Mass Effect Shall Continue!
Posted on Friday, April 27 2012 @ 14:17:16 Eastern

As I said before, Mass Effect is an incredible universe. ME1, 2 and 3 focused on Shepard’s tale but set the scene for books and graphic novels to complement that story arc and chronicle the stories of other characters such as Anderson, and the Illusive Man whose adventures feed into the events we have already played through. It’s testament to BioWare’s creation that the tapestry is so rich that even after the main plot and the complimentary plots are taken care of there is still huge potential for follow up titles to address the remaining mysteries.
 
The interesting thing about the Mass Effect universe is that humanity is very much a minor player and a newcomer to the galactic stage. No matter how ambitious they are their involvement in galactic events has been going on for less than thirty years so a lot of Mass Effect lore has nothing to do with humans. This isn’t unique in the sci-fi world but it is constantly an issue with Mass Effect so it warrants a mention. The great thing about it is that every species lends itself to a different style of game as evidenced by the ME3 multiplayer. BioWare have confirmed there will be more Mass Effect games and they may not be locked to a familiar genre so here are some of my ideas:
 
The First Contact Wars refers to the short but eventful period when humans were discovered by turian scouts trying to activate a mass relay. Human forces were decimated and the remains were followed back to Shanxi which was captured and subsequently liberated by concentrated attacks. A game revolving around this period would be heavily action based and would lend itself well to a squad based FPS. To keep it a Mass Effect title and not Ghost Recon in Space the main character should be someone already known to the fans. My first thought was Captain Anderson or the near N7 graduate as he was then but I reconsidered and thought that playing through as Jack Harper with his wet work team would be far more interesting. If you know who Jack Harper is then I’m sure you’ll agree. The Rachni Wars was a period many centuries before humanity had visited even the moon. Explorers opened an inactive mass relay and found a space faring race of insects operating under a hive mind intelligence. The rachni weren’t peaceful but there have been claims that this was due to Reaper influence and considering the use of Ravagers in ME3 and the peaceful nature of the queens Shepard has encountered this seems like a valid idea. Whatever the reasons behind rachni aggressions this game would be a good excuse to play a Gears style shooter as a krogan warlord. Plus, if the indoctrination idea pans out then subtle references could be snuck in. They would be too small to be spotted by a galaxy ignorant of the Reapers but enlightening for any fan of Mass Effect. Speaking of krogan… another important piece of lore is the Krogan Rebellions. After the krogan rid the galaxy of the rachni they used their new found leverage to obtain new planets. Their harsh homeland of Tuchanka had kept their numbers manageable, once freed of this they expanded voraciously and eventually forced the hand of the Council. This Real Time Strategy would document the events of the turians attempting to repel krogan shock troops planet side and prevent meteor strikes from their beginnings in space, and would culminate in aiding the salarians deliver the genophage to Tuchanka.. Moving back to the human side we could play through the events of the book Revelation. Playing as Lieutenant Anderson it would be a 3rd person adventure game with Anderson investigating the mystery surrounding the Sidon research facility. Because Anderson would be a lone investigator he would control more like Garrett from the Thief series and Drake from Uncharted; he would take stealth tips from Garrett, and agility and gunplay lessons from Drake. This game would shed more light on Saren Arterius and the finale would – should – be the destruction of the eezo refinery with an end-of-credits cinematic hinting at Saren’s plan. An aspect of Shepard’s life we have heard about superficially (depending on the character profile chosen) is his role in the Skyllian Blitz. This would expand our knowledge of not only the slaver attacks but also the origin of the hero we shaped throughout the trilogy. It would be a squad based shooter with Shepard as the only true soldier attempting to rally a hastily assembled militia. In much the same way as the upcoming Steel Battalion game is proposing, Shepard may need to look after the mental wellbeing of the amateur soldiers under his command and the game would finish with Shepard holding off hundreds of batarians on his own to save the men and women he is responsible for. Something ME3 helped to flesh out was the collapse of the Prothean Empire but it was strictly from the point of view of Javik. The prothean-reaper war lasted for more than a hundred years so a game following this period is sure to have plenty of material to draw from. All the disturbing lines delivered by Javik about the Protheans and their slave races committing various atrocities for various coldly logical and naively misguided reasons can be given real context in the form of an action RPG just like the original three Mass Effect titles but in a prothean dominated galaxy. Another story touched upon by ME3 is the Geth War (or the Morning War) and it shows huge potential. The origin of Legion is something many fans will be interested in and the prevailing geth/heretic dynamic is something which could be expanded upon. The structure of geth society is so different it would need to be explored in detail and I think the story is too deep for an action game. This is one story I’d love to see as a feature length film, either cartoon or live action. There is so much potential within the Mass Effect universe for expansion; the first journey through a mass relay, the evolution of the krogan, the discovery of the yahg, the beginning of the Shadow Broker and so many more. These are just a few examples of stories I hope BioWare expands whether as games, books, comics or films. It’s not often I take to a universe as strongly as I have to this one; I hope it continues expanding for a while yet.

