T w e n t y S i d e d
The last entry covered the overall shape of a hypothetical Mass Effect 4, and how to use stalling and retconning to mitigate some of the difficulties of the ending. Now it’s time to consider what the new game will actually look like.
In the past I’ve warned against the dangers of sticking to a formula too closely. That doesn’t mean that formulas are useless, just that sequel developers should aim for a balance between the familiar and the new. One particular part of the Bioware formula still works relatively well: their typical five-act structure. In it, RPGs are divided roughly into the following parts:
1. Character Creation/Tutorial/Kiddie Pool Area
Examples: Eden Prime and the Citadel (Mass Effect), the Ostagar/Lothering sequence (Dragon Age: Origins), Endar Spire/Taris (KOTOR)
This is where the player is introduced to the game. They create their character, get introduced to the setting, and face some challenges that are – mechanically, at least – fairly easy. By the end of the kiddie pool area, the player should have an clue as to what the main quest is about. The goal of this section is to ease the player into the game and get them interested without overwhelming them.
2. Go Three-Four Places
Examples: Liara/Feros/Noveria (Mass Effect), Redcliffe/Circle Tower/Dalish Camp/Orzammar (Dragon Age: Origins), finding the star maps (KOTOR)
After the kiddie pool section is completed, typically the game opens up and the player is told to visit several locations and resolve their storylines before the main quest can continue. This is in some ways the start of the “real” game. In the Mass Effect series, this is often where the character quests are introduced (more on those later). The requirement that the player go to a certain number of places is not a strict one, and not required in the new game. But it can be a useful check to prevent them from motoring through the main quest too quickly. The goal of this section is let the player get settled into the world and invested in it, while advancing the main story and reinforcing the player’s emotional connection to its outcome.
3. Someone Dies Or Something
Examples: Virmire (Mass Effect), The Landsmeet (Dragon Age: Origins), Leviathan (KOTOR)
After completing whatever number of sidequests is necessary, the player finally advances the main story, and there’s some sort of dramatic turning point. This is, in some ways, what would normally be called the “rising action,” even though it typically occurs later in a playthrough than it would in a book or movie. It’s not a requirement for someone to actually die, just that something dramatically significant happens. The goal of this section is to give the player a memorable sequence that sets up the endgame.
4. Last Chance For Sidequests
Examples: Anytime a game tells you “you won’t be able to go back after this”
After the story’s third-act turn, there’s an opportunity for the player to wrap up any unfinished business. This is the final breath before the plunge: polish off your build and equipment, finish any outstanding sidequests, and get ready for the final sequence. The goal of this section is to mechanically prepare the player for the final battle and hype them for the climax of the story.
5. Endgame
Examples: Ilos/The Citadel (Mass Effect), The Battle of Denerim (Dragon Age: Origins), Star Forge (KOTOR)
Eventually, the player passes the point of no return, and commits to completing the main story. Ideally, all remaining plot threads are gathered up and brought to some kind of conclusion here, and our heroes fight one or more bosses that are just challenging enough to be fun. The goal of this section is to give the game a satisfying conclusion, and to tease the next entry in the series, if there is one.
The plan for the series is to go through these five acts in order, describing what they might look like. The goal is not to describe a hypothetical Mass Effect 4 down to the last pixel, but to provide a template that allows for flexibility. Bioware’s five-act structure is a formula that shows some wear around the edges, true, but for the sake of simplicity and familiarity I’m going to follow it here.
Character Creation
We start with character creation. This is important enough that it’s common for RPG developers to release their character creation tools early, so players can get a head start on wrestling the facial sliders into someone who looks like Keanu Reeves. In fact, it’s important enough that I have a pretty big ask pretty early: let us play as a nonhuman.
Link (YouTube) |
This is obviously going to mean more work for the team, but in my completely unqualified opinion it’s both doable and worth it. For one thing, Bioware has done similar things before. Dragon Age: Origins let us play as a human, elf, or dwarf, from several different social backgrounds, and had not only character models but even unique starting areas for each. If you don’t want to go that far, even Mass Effect 3’s multiplayer gave us the option of playing as a Krogan/Salarian/Turian/Asari – you can even play as a Volus. If they can create builds, animations, voice barks, and character models for all of those species in an EA-mandated multiplayer mode, it seems to me it should also be possible to have us play as non-human races in singleplayer.
To me, this is an important step for the series to take. The first Mass Effect had an element to its setting that you don’t usually see: humans were not dominant. They were part of the interstellar community, yes, but Earth was a remote backwater – the sci-fi equivalent of a developing country. This is what made the Turian ambassador’s refusal to believe Saren’s treachery (not to mention “ah yes, ‘Reapers'”) both so frustrating and so consistent with the setting. It’s what, for me, made Udina’s character make sense – he’s an ambassador representing a species that isn’t really taken seriously. As a professional necessity, he becomes the squeakiest wheel he can, constantly shaking his fist and demanding things.
Contrast this to Star Trek, the setting by which Mass Effect was clearly at least partially inspired. Gene Roddenbury’s vision of a human-led space UN was an idealistic one, but it was also a power fantasy in its own way. Mass Effect deftly inverted it, making the player – in a way – the subject of anti-human discrimination in an otherwise fair and well-managed galaxy. Someone who important people just aren’t inclined to pay attention to or take seriously.
Unfortunately, this unique quality of the setting dried up in the second and third games. Shepard went from a normal protaganist to a memetic badass, and the straightforward power fantasy that the first game so skillfully avoided was gradually reintroduced. Now, not only were the heroes humans, so were the villains: Cerberus and the Illusive Man took over more and more of the story until they were practically tied with the Reapers as the game’s main antagonists.
It’s time to bring the unique character of the original game back – or at least something like it. Stop centering it around humans and at least let us play as the major humanoid species (Human, Asari, Turian, Salarian), and, if possible, others too (Quarian, Geth, Krogan, Drell, Volus… Vorcha? Elcor? Hanar even? Why not go nuts?). This is going to mean more work, yes, and more voice actors brought in to say all those lines for all those different species. But it’s nothing other games, in comparable situations with comparable resources, haven’t done before. If you want to get this albatross flying again, you’re gonna have to put the work in.
Once the player has their character – be it a human Keanu or an alien equivalent – ready, it’s time to drop them into the tutorial/kiddie pool area and reintroduce them to the setting. Getting the setting right is important, crucial even, and the next entry will cover how to make it effective and memorable.
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I’ve spent enough time playing the MP that I can tell a lot of animations are shared between characters. And the animations and models were also reused from the single player mode, so it wasn’t that big of a job. I think for the multi race implementation, it would be writing and voicing all those additional lines.
I think with some careful work they don’t even need a unique voice for each species.
1) Several races – Human, Turian, Asari – don’t have a strong unique sound.
2) They’re going to need the character to have some neutral ‘raised in a melting pot’ background anyway. No story could fit both a traditional Krogan and Asari. So they’re some kind of ‘orphan Solarian’ whatever.
3) Most of the uniqueness of alien voices is achieved by pitch, speed and effects. Slow a voice down and deepen it: Krogan. It needs to be done carefully but apparently Watchdogs: Legion does this.
You lose things like Solarian sentence structure, but that’s an okay trade-off. Imagine how fresh it would feel roleplaying the game as different races!
Dragon Age Inquisition has 4 main voices and a bunch of unique dialogue it could work.
