Mass Effect 3 and the Modern RPG

After playing Final Fantasy XIII and XIV, I was done with Square Enix after over two decades of loyalty. In my time of mourning, I reached out for solace and BioWare’s Mass Effect series gave it to me.

Just a note, this “review” is mostly meant for people who have already played the game, so it will have spoilers. I’ve marked them in the headings. I really just wanted to discuss my feelings about the game and my ideas about the series and its creators here. If you haven’t yet, Mass Effect 3 is definitely worth playing if you’ve played at least one of the other two games in the series. Despite the flaws, it still manages to be a fun and rewarding experience for the most part.

Gameplay: Non-Combat

I chose the Xbox 360 version because my original character has been on ME1 and 2 on that system and I didn’t realize until afterward that I could copy a code over and keep it. Because of this, I got a 2-Disc game that required me to swap them repeatedly throughout playing. A minor annoyance. Importing my character was easy though, and the amount of story elements that changed because I did so were very impressive. I met dozens of minor supporting characters from the previous games that contributed to the story in ways they probably wouldn’t have if I hadn’t done nice things for them previously.

Building your character’s combat skills is as stright-forward and simple as ever, except the last 3 levels in an upgrade are split so that you can decide between two different styles of combat for each. I liked this because it felt like they could make each of the options powerful without breaking the game by giving us both like the older versions did. Some of them, especially the Biotic powers, are extremely powerful when using the final upgrades.

Weapons are pretty cool too. At first, I just used the stats to decide what weapon loadout I’d use, but soon I realized it was more important to get a good feel for what you wanted from your weapons. In my case, as an Infiltrator I have a preference for Sniper Rifles, but most of the fights I encountered weren’t very good for the high-powered, slow reload style rifles. So I chose a rifle that could fire quickly and had less power instead. Using the right accessories and upgrading it all the way made the lack of power negligible while maintaining the range I wanted from it. Conversely, I didn’t care how powerful my SMG was because I only used it to freeze up close targets as quickly as possible with Cryo ammo. Because of this, I maximized how many shots I could fire and how quickly over power or accuracy. The firing range helps figure this all out very well.

If you’ve played the previous Mass Effects, you know about the mini-games that each one has are kind of a mixed bag. Some are lots of fun and enrich the game, while others were tedious messes that only served to elongate the game without adding any real fun to it. ME3 has neither! They’ve stripped away the hacking mini games I liked and the tedious scanning ones I didn’t like. They instead have mini-quests that use the scanner, but in a much faster and less tedious way. I miss hacking because it was one of the main reasons I chose an Infiltrator in the first place, but I like what they ended up with for the most part.

There are several places throughout the game where it has to load for a couple seconds. This is a natural part of any game with graphics, particle effects, and real-time lighting like this. The nice thing about ME3 is the clever little disguises they use for load and save times. Whenever they can justify a moment of pause in the gameplay, they’ll incorporate it into the story or the action so the loading doesn’t disrupt your play too much.

Gameplay: Combat

The main thing I noticed about combat in this version is the cover mechanics. You use the same button to sprint, tumble, and crouch behind cover. This causes problems quite often. In especially tight quarters — like where many of the toughest fights take place near the end of the game — it is extremely aggravating to try to duck behind a short wall or corner while 7 enemies are shooting at you. Usually Shepard tumbles in place against the wall or sprints for a split second then stands there. They really needed to work the collision kinks out or at least make all of these actions NOT use the same button.

The various enemies you face are dynamic enough that having abilities that counter each one comes in handy. For my character, I gave him 3 different ammo types and the ability to give them to his team mates [at 50% strength] so that the rest of them could focus on Biotic or Tech damage. It ensured that I always had an answer for Barriers, Armor, Shields, or pure health. I liked that thinking this through had a big impact on combat.

The multiplayer portion of the game was ok. Nothing really special, but not bad. I feel like they spent a lot of time working on it and gave it valuable disc space that could have been used for other things though. It struck me as a gimmick that didn’t add much to the experience. Ideally, I would have liked it if they included the From Ashes content in the main game and made the multiplayer support the DLC.

Better with Kinect my ass. When I first started playing, I thought it was cool that I could say what I wanted Shepard to say in dialogue scenes and it would select the right one. I thought that saying “Liara Lift!” was a cool command in combat too, even if it took two or three tries to get her to do it. But then it started swapping weapons for me in mid clip… It picked up the sound from my surround sound speakers or my girlfriend talking to me in the background and somehow decided those things meant it was time to shotgun some mofos. If they kept it to things a person would actually use their voice for (squad commands and dialogue only), I’d have left it plugged in.

