A large part of the game Mass Effect involves conversation with other characters. They say something to you, you pick among a choice of replies and they react to what you say. Depending on how charming or intimidating your own character becomes over the course of the game, more extreme dialog options become open to you. Experimenting with how characters will react to different lines is most of the fun of the game for me.

But I knew this could get really good when I was admiring a beautiful view with Kaidan, my male subordinate, and he inadvertently let slip something that suggested he was into me.

Now, it doesn’t matter that poor Kaidan looks like Erik Estrada and is written the way a male game designer thinks I want a man to be (basically a 32-year-old telekinetic virgin). I felt the same fuzziness, the same “whoa, did I just hear that?” feeling in my gut as when a new romantic interest is expressed in real life. I wondered how far it would go, and suddenly all my conversational choices with Kaidan revolved around nurturing the budding flame.

Later in the game, I met Liara, a knockout of a blue-skinned alien chick who’s also a socially awkward scientist. No matter what conversational options you choose, Liara wants you bad and overcomes her geeky shyness to let you know it. Indeed, nothing you say seems to turn her off (written the way a male game designer wants a woman to be?). She wasn’t particular about the fact that I’m a female, either. See, her race, the Asari, only has females (yah). In fact, she’s so easy that the first time I played through the game, I accidentally slept with her. And by trying to be a weeeee bit coy with Kaidan, I ended up crushing him.

So the next time I played it safe, acting all but abusive to Liara (because let’s face it, I felt she’d violated me in the first playthrough) and playing mother hen to Kaidan’s paper-thin male ego, and successfully ended up with him in the end.

In a surprising development, last night the two of them confronted me to make a definitive choice. Oh, the drama. I opted for Kaidan but noticed that I did have the option to ask if I could have them both. Now THAT, my friends, is replayability.

In other situations in the game, I wanted to choose one option to see what would happen, but just couldn’t morally bring myself to do it, or would feel truly sorry for the impact I’d had. I couldn’t abstract away the emotions just to satisfy my game designer’s curiosity. And that’s huge.

Mass Effect doesn’t come close to giving me as powerful or complex emotions as I’ve felt watching great cinema, but it comes closer than any game ever has before, and to me that’s a step forward for the medium. I guess the most important thing it made me feel, then, is hope.