Mass Effect 3

Having never played any of the previous titles in the acclaimed Mass Effect series gave me a unique opportunity to view the trilogy without any personal stake in the plot. Just 15 minutes into the third of the series, the aptly named Mass Effect 3, and I began to realize I've been missing out on an epic tale.

This isn't my first experience with a Bioware game, though it is my first positive one. Having previously been disappointed by Dragon Age: Origins, a title that got almost universally positive reviews, I was doubtful that I could enjoy Mass Effect 3, a game that by all accounts is a sci-fi Dragon Age. And by my own experience this is mostly true: both center around a single hub, both have arbitrary dialogue options, both suffer from inconsistent writing. Consequently, I've decided to make this post not just as a declaration of love for Mass Effect 3, but also as a means of discovering what it is exactly that I loved about it despite it playing so similarly to a game that I despise.

One of the more obvious points in favor of Mass Effect 3 was the soul of the storytelling, and essentially the work that Bioware went to to ensure that Shepard was more than an doll avatar for the player. Sure, there were more character customization options in Dragon Age, but ultimately any character you made was essentially a dummy. The player seemed so disconnected from his character that it felt like the game was rubbing the fourth-wall in my face. The lack of interesting dialogue and unique companion characters wasn't helping, either. Whereas in Dragon Age: Origins the relationships you built were entirely based on a political or survival foundation, Mass Effect 3 makes every conversation you have with your companions so personal. As a result almost every character is more than a 2-dimensional caricature but a completely fleshed-out person with an entire back-story that is, more often than not, worth discovering.