Mass Effect is a pretty awesome game
I'm going to say that there are maybe spoilers for this game, so you might not want to read this if you haven't played it yet.
Alright, this game rocks. You play as a space cop known as a Spectre named Shepard (First name and gender optional, as well as appearance) who saves the known galaxy from invading godlike super machines that are being summoned by your brainwashed and evil counterpart, the Turian Spectre Saren. You can play the game in two different ways: Space Paladin or Space Anti-Hero. Unlike previous Bioware games you don't have a single karma meter, you have two that measure how much of a Paragon or how much of a Renegade you are. Neither one is good or evil, really, because you can't play anything but the hero who is trying to save the galaxy so everything is technically for the greater good, Renegade just means that occasionally you shoot people in the head because it's the most expedient way to solve a problem. I prefer to go the Paragon route whenever possible, because if I'm taking part in entertaining escapist interactive fiction I'm going to play the over the top good guy hero if at all possible. (Although the option to just deck a person that is pissing you off is pretty damn hard to resist at times)
Some characters.
John Shepard- You. As stated before you can change his or her name and customize his or her appearance. The male version is voiced by some dude I don't recognize, but he's pretty good. Kind of a generic action hero voice but that's not a bad thing. The female version is voiced by Jennifer Hale, so that's pretty awesome. You can choose your background, which is a neat addition. You can choose to be born an orphaned street child who grew up to join the military, a colonist who was orphaned in an attack by space pirates who was saved by some space marines and decided to join up, or you can play as a spacer, the child of military parents who spent his or her growing up years traveling the stars. The second part of your background is your service record, and you can choose to be a war hero, a survivor of an attack by huge space worms, or the dude who managed to defeat an entire outpost of space pirates with tactics that were pretty damn ruthless. You can get some neat combinations with these backgrounds but it doesn't have much effect on the actual game.
Captain David Anderson- Your former commanding officer who is voiced by Keith David. (Maybe I should rephrase that, he's voiced by KEITH DAVID. Mother F-ing Goliath. So Awesome.) He's cool, seems like he was the previous generation's you, which translates as "Awesome Hero". Has a grudge against Saren, because he once worked with him and knows the dude is a "Kill everyone who needs to get killed in order to get the mission done. In fact, kill a few more people just to make sure" kind of guy.
Saren- Turian Spectre and sort of the game's big bad. Turians and humans had a bad first contact in which they went to war until the games version of the Federation put an end to their little conflict. Saren holds a grudge against humans for this conflict, and it seems this is his motivation for a lot of the game. Really, however, he's been brainwashed by a race of godlike machines who seek to wipeout all organic life. I was a little disappointed by this revelation, it kind of made him less of a magnificent bastard and more of a tragic character. The guys still a jerk face, but you sort of have to pity the bastard. Point of awesome: You can reason with him, which basically means you can debate him to death. You can convince him that his path is the wrong one, but he realizes that he is so far gone to the true big bad that he can only help fight them by killing himself.
Kaiden Alenko- You start off with this guy in your party. Voiced by the same dude who did Carth Onasi from Knights of the Old Republic. I hear some people don't like him because Carth left a bad taste in their mouths, but I liked both Carth and Kaiden. The voice is a point of familiarity, which is cool. Kaiden's got some secrets, so you should talk to him to find them out. He's also a romance option for the ladies.
Ashley Willaims- You pick her up during your first mission, she's the last remaining member of a colonies garrison force of marines who got slaughtered by robot invaders and cybernetic space zombies (cybernetic space zombies!). She's a bit on the conservative side and has some prejudices against aliens, but I like her. Her issues are due to her family getting a lot of crap because her grandfather was the first human to surrender to alien forces. She's a romance option for the guys, and the one I prefer 'cause she's cute and can use a shotgun.