“Oh Shit Moments”

People who talk about games with me know what I mean by this. My game design teacher, Steve Swink, coined this phrase for me and it refers to moments in a game where you actually feel like saying (or in my case DO say it out loud) “Oh shit” because something unexpected and awesome occurs. Mass Effect 3 has several of these, and it is one of the main things that work in its favor and make it a game worth playing in the end.

• EDI’s Body — When EDI gets a body to move around with and joins your squad, that was an awesome sequence of mixed emotions. On one hand it was really cool, but on the other it was frightening that an unchained AI now had an identity. Would she destroy all humans? Not sure, but I definitely enjoyed using her Decoy ability with Tali’s Drones to make the most distracting squad ever.
• Javik — Finding that box and learning what was inside was already a crazy feeling. Finding out that he could join your party just put it over the top.
• Fighting a Reaper “One-on-One” — Guiding the assembled fleets barrage to the eye of a Reaper while dodging its laser beams was a very cool scene, that only made the idea of being on the Quarian home world cooler.
• Miracles — Curing the Genophage was incredible, and probably the only time during the game that I felt near tears. I always really loved Mordin. The decisions made during this mission chain were some of the toughest and most consequential in the entire series, and I loved every minute.
• Unlikely Alliances — Ending the war between the Geth and the Quarians was epic. Finding out at the end that the Geth have actually started helping the Quarians set up their home planet for habitation again was amazing. The Quarians’ apprehensiveness was so palatable and understandable given their history of complicated regrets and traumas. Setting foot on their homeworld with Tali was especially great considering she was my choice for a romantic relationship.
• Grunt vs. Rachni — When Grunt goes for a kamekaze style attack on the Rachni chasing your team, it was an awesome scene of brutality and blood. It was a fitting end for such a powerful warrior… Until he walks out behind you right before you take off ALIVE and completely covered in Rachni blood. I was prepared for him to die here because Mordin had already passed away previously and it seemed like a fitting ending, but seeing him limp out like that and survive was just awe-inspiring.

Disappointments

Small Graphical Bugs

Normally, I overlook these unless they disrupt the game. Playing Skyrim and still liking it somehow despite its multitude of problems prepared me in this way I guess. But one thing that happened in my game completely ruined the drama of any dialogue scene with Shepard in it. At some point near the middle of the story, my characters eyes decided to bulge out of their sockets a la Arnold Shwarzenegger in Total Recall, and they stayed that way the rest of the game. It was creepy as hell and really took me out of the mood in some of the moments that should have been very moving.

Tali’s Face

They built up seeing Tali’s face for three games. If you bought the standard versions of each game over the near-decade this series has been going on, you’ve spent $180 in this process. If you’d romanced her in every game like I did, you were PISSED when they cut the camera away from her face in Mass Effect 2. When you got the third game, if you were like me, you thought to yourself “OK. This is the final episode. No reason to hold anything back now. I’ll get to see her for sure now.” So after all the breadcrumbs and cruel cop-outs BioWare gave us in the stories leading up to this point, I’ve invested a lot of time and effort in seeing this woman’s face.

What do they give us? A blurry photo that we can only see at an odd perspective angle. Not just that, but a stock photo they grabbed from Getty Images. The photo doesn’t even look like it would fit the shape of the face she had hinted beneath the mask all along. Just a normal, human model that doesn’t look “alien” in the least outside of some minor markings and missing fingers. The photo was taken with her not wearing any portion of her suit, but it was on a planet with a sun and grass in the background. They show this despite the fact that the Quarian backstory states that they haven’t been able to take off their suits since before she was born. Yet somehow, Tali is suitless and standing on a planet just like Earth somewhere since then. They couldn’t show her as an in-game model? They couldn’t at least draw something original for her? All they did was PhotoShop her face and hand.

Multiple fans — not professional artists — have done artwork that was hundreds of times better than what BioWare accomplished in years of work. Here are a few: Tali without glass mask, 3D Tali (more alien look). What this means to me is BioWare cuts corners and doesn’t care about delivering what they know their customers/fans want. They do not reward dedication to the storylines they built. This was a complete cop-out and an ENORMOUS disappointment for me.

