Mass Effect is back, baby!

 Time to back to the Milky Way, when these games were still good!

After all these years finally, my favourite Bioware franchise is ba- okay maybe not my favourite, but their best space ser- okay not that either. Best modern seri- Nah, 'Dragon Age' has really outstripped them there. Why is it that we want Mass Effect back again? Okay, I'm being a little facetious, Mass Effect has been as much a beloved part of my past as it has been for a great many others, actually going some way to solidify my definition for what makes a solid Science Fantasy world. It's a setting with just enough science in it to seem kind of believable if you tilt your head and squint your eyes, an undeniably epic narrative that set's it's scope so ridiculously high that we're literally talking about the fate of the sentient galaxy and, most importantly, a whole cornucopia of really well-designed and interesting aliens to make the whole affair more interesting. (are you paying attention Starfield?) Even as I heard news of this series and tried to act all aloof and uninterested, all it literally took was that glorified teaser trailer in which new character models were shown off to win me over whole heartedly. I want me some old school Mass Effect.

But what new trailer am I talking about? Well that would be the trailer which was released on N7 day to finally reveal that which the wider gaming audience have theorised to be true for an obscenely long time now, that Bioware have been working on an all-in-one remaster pack for the Mass Effect trilogy. (Talk about the worst kept secret) Following the trend of profiting on your already released content so late that this game is going to come out solidly rooted in the next generation of consoles, 'Mass Effect Legendary Edition' proposes to do the impossible and smoosh together these three humungous games into one affordable package with all the DLC intact. (Would you believe that I still haven't played the Mass Effect 3 Citadel DLC? I actually have some reason to buy this!) Of course, there are still some finer details that we don't know regarding this pack which we can only hope the coming months will elucidate us on, like if the final game has been retrofitted in order to make it so that the multiplayer isn't heavily necessary to get the best possible ending, but I just wanna bask in the glory of the announcement right now, thank you very much.

Rather confusingly, these remasters are said to be headed our way by Spring of 2021, yet the only consoles listed currently for release are of the current Gen. (Which I think can now be considered officially 'Last Gen', no?) The team have promised there will be some targeted upgrades made for the 'next gen' consoles, but it does seem like a trick has been slightly missed in not letting newer consoles have their very own copies. It's just sort of weird for such an anticipated release to come out and then immediate expect it's audience to get on the backwards compatibility train in order to play it. (I mean, I would totally be down for it, it's just a little odd is all.) But even with that sleight blemish I have to admit that the prospect of diving into this adventure once again is more than a little tempting.

The original Mass Effect trilogy is perhaps Bioware's greatest achievement to this day, in that there's a three act epic resplendent with memorable set-piece moments, unforgettable characters, emotional highs and Aliens. Mustn't forget the Aliens. Personally I consider it the watershed moment for Western RPGs where they learnt the ways in which they could define themselves distinctly from their Japanese counterparts. There was choice and consequence, events that would bleed into multiple games and multiple endings realised through slideshows. (Oh those multiple ending slideshows, how I don't really miss you but a lot of other people out there seem to think they're really important so I'll pretend I care too.) I genuinely do believe that every significant Western RPG that has launched since Bioware's first renaissance owes something in it's inception to Mass Effect and Dragon Age; they're an immutable part of gaming history now.

Personally I've always held these games very close to my old ticker. I was first introduced to the franchise through an article in a gaming magazine which remarked in the complexity of the lore, and that was enough to get me interested. (Games back then were almost insultingly straightforward, I wanted something with a bit more substance) Then I found myself lucky when a friend straight-up offered me the first game from their recently acquired collection after remarking that it was a game they probably wouldn't enjoy. And in stark contrast I enjoyed the game tremendously, too much, one might say. I completed the first game in a week. (For those who haven't tried it, that's pretty darn fast considering the amount of side content alone.) Since then I have completed Mass Effect 1 almost as many times as I would a Bethesda game, I'm that helplessly hooked!

