Ma**hole Effect

I'm a big fan of the achievements and my latest goal is the Renegade achievement in Mass Effect. You get the renegade achievement both for evil and for being a jerk.

And it's rough. I'd write about it in detail, but if you check out John Walker's excellent BOTOR articles you'll get a good idea of what I'm going through.

I don't like being the bad guy in games. And even if I am going to be a bad guy, I don't understand why being a renegade involves treating your allies like crap. Most of the world's most famous evil people tended to be pretty agreeable in person -- which is how they got into position to be so evil.

There are a lot of other moral choices in the game that just don't seem right. At one point a side quest asks you to retrieve the fallen body of a quest giver's spouse. Only it turns out that the body is being studied, research that will save the lives of others. I thought, "Well, the needs of the living outweigh the needs of the dead, so that moral dilemma is solved." Except that it wasn't.

I was going to do an "evil" playthrough but I've decided that's too much -- I'm going to get my Renegade achievement then start over.

And oh yeah -- I finished Mass Effect, exercising on a recumbent bike the whole way. I don't know if I'll bother with a review -- if you haven't played it by now I don't think my words will sway you. But I thought it was pretty darn cool with a bit of roughness around the edges. I was going to say there was too much traveling and talking and inventory management and side quests and not enough shooting, but I guess for an RPG it already has an overabundance of shooting.