From the moment I first heard of Mass Effect, I hoped for not just good gameplay, but a good story. My expectations were not met. They were blown out the bloody water.
The attention to detail is staggering, highly detailed Codex entries are available for everything from planets, races and factions, to how weapons work using the principle of mass effect.
Even before the introduction with the brilliant music playing that you get through the whole game is over, you get the sense that the scale of the game is epic, and that the attention to detail is microscopic. It's as if Bioware is telling you, "There will be no holes in this story".
All the characters are rock solid, each with their own individual history and motivation, each seeking their own goals. You quickly come to the realisation that these characters aren't just along for the ride, but that they believe that Commander Shepard can give them something that they cannot find themselves. They each have their own beliefs, and will not hesitate to tell you about these beliefs if you have earned their trust, which is another difficult mission on its own.
Each character has their own strengths and their own weaknesses, choosing who would join you for a mission might mean not just looking at what they can do in a fight, but also their history with whoever it is you are setting out to confront. Sometimes, characters would even decide that they are coming with you on that mission, no argument accepted. These creations are all headstrong, and not at all prepared to do what you have personally decided they will do. It's almost as if they have a disregard for the person controlling Commander Shepard.
This is in fact my only complaint. Commander Shepard. Regardless of the history you choose for him, he appears as a Gary Stu in Mass Effect 1. There no-one he cannot take down, he is untouchable, and regardless of how nice or how much of a bastard he is, there is nothing he cannot do perfectly. Thankfully Bioware fixed this problem when they killed him. But he dies so that others may live, not good enough, a perfect martyr to the end. Fine. If he dies again, it's through his own lazy negligence and refusal to upgrade his ship.
Everyone you meet in the game is lovingly crafted by Bioware, everyone has a story, and many are prepared to tell you what it is. They stop being bits of code, and become real living, breathing people. See all those people on the Normandy? Pick which one, it doesn't matter, they are rarely silent, many are talking, and their stories are never boring. Go into the sleeping quarters on the SR2, you will hear a crewmember worrying about his family and whether or not they are still fine, or even still alive.
They truly become people. Jack was one of my least favourite team members, and yet when she died on my first playthrough, I had to force myself not to cry. I had become emotional over a few lines of code and some graphics, which I hadn't liked to start with. This shows how good Bioware are at making people, mind you, they've had a lot of practice and didn't always get it right in their previous games.
The story itself is epic. The fate of the galaxy lies in the balance, a balance which will be tipped by one man and, to a lesser extent, those who consider him their leader. You're tasked with saving not just a city or a country, but the whole galaxy and everyone in it. To top it all of, many of the inhabitants of the galaxy think you're a mental lunatic for saying that an ancient race of sentient machines is going to devour the galaxy.
In this galaxy, humans are not at the top of the pile (in the beginning). You are the underdog, reviled by the galactic community for being a stubborn and hot-headed people who don't generally think before they do anything. You have to struggle to be accepted by the people who you will be the saviour of.
The main reason I love the whole Mass Effect series so much is because we get to be a part of the story. We don't just want the glory or the girl (although these do play large roles), but because we want a part in this epic. For no other fandom on this site have I seen as many self-insert fics as I have for Mass Effect. In Mass Effect we want to be part of the story, to say we were there, and this is the way to do it.
This is why Mass Effect is art. Not for the gameplay, as there are many games out there with better guns, better physics and a better cover system such as Gears of War. Not for the graphics either, as those don't break my PC like Crysis does. This is art because it has a brilliant story. Many games have a story, yes, some even have very good ones, but Mass Effect was the first game I ever played to revolve around your choices, and have the world adapt and change according to these choices. The choices of you, and by extension Commander Shepard have a huge impact on the game and how it plays out.
Here you are Commander Shepard. You don't play as Commander Shepard, you are Commander Shepard, the saviour of the galaxy. You start making choices based on what you think Shepard would do, regardless of what you as an individual in the real world would do. When the lives of the Council were at stake and their continued existence depended solely on my decision, I had to decide whether I would sacrifice many human lives to save three aliens who never believed me, or let them die. I was torn. I spent a long time sitting and staring at the screen trying to decide what to do. When I had to decide whether or not the Reaper factory would continue to exist, I had to stop and think, when I had to decide whether to rewrite or kill the breakaway Geth I had to stop and think.
This game is big on the moral decisions, and whenever one comes up you have to carefully weigh the pros and cons, and what will happen not only in the immediate future, but also in Mass Effect 3, which, it has been said, will draw on 1,000 variables from Mass Effect 1 and 2 to decide how the finale to this saga will play out.
Mass Effect makes you become Commander Shepard, someone who can be better or worse than yourself, and it all depends solely on the decisions you decide to make and mould the story the way you decide to do. This is why Mass Effect is art, and Bioware are artists.
Uh, no... this is not quite a story, I know. It's all cool, though. This is to get my mind in order and either find or rewrite all my material that was recently lost. It's getting there.
As you can probably tell, you'll be getting plot-heavy stuff from me. I'm sure you can handle it. Most of you don't appear stupid.
With all sincere gatvolness... Rockspider