Remember when this is what Mass Effect sounded like?

There was a time when the story had a fairly straightforward theme, using electronic and orchestral sounds to draw us into a sweeping space opera with dark tones around the edges. Back then, of course, it was a more straightforward story.

It was a theme in an even time—a nice predictable 3/4—and it moved with a melody you could hum. It was a theme you could take with you, as a Spectre and member of the Alliance Navy, to march into battle against a single, known enemy.

But as we all know by now, the story of the Mass Effect series doesn't stay simple. It twists and branches, and the reapers eventually become a threat too devastating to imagine on a scale too wide to understand. But it's still Commander Shepard's story, and it's still Mass Effect. So where does the music go, as Shep shifts from new Spectre, to would-be pawn of the Illusive Man, to humanity's—or, really, the galaxy's—last desperate hope?

The series spans between 60 and 90 hours, across three games, and pulls many very cool musical tricks during that time. But some of the simplest are also the most effective. So where does the main theme fit in over the course of it all? Here are some of my favorite highlights.

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In the first game, we meet Sovereign, and we learn about the concept of indoctrination. By hanging around near (or in) a reaper, you can start to believe anything... including the ultimate futility of your own cause. Starting around 00:17, Sovereign's theme quotes a bastardized, broken version of the main theme back at us, using the first four notes to draw us in. The message? "You, too, will fall."

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Of course, the first game is the only one Shepard can't get him- or herself killed off in. And it ends with Victory: a 4/4, successful, military march that again uses the first four notes of the theme to draw us in. Only this time, it ends happily.

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I love what happens to the theme in Mass Effect 2. (I wrote quite a bit about it, once upon a time.) It picks up the extra beat of irregularly, from the Illusive Man, and all the bombast of the Suicide Mission. But it's still very clearly the core of Mass Effect, just reimagined for a Shepard whose entire world has changed under her feet. While she was, well, being dead.

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By Mass Effect 3 everything is well and truly shot to hell. The music most closely associated with the game focuses on the reaper chord, not Alliance heroics. But references to the main theme appear at all of Shep's major landmarks. The first three notes to kick off "The View of Palaven" (which is a sad view, as the place is under attack by reapers) call back to the theme, though the rest is busy, busy battle.

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The reference to the opening notes of the main theme also shows up on Tuchanka. The mission where Shepard either cures the genophage or dooms the krogan to an infertile future has lasting import. At 02:16 especially, the reference is unmistakable. But the whole clip is also uniquely krogan—and uniquely female. It's the story of krogan women especially that Shepard can rewrite.

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And then there is the world's saddest piano, the one that follows Shepard around on her final adventure. Through the first two games, the piano always signified moments of particular importance to Shepard. This time, the whole galaxy's fate is personal to her. But even more personal is the companion she fights for. And this is the music that plays during their final quiet moment together on board the Normandy. It also, as first heard around 0:11, refers back to the opening notes of the main theme rather poignantly.

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Of course, this big, bold statement of the theme (starting at 0:19) is what we've been waiting to hear. Go, Alliance, go! Kick some reaper ass! Yay Crucible! Yay Civilization! You can do it! *tear*

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The last reference is also the saddest. "An End, Once And For All" is what it says. It plays "Leaving Earth" for us with the reapers (and their chord, and their tension) removed. And at 01:38, it plays the music of Shepard, the Alliance, and exploration one last time.

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Of course, that's just half of the Mas Effect main theme. The descending eighth notes (00:59) tell another big part of the story. And then there is music for geth, for reapers, for turians... for the Presidium and the Citadel, for exploration. For love, for loss, and for everything else.

But those are stories for another day.

I haven't played Mass Effect 3 yet. As a big fan of the franchise, I've been meaning to. But I had a very important task at hand before tackling the last game in the trilogy. I needed to replay Mass Effect 2.

(Mass Effect 2 spoilers ahead.)

In my first playthrough of the sequel, I felt a bit rushed. I was on a tight review schedule and didn't analyze every facet of the game as meticulously as I would've liked. So, forgoing some very important ship upgrades, I fell victim to a sloppy mistake and lost some of my teammates. And I lost someone very important to me.

If you aren't a stranger to BioWare's Mass Effect franchise—or, heck, just BioWare games in general—you'll know that the companions you gather along your adventures can become your friends, and these friendships can even develop into romantic relationships.

My female Shepard initially took to Garrus, a blue, Turian alien who had battled with me through the treacheries of the first installment in the action/RPG franchise. We had memories together. We fought together. We helped each other through our desperate situations by cracking jokes and complimenting each other's skills with weapons. Basically, we bonded.