Yeah, it can definitely be done, and doing this would get them to back off on the excess of cinematic dialogs. By all means have them, but not so MANY. This is a universe with electronic communication, after all. Fewer movies means an opportunity for a more immersive experience.
Granted, it’s not a guarantee, but at least give it a shot.
Turians actually do have a distinct “flanging” effect to their voice that’s added on in post-production. In theory, Bioware could just take the human voice recordings, run them through the “Turian voice filter,” and call it a day, but that would seem kind of cheap, wouldn’t it?
I don’t know, maybe the fanbase would consider it worth it. What’s left of the Mass Effect fanbase at this point, anyway.
I’d be okay with just applying the Turian flanging. If they show you at the character creation screen it might even be neat
It’d actually be really cool. See, you could have a standard “Pick a voice” thing, like Saints Row, with it changing with respect to race-pitch shift it down (While keeping the speed roughly) and you have Krogan. Add flanging, and you have Turian. You could easily turn one voice actor’s performance into several distinct aliens.
People would be fine with it. It’s literally how they produce those voices already, the only difference would be that they could see that they could have gone for a human version of the same voice as well. Really don’t see it being an issue.
Especially since Andromeda is the real albatross.
I would like different races, but more than that I want the background and identity of the player to matter, and once you get beyond a handful of player races it becomes practically impossible to make that happen. Because, as Bob says, it wasn’t just that Humans weren’t the dominant species, but that you yourself felt that privilege as Shepard found himself pushing against bureaucracy and prejudice.
Dragon Age manages to do it with 3 or 4, which to me is a good number. Give me Human, Asari, Turian and Krogan, but make each background different, unique, and change a number of interactions. Don’t give me 12 races. There’s no point. Those 4 major races are also the most changed by the events of ME3. Playing as a Krogan as they begin to resurge after the genophage ended? Or as an Asari, shamed and reviled after the revelation of their illegal hoarding of Prothean technology? Or a Turian, replaced by Humanity as the dominant species, and for the first time themselves feeling what it’s like to be second-class citizens? Yeah, there’s a lot to explore there. But playing as a Hanar? Sure, it would be fun, but it’s not worth diluting the more important stories you could be playing for.
Because if you’re playing as an ‘orphan Salarian’, then what is the point? Isn’t it just a cosmetic choice and little else if all characters of all species share the same background? Not only does that not actually provide the player with the kind of depth that they’d expect from a Bioware RPG, but it also undoes the depth that there was. That, actually, all these differences aside these species and cultures aren’t that different.
And to me that was one of the worst things about Andromeda, that the different races which all were unique, with their own cultures, histories and ideologies in the original trilogy all felt the same once they reached the Heleus Cluster.
I think having similar-sounding voices and the same lines make the idea of having multiple playable races way less interesting. What’s the point of choosing another race if it’s the same as humans? I’d prefer if each was really different, with the characters from each race using different expressions, figures of speech, ways of speaking. That would mean less dialogues and only a few race choice (3-4), but that’s better than having race that’s just a cosmetic filter.
Dragon Age; Inquisition had multiple player races that used the same voice and, while I haven’t played it myself I would guess mostly the same lines. But those races were fantasy “demi-humans,” so maybe that’s different.
Yeah, just ask the Quarians about how ‘fair’ and ‘well-managed’ Citadel space was.
The long and the short of it was that Citadel space was managed for the benefit of the council members; the other races were very much lesser and their interests were indulged only when they didn’t infringe on the council’s interests.
It’s also worth pointing out that their elite enforcers were almost entirely unsupervised, and were more or less expected to carve out fiefdoms to support their goals, so ‘well-managed’ seems questionable.
I’ve been playing Stellaris with the new Federations expansion that adds the Galactic Community and a Galactic Council, and since I have more diplomatic weight than the rest of the galaxy combined (despite having the smallest area) I was a shoe-in for a council position when the council was established. Then I got myself voted permanent council member…and now the temptation is very real to start lowering the number of council members from 3, to 2, to 1, even though my government is egalitarian and pacifistic and should really be against this.
I guess what I’m saying is that I very much understand the council members’ positions.
I get that in a military strategy game, both Stellaris and Civ do really test your patience with trying for something higher minded.
But to apply that in any way to reality, or a fictional world that is meant to be a passable bit of futurism, is foolish. Those games almost inevitably force conflict, because the AIs are not people with the same needs as you, the same desires, and the same fears, that you can come to any sort of agreement with. They are a set of numbers and “border anxiety” and concerns about the size of your military inevitably cause violence to erupt. In real life, having a powerful ally sharing a border with you is often a very good thing-in these games it inevitably tracks points against you, undermining the alliance, because conflict is the goal. Conflict, and the threat of it, create the drama.
Just because you can’t get strategy game AIs to collaborate together and behave themselves, and be even the slighest bit rational, doesn’t make dictatorship the better solution.
The council is only really a group you should empathise with if you too are into putting yourself at the top of a heirachy, arrogating yourself the best of everything, and setting up a beauracratic system for your worthless peons to petition you for favour.
Can’t say I’d respond to a post pointing out that the “stable government” in Mass Effect was a) corrupt and b) partly responsible for their own downfall, due to the leeway they gave their best agents.
It’s worthwhile to have you choose your race even if only so you can have a character of different height or proportions. Dragon Age Inquisition didn’t exactly change a ton based on whether you chose a qunari or an elf, but the customization was still welcome. Even if I got A Good Dwarven Perspective in the dialogue scenes all the time.
YIKES. That’s a BAD angle.
The different heights / sizes would need to be considered when balancing combat, in this cover-based shooter series. At least, roughly balanced. Otherwise, players would be incentivized to pick the tiniest race that could still pick up a gun. That would be one way to help balance it – bigger races can handle bigger guns more easily. Maybe Krogans can use shotguns, sniper rifles, assault rifles, and miniguns, but the race of Tiny Tims only get pistols, SMGs, and assault rifles, and the bigger guns cost more skill-points for them.
Not really. For one player hitbox doesn’t have to be as big as the player model. The other thing is that in cover shooter you get hit when you decide to stick your head out of the cover at the wrong time, no matter how big it is. Video games are full of cheating that only simulates real life. In Quake 3 you could play as a fly or as a truck, they would be as easy to hit and no-one would notice.
If you make the hitbox not match the model, it looks like cheating. The other players’ shots either go through your shoulder, and they get frustrated, or they “hit” above your head and you get frustrated.
No, it doesn’t, you don’t really understand the software.
The AI are under absolutely no obligation to play fair. Clover, you don’t have to make the hitbox bigger-though you raise a great point that in a cover based shooter, most of the time even if everyone is a different higher, a similar amount is exposed to fire, arms, 3-4 inches of torso, and head. So in the majority of cases, it’s a non issue already.
Echo, there is no reason that it would need to be specially balanced for height. The AI have perfect aim-it is an alteration AFTER the fact that reduces it. The hitbox being smaller does not matter one jot to their accuracy, since you designed their innaccuracy. If you’ve set it up so that your bots will miss 50% of shots, they will do that whether the guy running from cover to cover is a cave troll or a dwarf.
And please, spare me “But it’ll feel less realistic if they’re just as good at shooting my dwarf”. No, it’ll feel like consistent difficulty, and people won’t ever get the two of them side by side enough to make a good comparison anyhow.
If you wanna distinguish races by weapons, whatever, that’s a cool and neat idea-there’s no balancing issue that means you NEED to do it, it just makes the builds more unique and encourages replay.