Of course, being this familiar with the franchise does mean that I understand a lot of people's concerns when they remark that it's a little strange to include the first Mass Effect in a pack along with the next two. Whilst Mass Effect 2 and 3 are logical escalations from one another, both in story and gameplay, Mass Effect one feels like a messy and like a slightly too-experimental jump into the world of third person action by Bioware. The gameplay is clunky at times and the difficulty levels clearly haven't been balanced, the characters in animation and ability are incredibly stiff during action moments and the talents are either pitiful weak or so essential that your entire gameplay experience will revolve around spamming them. Essentially, Mass Effect 1 had huge gameplay issues that were almost entirely rectified for Mass Effect 2, and many hoped that ME 1 would therefore be granted a slight remake for such a collection pack. If that is the case, however, Bioware certainly aren't telling anyone about it. (Almost definitively indicating that it most certainly is not the case.)

However, Mass Effect Legendary Edition isn't the only 'surprise' that Bioware had up their sleeve for N7 day, because the team also took the time to reveal (once again) that they are working on yet another Bioware game and they haven't abandoned the franchise the same way that they abandoned both the DLC and plain patching plans for Andromeda. (Good thing we've all forgotten about that betrayal.) To celebrate this momentous re-announcement, Bioware greeted us all with a single picture representing the new game and yep... that sure is some concept art... I don't know what we're really supposed to say about the picture, there's nothing identifiably Mass Effect about it whatsoever and, in fact, with the 'whole wide-open tundra' and 'twin celestial bodies' vibe going on this sort of looks like Tatooine from Star Wars. You guys are going to have to pull a little more out of your hat if you wanna charm this old lug.

But that's all in the future and this event was all about unashamedly cementing ourselves in the past like the nostalgic windbags we all are deep down. (I guess not so deep for me, eh.) For now we have opportunity to entwine ourselves in the war against the Reapers whilst feigning complete ignorance to the mediocre sequel series that is desperate to start budding itself despite literally showcasing nothing thematically unique about itself. (Deep breaths, focus.) In many ways I see this as an impending reunion with old, beloved, friends; the likes of which makes me smile to think about. To see Liara, Rex, Mordin and, most importantly, Garrus, again, is a late Christmas gift I could have never anticipated, and am already thankful for. Good move Bioware, if severely delayed.

I hate: Cutscenes after save points!

Here we are again, it's always such a pleasure-

I play a lot of games, duh, it's the only that keeps me distracted from the overwhelming darkness in my head, but there's one habit of the gaming that I do not understand. It's something that I see in all walks of gaming life: I see it in big budget games, indie titles, souless crowd-pleasers, heart-felt thought pieces, multimillion dollar blockbusters and two-bit adventures cobbled together on RPG maker; it's some foul depraved pact that they all have in common, a disgusting deformity joining all these types of games together at the waist, it's a decent 50% chance that any of these games will have their save point occur just before a cutscene. As far as I am concerned, there is no greater sin that a game can commit. Even if the entire title freakin' implodes and takes my console with it, that is miles better than having to relieve the same dialogue over-and-over like I'm Dormammu going up against Stephen Strange.

In recent years there grew something of a movement around quality video games, and that was insisting how there should never be an unskippable cutscene. (Though as far as I'm concerned that was run by the sort of heathens who skip through all the story then complain about how they have no idea what's going on) As far as I'm aware the most famous example of this originates in one of the best games ever made; Mass Effect 2. (A game with quite a few cutscenes.) People bristled about having to sit through the same dialogue on repeat playthroughs and within a few years that practise was mostly abolished, but you know what? I have very different memories than everyone else of that game. I remember scenes, like that moment on Purgatory, where for some inexplicable reason the autosave hit just after a big dialogue and just before an ambush cutscene immediately throwing the player into combat. (thus restricting him/her from manual saving) So that issue with unskippable cutscenes? Made fifteen times worse when I'm watching that scene over and over each time that I die.

