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Here's the interesting thing I've noticed about the Mass Effect series (so far): It's basically Final Fantasy VI if that game were split in two...at least with regards to narrative. I shall e'splain:

In FF6 you start the first half of the game going through a specific and standard three act hero's journey as ya do in ME1 where the main character - Terra - meets the different characters that will join your party as a result of external plot elements. While ME1 had butt tons of sidequests to flesh/pad everything out, the main story was a relatively brief bit of linear planet hopping before meeting and defeating the big bad, much like the first half of FF6, which eschewed any sidequests for a beefier linear story to the big bad on his floating island...only it pulls the rug out and has the good guys lose and the bad guys destroy the world. This is why Kefka is Best Villian! Mommy boy Sephiroth wasn't able to pull that off now was he?!

ahem...but I digress...

The point being is that this is where ME1 ends and ME2 picks up. Like ME2, the focus was no longer on the story (the 'plot' if you will), but on developing and expanding upon the characters themselves. Like ME2, there was no longer an external narrative. You would find your friends, add them to your party and then have the option of helping them with a personal problem of theirs. Once your party was big enough, you took on the big bad.

The biggest difference in FF6: Part 2 is that there's no longer a main character and the completely open nature of the game design. You can conceivably pick up a minimum of three characters in order to obtain an airship which will allow you access to every single part of the now completely restructured planet (including the final level, but I'll get to that) and can go about picking up your former party members in any order you wish (though the game did give you lil hints to start you off) before heading off to fight the big bad. Unlike ME2, which forces 'gates' around the 'assemble a team' narrative to control the pacing (I assume), once you get those aforementioned three characters and airship, you can head right to the final level and take on the big bad. You'll fail of course (unless you grind like an insane person or cheat), but the point is there were no longer any narrative restrictions of any kind.

...it's just something I wanted to point out.

This post has been edited by Narratorway on 29th November 2011 20:26

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Good point! Now that you mention it, they are quite similar. I must say, though, that making this comparison helped me understand why ME2 is not that good as ME1 (besides the more "shooter friendly" gameplay).

What I mean is, like you suggest, ME2 is like half a game (in a FFVI narrative style), with some deep char development but no substantial plot development nor twists. Everything interesting (including knowing who the bad guy really is) happened on the first, so the second doesn't feel like to be a complete and a full game by itself, it feels more like a filler, but would have been a great second half of ME1, i guess.


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That's a really interesting connection, NP. I've never played the Mass Effect games before so I'm not really able to make any contributions to this, but it makes me think of how games are inspired by others. Now, it's very likely that this isn't a direct inspiration, but it seems odd to me that we don't hear more about structural comparisons like this. In literature or music, we almost always reference the authors or groups that have inspired a particular novel of song, but in videogames this sort of thing doesn't get much attention.

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That's a really interesting connection, NP. I've never played the Mass Effect games before so I'm not really able to make any contributions to this, but it makes me think of how games are inspired by others. Now, it's very likely that this isn't a direct inspiration, but it seems odd to me that we don't hear more about structural comparisons like this. In literature or music, we almost always reference the authors or groups that have inspired a particular novel of song, but in videogames this sort of thing doesn't get much attention.

@Narratorway, you oughta write a whole formal paper about this, and then self-publish it or something.

No, seriously. I have a couple old friends who helped start this class, and I already feel like pointing them to this here thread.

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This is interesting. I really need to play the ME's. I am a huge hardcore fan of FF but know little to nothing about ME.

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I was pretty opposed to playing Mass Effect because of the "shooter nature." I also wanted to play it because it was a Bioware game.

Never played the original, but I very much enjoyed ME2 and will anticipate the upcoming sequel.