Indoctrination Theory

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.

It's like running a marathon and just as you're about to cross the finish line you fly off into space.

This is it. All week I’ve been trying to prepare you for this. The end of Mass Effect 3 after the jump.

Do I even need to say that there are spoilers incoming?

Orange and Blue - Opposites Attract

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.

Warning! Spoilers ahead! Read at your own risk!

Left Hook or Right?

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!

I Am The Very Model...

 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!