But not all meaningful relationships have to become romantic. I realized that Garrus wasn't meant for one of those relationships with me when I started to pursue a romance with him in Mass Effect 2. He was nervous. He fumbled with his words and immediately started contemplating the science of interspecies intercourse. He turned what I wanted to be sweet and playful flirtation into what felt like cold analysis. At best he would say these things to me in a cooing voice. Don't get me wrong, I still loved Garrus. But I realized that while he was a trustworthy friend, someone I could rely on, he wouldn't be able to give me the relationship I wanted.

And I had no hesitation about that thought once I met Thane. Being an assassin, Thane is cool and collected. He's thoughtful and pensive. He typically keeps to himself, but he's easy to talk to once you sit down with him. He has an interesting background and even more interesting perspectives on life and his career. I don't agree with his spiritual beliefs, but I respect his dedication to them. I wanted to hear every story he had to tell me. About how he met his first wife, and about his feelings towards his son. He called me "Siha" and explained that it meant a warrior angel. I like the sound of the term of endearment he chose for me, and I like its definition even more. Thane is a romantic. He is also a poet, and a philosopher. Plus, he dresses pretty well.

But this would be a complicated relationship. Thane, like all Drell, is susceptible to Kepral's Syndrome, which is something of a respiratory disease. He knows he is going to die some time in the foreseeable future. He's told me as much. But Shepard can't help but fall in love with him regardless.

To my great dismay, Thane didn't survive the trip through Omega 4 Relay. I didn't realize how critical the ship upgrades would be. Worse still was that I had to watch as he and a few others died during a cinematic cut scene, completely out of my control. I'd spent hours with these people, helping them with their respective missions, lending both my rifle and my shoulder for support. After all that, it only took a few seconds and a few lucky hits of a laser to wipe them from my universe's existence.

I knew that I'd be replaying Mass Effect 2 before the final game came out. There was no way I was going to go through Mass Effect 3 without Thane. Jack was a loss. Legion I could live without. But Thane? Thane was worth another 40 hours of my gaming time.

I took the opportunity to complete every side mission, every dialogue option, and every single upgrade. It didn't matter if it was for a shotgun I'd never use. I spent hours mining resources from planets for it anyway. I wasn't going to leave one stone unturned. Not this time.

I wanted to hear more of his sweet nothings. I wanted to see how our relationship would continue to evolve. I wanted to either watch the world burn, or watch it come to a victory with Thane at my side in Mass Effect 3.

Here's the kicker: Thane survived, but I didn't even get to romance him. I screwed up some other decisions while trying to keep him alive. You should have seen my frustration while I was about to embark on the Omega 4 Relay mission for a second time, knowing that it wouldn't end in Thane sex. I looked through my save files and figured out that I'd have to backtrack about 13 hours to rectify this offense. Thane was worth the extra 40 hours. Another 13, though? Nah. 80 was enough.

Q&A, an Australian current affairs program, ran an episode over the weekend about Easter. A big part of the show is that, while conversations are taking place in the studio, a ticker on the bottom of the screen lets viewers get their $0.02 in.

Given the topic involved religion, then, it's easy seeing how ceekel got her Tweet past the producers, using the show to drop a little Mass Effect 2 backstory on an unsuspecting Australian public.

Q&A Believes In Mass Effect And The Lazarus Project [Kotaku AU]

When all is said and done, I'd say that Mass Effect 2 wound up being my favorite of the three Mass Effect games. It wasn't so much the story, the characters, or the gameplay that put it over the top—it was the TV show-like structure.

More than the games that preceded and followed it, Mass Effect 2 felt like playing a season of a really good Sci-Fi TV show. And that, as it turned out, was just fine by me.

Now, don't get me wrong: I liked all three Mass Effect games. I loved the first game's austere vibe and its fantastic soundtrack, as well as that exciting feeling of discovery. I thought Mass Effect 3 was a damned impressive finale, a breathless, high-stakes rush that, some unevenness aside, made for a fine blowout for the trilogy.

The folks at BioWare should be proud of the amazing universe they've created. But it turns out that rather than constantly rushing to save that universe, what I really wanted was an opportunity to relax and explore it. And that's what the second game gave me.

It's a matter of pacing. Both the first and third games were framed as a race against the clock—Saren was planning a Reaper attack of the Citadel in Mass Effect and in Mass Effect 3, well… it takes about seven minutes for the Reapers start destroying all life in the galaxy.

Mass Effect 2 was positively laconic in comparison. "Gather a crew," The Illusive Man told me. "Here are some names. Build up a team, make your ship and weapons really powerful. Take your time. No big hurry."

