Review: Mass Effect: The Best RPG of 2007 (Page 2 of 7)
The Galaxy Map lets you effortlessly navigate your ship around the cosmos
BioWare is no stranger to producing excellent RPG experiences. Its catalogue includes hits such as the PC classic Baldur's Gate as well as the amazing Knights of the Old Republic. And now, the company is back what might be its best effort yet: the stellar and sensational Mass Effect.
Childhood's End
After the climactic discovery of alien ruins on Mars, mankind finally starts taking its first baby steps into the greater galactic neighborhood, courtesy of a little understood technology that manipulates the fabric of space and time to facilitate interstellar travel. Around the same time, the "element zero" carcinogen gives rise to psychic abilities in ten percent of the population.
Two events of such magnitude might be sufficient for a simple space opera, but Mass Effect's universe is considerably more complicated. Between the seemingly arrogant posturing of the Council races, the instability of the outlying Terminus systems, and the myriad minor species that operate in between, the cosmos at large feels positively alive with political conflict and thinly-veiled hostility. Of course, where there's bureaucracy, there's corruption, and rooting it out isn't difficult solely because the perpetrators are hard to detect, but also because the long-term consequences of your own actions are so difficult to predict.
Custom Built
As complex as the big picture is, your personal journey is almost as complicated. Before you move a muscle, you are responsible for the very creation of the protagonist. You can run with the stock characterJohn Shepard, soldierbut you can roll your own through a cleverly designed character creation process.
The beauty of this system is that Mass Effect embeds whatever details you choose for your character's past inside the larger story that follows. Even if all roads lead more or less to the same place, the attitudes you encounter and project along the way are drastically different based on your background and actions. In a game with so many thousands of lines of dialogue, and branching choices for how you present yourself in every single conversation, the sense that your character is a living and breathing individual in an unpredictable world is utterly convincing, whether you choose to be a paragon of virtue with an honorable past or a renegade scumbag who rose up from the societal muck.
You'll come face to fact with all sorts of "people" in the Mass Effect universe
The character creation system offers plenty of options so feel free to experiment
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