choice in the details (which does make a big difference to the immersiveness) I guess there are four pre-written main characters to this game: male and female, paragon and renegade. And (not having played an m!Shepard yet) I'm not sure how different the male and female characters really are apart from voice/appearance and romance options. That said, I don't know what difference the different backstories and specialisations make. I played a paragon soldier f!Shepard and while she doesn't feel like my character I do like her a lot, the mix of idealism and pragmatism and complicated loyalties to humanity, the Alliance and the greater alien community. The romance with Kaidan was nicely understated and sweet (the little pause before he said "Ma'am" at the end of flirtatious sentences was adorable) I also liked the lack of DA's long squicky sex scenes, short tasteful and in character is much better.

Anyway! I loved taking the "wormhole mass relay network left to us by the ancients" idea and turning it into a trap. I'll never see that trope the same way again! The foreshadowing about how everyone relied on the mass relays and the keepers was very nicely done, tidbits of info sprinkled both in unskippable conversations and hidden in the codex. Saren wasn't the most original villain ever but he worked well enough and it was weird but affecting that you can persuade him to kill himself.

The two "big moral choices" weren't very much of a choice. Who shall I send on this suicide mission: My boyfriend, or the annoying xenophobic teammate who is pretty much useless in battle since she has the same skills I do and made bigoted remarks about my semi-girlfriend's sexuality? I WONDER.
That said, despite not liking her very much I did feel sad about Ashley dying, she was brave to the end.
And then, what shall I send the fleet to do: kill the evil all powerful AI trying to destroy all organic life in the galaxy, or protect the council who have been doubting my judgement and pettily impeding my and my species progress all game? I did feel a pang of guilt when I saw the looks on the the asari guarding them's faces when Joker cut off communication, but "a pang of guilt" doesn't stand up to some of the "OH GOD I KILLED THEM HOW CAN I LIVE WITH MYSELF?" moments in Dragon Age. I'd heard Shepard can die so genuinely believed and yet was surprised by the "Is Shepard dead?" fakeout,.

I'm very curious to see where they go with it all in Mass Effect 2. I hear they mention disability in a bigger way which could be…interesting (my opinions on the minor depictions in ME are mixed) I also think I'll play it again with a renegade sentinel m!Shepard so I can try out the tech and biotic abilities and finish off all the sidequests I left behind to get to the end more quickly.

Comments

[4thofeleven]

I've never understood why Mass Effect had such nice tasteful sex scenes, and then DA a few years later has such hilariously terrible ones.

It's interesting you played a paragon Shepard but felt the 'save the council' decision was a no-brainer; I always find it very hard to abandon the Asari fleet, even when intentionally playing ultra-Renegade...

(Then again, I can't ever bring myself to find out what happens if you fail to talk Wrex down on Virmire, so maybe I'm just soft...)

I love the little planet descriptions! So many fun details thrown in for such a minor part of the game.

[sqbr]

I didn't realise I was abandoning the whole fleet. I'm playing ME2 and feeling really bad about it now, oops :(

And I am totally soft. I tried playing an amoral character in DA and kept wimping out when it came down to the crunch. So I played a wimpy mildly amoral character with a soft heart instead :)

[lehni.livejournal.com]

I always felt the 'save the council' decision should have had more consequences - e.g., it should have made the fight with the Reaper much harder, maybe make the Normandy have a hull breach or something so that half your crew died. It always felt a bit of a cheat getting to save them and also not having any bad side effects (same with the Connor decision in DA:O - choosing to go to the Circle should have screwed up the village or killed Teagan or something).

I personally found Kaiden's romance really oddly flat and I felt like he had terrible bedroom manners (the 'after' talk just ... yeah. I youtubed it though; no way was I going to waste a whole playthrough on him.) I <3ed Liara from the moment I saw her though, and imo she just gets better in ME2 (though you really need to get her DLC - omg, the difference in quality between that and Witch Hunt that was released on the same day was just amazing).

[alias_sqbr]

Yeah, I feel a bit hard done by after watching Cam save them and have exactly the same ending in all other respects.

I found Kaidan a bit dull and really liked Liara but he clicked with my Shepard better and they'd gotten attached before I picked up Liara, since I did her mission a bit late.