The door to the endgame (The Omega-4 Relay) is sitting right there the whole time. But although the Reaper attack is still looming, it doesn't feel nearly as pressing as in the first and third games.

As a result, Mass Effect 2 felt more like a TV show than a movie. Most of the game felt like a series of discrete episodes broken up by the occasional "A-Plot" episode that deals with the season-long story, what Buffy The Vampire Slayer coined the "Big Bad." In Mass Effect 2, the Collectors were the Big Bad.

Shepard's death and rebirth were the season premiere. The initial crew recruitments and adventures made up episodes 2-10. The assault on the abandoned Collector ship was the type of mid-season episode that would've aired during sweeps. The back-half of the season contained the later recruitments, the crew's abduction being the penultimate episode, with the suicide mission as a two-part season finale. It's just about an exact structural match.

That structure was fairly rigid. Each crew member had two "episodes"—first, the sequence when Shepard would go and get them into his crew, and then their loyalty mission, in which he'd help them with a problem. And while in the end, Mass Effect 2 had easily the weakest A-plot of all three games, I liked the format so much that I didn't really mind.

The loyalty missions weren't directly connected to the Reaper threat, and as a result they felt like a part of the everyday flow of the Mass Effect universe. More than the other two games, I got a sense of what everyday life would be like for the leader of a crew of space-badasses. I liked talking down an assassin in the dark corridors of the Citadel, or engaging in corporate espionage, or figuring out the truth behind a spaceship crash gone horribly wrong. I liked teaming up with a ninja-like cat burglar and to pull off a heist, or helping one of my former crewmates track down the illusive Shadow Broker.

Mass Effect 2 had an opportunity to try out so many more flavors than simply "Action" and "Drama." It's easily the funniest game of the trilogy, and a part of that is that it's simply easier to be funny when a giant robotic Sword of Damocles isn't hanging over the head of every living being in the galaxy. The stories were refreshingly varied, from lonely salvage missions aboard teetering crashed space vessels to a game of seduction against a deadly adversary. Mass Effect 2 was a welcomely roomy game.

I initially found Mass Effect 2's post-mission results-screens to be jarring, but I grew used to them and eventually came to like them. The stat-covered screens broke things up in the same way as the credits at the end of a TV episode, which helped me structure my time playing the game. These days when I'm watching Misfits or Terriers, sometimes the credits roll and I think "No! I gotta watch one more episode!" But other times, I'm ready to take a break. Either way, it's nice to have the waypoint.

In between "episodes" of Mass Effect 2 I would do some planet scanning, or walk around the Normandy getting to know my crew. It was the kind of atmospheric filler that normally takes place at the margins of a good television show; before the opening credits, during an episode subplot, during a well-handled clip-show. The whole thing hit a rhythm that I found appealing for all the same reasons that I've come to prefer watching good serialized TV to watching a movie.

The more I think about it, the more I become convinced that an episodic BioWare (or BioWare-style) game could be terrific. A series of ten or twenty episodes spread out over six months, downloaded to your console or PC and broken up by smaller side missions… it could make for a highly enjoyable experience.

The mere idea of BioWare creating episodic games might make many a video game fan cringe—and with good reason. The approach could very easily devolve into the sort of nickel-and-diming for which BioWare's publisher EA has become known. But while EA hasn't earned the benefit of the doubt yet, if handled correctly, the approach could work very well. It could even allow players to give clearer, more regular feedback to the developers rather than lumping years' worth of effort into one gargantuan game with a correspondingly gargantuan amount of pent-up fan feedback.

I have a lot of affection for the Mass Effect games, and for the universe in which they take place. I've always wanted to learn more about that world, not from reading codex entries, but from living there, from having adventures and experiencing it for myself. Thanks to its episodic pacing and TV-like structure, Mass Effect 2 gave me the space to do just that. And that's why it's my favorite Mass Effect game.

We know that some really cool music from the first Mass Effect is hidden in the background of Mass Effect 3.

As it turns out, there's also some great unused music from Mass Effect 2 that's hidden… in the background of the internet!

Okay, that was an awkward transition. At any rate, the video above was created by Jimmy "Big Giant Circles" Hinson, who has released this album of music that was originally written for Mass Effect 2 but didn't get used.

Hinson also appears to have made the video above to accompany the track "Shepard of the Galaxy," which is… pretty damned great! I've seen a lot of fan-made Mass Effect tributes lately, but this one stands apart, largely on the strength of the music.

You can get nine of Hinson's unused Mass Effect 2 tracks here for $4.99.

Legacy [Big Giant Circles via James D.]