Mass Effect: In HIndsight

I finished my first playthrough of Mass Effect early last week. The conclusion was too easy (I played as a Soldier on Normal difficulty), but so thrilling and cinematic that it inspired me to roll up a brand new character and reply the campaign almost immediately.

My experience so far on my second playthrough has been a lot more frustrating. I'm now a low-level Vanguard fighting enemies on the Hardcore setting, so the combat is far from the cakewalk it was when I was a Soldier. The frustration has really begun to set in, however, and there's been something missing. While I'm making a concerted effort to play a very different character on my second attempt and make different choices in the way I handle missions, the story and the pacing of the game no longer grips me. There may be a lot of room to create a very different Commander Shepherd, but the RPG element is not pulling me in like I thought it would.

I already know why this is the case. The RPG elements are not drawing me in, simply because there are so very little RPG to the entire game in the first place. The way the character of Commander Shepherd is presented in the game is excellent, thanks entirely to the highly refined and highly cinematic dialog system. All the talking you do in Mass Effect, ironically, provides for most of the best moments in the game. The problem with the rest of their RPG formula is that it lacks any sort of depth. Each level gain gives you a couple points to use towards a set list of skills related to your chosen class. The progression in each skill is linear and there is no other trait development beyond this. When I first bought the game and was so engrossed in the gorgeous graphics and other bells and whistles, I nearly forgot that I used to enjoy simply pleasures in my RPGs, like branching skill trees, a cool selection of abilities and spells and highly customizable loot.

A lot of this is missing from Mass Effect, which has left me feeling very disappointed so far on my second play through the storyline. Now, more than ever, the game feels like a second-rate Gears of War with some very poorly conceived RPG elements tacked on for good measure. This realization has recently triggered a sort of gamer's hunger fixation and it had me craving a good RPG experience on my 360. I needed my fix and I needed it fast.

I have now run into the waiting arms of The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion. The winner of every conceivable RPG award in 2006, Oblivion largely satisfies what Mass Effect failed to deliver. When you want an open world to explore and a large variety of quests to pursue, you can't beat this game. BioWare's game has spoiled me on the graphics front, so the dialog system and look of the NPCs in Oblivion feels a bit primitive (literally, so many character faces in this game resemble apes). At the end of the day, it's still a beautiful game in its own right with its own fully realized fantasy world. An epic fantasy RPG does make a fine companion piece to an epic sci-fi (quasi) RPG and who can blame me for now owning the best RPGs for 2006 and 2007?