Abstract

This article discusses the role of historicity in the Mass Effect series of videogames. In a preliminary moment, I will attempt to identify the concepts that underline the franchise’s notion of history. Subsequently, I will discuss ways to analyze such a portrayal from the point of view of its audience’s response and its potential as a platform for historical reflection. Finally, I will compare Mass Effect’s approach to history with that of the retro-futuristic Bioshock games as well as with the discussions about historical strategy games made by historians to determine convergences and dissonance in their employments of historical discourses. It will be argued that Mass Effect’s choice-based narrative conditions its notion of history as an individually driven process whose changes are manifested in the short duration and that its hypothetical future is consonant with some of contemporaneity’s anxieties about its place in history