Apr 2, 2012

Why Mass Effect 2 Was My Favorite Mass Effect

Mass Effect (2007)

When all is said and done, I'd say that Mass Effect 2 wound up being my favorite of the three Mass Effect games. It wasn't so much the story, the characters, or the gameplay that put it over the top—it was the TV show-like structure.

More than the games that preceded and followed it, Mass Effect 2 felt like playing a season of a really good Sci-Fi TV show. And that, as it turned out, was just fine by me.

Now, don't get me wrong: I liked all three Mass Effect games. I loved the first game's austere vibe and its fantastic soundtrack, as well as that exciting feeling of discovery. I thought Mass Effect 3 was a damned impressive finale, a breathless, high-stakes rush that, some unevenness aside, made for a fine blowout for the trilogy.

The folks at BioWare should be proud of the amazing universe they've created. But it turns out that rather than constantly rushing to save that universe, what I really wanted was an opportunity to relax and explore it. And that's what the second game gave me.

It's a matter of pacing. Both the first and third games were framed as a race against the clock—Saren was planning a Reaper attack of the Citadel in Mass Effect and in Mass Effect 3, well… it takes about seven minutes for the Reapers start destroying all life in the galaxy.

Mass Effect 2 was positively laconic in comparison. "Gather a crew," The Illusive Man told me. "Here are some names. Build up a team, make your ship and weapons really powerful. Take your time. No big hurry."

The door to the endgame (The Omega-4 Relay) is sitting right there the whole time. But although the Reaper attack is still looming, it doesn't feel nearly as pressing as in the first and third games.

Why Mass Effect 2 Was My Favorite Mass Effect As a result, Mass Effect 2 felt more like a TV show than a movie. Most of the game felt like a series of discrete episodes broken up by the occasional "A-Plot" episode that deals with the season-long story, what Buffy The Vampire Slayer coined the "Big Bad." In Mass Effect 2, the Collectors were the Big Bad.

Shepard's death and rebirth were the season premiere. The initial crew recruitments and adventures made up episodes 2-10. The assault on the abandoned Collector ship was the type of mid-season episode that would've aired during sweeps. The back-half of the season contained the later recruitments, the crew's abduction being the penultimate episode, with the suicide mission as a two-part season finale. It's just about an exact structural match.

That structure was fairly rigid. Each crew member had two "episodes"—first, the sequence when Shepard would go and get them into his crew, and then their loyalty mission, in which he'd help them with a problem. And while in the end, Mass Effect 2 had easily the weakest A-plot of all three games, I liked the format so much that I didn't really mind.

The loyalty missions weren't directly connected to the Reaper threat, and as a result they felt like a part of the everyday flow of the Mass Effect universe. More than the other two games, I got a sense of what everyday life would be like for the leader of a crew of space-badasses. I liked talking down an assassin in the dark corridors of the Citadel, or engaging in corporate espionage, or figuring out the truth behind a spaceship crash gone horribly wrong. I liked teaming up with a ninja-like cat burglar and to pull off a heist, or helping one of my former crewmates track down the illusive Shadow Broker.

Mass Effect 2 had an opportunity to try out so many more flavors than simply "Action" and "Drama." It's easily the funniest game of the trilogy, and a part of that is that it's simply easier to be funny when a giant robotic Sword of Damocles isn't hanging over the head of every living being in the galaxy. The stories were refreshingly varied, from lonely salvage missions aboard teetering crashed space vessels to a game of seduction against a deadly adversary. Mass Effect 2 was a welcomely roomy game.

I initially found Mass Effect 2's post-mission results-screens to be jarring, but I grew used to them and eventually came to like them. The stat-covered screens broke things up in the same way as the credits at the end of a TV episode, which helped me structure my time playing the game. These days when I'm watching Misfits or Terriers, sometimes the credits roll and I think "No! I gotta watch one more episode!" But other times, I'm ready to take a break. Either way, it's nice to have the waypoint.

In between "episodes" of Mass Effect 2 I would do some planet scanning, or walk around the Normandy getting to know my crew. It was the kind of atmospheric filler that normally takes place at the margins of a good television show; before the opening credits, during an episode subplot, during a well-handled clip-show. The whole thing hit a rhythm that I found appealing for all the same reasons that I've come to prefer watching good serialized TV to watching a movie.

An episodic BioWare (or BioWare-style) game could be terrific.

The more I think about it, the more I become convinced that an episodic BioWare (or BioWare-style) game could be terrific. A series of ten or twenty episodes spread out over six months, downloaded to your console or PC and broken up by smaller side missions… it could make for a highly enjoyable experience.

