TKO Creations

Whelp, I wanted to give myself some time to digest what Bioware tried to give me… and I really didn’t want to flood this blog with ME3 rants.

Then a couple weeks passed, and I found I had nothing else to say.  So… here goes.

SPOILER ALERT!!! (even though you really don’t care)

At least the endings provided feel like actual distinct endings.  Even though with the original version it was logically obvious that the end result was different, it is a very significant improvement to actually see and feel the difference.

A majority of the major gaps in the narrative were filled.  It now actually makes sense why many of the disjointed events happened the way they did, although it’s obvious many of them were rather jammed in forcefully or outright retcons of what had been originally presented (like how the Mass Relays take noticeably less damage in the Extended Cut).

Sometimes it worked great.  How your squadmates left the final charge for the Citadel Beam was remarkably well done at the very least, and heart-wrenching in its emotional impact at best (even if it requires a little bit of handwaving to make sense).  Other times, it fit… like why Joker was seen leaving the site of the battle.  Sometimes, it doesn’t work particularly well at all… the jungle planet scene now makes even less sense in the Extended Cut now.  How could the Normandy have been damaged so badly considering it out-ran the shock wave… and how could it have been repaired so quickly?

There were also elements to the story that I thought were vast improvements… the Catalyst now at least clearly demonstrates a rampant circular logic flaw.  You’re not supposed to agree with it.  It’s supposed to seem a little off, but it also doesn’t change that it is the only way to defeat the Reaper menace.  Datamined information in the Extended Cut seems to suggest that further DLC will alter the interaction with the Catalyst even further… so this is likely not the last we have seen of the issue.

There is even a new option that (in the dark recesses of my soul) I thoroughly enjoy.  Not because it’s a particularly good ending (it’s actually the “worst” in a narrative sense), but because it demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that Bioware was listening to their fans, and was more than willing to mercilessly troll the most entitled, whiny brats among them.  The “Refuse” ending is an absolute slap in the face to the whiners who demanded an option to reject what the Catalyst offered, and to bring the combined might they had mustered against the Reapers…

… only to watch that fleet get outright steamrolled by the enemy force that we had been told (both in-game and out) was impossible to defeat conventionally.  As an added jab, a producer at Bioware tweeted that the next cycle then used the Crucible the player refused to use in order to win.

And on top of that… attempting to shoot the Catalyst (like a lot of raging children proudly declared they did), promptly segues into that “lol u git rolled by Reapers, trolololololololol!” ending.

It’s a thing of beauty, and inexorably putting the stamp on the silly notion that Mass Effect was in any way the fans’ story.  I loved it, if only to drink the bitter, angry tears of the whining minority on the Bioware Social Network.  They deserved the nothing they got.

Now… onto what still is a massive, gaping, catastrophic problem with the entire ending sequence as whole.

Even with the Extended Cut, the solutions the Catalyst pose still don’t actually… ya know… solve the supposed problem.  Destroy only delays it (the Catalyst, however, readily admits to this, and even predicts that is exactly what will happen).  Control is merely passing the buck onto Shepard (yeah, it’s your problem now… toodles).  I’m still not sure how Synthesis is even possible, much less how it prevents synthetic life from being built in the future.

In fact, Synthesis actually comes out worse in my mind… because it makes even less sense than it did.  How is everyone now having organic and synthetic elements supposed to prevent the greed and avarice that spawns the need to gain any advantage they can to be superior to those around them?  Because that is really what is at the core of why we’re in this tech race towards the “singularity” that is the point of no return for the Catalyst.  The drive to have the fastest computer or fastest car or tallest building… that’s what drives innovation.  That’s what drives technological advancement.  How does Synthesis change that?  By forcing people to no longer have that drive?

Oh wait… the Catalyst says Synthesis has to be voluntary.  What?  How the hell does that work?  Does the green colored shockwave stop short at every living person and give them a questionnaire?  Does it set up Synthesis Hotspots where beings line up like at the DMV to change their plates?

Congratulations, Bioware, you have managed to make the most convoluted and head-hurting ending to one of your games even more convoluted and migrane-inducing.  You should be proud, I guess?

Secondly, the choice itself remains painfully inconsistent, not just with the pre-existing lore of the game, but even with itself.  The “sacrifice” of synthetic beings in the Destroy option still feel forced and jammed into the consequences for no reason other than to make Destroy less of a desirable option.  And if the Crucible affects all synthetic life, then why doesn’t Control give you control of those same synthetic lifeforms?  And Synthesis, no matter how much effort Bioware puts into it, outright refuses to make any logical or coherent sense to me.  It’s like the Adam Savage of video game endings:  “I reject your reality and substitute my own.”

