Mass Effect, The Squad

No leader is worth anything if he doesn't have a solid team to follow him.  In Mass Effect, the team you build as you go through the story is, in my opinion, the source of the greatest storytelling within the game.  Through the dialog trees and the various assignments you can take on to help them, you really get a sense of togetherness with your crew.

Each team member has their own back story and fully-fleshed-out personality.  The characters are so well developed that when you hear Wrex lament the loss of his family's armor, or listen to Garrus' frustration at not catching a sadistic scientist, you want to help them with their problems.  I think BioWare learned a lot from player interaction with their squadmates because this focus takes center-stage in the next game.

As you can see from the image above, they also each have their own strengths and weaknesses.  Personally, in my current play-through as the Soldier class, my two favorite squadmates are Garrus and Kaiden.  But, everyone has their own play style, and the game accommodates that beautifully.

Here is the squad from the game along with a short bio:

Ashley Williams is a human soldier who served in the Systems Alliance as a Gunnery Chief in the 2nd Frontier Division on Eden Prime, and was later assigned to Commander Shepard's squad after the geth attack on Eden Prime.

Garrus Vakarian is a turian, formerly with C-Sec's Investigation Division. Like most turians, Garrus had military training at fifteen, but later followed in his father's footsteps to become a C-Sec officer. He was responsible for the investigation of Saren Arterius, the Council's top Spectre, after the Alliance claimed Saren had gone rogue. Though Garrus was told the investigation was over, he decided to defy the Executor's order and pursue another lead on his own. Eventually, Garrus joined Shepard's team, to help the Commander defeat Saren and the geth.

Kaidan Alenko is a human Sentinel and a Systems Alliance Marine. While serving aboard the SSV Normandy, he was a Staff Lieutenant and head of the ship's Marine detail. He also was an initial member of Commander Shepard's squad. Kaidan is a biotic wired with the controversial L2 implants, which are known to cause severe neurological damage to the user. However, he is fortunate enough to only suffer from occasional severe migraines. 

Dr. Liara T'Soni is an asari researcher who has spent the past fifty years of her life studying Prothean technology and culture, specialising in the Prothean extinction. She was born on Thessia in 2077, making her "only" 106—little more than a child in asari terms. She already has a great deal of insight into the Protheans and is a highly trained user of biotics. 

Tali'Zorah nar Rayya is a quarian and a member of Commander Shepard's squad. She is the daughter of Rael'Zorah, a member of the Admiralty Board. Though young, Tali is a mechanical genius.  In 2183, she is on her Pilgrimage, a rite of passage to prove her worth and bring something of value back to her people aboard the Migrant Fleet.

A famed krogan mercenary and bounty hunter, Urdnot Wrex is also one of the last Krogan Battlemasters: rare individuals who combine powerful biotic abilities with the devastating firepower of advanced weaponry. A long-lived krogan who has had many adventures, Wrex has heard of Commander Shepard on his travels, and respects the Commander as a fellow warrior.  Despite his chosen path of violence and killing for credits, Wrex is deeply concerned with the fate of his people after the genophage, and is one of the few planning for a new krogan future.

That's it for today, folks!  Have a good weekend!

Mass Effect, Pt 3

Before we continue our story in Mass Effect, I wanted to mention a couple of other features of the game I hadn't before.  As I mentioned in our first game post, player choice plays a huge role.  I've already covered the morality system, but there a lot more to it than just the dialog options.

The main story of Mass Effect is told through the primary missions.  You could conceivably play through the game and never touch any of the secondary quests, called Assignments.  But, this is just a sample of what the game has to offer.  Through the Assignments, you get to explore other worlds and experience hundreds of little stories, some of which have a bigger impact in later games.  The Assignments are totally optional, but you do yourself a disservice if you ignore them.

The bridge of the Normandy

Aboard the Normandy, you have the Galaxy Map which opens up, as the name suggests, the whole of the Milky Way galaxy to you.  From here, you decide where you want to go.  You start with an overview of the entire galaxy.  Little blue circles scattered throughout represent different clusters and within each cluster are solar systems.  Each of these systems has planets, ships, and asteroids that you can, if you so choose, travel to.  Now, as we know even from our own solar system, not every planet is hospitable enough to visit, but there is usually at least one location that you can land on to explore and investigate either on foot or using the all-terrain vehicle, the Mako.

