Oh hey, it’s N7 day!

Some part of my subconscious remembered, because I put on my N7 hoodie after not wearing it for a few days.

Me with my Mass Effect merch! Censored my face because I couldn’t be arsed to make myself presentable today. In the end, it took longer to achieve satisfactory censorship than it would have to brush my hair and slap on some powder. Selfie generation, I am not.

Both items from the official Bioware store. Official artworks (they call them lithographs which I guess describes how they are printed? My lack of art knowledge is embarrassing.) are limited editions as far as I can tell. This one was a gift Ed gave me years back. The most similar one currently available is the Mass Effect Saga Lithograph (which looks pretty cool, I must say – I’d buy it for our gaming room Ed if shipping to Canada wasn’t so outrageous). And the hoodie in the store today that is closest to mine is this one.

I see a lot of questions about merchandise quality and I have to say, my hoodie held up beautifully over the years. Yeah, the paint has thinned a little and I’d probably buy a new one if convention attendance was in the cards, but I wear it almost daily at home and I’ve washed it quite often (can’t have me perpetuateing stereotypes about unhygienic gamers). It’s still ridiculously comfortable, the inside is still surprisingly soft and it still looks good enough to please me when I see myself in the mirror. Only problem I have with the official store is that there’s no Canadian site, which means prices are doubled due to shipping and duty fees. If I were to ask anything of Bioware, it wouldn’t be a perfect Mass Effect game (although I admit that would be a close second) or more role-playable Dragon Age protagonists (third), it would be a more cost effective way for us Canadians to buy their merch. They could even just make a little front in the reception area of their headquarters. I GO TO EDMONTON ALL THE TIME! I WOULD SHOP THERE!

N7 Day

This year I predicted they’d make a video recycling interviews with people involved in making the game talking about how much they loved it. (I should really start keeping written proof of my predictions…)

There was a video, it showed people involved in making the game (as well as a few fans – which I loved, I’m especially happy they showed a clip of Biofan because I’m kind of obsessed with his videos these days) and they were all sharing their wonderful experiences. The interviews look new though. Or at least, I hadn’t seen them before. Despite being exactly what you’d expect, I still enjoyed watching it and savouring the warm fuzzies.

There’s some featured artwork, in high res even(!) so you can take them to Walmart for printing without having to spend an arm and a leg on shipping. I’m hungry for moar and moar artwork – it’s funny I never cared much for paraphernalia in the past yet lately I can’t get enough of Mass Effect related art – but I am very impressed at how excellent yet radically different their selection was. The one by Unoobang is my new desktop background. It totally captures the atmosphere of my Normandy. And that Space Hamster!

Mass Effect Archive

Buried in the middle of the N7 day page is the Mass Effect Archives. I almost missed it, thinking I’d talk a bit about the video and the art, then the streamers even though I don’t watch streamers, then hit the publish button.

In the nick of time, I noticed the link. I clicked it and OMG! WHY HAVEN’T THEY MADE A BIGGER FUSS ABOUT THIS? There’s nothing on the Bioware blog and even the Mass Effect subreddit was wondering if this was a new thing or an existing feature we’d all missed.

I’m a pretty big fan of the Dragon Age Keep. Sure, there are a few bugs and it can’t keep track of everything a save file can, but overall, it’s a great way to overcome game engine and console generation barriers. Plus the art is lovely and I had a lot of fun filling it out the first time. Actually, I still have fun messing with World States, and while I haven’t done so yet, I like how if you want to explore a specific world state in Inquisition, you don’t have to put in 100+ extra hours into the earlier games.

So I’m really excited about a Mass Effect version (I’m positive that at some point, I have wondered out loud why there was no Mass Effect Keep in production, but as usual, no written record).

You wouldn’t believe how long it took me to figure out how to upload my character. Maybe I shouldn’t have clicked through the tutorial…

It’s not as straightforward as the Keep (or maybe I’m just so used to it that I don’t notice the gaps in userfriendliness anymore) but perhaps I would have had an easier time had I used the tutorial. The Keep also doesn’t have an “upload appearance” feature, which is what I had the hardest time figuring out.

I hope this means we’ll be getting new Mass Effects in the future, and Mass Effects that care about our old Mass Effects (although the FAQ does specify that the Archives won’t affect future games) – unlike most vocal fans, I don’t think Andromeda was a death sentence and I do think we’ll revisit the universe, its world is so juicy and there’s an abundance of stories sitting there, waiting to be told. It would be way less time and money to return to Mass Effect than to create a brand new world.

I’m patient and I’ll be here, playing with my Tapestry while I wait.

Happy N7 day!

Wrapping up Mass Effect 3

I lost count of the hours long ago, but they were up there. After so many of them, it’s time to say goodbye to my Shep again.

There’s Shep, looking at her team. I get a green screen instead of a picture most of the time. This was the only shot I got.

Much easier on the feels this time around, for sure. I used Citadel DLC as my finale which concludes with Shepard looking nostalgically at the Normandy while her party attendees board. I held on to that feeling for a few moments after the screen faded to “Hit Any Key To Continue“. Considering last time I bawled my eyes out and moped for months, I believe I’ve made progress. (It seems there’s even an Urban Dictionary entry for this phenomenon.)

Then I went back to Mass Effect 1 and started a MaleShep Insanity run.

We’ll see how long that lasts.

It was lovely to play the same character, with roughly the same choices. I ended up with a few differences: despite my best efforts, Kelly didn’t offer to feed my fish, nor did she show up in the third game, and somehow I passed that reputation check with The Illusive Man in the end. As stated above, I was less of mess of this time so although I covered up the ending with MEHEM out of curiosity, I think I would have accepted the base game outcome. Except the Synthesis-disintegrated-in-a-well part (like WTF is wrong with whoever thought that was a good idea).

Interestingly, there were plenty of times I felt my heart race and my arms shake and had to say “chill out silly, you know what happens“.

Speaking of knowing what happens, I’m not holding back on the spoilers so I’ll stick the cut here.

Let’s React to the Mass Effect: Andromeda News (Or Anti-News)

After months of speculation, it was made official a few days ago: There are no planned future patches for single-player or in-game story content for Mass Effect: Andromeda.

While they say patches and not paid DLC, I think it’s pretty clear they mean single player content period. They elaborate: “we will continue to tell stories in the Andromeda Galaxy through our upcoming comics and novels, including the fate of the quarian ark.”

Kotaku’s Jason Schreier called it in May and again in June and is now probably enjoying the biggest I-told-you-so of his career. Anyway, his posts caused the fandom to erupt in a “Is it true? Is he right?” explosion that took Bioware what feels like forever to confirm or deny. I feel like at this point, they’re just accepting all publicity as good publicity.

Speculating on the Why

I browse the Mass Effect subreddit pretty often. The audience seems younger and less thoughtful than the Dragon Age subreddit, but there’s sporadic decent discussion and frequent fantastic fanart.

