I have a confession to make. I’ve never completed Mass Effect. I do own it, in fact, I have owned the Limited Edition of it since its day of release and did play it, and loved it, a lot until in my infinite wisdom, when my friend Lee bought his Xbox360, offered to lend him “any game you like, any at all”, to which he promptly picked Mass Effect, thus ruining my momentum in playing it. He actually took it and in fairness, played it, completed it, and loved it, for over 3 months, so it is a little hard to be overly annoyed because he did love it and it welcomed him into the wonderful world of Xbox360.
I always intended to go back to it, I even bought the ‘Bringing Down the Sky’ downloadable content as soon as it was released and continued to feature it in my most recommended 360 games lists over the last couple of years. I have decided to go back to it because of Mass Effect 2.
I’m not blind, I knew Mass Effect 2 was coming, hell, my friend Neil left a job at Bizarre Creations, moved to Canada to work for BioWare on Mass Effect 2. It’s not even that I’ve not had enough time to fit it in over the last couple of years, despite other fantastic games such as BioShock, Fallout 3, Gears of War 2, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, etc… It’s just that… well, I don’t know, I’m stupid I guess.
All throughout this period of time, right down to the impending release of its sequel, I’ve had one thought in my head, do I continue from where I am, quite progressed, certainly character developed the way I wanted to be, and possibly forget about all the wonderful nuances that the game offered when I originally played it, or do I take one huge leap backwards, start from scratch and take it all in?
To give full quality to the continuation of the story line in the second game, released this Friday in the UK, I decided that I really, really should be starting from the beginning because my knowledge of the story can only lend to the quality of story from the second game, so that’s what I’ve done, Commander Shepard circa February 2008 is no more, instead he has been re-built, although not quite better, stronger or faster… yet.
