Adam Jensen said:
It's the first time that someone tried [and succeed] in creating a new space travel sci-fi universe that can be compared with Star Trek and Star Wars and did so in a form of a video game. The game is actually brilliant, I would dare to call it the pinnacle of this generation of gaming (until the last 10 minutes of ME3 that I will simply refuse to believe ever happened). And in my opinion it is better than Half-Life.
This article is relevant to this topic. This is why Mass Effect is celebrated:
http://io9.com/5886178/why-mass-effect-is-the-most-important-science-fiction-universe-of-our-generation
See, this is the sort of thing that winds me up. Mass Effect is a decent series of games that take place in a well defined universe. It is
not the high-pinnacle of science fiction that a lot of fans make it out to be. It is far too derivative of other works and far too inconsistent in narrative quality to be worthy of that accolade.
Battlestar Galactica came out a few years ago, and by the end of its run, it was being hailed by mainstream critics as the best thing on TV,
period. This when shows like The Wire and The Sopranos were still on the air. Not only did it reboot an old campy TV show into something darker and more mature, it is one of the best examples in the history of television of writers playing the long game, and laying down seeds in the first season that keep springing up right the way up into the final season. For any old TV show to pull that off is rare enough. For a show on the Sci-Fi channel to pull that off so well that it receives the universal acclaim of mainstream critics around the world is something we haven't seen in the TV medium arguably since the days of the original Star Trek.
That is an example of a sci-fi series managing to be part of the zetigeist.
Moving away from TV, there's the plain old fact that Mass Effect simply is not as popular as many of its fans believe it is. It's sold well, don't get me wrong. Each game has sold in the region of between 2-3 million units, not a bad figure. But that absolutely pales in comparison to sales of
other current science fiction games. Both Fallout 3 and New Vegas sold in the region of 6 million each, well over twice the sales of any of the ME games. Gears of War 3 sold just shy of the 6 million mark itself. Halo Reach has sold over
9 million copies since release. Halo 3 has sold over
11 million. These are the kind of sales and, more importantly, the kind of impact that Mass Effect, good as it is, can only dream of.
If any argument could be made for a videogame series that could be called most influential sci-fi series of the decade, Halo would be a far more suitable choice than Mass Effect, regardless on your opinions of the quality of either. Halo quite simply not only revolutionised a genre, it changed the way people look at games. It was the first game to set a box-office record that outperformed the Hollywood box office. It was the first game to really bring home that gaming is not just a nerd hobby, but a form of entertainment just as popular and widespread as going to the movies. More importantly, it re-defined and set in stone the power-armoured space marine versus the hordes of aliens that has absolutely
dominated the science fiction scene over the last decade, Mass Effect included.
Regardless of how
good Mass Effect is or isn't, it simply does not have the widespread appeal and influence of other science fiction properties of this decade, and it doesn't have the consistent thematic quality of other science fiction properties of this decade.
Hardcore fans of Mass Effect who love the game, I'm fine with. Hardcore fans of Mass Effect who try and paint it as some unrivalled high-point of science fiction get my hackles up. Sorry, but the genre has seen too much content of both higher quality and greater popularity to let such a statement slide.
