Gameplay

The "choices, challenges, and consequences that players face while navigating a virtual environment" mentioned in the text book are apt descriptors of Mass Effect's gameplay. It can be broken into two basic categories: free roaming and cinematic. The free roaming gameplay is where the navigation and combat of the game take place. It is consistently played from the third person perspective in which the camera can be rotated around Commander Shepard in three dimensions but is usually at a fixed distance. The player runs about various environments, bound by the game's rules, and either shoots enemies or interacts with objects or NPCs with the A button, which frequently leads to the cinematic gameplay of Mass Effect. This second plane of gameplay involves the "choices" while the combat embodies the "challenges." The cinematic gameplay mainly consists of interactive conversations that Shepard has with NPC characters. The player chooses what to say using the previously discussed interface. While surviving the free roaming gameplay can be difficult at times (especially on "Insane" difficulty), it is quite easy to get what you want through conversation, perhaps too easy. The game tries to balance the free choice experienced in the cinematic gameplay with the challenge of physical conflict. These battles primarily test the player's Spatial Awareness and Reaction Time. Defeating your immediate enemies and surviving the firefights triggered by the primary quest is an explicit challenge while implicit challenges can be set by the player for him/herself. For example, perhaps I will set the goal to be mean to the NPCs in all of my conversations. This is difficult for me to do (and possibly affects my real world behavior) but as it is not a direct objective set by the game, it is implicit. Victory Conditions can be based on individual encounters but ultimately, winning in Mass Effect is playing through the entire story. Loss Conditions are simple; every time you die, you lose, though you can keep playing by reloading a game. On a smaller scale the conditions may change. For example, in the altercation with Wrex on Virmire, the player might consider it a loss if they are unable to reason with the krogan verbally and he must be killed. On the other hand, they may feel it is a victory to be able convince him to remain on Shepard's side. These feelings the player has could be seen as "implicit" victory or loss, while completing the game or dying in the attempt are "explicit" victory or loss. Sometimes, a Trade-Off must be made. For example, you might implicitly lose a little to implicitly gain a lot. Letting a few hostages die on the hijacked asteroid might have you feeling bad about yourself, but at least the evil terrorist leader isn't free to run around the galaxy killing hundreds more. Much of what counts as positive or negative feedback depends on what the player wants out of Mass Effect. Intrinsic Knowledge, or knowledge given to the player by the game, is very important to Mass Effect because it allows him/her to understand the plot and figure out what he/she has to do. Also, as is true with most games, the Time of Mass Effect is "limited" to the player's location. The sun never sets and the weather never changes. This is because the scale of the levels (or planets/space stations) is not great enough that the player will spend days there. By contrast, in open-world games like Grand Theft Auto 4, the player spends all of their time in one city and to make it feel authentic, it must go through the expected daily transformations. Extrinsic knowledge the player might want to bring with him/her are basic assumptions about the world of sci-fi. For example, if one makes contact with fast-moving, glowing beams of energy, one will die. It is also helpful to understand the rules of the universe such as physics. This will help you pilot the Mako. Speaking of the Mako, there are also minigames and vehicle sections in Mass Effect but the minigames do not advance the story and driving the Mako is similar to running around on foot but with more firepower and a greater chance of falling into a pit of lava or off a cliff. The Interactivity Mode of Mass Effect is Player-to-Game. There is no multiplayer and the player is confined to the environment of the game. While it does not involve other human players, the NPC antagonist and his followers have an opposing goal to the protagonist. Therefore, within the story, the game could be considered "Zero-sum." It is quite impossible for these two opposing forces to work together. If anything, the dynamic of Mass Effect is Restorative because the static balance is upset in the beginning and Shepard is working to make things "orderly" once more.