on Mass Effect, redux
Apr. 8th, 2015 01:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xparrotSo I beat ME3 a few days ago. And then at the advice of ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sheliana and others I got the Citadel DLC and played that (thank you SO MUCH for the rec, it's amazing, epic fanservice in the best of ways!) And now I'm out of Mass Effect to play! Other than the other DLCs, but some of those (From Ashes, at least) seem to require replaying pretty much the whole game, so...maybe later.
For now - a lot (LOT!) more squee and rambling under the cut. Unlike last post this will be spoilerific for all three games, so I advise you don't read unless you've played them already or are absolutely sure you never will - otherwise I strongly recommend playing unspoiled.
I went into them largely unspoiled myself, though I did have random knowledge picked up from overhearing discussions from my brother, Gnine, and friends. I knew the ending massively disappointed everyone (and yet everyone said the games were worth playing anyway, which was quite a point in their favor), that the main enemies were called Reapers, that Wrex and Garrus were favorite characters and I'd probably like them too, and that somewhere along the line I would meet a Rachni Queen and would choose not to kill her because no one ever does.
I'd managed to avoid most of the major spoilers, though, which made the whole experience that much more fun. One of the best parts of the games, asdoctorskuld said in the last comments, is that they're not trying to do anything super-original; instead they're space opera that plays as a homage and love letter to some of the best of the genre. It makes the universe feel familiar, but it draws on so many influences that nothing feels directly ripped off or imitated.
And occasionally it uses that familiarity to play with the player. One of my favorite things, and maybe the most original plotline in the trilogy, is the reveal in the first game about who really built the Mass Relays and the Citadel, and what they're really for. It plays on your genre expectations so beautifully - the remnant technologies of some past great civilization are such a staple of the genre that I never thought to question it. Of course the Protheans would leave behind a perfectly working space station! Just like SG's Ancients left behind stargates and Atlantis, and the Pak Protectors made the Ringworld. Those ancient civilizations just built them to last! ...and then, no, there's a reason how the Citadel survived 50,000 years untended - IT'S A TRAP. And the Protheans weren't some all-knowing super-race, but simply the last victims. I love how all through the ME galaxy you scan planets that mention showing signs of long-lost civilizations, wiped out thousands and millions of years before, and there's no real clues of how or why...these things just happen, apparently. At least when you live in a universe with Reapers.
The Reapers are awesome in themselves. Going in I knew they were the main enemies, but I didn't actually know what they were. I knew what sound their ships makes, thanks tognine's obsession with certain types of spooky ships (she reacts to Reapers the same way as to B5's Shadow ships :P) I didn't realize that the Reapers WERE the ships - the scene in the first game when you first meet Sovereign face to, erm, ship-hologram, was the first time the games really made me sit up and take notice. It was a shock to me as much as to the characters (that's maybe the first time in the game that the usually unflappable Garrus gets flapped, and I felt it with him, even if Shepard, as usual, took it in stride!)
The first game may have the best plot of the trilogy; the reveals have the biggest impact. Some of that is because the universe is new to you then, and it's when everything gets set up to be played out in the next games. On the other hand, the gameplay itself is the clunkiest, and the characters aren't nearly as developed.
But ME is one of those series that gets better and more satisfying as it goes along. The second game is the weakest in plot, but that's because the character stuff that is more atmosphere in the first game is front and center in the second; the plot becomes mostly incidental to the people, which, given the choice, is how I prefer my stories. While I liked most of the characters in the first game, the second game is when I really fell for everyone.
I love how pretty much all the characters play on your expectations, are not what you assume. I was excited to get Mordin anyway (I fell for the salarians in the first game - even before I found out they're all aromantic - they're just so funny and sweet and probably the least racist species, at least compared to turians and asari and humans. I saved the Council because I couldn't let a salarian get killed, not after seeing all the terrible things done to them on Virmire! - and so was thrilled when the brother mentioned I could get one on my team) but I didn't expect to love him as much as I did, and not only for the Gilbert & Sullivan (I actually missed getting the Mordin sex-talk because I was always going to talk to Mordin first thing, so ended up flirting with him instead...though flirting is all you can do, since, yeah, aromantic. Sigh! Well, as the brother says, we all have our white whale. He wants to romance Wrex, and Gnine would romance an elcor if she could. Or at least she wants one on her team XD)(I was amused that in the third game, on the Citadel you see several different pairs of human women with male salarians - just friends, presumably.)
