Last night it finally happened. I finished Mass Effect 1! It feels like such an accomplishment to actually finish a game, especially seeing as I was about 75% of the way through it the first time I tried to play it through before my computer crashed. Even though I had seen George play through a bit of it, it was only here and there so I didn’t know what happened at the end or in a few key points of the game. I am assuming that most people have played it seeing as it came out in 2008 originally, so I am going to talk about some key plot points and my reactions to them. SPOILER ALERT if you haven’t played the game. Stop reading now.

Firstly, I loved the game. It had the right mix of shooting things, action and dialogue. The story was great too. You really don’t see that many sci-fi action games with stories as compelling as Mass Effect. Given the fact that it was released in 2008 too, the graphics have stood up 7-8 years later. Sure Mass Effect 3 trumps it and any next gen releases will blow it away but I was pretty impressed.

I played a very different game to George which was fun. He played as a manshep Vanguard (biotic & soldier abilities) and I played as a femshep Adept (straight biotic). I was also pretty much a full renegade, as in I purposefully picked the decisions that would make me shoot people and generally be a bad ass. There was one point in the game though that brought up my paragon points, but I’ll get to that. It was a necessary sacrifice.

I will say, that playing as a female bad ass lead that I could customise was pretty awesome. The fact that you have the opportunity to “romance” (root) one of your crew mates, either Kaiden or Liara for me, gives the game even more of a story and really adds to the over all experience. I pretty much had both of them eating out of my had and didn’t know which one I really wanted to pursue, but then I think I said the wrong thing to Kaiden one time so I ended up with Liara. Clearly my shep has a thing for Asari as she also banged Sha’ira earlier in the game. But, alas, my one true space love Garrus was not an option in ME1. So really Liara is just a play thing till I get to ME2 and make Garrus my space boyfriend.

The squad mates were all pretty cool and added extra elements to the story. Once I had the full squad available I always had Wrex and Garrus by my side. They complimented my character’s abilities well. And I just love Wrex. Even though Garrus is my space boyfriend, I love Wrex as a character more. He is just so awesome. Which brings me to the time I had to wear gaining massive paragon points for my shep. It was the second to last mission of the main storyline which I didn’t get up to on my first play through attempt and I never actually saw George play through any of it. I did hear about the main outcome though because George grieved for the death of one of his squad mates for days. I knew it was between 2 of the squad that has to face an untimely death, Ashley or Kaiden. I didn’t really know who I was going to kill off at this point. I never used them in my actual mission squad and I was kinda romancing Kaiden, so I was leaning towards Ashley, but then, she did something I couldn’t forgive and bitch had to die. I didn’t know that there was a chance that you could kill of Wrex too. I am so glad I saved my game when I did. It was the only time I had to go back on a decision I made. Essentially I was trying to calm him down and then out of nowhere she shot him in the back! I was stunned and shocked. I loved Wrex. George didn’t even know that it was a possibility for Ashley to do this and he also laughed at my reaction for days. But I was seriously mourning a character from a video game. Clearly I went back and did the situation again and of course because I wanted him to live I picked up pretty much the only paragon points I received for the game. I was still a total bad ass renegade though. Nothing will change that.

I expected the final mission to be longer and tougher too. But it was a fun end to the game. I really enjoyed it and can’t wait to play ME2, then ME3 and then for when Andromeda comes out. All the Mass Effect. Oh, on a final note, Jennifer Hale is an amazing voice over actor. She bought such depth to femshep. I definitely prefer her over manshep, and Seth Green was great as Joker 🙂