GOTY 2010: Best Role Playing Game Runner Up – Mass Effect 2

Mass Effect 2 might not even be a role-playing game, but I know I approached it as such, and so I am inclined to drop the experience into this sometimes ill-fitting category and talk about it as a game that is more concerned with presenting the player with an array of believable development options in a coherent universe than one which is mostly built around a third person squad shooter mechanics.

More traditional role-playing video game fans might be disappointed to find a game which lacks an actual inventory for the characters and offers a more limited development path for the characters, in terms of skills and powers, than the first one in the series.

But the game compensates by delivering a personal arc for the main characters that has more weight and more attached potential drama than any other during the year that was.

Experienced gamers, betrayed by their own skills, might have never got to see it but Mass Effect 2 actually delivers the feeling of loss very well when it comes to the last sequence, the one where companions that have become cherished and even loved can be lost through actions that are always linked to player choice.

This game also does characterization very well, even when it comes to the NPCs which have little actual impact on the narrative, like Kelly, or to the more outrageous and out of this members of the cast, like a certain frozen character that becomes available half way through.

It also manages to maintain a coherent game universe most of the time, although the ending can be a disappointment as it feels that the team at BioWare is holding a bit back in order to have some surprises to deliver in Mass Effect 3.

The Paragon and Renegade interrupt moments are also a brilliant mechanics for a role-playing game and I would like to see them more widely adopted, as they add both tension to the conversations and a great deal of replayability.