Mass Effect: Emotional Robots

I'm roughly 27 hours into Mass Effect and I only just picked up Liara and ventured out into Feros to investigate those mysterious Geth attacks. Side-questing has been incredibly rewarding despite the generic layout of the space dungeons, as I've been able to grind up my character levels high enough to the point where I'm now literally just brushing past enemies found in the main storyline quests. Is it just me thinking this, or is it far to easy to max out those skills?

Through out the routine of space-faring and combat, I have come across some moments that really underlined the quality of the writing found in this game. The writing, best displayed in the dialog encounters with NPCs, is top-notch. It strikes this perfect balance between hifalutin pretentiousness and space opera cheese. There are the usual mundane exchanges between filler characters and merchants to be found here, but once in while there come moments when I come away from an encounter in disbelief that I just experienced this in a mere video game.

There was a prime example of this on one of my return trips to the Citadel, the first "town" that is available to you at the start of the game. I was going about my errands when I received a distress call from some security guards who were attempting to talk down some sort of escaped lab rab out of committing suicide. When I arrived on the scene, I was handed a tranquilizer dart and told to subdue the esapee, an armed and distressed young woman hiding out behind a crate on the space dock.

What followed was an affecting and very entertaining bit of verbal combat. For all the stiffness in the facial animations, the voice acting is still excellent. I was really taken in by the lab escapee's tragic story of torture and madness. I eventually managed to get close enough to stick her with the tranquilizer, ignoring her dementia-fueled protests and ramblings.

After I turned her over to the authorities, I couldn't help but wonder of her fate. I caught myself still thinking some of the things she had said and the pain in her voice. That's when I realized just how marvelous the writing was in Mass Effect and how so very few games have even approached this level of emotional involvement.

This RPG is so much more than just shooting robots and picking up sweet loot. It's so much more.