Mass Effect Mass Effect Series Retrospective by Shamus Young

[Deleted member 7219]

Didn't one of the ME3 DLCs reveal their origins or some shit? I think it involved the alien race that originally made them or something along those lines.

The Leviathan DLC was flatly contradicted by the ME3 ending and amounted to naught.

 

[Andyman Messiah]

Daaaiiummn....

Didn't know Mass Effect had story study groups!

You best believe it, Annie! This shit all the rage up on Academia right about now!

Btw, the reapers were AI that, at the end of a cycle, reaped organic life, archived it and rebooted it. Apparently, failure to do so would result in AI vs Organic wars and all would be fucked. Pretty simple, no?

Mass Effect is generally speaking a series that seem to bring out people that want to talk about its "lost potential" and the "what-coulda-beens", which I suppose is interesting, kinda.

I don't have any serious ideas myself (in addition to the idea that Reapers just wants to reproduce, before my hiatus I also wrote a post detailing my idea to make Mass Effect 3 into a dating sim with a love triangle consisting of Joker, EDI and Harbinger, with Shepard lurking in the background as a wingman or the one that steals EDI for himself and dooms the entire universe.) As far as the Reapers goes, they were just a silly thing that I knew BioWare was never gonna be able to deliver on. So whatever.

 

[Prime Junta]

Yeah it's all about lost potential. The ME series was a pretty damn huge game development effort. It could've been so much better if they had put more thought into the stuff that doesn't carry big production cost tickets, which includes background and story elements.

Besides which, I like space opera, and it's not like the market is flooded with it.

 

[Ash_Firelord]

The reapers are basically like the Force. Less interesting the more you try to explain it.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

You guise set your standards for games' stories way too high...

I thought it was a fun ride, in the same sense some competent nice looking sci fi movie is. It's a space opera, complete with save the universe (galaxy) and get the girl (guy/alien).

I mean, go nitpick any action sci fi movie or tv show and there's a truck load of stupid crap in them as well.

Now, if we want some thought provoking deep shit, well then yes, it doesn't deliver much of that. But hey, the new Star Trek movies don't either...

I'm mostly writing those things as a fun exercise for myself of "how I'd start writing out this sort of thing" variety. Overall I tend to view Mass Effect as kind of like a good fun arc of Farscape. It only really irks me when it tries to be smarter than it is.

EDIT: I still believe ME should have been written by Garth Ennis, or at least Shep's dialogue and action.

 

[Andyman Messiah]

EDIT: I still believe ME should have been written by Garth Ennis, or at least Shep's dialogue and action.

And the graphics should've been made in the style of John McCrea's art.

 

[Beastro]

In the Revelation Space cycle, the Inhibitors are fucking scary, until he tells us why they're doing what they're doing which is almost as dumb as ME3. His attempt in the Poseidon's Children series is only a little bit better. That's why HPL remains so fucking cool.

I just read up on their motives.

Hahaha, there's more danger from two clouds in the sky colliding than that!.

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=28314

Mass Effect Retrospective 11: Ilos

Now we have a big block of cutscenes to try and wrangle this open, player-directed adventure into a conventional three-act story structure. Shepard has the fight with Saren, Kashley snuffs it, and the Normandy flies away from Saren’s base as the whole thing goes nuclear.

Assuming you’ve visited all the planets now, you do one final mind-meld with Liara, and the vision reveals that the conduit is on the planet Ilos.

Race Against Time

Annoyingly, you’re locked into the endgame here. When you interact with the starmap the game simply triggers a cutscene taking you back to the Citadel. On one hand, we’ve just gone through a big emotional turning point and it would make no sense at all to suck the tension out of the story by wandering around the galaxy. On the other hand… BUT WHAT ABOUT MY SIIIIIIIIIDE QUESTS?

Here we have the inescapable tension between the needs of a story and the needs of an open(ish) RPG. Some people are put off by the fact that the main quest in this game is titled “Race Against Time” when you’re actually free – encouraged, even – to screw around doing odd jobs for random peasants. Other people are put off anytime the game pushes the main story forward before they’re ready.

There’s no way around this, really. If the game doesn’t push hard enough some people feel indifferent and directionless. If it pushes too hard they resent it, or end up skipping side content out of fear that something “bad” will happen in the story. That actually happens in Mass Effect 2, where doing too many sidequests after the big turning point will result in a bunch of people getting killed. This annoyed the other group of people, who felt that there was an unspoken agreement between the game and the player that time shouldn’t matter outside of missions.