Regarding Andromeda DLC, there are plenty of (relatively) long posts about how the game under-performed, how it was mocked by early reviews and how troubled the development process was (a topic also explored in depth by Schreier – I don’t normally endorse “professional” blog-like sites because I rarely like them, but if everything Schreier wrote is true, then that was some excellent reporting. And if it’s all made up, well, it was still one of the most interesting things I’ve read all year.)

All factors which most likely influenced the decision to abandon single player (for the foreseeable future).

What isn’t mentioned nearly enough though, is the less dramatic but probably main issue: in comparison to single player, multiplayer is really freaking lucrative.

Content DLC calls for a giant boatload of people: writers, voice actors, cinematics, animators, programmers, sound crew, testers, etc. A huge machine to put or keep in motion. All that to produce a few hours of story and gameplay that will sell for 10-15$ per player.

In multiplayer, players will throw 10-15$ at the game, over and over, for weapons and cosmetic items that already exist. They do have to keep the game fresh, but – and I admit to knowing very little about game development – it seems to me that APEX mission development requires a fraction of the team needed for single player DLC. Plus, it seems that the multiplayer team is sailing along smoothly, while the key single player developers, those who hung on until the end, are probably still trying to unlive the past few years.

Speculating on the future of Mass Effect

Will there be another Mass Effect game?

Everyone seems to think so. (Even Schreier posted Reddit that he guesses something would happen in 5-6 years)

I assume the game direction options are: 1) a prequel to the original games, 2) a sequel to the original games, 3) Andromeda 2, 4) a non-RPG game in the Mass Effect universe (think Blizzard’s Hearthstone).

Option 4 is the safest option from a business perspective – just like the current multiplayer, a card, an arena style or a MOBA would bring in the dough with minimal effort and risk. As an RPG player, I think this idea sucks massive donkey balls.

Option 1, a prequel, has been considered, I believe. Something about a focus group that revealed that fans adamantly want a sequel and not a prequel. I’ve seen fans say they’d like to play in a prequel world as another species, but believe it would never happen because apparently the larger player base only wants to play humans. Me, I think playing a non-human is trivial compared to a prequel’s bigger problem: one of the major joys in Mass Effect is discovering an unknown world and not knowing what will happen to it. A Mass Effect in known surroundings leading to a known outcome doesn’t sound very fun. In my humble opinion, of course.

A sequel, Option 2, would force some sort of backtracking on the endings. The meaning was a clear “fuck it, we’re done and we’re going to mess up the universe so they can’t force us back”. They all guarantee to leave the galaxy in one of several unplayable states. (So this recent tweet from former project director Casey Hudson made me chuckle.) While I would love to play some kind of investigator/explorer part of a galaxy rebuilding team, Synthesis Galaxy is awful and Refusal Galaxy would just be the same story with a different face. Destroy and Control could be worked with as a what-if, I guess. Cameos of beloved characters would also be a pain since pretty much everyone has the potential of being dead.

Then, Option 3, ME:A2. Popular opinion seems to be that the Andromeda setting is toxic. I disagree. The Andromeda setting is awesome. Going to a different galaxy totally blew my mind. At least for the first hour or so. It had, and still has, tons of potential. The weaknesses in the writing: the pathfinder’s progression, the shallow squadmates and new species, the sub-optimal placing of plot twists and the general lack of inspiration are all more due to the chaotic development forcing the game being published before it was finished. The bones of the story were interesting, they were just given to us without enough meat to sate our hunger. ME:A2, with a proper development team, using the first Andromeda’s loose ends could potentially be a exceptional gaming experience.

As for a time frame, I actually find 5-6 years to be short. Look at Dragon Age: Inquisition, a game that did well. It was released in late November 2014 and closed with its last DLC less than a year later. It’s been almost 3 years and almost 2 years since Trespasser, and while the team has made it clear that they’re actively working on DA4, there’s no formal announcement and probably won’t be until Anthem is released in (tentatively) Fall 2018. Which would set a Dragon Age release in 2019 or 2020, 5-6 years after DA:I. So for a franchise that has taken as many blows as Mass Effect, I don’t think 5-6 years is a long time.

What About These Comics and Books?

I wonder how they could wrap up the Quarian Ark story in a satisfying way via books or comics. While I doubt most of us are really attached to the bulk of our choices in ME:A, designating “cannon” pathfinders would ruin what little sense of ownership we felt over the universe. The other option, dodging the problem by not involving any pathfinders in the Ark retrieval, would be very, very difficult to pull off (yay APEX rescues the Ark! ….ugggg).

As for already published Mass Effect literature, I haven’t felt inclined to read any of original trilogy media, however I’m told the Drew Karpyshyn books are outstanding. I have read Nexus: Uprising (from Andromeda) and enjoyed it. (The selling point was that one of the authors, Jason M. Hough, hung out in the Mass Effect subreddit and made some very relevant posts. He seemed like a cool guy so I decided to read his book. I don’t regret it.) Supposedly the next book features Cora’s past. I’ll wait until it gets reviewed before deciding whether or not to get it. Same for any other Andromeda books. I am pretty unlikely to read comics though, just not my thing.

Looks like a grim future for us Mass Effect fans (and for us RPG fans in general, if the market keeps it’s current direction), but what can you do?

Mass Effect 3 Mid Game Post

Ok, I’m back. In the past month, I played until the end of my WoW subscription.

Not much to talk about there. I made it to Northrend and about level 70 before running out of time. Will have to go back and play again once I can commit to it so I can actually experience Legion (and Warlords of Dreanor for that matter, since I’ve never played that either). I do find that I like the “run around while listening to music/podcasts” aspect of the game the best, which is a little sad since the main reason I got WoW was because Ed kept saying how much he missed playing games with me. In the end, all I wanted to do was play by myself and listen to stuff. Maybe we’ll look into a different game to play together.

Also in the past the month, I posted pictures of my “forced” holidays. I feel like the world needs more harmless sharing of nature photos. (Not to be confused with au naturel photos which are a completely different matter.) Am always looking for recommendations. The travel and real life bloggers I follow either patter out or turn into advertisements for their “how to work from home” books and/or their sponsors. (Follow My Legs and the Giant Spoon! I have neither books to sell nor sponsors to promote!)

On Mass Effect 3

I’ve played up to Priority: Rannoch now. I supposed I should have good manners and put in a spoiler cut after the random screenshot. 

I freaking LOVE this poster. I tried to find a real life version (or even a windows wallpaper). No luck. Am bummed.

Mass Effect 2 Wrap Up

Got to the end of Mass Effect 2 a few days ago. I clocked in about 100 hours…a lot of which were AFK. My tendency to forget what I’m doing and just…wander off… makes it really hard to keep track of how long it actually takes me to play my games. The WoW subscription I paid for and have barely used is expiring in a few weeks so I figured I should do that before hurling myself at Mass Effect 3, but first things first, ramblings about my last and final ME2 session.

This is going to be all spoilers all the time, so even though this is a *checks* 7 year old game, I’ll be kind and hide the post behind a cut.

