So after going through some annoying computer fixing over the weekend

i took two days off from work to relax and get back down to earth before getting back into the things i work on, had to calm down and relax some for once =)

So i played through Mass Effect 2, one of the several big titles on my pile of shame waiting to get played whenever i might have a day or two off in one go (and man is that pile growing).

I won´t write a full in depth review on this, there are plenty of those around already so on that end, to keep the review bit shorter:

Its an excellent mixture of action and rpg elements with great storyline, satisfying gameplay and beautifully polished presentation.

If you´re interested in the least in sci fi, action focussed gameplay  which also has propper storytelling or good game design you should totally play this. What may seem like, oh, yeay, another space action shooter thingy has such an involved storyline and so deep characters that one gets attached to it like with very few other games.

What i´ll focus on more now is the decision making part in Mass Effect.

Decision making always had a role in games, since, well, at the core its all about the player deciding to some extent how things progress.

Mass Effect 2 is among those games where its more about decisions that have a bigger impact on the storyline in the longterm and less about the small itsy bitsy things (though there are some of those, too).

For Mass Effect 2 Bioware has actually toned down or even thrown out a lot of the typical to rpg in detail tweaking of character stats and upgrades and in return put way more focus on upgrading characters through actions in the game and also having much more focus on the dialog and quicktime event decisions the player makes.

I´m a bit torn apart whether i love it or not:

In Mass Effect 2 decisions one makes as player have a big impact.

They set who your team members are, with whom you have a love relationship and even way bigger scale things like the fate of an entire race or the entire galaxy.

On one side that´s great because it gives the decisions a weight like in few other games.

One really sits there and has to think forth and back sometimes whether one wants to choose this or another option during a conversation. In some moments, unlike in the classic dialogue tree system of mass effect 1, there are also events where one quickly has to decide how to react during a conversation, without having time to think about the decision lengthy.

The decision making also gives the game and game series a huge amount of replay value in theory because one could play through each part several times to experience quite different outcomes.

On the other side that´s also where the downside comes in in my eyes:

Its sometimes difficult or not possible at all to foresee all the possible consequences of a decision in the moment one makes them and the earlier big decisions come into the game in its progress, the more content one would have to play through again to experience the rest of the game again but with having made a different decision at that one moment in the storyline.

Some spoilerific examples in this paragraph to give an idea of the scale of the consequences:

-For example in Mass Effect 1 one decided to kill or leave alive a character of a race and based on that all of that race treats you quite a bit different in Mass Effect 2 throughout the storyline.

-In Mass Effect 2 itself building and maintaining relationships plays a much bigger role and there are several points in the story and gameplay where deciding one way or the other leads to different team members in the crew and possible different relationships, in some cases making one character happier upsets the other with the outcome that one can´t have a love relationship anymore with a character one maybe got along well with throughout the whole game before.

So the thing setting it most apart from many other games is both a strength and a weakness depending on what´s more important to you:

Your actions have consequences, big consequences in many cases, and unless you play through several hours of content several times you´ll have to live with a decision you made because it can´t be changed in any other way in many cases, throughout .

Its great when one plays through it and throughout the game is happy with all the decisions one made, or more the outcome they lead to.

Its also ok if one is fine with it no matter if it went as one wanted or not.

But if someone is an ocd type guy who wants to experience all sorts of outcomes or one wants to play through it once with outcomes one wanted, well, that´s tough.

If one wants to change some of those decisions that´s not made easy at all, one basically has to know which save slot was closest to that decision, then load that, pick a different decision and play the rest of the game onwards from there.

That may sound like a typical game scenario, but in Mass Effect,where decisions have so much more impact and can span over 2-3 games each with 15 hours or more of game time, at some point it becomes way less compelling to play through big chunks one experienced several times already to be able to do one different decision at one moment.

I´d really like to experience some of the rest of the game after having made a different decision in some sections but with my work, looking after my nephew and other things keeping me busy i will likely at best get to do one more playthrough of this before Mass Effect 3 comes out and that´ll be it.

I think the Mass Effect creators would do great in changing their saving/loading model a good bit to allow people like me to actually experience more of the story alternatives.

Things i´d like to see regarding that:

-If one could also add a note to a save slot, so type a short message that could for example be “before deciding for this girl” or “start of krogan killed path”, just a small reminder for when one wants to access another decision option

-If the game would auto create a save each time before a big decision is made

-if one could skip through chapters after playing through it once until one has another big decision to make

-If for every save slot there was a “last time on..” summary at the beginning where one can look through either the last few moments and current mission info of the last time one played it or even through a keyword list of big decisions one made.

-if one could create folders or another way to seperate saves for different story branches

Yeah, such things would make it more gamey and take away a bit from the weight of the decisions, having the option to experience it in different way easier and all that.

On the other side it would give players the chance to experience more of the decision outcomes than they would do now and would also allow them to, after knowing the outcome of some decisions next time, maybe more make those decisions they are happier with.

Mass Effect 2 is a great game and also good in reminding one that in real life some decisions have big impact and can´t be reverted, but i´d like it if in Mass Effect 3 it gives one the chance to be able to change decisions in easier way since, well,

isn´t it one of the great sides of games compared to real life that one should be able to experience more in the way one wants to and actually see how things would have gone different if one made a different decision in that one moment?

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 25th, 2010 at 3:17 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.