Time is a very limited resource, at least to a human being. There's only so much of it in a day, and only so many days before your time runs out. For better or worse, video games tend to take a long time to finish. One of the most distressing problems that this causes is that it makes discussion difficult. A group of friends can go see a movie together, but a video game simply takes too much time for most people to enjoy simultaneously. Someone will get ahead of the other and be left waiting for the rest to catch up. Personally, this problem has helped instill a love of watching others play video games in me. This way I know everything that's happened, and can talk about it immediately. Discussion flourishes under such conditions, but it can be difficult to set up, especially as we grow older (and thus burdened with more responsibilities).
Sometimes it's nice to chat.
Amongst my friends, I tend to lead the front; finishing games months or even years ahead of the others. This gives me a lot of time to analyze my experience, draw conclusions, and generally refine my thoughts on the game in question. Certainly, this has proved true with Mass Effect 3. Of my friends, I'm the only one who even owns it yet. But the internet far outstripped even myself, and I've only recently begun to catch up to the conversation.
My posts last week were written as a way for me to work out my personal feelings on the end of the game. They were a way for me to get the bad taste out of my mouth so that I could enjoy the rest of the otherwise fantastic game. Not taking the time to really analyze my experience, or catch up to the discussion was an error. A mistake. My blunder was not in making my posts, which really did help me deal with my feelings about the end of the game, but in not catching up to the current conversation. My true error was not finding about the Indoctrination Theory until now.
Read on to find more about the Indoctrination Theory and what it has to do with the ending of Mass Effect 3.
Style. That organic, enigmatic thing. Style is easy to see, easy to feel, but difficult to describe. Anyone can tell you that the last two Harry Potter movies are much darker than the rest, but when you press for specifics, it becomes difficult to describe. Certainly more characters die. More bad things happen. The film certainly has less colorfulness, that is to say there is less difference between each color and grey (not a bad thing when used well, as in this case). The music contains more minor keys and tones. However it comes about, it is a darker set of films than the rest.
What do the Harry Potter movies have to do with Mass Effect? Find out after the break.
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!
Edit: Having problems with Blogger, should be fixed shortly. Edit2: Fixed, kinda...
Continuing our discussion on Mass Effect 3, I would like to transition from talking about the active game elements (i.e. combat), to the passive. In this case I would like to talk about the characters. This is not going to be a detailed list of all the characters, and what was done well or poorly with them (though if there is interest I wouldn’t mind a project like that in the future), instead I just want to give something more akin to an appetizer, a taste of how the characterization and character interactions have changed over the course of the Mass Effect series.
Warning! Massive Spoilers ahead, including one of the best scenes in Mass Effect 3. Continue at your own risk!
Wow. I can't believe it's been over a year since I last made a post. It really does take something monumental for me to make my opinions known it seems. Well that, or I took a year off for personal reasons, but there's no way that's true. Right? If you follow anything even remotely video game related, you've no doubt heard something about the controversy over Mass Effect 3's ending. Going into the game, I expected all of the internet rage to be hyperbolic, as the internet does favor extremely strong opinions. In the end, however, I found I agreed with what I'd heard online, even if I didn't share their reaction.
While much of internet appears angry, even furious over the ending, I find myself more confused and disappointed than anything else. I sincerely doubt that I'll be treading new ground here, as by now the internet has probably discussed this issue to death (I did my best to avoid spoilers until I had finished Mass Effect 3 myself). Still, I would like to explain my feelings, if only to get them out of my system. I will not, however, be jumping right into discussion on the ending, as I know I have some followers who have not, or will not play the game, and I think it's important to understand the rest of the game in order to truly 'get' how disappointing the ending is. Thus, I declare this week to be Mass Effect week for A Curious Tale. Here's a rough schedule of what I have planned for this week's discussion:
Monday: Combat
Tuesday: Characters
Wednesday: Decisions
Thursday: Style
Friday: The End
I will attempt to limit spoilers, but I am going to be discussing the end of the game, as well as some of the best scenes in detail, so take heed. In addition to this influx of content, I shall be making my (hopefully) glorious return to twitter, where I can be found at Corynrags. Let's start things off then, shall we?
Combat is, hands-down, the best part of Mass Effect 3. I loved the combat in Mass Effect 2, and the 3rd has made nothing but improvements since then. Leveling has been extended, as have the number of powers each class has, greatly increasing the player's options in combat, while not sacrificing the balance that Mass Effect 2 added (global cooldowns and limited ammo in particular). The enemy forces, while fewer in factions, have much more diversity; to the point of forcing the player to change their tactics based not only on which faction they're fighting, but also based on what enemies happen to be around at that exact moment. The enemy A.I. is much more aggressive, and will attempt to flank your position, even on the easier difficulties, which, combined with some of the new enemy types, results in a much better flow to the combat. You are forced to find new cover periodically, rather than just hang out at an entryway and poke the bad guys to death (unless you choose to play as a vanguard, in which case, CHAAARGE!). All of these things contribute to make combat more fun, but it's the restoration of Shepard being able to use all weapon types, regardless of class, from ME1, and the associated weight system that really gels the combat together.
