My only friend, The End

(The following text contains spoilers for the Extended Cut Mass Effect 3 ending.)


I am a passionate man. 

 Let all doubts about that be cast aside right now. When I feel something, I feel it down to my bones, and when something has caught hold of my attention, I tend to make it a large part of my life. Take Mass Effect, for instance. Those of you who have followed my blog for a while, and seen and maybe smiled sanctimoniously at my little comic strips will know that I really like the Mass Effect universe. Six out of the nine (or seven out of ten, if you count #5, which was never released) of the comic strips I've done have been about Mass Effect.  

(By the way, #11 should be done this weekend. Plug, plug, plug.)

 And those of you who somewhere out there on the interautobahn stumbled across a post on a desolate gaming forum filled with shameless self-promotion, and was curious enough to click the link provided, will also know that the ending to Mass Effect 3 was a huge disappointment to me. Rumour is, I wasn't alone. And though I did make a snarky comic about the original ending, distilling years of the game's creators' hard work down to three panels of venom, I well and truly loved the rest of it. And as time went by and lent me distance and perspective, I came to calm down on the subject. I still feel to this day that the original ending was a massive failure of storytelling, but it did ask some interesting questions. Questions that I will not try to answer here, because yesterday, most of them were answered for me, with the arrival of the Extended Cut of the Mass Effect 3 ending.
 
There is something I need to get off my chest, though it is not my intention to make it the focus of this post. BioWare, the game developer stated with the announcement of the EC that the original endings would not be altered, merely elaborated upon. This is simply not the case. A lot of key dialogue was changed, some phrases that left you with dire connotations for the future of the galaxy where snipped out, or blatantly contradicted. This is stuff that only nerds like me who had become intimately familiar with every word of the original endings in order to make some sort of sense out of the jumbled mess they used to be will notice, but to me it seems clear. BioWare did not simply elaborate, the changed the implications of the endings, to make the prospect of what awaits the Mass Effect universe after the Reaper war a brighter one. And that it sort of disappointing to me, because as I've said elsewhere, I never wanted them to change the endings, no matter how much I hated them. I've said it before on this blog and elsewhere; I don't believe that you should backtrack on a published work. Let the original speak for itself, because that was your vision, and I feel you should stand by it.  

That's not to say that this new ending (please note that I've only seen the "Destroy" and the "Reject" endings)   wasn't very well done, and that I didn't enjoy it, because I did. I'm just a little disappointed that they felt the need to actually change what was already done.  But let me at last arrive at what I wanted to talk about in this post; the Reject ending, which seems to be the one that catches the most ire on the BioWare forums. (Seriously guys, enough with all the hate. What's done is done, and right now, the world needs more love.) In short, the reject ending gives Shepard, the protagonist, the option of rejecting the three options he is given for solving the Reaper conflict, and basically give a big, fat middle finger to the annoying AI that wants to force these choices on him. Of course, without making any of these choices, the armada of warships you've gathered throughout the game, formidable as it may be, cannot stand against the incredible might of the Reapers. You can reject the choices, but there is no Deus Ex Machina waiting for you just out of frame. Your resolve to stand up to him, and spit his choices back in his face does not impress the evil AI. As a result, the Reapers win, wiping out all of the advanced civilizations in the galaxy. Including humanity. This has caused some fans to get angry, as they believe this is a massive "fuck you" from BioWare, given that the reject option was one of the most requested additions to the EC.  

After the battle, you are treated to another scene, in which it is strongly indicated that your efforts against the Reapers did actually yield some beneficial results, and that is was enough to prepare the civilizations that rise in the millennia after the humans and the turians and the asari and the krogan and the quarians are long since forgotten for the next Reaper cycle. Your actions gifted them with the strength and knowledge to fight and destroy the threat once and for all.  I love this notion. For it is the only option before you that does not involve a massive ethical sacrifice to be successful. (Maybe apart from the new Destroy ending.) Your entire race may be wiped out, but it did not have to become something else, something vile in the process. You stood your ground, you went out swinging, and you ensured that the ones that come after you were ready to defeat this great threat. You sacrifice yourself, but you choose not to sell your soul. And in my naive, idealistic ways, I believe that is what it is to be human.  

At the very least, it is an ideal it is worth trying to live up to. Thank you BioWare, for an extraordinary game series, and a vessel for emotional investment that few works of fiction have ever given me. Though I still believe that you stumbled a bit with the original ending, which may have made me spout some angry, empty threats about not buying anything Mass Effect-related ever again, rest assured that I am and will remain a fan, and that I will be looking forward to whatever project you release next.  

Just maybe try to have someone honest look at its ending first, and trust them to tell you if it’s shit.               

QTMC 10!

Here it is, the decennial edition of Quick Time Moral Choice, written by yours truely, I'm sad to say.

(So is everyone else, Hjels...)