I get what Bioware wanted to do here; to present a moral decision that had no “right” answer… and push the player to determine just what they valued more.  But I feel there was a simpler, and more internally consistent way to go about it.

To put it in the most summarized terms: The Crucible targets Reaper technology.

Okay… how is that different, you may ask?  Here’s how.

Destroy: The geth and Edi and other synthetic life forms are spared, and it destroys the Reapers.  Great… but now isn’t that a perfect ending with no cost?  Nope.  Wanna know why?  Know what else is Reaper tech?

The Mass Relay system.  Oh, and the Citadel.  Yeah… that thing you’re currently kinda standing on.

Yep.  You’ve destroyed the Reapers… and everything that came with it.  The galaxy has earned its freedom from the narrow confines the Reapers imposed on their development.  Now you’re on the hook for it all.  Good luck getting all those races home.  Or keeping them fed on the way.  Freedom can be a bitch, sometimes.  Depending on your EMS, the ending outcome can have varying levels of hope to it, from utter chaos to a prolonged rebuilding phase that slowly puts the galaxy back together.  Shepard’s survival could also come into play the way it does now.  It might not be easy… but even the biggest hurdles can be overcome.

Control: I actually think Control works for the most part, in fact, my altered Destroy ending comes from the logical extremes of what the Control ending provides.  The caveat however, I would include is one that is tangentially touched on if Shepard was played largely as a renegade, but I would put it in all of the variations.  EMS would also adjust the extremity of the conclusion, but the conclusion itself should be hinted at the very least… that your Shepard is starting to think like a Reaper… and that eventually he might decide that the Catalyst had the right idea.

Basically, the cost of the Control ending is the strong likelihood that Shepard will fall prey to the same circular logic error that haunted the Catalyst.

Synthesis: Burned alive in an arsonist’s fire.

Honestly, my ending to ME3 wouldn’t even have it as an option… but if it must be an option (and honestly it seems to be the preferred one for Mac Walters as it requires the highest EMS to open), drop the entire “voluntary” bit, and leave it as it was implied to be in the original… a forced evolution of every life form in the galaxy, whether they wanted it or not.  The moral abhorrence of such an option is more than enough to give most players pause.

So, there we have it.  My thoughts on the Extended Cut.  It’s an improvement… the endings are now, for the most part, tolerable, but it’s still not even close to an epic conclusion to the trilogy.

It’ll do, I guess… but at some point, “it’ll do” isn’t good enough.

It’s been damn near a month since I’ve written anything on this site.

I know this… but I tend to be a fellow that just doesn’t talk unless he thinks he has something interesting to say… and I rarely find myself interesting.

And I really don’t want to devote another post to Mass Effect 3, nor do I care all that much about recording my thoughts about the recent “Extended Cut.”  Maybe later.  I dunno.

Sorry for being such fail.

Hey, it’s another Mass Effect rant!

Actually, it’s not… yeah, it’s kinda inspired by a very heated discussion within Bioware’s official forums, but the topic that I’m going to be discussing goes beyond one game.

Said discussion is about the idea of “golden endings”; the sort of happily-ever-after Disney style conclusion where everyone gets exactly what they deserve and everyone you care about emerges from the struggle largely unscathed.  They used to be remarkably common in fantasy and science-fiction, but not so much anymore.  Many fans are disappointed that this particular series, the option isn’t even on the table… even in the “best” conclusion, it is a bittersweet end at the very best.

I personally dislike “golden endings” in most cases, but it has little to do with some inherent pessimism.  It has to do with the mechanics of emotion; the science behind invoking emotion within a piece of fiction.

Yes, there is a loose science behind it.  Bear with me, and I’ll explain in time.

First of all, I personally come from a more modernist background when it comes to fiction.  In opposition to the Romantic Period that encapsulated literature as an escape from reality, the modernist modus operandi is that literature should reflect and encapsulate reality, exposing its flaws rather than running from it.  This is not saying that all modernist pieces are dark, dreary, bitter lessons about the cruel hard world (although many are, because frankly, writers tend to be a fairly gloomy and despondent lot); it is saying that a narrative should be consistent with some element of the real world, and that the story should follow and conclude within that framework.

