10 Video Game Franchises That Never Got Better Than The First Instalment

8. Mass Effect

The Franchise: Built around free-will, the Mass Effect series is a properly sprawling sci-fi epic that you can fully make your own. You may go through the same basic plot beats as everybody else, but with complete character customisation and sprawling dialogue trees the experience could vary wildly. You could play as a young man who never listens to the facts, instead just pushing forward doing the right thing, or a middle-aged woman who carefully takes in all the information so she can best further her nefarious goals. That freedom, set in a whole galaxy ready to be explored alongside a cast of varied and three-dimensional characters made for one of the most engrossing sci-fi experiences in gaming. Why The First Was Best: The series ultimately bundled its freedom promise with an ending that made most of the decisions made in the earlier games null and void (contrary to what was promised), but to get hung up on that misses out what made the series so engrossing in the first place. As well as having the best story out of the trilogy, the original game was the one that made you feel like you were actually part of a massive, explorable universe. The locales may have felt a little repetitive at times, but there's no denying Mass Effect was the most expansive of the series; using the Mako tank you could actually go down to a planets and feel like an intrepid explorer. The controls weren't all that great, but it's better than spending hours mining planets from space.