Choosing your path

 Time to talk Baldur's Gate again!

Level 1

 First Impressions.

It's a commonly repeated refrain that you have to nail your first impression because it might just be your last impression. Wait- no, that's not how it goes. 'First Impressions last longest'? Less threatening, but that still doesn't sound right. How does it go... "You never get a second chance to make a first impression", that's it! (Hmm, that still sounds pretty threatening...) But the point stands strong. The very first time someone starts an experience, meets a new person, or does pretty much anything fresh to them, it will be that first moment which colours their proceeding experiences. Which is why when we bring that philosophy to gaming, a lot of games that are beloved to small subsets of people fail to land with larger audiences. You can tell me all day how amazingly interesting the Avenger's combat apparently becomes once you hit the level cap; but I don't have fifty hours to spend grinding and being bored so I can be mildly entertained by an anaemic game from that point onwards.

Which is why nailing that very first level which the player comes across is so important to establishing the interest in the audience that is going to make them stick around for the long haul. And sealing that interest can't be done in the same way that we do with movies or TV. That stinger scene hinting of the later events might work on some very fringe cases, but most of the time it just highlights how boring the proceeding beginning sections of the game are, or just reveals how unimpressive your most exciting section will be. Perhaps the worst example of this is the legendary 'Ride to Hell: Retribution' which begins with a playable smash cut to all the action set-pieces of the later game, neatly allowing the player to experience right early how unplayably bad all sectors of the gameplay were. Almost like a warning to stay away, which I guess makes Ride to Hell's intro the most conscientious of all other games.

I think this late realisation has been what has led to the slow decline of the 'tutorial', as most games operate with the 'standardised control scheme' anyway and thus most players don't want to sit around being told how to move and shoot for the fiftieth time. The trend has gone towards action-oriented and explosive intros that propel the story and let the player get into the action and narrative immediately, even when the game in question is not a full action title. Some people might have been very surprised when playing the Mass Effect Legendary edition to be reminded how that first game begins with a fairly tame introduction that has you walk around the Normandy talking to the people that will become your crew and learning about the world through simple conversation. Mass Effect 2 has a more traditionally orchestrated tutorial action scene which sets you in a workplace ambush that bears a striking resemblance to the opening of Deus Ex: Human Revolution. And Mass Effect 3 has an even more overblown set-piece that leans more towards interactive cinematic than an actual firefight with stakes and peril. And that is just 5 years of 'first level' development clichés being developed by one company.

First levels have become such an entity unto themselves that comedy themed games, such as Far Cry Blood Dragon, have precedent to make fun of them. Why they had to do so in a manner that is equally as tedious as the cliché they were mocking is beyond me, but the expectation of fourth-wall shattering meta comedy is established by the display. Which is, of course, another function of the 1st level. Setting expectation for the audience to come back seeking a pay-off for. It's especially important to do this in long-form media like games and books because neither are expected to be finished in a single sitting. As a designer or writer, you have to be making the case on why your audience needs to return from page 1. Which is why 'Ride to Hell's' cliché 'fast forward' intro was in the right head-space, if flawed in other departments.

Souls games are great examples of this for how they endeavour to always ensure their reputation as unforgiving and brutal experiences is reinforced from the word 'go'. Practically every Souls game has a moment where you end up face-to-face with either the first boss or a tough early-game foe, totally unprepared for that encounter. The original Dark Souls has the first fight against the Asylum Demon, which transpires before you even have your class weapons; Bloodborne has the close quarters brawl with the werewolf which is attached to an almost scripted death sequence. Sekiro pits you against the final boss, and scripts your defeat no matter how well you do. And Elden Ring has Margit; a wound still fresh enough in it's players hearts that I don't need to tell you how unprepared people were for it. The message is very simple; 'prepare to die' and the humbleness of being killed is the first lesson FromSoftware teaches every one of it's players

There are some game types, however, that have confidence enough in the genre within which they exist and the precedent of their peers that they don't need to slap you in the face for attention. Some take their sweet time to establish atmosphere, or world building, confident in the fact that you will stick around for the prolonged amount of time required for the real excitement to start. Hollow Knight is a masterpiece that begins with a particularly subdued thematically desolate introduction to the Hallownest. And Japanese RPGs like Final Fantasy and Xenoblade usually avoid the big exciting events so they can allow the player to acclimatise first. This is because above all else, these games aspire to establish immersion, not just stimulation; and only when the player has sold themselves fully into the world do they come and supply the action and danger to the world they've built. 

I think there's one game I know, and love, which balances all the points I've picked out beautifully; and you won't be surprised in the least to see how that game is Yakuza 0. The prequel Yakuza game that revived this franchise to the Western world, Yakuza 0 had very big shoes to fill when it proposed to tackle the very beginning of Kiryu Kazama's journey ten years after his original outing. And they began with a shock, but not an explosion. Kiryu beating a man, in a cutscene, to a bloody pulp for protection money. What follows is actually a very subdued sequence of discovering the 80's Kamurocho, meeting the characters and beginning to get hooked into a plot that prioritizes intrigue. But by that same merit; Yakuza doesn't leave action fans waiting. The finale of the first chapter is perhaps one of the finest action set-pieces that the franchise has ever had. Built like the finale of a whole story with the focus on making the ultimate sacrifice by taking responsibility, the player is then thrown into a relentless no-punches-pulled onslaught of enemies in a perfectly paced gauntlet headed off with a climatic boss fight against one of the key villains of the game. It's over-the-top, awesome and supremely satisfying; that is how you start your game.

The beginning can often be the most challenging part of any work of art, and the amount of forethought and intention it demands will never cease to amaze me in the special instances where all works out with flawless delight. A great introduction will play in your head forever and make you want to dive back in the second after you finish; a bad introduction will kill your momentum and maybe even make you uninstall the game before it gets good. (I literally cannot replay Blood Dragon because I always automatically uninstall the moment the intro wraps up.) So think about the next game you start and whether or not the game you're playing touches on all the notes an intro should, and whether level 1 alone is enough to keep you hooked until the last level.

Mass Effect TV show; Why god no

 Speaking of gaming on the small screen

The first I heard of this show was not the announcement of it's legitimacy by the sucker of a studio who just bought it's rights. My first shout was a pure reaction from a former writer for the Mass Effect games who felt it his moral duty to art and the world to claim how the very concept of this show made him 'cringe'. Now that's a lot more of a provocative title then what his actual comments read as, because that's what the journalism world lives off, slightly and intentionally misconstructions for the sake of sensationalism, because his views are actually voicing the same things that people like me always mention whenever talk of these grand garish game series adaptations come alive. But beyond the things that he and we know to be true, lies the pernicious hunger of the corporate world that cares not for where things belong and will take and take without recourse or punishment. Everyone else suffers for their greed, and at the end of the day there's nothing left to do but sit around in the refuse and say 'what the hell even happened'?

So 'Massively Effecting' the video game franchise is getting it's own TV show, that's a nice bit of security at the very least given that the game series itself is currently behind a video game studio so beleaguered that it recently lost it's second creative director for the same game in two years. (Dragon Age 4 is going to suck more than usual, isn't it?) To be clear, Amazon doesn't have their hands on the show yet, but they're in the "nearing a deal phase", which typically means leaking the deal negotiations to the public to gauge interest. Of course, at this early stage that also means we have next to no idea what this series would even contain were the forces that be lapse in their watch over the soul of humanity enough to let this through, so we don't even know if it will be an adaptation and why this is a story that needs to be told. However, we can make some educated guesses given the other properties that Amazon has gobbled up in it's desperate attempt to make it's streaming service worth a singular damn. (Wasn't The Boys enough? Why can't you be happy this that?)

