12 Video Games That Will Change How You See The World
9. Mass Effect Series
Three sequential games, a galaxy full of races with their own lore, and taking on the role of 007-in-space, giving the player a lot of scope to penetrate the reality behind the outward racism and xenophobia between the members and non-members of the Citadel Council.
The dismissive attitude of the Turians can be a bit polarising, until you learn the war with the humans started after we blindly stumbled upon their end of a mass relay without an invite whilst holding a bunch of guns.
The Quarians were made homeless by an ever-expanding army of mindless machines, except those Geth, first controlled by Sovereign; later a collective of machine experience that formed a consciousness capable of defying the Quarians that had enslaved them.
Hell, even the Krogan genocide by sterilisation had me questioning my own moral fibre when I found myself understanding the Salarian mission to stop the war-mongering, walking tanks from spreading across the entire galaxy.
The beauty of sci-fi, and Mass Effect in particular, is the ease in which we can mimic real world events. Suddenly our treatment of those different to us takes on a whole new meaning. If we can put ourselves in their shoes, maybe we can understand why they react differently to us.
Or maybe we should just push them out of a skyscraper window and watch those juicy renegade points roll on in.