But Why Can't I Save the World?

Courtesy of Santi Slade

After watching Zero Dark Thirty for a second time and binging on both 12-episode, 12-hour seasons of Homeland in just three days, I was struck by a pang of melancholy. For reasons that don’t trouble me nearly as much as they should, this realization had little to do with my supine disregard of exercise or summer internship applications. Instead, I felt insignificant and small, humbled by the extraordinary acts that both Zero Dark Thirty’s Maya (Jessica Chastain) and Carrie (Claire Danes) of Homeland achieve, the latter on a serialized basis.

Granted, these two heroines are among the most flawed protagonists in film and television history; Carrie spends significant screen time crying, screaming, panicking, bugging her eyes out or — and this is how Claire Danes wins all the Emmys — colliding her many bipolar symptoms at once, while Maya sits on the opposite end of the clinical spectrum, possessing more of a psychopathic coldness that I consider to be the film’s apparently-too-subtle critique of America’s callous, post-9/11 foreign policy. Regardless, as I emerged, bleary-eyed, from the couch and the cinema, I could not resist the superficial allure of such “heroic” work. I want to join the CIA!

Even after admiring the gray tones of counter-terrorism in Homeland anddefending Zero Dark Thirty’s anti-war message to anyone who will listen, I find myself at the most base and opportunistic of temptations. As damaged as Carrie and borderline sadistic as Maya may be, they pull off peerless feats of deduction and investigation that are based on hunches only they believe. And that’s pretty cool. In the vacuum of fiction, a writer (or, in the case of Homeland, a room of them) can prescribe witty retorts and enviable bravery to a character and, with a mental breakdown here and a sobbing fit there, still pass off the creation as human. It is when we believe that these superhumans could even possibly be real that the aforementioned sadness, the most unwarranted of phenomena, creeps in.

Let us take a more agreeable example, especially as I remember the more unsavory details of Maya’s character. For me, Harry Potter embodied this saintly, yet still powerfully empathetic, protagonist. Here is a teenager, just slightly older than me when I first read The Deathly Hallows in 2007, vanquishing the greatest evil his world has ever seen. How does he do it? (*Spoilers, I guess*) He walks into a dark forest, guided by the souls of all the family and friends who have perished in the decades-long war he is about to end and accepts that, to fulfill his destiny, he must die. Harry follows through every step without curling into the fetal position or crapping his pants — he approaches his certain demise with maturity and grace. And, after flatlining right there in the Forbidden Forest, he returns to life to kill Voldemort in front of all his peers. Rowling likely intended Harry’s defiant victory to strike the reader as inspirational and comforting, yet I found myself plummeting into an existential crisis as I examined my own life and found my worst struggles woefully pathetic compared to Harry’s. Gee, I haven’t levitated a feather, no less slayed anything close in size or strength to a basilisk or He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named!

Am I alone in finding some of our culture’s most popular and satiating movies, TV shows and books inherently depressing? That I expect an answer from a rhetorical question may hold an answer. Moving away from the morally questionable heroines of Homeland and Zero Dark Thirty, the hagiographic elevation of protagonists in more crowd-pleasing works like Harry Potter, Star Wars or Les Misérables may very well provoke an unintended moment of self-reflection. The Sopranos knows this well: In a very meta scene, gangster Christopher Moltisanti freaks out after reading in screenwriting books about how every character has an arc. “Where’s my arc?” he asks.

Of course, the only way to cast off this pall of self-deprecation is to build your own character — in a video game, that is. Super Mario Bros. or Call of Duty don’t cut it, as they focus only on objectives within a predetermined playing style, leaving no other options for the player but to master the mechanics. Bioware’s sci-fi trilogy Mass Effect, rightly considered a masterpiece of the medium, still falls short in granting the player complete control of his or her destiny. Although the player must make a plethora of in-game choices, the core narrative still follows one of three — good, bad or neutral — pre-determined paths that all funnel into basically the same ending. The storywriter has more authority over the narrative than the player, which is no different than non-interactive media like film and literature.

This brings me to The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, the black hole that annihilated the rest of my free time over winter break, and then some. This game makes no attempt to emulate cinema through shot reverse shot dialogue exchanges, “cutscenes” or “quick time events,” a la Mass Effect. Rather, Skyrim throws the player into a massive world of high fantasy, borrowing names and creatures from Norse and Camelot folklore and severing all other ties from the world of our own. Sure, there is an epic story involving a prophecy and a mythical villain, but like Fallout 3, the other popular game by Bethesda Studios, the plot serves as a vehicle for gameplay and not the other way around.

