Mass Effect

[MythOfProgress]

another piece of media i remember catching onto before everything went to shit. mass effect is a military science fiction space opera game that takes place in the far future of 2183-2186. in this game, we play as protagonist Commander Shepard who fights against a threat referred to as the reapers-which is mass effect's answer to the fermi paradox problem. can only refer to the original trilogy because i haven't gone through the process of playing Mass Effect:Andromeda.

for what it's worth- i know most people don't like the way this ended-considering it "space magic" and all. for me though it was mostly a guilty pleasure- and a fitting end to a story that ran it's course-though it wasn't perfect in handling it's characters.

the gameplay is pretty rigid but enjoyable, evolving throughout the game franchise with limited resource mangement and easy shooting in the first game, the second is where it becomes more of a cover-based shooter and the third becomes a mix of both with a higher emphasis on movement - though you'll spend a good portion of your time talking and using the dialogue wheel with the characters you meet.

the setting is pretty, being set in a futuristic landscape where humanity(and other organic, alien species) has advanced enough to the point of being able to use the the mass relays(mass transit devices scattered across the landscape which help with traversing the milky way galaxy- turning journeys that would take years or centuries even into days or hours by traveling faster than light. keep in mind travelling faster than light would require massless particles- which in the universe of Mass Effect they've already discovered through a substance called Element Zero), there's plenty of environments and landscapes you can get caught in- there's even YouTube videos with an emphasis on the ambience of which setting you like best
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bX85F85 ... Pv9hrKHpNZ. keep in mind this is just for the first game- you can find plenty of similar ambiences for the second and third entries on the same channel.

the lore of the franchise is pretty extensive- you can go to the codex screen to learn/remind yourself of certain information regarding topics that interest you as a player- regarding species, technologies, planetary structures and civilizations. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lc4EKvgGHL4.

rating this using mohs level of science-fiction hardness- this is in the "One Big Lie" catagory- most of the science in here is actually pretty accurate with the One Big Lie in this instance being the element zero substance. as mentioned before, this substance is used to manipulate the mass of objects, with positive currents increasing mass and negative currents decreasing mass- allowing for a wide variety of applications like going faster than light, using artificial gravity/hover technology, creating force-fields and weapons that fire grains of dust with the force and piercing capacity of bullets. element zero can also affect organics- giving them abilities similar to telekinesis.

comparing this to our world however, we don't have any actual substances that allow for manipulating mass to that extent. climate change in the game is (understandably) toned down as while we do get a few mentions of it affecting Earth in some capacity(with extreme weather events and whatnot), we are never truly shown the actual worst of it.

there's the notion of resource shortages not really being much of a thing(as far as i call, i don't remember any situations in the game/lore where Shepard or other characters having no resources.) the xeno-biology of the various alien species is somewhat implausible- as a good deal of them seem to resemble the species of our earth in some capacity(not judging this from a narrative perspective, we all have to draw inspiration from somewhere), with Turians resembling Avians(birds), Krograns resembling reptiles(lizards), salarians resembling amphibians(fish), drell resembling reptiles once more, Hanar resembling amphibians(big stupid jellyfish), asari resembling humans, protheans resembling anthropods, rachni resembling insects.

overall, it's enjoyable and i don't doubt some measure of technologies in here might be plausible- then again i suppose the real-life equivalent of the reapers is overshoot, and we're most likely in the end-stages of that cycle.

[Cyber_Rebel]

Looking very forwards to Mass Effect 4 (5?) being released in a few years, easily one of my favorite game series ever.

Asari resembling humans

There was a very interesting scene in the bar of the second game, where a Turian, a Salarian, and a human were arguing over how the Asari resembled their species the most. I suppose one could just chalk it up to being humanoid, but like some others, I always thought it would've been cool if the Asari tailored how they appear to look to better mate with different species. Basically, their true appearance would be a mystery if they had gone in this direction. Taking in the genetic code of separate species was a big part of their lore, so it would've made sense.

Aside from, in regard to the endings I just wish they were done better and a bit more different from one another. Personally, I wish there was an option to have "synthesis" with the Geth rather than the Reapers, since I really liked their story and EDI. The same message would've gotten across, and I imagine it would've been an easier pill to swallow for those who didn't prefer that choice. The Reapers themselves were also likely portrayed as a bit too powerful to ever have a satisfying conclusion, and I even remember one of the devs mentioning on Bioware forums that they were intended to be a post-singularity type of machine consciousness. Considering that, "defeating" them conventionally was a writing conundrum.

climate change

Scrapped Dark Energy plot seemed like it was intended to be a galactic wide version of climate change. Curious as to how that ending might've turned out.

[Nanotechandmorefuture]

"I'm Commander Shepard and proud to be part of the Future Timeline group"

Its a damn shame I only found out about the game through a free origin download in 2016! ARGH SO MUCH DUMB STUFF HAPPENNED THAT MADE ME MISS OUT ON THE GOOD STUFF BACK THEN. Worst of all was a lot of negative distractions were all for no reason at all!

Yeah the series is nice and if they continue it well wonder where it goes. They battled the Reapers so what else is there after? Now that will be a task to solve.

Edit to add: Exploring the galaxy would be extremely awesome! The problem with not cracking immortality and being younger at the same time is that it does not give the video game abundance of not caring about time. Once life extension and getting younger at the same time are perfected galactic travel will be so amazing