Unfortunately, I got no submissions for the guest writer spot, but I soldiered on on my own, completely alone in the cold, bitter wilderness. Like a bear cub, lost from it's mother, trudging across the barren tundra, I walked with no salvation in sight, with only my own unshakeable belief in the project for company. When the night was at it's darkest, I...

I seem to have lost my train of thought...

Ah yes! Read, enjoy, be back for more. Please...

Quick Time Moral Tales 4

Less of a campfire tale to delight and amuse, and more of a reckless tap-dance through a minefield this week, as I try to tackle the slightly controversial topic of women's depiction in video games. And let's be honest right from the start; it's quite sad, isn't it? Let's establish that right now. Apart from a few noteworthy examples, female characters are over-sexualized and passive or preternaturally bad-ass and extremely over-sexualized. Neither of which is good characterization in my book. 

(Oh really, Hjels? Mr. Never-been-published... Tell me more about characterization.)

A lot of bloggers have tackled this subject before, and probably quite a bit better than me, so instead of storming at it head on, I'll sneak around the outskirts, and focus this post around the thing that bothers me the most. Utility.  

Warning: Games spoiled in this blog post: Prince of Persia: The Warrior Within, Various Tomb Raider games, Mass Effect 1+2

The Quickest Way to a Woman's Heart

"The right tools for the right job." That's what my father taught me, when I was young. A mountain hiker wears sturdy, comfortable boots and layers of clothes to keep warm. A firefighter wears a helmet and clothes that don't catch fire even if it gets quite hot. A hockey goalie wears enough padding to not be killed by the small rubber missiles launched at him at 200 mph. These people all dress from utility. They dress so that they are equipped for the task they are faced with. With that in mind, could someone please tell me what task this young lady us dressed for? Take your time.

You back? Hey! Eyes up here, buddy!

That's right, that's Shahdee from Ubisoft's 2004 game Prince of Persia: The Warrior Within, and in my mind, a, if not the prime example of all that is wrong with women's depiction in video games. But instead of going into all the pandering atrocities this character consists of, let's get back to utility. What task is this woman equipped for?  It would have to be something indoors, seeing as she's hardly wearing anything at all. And given that the first time you meet her in the game, she's on the deck of a ship in a raging storm; I have an issue with this already.  She is obviously a warrior, so wearing some kind of armour is something I'd at least consider, but it doesn't look like she's... Oh no, wait, there is. I just couldn't see it without squinting. 

Now, I'm not going to claim to be any kind of armouring expert, but to a layman like me, it seems like the prime function of any kind of body armour would be to protect major organs, most of which are located in the human torso, something her metal bikini somewhat fails to do. Even the inside of her thigh, which houses one of the biggest arteries in the body, is completely exposed. And here we come to the heart of my problem.    

I cannot respect a character that is designed with a bigger emphasis on titillation than utility. Stylizing the character is one thing, and it can be done really well, but sadly, stylizing a female character these days just means giving them impossible proportions and breasts big enough to give the most adept yoga master back-pains for life.  I'm not even going to go further into the body design, because it's been discussed by smarter people than me before, and this little article isn't about that. But we should all be alarmed when even I, Hjels, a prototypical disgusting, hairy sweaty man who unabashedly enjoys ogling the many iterations of the female form, am embarrassed to talk about my hobby because it seems incapable of portraying women as anything but an object of desire for the male eye. 

Shahdee is the banner figure for a trend that if it continues, will prevent video games from ever growing up as an art form. But all is not hopeless. Occasionally, someone gets it right. And I will get to that in a moment, but first I'd like to discuss another character, one which you may disagree with me actually does a few things that should be applauded.

Namely, Lady Lara Croft. I completely understand if anyone with strong feminists sensibilities reading this just got a drop or two of their green tea down the wrong pipe just now, when I claimed that the prototype for the over-sexualized female character in gaming has any merit as an antithesis to what our friend Shahdee represents. Believe me when I say that I completely see that point of view. However, going back to the criteria I'm focusing on today, utility, Lara stands head and shoulders above most of her sisters. Some of the time. Well, at least, there is an effort involved.

She knows how to equip herself for any climate or environment. If she's exploring ancient Himalayan ruins in sub-arctic temperatures, she wears clothes that keep the cold out. If she's diving, she wears a wetsuit. If she's trudging through the tropics, she wears something breezy. Everything about the character does not work quite as well, though. She is clearly designed as eye candy to the player. In her first few outings she had an impossible large chest, which quickly became her key identifying attribute, which is a shame, seeing as she has a lot going for her. She is well educated, she is supremely competent and above all, she is driven. Not driven to find a man to protect her, but driven to seek out adventure. In recent games, ms. Croft has received a bit of a redesign, making her appear slightly closer to human, but she still has a lot of characteristics pandering to the lowest common denominator. But all in all, I'd say she is a step in the right direction. There is nothing wrong with an attractive character, as long as she has other redeeming features that ensure that she is not defined solely by her looks. I cannot respect a character like that. In the end, Lara doesn't quite get a pass. But a B for a manner of effort. 

