I am playing Mass Effect these days, and I am having one of the most positive gaming experiences in years. The game is a work of art, so polished, so extremely detailed that it makes you gasp in awe. The developers have put in thousands and thousands of man-hours on gameplay, dialogue, worlds and story that most players won’t even see on their first play-through. And I haven’t even started talking about the graphics, art style, music or sound effects yet. Did this game really get the attention it deserved?
Whenever I watch a really good movie, it could leave a mark in me for days. It’s present in me, the plot, story and characters churning in my mind. This is now happening with Mass Effect. Only this time, I am tormented because of decisions and story line paths that I, myself, chose and experienced. “Could I have done this differently? Did he really have to die?” “Could I have done more to help out?” Lives, careers, even whole worlds are left in my command, making it an immersive experience that movies aren’t able to reproduce.
Waking up this morning and the first time that pops into my mind is the unfortunate death of one of my crew members in a faraway galaxy is a utterly positive thing. It makes me want to play through the game again, and see if this could be avoided. In a computer game, you are required to spend dozens, maybe hundreds of hours in the game world, and that makes it possible for the game developers to make a universe so much more filled with life, meaning, stories and characters than the 2-3 hours experience of a movie.
Anyways, it does of course require massive amounts of work to do this, and making games is expensive. I want to stress that emotionally immersive games isn’t an entirely new phenomenon. Games like Fallout, King’s Quest, A Mind Forever Voyaging, Final Fantasy VII and Gabriel Knight did this in the 70s, 80s and 90s as well. Computer games tell stories, but differently than movies. Hopefully, developers will look to games like Mass Effect to be reminded of the power of the computer game as a medium.
