Way back in the day, the original Mass Effect was my favorite video game.

Mass Effect hit the spot.

Cut to a couple decades later.

Mass Effect’s Reapers appear to have been inspired by the novel Revelation Space.

While sci-fi writers have always loved their ancient space civilizations, these are too specifically similar to ignore.

BioWare may have borrowed some concepts from Revelation Space, but it took them all in very different directions.

But with Revelation Space’s hard sci-fi bent, this conflict is a very long one.

Mass Effect 2’s human Reaper idea has aged pretty poorly, and it wasn’t particularly well liked to begin with.

Along the way, we dive very deeply into a ton of spectacularly bizarre concepts.

So his endings are often abrupt and overly neat.

I understoodwhatparts of that game frustrated me, but I didn’t really get thewhyof it.

But Mass Effect never had time for ideas that complex, and the whole concept was gutted.

That, to me, is the real tragedy of Mass Effect, looking back through this new lens.

Because that’s exactly what it was.

So that game serves as an excellent primer for Revelation Space, oddly enough.

These books and stories are beautifully bizarre, and must-reads for any sci-fi nerd.