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ME3: A Simpler Ending
Posted on Friday, April 6 2012 @ 09:33:50 Eastern

Mass Effect is an incredible universe. From the asari to the batarians each species has a compelling backstory: the hanar have a close relationship with the drell; the turians and volus are dependent on each other’s expertise. The complexity of the universe is deep throughout all species and all aspects. The story in Mass Effect 1 is excellent. There are sufficient twists and turns to engage the player; frustration from knowing Saren Arterius is dirty and being unable to convince the Council keeps the player driving forward and gives Shepard a rebel cop quality. There is little to fault in the first game. Yes, the combat gameplay could have been better, as could the interface, but overall the game is a master class in how to craft a self-contained story with the option for expansion (as evidenced by the graphic novel Evolution and novel Revelation).
 
Not only is the story entertaining, it makes sense. Saren becomes indoctrinated during the events of Revelation and proceeds to build a geth army with the aid of the Reaper ship Sovereign with a view to reactivating the Citadel mass relay which had been deactivated by Prothean scientists stationed on Ilos 50,000 years ago in order to usher in the Reaper fleet hiding in dark space. Shepard stumbles on this plan when he activates a Prothean beacon on Eden Prime and spends the rest of the game gathering resources and intelligence until he finally lands on Ilos and talks to Vigil, a Prothean VI who explains that the Reapers wipe out sentient life every 50,000 years and use the Citadel and mass relays (which they constructed) to guide evolution along the path they desire to make this process possible. So Shepard realises that Saren travelled through the Prothean constructed mass relay on Ilos (the Conduit) and rushes through the Conduit, kills Saren and takes down Sovereign. Convoluted? Perhaps, but no more so than a film like Reservoir Dogs or Shawshank Redemption and I’ll say it again: It. Makes. Sense.
 
Mass Effect 2 demonstrates a quick fall from grace. The action is vastly improved and the inventory is simplified… far too simplified, but as far as the story goes it… kind of makes sense. So Shepard was killed by the Collectors and brought back by Cerberus. Let’s give BioWare that one. For one reason or another they wanted Shepard to see the terrorist side of humanity and that was the best way they could see to do it, sure. So the Collectors are invading human colonies and taking them away for reasons unknown. Shepard is sent to a derelict Reaper and then has to board the same Collector ship which killed him two years previous and finally makes it through the Omega 4 relay to the Collector homeworld to take the fight to the Collectors. So far it’s making sense. We’ve found out that the Collectors are heavily indoctrinated Protheans and therefore the colony abductions are at the behest of the Reapers and so the whole plot does figure in to the overarching story set out by the first game. But what the hell do the Reapers want with a human shaped Reaper hundreds of metres high? I get that they liquidise sentient species to build the next Reapers in order to liquidise the next cycle’s sentient species but they need space worthy vessels for that, not humanoid synthetics, even if they are as big as a skyscraper.
 
Up until that point there were only a few minor niggles in the story. Things could have been better but they could have been a whole lot worse too. Then Mass Effect 3 came along. Mass Effect 3 started well. The decisions you made way back in Mass Effect 1 could affect your situation in the present; it felt like your choices mattered.  Once you get to the ending the inconsistencies begin to settle in until you realise that there could be a better alternative. This is my idea of what could have happened. It’s not a comprehensive, professional overview. There are probably better solutions, but what this does give is clarity. The third of a trilogy is hardly the place to bring in huge plot twists. It’s the place to reveal the twists which were already in progress and create an ending which brings all loose ends together.
 
The first thing to address would be the Reapers themselves. In ME1 Sovereign is depicted as the vanguard of the Reaper fleet. Its role was to drift through space awakening periodically to monitor the situation and, when the time was right, open up the Citadel mass relay to usher in the Reapers and begin the destruction anew. In ME2 this theme was kept aside from the bizarre inclusion of the human Reaper but ME3 concludes that their motivation for this genocide is the formation of new Reapers and the salvation of organic species from the synthetics they create. On the face of it this doesn’t make sense; why destroy organics when it’s synthetics that are the aggressors? Delve deeper and it makes even less sense: despite their power, Reapers are destroyed during the genocide which means the civilisation stored as the Reaper is also lost forever completely eliminating the point. Synthetics are also immortal meaning part of the stated problem continues to exist.
 