In ME3, you are given a weight limit, and each weapon has an associated weight, as your weight goes above the limit, so do the cooldowns on your abilities, and vice-versa. This creates a situation where an adept, who was forced to use only pistols and smg's in Mass Effect 2, will likely choose to do so in 3, as the lowered cooldowns are more powerful for that class than the benefit of the heavier guns. Yet, an adept is not forced to such a situation, and if someone wants to be a sniper rifle wielding adept, or sentinel, they are free to do so. Power gamers have more fun, as they can game the system for maximum combat potential, Role-player's can have fun, using the weapons they feel their Shepard would, even casual gamers find themselves rewarded, no longer having the confusion over why they can't use that awesome assault rifle they just picked up. This change is a wonderful one, and works beautifully in conjunction with the weapons themselves.
Mass Effect 1 had boring weapons. All the shotguns were shotguns, all the assault rifles were assault rifles, etc… The only difference between weapons were damage, accuracy, firing rate, and how many shots you could fire before they would overheat, and almost all categories increased as you bought the higher level weapons. The weapon mod system helped alleviate some of the boredom, but most of the choices came down to more damage. Mass Effect 2 mixed things up, guns were now much more individualized, having special properties, and really felt like different guns, but there were still usually optimal choices, and without the weapon mod system, most people ended up using the same weapons. Mass Effect 3 brought back the weapon mod system, but modified it to make it more engaging. Now I can choose to have a shotgun with an extended barrel that does more damage, or a blade on the end for more melee damage, or a larger clip, or a scope, or more accuracy. All meaningful, visual changes, as opposed to ME1's. Personally, I'd rather choose between a scope and being able to shoot targets through cover, rather than between extra poison or fire damage.
The Best Pistol
And then there's the new guns. ME2 may have introduced guns that felt different, but ME3 really makes each gun unique. From pistols that fire miniature sticky bombs that explode into miniature biotic black holes, to sniper rifles that fire laser beams after charging for a second or two. The guns really feel unique, each having its own distinct 'personality', bringing back fond memories of Goldeneye and Perfect Dark. Even melee attacks have been buffed. Not only are there gun mods and skill trees that help improve melee damage, but there's also a new three-hit combo for standard melee attacks, a new heavy melee attack, and a new storm-melee attack, some of these even change depending on your class. As a player, you have a vast array of techniques and weapons for taking out your opponents, which leads to more fun.
ME3's combat is such an improvement over it's predecessor's, that its multiplayer mode, which is reminiscent of a slightly (and only slightly) toned down single-player, is as fun and addicting as some of the more recent Call of Duty games. I find myself receiving the same endorphin rush for killing an opponent in multiplayer as I do in Call of Duty: Black Ops, a game well noted for tapping into that sensation. They did a great job with the visual and audio rewards. It's incredibly satisfying charging at a Guardian and as he flails about trying to regain his balance making his head explode with a blast from my tricked out shotgun.
To be honest, I never understood the relatively large mass-market appeal of the Mass Effect series. A sci-fi RPG seems precisely like the kind of game that would be relegated to the niche market of hardcore gamers and nerds (which while large, and larger than it used to be, is still niche in the grand scheme of things). Instead, it seems to have found a home in the same crowd that sits down with some beers for a night of Halo or Call of Duty. Certainly, the first game's combat was clunky enough for me to have this disconnect. With ME3, there's no disconnect. Halo had fun combat. Call of Duty had fun combat. Mass Effect 3 has fun combat.
At the end of the day, I have only three real complaints about Mass Effect 3's combat, and they really are minor. First, all of the enemies that can instant kill you are annoying. It's not fun in multiplayer, and it's pure bullshit in single player. At least give player's some kind of animation to look out for, or some way to know how to avoid the attack besides 'don't close to melee distance with certain enemies'. This is especially annoying for vanguards, as for them, the strategy with anything problematic is to charge right at it. Second, I really hope they release all the extra weapons that the collector's edition, or certain pre-orders received as DLC. I wouldn't mind paying a few dollars for a gun I didn't get because I decided not to preorder with Gamestop. That's fine. Just give me the option (though I do understand that this is unlikely due to contracts and all that jazz). Really, I just like playing with all the guns, and wouldn't mind some more. Third, new game+ lets you keep all of your guns and weapon mods. This is great, as some guns are unavailable until the last few missions of the game, and you barely get to play with them. So why am I complaining? The ending. The bad part of the end is short, maybe five or ten minutes, but it's completely unfun. It actually detracts from my experience, from my enjoyment. I just don't want to force myself through it just to get to the new game+.