Now I do realise that a big part of why this is a problem for me is because of my insistence to always throw myself out-of-my-depth whenever I play games. Unless I push myself to the highest difficulty I feel like I'm cheating myself out of the full experience and thus have trouble enjoying the game as much as I could do. Unfortunately, the side-effect of this decision is that I die a lot, which means that if there is any point in the game where the savepoint is just before a cutscene that throws you into combat, you can bet by god that I'm gonna find it! So in some ways I guess you could say that this is sort of my fau- you know what? No. No it isn't. They are still the ones who fought every common law of sense in order to install an incomprehensibly ill-judged system!

This is a situation that has come most prominently to my attention lately as I've taken to playing older titles, which doesn't mean that newer games are immune, just that they're all mostly open world games without cutscenes these days. (So problem solved?) Back in the day, however, storybased titles could not wrap their head around this most simple of concepts: People don't want to hear the same tired dialogue cues over and over! Kingdom Hearts suffered from this in 'Chain of Memories' and 2, (For COM this was especially vexing because the game itself was just bad.) Jade Empire, (which I've recently started, also pulls this trick. But it's a Bioware game so what do you expect.) and even X-com sort of has this issue in 2, if you save the game around a mission with a character announcement in it. (Although you could classify that as a bug-due-to-design-flaw if you were being generous. Though then again, you could alleviate all games of blame through that same logic, so I retract that olive branch.)

Though it is likely obvious to anyone reading this, let me explain to you why the very concept of save points before Cutscenes is the worst thing imaginable. Imagine you're going through your morning routine and everyday before work you have to take a call. Every day you receive that call before you are allowed to leave the house, and everyday you have the same conversation, with the same person, in which the same inane words are traded back and forth. How long will it take before you start dreading the coming mornings, until you start dreading your phone partner? It doesn't matter what you were talking about, you might have devised the solution to climate change over that brief 2 minute chat, you'll still be wishing that phone wires were a thing again so that you could hang yourself with one. Familiarity breeds contempt, it's a simple as that.

And you know what makes things even worse then that? Cutscenes that take place after savepoints and feature a dialogue choice in them. The act of having a dialogue choice in a video game is an important moment, it empowers the player with control and makes them feel like they own the story in front of them. Even when the choice of dialogue both isn't voiced and has no direct impact on the story, it's still an expression on the player's intent to have a marked effect on the world around them, to mean something. It's a powerful expression. That power gets slightly drained, however, when they are forced to go through and make that same dialogue choice again-and-again; very conscious, by this point, that none of the options they choose will save them from the arse kicking they are about to receive. It eventually starts to whittle down all semblance of worth behind player choice and, before long, will have most players resort to callously slamming the skip button until the fight starts. (At least that's the journey I go on in these situations.)

Now the thing I don't understand about any of this, is why these situations pop up in the first place! Okay, that's not true, I know why, I just don't understand how. 9/10 times, these situations arise as a conflict between gameplay and intent. The scene usually carries greater weight if the player is thrown right into the action the second after the cutscene ends, which in some games presents a bit of an issue as players are disallowed from accessing inventory or saving in combat. This means that a save point can't exist at the start of combat, it has to exist before otherwise there's a possibility of the player becoming trapped into a battle that they can't win indefinitely, I get it. But there's a solution; use a separate Autosave slot so that player's still have their manual and quick saves to revert back to if things go south. (It's not rocket science!) Mass Effect 2, by the way, has no excuse for this; they'll straight-up save your game midway through a conversation leading into a fight, just to screw with you.

At the end of the day, this is a super specific gripe and I'm wondering if literally anyone else in the world is even fractionally as pissed off about it as I am. I'm being serious, I can get chopped up all day by the Dancer of Boreal Valley and not feel nearly as brutally wounded as I do after just 5 rotations around the 'cutscenes after save points' circus. Although I must be in the absolute minority because I don't think I've ever heard people talk about this once and that's just another ostracising quirk of my anomalous world views. Am I really that out-of-touch? Is everybody else looking at me like a loser? (Well, I think I already know the answer to that one, but you get what I mean. Don't you?) But there's no solution bar a new law written upon the commandments of game design and I don't have that sort of power or influence so I'm just going to dunk my head into a bucket of water before I start shooting steam out of my ears and explode out of frustration. (Maybe I can do that, you don't know.)