The mere idea of BioWare creating episodic games might make many a video game fan cringe—and with good reason. The approach could very easily devolve into the sort of nickel-and-diming for which BioWare's publisher EA has become known. But while EA hasn't earned the benefit of the doubt yet, if handled correctly, the approach could work very well. It could even allow players to give clearer, more regular feedback to the developers rather than lumping years' worth of effort into one gargantuan game with a correspondingly gargantuan amount of pent-up fan feedback.

I have a lot of affection for the Mass Effect games, and for the universe in which they take place. I've always wanted to learn more about that world, not from reading codex entries, but from living there, from having adventures and experiencing it for myself. Thanks to its episodic pacing and TV-like structure, Mass Effect 2 gave me the space to do just that. And that's why it's my favorite Mass Effect game.

(Top photo | Refat /Shutterstock)

Apr 1, 2012

Retrospective: Jade Empire

Jade Empire™: Special Edition

I've played roughly a billion games with moral meters that paint in broad black and white stokes with the occasional sloppy shade of grey, but only one has ever made me turn. See, I usually stick to the straight-and-narrow goodie-two-shoes path on my first playthrough of these things, but in Jade Empire, I just couldn't do it.

I spent all of my time at Master Li's school of not-so-hard knocks devoutly following the Way of the Open Palm - defending the innocent, and helping those who didn't feel like helping themselves. And I even made it through most of the drought-ridden Tien's Landing playing Kung-Fu Boyscout for a horde of overly trusting teashop owners, weak-willed ministers and cowardly townsfolk who categorically refused to solve their own damn problems.

Then it dawned on me: I hated these people.

Honestly, though, that's pretty much par for the course with whiny, knuckle-dragging RPG quest-givers. But I can't play evil. The screams and cries and melodramatic declarations of "whhhhyyyyyy?" are too much for me.

Jade Empire, though, gave me an out. Way of the Closed Fist was, in essence, a pull-no-punches answer to the nonsensical nature of RPG questing. The world, its disciples said, was weak and complacent. So let its citizens face adversity. Let them question their values. Let them fight. After nearly topping out my Open Palm meter, I chose to bust the dam at Tien's Landing, leaving the newly impoverished settlement high-and-dry for the foreseeable future. Then I told the wily businessman who'd risen up to fill the power vacuum that - in no uncertain terms - he was to remind his skin-and-bones villagers that hardship brings strength. Served them right for trusting a stranger with their problems.

'Retrospective: Jade Empire' Screenshot 1

Kung-fu fighting has been known to produce lightning.

It was a lesson that needed to be learned, and clearly, no one else was qualified to teach it. And so, slowly but surely, I transformed into the cool-headed, cold-blooded lovechild of Yoda, Mr. Miyagi and natural selection. I wasn't just saving this world from some Darth-Vader-wannabe Big Bad and his evil empire; I was preparing it for what would inevitably come in the aftermath.

So I did a terrible, terrible thing, but I felt great about it. It came to define me. Even then, though, Jade Empire's moral code was inconsistent at best. For every moment of true complexity, I came across three or four others that basically boiled down to "Be sappier than one of Jackie Chan's family flicks or completely miss the point of your Way's teachings and take the lazy way out." Fight a bunch of normal enemies like a man or drop a boat on them and - in the process - kill an innocent slave. Good or evil. Black or white.

Sadly, that pretty much sums up Jade Empire. It was, in a nutshell, one of those YouTube videos where a kid thinks he can pull off some crazy triple-spinning kick, only to fall flat on his face. Sky high ambition minus the required know-how. But it makes sense, given that, for BioWare, the game represented a vision-obscuring downpour of firsts: first original IP since Baldur's Gate, first truly console-focused release, and first 'streamlined' combat system - among others.

For better or worse, Jade Empire ended up becoming the mid-point in BioWare's journey from clumsy yet lovable nerd to the popular kid everybody loves to hate. It definitely wasn't another KOTOR or Baldur's Gate, but it was still miles away from the polished cinematic antics of Dragon Age 2 or Mass Effect.

As a result, writing - especially during the game's opening few hours - was incredibly wonky and exposition-laden, stats and skill advancement were so simplistic as to be nearly nonexistent, and storytelling cliches from BioWare's Old Way lurked around every turn. Take its grand arc - you're the conveniently orphaned Chosen One. You set out on an epic journey to Fulfill Your Destiny after your hometown exploded. Your merry band of mouthy sidekicks included the Childhood Friend, the Brooding Bad Boy, the Charming Rogue, the Loud Idiot, and the One That's Not Human. If you've played a BioWare game, you'll have heard this one before.