My final consensus? Mass Effect 3's combat is a hell of a lot of fun. I could honestly play it for hours, and while I was surprised by it's inclusion, I am grateful for the developers spending the time to make the multiplayer mode as solid as it is so that I can enjoy it whenever I want.
I cannot stress this enough, but 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.
Edit: I apologize for the formatting, blogger is... problematic at times.
I hadn’t really planned on picking up Dragon Age 2, but curiosity got the better of me and I decided to try out the demo. I was pleasantly surprised by what I found. I had heard about the changes in the dialogue system (a good choice I feel, considering Bioware’s writing strengths), but I had no idea that they had changed combat as much as they did. Rather than gritting my teeth in frustration every time a new group of enemies would spawn, I grinned in anticipation. The combat in Dragon Age 2 wasn’t the boring slog of it’s predecessor; it was actually fun! So fun in fact, that I was a little disappointed when there were no more enemies to kill and I actually had to listen to some of the story.
At this point I was thinking that I would wait for a price drop and pick up the game then (combat was fun, but the characters and writing weren’t really catching my interest). Then Flemeth showed up. You see, one of my major complaints about Dragon Age: Origins was how forgettable the character designs were. They were serviceable to be sure, and outside of the funny hats, Morrigan’s outfit, and all of the heavy armor, they were pretty realistic, but it wasn’t good design. I couldn’t pick any of the characters in DA:O out from their silhouette. Don’t quite get what I’m saying? Then how about an example. Here’s Flemeth in Dragon Age: Origins:
And here she is in Dragon Age 2:
The design is wacky, even hilarious (older gal’s got quite the body), but it’s strong, has presence, and most important of all, it’s memorable. Seeing her character design sold me on Dragon Age 2, and that very night I pre-ordered it. I should have listened to my first thoughts.
Dragon Age 2 is not a bad game. It’s quite fun, and there’s a lot of good things to be found in it. I might even be tempted to call it a good game in certain situations. That said, it’s a broken, buggy, unfinished mess.
Quests fail to trigger, trigger early, and become uncompletable. There are multiple game breaking-bugs (there’s a way to permanently lower the main character’s attack speed everytime a party member leaves your party). Almost all of the quests in the game use one of five maps, with only which doors are locked to differentiate them. I hated this in Mass Effect, and I hate it still (though Mass Effect at least had a fluff reason for the buildings to all be identical). All of these I can deal with, assuming some of the bigger bugs get patched later on. What I cannot handle is how unfinished the game is.
It’s hard to describe exactly what I mean by unfinished. It’s like, the second half of everything that’s in the game is missing. Quests end before a full resolution can be made, or you don’t get to see the most important parts (Hawke’s return from the Deep Roads, Hawke getting the estate, Aveline confronting the corrupt captain of the city guard, Aveline’s marriage, etc...). Fights never progress in design beyond, enemy appears, you kill them, second group of enemies appear, you kill them, third group of enemies may or may not appear. Even bosses follow the same exact routine. The entire game is a dark build-up. Hawke (the main character) grows more and more important, but he loses more and more each time. The entire game is filled with points where no matter what Hawke does, he can’t succeed. All of this culminates in the final hour or so of the game, becoming one complete and utter failure for Hawke as a hero. And then, when things are at their darkest, the game ends.
I’m a fan of many different kinds of endings. Dark endings, sad endings, happy endings, crazy endings, even wtf endings. The one thing all of these things have in common is that they are endings. Dragon Age 2 doesn’t end. Everything goes to shit, and that moment when Hawke actually has the chance to do something, to make up for all the things they couldn’t change throughout the entire game, and Bioware doesn’t give it to us. This is not The Empire Strikes Back folks. Things got dark in that movie, but it had a true and proper ending. There was a final fight and the heroes lost. That doesn’t happen here. Sure, there’s a final fight, and you even win, but then the story basically acts like you lost. You can’t have it both ways and call it an end.
The fact is that we’re either going to get a proper ending in Dragon Age 3, or more likely since Flemeth is almost assuredly going to be the big-bad in that game, it’s going to come as DLC or an expansion pack. Before you try to explain to me how expensive video games are to make and how dirt cheap they are for entertainment, I’ll just say that I know, and I’m not like that. I’m fine with selling extra bits of content, things that couldn’t be finished in time, or anything like that. Even paying for content already on the disk doesn’t bother me that much. But the goddamn ending to your story better be in the fucking game when it ships, especially when the game is as buggy and needing of some playtesting as this one. Fallout 3 had more of an ending than this game, and I hated that game’s ending.
