Character Development

Over the past three weeks I have spend a large amount of my time writing very long blogs to which I am sorry for, on the Mass Effect series, starting with my thoughts on the series ending to how I got into the series and why I have enjoyed it so much.

While writing last week’s blog I touch on in very little detail the character development that takes place within the series and that a series can only survive if it can find a balance between the characters, world and story. An example of this that I would like to use would be any television show you watch, the main reason that you watch these shows is for the story and its characters and over time if those character don’t show any change or the story stays the same you will at some point become bored with the show and leave. If the show runners are able to create a balance between these two facts you will then be able to bring more people in to the series and give those that are watching a reason to return to the show the next time it comes back on and Mass Effect has done this very well.

The one thing that I would like to point out before I go on, is that once a series reaches its conclusion on its own terms you have to have created something within that time frame to give those that have invested time into your show a reason to come back and re-watch it even though they may already know the outcome. Examples of this would be the story and characters from Babylon 5, the comedy and relationship of Chuck and the story of Battlestar Galactica 2003. As you can see from my examples, each show I have listed also has a reasons as to why I would go back and revisit them.

As I have stated a moments ago Mass Effect has found a way in which to create this balance while at the same time giving those the chance to invest in the story and its characters. For me the first game created balance between the two very well, while the second game forced more on character development and the final game going more into story development.

I know that a large amount of the fan base will disagree with me but that is a topic for another time, today I just want to have a look at the characters themselves. The one theme that always come up in both the original and the second game is that you spend a large amount of your time talking to your crew members about their past and getting to know them, but the way in which the game makes sure you are not being over loaded with information is by only telling you so much before stopping and then only carrying on after you have completed another mission. Each time you interact with them you find out a bit more information about them while at the same time discover how they got to where they are now, plus you also get this feeling that you are helping them with their past.

By the time you arrive at the third game the character development that has taken place in the previous two games slows down so that the story can take a more centre stage but also allowing for those characters to grow and come to terms with their own actions.

The way in which the series gets you involved with the characters is to try and get you to sympathise with them along with allowing you to try and find apart of you within these characters. A great example of this would be Mordin Solus, when you first meet him you discover that he is a doctor who wants to give back to the galaxy before he dies. As you start to get to know him you find out that he worked for his races Special Forces while at the same time improving upon the Krogan genophage that was created by his race long ago. By this point you discovery that he is helping to create genocide on another race and that his reasoning behind all of it is statistics, when you do meet up with him in Mass Effect 3 you discovery that he has decided to help cure the genophage because he wants atone for what he has done, I won’t spoil what happens next but in just two games you end up caring what happens to him and that in some way you have had a hand in making him realise the error of his ways.

Another great example would be Thane, when you first go looking for him all you know in advance is that he is a contact assassin but just after a few moments of seeing what he can do you get this picture that he is a ruthless killer while being a very holy person as heart. Just like with Mordin when you finally do start talking to him you discover that he has an incurable disease that is killing him and that he wants to connect with his son and make up for lost time.

Again there a more character within the series than those that I have just spoke about and each one is completely different from the next but it is the way in which the writers have been able to create these characters so that we can relate ourselves to them while caring about who they are and what happens to them. This to me is good writing and this is just one of the reasons this series will stand the test of time and why so many will come back to it again and again, if it wasn’t for the story or the characters themselves I don’t think this game series would have been as successful as it is.

Until Next Time

Why a month of content?

If you have been following me on Twitter then you might have seen a tweet from me talking about Mass Effect March, you might also be asking yourselves what am I on about and if you do then you might be asking yourself why am, I making a whole month of content for just one game series. Well the reasons why I wanted to spend the whole month talking about this series is one, that I want others to know how I got into the series and why I like the series along with everything that has happened over the last year, I thought that I would at least try and shrine a positive light back on the series.

When the series was first released I was still at that point in my life where I wouldn’t play games, read books or listen to music that were popular and a good example of this would be when my brother (who had moved away to go university) came down for the weekend, we as a family went out for the day and he decided that he wanted to visit our local GAME store. While we were in the store I remember him talking about how much he wanted to play Mass Effect and because of his statement and the way I was back then I decided to stay well away from the series.

