The Art Of The Mass Effect Universe

by Casey Hudson

[inlibrisveritas]

It’s no secret that I’m in love with most of Bioware’s games, and Mass Effect is probably the one on the top of that list. Since I’ve been playing the 3rd game I thought that reading the art book would be an awesome way to finish everything out for now. I will say that I’m slightly disappointed in book, but I still want to own a physical copy because the art is really great.

Like I said the art itself is fantastic. You get to see concept sketches, full page renderings, and awesome landscape paintings. It gives you a nice view into the things you didn’t necessarily get to see during the game because you were too busy kicking butt and taking names. The concept sketches give you an awesome idea of where things could have gone and the artists mind set as they worked to create the characters and different races.

The part I was disappointed in was the actual explanations about the pictures. While some of the explanations really do give you cool info about the pictures, like why Quarian liveships are round and the inspiration behind things, others were very short and virtually uninteresting. I wanted to actually learn about the things they never explained in the games, like more info on the main characters or more info on the planets you only get glimpses of. I can also say that because of the short and brisk way some of the explanations are worded, it makes me wonder if there actually was anymore thought put into it or if it just happened. It felt…kind of half done.

As I said before thought the art is awesome and there are some really cool facts in it, and I think that if you love the games like I do then it’s worth checking out. I’ll probably end up buying it so I can look back and reminiscence, but I really hope they’ll do something else…maybe an encyclopedia of sorts.

I received this from Dark Horse and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.