Monthly Archive for August, 2008

After thoroughly enjoying both the gameplay and the storytelling in last year’s hit game Mass Effect, I decided to give the prequel novel a try. Several factors affected my decision to do so. I am not normally the sort of person who would enjoy the fiction associated with series spawned in other media. I find that the defining features of a medium generally dictate a certain style of storytelling, this does not always translate well to written fiction. This is perhaps most clearly the case with computer games. Computer games as a medium dicatate a certain focus on action, and interaction, that does not suit written fiction, or indeed any other medium. In this case however I was willing to give Mass Effect: Revelation a shot based on the fact that it was written by the lead writer of the game and also the high quality of the writing in the game itself. Additionally, a recent foray into this sort of literature by way of Peter David’s excellent Babylon 5 novel The Long Night Of Centauri Prime, gave me some faith in this time of accompanying fiction. Again David is an excellent writer, well versed in that source material.

What I found, was pleasantly surprising in some respects; but also entirely what I expected in others. It is fair to say that the plot involves more than its fair share of action, perhaps a necessary evil, but I could have done with a little more story in around some of the action section. The story takes place a number of years before the game and focuses on the Spectre (a kind of intergalactic police man who is almost above the law) Saren and David Anderson, a member of Earth’s Alliance Military. As ever in these stories, we have a united Earth as part of a galactic Council made up of a number of different races. This offers up the standard pot shots at racism that you’d typically expect to find in such a novel. There was also the First Contact War, which involved the humans and Saren’s race; the Turians. Stop me if this is sounding a little too familiar…

For what it’s worth though, the story is quite interesting in parts. It really does set up the game’s plot in a fantastic way, with a lot of foreshadowing, particularly as the book reaches its closing stages. The book starts out with an attack on an Alliance colony and our hero David Anderson just happens to be part of the response team sent in to deal with it. From there we go to alien bars, alien planets, have the odd politics section and finally end up at the part of the story that’s alluded to in the game. David Anderson being considered as a member of Spectre, but being teamed up with Saren. Essentially the mission goes very right for Saren and very wrong for everyone else. Saren then goes on to pin the blame for the incident on Anderson.

In an odd way I’m fairly sure this prequel book is designed to be read after the events of the game have taken place. There’s a lot in the book that wouldn’t make sense without the context of the universe and I’m not sure that the book does enough to establish that universe by itself. The book reads well as something akin to a flashback sequence, filling out the backstory. I suppose that makes it a successful piece of accompanying fiction, but I can’t help but feel the story could have been expanded upon more in this form. I think it was perhaps slightly constricted by the fact it was being written as a prequel to a computer game, rather than a book.

Overall though, it was an enjoyable read. With the context of the events of Mass Effect it’s certainly veyr entertaining and succeeds in its task in revealing more about what happened between Anderson and Saren. It also sets up the events of the game very well, dropping just enough hints at what is to come to make things interesting. I’ll certainly keep an eye out for any future accompanying fiction for Mass Effect.