There are three base classes (Soldier, Adept, Technician) and three classes that blend two of the base classes. Any of the ones that are at least part Technician would be a good choice for hacking (i.e., Tali, Garrus and Kaidan), assuming you invest in the relevant skills (Decryption and Electronics).
Ooof…I just got a super hard crash on my PC while playing. I now cannot even load the game. I get to the first screen and then BLAMMO…my PC crashes hard. I ran a repair…no help.
I can’t figure out why. I am meticulous about maintaining my PC and, honestly, crashes almost never happen. But here…bad. Googling provided no help. XBox players seem to be getting crashes. Guess I am special.
I’m reinstalling which sucks…lost several hours of progression.
FWIW: Not overheating…not even close.
Usually there’s one planet per system that you can land on, and the remainder will just be a button-press survey.
I recommend surveying and exploring as many planets as you can as soon as you can - you’re going to want those League of One medallions and writings of Matron Dilinaga and gas deposits later on.
(This mechanic changes in a big way in ME2, but that can be discussed when you get there.)
This is an interesting observation. Modern games are much more “hand-holdy” about taking you from place to place to complete your main objectives and side quests. By the midpoint of a game with a big world, your map is littered with all kinds of symbols telling you where to go to do stuff. I am just wrapping up a replay of Horizon Zero Dawn that I started when I was waiting for ME; it’s a good example of this style of player management. Choose your objective from the quest menu, and not only will the top-down map show you the destination, but the real-time play view will help path you there. You can turn it off, but it’s on by default.
The first Mass Effect isn’t like that at all. Partly this is because it is so firmly rooted in old-fashioned RPGs, but also it’s just part of the game’s ethos, where you’re one person finding your way through a large and somewhat uncharted galaxy. If you’re used to the modern style of chasing down icons, this can be disorienting, but the game really does want you to just explore and stumble across stuff. In all the star systems outside the main story path, there will be one planet where you can land and drive around just to see what’s there. On nearly all of them, you’ll find something happening: a pirate base you can clear out and loot, for example.
And on some of these, a mini story thread is introduced. I won’t describe it in detail, but you can basically trip over a private black-ops research group conducting their own terrible scientific experiments, and if you follow the threads, you’ll wind up chasing them across several worlds. None of this has anything to do with the plot of the main game, and if you don’t go exploring, you’ll probably never know about it. There’s an overheard conversation at one point that gives you a waypoint to check out, but the game doesn’t give you any indication there’s this extended B-plot behind it.
If you’re the type of player who likes to chase icons (or has gotten used to it, since that’s been the drift of game design for a decade), this may be perplexing and frustrating. But if you like to settle into a game and just wander around kicking over rocks, this will be exciting and satisfying.
I’m the latter type of player. In my HZD playthrough, I turned off the “active quest” marker, and just meandered around the map, activating campfires and triggering every green exclamation point I could find. (And I had to repeatedly turn the active quest back off, because every time I’d finish something, the game would “helpfully” reactivate what it thought I should do next.)
I will say, by about the two-thirds point in the first Mass Effect, this pile of exploration does start to get a little unwieldy. You’ll be looking at the galaxy map, wondering, okay, wait a minute, Maroon Sea, Styx Theta, were they there before, or are they new? So you go in and look at the planets, and you realize, oh, yeah, okay, I’ve been here already, but have I done the missions? You might end up needing to get a pen and paper just to keep track of the locations and make a checklist of which ones you’ve visited and what you found there. Like I said, it’s an old-fashioned RPG-style of gameplay. Even after a dozen playthroughs, I myself still have trouble keeping track of this stuff, and will print out a reference list to have handy.
By the third game, they’re using “X% complete” labels to guide your exploration. This is just an artifact of the first game, a combination of its age and style. Also, I’m describing what the OG game was like; I don’t know yet if the Legendary Edition adds any helpful guidance along these lines, catering to the modern player’s expectations.
But the point is, this wide-open feeling is very much by design.
(Also, if you end up liking the game and want to play through again, I recommend finishing all the other main-path mission worlds before going to Therum to rescue Liara as the last thing you do. The game… adapts the story a little bit to reflect this alternate throughline. And that’s all I’ll say about that.)
