Babble: The battle for Mass Effect 3's ending (Spoilers naturally)

So if the title didn't make an impression, please note that by discussing the ending, I will actually be giving away things you don't want to read if you still plan on playing the game. So don't read.


Are you gone yet?

Really?


Okay.

So I am still planning this massing ramble about the glory that is Mass Effect 3. And it is glorious, no question about that. What has people up in arms is in fact the last ten minutes of the game. My first playthrough hit 25 hours of game time. This is of course not counting the millions of times I had to reload after dying. But let's stick with 25 hours for now. I'm not going to call a whole 1490 minutes' worth of game play garbage just because the last 10 minutes wasn't what I wanted.

But let's get into that.

For this post I gave myself only three questions to answer. This limit was necessary seeing as I am such a babbler.

Did I like ending?

Needless to say, I didn't.

I think the biggest mistake the guys over at Bioware made was to try and explain something they shouldn't have. From the first Mass Effect, the players were denied the motivation of the Reapers. Sovereign told them it was above their understanding. In Mass Effect 2, the same notion was given of "we don't know why, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't stop them". In Mass Effect 3, one of the first things Shepard says is that the Reapers are more intelligent and more powerful than all the races are.

Now yes, avoidance is an easy way out. The most important message in the story was "The Baddies are coming!" That's what it needed. It didn't have to go into the whys and hows and make this whole thing a logical debate. And so they didn't bother.

Why bother about it now? Why go from "we can't understand" to "well, actually, here's why" and have that reason be nonsensical and somewhat insulting? 

Also, why give a power higher than the Reapers? What's up with that? So let's say the Citadel got blown into itty bitty bits, would that mean the Reapers wouldn't have come? Their boss who was directing them was there after all.

In Bioware's defense, their material got leaked. I was one of those who avoided watching anything leaked, but that is one helluva blow. Trying to cobble something together, something different or better in a short period of time with no relief from the overlords (*cough* EA *cough*)... that's gotta be a tall order.

I was with Bioware up until the beam transporting Shepard up to the Citadel. What went on beyond that... I think they could've just killed Shepard in that horrific laser blast, seriously. It would've caused an outcry but nothing compared to the venom that they're getting now. Would we have been satisfied? Not in the slightest, but I think more than anything fans just feel insulted.

I knew Shepard was going to die. He/She had to for the franchise to continue without Commander Shepard being turned to the next time the shit hits the fan. I didn't need the foreshadowing (I'll complain about that in the next post). I knew kicking the bucket was in Shepard's future. But the way things went down... *shakes head*

Do I agree that it should be changed?

No.

No, I really don't. I don't think it should be in the audience's power to demand a change in a story when they're not satisfied. Games are an art form. Legally. Seriously. See here. And as such, the story is in the hands of the writer. And this first-world consumer mentality of "I have the POWER!!!" is just bullshit when it comes to art. Sorry, it's true. Deal.

And if you can't, go write some fan fiction.

A couple of years ago, I read Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre-Dame. I slugged through it and, as soon as I read the last page, the book flew across the room. Literally. I got more satisfaction from throwing the book than reading it. Same could be said of some vampire books floating around, but let's not go there... That doesn't mean that I'm now going to arrange a protest and burn the book and expect someone to dig up ol' Vic to have him rewrite it. I'm going to just have to accept his story.

I'd have loved to see Shepard kick the bucket in a way that was awesome and heroic. I love Shepard's determination through all that the writers threw at her. There was nothing as striking to me as her crawling to the console asking Hackett what he needed to have done. That was Shepard in a nutshell. I'd love to have seen the commander die in a way that made sense and honoured the character in the way he/she should have been. But I'm not going to sit like a puffer fish and hope that the writers run into my spikes.

Why are people so upset about it?

Devotion.

I've played through all three games. Let's say that the average time it takes to finish a Mass Effect game is about 25 hours. (It's more than likely more, but bear with me). So we're talking about 75 hours in total, right? Let's say that a church service averages 1.5 hours. (Yes, that came way out of left field, but bear with me). It would mean that a gamer would've spent the same amount of time playing the series than a devoted believer would've attended church for a year. Now most believers don't go to church every Sunday. A gamer would actually spend more time on the series in ONE playthrough than a believer would spend in a church for a year.

And that's just one playthrough.

The beauty of Mass Effect is that most people haven't just played it through once and stopped. In my case, I've lost count of how many times I've played the first two Mass Effect games. It would've been more four times for each game. I'm already busy with my second playthrough for Mass Effect 3 and I have a character in Mass Effect 2 whom I was almost finished with when I realised I made a mess up earlier on, and so now I'm starting with her back in the beginning of Mass Effect 2.

