How to see ghosts or surely bring them to you

 
So I finished Mass Effect.

I didn't mind the ending. (Synthesis, btw, although I'm still unsure if that was the 'happy' end or not.) But after hearing a NPC comment half way through that it was a miracle Shepard had survived for so long ,I wasn't expecting a pleasant resolution.  So Shepard died, and it was sad. I like poignant endings. Makes the story mean more.  

That said, I enjoyed the Mass Effect world immensely, and all its characters. The game wasn't perfect, but no game is, and I liked it enough to invest over a hundred hours of gameplay in the trilogy. More, if you count playing the first two games twice; after a short Xbox custody battle with an ex ended in defeat. The only other game I remember mainlining quite as seriously was Final Fantasy 8, the champagne bottle that launched me on the wide seas of  gaming at the advanced age of twenty-one. Jesus, beating Bahamut took me hours, back then, and the camcorder epilogue was the best thing there ever was.

Normally I'd deal with the ending by diving into fan fiction, but here's the thing with Mass Effect.  There isn't any. Oh, there's piles of the stuff, including some that I've perpetrated. But none of it's about my Commander Shepard.

You know the one. The guy (yes, I always play male characters given the chance, because if I've got to look at a CG arse for hours on end then I'd rather it be one I find attractive) with dark eyes, a severe military haircut, broad cheekbones, and skin a shade darker than David Anderson's, which to my mind gave their final scene together a special poignancy. The man who always did the right thing, even when, especially when, it was the hard thing to do, who romanced Liara, saved the rachni, who made peace betwen the quarians and the geth, who collected tropical fish and then forgot to feed them.The man who managed to sweet-talk his enemies into shooting themselves more often than not.

He was a good guy. I'll miss him.

So I guess what this all boils down to was that Mass Effect was a good epic. Perhaps even a great one. The writing hit the spot most of the time, the characters were engaging (MORDIN), and the epic space vistas and station corridors seemed to suit the Bioware graphics engine better than Dragon Age's trees and hilly landscapes ever did. Space opera of the most addictive kind, with the monsters from Star Wars, the pathos of Battlestar Galactica, an the spaceships from Star Trek.

Although if there's one thing it reminded me of, more than anything, then it's Roy Batty's soliloquy in Bladerunner. 

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire from the windows of the Citadel. I watched plasma beams glitter in the dark near the mass effect relays.

All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.

Time to die.