This is an IGN opinion piece from Ryan McCaffrey, who worked at Official Xbox Magazine from 2002-2012 during the original Xbox and Xbox 360 era before joining IGN, where he remains “the Xbox guy.” In the run-up to Xbox’s 25th anniversary, he’ll be sharing his memories from the platform’s first quarter-century.
Anyone old enough to remember the Xbox 360’s earliest days, the ones before Mass Effect finally came out in November of 2007, will recall that BioWare’s epic space opera didn’t just come out of nowhere. It had been hugely anticipated and hyped up a whole lot… and I’m part of the reason why.
I worked at Official Xbox Magazine at the time, and to say we were excited for this RPG would be an understatement. This was a big, big deal. BioWare was, at the time, on a generational run, and Microsoft had signed them to an exclusive deal. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Jade Empire had already launched as Xbox exclusives, and the studio would go on to create the first two Mass Effect games as 360 exclusives before EA bought it and made it a multiplatform developer. In baseball terms, this was like the Arizona Diamondbacks, as a fledgling expansion team, signing Randy Johnson in 1999 and then watching him go out and promptly win four straight Cy Young Awards and a World Series.
As we approached the mid-point of that four-game exclusive run, BioWare had begun to promise the moon with Mass Effect. It teased a trilogy in which your story choices and progress would carry over from one game to the next and ultimately influence the outcome of the entire story. Not only that, Mass Effect was going to include a serious tech upgrade over BioWare’s previous games, utilizing the stunning Unreal Engine 3 to power its world and characters.
I didn’t get to review Mass Effect at OXM – Fall 2007 for the Xbox 360 was arguably the greatest three-month stretch in gaming history, which meant everyone at OXM was incredibly busy (I’d been assigned to review Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare). The honor went to my colleague, Paul Curthoys, who gave it a well-deserved 10 out of 10 – in-line with IGN’s own 9.4.
But while I didn’t pen the review, I sure as heck played it. And although I know most people hail Mass Effect 2 as the best in the series, I have always been and will always be a defender of the first game. While yes, its combat was clunkier than the more polished third-person shooting that the sequels brought, for me, the original game’s story is head-and-shoulders above anything in the subsequent games. Shepard’s journey to becoming a Spectre. Meeting classic companions like Wrex and Garrus for the first time and building your relationship with them through your choices (I 100% chose Ashley over Kaidan, how about you?). Exploring the vastness of the Citadel, which was supposed to be this massive hub of the galaxy where alien races from across the galaxy congregated – Mass Effect 1 succeeded in convincing me of that, whereas in Mass Effect 2, the Citadel was reduced to a tiny two-level corridor.
Remember the Elcor? Remember all of the sidequests you could take on? The Citadel was wondrous, and it wasn’t even the most memorable thing about my Mass Effect adventure. That would be the plot twist. Yup, BioWare got me again! I loved where the story went, and Saren was a great villain.
Sure, the framerate struggled to hit 30fps on the Xbox 360, and the elevator rides took forever, but the gameplay and story and world and characters were so damn good in Mass Effect that its technical limitations just didn’t matter. It really was the space opera BioWare had promised. It very clearly could not have been achieved on the previous-generation Xbox. It was genuinely amazing, and it took us on a four-plus-year-ride (Mass Effect 3 shipped in March of 2012 and concluded Shepard’s story) unlike anything we’d ever experienced in gaming before.
Those of you who were there at the time probably remember how awesome your first moments with Mass Effect were, and I hope a new generation gets a chance to experience some version of that with the untitled Mass Effect 5 – even if I’m skeptical that EA’s new venture-capital owners will let BioWare see a single-player game with minimal post-release monetization through to the finish line, especially after it’s already been in development for so long. I hope I’m wrong.
But even if the new Mass Effect never makes it, I’m grateful for the original. It is easily one of the best and most significant Xbox exclusives ever. Whatever Microsoft paid for BioWare’s exclusivity back then, it was worth every cent.
Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s executive editor of previews and host of IGN’s weekly Xbox show, Podcast Unlocked, and a co-host of Next-Gen Console Watch. He’s a North Jersey guy, so it’s “Taylor ham,” not “pork roll.” Debate it with him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan.
