My only other experiences with Bioware were Balder’s Gate 2 and Neverwinter Nights both of which I really enjoyed. I overlooked Knights of the Old Republic as I never really got into Star Wars, but I was interested to see that with Mass Effect, Bioware had dropped the Star Wars universe for one of their own creation.
I rolled a female soldier and got stuck into it. Right about the time the combat was about to get started I was waiting for a tutorial to pop up and tell how to point at the enemy I wanted to kill and watch the game do the rest. Then an odd thing happened: nothing. Gears of War being the last game I’d played and game play looking fairly similar I reverted to gung-ho instincts and aimed at an enemy and tried to shoot it to bits. Oddly enough, that bloody worked. The combat isn’t turn based. Sweet mother of Betsy it’s not turn based! Maybe they figured out that all the RPG fans who love repetitive mundane tasks were now on MMORPGS, whatever the case they’re now making real time combat so I’m prepared to look over a few first time insecurities and clumsinesses. There’s a cover system you’ll never use, and if you want to take a weapon out there are four buttons to help you (if it doesn't happen automatically), while if you want to use any of a stack of powers you have to pick from a wheel or a hot key all controlled by the same shoulder button.
As far as the story goes, it’s very Charles Dickens. Not to say it’s about poverty and has vivid descriptions of ugly people, I mean that it’s full of well developed characters and the plot is just an excuse for them to be there. The storyline borrows a lot from The Matrix Reloaded with the actual matrix replaced by the Milky Way, and manages to avoid the generally overdone ‘could we/should we’ sci-fi theme. For the most part, the major characters are deep, believable and conflicted, with the exception of one roughly man-shaped piece of cardboard with a name and some character traits written on it. Kaiden McCardboard aside, the characterisation only hits one major wall. Meet Liara, proof that the departments involved with game play and characterisation never really collaborated. In the cut scenes she’s the embodiment of compassion, in the combat she goes FUCKING BERSERK, going spell crazy and trigger happy in a manner that’d make Vikings blush. Once this crack has shown others start to pop up and I realised that one of the races of aliens look a lot like space bunnies and another are just toads in armour. After that the game had this creepy, space-age Wind in the Willows feel to it which thankfully wore of in time to be saved by the game’s best characterisation element, the hero himself/herself. In each cut scene you’ll be given the choice of how you want to go through it, usually polite, bitchy or too spineless to go either way. It mostly works to the same end but what makes it impressive is that none of it breaks character, which is a props to the voice actors more than anything. Here Bioware have proven that games can make a pliable protagonist without just making them a blank fucking pallet.
So if you play this as a solder it’s the sandbox(ish), story driven shooter that so many others have promised to be that still holds its ground as an RPG. The final level is like nothing else I’ve played, working itself up to the end boss fight by making you feel like the hardest badass in all Hardarseia in a merging of game play and narrative that’s raised my expectations of interactive storytelling.
No comments:
Post a Comment