Wrex- A Krogan mercenary and all around awesome warrior dude. The Krogan are a dying warrior race and Wrex is a bit on the nihilistic side, at least when it comes to his species. This is probably mostly just a cover, because during the course of the game Wrex is given the opportunity to find a cure for the disease causing his peoples crippling infertility and you have to convince him to help you destroy it because Saren is planning on using it to breed an army of Krogan warriors. I like Wrex to much to ever kill him, like I heard you might have to do if you can't convince him to help you destroy the cure.
Garrus Vakarian- A Turian cowboy cop who joins your hunt for Saren. Definitely a bit on the Renegade side of things, but you can show him that the rules are there for a reason. He's kind of hilariously deferential to Shepard, because most of the stuff you say to him has him respond like, "Yeah, you're probably right. P.S. you're awesome." Apparently some fangirls find him hot. Fangirls are crazy, yo.
Tali'Zorah nar Rayya- Ok, maybe I was too quick to call fangirls crazy, because I'm one of those people who think Tali's got it going on. She's got a full body suit, so we can't actually see her face, but her body is humanoid and her voice is hot. Also, she's highly knowledgable about technical things which is awesome. Unfortunately she's quasi-space jailbait, because she hasn't technically finished her people's right of passage into adulthood. Tali is a member of a space faring species that live on a flotilla of spaceships because centuries ago they were nearly destroyed by the machines they created, the Geth, who are currently in the service of Saren. They have to wear enviromental suits at all times, because their immune systems have been left weak because they're entire people live in a sterile spaceship enviroment.
Liara T'Soni- A member of a long lived monogendered species of aliens that just so happens to resemble attractive blue skinned space babes. They reproduce via a wacky space opera science fiction version of parthenogenesis that has them mindmeld (sex isn't necessary, but apparently the mindmeld is pleasurable) with other species to genetically alter their offspring with the "father" species positive species traits. This unique form of reproduction and her species not really caring about gender and sex roles means that Liara serves as a romantic prospect for both male and female characters. Liara's cool, but I don't really like her as a romantic prospect. She's just over a hundred, but she's still really young by her species standards and her attraction to Shepard seems like a schoolgirl crush. This might be a bit hypocritical of me because I'd be open to a Tali romance in future games, but Tali seems more worldly then Liara.
Alright, this game rocks. You play as a space cop known as a Spectre named Shepard (First name and gender optional, as well as appearance) who saves the known galaxy from invading godlike super machines that are being summoned by your brainwashed and evil counterpart, the Turian Spectre Saren. You can play the game in two different ways: Space Paladin or Space Anti-Hero. Unlike previous Bioware games you don't have a single karma meter, you have two that measure how much of a Paragon or how much of a Renegade you are. Neither one is good or evil, really, because you can't play anything but the hero who is trying to save the galaxy so everything is technically for the greater good, Renegade just means that occasionally you shoot people in the head because it's the most expedient way to solve a problem. I prefer to go the Paragon route whenever possible, because if I'm taking part in entertaining escapist interactive fiction I'm going to play the over the top good guy hero if at all possible. (Although the option to just deck a person that is pissing you off is pretty damn hard to resist at times)
Some characters.
John Shepard- You. As stated before you can change his or her name and customize his or her appearance. The male version is voiced by some dude I don't recognize, but he's pretty good. Kind of a generic action hero voice but that's not a bad thing. The female version is voiced by Jennifer Hale, so that's pretty awesome. You can choose your background, which is a neat addition. You can choose to be born an orphaned street child who grew up to join the military, a colonist who was orphaned in an attack by space pirates who was saved by some space marines and decided to join up, or you can play as a spacer, the child of military parents who spent his or her growing up years traveling the stars. The second part of your background is your service record, and you can choose to be a war hero, a survivor of an attack by huge space worms, or the dude who managed to defeat an entire outpost of space pirates with tactics that were pretty damn ruthless. You can get some neat combinations with these backgrounds but it doesn't have much effect on the actual game.
Captain David Anderson- Your former commanding officer who is voiced by Keith David. (Maybe I should rephrase that, he's voiced by KEITH DAVID. Mother F-ing Goliath. So Awesome.) He's cool, seems like he was the previous generation's you, which translates as "Awesome Hero". Has a grudge against Saren, because he once worked with him and knows the dude is a "Kill everyone who needs to get killed in order to get the mission done. In fact, kill a few more people just to make sure" kind of guy.
