My pre-review impressions of Mass Effect.

I don't know where you came up with succinctness -- unless you just mean stories should avoid boring filler -- but I agree with you about chronological structure, and the a+b+c thing was a nice way to illustrate your point. Even if a story is told out of order (Pulp Fiction, or anything with flashbacks) there needs to be a clear concept of what the proper sequence must be.

A mission-based structure weakens narratives because the developer can never assume full knowledge from the player, unless the developer has built an elaborate network of context-sensitive events that truly create a new story depending on the order in which players complete objectives. And by "elaborate", I mean way more than branching paths for key moments; at any given point, the game needs to be able to respond to everything that has come before.

That's where RPGs need to go to really be "role playing". In the meantime, I'll settle for seven core quests and a bunch of optional missions. That's more promising than simply riding a taxi all the way to the end.

//Zig

Yeah, I'm done trying to explain why I love Mass Effect as much as I do. If people don't see in it what I see, then that's not my problem. I do urge you to at least finish the game, though. And if you made the mistake of going Soldier, then seriously, just restart the game.

I'd rather be playing almost anything but The Last Remnant.

Jason is right about Pulp Fiction; it is much more linear than people think because it's clever about the way it uses its characters. The truth is, it hits the same beats that literally every successful film has hit since the beginning of the medium.

Video games, as they try to be more and more like films, have to either start adhering to those same beats or they need to go back to being... you know... games.

Jason's a pretty sharp guy.

//Zig

I had many problems with Mass Effect but linearity wasn't one of them. Well... it sorta was, but being linear is not necessarily bad.

Mass Effect was fun, but then again I didn't think it's story was extraordinary. It did what it needed to do, and that was it. I wouldn't think of it as rivaling a film, because they're two different mediums. It's like saying a film's plot rivals a novel's.

Sometimes I feel like when I post online, I'm almost a different person. For one thing, I have a... beard? That would never happen IRL.

Mass Effect is awesome, though I will agree that it is hard to get into Mass Effect 2 immediatelly after ending 1, because the gameplay mechanics are completely changed.

As for story, it satisfied my need for a narrative, and really, that's all I really need.

I liked Mass Effect because it made me feel like a space captain.

I didn't like Mass Effect because everything in it except for possibly the dialogue was done better in some previous Bioware game. Story wasn't so great, combat was bad, characters were shallow, sidequests seemed pretty much pointless, and the game only took me 14 hours 45 minutes to complete (and I must've done 30 sidequests or so). It just seemed like a completely lazy effort on Bioware's part.