The feeling of uniqueness is probably partially due to my personal feelings, but nonetheless the Mass Effect trilogy is basically my favorite RPG series ever. (I’ve tried KOTOR1 and it didn’t capture me in the same way unfortunately, I’m hoping to take another shot at KOTOR2 in the future).
There are many reasons, I just wanted to discuss them, and see what everyone else in the community thinks about the games we love:
The way mass effect uses a voiced player character and how that influences the response to player choices. This initially was something that had to grow on me. In games I’d played earlier like the Witcher 3 the fact that Geralt was voiced (which based on the game story was basically required) didn’t hurt the game, but there’s never really been a game like ME where half the time I’m more interested in what my character might say than the characters I’m interacting with.
I think it might have something to do with how they walk the line between generic player character and a character independent of player input. Take ME1, obviously the game doesn’t allow you to really do anything other than complete the story and fight saren. But every time something happens you’re typically presented with a choice that causes the player character to react differently, and that makes the situation interesting! It’s like the opposite of the ideal of RPGs like BG3 in a way, where the world can have more complex outcomes but the player character is always an uninteresting drone.
Then there’s the way scenes and dialogue are composed (even excluding the interrupt system in ME2 and 3) other than the cinematic style of dialogue that helps pull you in to the moment, I think the game can be very clever in how it introduces exposition or story beats. Take the conversation with sovereign in ME1, sovereigns dialogue doesn’t (I think it doesn’t at all but maybe there’s some minor variation) change at all no matter what dialogue option you pick, and most importantly, neither does Sheperds (I think)! (They always say no matter what option you pick “sovereign isn’t a reaper ship, it’s an actual reaper”). And, it works! (I didn’t notice that trick until I watched that scene like 3 times later on youtube). By taking a voiced character and having them say a line that “could” fit any option you don’t need to figure out how to keep your villain intimidating and serious across 3 different dialogue sequences while also hooking the player on the next part of their mission. This also works for when Sovereign provides information/is smug. Instead of having Shepherd have to say “that’s impossible“ and then having Sovereign berate the player it’s our companions that react and Sovereign responds to them (But either way the player learns more about the reapers).
This also applies to getting to know your companions, I find in a lot of RPGs the approval systems they have can sometimes make companion interactions feel like a chore, or the alternative is the companions are just plot-tools with no feeling of independence or personality. In ME there are lots of interactions you can have that have basically no plot or interpersonal relationship significance, but help build the feeling of the crew of the normandy. For example, companions just casually commenting about things independent of what they think you “should” do, or, because Shepard is also voiced, Shepard picking up the slack to make a conversation interesting when the characters just delivering exposition.
This is done in many interesting ways throughout the series: Thanes photographic recall of memories in conversations, at its most basic the different companion personalities bleeding into dialogue (the way dialogue in ME isn’t just a dropdown is also really nice, as it can let them show some conversation options organically and not overwhelm the player), or setting up a scene to make conversation appear more organic. For example, in ME1 when you talk to Ashley about her family the conversation starts with you overhearing a call to her sister, or when you talk to Zaeed about his experiences as a mercenary you interact with the different relics of his past in his room. This is only one aspect of the game, the companions, and I think despite ~15 years of distance from the ME series I’ve never seen another choice-dependent RPG put this much thought into making the companions seem like real people outside of their interactions with the player.
Anyways, these are just some thoughts I had and I wanted to ask if there are some things I missed, some flaws in the games I failed to notice (beyond the obvious ones that have been talked to death) or some games that offer a bit of an experience like mass effect.
thanks for reading!