Mass Effect (2007)

This has to be one of the best moments of the whole game. Sovereign's lines are impeccably written and impeccably delivered. It shows no emotion, is gives no importance to what's happening. Sovereign is utterly unaffected by pleads or threats from insignificant, inferior beings. It is neither angered, nor entertained.

I love the almost lovecraftian ethos. This sort of incognoscible, detached being whose motives are beyond our capacity of comprehension is what the Reapers should've never stopped being. It's a bit of a shame that the sequels (especially the Leviathan DLC) ended up banalising them so much.

As an aside, I always believed that in Mass Effect 3, the reaper laser sound effect was incredibly lame. It's uninspired and not at all menacing. What I've always though it should sound like is thunder, but more... mechanic. Think about it. The laser must be ionising the air around it and the sudden expansion of the hot air is exactly what causes thunder! But unlike the lightning that causes natural thunders, reaper lasers are straight, they are much simpler structures. Therefore, their sound should be also more simple with less harmonics. I think something like that would sound powerful, but also eerie and unnatural.

Ejem.. sorry, I veered offtopic. The point is. Mass Effect is awesome.

So the EA Access page for PS4 supported games includes all of the Mass Effect games and Dragon Age and DA2. Can anyone verify that you can actually play these on PS4 (streaming), or is this a goof made by EA's web team?

Edit: never-mind, it was a website error. I think the PS4 page was showing the full list instead of just the PS4 titles.

This is a good read on the current state of BioWare. But I just about squealed when I got to the following section:

As for BioWare’s own space-opera franchise, Darrah says, “We’re definitely not done with Mass Effect. There’s a lot of stories to be told. We could pull on the threads we put down with Andromeda; we could pull on threads from Mass Effect 3. There’s a lot of interesting space to be explored.”

“In my mind, it’s very much alive,” says Hudson. “I’m thinking all the time about things that I think will be great. It’s just a matter of getting back to it as soon as we can.”

Mass Effect is the first AAA game I've played with a 20+ hour single-player campaign. For the first ~4 hours, I wasn't really feeling it: the combat and gameplay were clunky, and I wasn't 'really' feeling the story.

The game started to click for me after rescuing Liara from the lava planet. I talked to all the crew members on the Normandy, and the lore in Mass Effect was really compelling, this being the first time I've found 'lore' in a game to be interesting.

Hearing how the Quarians were driven about by their own mechanical creations, exiled to roam the cosmos in 'The Floatilla', listening to Wrex talk about how the Krogan race is nearing extinction as a result of another race unleashing a virus to quell a Krogan uprising, a virus that kills 99% of infant Krogans. This lore is the 'something' that I've been waiting for. I'm only 5.5 hours into Mass Effect right now, but I'm eager for more.

Just played Mass Effect for the first time and loved it. It's really dated mechanically, but almost charmingly so. I've been playing a lot of late 2000's open world-esque games and I'm really starting to appreciate how games like this actually encourage exploration. I feel like so many 2010's games like this tell you exactly where to go, filling up your map with interest points. There's so much freedom to not knowing anything and just discovering as you go. Breath of the Wild was kind of a return to that for me, and I hope that trend catches back on.

Anyways, made this little video essay about ME.