T w e n t y S i d e d

This game is the Jekyll & Hyde of storytelling. Last episode was Commander Shepard vs. Common Sense. Now we’re meeting a Geth and visiting the Migrant Fleet. With a Geth.

I was actually very sorry when our session ended this week, because I wanted to keep going with this mission.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

We were off-topic for nearly the entire episode. In case you missed some of the references, allow me to spot you a few URL’s to provide you with needed enlightenment:

We talked about the movie Short Circuit, which featured Jonny 5, the self-aware robot made from mid-1980’s microprocessors. I mentioned the 8086 processor, which is to the personal computers what the Model T was to automobiles: Not particularly good. But it was cheap and useful, and thus the beginning of a revolution.

Rutskarn mentioned Nostalgia critic. I’ve heard of this site before, but never checked it out until now. True story: This post would have been up an hour ago if I didn’t just sink a bunch of time into watching 80’s TV commercials.

Rutskarn, Mumbles, and I are all playing Echo Bazaar, a Victorian Gothic-styled social networking game. I’m a big fan. It shows that the new wave of casual social games don’t need to be more mind-numbing Farmville knockoffs. The writing is smart and fun. The setting is exquisite, but daunting. My own Victorian London (yes, I’m talking about my unpublished book again, I have officially become THAT GUY) isn’t anywhere near as vivid.

Rutskarn mentioned MDK 2, which was an excellent game. And this conversation reminds me that I haven’t seen my copy in ages. It’s not on my shelf. I can’t even remember what the box looked like. I must have lent it out years ago and never got it back. Hm.

When I asked Rutskarn, “how do you type whilst wearing gentleman’s sport gloves?”, it was a reference to Old Timey Strong Bad.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

And we’re back on the ranting.

Here again we find ourselves interacting with the main plot, and once again the whole story flies apart. The reaper has been here for 5 million years, or one hundred reaper cycles. Yet none of the last 100 races managed to find it, destroy, or make use of it, or whatever.

And then we find it. Somehow. And we find out Cerberus has been here, dumped a bunch of scientists here with no real goal, and then forgot about them. And they all died. Just like all the other Cerberus cells, they wasted many lives and much money doing things that wouldn’t advance their stated goals even if they worked.

Now, remember that the council doesn’t believe that the reapers exist. (Which is preposterous, but let’s just ignore that for the sake of keeping this post under 1,000 words.) The council’s disbelief is the only reason we’re teamed up with these criminal racist murdering lying stooges. But we don’t use this reaper hulk to prove that reapers exist.

The only reason we’re going on board is to get a reaper IFF. And the only reason we’re doing that is so we can go through the Omega-4 relay to fight the Collectors. Of course, that’s stupid. If our only goal is to stop the collectors, then it’s way better to camp on OUR SIDE of the Omega-4 relay. Throw down some mines. Wait for them to run into the mines, then blast them. Problem solved.

Now you could argue that our real goal isn’t to just blow up the reaper ship, but to go through the relay and get our hands on that great reaper tech. Except the game designers portray this choice as unambiguously evil.

And Legion, who has been looking for us, shows up here? Was he able to predict that we would come here, or was he just amazingly lucky. (This point might actually be addressed somewhere in Legion’s dialog. In any case, this is a minor point and not nearly the immersion-breaker that the other points are.)

So sum up:

* Cerberus acted like idiots
* Shepard acted like an idiot
* The past 100 harvest races, while not entirely idiots, might have done better if they had found the reaper.
* The council are idiots
* Legion probably could have been making better use of his time
* The writers are not exactly making a fearsome display of mental prowess either. This is not a complicated plot, and it shouldn’t have this many problems.

So, par for the course?

Man, get me outta this main plot and back to the loyalty missions.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Here is a fun game to play. During this episode, one of the hosts says something incorrect about a videogame. Did you catch it?

The first four minutes of the episode were some of the most fun I’ve had in ages. I’m just picturing a newcomer to the series hearing our review of Halo, the Wiimote-based PS3 exclusive. Yes, 99% of the people out there will dismiss the discussion as the ravings of silly people. But you know, somewhere on the internet, lurks that last 1%. The people who will hear this, and the red curtain of rage will descend, and they will experience an epic level of indignation that “this review is so bias and inacurate”. I realize this is a really childish thing to enjoy. Sorry.

We did manage to sneak in a few words about Mass Effect 2. So there’s that. Anyway. Come back tomorrow and see if the show improves! The suspense must be killing you!

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.