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May. 29th, 2008
Okay, so I may have finally given in and purchased an Xbox 360 so that I can play Mass Effect.
...IT'S NOT MY FAULT, BIOWARE MADE ME DO IT
Anyway, ME is awesome, as expected. The customization for your main character is mind-blowingly flexible (even if all the male faces you can make tend to be very craggy-jawed and rough-skinned...to get anything approximating my own face I had to go to a female main character, and so I ended up just doing something that bore the vaguest resemblance to what I would look like as a MANLY SOLDIER MAN and went with that, since I wanted to play through as a male first).
But what struck me even more than that was the fact that it gives you a choice of pasts for your character, and they actually are referenced in the story! (I.e., if you grew up an impoverished megacity orphan who joined the military and became a war hero, people mention this, whereas if you grew up a military brat who was the sole survivor of some kind of horrific alien attack, people mention that instead. It seems obvious in retrospect but still, why aren't more RPGs with customizable main characters doing stuff like that?)
Also of course the plot is awesome so far, and the characters likable. I do think it's a bit unfair that you can be lesbian but not gay, but honestly the fact that this game lets you do any kind of same-sex relationship as more than just cheesecake fanservice is kind of nice (Bioware has a good track record of this, what with the possibility of female main character/Juhani in Knights of the Old Republic and then Jade Empire, which DOES let you be both lesbian and gay; the latter is also their least successful game to date, though probably not because of that.)
Also I'd like my stomach to stop devouring itself now plzkthx
...IT'S NOT MY FAULT, BIOWARE MADE ME DO IT
Anyway, ME is awesome, as expected. The customization for your main character is mind-blowingly flexible (even if all the male faces you can make tend to be very craggy-jawed and rough-skinned...to get anything approximating my own face I had to go to a female main character, and so I ended up just doing something that bore the vaguest resemblance to what I would look like as a MANLY SOLDIER MAN and went with that, since I wanted to play through as a male first).
But what struck me even more than that was the fact that it gives you a choice of pasts for your character, and they actually are referenced in the story! (I.e., if you grew up an impoverished megacity orphan who joined the military and became a war hero, people mention this, whereas if you grew up a military brat who was the sole survivor of some kind of horrific alien attack, people mention that instead. It seems obvious in retrospect but still, why aren't more RPGs with customizable main characters doing stuff like that?)
Also of course the plot is awesome so far, and the characters likable. I do think it's a bit unfair that you can be lesbian but not gay, but honestly the fact that this game lets you do any kind of same-sex relationship as more than just cheesecake fanservice is kind of nice (Bioware has a good track record of this, what with the possibility of female main character/Juhani in Knights of the Old Republic and then Jade Empire, which DOES let you be both lesbian and gay; the latter is also their least successful game to date, though probably not because of that.)
Also I'd like my stomach to stop devouring itself now plzkthx
