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...

I hated you so deeply because I loved you so dearly

Preface: This article contains massive, MASSIVE spoilers for Mass Effect 3. Do not read beyond this point if you don't want the entirety of the story spoiled.   


In December of 2007, I bought an Xbox 360 for the first time. I wasn't planning on doing it. After all, I'd been a PC gamer for several years, and the new consoles coming out offered me nothing that my gaming rig couldn't do better. And still, right before Christmas, I hurried down to the electronics store, and bought it, armed with a single point of justification: Mass Effect, Bioware's latest RPG was at the time an Xbox exclusive. From what I'd heard, it was a game right up my alley. An epic quest, a host of interesting, crazy characters and a genuine impact from the players own choices. I got home, booted up the game, and so began a four and a half year long love affair that was to culminate in one of the most soul crushing entertainment-related disappointments I've experienced: the ending to Mass Effect 3.
 
Let me get this on the table first of all: I love Mass Effect 3. Whoever said that video games are incapable of eliciting genuine emotion from the player is either talking out of his ass, or is unable to empathize with fictional characters. On three separate occasions during the course of playing Mass Effect 3, I was genuinely choked up with tears in my eyes. On a further two, the impact of the choice I'd just made rocked me so hard I had to get up and go for a long walk to process the implications of those choices, which are monumental. And I'm not some overly emotional sap either. I'm a big, hairy, sweaty man who keeps his feelings locked away at the bottom of a deep pool replenished by alcohol to keep them at bay. But oh my God; Wrex, the 800 pound alien lizard I've spent the last three games with just told me he considers me his brother. I love you too, Wrex!  


I think that's where Mass Effect's appeal comes from. The characters and the interaction between them. Take Jack for instance. When she is introduced, she (yes, she) appears like nothing but a tired archetype. An angry, powerful, borderline psychotic killer, with a tragic past which we've seen a million and one times in our games before. And while it's possible to get under the skin of the character in Mass Effect 2, you always kind of feel like she is a bit of a lost cause, that she'll never evolve into anything more than a biotic bad-ass, who doesn't care about anything.  


That's why the direction BioWare chose to take the character in for Mass Effect 3 was such a pleasant surprise. When you meet her again in the trilogy closer, she has evolved in a very interesting direction. During the Grissom Academy mission early on in the game, you find her having taken a position as a teacher for a group of biotic kids. It's an unexpected, but not uncharacteristic evolution. She retains her core personality, she doesn't hesitate to use her considerable powers to mercilessly kill her enemies, but she no longer does it for the thrill or for the hell of it. She does it to protect her students. It's not breaking new ground; it's not exceptionally good story-telling, but it really enjoyable and satisfying. That’s how I've always considered the Mass Effect games, like immensely entertaining pulp novels. For me, Mass Effect is, all hyperbole aside, the Star Wars of my generation. 


Which is a bit ironic, given that I'm actually old enough to be of the actual Star Wars generation.  


For nearly 30 hours, Mass Effect 3 was a thrill ride, the likes of which the gaming medium rarely delivers. The galaxy may feel a bit small at times, and the suspension of disbelief is stretched a bit thin at times, seeing as in a universe of billions upon billions it's never far between the familiar faces showing up seemingly by accident. But it works anyway. During the thirty hours it took me to reach London and the finale, my Shepard, "Vanilla John" as I like to call him, has been through some incredible things. Not only has he helped cure the thousand year old sterility plague which has kept the Krogan race subjugated for all that time, he has ended the threat of the geth, a race of sentient machines who decided to side with his enemy once to many and given the exiled quarians their planet back. He has also rekindled with whirlwind romance with Tali, the Russian-sounding quarian mechanic, fist bumped his way through his continuing bromance with Garrus, the rogue police-officer turned space-batman turned military strategist, and shared his hopes and fears for the future they're fighting for with gal-pal Liara, in addition to dozens of little events and scenes that make Mass Effect 3 one of the most memorable game experiences ever.  


And then you get to the end. Those of you who saw my last comic strip will know more or less exactly how I feel about it.


 It's really bad. Badly written, badly staged and such a sharp tonal shift I had to be examined for whiplash afterwards. It's horrendously bad. And I know bad fiction. I write bad fiction all the time, so I feel I can speak with authority on the subject. Basically, after fighting your way through London to get to a poorly defended space elevator, and being decimated by a Reaper laser, which also probably killed your teammates, you stumble up through the elevator to reach the big space maguffin (the crucible) which is apparently the only way of defeating the Reapers, the giant sentient space ships who are laying waste to all advanced organic species, you are suddenly taken on another, smaller magic space elevator, and set face to face with a little ghostly looking child in the familiar form of a human kid Shepard has been struggling with feelings of guilt for not being able to save in the beginning of the game. 


The ghost child then tells you that he is the one controlling the Reapers.  I had a bad feeling right there. If there is one sci-fi cliché I well and truly hate, it is when the main villain is introduced out of no-where literally in the last 10 minutes, just so he can cackle "it was me all along. MOHHAHAHA!" The ghost kid doesn't actually cackle, but he may as well have. Then the narrative starts sliding. The ghost offers you three choices on how to solve this conflict, to control the Reapers and die (don't ask), to destroy the Reapers and maybe die (again, don't ask), or to synthesize all sentient life in the galaxy into a single, organic/synthetic life form, to avoid an hypothesized conflict which is apparently the ghost's motivation ( what did I just tell you?)  


