History VideoGame / MassEffect1

* BarbieDollAnatomy: On higher resolutions with the Legendary Edition, one can see that Ashley and Liara's models were made [[NippleAndDimed without nipples]] due to the camera's ability to see further down than its initial release in 2007.

* BarbieDollAnatomy: On higher resolutions with the Legendary Edition, one can see that Ashley's model was made [[NippleAndDimed without nipples]] due to the camera's ability to see further down than its initial release in 2007.

** In the UsefulNotes/Xbox360 version of ''Mass Effect 2'', the Select button puts away your guns. In the original game, it throws a grenade. Muscle memory sees Shepard hurling grenades in celebration for winning battles.

* CopyProtection: The original standalone (i.e. non-UsefulNotes/{{Steam}}, and non-''Trilogy'' edition) PC version of ''Mass Effect'' only allows you to install it three times on different machines/hardware configurations. The previous version of the copy protection involved regular "calling in" periods to a remote server, resulting in a non-functional game if the program was unable to connect to the authentication server. This got a SelfDeprecation in ''VideoGame/MassEffect2'' courtesy of a salarian video game salesman on the Citadel.

* BatmanGambit: The UNC: The Negotiation assignment involves negotiating with a crime lord named Lord Darius. This assignment is only available if Shepard has a high Renegade rating. If the highly arrogant and obnoxious Lord Darius just happens to piss the known loose cannon off enough to shoot him in the face then they didn't ''technically'' order an assassination.

*** While having some conversations with Ashley, she'll quickly changes the subject when her family comes up. It takes a few more conversations before the subject of her father comes up.

*** Saren says organics would rather fight and die than surrender to the Reapers. [[spoiler:Guess what happens in the [[Refuse]] ending in ''3''?]]

** One conversation with Ashley has her mention how she doesn't like the Terra Firma party because of their bringing up Shanxi as an excuse for their actions. Post-Virmire [[spoiler:should Ashley survive]], she can be brought along to a meeting with them, and the player gets to see their leader try this, [[EveryoneHasStandards much to Ashley's displeasure]].
*** Early on in conversations with Ashley, she quickly changes the subject when her family comes up. It takes a few more conversations before the subject of her father comes up.
*** [[RuleOfThree Ashley yet again]]: If she's romanced to the end, she quotes "[[Creator/WaltWhitman O captain, my captain]]," to which you can point out [[AnalogyBackfire that captain died]]. [[spoiler:One guess what happens to Shepard at the start of ''2''...]]

* TheUnreveal: Wrex reveals early on in the game that he had met Saren once before joining up with Shepard; Wrex was part of a crew of Krogan mercenaries hired by Saren to raid ships in the Terminus systems. However, he only actually saw Saren once; when the mercs had taken a large Volus cargo ship, and Saren was silently walking through the ship, seemingly looking for something. [[GutFeeling Wrex then got a feeling]] that there was something ''very'' wrong with the whole situation, and fled before receiving any payment. Turns out his hunch was right; all of the other mercs turned up dead within a week after the job was finished. Despite this, it's never revealed whatever Saren was after on the ship or the exact reason why all the mercs were killed to hide it.

* SentencedWithoutTrial: Ashley Williams explains to Shepard that after the First Contact War, her grandfather General Williams was stripped of his rank without a trial because he surrendered to the Turians when it became clear that the garrison at Shanxi was going to fall.

* OffModel: Elanos Haliat, the criminal leader responsible for the Skyllian Blitz, was ''supposed'' to be a turian, but was accidentally given a human model instead, resulting in him having [[http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/masseffect/images/8/88/Haliat_ME_holoshot.png/revision/latest?cb=20140908183656 a baffingly bizarre face]]. It also gives some truly baffling dialogue where he rants about "the humans" even though his model is one. If one didn't know the details, one would think it was foreshadowing [[HumanAliens a very humanoid species]], since it was mentioned that the terminus systems were home to renegades. ''Legendary Edition'' actually rectifies this by giving Haliat a turian model, so his dialogue makes much more sense.

