(This article contains spoilers)
I never got around to playing any of the Mass Effect games before 2026. I bought Mass Effect: Andromeda when it was on sale a few years ago, but didn’t own the previous games, and wasn’t very keen on playing a sequel out of context. When I eventually bought the Legendary Edition (which includes Mass Effect 1, 2 and 3, and the DLCs, all remastered), I decided it was time to start the series. In 2026.
I know BioWare games, I’ve been a fan of the Dragon Age games since I played Dragon Age: Origin many years ago, Dragon Age 2, and Dragon Age: Inquisition in 2014. But I kept looking at the Mass Effect games, and saying “one day.”
I won’t talk about the studio and the issues they went (and still go) through, or just to contextualize some things about the games. There’s a lot to say, but also many things we can only speculate about. My main focus is the games themselves, the story, the characters.
The Trilogy: Discovering Mass Effect
Starting the trilogy reminded me why I kept putting off those games: male Shepard’s character design. I know, it might sound ridiculous, but when I started to be interested in those games, way after the release of the first one, male Shepard’s design felt so unoriginal and so cliché. So… “basic white handsome hero.” (and yes, I know he’s designed after a Dutch model.) “But there’s female Shepard!” I know, I was tempted to choose this version, but I also always play (male) gay if I can. Why? Because that’s usually what I prefer, but also because I wanted to see how it was written in an action and science-fiction RPG video game almost 20 years ago, especially knowing what BioWare did with the Dragon Age games and the inclusion of gay romance in them.
But let’s talk about the game itself for now. The gameplay is pretty straightforward, quests are rather repetitive in Mass Effect 1, even when you roam space and visit random planets,. The objectives seem too simple when it come to the side quests. But Mass Effect 1 is more than that, it’s an entirely new lore, new characters, and there’s a lot to do and learn.
Now, it’s important to know that I managed to avoid spoilers for all this time. I barely knew what the games were about except for the obvious pew pew in space aspect of it, and I knew about a few characters, especially Garrus, who’s been very popular on Tumblr since the first game. Oh, and I knew that the Mako was a vehicle from hell. So starting this trilogy was like landing on an unexplored planet, with many wonders to discover. And I wasn’t expecting to love the games so much.
An Ambitious Franchise
As I played the three games back to back, it’s hard for me to really differentiate them from one another. Graphically speaking, it’s rather homogeneous thanks to the remastered versions. Story-wise, everything is flowing so greatly, it makes the games feel like one single huge game. What actually made the biggest difference were the controls! Jumping from one game to another with different controls was tough, especially between Mass Effect 2 and 3, at least for me.
As usual with big games, especially with BioWare games, the lore feels endless. Between the different species, what happened before the story of the first game, the various characters’ backstories, etc., it’s a lot to discover, but it makes the games so rich and captivating. After spending a good part of 2025 playing Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, diving into Mass Effect feels like time traveling!
As usual with RPGs, especially this big, each player will have their own experience. The role-playing part of the Mass Effect games is rather satisfying with interesting choices, especially depending on the context, past choices, and your relationship with other characters. That is, until you, playing a human among several different alien species, are asked to make decisions for everyone.
This is the part I had a hard time supporting. The hubris of thinking we’re above other species is embarrassing and translates into a very special kind of colonial mindset. Does it work in the games? Well, it does, most of the time. Shepard is the one leading the story and the events, they’re the one pushing for the Council (made of people from various planets and origins) to do something about an impending threat to life in the galaxy — and we’re talking about all organic life —, and it’s not like we’re working with a full human team, quite the contrary. It’s still very human-centered, but at least it was a better set up than what they made with Andromeda.
The Friends We Make Along the Way
What I love about BioWare’s RPGs is the way they write companions. Right from Mass Effect 1, I liked most of them and enjoyed having them around. The friendship that grows between everyone (and I always play Paragon, so that probably helps), the different relationships between companions if Shepard doesn’t romance them, the backstory from one game to another. It’s good. As someone who romanced Kaidan as male Shepard, it was an interesting run. I treat the trilogy as a whole, like a series with seasons. I’m sure playing these games as they were released felt different, but when you play them back to back, the storytelling really feels consistent, like a big story running, and relationships don’t always take the expected direction.
In Mass Effect 1, choices have to be made, choices that will impact the future games, like losing Ashley or Kaidan, or helping Wrex or kill him. These choices have major consequences for the main character and the story. Since I saved Kaidan, he’s the one who became a sort of reminder of the past in Mass Effect 2. The fact that Shepard sided with a problematic entity makes him wary of Shepard, and Kaidan doesn’t join the team in Mass Effect 2. I found that to be a bold choice, to take away a companion from us from a game to another, only to meet them again in the third installment and be able to romance him. From a role-playing point of view, it’s quite amazing, from friend to side-eyeing to lover. They’re never really enemies, but one scene could have changed that forever. This, to me, made their romance storyline from the first game so much more interesting.