It wasn’t until the summer of 2009 when I was out shopping with one of my ex-girlfriend that we both decided to stumble into a GAME store and while looking around the box art for Mass Effect jumped out at me and to make things even better it was also on offer. (At this point in my life I had grown out of the phase that I was in back when I first heard about Mass Effect). At that moment in time I remembered what my brother had said a few years back about it, so I decided to pick it up but that didn’t mean that I could played it right away. Oh-no because not long after picking up the game, me and my ex-girlfriend broke up and in the process I had to move back to my parents house and because of all this I completely forgot about the game until April 2010.

When April of 2010 arrived I had the unforeseen problem of my Laptop dying on me and because of this I knew that I need to go out and buy a new one. While out shopping for my new laptop I discovered that the shop that I was buying my laptop from was also selling Mass Effect 2 on the cheap so without knowing what the first game was like I decided that I would pick the it up. I will admit that I did have a feeling that if there was a second game in the series out on the market then it could only mean that the first one was a success.

May 2010 and throughout the summer of 2010 was a bad time for me but I also took that moment in time to at least give Mass Effect a try in a hopes that I could at least loss myself in a story, setting or place that wasn’t my own at the time. Normally if I wanted to do this I would go and play a Tales of Series game (another RPG) or watch a television programmer but I just wasn’t in the mood for either of them. Within just a few hours of booting up the game I was completely lost in the game and its story and because of this I felt like I was the main character within the series and that I was the one making the choices throughout the game.

Once I had completed the first game and because I knew that I had the second one I decided to get started and right away everything that had drawn me in from the first game was there in the second one but this time on a big and more powerful setting.

All I could do after completing the two games was to go back and play them again but it wasn’t until I was with my current girlfriend that she informed me that there were other stories set within the series in books and graphic novels. With this new information I was really pumped and since that day I have done everything that I can to get my hands on any and all things Mass Effect.

Now after this little bit of story time you might be asking yourself why am I telling you my life story about how I got into the series, well the answer to that is very simple, I wanted to make sure that everyone knew that I was late to the party and to also give you an understand that at the time I was also using the story as a way to get away from what was a dark time in my life.

Now the one thing that I will talk about quickly is that at the time I was looking for something that was set within a science fiction background and while going through the series I noticed that this series also closely resembles television show that I was drew too when I was younger and that was Babylon 5. The reason that I make this connection is because after playing the game once you can see that some of the idea that are in Babylon 5 are also within the Mass Effect series, examples that I would use are the character development and that you as a person have the ability to change the events that are happening right now. I will also be honest and say that Babylon 5 does do it on a much better scale than Mass Effect, but this isn’t the reason we are here.

As I said moments ago some of the reason that I really enjoyed the series as a whole is that you get to see some of your choices play out throughout the series along with the relationships that you have created. What I am mean here is that like with all RPG you are given choices so that you can change the story but at the same time the story will still follow the path that was laid out for it but those character around you will react to your choices differently while at the same time seeing parts of yourself within each character and this is what makes good characters. Good characters are those that you can in some form relate to them while at the same time care for them and worry what could happen to them.

One thing that does sometimes get over looked when playing a game or watching other types of mediums is the music, music is also a very important part within these mediums and if you are unable to get the music tone right for the scene then it could completely change or destroy what is going to happen next and Mass Effect series does make good us of its own music.

The last thing I will look at before concluding this blog is the story for the whole series which includes all the novels, graphic novels, games and DLC (this does not include any DLC after the From Ashes DLC) that I have been able to experiences over the years. What I mean here is that the series has been so well written that it does give you the ability to go back and revisit it again and again, just like some of your favourite films or television shows.

I would also like to take this moment to thank everyone that help create such a great series that we can all go back to again and again and that I do hope to see more of these kind of series in the future.

Until Next Time.

There is more to this ending than what was there?

Last week I took a look at why I like the ending of Mass Effect 3 and today I will continue to do so, so if you haven’t read last week’s blog here is the link. http://understandingoftheworld.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/it-may-have-been-year-but-that-still.html

Like last week this blog will content spoilers, so you have been warned.

Now before I get into meat of this blog I would like to talk about a part of the game that everyone didn’t like or didn’t see a point to when it came to the end of the game and that was the War Assets system. The way in which War Assets system works is that throughout the game every time you complete an objective or mission you are given War Assets with a number that is attached to them.

