Mass Effect's Biggest Mistake
Coming right off the heels of Mass Effect Andromeda, there's been a lot of hate being generated by Mass Effect fans about EA's newest title--so much, in fact, that EA has officially put the IP on hold, and the game's infamous reputation has even put their secret new action IP way behind schedule as well. Needless to say, Mass Effect is in the doghouse, especially considering the shambles that Mass Effect 3 left in its wake 5 years before even this. Mass Effect Andromeda, while it was bad, was merely the icing on this cake, however. Andromeda was not nearly the worst thing that has happened to Mass Effect. Bad? Yes. Probably the nail in this beautiful series' coffin. But Mass Effect had problems long before Andromeda reared its ugly head. And it started around Mass Effect 2.
Then the game started. I had no idea what was going on. The first few minutes of the game caused me to ask so many questions about its lore (a very good sign). "What were those giant stations and why did I have to fly so near them to go FTL?" "That alien was called a Spectre. Is that their species name?" "Why is this Spectre overseeing everything?" "Wow, my Shepard character says things differently than what I select, but gives the same response!" "Ohh, I get it... The aliens are called Turians and Spectre is his job title." "Wow, this Prothean lore is great." "I wonder what that hand-like ship is designed to do in that video."
Needless to say, I was already immersed in the game's lore before I even saw action. Such a wonderful sign that this was going to be a great game. And after the first mission I was even more immersed. Never before did I want to walk up to everyone and ask them about the universe. The lore was well-thought out, the pace of the story as I progressed continued perfectly, and the action, while difficult, was something I had never seen before.
I was so immersed in the game I eventually spent nearly every waking hour thinking about it, wondering what the real story behind these Reapers were, and taking my sweet time going through the story. Eventually, I made it to Virmire and spoke with Sovereign. Below is a video about the Reapers; for those who haven't seen it yet, I here is the conversation that changed my perspective on the possibilities of storytelling forever. For those who have seen it already, I recommend watching it again anyway, as it highly pertains to most of the content in this blog post:
The truth about the Reapers had finally come out after all that shrouded mystery the writers so lovingly concealed from me. And this reveal was probably the biggest "Mind.... BLOWN!" moment of my life. A race of hyper-advanced, sentient machines whose existence predates the creation of the universe, whose purpose for existence is beyond our comprehension... That one conversation, listening to Sovereign's amazing voice, explaining its threat to my existence--that is easily one of my favorite moments in video gaming history. Over the next 5 years, I spent countless hours wondering to myself, "How am I even going to beat the Reapers? These beings beyond my comprehension... an army of machines that will darken the sky of every world... I barely beat one, how can I possibly beat all of them?" This game had stolen my heart and made me love it even more than Star Trek--a feat I never before considered possible. The entire concept of the Reapers was done so well that I submit that the Reapers were perhaps the greatest villains in storytelling. I think it's partially why the Kett in Mass Effect Andromeda fell so flat. It's like that one band Moose Butter that has to follow after Pink Floyd. How do you one-up antagonists like the Reapers? You don't, that's how.
Then came Mass Effect 2. Easily my favorite game in the franchise. It was done so well, and while they got rid of infinite ammo, the game did alright. One of my other favorite moments in video gaming history was the ending of Mass Effect 2. It was hinted that if you didn't do things right, Shepard could die. I didn't do things right, and as a result 3 of my squadmates died in my first playthrough. I remember being so scared. Was my Shepard going to die? It wasn't until well after that I learned that the only way Shepard could die was if there was no one there to catch you. But I didn't know that at the time, and I'm glad I didn't because my fear of Shepard's fate played a huge hand in this one moment. So in the final cutscene, my heart began pounding. A character I spent the better part of 2 games over 3 years preparing for this moment was possibly going to die. As Shepard made the jump to the Normandy, the universe slowed down around me. I couldn't hear the music. I couldn't see anything around me. I trembled in anticipation! And then when a teammate grabbed him, I jumped up and screamed "YES!" at the top of my lungs. No video game had ever done that for me. It gave me hope for defeating the unstoppable Reapers in Mass Effect 3.
