söndag 27 oktober 2019

It's the reapers!

Quoting my last post: "They are lovecraftian horrors as written by a 10-year old."

Basically the one concept that the whole Mass Effect trilogy centers around, they are the main villains, they are the underlying threat of the whole game. Most of the game, your main character stands there shouting "We need to fucking do something about those cockslapping reapers you morons!" at everyone who doesn't really want to pretend they exist.

First we should probably talk for a little bit about what lovecraftian horrors actually are.

H.P. Lovecraft was an early-20th century author who wrote weird horror fiction. His favourite topic was unknowable cosmic monstrosities, which is something that countless writers have completely failed to capture ever since then.

See, these cosmic horrors aren't just big, ugly, and dangerous enemies. They are beings entirely beyond the comprehensions of mere humans. It's not that you don't at the moment know where they came from or what they are, it's that they are beyond those concepts altogether. What are they like? They warp reality by simply existing!

A human being cannot even begin to fathom the nature of these horrors. In fact, even getting a tiny little glimpse at what they are will instantly drive you completely insane.

How old are they? You're not getting the point; they don't fit into the concept of time. The whole idea of "time" might just be a notion in the smallest dreams of one of these entities.

They are not enemies. They are not invaders. They don't come to kill us or turn us into slaves. They don't give half a thimbleful of jizz about us. It's like if the transdimensional omnipotent Q from Star Trek were to be said to be "enemies" with a single bacterium. One is so far beyond the other that the latter couldn't even describe the very simplest qualities of the former.

But writers, especially for video games, just can't seem to grasp that. To them, lovecraftian horrors are just big, dangerous monsters with scary voices.

And the influences from Lovecraft in Mass Effect are really obvious. The reapers are huge metallic monsters, modeled after cuttlefish, tentacles and all, that are so powerful that no ship in the galaxy can even hope to stand up to one. When encountered face to face, they speak with deep, rumbly voices and go on and on about how they are "beyond your comprehension" and shit.

Yet, those morons in the writer's office just didn't get it, because the reapers are in no way "beyond your comprehension".

In fact, they are very much within our comprehension; we know roughly when they were created, who created them, why they were created, why they harvest the galaxy every 50'000 years, how they procreate, and the code for their luggage(it's 12345).

This is bullshit.

Hell, they talk to the regular mortals. They speak to them, mock them, try to scare them, give them hints to their motivations. They communicate with them as equals.

"But" I hear you interject, clearly not understanding what a blog post is, "they don't treat them as equals, they constantly drone on about how they are superior".

Well, what they say isn't the problem, it's how they do it. The reapers intentionally speak in the language of the mortal they're speaking to. They speak, then pause to allow the other party to answer. They never interrupt the other party even when they clearly think they are absolutely wrong. Heck, Sovereign, the first reaper encountered, even makes a point out of saying he's terminating the conversation when he doesn't want to talk anymore, as opposed to just shutting up and terminating the link.

All those things are signs of politeness. They treat humans as equals in conversation, no matter what they pretend to do. I regularly speak to customers at work who show considerably less respect in a conversation than that supposed cosmic horror does!

After all this, the idiots pretending to be writers try to shoehorn in that concept I mentioned about these monstrosities warping reality around them. Except the effect they have is that their mere presence makes people around them gradually agree with them without realizing it.

Yeah...that's not really the same thing, is it? That doesn't make you a transdimensional horror, that makes you a politician.

And here's the killing blow, literally: They can be killed.

Yup, these things claiming to be beyond the understanding of mere mortals and who have neither beginning nor end...can be killed.

But what kind of magnificent device must one use to even hope to injure such a being? Guns. Just lots of big guns. Shoot at it a lot with really big guns and it dies.

Are you fucking shitting me?

"B-b-but" the voices in my head whine, "maybe the writers didn't want to create proper cosmic horrors, and just wanted to take some inspiration from Lovecraft!"

*places head firmly in palms* *where I found palms in this climate is a question for another day*

Let's say you created a superhero. You call him Man-bat, give him a brooding personality, a batcave, and dress him all in black. Then you have him exclusively pick fights with people in the open street in daylight.