* The Citadel: Old, Unhappy, Far-Off Things assignment, which is only available if Shepard has the Spacer background, requires you to bump into a NPC while in Ward Access, an area that apart from ''one'' assignment there is otherwise no reason whatsoever to ever visit.
* Feros: The Thorian mission -- during the section where you're trying not to kill the mind-controlled attackers, you're given a special non-lethal mod for your grenades. However, what the game never tells you is that you can also safely knock them unconscious with your melee attacks. An extremely valuable option since grenades are very rare in this game, though it does require you to charge into several streams of gunfire.
* Certain types of armor grant immunity to environmental hazards, but the game doesn't tell you this directly.
* Conversation options with romantic partners can lead to a case of this, with a player winding up in an unwanted relationship or even a love triangle simply by being polite.

* GuideDangIt: There are some missions and assignments that, if done in the wrong order, can screw up a 100% Completion run, although they don't make the game {{unwinnable}}:
** The Citadel: Old, Unhappy, Far-Off Things assignment, which is only available if Shepard has the Spacer background, requires you to bump into a NPC while in Ward Access, an area that apart from ''one'' assignment there is otherwise no reason whatsoever to ever visit.
** Certain types of armor grant environmental immunity, but the game doesn't tell you this directly.
** Conversation options with romantic partners can lead to a case of this, with a player winding up in an unwanted relationship or even a love triangle simply by being polite.
* GunsInChurch: Justified, somewhat; you are a Spectre, and numerous events prove that you are not safe from attack ''anywhere'' you go, so it makes sense for your party to walk around fully armed and armored at all times. It does get a little weird when you can draw and fire your guns (though not at people) and set off grenades all over the place and nobody bats an eye.

** In the original version of the game, you can carry up to 150 items, whether this be weapons, armor, biotic implants or omni-tools, as well as upgrades for the first two.

* HarderThanHard: Most agree that the Insanity difficulty setting [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin is just that]]. You can't even play on it until you've already gone through the game at least ''twice''.

* HelmetsAreHardlyHeroic: Played straight by default in all locations with a breathable atmosphere. However, helmets can be turned on from the inventory menu.

* TakeThat: In Bring Down the Sky, you can find a radio station where one of the logs states that people who have not listened to it are complaining about its subversive messages. This is a reference to the incident where a guest on Creator/FoxNews denounced the game as a "sex simulator" despite admitting to having never played the game.

The game received a lot of media attention and criticism for a sex scene between Shepard and a romantic option late in the game, which was perceived by certain MoralGuardians as being a HotCoffeeMinigame.[[labelnote:Details]]Creator/FoxNews talked to an author of a book on media influence, Cooper Lawrence, who proceeded to pick apart the moral values of the game [[CowboyBebopAtHisComputer despite admitting she had never played it and did not understand the game at all]]. In contrast, Geoff Keighley was also interviewed and explained in detail what the game was about and that it was just a cutscene and did not actually "emulate" a sexual encounter (i.e., giving the player options on what to do ''during'' the act). When Lawrence later watched approximately two hours of gameplay, she recanted her criticism: "I've seen episodes of ''Series/{{Lost}}'' that are more sexually explicit." Jack Thompson, of all people, believed that the media storm was overblown and unnecessary.[[/labelnote]]

* ArtisticLicenseChemistry / ArtisticLicenseNuclearPhysics: You can find lodes of Polonium while surveying uncharted worlds. The only isotope of Polonium that occurs naturally is Polonium-210, which is a product of Uranium decay, and even then it's only found in trace amounts and it has a half-life of around 4 months. It'd be virtually impossible to find huge lodes like you would find in game, and they'd need to be exploited quickly before they turn into Lead-206.

** Garrus's assignment has you chasing a criminal doctor who grew extra organs within his test subjects, without their knowledge. When they were ready, he would recover them and patch up the victims, ''badly''. Garrus mentions multiple cases of subjects bleeding to death from stitches reopening. [[spoiler:When you face the mad doctor in his own ship, you end up facing a bunch of mutant zombies that resemble what an ''ancient EldritchAbomination created'']].

** Also, everyone at Zhu's Hope evades questions by telling Shepard to "talk to Fai Dan", or some variation thereupon. And should you talk to Fai Dan, he's just as evasive.

