Mass Effect made a promise. Your choices will carry forward, Commander. The galaxy you build across this game will persist into the next one, and the one after that. The people you save and the people you leave to die will be there when you return. This was, in 2007, an extraordinary thing to say to a player. BioWare mostly kept the promise. The journey it described was worth the keeping.

The original Mass Effect has aged into a clearer light since the trilogy completed and the Legendary Edition arrived to remaster all three games. Taken on its own terms, it is a deeply idiosyncratic first chapter: combat that is genuinely rough by the standards of what followed, an opening act that takes too long to achieve its goals, and a galaxy that feels enormous in ways both intentional and incidental.

Commander Shepard

The central innovation of Mass Effect was Shepard as an authored player-character rather than a blank avatar. You chose Shepard’s gender, background, and class, and the game responded: different NPCs reacted to the backstory you selected, the Paragon and Renegade conversation system allowed you to shape who Shepard was morally across dozens of hours of dialogue.

The result was a protagonist who felt personal in a way that Bethesda’s silent heroes did not. Shepard had opinions. You could agree with them or argue against them. The relationship between player and protagonist was collaborative rather than projective, and it worked better than most games attempting the same thing have managed since.

The Crew

Garrus Vakarian. Tali’Zorah. Liara T’Soni. Wrex. The Mass Effect crew is BioWare’s best ensemble: each character has a backstory that opens up across the game’s loyalty missions, each relationship can be developed over time, and the choices you make affect how the crew relates to each other as much as how they relate to you.

Wrex’s confrontation on Virmire is the defining choice of the game: a moment that tests whether your relationship with the character, built over hours of conversation, outweighs the mission objective. It is exactly as hard as BioWare intended.

How It Holds Up

Mass Effect Legendary Edition (2021) remasters all three games with improved visuals, weapon balance changes that address some of the original’s combat roughness, and quality of life improvements throughout. It is the version to play.

The original’s Mako sections, driving across planetary surfaces in a bumpy armoured vehicle, remain divisive in the remaster. BioWare adjusted them. The adjustment is better.

The first game’s combat has not aged as well as the story. Playing it after Mass Effect 2, whose cover system and action feel are significantly more polished, requires the kind of patience that comes from already knowing the destination. For a first-time player, the Legendary Edition mitigates this enough to make the journey worthwhile.

The galaxy built in Mass Effect 1 is still worth visiting. BioWare has been trying to get back there ever since.