Mass Effect: First Impressions

I struggled out of bed this morning, dizzy and feeling under the weather. That, of course, did not deter me from bolting out the door, breakfast bar in hand, to snatch up my pre-ordered copy of Mass Effect over at EB Games.

After greedily ripping off the shrink wrapping and hunkering down for a day of sporadic play (about 6 hours), I'm here to report that... I'm not very far into the game. At all. This is rather surprising, given that the game critics are clocking the main storyline to be a mere 10-15 hour run. If you add on the time it takes to complete all the side missions, that's another projected 15 hours. This brings the grand total for Mass Effect to a mere 30 hours on one thorough play-through.

By MMO and old-school RPG standards, 30 hours is but a drop in the bucket and if everything else about Mass Effect wasn't so good, I'd probably take issue with this more. A lot of the content in the game is not directly tied in the main storyline or to pad it out in order to make it longer game. No, from what I've seen so far, much of the content would seem to be optional but if you choose to explore, this optional content adds a lot of richness to the experience.

So maybe I'll get deeper into this talk about content and jump straight into my initial impressions of the game so far. Hit the jump for more details.


Graphics & Sound
How could I start this piece without praising the overall visual and audio design of this game? Mass Effect is a graphical powerhouse and is such a beautiful game to watch in action. This what happens when you employ cutting edge technology with thoughtful, creative design. BioWare has created a wholly original IP and the universe they've created is exceptionally realized, complete with breathtaking settings, memorable characters and a real cinematic approach to the presentation. I love the look of the cutscenes and even conversations with the most trivial NPCs are framed like you were watching the scene straight out of a movie.

The sound is no slouch either, with some of the best voice work seen in a video game so far. Aside from cast of excellent actors on board to bring these characters to life, you have this amazing quantity. I have never heard so much spoken dialog in a game, and I've barely finished the first main quest. Almost everything is spoken, right down to your Codex guide, which is a sort of personal encyclopedia of the Mass Effect world.

Gameplay
As I mentioned already, I may have spent half the day playing this game, but my Commander Shepard is only at Level 7 and I've just cracked my first main quest. The play mechanics are pretty standard for your typical RPG: you find a new area, explore the beejuzus out of it, take side quests along the way, level up your avatar (and NPC companions) and obtain new loot. What really elevates this old song and dance is the overall polish and execution. Conversations with NPCs, an eventual chore with most RPGs, becomes pretty addictive thanks to the fluid and intuitive dialog system that's been perfected since BioWare's Knights of the Old Republic days. Your responses in conversations are broken into 4 general quadrants of friendly or aggressive and open-ended or close-ended. You only need to select a sort of "gut response" in the dialog wheel and your avatar will piece together a concisely worded response for you.

All of this seems gimmicky at first, and in all honesty, many conversations are railroaded into a binary choice of some kind (you either help someone or you piss them off) and you eventually get nothing but the usual hub of topics to probe an NPC about. Despite being aware of this, I still enjoy talking to even the most inconsequential character, if only to learn their story or pick up on some juicy rumors. The facial animations of the character models only enhances this social connection even more and I've already found myself regretting the things I've said to certain people, if only because their impassioned responses made me consider the implications of what I've done. That's how badly you can get wrapped up in these interactions.

My impressions on the game play wouldn't be complete without talking about the combat system. I'm playing a soldier class, so all I've had to worry about is the bang-bang and not much else. The combat really holds its own against dedicated third-person shooters like GRAW and Gears of War. Shooting the weapons feels nice and solid. It seems to strike a great balance between letting you take control (you actually have to aim to score hits) and doing the number-crunching behind the scenes to calculate damage and hit probabilities). RPG players used to turn-based or auto combat will likely hate this system. The main concessoin to these players is you can pause the game at any time by bringing up the weapon selection or combat abilities wheel. You do this by holding down the left or right bumper, then using the left analog stick to select a weapon or skill to use.

These wheel interfaces look impressive at first, but I can see them becoming quite clunky once you've started to unlock new gear and abilities through the course of the campaign. So far I've been happy to issue some basic squad commands using the D-pad and let my teammate AI determine how they react during battle. They do a pretty competent job too, although they have an annoying habit of not taking cover when I tell them to and simply standing out in the open to be shot at.

Overall
What can I say? I want to play more. Beyond the pretty graphics and the visceral, shooter-oriented combat system is the gripping story that is unfolding before my eyes. The story has me by the collar and I genuinely want to find out what happens next. This may be a slight spoiler, but when my avatar was promoted to the position of a Spectre (think intergalactic super agent), I felt a chill run through my body. The game does a marvelous job of giving you the freedom to create and customize your own Commander Shepard while still involving you in the mythology of the character within this world. The end result is you never feel like you're just leveling up some generic hero dude who exists in his own narrative void. You are the narrative, and the designers at BioWare make great efforts to ensure that you are always front and center, the star of your very own sci-fi epic.