I’m getting the hang of ME1 in some ways. I just realized I could mod weapons and that it installs my mods on any new weapons I get if I ask it to. I figured they were “one use and gone” type items.
Anyway, did two or three sidequests.
I’m basically writing down “this system, this quadrant, this planet” type stuff because there are a ton of planets and so forth and I really mix up quardant, system, planet and so forth.
I helped a hostage, figured out that a mining survey team was zombified, and maybe a couple other things.
I am trying to speak to my team members between missions to get their thoughts and hear their backstories.
I am usually taking: Wrex, Tali, and myself on missions. I have yet to learn if others are gaining experience along the way. If they force me to take a certain member later, I guess I’ll find out.
Your other team members will level up in the background.
Also, speaking to them between missions is an excellent idea.
Speaking to everyone, anywhere who will talk to you is an excellent idea.
I even tap the spacebar on people sitting on benches as I run by. I don’t stop…just hear what that have to say as I am on my way to somewhere else.
Thanks, good to know. They should really let me distribute their skill points without being in my immediate crew, but I don’t see a way of doing that. I can only level up myself and anyone immediately assigned to my team.
99% sure there is a way, but I don’t recall off the top of my head. It’s during Normandy time, I know that. I’ll have to check.
There’s a row of lockers in the cargo deck of the Normandy. I think you can go to your crewmate’s locker to adjust their armor/weapons/skills. (Certainly armor and weapons, at any rate.)
Yeah, gear only at the lockers.
Re the skill trees, I fired up the OG game on the Xbox One, and I was wrong. I was remembering something else from the second game, I think.
It’s fine. It doesn’t take long to distribute points once I take a new character.
FYI, y’all inspired me to download this and start playing today (on Xbox). I remember starting the first one a long, long time ago and never getting very far, perhaps because I was too busy at the time. Just finished the first mission and I am enjoying it so far. The remastered graphics are pretty decent, all things considered!
I like that my squad comments on the situations we are in both in main missions and quite often on sidequests. It does make me wish I could hear what every character would have said in those situations, but we only get to hear from who we have, obviously.
I’m just about getting my exit pass to be able to go out and locate Liara’s mother. Game warned me that taking her would be perhaps advisable, so I did go out with her and Tali…probably should have brought a better combat expert, but oh well. I’m a soldier, so I’ll be doing the shooting on this one.
Stuff like this is why I have a dozen playthroughs. 
There are achievements/trophies for completing the game having each squadmate with you through the majority of the story. As I understand it, this has been “softened” in the Legendary Edition, so you can get “Krogan Ally” or whatever if you bring Wrex on five or six away missions, instead of 60% of everything or whatever the previous threshold was (it varies by squadmate).
Oh, and I won’t say what does and doesn’t change when you have Liara with you on Noveria, but yes, there are some differences.
There are tons of Youtube videos for when you’re curious about how another squadmate might have reacted in a particular situation.
Someone by the name of Teryx made checklists of all the missions, upgrades, and planets for each game of the trilogy, including most if not all of the DLC.
While the original site has been taken down, the checklists are still available via Google Drive.
The checklists are mostly spoiler free, but they do include how you get each sidequest and upgrade and some notes about extra dialog options depending on who you have in your party.
You can ignore all that if you want to stay completely spoiler free and just look at the lists of planets. They are generally at the end of the PDFs. You can mark off each planet you’ve visited so you don’t return there later if you don’t need to.
This reddit thread has the details of where the documents are (and a further post that shows where the latest version of the ME3 checklist is, since the version that is on the same Google folder as ME1 and ME2 is not the latest.)
https://www.reddit.com/r/masseffect/comments/ardh2e/mass_effect_123_checklists_by_teryx_mirrors/
It’s worth it for this line alone (if you choose a renegade response):
“Quit whining and help me stop him, or I’ll drop your ass back in that volcano!”
I am thiiiiis close to having my computer back and can comment more on this thread…I can’t wait
Immediately after completing the sidequest UNC: Geth Incursions, talk to Tali on the Normandy and let her have a copy of the geth data. It has minor consequences for ME2, and this is the only opportunity you have to give her the data. If you do any mission after that, you lose that opportunity.