Mr 'former writer' had the same impression that most had going into this news, that this would be a straight adaptation of the Mass Effect games. Now this does have a precedent with Amazon given that their Wheel of Time adaptation and Lord of the Rings remake is treading the same waters, although you could point out how both of those were keenly weaved narrative books whereas Mass Effect is a more loosey goosy video game storyline. I mean sure, we all pretend that it's some super intricate web of delicate interweaved narrative prowess, but anyone with passing familiarity with the games themselves know that the product is a lot less proud then that. (They let entire plotlines drop like flies in order to justify the finale) What I'm saying is that there's a decent chance this series idea is going to just take place within the Mass Effect world and tell connected stories, which I think would actually be super cool. of course, if it is the adaptation that everyone thinks it might be, well we can go ahead and call that the worst ending...

But why would that be so bad, why is everyone from your humble degenerate twitter commenter to your whiny atypical games journalist all throwing a fit to the same pitch? Well, it's because some (if not most) games just don't belong on the small screen. (or the big screen for that matter) Yesterday I touched on this with my analysis on the core fundamental reasons why an interactive medium creates stories that appeal on a completely different level to what a passive visual medium hopes for, and crossing the two over with an adaptation will often mean a complete rewrite of everything that made the original recognisable in the first place. (Or you end up with confused and unfocused mess like the Assassin's Creed movie.) Although to try and make see both sides of the argument here, I suppose that an RPG like Mass Effect might have some place being adapted into a TV show...

Remember that Mass Effect and other Bioware RPGs are story-heavy affairs, wherein the passive entertainment of watching narrative events unfold are sometimes just as entertaining as playing the game itself. (If not more so.) Whilst ideally for a video game you'd want a greater balance of the value proposition to consist in the gameplay, I suppose for sheer adaptation prospects these proportions bodes a bit better. I can see a politically charged drama with the fresh face of humanity trying to scour it's mark onto the well established alien councils of the discovered galaxy, as a solid concept for a TV show. And having a super solider proving the worth of humanity in a tense chase against a rogue secret alien agent that has plots to unravel the universe; this premise works without the game backing it up, is what I'm saying. And yet fundamentally something still feels off about all of this. What could that be? Well our former Bioware writer seems to have honed in on it.

With Bioware games, and most RPGs in general, you have that all-important moment where you make your character, and that is the key here. The protagonist of Mass Effect, the secret agent searching those stars and pushing this narrative, is your character. He or she is your Commander Shepard. That isn't just how this character was shaped, it was what they were designed for. Commander Shepard has little personality beyond 'military training' in their basic writing. (I guess he/she tends to be a bit patriotic no matter which way you lean, too) This is a character designed to be, as our writer puts it, "a blank slate", perfect for the player to impose their own personality upon. That is why Mass Effect is a video game, because it's very soul rests on the interactive act of the player putting themselves into the product. They decide Commander Shepard's gender, look, combat training, past, drives, personality, love life, everything about he/she. Therefore if this Mass Effect TV show is indeed a straight adaptation, they'll have lost one of the core appeals of Mass Effect the second they do casting.

Who wants to be told definitively what their title character should look like? Heck, that was one of the key problems with the Mass Effect marketing material, showing too much of the default male's face so that it influenced player's perceptions on what the idiot should look like. It was so annoying that they had to offer different box art for Mass Effect 3 showcasing the female lead, and for Andromeda they opted for a totally masked box art character altogether. Imagine that 'identity crisis' problem on steroids, and you have the potential disaster that Amazon would be in for whilst trying to choose a starring cast for some sort of adaptation. But then again, they've opened themselves up to the whole 'challenging established iron-clad imagery' thing with the very idea of remaking Lord of the Rings, so perhaps they enjoy hitting up against seemingly impassable walls and then... proving themselves? (I wait with bated breath to see how LOTR works out for them.)

So we come around to the same message I have for any and all potential adaptations of video game properties that are bumping around Hollywood; don't. The video game industry already takes too many of it's cues from the traditional passive entertainment industry for movies and TV shows to bring anything different to the table. Take the confused Tomb Raider movie from a few years back that smashed together different game plotlines and felt undeservedly rushed from start to end. The upcoming Uncharted movie that looks woefully miscast and steals imagery from key scenes in the game series only to do them worse because a computer generated figure can do more daring stunts than a real actor on a CGI background can. History screams at these people that 'video games' and 'small/big screen adaptations' do not go well together. It's like Anime and live-action Netflix adaptation, it's just a bad idea from start to finish. So if you really are gauging interest before taking this deal, Amazon, then allow me to say very clearly that I, for one, am very not interested. Unless it's not an adaptation; in that case it's cool.

Mass Effect will continue

 Apparently...

Recently we were 'treated' to everyone's favourite annual event that we only get reminded by in news reports after the fact, N7 day. You know, that strange Mass Effect holiday that Bioware have celebrated for a while despite the fact it represents a franchise that was on life support for several years. But those days when the many journeys of Captain sleeps-with-the-entire-crew had slipped into naught but myth are now long gone. Thanks to the release and success of the Mass Effect trilogy remasters, people have the ME brand in their mouths once again and are sitting on a fire in their bellies wondering whatever happened to those games. And then they simmer down when they soon remember "Oh yeah. They got a sequel. And it was Andromeda... shame."

This break that we're going through right now, four years without a concrete whisper of a word about the new Mass Effect game, is the sort of gap I expected between Mass Effect 3 and Andromeda. Instead, it sort of felt like no longer than two years after 3 dropped, everyone was already gearing up for the next game. I can't speak for the rest of the community, but to me the overarching sense of "It just isn't the right time yet" was the main reason why I had my troubles with Andromeda. That being said, I do love me some Mass Effect and even Andromeda has some characters whom I'd be distraught not to hear more of in the future of this franchise. (Not Liam. Liam can go burn up on re-entry for all I care) In fact, I'm guilty of doing that super fan thing where you create an entire new trilogy of your own head and plan it out in ludicrous detail alongside major narrative twists, character revelations, set-piece moments, and even the seeds of a subsequent spin-off series that might well with the Yakuza formula. (Hmm? Literally no one else in the world thinks that much about this franchise. And only I would be dumb enough to think Mass Effect needs a Yakuza-style spin off series? Well okay then, you don't need to be rude about it...)

But breaks are not ends, and despite the very real fact that the Mass Effect series was dealt a perfectly serviceable point to cut their losses and run, they're back in the business, baby. And to be clear, I guess I do sort of see where the team at Bioware are coming with both, both within the confines of Mass Effect and taking in the bigger picture. Inside the franchise boundaries, Mass Effect Andromeda was sort of like a slap in the face from a wet sock, unpleasant and lingering. It introduced a whole new world, promised a whole new threat, and made the questionable choice of recycling important thematic elements (mysterious technological superior progenitor race) only this time in a universe that has a grand total of 1 native intelligent alien race. (If you don't believe me, I'll give you a second to think about that. And if you still don't believe me, look up a synopsis for the game, I'm right.) So for a series that's a tour of weird alien worlds and cultures, that made the entire universe of Andromeda feel like a tremendous let down. (Something I would have fixed in my Mass Effect Andromeda continuation series, whereupon the various species are actually sequestered into a specific region on the other side of the galaxy under the rule of- huh? You don't care about my fan fiction? Okay...) 

Outside of the Mass Effect brand, Bioware are in trouble. And everyone knows it. Sure, the totally oblivious smooth brains over in their PR department can waft away the smoking fumes of a house currently on fire all they want, but the can't change the fact that Bioware have delivered consistent substantial flops to a parent company not only renowned for being all around awful in as many areas as it's possible for a company to be, (EA) but one that has a specific reputation for acquiring studios, bleeding them of their IPs and then shuttering that company. The fact that Bioware jettisoned an entire Dragon Age prototype game they were conjuring just because they thought some high up at EA would like their flying jetpack game a tiny bit more, displays that very fact wonderfully. (And how did that work out for them again? Oh right... Anthem.) Bioware need their next games to be hits or else they're up for the chop next, (if they aren't already) and so it comes as no surprise that the words 'new IP' are entirely absent from their docket for the foreseeable future. (They didn't get a look-in for the KOTOR Remake: how the mighty do fall.)

