Mainstreaming Mass Effect

Remember how weapons work in the first Mass Effect game? If fired too often without pausing to allow excess heat to dissipate from the weapon’s mechanisms, the gun would overheat and lock up momentarily. This behavior is fully and intriguingly explained by the in-game lore: handheld weapons in the ME universe don’t require magazines of ammunition; they chip away at a pre-installed solid mineral block and fire these tiny particles at incredible velocities using miniaturized mass effect technology. This process builds up heat, however, which must be vented. Like most ME science fiction lore, this is a really interesting and plausible concept (assuming you first swallow the whole mass effect notion). Mass Effect 2 changed this. Suddenly, the weapons in the ME universe have ejectable heatsinks which become exhausted and must be replaced after a set number of shots. These thermal clips are found lying around the playable game world in random dark corners and not-so-random shelves immediately preceding each fight. The developers blatantly added ammo to the gameplay and attempted to cover it up by calling the ammo magazines “thermal clips.”

From a narrative perspective ejectable heatsinks may seem like a valuable upgrade for handheld weapons, but only if the heatsinks also naturally dissipate heat over time (a la Mass Effect 1) in addition to being quickly replaceable during a high-stress firefight. Unfortunately BioWare nixed the basic concept of a heatsink - they may be ejectable now, but they don’t dissipate heat anymore (apparently they simply trap it). Why did BioWare fly in the face of its own lore from the first game? I suspect this was done in order to more closely align Mass Effect’s gameplay with that of the most popular franchises of its day (Call of Duty and Gears of War) in order to reach a broader audience. BioWare and EA wanted to attract the millions of gamers who play shooters in addition to the RPG fans they already had on the hook. They needed to make ME2 and ME3 more familiar and accessible so mainstreamers could pick up and play more easily. Most gamers are used to collecting and using ammo, so it’s a must have. Same deal with the updated cover system. BioWare took their unique action-RPG and turned it into Mass Gears of Modern War Effect. The desire to increase your customer base is not in itself a bad thing, but this was done at the expense of poking an ugly hole in the franchise lore - and I would argue that same captivating hard sci-fi lore is largely to thank for Mass Effect’s initial popularity. Don’t get me wrong - Mass Effect 2 and 3 are great games. It’s just disconcerting what happens to games in the name of accessibility.