Mass Effect - On this day

The games of the BioWare development team were initially stubborn RPG hits in which entertainment was found exclusively by gamers on the PC. With the advent of the Xbox console, this began to change, and BioWare has since gravitated towards a spectacle of cinematic proportions. This was already evident in games such as Star Wars: KOTOR and Jade Empire, but the clearest demonstration exactly, 14 years ago, was brought to us by Mass Effect.

Mass Effect was the beginning of BioWare’s sci-fi trilogy and testing the terrain with new techniques like scanning actors and facial animations for the characters in the game. Based on these technologies, BioWare decided to play roles through making important decisions with consequences. To this end, they developed the main character Shepard, who was not an empty record, but already had a set position in the story itself.

And that story was set in the year 2183, more precisely in our galaxy where Commander Shepard and his team sought to prevent the return of the ancient Reaper race, chasing a treacherous agent named Saren. The first game served as an introduction to the significantly more grandiose second part, and its most impressive part was the large and foreign universe full of different races.

Mass Effect was an action game with a third-person view, in which the fight could be paused and commanders could be given orders. When there was no exploration of the world through hiking, the Mako off-road vehicle drove across the planets. That part of the game was not the most popular among the players so Mako did not return to the remaining two games.

At first, Mass Effect came out as an exclusive for the then Xbox 360 console. The PC version followed half a year later and was praised for improved controls. On the PlayStation (3), this first part came out only in 2012, after the series had been played by more than seven million players by then.

The first part of the trilogy is usually considered by fans to be the most boring chapter. Nevertheless, it was crucial in setting the stage for a significantly more impressive sequel. This year, the Mass Effect trilogy got its remaster for current platforms, and the biggest aesthetic interventions hit the very first game.