I propose that the Reapers were created by an advanced organic race millions of years ago (running counter to the claims of the Child who claims he created the Reapers and counter to Sovereign who claimed that Reapers had always existed). The Reapers developed alongside this civilisation and were perhaps even allies until the Reapers reached a point of intelligence where they could view the behaviour of the civilisation and extrapolate to the point where they could see the destruction of the galaxy. They may have tried to intervene but their warnings fell on deaf ears and the unnamed civilisation fell thanks to the need of organics to reach just a little further in whatever way they can.
 
Some life survived and evolved into the next cycle’s sentient beings with the Reapers watching. At some point the Reapers would have decided (perhaps in a manner similar to Geth thoughts) that life should not be extinguished but should be guided to ensure sentience does not equal assured destruction and that is the Reapers’ role. They are there to safeguard life as a whole. A civilisation advanced enough to create its own version of life (synthetics) needs also to be advanced enough to control its power and if the Reapers deem that to not be the case they will remove the civilisation to make way for the new organics to try; turning the civilisation into husks to use as ground forces and to create the next Reaper is nothing more than machine efficiency. Over millions of years there is no telling how the primary coding has been corrupted and modified. We have seen from the Geth in ME2 that a formula being solved for a different answer results in the heretics splitting from the Geth consensus and becoming actively hostile and this same principle could account for the Reapers attempting to extinguish sentient life in a galaxy not as advanced as that of the Prothean’s.
 
Now that the background of the Reapers has been defined we can move on to the Child. In the game the Child begins as a young boy killed on Earth during the Reaper invasion. Shepard witnesses this and had the chance to help the boy in a building but wasn’t able to. From the start this interaction is used to define Shepard’s guilt which has built up over the past three years and the boy is the latest in a long line of people to die under Shepard’s watch. Depending on the player, Shepard could be mourning the loss of Kaiden Alenko, Ashley Williams, the Council, Wrex, any of his ME2 colleagues and others and the Child puts a face on all of these characters in Shepard’s mind. This creates a strong plot point which has only been glossed over in the previous two games: the heavy toll command can have on a person. This was handled well and if that was the role the Child played in the game it would be fine but at the end the Child appears as part of the Citadel. This could be seen in a couple of ways. The first is how BioWare appears to have wanted it to be seen: the Child is genuinely a projection of the Citadel Reaper AI. The second is how the author of this document believes it to be: the symptom of an indoctrination attempt by Harbinger. To me, the Child’s inclusion should be limited to a manifestation of Shepard’s guilt since the presence of Reaper AI on the Citadel makes no sense as explained by the above link.
 
The idea that everything on the Citadel was a product of the indoctrination attempt is preferable but Shepard has spent all three games battling the Reapers and he is the galaxy’s saviour. Of course the Reapers would want to turn Shepard to their cause but the way it is presented in the above document almost does Shepard a disservice by portraying it as too easy to pull the wool over his eyes. At the very least he (and therefore the player) should have been aware rather than playing out the undeniably surreal scenario in the game unaware of what was going on. Of course it would be much easier to swallow if the Child was simply a way to present to the audience the guilt Shepard has been harbouring over the course of the games.
 
The idea presented in the document that the indoctrination was an attempt to prevent Shepard from destroying the Reapers is an interesting one and does explain why the options to control and synergise exist but overly complicates matters. By giving the player these three options at the end of the game the process to actually reach this point is devalued and while the idea that Shepard could get right to the end of the game and fail thanks to indoctrination is thought-provoking it only works if the player is aware of the indoctrination at some point (even if the revelation happens after the decision is made). It has been pointed out that after all the time Shepard has spent in and around Reapers it’s no wonder he’s been indoctrinated but why would they stop at just Shepard? Joker has been with him from start to finish and characters like Tali, Wrex and Liara are there for much of the ride so why aren’t they showing any signs of indoctrination as well?
 