There are many stories that focus on the hopeful, positive, and endearing traits of humankind, the world, and our place in it.  A “golden ending” is perfectly acceptable in such stories… it’s well within the boundaries of the story set forth.  That is actually a very modernist approach, believe it or not.

The problem is when you get stories set in what is in reality a very dark experience, and the disconnect that comes when everything you care about somehow comes out the other end with nary a scratch.  I’m going to bring up two very popular examples to task for this (and I want you to know I like both of them, and that one of them is one of my favorite literary works of all time) as a contrast to how it does and doesn’t work.

First up is probably still the definitive sci-fi movie series of all time; Star Wars.  I am going off the only three movies that matter, not the drivel of raw sewage that came later.  The first time I finished watching the Return of the Jedi, I literally rolled my eyes at how it concluded.  It was the Pixie Sticks of literature; pure sugar… empty calories that give you a boost of warm fuzzies, but little else.  Every major plot character came out disturbingly unharmed (I mean, hell, Han Solo had just been in one of the most vicious ground skirmishes in the entire war… he doesn’t even look like he had been scratched by a stray tree branch)… the chances of such a scenario unfolding was so close to nil that it might as well have been impossible.

The closest we come to any reflection about the toll war had demanded be paid was a short scene with Luke placing his father on a pyre… and even that is trivialized by the discovery that he is again one with the Force, and is far happier in death than he had ever been in life.  It steals away any sense of loss or grief when it all gets tied up in such a pretty little bow.  It loses the impact of the entire setting.  The cost of war is diminished in the audience’s eyes to the point that few people even stop to think about said cost by the end of the trilogy.

Now I want to contrast that to how it was done brilliantly by J.R.R. Tolkien in Return of the King.  On the surface, it would look like it plays out similarly… not all of the characters that Tolkien crafted to be important to the story live to see the end of the last battle with Sauron, though many get to cross the sea to the closest Tolkien has ever gotten to a description of heaven.  But it doesn’t take long to realize that the two conclusions could not be any more different.  It is painfully evident very quickly that the characters within Middle Earth paid a heavy price… they are all fundamentally changed and scarred by what they had been drug into, through, and finally out of.  When Frodo turns to Sam and comments seemingly wisfully that the wound on his chest will never fully heal… that hit me; an emotional blow that came when I realized he wasn’t just talking about the physical scar.

Some characters were changed for the better… some for the worse… but they were all changed.  That is the emotional impact of war.  That is the heart of what a fiction that is set in conflict needs to remember at its core.  War is never pretty, it is never nice, and it demands a king’s ransom from your soul.  It also needs to ask for something similar from the audience for it to deliver the emotional impact that conflict demands.

Now, you may ask, “But isn’t the war itself cost enough?  Isn’t thousands (millions, billions) of dead enough to sate the price you demand be paid?”

The answer, perhaps sadly, is no.

Death and destruction is the setting of war… it’s ingrained into the medium.  You wouldn’t consider the bright sun shining down on a happy story enough cost for the story to then turn towards something more dreary, and so you really can’t consider the loss of the faceless multitudes enough to invoke the emotional response required for the story to match the setting.

Let me use an example (shockingly, it’s not going to be the Holocaust, so ya can’t invoke Godwin’s Law here).  Joseph Stalin was responsible for the deaths of up to thirty five million of his own people during his leadership of the Soviet Union.  Thirty five million.  That’s an absurd number that dwarfs the crimes of Hitler nigh eight times over.

Most people know this… but they don’t really know it.  Numbers… the simple cold calculus of war… don’t convey emotion in and of itself.  Without the experience, without feeling that loss first hand, the number really doesn’t hurt you… it doesn’t shake you fundamentally.  The weight isn’t in the death toll… it’s in the experience (another very modernist thought, I may add).

So yes, the story pretty much has to hit the characters that you had come to love throughout a story, whether that means injury or even death.  It’s the only way that the audience can feel that loss, and then be hit by the emotional weight of the war itself.  Only then does the number and the setting have the power to hit with the emotional impact that the story demands.

It’s a consequence of the “monkey sphere” theory… the nature of humans to not really give much thought or care to those that are outside their circle.  So, as a writer, you have to weasel characters into that sphere of concern, and then you have to take that character away.  It’s the only way that I know of to get the reader to feel what has been lost.  I’m also dubious a better way exists.

A “golden ending” in that setting trivializes the tough choices that were made… it turns the cost of war into a number, not an emotion, and the story is lost because of it.  And since the vast majority of my stories involve the conflict of war to some degree, I think you can see why I abhor “golden endings” in the vast majority of my stories.