Mass Effects 1 and 2, Some Reflecting

Sometime ago, around when I wrote the Dylan/Anthem post, I think, I finished Mass Effect 1 and fired up Mass Effect 2.

I’ve played Mass Effect 1 plenty, made it to the end three (now four) times, yet I’ve only moved onto Mass Effect 2 once (now twice). I’m not sure which game I like better. Mass Effect 2 is way more intense and I fell hard for it the first time around. That was the main reason I was never able to play it again: too many feels. It’s been like 5 years, though, so I think I’m good. I even have thoughts like “I should come back and play this as ManShep, see if it feels different”. (All while those 3 months of WoW I bought trickle by unused.)

As much as I adore the Mako, or perhaps the idea of the Mako, Mass Effect 1 has too much boring “drive around the mountains” for this impatient completionist’s taste. But while others complain about the dated graphics, I find them charming. (My age is showing, I guess. Back in my day, we played our video games uphill through the snow without shoes. Or something like that.) As for the overall story, I don’t grab my monitor with both hands screaming “WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?” like I do when playing Mass Effect 2, but I’m completely engaged nonetheless. I’m totally intrigued by the future and Citadel space and can spend hours wandering around, talking to NPCs, moving my camera to trigger “Hit (E) to examine”, searching to discover more, more, more. My gamer soul was forged on the anvil of RPGs, so Mass Effect 1 caters to my intincts and comfort zone, however, Mass Effect 2 is so fun and exciting that it taught me that I could be rewarded by giving action/shooting-style games a chance.

Then one day, someone on Reddit (I don’t post on Reddit or even have an active account – self-preservation strategy – but I lurk) linked Shamus Young’s Mass Effect Retrospective as a reference when discussing Mass Effect 2’s writing faults. I did a double-take. What do you mean Mass Effect 2’s faults? Mass Effect 2 is the Internet’s favorite Mass Effect. It can’t possibly be that faulty!

I went to give it a skim. “A skim” turned into 3 nights of intensive reading and reflecting when this retrospective turned out to be a 50-part dissertation, published over the course of a year, on the storytelling in Mass Effect. The language is intended for a casual audience, but the depth and structure could easily be at an academic level. One of the most interesting things I’ve read in years. Highly recommended to anyone curious about the mechanics of storytelling, even someone who’s never played Mass Effect (or any video game, really). Then I went and bought his books because, seriously, that man has a gift.

Anyway, his analysis made sense of my feelings toward the series, in particular about how my love of Mass Effect 1 is different from my love of the two later games, as well as the intensity of my feelz while playing 2 and 3. I can’t recap pages and pages worth of discussion nor compare to his expertise, but I would like to highlight some major points relevant to my personal story-enjoying experience (with my own conclusions and interpretations mixed in, just in case someone happens to read my blog and thinks “that’s not what Young said!”):

1- The Shepard team in Mass Efect 2 consists of characters who, for the most part, are multidimensional, sympathetic and entertaining. They’re introduced with a backstory that you can usually partake in, and you directly observe their development (and the development of your relationship with them) through an engaging loyalty quest. It’s never made clear why you actually need some of them (why do we expect an assassin to be useful beyond the relay? a justicar? a thief?) but it doesn’t matter because you’re just grateful to have met their awesomeness.

2- The main storyline is only loosely connected to Mass Effect 1 (Collectors vs Reapers). It kind of comes out of nowhere and goes nowhere. Why are the Collectors/Harbinger after Shepard personally? How did Harbinger even find out about Shepard? Why is the Alliance doing a half assed job with its human colonies? Why do the Collectors want to make a human (as opposed to an asari or other) baby reaper? What does Shepard actually do in the Collectors ship since EDI doesn’t seem to need Shepard at all? Why is there only one Collectors ship? How did they find the dead reaper? Why wasn’t it found before? What do/can we learn from the Collectors base? The questions go on. Shame because I believe it would have been possible to properly intergrate the Collectors and the resulting story experience would have been mind-blowing.

3- The game is inconsistant about Shepard’s fit in the world. Some people heard “rumours” about Shepard being alive and working for Cerberus, other people know for sure and other people have no idea. Which makes sense until you realize “who knows what” is kind of random. Dumb kid on Omega sends you an email after you bump into him, while people with high intel access and motivation (such as ex-boyfriend and Important Alliance Guy Kaiden) are clueless. Some people are midly surprised you’re alive again, others aren’t fazed at all.

4- Cerberus is all over the place too. It makes sense that Cerberus would have different cells with varying ethics and ideals (I think this is very cool), but you don’t see much beyond Lazarus and ME1’s Kahoku’s questline (and maybe Overlord? Haven’t reached it on this playthrough yet.) Clearly, they’re able to attract lawful good personel like Jacob and Kelly, but you never learn anything about their lawful good endevours. Sometimes they go above and beyond for their employees (on the Normandy there’s a talk in the crew quarters about someone’s family being evacuated by Cerberus from an at-risk colony), other times their scientists are abandonned to a fate of insanity on a dead reaper. I think it would have added a lot to the story to be able to learn more Cerberus’ structure and key players beyond TIM. (It may be addressed in the books/comics, but I believe it would have added a lot to the game if details were included there, maybe as side-quest rewards for those who want to go above and beyond.)

5- The Illusive Man feels like a great tool that no one knows what to do with. I think he’s supposed to be a superhero story style evil business mastermind villain. This has tons of potential but interactions with him seem to have no purpose but to confuse and irritate me the player. I used to think it was just me because I’m easily confused (you know when you’re at the movies and there’s this kid who’s constantly asking “who’s that? why is he saying that? where are they going? why are they there? I’m the quieter, more polite grown up version of that kid.). Turns that being sent aboard a Collectors’ ship that was powered down by Turians, only not powered down by Turians but by the Collectors themselves as a trap, by TIM who knows it’s a trap and doesn’t have much reason to send you there and who doesn’t have to lie to you since you’re curious about Collectors and follow his orders anyway to keep your ship but still lies to you is actually confusing to everyone. You never get to properly tell him off and he never gets to shut you down by being right although unethical. All your interactions just end with you rolling your eyes and moving onto the next mission.

These brought me to the realizations that:

1- The characters are so much fun that you don’t care if the main storyline is just an excuse to go on adventures with your fictional friends. Before my replay, I had actually forgotten about the story in Mass Effect 2. I remembered Shepard dying and being reconstructed, I remembered recruitment and most of the loyatly missions, I remembered a suicide mission where you have to asign your squadmates to appropriate tasks, I remembered Kaidan being an ass after you save his life, I remember being creeped out by TIM. I didn’t remember about Collectors, what they were, what they did and where they came from. I didn’t remember any of the actual conversations with TIM. I couldn’t even remember what I was doing with Cerberus. None of that stuff really mattered because I was too busy enjoying my time with Shepard and her crew.

