Mass Effect
Mass Effect is a trilogy of video games by the studio, BioWare. The first game was released in 2007 for the Xbox 360 and and ported to PC in 2008, while the third game was released in 2012 for Xbox 360, PS3, and PC. The series is a scifi role playing game that follows the story of a male or female soldier and their place in a galactic struggle between organic and inorganic life. There has been controversy over the games for the animated sexual scenes, as well as the ability to play gay characters.
Contents
Plot
The first game starts in the year 2183 with Commander Shepard, a human man or woman who is serving on a jointly human/alien controlled ship, the SSV Normandy. While investigating a distress signal on a human colony, Shepard discovers an army of AI, the feared Geth race, invading the planet. He eventually comes upon their target: a message from aliens 50,000 years extinct, the Protheans, warning of the imminent return of an ancient and near omnipotent force of inorganic beings they called Reapers that destroyed the Protheans' civilization and wiped out all advanced organic life. The game continues with Shepard chasing Saren, the primary pawn of the Reapers and an ex-agent of galactic law, as well as his Geth followers around the galaxy in an attempt to foil his attempt to allow the Reapers to reenter the Milky Way Galaxy. After succeeding in delaying the Reapers' plans of galactic invasion, the second game picks up two years later with an opening scene showing Commander Shepard's death. His/her later high-tech resurrection is performed by a rogue military group named Cerberus, whose goals aim to place humans above all other alien species. Cerberus reveals that human colonies around the Milky Way are disappearing, and the likely culprits are the same group of aliens who killed Shepard. Leading a mixed team of master scientists, assassins, soldiers, and more, Shepard discovers that this is indeed the case. These abductors, called the Collectors, are a bio-engineered race crafted from the Protheans and left behind by the Reapers in order to carry out the mysterious process of Reaper procreation. Shepard works with Cerberus, either willingly or grudgingly, in order to put a stop to the abductions once and for all, and discovers that the Collectors are using the broken down organic material that composes humans in order to construct new Reapers, gigantic sentient spaceships. In the end of the game, Shepard stops the Collectors, destroys their base, and cuts ties with Cerberus, only to receive a message from the Reapers deep in space that they will arrive soon. The third game takes place shortly afterward, with the Reapers arriving on Earth and commencing with their galaxy wide slaughter of organic life. Shepard leads the efforts to both stop them and Cerberus, which seems bent on finding a way to control the Reapers, regardless of the cost. Commander Shepard gathers support around the galaxy, as well as helps construction on a Prothean weapon designed to destroy the Reapers. In the final phase of constructing and using the weapon, called the Crucible, it is revealed that the Reapers were created hundreds of thousands or even millions of years ago with the purpose of keeping organic life from creating AI that would destroy ALL life, rather than just advanced alien species. With this knowledge, Shepard is faced with the decision of whether to use the Crucible to destroy the Reapers, control them, or merge organic and inorganic life into a new, symbiotic form. The game finishes with a narrative which implies that the entire trilogy is a historic story being told by an adult to a child.
Controversy and Ethical Implications
Man vs. Machine
One prominent theme of the series is the idea of man vs. machine, showing up in all three games. In the first game, the most frequent antagonists are the Geth; AI created by an alien race, called the Quarians, originally as laborers. These first Geth were barely considered true AI but were networked intelligences; the more together the smarter they were. Eventually, some of the Geth began to show signs of sentience, such as questioning why they worked, and the Quarians attempted to shut them down/destroy them. The Geth started fight back, and eventually succeeded in pushing the Quarians off their home world. This event shaped galactic view of AI, outlawing their creation and even existence, with the Geth seen as AI boogey-men. When the Geth encountered Saren prior to the events of the first game, many followed him, seeing the Reapers as robotic "gods". They chose to assist the Reapers in the attempts to exterminate advanced organic life in return for access to Reaper technology. (Outside source info for man vs machine)
In the second game, new insight is given into the nature of the Geth, and how a faction didn't accept the logic of the Reapers. These Geth would seek to help organic life, and send an agent to help Shepard in his fight against the Collectors. The Collectors themselves are discovered to be
