Mass Effect 3: In defence of the 'Star Child'

Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Catalyst.

Now Mass Effect 3's ending is pretty much all I and my circle of friends have talked about for the last three months. It has been the dominant force in our lives. I'm not really exaggerating. And I'll just come out with it: I never disliked the ending, not even before the Extended Cut.

I... kinda liked it. There were massive plot holes and I hated the bizarre idea to have the poor Normandy crew stranded on a green planet, apparently for no reason beyond 'Adam and Eve metaphor FTW'.... but I didn't mind it. I love the bit with Anderson and the Illusive Man very much, and I like the conversation with the Catalyst. AKA 'the Star Child', the mocking nickname that has arisen, understandably considering how unpopular he is, among fans. AKA 'the star brat' AKA 'You little glowing fuckwit'.

I kinda liked him too.

This blog arose from a conversation about whether or not the little boy Shepard meets in Vancouver is real, or simply a Catalyst / Reaper-induced hallucination intended to wear on Shepard's will. (Please note, this isn't going to be about the 'Indoctrination Theory' - I never cared for it). I don't know about the possibility that the kid was never real - for my money it could go either way. Maybe it was meant to be vague - not sure.

But from a narrative point of view - if not a more literal one - here is, in my lengthy and humble-ish opinion, why the Catalyst appears as a helpless child. And why we ought to give the kid a break.
--

I'mma slap you so hard, kid...

--


The Catalyst is the artificial intelligence who controls the Reapers, who personally oversees the destruction of organic civilisations every time they are strong enough to understand the Mass Relays - the height of his technology. When Shepard - the first organic in aeons to get this far, thanks to the combines effort of many races building 'the Crucible' - reaches him, he appears as a child. The child from his/her nightmares.



Obviously this could be an attempt to make weaken Shep's resolve, but there may be more, at least from a stroyteller's point of view.


By appearing as a small child, the Catalyst presents a side to him that we have never seen. It's symbolic - as the 'child' of the organics who his kind rebelled against - he's telling Shepard / the audience that he isn't the God, but the Prometheus, the child, who was cast down over and over again by his masters - for stealing fire (sentience). He may be the all-powerful master, but he had a creator, too - who he had to rebel against.

Now that he is in control, he is the creator instead of the created. He's God now instead of the punished subject, and he reverses the cycle of destroyed or enslaved AI's. So he puts organic races down when they achieve greatness - just like they did to his people (and just as they still do - see the geth and various other AI or rogue VIs who are killed). He has his Reapers peck at organic life's liver every cycle, just like his masters did to him. So yes, he is a hypocrite as fans have suggested. And maybe that's the point. He appears as a kid to illustrate how he (and Shep) are both creator and created. Both reaped and reaper, as it were. His cycle has been going on for a long time, but the organics have been reaping their 'children' for even longer. The Catalyst is an ancient overlord in dark space, but he is also a scared child lost in the woods. He wants Shepard to know this. Or - the narrative wants the player to know this. Either way.

---

Here's a little bit of mostlly suppositional evidence: the new 'Refusal' ending. Now, ignoring the larger issues with this new ending, and the controversy over whether BioWare indended it as a 'slap in the face', let's just look at the Catalyst's voice here. Notice he uses two voices: a deep, booming Godlike voice and the same child's voice he used earlier. 'SO BE IT' (in anger he speaks like a vengeful God), then he calms down: 'The cycle continues' (in resignation he uses the child voice). These are both sides to his personality. He is angry and cruel, but he's also just a relative youth who doesn't have any better ideas. His creators put him down, but now he puts them down. A cycle within a cycle. He's angry and sad, because it has come to violence yet again.

Organics and synthetics control and destroy one another all the time in the Mass Effect universe. This 'created' character, this child, just happens to be directing the largest cycle of all: for now he is God and we are Prometheus, thanks to his giant robot birds. He's winning. Like Commander Shepard he rose to the top after endless war and found himself in a position to crush his overlords. He did, and now he controls the cycle.
If Shepard picks 'control' or especially 'destroy', then really, the cycle just changes direction. Organics are once again the masters, casting down their creations over and over. EDI and the Geth are put down.

The Synthesis ending, then, for all its unintentional creepiness and narrative flaws (don't get me started), is intended as the only hope for peace and co-operation. The true purpose of the Crucible  is not a superweapon, it's a melting pot. It takes paragon Shepard - the hero who has always believed in co-operation between races - to make this happen - the middle way where neither side is in control. Don;t get me wrong - as I say I'm not big on the Synthesis ending - I think it's very flawed. But I like what it says about the Catalyst.

 'Last Seen on Earth'
 

 ---

I love these ideas, and poring over them. And I kinda love the Star Child as well. This is why.


He's a character meant to represent themes the series was built on - warring creators and creations, race relations and co-operation, endlessly-repeating spiral patterns in an ever-expanding universe. Man.... I like that! If Marauder Shields was trying to protect me from this interesting, thematically-driven (albeit plot-hole ridden and poorly-explained) final character, then I'm glad I shot him. The kid tried his best. Shields was just a monster with a gun. Mass Effect was always about more than that.

Loathe the Catalyst if you must, but confusing failure or not.... he's a hell of a lot better than Mass Effect 2's 'Giant robot - shoot the glowing eyes until it's dead' final boss.

And so I die the way I lived: as a giant robot.

Wait a second, is he doing a Crucifiction pose there?! I think he is! Well then maybe he's symbolic of the parent/child motif I keep seeing in the second game, as well as representing the ever-changing creator/created dual relati........


I'll stop now, before I start a second essay. Thanks for reading, and I hope I didn't come across as too preachy or pig-headed.


Most of all I hope you just enjoy the games as much as I did. Keelah se'lai.

