Mass Effect Review

The first Mass Effect is a world building exercise BioWare hid inside a shooter. The Citadel works because the elevators run slowly enough to eavesdrop on the news, the codex reads like it was written by people who never expected you to open it, and the alien species have economies and grudges instead of hats. The conversation wheel, with its interrupts and its paragon and renegade poles, made dialogue feel like steering rather than ordering from a menu, and the Normandy crew earn the loyalty the sequels then spend.

The rough edges were noted on release and have not improved: the Mako handles like a shopping cart across the uncharted worlds, those worlds are the same prefab base copied dozens of times, the inventory is an unsorted spreadsheet, and the engine streams its textures in visibly late. None of that stopped critics calling it the richest science fiction setting a game had built in years. Virmire and the closing vote still hit harder than most of what followed.