NPR

Reading The Game: In 'Mass Effect,' The Story Starts With The Spaceship

The Mass Effect series is known almost as much for its storytelling as its actual gameplay — as the series is rereleased in an omnibus Legendary edition, we look at what makes it so literary.
The Normandy, coolest ship in this part of space.

For years now, some of the best, wildest, most moving or revealing stories we've been telling ourselves have come not from books, movies or TV, but from video games. So we're running an occasional series, Reading The Game, in which we take a look at some of these games from a literary perspective.


In the beginning, it was the Normandy that I fell for, not Mass Effect. If it hadn't been for the Normandy (gorgeous, sleek, the most advanced ship in the Alliance fleet and personal ride of Commander Shepard, star of the series), I might've just quit the newly remastered Legendary edition of the beloved trilogy after the first few hours.

See, I did not like at all when I started playing. Going in, I didn't have the nostalgia of a veteran player (it's a series I missed when it first ), so I saw only this busy, silly, overcrowded galaxy full of disjointed whistle-stop worlds always in some sort of terrible peril. Everyone had a problem that needed to be fixed. Everyone had a story they needed to tell me. Here I am, most powerful Space Cop

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