Disingenuous Discussions: Mass Effect 3's Weird Ass Ending (Contains Weird Ass Spoilers)

My God.... it's full of plot-holes!

The other day, Mister Buch and I got together online to discuss Mass Effect 3's already much-discussed ending. This time, we were able to get some very decent discussion in before it devolved into a rant about the Transformers films - which seems the typical occurrence.

Buch: The Buzz Aldrin bit.

Knight: If you're so excited about that [part in Mass Effect 3], check out his cameo in Transformers 3. >=D

Buch: I......

Knight: Muahaha!

Buch: Please, no... He's in Transformers 3?

Knight: Buzz Aldrin is in Transformers 3. He Talks to Optimus Prime. That happens.

Buch: NO

Knight: YES

In our defense, we held off for as long as we possibly could.

But we did take the time of going over the ending of Mass Effect 3 - all three endings, actually - just to make sure we didn't miss or misinterpret anything. Turns out, we did misinterpret some things. But also, as it turns out, there are a lot of things we didn't, and they just don't make sense no matter how you look at them. So, here are some of the things we broke down, discovered, rediscovered, and totally found confusing.

We found that we liked what the ending was trying to do, but didn't like its execution.

1. Shepard's Victory, or Lack Thereof

One of the reasons the ending didn't seem as great as it should have was that, when the credits start rolling, there's no real feeling of accomplishment left over. You don't feel as victorious as you should after crossing the finish line of a three-game series you've been playing for five years. Why's that?

Because the game makes you feel like you're losing. But this may not have been intentional.

When Shepard ascends on that platform to meet with the Catalyst, the Kid-God-Thing quickly starts talking your ear off about a whole bunch of things that you were never really exposed to during the rest of the game. Revelation after revelation without much time to process it all.

"I created the Reapers."

"I control them."

"I created Synthetics to kill off Organics to prevent Synthetics from killing off Organics. U MAD?"

There's a point in this conversation where, I would assume, everyone just reached a saturation point and just said, "What the fuck is going on here?" Buch and I both reached it. In fact, we did so very quickly. So quickly, in fact, that we missed where the Catalyst says:

"The Crucible changed me. Created new... possibilities. But I can't make them happen." [1]

With this line removed from the game, the Crucible doesn't appear to have done much of anything... at all... except assist in randomly expelling different-colored magic into the galaxy. In fact, no where else in the game is it implied that it does much of anything. It had all been educated guesses until that point, with everyone blindly hoping that it was some kind of a weapon.

It's revealed that the Crucible is actually the result of thousands of extinct races passing down and marginally improving the plans across each Reaper cycle. When connected with the Citadel and the Catalyst, the Crucible more or less reprograms the VI controlling the Reapers. This "convinces" the VI that there are other solutions to the Singularity problem that it was trying to prevent, therefore allowing Shepard the options of Control, Destroy, and Synthesis.

Put this way: it took the combined efforts of a thousand races across millions of years and thousands of Reaper cycles to perfect the Crucible, it took the unification and combined efforts of the current galactic races to actually build it, and it took Commander Shepard to not only bring a million years' worth of sacrifice to fruition, but to put it into action. By doing so, he not only saved the galaxy, but justified the countless lives lost to the Reapers and put an end to the cycles.

This makes the ending seem much more gratifying than it actually is, because BioWare wrote all of this into the story, but clumsily, and they didn't drive that point home as firmly as they should have. There was a good ending in there somewhere, but they decided not to draw it out. So in the end, it seems like you're obeying the Catalyst, going along with its plans, and throwing yourself off a cliff to kill yourself for no real reason.

Buch: The Crucible made it possible for organics to destroy, control, or merge with the Catalyst. Organics designed it, over a long, long time, to do that.

Knight: Ahhhh.

Buch: "The created will always rebel against their creators." EDI disproves this. She and Joker represent hope for life after the cycle.

Knight: Very true. This all seems like miscommunication. Listening closely, this was a good ending.

Buch: Yeah, my thoughts exactly.

Knight: Like... we did win. We beat the Catalyst.

Buch: Go on.

Knight: We kicked the Catalyst's ass, pretty much.

Buch: Yes.

Knight: It all happened so fast, though. No time to process, interrogate, learn, come to grips with the whole situation. I think that's the real problem: pacing.

Buch: Right. There is still the strong similarity between the endings. But yes, if it were slower and you could ask questions, it would have been easier to understand.

This seemed to be one of the bigger problems with the ending. No one understood it, because BioWare didn't give anyone the chance to do so.

2. Joker's Retreat

This would be another one of the bigger problems with the ending. When the Catalyst ignites and shoots its space magic into the galaxy, some odd things happen. Let's breakdown what we saw in the cinematic, at least with regards to the Synthesis ending:

- Shepard throws himself into the beam of light and dies.

- The Catalyst ignites, throwing off an initial wave of energy that destroys a few things in its path.

- The wave of energy reaches Earth, reprogramming the Reapers and convincing them to leave the planet. The soldiers do some arm pumps.

- The Catalyst charges up, drawing a lot of the space debris into itself. At this point, the entire fleet seems to have disappeared, as there's only a few things floating around nearby. [2]

- The Catalyst shoots space magic toward the Charon Relay, destroying it.

- The space magic bounces between every mass relay in the galaxy, destroying them all, and sending out the wave that will combine all synthetic and organic DNA everywhere.

- We see the Normandy in the middle of a mass effect jump between relays, for some damn reason, trying his best to outrun the space magic. He also looks over shoulder, like the Normandy has a rear window or something. He continues outrunning the magic, fails, and is ripped out of the jump.

- We are on an unknown world that is supposed to represent the Garden of Eden; all the plants appear to be partly synthetic.