Even though they are called War Assets if you go and open up the console that house all this information you will discover that there is more to this system than just numbers and that is it also has an account of what those assets can do. An example of this would be that if you did destroy the heretics Geth base in Mass Effect 2 (synthetics machines created in our era by the Quarian’s (A race that inhabits our galaxy)) you will then discover that the Quarian’s have gone to war with the Geth in Mass Effect 3 and by doing so they lose some of their fleets thus reducing their forces and the number that goes with it.

Now the another way in which you can look at these War Assets is how determined the galaxy would be when it came to fighting the Reapers at the end of the game and the way in which this was reinforced was the fact that the synthesys ending would unlock(where you were able to join human and machines together).

Does the story allow for your choices at key story moments?, your choices do matter when it comes to the end of the game, is the whole game the same as the ending.

By reading those three points you might be asking yourself what am I talking about but what if I was to tell you that those points also comes into play when talking about three of the most talked about complains about Mass Effect 3 ending and those complains are “My choices throughout the three games didn’t count for anything at the end.” “All three ending are 95% the same with minor details changed.” “Why can’t I tell the star child to fuck off.” Those three complains all link to my own point that I have just out line.

Your choices do matter when it comes to the ending of the game

The one thing that I have noticed throughout all the complaining about the ending of Mass Effect 3 was “My choices throughout the three games didn’t count for anything at the end.” As you can see by the sub-title above your choices did matter but did you realise that there are two ending within Mass Effect 3, the first ending is before you start the final mission in the game and the second ending is right at the end of the game when the final cut-scene rolls. Now I know that a lot of people are going to disagree with me but before you do let’s just take a moment to think about it.

The first ending is located before you start the final mission and is also where you start the game again after you have completing the final mission, now why do I say this is the first ending, well throughout all three games you have been trying to get all the race to work together in some form or another to try and stop the Reapers and the whole point of Mass Effect 3 is trying to get the whole galaxy to work together so that you can stop them. So when you have done all the missions you now know what state the galaxy is going to be when you complete the game.

An example of what I am mean is that the Geth and the Quarian’s are now working together to rebuild their home world, the Krogan have been cured from the genophage and can start to get rebuild their people and their home world, your choices throughout all three games made these events happen. The first ending is the whole galaxy working together so that they can stop the Reapers and then go about rebuild everything that was once lost and the second ending which is the end of the game only has the one choice to add to the whole game and that is if the Reapers are going to be around to help you or not.

Another example of this would be if you get the Geth and the Quarian’s to work together think about what decisions you made in Mass Effect 2 and 3 to make that happen, did you destroy the Heretic Geth? Did you re-programmer the Heretic Geth? did you allow Legion to reactive? Plus may more. All those decisions help in some way to get these two races to work together and to start rebuild their home world but the final decision decides at the end of the game if the Geth will be around to help with the rebuilding or not which then leads into how long will it take Quarian’s to do it by themselves. All you have to do is think about the conversations you have with Tali’s afterwards on the Normandy if you chose that path.

Is the whole game the same as the ending?

You might be thinking what the hell am I going on about with this sub-title, well this is all to do with the complained about the ending being almost the same with whatever choice you take “All three ending are 95% the same with minor details changed.”

If you are going to say that about the ending then you might as well say that for all three games and every Role-Playing game (RPG) that has been created to date if not in the future, I will apologies if this comes off as a rant but I hope you see where I am coming from?

The one thing that you have to realise when you pick up and play any RPG is that you may have the given a choices in the game but deep down the only chances you end will have is how the overall ending turns out and even then it is only slightly. Think of any RPG that you have played over the years, how much of the story has changed because of those decisions, the only things that may have changes is some of the dialog in that section of the game and the end epilogue but as a whole the game stays the same.

An example of what I am trying to say is that if you look at all the Mass Effect games you are given the choice of what your character looks like and background. Once you have set up your character you go on to playing the game from beginning to end and once you have finished you may then do back and change some of the decisions in what your character looks like and his background along with those choices in the game, but what you will then discover is that 95% of the game will be the same each time you make those changes.

The only things that may chance is that you may get the odd side quest that is different or some words in a conversation with a Non-player able Characters (NPC) may also change but overall the game is the same, which nicely leads into my final point.

Does the story allow for your choices at key story moments?

Like with the last point you have to understand one massive thing, this story was created by the people working within Bioware and they are the ones that then went onto made this story into a game. Like any story or game it will always have its beginning, middle and end. Because of this all the choices you have made though out the game where choices that would allow the story to change slightly but at the same time keeping the story on the path that was created for the story.