No True Final Boss

I realize that this is a little bit of a silly complaint coming from a person that wants innovation and new experiences in his games, but it did take away a bit from the triumph of beating the game that there was no large powerful boss to defeat at the end. Mass Effect 2 had an awesome one, so I don’t think it’s unreasonable for me to have expected another here. Yes, the final battles before it went into “Event Mode” were rather challenging and cool, but there were no new enemies to fight in that, just a horde of what we’d already seen. I think fewer people would be complaining about the endings if there were at least a better final battle.

Weak Squad Selection

When I met my past crew members along the way, I expected them to join me. Even if I knew some of them might die, I was hoping they would at least be temporarily available in my Squad selection for side quests. I was wrong. In fact, finding out that certain members were NOT available for squad selection actually made me expect them to be killed at some point in the story, which cheapened some of those moments for me. Also: No Krogan!?

It’s not like it takes that much data to port in characters that were already built out for previous games. The skill upgrades aren’t so deep that it would confuse any players. They all gain levels with your main character, so no investment would be wasted when they died.

If they really wanted to limit how many members you had to choose from, they could have at least made you get different characters based on the decisions you made in the game. For example, you could have to pick between saving Wrex or Grunt during the Rachni mission, and the survivor joined you. They did it with Samara in ME2. It just seems like a big missed opportunity, and is one of the things I think the Multiplayer portion should have been nixed in favor of.

The New Characters

James was a relatively cool guy that said some charming and funny lines throughout the game, but he was pretty generic. His use of Spanish slang felt forced to me. I never felt a really strong connection to him as a character because he just seemed generic. All the human playable characters felt that way to me though. Many of the NPC humans were interesting, but none of the ones you actually fought with could fulfill that for some reason.

EDI‘s story in this episode was a big highlight for me. Her relationship with Joker was cute, endearing, and funny. Joker has always been one of the most likeable characters in the series, but this storyline really made me feel happy with him getting something great to happen to him.

The appearance of Javik was a definite cool moment in the story. He adds a LOT to the flavor of the galaxy when you go through all his side quests and interactions with Liara and other characters. I bought the From Ashes DLC immediately and played through the game unaware of which parts of it were original and which were the DLC, so I really enjoyed this. If I played the game through without From Ashes (and thus without Javik) I would have been somewhat disappointed because he brings so much to the table in terms of plot. I’d complain about it being “required” DLC to make the game good, but I’m really not that irked about it. At least it wasn’t bad like some of the add-onn DLC I’ve bought for other games in the past.

I thought that Diana Allers was a cool addition to the game. Having a reporter on board really gave the game that extra tweak to feel like you were doing more than just flying around and fighting bad guys. You were trying to win hearts and minds as well. She was reasonable and fair in her reporting unlike certain Citadel reporters, so she was a pleasure to have around in my game where I had full notoriety in both Paragon and Renegade. People with less charm and tact might not have enjoyed it as much of course.

I love Steve Cortez‘s story. He has this really rough past and your ability to help him through his trauma makes you really care about him. He’s not a stereotype. He’s a valuable asset to the team as a pilot and mechanic. He’s just awesome. The same can be said for Samantha Traynor. She is much more than just a secretary that tells you when you’ve got mail. She has a vital role to play in the story as well as an interesting personality. Both of these characters are homosexual and can be interacted with on a romantic level, which is interesting. The sex/kissing scenes of every character in the game are all awkward and uncomfortable to me, and these were no exception. No better or worse than the hetero stuff.

As Kotaku and a few other writers have mentioned, the gaming community is one of the most homophobic demographics on earth right now. When I think about how many gay people I run into everyday (San Francisco greatly accelerates this of course, but even previously), the lack of that element in games is astonishing. It actually makes it unrealistic. I like that we can meet characters like Cortez and Traynor that are incidentally gay without it being a big deal. The fact you can have relationships with either of them may be a shock value thing, but incorporating the normal person who happens to be gay thing into more games is something I’d like to see more of in future games. Hopefully with the sex scenes being optional of course, unless they can make them not awkward.

Kai Leng is a straight-up badass. He is a classic mysterious ninja villain archtype, but he fits well into the storyline here. They introduce his mechanics through the Phantom soldiers in normal combat, then tune his abilities to be realistic and powerful without making him super-human by creating an environment where he gets support from other elements in his boss fights. He plays a role very much like Darth Maul did in Star Wars Episode One, and does it better.