One thing I’ve avoided discussing is the game’s writing. I wanted to save this for last, being the area where I have to most knowledge, and thus the most to complain about. I’ve always enjoyed Bioware stories. They may not have the best writing, or the most complex ideas, but they’re fun It’s like playing an action movie. For the past few games, Bioware seems to have understood what they’re good at, making games where the main character is increasingly badass and well... action hero-like. They didn’t do that this time. Bioware decided to take a page out of Obsidian’s book, and tried to make a darker story, with more difficult choices and less clear-cut good guys. Bioware tried to make DA2 a game that’s less about black and white, and more about shades of grey... and occasionally the succeeded at it. There is a long chain of quests regarding someone killing women in the town, and it gets quite dark and tense towards the end. When it hits the end of the quest though, Bioware cops out. They make the murderer a complete stereotype (and completely unrelated to everything else in the quest), and they completely deny his impact. I’m impressed that they tried something so difficult, but the fact is that you really should stick with what you’re best at, especially in writing. Obsidian gets away with making morally complex stories, because they have very talented writers that understand morally complex situations. Bioware has decent writers, but they’re about as morally complex as white bread. They just don’t understand the different scales of evil enough to write those kinds of stories. On the other hand, I have no doubt that Obsidian writers would fail flat on their faces if they tried to write a story as black and white as the original Knights of the Old Republic.
The companions in this game are, much like the writing a very mixed bag. Aveline manages to strike the perfect balance between being a stuck-up bitch, and an actually likable person (she’s probably one of the most complex characters in a video game, not to mention a strong female character). Meanwhile, Anders is whiny, annoying, and generally just a terrible person. They had something interesting going on with Merrill being nerd-bait/girl-next-door but having horrible dark things happen to her, but in never goes anywhere (her character is exactly the same the entire game). Fenris could have been a great joke about emo-characters if he wasn’t taken so seriously within the game. I didn’t use Isabella enough in my play-through to see what her writing was like. Hilariously, their best character turns out to be Varric. Upon first meeting Varric you would assume that he’s a typical con-artist. Nice and friendly, then he takes your money and runs-off. Instead you get a decent person with a good sense of humor. He’s basically the best friend I’ve seen in a video game. He’s a wonderfully fresh take on the charming rogue. I mean, he even calls Fenris “broody” (note Varric has a nickname for every character except for Aveline, seeing as how she’s the only character developed enough to avoid being a stereotype I find this hilarious).
Speaking of Aveline and Varric, they both happen to be the only companions in the game (ignoring DLC characters and siblings) that can’t be romanced. Considering two of the best characters in Mass Effect, Wrex and Mordin, are also unromanceable, I find this to be quite telling about Bioware’s writers. Personally, I subscribe to the belief that every good story is at its core a romance story. Sadly, romances in video games have rarely helped prove my point (although it may help explain why so many video game stories are so bad). Bioware in particular has always had very awkward romances. They didn’t break that tradition in this game, and I believe that I may have found part of the reason why:
"I don't believe in happy endings when it comes to love." - D. Gaider (Lead Writer for DA2)
I’m not sure of the veracity of this quote; I found it on a forum online. Regardless, of whether it is true or not, it accurately depicts my feelings on Bioware’s writers when it comes to romance. have you ever read anything written by somebody who was just dumped? I have, and they get written just like in DA2. Bioware romances tend to come in three types. Purely physical, where it’s all about sex and power (Miranda in Mass Effect 2). Painful, where the character doesn’t want to be in love (Morrigan in DA:O). Or last, but probably creepiest, true love, where the character admits love immediately and becomes super-attached and creepy (Liara in Mass Effect). I honestly can’t think of a Bioware romance that seems actually healthy, but considering how few relationships actually are in the real world, I could deal with that. What bothers me is how incidental romances are in these games. In an action movie the guy getting the girl is just as important as saving the day, and often being forced to choose between the two is the antagonist’s final weapon.
I know I’ve listed a lot of faults, and it may seem that I hate this game. In the end, I found Dragon Age 2 to be a fun, albeit unfinished game. If I had paid $40 or less I would have been perfectly satisfied with what I get, as it is I am only mildly disappointed. So long as you don’t go into this game expecting GOTY 2011 and you assume that your choices will only effect dialogue rather than the story itself, you should have a fun time.
I got a bit sick or something and it's turned my brain into absolute mush. Due to this, and the fact that I need more time to come to terms with my own feelings about the game, I won't be giving my thoughts on Dragon Age 2 tonight. However, I will have it up by the end of tomorrow, so long as I don't start throwing up.
I really wish I could figure out what it is about this house that makes me foggy-brained so often...
