I've been trying to write about my reaction to the Mass Effect games for bordering on half a year, the same has been going on for Batman: Arkham Origins for more then two years, and one things for sure: I'm terrible at writing coherent blogs. I think my problem on both fronts is feeling the need to prattle endless to properly set up my points and fill people in on things that players of both franchises would already know. Here goes attempt thirteen:
Mass Effect is a weird series for it's one of the few franchises that reduced it's scope so dramatically and then went on to be a much grater success in part due to that reduction. In Mass Effect 1 the Citadel is interconnected, whole, and cohesive. In Mass effect 2 there might be just as many locations to the Citadel but the connections between those places are gone with an elevator in it's place. This is to make it more convenient and allow for the engine to deal with the environments without huffing and puffing. Those hallways were important.
The hallways and elevators of Mass Effect 1 separate it from the later two games. This kind of game design is something I like to think of as "existence" design although I'm sure there's a far more eloquent term for it.
This kind of design is predicated on an adherence to the players window into the game world hardly ever cutting with the focus on existing in the game world. It's not immersion as that can still be accomplished in the moment with atmosphere and other things and still allow for such things as cuts indicating "and then they went to the ship!" With existence design the player must physically go to their ship, wait for the doors to open, enter, be scanned, then have the airlock open, and finally you enter your ship.
While tedious it gives weight to your ship as an existing thing in the game world.
Mass Effect 1 is a lot of open spaces and that hit the hardware and performance pretty hard but those open spaces help communicate that the game is more about being, like a Bethesda game, then about cinematic story cutscenes which is good because Mass Effect 1's cutscenes are comically inept in execution on the same level as a Bethesda game with only it's superb writing, dialogue mechanics, and voice work to save it.
This isn't to say that it doesn't have it's charms because ironically the goofiness of these scenes puts it atmospherically very similar to 60's Star Trek. Another bit of charm in the face of weirdness is character faces. The faces in the game for me did not hit uncanny valley like a 2007 production should but instead after many hours felt oddly normal. As in a better representation of how normal real life everyday human faces looked. There was no feeling of perfect face actors or focus tested good looks.
My Shepard had non-symmetrical eyebrows and sharp cheeks. After fifty or so hours that was who she was and I was fine with that. I was comfortable in that skin. For fifty or so hours I was Shepard, I had non-symmetrical eyebrows and sharp cheeks and my voice was Jennifer Hale's. And yeah I had red hair so sue me...
People tend to scoff at the notion of a player becoming the protagonist or the protagonist being the player. Around the early controversy of Fallout 4's voiced dialogue and increase in protagonist characterization a lot of people tossed aside the notion of the player being the protagonist as a power fantasy and as weird.
Yet when the weird moment in Liara's story came were she practically throws herself on you I felt disturbed. It felt like the writers had invaded the world and forced something. I thought about it for a second and then decided that engaging with this forced unearned romance would be exploitative. Luckily it was not thrown in my face anymore.
When Virmire came I didn't care all that much about the choice I would have to make. I didn't really like either Kaiden or Ashely but Kaiden was the least space racist so I chose him to save. I joked about how I would kill em' both off if I could. As soon as the repercussions of the choice started going into motion I kept thinking in my head.
Idon'tcareidon'tcareidon'tcareidon'tcareidon'tcareidon't
I cared. I did this. It was not this written and established character Shepard that did this and I only watched. I went to my ship and waited for the airlock to open and set a course for Virmire and landed and drove around and fought my way to this place. And then I decided Ashely should die because she was too space racist.
Then I find out much later that you can lead her to overcoming that space racism because of fucking course you would be able to do that why wouldn't you be able to do that you fool!
I can't go back and change that. That would be a lie and I know it.
*Spoilers for Walking Dead Season 1(the game)*
At the end of season 1 of the Walking Dead I told Clementine to leave me to die and turn in harsh defiance that she needed to toughen up for this world. It was my personal redemption for choosing to take the abandon car of food. Days later I thought over how that last episode went in my head and to my horror I remembered how the confrontation with the owner of that car went. There was a struggle and then Clementine shot him dead. My redemption was cowardice and my choice undermined by previous failings. They were my failings.
*End of spoilers for walking dead*
These kinds of moments only work when your given adequate control over your character. Choice is effective not because of massive change to the world as a whole but you ability to express yourself to that fictional world. Even if the world's response is vicious or railroaded no matter your choices. The one thing you don't want is not being able to voice your opinion in a given situation as that implies that your Shepard would never think like you in this way which separates you from the world and puts you in the position as spectator rather then existence.
This is why Mass Effect 2 was such a disappointment. All of the existence and being is ripped away and the entire franchise takes a turn for the immensely harsh but most important of all is that Shepard starts becoming disconnected with me. The majority of options dealing with Cerberus leave with little in the way of things I want to actually say. When confronted with why I'm with Cerberus early in 2 all the responses praise them in their own way or laugh at how silly and idealistic the person confronting me is or how I'm willing to see another side of their organization and...
I desperately don't want to say any of that. It's that moment in Mass Effect 2 that for a few hours afterward put me in the place of passive apathetic observer that I've never fully recovered from. I even later in the games engaged in one of the dumb romance plotlines because eh fuck it, even if the result made me immediately rollback that save out of regret.
This blog has already gone on for far too long and the writing so far is as about as inept as I imagined it would be so I'll spare you my thoughts on ME2 for now. That will probably be about as long or longer. I'd love some feedback on this mess of a blog even if it's just "Yup this writing is a mess!"
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