• she/they

pdx queer dev, now an Old


highimpactsex
@highimpactsex

This game is a war crime in the history of narrative design. This game is a black hole of money and talent. This game is the antithesis of video games.


aune
@aune

the very first time that Mass Effect 1 let me know that it had an inventory cap (not shown anywhere, good luck counting), and that it had silently deleted 300 new items because of said cap, was the very last time i played it


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in reply to @highimpactsex's post:

I have always felt like Mass Effect 1 is a bad video game that sets the stage for a good video game. Playing it feels - in an actual, tangible sense - like sifting through wet sand. It is an ocean with the depth of a puddle.

You nailed it by bringing up how the game plays better if you treat it like Baldur's Gate, I think. ME1 is spread way too thin by trying to simultaneously be Baldur's Gate (look at all these different wilderness zones for your level 1 adventurer to traipse around, isn't the world huge!), KOTOR (you are a cool jedi going to a bunch of cool planets where everyone thinks you're super cool!), and Gears of War (third person cover shooters are hot right now baby!). Even the Alien Lore is obviously just layered on top of DnD species and whatnot.

Mass Effect 2 does kinda give up and just turn into a Mediocre Cover Shooter but it also gives more meaningful context for why you should care about any given mission. It leans a little more into being pulp sci-fi. The aliens can be sillier and we can all actually have some fun with it instead of every other character stone-facedly telling you about their culture or whatever.

The post-9/11 politics are still rancid though. That doesn't change.

When I played through it about 5 years ago (after having played it way back when it came out), I just couldn't get over how much this game hates the idea of any kind of governmental oversight and instead violently pushes the idea that what the world really needs is people who make the "tough" choices.

Really the biggest villain in Mass Effect is bureaucracy, not that weird Squid Robot at the end.

It's wild how, having never played mass effect, I'm not sure I even realized it had combat until I read this post? Like I guess I've seen like guns and shit in videos but I've never seen any actual combat gameplay so I guess I just assumed it was an alien dialogue stimulator that just had weapons due to being a military setting?

I guess that kind of goes towards your point though, the combat is such an ignorable mechanics I didn't even realize it existed

There's a lot of worthwhile critique to be had of ME1, and a lot of things I like about it nonetheless. The reason I treasure it is because it hit me with a massive paradigm shift as a kid in highschool and set the wheels in motion for gender discovery. It's the first time I ever conceived of the idea that I could both be a woman, date another woman, and still be a badass galaxy savior.

This is one of many things that ME1 did that were revolutionary to me, even though they shouldn't be revolutionary in the grand scheme of games.