A year's worth of church services one playthrough of the series. Multiple playthroughs... it does point to intense devotion, doesn't it?

So here you have people so intensely connected to a game and have the very last moment, the last crucial finale, to their connection end in a way that would be kind to describe as disappointing. 

You can understand where the hurt and frustration comes from.

In the end:

It's a game. Granted a passionate, intense, wonderful game. But a game. Men and women spent HOURS really doing their best to make it a fantastic game - which it is. 

It is therefore shameful the way that people have attacked Bioware, the writers, the people who worked and spent a lot more than 75 hours on Mass Effect 3. 

I will never be satisfied with the ending. I don't download DLCs and have to wait for them to do with ME2 and 3 what they did with the first Mass Effect where they eventually included it on the discs. And I will buy those discs - even if I already have copies of the game. And I will spend even more hours on the series. I will still never be satisfied regardless of how they explain Shepard's end.

But you know what? The next Mass Effect game that comes out? I'm totally buying that. And the next. And the next. And the next...

Card Game Babble: Gloom

I love card and board games. I don't come from a family of gamers and, though I've been one for years, it's mostly been a solitary experience. As such, I've only been exposed to card games and board games in the last couple of years. So I know precious little of them. I only began buying some in my early twenties. The problem being that you actually need to have people to play against or with (in co-op games) - who knew?!

Still, I will share some of my favourites every now and again and this time Gloom is it.

In Gloom, you're given a family of... colourful characters. Your goal: To make them as miserable as possible before killing them off.

The problem being that your opponents have the same fate in mind for their families. This will not do as the game is won by the player whose family has the lowest self-worth points in the end. And so your fiendish opponents will do their level best to ensure that your family lead happy, successful lives.

Let the misery commence.

What you get:

• Character cards
• Untimely Death cards
• Modifier cards
• Event cards

Character cards are simple enough to explain. Each player gets five cards representing the members of his family. On the back of each character card is a tombstone. Once your character kicks the bucket, the card gets turned tombstone side up

 

 Untimely Death cards are full of ways your character can die. Maybe they were consumed from within or drowned by a duck (I always thought ducks were evil...) or maybe they disappeared in a fog. Just hope no one plays the dreaded 'Died without Cares' on one of your family members. In this game, no one likes a happy corpse



Modifier cards are the memorable moments in the lives of your family that make them happy or sad. Weddings, funerals, being honoured or loathed, each card comes with "self-worth" points which can be situated  on three different spots positions (high, mid, low) on the left side of the card which will be what you use to determine the winner at the end. While it may be easy just to pile the negativity onto your own and the good vibes onto others, these cards sometime come with special effects that may leave you hesitant on whether you really want to put them down. In fact, it might actually be a good move to play a negative self-word card on an opponent's character as it might result in them losing all those awful cards they've been hoarding up to use on you!


Event cards have immediate effect once played. While they end up in the discard pile in the end - as opposed to adding some much needed self-worth issues to your family members - they can play a crucial role in the game such as resurrecting an opponent's character, switching modifier cards from one player to another or cancelling an action as it's played out.

How the game is played crash course:

Essentially players are given turns to draw cards and to sow devastation with the ones they already have. Modifiers are placed over the family members showing positive or negative self-worth points and sometimes with special effects that the player needs to adhere to. What is important with the modifier cards isn't how many are placed on a character, but what is visible from above. Therefore the self-worth points of one card can be completely or partially cancelled out depending on what gets placed over it.

The game stops the moment a player's family has been completely eradicated. All the values that are visible on a character stack are counted and all the members' points are tallied to come to a final score.

What I like:

Gloom has a decidedly twisted sense of humour best likened to the Adams Family. What could have been a rather depressing game is instead filled with a constant sense of amusement as you cause havoc among your own family members and those of your opponents'. It's been a long time since I've seen a player pout about one of his characters having a good day.

The card design is really well thought out. With your cards being mostly transparent, you still see the image of your character regardless of how many modifiers are played onto it. It just keeps you in tune with the idea that it's a family member down there who's being so very miserable. As opposed to just a stack of overly negative cards piled one onto another.

The game game is rather easy to get into. The rules don't appear overly complicated. As easy as it is to make people miserable in life, the same basically applies to the game. This leaves the gamer with very little to worry about in terms of complexity. Easy to learn, quick to get into, fast fun right away.

What I dislike:

I felt they could have spent a little more time on formulating their instructions. Not everything is clearly stated and there are still some things I play "my way" simply because I couldn't quite make out how it's supposed to be done. It's not that the instructions are numerous or contradictory. It is simply that the few instructions they do have could have been better worded.