So with all this playing behind the scenes, and in public if we're being honest with ourselves, is their even a glimmer of grandeur in this year's N7 day special surprise: A vague screenshot of a spaceship with the caption 'Mass Effect will continue'? Oh really? Will it? You mean the years of leaks about such a project wasn't enough? And neither were all the stars aligning to make this the next sensible move? The investigative reports which bluntly said such? How about the trailer that you had released at the end of a next gen conference that showed footage of a game that you entitled 'Mass Effect' and which featured the familiar face of famed Asari Liara T'Soni? None of that was enough to confirm a new game was in the works, you needed to screenshot confirm it? Guys, I think Bioware are actually going through the first stages of collective memory loss right now, we need someone over there to make sure they've turned off all the stoves and aren't trying to drive the car.

But sure, whatever. 'Mass Effect will continue'. Allow me to blow-out all of the party streamers and do a back flip. Now that all the celebration is out of the way, can we sit here and reflect exactly what we can expect from this news, given that Mass Effect seemed to doing just fine as a corpse up until now? First off, obviously, this means that Mass Effect is going to continue on from 3 rather than keep up with the Andromeda series, which I find a shame because I liked some of that cast, but I can definitely see how that world building was so god awful no one even wants to return there. (It's just a shame that all the main ME cast are dead by the Andromeda timeline, else I'd hope they would dream up some stupid stuff to drag the new team back to the Milky Way.) Also, I guess the ending of Mass Effect 3 is going to be entirely nullified, because their individual ramifications are far too vast for any one game to try and cover sufficiently. (Which, to be fair, Bioware has done before with the ability to kill off Shepard at the end of Mass Effect 2)

Now comes my complaining, because I'm just not entirely sure we need more story tacked onto the end of this series. Early hopes were for a prequel Mass Effect series that would explore the first contact war against the Humans and Turians, but for my part I really wasn't interested in a game that didn't have most of the cool alien species and environments to explore. It's becoming clear that Bioware might have felt the same way, but is a post Reapers universe going to be any better? It will likely be a galaxy without FTL travel, considering that the Mass Effect relays are rendered inert in most endings. (Sort of defuncts the name of the series, but then I guess Andromeda had practically no relays in it at all aside from the Slingshot mega relay from the intro) The intergalactic governments will probably have been reduced to tribal squabbling. The citadel will be no more. A lot of species will be endangered. More likely than not this entire game will be focused around rebuilding the galaxy, which will make it feel like a stepping stone to the actually interesting story, just like Andromeda felt like with it's "colonialization done ethically" plot.

But I guess it's unfair to judge the game at this point, because the sky really is the limit right now- as long as that sky is given the go ahead as decently financially viable from EA. I've given Bioware some slack over the years, and getting into CRPGs recently has really highlighted all the areas in which Bioware undersell what could be their best mechanics, but I do love them. (As a whole, that is, the individual staff are proving themselves more and more out-of-touch and grating over the past year.) I don't want to see Bioware be eaten by the EA machine, and so I hope all the best for a Mass Effect sequel even if I secret away dour misgivings about the whole affair. Please feel free to prove me utterly wrong team, and please prove you guys can still make half decent games. (We're getting worried out here.)

When Choices don't actually matter

 Your actions have consequences

I actually remember my first time booting up Telltale's The Walking Dead and seeing that ominous message fade onto the screen amid a wall of black. 'Your actions will have consequences' blinked into life and hung for a time, ensuring the message really squirmed into your gut and nestled in your psyche. I'll be honest, it unnerved me. I wasn't throwing my head up and shouting "Finally, a game where things matter!", instead I was glancing to-and-fro, trying to exactly pinpoint how I typically like to play games and what sort of mess that might land me in. Could I accidentally screw up the entire story by not taking it utterly serious from day one? Would the main character instantly explode if I failed to select the perfect rhythm of choices? How serious are the 'consequences' we're talking about? I saw it as a threat directly against the laid back, see how things go, way I used to play narrative based video games, and maybe that was a jolt I needed in order to pay more attention and care about these games.

Obviously it didn't take long for a bit of experience with these types of games, all of whom started with that exact same plodding flash card, for me to realise that my 'actions' would only actually have a very limited set of 'consequences' and usually at highly specific moments where the actions are blindingly obvious. "Will you help the annoying guy or the useless woman in the middle of the zombie attack? Bare in mind, the other probably ain't gonna make it." Titles like these talk a big game about how branching the plot is, or how every single butterfly trod on will cause a cataclysm one world over, but in truth they're limited by the plot and the writers. You can't make every choice lead to some unforeseen consequence, else people will be too terrified to make any choices for fear that they'll screw everything up! (Not to mention the sheer vast range of options and story twists that would take in order to nail down to the wall perfectly.) But some fans can find this to be a bit of a betrayal in that they very much expected for their every choice to become a new plot point. So I wanted to explore some games who flounder or succeed on that very promise.

Take Cyberpunk for instance, being a game that very much sold itself on being a heavily choice-driven experience, but which famously didn't live up to that nearly as much as fans wanted. One of the most commonly quoted points of contention is the 'origin' system, wherein players would get the chance to choose who their character was before the storyline and that would influence the way they would interact with the story. Similar to how a lot of the more hardcore RPGs function. However, that origin ended up influencing only the very beginning of the story and as the plot went on, people found themselves only really being given an influencing part in the main plot at very sparring moments. Most annoying for some, being the fact that some conversations would give you a chance to offer an alternative option (even requiring a skill check to be passed in order to raise the point to begin with) only for your opinion to be overturned in favour of where the game wants you to go. Presumably the option is just there for characterisation in showing how smart or capable the player is then? It mostly just frustrated instead.

Pillars of Eternity is a game that doesn't suffer nearly the same amount of narrative hatred, even though it does actually handle it's origin choices very similarly. In that when you select where you came from, what your species is, and what you do; oftentimes that comes up very rarely in conversation, and when it does it comes as mere flavour text that is then contributes nothing tangible to the actual scene or interaction. The sequel does a much better job of this, but in the first game the only point I can recall where something tangible can be done depending on what your character is, was in the very beginning of the game where you find some braziers which can only be lit if your character is a fire god-like. But even that doesn't make any sense because you actually find torches littered all over the place, why can't they light the braziers? Of course, the rest of the game has a lot of choices and branching quests independent of your character creation choices, so this is more a 'drop in the bucket' problem for Pillars, but Obsidian did take steps to rectify it for the next game so it was definitely a recognisable problem.

On the other side of the spectrum we have games like Deus Ex, where we are presented with a world where choices do matter. Now by it's very nature, Deus Ex is a series where player choice shapes the experience, as this is a stealth-based immersive sim, and so building your character to be better at hacking defences and turning them against the enemy is going to change how you approach pretty much every area of the game. But choices effect the story too in that you're given chances to effect the progression or ending of practically every single encounter and mission in these games. A lot of these are self contained instances, wherein the matter is opened and closed within this quest alone and the wider narrative carries on unabated, but the effect still rings true in that the player feels like an active architect in their own fate.  On the otherside of the adventure, this means all these games have huge branching finales that can mean drastically different things for the future of the world and the people who live therein, encouraging replayability as these sorts of systems are designed to do.

So we've seen examples of both successes and failures in this field, but what of a successful failure? Mass Effect and Fallout 4 both have shades of everything we've already talked about in them, however when it comes to choices and consequence there is a shared criticism that these games illicit more than any other; the misleading dialogue option. With the very nature of how dialogue is handled in these games, a preview for the player followed by a full response from their avatar, there comes a few situations where the player will pick an option only for the response to veer in tone drastically from what they expected. This isn't necessarily an example of the writing lacking the scope to change the story, but can still feel like choice being invalidated due to the game interpreting your choices in a way that you didn't intend for. My example for this would be during Mass Effect Andromeda, where if you're too friendly with a swashbuckling smuggler side character the game will automatically assume you are pursuing a serious scandalous relationship there, which leads to some very awkward 'surprise intimacy' moments down the line. (I didn't know it was that easy to lead a guy on...)

