The Mass Effect Trilogy

Warning: This entry contains spoilers for the Mass Effect trilogy.

I was waiting till after E3 to post this because I was so sure that EA would show at least something of Mass Effect 4 during the event, but apparently not… So yeah, I promised I’d post this entry soon after the Mass Effect 3 entry, but what can ya do?

Before you go on reading this entry, if you haven’t read my three previous entries on the Mass Effect trilogy then you should definitely take a look through these…

• Game Spotlight: Mass Effect
• Game Spotlight: Mass Effect 2
• Game Spotlight: Mass Effect 3

Wait, didn’t you endlessly complain about the Mass Effect 3 ending yet you still love the Mass Effect trilogy?

I prefaced this entire journey by saying that I promised myself that I would NEVER play the Mass Effect trilogy again for a second playthrough after I had finished Mass Effect 3 for the first time a couple of years back. However, as I’ve already described in previous entries, something drew me back and after a second journey through those three games, this time with the full suite of downloadable content along with the main content, I came away emotionally exhausted but with a greater understanding of what the Mass Effect trilogy means to me.

There is a lot to love about the Mass Effect trilogy and each of the three games deserve a lot of praise, though, at the same time, there is a lot of justified criticism to be laid down upon them as well. I could be one of those people who simply chooses to ignore all the failings of the series and focus purely on the good parts, but that’s just not the kind of person I am.

I’m not the kind of person who is capable of ignoring all the bad aspects of something simply because it’s something I love. If anything, I’m harder on the things that I love compared to the things that I don’t care much about. I’m brutally hard on things like Mass Effect, Star Wars, Macross and Nintendo when I notice something stupid about them that rubs me the wrong way and doesn’t live up to the quality I expect from them.

For me, noticing all the flaws in something like the Mass Effect trilogy isn’t a bad thing by any means and it doesn’t take away my overall enjoyment from the games. I admit that my initial reaction to the ending of Mass Effect 3 did take me away from replaying the games again for a couple of years, but I’m sure many of you realise it’s because of the scope of the journey you end up going through over the course of these three games. I felt it the first time I played, but the second time I played through the trilogy non-stop from the start of the first to the end of the last really did hit me with an emotional low at the end. I wasn’t making a joke about being emotionally exhausted because I really was just that… emotionally exhausted. I felt like I had just been through this grand adventure, but at the end of the long journey there was no closure, at least, not for me.

Still, it’s a good thing I did play through the games for a second playthrough because going over them again helped me to notice and de-construct the flaws in each of those games which helped me to understand the difficulties the developers over at BioWare had creating these games and the challenges they faced in the creation of the Mass Effect trilogy. It also helps to know some of the history of how these games were created, all the different elements and events that took place during development to forge the games that we ended up getting. All of that really makes you appreciate the development process of something with this kind of scope.

I guess what I’m trying to say here is that I don’t unconditionally love anything and I don’t follow blindly. If there’s something out there that is worthy of my fandom, it has to be for a damned goo reason and I have to know what’s so great about it and what’s so bad about it for me to truly love it. And yes, I do love the Mass Effect trilogy and see it as one of my favourite video game series of all time despite all of my complaining and all the flaws we can all point out throughout the entire trilogy.

It’s the difference between liking something as a child and liking something as an adult. You like something as a child for purely superficial reasons. This thing is “cool” because it shoots lasers and flies in space, or whatever. As an adult it’s more than just the lasers and the ability to fly in space, it’s about the mechanics behind how that laser fires and the way the portrayal of space flight works and doesn’t work in the context of everything in that fictional universe. Once you start thinking about these things with a critical eye, there’s really no going back to the superficial reasoning of a child.

I love the Mass Effect trilogy because of all the things in the trilogy that I think are great AND because all the things in the trilogy which I think suck. The things that suck help me to recognise why I love the things that are great about these games and without them, it would simply be a game series that I like and not one that I love.

The future of Mass Effect

From the very little we saw of the concept art and such of “Mass Effect 4” at E3 or whatever they’ll end up calling the next Mass Effect game, there’s really not much to talk about here in the way of concrete information since there’s hardly any aside from the fact that BioWare is working on it and it’ll come out some time in the future in probably a couple of years judging from how little we saw.

Disappointing, I know, but what can you do? If BioWare needs the time to get their act together and create a new trilogy of games that is actually planned out well beforehand instead of muddled through with each successive game made, then that means we’ll get a much better set of games out of it. At least that’s what I’m hoping this delay in actually revealing something of the game amounts to. I really do hope that they’ve learned from their mistakes and shortcomings from the previous trilogy and are doing something that is entirely BETTER than the first Mass Effect trilogy based on everything they have learned.

Whether that actually becomes a reality is yet to be seen and I realise that it’s wishful thinking on my part to think that BioWare is going to learn from everything they’ve done from the past Mass Effect games. Still, there’s nothing wrong with a little hope, is there?

While we have ZERO information about what kind of setting the next Mass Effect will take place, I’m betting that it’s going to take place a long, LONG time after the events of Mass Effect 3 where despite whatever endings you end up choosing for yourself (red, green or blue, I’m sure you remember), it all ends up normalising into a future where no matter what happens, everything ends up being the same for some reason.

I can just see it now, the Mass Relays are either repaired, rebuilt or remade from scratch due to whatever reason that’s cooked up or FTL travel without the use of Mass Relays has gotten to the point where no one needs to use the Mass Relays any more whether they’re usable or not. Whether you choose an ending that kills all synthetic life forms, we’ll probably not see any geth but we’ll probably end up seeing a new selection of synthetic life in some form whether they’re hostile or not. After a long enough time, the deaths of countless trillions will seem like a drop in the bucket and whatever generally happens in the new games won’t bother to go over events that changed the galaxy forever because they just happened too damned long ago and no one cares any more because something else new and exciting is happening that drives the story forward.

From the scraps of what was actually said during E3, BioWare suggested that we’d end up exploring new worlds in parts of the galaxy we hadn’t been able to reach before due to them either being locked out of the Mass Relay network or because we’ve finally developed FTL fast enough to let us reach those locations. Either way, it sounds like we’ll be doing a bit of star trekking in our quest for exploration in these new games.

I’m interested to see what new threat will creep up on us during all of that exploration. I’m also interested to see what kind of hero will lead us into the new journey we’ll all embark on in the Mass Effect universe. Will it be another human in the military or will BioWare give us the option to play as a Turian, Asari, Quarian or any number of other species we’ve all come to love? It would be cool to see them taking things that far, because I would so choose a female Quarian as my character if I was given the opportunity to choose. Of course, if it’s another human-centric story yet again, I guess, since I’ve already used up my likeness with Commander Shepard, I’m going to opt for a female hero this time around and see where she takes me.

I know I’m excited to see what BioWare will bring us for the future of Mass Effect, but it looks like we’re all going to have to wait at least a little longer before we get anything out of them. Until then, I’m glad I did take the plunge and go through the entire Mass Effect trilogy all over again.

Welp, that’s my last entry before I head off to Japan tomorrow, see ya!