It’s near impossible to predict how humanity will react when we first encounter intelligent life on other worlds, but sci-fi trends towards either putting us in a position of power or having the aliens be so advanced we’re threatened by their mere existence. Mass Effect takes a less traveled route, with humans just recently joining the galactic community and finding themselves a sort of middle of the road species. Proving themselves to their alien neighbors is a big focus of the plot of Mass Effect, the game playing into issues with xenophobia from both sides and ultimately putting a lot of the potential for galactic harmony or discord on the shoulders of the player’s custom character.

Set a while after Earth uncovered ancient alien technology that allowed them to travel the stars more freely and meet the other races who did the same, Mass Effect has an ancient alien threat reentering the picture that it falls on the player to stop. Playing as a Commander Shepard of their own creation, the player’s approach towards the goals of stopping this galactic threat and dealing with other issues in the Milky Way can tip in a few different directions. The player can approach things with a human-focused approach or try and be inclusive towards alien races, and depending on whether the players prefers persuasion or intimidation, they can develop into either a Paragon or Renegade. By playing into either path more strongly and leveling up Charm or Intimidation appropriately, the player can open up new dialog paths to change the course of certain quests and plot events, the player even able to avoid certain conflicts if they pick the right dialog options.

A big part of interaction in Mass Effect involves which options you pick from a dialog wheel when chatting with both friends and foes. Commander Shepard has been given a role of huge import, with both the eyes of humanity and the eyes of the galactic Council on them to help determine whether or not Earth and its colonies should be considered a more important member of the galactic alliance. As such, you can undermine or improve the standing of Earth with your choices on certain missions, but the stakes can be a lot more personal as well. It’s possible not only to romance a crew member but lose some of them as well, and if you don’t watch your words it might mean missing out on certain features in the game. Your voice has weight in this world and the story can branch off depending on your actions, the player encouraged to cultivate a character of their own that further makes the experience unique and memorable. There are consequences for how you behave, and it makes it a lot more interesting when that dialog wheel appears and makes you pick between two rough options. Sometimes the words that appear on your dialog wheel don’t quite match what Shepard will say though, but you can quickly figure out that certain placements on the wheel usually will carry the same tone. Aggressiveness and politeness can pay off in fairly equal yet different ways as well, ensuring that you won’t have to pick a certain route just to ensure you get rewarded properly.

Despite the level of personal importance the game gives you, Mass Effect does not skimp on fleshing out its invented galactic society. In fact, it puts a surprisingly detailed amount of information on most every part of it into a Codex you can access at any time, the player unlocking new topics as they encounter pertinent subjects during gameplay. Details on most every species and important planet can be found in there, with pivotal events in history, details on alien society and culture, and the minutiae of technology all available for the player to read if they so wish. Thankfully, if the player does not feel like engaging the Codex, whenever new subjects crop up in gameplay you can usually get the important information by asking a character about it, but the Codex shows an impressive level of dedication to world-building, able to squeeze at least three detailed paragraphs out of every subject. Despite never participating in a single space battle yourself you can read the strategies, technologies, and history of many of them, and even though Commander Shepard may never see certain planets, you’ll get a pretty good picture of them if you set aside some time to read.

The world-building and branching dialog paths are what make Mass Effect a special experience, but at its core Mass Effect is still a third-person shooter with heavy RPG elements. At any time you and two members of your squad will be participating in the firefights, and while the guns seem like sci-fi upgrades on typical weapons like pistols, shotguns, automatics, and sniper rifles, there’s a secondary layer to things so that Mass Effect isn’t just a reskinned cover shooter. Weapons are customizable with abundant upgrades and can be swapped out with better models as the game progresses, although the loot is perhaps overly generous. It makes for a bit of a poor fit for the game’s cluttered inventory system where you can’t sort items and you’ll hit the 150 item limit quickly if you aren’t constantly selling or breaking down weapons for a special gel that is used for hacking digital locks. It can make it cumbersome to access your inventory and try to kit out your characters, but it can be adjusted too, especially when you realize how much of the junk should just be recycled straight away.

For the shooting itself, things start off a little weak, but the RPG elements help it grow into a more manageable and interesting system once you start gaining levels. Experience can be earned from combat or completing quests, the game not punishing you for talking yourself out of a potential fight, and with that experience you can level up your capabilities and unlock new abilities. New weapons and skills will give your weapons more kick and up your accuracy, and it’s not long before you can be a bit more aggressive in battle despite the game trying to implement a cover system. The cover system isn’t too bad honestly, and it’s good to have options for peeking around corners or huddling behind walls to heal or avoid fire, but once you can rely on it less the firefights get more engaging. Some abilities like Marksman to increase your rate of fire and Barrier to increase your shielding make firefights more than just gunning down bad guys, but the Biotic abilities that are essentially psychic skills fall a little short, many of them being too weak and too slow to really bother with unless you intend to invest heavily in them. Accessing the skills is easy and safe though so they are integrated into the gunfights pretty well, they just vary in their effectiveness and mostly just supplement the use of weapons as your main approach to combat.

