I pledge allegiance to Jean-Luc of the United Federation of Planets, and to Glasgow-kiss everyone that gets in the way of a peaceful resolution. I think it fair to say, through all that I write about and all that I consume in the realm of entertainment, I may like a little bit of sci-fi. I say a little as I write about Doctor Who weekly, I’ve written about Picard, Lower Decks, and even came around to the idea of Discovery being palatable Star Trek in the end. Then there is of course, The Orville, which I got Alexx into watching and ultimately loving. These are just some examples.

You see, when Mass Effect hit shelves in 2007, I was ten and didn’t like the prospect of an RPG, no matter the format or setting. Over the years of exploring games, I’ve developed that point of enjoying an RPG from time to time, expanding my horizons with point upgrades in charisma each time. The game that got me into the genre was arguably a more complex, more detailed, and the complete opposite of sci-fi and my tastes in particular: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. The climax to the fantasy series based on some books I’d never heard of, and starring this gruff bloke I didn’t know. It captured me.

The complications of the life of this man I’d learn to love, Geralt, and his ensemble of friends, family, and adversaries made the bigger and scarier parts of jumping into the genre much easier. With constant reading on every horizon, it makes a dyslexic sometimes convulse in horror. Nonetheless, marching on through the quests unlike any other, building that desire to delve deeper into the world and explore, made for the foundations of what are my newer tastes in gaming. Of course, following that came Fallout 4, Final Fantasy XV, the Dishonored series, Skyrim, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, the Yakuza series, and the ultimate high fantasy barrier, every From Software game that’s Souls–Borne-esque.

I actually tried the Mass Effect series a while back, stumbling as I do when I go to any pre-Skyrim RPG and end up disliking any Fallout that doesn’t have a 4 in it. I don’t know why I stopped, I just did. I believe it may have been a desire to get back to work and focus a little more, but I am not entirely sure of the purpose of uninstalling it. Being a little around ten years old itself by that point, I believe it would be fair to suggest that age was starting to show. In menus and in general graphically it was showing a few wrinkles, but I think the design itself was also showing some age too.

Of course, I’ve been playing a little bit more of the game recently in my time, making up for what I had lost out on when I uninstalled it back in 2018. When the Legendary Edition was announced last year, I think it was fair to say a few of us put our sights on the series again, looking to return Shepard to the role of Spectre. We wanted to return to the giant space opera that is the trilogy as a whole, seeking out new and old life throughout the galaxy. Perhaps you’d make a new conquest, and maybe, just maybe, you’d be able to sleep with all those aliens without Fox News getting their panties up a metaphorical twist.

Let’s not get too ahead of ourselves here: The first time I played Mass Effect I wasn’t entirely sold. The menus were not all that friendly as I started the game, suggesting I read the name and hit enter. Somewhere in there, I was meant to alter John, and possibly turn him into Jane, but I didn’t know, so I just marched on with this boring-looking man. This is where I think the second go around the merry-go-round was useful. Possibly the Legendary Edition was helping, letting me better create my Shepard. My lady Shepard Jane, who on second thought hours later I’d have preferred to have called Amanda.

Anyway, Jane and I have gone to the edges of Citadel space with Garrus, Tali, and the others, attempting to be the hero in my own little story. A story that has seen me take on Deanna Troi and her wonderbra, do what we’re all doing with love as I searched for a Keeper (or twenty), and ultimately destroy the council. I only wound up swearing a few times. I think it is fair to say spoilers and warnings of such can get right in the bin at this moment, the game is 15 years old this November after all.

At its core, it is a giant space opera set against the backdrop of a Saturday morning cartoon villain trying to kill all life, for some reason. Ultimately you find out why Saren, a Turian or the Galaxy’s most evil velociraptor-being, is trying to create mass genocide, but I don’t think it is entirely clear early on. However, for all the grand and spectacular party tricks of all of the Milky Way playing host to a game of cat and mouse, Mass Effect isn’t about that really. It is about the stories and the small personal quests that send Shepard prancing up and down the Citadel for hours helping alcoholics, or fighting AI that have been siphoning from the casino in Flux.

Many games, TV, and films try to induce this sense of otherworldliness to their fiction, often with little more than a bit of blue make-up. Some, such as The Orville and Star Trek, do this well and make what is fantasy a believable reality for moments at a time for some. Nonetheless, I’d argue many games fail in this regard, often relying on either a few too many humanoids or AI systems gone rogue. While Mass Effect does have that from time to time, the Krogans, the Geth, the Hanar, The Keepers, the Asari, The Elcor, and the Volus, make up for weird and interesting creatures. Some of them are humanoid but ultimately feel a little more fleshed out and natural than Chiana was in Farscape.

All that said, it does have a bit of an older RPG issue in that while the world is lovely and very inviting, (I love the Citadel) it is a bit empty. Similar to the issue with sandbox games, most of your time in the world is doing nothing more than idly traveling between quests. There are no collectibles unless you count text documents in your codex, which you get from talking with people, and ultimately, you only talk to people to get quests or shop. It is hard to say an RPG shouldn’t have an open world, and that’s not what I am saying. However, there is nothing in it other than the quests in the first place. So when you are walking across the concourse to get to the next quest, you are kind of bored by a majority of it.

The scope, the idea of these large venues of habitation or even the political heart of the galaxy, is one of the unbeatable traits of Mass Effect. It is the first to truly capture that scale. However, for all that I admire that beauty and the game despite its recent new coat of paint, it does (in some areas) feel a little old. I’m mostly looking at Captain Anderson, who for some reason looks dead, not just in the “BioWare can’t do faces and expression” kind of dead either. If anything, characters look like what our rose-tinted vision think the PS3/Xbox 360 era looked like, but every image I’m including was captured with the Xbox One screenshot feature.

I’m not saying you are being shafted by the Legendary Edition. Once you look at the editions side-by-side you see the difference, but there is still that question in the back of your head. At least there is in mine, I have to keep reminding myself it is not a new game, but a reskinning. This ultimately raises the question that Mike had a while back, is this port/remaster worth getting? Well, that comes with questions I have of you: Do you own the originals on PC? If yes, you can kind of just mod the game to look as good, or even better than this. With only minor tweaks as far as I can tell, I don’t think you would be jumping for your debit card/credit card.

If you think a photo mode, a little jiggery-pokery with bum-focused cameras, visuals getting a little bit of a kick, and the DLC is worth it, I wouldn’t blame you. On the other hand, for the few people who haven’t played Mass Effect before or just want to pick up the series again to play on a console, I highly recommend the Legendary Edition. On consoles, it might have a few things I am not entirely sold on, with the skill tree powers being poorly explained (or not at all). I went 10-hours before I looked at the flimsy cards they give you with the controls, swearing quite loudly early in the morning.

The space adventures of Spectre Jane Shepard, her blue lover, and alien friends captivates me, and it always was going to. I just needed to give it the time. Some dated design notwithstanding, the world and its extraordinarily compelling inhabitants shine through the roughness. With a cast of some noticeable names and voices to lesser-known talent, every one of them stands out from either their performance or the writing behind them. It was never going to be from their expressions, now were they? It seems redundant to say, but the Legendary Edition of Mass Effect 1 is the definitive one. Though, none of that makes up for those damn rovers!

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Mass Effect 1

$59.99

9

Score

9.0/10

Pros

• A world of wonder and disgust.
• Pure adventure.
• It understood how to make you a political pawn on a grand setting.
• A personal stories bring the world to life

Cons

• Those damn rovers!
• To smile or not to smile, that is the question.
• Moral choice systems.