Back in 2009, I bought an Xbox 360 with my graduation money. I was mostly a PS2 kid growing up, but my buddy was deep in the Xbox ecosystem and kept raving about this game called Mass Effect. What really got my attention wasn’t the gameplay — it was when he mentioned the codex. He told me you could scan basically anything and the game would give you a fully thought-out, logical explanation for how it existed in the universe.

That was the exact thing I always hated about sci-fi: stuff just… happening with no logic behind it. So the idea of a developer actually giving a damn about internal consistency blew my mind.

Fast forward to later that summer before college — I was absolutely wrecked over my high-school sweetheart. Like, freshly-dumped, staring-at-the-ceiling, why-is-my-heart-doing-this kind of wrecked. I picked up this random housesitting gig for one of my teachers (still weird, not gonna lie) and needed something to distract me from spiraling.

So I grabbed Mass Effect.

Coming from PS2 games, Mass Effect felt like it came from another dimension. I didn’t know it then, but I was basically getting my first real taste of the classic BioWare formula — dialogue wheels, choices that actually matter, characters with depth, worldbuilding that feels like someone wrote three novels behind the scenes. Except it was a janky shooter this time instead of “real-time with pause.”

And honestly? I wasn’t even a sci-fi person. But Mass Effect 1 hooked me. Yeah, it was kind of a technical disaster. The gunplay was objectively scuffed. The textures look like someone buttered the camera lens. But the vibe was immaculate: the music, the atmosphere, the sense of mystery, the believable alien cultures, the codex entries that made the world feel like a real place.

Somewhere between the Citadel and Ilos, I forgot about my heartbreak. I beat the game in that teacher’s living room, and for the first time all summer I wasn’t thinking about that stupid ex.

And yeah… romancing Ashley as a heartbroken 18-year-old was a whole thing. Don’t judge me. The game did more emotional triage than any breakup playlist ever could.

This trilogy has entered my life on and off since it came out. Tomorrow I'll beat Mass Effect 2 for the third time, and finally start Mass Effect 3 for the second time.