Then Grunt - I really enjoyed Wrex in the first game and wasn't sure about getting a new krogan, but awwww, my cute little Grunt! (okay, not little, and cute only by a certain metric that somehow included krogan, but! a precocious genius krogan teenager, what's not to love! "I found out I hate turians! I thought you'd be happy for me!" Oh Grunt!) And Thane is one of the few examples I've seen of a sexy male alien - he's very alien but also attractive by human standards (not that Garrus isn't awesome to look at, but turians are more pretty like a bird of prey than hot.) If I hadn't been getting it on with Garrus I would have been really curious how the romance with Thane plays out, he intrigues me.
Tali is so cute- she's my girl, after Garrus she was probably my most frequent squadmate. Which leads to some awesome lines, as by the end she's as snarky as he is. And in the Citadel DLC she turns out to be a fangirl, no wonder we got along so well! (that little scene is actually really sweet, it's fun and funny and true to fanning.) Though I ended up surprised by Liara - I didn't think I'd like her as much as I did, but in the first game she's just hopelessly adorable, and then her transformation into the Shadow Broker totally took me off-guard. If/when I replay the games I might do the full romance with her (I hooked up with her in the first game, though that causes this weird discomfort because on the one hand, she's a century old, but on the other hand she's so obviously a teenager in love for the first time, you feel kind of like you're taking advantage, especially when you know you're going to be romancing someone else later...and then you remind yourself it's a video game, but still...!)
Samara is intriguing, but her sexy superhero costume drove me nuts - the superhero part is only apropos for a justicar, but the sexy part makes zero sense given her character, and distracted me negatively in every conversation. The asari walk a fine line between interesting aliens and obvious fetish material. In part because they make so little sense - why do they look so human? Why does every species lust after them - yet no other species seems to find human women so attractive? At one point in the second game there's a background conversation that implies that asari look different to everyone who sees them, Vorlon-style, which given their telepathic abilities seems plausible. It doesn't explain the look of their statues or the asari VIs, but eh, I'm still going to headcanon their true form as bipedal blue squids (who can squeeze into human armor in a pinch.)
And of course there's Garrus! who like I said I knew was going to be my favorite going in, and he did not disappoint. He's got that irresistible blend of snark and ego and attitude and angst. And also adorable when flustered, making the romance with him a thing of epic beauty (fortunately Shepard agrees...) He's like Illya Kuryakin in that he's a whiny badass - which is totally a type, though I'm having trouble thinking of other examples. But they're the kind of character who will whine and complain about hangnails and the cold, but will be wisecracking and back in action a day after taking a rocket to the face. Also he does that thing where he comes across as so cool and then the more you get to know him the more obvious it becomes that he's trying way too hard, and only can pull it off because he actually is almost as good as he thinks he is. (and I love his combat dialog in ME2, "Never saw me comin'!" the cocky bastard.)
Is that everyone? ...oh yeah, there's some humans. Um, apologies to their fans, but I found the human characters mostly uninteresting compared to the aliens, at least until the third game - James, Cortez and Traynor are all fun. But otherwise, yeah, they're...there? Except for Anderson, by virtue of his voice (Keith David still has the sexiest voice of any English-speaking VA, that's just scientific fact.) --And Joker of course, but that goes without saying! I started shipping him and EDI back in the second game when she was pulling his pigtails and he was too irritated to realize she had a massive crush. I had no idea she got a body until she did, and I couldn't get worked up about the sex-bot angle because - EDI and Joker! I so wanted to marry them, as ship's captain.