I think either way is fine, as long as the player understands the rules. The problem is that it’s really hard to convey these rules because they come completely from outside the gameworld.

The Normandy is Grounded

Shepard flies back to the Citadel to meet with the council. It turns out they still don’t believe him about the Reapers.

We know where Saren is, we know he’s looking for something called “the conduit”, and that it’s on Ilos. Up until now we’ve been assuming it’s a weapon[1] and that Saren is going to get it to use against the Citadel. The council doesn’t want to send ships into the Terminus systems to look for Saren and end up provoking a war. The old problem of “an enemy agent is hiding in the region controlled by a rival nation” should sound pretty familiar to anyone who’s followed geopolitics recently. (Or ever.)

Shepard doesn’t like this, so he throws a tantrum in front of the three most powerful politicians in the galaxy and the Normandy is grounded.

Looking at it from the council’s point of view: I have to say they have a point. They don’t know what conduit is. None of the good guys do. As far as anyone knows, Saren would have to assault the Citadel directly, and their fleets are camping the mass relays. Given what they know, this isn’t an unreasonable course of action.

On the other hand, their steadfast refusal to even entertain the Reapers as a possibility is starting to wear a little thin. It’s not like there’s a shortage of crazy stuff in this universe. Saren has the largest “ship” in the galaxy and it has demonstrated abilities far beyond anything the council races can achieve. Even if they’re incredulous about the whole idea of “ancient machine gods throw a 50,000 year extinction party”, they ought to be pretty freaked out about this massive new military threat. Whether they believe in Reapers or not, they still ought to be worried about where this ship came from, who made it, and if there are any others like it out there. The argument between Shepard and the council creates this false dichotomy: Either the REAPERS ARE REAL AND COMING TO KILL US, or this is no big deal.

So while I think their actions make sense, their attitude towards the danger is a little unreasonable. It would make more sense if they wanted you (or someone else) to track down where and how this “ship” was made.

Udina

Udina goes along with this, and the story plays it off like a betrayal. It’s clear we’re supposed to hate Udina. His character design and his delivery are dripping with scheming villainy. But in-universe, the known facts are on his side. Poking around deep in the Terminus systems would be provocative and risky, and as far as anyone knows there’s no reason to take that risk. Shepard even says, “If Saren finds the conduit we’re all screwed!” Like the trial at the start of the game, his arguments are all passion and no substance. Nobody knows what the conduit is or what it does, so there’s no reason to expect that the blockade won’t work.

Basically, Udina didn’t need to be a bad guy for this scene to work, and I would have liked it more if the story had given him more depth. In the next scene Anderson punches him out, and it’s clear this is supposed to be an act of catharsis for the audience.

I’d rather they had dialed back on the slimy politician angle and painted him as a smart man playing a difficult game against the other races. I like the idea of Udina as a calculating and pragmatic politician playing realpolitik against the vastly more powerful and experienced members of the council. I like this so much more than making him some creep who just wants power. I think he is (or would be) a lot more interesting as a foil than an adversary. Pritchard and Jensen had this kind of dynamic in Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and it was probably the most interesting relationship in the game.

Regardless, Anderson unlocks the Normandy and you escape with your crew. If you’ve been romancing someone, then now is your last chance to do the deed with them, you naughty commander you.

The Protheans

And here we are. The Normandy arrives in Ilos and the story pulls the trigger on two Chekov’s Guns at once: The Normandy’s stealth systems and Joker’s superhuman piloting. Joker drops the Mako almost on Saren’s head, and you begin the mad dash to the conduit.

But first you have to run around and shoot dudes and open containers and push buttons, because this is still an RPG shooter and you don’t just let players saunter to the finish line in this genre.

This is my favorite environment in the game. We get our first solid look at Protheans, their art, and even a little of their culture.

Yeah, don’t let Mass Effect 2 and 3 confuse you. Here in the first game, these are clearly the Protheans:

Unless you’re going to suggest they made statues that looked nothing like themselves. And let’s not forget the vision of the Protheans the game keeps showing us, where we see this:

…which is clearly the same creature. And then we hear their VI’s speak, and they talk with a gentle, vaguely aristocratic tone.

But then in the latter games some dingbat decided that Human-sized Jamaican Nigerian bug-men would be so much “cooler” than these design cues. And they decided that “coolness” was more important than consistency or delivering revelations that built on previous foreshadowing, so they chucked the Mass Effect 1 designs and never even bothered to put a lame, thought-about-it-for-ten-seconds excuse in the codex to explain this discrepancy.