The friendship with Garrus, Tali, and Liara really adds to the character writing. All the relationships are unique, be it friendship or romance, and the three games benefit so much from it. I had a harder time with companions from Mass Effect 2. They were great but none of them felt as interesting as the original ones, and having them all back in the third game was indeed the right choice.
Now I Understand The Love for the Mass Effect Trilogy
From an outsider’s point of view, fans of the Mass Effect games have always looked very passionate, but for so many years, I never really understood why. What I knew was that BioWare was making good narrative-driven RPG games, so the craze didn’t really surprise me, I just missed it at the time. Now I understand. The characters, the story, the world-building, so many things make these games unique, engaging, and memorable. They really stick with you. The friendships you build with various characters, the romance you can start, the polarizing characters and situations, there is so much to love, or to hate. And being able to play a female or a male main character can change the entire games’ POV. As it should.
As a male Shepard player who romanced Kaidan, I loved reading about players who chose a female Shepard and romanced Kaidan. The difference in the dynamics, in the way the characters interact, it all makes the games so much more interesting and rich. And it’s not just about the main character, there’s also the relationships between the companions, the friendships, the romance, the respect or the distrust. It creates such a realistic crew. Finding them in their quarter, talking about the missions, their fears, their hopes, their own goals.
As a gamer, I’m less focused on technical performances and prefer judging a game from many angles. I don’t even mind minor bugs if the writing is good, if the graphics are consistent, if they created the music with care and consistency. To me, video games are an experience as a whole, and some flaws can be counterbalanced by other aspects. And overall, the writing of the Mass Effect trilogy is really good.
Mass Effect: Andromeda: A Good Game for a Non Mass Effect Game
After completing the trilogy, I jumped into Mass Effect: Andromeda. Released in 2017, this game came with a lot of backlash. I still didn’t know a lot about the franchise at the time, but oh boy did I hear and see many things about this game. Broken graphics, endless bugs, and the change in the art direction were received with quite a lot of hate. I could understand why people were angry about the graphic issues that were a lot, but I didn’t really know the extent of the damage.
After playing the trilogy twice in a row (because I wanted the good ending and didn’t even know about it on my first run, that’s how little I knew about the games), diving into Andromeda and its more recent graphics felt like a visual treat. Not that the trilogy looked bad, quite the contrary, but more modern graphics for a space game, with different ecosystems on various planets, are more immersive. Thanks to all the work the team did on it since 2017, I didn’t encounter any graphic issues, any bugs, or anything that made me say the game felt technically unfinished.
Then came the rest. As a stand-alone video game, Andromeda isn’t too bad: good graphics, a story about space traveling and visiting planets, more alien species, combat in space. Space! But as a Mass Effect game, it’s lacking. Just like Dragon Age: The Veilguard, it has lost the heart of the franchise it’s part of. It felt disconnected. The original recipe is there, somewhere, but too much has been changed.
I think I would have enjoyed the game a bit more without the whole “colony” and “settler” aspect of it. It was very unwelcome, especially in 2026. Of course, it’s part of the story, but maybe that’s the real problem: it’s a choice. They’re not refugees, no, they left their system to colonize another one after fleeing war, which was the perfect context for making them refugees. Instead of calling themselves that, there’s talk about colonizing, about settling, and humans are acting like they’re owed a place on another planet. And of course, you’re stranded in space, thousands of people could die, but the three arks are actually guests at best, invaders at worst, and the planets they want to “colonize” already have life on them, people living there. This is not about sharing a world, this is about invading.
This game felt strange. While I really enjoyed some aspects of it, like the banter between companions, better graphics, more worlds to explore, with the whole premise of having people stranded in space, it became clear that we were supposed to play people getting their share of several planets, whatever the cost for the local population. What should have been a situation where the arks are seeking shelter and help became a full on colonization. And… yeah, it was a very weird aspect of this game. And I know that, in a way, it might actually be more realistic than having a ship full of humans simply asking for help.
I can appreciate the complexity of the situation, but when I know how things goes for actual refugees in our own very real little world, something feels off with the way Andromeda is unfolding (and I only talk about the human side, the two other arks being from other planets, with other species, it’s an entire different dynamic.)
The Future of Mass Effect
A new Mass Effect game was announced back in 2020, and has been in the works for a few years now, with some teasers already revealed. Called Mass Effect 4, this game, that won’t be released before 2029, could return to the roots of the franchise. This is very hypothetical, as we know very little of it. Space games, and not just space combat games, seem to be the new trend, which could set new standards for this type of game, pushing studios to not only make better games, but also make wiser choices (one can hope.)
Mass Effect 4 could be what the fans expect from a new ME game. Could. The mistakes made with Andromeda should have taught them what to do, and especially what to not do, with the franchise. And with RPGs like The Expanse: Osiris Reborn or Exodus coming out next year, Mass Effect has to be good. This is their chance to win back their fan base, people who are still very passionate about the trilogy.
I just hope they don’t fall for the genAI craze. We need artists, we need people to work on video games, this is an art that belongs to us.