Hey, it’s another Mass Effect rant!

Hey, it’s not like I have much else to rant about.

Bioware recently released a statement regarding a free DLC content, Mass Effect 3 Extended Cut, that expands and will hopefully fill in some of the gaping plot holes to the series.  Considering this was my primary complaint, I am content with this.  For the great majority of the fans (who are the epitome of entitled brats), it’s not even close to enough.  But it is my sneaking (and perhaps cynical) suspicion that nothing was going to satisfy these complainers, and I am perfectly fine with Bioware ignoring a group that is never going to be content.

In fact, if I was Bioware’s writing team, I would totally sneak in this current rage into the narrative with the Extended Cut.

(SEMI-QUASI SPOILERS INCOMING)

Shepard: You say that peace between synthetic and organic life is impossible?  I just brokered the end of a 300-year-old war between the Geth and the Quarians!

Catalyst: And how long do you think that peace will last?  Forever?  A hundred years?  A hundred days?  The “peace” you brokered was nothing more than a banding against a supposed common enemy.  The elements within the Quarians who seek to dissect and dominate the Geth still remain.  How long do you suppose they will wait upon the end of this threat before they resume their tireless march?

Shepard (thinking about Daro’Xen): …

Catalyst: Exactly.  Your meager frame of reference pales to mine.  I have seen this cycle unfold thousands upon thousands of times.  The end result has been the same; every… single… time.  Peace is fleeting.  War is inevitable.  It’s not even limited to synthetics and organics.  You organics are perfectly willing to massacre other organics for the flimsiest of reasons.  Truly, your only purpose seems to be the total annihilation of yourselves.  I do your kind a favor by preserving the species that advance before they eradicate existence for all life, synthetic and organic.

Catalyst: You are hardly the first species to protest.  You are hardly the first to fight.  I do not need to explain myself to you.  There is no way your simple frame of reference could possibly grasp the millions of years of experience I possess.  Just as you would not suffer the arguments of an infant trying to teach you the art of war, Shepard, I will not suffer your infantile babble about things you know nothing about.

Catalyst: I have given you your options.  You can either accept one of them, or you can do nothing and let the Reapers lay waste to what remains of your pathetic “combined might of the galaxy” and start the cycle anew.  THAT is your choice.  Be grateful I am giving it to you at all.

To be honest, that was my biggest complaint about the Catalyst at the end of the game.  It wasn’t nearly condescending enough to this insignificant ant that dared to argue against it.  I’m hoping that it gets the proper degree of dismissal for Shepard that it should have.

(END SEMI-SPOILERS)

Now, with that said… we get to the concept of artistic integrity, and its blatant misuse both by creators and fans.

Artistic integrity is the power to create a story in the way you see fit.  That’s it.  It is not a shield creators can use to ward of criticism.  You can’t create something terrible, and then say people don’t have the right to say it sucks because you want to keep your “artistic integrity” intact.

It is also not something to scoff at just because a fan doesn’t like how a story developed.  If a creator listens to your complaints, and ignores them, artistic integrity is not an “excuse”, it’s a “fact.”  They aren’t changing something because you don’t like it to spite you.  They aren’t changing it because that is how they want the story to develop, and that is their right.  If you don’t like it, that’s your problem, not theirs.  The entitled brats who write something like “Who Really Owns Mass Effect 3?” or try to file a complaint with the FTC to force Bioware to change the ending, are just that… entitled brats… and deserve the nothing they got.

I’ve gotten into some pretty heated arguments with ME fans because of how this third game ended, and some very angry words were exchanged on both sides.  I get what the fans are miffed about; they were promised that Mass Effect was “their story”, and they feel betrayed because Bioware took “their story” away from them.

And that’s the problem I have with the fans in this case.  I don’t care what some advertising department said, or what some company head said to stir up interest and try and drum up game sales.  The fact of the matter is, Mass Effect was not your story.  It never was.  Bioware didn’t take anything from you because it was never yours at any point to begin with.  They, like the Choose Your Own Adventure books of the past, didn’t actually offer you choice.  It offered you the illusion of choice.  The narrative of all three games was set before you ever put those discs in your console.