The Controversies

Browsing around online, you’ll see a lot of people complaining about Mass Effect 3. Some are pissed about the From Ashes DLC that was released at launch, and I can agree with that disgust. Without that DLC, the game would have been a lot less impactful for me. But in reality, if they gave us the exact same DLC content, but held it back for a couple weeks, would it really be any different? I doubt it. In fact I bet that EA will do that instead on future releases just to shut people up. Shipping incomplete games out for full price is the real problem. Not adding content afterward. ME3 would have been less enjoyable without From Ashes for me, but I wouldn’t have considered it incomplete.

Other complaints revolve around the game’s ending. I’ve played through almost all of the endings and wasn’t fully satisfied with any of them, but none of them were THAT bad that I would think the game was ruined because of it. That being said, every ending is remarkably similar. I made two characters, plus Kati has her own FemShep character that is different from both of mine. My second character and Kati’s character were both started in ME2. Yet we all get an ending that is 80% the same. It’s another bullshit cop-out like Tali’s face, except everyone sees it.

Some might ask “With how hyped this game was, what ending would have satisfied everyone?” And this is something I considered as well. But I’m pretty sure that all we wanted was something that suited our vast array of differently customized characters. BioWare promised this. It was the whole reason many of us played the whole series. To have these vastly diverging storylines all end up in a tight bottleneck of only a few mildly varying endings is just lazy. BioWare is entirely deserving of the backlash it has received.

Who To Trust?

I have been boycotting EA products since before they bought BioWare, which has always been a major disappointment for me. At that point however, I decided that I would allow myself to waver only for the sake of Mass Effect games. Aware that my integrity is tarnished because of this, I couldn’t say no to the game I fell in love with since the first version. Part of me was excited that this would be the final Mass Effect simply because it meant that I wouldn’t ever put another dime into EA’s pocket afterward. But a bigger part of me was just excited for the closure of its story.

But now that the series has come to an end, I’m not sure where to go from here for my RPG fix. BioWare is dead to me simply because of their owners and, to a lesser degree, the flaws inherent in ME3. What company — if any — deserves my brand loyalty now?

Square Enix

I have been a Squaresoft and Square Enix fan since the early 90’s. I would buy every RPG they released the day it came out if I could and just know it would be high quality. I anticipated every new release years in advance and talked many of my friends over the years into playing them if they never had before. I participated in fanboy forums where we argued all the time about which games were the best and worst and what characters would win in fights. I was all-in on Square.

Then, Final Fantasy X came out. It wasn’t that bad; in fact it was still better than the RPGs any other company was releasing at the time. But I had a feeling at the time that it was the beginning of something terrible. I played Final Fantasy XI Online on and off for 6 years, and it felt like a compromise every step of the way. When they talked about the upcoming Final Fantasy XII, I was excited because of the return to Ivalice, the bastion of the great Final Fantasy Tactics storyline. I said to myself “If this one ends up being bad, I’m done with Square.” Lots of people disliked #12, but I wasn’t one of them. It had flaws, no doubt, but I really enjoyed the art stlye, the battle system, most of the characters, and the wide-open storyline with lots of side quests. I was ready to give Square another chance.

Somewhere in between those events, Final Fantasy X-2 came out and I ignored it like most people. It was a bad omen, but I didn’t need to play it to know that. Around this time, I played other MMO’s that were actually built correctly and quit Final Fantasy XI. I missed some elements of Final Fantasy XI — namely the reason I played it in the first place: The Classic Final Fantasy Job System. But my experience with WoW and other MMOs showed me just how horribly bad Square was at designing multiplayer games. Each time they released a new Expansion, it got better, but not by enough. Soon, they announced that they were beginning to work on a brand new MMO. They said that they had learned a ton from XI and their competition and planned to deliver a much better experience to Final Fantasy Fans. This became the biggest thing I looked forward to in gaming.

Final Fantasy XIII was also announced shortly after this. As awesome as it looked from screenshots and sounded from the over-promising mouths of SE reps, I was still much more excited about XIV Online. This was the year my faith in Square was completely destroyed. Final Fantasy XIII was a vast disappointment and I was vocal about it, so I’ll link the article and move on. Final Fantasy XIV was everything that was wrong with XI without the good parts. It was such a horrible game that I only played it for 2 hours before quitting and canceling my account on the spot. They lied about everything. They learned nothing from any of their fans (at least not in the U.S.) or competitors. I pre-ordered the special edition version of this game for $80 and signed up for a paid online account ahead of time only to play it for 2 hours.

