The Game Boy: My 2010 Games of The Year, Part Three – Mass Effect 2

Posted 01/03/2011 at 2:43pm | by Nathan Grayson

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This year, I'm trying to do something different with game of the year awards. You can find a full explanation in part one, but the gist is this: I'm eschewing a list – because, let's face it, you've already skimmed 10,000 top-10s – in favor of writing about how these games affected their players and the specific moment that made me realize how great each game really was. Needless to say, SPOILER WARNING. Today's topic? BioWare's latest space odyssey, Mass Effect 2.

As much as I love my job, I have to admit that there's one major downside. After years of nitpicking games until their every naked flaw is flapping freely in the breeze, it's become rather difficult to separate work from play. Instead of seeing a giant battle brimming with earth-shaking violence, heartbreaking tragedy, and inspiring camaraderie, I see a highly scripted scene that'll go completely haywire if I even inch my pinky toe off the beaten path. Most people watch the puppet show; I look for the strings.

Every once in a while, though, a rare game comes along that's able to shatter my cold cynicism and spirit me away so thoroughly that – for a few magical moments – I forget I'm just some guy staring blanky at a monitor in a dimly lit room. Mass Effect 2, perhaps moreso than anything else in recent years, managed to be that game.

Videogames – as almost every over-played “nerd” stereotype can attest – are rarely physically involving. Sure, you've got the occasional fat-burning fad like DDR or the Wii, but most gamers will have their bodies aching from a game as readily as they'll play fetch with a 900-page novel. For those keeping score at home, Mass Effect 2 has no motion control component or outerspace dance club minigame. However, it still managed to make my heart pump and turn my legs into Jello.

It was the final mission – or the “suicide mission,” as BioWare so invitingly named it. As a mostly heroic, never-compromising Commander Shepard, I'd spent the entire game up to that point putting together a team of the universe's biggest badasses in hopes of putting a stop to a hilariously one-sided apocalypse that'd decimate all life as we know it and pave over it with a nice set of summer condos. Or, you know, whatever else the evil, almost god-like Reapers were planning.

But there was more to it than that. See, convincing the best and brightest to join me was only half of the equation. Earning loyalty by helping my crew members sweep up after the veritable oil spill that was their personal lives, then, was the second half. Of course, the result of all that wasn't just a pragmatic “Sweet! Now I'm pretty sure that psychotic psychic murderer won't psychotically psychically murder me while I'm saving the universe!” Through a mix of BioWare's fantastic storytelling and my ability to make decisions both large and small, I felt like I'd really gotten to know my dysfunctional family of a crew. They each had wildly varying quirks, backgrounds, and personalities. No one was redundant. No one was merely “the tank” or “the guy who hits really hard.”             

Point is, I cared. And I'd heard the stories. A friend of mine had made all the necessary preparations, but one of his favorite party members still managed to die – permanently – during the final mission. That's not just another guilt-ridden videogame “boo-hoo” moment either. Let's not forget that Mass Effect imports save data between sequels, meaning that my friend could very well have removed his favorite character from the entirety of Mass Effect 3, a game that won't be out for another year. That's kind of terrifying.

So, having narrowly avoided spoilers like a pedestrian near the Empire State Building dodging pennies, I came into the final mission absolutely terrified. Sure, I'd spent hours mining planets hollow to make my crew impervious to everything short of a series of personal insults, but for all I knew, that still wasn't enough. I had no idea what to expect – except that any member of the crew I'd spent the better part of 40 hours chatting with, fighting alongside, and even romancing was fair game.

So it began. As soon as I was given control, my heart started pounding. Literally. What if I wasn't making the right decisions? What if I was too slow? What if I'd forgotten to do something essential beforehand? I was crushed under a mountain of pressure, stress, and doubt. As Commander Shepard, you're supposed to be the best leader all known life has to offer. Here, though, I finally had the chance to experience what it felt like to be a leader with the training wheels off. No do-overs. My version of Shepard always put on a cocksure, take-no-prisoners front, but I had to wonder if – somewhere in the back of his head – he constantly had to deal with a tiny voice screaming the kinds of thoughts that were walloping my brain at that moment.

That's how absorbed I was in that final mission. For all intents and purposes, the line between game and reality was gone. My limbs felt like someone had strapped 50 lb weights to them while I wasn't looking and I was trying to understand the thought processes of a fictional character. And it was amazing. Sure – thanks to an incredibly detailed and well thought-out universe – I'd already been pretty wrapped up in the game, but this was different. This moment very nearly overwhelmed me.         

But I persevered. I made the calls I thought a “real” Commander Shepard would make until the very end. Lo and behold, everyone survived, and my nervous breakdown slowly subsided. It's interesting, too, because looking back, I realize how transparent and simple the choices the game presented really were. Honestly, with amount of work I'd done before the final mission (which, in itself, was pretty clearly laid out by the game as the “right” way to do things), it was pretty much impossible to lose anyone. Still though, on some level, it speaks to the power of Mass Effect 2's presentation that – in spite of all that – the logical side of my brain checked out, leaving the emotional side to scream and honk its horn in the driver's seat for the entire mission.

So congratulations, BioWare. You temporarily turned me into a screaming, sweaty, debatably sane idiot, and I love you for it.