The Mass Effect Of Movement

 The Mass Effect Of Movement

Today our topic is Mass Effect Legendary Edition. Let me make a note that this post will just be talking about the first Mass Effect game. The Legendary Edition includes Mass Effect 1, 2, and 3. So Mass Effect is a third person shooter game. I want to mention that the Witcher and this game will have similar  movement but not the same movement in terms of playstyle. The main protagonist is John Shepard. He is a human soldier who is a part of the alliance. The alliance are kind of the guardians of the galaxy. They are the human military and serve under the Citadel Council, a council of all sorts of aliens who govern the galaxy. Commander John Shepard is made a spectre and given control of a spaceship called the Normandy. It is an experimental ship of special ops. The human and alien alliance is at war with the geth who are robots trying to resurrect apocalyptic robots called Reapers. So this is a space game whereas the Witcher is a fantasy game. The Witcher involves much more close combat, while this is going to be much more ranged combat. 

Equipment: For this game the equipment is a PS5 and a controller.

Controller

PS5

Home Screens

Character Customization

Character Customization kind of changes the style of movement. You are only able to create humans. There are aliens in the game and I will talk about their movement as well. Soldiers are very weapon oriented so they are always further back. Vanguards possess more heavy armor, which means they can get into close range: Think more like a swat team. Infiltrators have a special melee move where you hold the circle button and a mini knife comes out of their omnitool. To clarify:  Omnitools are basically holographic bracelets that can open doors, hot wire computers, or the most common use is healing your team. 

Mass Relay

Let’s talk about this for a minute. Mass relays are stations that basically allow hyperspace travel. As you can see in the image, they have a power source with energy. When a ship goes near it, the ship will get hit by what looks somewhere in between a thunderbolt and tractor beam, then the relay will slingshot the ship into hyperspace. I will explain more on movement later.

Ship and game start 

Command center of ship

Galaxy map

Menu

Let’s talk about base movement and no fight zones. The game starts in a no fight zone. This means you have limited movement, similar to what happens in the Witcher game. You also wouldn’t want to fight if you could because you would eventually lose. Walking is done in 3D. Left thumbstick controls direction. Pushing up moves forward. Left and Right move you sideways left and right. This is slowed because of the place you are in. Right thumbstick controls where you are looking:  Up is up, down is down, left is left, and right is right. Movement is mostly smooth, although it can be rough. The controller does recognize when you hit a wall. I believe it even vibrates. 

Mission 1. Non lethal aliens

So when on a mission, you can pull out or put away your weapon by pressing the button in between the select and start buttons. It is the giant rectangle. On missions you can run. When your weapon is drawn, you move faster. You can also hit the X button to run whether your weapon is drawn or not. Left trigger lets you aim. Right trigger lets you shoot. The aliens in the picture are slow moving and non lethal. Non lethal things are not common. They are basically gas bags here. They float and hover and move slowly

Commands

You can issue commands for your teammates. You press the buttons on the left to issue commands. For the purposes of this, those are the D pad buttons. You aim and press up to have your team focus on an enemy. Some enemies are more powerful. Left will command who is on the left under your health bar. This is the bottom center info right there. In this case, you can see I have one guy on the left. Right commands your right squadmate. Bottom calls your team back to you so they will follow you. You can have people move to positions and they will vault over objects and get into cover or stand still. In addition, in that same place, you see a med pack with a number under it. You can hit triangle to use it and it will heal your entire team. 

This is supposed to be showing geth soldiers. Some of these images turned out bad. In the first picture you can’t see him. The second you should see him through a sniper scope. 

Geth soldiers move at normal speed. They run and walk etc. They act like normal soldiers. Something I forgot to mention:  You can hit the X button to get into cover. While in cover, if you are on the edge of one set of cover and there is another right next to you, you can hold the left thumbstick left or right and then press the X button and it will swap cover in that direction. 

Swap weapons

Swap powers. Powers.

Swapping weapons is done with the left bumper by holding it down and then using the left thumbstick to select a weapon and hitting the X button. Powers are different abilities you can use, similar to magic, only in space. You can use it to switch to special ammo (freezing, armor piercing, etc), to turn on a shield, to hit someone with an anti grav field, or to do other things. You aim and hit the right bumper to use powers. You can hold the right bumper, select an item with the left thumbstick, and hit the X button to select the item. Anti grav and burst abilities alter movement. Anti grav creates a field and makes all objects in the field hover. Burst basically can slam an opponent in the direction they are hit. There is also freezing power. There is a slow motion power. All are very useful to alter movement. Different classes get different powers. Soldiers get different ammo. Vanguard gets shields. There’s a biotic class I think that basically is designed to alter movement and physics. 

