Can we really achieve this?

Last week’s blog was about me reviewing on the final three pieces of DLC for Mass Effect 3 and what you might not know is that after I completed the Citadel DLC I felt sad. It wasn’t because I knew it was the end of the series and the last time I will see this characters but it was because throughout this whole month and up until that last sense I had noticed something that my life and others where lacking. Before you turn away and say that this is going to be another topic on Mass Effect it isn’t but I am going to use this scene to paint you a picture of what I am trying to get at and then talk about what it all means.

The scene in question takes place right at the of the Citadel DLC, After you have completed all the mission and thrown the party, you are then asked to return to the Normandy where when you active this cut scene you are give a scene where you, the crew and your love interest have one last look at your ship and a talk. If your love interest is with you, you are shown a moment of pure love that those two characters have for one another.

To make the point even more I will also us this quote from a song “If it’s not like the movies, That’s how it should be,”

For those that are unaware this is a Katy Perry song that talks about how love should be like the movies and if you have seen a any romantic films you will have seen what Katy Perry is singing about, in which they have such great love for one another and then at the end of the movie go on to have that “happy ever after” scene.

Now a lot of people will say that this is a fantasy that the media wants us to believe is true but in real life it isn’t and I would like to agree with you but there is a time in everyone relationship in which they do get to experience this.

All relationships start off with the two of you chasing after one another so that you can get to go on a date with said person and by the time you arrive at the second or third date, feeling start to boil and the relationship starts to get going. From this point on you both start showing your raw emotions and passion for one another and you are doing everything you can to keep that spark alive and this to me is the part that the movies are talking about.

Now you may disagree with me which is your right to but I know that I have experienced this within my own my relationships and I have also seen those in their own relationship experience it too but somewhere along the line it just stops and you both become comfortable with one another and in the process the romance just dies and then the following situation could happen.

Have you ever been with your other half when he or she asks you the following question “Do you love me?” and your answer is always yes but here is the kicker, are you saying yes to this question because it is true or are you saying yes so that the two of you don’t end up in and argument but you do love them but you know something is missing from your relationship.

If it is the latter part then you have just arrived at what every relationship gets to at some point, where the “happy ever after” is gone and that is because you both have become too comfortable with one another.

When you arrive at this point in the relationship it is very hard to get out of it and I know that there are books and articles all over the place that will tell you that the two of you need to make time for your relationship and everything else but the true is that, there are only so many romantic dinners you can go out on or cook for your other half when you have to come to the conclusion that nothing is working.

The think that I am trying to get at here is that it took god only knows how many shows, movies and games for me to see that we all have experienced this kind of love at least once in our lives and that if you want to have that long last relationship with the “happy ever after“, like the movies you are trying to show us then you both are going to need to keep working on your relationship.

Until Next Time

Katy Perry – Not Like the Movies

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ewTkrfaWtA

Mass Effect 3 scene in question, see from 5:40

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXkSjOMJYDc

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.

Story Time

This week I wanted to take some time out to talk about what is involved in trying to create a story that everyone wants to read. The first thing that I would like to mention is that this is from my point of view in which I used to create my own story and that every writer has their own way in which they do it.

The reason that I wanted to write about this topic is because this will be the template to coming topic that I want to talk about later on in the year when I look at other stories plus I have this feeling that a lot of people don’t realise how much work really goes into writing and creating their own story.

Now the reason that I wanted to write stories is because I have spent a lot of my life reading, watching and playing all different types of stories and I have found that it is because of these story and the way in which they are down that keeps on bring me back to them later down then line.

As I said moments ago ever write has a different way in which they go about writing their own stories and that can also be said for the way in which they create their own ideas too. If you have been reading any of my blog’s as of late you might have noticed that I have spoken about writing my own story and that I would like to get in published some day.

When creating any type of story the first thing that anyone needs to do is to work out what the story is about and how it will end. The reason that I believe that this is very important is because you at least know where it is going. For me the end of my story came to me when I was seating in a car trying to break up with my girlfriend at the time, let’s just say we didn’t break up then because I wanted to get home as soon as possible to write down every that came to me at that point. The moment that I got home I grabbed a bit of paper and to start writing everything that I could remember of how the story was going to end, all I placed on the piece of paper was the outline of how it was going to end, I had no location or  character names in place that this time.

Once I had written this down I then got another piece of paper and started to write down who were going to be the bad guy, good guy Locations, ages, what made up them who they were and what could happen afterwards. The reasoning behind all this was so that I could get all of this within my story and to have some idea where the story could go if I wanted to write anymore stories.

With this basic information I knew that I could start out lining the direction in which my story was going to take. The best way that I found to do this was to get a note book and do bullet points of what I believed was going to happen and in what order. This is what I would like to call the beginning of story structure because once I had completed it I now had an outline of what was going to happen and when, all that I had to do now was to fill in the blanks.

As you can see before I had even started writing my own story I had a lot of work to do before hand, think about the amount of pre production that film makes have to do before they start shooting their film. The time that It took me to get all of this information down was about a week.

The hardest part that I discovered when I started writing the story was trying to get everything that I had put into my notes into the story, the reason that is hard is because deep down you want everything to go into it but some time when you start to write up parts of the story it just doesn’t flow very well so it is sometimes easier to take it out or change things round so that it still flows.

Now you might be ask why did I have so many notes before I started writing and the answer to that question is I don’t have the best memory and second was so that I had some kind of record that I could keep going back to.

I do hope that by reading this that everyone can see that there is a lot of work that does go into creating a great story and those that create these stories have the right to tell it the way they want to because it is their idea to begin with.

Until next time.

Massive Decision, Pandora's Star

Before I start with this blog I should warn you that there could be spoilers and points that will be looked at in future blogs(but I won't highlight them like last time).

I have always been a fan of well written and interesting stories but there was always one medium that I found really hard to get into and that was reading. You wouldn't have through that someone like myself would not have a problem but due to me being dyslexia and the fact that when I was younger I would get anger at myself and others when I couldn't read something.

Now that I am older, have more patience and the improvements in technology it has become easier for me to read books due to the fact that if I get stuck on a word I can type it into my phone and get the definition straightaway so that I can carry on but there was also one other item that helped me and that was a Peter Hamilton book called Pandora's Star

Back in 2005 the idea of me going into a book shop was unheard of but I was told by my mum that if I wanted more interesting stories then I should consider looking towards the idea of reading books, so that is what I did on a hot summers day.

When entering the book shop I decided that I would head towards the genre that I loved the most which is science fiction, upon arriving I couldn't believe how many books there were and I had no idea where to start until  I discovered a recommendation card on one of the shelf. Upon reading this card I knew straight away that I needed to have this book so that I could find out what really happened and where the story would take me.

It's hard to believe that the first book that I picked up, read and enjoyed since I left school would have this much of an impact. Every word that I read made me believe that this story, characters and the world was real and that I wanted to read on to find out what was going to happen to them all.

By the time I got to the end of the book I had this feeling that the human race may not survive the war and that the book was going to be left on a cliff hanger. The best thing about most cliff hangers is that if the story is written well  can leave the person trying to guess what the outcome is going to be, but lucky for me I only had to wait a day so that I could read what was going to happen next.

The joy of Pandora's Star and many of Peter Hamilton's works that I have read is that his stories are well written and interesting with twist that you wouldn't have suspected and that you can tell this is a story that he wanted to tell.

If you haven't already read any of his books then I would to recommend his The Commonwealth Saga, The Night's Dawn Trilogy and The Void Trilogy

Until next time.