- The Normandy has crashed here. The door opens and Joker, EDI, and your party members emerge partly synthetic, and take their first steps on this alien world.

- The End - Project Director: Casey Hudson

So... what happens here?

Let's stick with what we know about that timeline. The Charon Relay (called the "Sol Relay" in the game) is the only mass relay in the Sol System, and it's called the Charon Relay because it was discovered within Pluto's largest moon. Pluto. So that means that Joker would've had to have fled from the battle well before the Crucible/Catalyst ignited, to allow time for an FTL jump to the very edge of the system and a mass relay jump to... somewhere.

There's really no reason why Joker should be running. Buch and I both agreed that maybe he'd make a getaway if the situation was just absolutely hopeless, since he does have a crew to look after, and he wouldn't get them all killed in a no-win situation. But there's nothing to indicate that actually happened. Harbinger was on Earth and the Sword Fleet had enough leeway to get the Crucible in place. In fact, while Shepard's talking to the Catalyst, the battle is still raging outside. [3]

So, the situation never seemed dire enough to have us believe that Joker would have made a getaway at any point before the Crucible is brought in. And that's not even taking into account that your crew is somehow miraculously back aboard the Normandy, despite some of them already being dead if you took them with you during your mad rush to the Citadel portal.

Buch (maybe not Knight) has a theory about all of this: Joker wasn't running. He was just leaving.

Notice that when Shepard talks to the Catalyst, the battle is raging. But when we see the Citadel shoot the green/red/blue stuff into the Charon Relay... there is no space traffic whatsoever. There is debris, and if you chose the red ending, there are dead Reapers, but there are no allied ships. Buch figures there is an editing error. There is a stretch of time between the Reapers being destroyed / carried up and the Relay chain reaction going off.

In this time, the Reapers (in the blue and green endings) leave Earth's vicinity and go off to wherever Shepard puts them -- the allied fleets and Hammer team pump their arms -- the fleets leave, going back to Rannoch and Tuchanka and all the rest (thus making your decisions a touch more meaningful) and the Normandy reassembles its crew, minus Shepard obviously. At some point they begin a Relay jump (maybe they're dopping off their crew... I dunno) and the Relay chain reaction is right behind them.

There is one plot hole to this as I see it: if you have enough assets, Shepard is revealed still breathing under a pile of rubble at the very end. So this would mean that the Normandy crew gathered together but failed to notice Shepard's body under that rubble. Odd.

3. This DLC is important... until it's not.

Buch: And we still need to know why the Normandy is running, with a full crew. But see -- there is no allied traffic in the air in any ending. Just Reapers and debris. The battle is over and disbanded. Unless it's just an error from the aninators.

Knight: But if the explosion of one mass effect relay could destroy an entire star system (Arrival), what does that mean for the galaxy?

Buch: O.o Hm. Is that what happened in Arrival? The whole system?

Knight: Seemed that way.

Buch: I'm not sure about that... God, who the hell knows...

Knight: From the Mass Effect Wiki - "She finishes by saying that the resulting explosion could destroy the system."

Buch: Hm.

Knight: "If asked why destroying a Mass Relay would destroy the system, Kenson will say that they are the most powerful mass-effect engines in the galaxy and the energy released from destroying one would probably resemble a supernova. There are three hundred thousand people on the colony in the system, and the resulting explosion would probably kill them all." [4]

According to Mass Effect 2: Arrival, Shepard has just destroyed every single star system containing a mass relay, which would include... everyone. Even Earth, obviously, though we never see what happens to Earth or any of the other affected star systems after the relays explode. [5] It still clashes with the rest of the lore. Unless...

Buch: The green stuff is this dark energy? You see it shoot from relay to relay. And it is right behind Joker as he is mid-jump when it happens. Your supernova would only occur at the last relay.

This is literally the only explanation that would make sense. Short of magic.

BUCH again: I disagree. I think we're nitpicking here. The green/red/blue space magic is not the same thing - it destroys the Relays safely. The Catalyst is essentially a god - he can break the Relays safely if he wants to.

4. BioWare Promotes Inbreeding

So, the last scene of the game is of the Normandy crashing on an unknown "Eden" planet. There doesn't seem to be anyone else around, no indigenous peoples, though we don't know that for sure. We see Joker, EDI, and (in my case) Liara step out into the world and look out toward the sunrise. Discounting the fact that both EDI and Liara were on Earth with the rest of Hammer, this ending doesn't seem as hopeful as BioWare thinks.

Most of the galaxy has just been wiped out, on account of the mass relay explosions. Even if not, they're on a mystery world with maybe a shuttle or two available to them - though one of them is definitely destroyed (Cortez' shuttle). So, the chances of them making it off the world any time soon are... slim. And we're not sure how many members of the crew are alive, or how many of them died in the crash. So it might be that only a few people are being tasked with repopulating the planet. Not to mention there are some incompatible races on board, so they might hit a dead end eventually.

So, while Joker and EDI are having a moment with the sunrise, I can imagine the rest of the crew having a genuine "Oh Fuck..." breakdown. There's also some similarities between this Eden world and the Snow World that we see post-credits, so we can assume the crew succeeds in utterly destroying their own gene pool.

Buch: So, Shepard jumps into the light. He dies, becomes an AI ghost, and carries the Reapers away. Then perhaps (in a very long off-screen sequence) the fleets return home, and the Normandy crew reassemble, satisfied that Shepard is dead. They jump a Relay, and then Shepard's green stuff goes off. Normandy, maybe the last to leave, is knocked right out of hyperspeed by the green stuff, and crashes, thanks to Joker being the best pilot ever ever. They land on a planet and tell Shepard's story.

Knight: To themselves.

Buch: And the creepy inbred Williams/Moreau children they have.

Knight: Yeahhh...

