Playing Mass Effect Again

I finished Mass Effect and immediately jumped into Mass Effect 2, as I had planned when buying Mass Effect with refund credit around Christmas time. The effect was, to say the least, massive (*ahem). The plot passed by at a blistering pace, characters and elements of the story flowed smoothly, special thanks to transferring my save file from one to the other.

Still, I felt like I was missing out. I played both titles as a paragon character, always ethically and morally "good." I was left wondering. Way did I miss by not being bad? What did I miss by flying through each title and not taking in as many sights and sounds, especially when Bioware's galaxy had so many stories to tell.

I immediately jumped back in to Mass Effect (the first), deciding that I would take in the scenary this time around, play as a renegade, and mop up some achievements, of course. I've now found out that I'm not so motivated by the story telling, certainly not in the capacity I was with the first time around.

Mass Effect weaves a grand tale of heroism, danger, and politics, wrapped around a galaxy as far and wide as a big stretch of the imagination, but what happens when you know how it ends? Where does the imagination go?

I don't think the imagination is gone, so much as there are so many other games to play. I have this problem with RPGs, Mass Effect is just the same as Fallout 3. As much as I may enjoy the games, I have trouble staying involved. I have a high threshold for the hooks any given role playing game can sink into me.

How long do I need? With Fallout 3 I had to have at minimum a full hour of playtime before finding any level of involvement. Mass Effect took about half an hour the first time around. Now I find ME's brand of role playing to need about 45 minutes to an hour on the second run. I'm sure I'm not the only one who needs so much time to play an RPG. In fact, I heard repeatedly that several people needed an hour to get into Fallout 3.

How long does it take for you to get into an RPG?