The original Mass Effect is easily my favourite of the three.
There's a sense of scale in the game that the other three never came anywhere close to rivalling. Not just in terms of the importance of the actions of the player, but in a physical sense. When you're making a video game about humanity reaching the boundless expanses of outer space, this is absolutely and completely essential.
Environments where the player is on foot are open and populated, and have enough space and connectivity to them to give the impression of even larger spaces beyond the boundaries of where the player can go. The concourse in the Citadel is enormous, and the skybox implies that what we access is only a fraction of its enormity. In comparison, the Citadel in ME2 is a small port section, and a tiny little strip mall. Combine this with the ability to proceed on foot on the (admittedly empty and barren) planets the player can land on, and there is such a stark contrast that ME2 and ME3 can't even really begin to compare.
Compounding this is the sense of continuity between these places. The Mako gets a lot of flack for handling poorly (and, frankly, it does), but it provided an absolutely essential interstitial step between the vastness of space, the panoramas of the planets, and the smaller confines of compounds and buildings explored on foot. Because the players is present and a part of each of these steps, they reinforce the perspective and scope of each other. In contrast, even when making planet-fall in ME2, the environments the player explores are, by virtue of the engine, tight and confined. There is no distinction in scope in ME2 between being confined to the Normandy, a space-station, or a planet. They're all presented from the same perspective, and are all roughly the same in terms of dimensions. ME3 does more to change this up, but still never comes close to reaching the vastness that ME1 achieves.
As for the writing, I'm aware I'll catch a lot of disagreement for this one, but the crew of ME2 was actually one of the weakest points for me. Mordin, Legion, Garrus and the DLC characters aside (who I never got to experience on my play-through), the majority of the crew's personal arcs in the story are all just some variation of daddy problems (Jacob, Miranda, Tali specifically, and even Grunt and Jack insofar as they both strugge with finding their own identity without the support or care of loving people to raise them) or issues with the responsibilities of being a parent (Samara, Thane). Jack's a bit of a wild card, because I was never able to finish her story-arc on account of playing as a lady Shepard. Garrus's character arc mostly ran its conclusion through the first game, and here he's given a new premise, a new beginning, but he proceeds to do basically nothing with it. Mordin's fantastic, though, and Legion's an excellent mouthpiece for learning more about the mysterious antagonist race of the first series. Those two bring something new to the story, and have arcs all of their own. The things that Mordin and Legion do they would likely have tried to accomplish regardless of whether or not Shepard came to recruit them.
This is more in-line with the stronger characters in ME1 (in particular, Wrex) who had a clear narrative arc, and who assist Shepard not because they are doe-eyed followers who believe Shepard's hype, but because they have goals and objectives, and working with Shepard is an obvious way to further them. This isn't to say that every character in ME1 was strongly written, but the game itself also placed far less emphasis on them individually. It makes their inclusion and continued involvement in the story make more sense. In contrast, in ME2 the idea of Shepard working with Cerberus, even in gratitude for their saving of Shepard's life, always rings a bit hollow. It's a blatant contrivance to try and force some sort of "shades of grey" dynamic that never really pays off. In ME1, Kaiden and Ashley are hardly the most dynamic characters, but given that they, and Shepard, are all working for the same military organisation, of their own free will, their continued inclusion makes sense. In contrast, ME2 presents us with Miranda and Jacob, theoretically good people who willingly work with a human supremacist terrorist organisation. An organisation Shepard has spent no small amount of time fighting against. Not only is there no compelling reason for Shepard to work for or trust Cerberus or its agents, there is no repercussions to openly defying The Illusive Man at any time. This is bad writing, and it makes up a disproportionate amount of ME2's narrative.
(An aside: while writing this, I realise how much relevance there is in ME2's ambitions of excusing a clearly evil organisation in "shades of grey" and the current political climate, and wooof if that doesn't make me like the game a whole lot less.)
I cannot really consider ME3 to be the best game in the series because so much of it is wholly dependent on the player caring about characters, places and events of the previous two games. For what it's worth, I think it is generally a stronger game than ME2, both in terms of overall writing (the ending(s) notwithstanding) and gameplay. That said, I find the tone of exploration and wonder of the first game more enjoyable than ME3's tones of finality and conclusion.
tl;dr I think ME1 is the best, with ME3 coming in second and ME2 bringing up the rear.
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