A Foreword

The time has come. The time has come for me to finally sit down and lay everything out on the table in a logical manner that tries to process just exactly what happens when I think about Mass Effect and the games industry at large. What about it that I feel strongly about and why I believe the violent fan reaction is not only indicative of the power the series has had over people for the past 5 years, but why Mass Effect 3 and its subsequent sequels of various media will forever more be looked upon with disdain in the same way Star Wars fans frown upon The Phantom Menace.

This is personal, I will not deny it. Much to my disdain I am indeed human, I cannot see what others see in the series as it is now, I cannot see how people can play Mass Effect and not come away enthralled by the universe BioWare has created. I will also say this now I am not a BioWare fan specifically, I have not played any other game by the developer, and I judge Mass Effect based on its own merits. Not by what successes or failures that has come before, but by what they created in creating Mass Effect, and how after playing the first two games I came to expect a certain amount of finesse, quality and attention to detail to appear in the third and final installment. This will not be pretty, this is not an apologetic piece. This is the culmination of turmoil, discussion, outright hate and more turmoil that I have been experiencing since I picked up Mass Effect.

The other, more practical, reason I feel I have to do this is that I’m tired of repeatedly typing out my opinions over and over and over and over again in a high intensity environment where I cannot simply look over what I’ve written.That’s an inherent problem with forums, you’re too busy trying to respond quickly to give your post structure and ensure a cohesive argument, lest the thread be closed. I will also be expanding to the industry at large once I have exhausted Mass Effect...or until Halo 4 consumes my life, whichever comes first.