Back in Action

Hello, all. I’m back. I took a bit of a hiatus for many reasons. Sometimes life just gets in your way and makes demands of you and while fulfilling those demands its easy to lose sight of what you were doing and why. That idea kinda ties into what I want to talk about today. You, see while I was on my hiatus I lost sight of why I was writing so I began searching for some inspiration. I usually find creative inspiration in movies and video games because I am a visual learner. So, I watched a lot of movies and played through some video games. One of the video games that I experienced was Mass Effect 3 from developer BioWare. The game not only inspired me to write this post but one of the alien races in the game inspired a short story that I am now writing.

For those uninitiated, Mass Effect is a trilogy of games in the Space Opera sub-genre of Science Fiction. A simple definition for Space Opera is “a futuristic melodramatic fantasy involving space travelers and/or extraterrestrial beings.” I.E.- Star Wars, Star Trek, Firefly, Futurama (parody/satire), and Space Odyssey. The Mass Effect series follows the exploits of Commander Shepard. Consider him kind of a Jack Bauer in space but instead of trying to save America he’s trying to save the galaxy. I played Mass Effect 3 (here on out referred to as ME3) and beat it just a few days ago and I’ve had some time to collect my thoughts on it. After its release ME3 saw some controversy with its ending. I didn’t read anything about it until after I beat the game because I didn’t want anything spoiled but now I've read up on it. The only thing that I knew going into the game is that several thousands of fans were unhappy with the ending. Today’s entry will be my take on the ending.

It was brilliant.

Now don’t go anywhere. I plan on giving an explanation for the above statement but first I need to give an official spoiler warning just in case some haves not played it yet and admit that I am a little late for this conversation considering ME3 came out months ago but what do you want from me? I had to wait for it to go on sale which happened right around my mid-July birthday. Also, if you haven't played the game and have no intention of doing so I will try to explain every thing as best as I can.

The story of the game is pretty heavy. There is a threat to the galaxy known as the Reapers who appear every 50,000 years to wipe out all advanced life and reset the clock on the galaxy. The game stats with the Reapers attack on Earth. Commander Shepard is trying to stop them and retake Earth. ME3 plays with some pretty heavy themes like "having hope when you literally have nothing else" and "adversity bringing out the worst in some and the best in others" and the game handles all these smaller themes really well but none of them are the main theme. We'll get to that in a minute.

 Not actual game footage. But that would be hilarious

Before I give my opinion I need to lay some ground work. Many fans were upset about the ending because the choices that the player made throughout the series didn’t seem to have much impact on the ending which is true but not at all a bad thing if you think about it. One of the game’s mechanics and its stand out feature was the interactive dialogue. Commander Shepard would engage in conversation with people and the player would have to choose from different options what Shepard would say. And several places throughout the series the player would have to make some pretty tough calls from some bleak options and then live through the consequences of their actions. Up to this point players have assumed that choice and consequence was the theme of the series and that would be good enough but ME3 took things one step further.

Choice and consequence was just a tool used to setup and enforce a much deeper theme. A theme that actually pervades the series. The inevitably of chaos. This is a very important lesson for people to learn and ME3 teaches it in the best way possible. The series lets the player make hard choices and sacrifices over the course of three 40hr/each games, then pulls the rug out from under the player to teach an absolutely imperative lesson that nobody wants to either hear or learn.

“You can’t control everything.” No matter what you do, how many choices or sacrifices you make, and the lengths you have to go through to make them there will always be things that are out of your control. ME3 hits this particular nail on the head because they bring all this out in the last 10 minutes of the game. They drop this reality on the player and make no apologies for it. This ladies and gentleman is how video games can be profound.

Now, I can’t assume that the developers at BioWare intended this but that doesn’t matter because once the art is released to the world it speaks for itself and the Mass Effect series speaks volumes weather you want to hear them or not. I really enjoyed the Mass Effect series and give many kudos to BioWare for their excellent story telling and lovable characters. I can't wait to see what adventures they are going to make next.

 ME3 pulled tears from me on more than one occasion because of these guys.

Okay. That’s my two cents on the matter. My next post is going to be a Writing 101 post about metaphors gone wrong and I will be citing lyrics from current popular music as examples of bad metaphors. Also, I’m still working on the horror movie thing. I’ve pretty much covered the reason why they don’t scare. Now I’m just looking for one that gets the fear right. Thanks for reading I’ll write again soon.