While most cards are clear to understand, there are some unclear event cards that I don't use in the game simply because I don't understand what you're meant to do with them.  One could chalk something like that up to a language barrier, however when an English friend is just as baffled as I am, I think it's safe to say that that's not the problem.

Getting hold of the game was a problem. The few gaming stores I could know of in South Africa that imports board and card games didn't buy any goods from Atlas and getting the games from overseas is... bloody expensive to say the least. I ended up buying the game through Amazon.co.uk and have it delivered to my brother in London who then later sent it down in a package with some other stuff. I know it's not a bash against the game itself so much as evil logistics, but still. I didn't like it. ;)

In the end...

I think Gloom is a game many would enjoy. I'd recommend getting three or four people together (it is a 2-4 people game, though expansions do include more families).

Have fun making people miserable!

Books: The Honor Harrington Series

Space opera. Mention it in scifi circles and you'll get reactions from mild curiousity to outright hostility. Books of this sort are mostly lugged into the soft scifi category with hardly a second thought. With titles like Star Wars and Firefly falling under this sub-genre, one would have thought it would be more highly regarded. That isn't the case (in my experience at least). Perhaps it is because space opera can be soft scifi and therefore a much easier entrance into the world of scifi in general - for both writers and readers. Unfortunately, with such an open field, it ends up very much like Fictionpress.net - a pit full of millions of stories of which only a handful are actually worth reading. Also, soft scifi is almost always shunned by the more scientific crowd because of its more ah flexible approach to science (Sound in space? Pah!).

The Honor Harrington series, while space opera, most certainly falls under the umbrella of hard science. But I'll babble a bit about that later. The series by David Weber follows Honor Harrington's carreer as a naval officer of the Star Kingdom of Manticore which is inching ever closer to open warfare with the People's Republic of Haven. The escalating tensions often lead Harrington and her crew into hair-raising conflicts against superior forces, earning her the nickname of Salamander for her knack of always being where the fire burns hottest.

Who does the series pander to?

The series is very difficult to pin down. A military science fiction series, certainly, but it's more than that. It is both character- and action-driven. This is particularly noteworthy as it is so difficult to pull off successfully. You'll often see books leaning either one way or the other.

Like Game of Thrones (sans the crazy nudity, sex and incest), the series' events are fueled by several complex layers of politics - of which Harrington has no understanding or interest in at the beginning. There are always plans within plans and the scheming can be rather thick. For those who enjoy the machinations of politics, this series will certainly entertain. It doesn't have the immediate intrigue of 'in court' politics, rather it focuses more on governmental and planetary politics. Still, it is very interesting.

The series is also about naval warfare (be it in space) where there is always a balance to be examined between superior technology and experienced, competent crew. Weber's ships and technology are detailed and mathematical to the point of annoyance (at least for the non-sciency, users of fingers and toes to count). Needless to say, he's put a LOT of consideration into the tech. Naval tradition and protocol reigns supreme and readers are early on introduced to the calm, confident exterior of naval officers and the need for them to control their own emotions. There are no lone wolves, no cocky pilots and furry sidekicks. Okay, no. That's not completely true. There is a furry sidekick but he doesn't do much initially but be cute and say 'bleek'. At least until book two.  And there is definitely no massive planet ship with a simple, "shoot here" Achilles heel. So military science buffs, step forward.

It has also a very personal, human story. And while Honor remains the protagonist, there are scores of side-characters who have their own distinct makeup. It is a series about people doing their best to deal with the demands of those higher than themselves. It has both bravery and cowardice and has people dealing with conflicts within their own camp as well as from the outside. For those who are drawn to a story by compelling characters, here you are.

Likes

Characters

I enjoy the series primarily for Honor's story. She truly is a fascinating character with very distinct strengths and weaknesses - both of which come out quite clearly through her actions and each having their own consequences. She is both the born leader and the clumsy fool who has to be shaped into something more. With that said, she never quite gets rid of her flaws. Something always creeps up through the cracks.

Even if one didn't enjoy Honor as much, she is joined by a really good cast of (sometimes) reoccurring characters.  And Weber doesn't just stick to one side of the fence. One of the most loved characters of the series happens to be fighting against Manticore. Talk about dividing loyalties. You might end up rooting for Manticore overall, but when they face off with Haven and some of those characters happen to be on the enemy's ships, it gets really hard to decide who you'll be shouting for.