I understand that is probably a very bitter pill to swallow, and Bioware sure made a very terrible way to demonstrate it (although I am not going to claim that was their intent; that would require a degree of writing sophistication I don’t think Casey Hudson possesses), but that’s the truth.  Mass Effect was Bioware’s story from start to finish, and for 2 and 9/10ths games they did a spectacular job of fooling you into thinking it was yours.  I’m sorry if that hurts the people who invested the time and money into all three games to the point where they are emotionally wrought dry… but that is frankly not Bioware’s problem.

When I laid out the first drafts for The Second Gate, it was actually in response to how absolutely ridiculous I felt C.S. Lewis ended The Chronicles of Narnia.  Even at 14, I felt he had taken an intriguing retelling of many biblical fables, and turned it into a bitter, petty political rant about women, Muslims, and anything else that wasn’t a white Christian male.  But that was his story; that’s where he wanted to take it.  I wanted a story that reflected something else… so I wrote my own.

That’s my earnest advice.  If you want something that is your story, create your own story.  If you don’t want to do that, then you need to accept that you are at the whims of the people who are creating them for you to enjoy, and that you have no right whatsoever ever to demand they change that vision to suit you.

Hopefully, this will be my last rant on the subject.

Goodness gracious, three blogs in the last five days or so, and all about the same topic.  You’d think I was a Mass Effect fanboy or something…

… oh wait.  I am.

At any rate, having finished my first playthrough of the game (and seeing one of these “horrible endings” for myself), I think I’m ready to add some more thoughts to what I’ve already posted.

(SPOILERS INCOMING)

Firstly, what I liked:

– The game itself is very, very fun to play.  The interaction on the Z-axis (going up ladders, jumping) can be jarring at points due to the delay the game has processing that you actually want to jump over this gap or climb this ladder rather than just sprinting to cover.  Enemies and fellow players don’t always look entirely natural as they interact with the Z-axis either, there’s just something off about how they move when falling or climbing, but it’s a minor yip in what is otherwise a sound blend of combat and role playing elements.

The improved combat really shines when moving from cover to cover or dodging attacks in the open… it is all very seamless and feels natural.  Each weapon reacts differently, much like how different weapons have different feels in real life, and it’s both a challenge and a delight to see those little details.

Graphically, the game can be downright breathtaking, the visuals (whether derived from that awful “stock imagery” or not) can invoke powerful feelings.  Having been to London, seeing it in rubble by the last missions of the game was an almost painful experience, simply because it hit home that nothing was going to be the same in that universe, no matter what Shepard and his crew did (I’ll continue this line of thought later).

The Multiplayer is an enjoyable experience… it provides a challenging option for people who really don’t want to go digging around Reaper infested space to find every little war asset out there in order to get the “best” ending.  But even without that influence on the single player campaign, it holds its own, and is worth playing simply because it’s fun to play.  I honestly don’t think Bioware had to link the two in order to get people to bring people into the multiplayer option.

But what I loved the most in ME3 was what I loved the most in ME1 and ME2… the characters.  Their depth… their interactions… the voice actors knocked that element out of the park.  Each and every character in this game felt real.  Even the most minor bit player left you with the feeling that they all had a story, they all had a history and reasons for being where they were and doing what they did.  Even if you never got the chance to fully experience it, you could feel that depth there.

The characters were so well written and composed that you could feel every death in the series.  An example is a Quarian Marine named Kal’Reegar.  Players meet him all of twice, both times in ME2, and both times, those meetings are fairly brief.  It’s safe to say that I never really got the chance to get to know this character.  Yet, when a report reaches Shepard that this fellow had died defending a Turian asset on Pavalen… it literally felt like I had been punched in the gut.  I had to stop playing for an hour because it hit me that hard.  This game really tugs the heartstrings because you really feel invested in the people you meet… and reminds you that you’re only one person, and that you can’t save everyone.

Which brings me to the ending of the trilogy, that has so many people up in arms, fuming and raving and ready to riot outside Bioware because they were just so horrible.  And the critics are right; the endings are awful… but I don’t think most of them really understand why.

The biggest complaint I’ve heard through various outlets is outrage that all the different paths you take, all the different relationships you form, all the different people you save and lives you alter… you’re forced into one of three choices, and that nothing you had done previously changes the end result.  To that, I tell people… grow the f*** up.  Guess what?  That’s not horrible; that’s reality.  Sometimes, no matter what you do, no matter how important you think you are, the things you do amount to jack squat in the end.  Sometimes, you have to make a choice where there is no right answer.  Sometimes, life really doesn’t care what you did, and it’s going to do to you whatever it damn well wants to do to you, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

On that score, I have no problem with how the series was ended.  There was no pretty bow with sunshine, rainbows, and lollipops that could have possibly made sense.  As much as the first two games were about trying to make the world around you better… the third was all about trying to make the best of the worst possible scenario.  I respect Bioware for being willing to deliver such a harsh lesson, knowing a lot of Pollyannas weren’t going to like it.

