Mass Effect by Mike Mitchell

The Mass Effect series is a space opera comprised of three action role playing games that put you in the role of Commander Shepard, an officer of the Navy branch of the Systems Alliance military. You kinda have a knack for saving the galaxy. In Mass Effect you start off by tailoring Commander Shepard to your liking, you decide everything from his/her background, personality, skills and looks. The way you shape your personality and the way people interact with you is done through a huge branching dialog system that awards you Paragon points when you say or do something good and Renegade points when you say or do something bad. Decide to help someone out? Or reassure someone feeling down? Paragon +15! Were you a total dick to someone or decided those orphans didn't really need to live? Renegade +20!

As the first Mass Effect begins Commander Shepard is just a regular old Alliance Navy officer (aside from any past war heroing and secret consideration of spectre status) who is thrown into extraordinary circumstances. What seems like a routine patrol mission is actually a secret reconnaissance mission , you and Citadel Spectre Nihlus go down to Eden Prime to recover a Prothean beacon. You discover the colony being attacked by Geth that are led by a rouge Spectre named Saren. You fight your way to the beacon and it imparts you with visions of war and death. After proving Saren's treachery they make you a Spectre and the previous captain of the SSV Normandy hands over control of the ship to you for use in apprehending the outlaw, all the while uncovering the truth that Saren is merely the puppet of a much greater evil. Over the course of the game your decisions not only have impact on future events of this game but in the series as a whole. You will even be forced on more than one occasion to decide who lives and dies; do you sacrifice one for the good of many or forsake them to keep those close to you alive and further your own agenda?

Enter Mass Effect 2, it's two years later and hurray! The galaxy has been saved! Until you get blown to pieces by an unknown ship with massive firepower while on Geth patrol. Everyone makes it off safely but you, being the captain of captains that you are, goes down with the ship. Several months after the entire galaxy believes you to be killed in action you wake up in a Cerberus medical facility and discover that because you are so awesome and The Illusive Man believes that the big bad from the previous game was only the beginning, they used their seemingly unlimited funds to perform some medical wizardry and turn that vacuum sealed, lump of charred matter back into a person. You now work for him whether you like it or not. Your mission this time around is to once again assemble a crack team of specialists and find a way to put a stop to the Collectors.

Your choices here have more weight; since the nature of your end goal basically amounts to a suicide mission you have many more chances to completely screw everyone over. For example, if you don't get upgraded armor then the Collectors will slice through your ship as if it were a block of cheese against a battle axe. When your team splits up to take on different objectives if you aren't careful about who you send to do what, it's very possible you won't be seeing that person again. Ever. And if you happen to stumble upon an ending where Shepard dies, you will not be able to import that save file into 3.

In Mass Effect 2 your morality rating is displayed visually by the amount of scar tissue you have. If you're a cool guy it all heals up nicely, but if you are King of the Assholes it actually gets worse and starts to glow red along with your eyes. 2 also introduces an interrupt system; tired of a certain reporter’s bullshit? Punch her in her stupid face. Friend beginning to break down as they tell you their life story? Step in and comfort them. This is the basis for how people react to you and gauge their loyalty accordingly, which is important if you want them to survive the Collector base.

So you stopped the Collectors, got schematics for a Reaper and it seems like everyone is finally going to believe you! Then the lot of them awake from dark space and begin to start wrecking the entire galaxy. Earth included. You barely make it off the planet as a Reaper invasion force is bombarding the planet and abducting or killing everyone in sight. Welcome to Mass Effect 3. You immediately begin efforts to try and rally an entire galaxy - that is not entirely fond of each other, especially the races outside of Council space - to the cause of stopping the Reapers. What you experienced before were merely skirmishes compared to what is to come, this is galactic war.

Multiplayer is introduced in this one and is not only not a tacked on piece of crap but also has effects on the single player campaign. In multiplayer, you team up with 3 other people and fight waves of enemies for control of the section of space you are fighting in. The enemies include every main antagonist force as well as every unit type from those forces. Winning lots of battles increases the percentage of that system you have been able to take back and contribute to your war assets in single player. Much like in 2 you should have a certain "preparedness level" before you attempt the final missions but at least this time around they have let you know ahead of time.