Given how we had the recent passing of N7 day, a celebration of all things Mass Effect, and some juicy tidbits regarding an upcoming project in the franchise, even if it is an indeterminable time away, I thought why not revisit the game that started it all? This is Bioware’s classic masterpiece, the science fiction epic, Mass Effect!

Introduction & Leadup to Release

       Following Bioware’s development of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Jade Empire they started pre-production and development of their next project in 2004, which was shortly after the PC release of KOTOR. As the development of the project that would become Mass Effect progressed the project would find its home on the recently launched Xbox 360. The game was developed in the Unreal Engine 3, but additional programming elements were developed as the project progressed. The first six to eight months of development were spent on establishing the art direction and visual style.

                Casey Hudson, one of the creators, a Bioware Executive, and project director wanted to develop a game that turned the pseudo turn-based mechanics of KOTOR’s party-based RPG into a third-person shooter RPG. They also wanted to expand on the emphasis placed on player choice from the likes of KOTOR and Jade Empire. The development team consisted of 130 personnel who developed the game over the course of 3 years. It was the single largest programming project Bioware had ever taken on as a studio at the time of its release.

The game eventually saw an initial release in November 2007 for the Xbox 360. Then, after its Microsoft exclusivity deal expired, it saw releases for Windows PC and PlayStation 3, and subsequently remastered with the rest of the trilogy and re-released as Mass Effect: Legendary Edition. The art direction was overseen by Derek Watts. Drew Karpyshyn served as the narrative lead, whilst the score was composed by the team of Jack Wall, Sam Hulick, Richard Jacques, and David Kates, with Casey Hudson serving as project director.

  Synopsis & Writing

       The world of Mass Effect is set over the span of 150 years in the future starting in 2081. Shortly after humanity left its home world of earth behind they discovered a cache of advanced technology from a long lost alien race. Among this technology they find are mass relays, warp drives that allow near instantaneous travel to far off star systems, so mankind can expand onto the stars. This technology had propelled human civilization for centuries, but mankind discovered they were not alone in the universe. Now as one of many races in the Milky Way, humankind must navigate this new community and charter a place for itself among the stars.

                It is in this environment that the galaxy finds itself in need of a hero. You are Commander Shepard and it is up to you to build a crew and save the entire galaxy from the threat of annihilation. From the moment you create your character, Bioware truly immerses you in the Milky Way with a setting that feels both familiar and very alien. Your mission will take you all over the galaxy, and meeting all sorts of intriguing characters.

                The main story path of Mass Effect involves travel across six main planets for your investigation whilst side quests will take place on over a dozen planets. An interesting aspect of Mass Effect’s writing is the fact that each of the story’s main planets had a different writer. Despite this the quality of the narrative remains consistent due to the vision and oversight of the narrative lead Drew Karpyshyn who was also the narrative lead for KOTOR and would go on to write Mass Effect 2. He also wrote the tie-in novels for the series such as the prequel, Mass Effect: Revelation, which further dived into the history between Captain Anderson and Saren. He also wrote the sequel novel Mass Effect: Ascensio that continued the story of the original character Kaylee Sanders and tied into Mass Effect 2.

As a result of this consistent vision the narrative of the original Mass Effect remains a master class in storytelling. It balances its characters and narrative while introducing a rich setting primed for exploration and development. The remaining installments in the trilogy would bring a number of mechanical gameplay improvements to the franchise. But when it comes to worldbuilding, storytelling and characterization, this is Mass Effect at its best.

Mass Effect places an extreme emphasis on player choice as the entirety of the narrative is shaped by your choices. Commander Shepard only says what the player directs him/her to say and is acted very well by Mark Meer and Jennifer Hale for male and female Shepards respectively.

 Much like Bioware’s previous projects, Shepard will recruit a band of dynamic companions, most of whom have their own questlines that players can influence. And as a result, influence the growth of your companions. Mass Effect does a great job of showing us the ramifications of player choice and will ask the player to make some difficult choices. This I think was a brilliant stroke of genius by the writers. The development staff have gone on to state that Mass Effect was always planned as a trilogy, despite this only being the first third of the story they wanted to tell. Mass Effect 1 ends in a satisfactory manner even though it leaves matters ambiguous and open for a sequel. But the story doesn’t feel unfinished, it makes for a fine bookend for the first section of Commander Shepard’s story.

Gameplay

       At its core Mass Effect is a third-person perspective shooter RPG in its moment-to-moment gameplay. This game marked the first time Bioware attempted to develop a game rooted in shooter mechanics and marks an impressive first attempt. But there are some growing pains associated with this new venture, so let’s start with the basics. When it comes to gunplay there are four primary weapon types: your standard, assault rifles, pistols, sniper rifles, and shotguns of varying levels of upgradability. Additionally, you carry grenades for crowd control, which are also upgradable. Outside of firearms, Shepard and his companions make use of combat and biotic abilities that range in role from support and damage reduction to more offensive measures.