A more direct approach could be the challenge to actually get to the Citadel. The conflict doesn’t come from the final, be-all/end-all decision which eradicates all previous decisions; it comes from the conflicts Shepard has gone through to get there. If he fails to save Wrex way back on Virmire then his efforts to unite the Krogan would be that much more difficult since Wreav is a weaker leader than his brother. If he didn’t activate Legion then uniting the Quarians and Geth would be far more challenging due to the lack of a truly sympathetic Geth ally and so on. No decision would necessarily rule out success but they would make it more difficult as found in Heavy Rain. If the player handles themselves correctly then they will make it to the Citadel to turn on the Crucible and it won’t be because a number is high enough, it’ll be because they had Krogan infantry lines drawing away ground troops, Turian dreadnoughts engaging Reaper ships, Quarians evacuating refugees, Asari contributing their biotic shields to front line troops… you get the picture. Each species has their role to play from the Council species all the way down to the ones we only found out about in DLC like the Batarians and Shepard’s efforts to unite them should have played out in a far more immediate way than an Effective Galactic Readiness rating.
 
Once Shepard had reached the Citadel, listened to the Child and made his decision the final cut scene triggered. The big problem most fans have is that regardless of the choice they made all they did essentially was change the colour palette. The way the Crucible works doesn’t really make much sense and it effectively ends any story telling in the Mass Effect universe by ensuring no species could traverse space in the same way for a long time, if ever again. Surely it would be better if the Crucible was an actual directional weapon rather than distributing its energy across mass relays. The Catalyst was depicted in the game as a necessary piece of the Crucible which is something that makes sense. The Crucible was developed over several cycles; each successive species added their bit on until it was apparent that the Citadel was required to focus the energy correctly. As long as we assume that the Citadel is suitable to act as the Catalyst and not specially designed as such then this is ok. Given the shape of the Citadel/Crucible creation, though, it seems that the Citadel would be used to direct energy from the end of each of the arms to the Crucible and out in a concentrated beam. This beam would be the Reaper destroying energy to be fired by the lucky son of a gun sat at the trigger. Of course this means that the process of ridding the galaxy of Reapers would be long and arduous but it god damn should be! The Reapers have had three games to be hyped as an unstoppable death-force; it should take more than a flick of a switch to disable them regardless of how hard the journey was to get to the switch.
 
The last element a lot of people have trouble with is the fact that Shepard dies. Of course this doesn’t necessarily have to happen; it depends on the player getting enough points to unlock the ending where he survives. While his sacrifice is sobering it feels arbitrary in the game because regardless of why he dies the progress of the galaxy is reset to zero. The chance to have Shepard die should be there but more as a consequence of his attempt to destroy the Reapers rather than as a noble I’ll-die-so-you-don’t-have-to. This would free things up to allow Shepard to survive and perhaps someday become an admiral who heard the beginnings of the legend we hear at the end of the credits first hand.
 
At the time of writing the ME3 team sent news that the first lot of DLC would be available this summer and would expand on the ending to explain it further so who knows? Perhaps the indoctrination idea will turn out to be correct? I now know that my ideas above will not happen since they require a complete 180, something BioWare has denied will happen. All I can hope is that their additions help the ending make more sense.

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The Scourge of Multiplayer
Posted on Friday, November 18 2011 @ 15:29:55 Eastern

The biggest game of the year has just been released. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 has been available to purchase over retail counters for a few days and now seems as good a time as ever to discuss how multiplayer has progressed from humble beginnings to the powerhouse it is today.
 


Way back in 1958, Tennis for Two was developed on an analogue computer and is arguably the first example of a multiplayer game. Other early multiplayer games include other sports games such as the renowned Pong, shooter games like Spacewar! and racing games like Astro Race (thank you, Wikipedia). There have been massively multiplayer games, there has been multiplayer on lone console units. Ever since there was gaming, multiplayer was a factor.
 
Services like Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network have made multiplayer not just a nice extra, but a powerful reason to buy a game. So powerful, in fact, that games which don’t lend themselves to multiplayer have been given that component to appease the fans and make a grab at that extra market. I’ll be honest; I’m not much of a multiplayer gamer. I dabble in some Gears Horde and some Halo Firefight; I do frequently co-op games with friends but that’s about the depth of it. You may notice a theme here: it’s the competitive side I stay away from. While competitive multiplayer isn’t completely the water to my hydrophobia, I do tend to steer clear of it for the most part, and this is why the recent shift in attention to multiplayer somewhat concerns me.
 
Call of Duty proves that there are a lot of people out there willing to pay for multiplayer. It proves it so hard that those people will pay £45 for the game and an additional £35 for the yearly Elite service they have rolled out with the third Modern Warfare. Ok sure, Call of Duty is a multiplayer game with a single-player campaign tacked on, but that doesn’t mean the same rule applies to every game, right?