I will say that Dantooine from KotOR still looks shockingly good.
It should be noted that the screenshot is utilising a number of mods, so it’s not an accurate depiction of vanilla KOTOR.
Interesting. Do you know what would these be, aside from some sort of hi-res mod (that I can tell is there by how small the HUD is)?
And regardless, the game has wonderful art direction and great lighting.
When I played it for the first time in 2015 without any mods, a lot areas still looked really good, as you say, due to the art direction and lighting. (also perhaps the SW appeal did help a lot)
From what I can see in the pic, a skybox mod (probably Kexikus’ “High Quality Skyboxes”), a grass mod (might be vurt’s not sure), a lightsaber mod (no idea), and whatever that Mando armour is is also using modded textures (no idea by who though). Looks like the ground, cliff, rock textures are all vanilla though.
The UI is due to a widescreen resolution exe hack that lets you run the game up to (and I think above) 4K, with scaling of UI elements to match. That would be the Universal Widescreen (UniWS) patch in conjunction with ndix UR’s “High Resolution Menus”.
Typo? I assume you meant Reanu Keeves. After all, there’s no-one better suited than him to save the universe.
Didn’t both ME1 and KOTOR allow the player to go to the third act without having to finish all the main quests? I definitely remember leaving recruiting Liara for last, because the whole thing is hilarious: not only is she fully convinced she’s hallucinating the rescue, but then you get to explain Protheans and Reapers to her.
Same with KOTOR, where you can just stroll into Korrban
knowing full well you’re Darth RevanYou are remembering correctly. Virmire becomes available after two critical-path questlines, and the Leviathan straight-up breaks into KotOR’s structure.
I really dislike KOTOR’s version. If you present X many choices, interrupt them all equally, or don’t interrupt them. If every level had a mandatory follow-up level it would be fine, but three out of four don’t, so having a fight with the Big Bad’s army, and then going on to number 4 anyway, diminishes both levels. Going in, I know I won’t beat the Big Bad here because I’m required to have all the Xs before I can win, and I know it won’t affect the next level because I could have done the next level before this one. And in the next level I’m going “this seems less dramatic than the last level”.
I think that Knights of the Old Republic works fine. It gives the player time to digest the big reveal from the Leviathan, to think about what that reveal means, and to role-play in the aftermath of that reveal before heading into the climax. Even if the fourth planet is mostly the same as it would have been if the player had chosen to do it earlier in the sequence, the reveal recontextualizes it. In particular, going to Korriban post-Leviathan is mentally very different from going there pre-Leviathan. I don’t think that the effect is quite as strong for the other planets, but each planet has at least a few new bits of dialog post-Leviathan that it doesn’t have otherwise.
But perhaps the most important thing about the Leviathan stage is that it adds a sense of urgency that the game wouldn’t otherwise have. In most RPGs, the game world is static and the people robots. Nothing happens until the player arrives in order to cause or witness it. Knights of the Old Republic isn’t really any different, but the Leviathan stage creates or contributes to the illusion that it is. The Leviathan stage suggests to the player that Malak is a person with actual initiative rather than an automaton waiting for the player to show up until his script can begin executing.
The Leviathan stage does have its problems. Specifically, it’s much too easy. It’s hard to take Bastila’s sacrifice seriously when the player can defeat Malak so quickly and the contrast between Malak the pushover mid boss and Malak the very non-pushover final boss is jarring. But it’s existence isn’t one of them, nor is its uniqueness. I’d hate to have an obligatory interruption after each planet. I’d rather be surprised from time to time.
I don’t get urgency from it at all. Maybe I’d get it if they locked you out of the fourth planet, but going back on the original path feels like what you were doing before. Two of the planets will flat kill any sense of urgency, one by being mostly political sniping, the other by introducing a new teammate to get to know.
I think the problem with Malak’s initiative is that he has no henchmen. If he had right-hand men in his cutscenes who were active on the worlds, it would feel like he was doing something throughout. Korriban feels close to that because it revolves around Sith leadership. You could have had someone like that on all of them, trying to strengthen Malak’s position with varying success.
Linear JRPGs are usually pretty good about this. Trials of Mana has a similar setup; there are a few points where you can pick the order you do levels in, but all the locations involve different sub-villains of the main villains so it always feels like they’re out there doing things.
He does have henchmen, they are just implemented fairly poorly. One is a caricature with 5 minutes screen time (Calo Nord), the other is a complete non-entity with even less (Darth Bandon). Although Malak himself is a pantomime villain, so it’s not surprising his henchmen are undercooked. Karpyshyn obviously still had his training wheels on at that point.
I think it would have been best to just kill off Calo on Taris, and then introduce Bandon afterwards, having Malak send him out to hunt you down. You could have him be a threat while you try to complete each planet, culminating with it being him you face at the end of the Leviathan. That way you could actually fight him to the death, rather than the lame fight with Malak. Malak could still show up at the end, but this time you don’t fight him. Bastila sacrifices herself to buy you time to escape.
They’re technically henchmen, but their only impact is a single fight in the middle of nowhere. They’re also presented as hunting the player rather than interfering with the player’s goal, which is reactionary and doesn’t fix the “waiting for the player to show up” issue.
The more I think about Korriban, the more I wonder why the main game didn’t use that structure. You’ve got the recruiter, and her boss the headmaster, and their five students, who each show up at the various story events to try to steal your credit and kill you, with various fates befalling them. It’s a really good structure for a story, and they could have used that for the main story too.
Mate, that’s on you. One of your closest companions, and quite probably your love interest if you pursue that, has been kidnapped by the enemy you were working to defeat-AND you haven’t even completed the tasks you needed to FIND where you’re looking to go.
That adds plenty of urgency, it adds another ticking clock, it adds dramatic weight, and it serves to inject a direct link to the main Villain, who’s appearance is sorely needed, and tie back the quest to find the map to the Star Forge to it’s real goal: Stopping Malak from using the Star Forge.
If you can’t think that through, and your thought is “Oh, well, we were all abducted, almost died or worse, and one of us, who the story has gone to special effort to make us invested in, has been kidnapped, but, you know, just another day at the job, doing the non-urgent task of finishing what I need to do to find and stop that guy”, there’s no amount of narrative structure that’s going to help you.
It’s literally a basic part of story structure, the raising of the stakes.
The second act of Hordes of the Underdark is similar. The act’s finale is triggered by the player returning to the central hub after completing his fourth major sidequest. The only way to complete all five major sidequests is to go directly from the fourth to the fifth without returning to the hub, which may not be possible. (It all depends on the order in which the player does the sidequests.) The first and third acts of the expansion, by contrast, are completely linear and don’t have the usual Bioware structure.
You mean Mr. Reeves isn’t a hyper-advanced android, built to save humanity?
I miss the 5 act structure! Its enough chunk to make worlds feel solid, but enough freedom not to feel railroaded.
Inquisition almost followed this:
1) Haven/Hinterlands prologue
2) Go 2 places (Winter Palace / Grey Wardens)
3) Race to the temple (this isn’t quite rising action, but the Pool of Sorrows has a big reveal)
4) Last chance for sidequests
5) Epilogue
6) The real epilogue disguised as DLC
And those bits by themselves (pretending 5 is 6) actually feel good. Particularly with the standard companion sidequest template. But they flooded it with so much cruft and padding it didn’t feel like that.