This really bugged me[2], because you spent this entire game working to find out who the Protheans were and what they knew. I really felt like this planet was part of our reward for the long struggle, a major reveal of a long-kept secret. To have it carelessly erased or ignored by someone’s rule of cool approach to worldbuilding drove me crazy.

Vigil

It would be grossly underselling it if I said this was my favorite part of the story. The conversation with Vigil the ancient Prothean VI is deeply satisfying. Hearing his long bitter tale about the end of a species is moving, and sets the stakes for the challenge ahead of you. But most of all I enjoy this part because this is where it all comes together.

I’m a big fan of sci-fi stories with an expositional payload. You can see it in a lot of Trek and Twilight Zone episodes. Asimov’s classic I, Robot was made almost entirely out of mysteries or puzzles that are unraveled at the end. “How could this robot kill people if its programming forbids it? Ah! It didn’t understand that this action would result in death! It all makes sense now!” The questions are answered. Inconsistencies are resolved or cancel each other out as the pieces of the puzzle snap together. We nod and breathe a sigh of relief. Ah yes. Of course! Of course, for this to work the payload has to be a satisfying answer. The author has to have established the rules and stuck to them.

Mass Effect isn’t a mystery, of course. But the game has presented us with some questions. What is Saren trying to do? What’s the conduit? What happened to the Protheans? What are the beacons? Where are the rest of the Reapers and are they about to invade us? What’s so special about these Prothean ruins on Ilos? These questions are all answered here, and a few new questions are introduced to keep us interested.

Fifty thousand years ago, the Reapers showed up to do That Thing They Do. But Ilos was a secret research center where a small group of Prothean scientists were working to figure out how the mass relays worked. Since it was a secret station, there were no records of it on the Citadel, so when the Reapers showed up and read everyone’s email, they didn’t find out about Ilos. So the researchers on Ilos quietly slipped underground and listened in on the radio as their civilization was systematically purged.

A few decades in[3], they realized this was going to take a while. So they went into cryo-sleep and created the Vigil program to listen to the airwaves[4] and wake everyone up when the whole Reaper thing blew over.

Well, it turns out it takes a bloody long time to scour an entire galaxy of a particular species. Decades turned into centuries, and Vigil started running out of power. He cut all the systems he could, and then started shutting down cryo-pods, starting with the least essential people. By the time the Reapers finally left, they were down to a few dozen people and they realized they didn’t have the makings to re-create their galactic civilization. So they used the conduit to jump to the Citadel and sabotage the Keepers. The next time the Reaper alarm went off, the Citadel wouldn’t open up the mass relay into dark space. This would leave the Reapers trapped out there. Serves them right. Jerks.

Then the Protheans used the beacons one last time[5] to explain to any unlikely survivors what had happened and what they had done. These are the beacons Shepard has been running around interfacing with since the start of the game.

Every RPG fan has their favorite “storytime” moment from a game, where you stop the action and enjoy a bulk load of worldbuilding and character flavor. For some people it’s Cheif Hanlon in Fallout: New Vegas. Or Canderous in KOTOR. Morpheus[6] in Deus Ex.Dagoth-Ur in Morrowind.

For me, this conversation with Vigil is that favorite moment. We’ll talk more about Vigil next time.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Tentacle-mouth-in-the-balls Protheans were much more visually fascinating, and Shamus is correct that Vigil and Ilos is the best part of ME1.

 

[Fairfax]

Tentacle-mouth-in-the-balls Protheans were much more visually fascinating, and Shamus is correct that Vigil and Ilos is the best part of ME1.

Indeed. The retcon and the companion that followed were as neo-BioWare as it gets.

 

[pippin]

Not to mention this jamaican clown was behind a paywall.

 

[Fairfax]

Not to mention this jamaican clown was behind a paywall.

On-disc DLC!

 

[Andyman Messiah]

Tentacle-mouth-in-the-balls Protheans were much more visually fascinating, and Shamus is correct that Vigil and Ilos is the best part of ME1.

Well, of course the penultimate level of the game is the best part.

Frankly I prefer the end credits more but that's just me. It has a p. good song too.

edit: Also on-disc-day-one dlc is shitty as fuck but that shittiness aside, Javik was awesome and added a shit ton of good scenes to the game. I also also didn't mind the mouth tentacle retcon. Mostly because I knew, and you know what, we ALL knew, that BioWare was eventually going to have a Prothean motherfucker show up in the flesh and PROBABLY join the squad, and BioWare, as retarded as they are and always has been post-Shattered Steel, they still have something resembling standards when it comes to characters.

