Description
Mass Effect (the first part in a planned trilogy) features the unique chance to play as
Jack Bauer in space.
The bigger story of the trilogy is that in every 50,000 years a very cool looking portal, decorated heavily with Hollywood quality special effects, will open up and destroy all life in the universe.
But the story of this chapter deals with Commander Shepard, supposedly the first human candidate for the elite group of special agents (the Spectres), who serve the inter-galactic Council, comprised of the oldest and most powerful races in the universe. With or without the help of the Council, Shepard has to stop Saren, a Spectre member who went rogue and tries to exact revenge upon the human race.
In Mass Effect you play as Commander Shepard - who is fully customizable in the character creation screen, you can make him/her look any way you want. Also Commander Shepard, both female and male versions of the character, is fully voiced.
Mass Effect introduces a new conversation system in which responses to NPC's are displayed and can be chosen before the NPC has finished speaking. This, combined with detailed facial expressions, allows for more fluid and natural conversations.
Combat in Mass Effect takes place in real time, and is similar to tactical squad-based shooters. Much like in BioWare's previous game,
Knights of the Old Republic, the player can pause at any time to give orders to other squad members. The squad members are AI-dependable, but general commands (such as run forward, take cover, target a specific enemy, etc) can be issued without pausing.
Mass Effect comes with less "black and white" morality than in previous BioWare games. There are two sides of morality in this title - Paragon and Renegade, with Paragon being a more diplomatic, official military courtesy following character and Renegade being the ends justify the means, damning everything to hell kind of character.
The main quest with its choices and consequences is only a small part of the experience - there are several optional planets of side-questing and exploration and there will be a lot more, since the idea is to keep public interest up with downloadable content, until the sequel.
The PC-version of
Mass Effect differs in some points from the Xbox360 release. Besides higher resolution graphics, the mini game about hacking a computer has been changed. Now instead of playing "Simon Says", the player has to get a triangle into the middle of a circle by avoiding the blocks that are constantly moving around in a
Frogger-like fashion. The interface has also undergone massive changes. Besides a new quick slot bar in which the player can assign up to eight abilities for quick access to the number keys, the pause menu has been changed to give the player faster and better control over his teammates. It's now also possible to give every teammate individual orders instead of having both do the same thing. Item management has also been simplified to account for the new keyboard/mouse control scheme which also allows for better precision in the shooter-like fights.
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Trivia
The game's street date was broken multiple times. In the United States, several K-Mart stores started selling the game on 9th November 2007, eleven days before the official release date. The same happened in Australia, where EB games started distributing it on 16th November 2007. Other retailers quickly started selling the game early as well.