2- The unexplained parts of the story are hinted to be “explained later” (for example, when you ask EDI about Cerberus’ funding, she says the information is classified so you think “oh, something will happen to unlock this”), then you’re then distracted by shiny events and by the time “later” rolls around, you’ve forgotten all about wondering where Cerberus gets their ressources (or why Wilson wants to kill you). I think this is a big difference between books and movies versus video games. When you’re reading a book or watching a movie, you’ve got nothing better to do than sit there and process the story. In a game, you have to choose your gun, scan the room for treasure, kill the trash mobs, read your quest journal. It’s pretty easy to distract players from lacking story elements and if players do notice, most won’t care unless the distractions aren’t enjoyable enough.

3- I was so heartbroken by the ending because the elements fueling my love for the series were 1)pride in my work in making the galaxy a better place, 2)my dear companions and 3)a Shepard that I pretty much worshipped. The ending 1)undoes my hard work, 2)takes me away from my companions (and never properly tells me what happens to them, though the extended cut is an improvement) and 3)destroys Shepard (even the scene where people say “Shepard survives” is useless to me because you don’t see her in the epilogue). I have been offended when told “you just wanted a happy ending”, but after proper reflection, my offense comes from “happy ending” being a simplication. I think I wanted an ending that doens’t consist everything I like about the series being stripped away and thrown into a fire. Or beam of light or whatever.

So after a week of reading and reflection, I’m ready to get back into the game. Have a couple of loyalty missions to redo (I screwed up my romance with Garrus by choosing the wrong options and my best option is a save from two missions ago…I vaguely remember doing that on my first playthrough too. Apparently the right options are obvious, but I always miss them. I suppose I’m as dense as he is.), then some side quests, then off to collect Reaper IFF.

Can’t Escape from Mass Effect

I spent two weeks trying to write about playing Wow again. Got about 6 lines in and a screenshot.

Also spent that time trying to play the Witcher 2, in hopes of getting to the Witcher 3. I think I made to the end of the prologue.

My heart just wasn’t there.

My heart, as we know, was shattered after playing the original Mass Effect trilogy and never recovered. /overlydramatic. I’ve played Mass Effect 1 a bit since then but haven’t been able to go any further because I can’t handle the feels. Since playing Andromeda, though, (and missing most of the references because it’s just been too long) an itch has been slowly growing to revisit Shepard.

I…I think I’m ready.

I changed the resolution a few hours after creating my character so now she looks all weird and stretched out. Hence, why you only get a side shot. Wish Mass Effect had a Mirror of Transformation like Dragon Age.

I miss Shepard. My Shepard. So I made her with roughly the same look and roughly the same personality. Doing identical (or somewhat identical) playthroughs was actually such a foreign concept that it didn’t even occur to me until I came across a Mass Effect subreddit where someone mentioned doing several playthroughs with the same Shepard and choices. How someone could submit themselves to that emotional roller coast so many times in such a short period, I can’t fathom, but since it’s been a few years and I only vaguely remember my old game, I thought the idea to be brilliant.

I’m still undecided about what to do at the end. It is much better with the extended cut (it’s been years and I still can’t get over how anyone thought the original ending, with no acknowledgement of your personal efforts, no explanation, no epilogue, was a good idea), but it still doesn’t sit right with me. I’m told there is a mod that sets Citadel to be played as an epilogue (which is pretty much how I head cannoned my original game since Citadel came out long after I’d finished), but I think I might just play up until Shore Leave and leave it at that. *****SPOILERS***** I previously went with Synthesis since I didn’t want to destroy the Geth with whom a lot of work went into forging an alliance, and being a space god for the rest of eternity is just UGGG. Plus EDI and Joker get to be together! (Priorities!) But Synthesis doesn’t make any sense – like how does it work? How does Space Magic turn people into part computers and computers into part people with just a beam of light? (The other options don’t really make any sense either, but they’re a bit more plausible, as Destroy could cause some short of galactic malfunction and Control would be Shepard accessing the main panel.) I also hate changing the galaxy to that extent. And why must Shepard be disintegrated in a well? Kill her if you must, but…not like that. ****SPOILERS OVER **** I never decided how I wanted to head cannon retire my Shepard. I mean, her career is clearly over. You can’t go back to normal hunting bad guys and rescue missions after what she’s been through. Settling down with Garrus doesn’t suit her either, she’s an adventurer and spacer through and through. Being put in a pod and shipped to Andromeda for a total change of scenery might fit her personality, but would she want to leave the Milky Way behind after everything she did to save it? I guess it doesn’t matter. I’m only with her for this ride, what happens after, whether she accepts her Bioware fate or lives on to do whatever, is in her own hands, not mine.

So yeah, Mass Effect 1 vs Andromeda

I was interested in how the two compared side by side since they are both Part-Ones-That-May-Be-Stand-Alones.

ME1 definitely feels better fleshed out in all the story elements, the species and their cultures are given way more depth (despite introducing a lot of species – it’s amazing what they did, actually), the characters feel like real people (while in MEA, with the exception of Peebee and Drack, they kind of just felt like their tagline) and you can tell you’re just touching the tip of the lore iceberg. The dialogue options, however, are extremely unpredictable. I know we complain about that in every Bioware game, but ME1 is especially bad. A lot of options are along the lines of 1)Yes 2)Sure 3)Of course. You figure out quickly that the top option is usually gentle, the middle one is neutral/professional and the bottom one is more aggressive, but still. I’m hardly a newcomer and I’m still shocked by some of the things to come out of my character’s mouth. The voice acting, as well, triggers flashbacks of voice actor con panels where the actors always complain about they’re often not given context for their lines and have to guess. It’s not obvious in new games, but in ME1, you frequently get odd lines where the tone is all wrong.

On the other hand, while I’m driving around, I really miss the Nomad banter from MEA. That’s something the newer game did brilliantly.

While critics denounce MEA’s open world, I’m finding ME1 to be way more grindy and drive around random-y. The Nomad is much easier to handle than the Mako (and I’m super glad they made the Nomad in MEA, I love the Mako but always thought it needed some maneuverability improvement. I did miss the Mako’s canon.) and while ME1’s discoveries are fun and exciting (in MEA, you rarely discover anything cooler than respawning enemy camps – and in space, this drove me crazy, even the most “remote and mysterious” solar systems end up being polluted by remains of the Angara, the Kett, the Outlaws and a Nexus science shuttle), it takes a lot of boring driving to get there. I also found that MEA’s sidequests were more connected to the main plot than in ME1 (which, I suppose, is more natural for a “settle these planets” plot). I feel like in ME1, Admiral Hackett takes way too much advantage of the fact that you happen to be near somewhere (“I know you need to find Saren and stop him from bringing on our inevitable destruction, but while you’re in the area…can you rescue this guy?”).

Combat is more fun (love jet packs and combos!) and intuitive in MEA, though I do like having a ton of abilities at my fingertips in ME1. I prefer the talent system in ME1 with new abilities being unlocked at certain points, though I did like MEA’s as well. I love how in ME1 you can access your weapon loadout screen at any time. After how tedious MEA was about gear switching, every time I update my gear in ME1, I get a feeling of “YESSSSS!!! OH YES!!!”. I do, however, find it super annoying that a squadmate has to be in your party in order for you to access their talents. Especially early in the game, while I’m on the Normandy, trying to upgrade weapons. How am I supposed to know what to give if I can’t check what their weapons skills are?