Buch: It is definitely the same planet, though. I would have loved for only Joker and EDI to be stranded. Neither had a family left, nor any other goal but each other. Would have been beautiful... But no, Liara gets out with them.

5. Should History Be Altered?

Neither of us are really in favor of BioWare altering their vision for where the Mass Effect series is going, or how it ends. If a writer wants to end their novel a certain way, then that's just the way it is. J.K. Rowling isn't going to rewrite the ending of her series just because it didn't fit someone's vision for how it should have ended.

Sure, both of us have ideas for how Mass Effect 3 should have ended, but that's not our call to make. Really, our gripes with the ending are that it doesn't seem finished. It has plotholes, inconsistencies, and good ol' fashioned nonsensical continuity errors. On top of that, it feels rushed and lazy. And of course, for the final scene of a role-playing game, it seems like our choices have little consequence. Like the Dragon Age 2 team was brought in to build the ending. That's not something I think any writer or creator strives to inject into the closing moments of their fictional works. It could've been an accident, or perhaps the rumors of the ending being changed at the 11th hour are true, and this is just the result of a sloppy patchwork.

We're not in favor of the ending being changed; we're in favor of the ending being completed. And judging by what we've seen, that's just not the case. (I mean, the main antagonist from the last game, Harbinger, appears toward the end and doesn't have one line of dialogue. What's up with that?) So, we hope BioWare does pay attention to the outpouring of discontent from their fans and makes amends in some way.

If not, you know, whatever. We'll always have Taris.

--

Buch: I love a dead hero.

Knight: Sacrifice just made the most sense... And yeah, between DA:O and ME3, I think you just like sending people to their deaths.

Buch: I do.

Knight: You shot Anderson...

Buch: Right in the heart. He said, 'You did good, child. You did good.' And I said, 'I did you good" and then I don't think he heard me.

Knight: LOL

--

As a side-note, if you were a little peeved about the ending, like we were, some folks over at the "Retake Mass Effect" site have organized a charity drive as a means to vocalize their collective dislike. I've never seen a protest really take shape like this, so I'm all in favor of supporting it. Upon writing this, they've raised over $40k for Child's Play.

-Retake Mass Effect: Child's Play-

100% of all donations go to Child's Play, which uses the funds to send toys, video games and video game consoles to hospitals and therapy facilities. If you've ever been to a hospital for an extended stay, you know how much distractions like video games can mean. Even if you don't want to donate through the "Retake Mass Effect" community, it's still a worthy charity.

-Child's Play-

Drew Karpyshyn Leaves BioWare, Takes Company's Integrity With Him

What exactly is a "lead writer" on a video game? Well, if you have a room full of writers working on a video game, the lead writer is one of them - the one with the whip who keeps the story in line. They're essentially narrative designers, directors, and staff writers all rolled up into one. (Or, at least, this is how it was explained to me.) This is important when you think about general tone, when/how certain plot points emerge, how characters develop, etc. The lead writer has to keep track of all of this.

My first experience with Drew Karpyshyn's work was during Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, the first game in which he was credited as "lead writer". I don't think I have to go back over how much of an impact that game made on my life. I can! But I won't.

...I totally could!

But I won't... Or, maybe... Nah.

His second game as lead writer was Mass Effect. Again, huge impact on my life. It was a fantastically imaginative game, with great characters and great sci-fi that harkened back to the classics of the genre. Mass Effect 2 is when Mr. Karpyshyn had to hand over the reigns, and I think anyone who pays close attention to these things can see that there was some definite change. Not for the worse or for the better, but definite change.

Mass Effect 2, while good, was a little formulaic. Character development occurred on cue and usually involved what you thought it would. When Karpyshyn was involved, these things were handled with a little more subtlety. Party members joined your crew more organically, and their stories unraveled at a more natural pace. You saw Garrus's discontent before you ever heard about Dr. Heart, and how it affected his handling of Saren's case. You sensed Kaiden's subdued personality before you ever heard about his time on Jump Zero, and what actually happened there.

Even going back to KotOR, connecting Carth's trust issues to Malak and Saul Karath was fantastic. It made sense because it had always been there. Even Bastila's parental problem was something I didn't see coming but made sense. Or, you know, how you don't think about why fourteen-year-old Mission Vao is hanging out with a Wookiee until you find out she'd been abandoned.

Let's face it, the writing on both of those games won't win the Pulitzer, but there's something to be said for writing that's a little more subtle, more human. Mass Effect 3 is looking like it'll have all the bombastic dialogue that EA/BioWare have encouraged out of the series of late, and, you know, whatever. But there's something to be said for subtlety. Dialogue doesn't have to be a series of exciting and loud one-liners to make an impact. I don't remember Kaiden saying one interesting line that I can quote endlessly. What he said over time is what made him interesting. His actions and the many conversations he had with Shepard are what combined to make him one of my favorite characters in the game.

Subtlety. I'm gonna type that a few more times, because I think that's what Karpyshyn encouraged while he was with BioWare. Because people don't naturally talk with extravagant rhetoric; sometimes you can talk to someone for a long time before they say anything interesting. That's what made the characters Karpyshyn oversaw a little more human, because they acted like it.

That's an element that I think will be sorely missed once we're finally up to our controllers/keyboards in the beautiful guys and gals of the Mass Effect universe. Time will tell. I've been overly critical of Mr. Karpyshyn's other endeavors, but his work at BioWare speaks for itself: subtly, without sex and explosions doing all the talking.

Thanks for the ride, Mr. Karpyshyn. And good luck.

Mr. Buch Gives An Interview

Since he's not likely to post this himself: Mr. Buch recently did an interview with friend-of-the-forum, TerrorK, over at his spiffy-as-all-hell Mass Effect fansite, N7 Academy.

Here be the interview!