Your squad mates are fairly useful back-up in battle and can often cover weapon niches or skills separate from how you level Shepard, and although their AI isn’t the best for fighting intelligently, you can call on their skills if needed or just hope they make for good distractions. They are not just gun-toting followers though. Each ally has a bit of a story and personality to them, and even if you aren’t interested in romancing one of the available crew members, you can still talk to them after missions and learn more about them, potentially even uncovering optional sidequests or making certain moments in the main story carry more weight. Mass Effect gives you a pair of humans as well a cadre of alien species to stand by your side, and I quickly became a fan of the gruff mercenary Wrex and the eager technology expert Tali. On the surface they might seem a bit simple, but spending time getting to know them will reveal the plights of the individual character and their race, such as Wrex’s disillusionment after his race was nearly made completely sterile as an act of war or Tali’s desire to help her people after development of artificial intelligence got out of hand on her homeworld and forced her people to be space-faring refugees.

Mass Effect builds a detailed galactic environment with so much depth that you’ll want to explore it all, but an unfortunate amount of the optional content falls short in feeding that desire. While some sidequests have storylines, moral choices, and unique combat situations, the game adds a bit too many that rehash the same style. Many sidequests take you to far-off planets you won’t explore during the main plot, and while the storyline’s worlds are usually well-designed to house action and some small sidequests that flesh out the location, the ones that take you to new worlds boil down to dropping down in the Mako fighting vehicle and driving over drab, bumpy terrain in search of a point of interest. While you can sometimes encounter enemies in the Mako, the combat is so straightforward and simple that it hardly puts up the fight needed to make it an interesting addition. These barren worlds often have a few little diversions like mineral deposits or crashed satellites to investigate as well for little reward besides seeing the number on a large progress counter tick up one point, but if you focus on the mission instead of getting side-tracked you still might see the same buildings from other sidequests pop up, leading to very similar firefights once you get inside. Because they were both developed by Bioware, it’s hard not to compare this negatively to the better handled and more interesting optional content found in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, making it seem like a bit of a step back from an earlier and more content rich title. If you stick to the main plot thread and only dabble in the optional content that has a more focused design though you can avoid a road flush with repetition, it’s just a shock that they’ll write long descriptions of worlds you can’t even land on and then make the ones you can visit so bereft of interesting content.

Something else important to consider is that the PS3 version of Mass Effect seems to have a few glitches. Besides just freezing at certain points, you might also be in the middle of talking to a character when their face stops moving properly or the character just disappears altogether. Combat has its own issues too, such as aiming down the sights with flashier weapons or the Mako’s cannon causing blinding flashes to fill the screen. These issues aren’t common enough to ruin the experience and can often be accounted for, but they are still present enough that they can’t go without comment. Saving often helps counteract the issues that could hurt progress at least, allowing you to play an otherwise fairly solid experience that controls well and offers a lot of interesting content that is worth pushing through the small problems to reach.

THE VERDICT: Bioware’s flagship original series had a strong start with Mass Effect. Despite having a detailed galactic setting with oodles of built-in history and a scope larger than any one character, the game does not belittle the importance of the player controlled character. Commander Shepard must stop a major threat to the galaxy while also determining the fate of the human race on the galactic stage, and their choices can impact events and characters in a variety of ways. The shooting is a good companion for the writing and world-building, but it can’t quite match the same high bar of quality due to a few unpolished mechanics and the over-reliance on the Mako segments.

And so, I give Mass Effect for the Playstation 3….

A GREAT rating. Mass Effect’s commitment to its RPG elements is its strong suit, with leveling up and stats helping to increase not only your effectiveness in battle but opening up new dialog branches to further twist the story into something more special. The action elements are what hold Mass Effect back from being something greater, because despite being fairly solid on the whole, the gunplay has a few pieces that are not up to snuff or are poorly implemented. Biotics are mostly a waste of time and anything involving vehicular traversal or combat just feels like a time sink rather than an interesting secondary layer to the game. If the strength of Mass Effect’s storyline had carried over into more meaningful side quests it would be at least on par with Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic if not better since the gunplay in Mass Effect is more engaging than the combat system of Bioware’s older RPG. Despite the issues with the extra aspects, the core materials of Mass Effect make for a remarkably developed setting, story beats with consequence, and a fine shooter that is definitely still worthy of praise and play.

While there is certainly room for improvement, Bioware’s interactive story and action elements combine to make an incredibly effective video game.