Part of what makes the 5 act structure great is the placed you visit feel fleshed out. Instead the main missions and padding feel like separate games. It would have been 10x the game of it had half as many areas.
Go 2 places – that should be the templars or mages.
The group you didn’t help assaults your fortress and you and the inquisition are “at your low point in the story” as well as reveal the baddie – sounds like rising action to me.
For what it’s worth, I think it would be wiser to narrow it down to one non-human species (one of the council species, most likely) and offer the player a broad range of customization options in terms of appearance. Better to get a deep-dive into a single culture’s perspective than to have non-human species act as reskinned humans from a narrative perspective. Do I think modern-day Bioware is capable of telling a compelling story from an alien perspective? No. Would it be interesting if they pulled it off? Absolutely.
That said, I look forward to reading your thoughts on a prospective fourth entry in the Mass Effect series, Bob.
I’m still a champion for the lost DLC Ark from Andromeda. That would let us go with quarians or drell. Maybe a batarian stowaway?
I think you could get a pretty decent amount of variation in the non-human races, without a lot of extra effort. Most of the missions / quests and side-quests in the games already have multiple options, for things like lethal vs peacefeful, helping civilians or ignoring them, etc. To make the different player-races feel unique, some of the options for different missions could be available only to some subset of the races. For example, a human farming colony that’s slowly dying from a plague, could have these solutions: hire a space-doctor with your own funds, to help them until the plague’s been eradicated (not available to militaristic or money-hoarding races); fix their broken equipment, so that their technicians can help with the quarantine and hospotalization efforts (only available to “sciency” races, or the robot/android races); kill the space-wolves in nearby caves, which are immune carriers of the plague, and hunting the space-farm-animals, which is adding tension to an already-stressed colony (not available to “peaceful” races, who want to preserve nature). To even better highlight the different races, the locked-out options could even be listed by your character, as forbidden, dishonorable, too expensive, etc, based on their personality / racial tendencies. Your character could name their most race-favorite option, and squad-mates of different races could suggest the secondary options, which your character could reject if they were from an incompatible race. Hell, that leads to another cheap way to highlight the different races – certain squad-mates could be unavailable, because of space-racism!
cannot read.
learn how to format your writing.
peacefeful? hospotalization? Have you been playing the drinking game again, ET?
Joking aside, that would be very interesting. It reminds me kind of of Pillars of Eternity or Tyranny where your background lets you choose/locks you out of certain dialogue options.
That said, we’re talking about Bioware. Different options will be either Renegade) kill the plague-bearers, or Paragon) give the colony a bunch of resources that you could otherwise use to research some cool tech, in return getting a different cool tech.
Yep. True meaningful choice and difference is hard to do. The potential things the player can do rises exponentially and it’s a nightmare trying to account for it all.
‘But I killed the wolves AND hired the doctor AND fixed the medical machinery! Why are the farmer still struggling with the plague?’
The patented ‘2-way Arbitrary Moral Choice’ * is much easier to implement.
I do hate the way the rewards are ‘balanced’ in these choices, though. It turns ‘how do I help these plague-stricken farmers?’ into ‘do I want the rifle upgrade, or the extra medikit capacity?’
*And it’s not only Bioware that does this.
I don’t know if it’s hard to do… Way of the Samurai has been doing it since 2002.
But Way of the Samurai has a very different structure than the Bioware games, they’re much shorter and made for multiple playthroughs
If you did any of the three options, the plague would be solved, so your hypothetical frustration, “Why are the farmer still struggling with the plague?” shouldn’t be possible. I mean, I wouldn’t doubt that Bioware would have horrible bugs, but we’re talking about a hypothetical game, which could have competent developers.
As for the different upgrades – the problem there is that they’re tied to the specific action you took. Tying the mechanical rewards to any ostensibly role-playing action in a game, necessarily forces players to meta-game. The rewards could themselves be restricted by race, with players free to choose anything allowed for their character. For example, Krogans can’t pick the science-machine upgrade, but Salarians can’t pick the mega-shotgun.
Meh, just finished playing through Dragon Age Inquisition, and one of the most painful aspects of that game is that it was dragging the story, the lore and even the characters from Dragon Age Origin with it. i would have preferred a new story, not a rehash of already explored themes, and cameo appearances by old characters.
Likewise for Mass Effect, the story is done. And there is nothing in Andromeda that I would want to revisit for nostalgic reasons either. (To be honest, at this point a “by the makers of Mass Effect” would not be a recommendation.)
Give me a story arc, give me the established tropes of fantasy/SF RPGs, and try to make it fun. Bit more Han Solo / early Guardians of the Galaxy, bit less “we are all doomed and everyone is going to die”.
A fresh start would be welcome, and I hope that’s what Bob’s going to go for – new places, new races, etc. I’m very tired of Krogans, Asari, and the like.
Honestly, we should play through the First Contact war. I’ve always wanted to see what the narrative of a game where you lose, is. Can that be a satisfying story? I dunno, but I’d like to see more attempts than, arguably, Halo: Reach?? I think it was that one, never played any of em.
Having said that, that would be less of a Mass Effect (1) style game, probably, than it would be an FPS and/or RTS, I imagine. But if they tried they could probably still make it work.
I wrote a commentary about it in a previous discussion already. First Contact War premise could be used in RPG, but it should be very slow-paced and low-combat one. It could be weird AA side-entry, but for main entry in franchise Bioware would need something bigger and safer.
Something like Sunset over Imdahl? The only way to go is to lose and watch everyone die?
I mean, it’s an amazing game, but it won’t have too much appeal to the bro gamer who likes ME2 better than ME1 and who is Bioware’s new target demographic.
Spoilers, obviously, but I’ll recommend
you try out Nier Automata, and play through Route C. It’s basically the main characters coming to terms with the fight being hopeless from the start.The hallmark of Mass Effect isn’t a “fun” setting; It’s one where the politics, societies, etc (i.e. the world) all makes sense, and is believable. Space-opera involves a lot more hand-waving snenanigans.
I’d say, space opera doesn’t delve into aspects, that require hand-waving, and more important – shouldn’t. But it’s very easy to set a space-opera-ish adventure in established sci-fi setting.
While I think the Bioware 5-act model hasn’t aged the greatest, it would be an excellent way to “return to form” in a relatively safe manner so as to not fuck up the game. I won’t win Game of the Year awards for storytelling but it would go a very long way to help restore Bioware’s shattered image after Andromeda and Anthem.
However to play devil’s advocate, that isn’t what made Bioware ‘Mainstream’. Before Mass Effect 2 and Dragon age 2, you could see the Bioware logo on a game and know exactly what you were getting. But Mass Effect 2 and Dragon age 2 was where they started to deviate from the Bioware Formula, and Mass Effect 2 is credited by a lot of game reviewers as being one of the best RPGs, and Sci-Fi games ever made. I personally think ME:2 was overrated. It did a lot to improve on the gameplay of the first game at the expense of watering down the RPG mechanics and including a nonsensical Storyline. The companions were great and as good as any Bioware game but the ham-fisted Cerberus story was just awful. As for Dragon Age 2 you had the rushed, money-grab to capitalize on Bioware’s newfound mainstream success. Cue clips about the “awesome button”. Both these games mark a departure from Bioware’s method of story telling and I’d almost argue it went down hill from there, albeit gradually.
