I want to talk about Mass Effect. I first started when I played Mass Effect 2 on my friend’s Playstation 2. As with Dragon Age, I wasn’t supposed to care. I wasn’t supposed to get emotionally invested. I never cared for Star Wars or Star Trek, so I figured maybe space and sci-fi wasn’t really my thing.<\/p>\n
Oh boy, how wrong I was! My story began with a custom character in ME2- a male Shepard that I made to look like me. In the story I wrote in the DLC where you choose what happens in ME1- I saved the council, romanced Ashley and then sent her to die, killed the Rachni Queen, chose Wrex over whoever else. I think I was a Spacer War Hero (or perhaps sole survivor). I quickly and naturally fell into a predominantly Paragon path. I did everybody’s loyalty missions. I let Kasumi keep the box. I left Zaeed to die for being such an asshole. I didn’t allow Garrus or Mordin to kill their targets. I helped them find redemption instead. Destroyed the Collector Base. I was romancing Miranda all along. When I found Jack, though, I didn’t have enough Paragon meter to get them to seek compromise. I had to choose between one or the other. I chose Jack. I thought Miranda was being overbearing- as Commander, I expect my crew to look out for each other, or at least leave each other alone. I felt that Miranda was being the aggressor, which I felt was a direct assault on my principles. Siding with Miranda would be clear favouritism, too. I imagined that Miranda would understand where I was coming from.<\/p>\n
Bollocks- I lost both her romance option and her loyalty! Women’s logic prevails. I was really upset about that, but I felt like it was the right thing to do, given the situation. (Given that I wasn’t man enough to get both of them to listen to me.) My favourite ME2 moments- drinking brandy with Dr Chakwas was one. Eavesdropping on the engineers. Getting closer to the crew- I liked how my Shepard and Jacob became bros later in the game. I enjoyed conversations with Thane and hearing Garrus’s funny sex stories. I was intrigued by Samara’s mysticism. I loved Kasumi’s depth and humour- I wish she was more than DLC. I found Tali to be kind of like a cute little sister type character. I enjoyed eventually helping to soften Jack.<\/p>\n
Mass Effect 2 felt like a great buildup to Mass Effect 3. Unfortunately, I had lost my ME2 save- it was on a friend’s PS3, which subsequently got fried. So I ended up starting ME3 from scratch. (I decided to play FemShep instead, because she’s absolutely amazing.) It was a tad depressing, because I had watched many of the videos on Youtube about what happens when you DO carry your characters over- the romance options, the backstory. So I had to play those things in my head. I had to imagine Jack was around (my eventual, genuine romance option), when she wasn’t. It was painful to know that Thane was already dead, and it was kind of sad that I didn’t get to see Legion or Samara. The most painful thing for me was that I couldn’t save Tali. See, in ME2, I had the best possible outcomes for both Tali and Legion. In ME3, Tali is exiled by default. I made a silly mistake- I initiated the final Quarian mission without first rescuing the Admiral. This denied me the opportunity to broker peace, a ceasefire between the Quarians and Geth. I had to choose the Geth. The Geth had just recently attained self-awareness and self-actualization, and they had only acted in confusion and self-defence. The Quarians, in comparison, were insecure, needy and generally fucked up. Tali was their only saving grace. When forced to choose between the two, I had to pick the Geth. Tali- my old friend, who I had been through so much- committed suicide in horror.<\/p>\n
I was shattered. I knew what the possible outcomes were in advance, but I wasn’t expecting to have cornered myself into a situation where I would have had to pick one or the other. It was like the Miranda\/Jack situation again. I accepted this as a part of my story, my playthrough. I made a bad call- I should have gone for the Admiral. I’m not sure if that would have changed anything, if I would have been able to seek compromise, and brought Tali with me to the end. Some people online suggest that it’s impossible to get that best option without porting over an ME2 save. Oh well.<\/p>\n
I remember being genuinely emotionally distraught after Tali’s death. I found myself thinking that I ought to stop playing the game altogether. How much loss should one have to sit through? I had already witnessed the deaths of countless people- Turians, Asari, Humans, Krogans- all of whom made the noblest of sacrifices just so that me and my crew would have the slightest glimmer of a chance, at hope.<\/p>\n
They died so that we might TRY.<\/strong> But at that moment, I found myself thinking- how much more could I possibly take? It was Garrus who pulled me through. After Tali’s death (and knowing, especially, that Garrus and Tali would have had a romance if you romanced neither), I confided in him that I was losing faith, and losing hope. And he told me- “and this is when your best friend in the galaxy picks you up and tells you that you’re the most fantastic commander…”. It wrenched my heart, it really did.<\/p>\n We have to carry on for those who are still alive, who are still fighting.<\/strong> I have a lot more to say, but I’ll leave it at this for now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I want to talk about Mass Effect. I first started when I played Mass Effect 2 on my friend’s Playstation 2. As with Dragon Age, I wasn’t supposed to care. I wasn’t supposed to get emotionally invested. I never cared for Star Wars or Star Trek, so I figured maybe… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11654,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[591],"tags":[282],"class_list":["post-5375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews","tag-mass-effect"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/mass-effect-normandy.jpg?fit=960%2C540&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5gxNz-1oH","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5375"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5375\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9219,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5375\/revisions\/9219"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}