Assignments range from simple quests, such as chasing down a renegade doctor or fetching data files for a journalist, to the complex, such as tracking down a geth outpost to halt a impending invasion or negotiating with a biotic terrorist cell.  There are some assignments that are fun and goofy like when you have to track down an data chip stolen by an actual space monkey.  And then there are some that tug at your gut, like pretty much anything that involves stopping one Cerberus' operations.  Cerberus plays a huuuuuuuuge role in later games, but for this one they are primarily regulated to Assignments.

And through many of these Assignments, you are given moral choices that can impact the lives of thousands, even millions.  BioWare did a fantastic job of giving you the feeling that you are playing a starship captain whose actions determine the course of an entire galaxy.  And as any kid that grew up on Star Trek or Star Wars will tell you, its a sci-fi nerd's dream come true.

On Thursday, I'll briefly tackle the squad mate roster and then dive back into our story on Monday.  See you next time!

Mass Effect, Pt. 2

The story of Mass Effect opens with a mission to perform a test run of the Systems Alliance's newest ship, the SSV Normandy.  The Normandy is a stealth focused ship.  It's drive core and structure are designed to to keep the ship hidden from enemy sensors.  The initial design and construction was a joint Alliance and turian affair, one of the many efforts to improve relations between the races since the First Contact War.

Commander Shepard (Male)

The commanding officer in charge of the mission is our good friend, David Anderson.  His second-in-command is Shepard, the character you play as throughout the game series.  Shepard completed N7 training, just as Anderson did, and is the best and brightest the Alliance has to offer.  The mission involves a run to Eden Prime, a stable, quiet human colony, and back.  The Citadel Council has sent a Spectre to monitor the mission, a turian named Nihlus.  Shepard learns that the mission is actually more than a shakedown run; a Prothean artifact called the Beacon has been discovered on Eden Prime and they are to investigate.

But, as all good stories begin, a wrinkle soon appears.  A distress call is sent out from Eden Prime.  The video picked up by the Normandy shows Alliance soldiers in the midst of a firefight with an unknown and unseen enemy.  Then, a unholy sound rings out across the sky.  The soldiers look up and see a ship, like something out of H.P. Lovecraft's nightmares, hovering menacingly over a star port.  Then the video feed cuts out.

Upon landing, Nihlus scoots on ahead to check things out while you hit the ground with two other squadmates, Lt. Kaiden Alenko and Pvt. Jenkins.  By the time you take ten steps in the game, Jenkins is gunned like the Star Trek redshirt he is by a floating robot.  But, you manage to pick up another team member along the way, a feisty brunette named Ashley Williams.  Unfortunately, she has a squad of geth on her tail so you have to take them out.

Soon, we learn the identity of the person behind the attack on Eden Prime.  It is none other than Saren Arterias.  Nihlus, who a good half-mile ahead of Shepard, discovers him, but doesn't suspect his involvement.  When he turn his back, Saren puts a bullet through his fellow spectre's head and makes for the Beacon.  The turian has his geth minions arm a set of explosives to blow up the colony, gets what he needs from the Beacon, and jets off-world before Shepard and company catch up to him.

Saren's ship, Sovereign, on Eden Prime

You deactivate the bombs and secure the Beacon.  But, the Prothean artifact reacts with Shepard, flooding his mind with random strange and creepy visions before knocking him out.

From there, the Normandy returns to the Citadel.  In the process of trying to convince the Council to act against Saren, Shepard picks up Urdnot Wrex, a krogan mercenary who has it in for Saren thanks to a deal gone bad, Garrus Vakarian, a disillusioned turian officer with Citadel Security who wants to see justice done after his investigation into Saren gets blocked, and Tali'Zorah nar Rayya, a Quarian on her Pilgrimage who happens across a geth data chip directly linking Saren to the attack on Eden Prime.  From the data chip, it is learned that Saren has allied himself with Matriarch Beneziah, an incredibly powerful asari, and that he is searching for a device called the Conduit.

