User blog comment:Battlemaster Grunt/What is the best Mass Effect? 1,2, or 3?/@comment-5271559-20121001033032/@comment-5607673-20121001182239

'''No offense but by your definition of a role playing game, any game with a story and a main character would be classified as an rpg. I am not denying that both two and three have rpg elements, 3 more so than 2, but they both feel like a TPS, instead of an rpg. Mass Effect 1 on the other seemed like an RPG with shooter elements instead of the opposite and had a more traditional rpg concept. All the old school rpgs both Japanese and Western had all the aspects you just talked about not making an rpg.'''

Then I'm not making myself very clear. So, the player, in Mass Effect, pretty much is Shepard. Not like, uh, say, Call of Duty, with its faceless characters, etc. As Shepard, hm, how can I say, we choose what him/her does and chooses.

In any event, looting and skill trees, etc., are not what defines an RPG. That much is true. Those things might have become commonly associated with the genre, but they are not what defines it.