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BioWare vet says Mass Effect and Dragon Age got "too homogenous," wishes Dragon Age had been more "Neverwinter-like" | GamesRadar+ WWW.GAMESRADAR.COM Trip down memory lane

I have replayed and beat the first Mass Effect so I can finally beat Mass Effect 3 for the first time. Mass Effect had a special place in my heart, similar to Dragon Age: Origins, but on replaying, I realized my memories of it are far greater than what the game is. Now, I still really love the combat in ME1. I've only ever been soldier until now, but this time I made a space mage with Vanguard. I recall never being much of an ability user and this time around I set NPC ability usage to all and rolling two biotics and a tech-wizard stunned locked the entire game on Insanity. I don't know if this was a side effect of the legendary upgrade, but ME1 is fuckin' easy on the hardest difficulty. However, I wonder if I am just a smarter gamer. In the past, I would have never picked a class like Vanguard nor would I have used major defensive skills like Barrier, which really makes the Vanguard into an unkillable shotgunning machine. Whatever the case, I have never liked the ME combat more than I have with my most recent play-thru. It was a blast charging into the enemy while enemy projectiles failed to pass my unnatural biotic defense. I have loaded up ME2 already, still picked Vanguard, but it breaks my heart to see it gutted of its utility. Sure, I could reroll to adept, and I might, but I really wanted to go Vanguard all the way. It is just that on Insanity in ME2, I feel like I am taking loads of damage, and all of the ways I avoided damage were taken from me. I didn't use cover pretty much ever in my most ME1 play-thru. My Shep is just the standard John Shepard. In my mind, Shepard is a character as much as Geralt is and so I just left the name as the default. However, I really wanted to create a "punished Shepard" that I could carry over into ME2. I kind of succeeded, but the story of ME1 doesn't really have the depth for my punished Shepard RP to exist. And I have no interest in killing off everyone in ME2 as a punished Shepard would never allow that to happen. While it is the most popular pick, I went sole survivor, but I also went least popular with colonist. This is because not only does your entire squad die as sole survivor, but all of your family and friends die as colonist. Sadly, the game never really connects these two events in the way I feel they should. The next step in my punished Shepard RP is to romance Ashley () but to select her to die on Virmire. She becomes the final victim of the Shepard curse, and Shep rebounds with Liara in his time of hurt. That aspect of my punished Shepard went alright, but not as great as I wanted it to. Again, there is no in-game connection of events so Shep doesn't really despair as I'd want him to. But, getting with Liara after Ashley felt like it worked decently. Character reactions were appropriate. Of course, I couldn't properly romance Ashely and Liara as getting the scene where you have to choose wouldn't go well with my RP. I actually had to do virmire "early" for this to work and I can't do the core missions in my preferred order for this, at least not in the first play-thru, but I wasn't willing to do two play-thrus. So, while I was on the path to romance Ashely, the romance could only progress to stage 2 of 4 instead of 3 of 4. Still worked out pretty well with Liara and Ash not being happy with your "friendliness" toward the other and Liara's dialogue post-virmire works really well for my RP. That brings me to the two ultimate bad things with ME1. Male Shep's voice acting is bad and companions are so underwritten. I have only played the intro of ME2 but my god Mark Meer really stepped up his game. ME1 Shep is a robot. Almost every line is spoken with so much... neutrality. Unless you pick the bottom option which has him sounding like Shooter McGavin. Those are his only settings. Asshole or Monotone Soldier. It makes the romances feel wrong. I know he is a commander, but he romances others while using the same tone a superior officer would use to command those under him. Seems like it is much improved in ME2. Now in my memories, Wrex and Garrus are these great characters with loads of witty and funny dialogue. It is so obvious why they are the best! Or so I thought. Your companions are almost irrelevant. Sure, each one has some good lines every now and then, but they add almost nothing to the story. I honestly should have used Liara more, but I was so unwilling to swap out Garrus and Wrex. Liara was my third most used, but Tali and Kaidan saw almost no screen time. I have no clue what they have to offer to the main missions and their interactions on the ship do not inspire me to bring them out on missions either. Garrus and Wrex also are such a balanced team. Liara swaps with Wrex pretty easily even though she isn't a tank, but while there is plenty of Geth to hack, I don't really feel Tali's hack is all that useful when you are running two biotics who can stun lock with space magic. Garrus is just the better combatant. Anyway, your companions have little to offer and don't talk often. They never talk on the field like in Dragon Age, my elevator rides were so few and always filled with new reports, and overall there was just so little banter. It seems crazy