Speaking of my ship - after so long watching Star Trek and Star Wars and the rest, having the Normandy was one of my favorite things. Most things in the game, my pronouns get confusing - when talking about Shepard's actions, I tend to switch between "I" "you" "she" and "they", at random and sometimes mid-sentence. But the Normandy was always MY ship. ...especially at the beginning of the second game, where I was shouting MY SHIP! THOSE BASTARDS BLEW UP MY SHIP! at the screen for about fifteen minutes. Killing me is one thing. But my ship!!!
If the first game is strongest on plot and the second game is all about character, then the third game is mostly the best of both worlds. The plot is majorly ramped up from the second, and if it lacks the gripping reveals of the first game, its core of solving problems and bringing the whole galaxy together against the Reaper threat is so epic and appealing. And then the character elements are fantastic. Seeing your crew interact with one another, being a real team, is so satisfying. My favorite such conversation (other than the Citadel DLC) might have been after Thessia's fall, you come across Tali talking with Garrus about how to comfort Liara, and it's so sweet and team-y. The Normandy crew are such nakama! (...I got as far as Mordin = Brook, Garrus = Sanji and Liara = Robin before the brother shouted me down. ...though Zoro is obviously one of the krogan...)
Then there's the end. The brother wanted me to play the original version, but due to a miscalculation (he hadn't realized the extended cut DLC was already downloaded, and hadn't played it himself so didn't recognize it until it was too late) I got the extended cut. Which wasn't nearly as bad as I was braced for. It wasn't a perfect ending, but it's not as outrageously frustrating as it could have been. They changed the part that most upset the brother, the destruction of the mass relays that pretty much destroys the universe we know. With the mass relays still around, the universe is fundamentally altered, but not lost.
As for Shepard's fate...I didn't have the score for the Shepard lives Destroy ending, and wouldn't have done it anyway, not at the expense of the Geth and EDI. I went with Synthesis - and now expect the sainthood Garrus promised me, since I made peace with the Reapers!
I admit that I don't get why all the endings are so final. In some ways it makes sense - Shepard is on the classic hero's journey, ending in transformation/apotheosis. But on the other hand the games usually give you the superhero option to save everybody, if you've done enough otherwise, and that it's never available for Shepard at the end seems really unfair. Especially since they also kill Anderson, and while as the mentor figure I was surprised he lasted as long as he did - to off him at the last minute, right before Shepard goes, ends up just seeming gratuitous. Either the mentor or the student is supposed to be sacrificed, not both.
Though really...I have a hard time buying Shepard is really gone. Considering they appear to die in both 1 and 2...nothing convinced me THIS death is actually going to take. (Cue Garrus channeling Jack O'Neill - "I'm not buying it! She's just waiting for us to say nice things about her!")
Putting that aside, in some ways I was more disappointed by the stuff leading up to the end. Not the starchild/Crucible conversations, really; I've seen enough anime not to expect truly shocking revelations in the finale of such an epic battle. But the Cerberus storyline never engaged me as much as the rest of the story of ME3, and its payoff wasn't that satisfying. The Illusive Man was fun in ME2 because you're trying to figure out his deal (he's so obviously a supervillain! He's got glowy cybernetic eyes, Martin Sheen's voice, and a dying sun as a backdrop to his office! and yet he's on your side...?) but as a straight-up villain there's not much there. Maybe he's got more backstory in the comic tie-ins or something? In the first game I found Saren genuinely compelling - while he may have been an asshole all along, there's something terribly tragic in how indoctrination twists his mind to think he's saving the galaxy - that Sovereign got to him through his best nature. But the Illusive Man's xenophobic humans-first attitude makes it difficult to ever sympathize. And Kai Leng is a weirdly flat nemesis - again, maybe he's got more character in the tie-ins; but in the game proper he's just an assassin who for some reason has it in for Shepard, and then he kills a friend or two of yours, and then you kill him. He was so uninspired that I'm really wondering if his backstory was originally that of the enemy in the Citadel DLC - considering that's also Cerberus creation, with a much more understandable grudge against Shepard. (...also perhaps a Vorkosigan reference, or maybe that was just me reading into it? Though I do think Vorkosigan might've influenced someone on the writing team.) As it was I spent most of the game calling him Bucky and insisting Cerberus had resurrected Kaidan (I knew he wasn't, since the sister played the games with Kaidan instead of Ashley; but I maintain it would've made more sense and been a better plot twist. Especially if they only hinted at it, but if Ashley were dead you get a female assassin instead...)
