Shepard has the Normandy sidle up to the “disabled” Collector vessel and his team takes the shuttle over. They’re here for “intel” on the “Omega 4 Relay”, but it’s kind of vague because that’s a really broad topic and we don’t know what they’re looking for specifically. We don’t know what part of the ship they’re in, or heading for. We don’t know how far we have to go, and it’s not even made clear why we need to board their vessel in the first place, since EDI seems to read their databanks from the Normandy. I guess the Collectors have a really shitty Wi-fi password? The author doesn’t seem interested in explaining how that works or what the limitations are, or what.
That’s usually fine in a drama-based story, although this is kind of muddled because the team seems to forget why they’re here. It would be nice if there was just one or two lines of dialog that framed their goals for this scene and explained how they planned to achieve themLike: We need to take this wireless adapter to the Collector router on deck 2.. Shepard and friends just walk down a single linear corridor and act like tourists in a Collector-based theme park.
It’s actually important to keep the audience focused in a situation like this. We want the player to have some kind of perceptible goal. Since this is supposed to be an ambush, we want them to be thinking about the thing they’re supposedly about to get. Otherwise they go into passive mode and simply wait for the other shoe to drop.
And then we come across a weapon on the ground and we get a popup asking what weapon class we want to permanently unlock for Shepard. Just.. what? Here? In the middle of a mission? Shepard suddenly unlocks a new weapon? Shouldn’t this happen on one of the many upgrade menus in the Normandy? Why is this choice here?
It’s like the writer forgot they were supposed to be building tension for the upcoming ambush and so they left out some exposition and instead gave us some immersion-breaking decisions to make about our character build.
None of this is horrible (yet) but it does feel distracted and desultory.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Mass Effect Retrospective 28: Actually, Go Ahead and Fear the Reaper”
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.
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