Do we go with the ridiculous, gaunt, bald, chair-sitting fuckers that looks like they've all been blow-banged to death by octopuses? Or do we go with the Jamaican-Nigerian bug samurai guys that you can believe made up the master race of the collected prothean empire, and probably commissioned statues to be made of the gaunt, bald fuckers that got raped to extinction by squids just to add insult to mouth-rape?

"Ha ha ha, Commander. That was a fun moment in our history. But seriously. I notice you are bald. Watch yourself around Liara and other Asari."

 

[stray]

I thought all of ME1's main levels were boring slogs. Except oddly the ones without much gameplay. Citadel and stuff. And that's only because I liked the urban potential in this sci fi setting. They did Omega better in ME2.

If it was up to me, I'd just be some dirty-cop-in-space... walking the beat.. doing storylines in these shady alleys and such.

 

[pippin]

I thought all of ME1's main levels were boring slogs. Except oddly the ones without much gameplay. Citadel and stuff. And that's only because I liked the urban potential in this sci fi setting. They did Omega better in ME2.

If it was up to me, I'd just be some dirty-cop-in-space... walking the beat.. doing storylines in these shady alleys and such.

That's because Bioware's emphasis was always dialogue, not gameplay, especially in recent years. Without talking about space stuff, you were left with a corridor shooter.

Also, you should try the Tex Murphy games if you haven't.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Well, of course the penultimate level of the game is the best part.

Frankly I prefer the end credits more but that's just me. It has a p. good song too.

edit: Also on-disc-day-one dlc is shitty as fuck but that shittiness aside, Javik was awesome and added a shit ton of good scenes to the game. I also also didn't mind the mouth tentacle retcon. Mostly because I knew, and you know what, we ALL knew, that BioWare was eventually going to have a Prothean motherfucker show up in the flesh and PROBABLY join the squad, and BioWare, as retarded as they are and always has been post-Shattered Steel, they still have something resembling standards when it comes to characters.

Do we go with the ridiculous, gaunt, bald, chair-sitting fuckers that looks like they've all been blow-banged to death by octopuses? Or do we go with the Jamaican-Nigerian bug samurai guys that you can believe made up the master race of the collected prothean empire, and probably commissioned statues to be made of the gaunt, bald fuckers that got raped to extinction by squids just to add insult to mouth-rape?

"Ha ha ha, Commander. That was a fun moment in our history. But seriously. I notice you are bald. Watch yourself around Liara and other Asari."

I'm actually perfectly okay with the whole tentacle-mouth-in-the-balls guys being something the Protheans found, which is the official Bioware explanation for the retcon. It's a good idea, ties into the whole cycle concept, and could have been used for creating designs for Reaper embryos inside the frames if going by my ideas.

The main problem is still that the ending of ME3 is one of the most embarrassing things ever made by human hands.

 

[stray]

That's because Bioware's emphasis was always dialogue, not gameplay, especially in recent years. Without talking about space stuff, you were left with a corridor shooter.

Also, you should try the Tex Murphy games if you haven't.

Maybe I might do just that. I played some Adventure in the 90s, but I didn't get around to those.

I don't mind their combat though, but it's generally sucked in this series. Even ME2, which I liked more. Like the Collector Ship had a sort of stressing, tactical feel to it. Or Grissom in ME3. On Insanity at least. Those are my favorite levels in the series.

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=28337

Mass Effect Retrospective 12: A Chat With Vigil

Like I said last time, the conversation with Vigil is my favorite part of the game. Thatincredible music plays, you’ve got your two favorite companions with you, and Vigil lays it all out. He explains just how long the odds are, just how powerful the enemy is, but he also explains the little glimmer of hope you have.

Fridge Logic

As much as I love this section, you knew we weren’t getting through it without a little nitpicking, didn’t you? Let’s paraphrase / summarize this conversation:

So Vigil, what are the beacons and why do they show us these psychedelic visions of machine murder?

Those are our telephone system. The vision wasn’t clear because you’re not Prothean. But good on you, Shepard. You managed to get the gist of it.

What’s the deal with the Reapers? Why do they kill us meatbags every 50k years?

We don’t know either.

Why haven’t the Reapers invaded yet?

We sabotaged their ambush machine. It won’t stop them, but it has given you this fighting chance to get ready for them. I sure hope you don’t spend the entire next game dicking around with a secondary threat instead of working on this problem, because that would make you a monumental idiot. Good luck!

What’s the deal with Sovereign?

