(Originally written for the "On the Contrary" community challenge, I couldn't post these until now due to some wonkiness with Bitmob's old editor. Now that it has cleared up with the awesomely new update, here's what I had come up with as one of two different views on Mass Effect 2 and what it might mean for the RPG genre.)

Bioware's strides in the RPG space are arguably one of the more compelling reasons to look forward to their efforts with every release. But the commercial popularity of Mass Effect 2 (ME2) does not bode well for the genre as a whole. Cities may burn, gods may fall, and worlds may be saved, but the old ways are no longer best.

Critically lauded titles are not always AAA sellers. Titles such as the PS2's Ico, Ubisoft's Beyond Good & Evil, Volition's Freespace 2, and Troika's Arcanum stand side-by-side in a long parade of remarkable games whose commercial fortunes have quietly buried their genius. That's not to say that being commercially successful can't go hand-in-hand with quality; Resident Evil 4's inspiration to Cliff Bleszinski's work on Gears of War has provided us with one of its most memorable third-person shooters to date.

But ME2's success only hastens the downfall of most of the traditional, if not amorphous, concepts of what makes an RPG; the same ideas that have catapulted titles such as Black Isle's Planescape and Interplay's Wasteland into legend. ME2, even pokes fun at such players expecting to spend 5 hours traveling as if it might be a bad thing. It is, but only if the designers provide nothing to kill, explore, pillage, or speak to.

Venerable classics are now forced to share their places with ME2 which has all but become the benchmark for the rest of the year. Then again, films such as Citizen Kane are forced to share the film vault with classics such as Leonard Part 6.