It's hard to talk about Mass Effect without getting myself into a full-blown article on BioWare. A long loved company focused in a long lived genre, maintaining it while it slowly loses ground to the new guys in the party. In my mind I used to paint them as fairy tales knights, with shiny armour, declaring eternal love and care for the target of their affections.
And still, I cannot be considered a great fan on this company. Simply put, I haven't played that many of their games. I loved Baldur's Gate, but never played its expansion nor its sequel. Years later I tried Neverwinter Nights but found it too dissapointing, so I left it after 2 hours or so. Knights of the Old Republic and Jade Empire went by and I haven't played them yet, although I really want to.
And then, Mass Effect and Dragon Age came, which would be the last independently developed games before EA acquired the studio.
Yet, until very recently, I still respected the BioWare logo. It is possible that the cause was mainly my associating them with Planescape: Torment (Black Isle Studios), plus many friends of mine love their games and are constantly relating how they abused Baldur's Gate 2's magic and critical systems to destroy dragons in less than a D&D combat turn.
It's funny: most good memories I have of BioWare are actually not mine.
Mass Effect is, in few words, the evolution of BioWare from the complexities of its original Baldur's Gate and the D&D ruleset into a simpler experience, intertwined with shooter elements. It is, as well, a branching point in character complexity and plot scripting, providing a lot more depth, at the cost of some diversity.
There is so much I want to say of Mass Effect, and so little time to put it into words, that I'll post two separate articles. The first one, this, will focus on the shooter aspects, while the second one will look into the RPG segments and story.
Mass Effect
So, Mass Effect. A shooter developed by a renouned RPG developer constantly trying to make its games more immediate and accessible. Neverwinter Nights felt like a complex Diablo, while Jade Empire was a beat'm up with lots of abilities, few stats and no classes, but still many points to assign. Knights of the Old Republic, however, remained more faithful to their origins, for what I know, in spite of being an action game.
Mass Effect plays a similar trick, becoming a shooter while keeping a lot of its RPG origins: multiple missions, lots of dialog and weapons and a big stats/abilities system. It even goes further than BioWare's previous efforts in world and character design, producing a unique, rich universe with personality. It also gives the player more options than usual in how to play the main story or interact with partners.
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| If it has so many stats, it has to be an RPG |
At its heart, Mass Effect is a shooter. No matter how good your character stats are, if you are not skilled at these kind of games, you will have a hard time. But also, no matter how good of a shoot you are, if your character sucks using assault rifles you will not likely hit anything more than 2 metres away. There's a balance between both worlds, and, now, I like that. When I first played, I was expecting a role game, and having to aim pissed me off. I was used to marking targets and having my characters' stats do the work. Once I got used to Mass Effect's real nature, however, things were smoother.
As a shoother, Mass Effect does a good job at reading current patterns in the genre, adapting them and improving where needed. Recharging shields and cover shooting are nowadays almost a must in any slightly strategic shooter, but BioWare's implementation of such mechanics is way better than usual.
Although I greatly dislike the Halo followers which shoehorned shield recharging into any kind of game (World War II was, apparently, won by Wolverine's family), Mass Effect is one of the few that respects the original idea.
The shield is a second chance after a mistake. But rely too heavily on consuming it and your health will be reduced to dangerous levels. The next battle might be too much, if careless. I, as a player, am encouraged to think of intelligent strategies, rather than head on attacks, taking into account that life is a precious, easily drained resource.
U¨nfortunately, the effect is greatly lost due to the wide availability of Medi-gel and, much later, medical interfaces and exoskeletons. It is too easy to recover lost life, a nod, I guess, to the voices crying for easier games. The fact that life recovery are not obtained for free makes things a little better: to keep a constant flow of medi-gels many stats points must go to decryption skills, and using a medical interface means you are not using another armour upgrade. So it is a good rock-paper-scissor system, leaning a bit too much to the forgiving side.
Mass Effect's cover system is also an example of adequate design and integration. The environments include many safe positions, so the player can rest and take careful aim, and using them is simple and fast. The only spot in here is that it is actually hard to actually stop taking cover: the character's resistance to abandon its position is way too high (one second or so), and can sometimes get you in trouble. I must admit, however, that this is possibly a PC specific problem. In consoles, I'd say pulling the analog all the way down will automatically break the cover.
But cover systems are well implemented in most games using them. The ball falls more often in the level design department. In how games have you stormed into an enemy fortress, finding that there are barricades precisely placed so that you can reach the gates without being too exposed? Every time I've seen something similar, my suspension of disbelief just fell down to the floor in tiny fragments, ruining the game. It felt almost like the game designer was standing besides me all the time, pointing at the next safe position.
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| These boxes are found anywhere around here. |
Yes, the designer is still there, but the manipulation is now indirect and I have to actively look for it to understand the designer's intentions in a conscious level. Reasonable environments fool the mind into thinking it is finding strategical positions by itself, even if they were craftly designed to give the player the upper hand.
The other innovation to shooters is in the ammo department. Replacing actual ammo with overheating weapons controls fire rate, average damage output and makes self-restrain a necessity to advance in the game. Overheating a weapon incurrs in a considerable penalty: either wait until it cools down completely or use a different weapon, one your character might not be too good with. Once again, a stylish cost-benefit balance.
And the explanation of the infinite ammo and shooting mechanism is actually cool. From Mass Effect's Wikia page: "The guns shave a bullet the size of a grain of sand off a dense block of metal stored in the gun, decrease its mass with a mass effect field, and fire the projectile at supersonic velocities." As a hard sci-fi lover, I must say I love that. And rail-guns are a theoretical beauty.
Conclusions (shooter)
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| Yep, the sequel is that low. |
And, even if it is not a shooter at heart, it still does much better as such than pretty much any recent game in the genre has managed to. Only RPG blenders like STALKER or Deus Ex stand by its side.
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