Should i play mass effect 1

The story that follows Shepard's journey is powerful, unique, and at times gut-wrenching. As a note before we continue, I'll be referring to Shepard as "their" since players can choose to play a male or female version. I am using "their" to encompass both options. Anderson becomes like a father figure to Shepard, though eventually events lead to Shepard taking the Normandy's helm.

The first game is also about uncovering an ancient threat, a threat not even fully realized until the end of the first title's story. The first entry is all about setting up the universe, making you care about it and feel like it's a part of your actual reality. Because the first Mass Effect is more about setting up the world than being the end-all-be-all of the game series, the pacing is a little slow to start but once it picks up?

It really picks up. The pacing disruption is also a world-building hurtle, and not something that impacts the second and third games. The first game leads into the second where we know who the threat is, but the right people aren't taking it seriously.

Politics shocker stand in the way of public safety as Shepard goes through an entire world shift from being poster child of the Alliance, the human's interstellar military, to being a part of a human terrorist organization due to unforeseen circumstances we won't say why, major spoiler. Without giving too much away, the organization in question is called Cerberus, and it's an organization we first learn about in the first game as players uncover sordid experiments underneath this particular banner.

Throughout the course of the three games, we learn more and more about Cerberus and where they fit into the galaxy, and those horrifying details create a uniquely heartbreaking narrative divide for our protagonist and those closest to them. In a massive fight against an ancient race known as the Reapers, a sentient machine race that wipes out millions of lives on a cyclic schedule, Shepard builds their team across all three games with characters that are so vastly different from one another and begin to feel like actual family.

To me, what makes this story so special is the characters themselves. Throughout 30 years of gaming, I've become so attached to thousands of characters, all with something special to add to any gaming adventure.

That being said, there is something about the progression of getting to know Mass Effect NPCs that feels organic, real, and not unlike how we build friendships and romantic relationships in real life. They are special in a way that even as a writer I'm not sure I could convey properly. Read our editorial policy. To see this content please enable targeting cookies. Manage cookie settings To me, it feels like the video game community online is currently in the middle of a glorious time warp back to the early s.

Hirun Cryer 4 1 day ago. Jump in this Xmas. Tom Orry 28 1 day ago. Dom Peppiatt 2 days ago. It's Miller Time. Stephany Nunneley 4 6 days ago. Lose Your Head. Jeremy Signor 7 hours ago. Ooey Gooey. That there would be some some hefty in-game repercussions if I dawdled running errands for any of my crew in game.

Urdnot Wrex a member of the gruff, warlike, Krogan, a very rough analog for the Klingons in the Mass Effect universe if you squint really hard, had joined my crew early on and won me over with his no nonsense attitude and refusal to back down from a fight. Wrex was my buddy, or so I thought. In , I assumed I knew everything there was to know about the latest video games and that my crew would be relatively safe until much later in the game. On Vermire, outside a lab that could hold the key to restoring his species fertility, cruelly stolen from them via a bioweapon known as the Genophage, Wrex and I had a… disagreement.

Saren may have come up with a cure to the Genophage so he could breed his own unstoppable army of Krogan — the Genophage having been unleashed on them in the first place due to their incredible rate of reproduction.

How could this be? What kind of cruel bullshit was this!? No biggie. Then I looked at my saves. The only save I could use was from over six in game hours ago! This is just one of the many experiences from my first, and only , Mass Effect play through that marked the whole experience as uniquely mine. Sure, plenty of people had to face similar decisions but when all those decisions were taken as a whole they lead to very different experiences.

It is impossible to save both. If you skip to Mass Effect 2, the game chooses for you, based on the gender of your Shepard. However, a third squadmate can also die in the first Mass Effect - this character returns for a major role in Mass Effect 3; or at least, they do if you keep them alive.

If you skip Mass Effect, the game automatically kills them off. This is a hugely popular character too, and their replacement is very meh. You are not getting the true Mass Effect experience if you kill this character off. But what if you want to start at Mass Effect 3?