The Silent Protagonist – Mass Effect and Silliness

Hello, one and all!

I realise that in my last blog I said that I was going to write about Capcom’s “Remember Me,” the up coming RPG due to be released in May 2013 but something happened to me recently… and, well… I changed my mind. Sorry!

Anyway to cut a long story short, I was out and about, when somebody came over to me and said “You’re that guy who hasn’t played Mass Effect”. Needless to say that I denied that I was that guy, and naturally I went home and downloaded myself a copy. (PS. Thank you, Xbox Live Marketplace)

I loved BioWare’s “Dragon Age” and I actually really liked “Dragon Age 2.” Despite that, I was adamant that I was never going to like Mass Effect, for three reasons:

It had guns.

I thought it was first-person.

It had more guns.

In case you can’t tell, I don’t like first-person games and I don’t like guns. If I play a game in first-person for more than twenty minutes or so, I get a splitting headache. So I tend to stay away from them. I’m pathetic when I’m in pain.

I have to admit, though, after 14 hours, 42 levels, countless numbers of dead Geth, multiple restarts and unfathomable amounts of missed shots later, I finally finished it. And I wondered why I avoided this game for so long?

The long and short of it? I wasn’t willing to give it a chance. I was set in my ways and until a total stranger confronted me about it I didn’t give it a go.

I’m very glad I did. I’m currently twenty something hours through my second attempt at the second installment in the series, after putting in thirty something hours and deciding that I didn’t want “Ben Shepard” to be an Engineer anymore. Yes, I know; I’m super creative with naming my characters.

When I seriously came to think about why I didn’t give it a chance, and why I simply blamed it the fact that it had guns, I came to a stop. Every game I’ve ever played has had character development, minions and bosses, maps, hubs and a big bad but I was so prejudiced towards this game.

Then I came to a realisation: I simply never expected it to be so good. When I counted out the number of games in my Glasgow collection, I had 165 games. 153 of those are RPGs. Then I counted how many of those were JRPGs…117 of those belonged to a Japanese Company. So 71% of all of my games are from Japanese companies. I’m almost ashamed to mention it but there’s a load more at home in Northern Ireland… including Bayonetta which is actually still under my bed after my difficulty rant.

So upon closer inspection, it wasn’t so much my dislike of guns (although this did keep both Vincent and Barret out of my party in Final Fantasy VII) but rather my prejudice towards Western Gaming companies. I’m not entirely sure where or how this developed but I doubt I’ll ever get to the bottom of it.

What I do know is, I’m going to broaden my gaming experience. Who knows what awesome games I’m leaving out?

I’m loving Mass Effect, and that I was silly to avoid it for so long simply because it wasn’t made in Japan.

PS. If anybody was wondering, I left Ashley to die for being a racist cow.