Yes they gave you the chance to kill of one of the characters because the story needed you to, the only difference was that the person how wrote the story had already decided who they were going to kill but for the game to enter the realm of the RPG they knew that they had to allow you the player to choice who would be killed off at this point of the game. Another example would be the suicide mission at the end of Mass Effect 2, you had to choose who of your squad you wanted in each team throughout the mission and that if you had chose wrong then you couldn’t end up losing someone. Again this is another example of giving you the player choice but at the same time the write already knew who would be in each team so that the story could continue the way they wanted it to.

At the end of the day this game was a story that was created by Bioware that they wanted you to experience but at the same time allow you to have some control over some of the variables within the game. So if you happen to be one of those people that said this was your story and that you want to tell the star child to fuck off then you are completely wrong because this was their creation and they can do what they like with it.

The last part that I will look at is that we as the player didn’t get the closer we wanted from the characters we had meet along our travels. The problem I have with this point is that to a point I believed that there was closer for a lot of the characters we meet in Mass Effect 2, examples of this would be Jacob starting a family, Mordin curing the genophage that he worked on in his earlier life and Samara relooking at her code after the Reapers attack an Asari colony. This to me was closer because we knew what their futures had for them.

When it comes to your squad members in Mass Effect 3 it’s kind of a mixed bag for me because part of me can sees where someone of the complains are coming from while at the same I wouldn’t want them to change the ending due to the fact that as the play you did get the chance to say your final farewells to those that have help you to this point.

Yes I will agree that the Extended cut did allow the ending to bring that closer that fans wanted but at the same time took away some of the mystery that the ending original had felt us to dream up.

To round this up I found the end of Mass Effect 3 really good and gave me the chance to look at the ending of the series in many different ways and I will acknowledge that people didn’t like the ending of the series because they too have their own opinions but I hope that this weeks and last week’s blog help others see that there was more to the ending of Mass Effect than what was shown to us.

Until Next Time.

It may have been a year but that still doesn’t mean I can’t have my own Opinion?

In the last two weeks I have spend a large amount of my time trying to figure out the best way in which I could approach this topic and each time I started, I found myself going into following topic that I want to talk about. So to get the ball rolling I decided that I would link both these two topics together and knowing that this blog would be too big for just one week I decided to spread it over two weeks instead. I should also take this moment to mention that this topic will also contain spoilers, so you have been warned.

This week marks the one year release of a game called Mass Effect 3, for those that are unaware this game is a third person role playing game that's story is told over three game with the third game being the finally. If you have done any reading online since its release you will discover that a large majority of people dislike the way in which the game ended and wanted a new ending.

So today and next week I am going to go though my thoughts as to why I liked the ending of Mass Effect 3 while at the same time talking about each point that others have raised about why they dislike the ending.

The main reason that I like the ending to Mass Effect 3 was because it left this air of mystery that got me thinking about what the ending meant to me and where I as a person or fan could take the story. A good example of what I am trying to say is that I could write my own fan fiction or writing up my own thoughts on a blog, which is what I am going to do.

Now one of the best parts that I really enjoyed was when I arrive at the Citadel main control room and found myself talking to both Anderson (my commanding office) and The Illusive Man (leader of a human criminal organisation called Cerberus), the reason that I like this part is because you get to see how far The Illusive Man is willing to go to meet his own goals while laying down the foundation of what is going to come next.

Now the complaint that I have heard about this part is how did The Illusive man arrive at the Citadel when it was under the control of the Reapers, the answer to that questions comes to you while you are on the Cerberus base talking to Prothran VI because he tells you that The Illusive Man has left his base and gone to the Citadel to tell the Reapers (the bad guys) what you have planned for them.

The next part that really got me thinking was when I met the creator of the Reapers and his explanation of their goals. The reason that this part really got me thinking was because one the creator of the Reapers comes to you in the form of a child and second is because of his reasons as to why the Reapers are wiping out the galaxy, which in turn sounds like circular logic but if you take a moment or two to think about it you will discover that his logic and appearance are what I believe to away in which you can see and relate to him while at the same seeing his side of the story.

When It comes to the internet on this part they really hated the idea of the Reaper creator and his logic and the fact that all they could do as a player is to listen to what he has to say, for me to tackle this I will first talk about why I believe the creator has appeared to you as a child and then why his logic isn’t circular.