But those quibbles are trumped by how much I enjoyed the hell out of the rest of the games. Having finished the Citadel DLC - and oh, after all the hilarity, the very end with your crew looking at the Normandy and knowing they're never going to do this again together - you're meant to play that DLC after you've played the end, so you know how it's going to go, and it hits hard, and effectively. It's almost worth the end just for that gut-punch. (Which is what makes the end frustrating, because tragedy sometimes can work, and sometimes they pull it off in style. Mordin's death is so sad - it's the only thing in all the games that made me tear up* - but it's perfect, too, the atonement and sacrifice and rebirth. It's not gratuitous but necessary to the story. And they're going for something similarly affecting in the finale, but they don't quite make it.)
--Though at least the music is up to the challenge, I absolutely love this ending theme. ...Yeah, yeah, soft piano and rising strings will get me every single time.
* Okay I teared up over Grunt, too, but then that was a fake-out, and man it was marvelously done, too!
...aaaaand looking at that OST pic...playing femShep means I have doomed myself to a lifetime of looking at ME official art and going "But who's that guy--oh right." (especially since I made my armor look all awesome and matching with Garrus and Tali's black-and-gold look...)
Now that I have no more game to play, I'm finding myself looking up videos on youtube - of which there are a ton, and it's hilarious to see alternative conversations and things I somehow missed. (I'm mostly avoiding anything from DLC I haven't played.) And reading the comments, which are a blast - video game fans arguing is almost as good as comics fan rage. Especially when it's terrifically earnest arguments about the genophage that are pretty much exactly how they'd play out if it were all real.
...though I'm cranky about all the people insisting that the Destroy ending was the only right choice, that anything else is giving into the Reapers and the point was to destroy them - no, the point was to end the cycle, and both the Geth and EDI are proof that AIs are not fundamentally evil, nor incapable of co-existence; destroying all AIs just makes the Reapers' case, that it's us or them, and I refuse to believe it! Phooey on you, random youtube commenters :P
And then, inevitably...I make no promises about completing it, but I have 3K words and counting of post-game fic. As I have said so often before: Whoops.
sheliana and others I got the Citadel DLC and played that (thank you SO MUCH for the rec, it's amazing, epic fanservice in the best of ways!) And now I'm out of Mass Effect to play! Other than the other DLCs, but some of those (From Ashes, at least) seem to require replaying pretty much the whole game, so...maybe later.For now - a lot (LOT!) more squee and rambling under the cut. Unlike last post this will be spoilerific for all three games, so I advise you don't read unless you've played them already or are absolutely sure you never will - otherwise I strongly recommend playing unspoiled.
I went into them largely unspoiled myself, though I did have random knowledge picked up from overhearing discussions from my brother, Gnine, and friends. I knew the ending massively disappointed everyone (and yet everyone said the games were worth playing anyway, which was quite a point in their favor), that the main enemies were called Reapers, that Wrex and Garrus were favorite characters and I'd probably like them too, and that somewhere along the line I would meet a Rachni Queen and would choose not to kill her because no one ever does.
I'd managed to avoid most of the major spoilers, though, which made the whole experience that much more fun. One of the best parts of the games, as
doctorskuld said in the last comments, is that they're not trying to do anything super-original; instead they're space opera that plays as a homage and love letter to some of the best of the genre. It makes the universe feel familiar, but it draws on so many influences that nothing feels directly ripped off or imitated.And occasionally it uses that familiarity to play with the player. One of my favorite things, and maybe the most original plotline in the trilogy, is the reveal in the first game about who really built the Mass Relays and the Citadel, and what they're really for. It plays on your genre expectations so beautifully - the remnant technologies of some past great civilization are such a staple of the genre that I never thought to question it. Of course the Protheans would leave behind a perfectly working space station! Just like SG's Ancients left behind stargates and Atlantis, and the Pak Protectors made the Ringworld. Those ancient civilizations just built them to last! ...and then, no, there's a reason how the Citadel survived 50,000 years untended - IT'S A TRAP. And the Protheans weren't some all-knowing super-race, but simply the last victims. I love how all through the ME galaxy you scan planets that mention showing signs of long-lost civilizations, wiped out thousands and millions of years before, and there's no real clues of how or why...these things just happen, apparently. At least when you live in a universe with Reapers.