Now bear in mind, that does not mean I think the ending was good… because it wasn’t.  It was actually quite poorly done.  And here’s why it failed, in my opinion.

Bioware’s writers thought they knew what their story was about; they thought they knew the story they were telling, and if you try to comprehend the story they were trying to tell, you can see where the ending makes sense, and would actually be quite good.  Their story, the one about the projected path of humanity as our technology reaches the point where the line between life and machine blurs irreparably, and the possible struggle between organic sentience and artificial intelligence, fits with how they tried to end it.

All the choices you have deal with how Shepard decides to handle this “singularity”, and how it reflects on humanity in this day and reality.  How will we approach this issue, as the line is already starting to blur?  Will we panic when the first machine says, “I think, therefore I am?”  Or has that moment already happened, and what will our reaction be?  Or will we try to yoke this life, dominating it like an oppressive god?  Or will we seek to unify the divergent paths and become something not wholly either?

In that context, the ending makes startling sense.  There is no clean resolution because there can’t be.  The uncertainty was the entire point. 

However, Bioware fell into a very common trap that a lot of creators fall into, and a trap I am terrified I will fall into myself as I seek to resolve my own intellectual property.  To put it as simply as I can; the story Bioware thought they were telling was not the story actually being told.

A fairly cynical literature professor in my university days once told me that the writer’s intent means nothing.  It’s what readers get out of it that is the only intent that matters.  I don’t entirely agree with this sentiment, because to be perfectly frank, readers can be simply wrong.  Not to mention that he had no problems marking me off on exams… if my interpretation was all that matters, why’d you give me an 86 on my English Lit 230 final, huh, Professor Tower?

However, I do believe that a story is not something that stays static, even as you are writing that final revision.  The tale gains a life of its own (which is fairly ironic considering how the Mass Effect story was supposed to center on the struggle of artificial life); it wants to take its own path… as the story unfolds, what it winds up telling can be very different than what it was supposed to tell.  If the writer is not aware of this as they are finishing the story, the ending simply won’t fit… because the lesson you are trying to impart does not fit what what you wound up laying out.

It would be like a math teacher laying out the First Theorem of Calculus… but if the class thinks he’s discussing the Pythagorean Theorem… all they hear is that A squared plus B squared equals… the function of X?  They then think this teacher is flat out insane, and has no idea what he’s talking about, even though he is assuredly more knowledged about both than all of the students in the room put together.

This is what I believe happened to Bioware, and it harkens back to what I thought the writers for the trilogy had done so brilliantly through the whole series.  The characters were so lush, their interactions so real, that the story stopped being about the struggle with synthetic life, and became about people struggling to survive and make sense of their own existence while facing impossible odds.  How do we respond when faced with what is likely annihilation?  What is the limit of courage and sacrifice?  How do people rise up when all seems lost?  How can we make sense of everything… when everything is falling apart right before our very eyes?

Players had come to attach deeply with the lives of Shepard and the different people that had comprised his crew over the course of these three games.  That is what the story had become.  And so when the ending offered no resolution for those characters, it was deeply and profoundly unfulfilling.  What was supposed to be an ending that demonstrated a blank slate instead came across as a horrible cliffhanger for characters who needed to know what fate had unfolded for them.

So yes, it was bad… in the same way that many endings really don’t seem to work.  I expected better of Bioware.  I expected them to be able to identify what their story had become.  That they didn’t wasn’t so much their fault, but mine for having such high expectations.  We are all only human, but it is still disappointing.

I’ll most certainly play the game again, but only because it’s a fun game to play, not to unlock the “secret” ending that still fails to deliver what I wanted.

Wow… a couple posts all within a couple days of each other.  Will wonders never cease?

Meanwhile, I have gone from being reluctant to commenting on other creative works to doing so twice in roughly 48 hours.  But eh… whatever.

(SPOILERS ARE FORTHCOMING, BECAUSE PEOPLE PRETEND TO NOT LIKE THEM… EVEN THOUGH THEY DO.)

In my last (fairly long-winded) rant, I commented about Mass Effect 3’s DLC “From Ashes”, and suspected that some very angry people were jumping to conclusions that may or may not be true.  Having now finally purchased and played such DLC personally, I feel safe to say that my initial suspicions on the matter feel very much correct to me.

