I was a fool to ignore Mass Effect for 17 years

After 17 long years, I have finally gotten around to trying Mass Effect. For the entirety of my childhood and well into my teenage and later years, I had heard about this supposedly great game made by a once-amazing studio, but never ventured to play it for literally no reason.

But now, having played the first game for a few hours, I’ve come to realize my mistake and how much of a fool I was for sleeping on what could very well be my favorite RPG yet.

Those of you who have visited the site before and read up on my ramblings should know by now how much I love RPGs. I constantly highlight all the good and bad things about each individual RPG I come across, analyzing them from head to toe and theorizing about what could’ve been done better. This genre is thus a special one to me, one that I continue to scrutinize even outside of work, searching for that one game to rule them all.

I cannot fathom how many times I had googled “good RPG like game X or Y,” always failing to take into account the amazing games that were made by the pioneers of the industry. Sure, I had played a lot of BioWare games, including those it had made over 20 years ago, like the Baldur’s Gate titles, but I never, for no particular reason, tried out Mass Effect.

When I was in elementary school, I’d come home, get online by whatever means I had at that time, and read up about all the great games I could not play (on account of my crappy PC with a Rage 128 GPU and less than a gig of RAM). Mass Effect came up time and again, alongside the likes of The Witcher 2, Skyrim, and so on.

Everyone who was anyone in the RPG sphere played this series, praising its story, romance options, and choice-and-consequence systems, which I was intrigued by but never really captivated. In time, I would get a better PC, start playing games religiously from around 2013 onward, beating The Witcher 2 and 3 a dozen times, playing even Skyrim, Oblivion, and everything in between. Not a single Western RPG had been left unexperienced, that is, except Mass Effect.

And it wouldn’t be until these past couple of days, in the big 2025 (right at its very end) that I’d finally pick the game up.

Man, have I been missing out.

I initially expected this to be a game with a pre-set, silent protagonist in a run-of-the-mill sci-fi setting not far removed from anything I’d read, seen, or played before. It would turn out that no, Emilia Shepard isn’t silent, and while she’s half-pre-written (much like V in Cyberpunk 2077), the roleplay options remain nonetheless endless.

The graphics in the Legendary Edition are nothing short of breathtaking, whereas the art direction and style are a whole other story in and of themselves. From the cutscenes to the traversable areas to the nature of this amazing world itself, I keep finding myself just staring at things, which are no doubt even more beautiful when displayed in HDR on an OLED screen.

Everything in this game seems to have been meticulously crafted with the utmost care, while even the most rudimentary prop in the environment carries artistic merit. The voice acting, writing, story—everything is beyond fantastic. It has gripped me with a force greater than I had thought possible, finally scratching that RPG itch I have long carried with me (i.e., ever since Baldur’s Gate 3 came out).

And it’s only the first game. There are three of these things, coupled with dozens of DLC that come pre-installed with the Legendary Edition, and I’ve only begun to scratch the surface of this stellar (pun intended) experience that stretches out across the cosmos, or at least our rather big milky chunk of it.

It’s a refreshing moment in my gaming career, so refreshing that I had to tell you all about it. So far, I’ve yet to find a single flaw in the game’s design, which was likely refined a bit over the original 2008 release. In particular, I am quite taken aback by the fluidity of the combat, the smooth movement, and how satisfying fights actually are.

RPGs are keen on telling you a story, but often sacrifice mechanical depth for the sake of a good narrative.

Mass Effect delivers on both and does it more than well, and is sure to keep me up for countless nights until I, too, can join the conversation about how great BioWare used to be.

The post I was a fool to ignore Mass Effect for 17 years appeared first on Destructoid.

The release of Time Warp team 2 might be at least a couple of weeks away from the time of writing, but the FC 26 community can take advantage of all the leaks available on social media.

So far, EA Sports has remained tight-lipped about what’s going to arrive during the festive calendar once Winter Wildcards is over. Social media rumors suggest that the Time Warp promo will be the next campaign in Ultimate Team, and it will be a two-week affair.

Let’s look at all the cards that have been leaked.

All FC 26 Time Warp team 2 players (leaks)
FC 26 Time Warp team 2 release countdown

All FC 26 Time Warp team 2 players (leaks)

Here’s the complete list of leaked cards that are predicted to belong in the second team of the Time Warp promo.

Cristiano Ronaldo
Philipp Lahm
Jamie Vardy
Casemiro
Pavel Nedved
Homare Sawa
Sissoko
Thomar Muller
Kyle Walker
Kenny Lala
David De Gea
Mario Gotze
Manuel Iturbe

More names are expected to be leaked when we are closer to the final release date. The whole first team has already been revealed, and it contains some big names from the world of global football. While the whole team will be available in packs, you can expect to find new cards via objectives and SBCs.

FC 26 Time Warp team 2 release countdown

As mentioned above, the second Time Warp team won’t be available before the first week of January 2026 ends. It will replace the first Time Warp team that enters Ultimate Team on Friday, Jan. 2. The following countdown will expire once team 2 is live in Ultimate Team on Friday, Jan. 9.

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The countdown is based on the following timings.