I’m on the fence about what I prefer between equipping my squadmates myself and letting them take care of their own gear. I’m an RPGer at heart and loooove dedicating entire evenings to pimping everyone’s gear, but I didn’t miss it at all in MEA, maybe because they give you lots of other opportunities to micromanage stuff.

If you don’t have your Classic Bioware Games on Origin, you can download the DLC here.

 

All the DLC for ME1, 2, Dragon Age Origins and 2 (and a random Need For Speed Game) can be downloaded off the EA site, even if you purchased them on Steam. I originally thought that they’re free now due to the age of the games, but it seems that Mass Effect 2 DLC (and possibly the others) won’t work unless you bought them. Mass Effect 1 DLC is free however so grab Bring Down the Sky and Pinnacle Station if you don’t have them already.

Played the latest Mass Effect (Keeping Spoilers to a minimum)

Took me a few tries to remember my password.

Once upon a time, I was a student who needed to write a lot of papers. My finished products weren’t bad, but what seemed to take everyone else 3-4 hours always took me at least 10. Sometimes 20. So I started a blog about World of Warcraft, wrote in it twice a week and after awhile words came out of me faster. As an added bonus, I made friends, found myself at conventions all over North America and really got a deeper, more intense experience out of my games. Then I quit it all to live out of a backpack for two years. I tried to keep up the writing but I was always too tired, too busy, too impatient. It didn’t take long for the words to dry up. Now I’m a grown up who has to write letters, memos and reports. While my letters, memos and reports are never short of excellent (IMHO), what takes my colleagues 5 minutes to write during shifts takes me over an hour, off the clock. Plus, I miss my favorite people but am scared that if I email anyone, the only response I’ll get is “I’m sorry, I don’t think I know you. You must have the wrong email.” If my emails don’t go right to spam. It has been that long.

In hopes of finding some good ol’ days glory, I promised myself that I would make a post once I finished Mass Effect: Andromeda.

…Ok, I promised myself I would make a post once I was done with Skyrim. Then after the first time I finished Dragon Age: Inquisition. What can I say? I’m just a big disappointment to myself.

Speaking of disappointments…

Actually, no, I wasn’t really disappointed by the latest Mass Effect. I had a lot of fun playing the game. Yes, the flaws are glaring. (And would you even call them flaws? I feel that sloppynesses is more descriptive.) But since I was so attached to Shepard, I half expected to spend the entire game thinking #notmymasseffect. Which I didn’t do. I easily lost myself in the game and clocked in at 153 hours (estimate 120 if you cut out idling).

I had just finished another Dragon Age: Inquisition run when MEA came out (not that I expect anyone to read this, but just in case someone who doesn’t follow the gaming industry ends up here by accident – Dragon Age and Mass Effect are made by the same company but different teams- and this time around in different studios- and share a lot of features), so it was interesting to me that it seems MEA shines in the places DAI was lacking and the things DAI did well crashed and burned in MEA.

Let’s talk about Ryder

I feel like talking about the story first would be more logical, but Shepard was so important to me that it only makes sense to start with Ryder.

You can’t see it here but, by total accident, I made her scarf match her eyes.

The history between Shepard and I is that I stumbled across Mass Effect at a time where I needed a storybook hero in my life. I’m not a “power through this” kind of person. “I’ll have meltdown now and feel better later” is more like me. The latter serves me well, but every now and then mastering the former is what gets the job done. Shepard was my shining example of powering through everything.

Unlike Shepard, a 30ish year old born leader with an established and successful military career who is applying her exemplary skills, Ryder is 20ish (22 I think) and discovering herself as she takes on the unexpected job of frontlining exploration in a new galaxy. She’s awkward at first and grows in skill and confidence throughout the game. I love it. To younger players, I feel like she would be very relateable, and if at the frontline of further Mass Effect games, could really endear herself to that audience. For me, on the other hand, Ryder made me feel old. So she was more like a little sister that I cheered on and was proud of. She was so deliciously distinct from Shepard that I was able to let go and allow her to grow on me.

In the comparison with DAI, MEA stands out. Both Ryder and the Inquisitor are inexperienced people ending up at the forefront of a massive, high stakes organization through unfortunate circumstance. But the Inquisitor’s journey is too smooth to be engaging. Two of the biggest badasses in Thedas (Cassandra and Liliana) are bearing their fears and dreams to her within hours of meeting. She takes on each mission with a smile and emerges non worse for wear. The events in Haven are the closest she gets to a setback, everything else just works outs. Ryder also does abnormally well for herself (after all, the game is long enough, adding setbacks would stretch it out ridiculously) but she is forced to prove herself. She also occasionally and appropriately loses her shit and at times needs to count on her squadmates. The writers could have gone further with Ryder, but that’s just me being greedy.

Like the Inquisitor, Ryder does suffer from somewhat of a narrow personality range. Emotional/Logical and Casual/Professional replies structure seems good in theory, but in practice (possibly due to the weak dialogue writing) they really didn’t feel all that different from each other. Back in the Paragon/Renegade days, I would play Paragon with some “I’ve had enough of your shit” Renegade moments (I’m so bad at being an asshole that when I did my Renegade ME1 playthrough, I had to use a guide.). I don’t mind trying something different, but I liked that Shepard chose to be compassionate (or not). With Ryder (and the Inquisitor), it felt like she responds the same way and does the same thing no matter what, she just words it a little differently.

Ok, now for the story

Yeah, so DAI. The story starts off great and promising, you’re excited to grow your Inquisition, your camp gets attacked, you do badass heroic stuff- then the story comes to a screeching halt and you collect flowers for 100 hours until you decide to take out the bad guy. There are some story bits thrown in and I loved the story bits, but they’re so rare that you tend to forget about them as you do other stuff.

I was therefore pleasantly surprised that MEA starts off strong, continues strong and ends strong. In my 120 hours of playtime, I had a few nights before the final battle where the story stagnated as I drove around to do all the “collect shit that might appear in some places if you’re lucky and the quest isn’t bugged”. The rest of the time I felt engaged and enjoyed how even the most insignificant sidequests felt somehow connected to the story, a very different experience from DAI.

There is a lot of repetitiveness in planet exploration – most planets follow the same pattern, but, to my surprise, I didn’t mind. By the end of the game, everything felt like “drive around the mountains”, but discovering each for the first time was exciting to me. Every political situation, every Remnant vault, every environment was just different enough to feel fresh. I might not feel the same way in future playthroughs, but for now, I’m satisfied.