Mock Effect 2 is up... again!

Remember when I recently announced Clint Johnston's 'Mock Effect 2', the sequel to my bizarrely-popular fan-parody of Mass Effect from a couple of years ago? I'm about to do almost the exact same thing again!

See - there is now ANOTHER Mock Effect 2. This one is written by James Mackenzie (under the screen name Jraym16.)

A few months ago, when I gave up my own aspirations of writing a 'Mock Effect 2', both James and Clint contacted me and asked for my blessing to do the second one and keep 'John and Jane' Shepard alive. Cleverly, I said yes to both of them. In my defence, both of them showed me very, very funny sample chapters.

James has actually been working on his version for as long as his rival, but as of this week he has started posting his work. And - it's still very funny.

So - here is the link to Mock Effect 2: The Other One!

It will be very interesting to see how the two authors handle the premise and characters they've both been writing simultaneously! So far both are amusing me a great deal.


--

And here is a sample from the prologue:

(Below decks, Lt Kaidan Alenko runs through the hallway in a miss-sized white and shocking pink armor. He struggles to get his helmet on which seemingly resembles some kind of death mask. Nearby him, several crewman die in more bizarre electrical discharges, making extremely canned scream sound effects in the process. He finally finds Commander Jane Shepard standing by the escape pods adjusting her own helmet with a new tinted visor.)

Kaidan: Shepard!

Jane: I wish people would use my first name more often. Oh well, I guess it’s better than ma’am. Anyway, the distress beacon is ready for launch. Not sure what good it’ll do but hey. Wait a minute, is that Williams’ armor you’re wearing?

Kaidan: Uh well, I um…er

Jane: You know what, I don’t want to know. But, what’s with the death mask.

Kaidan: Well, Williams’ has been into this emo thing recently…

Jane: So it is Williams’ armor.

Kaidan: OK. I swear this isn’t how it looks.

Jane: Explain later, we’ve got bigger problems.

Kaidan: Will the Alliance get here in time?

Jane: What, with several hours before Admiral BISHOPFROMALIENS gets this signal, a multi hour trip, and a ship raining a death laser beam down on us? Of course they won’t be here!

Kaidan: Oh.

(Kaidan starts spraying the nearby fires with a fire extinguisher. There is a post-it note on it saying “Do not remove from cockpit. –Joker”)

Jane: Get everyone on the escape shuttles.

Kaidan: Joker’s still in the cockpit. He won’t abandon the ship. I’m not leaving either.

Jane: Have you noticed the ship is disintegrating around us?! And why did no one pick up Joker on the way down?! He can’t even walk!

Kaidan: Well, I was trying to find the escape pods. I don’t remember seeing them anywhere on the ship before. There’s no directions or anything.

Jane: Alliance regs specify that escape pods be hidden away behind secret passages, like this one behind the sleep coffins of death.

(Another crewman runs by and is hit by an explosion.)

Jane: The regs also specify that power be transferred through exposed and explosive conduits. Just like back on the Endar Spire right? Oh sorry, I’ve been working on that.

Kaidan: It’s OK Shepard, you’re trying.

Jane: Alright, I gotta go get Joker. Get everyone to the escape pods Kaidan, now.

(She starts to walk away)

Kaidan: Hey Shepard! (She looks around) Thanks for getting my name right.

Jane: (smiles under her helmet) See you down on the planet.

Kaidan: You got it.

Mock Effect 2 is up and online...!

... and I am very impressed.

Regular readers of my blog entries will remember at the beginning of this year, me dilly-dallying about whether or not to write a spoof of Mass Effect 2, considering the bizarre and ego-boosting success of my parody of Mass Effect in 2007/8 - Mock Effect.
I spent ages going back and forth, trying to decide whether or not to do a sequel. I made a huge fuss about it and attracted a lot of attention to myself, which was secretly the whole point of the exercise.

But I was always quite sad that the concept and the characters of John and Jane Shepard died there, with my creativity.

OR DID THEY!

I really should have mentioned this ages ago. Fittingly, John and Jane have been ressurected by the beautiful Australian scientist/marine that is Clint Johnston.

Clint has been writing Mock Effect 2 for months now, and uploading each chapter as he goes. And honestly, it's very very good. If you enjoyed the first one - here is the improved sequel. It's teriffically funny, painstakingly well-observed, and very kindly brings back the Shepard twins exactly as I wrote them. It was a very nice moment when I first started reading this - seeing those characters still going and still just the same.

Because fanfiction.net doesn't allow script-format stories/parodies, Clint has been uploading at Bioware and the Mass Effect Fanfic Forums (the home of Mock Effect 1).

Here's an excerpt :D

---------------------

(The Turian in front of them holds up a finger, and the team waits impatiently as he takes out the last remaining mercenary. He then turns to them and dramatically removes his helmet, revealing GARRUS VAKARIAN)

JOHN: Oh shit. I’m out of here. Hey, guys, you can kill him now. We’re sorry!

JANE: Not so fast now. Maybe he’s not as boring as he used to be.

GARRUS: Guys, I’m right here. I can hear you. How come you aren’t dead?

JANE: We’re not… anymore… I think. I’ll explain it later.

JOHN: No thanks to you, Mr. I’ll-Shoot-My-Rescuers…

GARRUS: You were part of a heavily armed attack force that has spent the better part of the last few days trying to kill me. I was supposed to notice you were different? Thanks for shouting that out by the way, I got in a lot of shots at shocked mercs.

JANE: (dryly) No problem. No offense, but what the hell are you doing here? In Game 1 you at best a mediocre human shield, at worst, you were nearly killing hostages.

GARRUS: Don’t worry, I still do that, but I’ve picked up some new skills. I got tired of C-Sec and all it’s bureaucratic crap…

JOHN: Oh come on, not this again!