I've touched upon a bunch of different types of promised consequence met by disappointing payoff, and what I've landed on is that mostly successful payoff (like Deus Ex) relies heavily on choice that has a distinct effect rather than choice that merely adds flavour; but does that automatically mean flavour options are bad? Whenever I was playing the Pillars games and an option would pop up to indicate that the experiences I'd had or the options I'd selected in character creation, would give me a unique option, I'd pick it. Personally, I saw these not as new paths to through the narrative that needed to branch into new questlines, but just an expansion of who I was, providing a unique perspective that I wouldn't have otherwise gotten to experience. But I think the key is balance. Don't promise your game will be a choice-important romp if the majority of your choices merely add context that the other person would have shared anyway.

There are a lot more examples of choice versus consequence in the interactive story games out there, but I found a lot of those example to be much more situational and specific than what I was talking about here. Although I bet it would be fun to pick out some of those games and really go to town on the key choices of certain episodes, maybe I'll do that sometime. My view on things is that choices and consequences shouldn't ever really be the key selling point of your game, but merely some spice thrown in there to mix up the pot, provide some replay value. Because when you put the weight of the game on it, then you open yourself up to criticism about "But what about this moment where I couldn't choose?" or "Why didn't this choice mean as much as that one?" At the end of the day the tag is performative more than anything else, no one really wants to make a story where every element of it can be pulled apart my some scrappy player who thinks they know the best solution to every problem. It's the writer's story at the end of the day and is limited by the shades that they want to explore, maybe that's a reality that game's marketers need to be more cognizant to in the future if they want to avoid unnecessary disappointment. 

Mass Effect 5E

 Lasers and Feelings

As you might have noticed me sprinkle in around a blog here or there, I've recently being doing my darndest to get into the famed fantasy role playing goliath 'Dungeons & Dragons', through way of both watching several experts play it and now even trying a few of the video games set in that universe itself. I have to approach the subject at a rather abnormal angle for the plain merit of the fact that I don't have friends, and thus can't just play the darn thing, but I feel that for someone with a desire to be somewhat competent at storytelling, it would make for an invaluable practice medium. Alas, circumstances dictate that I remain an observer of D&D rather than a participator, rather sullying the main draw of the game to begin with, however even in a casual way I just love the world of D&D. Isn't it interesting to think that there's a fantasy property out there which has lasted for decades and been directly responsible for the spawning of so many over gaming fantasy properties to date? I think so.

So as I get into Baldur's Gate and familiarise myself with their real-time gamification of the 2nd edition ruleset, whilst keeping an eager eye on Larian's 5th Edition portrayal of Baldur's Gate 3, I've gotten to thinking a lot about the scope and potential of tabletop gaming. Because if there's one huge advantage that tabletop gaming will forever hold over digital games, and forgive me for sounding a little sappy for a moment, it's the fact that it's imagination driven. No processing power or hardware costs are getting in the way of someone telling the most epic story that they possibly can, they just need to come up with it and get a group of people to give themselves to the adventure. Whatsmore, the cool thing about games like Dungeons & Dragons it's that they exist to encourage you to imagine, so you don't even necessarily have to stick to their ruleset. Everything in those books are guidelines and if you need to change something because it'll fit your game better, that's encouraged. 

This is something that really hit me when I was salivating over the details for 'Pathfinder: Kingmaker' after I just found out it existed (the upcoming sequel sounds nutty in all the best ways!) and I realised that the entire Pathfinder table top game was actually made by a fan of D&D who based it off of the 3.5 ruleset. And I don't even know how there can even be a 3.5 ruleset so this was all news to me. (What was the .5 about?) Even the tabletop world owes a lot of it's influences to D&D whether that be subtly, through the dictating of the norm of the platform which naturally challenges other creators to defy it, (Vampire: The Masquerade) or more directly by lending it's skeleton in the creation of a whole new game altogether! Learning this really detailed the limitless potential for games like this, where anyone with the time and provocation can sit down and create a whole system based on whatever it is they want. So naturally I got bored one night and started googling. And here's what I found.

Mass Effect 5E, a D&D style fan made system built to leverage that popular sci-fi soap opera universe which always feels like it could use a few more 'wider universe' games around it, if you know what I mean. With a little bit of a looser grip on the franchise there could be a plethora of smaller spin-off titles that really fill in the fat around the flesh and make the skyline just that more bountiful once the next big RPG comes through. And it's not like Mass Effect isn't the sort of game that can handle that sort of introspection; have you see the volumes of lore logs you can read through in each game? I have, and I read every single one of them, there's so much untouched universe out there it simply hurts to leave it unexplored. And what better medium to touch on all that unknown than the unlimited creative potential of a homebrew D&D module? (An official D&D-type module, but we're never getting that.)

Now the title of the thing is a bit of a misnomer, despite being called 'Mass Effect 5e' this isn't, as far as I know, the 5th rendition of a Table top RPG set in Bioware's Milkyway, but rather a direct adaptation and remixing of the D&D 5th edition ruleset. Taking the basics which form the way that worlds of sword and sorcery are constructed and transferring that into a universe of guns and biotics, just the way our biomechanical robot gods intended. I honestly have no idea why Bioware themselves haven't swooped in to make something like this a reality beyond the obvious fact that making a Table Top ruleset module requires a lot of passion and hardwork. (Are Bioware even capable of either of those nowdays? Sorry, I'm being rude.) I thought it would be interesting to take a dip into some of the things that I'm curious about to see what our independent game designers here have conjured up.

Most important to me, of course, is the race and classes, because these sorts of games are all based around the creation and playing of a character so we want to have as much choice as possible here. Of course the source materiel provides plenty in this regard and the creators of ME5E have taken to it with gusto. You have many of the core world races lined up here, just about every one which could feasibly hold a weapon and go on an adventure from Asari and Turians to the Vorcha and Batarians. (Have to have those low-intellect races in there for the fun role playing times) But the madmen went one step further and included some of the viable background races in the Volus and the Elcor. (I have to watch a game where some brave soul spends the entire time speaking in Eclor. "Intimidating: I've come here to chew bubblegum and kickass. Excited: And I'm all out of bubblegum.") Whatsmore, you even have a few racial variants chucked in there for good measure, such as the Asari Ardyat-Yakshi, for those who fancy playing a space succubus. Still, it's just a shame there's no- wait, there is a Hanar option! Wow, this team really did try to please all comers.

Of course, for a sci-fi space adventure the other part of the rules I'd be drawn to head to would be the ones regarding ship-to-ship combat, but the Bioware team seem to have just thrown so much lore hurdles in the way of ship combat being anything approaching fun that in order to stay lore friendly I can't imagine this team being able to make some comprehensive battle system. Instead I'll go to my second go-to, finding the biggest monster in the bestiary and checking it out. (Yes, I'm a child; leave me alone.) Surprisingly, to me at least, the team haven't actually even bothered to try and calculate the stats of a Reaper using their system, (I guess they're usually impervious to small fire anyway, so that's fair) so in lieu the biggest bad of Mass Effect 5E's bestiary is the Thresher Maw. (Makes sense.) Multiple attacks, difficult-terrain generation, double damage to structures, yeah this thing sounds like a real nightmare. (Which makes me just bristle with all the ways you could terrify a party with one!)

I encourage the curious to take a look for themselves at the passionate work done by the team behind this, as well as the rather slick and manageable website that features it all. It isn't an avalanche of game mechanics and ideas thrown at you, and the articles I've read are kind enough to treat the reader as though their a novice to Tabletops in general, thus you won't be tripped up by technical jargon. It's just a fun and approachable reimagining of D&D based in one of the best Sci-fi universes ever made and just begging someone to come and make a campaign with it. (Also, I think it's cute how they changed 'Dungeon master' into 'Galaxy Master'. DM to GM, I can dig it.) So if you're interested in D&D but fantasy just isn't your thing, give these guys a look over and see if there's anything there closer to your speed, you never know.

