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.
There's also this sense that certain aspects of the game weren't quite finished. In this day and age of gaming it's really not okay anymore for you to take an action or accomplish a goal and have a dialog box pop on the screen to narrate for you what just happened. If, for example, I survey a world and find an alien artifact, the game shouldn't make me read a pop-up summary of that action. The Normandy has a crew, an under utilized one at that, so why don't I get a report, aurally or textually, from one of them? The pop-up summaries, which come up most frequently on the game's many side quests, really take you out of an otherwise immersive game.
Despite some of these faults, it's impossible to overlook everything this game gets right. The storyline, which involves a mystery regarding the disappearance of an ancient race, the Protheans, is immediately engaging as it's intertwined with humanity's own search for credibility with a council of races that has been on the intergalactic scene far longer than we have. You'll quickly find your character at the center of this quest for legitimacy as your superiors seek to make you the first Specter, an elite group of investigative operatives that operate outside of and above the law.
What I really find fascinating about this game is what it has to say about race. With so many alien species working for, with and against each other, Bioware could easily have squandered an opportunity to explore the very human traits of fear, bias and outright insecurity that often lie at the heart of race relations. Instead Mass Effect revels in its exploration of these issues, both in the form of aliens that don't like or trust humanity, and humans that don't much like or trust these aliens. It's compelling stuff.
Ultimately, Mass Effect is everything a fan of Bioware has come to expect from the company. While it may not offer the complexity of the old Baldur's Gate games, at its core, it's still an RPG fan's RPG. It has the kind of melding of action, adventure and character work for which the company has been known for a decade and it's the type of game we gamers don't get nearly enough of anymore.