ME:3 is a terrific game and story until you hit the ending and it all flies apart. Dragon Age Inqusition had compelling story and characters but was filled with boring MMO-esque quests and structure to where anything that wasn’t the main quest felt flat. Then the Witcher 3 comes by a few months later and creates a whole new paradigm of interesting and enjoyable side quests, that make Dragon Age Inquisition look even worse by comparison. Then there is all the drama that came up over its development after the fact.
So yeah long story short I think a return to the old Bioware Formula could do them some good.
Which just goes to show you how completely and utterly worthless the opinion of the average game “journalist” is.
It’s also credited the same by a lot of the wider public.
I’ve seen the preferences of the wider public and don’t think that means what you think it means.
This is a really tired diversion.
You’re talking about videogames, not even indie ones, blockbuster games.
The POINT is to entertain a massive number of people-wider acclaim is good, even if it doesn’t have a 1:1 relation with what we individually might see as quality.
And this discussion has NOTHING to do with the point that was raised, apart from nitpicking.
Michael Bay’s Transformer movies make a ton of money and millions of people apparently love them (given that they have made, what? 4? 5? of the things with no real sign of fatigue). I don’t think anyone (sane) would seriously suggest that therefore those movies are great/high quality. The chances of one ever winning an Oscar for Best Picture seem low.
> I’m not with Cerberus.
Seriously, if I had a physical copy of ME2, I would’ve taken it out of the drive and thrown it against the nearest wall. The most disappointing video game sequel since Chrono Cross.
To paraphrase the best film review I’ve ever seen, Mass Effect 3 makes Mass Effect 2 look like Mass Effect.
Good Lord, no. You cannot criticize Mass Effect 2 and then claim Mass Effect 3 is great when the latter amplifies the problems of the former tenfold. If Cerberus’s story was ham-fisted and annoying in 2, in 3 it’s the worst (they’re somehow the main villains on the game, on a franchise that relies on battling Eldritch abominations). Plus, the game can barely be called an RPG now. And don’t even get me started on how preposterous the whole Crucible storyline is.
No, no, no, you have to stop with that crap. You liked Mass Effect 3? Fine. But objectively speaking, the game is rotten hobo ass.
At least ME 3 improved massively on the combat and “RPG systems”, which were much more expansive this time around, with a lot more choices in powers, weapons, mods, loadouts…
>The companions were great
Well, there was two or three good companion, the rest were just so-so.
I wouldn’t say “massively”, after ME2 almost butchered the whole “system” – maybe, but it’s still more fine tuning, than actual choices.
Companions were likeable and decent, part of them just aren’t developed properly. I know that Miranda and Jacob get a lot of hate for being “boring and ordinary”, for example, but they’re not badly written characters, just underutilized and not flashed out properly, same goes for DLC characters.
To be fair, ME3 isn’t completely awful, Tuchanka and Rannoch were great. Oh, and also Citadel DLC, it was over the top and full of fanservice, but still good. Problem is, other parts are bad and anticlimactic ending made things even worse.
The irony of doing so here, of all places on the internet to argue it.
The sequels sold well because of the goodness of the original games, because most people don’t read reviews, they go off of word of mouth for the previous entries.
Shamus had an article about this phenomenon at some point, but I can’t seem to find it with The Googles.
No, they don’t. That’s really, really silly.
Otherwise sequels couldn’t outsell the earlier titles. Which they did. Mass Effect 2 outsold ME1, and ME3 outsold ME2, and ME2 brought the games to the mainstream.
I know we’re in a little echo chamber here, but it really doesn’t matter how good ME1 was to that. There is a reason that companies spend money on advertising, that they send out review copies. Mass Effect 2 didn’t sell well “because of the goodness of previous games”. They sold well because it was a polished, accessible game, built of a brand with a steady start in the first game that people had a solid opinion of, from a studio with a history of making games that were quite popular, that built upon that with a massive marketting push to create hype.
Hype is not rational. It’s not “I liked the last game and I told my mate so he bought the sequel”. It’s “I’ve been bombarded with advertising for this sequel and now I’m interested and excited and therefore talking about it and how excited I am and sharing the advertising material-which is already being thrown at them in the form of banner ads and sponsored content”.
Most people don’t read reviews, but even fewer people hang out in gaming forums. Suggesting that anything but hype sells games is mistaken.
Now I’m trying to figure out how Bob got to wear Mandalorian armor on Dantooine. I’m pretty sure you can’t get any Mandalorian armor there. And, now that I think of it, I’m pretty sure you can’t get Mandalorian armor that looks like Mandalorian armor–by which I mean that it makes the character wearing it look like one of the Mandalorian enemies–until you get to the Rakata homeworld at which point Dantooine is inaccessible. And that armor is blue, not red! There’s other Mandalorian armor in the game–there’s some on Kashyyyk, I believe–but that armor looks like regular heavy armor, doesn’t come with a helmet, and isn’t that color. I’d ask if this were a shot from the sequel if Bob’s party didn’t include Mission and Zaalbar.
Did I miss something in Knights of the Old Republic? Me? This is going to drive me nuts.
A comment above makes references to that screenshot being a modded version of the game, so I imagine that would be your answer.
Mods ma-man. Everything has mods these days.
I like this “modular” setup, for reasons Shamus covered in his own series. If you need to cut a location, it’s less painful if you can take out one of the relatively self-contained segments after the tutorial/intro/kidgloves bit. One can write the ending and the opening and as many modules as you can plug in between, and this plays well with development schedule.
I’m less enthusiastic about the idea of multiple potential starting species for your protagonist. To me it sounds like it could be a massive increase in complexity of writing and NPC creation. If NPC #23 on Planet 4 is a turian with a strong prejudice against humans, you can write this into the game when you plan a human player character. If your player character can be a human or a turian or an asari, do you write triple the dialogue for this guy depending on what species the player character is and have human-hostile/turian-ally/turian-hostile/asari-indifferent for him and every other character?
You don’t get to enjoy a more tightly-written story focused at a couple possibilities of player character, instead having to work more vaguely around way more potential PCs.
You could hack around it by writing him for one of the companions instead. All his ire gets aimed at your human teammate, with maybe some “I’m that species too” dialogue options for a human player.
Typolice:
Should be “a clue”.
Other than that, this continues to be one of my favourite series right now. Too bad there’s next to no chance of a Mass Effect sequel happening :(
I thought the fact that another ME was in the works was already a fairly established fact?
I believe we know they’re working on something Mass Effect related, but the speculation is that that’s currently a remaster. The assumption with that though is that the remaster would be a way to prepare ground for a sequel (unless the remaster is a full on remake)
Yeah, too bad one game is all we’re gonna get. Well, better to have one great game that leaves people wanting more than having the great game be soiled by a slew of horrible sequels that completely ruin the experience.
Am I the only one who felt that the five act structure aged horribly? Bioware relied on it so often and for so long that it was the chief reason I stopped buying their games; every new release had that sense of cookie-cutter predictability and over-familiarity that bred, for me at least, fatigue at first and eventually contempt.
It’s not dated, five-act structure was made long before Bioware adapted it to CRPGs. And it’s essentially, enhanced basic three-act dramatic structure. It should be, I’d say spiced up a bit though. Third point could be floating and dependent on player actions more. Pool of places to visit could be affected by player action more too. Five-act structure is a solid basis for the plot, and it will work perfectly with good writing and a bit of creativity.
I think we’re maybe getting a little too wrapped up in the trappings of the word ‘act’. Structurally Bioware games have been noted for adhering to a formula since Kotor, but it isn’t the only formula from which a game can possibly be made; as evidenced by literally thousands of other games. You can read the three act structure in any story, although like others I really wish you wouldn’t, in the same way that you can interpret phallic symbolism in the use of any cigar.