Missions will have you operate in fireteams of three in which you will select two of your companions to accompany you. A core aspect of Mass Effect’s gameplay and level design is choosing companions who complement your own skillsets, which by design is very similar to how Knights of the Old Republic functioned. The skills you use and the characters who use them may be different, but Mass Effect at its heart is the continuation and culmination of Bioware’s previous work on the likes of KOTOR and Jade Empire.

As is natural for an RPG you will gain experience by defeating enemies, discovering new locations, completing quests, and discovering codex entries. As you level up you’ll earn skill points to increase the skills of you and your companions. These abilities range from passive boosts and character class, to increasing proficiency with certain classes of firearms, and critical charisma bonuses.

Mass Effect was the first of Bioware’s games to include the dialogue wheel in which you select a response to advance the storyline. Naturally, certain choices are locked behind stat checks for paragon and renegade stats. Making moral honorable choices will raise your paragon stat whilst making aggressive and selfishly motivated choices will raise your renegade stat. These stat-checked dialogue options will result in different outcomes for conversations, quests and even the main story. The game even offers different quests depending on what moral path you are on; you’ll even be able to defuse some situations that otherwise would result in firefights.

At the start of your playthrough you’ll be prompted to select one of six classes, which will determine your weapon proficiencies and the abilities available to you. You can use all weapons regardless of class, but you will be much more effective using weapons tied to your specific class. The downside to this is that using weapons that you’re not proficient in will result in damage and accuracy penalties compared to your specialties.

Weapons themselves have infinite ammo as Bioware wanted to focus more on the RPG elements and less on the shooting mechanics. Lore wise there is a bit of an excuse for this as this  takes place in the distant future where weapons discharge energy ballistics and overheat. The weapons themselves have multiple manufacturers with in-lore implications. The weapons lack skin variety and have less than six visual variations.

Certain weapons have different methods of firing such as burst fire versus single shot, but since the weapons themselves have no descriptions, you won’t get a feel for how the weapon operates until you use it in live combat. Melee combat is basically non-existent for the player as there wasn’t even a dedicated button for it in Mass Effect 1 until it was added in the Legendary Edition remaster. Weapons themselves have numerical stats and while guns are upgradeable, you’ll be constantly getting new weapons to equip, meaning if you don’t like how a gun operates, you won’t be using it for long. On the flip side, if you become attached to the properties of a certain weapon you may be disappointed that it will largely become irrelevant within an hour or so of gameplay. When it comes to gameplay balance there isn’t too much to say as the gunplay, tech skills, and grenades give you plenty of options to deal with when fighting the opposition. Your enemies however will use all of these tactics, save grenades, and will instead opt to rush you in mass. As I elaborated earlier, this was Bioware’s first attempt at a third- person shooter and while being an impressive first attempt it is still obvious that they are not quite yet experienced with this sort of game. These issues would be worked out as the trilogy progressed as they refined the experience over time.

Presentation & Score

       Seeing as Mass Effect initially saw release near the very start of the Xbox 360’s life cycle and looks very good for that era, Mass Effect was very creative in how it hid it’s technical limitations at the time. Instead of having static loading screens it used active transitions such as elevators descending or ascending whilst the game imparts lore and character motivations upon you or an animation of landing your starship in a spaceport as you’re treated to a stunning vista. Given that Mass Effect introduces you to whole new galaxy of various species it was important to nail that atmosphere and visual identity and the game excels very much at this. From the dignified Turians, to the burly Krogan, the art direction is incredible and truly immerses you in the setting.

Naturally as a game from 2007 there are some visual and technical cracks. The models themselves are very impressive and detailed but seeing as the game reloads the models with every scene, sometimes they don’t load the finer details of the models in time for the scene to begin. Biotic abilities were notorious in the original release for their notable messing with physics and could force a reset if you were unlucky enough to get wedged between two objects. The Legendary Edition remaster fixed many of the bugs associated with the original release and introduced a new UI to be visually consistent with the rest of the trilogy.

The visual presentation of Mass Effect had most of its issues with the limitations of the era. But the audio design, score and music direction suffered from no such limitations. Mass Effect had several composers, but heading the creation of the game’s score was none other than Jack Wall. He has many games under his belt outside of Mass Effect 1 & 2 and Jade Empire since he has also worked on other franchises such as Splinter Cell and remains an active contributor to Call Of Duty scores. His work has won several awards particularly for his work on Myst IV: Revelation as well as the original Mass Effect, where he took home the award for Best Original Music in 2007. I knew from the moment I heard the main theme booting up the game that I was in for a grand science fiction journey. The sweeping orchestra and varied instruments leave an impact from beginning to end.

Conclusion

       Bioware put themselves on the map with the likes of Baldur’s Gate, Knights of the Old Republic, and Jade Empire, but Mass Effect solidified Bioware’s presence in the seventh generation of home consoles. And whatever misfires Bioware may have had under their belt in the last decade, no one can take away what the original Mass Effect accomplished with its nuanced storytelling, engaging characters, and sweeping presentation. I wholeheartedly recommend Mass Effect to everyone!

Patron Shout-Out

Special thanks to the following patrons whom without the support our work would not be possible: Francesco Santoyo