Sovereign probably stayed behind to keep an eye on the galaxy and wait until there was a society advanced enough to fully appreciate just how much it sucks to experience genocide on a galactic scale. But since we sabotaged the Keepers, when he rang the dinner bell the Keepers didn’t open the door to dark space. So all his Reaper buddies are probably still out there, napping.

What’s the deal with Saren?

The Reapers indoctrinate servants and use them to infiltrate the cultures they’re killing. Did I mention they’re assholes? They are patient and cautious. Rather than just brazenly assaulting the Citadel all by himself, Sovereign went around and indoctrinated some followers. Saren probably isn’t the only one, he’s just the most visible and active. Not trying to make you paranoid or anything, but, you know… heads up.

Okay so Saren was looking for the conduit. And he attacked Eden Prime to find it. But the purpose of the conduit is to give him access to the Citadel, so he could get to the Council chambers, since that’s where the controls for the station are. But, like… he was a Spectre. Why would he attack Eden Prime to gain access to a magic door that will let him enter a room that, presumably, he was already allowed in?

I don’t understand the question?

Why didn’t Saren just walk into the Council chambers and push the button? Why didn’t Saren just undo whatever the Protheans did to the Keepers, so Sovereign could go back to Plan A?

Those are great questions, Shepard. Good thing you never ask them in the game!

Conjecture on my part:

Saren could indeed walk up to that control panel, but he’d be doing it right in front of the Council, which is roughly the equivalent to walking into the office of the American President and thumbing through his big book of nuclear launch codes. It’s a safe bet that security would provide a spirited response. Saren is a badass, but presumably he’s not a match for all of C-Sec. So while he can walk into the chambers alone, what he needs is to walk in there with an army of Geth. And the only way to get that many Geth into the Citadel without starting a war is to use the conduit. Sovereign only gets one chance to poke this particular hornet’s nest, so he probably doesn’t want to take any chances. Beaming an army of Geth into the station is a lot like usual plan of popping Reapers in around the station. It’s got that sudden surprise invasion vibe that seems to appeal to Reaper sensibilities.

Saren’s plan does seem to have a few cracks in it like this. The difference between Saren and antagonists of the future is that Saren’s plans seem mysterious at first, and then only seem questionable once you know the full story and have time to let the fridge logic to settle in. This is different from adversaries in the subsequent game, who seem to do confusing or stupid things, which are then sort of half-justified if you read enough codex entries and selectively believe certain sub-section of the things the Illusive Man says. It’s the old gradient of plot holes at work again. No story is perfect, but the job of the storyteller is to avoid those plot holes that immediately launch you out of the story and require you to begin authoring your own headcanon to get back in.

The Slog

Saying goodbye to Vigil, Shepard chases after Saren and drives the Mako through the conduit to land at the “statue” of the mass relay in the presidium. From there it’s a massive hike up the tower, while Sovereign looms on this new indoor horizon. The arms of the station have closed, hiding the nebula and the stars around the station. The new sky consists of the wards – the cities filled with the people Shepard is fighting to save[1].

It’s a long hike up the tower, fighting against the same two or three enemies you’ve been fighting for a majority of the game. The designers do what they can to keep it fresh by changing the terrain, but it still feels like BioWare’s standard mook-fest padding. It’s the classic late-game slog for which RPGs have become infamous. KOTOR, KOTOR II, all the Mass Effects, Neverwinter Nights 2, Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas, Oblivion, Skyrim, and numerous others. Dragon Age: Origins subverted this by having their slog in the middle-ish[2], and making the end-game mooks all low-level pushovers. There’s always a misguided attempt to increase the tension by loading us with combat, but for me it ends up sucking the drama out of the story. Changing Star Wars so that the final X-Wing dogfight was an hour long[3] would not make the payoff at the end bigger.

Ideally, I think it would be best to design things so that the section from Ilos to the closing credits should all fit in the average game session. In any case, whatever happened to the Fallout 1 idea of using disguises, bullshit, and subterfuge to avoid all that combat? I’m not saying they needed to do that here, I’m just saying I wish somebody was still doing that sort of thing now and again.

At the top of the tower Shepard has a fight with Saren – right in the council chambers where the two of them debated at the start of the game. If you’ve been investing in Paragade, then Shepard can even convince Saren of just how lost he is, so that he can find redemption through suicide. Regardless of which gun kills him – Shepard’s or his own – once he’s down Shepard opens the arms of the station so the fleet can get at Sovereign. We get an epic space battle and we get to see the Normandy spearhead the attack. Sovereign blows up like the Death Star. A chunk of Sovereign comes in the window and seems to crush Shepard’s team.