I can see why Bioware (or EA) rejected this plot line as being a central element to the story.  To have this element being vital to the storyline would have felt like a glorious ass-pull; conveniently finding a surviving member of a race that made the initial designs for the weapon the Alliance was now trying to build?  There was very little chance that Bioware’s writers could have sold me on that, and for as difficult as I can be on myself when it comes to plot devices, I am notoriously easy to please when experiencing others.

It would have been horrible, but in the constraints it is currently in, it works… better.  I still think the entire premise is fairly fundamentally silly, but in its current form it creates a nice backstory lore and makes some very interesting observations on how people will read their own biases into things, whether or not these biases are accurate or not (I personally find Liara discovering the Protheans were pretty much nothing like the idea of them she had constructed in her head to be deviously amusing… because I see people do this all the time with historical figures even now).

As for it being worth the $10?  It really depends.  If you are a lore nut who squirrels away and reads every Codex entry as they pop up, and greedily grabs every detail of the Mass Effect universe you can (ya know… like me), then yes, it really is.  If that stuff doesn’t concern you and you’re looking for something that is an actual legitimate compliment to the main storyline… you’re better off saving those $10.

Meanwhile, since I have the post window open, I might as well bloviate on another ME3 related topic clogging my headspace.  That of Mass Effect’s favorite Quarian, Tali.

There’s a bit of an angry backlash over the entire event that finally revealed Tali’s face behind the mask to the player.  The rage is centered around the image actually being an altered stock photo, and reflecting laziness on Bioware’s part.  I think the anger is misdirected; not because it was “lazy”, or because it was a “stock photo” (gonna shock some people here, but you’d be amazed how much game imagery is based off of stock photos) but because the entire literary device used simply wasn’t very well executed.

I get what Bioware was trying to do.  In the first Mass Effect game, you never see Tali’s face, and the game’s lore suggests fairly strongly that you never will.

But then, in Mass Effect 2, the option to romance this shy, bookish, alien hottie with a crush on the hero (the number of fetishes this girl hits among the sci-fi nerd group is truly staggering) emerges, as well as her determination to let your hero see her face… except… the player doesn’t get to see it.  Her back is to the camera.

F***ers.

Then comes Mass Effect 3.  Depending on how it works out (I’m assuming the people who really care about this are the ones that went the extra three some odd side missions, reputation, and dialogue choices to get the best possible result), Tali and her people have their homeworld back; a place where they can eventually live without those “damned helmets.”  And sure enough, Tali does just that, taking off her mask to breathe the air of Rannoch for herself… with her back turned to the camera the whole damn time.

F****ers.  You did it to us again.  You got our hopes up all over again… teased us… taunted us… and we fell for it again, you devious, cunning, scheming fu…

… wait, what’s that?  You left us a gift, Tali?  In the cabin?  Oh.  Well, hey.  It’s you.  Without the mask.  Good one, Bioware!  You really had us going!   Good show!

…

At least, that’s what they were hoping for.

But really, guys, you know better than that.  If you’re gonna jerk around someone like that, you either completely jerk them, or your make-up effort has to be worth it.  A very low quality image sitting on the end table with no life or energy frankly doesn’t cut it, and that would have been true even if the image in question was a completely original artwork.  You executed the routine great, then completely flubbed the landing, and as such the entire routine suffered.

It wasn’t laziness, it wasn’t the stock photo, it was a literary device that just didn’t work.  There’s no shame or dishonor in that.  That happens all the time to the best of writers.  And that’s… okay.  We’ll live.

I normally don’t comment too much on the creations of others, but considering this topic pertains to a series I’m quite endeared to, I’ve decided to drop my two cents (whether you’ll pay that isn’t entirely supported by my sales)…

Mass Effect 3 announced a Day One DLC (additional content to a game released the same day the game is).  I’m not particularly bothered by this, for reasons I’ll explain later, but I could understand why some gamers would be irritated.  Except for… the fact this content was always intended to be part of the Collector’s Edition of the game (which many gamers spent extra money for), and is being offered to those who purchased the standard edition for what will still be less than the cost of the Collector’s Edition.

If you want to complain that companies shouldn’t be creating such tiered systems of content, or that DLC is getting out of hand and has become a tool for game companies to nickel and dime their customers, that’s fine.  I’ll largely agree with that sentiment.  But don’t be surprised or demand something for free when it was made clear months ago that this was going to be available for an extra charge.

