Contributing to this is the fact that Mass Effect was ported over from the Xbox 360. Console developers have the benefit of knowing exactly what sort of hardware they'll have available, and can tailor their code to take best advantage of it. The 360 sports a lot of CPU horsepower, courtesy of three IBM PowerPC processors, but relatively less video chutzpah than a recently-built PC on a fairly austere budget. Good news for those of us who've waited (or, uh, forgot to pick it up... there's a very, very annoyed copy of Halo 3 on my coffee table that is about to sue me for wrongful neglect. But I digress...).

That said, the modest equipment demands laid out for Mass Effect should translate into a very smooth gameplay environment on a wide array of hardware. If your machine is less than about three years old, you're probably already good to go, assuming you've got a dozen gigs of hard drive space to spare.

Derek French, one of the developers, had this to say about the game's auto-config utility:
The Mass Effect Config program will automatically adjust your settings on first run, to attempt to give you an optimal play experience. As with all PC games, computer performance varies from system to system and adjustments can be made via the Config or through the in-game options to tailor your experience.

This sort of utility is becoming more prevalent in the marketplace, and it's a good method for folks who are more casual about their equipment to see optimal performance and graphics without much fretting. Those of us who like to pore over the minutia of .ini and .cfg files to wring every last bit of sparkle and speed can still do so, of course.

As a rule, when given the opportunity to let players turn up the visual effects, it's easier for developers to enable features than disable them. What this means is that folks playing Mass Effect on the PC will frequently be able to enjoy a superior level of visual detail than their console-using counterparts, albeit probably on a smaller screen. There's been some spirited debate behind the scenes here as to which offers the better experience. Feel free to weigh in with your take in the Comments.

Rafe Brox spends an inordinate amount of time annoying people who think they know more than he does. When not causing friends and enemies alike to /facepalm electronically, he can be found extolling the virtues of the weird peripherals in his life, from kettlebells to the Trackman Marble. If you also share an unhealthy passion for PC hardware or know a good place he can get help for his addiction, the target coordinates are rafe.brox AT weblogsinc DOT com.