But no! Music swells, and Shepard emerges, injured but strong, standing atop the carcass of the slain Reaper! He’s backlit, and everyone else is looking up at him.

Symbolism!

Is it a bit hokey? Yes. But it works. It’s far too early to begin the long autopsy of the Mass Effect 3 ending, but I want to peek ahead for just a moment so we can compare how the two games handled their big “moment of truth” finale, at least in cinematic terms. Let’s compare this staging to the same scene at the end of Mass Effect 3.

Here in Mass Effect 1, the author had already established the locations of the tower and Sovereign. They placed the control panel in the council chambers, which placed the final shootout between Shepard and Saren in the same room. So when the writer wanted Shepard to symbolically stand on top of a dead Reaper, at the seat of galactic power, they didn’t have to contrive a way to move those plot elements together, because the earlier parts of the story – going all the way back to the first hour of the game – had carefully laid the groundwork for this. Instead of feeling forced, it feels inevitable. Of course! It had to end here, like this.

In Mass Effect 3, the Citadel isn’t immediately invaded in the initial wave, even though that’s Standard Reaper procedure. Then when they do finally invade the Citadel, they move it into Earth orbit, which isn’t something we knew it could do and which doesn’t really fit very well with what we already learned about them from Vigil. It looks like Shepard is standing in space without a helmet and without an explanation, and while there’s a huge space battle in the background we’re disconnected from it.

The ME3 writer crudely shoves the plot elements into position and proclaims, There! NOW FEEL STRONG EMOTIONS ABOUT THIS!” If they’re feeling generous they might shove a half-assed justification into the codex to shut up the whiners. It’s very brute-force, and so when Shepard is talking to the Star Child with the ruins of the Earth in the background, it doesn’t feel like a natural culmination of everything that came before, it feels like a clumsy and heavy-handed attempt at being profound in the most banal way possible.

The end of Mass Effect 1 shows that details-first stories can have drama too. They can have iconic imagery, symbolism, foreshadowing, irony, and catharsis. They can have heroic poses and blunt, on-the-nose camera framing. They can have cliché situations and musical cues. They just have to do their homework first. They have to plan ahead. They have to earn it.

We’re not quite done with Mass Effect yet. We’re going to talk about the ending for a couple more entries before we move on to Mass Effect 2.

 

[stray]

I have more complaints about ME3's entire Earth level. The whole thing sucked... the Starchild was almost a relief.

It doesn't help that I liked the ME2 characters more, and they screwed that up. I understand not putting them on the squad, but even their earth cameos were weak. They could have done some Suicide Mission thing, except with the team from all games + the armies you gathered. Whose bright idea was it to present that battle as just you again with only two squaddies, running through boring ruins and barely any sound or music.

 

[pippin]

I have more complaints about ME3's entire Earth level. The whole thing sucked... the Starchild was almost a relief.

It doesn't help that I liked the ME2 characters more, and they screwed that up. I understand not putting them on the squad, but even their earth cameos were weak. They could have done some Suicide Mission thing, except with the team from all games + the armies you gathered. Whose bright idea was it to present that battle as just you again with only two squaddies, running through boring ruins and barely any sound or music.

But they had to make you play multiplayer and the mobil game somehow

 

[stray]

But they had to make you play multiplayer and the mobil game somehow

Silly me. I actually thought my Batarian mp character was gonna show up in those shuttles in the end sequence

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=28475

Mass Effect Retrospective 13: Plan B From Outer Space

Before we move on to Mass Effect 2, let’s talk about what what we might expect to see as someone who just completed the first game and had no idea where the sequels were going to go.

The Plan is to Come Up With a Plan Later

In the past I’ve said that BioWare’s problem was that they didn’t have a plan for Mass Effect. After re-playing the first game and looking back at the arrangement of plot elements, I have to say it’s pretty clear I was completely wrong. Somebody did indeed have a plan. No, they didn’t know the secret behind the Reapers or how the heroes would stop them, but they did have a framework to build on. They had clear direction for the story. The first game spent a lot of time establishing a very particular arrangement of elements and characters to facilitate the quest-driven nature of this series. It was ideally suited to explain why a squad of three people on foot was the best way to solve the problem of genocidal machine gods.

Reapers are an unbeatable race of machine gods that are coming to wipe out all life. However, it’s completely up in the air as to how long it will take them to get here. More importantly, we have no means to fight them. This creates questions in the minds of the audience, and those questions perfectly line up with the needs of the plot and the motivations of the central characters. Shepard’s last line in the game drives this point home, “The Reapers are still out there. They’re coming. And I’m going to find some way to stop them!” The final line of the game explained what the sequel would be about.