Absolutely, there are still plenty of single-player exclusive games like L.A. Noire and the upcoming Skyrim which focus completely on the storyline and single-player gameplay… I think I may have to take back the ‘plenty’ back there, though, as the only other major game I can think of that fits that criteria is Batman: Arkham Asylum/City. Of course there are smaller titles such as the fantastic but underappreciated Alice: Madness Returns and the surprisingly sexual (given the rating) Bayonetta which are only single-player, but you could say that about the first Uncharted.

Franchises like Uncharted, Mass Effect, Assassin’s Creed, Grand Theft Auto and even frigging Bioshock started as single-player games and then caved to consumer pressure to include a multiplayer component in later iterations. A couple of games like Halo: ODST and Rage even included a separate disc solely for multiplayer!



Sometimes these components are surprisingly innovative like the Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood Free-for-All mode where players need to stealth around blending in with NPCs until they kill their target. Of course the targets are doing exactly the same thing and incorrect kills change your target, so it can be quite challenging. Let’s face it, though, most multiplayer portions of games are cookie cut from other, more established multiplayer games.
 
I’m sure you’re wondering by now what my problem is; if a game can take care of single-player and multiplayer fans, then why shouldn’t it? Well, my concern is that most developers can’t afford to have one team develop solely for the single-player and one for the multi. There will invariably be a loss of focus on the single-player and there will be a conflict of interests as far as gameplay goes. A good single-player game requires different elements than a good multiplayer, and it’s hard to get both of them right - it’s not impossible, but it is difficult.

So which type of game suffers most? Obviously this issue is decided by the developers and publishers, but which would you focus on: a game where the sole focus is to get through once, and perhaps twice to get all the collectibles, or a game where the focus is to continually play a series of small matches and then later buy add-ons in the form of extra maps or weapons to continue playing the (easy to develop) small matches?
 
Another issue is the long term impact on a franchise’s overall feel. It’s hard to remember now, but way back in 2003, the original Call of Duty – developed by Infinity Ward – was released. You may recall that this game was based in WWII and focused entirely on single-player. Even when multiplayer was introduced in the second game the single-player story remained important. Compare this to the state of the franchise today and you’ll see that the six-hour campaign is there to justify its own existence.
 
Now that Mass Effect 3 has confirmed multiplayer, will it become a Bioshock 2, or an AC: Brotherhood? Only time will tell, but I sincerely hope the story doesn’t suffer to placate the masses.


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Kingdom of Violence
Posted on Tuesday, August 2 2011 @ 14:33:41 Eastern

Once upon a time the citizens of a fair and prosperous kingdom enjoyed a pastime. Their hobby was a combination of story-telling, make-believe, music, and action. Practitioners would don costumes and play out specially created stories with each other...   read more...

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Pire-at-Sea
Posted on Monday, July 25 2011 @ 15:48:47 Eastern

Far away in the kingdom of Pire-at-Sea the evil ruler Arfor concocted a diabolical plan. He would create cloned citizens to infiltrate the kingdoms of Ninmar, Migat and Sogi. These clones would work for the citizens of the kingdoms for free providing...   read more...

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Hacking and Piracy
Posted on Sunday, May 1 2011 @ 16:56:50 Eastern

Unless you’ve been living under that special rock occupied by people who still haven’t seen Toy Story you’ll be aware that Sony, for the last two weeks, has majorly dropped the ball regarding their online service. While Sony’s...   read more...

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What's so bad about video games?!
Posted on Wednesday, January 12 2011 @ 11:42:31 Eastern

We hear it all the time: “Doom caused Columbine!”, “Mass Effect is depraved!” and “Oh my god the swearing! My poor, delicate ears!”. As gamers, dodging such attacks is pretty much a way of life; hell, take a look a...   read more...

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Games and Stories
Posted on Monday, October 11 2010 @ 14:12:43 Eastern

I just finished reading an article on Cracked.com. For the uninitiated, Cracked.com is a comedy website which allows its readers to supply the site with comedic lists. Not only does this supply them with a very decent sized audience, it also supplies...   read more...

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Piracy: The Reality
Posted on Saturday, February 13 2010 @ 15:45:38 Eastern

Piracy has been with us for centuries. True pirates: the ones who cannot be mixed at the aesthetic level with zombies, ninjas or robots terrorised the high seas. They pillaged and took whatever...   read more...

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The technological limits of consoles
Posted on Sunday, January 24 2010 @ 08:40:13 Eastern

After reading an article in 360 Gamer (issue 72) I came to wonder just how much life is left in today’s generation of consoles, this is an expansion of the issue that article touched upon.read more...

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