Mass Effect

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that Mass Effect was one of the games that I was looking forward to. Mass Effect is the next RPG from Bioware - one of the premier developers of western style RPGs and my favourite RPG developer by far (I've played all of their RPGs except Neverwinter Nights).

After having played Blue Dragon, which I blogged about last week, I am especially looking forward to Mass Effect. Although Blue Dragon was good, the problem with JRPGs in general is that you don't really feel like you are the protagonist. In JRPGs, the protagonist is always a well developed character (assuming the developers did a good job!) and has his own personality etc. You go through the game and the only thing which you really control is how he levels up.

However, in WRPGs, the character and quests are generally designed to be a bit more open ended. This means that the protagonist in most cases, acts the way that you as the player want him to - you get to decide what you want to do and how you want to repond in different situations. Not only does this give you more replayability, but for me, it also increases the empathy I feel with the main character. Considering how long an RPG can last, this is quite an important "feature".

This is the reason that I tend to prefer WRPGs although I do still enjoy playing JRPGs for the storys which are generally quite good.

Anyway, as I said, Mass Effect is the next RPG from Bioware and I can't wait to get my hands on this. Historically, I have played each of their RPGs at least 2-3 times so I have a lot of expectations for this one. Just to share my enthusiasm, I have provided below some recent trailers and clips from the game. If you are interested, check out the games website here. I'm also not the only one looking forward to this game as it was recently awarded Best Console Game and Best RPG of E3 2007 by game critics!

The first trailer you see below is an in-game trailer shown at the recent E3. It primarily shows some of the combat mechanics and some of the back story to the game.




The next clip below shows an in-game conversation between Shepard (the protagonist) and Liara, one of his crew. As you can see, it looks like the schmuck is trying to chat up Liara (go Kirk!). The conversation mechanic in this game looks awesome and I really can't wait to check it out when the game comes up.