Because I’m either not highly impressed with current gen offerings at this point or either can’t justify the price tag for new current gen games (see: Watch_Dogs), I’ve realized there are plenty games that either I already own or are dirt cheap by current gen standards that I still need to play or want to play again.
One of those games (or franchises, if you will) is Mass Effect. I haven’t played the original game in the trilogy since about a year after it first came out on the Xbox 360. It was one of the games I originally bought a 360 to play. Some things really stood out to me as I played it again. While nothing really changes how awesome this game and the entire trilogy is, there are a couple things that make me wonder what on Earth the devs were thinking.
[There are a few story spoilers here for Mass Effect 1, but if you haven’t played the game after seven years, don’t blame me if you get spoiled.]
Elevator rides: This has been a running joke about the first Mass Effect game since it came out. The elevator rides (on board the Citadel especially) are ridiculously long. At first, back in the day, I thought they were to give the player something to watch while the next area loads. So, I assumed they were glorified loading screens. However, when you load from the Normandy onto the Citadel or any other area, the loading screens aren’t that long, especially playing on the PC. So, that can’t be why the elevator rides take the better half of forever. No, it was someone’s bright idea to put “flavor dialog” into the elevator rides in the form of either a news alert or the team chatting among themselves.
Thankfully, in later games, these things were available to happen at any time while the team was running around an area and not just during elevator rides, so that means of transport was significantly quicker. It’s likely the Citadel elevators were…redesigned…after the attack at the end of Mass Effect 1. Also, you find funny little references to the jokes surrounding these lengthy ventures in subsequent games, signifying that BioWare actually has a sense of humor about it all.
Driving the MAKO: People complain about the battle mechanics of ME1 vs. ME3, but the real stinker of ME1 was that god-awful MAKO. Who’s bright idea was it to require its use on EVERY SINGLE planetary exploration side mission and probably 75% of the main story missions? I mean, really. This thing is horrible. The physics used to make that thing move and bounce around like a kid in a bouncy castle are a bane on the world of gaming.
While the exploration is a great idea as far as checking out various anomalies on planets go, having that bouncy tank with horrible controls and physics be required for it all really puts a damper on that aspect of the game.
Inventory management: For a while after ME2 came out, in which they stripped out many of the RPG-centric elements of the first game, I was really disappointed, even though I enjoyed ME2 the most. However, now that a lot of time has passed and I’m playing ME1 through again, the whole 150 item limit and omni-gel system just really got to me; having to clear my inventory after every couple missions (or one long story mission) and convert tons of stuff to omni-gel or sell stuff was just ridiculous. I’m glad they nixed inventory management in subsequent games.
Longer main story missions, but fewer of them: I hadn’t realized it before, but there really are only a handful of main story missions in ME1. The major missions are as follows: Eden Prime (prologue), Find Liara, Novaria, Feros, Virmire, Ilos, the end.
Granted, all of those have multiple parts and some (especially Novaria and Feros) seem horribly long by ME2/3 standards, but those are the major story missions. There are also three segments that have you at the Citadel for the main story. One right after Eden Prime, one right before Ilos, and one when you take The Conduit from Ilos to the Citadel at the end of the game, but these are fairly small parts of the game overall and the last one is really attached to the Ilos mission in general. This leads me to my next point…
Shortest of the three games: ME1 has to be by far the shortest of the three ME games. I did every single combat-related side mission, as well as, obviously, all the main missions, and a decent amount of exploration (both from the Normandy surveying worlds and checking out stuff on planet surfaces via the MAKO), and only logged in just under 24 hours of play time by time I finished. I’m pretty sure when I played through ME2 and ME3 previously, it was at least twice that, if not more, when attempting the same feat (all side missions complete).
(Side note: As I was writing this up, I’ve moved on to Mass Effect 2, and have logged about 24 hours in it and still have the majority of side assignments, loyalty missions, two dossiers and a couple large main story mission chunks to complete, not to mention three rather extensive DLC missions – this is going to be a 50+ hour play-through, at the very least.)
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, since most people these days just want to rush through ME1 and get to the better combat opportunities in ME2 and ME3, but it seems kind of odd for the more RPG-heavy of the three games to be the shortest.
Overall, the game still really holds up, especially the main story missions and combat environments. You do notice some rather lame repeating textures and environments when you get into landing on non-story planets and doing the side missions, but that’s both to be expected and not a bad thing for a game released in 2007. I realize the gamplay itself evolved over the course of the three games and some things got arguably better, but you can’t deny how great a game Mass Effect was, and still is. It’s probably one of my favorite game franchises of all time.