Mass Effect 4?

 So, we just gonna forget about that last game or...

In a Game Awards packed to the gills with no surprise after no surprise, how curious it was to note that the most interesting moments popped up separate from the awarding process whatsoever, such as through the two anaemic Bioware trailers the studio threw our way. Now to be clear, my very first thought when I saw these little snippets was "Isn't this more the bare minimum that gets reserved for N7 Day?" But then I guess we did get the remasters teased that day so these get to take the much more coveted game awards spot. (Makes sense.) So that's why we got a prolonged trailer for Dragon Age wherein someone who sounded a little like Varric (only tired) tried to gaslight us all by telling us that this time around we'd have a different protagonist "Without a 'magic hand'". Oh, that's funny Varric, because literally only the Inquisitor from the last game has a magic power, that's what made them feel different from the last two, so don't wave this powerless protagonist in our face like they're some sort of break from the norm you trumped up Cameo-case who's not nearly interesting enough to carry the prolonged screen time you are so often rewarded! Sorry, that one just rubbed me the wrong way. Also, I still haven't finished Inquisition, (sue me) so I prefer to focus on the Mass Effect stuff this time.

So this trailer came at the tail end of the event, wherein typically sits the biggest trailer that is set to blow literally everyone away with it's grand scale. And honestly, that did work a bit against this trailer because the second we see the Milky Way and think 'anticipated space game', I think it's safe to say that most of us default to Starfield. But as Bethesda seem deadset on making Starfield another stealth launch from their studio (because that went so well the last two times...) we instead got a zooming in on a broken Mass Effect Relay and that small hope vanished. Yet somehow, more the fool I, it took until the trailer zoomed in on a curiously familiar Asari woman digging Shepard's helmet rim out of Luna's dust for me to realise what this means: The next Mass Effect isn't a sequel to Andromeda... it's four! (Which, again, I should have realised immediately from the broken relays because Andromeda rather pointedly had no Mass Effect Relays which is why everything took place in a miniscule space with only one new alien Civilisation and was terrible.)

Now I know I'm not the only person scratching their head at this because, by all reckoning, there shouldn't be a Mass Effect 4. The first 3 Mass Effect games built up this epic Science Fantasy opera revolving around a galaxy-level threat where action and consequence built up into the crescendo that was Mass Effect 3 and its game-long wrap-up event. Some people disliked Mass Effect 3 because they found themselves turned off by the three (later patched to four) colour endings by the end that felt completely independent of the unique choices that led them this far, but this was meant to be the conclusion none the less. Me personally, I interpreted the entirety of Mass Effect 3 as the culmination of the last two game's choices, so I got a lot more mileage out of the game, but even then I didn't really see any of this game as a jumping off point for the next Mass Effect to pick up right after this one. But then again, here we apparently are.

I think the most puzzling thing about this apparent reveal is thus; despite the three endings being wildly mocked at the end of ME3, they were still so ludicrously distinct from one another that making a follow-up game seems a tad foolhardy. One ending saw the Reapers become slaves of the galaxy, disabling the threat for now but leaving the machines alive to potentially rise up again someday. Another saw them all destroyed along with the Mass Effect Relays that their creators built (thus disabling FTL flight seemingly forever) And another still saw organics and synthetics merged at a molecular level to reach some new species. (Never really understood that last one, seemed a little out-the-blue) Oh, and then there was the ending they added in where the player proved to be an obstinate ass and refused all choices in favour of damning all the species of the Milky Way for another 10,000 year cycle. How do you spring off from all those decently distinct paths and create a sequel? That would be impossible, no? Well not if you just ignore half of them!

Although this is going purely off of the ludicrously slim reveal trailer that we saw, which was accompanied with no information apart from the redundant "Mass Effect will continue", (Ya don't say?) It seems we can narrow down the exact ending that Bioware went for. As I remember it (And I played this game literally six years ago so forgive my poor memory) the power required to execute any of the endings required the destruction of the Mass Effect Relays, so merely seeing one drifting through space in pieces isn't enough to tell us anything. Seeing Liara, however, tells us that this wasn't the 'obstinate ass' ending, because she's alive and otherwise that probably wouldn't be the case. She appears entirely organic too, with no mechanical glint in her eyes or something to denote she's part synthetic, so either the team chose to hide this or the 'synthesis' ending has been written off as well. Then comes the smoking gun which nails it down; the mask fragment which she found. We can assume it belongs to Shepard because otherwise there would be no reason for it to feature in this trailer, and we can assume this is Luna because she travels to a moon and Luna would be the closet to where Shepard was last seen. (Although I don't remember it being particularly snowy on our moon but maybe that's several years worth of ash and debris, who can say?) Such would imply that the Citadel which Shepard was on exploded, thus settling things on the 'Destroy' ending.

Not that there's really any special reward for figuring that out, as not only was the destroy ending easily the most popular among players, but it was also the only ending given special treatment of there being two variations of it. One you get just from hitting the bare minimum requirements, (I.E. reaching the final section of the game) and the other you get by completing the majority of the side content and amassing a War Asset score threshold higher than is required to get any of the other endings. It's just a little teaser shot of Shepard's body lying amidst the rubble in a ponderous pan before he takes in a breath of life like freakin' Captain Scarlett up in here. Although I don't think anyone really expected anything to come of it and I'm not sure how I feel about continuing this story.

On one side of the fence I do realise that Andromeda was a absolute false start that seemed to bumble any remote build-up whatsoever to the point where by the credits I honestly couldn't identify a single plotline I wanted to see continue apart from the fact that I liked some of the teammates and wanted to see them evolve. (Not Liam. God, not Liam) But on the otherhand I thought this left the field completely open for the team to learn from their mistakes and really make the next Andromeda game special. Yes, the alien design for Andromeda sucked, but that was just incentive for the next round of aliens to be amazing! Yeah the Milky Way Refugees spent the majority of the game setting up crappy outposts instead of having a driving force to them; but that just opened the way for an actual narrative now that all that admin stuff was out the way! I was genuinely excited for the future of Andromeda and now I feel like a mug for ever feeling that way. Plus, I'm honestly done with Shepard and felt there was no more to say with his/her story; so why exactly are we going back to them? Isn't the same problem everyone had with The Last of Us Part 2? Continuing a story that didn't need anything added to it? Just seems like a recipe for ruining the last fond memories anyone had of Mass Effect in my opinion...

Misgivings aside I will admit that, unlike with Andromeda, this feels like the right time for a new Mass Effect; so I'm ready for whatever Bioware has to throw our way. There is that slight nagging feeling that this all just reinforces how Bioware has lost such confidence in itself (or from others) that they're retreating to what they know, but Mass Effect isn't the least creative franchise on the planet so I don't think they'll be scraping the barrel just yet. Of course, given the current state of affairs with literally every single AAA company on the planet, I'm far from given my confidence to a studio like Bioware, but I'm also a fanboy deep down and if I have another chance to fly the Normandy, by god I'm going to take it. Good tease, Bioware; now you just need to follow through.

The Best Companion in: Mass Effect

 Where the trees have leaves of prisms

In the age of ancients the western RPG genre was unformed. T'was an industry full of clichés, usually weak combat and rampant misunderstanding of what exactly constitutes an 'RPG'. (No, just having a lifeless automatic 'level-up' mechanic, doesn't count.) But then there was Bioware, and with Bioware came disparity. (As well as Bethesda and at least one other RPG pioneer I'm forgetting right now.) Good games and bad games, B tier and A tier, and of course, actual rudimentary RPG mechanics and just having an number next to your healthbar.  Then, from Bioware's creative minds, they came and founded possibly the first high quality Sci-fi-fantasy hybrid game; Mass Effect. And I can't keep up this Dark Souls intro anymore, it doesn't even make any sense, this blog is about Mass Effect... and I'm sure you can figure out the rest of the premise from the title alone, but I physically cannot function without a proper introduction so I beg your forgiveness...

