TOM FRANCIS
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Mass Effect In Wheels

I love the breadth of choice Mass Effect’s dialogue wheels give you sometimes:

Or the classic:

For some reason it drives me crazy when I can tell, before or after selecting an option, that my character would have delivered the same line no matter what I clicked. For the unfamiliar, Shepard doesn’t say the words you click on, but rather something to that effect. Sometimes there are alarming differences between the two, more often it’s clear the line was phrased to fit all three choices.

If you can’t give me the option, don’t give me the option. There’s plenty of meaningful choice in Mass Effect, punctuating it with meaningless choice only undermines it by making the developers seem lazy and the player’s choices irrelevant.

Plus side, some of them are so good I have to go away and make a cup of coffee before deciding:

I was surprised and pleased to find a lot of commenters here are fans too – I thought any of the other games I mentioned in my last post were more likely to spark a discussion. If you’re playing through at the moment, make sure you hit up Garrus for any old cop stories. My biggest regret when reviewing was that I didn’t follow that lead up before the game ended, and doing so on my second, more Paragonian playthrough was profoundly satisfying.

Bonus points to anyone who knows which two encounters those last decision wheels are from.