T w e n t y S i d e d

So the Legendary Edition of Mass Effect is here. This means that millions of us will be taking yet another trip through Shepard’s universe, all the way from our initial drop point on Eden Prime to the baffling and disjointed conversation with the Star Child at the end of the third game. It’s a long journey and the voyage is filled with adventure, discovery, friendship, and brilliant character moments. But we know where it ends. We know how it ends. And sooner or later every player winds up standing in outer space with no helmet, arguing about robots with the hologram of a ghost of a ten year old boy. 

And then the player asks, “How did we get here?”

The conventional wisdom is that the story of Mass Effect was great right up until the ending. The idea is that things were fine, except the writer went suddenly crazy in the last half hour and messed everything up. Critics of the series usually explain the ending in terms of plot holes. They’ve got a long list of unexplained contradictions, and so therefore the ending is bad because the writer didn’t explain things properly.

But I believe that the big problem with Mass Effect is one of structure. For me, the problems didn’t appear out of nowhere at the end of the third game. Instead they began at the very start of Mass Effect 2. 

This is hard to talk about, because Mass Effect 2 is a really popular game. It’s the most popular entry in the franchise, and so you’re usually not allowed to say bad things about it. The Internet doesn’t know how to parse nuance, so everything is either absolute perfection or total garbage. 

But if we’re going to talk about what happened to Mass Effect then I need you to at least be open to the idea that Mass Effect 2 had some non-obvious structural flaws. Yes, Mass Effect 2 features some of the best characters and sidequests in the history of the series. Mordin Solus is pure gold. Samara’s loyalty mission is a brilliant crime thriller told exclusively through dialog. Tali’s loyalty mission is an amazing courtroom drama with high emotional stakes. Legion’s mission offers the most interesting moral conundrum in the entire series, and that’s really saying something. But mixed in with those great stories and lovable characters is a story that creates tons of problems for anyone trying to write the third game.

But before we can talk about where Mass Effect 2 went wrong, let’s talk about the story that the first game set up. The story in Mass Effect is a really interesting hybrid of two different genres: Space Mystery, and Cosmic Horror.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Mass Effect 2 Broke the Franchise”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.