Mass Effect

While various features of gameplay varied across the series, the Mass Effect games are action role-playing games. The player customizes their version of the game's main character (Shepard for the first three games, and Ryder for Mass Effect: Andromeda) based on physical appearance, background, and one of six character classes, each class centered around one or two specializations in combat, technology, or "biotic" skills (similar to mutant abilities in various franchises.) This establishes a skill tree that the player can advance through as their character gains experience levels through completing missions. Each game generally follows a main story pathway with points of branching narratives and multiple side missions, allowing the player to proceed through the game as they desire. Both story and optional missions most often involve using their ship to travel via the mass relay to remote star systems and explore planets to find target objectives.

When exploring planets, the player has the option to bring up to two of their crew members with them, who generally act autonomously but can be given specific orders by the player. In missions, the player can explore an area to find information, discover lootable objects with new gear or in-game currency, non-playable characters to talk to, and key mission items that are to be recovered. Frequently, the player will enter combat, which plays out as a third-person shooter, with the player and their allies using a combination of their weapons and combat, tech, and biotic powers along with tactic use of the environment to defeat opponents. e.

The Mass Effect original trilogy takes place in the Milky Way towards the end of the 22nd century. In 2148, humanity discovered an alien outpost on Mars, and learned that Charon is actually an alien artifact known as a "mass relay" that enables faster-than-light travel to other mass relays located across the galaxy. These discoveries drastically increased the enhancement rate of humanity's technology.

Humanity comes into contact with numerous other space-faring alien species, some far more advanced than humans. Humanity's first encounter resulted in the First Contact War, but the Council, a ruling body for the galaxy, intervened to achieve peace and welcomed humanity. The main species encountered by humanity include the asari, a species of mono-gendered beings closely resembling human women; the salarians, an amphibious species with considerable technological and intellectual prowess and an extremely high metabolism; and the turians, a heavily militaristic race of raptor-like avian humanoids who fought humanity in the First Contact War.

Mass Effect began as a 2003 pitch for a project codenamed SFX by BioWare project director Casey Hudson to the company's co-founders, Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk. Hudson wanted the company to set a goal on developing its own science fiction intellectual property that is on the same scale and scope as the Star Wars setting. On 11 October 2007, shortly before the release of the original Mass Effect video game for the Xbox 360 in November 2007, it was announced that EA bought out VG Holding Corp., a partnership between BioWare and Pandemic Studios formed in November 2005. The Mass Effect IP was acquired by EA in the process and BioWare continued their role as the IP's developers.

The technological outline of the series is based on the theory of dark energy, a form of energy proposed to be the source of the universe's expansion, and a hypothetical instrument for faster-than-light (FTL) travel. By applying a strong electric current via dark energy to the fictional Element Zero or "eezo", "mass effect" fields could be created and manipulated: a positive current raises the mass of any object currently occupying that spot and help to create artificial gravity effects, while a negative current does the inverse by reducing mass and improves the cost-effective expenditure of fuel for starships that move at FTL speeds. The stronger the current, the greater the magnitude of the dark energy mass effect. Other real world advanced scientific concepts explored in the series include 3D printing for the omni-tool concept, hard light technology, and hypervelocity weaponry. Based on the "underlying idea that real-life scientific discoveries consistently create imagery and concepts that blow away previous notions of what is possible," Hudson opined that "reality will continue to be stranger than fiction" which in his view justifies the developers' creative license with their work.

The original Mass Effect trilogy has received near-universal critical acclaim across all release platforms, according to review aggregator Metacritic. All three games have received numerous nominations as well as number of year-end awards from video game publications and major award ceremonies, and are widely considered to be among the greatest games of all time. Mass Effect 2 in particular is the most critically acclaimed game in the series and garnered numerous game of the year awards following its release. It received over 70 perfect review scores. In 2013 IGN rated the Mass Effect Trilogy the best Xbox 360 game(s) out of a list of 25, and the 7th best PS3 game(s) out of a list of 25.

The fourth installment, Mass Effect: Andromeda, received a less enthusiastic critical reception, with a consensus among critics that it was not up to par with its predecessors in terms of overall quality, although the improved combat received praise.

Tauriq Moosa from The Guardian lauded the Mass Effect franchise as some of the best science fiction ever made, describing its overarching theme of "aspiration and connection in the face of an indifferent cosmos" to be "as cerebral as Star Trek, as hopeful as Asimov and as dramatic as Battlestar Galactica". Jessi Sampson from PCGamesN concurred and called Mass Effect an "impressive melting pot of ideas" from various seminal science fiction works, and that the ambition of the first game and its developers shaped the video game industry and "left behind a legacy as bright as the stars it had so vividly imagined". Writing for Wired, Jonathan Wood said the first Mass Effect set a high bar for storytelling in the video game medium unmatched by most of its contemporaries. Benjamin Bullard from Syfy noted that the first game debuted at a time when science fiction video games mainly revolved around persistent conflict and violence between alien and human characters, and the franchise had since grown from a niche RPG into a "full-scale AAA gaming phenomenon."

In 2010, GamesRadar called Mass Effect the best new franchise of the (then seventh) generation, with a galaxy setting "so well-constructed that it felt like a decades-old franchise and represented a high-water mark for video games as a story-telling medium." Colin Moriarty stated that "the Mass Effect series is one of the defining video game franchises of [the seventh] generation". Kyle Munkittrick from Gizmodo argued that Mass Effect, based on several factors articulated in his article, is the most important science fiction universe of the contemporary generation. Patrick Carlson from PC Gamer called Mass Effect one of the grandest and most personal science fiction epics across all mediums due to the successful combination of classic space opera's best elements with an RPG adventure structure that "encourages both playful and serious challenges to traditional science fiction". Cian Maher from TheGamer credited the series' well-written codex entries as playing an instrumental role in building "one of the most fascinating universes in the history of video games".