Following the recent trend of weaponised nostalgia in... well not just the gaming industry, every industry when I think about it, but especially those who sign off on all these remakes; it was recently confirmed that a remaster of the good Mass Effect games is incoming. (Sorry, Andromeda; you trash) And even I have to admit that although I was fully aware of what they were doing with that teaser and how literally just teasing Character models is practically the height of laziness, I still feel for the hype a little bit. What can I say, Mass Effect means a lot to me and in fact I was one of those people who actually started with the original so seeing those particular models recreated was very special to me. Even more so because these were the companions that I spent so much time with and grew to love through merit of being stuck on a space adventure with them. Of course, some I loved more than others and now... uh oh..

So that's how I felt the need to revive this old Blog series of mine for at least a single entry more in order to talk about a game I really do know well enough to assess, as opposed to the game which I was going to cover last on this series which had since released a DLC and threw my understanding into turmoil. (One day I'll get back to it, I guess. Maybe.) But I suppose it would behove me to touch on exactly what it is that we're talking about here. I mean, what exactly constitutes the 'best' when talking about characters in a video game? Well, quite simply, personal opinion. Yep, this is gonna be a subjective as heck blog wherein I split hairs, over analyse and prove to be wholly unfair for my own sick amusement. Maybe I'll touch upon the actual 'usefulness' of each character in combat, but quite honestly this is Mass Effect 1 we're talking about, most companions are literally only good to be bullet shields whilst you do all the work. (If you've never played then trust me, they are that useless.) But with that out of the way, let me launch into my usual listing of worst to best.

Carth Onasi tops out list in the worst spot for pure merit of being such an insufferable arse to the protagonist for seemingly no good reason whatsoev- huh? What do mean that's the wrong game? Oh right, I'm supposed to be talking about Kaidan Alenko! (Wonder how I made that mix up...) Kaidan is... there. Quiet honestly the man is like background dressing in all manners, from his voice to his story to his character design. (There's a reason he didn't make the cut in the teaser trailer) I genuinely cannot even remember what his character's arc was meant to be throughout the first game. I'm looking it up and apparently there was some sort of influence subplot going on wherein the player could subtly make Kaidan more or less accepting of Alien races, but that doesn't sound right at all, he seemed pretty plain toast to me.

So Carth- sorry Kaidan, pretty much sums up like this; he is one of the human's that is capable of using the mystical space powers know as the for- I mean Biotics, due to his exposure to Element Zero at a young age. Unlike Shepard, who got very lucky, Kaidan was fitted with L2 implants in order to control his biotic abilities and reacted badly to them. Not 'reacted badly' as in he started shooting blood out of his ears, but that he's wracked with migraines fairly regularly; which is about the best that those folk can hope for. (Unless you're the protagonist, in which case you get off scot free) He's loyal to the crew, doesn't seem to get in the way too often, Kaidan is pretty the model solider in every single way and the kind of person you won't really think twice about sacrificing for the good of the mission should anything go awry. (Seriously, did this guy make it through anyone's playthrough?)

Next up is the man, the myth, the legend: Richard L Jenkins. (That's right, you thought I forgot about him didn't you? Shame on you heathens!) This big meaty hero of a man that is Jenkins is but a mere rookie when he gets picked up by the commander for a ground mission on Eden Prime at the literal beginning of the entire Mass Effect franchise. He is abuzz with excitement about his first ground-op, but the Commander is pretty stern about letting him know that this is a serious mission, and that there's no room for undue heroics. (A clear effort from Shepard to try and steal the spotlight from this absolute demon of a man who would easily overshadow the entire crew if allowed to run at even half his full power level.) And there, on his first touch down to Eden Prime, whilst exploring the recently silenced colony, Jenkins is unfairly ambushed and brutally cut down by the literal weakest enemies in the game so quickly that he must have purposefully turned off his own kinetic shields before the mission because that's just how hardcore he is, baby! 

So wait a minute, did I just rank Jenkins, the man who famously dies before the first fight in the game, as higher than Kaidan, a man with the potential to make it through the entire franchise? (But who never will because duh, it's Kaidan) You betcha, and it's likely because honestly I found Jenkins to be more memorable. I mean sure, he is pretty much the living embodiment of a red-shirt, but that sort of blatant foreshadowing just makes the man's untimely death all the more memorable, out of sheer ridiculousness. How did this man make it aboard the most advanced ship in the Earth fleet? Why does he hold his weapon sideways if he's given literally anything other than his starter rifle? How can he wear Krogan, Quarian and Turian Armor without it showing up at all? And most importantly, why didn't he have his darn shields on? All these questions swirl around this enigma of a man, and until we get the demanded Richard Jenkins prequel game, the world may never know....

Now we have Ashley Williams and I'm just realising that I grouped up all the humans at the bottom of the list... I'm not sure if that's a testament to how cool Mass Effect aliens are or a red flag about my own speciesism against the human race. (Probably both, to be honest) Ashley is pretty much the lady counterpart to Kaidan who takes up his roll depending on the gender of the protagonist, with the slight difference being that she actually has a personality. Ash hails from a line of military service members and thus has that no-nonsense over protectiveness which bleeds out from that sort of lifestyle. She also has a prevalent sense of family and deep loyalty to them which fuels her desire to protect them whatever the cost. Of course, that loyalty also fuels her worst character trait, which is why she appears so low on this list.

How to put this... Ashley is sort of a space racist. Not in a 'war crime committing' sort of way, but in a 'deep seeded distaste that has unknowingly seeded into her rational decision making' sort of way. And that alone makes it pretty hard to get along with her, or rather it would with weaker writing. I genuinely don't know how the team had the courage to pull it off, but they actually gave a decent reason for Ash's xenophobia and allowed the chance for her to be redeemed throughout the storyline, and that's quite something for any one character to go through. And it's not something melodramatic and hammy either, it's actually quite subtle and organic, and if Ash was just more interesting outside of her racism I might even consider this character journey as worthy of a higher mark. Unfortunately, her best moments are saved for later games so this is the best I can do right now.

Here comes a controversial placement and so let me precede it by saying; Tali'Zorah Nar Rayya marks the first in a list of three characters who are almost too close to call in how much I like them. She may be in the middle of the list, but that is no ragging on her as a character, the standard is just so high from this way forward. Tali is a Quarian and thus a member of the Migrant Fleet, an entire race of aliens who were kicked off of their home world and now must live their lives as space nomads forever inside of environment suits. It's an intriguing premise that make Tali a curious being right from the get go, and that's before you actually start learning about the woman herself.

Tali is on her 'pilgrimage', which means she must search the universe to learn something worth benefitting the lives of folk back on her ship, this alone makes her a great analogue for introducing some of the more technical aspects of the world as well as to be insight to her fascinating culture. Unfortunately, this pretty much amounts to all Tali is during the first game and she doesn't really get to become an interesting entity of herself until Mass Effect 2 wherein she has a simply great storyline. Tali gets this high billing just from being such a great concept, but her best moments are absolutely yet to come.

Which brings us to the stalwart tank of the group, Urdnot Wrex, a turtle with a shotgun and a heart of... well he does kill for money so I guess I can't say Gold... Pyrite? Everything about Wrex screams 'tough' and 'hardened', and this comes down to his writing, voice acting and spectacular character design. (Although to be honest; all Aliens in Mass Effects prior to Andromeda are brilliantly designed) The man is a Krogan, which means he hails from a race of war fish that were ascended to space-faring status too quickly, and thus became a literal galactic threat worthy of retaliation. (That's the kind of badasses we're talking about.) The Krogan of today are far and few between, having been crippled through a manufactured virus that acts as population control, and the whole thing is some of the most interesting back story I've ever heard for a single Alien race. And whatsmore, Wrex doesn't just act as a spout of exposition for all this, he is himself a product of it and his very way of living and mannerisms convey as much about this situaiton as words.