The Reapers are awesome in themselves. Going in I knew they were the main enemies, but I didn't actually know what they were. I knew what sound their ships makes, thanks to
gnine's obsession with certain types of spooky ships (she reacts to Reapers the same way as to B5's Shadow ships :P) I didn't realize that the Reapers WERE the ships - the scene in the first game when you first meet Sovereign face to, erm, ship-hologram, was the first time the games really made me sit up and take notice. It was a shock to me as much as to the characters (that's maybe the first time in the game that the usually unflappable Garrus gets flapped, and I felt it with him, even if Shepard, as usual, took it in stride!)The first game may have the best plot of the trilogy; the reveals have the biggest impact. Some of that is because the universe is new to you then, and it's when everything gets set up to be played out in the next games. On the other hand, the gameplay itself is the clunkiest, and the characters aren't nearly as developed.
But ME is one of those series that gets better and more satisfying as it goes along. The second game is the weakest in plot, but that's because the character stuff that is more atmosphere in the first game is front and center in the second; the plot becomes mostly incidental to the people, which, given the choice, is how I prefer my stories. While I liked most of the characters in the first game, the second game is when I really fell for everyone.
I love how pretty much all the characters play on your expectations, are not what you assume. I was excited to get Mordin anyway (I fell for the salarians in the first game - even before I found out they're all aromantic - they're just so funny and sweet and probably the least racist species, at least compared to turians and asari and humans. I saved the Council because I couldn't let a salarian get killed, not after seeing all the terrible things done to them on Virmire! - and so was thrilled when the brother mentioned I could get one on my team) but I didn't expect to love him as much as I did, and not only for the Gilbert & Sullivan (I actually missed getting the Mordin sex-talk because I was always going to talk to Mordin first thing, so ended up flirting with him instead...though flirting is all you can do, since, yeah, aromantic. Sigh! Well, as the brother says, we all have our white whale. He wants to romance Wrex, and Gnine would romance an elcor if she could. Or at least she wants one on her team XD)(I was amused that in the third game, on the Citadel you see several different pairs of human women with male salarians - just friends, presumably.)
Then Grunt - I really enjoyed Wrex in the first game and wasn't sure about getting a new krogan, but awwww, my cute little Grunt! (okay, not little, and cute only by a certain metric that somehow included krogan, but! a precocious genius krogan teenager, what's not to love! "I found out I hate turians! I thought you'd be happy for me!" Oh Grunt!) And Thane is one of the few examples I've seen of a sexy male alien - he's very alien but also attractive by human standards (not that Garrus isn't awesome to look at, but turians are more pretty like a bird of prey than hot.) If I hadn't been getting it on with Garrus I would have been really curious how the romance with Thane plays out, he intrigues me.
Tali is so cute- she's my girl, after Garrus she was probably my most frequent squadmate. Which leads to some awesome lines, as by the end she's as snarky as he is. And in the Citadel DLC she turns out to be a fangirl, no wonder we got along so well! (that little scene is actually really sweet, it's fun and funny and true to fanning.) Though I ended up surprised by Liara - I didn't think I'd like her as much as I did, but in the first game she's just hopelessly adorable, and then her transformation into the Shadow Broker totally took me off-guard. If/when I replay the games I might do the full romance with her (I hooked up with her in the first game, though that causes this weird discomfort because on the one hand, she's a century old, but on the other hand she's so obviously a teenager in love for the first time, you feel kind of like you're taking advantage, especially when you know you're going to be romancing someone else later...and then you remind yourself it's a video game, but still...!)