At that stage, you might whinge all you like about how you "Wasn't trying to copy Batman...", but we all know damn well that you were, and you completely missed the point of Batman.

The reapers in the first game are presented as basically machine gods, which periodically murdered all civilized species for some unknown reason. Don't fuckin' come to me claiming they weren't trying to copy Lovecraft's monstrosities.

Fact is, though, that even though the first game treats them with more reverence than the last one, it still fails, because it still communicates with mortals, and is killed in the end by shooting at it.

So, clearly, EA's writers are absolute hacks.

onsdag 23 oktober 2019

Mass Effect 3

Greetings and salutations, my loyal mini...ehm...readers!

Usually I wouldn't be one to start a post saying sorry for not writing more frequently, and I'm not going to do so this time either, as I rather thought the birth of our daughter was more important than letting you enjoy the most fantastic blogging in history.

I was going to dedicate today's post to dickpunching the reapers of the Mass Effect series, but since I happened upon plenty of other material that's actually presented much more centrally at times than the reapers, in a game that's about a war against the reapers, I decided to dickpunch a bunch of other concepts.

See, there is so much in Mass Effect 3 to love. They've perfected the combat, and really made active abilities a central part of it at last. You also get to experience a much wider range of different locales, and certain story elements that should have been solved ages ago are finally solved. I'll just go head and list some major issues that really frustrate me and make me like the game a whole lot less than I should.

Before I start, maybe I should explain what the reapers are. They are lovecraftian horrors as written by a 10-year old.

#1: Cerberus. They are a pro-human splinter group that wants to control the evil reapers and thus make mankind the supreme rulers.

In the first game, they were cameo opponents at best; you stop a few nasty experiments and there's some flavour text, but that's it.

In the second game, they are the ones who resurrect the dead Shepard and give him the resources to stop the agents of the reapers. They are then portrayed as ruthless and pragmatic, but in the end wanting to do the right thing, at least for humanity.

In the third game, they are pretty much the main antagonists. They are 100% evil, and during large parts of the game they are much more prominent than the reapers themselves.

Why the flying fuck was this necessary?

The reapers are the greatest threat the galaxy has ever faced! They intend to wipe out all civilizations and leave no traces of them. When you have that, why would you ever need another major antagonist?! Apparently the writers of Mass Effect 3 just have no sense of how to write a story at all. There is no focus, clear end goal, nothing whatsoever to stick to, because apparently there are two main enemies, and we don't have a clue what the hell one of them is up to!

Look at Lord of the Rings; there is one primary antagonist, and we know what he wants. Then, there is a secondary antagonist, and we know what he wants as well. He is then defeated so the heroes can focus on the primary badguy.

In Mass Effect 3, the two stories just run parallel to each other, and Cerberus aren't beaten until just a tiny little amount of time before the big showdown.

So, who are we fighting today; the bigtime badguys, or the bigtime badguys?

Now, speaking of Cerberus...

#2: Kai Leng. He's a character that never appeared in either of the previous games. Apparently he came from some animated movie or some comic book or whatever.

You know what, EA? I don't want to keep up to date on three different fucking forms och media in order to know what's happening in the video game I'm playing. Why do you keep doing this; making gaps in the story of the the games that you fill in with other media? You know what, if I play a game I'm kind of expecting to be able to understand what the hell happens in it by...oh, I don't know, playing the damn game?

So, anyway, he's the loyal lapdog of the main antagonist of the game. Okay, one of the main antagonists of the game. Okay, the Illusive Man.

Notice how that paragraph points out both his place in the story AND his name, and an outsider would still not be able to reliable tell which faction he leads? That's not a sign of a good story.

Back to Kai Leng. Apart from being a lapdog and being spawned from a comic, he's also a super-duper-mega-awesome cyborg ninja! And he can do lots of awesome stuff, like be immune to bullets, vanish instantly at will, and jump backward 10 meters from the back of a flying car into the seat of another flying car!