Wrex marks some of those Bioware characters that you just instantly build rapport with. Seriously, it's hard not to love this fish by the end of any playthrough. He's tough as nails but laid back about it and even manages to treat the player to a story or two about his mercenary days, and unlike with Canderous, these stories are actually interesting to listen to and don't make you want to sever and eat your own ears with chopsticks. Wrex's personal quest about getting his grandfathers armour is not too elucidating, (although it is played perfectly for his character) but the way in which he is tied into the main story is truly impactful and marks one of the best moments in the franchise. I won't get into it here given that the remasters are on the way, but I've never seen Bioware craft a character who so starkly opened up in one moment that completely recast who you thought them to be. Great stuff.

These next two were literally agonising to choose between, because you'd think a list about best companions in a Mass Effect game would only ever have one clear winner. However this is Mass Effect 1 we're talking about and situations are different, thus I have to award the runner up prize to Garrus Vakarian. (I know!) This guy is a Turian, a no-nonsense species who famously were the first aliens ever encountered by humans during an event that would come to be known as 'The First Contact war.' (No prizes for guessing how that meeting ended up.) Although Garrus isn't the kind of Alien who carries the weight of his species on his shoulders, this time the writers give him space to shine as his own character and really become memorable based on those merits.

Yet again this is a case of a character who's instantly likeable, it's just in the way that his personality is and the dialogue he has; there's this constant sense that you and him are always on the save wave length. His personal story is perhaps the most solid narrative in the game, tying into the stories that he tells you in a manner that feels natural yet still impactful once you pick up on it. And most importantly, in my weighing system, he does hold ties to the main story through a touched upon rivalry with the rogue Spectre Turian, Saren. Garrus takes him on as a disgrace to their race thus given him personal fuel for the journey to put him down, same as with the protagonist. Unfortunately he's just not quite at that level of instant life-long pals that he reaches by Mass Effect 2, but he's certainly on his way there.

Which leaves me crowning the other most iconic character from this series, Liara T'Soni, perhaps the only companion in the game who is actually worth a damn in battle. (Okay, Wrex can be good too depending on the situation, but Liara is a literal jack-of-all-trades) As an Asari, a race of all female, all blue, psychic ladies, it would have been easy for this character to slip into those Sci-fi tropes as the overly sexual cliché spout, (god knows this entire species' design leans dangerously close to that territory) but the actual Liara herself is tipped in perhaps the exact opposite direction as a naïve pseudo-teenager looking for her way in life. (I say 'Psuedo' because she's over a hundred)

Liara is actually an interesting case because her ties to the main narrative run deeper than any other companion. She's a target during the early investigation due to her mother being so close to Saren, but soon after she joins up with the hero and we get the ever interesting dynamic of pitting a child against their parent. I think what I love so much about her character is the way in which her Arc starts in Mass Effect and tangibly evolves throughout each game until the 3rd, without feeling ham-fisted or half hearted in any of the individual entries along the way; that's truly impressive character forming. Whatsmore, her arc's conclusion in Mass Effect 1 is actually one of her peak character moments in my opinion, which marks a rare case of ME 1 getting the best of the series. (That doesn't happen too often.)

So Liara is my top pick for Mass Effect 1, but one must bare in mind that (excluding Andromeda) it is arguably the weakest game in the franchise, so perhaps a follow up is in order. Still, even with it's faults Mass Effect is a great game that seems to pay homage to so many Sci-fi series out there whilst still managing to wind into something unique along the way, and that's worth applauding all on it's own. And no matter how much I pick holes in them or rib at them, the ME cast remain one the most memorable casts that the company has ever assembled and I can't wait to see their glow up next year in  the remaster which better be at least half as good as the Demon Souls remaster. (I'll settle for nothing less...)

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.

Worlds I want to live in: Part I

Words are flowing out

No this isn't some postulation about how we create a better world out of the one we live in, you know by now that I am far too much of a pessimist to care about any of that anyway. Instead I intend for this to be a raising of that most timeless of questions: If you could live in any fictional world, which would you live in? Yes, I know it's a bit of a cliche for a gamer to be wondering about life under different circumstances, but it's a thought I like to raise with myself now and then with some interesting connotations. I say this because there actually aren't a great deal of fictional worlds in gaming that really support such a train of question, for the very same reason that makes them such fun worlds to play in. They are often violent, death-filled expanses where life is cheap and bullets are cheaper, making this question less about one's ideal getaway and more about which place they'd feel most likely to survive in.

As such, I've selected a bunch of different game worlds all based around titles that are either renowned for the simulated worlds or too interesting for me to leave out of this list. The idea is to try and find some positive about residing in a world as an everyday normal human rather than a super powered protagonist with the power to freeze time whilst they chug several gallons worth of cheese wheels. (Guess that already gives away one of the games I'll eventually look at.) I feel like that's an important stipulation to make, as most of us on the planet Earth are really little more than just the mindless NPCs who flitter about life aimless and purposeless until we find ourselves stepping directly into our own graves. (Yeah, I'm just full of cheer and happiness today!)

Firstly I decided to go with a video game world that I've spent a considerable amount of time within, and that would be Fallout's Wasteland. Now Fallout takes place in a universe where the world hit an explosion of technology and productivity after the world wars resulting in a huge leap forward in what humans had at their disposal. Suddenly ideas that were once thought of as Science Fiction became the everyday and people were living in the world of tomorrow. Unfortunately, this also meant that the cold war lasted a little longer and grew a little hotter, this time with America and China in opposite corners of the ring. Their hostilities grew so all-consuming to each respective country's cultures that neither of them realised that the world they both shared was heading towards a resource collapse until it hit. Suddenly America had to develop a particularly authoritarian slant to their government, annex Canada, and fight off a budding Chinese invasion. That was until a surprise nuclear strike kicked off full global thermonuclear warfare.

Now I know what you're thinking. "In what way is that world supposed to sound like an appealing holiday destination?" but bear with me. You see, not everyone was killed when those bombs fell and in fact the remnants of humanity that did survive crawled out the debris and started remaking the world around them with whatever the had to hand. Some choose to model their lives on the same values as the old world, but most realised that such had led them to destruction and the way to rebuild was to form something new. One could look at this as a sort of grand resetting for the Earth, similar to the ideals that Tracer Tong preached in Deus Ex. (For the purposes of this analysis, I choose to focus on New Vegas' Mojave Wasteland as that's the closest this series has ever come to representing a functioning society.)

Now the most obvious reason to want to live in a world defined by it's collapsed society is thus, freedom. Fallout is a world in which there is precious little infrastructure or rules that folk are expected to adhere to aside from the absolutely necessary. (And even then there are some settlements that don't even functional lawmen.) This allows those that wish it to pursue that which they wish to achieve the most in life, like becoming one with nature and starting a farm, or vowing to travel the country and see every state. There are no ties that bind and I'd imagine a lot of people wish for a chance to be that responsibility free. Of course, there also the chance that such a freedom will overload your perception of what is possible and lean you towards the extremes, likely resulting in you regularly risking your own wellbeing or actively threatening others', but we're getting close to negatives here, let's still with the pluses for now. Another result of a society raised in the Wasteland is that is breeds a hardy folk of people who scavenge many of the space age tech of the land before them, some that stuff is even more advance than what we have today whilst still being 200 years out of date in their world. Heck, they have floating robotic servants, mini nuclear reactors and automated 'Auto-doc' units that can repair practically any injury. (Or lobotomise you if they're programmed incorrectly. You should really double check with that one.)

Of course, on the flip side there is the little issue that living in the Fallout Wasteland would open you up to the many dangers that an American Fallout citizen faces on the daily. This includes having to handle roving band of raiders who are eager to shoot you and play with your corpse, Super Mutants who want to kidnap and eat you, Deathclaws who want to eviscerate and probably also eat you, and on rare occasions, Aliens who want to abduct you for some vague reason that's never quite explained. Then there is the residual nuclear fallout that resides due to the weaponized material that exposited it. This results in deadly patches of nuclear radiation in the world as well as the odd nuke storm that may blow in now and then. These rads have made their way onto almost every food piece of food you'll find and water source that you drink from, and unless you've been born into this world you won't have the inherent resistance that those natives have built up, meaning you'll likely fall apart in no time. So if you can get past having to scavenge for your food, beating off raiders and mutants who happen upon you, and screening every snack through an anti decontamination chamber before consumption; then the Fallout Wasteland is the ideal consequence free dream land for you.