Samara is intriguing, but her sexy superhero costume drove me nuts - the superhero part is only apropos for a justicar, but the sexy part makes zero sense given her character, and distracted me negatively in every conversation. The asari walk a fine line between interesting aliens and obvious fetish material. In part because they make so little sense - why do they look so human? Why does every species lust after them - yet no other species seems to find human women so attractive? At one point in the second game there's a background conversation that implies that asari look different to everyone who sees them, Vorlon-style, which given their telepathic abilities seems plausible. It doesn't explain the look of their statues or the asari VIs, but eh, I'm still going to headcanon their true form as bipedal blue squids (who can squeeze into human armor in a pinch.)
And of course there's Garrus! who like I said I knew was going to be my favorite going in, and he did not disappoint. He's got that irresistible blend of snark and ego and attitude and angst. And also adorable when flustered, making the romance with him a thing of epic beauty (fortunately Shepard agrees...) He's like Illya Kuryakin in that he's a whiny badass - which is totally a type, though I'm having trouble thinking of other examples. But they're the kind of character who will whine and complain about hangnails and the cold, but will be wisecracking and back in action a day after taking a rocket to the face. Also he does that thing where he comes across as so cool and then the more you get to know him the more obvious it becomes that he's trying way too hard, and only can pull it off because he actually is almost as good as he thinks he is. (and I love his combat dialog in ME2, "Never saw me comin'!" the cocky bastard.)
Is that everyone? ...oh yeah, there's some humans. Um, apologies to their fans, but I found the human characters mostly uninteresting compared to the aliens, at least until the third game - James, Cortez and Traynor are all fun. But otherwise, yeah, they're...there? Except for Anderson, by virtue of his voice (Keith David still has the sexiest voice of any English-speaking VA, that's just scientific fact.) --And Joker of course, but that goes without saying! I started shipping him and EDI back in the second game when she was pulling his pigtails and he was too irritated to realize she had a massive crush. I had no idea she got a body until she did, and I couldn't get worked up about the sex-bot angle because - EDI and Joker! I so wanted to marry them, as ship's captain.
Speaking of my ship - after so long watching Star Trek and Star Wars and the rest, having the Normandy was one of my favorite things. Most things in the game, my pronouns get confusing - when talking about Shepard's actions, I tend to switch between "I" "you" "she" and "they", at random and sometimes mid-sentence. But the Normandy was always MY ship. ...especially at the beginning of the second game, where I was shouting MY SHIP! THOSE BASTARDS BLEW UP MY SHIP! at the screen for about fifteen minutes. Killing me is one thing. But my ship!!!
If the first game is strongest on plot and the second game is all about character, then the third game is mostly the best of both worlds. The plot is majorly ramped up from the second, and if it lacks the gripping reveals of the first game, its core of solving problems and bringing the whole galaxy together against the Reaper threat is so epic and appealing. And then the character elements are fantastic. Seeing your crew interact with one another, being a real team, is so satisfying. My favorite such conversation (other than the Citadel DLC) might have been after Thessia's fall, you come across Tali talking with Garrus about how to comfort Liara, and it's so sweet and team-y. The Normandy crew are such nakama! (...I got as far as Mordin = Brook, Garrus = Sanji and Liara = Robin before the brother shouted me down. ...though Zoro is obviously one of the krogan...)
Then there's the end. The brother wanted me to play the original version, but due to a miscalculation (he hadn't realized the extended cut DLC was already downloaded, and hadn't played it himself so didn't recognize it until it was too late) I got the extended cut. Which wasn't nearly as bad as I was braced for. It wasn't a perfect ending, but it's not as outrageously frustrating as it could have been. They changed the part that most upset the brother, the destruction of the mass relays that pretty much destroys the universe we know. With the mass relays still around, the universe is fundamentally altered, but not lost.
As for Shepard's fate...I didn't have the score for the Shepard lives Destroy ending, and wouldn't have done it anyway, not at the expense of the Geth and EDI. I went with Synthesis - and now expect the sainthood Garrus promised me, since I made peace with the Reapers!