Prothean ruins are scattered throughout the galaxy, and they hold secrets that can advance the plot. They can have technology which grants us new weapons. They can have a VI like Vigil that can bestow explicit information, or they can have beacons that dispense vague hints. They can have hidden mass relay jumps to secret locations. They can appear on distant uninhabited worlds, be found near colonies, or be hidden beneath existing cities. Most importantly, they can hold as much or as little about the Reapers as the plot requires. Basically, they give the writer the excuse to send us anywhere. They can design a variety of fun quests, set pieces, and locations, and then just stick a Prothean ruin[1] or artifact nearby to give the plot a reason to go there.

The Council got to see a Reaper up close. Maybe they believe in the doomsday legend and maybe they don’t, but they have witnessed first hand that there is a massive new Military threat in the galaxy. Udina even says that “The races are scared. They’ve never faced anything like this before. They don’t know what to do. They want us to step forward.” The council also might have died and been replaced by one that’s human-influenced to some degree. The writer has leeway to make them provide you with help if the story calls for it, or leave you to conduct your search alone if that suits gameplay better. The only thing this ending doesn’t allow for is that the leadership would dismiss Shepard and decide to do nothing.

Shepard can understand Prothean thanks to the Cipher. The conversation with Vigil makes it clear that Shepard hasn’t just seen a bunch of random hallucinations. Through his struggles he’s gained some sort of insight into Prothean language. If the writer needed, they could even use the Cipher to say Shepard is able to use Prothean devices or open doors that nobody else can. This gives the writers a free pass to put Shepard at the center of any effort to learn about the Reapers. Large-scale RPG’s always have the question: “If this is so important, then what don’t they send in the army?” Mass Effect 1 carefully constructed a scenario to address this problem. You don’t need an army to investigate ruins and look for clues in deep space. You need a small team, and Shepard is the most logical leader for that team. Boom! No need for a “chosen one” trope. Shepard just happens to be the person with the skills and resources to do this, and it has nothing to do with fate or superhuman ability.

Shepard is a Spectre. The Spectres are this group of agents with tons of power and little accountability, who are respected in some places but not others. This is like a “create a plot point for free” card for the writers. Do we need to explain why this ruin has been undisturbed for centuries before Shepard came along? “Nobody is allowed in here but since you’re a Spectre I’ll make an exception.” Do we need to justify obstructionist jackasses making us do side-quest stuff even though we’re trying to save the galaxy? “I don’t trust the Spectres or the council because they failed us when [backstory]. Your Spectre status means nothing in this part of space. Instead, you must [do this quest thing] before I’ll agree to help you.” People can be as difficult or as accommodating as the gameplay requires, without breaking any characters or creating annoying plot holes.

Liara is an expert on Prothean ruins. Right there, built into the core of the squad, is a magical exposition and quest dispenser. Do we need to send the player somewhere? Liara knows about some ruins there. Let’s say we want a ruin with a Prothean door that’s been sealed for 50k years (to explain why it hasn’t been looted yet) and we need some way for the heroes to open it now. Liara can find the door, explain the backstory of the ruin, and provides an excuse for why our team can go inside even though nobody else can. Liara can read symbols and explain why we have to do the requisite door-opening puzzle. Do we need to understand some new techno-gizmo? Liara has seen diagrams, or read rumors, or whatever. Her career is directly relevant to the plot in a way the other characters aren’t.

The Normandy is a one-of-a-kind stealth ship with the best pilot in the Alliance. Do we need to send the crew where nobody has ever gone before? The stealth ship and Joker’s skill can explain why the journey is possible for us when it was impossible for others. On the other hand, the stealth systems aren’t a cloaking device and the ship can still be spotted visually. So the Normandy is as visible or as hidden as the plot requires, to allow or gate progress as needed.

Mass Relays are mostly closed because of the Rachni, which means there’s a great big chunk of the galaxy out there that we’ve never seen. If the writers really need to fling the characters into the unknown, there’s always the possibility that they could open a relay and go someplace crazy in the quest to find a way to beat the Reapers.

Indoctrination can mind control anyone, so if the game designers decide that Geth fights are getting stale, we can justify having just about any race we like as a Reaper-serving mook. There’s no telling how many followers or sleeper agents Sovereign might have created before the events of Mass Effect 1.

