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!