A game like Skyrim offers an oddly empowering experience. Why stick to a sword, bow or fire spell when you can wield them all simultaneously? The citizens of nine cities and countless villages, forts and dungeons depend on your agency to decide a Civil War, reconcile warring factions and kill a plague of dragons, in whatever order you choose. Or you can forget about all that and buy a house, collect potions and assist the local business owner in finding his lost family relic. But be wary about investing too much into your character: The humbling heroics of Harry Potter and Homeland have nothing on realizing that your video game character is living a more listless life than your own.

This article was originally written for The Cornell Daily Sun and can be viewed at its original location via this link.

Mass Effect 3 Review

Mass Effect 3
Developed by BioWare
Released in 2012

The Mass Effect series is, so far, the only body of video game fiction worthy to join the heavies in film, television and literature like Star Wars, Lost and Harry Potter. The rich universe of characters, locations, conflicts, phenomena and funny names created by Canadian developer BioWare not only stirs a rabid fanbase but also mines a vein of franchise dollars on a scale unseen before in role-playing games. All tales must end, and Mass Effect 3 concludes the trilogy just like those aforementioned series: with nostalgic nods to its revered canon, inspiring additions and a handful of questionable decisions.

Despite what EA Games' marketing team may be preaching, Mass Effect 3 is made for the fans. Who starts with Return of the Jedi, after all? As hero Commander Shepard, you run into basically every key and bit character of the trilogy (well over 50) as you prepare to battle the gargantuan threat of the Reapers, an ancient alien race that wipes the universe of all sentient life every 50,000 years. Since you can import your save file from the second game — which, in turn, could have been imported from the first — the choices you made way back in 2007 decide who is alive to fight by your side.

The word "choice" rules most discussions of Mass Effect. Once again, choices you make shape your character into a good — “paragon” — or bad — “renegade” — character, though saving the galaxy is the common goal at both ends. The variable is more how you get there: unite the quarreling races or save only those already on your side? (Hint: the latter approach is most unwise.)

Guiding your Shepard’s morality takes place in the abundant cinematic dialogue the series is famous for. Not much has changed in aesthetic since the first game, but I am once again astonished how they record over 40,000 lines of dialogue and attach them to convincing, animated characters in proper lip-sync. The voice cast includes such actors as Martin Sheen, Seth Green, Keith David and Yvonne Strahovski. It speaks to the respect BioWare has accrued that these acclaimed talents bring their all to this medium.

BioWare fills the Milky Way with species ranging from beautiful humanoids to sentient Portuguese Man o’ Wars. There are the brilliant, if neurotic, amphibious Salarians and the brutish, reptilian Krogans. Ignore that all these disparate organisms evolved with roughly equal intelligence and have spoken modern English for millennia (shh, ignore it). Shepard has to find a way to band together the warring factions and recruit the isolated ones to unite against the greater threat. In my playthrough, Shepard solved not one but two Israel/Palestine analogous conflicts; one race involved, the Quarians, carry an unmistakable Middle Eastern accent. Earthly ties can be drawn between all events, if on a macro scale. It is a post-human society where contemporary quibbles over evolution — “the cosmic imperative,” a wise, African-inspired race calls it — and homosexuality — pilot Steve Cortez recalls his dead husband with no camp or novel subtext — are relics of the past.

But your time with Mass Effect 3 will not rest solely on futurist political theory and interspecies sociology. At its core, the game is a cover-based shooter a la Gears of War. Action still does not flow as smoothly as said game, and both schools and monasteries possess invincible architecture primed for war. However, there is a broader cornucopia of choice on how each battle is played. Dozens of pistols, shotguns, snipers and machine guns flesh out the arsenal, and new modifications can be purchased to strengthen your stopping power. Biotic and tech powers, including a repackaged Force push, are now easier to complement conventional weapons, leading to varied battlefield encounters encouraging experimentation.

There are only 15 or so hours of required missions, but to see all the content — and achieve the “best” ending — 30 to 40 hours will accumulate. One central mission culminates with directing airstrikes on and dodging the death rays of a giant Reaper, the design of which resembles Halo’s Covenant ships and H.G. Wells’ alien forces. Another smaller assignment has you defusing a bomb that could decimate a planet, ending with a scene of thrilling cinematography and moving sacrifice. There was only one mission I actively disliked, involving a digital Shepard recovering important files; basically, a virtual reality CCleaner. Regardless, most missions reintroduce familiar faces from past titles and carry enough thrills to induce involuntary gamer vegetation, or bliss, as we prefer it to be called.

Between missions you roam the Normandy SR-2, your sleek vessel capable of faster-than-light speeds, and talk to your squadmates about the mission ahead. The different perspectives of your varied crew lead to enlightening discussions on the toils of war. However, if playing the good guy as I did, it usually boils down to Shepard reassuring those worried that cooperation is the key to victory and, when Shepard laments all those dead, a pal like series steady Garrus reminding that sacrifice is the other key. War is bad, that is for sure. The game even opens with you watching a little boy crash as his ship fails to escape a smoldering Earth. For a triple-A blockbuster title of the sort, there is legitimate contemplation on the price of war, even if the theme’s execution leans more Independence Day than The Battle of Algiers.