Jade Empire was not, however, by any means terrible. Instead, it became the embodiment of BioWare's gangly teenage growth spurt, prone to tripping over its own two feet. And all the while, tremendous potential stirred just beneath the surface. The world and its mythology, especially, were a breath of fresh air in a genre distressingly content to perch atop D&D's reliable shoulders. Drawing from all manner of Chinese legends, action films, and martial arts philosophies, it was like a cobbled together book report written by a kid who loved the fantasy of the place, but - perhaps willfully - ignored the reality. Yes, Jade Empire absolutely was an Americanized cultural mishmash, but don't mistake it for ill-informed exploitation. The game was a work of honest reverence in the same vein as, say, Avatar: The Last Airbender, and that "China's Greatest Hits" approach was part of the charm.

Ultimately, though, I'll keep pining for a Jade Empire sequel in hopes that BioWare revisits the game's flawed yet fascinating moral philosophies - perhaps with separated Mass Effect-style meters or none at all, as in Dragon Age. After all, what sort of Way of the Closed Fist practitioner would I be if I took some silly meter's slight undulations as Gospel? I'm defined by the choices I've made - not what some arbitrary pile of points tells me about them. That in mind, I leave you with the moment that truly defined my character.

I'd rescued a young woman from a group of bloodthirsty pirates. (Incidentally, she and her mother were in the process of fleeing from the city - and their problems - when I arrived. Evidently, that hadn't gone so well.) One unsavory character, however, still remained. He was a slaver, and he claimed the girl was his property. Typically, I would've played knight-in-shining-armor and rescued her without a second thought, but Jade Empire offered an option that had even my Brooding Bad Boy party member grasping frantically to keep me from going off the deep end. But I had to do it. So I handed the terrified young woman a knife and told her to kill the plump, unarmed slaver if she wanted her freedom. She protested. I insisted.

Eventually, the slaver dropped to the ground, his ill-gotten girth a woefully inadequate defense against someone who could actually fight back. The mother conveniently arrived at that point - just in time to marvel at her daughter's handiwork. Predictably, she threw a temper tantrum for the ages. But her daughter seemed oddly... pleased. Empowered, even. After a life of running away, she was finally forced to become a fighter.

I did a terrible, terrible thing, and I felt proud.

Mar 30, 2012

Clue's Multiple Endings Confused Everyone Way Before Mass Effect 3

Mass Effect (2007)

I love the movie Clue. I've seen it over a dozen times. I can quote whole sections verbatim, and any time I feel annoyed by someone, I suffer from flames on the side of my face and heaving breaths. The board game is great, but the movie will always be the Clue that has my heart.

Its multiple gag endings are now a classic bit of cinema history. But every time I've watched Clue, it's been either on DVD or on VHS, and so I saw all of the endings one right after the other, but during its 1985 theatrical run, Clue was presented with the same multiple endings we all know and love, but each theater only got one.

Film critics at the time didn't quite know what to make of it, nor did many audiences. In his review, Roger Ebert calls the multiple endings idea "ingenious," though he didn't like the movie enough to recommend people actually go around to multiple theaters to see the endings.

From Ebert's review:

"'Clue' is a comedy whodunit that is being distributed with three different endings, which is sort of silly, since it doesn't make the slightest bit of difference who did it. That makes the movie a lot like the board game which inspired it, where it didn't make any difference either, since you could always play another game."

Despite being an ardent fan of the film, I'd never thought of the parallels before. Here we've got a movie that has multiple endings, each of which combine to tell the viewer "Actually, nothing that happened in the movie really matters! It's one of these endings, but who cares which one?" Sound familiar?

Yes, Clue had a few things in common with the ending to the Mass Effect trilogy, and more broadly, to any story-based game with multiple outcomes.

Clue's multiple-theaters-multiple-endings stunt was a flop, and most people weren't interested enough to actually go to multiple viewings to see multiple endings. But think if they had—it wouldn't have been all that different from those of us who do multiple playthroughs of BioWare games like Mass Effect just to see the various endings we can get.

When he reviewed the film, Ebert gave this advice: "Since this movie is so short anyway (88 minutes), why doesn't the studio abandon the ridiculous multiple-ending scheme and show all three endings at every theater? It would be more fun that way."

Apparently Paramount agreed, since the film's video release did just that. By packaging the movie with all of the endings stacked in a row, it became clear that really, despite the "real" ending embedded here, there was no actual true ending.

I'm not suggesting that Mass Effect 3's ending would be improved if BioWare strung all of the possible outcomes together with the jaunty Clue theme music playing.

However, I am suggesting someone else do this and post it to YouTube. Because that would be pretty funny.