Author's Note: My part 2's of both the Ten Commandments of Blogging and the Japanese RPGs are Dead blogs are coming. I saw a crime committed today on Gamespot and had to correct it. Introduction Recently, Gamespot proved, yet again, that they have been seriously lacking in taste when it comes to role playing games ever since Greg Kasavin left the site when they awarded Persona 3 the genre award for best RPG of the year. Now, I don't want to get too snarky about this peculiar choice, which went against roughly 97% of the voting population of the site, but this year's choice of Persona 3 as the best rpg of the year is really only useful for one thing: separating those who know and love rpg titles from those who need to remove their heads from their glory holes. For those of us who, like me, eat, breathe and make sweet animal love to rpg titles, there were only two acceptable choices for the top honors in the RPG field in this, another dry year overall for the genre. (Links to my personal reviews included.) 1. Mass Effect 2. The Witcher Now, I have nothing against Persona 3. I have played the game extensively, written a detailed review of the game and referenced it in several previous blog posts like this one. However, Persona 3 is a niche game. Specifically, it is a niche game that only those who absolutely adore and treasure all things Japanese and Anime could possibly love unconditionally. For others, like me, it evokes mixed feelings. We love the game for the attention to detail and great characters, but hate it for the many shortcomings mentioned in my review. A game that inspires mixed feelings in the mainstream lovers of its genre cannot be the best representative of its genre. It just can't. The voting of the Gamespot public reflects this. 97% chose a different game as their top choice, and there were only five choices to choose from. Now, I don't necessarily agree that the game that gets the most votes should automatically get the award for best rpg, but 3% is a pretty low vote total. So, which is the better game between The Witcher and Mass Effect? Frankly, this is like trying to choose between whose breasts you'd most like to cuddle up against: Lindsey Lohan's or Jessica Alba's. There isn't really a wrong answer, but merely debating between the two is good, clean fun. So, without further ado, let the debate begin! Storyline Both of the two games have seriously deep and thought provoking storylines. Both storylines unfold rather slowly due in large part to just how many side quests are available to do. In general, Mass Effect's story is told better due to its superior voice acting, dialog and facial expressions. On the other hand, The Witcher allows for a far greater feeling that you have true free will behind your actions. Its magnificent use of flashbacks to show the unintended consequences of your actions in previous chapters really makes the player feel like each choice they make during the missions they undertake can have huge, rippling effects. I'm going to call this one a tie. Character Development The central characters in Mass Effect, like most characters in Bioware games, show a great deal of attention to detail. Once again, due to the amazing voice acting and dialog, the characters that you interact with, even the side characters, seem alive and personable. However, the main characters don't really talk much during the game compared to previous Bioware efforts like Knights of the Old Republic and their opinion of you doesn't change based on your choices during the game. Frankly, they feel, dare I say it, a bit on the shallow side? The Witcher took a slightly different route. Rather than giving the characters you encounter very fixed personalities, it gives them certain baseline characteristics and then allows for your moral choices in the game to impact how they end up acting later on. Did you choose to side with Yaevinn over Siegfried in the conflict between the nonhumans and the Order of the Flaming Rose? Siegfried changes a lot later on in the game because of that decision. On the other hand, when it comes to facial expressions, body motions and side characters, Mass Effect ends this category with the slightest of edges.



Setting and Atmosphere This is another challenging category to render a verdict on. How do you choose between the incredibly detailed and well-thought out galaxy that Mass Effect offers up and the grimy, mature feeling cesspool that The Witcher gives? The two games took nearly opposite approaches for their setting. Mass Effect's setting is gigantic, allowing the players near-Oblivion like freedom to go anywhere they want to. On the other hand, the galaxy was largely empty outside of the main planets and had, again, a shallow sort of feeling. On the other hand, The Witcher confined its players almost exclusively to a couple of places while giving hints of a much larger world that they weren't going to get to explore in this game. All the while, it showed you via books, storyline and characters you interacted with during the game your impact upon that larger world.