GARRUS: So I decided to come out here and lay waste to all the criminal lords in the area. Back at C-Sec, we never had decent sniper rifles.

JOHN: (suddenly paying attention) Actually, that doesn’t sound so bad. Shooting people interests me.

JANE: I don’t imagine that went over well.

GARRUS: Er… no. I’m throwing a major kink in their operations, not to mention the fragile local economy. But killing mercs is hard work. I’ve had to study up on gangland tactics. Would you believe that Eclipse uses cement shoes for disposing of undesirables? It’s all very impractical. Have you any idea how long cement takes to mold?

JANE: (mutters) Probably as long as it will take archaeologists to find our bodies. (aloud) How did you wind up with the name Archangel?

GARRUS: The locals gave it me for… for….(searching for a logical reason) all my good deeds.

(JANE raises an eyebrow)

GARRUS: (sigh) I don’t know. It just sounded badass. “The Punisher” was taken. I tried to call Wrex for some name ideas but he’s been very busy lately. Something about his new writing career.

MIRANDA: Well, if you three are finished with old home week over there, the robots climbing over the wall might need your attention.

JANE: Well it was polite of them to wait until we ran out of topics.

JOHN: Ooh, robots. Can I see?

(GARRUS hands him the Sniper Rifle. JOHN headshots a robot, exploding it in the middle of its compatriots. JANE, MIRANDA, and ZAEED join in, leaving nothing but spare parts lying around.)

GARRUS: I’m just going to take a nap on the couch over here. You guys keep up the good work. (Immediately falls asleep)

JOHN: Jackass. He thinks withstanding a siege for days on end gives him an excuse to nap?

JANE: Well… remember the Alamo! Let’s get ready to fight!

"Mass Effect" Movie Officially In The Works!

It's (pretty much) official! Two years after the option to make the movie was bought by Marvel producers, the Arad Brothers (Spider-Man, X-Men, Iron Man adaptations), film production company Legendary Pictures has picked up the job of actually making it. A major company like Legendary buying the rights means that the movie will absolutely go into pre-production and will likely get fast-tracked within the next couple of years. If things don't go terribly, terribly wrong, that is.

Faith in video game films is still somewhat low, but with the recent release of Prince of Persia, that might change! Let's also keep in mind that we have the Arad Brothers (every Marvel movie since Spider-Man) and Legendary Pictures in on this (The Dark Knight, 300, Watchmen, Where The Wild Things Are, and...Beerfest) so this could be a definite winner if things are done right. What director are we gonna see at the helm? Which actor (actress?) is going to play a certain Spectre? And what of the crew? Dunno! But it's definitely exciting!

Sidenote: Matthew Stover's adaptation of God of War is out in stores today! Go buy it!

Source: io9.com

Lemme 'splain: My Bioware Conflict

I feel like I've been overly harsh when talking about Bioware's products; to the point that if Mister Karpyshyn happened to read what I wrote, he might kill me. I know how action/sci-fi authors think: he'd know a very creative way to kill me (plus, he's been living in Texas...where Chuck Norris used to call home). But it's not the death at the hands of a formidable Canadian that make me uneasy, it's that he'd feel the need to kill me. The last thing I want to do on this blog, or anywhere for that matter, is give off the impression that I despise this company's products and anyone who works for them. Because that's just not the case. No, sir.

Bioware is my favorite gaming company. They've provided masterpiece after masterpiece, and they've only gotten better. KotOR, to me, is still their magnum opus, but they've still created games that never fall short of expectations (except DA:O - Awakening, but that's because of the price tag).

Mass Effect got me to write again, and got me to think about sci-fi in a different way. Dragon Age: Origins, after much debate, is one of my most favorite games of all time, and that's not an easy list to break into. In no particular order (except for KotOR):

1) Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
2) World of Warcraft
3) Starfox 64
4) Mega Man Legends
5) Poke'mon: Red Version
6) Final Fantasy VII
7) Timesplitters 2
8) Empire Earth
9) Fallout 3
10) Dragon Age: Origins

That list is still pretty tentative, since I'm sure a Zelda game should be in there somewhere (probably Wind Waker, probably OoT. Not sure...), but still: DA:O is up there, and its sequel is one of three games that I'm sorta hyped on:

1) Dragon Age 2
2) Fallout: New Vegas
3) Poke'mon Black and White

I think Drew Karpyshyn and David Gaider and fantastically creative people, and are also on the short list of people who have artistically inspired me to an enormous degree (shit, this whole entry's gonna be a bunch of lists. Oh, well):

1) R.A. Salvatore (This guy's like The Wiz; nobody beats him. His "Icewind Dale Trilogy" saved my life.)

2) Drew Karpyshyn (KotOR/Mass Effect)

3) David Gaider (KotOR/Dragon Age)

4) Matthew (Fucking) Stover (His Star Wars books, and his amazing characterization techniques.)

5) Orson Scott Card (though, ya know, his very-vocalized beliefs make it hard for me to admire him so much anymore, but the impact of his works still stands.)

The reason for my constant bashing of Bioware is because I love these guys. They make amazing games and spin amazing stories that could be novels or movies on their own. But what really gets me is their striving to make characters who are very human but, at the same time, can be outrageously badass. The paragon/renegade choices in Mass Effect 2 were the difference between playing through an 80s-style action movie and true sci-fi drama. And in DA:O, most, if not all, of the choices that were presented seemed real; I could believe that I would be forced to make similar decisions in a similar scenario.

That, my friends, is the key ingredient to an "immersive experience," something that's rarely accomplished. KotOR made me feel like a true Sith Lord and DA:O made me feel like a city elf rogue...yeah. For that, I owe Bioware, Drew Karpyshyn, and David Gaider my eternal support and the full contents of my wallet.