I have to kill you to save you. Imagine that, another sci-fi trope I hate down to my very soul. 


Oh, and by the way; picking any of these choices will demolish the mass relays, the ancient, mysterious superhighways which uphold the galactic infrastructure, rendering long distance space flight impossible. Why? Because space magic.  A little aside: Is it just me who's concerned with the moral of the synthesis ending? Because it makes it seem like only way to avoid conflict is to stamp out any sign of individualism or diversity. That's communist and racist in one package!  


Anyway, after being given these three choices, it is now the perfect time for Shepard to call on the strength of the considerable galactic fleet he has amassed to combat the Reapers to bomb the living shit out of the space station which the two of them are standing on, going down in a fiery blaze of glory, holding his middle finger high at the little shit how has the gall to give Shepard three stupid choices, which are all the same in the end anyway. 


 But no. Shepard can't do that. For three games and nearly a hundred hours, Shepard has defied the odds, and played by his own damn rules. But now, as he finally stands face to face with his enemy, he figures he'd rather not question the choices laid before him, and take whatever comes. And take it he does, no matter how much you as the player scream at him to sack up, and at the very least try to dig some clarity out of the little nonsense-spouting space spirit. You have to pick one of the three endings, which more or less boil down to which colour you want to destroy the universe with, blue, green or red.  And if that wasn't silly enough, you get a little bonus scene where you see your crew racing across the galaxy in your space ship, going... somewhere. It's never made clear where they are going, but they get hit by the coloured shockwave you just triggered up in the crucible, and crash.  


On a livable planet somewhere.  


With no scorch trail behind the ship.  


The door to the ship opens and out steps your pilot, who by the way suffers from brittle bone disease, and should have crumbled completely by the force of his ship falling out of the sky. Not content with that, however, you also find out that at least one of your teammates, who a moments ago was being burned to death by a giant laser at the space elevator, was also somehow on the ship. And then they walk off.  And that's how the game ends.  


Actually, there is another scene after the credits, but it's just too much for me to go on about. I was devastated. There was no way the amazing adventure that was the Mass Effect trilogy could end this way. I thought I must have picked the wrong ending, so I spent the next hour playing through the other two, only to realize they were almost exactly the same. So where does the ending of Mass Effect leave us?  


First of all, the mass relays are gone, so everyone is pretty much trapped where they were the moment the crucible fired its magic shockwave. Which is bad news for earth, given that pretty much every military space ship in the galaxy is orbiting it. Especially since it's been burned to cinder over the last few months. So as any student of history will tell you, this will lead to a war for the few resources that are left. All the aliens who are stranded, with no chance of ever seeing their homes again will turn on each other, and nearly finish the job the Reapers started.  


Meanwhile, your crew, who lack the genetic diversity to create a new civilization, will have to languish on this unknown world they find themselves on for the rest of their lives with only each other for company, and an unknown access to sustenance. Cheerful stuff. 


Mass Effect 3 is one of my favourite games of recent years. It is an absolutely fantastic game. But it leaves you utterly confused and depressed in the end. The ending veers hard away from any internal logic which has been established, it's difficult to believe the last 20 minutes are from the same game you've spent 30 hours with. The ending as it is, as I see it, is utterly broken, and I don't see any way it could be salvaged. 


Still BioWare, bless their hearts, are going to try, submitting to the massive fan outrage the ending triggered, and announcing new, free DLC which is meant to offer more clarity and closure to the ending as it stands.  I say this without snark or sarcasm: I think that is a good olive branch to those of us who loved so dearly and then hated so deeply. Despite my utter disdain for the ending, I never wanted them to change it after the fact, something a lot of fans did, and are still pissed off that they now definitely won't do. As an aspiring (read: failed) story-teller myself, I don't believe in narrative mulligans. You live with your decisions, no matter how much your audience hates you for it. 


And that I can respect BioWare for. They are still my favourite video game developer, and I'll probably continue to buy their games. I just wish they hadn't fouled up the ending to the greatest space saga in a long time.      

QTMC #8

Comic strips! You guys remember I used to dabble in that, right?

Well, I'm back, my beautiful readers, with the brand spanking new Quick Time Moral Choice numero 8, and for the first time, it's actually topical. By now I suppose all of you have heard of the ending debacle surrounding this year's most anticipated trilogy closer, Mass Effect 3, and that very ending which I won't spoil here, affected me so much that I had to make a comic about it. In short, I was severely dissapointed by the amount of plotholes and the lack of closure the last 15 minutes of the final game in my favorite games trilogy provided.

So, drawing this was a means of catharsis for me, and hopefully, for you as well. Unless you liked the ending of course. Then I'm happy for you. I'm still just as devasted. And yes, I know it bothers me disproportionally. There are alot of problems in th world which should take presedence, but it's Mass Effect, dammit! Damn BioWare for making me love too much, and then punch me in the face, as I closed my eyes and leaned in for the kiss.

Anyhoo, since alot of you may not have finished the game, and the comic strip spoils it completely, I've hidden it behind the link you'll find below. Promise me that you won't click it until you've finished the game. Promise!

You sexy thing...

Quick Time Moral Choice 8

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.    

QTMC #6

Aaaand, here it is... My quickest turnaround from conception to finished product yet, and maybe a promise of  more frequent updates in the future. Maybe.

In the mean time, I hope you enjoy it. As always, I'd love it if some of you could leave me with a comment or two? Please? Just one?

I'll dance for you...