Put simply, one game gave you a high orbit look at everything, whereas the other decided to really flesh out a smaller setting and get you right into the muck and gore. When you get right down to it, I can still feel the grime on me from playing The Witcher and the overall feeling that the setting for that game had a lot more meat on its bones whereas Mass Effect may have bitten off just a bit more than it could chew with its galaxy, gives The Witcher an edge in this category. Annoyance Characters ***MAY CONTAIN MINOR SPOILERS*** Let's face it, sometimes less is more when it comes to characters in books, games, or movies. Everyone remembers Star Wars: The Phantom Menace more for the fact that Jar Jar Binks and a child Anakin Skywalker were both incredibly annoying than anything else. So which game, ultimately, could have benefited with a couple of extra edits here and there? Alvin, the gifted boy "source" child in The Witcher was certainly a pain. He never stayed in one place for long. The entire storyline hinted at how important he was, and the ending hinted he may have been even more important still, but ultimately, he was all promise and no delivery. We never really get to find out, for certain, what was going on with him. Unfortunately, he wasn't even really the most annoying character in the game. That dubious honor belonged to Shani's grandmother, a senile old bat who threw you out of Shani's house roughly 78% of the time you went to try and visit Shani. Given the incredibly long loading times for The Witcher prior to the new 1.2 patch, she was remarkably annoying. On the other hand, a certain human ambassador in Mass Effect deserved more than a single punch in the jaw for being a pain in my backside the entire game in Mass Effect. We're not even going to mention how annoying the citadel council was either. Still, all-in-all, at least the ambassador and the council in Mass Effect were centrally important to the overall story. Neither Alvin nor Shani's grandmother ended up qualifying for The Witcher. Maybe Alvin will with the sequel, but for right now a distinct edge goes to Mass Effect on this one for having fewer characters that should have been left out entirely. Technical Issues Technical issues are almost par for the course with the RPG genre. Given that the games are almost always larger, more detailed, and more complex to code for than any other genre, a certain amount of technical annoyances is to be expected and both games delivered on those expectations. Long and frequent load times? Check for both. Frequent texture popping? Check for Mass Effect. Broken and or glitchy quests? Mild check for The Witcher. No check for Mass Effect since most of its quests were shooting galleries. However, right now The Witcher takes this category for no other reason than the game has had several patches put out since its release that have substantially improved the overall experience. Loading time issues in particular saw vast improvements with the 1.2 patch. Innovation Both games delivered some innovation here with noticeable changes to the usual combat gameplay in rpgs. Mass Effect's method of merging shooter gameplay with an rpg was the more risky innovation whereas The Witcher's method of adding rhythm based attacking to the usual swordplay hack-fest was also a step forward. Ultimately though, the biggest innovation that either game put forward wasn't in regards to the most fun method for killing the bad guys. The biggest innovation either put forward was to ignore the censors and go for more mature themes. Both games got M ratings and neither seemed particularly interested in even trying for a T rating that would allow their games to be sold to wider audiences. Whether it was swearing, distinctly gray moral choices, or gratuitous sex scenes, both games seemed bound and determined to give big middle fingers to "The Man".