how loved some of these characters are when they lack so much. I know ME2 changes this somewhat, but people have always loved Garrus and Wrex and it sucks to see my favorite characters as boring now. Maybe there is something wrong with the Legendary Edition and I just missed a lot of interactions, but I don't think I did. I mean, once you do Garrus's missions in ME1 he gets stuck in this loop of thanking Shepard and has nothing new to say until you set sail for Ilos. I really feel like all the companions are undercooked except for maybe Liara which makes me regret that I didn't use her more this time around. Now maybe back in the day, ME had a really good story when compared to its rivals but it is very lacking now. I am also somewhat put off by how much fantasy is in my science fiction. So much of this game feels like a fantasy game with a sci-fi skin. Like Star Wars without the lightsabers. Makes sense given what games they made before, but it feels wrong for a game where Earth is real and exists. I'm not even talking about the biotic powers, but shit like the telepathic 50k-year-old plant and regular mentions of higher powers. I'm also bothered by how young a spacefaring humanity is and how their advancements are unrealistic. What I mean is, Earth is Earth. If your story contains a realistic Earth, Humanity's advancement needs to feel much more realistic. Earth, in-game, is way too advanced for something that was less than 200 years in our future and there is no bullshit alien magi-tech on Mars either. How humans became spacefaring in-game is just bad and wrong IMO. It really isn't a big deal but I don't like it. Ideally, such alien tech would have fallen into the laps of humanity instead of it being some buried treasure on mars... Anyway, about the main story, it just isn't that great until the final act. The Lockdown, Ilos, and the endgame is really when the story picks up which is like the last 5-ish hours. Now that last act was fucking great. I had forgotten all of it except for the final battle with Saren. I had forgotten all about Vigil who is great. Virmire was pretty great too with Sovereign, but the story wasn't that strong there. Of course, Virmire was something I remember clearly except for Sovereign so it could just be that I was expecting a fresh new experience from a book I have already read multiple times. None of the side quests were that special. Not like in something like Dragon Age: Origins. Quests with the fan, and where you punched the reporter seemed much more impactful back in the day, but I may be adding my experiences with ME1 and 2 together so they seem even greater in my memory. What this game does really well are atmosphere and music. The Citadel is almost perfect for what it is. The music on the Normandy really sets the mood, and the game has such much "ambient" synth-wave music that you can't escape that feeling of being a Space Boy in Space, doing Space Boy things. Each planet, even if they are reusing skyboxes, give off such strong feelings of adventure, dread, and loneliness. There is a special type of horror to being the only living thing on an empty planet. So many of the planets feel like places where you shouldn't be. A place you need to leave asap. Any dead people and abandoned buildings you find only serve to remind you that you don't belong on this empty world. Like god, imagine waking up on a world with no life other than plants. Mountains tower over you in every path, and when you encounter a vast empty plain all you can feel is dread. At least for me, when you are in your shitty Mako, with no visible companions, you truly feel alone in the universe. It is a special type of horror that you can't achieve on purpose. You couldn't actually make a game like that because it would just come across as a shitty UE asset flip. I just love the feeling of landing on a new planet. I won't miss it in ME2 as it does get boring, but there is something about it that is great. It is what makes Mass Effect stand out for the better. Finally, as I was playing it I was reminded of another game I really enjoyed despite it being shit. Of course, I am talking about ELEX. There is something about ELEX 1 and ME1 that is just so similar. Mass Effect does have this level of shittiness that I didn't remember. And it isn't just in the bugs either. ME does have a good amount of jank that really makes an RPG great. No, the bug where you can use your power wheel during the final battle with Saren is not what I am talking about. But shit like the Biotic abilities and the high explosive rounds. They are beyond fuck up. Enemies just rag doll constantly and are stun locked to death. Often I would Lift an enemy and send them flying so far up into the air with my shotgun that the game would just kill them. Knocking enemies off an edge has them die instantly and comedically. Like, they would die if they fell off their bed or something. Shit like that really just makes a game great. Now I'm off to ME2. I remember less about this game so I should be in for a somewhat fresh experience. I have a feeling I will be just as letdown by the gameplay changes as I was when it first came out, but that's just the way it is.

Guardians of the Galaxy/Deus Ex prequel writer is BioWare's new senior narrative director | PC Gamer WWW.PCGAMER.COM Mary DeMarle joined the studio this month.

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