The Mass Effect series is well-known for powerful stories, along with compelling and deep characters. It is less known for its gameplay, and after replaying the original Mass Effect, I can see why.
While I enjoy the series as a whole, I’m honestly surprised at how much praise the first Mass Effect gets – especially after playing it again. The game is honestly a technological mess. Bugs and glitches run rampant, and load times are unbearable. I set the game to “easy” difficulty not because I didn’t enjoy the game’s challenge, but because the game took 30 seconds to load for every death.
Then there is the game’s User Interface. This was the first time I had played Mass Effect on a console, and the poor design decisions are made even more clear when playing with a controller. Navigating through different weapons and items felt like a waste of time, and I ended up skipping inventory management to upgrade my characters, simply because I didn’t feel bothered tangling with the jungle that was the Equipment menu.
All this being said, this post isn’t just a post for the sake of complaining. I think Mass Effect was deeply affected by the game’s poor technical presentation. When the game was released, it was almost unanimously praised. It was obvious that Bioware had put out a hit. But I think that the developers knew they could do better with the game’s gameplay aspects. However, rather than focus onimproving Mass Effect’s design, and streamlining the game’s more convoluted processes, the creators decided to remove them all-together.
Coming to this conclusion, it explains the drastic changes that come with Mass Effect 2, which I’ve started after completing the first game. ME2 all but completely takes away most of the RPG details that came with the first game. In fact, the sequel is much more “Shooter” than “RPG”. One could go through the entire game without changing a single piece of equipment, and not miss out at all.
I find this very interesting. I wonder, what could the Mass Effectseries have ended up like had it started off with a better RPG interface? I think the gameplay would be drastically different if this were the case. The series would be more inline with Bioware’s other series’, such as Knights of the Old Republic and Dragon Age, with a larger focus on strategy through item-management. Picking the right stuff to defeat your enemies.
I don’t think Mass Effect as a series is any better or any worse for having gone the direction it had after the first game is released. But I wonder how the series would have been accepted, had it continued down the path of the original.
Eight-Bit Samurai 