FORWARD: So, God Help Me, I Wrote a Piece of Fan Fiction That Has Damn
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! FORWARD: So, God help me, I wrote a piece of fan fiction that has damn near turned into a novel in its own right. Why did I do it? Because like many people who had invested hours of play in the Mass Effect franchise I had become obsessed, and when the ending left me depressed and devastated I found that I needed to say farewell to the companions and the universe I had come to love in a way that didn’t leave me both angry and broken-hearted. If you enter into these games as an immersive piece of role-playing you end up becoming emotionally involved; in your character, in the relationships you form with the companions, in the story. You craft your Shepard and make him or her your own as well. If you’re a crazy writer like me you imbue this character with a backstory, with experiences that predate the events of the game. You envision scenes and conversations that take place during the game, but don’t appear in the game itself. There is also the universe which was so fully realized that it began to feel like a character. Which meant that seeing destruction on the Citadel, or Thessia, or Earth affected you emotionally. Because of this level of involvement and because you make ethical and romantic choices for your character you invest a part of yourself in a very different way from being a passive viewer of a movie or television show, or even a reader. In those pursuits the writer sets the agenda. We always hope that our readers/ viewers will identify with the protagonist and experience the adventure vicariously, but as a reader/viewer you know your input is limited. But not in gaming. There is a new dynamic that, if anything, requires even more careful plotting and god help the designers who fail to “stick the landing”. As BioWare and EA learned to their dismay. During the intervening months after finishing Mass Effect 2 and waiting for the third game to arrive I pondered: How would my sparing the Rachni Queen back in game one affect the outcome? How would all those minerals I’d gathered in game two be utilized in the final battle? Which of the fascinating side missions would prove to be critical to the final outcome? Would it be scanning the Keepers for Chorban in Mass Effect 1? The dying sun on Haestrom when you rescue Tali in mass Effect 2? In due course Mass Effect 3 arrived. I loaded the game, and prepared for a creative, satisfying ending because I’d seen BioWare deliver with the magnificent Dragon Age: Origins, and Mass Effect 1 and 2. But alas the ending fell sadly short because critical rules for good story telling had been broken. You can find a number of posts in the blog section of this website detailing the problems with the game, but I’ll try to summarize what has been an ongoing analysis here. Before we get to the bad let me praise the good. The things the game did well. The game play was very smooth and effective. The death of Thane -- deeply moving and so well done. The curing of the Genophage and Mordin’s sacrifice -- magnificent. Tali’s joy at recovering her home world. The private moment on the Citadel with Garrus when you go shooting -- priceless. The exchange with Joker regarding Shepard’s emotional state. Keeping Joker and Garrus as the touchstones throughout all three games. The male Shepard/Kaidan romance -- elegantly crafted, and the pacing was perfect. It is, in fact, the foundation for this story. And the final farewells, “I’ll meet you at the bar.” Leaving Kaidan, sharing moments with Liara and Wrex, Tali and EDI. But.... But..... None of it was enough to offset that horrible ending. So here’s my analysis of why the wheels came off. First rule -- deliver on your promise. Whether it’s a book or a movie or a game we as writers/designers make a promise to our readers/viewers/players. Within a few pages or a few minutes we should have given our audience a sense of the journey we’re going to take together. This was done perfectly in Dragon Age. Within 20 minutes of play you know the problem is the archdemon, and you as one of the last Grey Wardens are going to have to face this monstrous threat. And indeed that is the final confrontation. Yes, you are offered alternatives -- noble self-sacrifice, the weasel -- allowing another to make the killing stroke, dark bargain that allows you to live and receive the accolades due a hero, but these are choices, and whichever ending you select there is a final scene that gives closure to the journey we took with our companions, and you have a sense that your actions effectively dealt with the problem. Mass Effect 1 gave us the promise -- within 20 to 30 minutes of play you know the problem -- Reapers. So far so good. But Reapers are too big, too inchoate to grasp so the designers and the writers, ably led by Drew Karpyshyn, wisely personified the villain in the person of Saren as a stand in for Sovereign. This need for a personified villain becomes a bit shaky in Mass Effect 2. The Collectors were wonderfully creepy, but it wasn’t until Harbinger started “assuming direct control”, and trash talking Shepard that it became personal and powerful. Which meant that Harbinger needed to be the antagonist of the third and final game. The ultimate Reaper. The stand-in for all his kind. The path to victory lay through Harbinger. Instead Harbinger is nowhere to be found in Mass Effect 3, and while he appears near the conclusion of the game he rarely speaks. He has no role. Instead we were suddenly confronted by the Catalyst who had never been even hinted at in the earlier games. Some will argue that Vendetta’s reference to a “controlling influence” on Thessia counts as foreshadowing, but Thessia is the second to the last mission before the Cerberus base. All that remains before the climax on Earth is Horizon which is presented as more support for the horrors of The Illusive Man’s pursuit of control. So as foreshadowing it’s far too late to be effective. This kind of set up needed to occur way back in Mass Effect 1. Which violates rule number 2. You don’t get to ring in a new villain in the final pages of a book or minutes of a movie or a game. That’s a party foul. Whatever is going to be critical in the end needs to be set up in the beginning. The solution to the problem must be suggested in the opening moves. The villain must be present. Otherwise it feels like a cheat. For Mass Effect to truly have been a brilliant game, possibly the most brilliant game ever designed, the Crucible and the Catalyst needed to be laid in early in Mass Effect 1. There’s a subsection to rule number 2. Your villains can’t be stupid. Otherwise it cheapens your hero’s victory. If you spend any time analyzing the final scene with the Catalyst you realize it makes no sense. Not just because of the circular logic about synthetics and organics living in peace and working together -- “Hello, have you noticed we’re all working together? There’s this mucking big Geth fleet fighting alongside all the organics to kick the Reapers asses.” -- but because if the Citadel plus the Crucible equal big weapon that will kill you, and the controller of the Reapers knows that, and in fact he/it has constructed a little three color panel in anticipation of the day when someone would want to use the weapon -- why would you not have the Reapers go first to the Citadel and blast it into its component atoms? Next: There was no option for a “happy ending”. I know that happy endings have fallen into disfavor, certainly among the literary set, but let me recommend them to any aspiring writers out there. I think humans are hardwired for happy endings. We tell stories of how brave heroes and heroines overcome obstacles as object lessons, and to bring us a respite from the trials and tribulations of real life. True love does conquer all, David can defeat Goliath, etc. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a place for the bittersweet ending or even tragedy, but even in tragedy there is a kernel of hope. Consider Shakespeare’s King Lear. It is a tragedy, but there is joy because Lear and Cordelia are reconciled at the end. There is also the concept of a hero or heroine “earning” their happy ending. They have to have come through darkness and tribulation, and won the right to find peace. Shepard’s experiences throughout all three games more than earned the character that happy ending. The fact you were bluntly informed that no matter what choice you selected you were going to die made it all seem as if it had been for naught. Finally a creator needs to know on a thematic level what is this story about? Because of the change in the writing team I think the point of the journey was lost and hence the three horrifying final choices. From the very first Shepard is presented as a person who is willing to accept diversity, to build consensus, to find strength in unity by crafting differing outlooks into a coherent whole.