Little did I know...
Mass Effect 3 finally rolled around. I played through the demo and really praised the game's improved graphics, streamlined action, and superb storytelling mechanics. The Reapers landing on Earth and mercilessly attacking everything? It was exactly what I had hoped for. I was late to the party when it came to buying the game. Didn't exactly have the cash readily available, as I was spending it all on dating the woman who is now my wife. But before I had gotten the game I was already hearing about the obvious backlash everyone still berates the game for, even after they patched in a fix for it: the infamous 3-colored ending. My initial thought was, "How bad can that really be?" And when I finally did buy the game and play through it to its completion, I was absolutely pissed. But not for the 3-colored ending. I was so angry about something else that I couldn't even see color at that point. No, the ending isn't what destroyed my faith in the franchise...
EA RETCON-NUKED THE REAPERS!
They went from being these beings that have no creators, beings with no beginning and virtually no end as we understand it, beings with a purpose beyond organic comprehension--to being robots with a beginning, with a tasteless and cliche purpose ("I'm going to destroy organic life to save it, hurr-durr!"), and with a practical "please-end-our-existence" technology taped to the Citadel. WHAT A COP-OUT! You're telling me that you're going to let the creatures of the galaxy find this... tool of the Reapers (the Citadel is pretty much their Swiss-Army Knife: a livable station for races to live on, a conduit to bring the Reapers out of Dark Space, a Keeper baby-maker, a literal self-destruct button--I'm fairly certain there were more plot devices packed into that construct than all of the ones on Earth in the Transformer's series--and they're not even done making movies yet!), and expect them to do things exactly as you expect? Indoctrination or not, have you not considered that someone might--just might--find the console that stops you from harvesting them? And why the heck does having military Assets give us more or less ending options?! What idiot designed this?!
It's been 5 years and I'M STILL BITTER about this! 5 years of my life--WASTED BY A STUPID, INFERIOR, RETCON! Haley Joel Osmond practically ruined my love for science fiction with that smug, starkid face. My friends reading this are probably rolling their eyes into the backs of their skulls because I have angrily brought this up so many times with them. I've been slapped a thousand times by the "Maybe Sovereign was just smack-talking you in Mass Effect 1," argument. NO!
Don't give me that ridiculous BS! They deliberately changed the lore to appease fans who couldn't wrap their brains around the fact that there could be things we don't understand outside the curtain of the universe, with origins beyond what we can understand with our linear and mortal minds.
Ahem... This brings me to my opinion of Mass Effect's biggest mistake: dumbing down good science fiction for a larger audience. Mass Effect became too popular for its own good. Personally, I blame EA getting their grubby mitts on Bioware and all their IP's. With the introduction of Mass Effect 2 (where EA really started making demands to change the formula), we saw the infamous infinite-ammo redaction, so it would appease shooter fans more. While I agree that the game's signature RPG-shooting style was changed for the better, I wholly disagree with the removal of infinite ammo on a lore-perspective. Who cares if it's better for the life of a gun to have thermal clips if it removes the point of the ability to fire without having to reload? Another cop-out. Then in Mass Effect 2, we saw the Dark Energy storyline sputter to life and then die as soon as it started. This is rumored to be a storyline that would progress the original concept of the Reapers and their true agenda. But EA thought Bioware's writing was too complex for most people, and axed the concept, firing the lead writers and replacing them with people who understood it was better to make money than an amazing story. So the Dark Energy story arc was thrown out the window--at least mostly. Remnants of that arc remain in the game, being a chief reason we get to recruit Tali and partially the reason we go on her Loyalty mission. But after that we never hear about it again. How stupid.
