Mass Effect: What I find special about it - Part 1

Mass Effect, a space opera spanning 3 games and follows the journey of the first Human Spectre in the Milky Way.

The story starts simple enough, humans unearth some ancient tech and as show of good faith has shared this information with the galactic council. A fairly routine mission to covertly pick up and deliver it turns out to be the catalyst to discovering a deadly cycle that repeats itself every 5 0000 years.

From barely scraping enough evidence to convince the council to provide a token effort to investigate, Shepard is provided the auspicious title of Spectre.

Why is that important?

It sets up Shepard as the first human spectre and with it provides humanity more clout as being a race that is considered strong enough to contribute to the galactic political system.

There is expectation and responsibility on Shepard, and by extension the player, to set an example of the value of humanity while at the same time show that humanity is ready and able to contribute to the galactic council and community as a whole.

Shepard's goal and reason for being instated is "To stop Saren" everything in between is secondary to this primary goal. A benefit of Spectre status is that they are free to pursue their assigned goal by whatever means necessary and so long as there is results the council is willing to look past transgressions and, in the events of excessive use of status, an easy means of deniability. This is especially handy as one travels primarily through the Attican Traverse, a region of space where the Council has given humanity the freedom to settle but not their full support in the event of hostilities.

This sets a stage that the player is essentially free of consequence as everything is done within either human controlled space or in an area that the council will be quick to ignore as to not draw attention to the sector and draw it into unnecessary conflict. 

The Council gives you leads and you are expected to follow them, with each lead followed through to completion the story peals back a layer and these layers collectively paint a situation far more serious than first thought.

This is where the first Mass Effect really shines, the core elements of the story fit together and build up until reaching an intense conclusion. Everything else outside of that is mostly in service of the world building or it helps flesh out characters through doing personal favours or assignments which builds context for what type of world it is.

This level of world integration does come at a cost however as solely following the golden path will provide a solid beginning, middle and end, but will also feel substantially shorter. To complete every objective and read all the lore is a time investment and also a commitment to get through tedious elements of the game such as locating all resource and points of interests on a planet, some with horrendous topography. However doing so does make the universe feel far more lived in, even with repeated elements, and when one does find something out of the ordinary it usually sticks out enough to get ones hopes up that there might be something more to discover.

What I find special about the first part of the trilogy is how it gives you a power space fantasy to explore both in a narrative sense in trying to figure out what is really going on, but also in an explorative way too as every planet has some form of lore to read and even though most of the explorable planets are pretty bare bones( checking off a list), there are planets which have events that feed into both the universe and narrative experience.

 

 

Continue to part 2:

Mass Effect: What I find special about it - Part 2

Skip to part 3 :

Mass Effect: What I find special about it - Part 3

Images Sources:

IGDB Mass Effect Legendary Edition

IGDB Mass Effect 1