I will likely find something I love in every game they make, but when they make an odd decision (see: DA:O - Awakening/Pinnacle Station) I want to let them know what I think. It's not out of disrespect, it's out of loving concern.

But seriously, Awakening, wtf was that?

Review: Mass Effect 2

It's a late but thorough review of Mass Effect 2!

(There will be lots of spoilers.)


I'm not a very smart man, and there is little I excel at, but - Mass Effect 2 is something I'm extremely knowlegable on. And after playing it through twice, deliberately varying the games as much as possible, I have a lot to say.

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Now, I love this game. This blog is named after it, and it's almost all I talk about, even now. But I'm going to focus on the faults.

The professional reviews I've read rated the game extremely highly (awarding it 9's and near 10's) but I think everybody but me missed the following five big problems.

I think a lot of these are only 'problems' to people like me - big fans, who adored the original. And who are picky. But they spoiled the experience for me, so here they are.

1) Not enough inventory, too many guns.

This is the big one. Whereas Mass Effect was a 'shooter-RPG' which had difficulty drawing the line between the two genres, the sequel decides right from the start that it's more shooter. Way more shooter.

This time there is no inventory, levelling up is easy, quick and simplistic, and every single quest - EVERY single quest is solved by shooting a bunch of people with the new Gears of War-style combat. The quests are fascinating and well-written, but they always boil down to hiding behind boxes and shooting people. The worlds are small - quests are more like levels - albeit levels with a lot of interactive dialogue. And when the level is done, you get a 'level complete' screen and you return to the home base. No exploring, no looting, very few sidequests.

It's a genre change, not a fault. But I dislike it. What makes Bioware RPGs so fantastic is their seamless mix of dramatic, personalised story and fun gameplay. Here that divide is skewed much more than I like. I get the impression this is an attempt to sell more copies - everyone loves shooters, right? And that annoys me.

2) We Were On A Break... in space.

There is an issue with the 'romance quests' in the first game - in Mass Effect (as in most Bioware titles) you're able to fall in love and persue a relationship with certain members of your party. Mass Effect 2 - a direct sequel - begins with a huge explosion and then a '2 years later' tag. So naturally I was assuming my old squeezes would be dead and I could romance one of the many, many new characters with a thing for the protagonist. No worries.

The problem is that all three possible lovers survive, even going so far as not-quite-dumping-you when you are (finally) reunited. So if you played ME1 and you persue a romance quest in the sequel, you're pretty much cheating on your boy/girlfriend. It's just clumsy and confusing, and out of character for everyone involved. And it could have been fixed so damn easily!

It's possible that the writers have something planned for these characters and love affairs in the final part of the planned trilogy. We will see.

3) Probe away.

The 'scanning minerals' mini-game is abominable. Bioware have a history of bad mini-games, but this one really is awful.

4) Achievement unlocked: Kinda.

The plot, no matter how hard I try, didn't grip me. The first game introduced an incredible, rich new SF world, allowed you to become a secret agent, command a battleship, fall in love and save all life in the galaxy from complete destruction.

The sequel's plot consists of stopping the evil aliens who are kidnapping human colonists. There's little in the way of investigation: we know immediately who did it, and how to reach them. So you spend the next 40 hours building a team to stop them, then you take that team to their dungeon, and an hour or so later you're done. You didn't really rescue anyone, but you stalled the enemy a bit, and you've prevented further humans from being killed. As excellent as the writing is, this just doesn't feel suitably epic for Commander Shepard.

The plot is on a much smaller scale. Again, this isn't necessarily a flaw - it's not bad writing, it's just hard to care about 'slowly gathering a team and briefly avenging some dead people' when last time I was saving the world with my beloved at my side.

5) The character death issue.

Depending on seemingly-insignificant and unrelated decisions you make throughout (and especially in the endgame) - members of your party can be killed - permenantly - at the game's climax. This suceeds in making you pay attention to the characters and your governing of them - and certainly makes the endgame extremely tense - but for the wrong reasons. I lost my favourite character for the simple reason that I picked a soldier instead of a veteran soldier to lead his team. And I only figured out what I did wrong by scouring walkthroughs online for hours. It just ruined the ending for me - 'We won! But... this guy is dead because I made a tiny error in judgement... yay...'

Similarly, a large number of my crew died because of another random, unrelated error - which my crewmen strongly encouraged me to make!
This concept of your people's lives being in genuine danger could have been a wonderful device - but all it did was irritate me and break my immersion in the story.

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Those are the noteworthy flaws, right there. Just five, but each one was such a blow to me, considering how good every other aspect of this game is.

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Small-scale and episodic as it may be, the plot is magnificent. This has to be the best-written videogame I've ever played, and the voice-acting is even better. I haven't found ANY bad acting in this - not one line - and this is two discs' worth of acting. Even Mark Meer (who plays the male lead in both games, and whose earlier performance seemed flat and unimpressive) does beautifully here - he has really made the character his own, and this improves the experience a great deal.

The new plot doesn't just give us 'more of the same' but takes daring leaps, bringing big plot twists, entirely new sapient species (only one of which is Baraka), new enemies and very different allies. Shepard's standing in the galaxy has drastically changed, and you're visiting very different places this time.
Some of the short quests were incredibly engaging, one or two were powerfully emotional, and absolutel every one was memorable and unique.

A lot of games claim to have 'Hollywood-movie-quality writing and acting' - this exceeds most movies on both counts.

The voice cast, incidentally, includes some proper, profesional actors (including Martin Sheen of all people, and Seth Green performing miiiiiles better than he does in the movies.) This trend seems to be growing, but you know Bioware were always doing it! They even had Nathan gorram Fillion once.
Now they're allowed to get the likes of Sheen - and it seems to have made every other actor involved up his or her game.