Throughout recent gaming history, there have been a few really good female characters that don't cause the usual eye rolling I tend to experience when booting up a new game. Jade from Beyond Good and Evil, and Alyx Vance from Half life 2 are two examples that usually come up when this discussion arises. Me, I'd like to finish this article by going to one of favorite game universes, Mass Effect. The obvious place to go here would of course be the female version of the player controlled protagonist Shepard, otherwise known FemShep across the internet. Sure, FemShep is in many ways a good example of a strong female character, but there is one problem I have with putting her forth as the poster for the proper way to write a video game woman who you can respect. 

She was written as a man. 

The Mass Effect games give the player the option of customizing their Shepard character, down to appearance, back-story, personality and gender. But apart from the voice acting, which is stellar, there is nothing to give FemShep her own character traits to separate her from her male counterpart, because the character behaves the same way regardless of sex. This results in the character taking on a lot of masculine virtues and mannerisms, which isn't a bad thing, considering that Shepard is a supremely accomplished soldier with the fate of galaxy resting on her shoulders. But the mere fact that she is simply a female version of another character makes me want to look elsewhere. Like for example Dr. Liara T'Soni. Now I have to preface this part by saying that Liara is not technically a woman; she is an alien, from a species that... You know what, forget it. Liara is in every way a female character.

Now, what are the chief characteristics of Dr. T'Soni? When you meet her in the first Mass Effect game, she is working as an archeologist, specializing in the Prothean civilization, an extinct species which a strange relevance to Shepard's ongoing mission. Though she has achieved her doctorate at a young age, she comes across as somewhat naive and timid, and more or less remains so for the duration of the first Mass Effect game. She is a romancable option for the player character of Shepard, whether Shepard is male or female. It is in Mass Effect 2 that Liara really comes into her own, and more specifically the DLC called Lair of the Shadow Broker. When Shepard encounters Liara in the game, two years after the events of the first game, she has gone through some tough ordeals, which has led her to a career change. She is now working as an information broker, buying and selling information, one of the hottest commodities in the Mass Effect universe. It is immediately apparent that she has changed in a significant way. She nurtures an obsession. 

This may not seem like much, but to me, this is a truly refreshing bit of storytelling, because obsession is usually a character flaw seen 9 times out of 10 in male characters, very rarely in female ones. When Shepard asks Liara to come with him on his mission, she flatly refuses, and not until Shepard offers to help her accomplish her own goal does she agree to team up again. Utility. She doesn't drop everything that's important to her just because the handsome hero comes calling. She has her own agenda, one she even takes too far little while later. When Shepard gets knocked down in a fight with one of the villains, and said villain proceeds to flee, Liara gives chase, without even throwing a glance in Shepard's direction. Not a nice thing to do, but good characterization for a character like Liara and the place she is in emotionally. 

**Please note, I'm about to spoil the ending of Lair of the Shadow Broker**  

After a rip-roaring chase through a metropolitan skyline, and a brutal fight through the antagonist's hidden space station, Liara and Shepard find themselves face to face with the intimidating final boss. And it is Liara, not Shepard who takes charge. Shepard is along for the ride, and actually goes toe-to-toe with the boss at one point, but in the end, it is Liara who not only figures out how to defeat him, but also executes the plan. It is in every way her show, and she is the one who comes through in the end. And only after her enemies are conquered and his empire is now hers, does she let her shields drop, and you see that underneath, she still has all her insecurities and her doubts intact. She just doesn't succumb to them when the situation calls for her to hold it together. 

I'm pretty sure I lost my own direction at one point during the writing of this blog post, (I'll blame the fever I've been hallucinating my way through this past week for that) so let me return to the post's initial point. 

When creating a character, be they male or female; equip them for what they will be facing, physically and mentally. And if your character is going into a sword fight, for the love of God, put armour plating on them, no matter how tempting it is to show off her lovingly rendered cleavage. 

Because the quickest way to a woman's heart; it goes right through the rib cage, just like with the rest of us.    

Quick Time Moral Choice #3 (really!)

"Whoa, dude!" you might say. "What's up, bro!?" you might continue.

And I would understand exactly where you are coming from. Well, here it is, children. I promised you a new strip in august, and I have duly delivered!

...in April the following year...

Now, I will not get defensive, and try to defend my lack of updates, other than to reiterate the fact that I am a lazy, lazy man, and leave it at that. And I will not make any more concrete (and empty) promises like last time. I will only attempt to make these appear more frequently. (Less frequently is hardly possible, am I right?)

Anyway, here is QTMC #3. Hope you enjoy it.

Thanks by the way, to @killjoi (that's twitter, kids) for helping me do a last minute re-write.