I’d like to argue about that article, but I’m lazy and haven’t fully read it. So I think, I need to stress out second part of my comment more. BioWare structure is perfect as a basis for story-heavy RPG, because it works, because it uses basic principles of storytelling. But it’s only a template, without further development this structure isn’t compelling anymore.
And also I think, that a lot of narrative focused RPGs adhere to this formula, just not as straight as most of BioWare products.
That structure is fine. In terms of story, 5 act structures have literally existed since shakespeare.
“But it’s only a template, without further development this structure isn’t compelling anymore.” is wrong.
It is only a template. You don’t need to develop the basic milestones that fill out the basis of a story structure further to make it interesting. It’s completely irrelevant. Just because it’s a structure doesn’t mean you can’t shake it up, do things differently, and tell a compelling story that feels fresh. The Bioware style isn’t falling out of fashion because people are sick of the 5 act structure. It’s falling out of fashion because it’s being used to make soulless, cookie cutter games that mimic the previous ones too much in terms of parallels, while also using the same interface and mechanics-ofc you’re going to be reminded of the previous games made by them when you look at the dialogue wheel while facing a Turian. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel, and please don’t. Nobody wants to see whoever EA decides to put in charge of writing the next Bioware game try to invent a new structure.
They need to find a new way of following the same structure. Like, maybe don’t make your protagonist a Chosen One for once (Revan, Shepherd). Maybe don’t have all your quests resolved by extremely binary choices that make the rails a little too visible (Maybe look at The Witcher 3, and how it did that-often you really only do have two options, and it’s so much more tense, because half the time, even good options have horrible things happening, and unintended consequences abound). Maybe don’t write characters that seem so similar (Carth, Alistair, Bastilla, Miranda) because you keep reusing arcs, motivations, and archetypes.
Being able to break down a story into it’s components isn’t the problem. Being able to play bingo with tropes, or mad libs the shit out of a Bioware story for a joke, is.
Ironically, you’re kind of contradicting yourself. This was basically what I was going to type in disagreement with you-but you did it.
Nearly every story can be looked at through the lens of a 3 act structure, and nearly every 3 act structure can be viewed as a 5 act structure, because it’s a framework, and it need not be prescriptive. Not to say you should use that lens all the time.
I don’t think you’re tired of the 5 act structure, because it’s really hard to get tired of something as vague as a structure. For instance, most people would look very foolish if they said they were sick of the 3 act structure, and “every story is exactly the same because I can split them into elements” is babby’s first story analysis (Like, I literally remember learning this in Grade 4. I was 11). Wait, no, babby’s first story analysis is “This story is too much like Star Wars” in reference to something with a Hero’s Journey. I think you’re tired of how similar Bioware games are, and I don’t really think that comes down to their structure, it comes down to a whole host of elements in their stories being similar.
/Sees someone start a sentence with ‘ironically’ and proceed to state something that isn’t remotely ironic
/Drinks
I don’t think you know what I’m tired of in Bioware games better than I do. What I eventually tired of is exactly what I said: the noticeably formulaic and predictable structure of their games. What you literally did or didn’t do in grade 4 isn’t relevant, or frankly, very interesting.
Incredible how precisely the 5-act structure describes Witcher III.
Starting location, three worlds, wrapping up before reaching Ciri, the finishing line.
I have to disagree about more options for race.
You already conceded the most important argument: how being human in ME1 allowed you to create an interesting narrative based on that humans were underdogs. Having to hedge and compromise so that a narrative can fit every possible background is greatly detrimental to any story.
If you present a choice, the choice can only be interesting or relatable if the dilemma is meaningful for the character. Otherwise choices fall into “paragon” / “renegade” bullshit.
The other problem is that you have a limited “budget” for choices. For a fixed character, all choices can be made interesting. But if I can choose any background, then choices are instead crafted to accommodate any character, and frequently there’s only one choice (and sometimes none) that makes sense for the character I’m playing. In a sad extreme, when I am playing a good character I have to pick “good” option in every conversation to stay in that character, so I’m not choosing at all.
RPGs that had the most resonant main story had an established character: Witcher III, Deus Ex (original).
Note how all other wildly successful story RPGs such as Baldur’s Gate, Planescape Torment, Torment: Tides of Numenera, KOTOR I AND II, Pillars of Eternity: ALL of these make the main story about dealing with something very specific from the protagonist’s past: a heritage, forgotten memories, past lives… The very best story moments in all of these come from discovering that past identity, its connections and dealing with it. I’m not going to list those out explicitly because they are heavy spoilers for those games.
While dealing with a difficult past can make an effective story, it’s not a particularly good sci-fi story, which should be more “forward” looking.
You’re not wrong, but what you’ve pointed out is a balancing act with no real right answer. On one hand is the problem of letting people make choices you can’t account for, meaning said choices are flat and empty.
Yet the other side is what I call the JRPG Experience, wherein you as the player are basically a camera following the characters as they make all the choices, except for in battle. Which can work, but often makes me wonder why such games have ‘Role-Playing’ in the description.
Oh yes. when the Moral Choice is ‘Hug baby’ or ‘Eat baby’, I often find that I end up being a Paragon of Virtue by more-or-less default.
In real life I’d just awkwardly hand that baby to someone else and leave, but the game won’t let me do that (or I’d be turning up experience points etc) so I have to do one or the other…
Role playing, as in playing a role, is still such when given a script. In fact that’s how most such things work. You don’t determine what happens so much as how.
Are we going to claim people in a play aren’t playing a role, because they’ve a script to follow?
If we’re going to claim this makes a game an RPG, then Metroid is an RPG.
It IS. The platforming and combat are super basic, where the primary engagement comes from mood, and the acquisition of new powers and stats.
Stray off that paradigm to tack on a combat system, and a focus on getting verbose you just get other M. Otherwise known as the least RPG and most reviled game in the series.
Counterpoint: Ultima VI. An amazing story and yet the Avatar isn’t much of an established character. After all, anyone can be an Avatar, as long as they complete the quest of the Avatar. The Companions are established characters, and so is Lord British, but the only establishing feature of the Avatar is their relation to these people.
In fact having an established character detracts from the story as it creates a disconnect between the protagonist and the player. Ultima made me feel as though I were the Avatar, while I didn’t have that close personal connection to JC Denton.
You can still have a narrative where humanity is an underdog race and tell it from an alien viewpoint. You’re an alien hired by the humans. You can see their problems as an outsider, perhaps with more clarity than they can. Why do these primitive ape-people think they’re ready for a seat at the big table? Can’t they see they need to prove themselves first or they just look like entitled brats?
I can imagine such story and it could be an interesting one, but I think it would not work if it was the same game when you play an actual human.
They could make two different games with the same budget (so each game receiving half of resources), or they could make one, but then something about NPC’s reactions to you as a protagonist would always feel off.
Think about it: as a player, you get to know the world mainly by its reaction to you. If a story is the same for each race, then there is a strong undercurrent that race does not matter. As a writer, you can’t sell that races are different if you as a player are a walking manifestation of the contrary.
Unless you put in a LOT of extra effort.
I’m not saying it can’t be done. It just makes the writers’ job so much difficult for no payoff within the story itself. The payoff is only outside the story.
A good choice in any game is when you can understand it. When you choose about things you’ve already grown to care about.
