Mass Effect 2 is celebrating its 15-year anniversary today, January 26, 2025. Below, we look back at its unique episodic structure, and how other developers have not picked up its torch.
Most RPGs are like fantasy or science-fiction novels. The cross-continental journeys of Final Fantasy X or Dragon Age: Origins feel analogous to The Lord of the Rings or The Wheel of Time. Even sandboxes like Baldur’s Gate 3 lean on a linear set of events, the disruption of routine key to fantasy fiction. Mass Effect 2 is a serious contrast, instead modeling itself after a season of television. I’m not the first person to make this comparison, but even after a decade and a half of further RPG releases, ME2’s structure remains striking. The format helped catapult ME2 to upper echelons of many greatest-games lists. It is still the most beloved entry of the franchise, beating out its incomplete and controversial siblings. However, without the novelty of experiencing it for the first time, ME2 feels more like a valiant first effort at something new, rather than the apex of the form.
To summarize, protagonist Shepard is tasked with recruiting 12 party members to accompany him on a “suicide mission.” Outside of a few main quests, most of ME2’s runtime concerns itself with recruiting those characters and helping them resolve their personal issues. ME2’s main plot is ultimately inconsequential to the trilogy’s broader machinations. Instead, the game’s series of one-off missions steal the show, making ME2 more character-focused than its kin. One could argue that Baldur’s Gate 3, with its three acts, or Dragon Age: Origins, with its hub areas, have episodic structures. But each mission in ME2 is essentially an episode of TV. Most are entirely self-contained, and few relate back to the main plot in any meaningful way. They act the way individual episodes in a television show might act. The game is a serious attempt to bring the long-term, routine-focused dynamics of classic Star Trek to a massive RPG.
In theory, this offers space for characters to relax, take up space, and show their complexities and shades. Sometimes it even succeeds. The assassin Thane is an obvious highlight–a clichéd character given weight and grace through careful writing and some beguiling alien touches.