*facepalm*

So, he's essentially a character from a Final Fantasy or Metal Gear Solid game transplanted into Mass Effect. What the everloving fuck? What absolute pathetic moron thought this was a good idea? Of course, we know someone must've loved him, because he shows all the classic signs of a writer's pet; everybody talks a whole lot about how dangerous and awesome he is; he pulls off stunts that are simply not possible in the setting in question; he gets cool oneliners; he's dressed all in black, has black hair, and has his eyes covered by some kind of cybernetics(or really weird glasses).

Hell, everytime he shows up is in cutscenes, so the player character just becomes a blithering idiot to show how awesome Kai Leng is!

There might as well be anime girls fawning whenever he shows up.

To remind you, this is in a game where some of your teammembers are; Cortez, a skilled pilot and technician who lost his husband in the invasion of earth; Tali, a member of the nomadic race Quarians, who is a mechanical prodigy; Garrus, member of the militaristic race Turians, who's got a strong sense of justice and likes to play it fast and loose with the rules.

He simply has no damn place in this game. He doesn't belong there. Not that such a minor inconvenience would ever bother the writer, who is clearly masturbating furiously every single time that character comes into view.

By the way, if you want a deeper analysis of the character, I can recommend [this link]. It's just a piece that I found on Google that I think nails it perfectly.

How does all of this translate into gameplay, then? Well, it really doesn't.

All those amazing things the game says he can do? They all happen in cutscenes. The only two times the game actually lets you fight him he has the moveset and abilities of a type of enemy you've faced lots of times through the game. During the first fight, you shoot out his shields three times, then he magically wins in a cutscene, and oh isn't he so fucking awesome? The only things making the last fight difficult are the enormous amounts of health they've given him and the fact that the area you get to fight him in is quite small. Even then, it's not a particularly hard fight.

And that is the perfect segue to...

#3: The cutscenes up the arse. This game is cutscene-tastic. It just doesn't want to hand over the controls to you if it can help it. It's pathetic really, how the game insists on showing off so much of it without any interaction whatsoever.´

But I get it; the devs want to make a movie, not a game, and you're ruining their movie by doing the stuff you do while playing it, man!

Here's the thing: in non-interactive media there is a saying; "Show, don't tell". It's simple; you should demonstrate things rather than just saying them. There's a character who is a skilled strategist? Well then, show him making smart strategic moves, don't just have other characters bang on about what an amazing strategist he is while you never demonstrate it in any way.

Well, in interactive media, there's another: "Do, don't show". Since gaming is a media where we are supposed to actively interact with the work in question, basing your game around the player sitting on its' arse and doing fuck all is a crappy strategy. Oh, this character has the ability to pull off these awesome moves? Then let us experience that in gameplay, don't just show that shit to us in cutscenes and leave the gameplay with regular old shooting mechanics.

Naturally, they insist on turning things into cutscenes when there's no fucking need to. You're holding back attacking enemies so you can evacuate a couple of civilians, and about a minute before everyone is seated and set to leave the game takes the reins and makes it a cutscene. Why the hell does it have to do that?! Was there any part of that last minute that couldn't be portrayed ingame?!

That might sound petty to you, but when that happens all the damn time you tend to get really damn tired of it.

Hell, they can't even do the cutscenes right. You know which single scene is the most common one? Have a guess.

...

...

Okay, did you guess "Prolonged cutscene inside of a shuttle while exciting stuff happens outside"? Then you can pat yourself on the back for being right.

They've decided that "Fuck it, we'll just let the player do as little as possible, we'll show them film sequences instead of all the cool stuff we want in this game!", and they can't even do that properly.

That's not to mention the fact that the last thing the devs would ever want is for their game to be judged as a movie rather than a game. It's got pathetic special effects by movie standards, the story meanders with lots of loose plot points just forgotten about, the pacing is all over the place, and the main character's actions are erratic at best.

Not to mention the worst one...

#4: Human facial animations. They are atrocious. It's like the job of animating the human facial expressions was given to a blind person who had heard descriptions of what human faces look like from another blind person who was also mute so he had to use sign-language.

I don't have much to say about this, other than that they've managed to cock up the facial animations royally in ME3, much more so than in the first game.

Next time, I'll be having a god at those damn silly reapers!