The First Hour

Welcome to Mass Effect: An Audio-Visual Experience.

Often in life, people notice a gorgeous environment or model or visual effect or even just an angle in relation to the scenery. Thanks to the magic of image capturing, these moments can be preserved for future savoring and to remember the moment. The same experiences can happen while playing games. Due to the magic of screen/video capture software (Fraps in particular), these moments and experiences can be captured for display for others or self in the future.

While playing Mass Effect, I noticed a relatively high amount of impressive scenery and images being captured, from which this idea was formed. As far as the specific idea for an audio-visual experience, I'll start by saying that people do things for any large number of reasons. To narrow down, common reasons for playing games may include the desire to distract oneself, desire for competition, desire for mental stimulation, and/or the desire to get lost in a new subjective experience. The goal of this article is to give you a subjective audio-visual experience without needing to travel through the entire game yourself. If you are new to the game, it will lead you through its entirety, accustoming yourself to the environments, style, and action. If you have already played the game, it will jog memories and rekindle an experience trapped down in long-term memory. Great care has been taken to withhold any apparent spoilers for those who have not experienced the game while still keeping the experience intact.

This introduction may be withheld in future iterations of Audio-Visual Experiences (if any) to better focus on the experience. In addition, this installment will only be a pictorial experience due to a sudden, poorly-timed harddrive failure. Only the images were uploaded to the internet before the unfortunate crash.