Back in the days of the old Xbox I bought a game called KOTOR. I was mostly motivated by the Star Wars setting and had no previous experience in Role Playing Games. Although I found it to be quite enjoyable, my absence of skills eventually got the best of me. Somewhere half way through the game I got stuck, my team of characters killed repeatedly due to my evident lack of expertise. And so it was that I eventually left KOTOR unfinished. Hélas…

RPGs, you see, are the stuff heroes are made of. It's the turf of gaming ninjas, people devoted to long hours of codex reading, tactics configuration, item customization, weapon upgrading and potion management. For an action gamer like me, well, it felt like hostile alien environment.

A few years ago I bought the X360. A friend of mine, a big Gears of War fan, told me to purchase the console packed with Gears of War 2. And so I did. I played it and finished it. I was happy. Then my friend asked me if I could lend him the game. I did, and he was happy too.

In a strange twist of events, this friend of mine asked me if he could keep GOW2 for himself. He was basically begging at this point and wanted to trade the game for one of his own. Among them was the original Mass Effect. He told me it wasn't his kind of game; he had hardly made any progress on it. I was curious about ME. I'm a big sci-fi fan and there was something about it that seemed really appealing. But I had my doubts. ME seemed to have mixed reviews… I remember watching Gamespot's video review focusing on all these problems with Thresher Maw's instant death and stuff. I ended up thinking that Thresher Maw bashing was probably a big part of Mass Effect. How silly.

So there it was that I became an owner of Mass Effect. As I started to walk the Normandy, chatting with the crew, I experienced a true sense of awe. Everything about it seemed fascinating to me. And then the first mission comes along and wow this combat mechanic is really weird. What's this power wheel thing for. Ignore it. Go for the action… No, wait, I'm doing something wrong. What was that again?...

Needless to say, it took me half way through the game to figure out all the gameplay dynamics and make a proper use of the Biotic talents of the crew. But I was completely drawn into its universe by then. The first arrival at the Citadel made it for me, definitely one of the most extraordinary futuristic environments ever designed for a video game. And so Mass Effect became my favourite game of all time. Never have I replayed a game so much… Until Mass Effect 2 came along, that is.

ME2 was my first pre-ordered game. I love everything about it… Well, there was this initial moment when even I questioned the oversimplification of some of the customization elements in the game. How about that? An old fashioned action gamer like me aching for customization. I must be getting indoctrinated by BioWare. But, seriously, Mass Effect blends the two things I find most fascinating about video gaming: alternate forms of storytelling and the experience of speculative physical environments. It has inspired a new iconography of sci-fi fantasy, unparalleled to anything ever seen in video game format. The Mass Effect series is the first true sci-fi epic of the 21st Century.

This article was originally posted on Nowherescape.