A Way to Beat the Reapers

The writer also gave themselves a couple of tools for justifying why the good guys might win this time, when so many countless cultures have fallen to the Reapers. In a Details First story, saying “We won because we’re super-motivated badasses” will come off as lame. Sure, we do need heroes to be strong and passionate, but it’s safe to assume that over the last few millions of years, some other passionate, clever, and motivated folks fell to the Reapers. In fact, that’s part of what makes the Reapers so horrifying.

The Reapers actually have an insidious setup. They have a network of relays that control the flow of traffic through the galaxy. At the crossroads they have the Citadel, a spacious, self-sustaining palace of comfort and free energy. Naturally, this place would make a fantastic trade center or seat of government for whatever sapients find it. Whoever controls the Citadel will have an advantage over the other species that might show up, which gives it strategic value, which means political power will gravitate there.

So the Reaper alarm clock goes off every 50k years. They jump directly into the Citadel, wiping out the government and silencing all communications before the dumb meatbags even know there’s a problem. By the time Joe Sapient gets his pants on and arms himself, his government has stopped existing.

Once they control the seat of power, the Reapers can indoctrinate whoever they please and read everyone’s computer files, thus telling them the location of every single known settlement in the galaxy. From this point, it’s just a matter of mopping up. Once the last of the sapients are dead or indoctrinated, the Reapers obliterate the ruins, clean up the Citadel for the next batch of suckers, turn off the lights, and then retreat to dark space and set the genocide alarm for 50k years.

It’s a setup so good that over the course of countless cycles, no species has ever stopped them. We can assume it would be just as hopeless this time around, except for a few small details that have changed.

Our first lucky break is that the Protheans did us a solid and sabotaged the Citadel. They tried to hide from the Reapers on Iilos, and that nearly worked out. But when it was clear they were doomed to extinction, they fixed the Citadel so the Reapers couldn’t just pop in like they usually do. If not for this, then Humans would likely have opened up their Mass Relay a couple of hundred years ago and wound up stumbling out into the galaxy mid-reaping.

But the Prothean sabotage delayed the Reapers, denied them their backdoor, and left scattered warnings for the people of the next cycle. This didn’t give us the means to win, but it did give us a window of opportunity to look for a way to win.

The other lucky break for the inhabitants of this cycle is that the Asari were the first species to rise to power. It’s hinted that sooner or later, usually one species winds up in charge. Like a game of Master of Orion that runs long, someone is bound to tip the balance and grab all the power for themselves. At that point everyone else ends up dead or enslaved. This means that it’s just one species ruling the Citadel when the Reapers throw their surprise party.

But the Asari have an unconventional way of procreating. They prefer to mate with other species, which means they value species diversity. They’re also incredibly long-lived, which tends to put them in charge. So this time around the galaxy is run – or greatly influenced by – a powerful species with a fixation on peace and cooperation. They’re strong enough to rule, but have this interest in promoting peace and lifting up other species instead of subjugating them. .

This creates a galaxy with a lot more diversity than the Reapers are used to dealing with. This could have been used as a plot point at the endgame, or it could have been used to explain why this cycle is just a little more adaptable than previous ones.

And finally, the Rachni happened. At one point someone opened up a relay and the Rachni poured through. They nearly conquered the galaxy. The fallout from this shook the mindset and development of the entire galaxy. It led to the Krogan uplift, which led to the Genophage. It led to a policy of not opening up any more relays, which led to the war between Turians and Humans. It also led to a galaxy where a majority of the relays are still closed, which is probably also something the Reapers don’t usually see when they show up.

Mechanically, the Mass Effect 1 writer did plan ahead. They had an “unbeatable” enemy, an excuse for why we “might” be able to beat them, and a setup that required a small squad of characters to travel around and have adventures. Yes, they needed to come up with an ending, and (maybe) an explanation for the Reapers, but they gave themselves a wonderful framework to build on, and that framework worked with both the genre of gameplay and the genre of the story. There was a plan, and for whatever reason the writer of Mass Effect 2 threw it away and did something completely different.

We’re going to spend one more post walking about this strange disconnect between the end of Mass Effect 1 and the start of Mass Effect 2. A lot of the later problems begin here, and there’s a lot to unpack.

 

[Lhynn]

Yup, he neglected some minor stuff but ME1 was clearly setting up a buncha crap for ME2. It was a well constructed world.

 

[Akratus]

You guise set your standards for games' stories way too high...

This is the first time I TRULY advocate for a dumbfuck tag, and would be massively dissapointed if it was not given.

 

[Jaesun]

You guise set your standards for games' stories way too high...

This is the first time I TRULY advocate for a dumbfuck tag, and would be massively dissapointed if it was not given.

He is right though...