Mass Effect, Dragon Age, and Replayability

With the sights of Mass Effect: Andromeda looming on the horizon, I patiently wait the days until I can get my hands on the game and revel in all that is Mass Effect.

If anyone knows me well, they know that I am a HUGE Mass Effect fan, and have played the series more times than an average person would find reasonable.

Mass Effect's main draw to me is its emphasis on narrative, world-building, and player choice. The developers created such a compelling and interactive world to explore. The multitude of choices provides players with a sense of control of how they would want act in certain situations. After completing the game for the first time, I remember just sitting there during the killer end credits song, and thinking to myself, "Wow, that was freaking awesome. I cannot wait to play this again and go full Renegade".

Mass Effect 2's Suicide Mission is hands down the best
level I've ever played in a video game

Until then, I rarely played narrative driven games more than once. Mass Effect was the game that got me into playing RPGs, and I am forever grateful to my brother for picking up the game on a whim during a family vacation. Considering giving the series yet another play through, I began to question myself on why I liked the series so much, and continue to keep replaying it years later. Everything about the game appeals to me as I love RPGs, I love Sci-Fi, and I love action-adventure games. However, that is not the real reason why I love the game so much, those preferences just guided me towards it. I love the series so much because of the engaging narrative and its emphasis on the impact of player choice.

After playing a number of other RPGs, a friend of mine suggested I give the Dragon Age series a shot. Dragon Age: Inquistion had just been released, and everyone was eating it up, calling it one of the best RPGs to date. And seeing how it was also released by Bioware I decided to give it a chance. While I am not the biggest fan of High Fantasy settings, I have to hand it to Bioware for creating an even more deep, and complex world than Mass Effect and I was instantly hooked.

After churning through the first two games, I set my sights on Inquisition and began playing Dragon Age Keep, an application that allows you to "import your saves" through an interactive storybook making choices as you go through a condensed version of the entire series. It took me nearly 30 freaking minutes finish the damn thing. It's honestly ridiculous how many different choices you can make, and all of which can influence the story in minor or drastic ways.

If you aren't running this squad at all times
in Inquisition, then you are doing it wrong

After completing the game, I met up with the same friend of mine who suggested I play the series, and discussed our thoughts on the overall series. As we were talking, I remember having to stop him several times because I was getting so confused from all the different possibilities that could occur based on what your characters origin was, what class you played, as well as the effects decisions had from previous games. I remember feeling especially confused and overwhelmed by all the lore when we were talking about Inquisition. My friend went into describing his playthrough and I was amazed. It was almost like we had played completely different games. Some characters or events that appeared in my games (which seemed  pretty important to me) did not even appear in his, and vice versa.

The lore, player choice, and character interactions are so much more complex than any game I've ever played; the amount of work that must have gone into creating these games is honestly terrifying. I must imagine they have some enormous flowchart describing the hundreds of different interactions with some dude given the nearly impossible task of making sure there aren't any plot holes or incompatibilities.

As much as I loved playing Dragon Age: Origins, Inquisition is really where the series shines in my opinion. The decisions from the first and second game carry massive weight into Inquisition, which, in my opinion, makes up for Dragon Age 2's less than stellar performance. Hawke is pretty cool, but  he (OR SHE) ain't no Warden or Inquisitor. After playing Inquisition, it really seems like the second game was literally all just setup for Inquisition, which gives me enough motivation to justify playing through it again. As much as I love the Mass Effect series, its replayability pales in comparison to the Dragon Age series. For example, there are 7 different background stories you can pick for your character in Origins, and 6 different background stories for Inquisition, all of which change how the game starts, and how characters interact with you. Then you can pick your gender, all of which have different romance options, and what class you will play as, which ALSO can change how how characters interact with you. There's a lot of stuff, and I don't even know the half of it.

Hopefully Mass Effect: Andromeda is able to achieve the incredibly high standards they have set for themselves with the Dragon Age and Mass Effect trilogies. I just hope that it won't get too in the way of my school work...