Lucas Versantvoort / February 11, 2015
After the success of Mass Effect
and the even bigger success of Mass
Effect 2, everyone was awaiting with baited breath the game that would
conclude the story of Commander Shepard in stunning fashion. And in 2012, the
game hit store shelves and sure enough, the game was memorable, though for
other reasons than an ardent Mass Effect fan might hope.
The story starts with
Earth being attacked by the Reapers. You escape Earth in the SSV Normandy with
your crew and spend all efforts on gathering as many allies as possible.
Depending on your decisions in previous games, this might prove easier/more
difficult than anticipated. It is up to you to try to make everyone see the
bigger picture, that focusing on their own little quarrels doesn’t matter much
if the Reapers wipe everyone out in the process. This amounts to you helping
the other species and garnering favors and securing promises of aid against the
final assault against the Reapers. Meanwhile, Cerberus, the organization you
helped in the previous game, has turned against you, its leader (TIM) having a
plan of his own of ‘ending’ the Reaper threat. Eventually, you are informed of
an ancient Prothean superweapon that might prove key to wiping out the Reapers
and saving the universe.
So…the story. Is it any
good? I’m going to go with the always highly useful answer of ‘yes and no.’ It
is true that several sections are incredibly potent, but it’s offset against a
plethora of narrative issues: drivel like Shepard’s nightmares about the one
kid he couldn’t save on Earth. Puh-lease… You mean to tell me that after two
games of allowing you, the player, to decide Shepard’s character through
dialogue options and so on, now
you’re going to actively write him as a dramatic character? I’m sorry, but it
doesn’t work that way. What if someone’s renegading? After pragmatically
killing of hundreds of enemies—and sometimes entire species— in cold blood over
the course of two games, making Shepard go all emo about one boy just doesn’t
work dramatically. I also remember this clichéd missions featuring a bomb on
Tuchanka where the Turian Lieutenant Victus sacrifices himself to redeem his
honor and save the rest and of course he goes out with a one-liner: “Victory,
at any cost.” I can almost hear the
solemn trumpet solo in the background…
On the other hand, what the game does positively nail is
the feeling of things coming to an end now that the Reapers have finally showed
up. Even when I was just strolling through the Citadel, I had the feeling that
I should get my ass moving and save the Universe. There was this constant air
of melancholy permeating every second of the game. And that’s precisely the
feeling that, for better and for worse, BioWare was going for with this entire
game. It’s the same deal with Final
Fantasy XIII: there’s little to no exploration, because the main characters
are fugitives. In Mass Effect 3, the
Reapers are killing everyone, so there’s little to no time for sightseeing (no
exploring the homeworlds of the Turians and Asari); there’s only a race against
time to gather as many allies as possible and defeat the Reapers.
All in all, the story
is flawed (to speak nothing of the ‘radically different’ endings), but there
are times, as I said, when it gets it completely right. The perfect example is
the chapter involving the Krogan. This is where everything comes together,
where the gameplay is tense, the storytelling is tight and the choices are
meaningful. You can let Mordin sacrifice himself for the good of the Krogan
future, or, if you did certain things beforehand, can save him as well. You can
confront Mordin with your worries about future Krogan aggression and fatally
wound him, etc. The great thing here is that it feels like a self-contained
chapter that has a clear beginning-middle-end structure and builds on the
themes connected to the Krogan and Salarians. It all comes together
wonderfully. More importantly, it’s emotionally satisfying.
Speaking of which, that’s another problem with ME3, the fact that it has to tie
everything together and make sure your that all
your choices made in the previous games matter. It sounded ambitious when
BioWare first announced its plans of letting you transfer saves from one game
to the next, but in practice, it’s clear BioWare bit off more than it could
chew. Rather than having all your previous choices make a real difference, they
don’t mean a lot in the end, a fact emphasized by their being given a number of
War Assets. Remember the huge decision at the end of ME2? Whether or not to destroy or save the Collector base? All that
does in ME3 is give you a measly few
War Assets…whoop-dee-fuckin-doo. That’s the problem when you’ve created a
canvas as big as this: it becomes impossible to make all the player’s choices
matter without most of them feeling inconsequential in the bigger scheme of
things. The direct consequence is that you become more easily aware of the underlying
machinations of what triggers what event. You quickly identify certain short
scenes as being a little reward for you having done something in one of the
other games. It doesn’t exactly enhance the narrative flow when you’re like “oh
okay, he shows up, because I did this in ME2.”
You instinctively realize it doesn’t really matter. Minor characters make
little more than glorified cameos for one scene and are never seen again. It’s
the same thing that plagued ME2. To
save or not to save the Council; that was the big question at the end of ME and all it meant in ME2 were a few pointless scenes
featuring the Council, that’s it. It didn’t change anything substantial.