The second complaint that has arisen from this entire controversy is one that I really think is being made from ill-informed opinions on how the writing and creating process works.  Since most people pretend to dislike spoilers (when in fact the large cross-section of humanity actually does… but that’s a story for another time), I won’t go into specifics.  I’ll only say that the complaint is that because a story line resembling the DLC “From Ashes” was found in leaked early scripts, that must mean that Bioware has taken out vitally important parts of the story, and are making people pay for the entire story that they shouldn’t have to.

On the surface, I can also understand this concern; and if that is what Bioware has truly done, I think they’ll discover this is a horribly short-sighted move to make money now at the expense of their reputation and that future games will suffer for it.  Video games aren’t like gas… if people don’t have to have it, they won’t buy it if they don’t want to.  If Bioware truly has gone down a very dark path of creating tiers of story content, it will lead to the end of their company.

Now here’s why I think it’s wrong to assume they have done so.

Critics have pointed to leaked early scripts that show this story line and its central character as an integral part of the ME3 tale.  Now I want you to talk to any author, any music composer, any scriptwriter, or designer, or artist… or hell, basically anyone who creates as a profession.  Ask them if their first draft is anything like how the final revision turns out.  99.999999% of the time, the answer you get will be “Hell no.”

Correction, the first response will either be a derisive scoff or hilarious laughter, then followed by “Hell no.”

Just because this element was integral to the story in its draft stages, does not inherently mean it is important at this point.  In fact, I would wager a good half of the material in the first drafts of ME3 doesn’t even remotely resemble how it shaped up into the actual game.  I can relate, as I am probably the worst at this phenomenon.  Anyone who would read my first draft of The Second Gate (not that anyone outside of the small handful that already has ever will), would be startled to realize that about the only thing that remains constant is a handful of names.  The characters, the plot, the places, all of them are starkly different than how they were originally planned.  There were more than a small handful of story elements that were absolutely vital to the first draft that are missing completely from the story in its finished form.

My theory is a fairly simple one, that I think explains the superficial importance yet demonstrates how it isn’t.  “From Ashes” was a plot line that wound up rejected, either by Bioware or Electronic Arts.  The story was then further constructed without it.  Then, at some point later in the games development, someone looked back, and thought, “Ya know, I don’t think we should give up on this concept.  I think we can salvage it.”  The result was a pared down auxiliary story line, but since a lot of the initial framework was already in place, it allowed Bioware to put it together much more quickly than content they normally composed from scratch.

As for charging for this extra content; I can’t say I disagree.  I plan on doing something similar myself.  When I am able to put The Second Gate together in a printed, dead tree form, I plan to include an extra short story, to this point unpublished, that will only be part of the printed version of the book.  This story doesn’t particularly add or detract from the The Second Gate itself (and you’ll actually get several hints within The Endtimer’s Legacy anyway), but I think it’s a nice addition for those who are willing to put forth the extra money to support my work.  I don’t see how this is a scam, or evil, or anything other than a nice added piece to those who give me extra money.

Anyway, that’s my two cents.  And I gave it to you for free.  Eat that, Bioware.

Well, the Ohayocon 2012 experience was an adventure, to say the least.  Between Fred having a cold (and summary laryngitis), and my bout of food poisoning through most of Saturday and part of Sunday (I will never eat at Noble Roman’s Pizza ever again), we weren’t exactly the most upbeat and happy pair at the convention.

But regardless, it was a remarkable positive experience, met some wonderful people, and even some old friends (like my buddy Naosa, who does some remarkable cosplay, you can see some of it at her website, http://naosa.deathcom.net/about/index.html).  Hopefully, the two of us will be invited again… because I would love to attend next year.

The new year marks a new appearance to the public.

Once again, I’ll be joining Fred Gallagher and his MegaTokyo cabal; this time at Ohayocon in Columbus Ohio, January 27th-29th.  Not sure if I’ll be engaged in any panels this time around or if I’ll just be manning the booth, but we shall see.  Youmacon went so well that I hope this convention will be as enjoyable.

My panel time along with Fred Gallagher has been confirmed as 9:00-11:00 am Saturday, November 5th, in the Renaissance Center main ballroom.  Nice big venue; should be a fun experience for everyone involved.

It’s possible I might get drafted into other panels in the convention, but that’s probably going to be a spur of the moment decision.  I’ll likely be at the MegaTokyo booth for the majority of the time otherwise… wherever that proves to be.