Decisions. Choices. Options. Staple of the Western RPG, the ability to make decisions for your main character has been both praised and criticized. Some see it as the ultimate destination of video game narrative; the ability for a player to tell the story they want, to interact with it. Others see it as a weakness. An obstacle towards crafting a cohesive story. Personally I think both styles have their advantages, and it really depends on what kind of game is being made, and how good the writers involved are.
For better or worse, the Mass Effect series, and Bioware games in general, utilize a decision based dialogue system. The story is told through character interactions and the player is allowed to choose what their avatar says or does from a set of given options. Personally, I think it’s a great fit for the series, but it’s also a major contributing factor to the disappointment I, and others, have for the ending.
Why is decision making important to Mass Effect’s story? How does it enhance the game’s narrative? Let’s discuss, after the jump.
Warning! Once again, the rest of the article is filled with major spoilers! You have been warned!
Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but as far as I know, Mass Effect 1 was the first western-style RPG (player’s decide the main character’s dialogue) that was fully voice-acted, including the main character. That last little bit, the main character being voiced, is the important part. The Silent Protagonist has long had a home in Western RPG’s, their lack of dialogue allowed their character to be more nebulous, allowing players to more easily imagine it as their avatar. The Silent Protagonist acted as a second skin, a way for players to interact directly with the virtual world. Voice changed that. The player could no longer imagine how their character spoke, how they would intone a line. Voice acting inherently added character, personality, and so Shepard was born.
The main character of the Mass Effect series is Commander Shepard. Their gender, first name, facial features, race, eye color, background and more are left to the player to decide (at least from among the options given), but they will always be Commander Shepard. This is the change, the feature really, that drew me to Mass Effect in the first place.
I’d always seen Western RPG’s as something more akin to interactive stories than video games. I was always interested in crafting a cohesive narrative; working with the game’s decisions to help characterize the main character. I’ll admit, I’m not sure if others did this previous to Mass Effect, but I do know that amongst my friends I was the only one to do this. Mass Effect changed that. It was a great experience, seeing how my friends chose to characterize their Shepard. Some were jaded rebels, shooting first and not really caring about the answers. Others were soldiers first and foremost, doing everything for the Alliance. It was fun, in a grade-school show-and-tell kinda way.
Mass Effect’s other distinction, was that your decisions mattered. Certainly other games have had your decisions impact the rest of the game. A fair number were even better at it. But I’m hard pressed to think of anywhere your decisions mattered between games. Mass Effect 2 lets you import your save data from Mass Effect 1, and 3 lets you do it for 2. The entire trilogy is connected by your decisions, and while your decisions don’t change the game in truly significant ways (understandable given the amount of work and resources that would require), it doesn’t really matter. Just the idea of your choices carrying across the games makes them more important, more powerful, more engaging. It’s little wonder that so many people talk about how engrossed they became with the games. No matter how small the changes, their choices actually do matter. They can change things.
Mass Effect 3, thanks largely to being the last game in the trilogy, has some of the best decisions in the series. While the other ME games allowed for some important decisions, the outcomes all had to be designed with the next game in mind. It is certainly arguable that Bioware dropped the ball on this front (personally I don’t think there are enough important decisions), there are still some truly fantastic choices that change how the game proceeds (at least narratively).
Tune in tomorrow for the discussion on style, and maybe even an extra surprise. Until then do you remember Mordin’s final scene yesterday? Compare it to this version, found if you change just a few of your decisions:
Yeah.
As always if you have anything to say, positive or negative, please do so. You can leave a comment here, contact me through Twitter (@Corynrags), or even my e-mail. I like discussing much more than I like preaching, and I would love to hear some other people's thoughts.
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