Love is still on the plate, of course, and virtual romance is still as incendiary as it has never been. I favor overhearing crewmembers hit on each other and the awkward results that follow, or the exchange of dirty jokes between a meathead soldier and a 50,000-year-old warrior (“Now the joke’s on you, human, hehe”).

To guarantee the “best” ending, assisting different races to find traitors or artifacts boosts their morale and, alas, readiness. Your in-game journal does not register progress on these tasks, so these preparations for war just become what they really are: cumbersome chores. Thankfully the Citadel, an ancient space metropolis, is a triumph of artistic direction, so running across a beautiful plaza to deliver the third missing war bible right after taking down a mile-high Reaper is not that much of a buzzkill.

Playing multiplayer is also necessary to gain access to the “best” (again, the quotes) ending by some inexplicable logic of ratios and “effective military strength” EA threw in. Thankfully, the online co-op is surprisingly fun, structured like Horde mode from Gears, with waves of enemies to defeat and simple objectives to complete. I cannot picture myself playing it weeks down the line, but it is a worthwhile diversion from the main campaign.

And then it ends. The ending already lives in infamy, with thousands signing protests against it. I find this widespread devotion to story inspiring, signaling how great writing is now expected of great games. The final moments do not take into account the whole arc of your journey and enter some serious Lost territory that will frustrate some, or many. I do not personally loathe it so for it still successfully wrings emotion, a tough feat in video games, and there is a convincing justification making the Internet rounds (look up: Indoctrination Theory). The real issue is that, after bonding together the entire galaxy to fight the Reapers, there is little proof of collaboration in the final battle. I would have appreciated some help from the bloodthirsty Krogans I befriended after dying for the ninth time battling endless screeching Reapers.

The first Mass Effect received a fair share of ridicule for its loading screens disguised as the slowest elevators in the universe, inching up as you and your squad just awkwardly stood there. There is a not so subtle nod to that ignominy in Mass Effect 3 as you blast off on top of a high-speed elevator to apprehend an assassin. BioWare has brought this series to remarkable heights over five years, aware of its weaknesses and ever eager to improve. While the third may hold its own flaws, it closes the greatest modern video game franchise with style and heart. I finished the game and was struck by that unique depression that also accompanied the finales of Lost and Harry Potter. Now what? I guess I’ll play them all again.

Final Verdict:

4.5 Stars out of 5

This review was originally written for The Cornell Daily Sun and can be viewed at its original location via this link. 

Mass Effect 2 Review

Mass Effect 2:

Developed by Bioware

Released in 2010

Now, I love video games more than most but I am usually reluctant to ever publish a comprehensive review of any title. I spend more than the average number of hours with a gamepad or mouse and keyboard in my hands but I still feel that games are miles away from the nuanced art forms that are literature, music and, of course, film. Every so often a few games will come by and challenge this notion: Bioshock, Braid, and Metal Gear Solid 4 are just a few to name. However, the majority of games out there, ones that I appreciate no less, like Modern Warfare 2, are polished, extremely tight shooting games that value style over narrative substance. Saying all of these seemingly inane opinions of mine, I love Mass Effect 2. 

Mass Effect 2 is not a game that will revolutionize the medium in any significant ways. Rather, it takes its ambitious yet flawed predecessor's core and fleshes it out with a bevy of new improvements. The result is a very memorable experience that is the automatic lock for Game of the Year 2010 until something very, very impressive tries to knock it off its pedestal. 

The first Mass Effect had an incredibly engaging storyline and rewarding combat but was hampered by a wide gamut of small, but souring, flaws. The inventory was a mess, and no one will speak kindly of omni-gel and the efforts needed to navigate the clunky menus. Technical problems also plagued the original, starting at texture pop-in and glitches and going as far as game-ending crashes. The side mission structure was repetitive as well, as the tank-like Mako was the only means for transportation on boring, desolate planets.

Thankfully, the sequel not only eliminates all of these problems, but comes up with enjoyable alternatives.The inventory system is practically gone; all weapon and armor switches can be made on the ship or before a mission. The Mako is scrapped in favor of a single loading screen that launches you straight into the action. Side mission variety is also improved:  many trivial quests are present but they are all different with unique environments and objectives. The first title was often given a pass on its problems for its epic story, but there are no need for excuses here. 

As a Bioware game and the sequel to the game that launched this console generation's ultimate role-playing tale, Mass Effect2 is expected to have an above-average storyline. Fortunately, what is here is a gripping, cinematic science fiction experience that is greatly aided by its motley crew of characters. Leading is Commander Shepard from the first title, and the import of a Mass Effect 1 character to the sequel strengthens the narrative structure as all choices from the first carry over to the second (it is expected that the second will do the same for the third). After a dramatic opening reminiscent of 2009's Star Trek film, Shepard is put through an intense trial but brought back into action not too long after. He works for a company that is not the noble yet hidebound Alliance, but a more secretive and, let us say, illusive branch.