I’ll note, though, that while the story is highly entertaining and well-paced, it seriously lacks creativity. I mean, it’s fine: entertainment is the most you can ask for from a video game. It just surprised me since Bioware is supposed to be the storytelling leader in the industry, you would think they had hordes of brilliant writers fighting tooth and nail for an opportunity to pitch their awesome ideas. Instead, most of the twists are predictable and kinda cliché (and worsened by the clumsy foreshadowing), as if there was one person responsible for the whole thing who was told to go home, watch some Star Trek and come back the next day with a full story. There are some interesting chunks of story near the end, you know, once it’s too late in the game to actually develop and explore them. It’s not bad by any means, it’s just, well, after the original trilogy missed the mark for legendary status by 20 minutes of “WTF were they thinking”, as a loving fan, I hoped they would redeam themselves. And MEA is good but isn’t inspired enough to go down in history. With all the love in my heart, I hope MEA2 uses the established groundwork to give us something exceptional.

I guess this is where we can segment into the writing

To me, this was the most massive disappointment. Some of the dialogue and the random bits of writing you find in game were great, maybe even most of it. But there was enough unnatural, tedious, confusing or downright cringy material to distract me from all the good. So much made me wonder who on earth they hired to write this stuff, and what happened to their editors?

There’s a lot of telling instead of showing. One of your companions, one who hides her insecurities behind playfulness, wants to be slow to open to you. But instead of in-character dodging of questions and teasing, she seriously tells you (I am paraphrasing but only slightly) “I am slow to open up, please leave me alone until you have earned my trust” Like, who says that? It would work with a bookish, formal character, but it DID NOT FIT her AT ALL. Oh, and in case you do miss what little your companions show you instead of spelling out to you, you can count on your ship’s doctor to explain it to you. I get that the target audience for Mass Effect is young and possibly socially inept, but comon, they can’t be that clueless.

Another telling-not-showing that really got on my nerves was, well, everything about the new galactic species you befriend. “Oh the Angara! They have electromagnetic bodies and are so open about their emotions!” Your Angaran squadmate reinforces this at every opportunity “I think you are a good friend. I say it because I am Angaran and we are open about our feelings, unlike you Milky Way folk who are embarrassed about your feelings.” There is also this late game gem: Angara: “I am excited about this thing we discovered” Ryder: “Oh, how I love how open and vulnerable you are with me! (You open-Angara-you)” Yet I didn’t notice a single occasion of an Angara being unusually emotional. If anything, they’re kinda flat and talk like zenny yoga instructors. I also never noticed any Angara using their electromagnetic abilities (outside, perhaps, of your companion in combat).

As for the other companions, I found that they started out strong “I am your new crewmate and this is what’s cool about me”…then didn’t really say anything new to you for the rest of the game. One even regresses and becomes insufferable. To make matters worse, when your companions (and some other NPCs) have something to add in their non-cutscene dialogue, there’s no notification. All their options stay greyed out. If you want to find out whether they have more to say, you have to replay all their dialogue in hopes that some of it might be different. So you miss new content (and sometimes even new quests) until you realize this, then you end up playing old stuff over and over again. It would have been easy to make new dialogue content white, like those dialogue options you haven’t selected yet.

When compared to DAI…well you can’t even compare to DAI. Despite pacing issues with the story, nothing is accidental about character dialogue. If a characters says something that seems off, you find out down the road they were hiding something. You discover character personalities little by little as you play the game, very little is told to you. In fact, with every playthrough, I feel that I get to know and understand the DAI characters better. I don’t expect the same to happen in subsequent MEA playthroughs.

The Gameplay, however, was really fun

I love currencies so I was served. Three types of research data, skill points, credits, APEX teams, gear levels, cryo pods, viability points, profile levels. So fun! I suspect my large number of played hours was due to sitting in my ship micromanaging all my stuff.

The combat is tough for me to comment on because as long as it’s not terrible, I’m happy. I’m no TPS expert, but, um, I enjoyed the combat. There’s a huge variety in weapons and defensive gear (a little overwhelming at first, to be honest) and you can experiment and modify your stuff to you heart’s content. Fighting is smooth and natural, your squadmates take care of themselves, everything works as expected (as far as I could tell) and early in the game, the difficulty scaling seems right. As an average gamer, I played on normal difficulty and the challenge felt…normal. I had to think about what I was doing, but was never frustrated. Later on in the game, the combat does become trivial, but I guess you’re just not expected to be level 70 on your first playthrough. You can also up the difficulty whenever you want.

The profile system, where you can customize and level up different profiles, felt quite brilliant to me as well. I didn’t realize you could switch profiles on the fly until late in the game (the one time the game shows you something instead of telling you and I missed it: in the tutorial mission, you see Daddy Ryder switching profiles. Maybe I am as clueless as the game treats me.)

I have to criticize the crafting a little. You can research blueprints and craft from the same station, but if you want to equip/unequip weapons, you have to run pretty far to a load out station. And heaven forbid you want to try a weapon. You have to equip it, land somewhere, drive around until you find enemies then fight. A target dummy in your ship’s loadout room would have been infinitely more convenient.

Overall, though, given how frustrated I was with DAI’s combat (mostly with the camera, I could never freaking see anything while fighting) and crafting system (I had to make detailed tables to keep track of everybody’s gear, then I’d use up all my resources to craft something cool, only to find an upgrade 30 minutes later), MEA was absolutely glorious to play.

The Details

Animations, lack of facial expression and, well, lack of faces period are probably the most common complaints I see about the game. I mostly play old games with terrible graphics and I’m face-blind anyway, I didn’t notice until it was pointed out to me. As for the facial expressions, I didn’t mind too much, however, I felt like it was a missed opportunity, especially when playing right after DAI, where I found myself really speculating what characters are secretly thinking based on their body language. I did feel like main character animation was improved in MEA, though. I hated, hated, hated seeing my graceful, beautiful Inquisitors move like gorillas. Sara, thankfully, did not move like a gorilla.

While I wasn’t overly bothered by the graphics and animations, I do question what they did with their resources. They had 5 years and a good budget. I don’t buy the “new team and Frostbite” excuse. The Dragon Age team didn’t have experience with Frostbite either and other than the gorilla Inquisitor, the animations were fantastic. Plus, Montreal has a huge animation scene (Quebec produces a lot of media, almost all of it coming out of Montreal), there are other big name gaming studios in the city and every credible CEGEP has some kind of game development and/or animation program. There’s no way they couldn’t find proper talent. Besides, even if the game is made by a different studio and team, couldn’t the new studio receive coaching and training from Dragon Age veteran animators?

What did bother me, though, where the bugs. More bugs than a beehive, it felt at times. I haven’t been able to get new gear or mods for the past 8 levels. The APEX menu freezes the game more often than not. I have two completed quests stuck in my quest-log (ok, minor detail, but it bothers me). My AI tells me I have new email all the time when I don’t. Sometimes my character and her subtitles have totally different lines.

If you look at the credits, there’s a long list of game testers. I could see them missing little, specific things, but some bugs are pretty major and some occur for most players. Seriously, what are those game testers doing with their time?

Let’s wrap it up

Almost 3000 words and I didn’t even write everything I had in my head. Feels just like old times!