Let's talk about the stupid changes they made so the audience could appreciate it more in Mass Effect 3. I want to start with the Illusive Man. I get they needed a bad guy faction, and a side-villain other than the Reapers so we can have a face to be angry at. But they completely wrecked the Illusive Man's character and went out of their way to break their own lore to do it. You have to look at this from a perspective of Mass Effect 2 before the third game had come out. First and foremost, it was set up in Mass Effect 2 for Shepard to never like the Illusive Man's methods, even though Shepard has the potential to do the same morally-questionable--and, in my opinion, sometimes worse--things than the Illusive Man did in Mass Effect 2. I caught myself approving of some of his methods in ME2, and I remember being genuinely upset that I couldn't approve as Shepard. I felt as though EA missed an opportunity to explore the morally-grey overtones of the second game like they had advertised. The Illusive Man was shady, but I believed him to be far from evil.
But that isn't what the audience wanted. No... The Illusive Man's methods were considered by so many to be evil EA made the executive decision to make him go full-on bad guy by Mass Effect 3. It was a terrible idea, because there could have been so much more than there was with him. He could have been an asset to Shepard or a hindrance depending on the ending of ME2 and sequences throughout ME3. But they wanted to take a less-open approach about it.We were not allowed to agree with the Illusive Man, and so in the third installment of Mass Effect he took on the role of full-time villain, and, in my humble opinion, complete opposite of his character. I don't even like that "He was Indoctrinated" excuse. There is no way that he would have been Indoctrinated. He was a recluse on a station out in the middle of nowhere, far beyond the reaches of the Reapers' whispering tendrils. And even so, he would have taken serious precautions with his "virtually-limitless" resources, moreso than even Saren. I see no conceivable way that he would have been Indoctrinated like Saren was--especially since he dedicated his life to fighting the Reapers. Let's also talk about the Illusive Man's finances. He could have hired an army to go to the Omega 4 Relay in Mass Effect 2. But he drained his resources reviving Shepard. It was on official record that Cerberus went nearly broke trying to save Shepard. So why does Cerberus suddenly have money to create an army in ME3 for Shepard to fight? They broke their own lore, and it's completely stupid.
The second thing about ME3 that they did wrong was obviously, as mentioned already, the Reapers. I get that they needed to find a way to make the Reapers easier to kill. My musings about them over the 5 years between Mass Effect's 1-3 came to the conclusion that there really wasn't a way. Or was there?
Vigil gave us a huge hint, and the War Assets could have been handled so much differently because of this one weakness already written in since the first Mass Effect. Above is a picture of a scene in Star Trek: the Next Generation. If you know anything about the series, this one scene should be a huge tell about what I'm about to say. Take a moment to process it, Next Gen fans........................................ Do you know the Reapers' weakness yet? In Mass Effect 1, Vigil, a VI programmed by the now-extinct Protheans, explained that the Reapers are vulnerable while they are in sleep-mode in Dark Space.
This means that the Crucible could have been vastly different, and so could the point of War Assets. As the Reapers prepared for one final battle above Earth, just like in the actual game, Shepard could have activated the Crucible using the Catalyst and it could have been designed to utilize their one weakness: temporarily force the Reapers into sleep mode, and allow the armies of the galaxy to fire everything they can at the sleeping giants while they try to override the command they were given. Depending on the amount of War Assets you have will determine how many Reapers actually die, which affects the outcome of how many species become totally harvested. If you did really well, all survive the onslaught of the Reapers, and you still get the ending where people decide to learn how to use the Reapers' technology to become one with machine and evolve even further. I mean, this part isn't really required, but it's still a better ending than what we got. And it keeps the Reapers' lore intact instead of being utterly retcon-nuked into Leviathan--er... I mean, oblivion. So very much like Captain Picard's decision to tell the Borg to go to sleep, we could have had an awesome moment watching Reapers get decimated left and right; the only difference being that they don't self-destruct because of an error in programming logic.
So what's the moral here? Stick with your lore and nothing can go wrong. Try to "fix" what isn't broken, and everything gets screwed up! I hope you learned your lesson, EA! Thanks for sticking with me on this one. I know it was a doozy. Sorry for the especially-long rant. But it's one I just had to tell. Hopefully it will relieve some of the pressure off Mass Effect Andromeda; it totally deserves what critique it's getting, but let's all remember that Mass Effect was messed up long before Angara were a glimmer in EA's corporate eye.
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