ABSTRACT
Digital game have been celebrated as a democratic art form, a medium allowing the user to 'actively engage' in a story rather than 'passively receive'. In this chapter, Hanna-RiikkaRoine use BioWare's Mass Effect Trilogy one of the most acclaimed science-fiction sagas in the digital role-playing genreas. The trilogy immerses the player in the adventures of Commander Shepard, a playable character who strives to defeat a race of sentient machines called the Reapers who threaten to purge the galaxy of all organic life. The crux of engagement in these kinds of games is often pinpointed as the act of making choices. In one of the missions in Mass Effect, for example, the player must address a potentially dangerous situation involving Wrex, one of Shepard's crewmates, on the planet Virmire. In his opinion, these arguments are problematic in the study of stories in role-play and in the digital game medium in general.