To me, Mass Effect: Andromeda was fun. Definitely worth that money and time I put into the game. (I just kind of wonder what the development team did with their time and money.) I’m not sure whether I will want to play it again, but I do want to explore multiplayer (and coming from me that’s saying a lot!) and I’ll be first in line to buy DLC. I know MEA2 isn’t a sure thing, but I do hope for it because I want to see my Mass Effect buddies and colonies grow. I want to see what comes of the loose ends still hanging. And I still have hope for a legendary space story.

This Happens when I Play Mass Effect DLC

I didn’t want to tell my coworkers that the reason I was falling asleep everywhere earlier this week was because I had been up all night playing Mass Effect: Citadel.

Not up all night playing video games – that happens all the time. No one thinks anything of it anymore. Playing Mass Effect, though, that’s different. I didn’t want to say anything because they just wouldn’t understand.

I didn’t plan on getting Citadel. When I finished the game, I moped a bit and was eventually distracted. I wouldn’t say I was really done with Mass Effect but I was done with other people’s (including Bioware’s) Mass Effect. “Best seats in the house” is when headcannon takes over the rest just fades away.

I was finally, you know, “getting over it”. I wasn’t avoiding Mass Effect DLC to make a foolish nerdrage stand. At this point I’m mostly sad for Bioware because they came so close to making something perfect only to miss the bullseye at the worst possible time.

Rather I was avoiding DLC because I didn’t want to pick at my post-Mass Effect scab.

How I broke

One day I typed “mass effect citadel” into a search field on Youtube. I swear I only watched a video for a second!

Well.

The first time.

The second video I watched a little longer. The third video I watched big chunks of.

Eventually I figured I might as well act before I spoil everything for myself. I ripped that scab right off and downloaded Citadel. And now I bleed all over this blog post.

Dear person who’s never played Mass Effect

Some time back a guy “friend” was sitting in my living room and had the balls (or outright stupidity) to say “people were just mad at the Mass Effect ending was because it wasn’t happy“.

Hence the quotation marks around friend.

Over the years I’ve learned some restraint. So he didn’t find himself skyrocketed from my balcony. But I never forgave the ignorance (he has never played Mass Effect, nor has ever even read anything about the game), the callousness (he knows how emotionally involved I am in the Mass Effect story) and the lack of understanding in that comment.

Yes, I’m that pissed off over a comment about a video game. Oh, and it gets better. I can rant for a long, long time.

I’m not going to hide that the lack of the possibility of a traditional happy ending does come up in conversation at times (there’s even a mod!), but it’s so much more complex than that. And going straight to “u mad at no happy ending bro” is an insult to any disappointed fan of the series.

You know, the default ending isn’t even really sad.

The original ending went kind of like: you fight boring mobs, you fight boring mobs, you fight boring mobs, there’s some conversation, there’s some weird conversation, then some explosions set to music, then the end. And you’re sitting there thinking “Okay… Soooo… Did I win?”

The Extended Cut was a little better. You can see that you did win (unless you refuse, in which case you help people 50 000 years from now win), but you’re still in the dark about what winning means. And all the puzzle pieces you spent hours and hours finding and trying to fit together: clues about the Reapers, about Cerberus, about the Illusive Man, about other galaxy mysteries. You never get a snapshot of the finished puzzle. Actually, you never even get a finished puzzle. You sit there watching the credits with stray puzzle pieces in your hands, a blank stare on your face and a sick feeling in your stomach, saddened over never learning where these pieces go.

Next, on Life and Death

Shepard living and dying comes up a lot. Trolls (I figure) post “people are just mad that Shepard dies“. Destroy players call out “My Shep didn’t die!”

In my heart, neither is really true. Ok, so you see your Shepard disintegrating and end up with a plaque on your ship. That’s not what death is. Maybe it’s part of what death is, but it’s not all death is. Death is the people who love you grieving and moving on without you. Death is someone else picking up your torch and continuing where you left off. That never happens, so, to me, it never felt like death.

As for living. Living! You get, what, a gasp and no plaque on your wall? That’s not living! Living is carrying on with the injuries that don’t heal, it’s rebuilding, it’s having a place in the world. A gasp and no plaque is nothing of that.

As far as I can tell, in the game, Shepard doesn’t really live or die. The official story ends before that.

Of course, you can look at it from another angle (and this is one of the few not too bad things about the ending). Mass Effect forces you, the player, to build a certain relationship with your Shepard. Some people play Shepard as badass versions of themselves, some play Shepards in honour of real life people who’ve touched them, some people just want to blow shit up.

Me, I played Shepard as my imaginary BFF. Mass Effect came to me at a time in my life where I had been forced into a situation that I wasn’t prepared or qualified (and, well, willing) to handle. Not of galaxy-saving-in-face-of-hopeless-odds proportions, but still. I found a lot of comfort and (imaginary) complicity in shooting things, shopping for weapons (and miniature ships) and mouthing off to idiots with Shepard as we coped with what life handed us.

Had I played Shepard as myself in a science fiction world, she (I? we?) would have died. When the game is over you leave the world. The world is still there but you’re not because the game is over and you’ve moved onto another game, another pretend life. But Shepard was my imaginary friend and imaginary friends live with you a long time.

Magic Space Kid’s Legacy

After a year, the icky feeling that stuck to me wasn’t about crew reunions, wasn’t about unfinished stories, wasn’t about Shepards stuck in limbo (but know that I can get myself worked up over those things if I try hard enough!). What makes me block out the real Bioware ending, as a story and world lover who lets her imagination run wild, is, no matter what you do, Mass Effect’s official post-ending legacy sucks.

What resonated with me about the Mass Effect world was how plausible it all was. I could totally picture the galaxy like that 150 years from now. But then, a couple hundred hours into playing around in this fairly realistic science fiction world, everything gets all new agey weird.

And after all is said and done, you’re left with 4 options to work with:

1)This cycle ends so any kind of post-game imagining has to be about the world 50 000 years from now, which we know very little about and thus don’t care.
2)You end up with an entire galaxy (universe?) of cyborgs, which is really not fun to build personal stories with.
3)You end up with a world that has a Reaper-god Shepard, which is also not fun to work with.
4)The tons of hours you spent doing diplomatic (and match making!) crap go to waste when you kill half the people you spent huge chucks of the game coercing.

Srsly. What the heck am I supposed to do with that?

My Headcannon

So. My kind-yet-feisty Shepard (for whom death really doesn’t fit) is badly injured, never recovers and is forced into a Council position she hates. Her and Garrus pursue their bizarre cross-species relationship and adopt cute little krogan orphans. Garrus is a surprisingly good stay-at-home dad. Kaidan gets the Normandy, mostly as a Spectre vessel. Everyone else goes on with their usual occupations. My own characters are weaved in, but that’s personal so you’ll never find out.

Citadel

I played Citadel as if it was happening after the ending.

At first I felt a little guilty and justified myself by saying that I spent 15$ on this DLC and can play it in any mindset I want.