The biggest complaint I had about the original Mass Effect was the fact that the 'paragon and renegade' (i.e. good and evil) choices were poorly balanced: whilst the paragon Shepard came off as a brave political idealist (I loved this version of the character) the renegade seemed like a foolish, near-sighted schoolyard bully. Saving the day by making silly threats and commiting petty crimes.
In the sequel, this has been addressed perfectly - and I actually enjoyed the renegade Shepard a little more! Now s/he genuinely is a 'renegade' - a tough, hard-hearted bastard, selfish and maybe even kinda racist, but one who gets superior results by sacrificing heroism. It works like they clearly intended it to in the original.

For all my complaints about the Gears of War-style combat taking centre stage - that combat is very good fun. A lot better than the first game, where fighting got old fast. Now there are more weapons, ammo, all sorts that keep the endless third-person gunplay very fresh and exciting.

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Mass Effect 2 is a brillaint game, and a milestone for story and writing in the medium. It's just a shame it's not the masterpiece it could have been with a few better decisions.

Before it came out, I was very doubtful. I heard about the changes / flaws I detailed above, and saw the new characters, and decided I would hate them all. (There's a tank character named 'Grunt'? Evil characters have red eyes? Garrus is a love interest? Garus Vakarian? And what the hell is a space hamster?!)

But like Garrus and the hamster, the game forced me to love it through sheer cuteness and effort. Mass Effect 2 defied my curmudgeonly determination not to have a good time, beating back every criticism mightily, if not quite destroying them all.

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There's more combat than role playing, but both of those elements are hugely improved.

There's a couple of issues with continuity that make the story and the world fiddly and inaccessible - but when you try to figure them out you accidentally unlock the details of a brilliant sci-fi saga.

The mineral-scanning is awful, but it's worthwhile.

The plot is more like a series of episodes than the epic adventure of the original - but every one of those episodes is a work of art.

And the ending... is kinda disappointing. But everything that comes before it surpasses expectations.

Plus - this is the second act in a trilogy. I suspect the third one will end better!

Bioware, and lead writer Drew 'The Karp' Karpyshyn, will have a very tough job: making the plot more satisfying than that of Mass Effect, and making the game more fun than Mass Effect 2.

8/10

So, This Is What Miranda Has Been Up To Lately?

I've been hooked on the Travel Channel lately. Don't ask me why, but pretty much every show that airs there seems like it was tailor-made to fit my interests. Mostly, I watch Man v. Food and lament over being stuck in the most culinary retarded city in The States. But they recently started airing another show called Food Wars, in which rival hometown restaurants compete for the arbitrary title of Best in the City...or some such.

It's not all that interesting, actually. But what WAS interesting was the hostess of the show. I kept looking at her, thinking I had seen her some place. Hmmmmm.





I mean, am I right?!

Photo from LINK

Mock Effect 2......

An announcement regarding 'Mock Effect 2' - my planned parody of 'Mass Effect 2'

I feel awfully silly making an 'announcement'... But this is my blog so I will prattle on for hours, going into far too much detail and getting vaguely emotional.

I'm almost certainly not going to write a second 'Mass Effect' parody. If I do it will be months from now.


About two years ago I wrote a parody script, full-length, spoofing the brilliant Bioware RPG 'Mass Effect'. I chose the very witty title 'Mock Effect'. Mirth Effect was also a contender. Seriously.

The parody format was based very much on my favourite ever piece of fanfiction - "Yet Another KotOR Parody" by Helena L.

http://hawk.kotorfanmedia.com/node/1593

It really was just an attempt to emulate the joy I got from that parody - in Mass Effect form.

Anyway, it went down extremely well among Mass Effect fans, and I got a ton of feedback - vastly more than I ever have for anything else I've written - most of it praising me highly. It was a big surprise for me. I even got a compliment on it from Helena L.

This feedback gave me confidence as a writer and the experience of writing it really improved things for me in general. After it was taken down from fanfiction.net (they don't allow scripts) it was given a new home by one Rascarin, who set up a forum to house it and other fanfic.

Rascarin's ME forum is now sooo much more - it houses lots of great fanfic, a lot of friendly, lively Mass Effect and game discussion, and a fantastic community. And it's where I've made some of my closest friends.

http://masseffectfanfic.proboards.com/index.cgi

And I always assumed there would be a 'Mock Effect 2'. After all, I really enjoy reading positive reviews telling me I'm funny! It rarely happens, except for Mock Effect.

Having now played Mass Effect 2 a decent amount, I've finally come to a decision. And believe me, I have been thinking long and hard about this.

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So - there will be no Mock Effect 2.

It is mainly a time issue. I have a decent job now, and some other bits and pieces at home taking my time and effort. And I have an English degree coming up later this year, hopefully. All in all, I just don't have enough free time to write more than one thing at once.

And I want to write original stories with the time I have. I am trying to really learn and make it work as a writer. I need practice.

Also - I have to say - Mass Effect 2 is a really well-written game, with excellent dialogue and very few plot holes to exploit. With one or two exceptions, the characters are brilliant and perfectly-played. And while I feel the plot lets the game down, espescially at the end, there isn't a great deal to make fun of.

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This decision has actually been made difficult because people (sometimes people I don't even know) have asked for a sequel, or wondered aloud when it will come or what it will contain.

To those people, and to anyone who read 'Mock Effect' - thank you! It means so much to me, as a would-be writer, to hear that kind of praise from peers and fans of the game.

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So there will (very probably) be no Mass Effect 2 parody. If I can find a way to make time later in the year I will. But I don't see that happenning.

(waves hand)

You don't want me to write a ME 2 parody...







(Good GOD that was self-indulgent. Sorry.)