Studying Interactive Storytelling, Part 1: Mass Effect

The 2007 Bioware role-playing game, Mass Effect, along with its 2010 sequel, is an impressive example of the power of interactive storytelling. The player has an enormous impact on the events that take place throughout both games, thus making it a great jumping off point for my research. Mass Effect takes you beyond simply controlling your character as the story plays out around him (or her) and instead allows you to make decisions that dictate the narrative. In doing so, the people behind the game have managed to take a massive universe and make it feel surprisingly personal.

On the most basic level, Mass Effect becomes a personalized experience from the moment you start the game. You are prompted to create your version of human Alliance soldier, Commander Shepard. You choose everything from gender to facial bone structure. You give your Shepard a first name, but his or her last name will always be Shepard. The trade off here is the ability for the non-player characters in the game to vocally address your character by name. You then choose the combat abilities of your Shepard as well as a brief history of his or her life prior to Mass Effect. The latter is a simple but effective way to essentially make the first big decision of your character’s life. Although it feels hokey when the paragraph you just read about your own history in the character creation menu is paraphrased by your captain in the first moments if the actual game, this is (fortunately) not the last time it is mentioned. There are multiple times throughout both Mass Effect games where Shepard’s history is referenced, and it always felt appropriate. Are you talking to a character about their parents? If you chose the “colonist” history, there’s a good chance Shepard will mention how his parents were killed on his home planet. If you chose the “spacer” history, Shepard might gab to other soldiers about his lineage in the service. It’s not something that is constantly in your face, but rather a subtle detail that stays in the back of your mind.

Writing the blueprint for your character is only the beginning, of course. Shepard’s personality is something that forms throughout the course of both games. Many of the dialog options in the game fall into one of two categories: paragon or renegade. This is a similar concept as the morality systems that have become fashionable in video games in the past few years, but with less of the black and white feeling that can often accompany them. The paragon dialog option is not necessarily the “good” answer, just as renegade is not always “bad.” Choosing paragon generally means a kinder, gentler Shepard who is more likely to solve a problem with words rather than bullets. Renegade Shepard is less concerned with consequences and more with results. The more you lean one way or another, the more persuasive Shepard becomes, albeit in different fashions. Trend more towards paragon and you will have opportunities to persuade people with reason and eloquence. Conversely, a strong renegade character will be able to get his or her way using intimidation. The real beauty of this system is not feeling the need to choose only one way or the other. You can be the tough-as-nails, stiff-upper-lip captain who takes orders from no man (or alien), but you can still value life and show some compassion here and there. Maybe you hated taking orders from the Citadel Council, but that doesn’t mean you won’t try to save them at the end of the first game. On the other hand, maybe you just gave them the old nod-and-smile routine and then sat back and watched them burn after the climax. It is rare that an action you take feels out of character because the game is so successful at making the tale personal. This system is built upon in ME2 with the addition of interrupting actions during conversations which allow you to change the tone of a conversation physically rather than verbally. A paragon can act as a shoulder to cry on while a renegade might, well, shove someone out a window. Though you will shoot countless enemies in Mass Effect, the conversations in the game shape not only the way you perceive Commander Shepard, but the way nearly everyone in the universe perceives him or her.

The most important people to converse with are your crew members. You team up with many allies throughout both games and your interactions with them are key components of the narrative. Each member of your team has a distinct personality. Between away missions, you have the opportunity to talk to those aboard your ship. These conversations contain information about their back stories, their evaluation of the mission you just finished, even flirtatious exchanges (depending on the character). The more you get to know your crew, the more you further Shepard’s personal narrative. There is a mission in Mass Effect that ends with you having to choose who of two team mates is not making it out of the mission alive. If you never talked to either of them, it might not be a big deal. If you’ve taken the time to get to know them, it becomes a much bigger deal. It’s not a choice you want to have to face, and the results aren’t just getting X amount of points instead of Y. Making this decision has the potential to impact you as a player just as much as it impacts any fictional character in the game. This is expanded upon in Mass Effect 2 where each of your crew members has an individual loyalty mission. After a few between-mission conversations, each character will open up to Shepard and request that you help them take care of some personal business. Not only do these missions add depth to the lore of that character, but successful completion of the mission makes them more loyal to Commander Shepard.

Both your success and enjoyment of Mass Effect 2 rides on your ability to, essentially, be a good captain. If you take the time to talk to (and listen to) your crew you will be rewarded. The completion of a loyalty mission also provides you with an upgrade to make either that character stronger or your ship stronger. ME2 culminates in a point-of-no-return suicide mission in an uncharted and feared inescapable sector of space. Any and every member of your crew can permanently die if the proper precautions are not taken. As with whomever you could not save on Virmire in ME1, anyone who dies during this mission will not return. There are decisions to be made leading up to and during the final mission that are crucial in determining the outcome. Who do you trust to lead the B-squad, away from your control? Who has the biotic strength necessary to protect you from swarms of Collector wasps? Even the amount of time you spend between the moment your crew is captured to the moment you embark on that final journey determines whether people aboard your ship live or die. After watching the first Normandy ship get destroyed at the start of Mass Effect 2, you want to take every precaution in making sure that the decisions you make don’t allow history to repeat itself.

At the very core of both Mass Effect titles are the choices you make throughout and the effect (no pun intended) they have on your story. The effects you can have on the world(s) around you are even more evident when importing your data from the first game into the second. Continuing the journey of the very same Shepard is a surprisingly powerful experience. Whether it’s an asari slave trying to get her life back together after you saved her from the enigmatic Thorian or just a simple “thank you” e-mail from someone you helped out, the game constantly reinforces the fact that you make an impact. Even more personal, Shepard has a little framed picture in his or her quarters or whomever he or she became romantically involved with in the first game. Get a little too friendly with a new crewmember, however, and that picture ends up face down on the desk. If you decide not to pursue a new relationship in the second game, that picture stays up. On a less personal level, there is alien technology you can either save or destroy, entire species you can either help or make extinct, mercenary groups you can fight or ignore. The influence you have in Mass Effect is unquestionable.

That influence is a big factor in what makes the entire universe feel so personal. The saga of Commander Shepard and the crew of the starship Normandy is something that no two players will experience identically. Interaction in this story is paramount. In the theme song to the seminal sitcom, Cheers, songwriter Gary Portnoy theorized that, “sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name.” In the Mass Effect series, seemingly everyone in the galaxy knows your name. Why they know your name, however, is entirely up to you.

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