As the DLC goes on, though, it almost feels like that’s how you’re supposed to play. If you replace every “we’re at war” with “we were at war“, it actually works really, really well. Some of the scenes – Vega’s N7 tattoo, Garrus’ ballroom dancing recital, fundraising for Salarian space cancer research – make a lot more sense if you think of them as happening after the war.

So yeah, it’s after the war, we’ve moved all the gross bodies out of the Citadel, we’re going around the Galaxy rebuilding and getting rid of whatever the Reapers left behind, the Normandy needs a tune up and Anderson (who survived being shot, because, really, I’m not too sure he got shot in the first place) is all “I’m not leaving Earth, go hang out at my place in the Citadel“.

The timeline is after Shepard has recovered enough to help in the Galactic Clean Up Effort and before her being dumped against her will into Udina’s dirty Council chair.

And then… It felt like when I was a kid. On the last day of the school year, we were given candy, we played games and teachers slacked off in enforcing the rules. Citadel was like that last day of school. The “rules” didn’t matter, it was just celebrating, reminiscing and gorging myself with sweet, sweet candy.

I’d followed the blurbs from different Bioware employees who were involved in creating and marketing Mass Effect on the Bioware Blog. (You should check it out! Tends to be forcefully positive because of, you know, PR and stuff, but still very interesting.) Playing Citadel was like experiencing those blurbs. I kept imagining the writers sitting around a table tossing around their favorite jokes and game references and just laughing and laughing. I felt connected to the game like I always do, but I also felt connected to everyone who’d loved Mass Effect over the years.

By the way, the references to Multiplayer throughout the Strip were brilliant. I spent so much time listening to the pair discussing bad pugs! It was the first time I felt like Multiplayer was actually part of the story and not just a ploy to keep people playing the game longer.

Critique of Citadel?

Um. My first reaction to Shepard’s new apartment was “Wow, that’s a lot of wasted space.” Tiny house fan knee jerk reaction, sorry. I would have liked a bit more customization available too (which is hilarious because normally I don’t care about customizing anything – I’ve never even transmogged in WoW! Mass Effect is just special.), but I could understand how there’s no point in adding tons of extra items that’ll only be seen for a few hours.

I love how the plot dragged me through the archives. Perfect idea for a final DLC! I would have liked more lore, though, and lore that I didn’t already know about. I would have loved to stumble across some ancient, ancient story. But I’m splititng hairs here. I loved the archives. I’d even pay for a DLC that consists of nothing but archival exploration. (In case you were wondering, the character that I’ve always related most to is Liara. She’s like the video game me, only with a gentler voice and fancy biotic powers.)

Found in the Archives. Unsure of purpose. Nothing happens if you shoot it.

And Legion. Why no Legion? Mordin and Thane got a nod (I cried like a baby during Mordin’s!), but Legion… It’s like he never even existed. (Ashley didn’t get anything either, but since she’s mentioned a lot during ME3, I was fine with it.) I even checked all the arcade scores for “Infiltrait0rN7” and nothing.

And now I’m hooked on the Arena

When I heard the combat simulation, I thought “Why would I want that when there’s plenty of actual combat to go around?”

Then I tried it.

Damn.

It’s all the fun of Multiplayer without the stress of playing with strangers. I enjoyed all the mini games in Citadel (again, hilarious because I normally just ignore mini games) but the Arena, in all its simplicity, was so much fun.

When I reached the end, I let the tears flow at Shepard’s “The best” line and thanked the game and its creators for giving me such a good run.

Then I hit “load” and ran back to the Arena.

The best.

After the Mass Effect Extended Cut… Or, What’s in an Ending? *Spoilers after the cut*

I’ve never been ansty about a video game-related release before.

I mean it. I even have to fake excitement about new WoW content. It’s not that I don’t like new video game goodies, I’m just not the kind of person who anticipates. So when June 26 was announced as the Mass Effect Extended Cut DLC date and I near fainted, I discovered a part of myself I hadn’t met before.

Official FemShep Extended Cut Wallpaper. Can be downloaded from the Mass Effect Official Website.

I suppose terror might most accurately describe the emotion that surfaced when I found out about the release date.

I was among the many who didn’t like Mass Effect 3’s ending. I came into the franchise late and was prepared for disappointment so I was spared the cold shower given to long time fans. No amount of preparation, though, could keep my poor little heart from breaking. This was a game that had really struck a cord with me, that I played obsessively and that I became heavily emotionally invested in. I’m even sort of embarrassed to admit that I started a new game a couple of days ago… I couldn’t find joy in anything until I saw Mass Effect 1’s Shepard again.

The promises of the Extended Cut DLC gave me a little hope, but it wasn’t a healthy hope. It was more like that sickly hope you get after you break up with someone, that teeny tiny little belief that circumstances might change and your former partner will run back to you with flowers, begging for forgiveness. That last thread you cling to before accepting that it can never be. Hence the terror.

I did take into consideration what Bioware said about the extended ending (that indoctrination theory is disregarded, that the endings remain the same, only more fleshed out). I did realize that nothing can erase my experience of finishing the game for the first time. I used all the expectation-lowering self pep talk I could manage. But there was a tiny glimmer of hope that the game might come running back to me with flowers, begging for forgiveness. It was a scary feeling.

(On a total side-note, because these guys really deserve a shoutout, you know who didn’t screw up the original ending? (Or the DLC ending for that matter.) The music team. I’ve played the original ending a few times now, and invariably, the music grabs me by my heart and won’t let go. I found the music to be subtle throughout the series, like it was just waiting for its ultimate moment of glory. I simply must share my appreciation for the music team’s excellent work.)

Before I jump into spoilers, lets have a talk about endings.

What do you want in an ending?

I always hate endings.

There, I said it.

I’m impossible to please when it comes to stories.

Surprisingly, I’m a very detached person in the real world: I float from one side of the continent to another, I meet new people, I say goodbye to old people and I never look back.

With stories, though, I’m not like that. When my imagination is stirred, I have a tough time letting go. Toward the final turns of a long, long story, I’ll be looking forward to moving on with my life (I even said this a few times while playing Mass Effect), but there will still be a part of me that rebels against coming back to reality.

But when I’m forced to accept an ending, given the choice, I’ll always choose an easy happy ending over a tragic ending. I also like to know what significant things will happen to my beloved characters in their future. And I like straightforward endings that tie up the loose ends of the story and let me walk away sated. I prefer simplicity over surprise.

I knew I’d have to rely on my imagination to get my ideal ending for Mass Effect and I’ve come to accept it. (Fanfic helps.) But since I’m sharing my deep dark secrets here, I’ll confess that my ideal ending for Mass Effect would be a simple “we kick Reaper ass and take a vacation”. I’d like to see a Councillor Shepard (though I’m sure Shepard herself would hate me for it) or maybe an Admiral Shepard who takes over for Admiral Hackett as the official Mass Effect universe quest-giver. And I’d especially like to see her and Garrus spend some happy years together. I’m normally very disdainful of romance stories, but for some reason I really connected to Shepard and Garrus.

Ok, Spilling Out the Spoilers, Now!