I'm Commander Shepard, and This... Nevermind

Here at HyperPixel (where I'm working), we write articles for developers and fans alike, ranging from reviews to full articles. These include the one I just did about video games being art. Some of our upcoming reviews as a magazine will be SSX, Silent Hill: Downpour (which I'm writing), and Syndicate. Mass Effect 3 may not be on that list. The reason is a very bizarre one; we can't find a writer who isn't calling for BioWare's collective heads to be paraded before us on pikes.

I'm not going to lie, emotions do play a large part in this. The emotions that Bioware have forged between player and characters are amazing, and seeing them die is heart wrenching. At least, it's supposed to be. The story in Mass Effect 3 is filled to the brim with moments that make me scratch my head and wonder, "They thought that was a good idea? X-Men: Destiny had more choices implemented than this! Hell, Call of Juarez: The Cartel was at least fun to make fun of!"

A slight warning: *ahem*

THERE BE SPOILERS AHEAD! AND HOW THEY BLEED

Joke fell flat, didn't it? Damn, no Clive Barker fans in the crowd.

Anyway, admittedly, I didn't play much of Mass Effect 3, because, at first, I hadn't had much of a chance. I played the game for three hours, or, what honestly equates to half an hour of gameplay and two and a half hours of movie. What I played of the game was very dull, and bared little resemblance to the previous games. It was more shooter based (I was playing on Role Playing Mode, and I felt like I was playing Gears of War with an occasional moral choice). As I didn't have my save from Mass Effect 2 on my PS3, I could not import my character, and much of the choices were made for me.

Then, my girlfriend started to play. She loved the second, and was hesitant to pick up on this one. Even with the rave reviews that it has been getting, we were both hesitant. Especially when half of those reviews are connected to Jessica Chobot, who works for IGN and G4, and is married to one of the hosts for XPlay. If you don't see the problem with that, think about it this way; those news outlets are now connected to the development of the game. If Gene Siskel was in a movie in the '80's, and Roger Ebert gave it a nigh perfect review, would anyone take him seriously? It doesn't help matters when her employers knew that she was in the game, but said nothing until the cast announcement. The one redeeming factor is that she didn't review the game. No, she just previewed it, which can be seen as her not being an entertainer, but a journalist. Even then, it's borderline review. It's hard to not look biased when you pressure the people you work for by being in the game. Give the game a bad review, it looks bad for her. Obviously, we can't have that, now, can we?

Let's cut that rant short, and talk about the game proper. The main squad has been narrowed down to only a few: Garrus, Tali, Ashley/Kaiden, James "Jersey Shore" Vega, and EDI in a robot body. You also get a Prothean if you buy the DLC, or got it for free with the game. You have to spend $10 on DLC that is "story essential" for the game... yet it doesn't make sense. The Protheans are all dead, yet Cerberus knows of the last living Prothean. We played without him, obviously. We were stunned by what we saw.

Here comes the spoiler train:

Pretty much everyone dies. Jacob becomes a merc, you know, those things he hates. Mordin has an honorable death, curing the genophage, and allowing the Krogan to bolster their numbers. Thane either dies saving the counsel and Shepard, or dies a faceless death if you wait to do that mission. One of the most interesting characters dies off screen if you take a side quest.

Let me put it this way: Thane was my girlfriend's love interest in the second game. She saw his heroic death first, but restarted after a death that utterly pisses me off, that we'll get to in a moment. She wanted to save that character, but found out that Thane could die off screen, without the player having a chance to say goodbye. That's lazy writing, plain and simple. They build up the character to kill him off, either in a way that is respectable, or in a way that is a cheap shot at the player that negates all of the work they put into him.

This also goes for Jack. If you do not take the mission to the Grissom Academy right away, you never see her. Why? They all get kidnapped by Cerberus. Jack, the most powerful Biotic in the universe, who punched through a ship's hull, gets kidnapped by Cerberus. In other news, Superman is foiled by a feather. It's as if they forgot who exactly these characters even are. As far as I'm concerned, they aren't the worst offenders.

Tali's character is, though.If you do not have a high enough paragon score, or choose to side with the Quarians instead of the Geth, who are trying to make peace, Tali watches as the entire Quarian fleet dies. She then commits suicide, no matter if you tried to save her or not. Let me repeat that: She dies, even if you try to save her! The game gives you a choice, then turns around and tells you that it didn't matter. If you didn't try to make peace, or you chose to make the Geth peaceful, she dies. For no reason.

As a writer, I find this to be absolutely lazy. Having a character die off screen is extremely lazy, for starters. If you spend the time writing a character for the player to get to know, you had to care enough about the character to give them a meaningful death. Giving the player an option to miss that death, and killing the character off screen is punishing the player for something that they didn't even know. How can you say the player has a choice, when obviously one was wrong?

Which brings me back to the first two games. Udina will be counsel no matter who you chose in the first game. You have to free the Rachni again. If you didn't have a save from the first two games, you miss out on dialogue from characters that you were supposed to know before this game. Finally, any choice you make actually makes no difference. The endings are all pretty much the same, Shepard becomes a messiah (I wish I was joking), and your crew is stranded on a planet after the Mass Relays are destroyed. No matter what you do, you cannot win.

But, Bioware tells us to wait for DLC. So, once again, we got the incomplete story, and we have to pay more to see how it actually ends. Would you buy a blender one week, and then buy the missing blade a month later? Would you be happy if you saw a movie, only to have the soundtrack missing, but the theater tells you to keep the ticket for next week when they play the audio?

DLC is being abused. It's meant to add to a complete story. For example, Enslaved's DLC added a new story entirely to the game. Adding elements that are necessary for the story to even be complete reeks of lazy writing.

And that's when we hit the issue. Bioware's laziness doesn't stop at the writing. They used a stock image for Tali's face, seen in a photo in your room. That Photoshop had to take at most fifteen minutes. This image took four hours, and it still isn't perfect. The clouds aren't blended the way I wanted them to be, but it was a school project. I took the pictures used in this image, and made it. You mean to tell me that Bioware couldn't have done that?

The game probably cannot be reviewed, because the elements in the game's design make us biased against the game, to the point where we can't review it. And, no, making me the next Shepard will not help. I want nothing to do with Bioware unless they take the time to write a complete story. For all the characters involved, too, not just the audience.