So I was hurt. I had been abused by the company I grew up trusting. I vowed to not buy another Final Fantasy game again until I heard massive positive reviews. I could no longer trust them. Then I saw this:

In my opinion, this is the best game trailer ever made. It got me more excited about this game than any other trailer I’ve ever seen.

I always heard my PC gamer friends talk about Deus Ex games and how cool they were. Especially after I got really into The Matrix. After seeing how cool the trailers and reveals in various gaming sites and magazines were, I was going to give this series a shot. I was not disappointed at all. I loved Human Revolution. It was like Mass Effect, but with better shooting and a more gritty and grounded storyline. I was a little disappointed with the DLC that came shortly after because it was a little shorter than I expected for $15, but no big deal. I would still expect to buy future content from this IP.

Does this mean Square Enix is back in a positive light for me? It was for a second… and then they released another “-2” game. Was it VII-2, the one that their fans have been asking for for over a decade now? Of course not. It was a sequel to their train wreck XIII. They marketed it to gamers on the down-low as a “Oops! We promise this isn’t another Hallway Simulator this time!” but I’d heard all that “we learned from our mistakes” crap before. As far as I’m concerned, I go to Square Enix with trepidation for everything. Deus Ex will be something I let myself look forward to, but not as much as I could before.

Blizzard, Bethesda, Mistwalker

I have always liked Blizzard titles, since the first StarCraft. I use the term “liked” because I’ve only loved WarCraft 3 and Burning Crusade era World of WarCraft. They do a great job of making their games fun and accessible. They aren’t the top-quality masterpieces that I used to get from Final Fantasy games, but they are definitely trustworthy of releasing quality product that is fun and rewarding. Too bad Diablo and hardcore RTSes like SC2 aren’t really my thing.

I have a love/hate relationship with Bethesda. On one hand, I consider it inexcusable that I could pay $60 for any game without it being complete. On the other hand, no other studio seems to want to release ambitious open-world role-playing games like they do right now. Sure, there are a few here and there, but none of them are as huge as Elder Scrolls or Fallout. I have a big issue with the fact that every game they produce is pretty much the exact same style except with a different skin, but I’ll be louder about that when they stop being fun.

I was a huge fan of Lost Odyssey, and after completing it, I was ready to play the sequel or pretty much anything new that Mistwalker released… but there was nothing. Every time I saw that they were working on something new it ended up being little handheld games I had no interest in. I continue to anxiously await another big console RPG of equal quality to LO.

One-Hit Wonders

I have endless praise for Riot Games. They built a game that is extremely fun, very high quality, has endless replay value, and costs nothing to play unless you want extras. League of Legends embodies everything I loved about WarCraft 3 and their user-created content of that time, without all the crappy interface and steep learning curves. I have dropped 10x as much money on this one game as I have with any other game and I regret none of it. Riot Games has supported their game better than even Blizzard does for its, which says a lot. They created a game and business model that I respect and would love to see more of. They oppose gaming-related legislation like SOPA that I also oppose. They go out of their way to respond to their customers, even if they are retarded, whiney children.

Other great non-traditional games include: Bastion (XBLA), Braid (XBLA), and Portal 2 (PC/Steam). All of them are cheap compared to the competition and offer much more to the gamer that wants fun, innovative entertainment.

Do I Even Need a Brand?

I think it has become inappropriate to equate a game’s quality to its development studio. At least as a consumer or fan, the ones that should be praised and “subscribed to” are the individual writers, artists, and designers. Obviously, the developers, producers, quality assurance, and other cogs in the machine are all relevant to its success, but when an integral part of the original creative team is no longer present (as with Drew Karpyshyn with Mass Effect 3), it should trigger a change in expectations. Instead of trusting and giving your loyalty to Square Enix or BioWare, give it to specific people in the industry. So far, it has steered me in a better, and less disappointing direction.

I used to have it easy when I was a kid and Square Enix was the be-all end-all of gaming, but that time has passed. I was lucky to have experienced it at all. Maybe someday there will be another game studio that goes 10 years without a bad release, but I can just write love letters to Hironobu Sakaguchi until then.