Saren- Turian Spectre and sort of the game's big bad. Turians and humans had a bad first contact in which they went to war until the games version of the Federation put an end to their little conflict. Saren holds a grudge against humans for this conflict, and it seems this is his motivation for a lot of the game. Really, however, he's been brainwashed by a race of godlike machines who seek to wipeout all organic life. I was a little disappointed by this revelation, it kind of made him less of a magnificent bastard and more of a tragic character. The guys still a jerk face, but you sort of have to pity the bastard. Point of awesome: You can reason with him, which basically means you can debate him to death. You can convince him that his path is the wrong one, but he realizes that he is so far gone to the true big bad that he can only help fight them by killing himself.
Kaiden Alenko- You start off with this guy in your party. Voiced by the same dude who did Carth Onasi from Knights of the Old Republic. I hear some people don't like him because Carth left a bad taste in their mouths, but I liked both Carth and Kaiden. The voice is a point of familiarity, which is cool. Kaiden's got some secrets, so you should talk to him to find them out. He's also a romance option for the ladies.
Ashley Willaims- You pick her up during your first mission, she's the last remaining member of a colonies garrison force of marines who got slaughtered by robot invaders and cybernetic space zombies (cybernetic space zombies!). She's a bit on the conservative side and has some prejudices against aliens, but I like her. Her issues are due to her family getting a lot of crap because her grandfather was the first human to surrender to alien forces. She's a romance option for the guys, and the one I prefer 'cause she's cute and can use a shotgun.
Wrex- A Krogan mercenary and all around awesome warrior dude. The Krogan are a dying warrior race and Wrex is a bit on the nihilistic side, at least when it comes to his species. This is probably mostly just a cover, because during the course of the game Wrex is given the opportunity to find a cure for the disease causing his peoples crippling infertility and you have to convince him to help you destroy it because Saren is planning on using it to breed an army of Krogan warriors. I like Wrex to much to ever kill him, like I heard you might have to do if you can't convince him to help you destroy the cure.
Garrus Vakarian- A Turian cowboy cop who joins your hunt for Saren. Definitely a bit on the Renegade side of things, but you can show him that the rules are there for a reason. He's kind of hilariously deferential to Shepard, because most of the stuff you say to him has him respond like, "Yeah, you're probably right. P.S. you're awesome." Apparently some fangirls find him hot. Fangirls are crazy, yo.
Tali'Zorah nar Rayya- Ok, maybe I was too quick to call fangirls crazy, because I'm one of those people who think Tali's got it going on. She's got a full body suit, so we can't actually see her face, but her body is humanoid and her voice is hot. Also, she's highly knowledgable about technical things which is awesome. Unfortunately she's quasi-space jailbait, because she hasn't technically finished her people's right of passage into adulthood. Tali is a member of a space faring species that live on a flotilla of spaceships because centuries ago they were nearly destroyed by the machines they created, the Geth, who are currently in the service of Saren. They have to wear enviromental suits at all times, because their immune systems have been left weak because they're entire people live in a sterile spaceship enviroment.
Liara T'Soni- A member of a long lived monogendered species of aliens that just so happens to resemble attractive blue skinned space babes. They reproduce via a wacky space opera science fiction version of parthenogenesis that has them mindmeld (sex isn't necessary, but apparently the mindmeld is pleasurable) with other species to genetically alter their offspring with the "father" species positive species traits. This unique form of reproduction and her species not really caring about gender and sex roles means that Liara serves as a romantic prospect for both male and female characters. Liara's cool, but I don't really like her as a romantic prospect. She's just over a hundred, but she's still really young by her species standards and her attraction to Shepard seems like a schoolgirl crush. This might be a bit hypocritical of me because I'd be open to a Tali romance in future games, but Tali seems more worldly then Liara.