Making the most expensive choice (writing-wise) also the most emotionally meaningless is extremely poor use of resources, IMHO.
I’d say Arcanum and VtM:B both have great main story, with both not having an established character, instead letting the player to create one, choosing from a wide variety of backgrounds (races and classes in Arcanum, Vampire clans in VtM:B)
So do half the games he listed as being important to why you shouldn’t be able to pick the race.
The point about humans being underdogs is a moot point in any conceivable Mass Effect sequel. If they continue on from Andromeda, then, while I haven’t played the game myself, based on what I’ve read humans were at least on equal footing with the other races in the Initiative even before the human Pathfinder came in and saved the day. If they do what this column series is suggesting and somehow manage to scrape together a ME3 sequel, then humans were the species that led the fight against the Reapers, and the seat of the galactic government is now parked in orbit over their homeworld.
The only way that you can recapture the “humans as underdogs” thing is with a prequel, and I’m pretty sure that option has been repeatedly ruled out by now.
Nobody is suggesting that the player shouldn’t have a connection to the plot or that they should blow out the production costs on making redundant background.
Choosing race in a game like this is nearly always like choosing haircolour, and that’s fine. Does hair colour count as paragon renegade bullshit? It’s literally a very popular feature that a lot of people have been waiting for for a long time.
The easiest solution (And best), would be to set the story in some sort of melting pot (Say, I dunno, there’s a planet, which due to the Reaper situation, has a large amount of survivors from a last stand against them living there, because a lot of them were stranded by the catastrophe. Like, I dunno, Earth, considering that literally happened in 3). Your background is roughly similar, you grew up in the same place, you get some fun new dynamics between different groups who’ve been on Earth for a while now.
And it doesn’t mean that it can’t have a connection to your past lol. WTF. You LITERALLY LISTED A TON OF GAMES WHERE YOU CAN CHOOSE RACE! Like, I can’t help it, I actually laughed at you. Baldur’s Gate literally introduces you as Gideon’s Ward, which is EXACTLY the sort of scenario which makes sense here-justifying racial differences between the PC and those they’re close to in the early game. Also… PSSSST-it doesn’t have to be their past, in fact, the past is often the least interesting part of your protagonist, especially if they don’t have amnesia-and oh god, the protag for ME4 should not have amnesia-many of those games literally have old school “Pick a random Bio-or literally WRITE ONE BECAUSE IT DOESN’T MATTER AT ALL”.
And I don’t know why you’re bringing up established characters. I love Geralt too, but if you are seriously suggesting that a character should have less freedom in a BIOWARE sequel, because the writer has ideas about what the character would and wouldn’t do and constrains you to something in line with their character, and forcing them to be stuck with a very specific appearance and sound-well, let’s pretend you didn’t mention it.
I mean, sure, humans had it bad compared to the Council races, but they sure as hell weren’t the underdogs. Other races had it far worse. Hell, you could already see others complaining about human privilege the very first time you stepped foot in the Citadel. Even if you only take your own team from the first game into account, you have a Krogan, a race that has been used and misused by others and are now victims of a race-wide disease, and a Quarian, a race that’s unfairly discriminated as untrusworthy and criminal.
Having the human as the protagonist still was a power fantasy. The human was the only one to treat everyone equally. The human was the one to “bring balance”. Like in many other sci-fi and fantasy settings, the humans are still prevalent in matters of diversity, whereas all the other races are more homogeneous. You don’t see Krogans doing accounting, or Elcor going into battle (unless it’s played for laughs, like with the whole “Blasto” thing).
Yes, I certainly appreciate the original game for not making humans rulers of space and all that, but maybe a prequel game based on the First Contact war would make this aspect more notorious. Being literally the new race to show up in this whole deal and having to convince everyone that we’re not another Rachni problem would make for an interesting story.
That structure was honed in Neverwinter Nights’ original campaign, where each act had that structure. (excepting that the tutorial happened only once).
The modern version of going from clusters of “here’s a handful at a time of level-appropriate areas to explore” is “here’s a ton of leveled areas to explore”.
Honestly, I think I prefer the design choice where sets of areas unlock in groups when you’re close to ready for them, rather than forcing the area to match your ability (which requires making every enemy type appropriate for either all areas or all levels).
New Vegas managed to split the difference between all three poorly; you could accidentally wander into areas that you didn’t have the HP to survive, most areas would level up with you, and some areas were hard-gated to plot progression.
It’s not like BioWare doesn’t have a precedent for letting you play as various races with different voices and dialogue options. My favorite BioWare game, Dragon Age Inquisition (yes, I realize what a massively unpopular opinion that is) does just that, and it’s a massive part of why I love it so much. While all the races get the same lines for the most part, the game does significantly change based on who you play, and you occasionally get lines informed by your race – Elves can bring up the Dalish Gods, Qunari talk about how stuff relates to the Qun, etc. Your companions can react very differently to you depending on your class and race (for instance, if you romance Sera – a city Elf Robin Hood type who dislikes Dalish Elves because they’re pompous – as an Elf then she’s more apprehensive about you and there’s eventually a conversation where she demands you turn your back to the Dalish Gods. If you refuse it completely locks you out of romancing her), and several story missions change as well (navigating and impressing the Orlesian royal court is harder as a Qunari than as an Elf, which is harder than as a Human, for instance). It’s only small changes here and there, but it’s actually super impactful on the experience as a whole and just by drawing attention to your race adds a whole lot of nuance that’s not even neccesarily there on purpose in the minute-to-minute writing. I would love something similar with the Mass Effect universe, especially since it’s been demonstrated to be doable and work.
I disliked DAI, but I thought I was in the minority opinion when I peruse forums.
I’m going to have to disagree with the “significant” adjective. Having played as an elf and as a qunari, all the nods to what race you belonged to seemed like flavor instead of being interwoven into your particular narrative.
I think this really came to a head when Morrigan explained to Lavellan his own mythology. Given the importance the Dalish have placed on their preserving their culture, Lavellan should have felt this exchange was condescending.
Idea about the main quest. Just don’t have one. Just give people a whole lot of space to discover, planets to see, aliens to meet/seduce. Main quests of late have been a very expensive way to disappoint a lot of people.
>Liara/Feros/Noveria
Why is Therum gone?
Why is Therum always gone?
Ok, this is officially a pipe dream. Having EA back down from its major executive decision on the Franchise? That is, mandate that “humans are awesome, we do not want the player to feel bad.”
This is NOT going to happen. ME 1 is a different beast from ME2-3 for a reason. And that reason is EA.
So, I agree that ‘humans aren’t special’ is a major part of ME1 that ME2 missed.
But it’s worth pointing that we aren’t ‘a developing country’ – the game’s much more specific than that. We’re Japan, 1919-1938; a cocky young power, eagerly pushing out to engage in new imperialism in a galaxy already old and tired, that recently entered the ranks of the Great Powers after doing surprisingly well in a war with a leading Power (First Contact War / Russo-Japanese War), but is still seen as half-barbarous by most of the setting, which is trying to balance humoring us with not letting us push the rest of the world around.
We see this most clearly with the 5/5/3 (Asari/Turian/Human) ratio in large ships that is the reason humanity builds the Normandy in the first place – which is a direct referance to the Washington Naval Treaty (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Naval_Treaty), which similarly arranged a 5/5/3 ratio in battleships between the US, UK, and Japan, thus leading Japan to engage in extensive innovation in cruiser designs.
