This balance is thrown on its head when faced with the existential threat of the Reapers, an immortal machine race that cyclically wipes the galaxy of life. Your early run-ins with the Citadel council play like an argument between a parent and a petulant child-not surprising considering most of the council races’ lifespans dwarf those of humans. And they don’t hesitate to remind you of that, either. The Asari and the Salarians discovered the Citadel, the central location of all three games, thousands of years before humanity figured out how to escape Earth’s gravity. The Mass Effect games have you play as Commander Shepard, the representative of humanity, a species depicted as the nascent underdogs in a universe dominated by much older and more advanced civilizations. These are stories that de-emphasize the importance of humanity and the individual in a genre traditionally dominated by both. The film Arrival makes the same argument in strikingly similar ways. The Mass Effect trilogy, through its story, presents an argument for empathy, social responsibility and the necessity of working together to survive. In light of the upcoming Mass Effect: Andromeda-and considering its increased focus on colonization-it’s helpful to examine what made the original three games successful in this regard. Now, more than ever, we need stories that address the fractured nature of our society. The extreme right, cohered around fear and distrust of others, is on a worldwide winning streak. We are long past the point of returning our climate to normal levels and are rapidly approaching environmental catastrophe.
As Americans, we see our country embroiled in dozens of different conflicts with ambiguous enemies and no clear signs of exit. The fears and concerns of the present day are as pressing as any other period in human history, past or future. Black Mirror uses its Twilight Zone-inspired formula to explore the dangers of over-reliance on technology. Star Trek used its diverse cast to battle the hegemony of the 1960s TV landscape. Paul Verhoeven’s dystopic run of films in the 1980s were a reaction to the rise of neoliberalism and corporate recklessness.
Science fiction works best when it uses fantastic worlds to comment on our real one.
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