Properly Calibrated

My character in Mass Effect specializes in pistols & sniper rifles. I picked up a High Explosive Ammo upgrade at one point, which increases damage something like 400%, but also allows for far fewer shots before overheating (Mass Effect’s replacement for ammo clips).

Packed onto my sniper rifle (which only allowed 1.8 shots per overheat cycle anyway), it becomes a small howitzer. A sniper rifle with a 6-foot explosion radius means many instances of Geth flying through the air while disintegrating into char. Pure comedy.

I finished Mass Effect last night just barely under level 50 (which would have garnered me an achievement, oh well). The story arc gets an A+ for pacing; the Last Segment Of The Game is very clearly defined, and allows you plenty of space to finish up your side-quest list before heading off to the final battle. (Compare to: Fallout 3, where I didn’t realize I had entered TLSOTG until it was too late.)

While the main quest & storyline were clearly given every bit of polish they deserved, almost everything else in Mass Effect has the distinct feeling of being unfinished in one way or another. I have a list. I’ll write about it tomorrow. Today, though, nothing but praise.

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Spent a couple of hours knocking out some secondary quests for Mass Effect. Saved a few dozen lives, came to terms with my horrific military past, that sort of thing.

Spent some time on the planet Ontarom finding some scientists. Turns out they were at the map marker labeled “Underground Facility.” That map, it never lies.

Let’s be clear here: I’m all about modularity in construction. If prefab houses wouldn’t get egged in any typical American neighborhood (and if typical American contractors knew how to build them), I’d be the proud owner of an aluminum and plate-glass box. Apparently the builders in Mass Effect think similarly, as OuterSpaceCo Inc. appears to offer one model of Above Ground Dwelling and one model of Underground Dwelling, both with one choice of layout, complete with semi-permanent crate-themed interior decoration.

Speaking of things that BioWare probably would have finished if they’d had the time and/or inclination (you’ll notice that there are a lot of these):

I had previously thought Eletania’s monkey colonies were pushing the parallel envelopes of crazy and lame, but Onteron has topped them with its native herd of — wait for it — horses with arms. I don’t know how else to describe it. As I remember it, they were essentially normal horses, but with human-like vestigial arms growing out of their general shoulder area. Two arms, kind of hanging there. I decided to dub them Tardicorns.

The game HUD also bracketed them with a “Talk” prompt, as if I could converse with these proto-magical creatures. Unfortunately, either BioWare glossed over the Tardicorn conversation tree in favor of polishing the voice acting (a completely acceptable decision), or Tardicorns are just jerks who like to ignore perfectly friendly spacefolk.

I smushed one on accident when I backed the Mako out of their valley. Can’t say I felt guilty. Stupid Tardicorns.

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A few more hours of Mass Effect today. It’s so good that I haven’t even taken time off to attempt another futile run at a Geometry Wars 2 achievement. I haven’t even popped in Burnout Paradise and fantasized ways to smush DJ Atomica with my car.

Now that I’m back on the main quest line for a bit, things have gone back to being tight, well-written, and polished. So what if there were monkeys on Eletania — there are survivors, warships, creatures, and plot-points galore on Feros. However, although this game may be getting on in age, I’m still averse to spoiling the plot for my incredibly modest readership, so I’ll describe my latest impression in more general terms.

Knights Of The Old Republic was, for better or worse, nothing more than a Star Wars game, and I say this as an incredibly loyal twentieth-century Star Wars fan. The story may have been set thousands of years in the past, but renaming the R2 unit and throwing on an extra leg does not a new galaxy make. KOTOR was a Star Wars story, and the Star Wars canon, is (to put it lightly) somewhat fleshed out already.

Mass Effect is different. It’s 100% new and original, and after playing this far, I’ve seen creatures and been told stories that would have never meshed with the Star Wars universe. The detail given to every species, planet, and scientific justification is Firefly-esque in its level of tender, loving care.

Mass Effect has a completely game-optional Codex, explaining all sorts of completely game-optional details. You may never read the Codex, but it’s there, available. I appreciate little details like that, just like I appreciate being able to steal every piece of silverware off of a dining room table in a Bethesda game. An uncompromisingly fleshed-out universe can be that extra bit of genuine spirit that can make a game really be something.

It’s important to note here that fleshing out a game is not the same as padding it. The Mass Effect codex is flesh. The monkeys? Marsupial, module-stealing padding.

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I’m 11 hours into Mass Effect, and then this happens.

DISCOVERY: The monkey does not have the module.

I’m running around a valley, pressing A at lethargically plodding semi-elongated space monkeys on the planet Eletania (in the Hercules system), trying to find the module that one of them apparently stole from the downed satellite at which I had also just finished pressing A.

DISCOVERY: The monkey does not have the module.

Monkeys?

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