* ColonyDrop: You stop one of these from happening in the Bring Down the Sky DLC.

* TheCuckoolanderWasRight: [[spoiler:Manuel on Eden Prime]] sounded like he got a little unhinged by the attack. Later on in the series, however, you slowly realize that his manic babbling was more than just hallucinations. In fact, he's so spot on some theorize that he managed to [[spoiler:access the Prothean beacon, but couldn't handle the alien information inside]].

* CutLexLuthorACheck: A pettier example than usual. In Flux, a salarian needs your help testing out a device he built to cheat at Quasar. If you foil his plans, he'll be crestfallen that the years of work he put into making the device have gone to waste, wondering what he will do now. Your squad members suggest that he could use his skills to get a real job.

*** [[RuleOfThree Ashley yet again]]: If she's romanced to the end, she quotes "O captain, my captain," to which you can point out "[[AnalogyBackfire As I recall, the captain dies in the poem]]." [[spoiler:One guess what happens to Shepard at the start of ''2''...]]

* EarlyBirdCameo: That rogue VI on the Luna base? That's [[spoiler: EDI]].

** When exploring the ''Normandy'', before setting down on Eden Prime, you can participate in introductory conversations with many of the background characters of the game as [[InfoDump they explain the fictional universe]]. During the conversation with Dr. Chakwas and Corporal Jenkins, they outline the upcoming plot of the game in a theoretical discussion about the Spectres, including pointing out that Shepard would make a good Spectre, questioning how a Spectre could get his official status revoked and also how the Council would retaliate.

** On the Citadel, you can learn about the [[BugWar Rachni War]], which was ended by xenocide, and the Krogan Rebellions, which were stopped by the use of [[DepopulationBomb the genophage]]. Later, [[spoiler:you encounter and fight the rachni, and an entire mission is based off preventing the curing of the genophage by the BigBad to make an army of krogan]].

** If you check the map of the Citadel Tower, you'll realize that the Council Chamber is [[spoiler:shaped like a ''Reaper'']].
** A ''massive'' case with the Citadel: Signal Tracking assignment where you hunt down a signal that was funneling credits out of a quasar machine, only to discover the signal originated [[spoiler:from a hostile artificial intelligence that hoped to rendezvous with the geth]]. If you try to reason with it, it shoots you down and informs you that organics can only ever control or destroy synthetics. [[spoiler:Guess what your big, final choice is at the end of the third game? Unless you choose Synthesis, of course.]]

** An assignment has Shepard encountering scientists who've been turned into Husks, with no sign of geth involvement, and far away from their stomping grounds. [[spoiler:It's a big hint that the Dragon's Teeth are not actually geth inventions.]]
** One conversation with Ashley has her mention how she doesn't like the Terra Firma party because of their bringing up Shanxi as an excuse for their actions. Post-Virmire, [[spoiler:should Ashley survive]], she can be brought along to a meeting with them, and the player gets to see their leader try this, much to Ashley's displeasure.
** Early on in conversations with Ashley, she quickly changes the subject when her family comes up. It takes a few more conversations before the subject of her father comes up.
** A codex entry unlocked extremely early in the game mentions off-hand that the human fleet is unique among galactic powers for keeping only a minor garrison at each world so that their forces can be rapidly deployed en masse to trouble spots. [[spoiler:In the end this pays off when a massive human fleet is able to arrive as TheCavalry for the Battle of the Citadel on almost no notice.]]

*** Saren says organics would rather fight and die than surrender to the Reapers. [[spoiler:Guess what happens in the "Refuse" ending in ''3''?]]

** Pinnacle Station is a completely optional location which lets the characters participate in a series of battle simulations of various difficulties, whose completion rewards you with a new location to requisition gear and items, most of them being quite rare. Due to source code corruption, only the original Xbox 360 and PC releases have access to this DLC.

* AHomeownerIsYou: Complete Admiral Ahern's custom mission on Pinnacle Station and you're rewarded with his pre-fabricated home on Intai'sei. Sadly, it never shows up again in later games. The Pinnacle Station DLC was dropped entirely in the ''Legendary Edition'' due to the source code having become irreparably corrupted.