It is Tali's data chip that convinces the Council to act.  They name Shepard as the first human spectre and task him with tracking down Saren.  The human ambassador, Udina, and Cpt. Anderson give Shepard command of the Normandy.

Your sixth and final team member is found on the volcanic world Therum.  The daughter of Beneziah, Liara T'Soni, is excavating a archaeological dig when geth troopers attack.  After you rescue her from the geth and a krogan merc hired by Saren, she joins you on your mission.  With her telepathic abilities, she is able to help make some sense of the visions implanted within Shepard's mind by the Beacon, but not all of them.  The visions tell of the end of the Protheans at the hands of a race of hyper-advanced, sentient machines known as the Reapers.

And that's where we'll leave off for the time-being.  See you guys Monday!

Mass Effect: Video Interlude

Things have been kind of crazy what with a newborn and all.  I don't have a full blog post ready just yet to present.  It should be ready for the Thursday posting.

In the meantime, I wanted to give you guys a pair of videos that sets the stage for the story of Mass Effect.

See you guys on Thursday!

Mass Effect

A month after I started this blog, we have finally reached the eponymous first game of the Mass Effect series.  When I play most games, I usually will play through, beat it, and I'm done.  There are very few that I jump back into, much less finish.  The game takes roughly 30-40 hours to complete, and this will be my fourth play-through of the game.  I foresee at least one more in my future, so that should tell how much I enjoy it.  The only other games I have completed multiple times are Fallout, Fallout 3, and the Half Life games.

Paragon

The great thing about Mass Effect is that it has so much to uncover.  While it has a more linear structure than open world games like the Fallout series, the choices you make through conversation and decisions within the missions are numerous.  With every play-through I have uncovered more and more new things, and I've only ever played along the Paragon lines!

To help that last sentence make more sense, Mass Effect has a morality system built into it.  On its surface, it is a sci-fi roleplaying action game.  However, as you make your way through the game, you are constantly tasked with decisions.  Nearly every dialog decision - and some mission choices - alter your in-game moral compass.  If you likened it to Star Wars, Paragon represents the light side, while Renegade represents the dark side.

Renegade

Only, it really isn't so clear cut as that even.  There are some decisions as a Paragon that can seem more self-righteous and haughty, and some Renegade choices more selfless (though they probably break some sort of law).  The game's handling of these moral choices give it a richness and depth you would hard-pressed to find elsewhere.

On a technical level, the game looks beautiful, though, by this point, slightly dated.  Drawing from the heyday of science fiction in the 70s and 80s, BioWare gave the setting and the characters a great aesthetic.  From the Presidium on the Citadel to the bridge of the Normandy, to the ruins on Feros, the game's environment draws you into a world as rich and detailed as any Tolkien created (cue Tolkien fan rage).

Combat is handled on a real-time basis, meaning you are actively engaged in the fight.  Previous BioWare games, such as Knight of the Old Republic, typically involved a click-and-go function, but with Mass Effect, you determine every step, every gunshot, every biotic ability your character makes.  All this from a 3rd-person, over-the-shoulder perspective.

In-game screenshot

You even get to drive your own vehicle as you explore planets and conduct missions.  Here's a video that shows some of the gameplay.  Start at 4:20 if you want to skip all the driving:

All right, that's it for today.  Next Monday, we'll dive into the story of Commander Shepard and his fight to save the galaxy.

From the Mass Effect Codex, Pt. 3

Here we have our last set of entries in preparation for the first post that deals with the first Mass Effect game. More entries will be posted as we go through the game itself. So sit back, grab some coffee or tea, and read away.

As always, the [*] indicates items that will be covered in a future Codex entry.

Revelation

Mass Effect: Revelation, written by Drew Karpyshyn, is the first novel in the Mass Effect universe and a darn good one at that.  Set several decades before the events of the first game, it tells the story of David Anderson - Commander Shepherd's eventual mentor and chief promoter - and his first encounter with Saren, the turian spectre.