Though, I have played Jade Empire on someone else's xbox, long ago, and I suppose these games were made by the same people? It's got all the same hallmarks - you make your own person and drive your own personality, but you have to interact with about 6 different teammates that you can swap in and out of your squad, and whoever your morality lines up with the most, you can sleep with by the end of the game, provided you did enough kissing up, etc. I enjoyed that one immensely - I felt like it was a good 'consequence' of the morality of your actions, without affecting their bottom line. You know how it goes; the company can't make fifteen different endings of the game based on your morality choices. Sometimes a game goes with two morality-based endings (as in BioShock: Nurture the Little Baby Orphans, or Murder Everything Everywhere), and sometimes a game will just go with one (as in most games - you can be a jerk, but you've still got to save the universe and be hailed as a hero). I mean, I can't imagine Mass Effect being able to adjust for horrible behavior by, let's say, firing me from the Fleet and I spend the rest of my days playing a quick-time mini-game to mine ore on some remote planet while some other upstanding fellow saves the universe, even if I hang up on the Council mid-transmission.
It's mostly moot - I always play the same way anyway. I answer exactly how I would really answer if it was me, and I finish all the side-quests, because I am some kind of side-quest-aholic. I crave me those side-quests. Gotta catch 'em all. And that includes squad members. If I have to be Captain Slut, so be it, I'm gonna hunt down every romantic interlude side quest available. Now that our intentions are clear, let us begin the festivities.
Mass Effect begins by asking you to configure a character, both in appearance and background. Well, you could choose the stock options, but you'll forgive me if I assume the worst about you if you do such a thing. Your options in appearance are terribly endless; I managed to create something that resembled a human being, at least. She is a touch amphibian in her facial features, but I had already spent enough time trying to tweak her - I'm pretty sure I can look at her for the duration of three games. All the NPCs you meet in the game are configured really well - I guess I'm just not as adept as the game's artistry team. The choices for background are more limited. Three choices for personal history (orphan from Earth growing up on the mean streets, military kid, and sole survivor of colonial massacre), and three choices for military history (war hero, sole survivor of a military catastrophe, and ruthless). Do they affect your gameplay? Not that much, though people do mention it in conversations, and apparently a side mission or two will depend on your choices.
The game world is based on the a sci-fi concept: the human race uncovered artifacts from an ancient civilization under the surface of mars in the not-too-distant future. Study of these advanced technologies allowed our own science to move forward by leaps and bounds, and we soon discovered the 'mass relay' at the edge of the solar system - a device created by these progenitors (called Protheans) to travel across galaxies in moments. By jumping through these still-working relays, we traveled and colonized across the universe. We met (and had a First Contact War with) alien races, and finally have started to gain a modicum of respect in galactic civilization as the newcomers. The Council rules from an enormous structure called The Citadel, which is another working piece of Prothean technology - everything that everyone knows is from Prothean artifacts, apparently. No one even knows how the Citadel works, but they figured it was as good a place as any to gather all the races up and conduct politics. The Council is made up of only 3 representatives: a Salarian, a somewhat bug-like race that thinks fast and talks fast; an Asarian, an all-female race that are a little betazoid, with biotic powers and a reputation for promiscuity; and a Turian, a more warrior race that humans distrust after the First Contact War. Humans, and the myriad of other races in the galaxy, get pretty much no say in this hierarchy, but that's what we're working to change at the outset of the game. The human Alliance is making a push to get one of their own into the Spectres - the Council's MI5, if you will, a secret organization that can bend galactic law to execute the Council's will. No human has yet been admitted, and the Alliance's candidate is me, Shepard.
It's mostly moot - I always play the same way anyway. I answer exactly how I would really answer if it was me, and I finish all the side-quests, because I am some kind of side-quest-aholic. I crave me those side-quests. Gotta catch 'em all. And that includes squad members. If I have to be Captain Slut, so be it, I'm gonna hunt down every romantic interlude side quest available. Now that our intentions are clear, let us begin the festivities.
Mass Effect begins by asking you to configure a character, both in appearance and background. Well, you could choose the stock options, but you'll forgive me if I assume the worst about you if you do such a thing. Your options in appearance are terribly endless; I managed to create something that resembled a human being, at least. She is a touch amphibian in her facial features, but I had already spent enough time trying to tweak her - I'm pretty sure I can look at her for the duration of three games. All the NPCs you meet in the game are configured really well - I guess I'm just not as adept as the game's artistry team. The choices for background are more limited. Three choices for personal history (orphan from Earth growing up on the mean streets, military kid, and sole survivor of colonial massacre), and three choices for military history (war hero, sole survivor of a military catastrophe, and ruthless). Do they affect your gameplay? Not that much, though people do mention it in conversations, and apparently a side mission or two will depend on your choices.
The game world is based on the a sci-fi concept: the human race uncovered artifacts from an ancient civilization under the surface of mars in the not-too-distant future. Study of these advanced technologies allowed our own science to move forward by leaps and bounds, and we soon discovered the 'mass relay' at the edge of the solar system - a device created by these progenitors (called Protheans) to travel across galaxies in moments. By jumping through these still-working relays, we traveled and colonized across the universe. We met (and had a First Contact War with) alien races, and finally have started to gain a modicum of respect in galactic civilization as the newcomers. The Council rules from an enormous structure called The Citadel, which is another working piece of Prothean technology - everything that everyone knows is from Prothean artifacts, apparently. No one even knows how the Citadel works, but they figured it was as good a place as any to gather all the races up and conduct politics. The Council is made up of only 3 representatives: a Salarian, a somewhat bug-like race that thinks fast and talks fast; an Asarian, an all-female race that are a little betazoid, with biotic powers and a reputation for promiscuity; and a Turian, a more warrior race that humans distrust after the First Contact War. Humans, and the myriad of other races in the galaxy, get pretty much no say in this hierarchy, but that's what we're working to change at the outset of the game. The human Alliance is making a push to get one of their own into the Spectres - the Council's MI5, if you will, a secret organization that can bend galactic law to execute the Council's will. No human has yet been admitted, and the Alliance's candidate is me, Shepard.