Funny Dialogue
I wouldn't call Weber a comic, but he does produce some really funny lines of dialogue. It isn't even that he sets them up (ala one, two, punch). Instead, it's the simple dry-humoured observations that some of his characters make that can have you chuckling.

Honor's mother is probably my favourite character for her ability to say things no one would expect: "You know, that young man has a really nice ass for a round-eye," Dr. Allison Chou Harrington observed. "I bet you could have some fun chasing him around the command deck, dear."

Challenging conventions
Weber's stated somewhere (don't ask, I can't find it) that having gender issues in the future just doesn't make sense to him. He reasoned that as we can't understand or don't feel the same hostility towards cultures issues of several generations ago (for example everyone against the Roman Empire), it wouldn't make sense to have gender problems still be that much of an issue in the future as it is now. And so, he ends up challenging conventions we've all encountered. There is no real distinction between who does what role and why. Honor does encounter governments where women are still severely limited and can't grasp it. Not because of her superior arguments (though it does get there), but simply because she had never considered that to be a problem.

Similarly, Weber keeps on challenging his readers to consider other situations in which things we find strange could make sense. He does throw in some religious views here and there, but this too gets questioned along the way. While it's not the main focus of the series (he's not here to go on a rant about anything and everything he can think of), some small elements of commentary is evident and it's just enough to make you go 'hmm'.


World creation (or rather galaxy creation...?)
 David Weber is a fantastic world builder. Every facet of the series has been meticulously thought out: politics, medical science, physics, mathematics, time differences, space travel, composition of planets, commerce. I shudder to think how many hours he must have spent simply figuring it all out. But it's certainly paid off. I can't say much for the science (fingers and toes, remember?) but I can say that I haven't encountered anything where I thought what he was doing felt flat. I might not agree with everything, but that's one accusation I couldn't lay down on him. Having read his War God series (fantasy), I know that this is his bread and butter. He loves going into the nitty gritty and he definitely reaps a solid harvest from his efforts.

Dislikes

Info-dumping
Weber has truly created an amazing 'verse and he loves sharing everything there is to know about it. Which can sometimes pose a bit of a problem. I'll try to give an example of what he does to prove the point. Let's say we have two colleagues and the dialogue goes like this:
Dude 1: So you finally finished the report?
Dude 2: Yes! I was so busy with the Armstrang issue, but I managed to scrape the time to get everything done.
Dude 1: Good! Mr Ashton's been rather eager to wave some solid facts at our investors.

Simple enough. So Weber will feel the need to explain 1) what the report was about, 2) what the Armstrang issue was, 3) who Mr Ashton is and how he fits into this whole thing and 4) who the investors were and how the fact waiving would explain all the million things the investors are ignoring. This he will try to stuff in between the dialogue, which means that there can be literally two pages of exposition between what dude 1 and 2 said to each other. This often has me skipping paragraphs. And while some might find this sacrilegious, I have to say it works for me.

Yes, exposition can be pretty important, but Weber does tend to be somewhat overzealous in his sharing. This 'problem' might vary depending on what your interest is. Maybe you'd like to know the political structure of the government. Or maybe you'd like to know in the middle of a naval battle what speeds the missiles are moving at. Me? I'd just like to know what got hit, who died and who survived in the end.

Too kind; too good
Weber isn't very kind to his characters... Or rather, you're never quite sure of his characters' lifespans. He's not as bad as Joss Whedon but he has a knack for killing those you wouldn't suspect. Again, it's war, it happens. No one is safe when bullets (or missiles) are flying. However, there almost always seems a way out of a predicament - especially when its to do with personal disagreements between people. Put two people he likes in the same room that hate each other. Give them enough time to argue and they'll walk out friends. Skip grudging respect, don't collect any brownie points and head straight to "oooooh! you're awesome!" He's a bit too kind in this regard and it can be a little annoying as your mind does disconnect in those moments. It doesn't happen often, but it does happen enough to notice.Weber also has trouble getting his 'shades of grey' when it comes to his characters. Yes, they have flaws, but they are either very good or irredeemable.

Something more about David Weber and Baen books

The publisher Baen books has a very interesting approach to its books. It has a online library of free books which includes at least the first book of an author's series. In Weber's case there are quite a few of his books available including Basilisk Station and Honor of the Queen which are the first two books of this particular series. The idea of Baen being that if you like the story, you'll buy the book. I think it's rather commendable. I got the series on a disc as a gift from a friend and I am now slowly but surely purchasing the books. I think this approach is especially useful for someone living in a country where they can't just find what they like in a bookstore. It's taken years before the Honor series hit our online stores and the lack of exposure would definitely have made me skip what has now become one of my favourite science fiction series.