It isn’t a perfect comparison – Japan really got accepted as a Great Power after WW1, and I think the closest thing is the Skyllian Blitz, which is a minor border war that more resembles the Japanese narrative of the Marco Polo Bridge Incident. And even Renegade Shepard isn’t WW2 Japan levels of evil, but I think that that was clearly the inspiration.
Hi there,
Let me start by saying I really enjoy your work. I’m interested in a lot of your writing, but I’m particularly taken by your writing about Mass Effect. I too am a writer person with an abiding love for the ME Universe. In particular Mass Effect One and Two. Now that I’m watching you ruminate about ME5, I wanted to pipe up with some similar thoughts I’ve been navel gazing about for years.
I’ll try to burn through these ideas quickly. Before laying out as quickly as possible how I’d handle the ME5 Story. I apologize in advance if the density of the writing makes it whiplash inducing.
I reserve all my personal animosity for Mass Effect toward ME3, but I honestly, I’m not talking about the Ending. What I hated about ME3 was that they turned ME3 into a fetishized militaristic dirge, where you piloted Shepard through a 9/11-like hellscape, inexorably drawn toward your pre-ordained death. The way this suicide was telegraphed was painful. It left you no doubt that your choices didn’t matter. Instead of playing an RPG, you were trapped inside a fatalistic slide into oblivion. It was devoid of joy or heroism. And I hated every minute I spent with it.
I would argue that the three ending choice was baked in, but let’s leave that thought experiment for another time.
I will grant you that the three-way ending probably killed the franchise, and left very few ways for writers to escape the trap they set for themselves. Honestly, I think the setup for ME4 was clever in theory. If it had been a fresh start in a new place with half a dozen alien races (with some interesting science fiction thinking invested in each) I would have been delighted. The idea of the human race being set adrift without earth (Quarian style) having to make their way in a new galaxy with no homeland and no way to retreat is a very good idea. Adding in that humanity has became fragmented adds a lot. Some humans banding together for the common good searching for a place to call home, while others became warlords seizing planets or corners of the galaxy from the local inhabitants is a ripe universe for storytelling.
The problem: They missed every single story opportunity available within this setup. I believe it’s because these ideas are irreconcilable with the “Pathfinder”. They tried to start the story with their character as a Messiah, rather than let the player grow into a hero. They tried too hard to replicate the ME1 “Specter” dynamic, where Shepard is the first human to reach the exalted status of “Specter” and found himself carrying all the hopes of humanity on his shoulders as he faces an inconceivable threat to the galaxy with no help from anyone. It’s a big ballsy idea that you only get to do once. The pathfinder idea just sucked monkey nutz, as it tried to ape this conceit. The writers are going to have to earn the next hero of the Mass Effect Universe. Shepard is the only guy who gets to start his story as “The Chosen One”.
If it where me, I would have started that ME4 thirty years after they arrived on their arch. What’s left of the human race has been torn asunder. Part of humanity still lives on the decaying arch, while the other half set in motion a war that threatens to envelope the galaxy. Human warlords set about cruelly carving out a place for themselves, which lead to the rise of an even greater evil. The Roopers (TM). Let the player start as a young hero determined to lead what’s left of humanity into harmony with this the indigenous peoples, of this galaxy as he prepare his crew and anyone else who will join him against the onslaught of Roopers.
Ahhh! What could have been! But alas, ME4 is dead. So? What of ME5?
Here’s how I would handle the story for ME5
You are the captain of the smuggler’s frigate Huckleberry Finn, which is tethered to a Mass Relay in the Halstaad system. You are floating through space using your jet pack to navigate toward an opening in the underbelly of the Mass Relay, where a huge section has been removed allowing access to the innards of the ancient structure. As you float toward the opening, the once inhabited planet, Gannish Minor, is reflected in your helmet. A millennia ago, it was a lush vibrant water world, but now Gannish Minor is devoid of an atmosphere, a barren rock circling a red dwarf.
Two engineers accompany you on your spacewalk into the Mass Relay. One is an Asari named Nara, a roughneck who keeps Huckleberry’s engines spinning. The other is human, cleverly named Mr. Smith assigned to your crew by the enigmatic Mrs. Blake (read Cerberus). You’re not sure what you did to attract the attention of Mrs. Blake but she commandeered your vessel and crew three months ago as you docked on Earth. She gave you an ultimatum, lose your ship and spend ten years in jail for the goods seized from your hold, or bring her science team to the Halstaad system.
Ms. Blake’s voice crackles over your comms instructing you and Nara to fiddle with a bunch of doodads inside the Mass Relay. You do not know exactly what Mrs. Blake has planned, but you know she intends to power down the Mass Relay so that her scientists can study it. She’s chosen this remote system for secrecy, and clearly she wants knowledge or technology that is hidden within the Relay. She claims it is safe to power down the Relay, assuring you that she has intimate knowledge about Earth’s Mass Relay and details about powered up for the first time.
After powering down the Relay, you are jetting back toward the Huckleberry Finn when you find yourself enveloped by a giant blast of X Light (Where X = Red, Blue or Yellow). Your comms come alive with nervous shouting from your crew.
“Holy shit! Did you see that giant…
A. Red laser
B. Blue laser
C. Yellow laser
That just hit the mother xxx-ing Mass Relay?!”
Jump ahead six months. Your crew and Mrs. Blake are at each other’s throats. Your team was able to turn the Mass Relay back on and it seems to work perfectly, but you are unable to find the Citadel nor any other Relays, such as Earth or Thessia on your sensors. The Relay appears disconnected from the rest of the Relay system, as if all the other relays had been destroyed… Hmmm…
You’ve connected your ships computers to the Mass Relay and spent these months struggling to remotely locate another Relay, any Relay. Using records contained within the Mass Relay itself you finally locate another at the very edges of your sensor range. Mrs. Blake uses your Relay to communicate directly with this other and eventually manages to power that Relay on remotely.
Who knows what you’ll find in this unknown system? Fuck it! You only live once! You hold your breath as your crew spools up the Huckleberry’s engines. You grip the arms of your seat as you say goodbye to the Halstaad System and rocket through the Relay into the unknown. When you arrive, the Huckleberry Finn is floating though space debris, through the wreckage of an enormous space battle.
Welcome to Danarath. The first system you’ll find in your new Mass Effect Universe. Something here is wiping out fleets of ships. You have the knowledge to turn on mass relays, turned off long ago during the Arachnai wars. And there is a bright blue planet beneath you, perhaps there are some interesting aliens to talk to. What are you gunna do next?
YES.
For me, one of the best things in Mass Effect was that humans were just newcomers with half-assed tech. But seeing the galaxy maps with an “Alliance” zone almost as large as the whole Citadel-controlled space was ridiculous. Aliens must have been quite inept for letting so much territory to linger on the side. This was almost insulting to me, as a player.
As for the “Take Back the Earth” despite the whole point was saving the galaxy from immortal robot armies… I still have gag reflex about this one cheap marketing trick.
Leaving the “Alliance is so Awesome Turians are in awe” behind, and embrace back the “humans are newcomers still trying to learn” would be a boon. But now that the humans led the assault against the reapers, I don’t see that happening in ME4, without a (welcome) retconing.
Anyway, yes, being able to choose between many races, like we did in Dragon Age 1 and 3, would be a step in the right direction: Humans are not back on the newcomer seat, but at least, the story will not be able to be so human centric it smells like diet-racism.