Geek Syndicate
my friends played, may well be materially different to the game I played, but at the same time I can’t help but wonder how much some new to the franchise will be missing out on. Will they care? Will some of the games finest moments - which I won’t spoil, but there are some truly fine moments - even appear, or work as well if they do appear, to someone without an imported savegame? As you can probably tell from this review so far, it’s the story that has engaged me the most, and the universe itself is something that I’ve become fond of simply spending time in.That’s not to denigrate the gameplay itself, which is a solid cover-shooter in pretty, yet fairly linear environments with good range of variety both of the colour and design of the waist-high walls you velcro yourself to, and the enemies that you have to face. The gear system is finally, on the third game, both easy to use and sufficiently diverse that your loadout choices seem to matter, and the classes are nicely distinct, with your classes weaknesses balanced by the choices of companion characters you can take. In between missions you can wander around the Normandy, your starship, and chat to the crew as before, but this time they’ve realised they are allowed to leave their normal haunts and often move around and talk to each other which gives a wonderful sense of “life” to the ship, as you can now turn a corner and run into a crewmember, for example, getting drunk at the bar. Similar things happen at the games other main hub, The Citadel, which you’ll be seeing a lot of, and just wandering around the concourses can pick you up a bunch of fetch quests from the milling refugees. As you might expect, these are largely concerned with the Reaper Invasion, in keeping with the games admirably tight focus on the cataclysmic war raging across the Galaxy. Many (but not all) of these quests can be done at any point up to the games climatic jumping off into the final confrontation, but my one big criticism of the games story is that because they can’t know which order you’ll do them in, or if you’ll do them at all, they feel slightly fragmented away from the main story and really serve as cameos for returning characters that for whatever reason don’t join you on the Normandy. They’re usually great cameos, in all fairness, but usually resolve in some sort of dialogue sequence where the returning character tells you they can’t come help you directly, because, you know, they’re washing their hair that week. They’re really a moment that lays bare the tension between Biowares desire to tell an organically changing story, and the time and technology available to them. Mostly, however, the approach is more than successful, and amazingly immersive. Shepard is my character, living with my decisions, and even if that choice is illusory, it’s a pretty great illusion. The series as a whole has been, in my opinion, far more ambitious than it is often given credit for - a whole new Space Opera Universe to play in, and a grand, space-operatic plot for the highest stakes played out against a background that shifts due to player interaction. The RPG genre is so often defined by the “game” part of “Role-Playing Game” but Mass Effect remembers the “RolePlaying” bit too - stripping back the number crunching to being a game about who you want Commander Shepard to be, and what sort of relationships you want them to form, and what sort of universe you want them to live in. There are walls to this sandbox, and you occasionally bounce off them hard, and it’s not the vast openness of say, Fallout 3 or it’s Bethesda stablemates, but the mix of strong story, and player ownership, is pretty unique. In the end, Mass Effect 3 is just that - an ending. Its caps off the story and the characters, a bold move in itself, although I can’t believe this is the last trip we’ll have to what has become a hugely successful franchise. It’s closure, in the spirit of the series, is bittersweet, it’s story tinged with death and sadness, even in the best outcomes. It’s grown up storytelling; at times some of the best you’ll find in gaming and even with the flaws big and small, an astonishing achievement.
Matt Farr
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