Most missions in this game revolve around assembling a powerful, eclectic team to fight the new threat. Miranda, the genetically "perfect" leader; Grunt, another lovable Krogan; and Thane, a master assassin with a conscience and case of physical atrophy, are all members of the new team. The best of all new teammates is, hands down, Mordin Solus. A Salarian (skinny, typical alien appearance), Mordin talks in quick, terse statements, and every discussion with him usually usually ends in a chuckle. Two chats on histrionics and interspecies intercourse left me with a guilty grin, in particular. On top of these characters, old flames reappear, all in a welcome manner. The story of Mass Effect 2 should satisfy fans of the original as well as the unacquainted.

Why Mass Effect 2 succeeds so well, however, is because it does not merely rely on cutscenes to convey its story. Like the original, a dynamic dialogue system takes up a significant portion of the game's time. Extensive motion capture and very accurate lip-syncing make all the characters feel alive, complementing the excellent voice acting in the process. Martin Sheen, Yvonne Strahovski (from the TV series Chuck), and Seth Green all play characters with a lot of screen time in addition to the dozens of other talented actors that worked on this title. Martin Sheen's character, "The Illusive Man," sports a surprising likeness to the veteran actor, and his gravel voice does not sound too far off from Apocalypse Now. All of the humans, aliens, and curiously deformed creatures benefit from the motion capture that give them an emotional weight, rendering them as caring, scary or maybe even a mix of both. Think of the work here as Avatar on a smaller scale. The impressive aspect here is that the control is in our hands for nearly every action the character makes.

Comparing Mass Effect 2 to a film is not totally off, however. After any mission, it only seems proper to converse with all the inhabitants of the ship, getting to know their histories and feelings for the mission ahead. The term "video game" suddenly did not apply anymore; this was more of an "interactive cinematic experience." The interactive part is something film cannot achieve. Games like this one are showing the true advantages to the medium that many still frown upon when motion control is not slapped on. Getting lost in a deep, distinct world like Mass Effect 2's star-spanning cosmos is something that only video games can properly convey, and few do it as well as Bioware's latest.

Of course, the story and universe to explore are rich and detailed, so how does the rest of the game stack up? For the original, the positives ended around here. This is not the case with the sequel. The RPG nature of the first has been stripped down to a barely recognizable, yet very tight, third-person action game. Ammunition is not unlimited this time around, which at first presents itself as a nuisance but turns out to be an intelligent alternative that gives firefights more of a sense of urgency. Enemies are smarter this time around, and cover is absolutely necessary if you want to get through any tougher difficulties in one piece. The whole title feels much more like an action game this time around, even when the few RPG elements have been tremendously improved upon.

The need to update character stats is not as necessary this time around; small aspects like a rifle scope's drift are already handled and do not need any useless upgrades. Upgrades do play a major part in developing a tough protagonist and resilient squad, however. Improvements to weapons' damage, accuracy, and capacity will give your team an advantage, and enhancing the Normandy (the space shuttle that you call home) is highly recommended. In order to pay for these boosts, materials in the form of three real-life elements, Platinum, Iridium, and Palladium, as well as the mysterious Element Zero, will need to be scavenged from scanning planets. This system can be extremely boring and derivative (basically you hold a button and move a reticule over a planet until the controller vibrates), but I seemed to dump a few hours on this system without a second thought. The flaws in Mass Effect 2 are few, but this is certainly one of them. Minigames are used to hack safes, doors and important data, and these are repetitive but enjoyable enough to not feel like a trial. Overall, the gameplay in Mass Effect 2 is lightyears ahead of anything that reared its head in the first. Finally, we can praise this series for more than its ambition alone.

In the end, Mass Effect 2 ranks along the likes of Resident Evil 4 in terms of drastically improved sequels. The qualms of the first game are gone and, in the process, a satisfying action game emerges. The dialogue system has made changes for the better, and the world is so detailed that it is tempting to list the richest science fiction epics as Star Wars, Star Trek, and then Mass Effect. There are many stories to witness throughout the world. One recurring minor storyline in particular stuck with me. A male and female in the Normandy's Crew Quarters cabin sit a single table throughout the game, and you can check in periodically to hear their story. The male is a father and wants to eliminate the alien threat as it puts his family to risk at home. Listening to this story of woe is touching, even if it is as minor as side stories go. Small details like these can only be conveyed through video games, and Mass Effect 2 represents everything that is great about the medium in one absorbing, near-perfect package.

Final Verdict:
5 Stars Out of 5