Massively (e)ffecting

I am finishing my second playthrough of the Mass Effect 3 remaster (I think 4th if I include the original release), the end of my favorite video game trilogy, and realized that I never blogged about it. I’m rectifying that immediately. I don’t know if this is how it happened, but my headcanon is this: BioWare, a game development company in Vancouver, had created some all-time hits with licensed IP. Their latest was arguably the best Star Wars game ever made, Knights of the Old Republic. BioWare then lost the Star Wars IP, and turned around and made the actual best Star Wars game(s) of all time: the Mass Effect trilogy.1 The first Mass Effect was a solid sci-fi action RPG, incorporating gun play with physics-based attacks (things that would not be out of place in a Star Wars game if they had the word “Force” appended to their names). It used a similar morality system as KOTOR, retitled ‘Paragon’ and ‘Renegade’ instead of light- and dark-side. The story does a lot of fun world-building,…