Giant ship. Secretly a Reaper. 

Train. Trolley. 

This is a very narrow place and long platform that moves. This limits movement. You can vault over cover by pushing forward on the left thumbstick and hitting the X button twice. 

Citadel A space station

This is the Citadel, which is a space station and capital of the galaxy basically. 

Citadel Council

This is the council of the Citadel. They govern the universe. Let’s talk about the different races. The Human is the only physical one there; The rest are holograms. On the left is a Turian. This is a warrior, militaristic race. They have jackal-like feet. They are slightly slower than humans, but not by much. They have physical strength and great armor. The middle figure is an Asari. These are basically mages and judges. They focus on shield, burst, anti grav, and physical powers. If you can fling someone 5 feet, they can toss them 20 ft and slam them into a wall. They are judges and law officers. They are fast, but slow when casting powers. To the right is a Solarian. They are scientists. They specialize in gadgets, hacking, computers, special grenades (normal, fire, disintegration, anti  grav). They move super fast but they have no health basically. 

Transport

Fast travel is a thing. When you walk up to something and hit the X button sometimes, you can select from options on the menu that pops up with the left thumbstick and X button. Then it goes to a loading screen. 

Loading screen

Turian Companion

All three squadmates. Turian is NOT actually a part of my squad yet. 

In general, you select two squadmates. Sometimes you will have third parties who are not a part of your squad for a specific mission. This is to show the comparison between humans and Turians. There is not much difference. Turians are slightly bigger and stronger. 

Krogan and Turian

Krograns like the one on the left are aliens who are practically giant. They are super soldiers. They love war. Their armor is tough. The problem with lots and lots of armor is while you may be virtually indestructible, you are slow.  Krogans are slow, like really slow. They are very strong and tend to prefer shotguns and heavy weapons. If they bash you because there is a melee button, it will hurt. I think they can stun you by knocking you to the ground. Circle is the melee button: Pressing it bashes an opponent. If you’re lucky, it stuns them. Melee exists, but unlike in Witcher, is generally not the main mode of combat. In the Witcher, I don’t think there are very many ranged enemies. Melee is almost unavoidable. In this there’s a lot. Welcome to space. If you try to be crazy and melee everything, you will more than likely die. 

Human Council member

Galaxy map view. Planet mode. 

System mode

Star Mode

Galaxy mode

So as I had mentioned earlier on the galaxy map: You can walk up to it and hit X to interact with it. The planet mode gives you details of the planet or station.  I will talk about that later. There are different things you can do in the planet mode. System mode lets you explore a system's planets and stars and stations and asteroids. Star mode lets you see the systems you can explore in the galaxy. Galaxy mode lets you see the whole galaxy. You can select your options by pressing circle to zoom out and X to move into an option. 

Planet

Planet

Some planets are planets. There is nothing you can do. You can land on any planet that says land. 

Landing

When you land, you are in a truck. This is just a transport. You can drive with the left thumbstick and change your view with the right thumbstick. It is generally easier to drive where you are looking. You can hit X to make the car jump. You can hit Square to boost. Right trigger shoots a machine gun. Right Bumper fires a grenade launcher. Triangle is a repair kit in case your vehicle is damaged. It is relatively smooth driving. The screen can go crazy sometimes. As you move, in any case, you will see something new on the map. The view is tied to an actual map. Map is the same when you leave and come back, but as you move your X and Y, positions shift. 

Survey

You can survey to get resources or determine if you can land.

Driving and giant metal lizards

These are not really metal lizards. The Geth have machine walkers. They have legs and walk slowly. Some of these are practically tanks. 

Tunnels

A restriction for when you are in your transport are tunnels and paths. 

Outside transport

If you hit the circle button, you get out of the transport. You can get in by walking up to it and pressing X. Worth noting the transport armored tank is the only vehicle you can control. 

Whole Squad

You get a variety of choices with your whole team. You can only take two, but they have different strengths and weaknesses when it comes to movement and in general. For instance, some are super fast and some are very, very slow. 

Voice options

You can use the left thumbstick to select what you want to say and then hit A to say it. 

Asari

Transport exploring

This is the movement description of Mass Effect. The Witcher may be more exciting. Really it just was more movement, especially when you think about the melee. However, Mass Effect does have its own strengths. It is a ranged game, so movement is defined differently. Most of your movement is cover to cover and ranged. The transport vehicle is a unique feature. It is all terrain basically. It can be fun to explore. It is a fun game. You should buy the legendary edition from a physical store: Target, Best Buy, etc. You can also get it from Amazon, the Xbox store and Playstation Store. We have reached the end of this blog. If you have feedback, please reply in the comments.