‘Less Star Wars – more Blade Runner’: the making of Mass Effect 2’s Bafta-nominated soundtrack

A blind audition, a fruitful collaboration, a tense creative fallout: composer Jack Wall's journey through the Mass Effect universe was as epic as the player's

Mass Effect is some of the best science fiction ever made. That may sound like a grandiose comment, but it's true. As a trilogy, the original games from 2007-2013 effortlessly plucked the most cerebral ideas from the sci-fi genre and slotted them into a memorable military role-playing game that had players invested from beginning to controversial end.

Whether you prefer the hopeful, optimistic outlook of Asimov, the dark and reflective commentary of Shelley, the accessible thought experiments of Star Trek, or the arch melodrama of Battlestar Galactica, Mass Effect has it all. The trilogy is as happy grazing on the western-inspired tropes of Star Wars as the hard" sci-fi of Iain M Banks, blending all its moods and micro-stories into a compelling, believable galaxy that somehow walks a line between breathless optimism and suffocating bleakness.