Okay, so I bought an Xbox 360 to accompany my Wii earlier this summer because I felt that 90% of everything good that's ever going to be released for the Wii has already been released, and I wanted to have something to play during the summer. I was also excited about getting to play some games like GTA 4 and Mass Effect, of which I have heard nothing but good things. So I finished GTA 4 first and I started on Mass Effect yesterday, and finished it today. I was expecting the plot to be something earth-shattering and completely mind-blowingly awesome, so it was only natural that I was a bit let down. But I would never have imagined Mass Effect to be such a colossal disappointment.
For starters, the critically acclaimed plot turned out to be a huge flop. I appreciate sci-fi clichés as much as the next geek and have nothing against spaceship battles of epic proportions, but they alone are not enough, you need a decent plot. In Mass Effect, basically when you leave tutorial-land you are given three places you need to visit to search for clues as to where the baddie is headed. After you've searched these three places, all that is left is the final lair. That's it. You know exactly who the bad guy is from the start and there are no twists or turns in the plot whatsoever. Definitely not something I'd expect from a praised sci-fi RPG. They could already do it so well in the 90s with the Final Fantasy games, for example. How did they fuck this up so bad? And why are critics praising this A-to-Z in one night crap, are they really so used to games that don't even have a plot that they go crazy when someone's at least trying to come up with reasons for killing hundreds of aliens?
Secondly, the script is completely and utterly boring. I could not find one joke in the entire game, and most of the dialogue consists of the main characters "realizing" new things that have been obvious to the gamer right from the start of the game. In addition to the dialogue being bland, the possibilities for the player to affect it are minuscule. Often the only options are in the realm of "Okay", "Yes" and "Why not". Many times I didn't even understand the difference between some of the options. When there is an actual choice involved, the options are always to suck up, be indifferent or say something like "Shut up", i.e. there is never a gray area, the options could just as well always be "be good", "be neutral" or "be evil". When I started the game, I was expecting verbal acrobatics à la Fallout 2 so this was a great disappointment.
Thanks to the stupid and meaningless dialogue all the characters remain paper-thin. There is almost no interaction between the main character and his team, and you cannot talk to your team members whenever you wish. When you're not in your base all they ever have to say is "I'm right behind you" or "You lead and I'll follow". The interaction between the protagonist and his team members is not dynamic at all, and everything important happens in ready-made cutscenes and the whole game seems to be moving on rails. A good example of this was that I hadn't said two words to person A and had been nothing but cold towards her, whereas I had been talking a lot with person B and been trying to create warm feelings between her and I, but when the game progressed to a certain point I still ended up in bed with person A, because all I had to do was select "Bunk with me tonight" once in a casual conversation, nothing I had done earlier mattered one bit.
This is definitely not the kind of game I thought I was going to get to play. I mean, so little ever happens in Mass Effect that it could be fit into just one sidequest in a game like Planescape: Torment, Baldur's Gate 2 or Fallout 2. How is it possible that every review I've read about this game praises the incredible depth that it has? I would agree that the universe of Mass Effect does have quite a lot of depth, and there is a lot to read about the politics and the history of the Galactic Alliance, for example, but it cannot compensate for the complete lack of a good storyline or dialogue.
All that said, I still enjoyed playing the game, just nowhere near as much as I thought I would. I liked the fighting and the biotic powers and all that, and of course just looking at dem grafix gives me a boner. But all that gets shadowed by how great it could've been had they concentrated on a creating a multi-dimensional plot instead of realistic facial expressions. The fact that the characters can't even jump or climb over obstacles (or ladders or anything) also shows that the graphics have been way too high on the list of priorities for the makers of this game. Such a shame. So, what are your thoughts on Mass Effect? Is there someone here who thought the plot was actually good?
