T w e n t y S i d e d

The second episode of our very first season, wherein our hero dithers about the Citadel for a half hour, yelling hyperbole and non-sequiturs at everyone he sees. Also features our very first complete failure-state bug, requiring a full reload.

It’s so odd, going back to this game and seeing all the things that were abandoned. Shepard was the one that interfaced with the Prothean beacon. That’s what made him special. That was the hook for his character, to justify keeping him at the center of the conflict. That’s a pretty useful trick on the part of the writer. The game even established at the end that only Shepard could understand Prothean VI. Boom! Magical pass to make sure that if anything is going on with the Reapers, artifacts, ancient ruins, or Prothean devices, anywhere in the galaxy, Shepard can plausibly be the one people send for.

It’s barely mentioned in the second game. (And they only do so to glue the collectors onto the end of his nightmare vision as part of a clumsy retcon.) It’s not even mentioned in the third game.

There are a a lot of elements like this, where old ideas are abandoned and new ones are shoehorned in.

On a related note Drew Karpyshyn, former BioWare writer and one of the creators of the Mass Effect universe, was interviewed by Eurogamer. Maybe you like his work, maybe not. But either ways it’s an interesting look at what he contributed.

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.

I apologize in advance. Actually, it’s too late for that. If I was going to do that, the apology should come BEFORE the video embed. So I apologize for the late advance apology, for the awkwardness of this apology, and for the video you may have just watched without the comfort of a preemptive apology. I may apologize for more things later. This isn’t very organized. I’m sorry.

So this was the first ever episode of Spoiler Warning, which appeared in January 2010. This was done while Conan was being booted from the Tonight Show, which is a pop-culture reference that is now well past its sell-by date.

This episode is one hour and eleven minutes long. By Crom that is ridiculous. As Josh said in the YouTube notes:

The very first episode of Spoiler Warning ever published, now finally available on Youtube in the aftermath of Viddler’s self-inflicted and ever-so-deserved financial suicide. Featuring 480p, awkward commentary, more awkward jokes, terrible audio, lawful-good gameplay, and the ever-elusive not-the-baseball-player-Randy Johnson. This episode is extremely… odd – and bad, by our current standards. But it was the first step we took on the long road of establishing the Spoiler Warning formula.

I still get a pang of nostalgia when I hear that music at the opening. I’d love to play the trilogy suggested by this first game.

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.

Volus! Volus is the name of the species I’m always forgetting. Anyway, Elcor are my favorites. I’d always hoped that we’d get some Volus, Elchor, or Hannar on our ship. Squad members would have been awesome, although I would have settled for someone on the ship who did a thing. I was really sad to see they were basically abandoned after the first game so we could tell more stories about the humanoid races. Or actually, just a story about the human Cerberus vs. human Alliance.

I have nothing to add on the ending of this episode. I think it speaks for itself. Although to be perfectly fair, the game did continue normally once Josh clicked on the popup. But still, what on Earth was that popup doing in the game at all, much less in the single-player gameplay?

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.

I’m not sure why BioWare has so much trouble with translating real-world ladyfaces to their game. They based Commander Shepard on model Mark Vanderloo, and I think they nailed it. But the in-game versions of Yvonne Strahovski (Miranda) and Jessica Chobot (Diana Allers) seem to come from a deep crevice at the bottom of the uncanny valley. For the record, here is the real Chobot:

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Mass Effect 3 EP12: Space Magic Town”

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.