In terms of gameplay, the game suffers from/enjoys the
same features that separated ME2 from
the first game. Just like ME2 was
more of a shooter than an RPG, ME3
symbolically does away with all RPG elements and goes into full-on Gears of War mode and never looks back.
Oh sure, BioWare may have claimed they’d introduce “added RPG elements,” but
the simple fact is that no one in their right mind would consider this an RPG.
Even the classes themselves aren’t truly unique enough to provide for radically
different gameplay styles. In the end, it all boils down to moving and
shooting, getting behind conveniently placed cover and shooting, and so on…
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| Ugh... |
And don’t even get me
started on War Assets, a feature with which you can keep track of the support
you’ve gathered throughout the game (individuals, armies, technology and so on).
What baffles me is that it flat out tells you the minimum number of points
necessary to even get access to one of the main endings. It’s so immersion-breaking
it defies belief. So let me get this straight, you spend three games immersing
yourself into this universe and all these characters and prepare for the coming
onslaught of the Reapers and now you get a system that blatantly tells you when
you are ready to defeat the Reapers, the almighty species against which victory
is nigh impossible? Yeah…do you see how that doesn’t really fit into an
emotional storyline where you desperately fight to save the universe and
everyone in it? What kind of computer is even able to predict this, anyway!? I
understand that a game in the end is entirely ‘technical,’ that it takes into
account certain variables and that you are assigned a certain ending as a
result and all that, but how about we don’t confront the gamers with this
emotionally inert nonsense? You’re supposed to effectively suppress aspects of
game design, not shove it into people’s faces. Right after reaching the minimum
amount of points necessary, I remember thinking, “well, no matter what I do, I
guess I’m now able to defeat the Reapers.” Not exactly the kind of emotional
response you’d want to get out of a dramatic narrative. What's worse is that you need to compete online for assets, otherwise you can only gain 50% of all assets. So, 50% is gained through single player, while the rest through online multiplayer and iOs/Android apps. I was furious when I first discovered this, cuase it felt my single player experience was being fucked around with by needless online components.
Other things that left
a bad taste in my mouth are little things like BioWare’s decision to increase
Ashley and Liara’s cup sizes for what I’m sure was a very valid reason with
lots of narrative implications. Even worse is the inclusion of Jessica Chobot
as reporter Diana Allers who you can take with you on the Normandy, so she can
‘broadcast the truth to the people’ and all that. You can romance her, but it’s
just a fling, so why would you? For those of you who don’t know, she was
involved with IGN at the time, which casts an all the more dubious light on not
just her casting, but on the notion of ‘objective video game journalism.’ Just
this casting choice alone can easily make me dislike the game as a whole,
depending on my mood. BioWare also screwed up side quests, more specifically
the giving of objectives. Most side quests involve only going to some planet
and find some object or something, but the objectives don’t necessarily state
which planet you’re supposed to go to and even when they do, you’re not told
exactly where it is. Apparently, you’re supposed to just wander the galaxy and
hopefully stumble upon the right planet at some point. How do you screw up
something as simple as side quests? Another “new and exciting” feature was that
you could give voice commands through Kinect with a headset. How anyone could
think this is what gamers want is beyond me. Because you know…sometimes I look
at my controller and I think, “man, I wish I could just do away with all those
buttons and just talk to my TV, because that would definitely increase my
immersion into the game world and raise my enjoyment levels by at least 100%.” The
entire notion is just ridiculous, a failed attempt at blurring the lines
between your living room and the game world.
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| Just...wow... |
For what it’s worth,
there were enough good moments to warrant my purchase of Mass Effect 3. The attempt here was obviously to create a stunning,
emotionally compelling, cinematic finale and they somewhat succeeded. But for
every compelling moment, there were things that annoyed me: the fact that ME2’s teammates can’t join you on your
ship (BioWare instead obsessively focused on ME’s cast and gave ME2’s
cast a couple of cameos for good measure), the lack of conversations with your
teammates, the immersion-breaking War Assets, the lack of differences between
classes, Diana Allers, the fucking cup sizes, the relatively boring new
characters, the obvious appeasing of the LGBT community by shoving gay romances
into the proceedings (I have nothing against gays, but it’s weird how Shepard
and Kaidan can all of a sudden ‘bat for the other team’ even though this was
never implied in previous games, not to mention how underwritten Steve Cortez
was), EVE’s hot cyborg body, the dream sequences, not to mention the endings
themselves…and that final screen... BioWare tried and occasionally succeeded, but they bit off more
than they could chew here.
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