All things being equal, Mass Effect's gameplay innovations were a bit more extensive whereas The Witcher's attempts to introduce the novel concept that some people have sex without love being involved was long overdue. I'm calling this category a tie and giving both games a big, sloppy Jim kiss for actually bringing some mature content to video gaming without being childishly over-the-top about it. Side Quests If you don't know which game is going to be taking this category then it is only because you haven't been paying attention to anything I've written in this blog. Mass Effect's side quests were more or less all the same. The Witcher's side quests had its fair share of "go kill a bunch of things and bring back proof of your success" but they also had a fair amount of other, more interesting, activities. And boobs. Let us not forget that The Witcher, at least the uncensored European edition, offers us much more in the way of boobs than Mass Effect does. I don't know how my female readers feel about this, but it's a big plus in my book that my character in The Witcher is actually a realistic enough guy to not only enjoy casual sex, but to put saving the kingdom on hold for an hour or two in order to go and pursue this. Big edge goes to The Witcher. Main Character Customization At a glance, this seems to be a category that Mass Effect would take with ease if for no other reason than because it lets you play as either male or female, choose a background, and choose what your character looks like. However, digging down further below the surface, The Witcher also gives a great deal of latitude to choosing how your character acts by the number of moral choices the game gives you and the "blank slate" approach to your character's memories and personality. Since your character has amnesia, you get to "discover" who he currently is throughout the game like The Nameless One from Planescape: Torment. However, Mass Effect also gives a wider range of character abilities and archetypes to play than The Witcher does, with its many and varied abilities. While The Witcher does a better job of making you feel the consequences of your moral choices through the flashback sequences, the variety of gameplay that Mass Effect presents gives it the edge here. Villains ***MINOR PLOT SPOILERS ALLUDED TO HEREIN*** Neither game did particularly well here. In both games, the villains were of the "manipulate things behind the scenes" type. This works out great for books because then authors can focus extensively on the effects of what the unseen villain is doing. It doesn't work out as well for games, which tend to require a firmer hand for the players to battle and grow to hate. Without giving too much away, both games also had villains who, ultimately, thought they were doing the right thing overall. When all is said and done though, one villain was much more responsible for his own actions than the other. This makes him the better, more mature, villain in the end. Whereas one game effectively transitioned all responsibility for the bad guy's actions through the tried and true "it wasn't really their fault" approach, the other game firmly accepted that some people just are evil and twisted. For having the guts and maturity to allow for the fact that some people choose to do evil things of their own free will, The Witcher takes this category. Graphics and Audio It should be acknowledged that I played The Witcher on a top-end gaming computer with all settings maxed out. Others who played the game on a lesser machine will have a different experience than I did. This is a tough category to judge because of how uneven the experience was in Mass Effect on this. When at its best, in conversations or on some of the main worlds of the game, this game was better than The Witcher visually. Unfortunately, at its worst, like when you were exploring many of the innumerable side worlds that all looked more or less alike, it trailed The Witcher's consistent experience. Where Mass Effect really shined was in the body movements and facial expressions that made everything feel so very real. Ultimately, graphics wise these games were very close to being equal. The fact that Mass Effect's beautiful parts topped The Witcher is downgraded due to The Witcher's overall consistently great offerings. It wasn't as good as Mass Effect at its best, but it was far better than Mass Effect at its worst. This brings us to sound. Mass Effect had better voice acting and some truly inspiring music during a few key scenes. The Witcher had some good sound effects and decent, if uneven, voice acting. Overall though, Mass Effect has a big edge where audio is concerned which is enough to take this category. Well, right now these two games are tied four categories apiece. So how am I going to choose between them? I guess ultimately, when judging games, it comes down to a subjective value call in situations like this. Where do we place the greater emphasis? Ultimately, I think for me the tiebreakers were in two areas. The first tiebreaker is what we originally expected out of the game in the first place. The second tiebreaker was overall value. With Mass Effect we all expected truly incredible, amazing things. We got much of what we wanted, but not everything. The game fell short in a number of places. It isn't entirely fair because our expectations were so high in the first place, and the game still ended up being something truly special, but overall it did fall flat in just a couple of places here and there. The Witcher came out of nowhere. Few people expected it to be as great as it ended up being. It had that hard to define "something" that marks all truly special games. You can't put your finger on it. You can clearly see its shortcomings in a number of areas, but you love it anyway. For that reason, and for the fact that at roughly $10 less to experience the greatness The Witcher is a better overall value. My RPG of the Year Award goes to The Witcher by the slightest of edges. Edit: To give you an idea of how close it is between these two games. It's about a half hour after I posted this and I'm already having second thoughts and considering going back towards Mass Effect.