I admit that I don't get why all the endings are so final. In some ways it makes sense - Shepard is on the classic hero's journey, ending in transformation/apotheosis. But on the other hand the games usually give you the superhero option to save everybody, if you've done enough otherwise, and that it's never available for Shepard at the end seems really unfair. Especially since they also kill Anderson, and while as the mentor figure I was surprised he lasted as long as he did - to off him at the last minute, right before Shepard goes, ends up just seeming gratuitous. Either the mentor or the student is supposed to be sacrificed, not both.
Though really...I have a hard time buying Shepard is really gone. Considering they appear to die in both 1 and 2...nothing convinced me THIS death is actually going to take. (Cue Garrus channeling Jack O'Neill - "I'm not buying it! She's just waiting for us to say nice things about her!")
Putting that aside, in some ways I was more disappointed by the stuff leading up to the end. Not the starchild/Crucible conversations, really; I've seen enough anime not to expect truly shocking revelations in the finale of such an epic battle. But the Cerberus storyline never engaged me as much as the rest of the story of ME3, and its payoff wasn't that satisfying. The Illusive Man was fun in ME2 because you're trying to figure out his deal (he's so obviously a supervillain! He's got glowy cybernetic eyes, Martin Sheen's voice, and a dying sun as a backdrop to his office! and yet he's on your side...?) but as a straight-up villain there's not much there. Maybe he's got more backstory in the comic tie-ins or something? In the first game I found Saren genuinely compelling - while he may have been an asshole all along, there's something terribly tragic in how indoctrination twists his mind to think he's saving the galaxy - that Sovereign got to him through his best nature. But the Illusive Man's xenophobic humans-first attitude makes it difficult to ever sympathize. And Kai Leng is a weirdly flat nemesis - again, maybe he's got more character in the tie-ins; but in the game proper he's just an assassin who for some reason has it in for Shepard, and then he kills a friend or two of yours, and then you kill him. He was so uninspired that I'm really wondering if his backstory was originally
But those quibbles are trumped by how much I enjoyed the hell out of the rest of the games. Having finished the Citadel DLC - and oh, after all the hilarity, the very end with your crew looking at the Normandy and knowing they're never going to do this again together - you're meant to play that DLC after you've played the end, so you know how it's going to go, and it hits hard, and effectively. It's almost worth the end just for that gut-punch. (Which is what makes the end frustrating, because tragedy sometimes can work, and sometimes they pull it off in style. Mordin's death is so sad - it's the only thing in all the games that made me tear up* - but it's perfect, too, the atonement and sacrifice and rebirth. It's not gratuitous but necessary to the story. And they're going for something similarly affecting in the finale, but they don't quite make it.)
--Though at least the music is up to the challenge, I absolutely love this ending theme. ...Yeah, yeah, soft piano and rising strings will get me every single time.
* Okay I teared up over Grunt, too, but then that was a fake-out, and man it was marvelously done, too!
...aaaaand looking at that OST pic...playing femShep means I have doomed myself to a lifetime of looking at ME official art and going "But who's that guy--oh right." (especially since I made my armor look all awesome and matching with Garrus and Tali's black-and-gold look...)
Now that I have no more game to play, I'm finding myself looking up videos on youtube - of which there are a ton, and it's hilarious to see alternative conversations and things I somehow missed. (I'm mostly avoiding anything from DLC I haven't played.) And reading the comments, which are a blast - video game fans arguing is almost as good as comics fan rage. Especially when it's terrifically earnest arguments about the genophage that are pretty much exactly how they'd play out if it were all real.
...though I'm cranky about all the people insisting that the Destroy ending was the only right choice, that anything else is giving into the Reapers and the point was to destroy them - no, the point was to end the cycle, and both the Geth and EDI are proof that AIs are not fundamentally evil, nor incapable of co-existence; destroying all AIs just makes the Reapers' case, that it's us or them, and I refuse to believe it! Phooey on you, random youtube commenters :P
And then, inevitably...I make no promises about completing it, but I have 3K words and counting of post-game fic. As I have said so often before: Whoops.