Next up is a world that I don't exactly think was designed to be all that sensible and feasible to reside within, but nonetheless I'm willing to ask the question anyway. Would you want to live on the Borderlands? Now, 'The Borderlands' is a term that I use to refer to the border reaches of space that make for the setting of the 'Borderlands' series of games. You see, these are the planets that various corporate entities sought to colonise as soon as they first expanded into space, likely believing themselves smart for scooping up as much real estate as possible. Unfortunately there were a lot of factors that ended up making these places not the smartest purchases, the most primary of them being because these planets were all infested with an unhealthy amount of man eating monster that made life virtually impossible. Some tried anyway, but most just pulled out and left these planets alone, likely writing them off as a failed venture, and leaving all those early residents behind. Pandora, the setting of the first two Borderlands games, is one such place.

Now you're likely thinking the exact same thing as last time after that summary, but there's a little bit more to the tale. You see, whilst the majority of the workers who were left behind eventually found themselves going insane and resorting to banditry in order to make ends meet, some choose to capitalise upon this 'Wild West' in space and that led to a few sane settlements starting in this no man's land. There was even some talk of a mysterious vault being somewhere on the plane of Pandora, which drew in a lot of outside interest as the last vaults that were opened led to various priceless items and technologies falling into the palms of whoever was the lucky opener. This means that a thriving bounty hunter community started to form on Pandora as well as a little bit of money from companies looking to strike themselves lucky off of what was initially considered a disaster of a planet.

Straightaway you'll see the parallel's that this world has to Fallout, only with a lot less dire circumstances. The majority of the establishment has abandoned the people of Pandora and pursued their interest elsewhere, leaving the folk of Pandora to their own devices. Once again this could be see as a licence to do whatever you want, but Pandora is known for being a infertile wasteland that is comically overly hostile in every possible way. (Aside from it's atmosphere, I guess, which human's can inexplicably breath) I guess if there is one immutable benefit to this world that I cannot take away it's that fact that this world is full of so many attention grabbing heroes and Vault Hunters, that if you're a nobody you'll literally be at the bottom of the list to be mugged. Bandits wouldn't even want to spend the cost of a single bullet that it would take in order to loot your corpse, because that's how worthless you are.

On the side of negatives, do you remember when I said that the Fallout wasteland was dangerous? Imagine that, but amplified to a ludicrous degree. Pandora is so dangerous to live in that there is an in-universe respawn mechanic of questionable canonicity that allows for vault hunters to be cloned the second after they die, because there has to be something like that in a world where your more likely to trade bullets with your neighbour than words. In fact, this place is so deadly that an entire spin-off game, 'Tales from the borderland', was built from the grounds of this very same proposition; "What if you were a nobody in the deadliest planet ever?" Anyone who does manage to survive Pandora looks miserable to be doing so, and I cannot imagine a single reason why anyone would live there willingly. Heck, the only mildly stable large settlement we see in this game is Sanctuary, and that place gets blown to hell and back repeatedly for the crime of having Vault Hunters even around them. So if you've literally come to terms with death and want to know what it's like to live life on hard difficulty; Pandora and the Borderlands is the hellscape for you.

Finally for part 1 of this blog, I'd like to take a look at a world that is very similar to our own yet fundamentally different. Out of the three choices that I've picked out today, the one universe that I would want to live in most is Mass Effect's Milkyway (Not Andromeda, screw that) and before I explain why let me define that universe. Now I remember a very long time ago being introduced to this franchise by a article which said "describing Mass Effect often consists of retreating to a dark room for hours whilst you decide where it is to even start", so I find this a little daunting but I think I'll begin in the 22nd century. In 2148 humanity discovers a cache of ancient alien technology on Mars so advanced that it shot their understanding of science forward by lightyears. Before long they'd discovered that their universe was full of actual aliens, and after a brief first contact war against the Turians, they were welcomed into a galactic community full to the brim with various alien races.

The Mass Effect milkyway is defined by the Citadel, which is a huge space facility that holds the council that brokers peace between as many races as possible. As such humanity finds themselves joined by the martial prowess of the Turians, the mechanical mastery of the Quarians, the intellectual supremacy of the Asari and the rapid talking of the Salarians. (I don't know what else is distinct about them. I guess they're really smart too.) Of course, there are still some universal threats to the universe, else this wouldn't make a very good setting for any stories, but the rampaging AI Geth are mostly found on the outskirts of space. Imagine what it would be like to be a human oblivious to everything going on with 'the Reapers' and 'the end of all life as we know it', just living it up on the Citadel.

On the list of positives, this would probably be a world of Utopian accessibility provided that you live in the Citadel, above the poverty line and some time before the coming of the Reapers. (So, just like real life then.) You'll be alive in a time of practically unlimited space travel where you can see all the wonders of the universe without putting oneself in danger and with the help of the Mass Effect Relays you'll be able to see it all within a matter of months instead of decades. Plus there is the fact that your universe will already be home to a bevy of alien races and cultures proving that we aren't alone in the Galaxy and interacting with peoples that were born on an entirely different planet would literally be my most heartfelt dream. (I love getting glimpses of over people's lives and experiences, but this would be a whole other level.) Mass Effect's Milkyway is practically a dream location that I wouldn't just visit but literally move into permanently.

Unfortunately, such a move would come with substantial risks. First of all, yes every race in the Citadel is technically friendly, but that doesn't mean the place can't get a little rough from time-to-time, especially in the lower decks. Humans specifically have a bad rap in the universe for having shown up so recently yet having still managed to worm their way into positions of leadership in no time at all. (We're sneaky like that.) This could make your Homosapien hide target practice for some of the less 'friendly' species out there like the Batarians and the Vorcha. But both those species are vermin who would never be allowed in the Citadel, (At least, not on the Presidium) what you'd really have to worry about are the threats to your life that won't be stopped by a denied VISA. The militarist sentient AI race known as the Geth seem to delight in picking off harmless human settlements for no reason whatsoever, and if they don't get you then maybe the mysterious Collectors will shown up to throw you in a rubber tube and melt you down into grey paste that they'll then fit into their superweapon. But let's say that you've got the funds to reside purely on the Citadel, and on the Presidium also. Well, you'd live a life of safety and prosperity. That is, at least, until a hulking death robot-squid called Sovereign comes to ruin your day by attaching itself to the Citadel tower and summoning it's kin. You might survive that, but from then you have exactly two years to enjoy your space life until a race of deadly human-synthetic hybrid squids come to literally wipe out all life in the Milky Way. So as long as you live your Utopian existence happy with the inevitability that no matter what you do any life you manage to build for yourself will eventually fall apart when death and war comes to your doorstep, you'll do fine. (Or you could sign up to that experimental expedition to slingshot a bunch of random folk off to the Andromeda Galaxy, but I'd probably stay away from that lot. Thinking about them just makes my face tired.)

As you can see I put an unhealthy amount of thought into thinking about the pros and cons of living literally any other life than the one I've been given, but it makes for fun blogging so who needs a psychiatrist? I've still not sure whether it's fair to judge the viability of living in a world on my knowledge of the plot of the games, because in real life we obviously don't know what the state of the geopolitical world will wrought for us in the next 5 years, but with such a silly premise I feel it's fair to approach it in a silly way so I'll keep it up when I pick this up next. There's a whole lot more worlds I want to judge and I look forward to coming back to this fun little thought experiment when I come up with more after this slot. And who knows; maybe I've got you thinking about the same stupid questions too. (Sorry, I had to share my idiocy with something.)