The Mass Effect trilogy 2007-2011

 “You were born to do this.”

What do you get when you combine two medical student’s love of video games, with Star Wars and the acting talents of Martin Sheen?

I would say Bioware’s seminal space opera trilogy, Mass Effect. Though if you came up with something else please let me know because I really want to check that out.

In my humble estimation, The Mass Effect trilogy succeeds where other games may fail, because they are able to three-dimensionalize a player's choices in such a way that the choices become part of the narrative rather than its orchestrator. In a sense, the characters in the games are independent actors in the story, and the player is just there to witness how they will respond to their prompting. I don't want to be misunderstood here, there are hundreds of meaningful player driven choices throughout these games. Though these choices are contained so effortlessly within the confines The story and third-person action gameplay that they don't seem like choices, instead they come across as natural outgrowths of character arcs.
The dialogue system in the games essentially learns how the player interacts with the world around them. As a result It prompts your companions to respond to you in kind, or as their morals permit. Who are these characters you ask? To go into that would take way more time than we have here. I will say this though, There is a reason why I've played these three games more than 10 times over the past 17 years. If I'm honest I played so many times I don't even remember how many times I've played them. Though, more than the choices, what keeps me coming back? The story, and the characters that inhabit it, for me the Mass Effect trilogy is a story of honor, sacrifice and hope. Even in the face of unbelievable odds, the Normandy and its crew are ready to lay down their lives for the Galaxy.
That is only scratching the surface of my playthroughs. It's very easy, at least for me, to turn the Mass Effect games into superlative magnets. Though to be fair I think they more than earn them. Perhaps The only downside to these games is that Martin Sheen's performance as The Illusive Man only graces Mass effect 2 and 3. That though is certainly not giving enough credit to the myriad of the other stellar performances throughout the trilogy. In the end, these are stories that everybody should experience if they are able, if you're not, I believe there is a TV show in the works. I'm really hoping that TV show will be able to see the light of day.

I found these games to be meaningful, thought provoking and extremely entertaining. I hope in some way you do too.

Note, these games are rated M for mature 17+ Blood, Drug Reference, Partial Nudity, Sexual Content, Strong Language, Use of Alcohol, Violence. The ESRB rating summary for Mass Effect Legendary Edition can be found at esrb.org. All of the sexual related content is determined by player choice, and can be skipped entirely. That applies to most of the strong language