All of this, however, isn't what makes Mass Effect the kind of game experience that any fan of RPGs should long to play. Really, it's the fact that Bioware has allowed the galaxy that they've created to breath. When you first arrive at the central world of Citadel, it looks like it's going to be a pretty generic 3rd-person shooter with a little talkity-talk as you go. But as you explore the Citadel an entire galaxy opens up to you.

The alien races all have incredibly rich histories. Every character of consequence has a deep personal history that offers clearly defined motivations for their actions. And the actions you take in the world have consequences in the world appropriate to their scale. (If you're just doing one person a small favor, they'll remember you. But if you do something big that gets everyone's attention, most everyone will comment on it.) With characters and cultures so well defined, it's easy to get lost in the world and get to the point where you actually care about what happens to the people in it.

The only sin that consistently holds back the experience is the sense that certain aspects of the game don't quite live up to their potential. There's not a whole lot of new ground being broke here and for all Bioware's crowing about the dialog system in particular, it doesn’t go anywhere we've not been before. Dialog between characters typically offers the standard RPG choices of being nice, neutral or a raging prick. The illusion of choice is very much present at first, but as you play the transparency and lack of any real ramification between these choices is pretty clear.

NPCs will often respond exactly the same regardless of the dialog option you choose and even when they do react appropriately to something you've said, it's often just a tweaked one sentence response before they slip back into the standard dialog tree. Plus, there's no shortage of times when an otherwise intelligent character says something unforgivably stupid in the name of forcing some aspect of the story forward, especially with regards to the love triangle within the game and how those characters express themselves. Finally, if I hear another character in the game completely change their viewpoint because I said something they, "hadn't thought about that way," I might just activate the Normandy's self destruct sequence. (If only it had one.) In this area of design Bioware really could take a pointer or two from the folks at CD Projekt, the makers of The Witcher.​