The first thing that I wanted to get out there is the fact that I don’t believed that this child looks anything like any of the AI (Artificial Intelligence) or VI (Virtual Intelligence) that I have come across thought out the series and my reasoning being this, is that one we have never seen an AI or VI take the form of a child and second that if you watch him you might notice that there is some form of energy moving around him which has lead me to believe that this so called AI is actually an original Reaper that has found some way to ascended. This explanation alone would also explain why no one on the Citadel has seen him before and why he has taken the form of a child to relate to your character.

Now when it comes to truly understand why the Reapers have reached this circular logic, you must first go back to when the Reapers ruled the galaxy, (this is what I would like to call the Reaper era) at this point in time you would have to take into consideration that the Reapers themselves where organic and not the Synthetics that we now know them to be (like we have seen in both the Prothran and Human era’s.)

As I said in the Reaper era, the Reapers themselves are organic and have now created their own synthetics to help them but at some point these synthetics turned on the Reapers and the two went to war. As the war raged on the Reapers came to the conclusion that they could not win the war, so they came up with the idea of making themselves part synthetics which in turn created the Reapers that we now know. With this new technology the Reapers won the war and saw how costly it was to them and other race, with this knowledge and from what they have seen from other race that had gone thought the same thing, the Reapers decided to harvest all the races that were at a certain technologic point and add them to themselves. Once they had completed this task they left the galaxy to the younger races knowing that in 50,000 years time the galaxy would end up in the same state as it was before they became the synthetic Reapers and that when they returned they would then harvest these races to save them from being destroy by their own synthetics, thus creating the cycle.

The last two parts that I want to look at this week is to do with what happens after you have made your choice, I should make a point here that the choice part of this blog will appear next week due to it being a very large section.

The two parts that I am referring to is when you active the Crucible (A weapon you hope will destroy the Reapers), at this point a beam of energy leaves the Crucible and Citadel and heads out to the Mass Relay (this allows faster than light travel), upon hitting the Mass Relay it collects up the energy that is stored within the relay and then moves on to the next relay. As it does this the relay is destroy and a wave of energy is realised that ever destroys the Reapers or re-programmers them.

Now when I completed the game I went with the destroy the Reapers ending first and then went though and did the other two ending afterwards and the reason that I liked these ending is because of two reason, one being whichever choice you made you already knew that the Crucible had a large amount of energy stored within it and that it had to go somewhere and second you also need some way to delivery your chosen choice.

As I said if you were like me and went with the destroy the Reaper ending you have to take into consideration that you are not just destroying the Reapers but everything that is Reaper and that includes your own technology which is based on Reaper technology along with the Mass Relay which they created.

You might be asking yourself how do I know this, well Sovereign tells you all this in Mass Effect 1 when he tell you that the Mass Replays were created by the Reapers so that all race that came after them would follow the path they had laid out for them. Now if you went with the two re-programming ending everything stay’s the same but the only difference is that the Mass Relays are still destroyed because the energy that is realised from them is so that they can deliver your chosen choice but on the flip side you still have the Reapers around to help you rebuild the galaxy quicker.

The Internet on the other hand had the believe that by destroying the Mass Relays they ended up killing everything within the galaxy and removing faster than light travel and in turned dooming both the fleet’s around Earth and those on colonies though out the galaxy to die.

First let’s look at the destruction of a Mass Relay, in Mass Effect 2, Arrival DLC you watch as an asteroid hits the relay which in turns destroys the relay and the white energy that is stored within the relay becomes unstable and blows up the whole system without you seeing anything from within the exploding. While in Mass Effect 3 the energy that is within the relay is removed from each relay before they are destroyed allowing you to see the relay itself being destroyed making the two explosions completely different thus not destroying the whole galaxy.

When it comes to the fleets and alien worlds you have to take a few things into consideration, one being that after you win there isn’t going to be much of a fleet left around earth and second yes all the different races colonies will be unable to get to one another but they do still have their own people on those planets. So what you could say is that those that are left on these planets can rebuild their homes and within time get everything that they had once lost back.

That brings me to the end of this week’s blog but come back next week to see my final thoughts on the ending of Mass Effect 3

Until Next Time. 

Link to the ending: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nhf-GZpNCxU

Link to the Arrival DLC Mass Relay exploding: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGr9T1k8QOY