Mass Effect 2 Tried Something Bold But Didn’t Spark A Revolution [Video]

Mass Effect 2 is celebrating its 15-year anniversary today, January 26, 2025. Below, we look back at its unique episodic structure, and how other developers have not picked up its torch.

Most RPGs are like fantasy or science-fiction novels. The cross-continental journeys of Final Fantasy X or Dragon Age: Origins feel analogous to The Lord of the Rings or The Wheel of Time. Even sandboxes like Baldur’s Gate 3 lean on a linear set of events, the disruption of routine key to fantasy fiction. Mass Effect 2 is a serious contrast, instead modeling itself after a season of television. I’m not the first person to make this comparison, but even after a decade and a half of further RPG releases, ME2’s structure remains striking. The format helped catapult ME2 to upper echelons of many greatest-games lists. It is …