Adventurer's Journal

Picking up from my last post, I purchased “Dragon Age: Origins” (DAO) and “Dragon Age II” (DA2) on the cheap from GameStop. Combine cheap games, nothing terribly interesting (OK, “not terribly cheap”) on my radar at the moment, and general tiredness with the Mass Effect series and you get DAO as the game of choice for the time being.

DAO is three or four years old by this point, so a full review of the game is probably a waste, but I’m going to do it anyway. If you want a professional one, you can find several at Metacritic, although I have no idea how eight reviewers (out of 67 reviews) can give the game a perfect 100. Either they didn’t take the time to do a thorough play-through, they got a bug-free version of the game, some serious money changed hands at some point, or they’re lying through their collective teeth. Perhaps all of the above? Don’t get me wrong. It’s a very good game, but it’s certainly not worthy of all of the high-90s and 100s being heaped upon it.

To start with, I’m going to be making a lot of comparisons to previous BioWare games. This is not because I expect DAO to follow in the footsteps of these games. Each game should be judged on its own merits, after all. I’m going to be making the comparisons because of the significant amount of time that has elapsed between those older games and DAO. In that time, the technology changed tremendously, developers’ approaches to games changed tremendously, and BioWare had huge amounts of time to reflect and learn from those earlier games; both what worked and what didn’t work. Also, since it has been three or four years since the game’s release, I have higher expectations regarding stability and general bugginess than I would for a new release. I will get to DA2 eventually, but all I’ve done up to this time is install it and make sure that it launches.

General

DAO is a 3rd person FRPG. In many respects, it feels like Neverwinter Nights/NWN2 and the like, although it has nothing to do with the Dungeons and Dragons franchise. Anyone who has played any of these games will pretty much feel right at home. The game is quite obviously a BioWare product and I do not say that in a disparaging way. All of BioWare’s ventures into the D&D franchise were good to great games. It’s just that the game feels like those, so I can’t honestly say that it’s “fresh” in any meaningful sense of the word. This is not a good thing or a bad thing. It simply is. If you enjoyed those earlier games, you’ll most likely enjoy this one. If you hated them, it’s doubtful that you’ll enjoy this one.

The reason for the “Origins” moniker is likely the fact that your character (the Warden) can come from one of several backgrounds and each has its own story of how you came to join the Gray Wardens. You will pick up the same set of companions once you’re in the main quest, but your origin story will have some effect upon how the world reacts to you.

My game came with the “Blood Dragon Armor” and “Stone Prisoner” DLCs as part of the package. Because of weight considerations early in the game, I had no use for the armor piece that I started with and have not begun the Stone Prisoner quest. I disposed of a few hundred old BioWare points to purchase the “Wardens’ Keep” DLC, though, and have played through it. I’m debating on springing the extra $20 or so for the “Awakening” expansion pack, but haven’t opened the wallet just yet.

Installation

Since I purchased the game through GameStop, their client handled the download and installation. It was a hands-off experience, for the most part, but had its fair share of hiccups. GameStop’s digital download version of the game presented me with your product keys right at the outset. The problem with this is that I didn’t need those keys at the time, so I closed that little window and then had a dickens of a time getting it back when I needed the keys. My eventual solution to the problem was to let the game install without them (I really had my fingers crossed that this would work – my fallback plan was a complete uninstall/reinstall and BioWare has historically not been terribly understanding on this). When I tried to start the game , it asked me for the keys. By that time, I could access them again through the client, heaved a great sigh of relief, there was much rejoicing, and I moved to the next step.

The next problem was patching. I cannot speak for any of the other download services, but GameStop did not deliver a patched version of the game. I’m not going to point fingers, rub their noses in it and say, “Bad GameStop”, though. As I discovered later, you need to rerun the 1.04 patch installer after you install the “Dragon Age: Awakenings” expansion pack (which I had not purchased). Because of this, it’s pretty much required that they deliver the game and patch as separate downloads. Sad, though, because the current version is 1.05, so I needed the game, the 1.04 patch and then needed to download and install the 1.05 patch (about 93MB worth).

For the record, the correct order of installation is:

1. Dragon Age: Origins
2. Dragon Age: Awakening (separate purchase unless you got the Ultimate Edition)
3. v.1.04 patch
4. v.1.05 patch

Not really sure when you’d add any of the DLC (there are several), but I assume they would go after the 1.04 patch since that’s where I added mine and it seemed to work OK. All in all, I wasn’t thrilled with the installation. And considering the age of the game, I would have expected that BioWare would have fixed these little issues by now. I realize that games do not have an exceptionally long support cycle. A game is released, patched (and often re-patched) until it’s stable and then you’re pretty much on your own. But a problem this pronounced is a problem for which the developer should have released a permanent fix. Bad BioWare! Go to your room!

Gameplay

If you’re playing the game with any of the DLCs, you must be logged in to BioWare’s network before you try to start or load a game. If you are not, the DLCs will not function, which might result in you losing access to items. Whether that loss of access is permanent or temporary is an open question in my mind. For example, you gain a storage chest after completing the Wardens’ Keep DLC. If you have items stored in it and lose access to the chest by not being logged in, do those items disappear unless you log in and revert to a save where they were in their proper place? This seems a rather draconian measure to insure that people are playing legitimate software. What happens if you lose your internet connectivity? Are you completely hozed if a drunk driver knocks over a telephone pole and takes your DSL with it? No games for you because you decided that the $45 per month for internet access is outside of your new budget? Like I said, “draconian”. Bad BioWare! Go to your room!

Character creation is fairly straightforward and simple. Unless you’re really in to customizing your character’s appearance (and you can do that), you should be ready to play within a couple of minutes. One disappointment (understandable, but disappointing nonetheless) was in the player character voicing. This is not Mass Effect, where Shepard is 100% voiced. This is more like NWN or Baldur’s Gate where the PC has a few standard lines like, “I can do that” or “On my way”. Considering that DAO comes out two years after the 100% voiced “Mass Effect,” it’s a bit disappointing to find that not much has changed from about ten years prior to DAO (that’s when Baldur’s Gate was released). It was probably for cost-savings since this was a new venture and the PC would have needed at least six different voice actors (male/female human/elf/dwarf), but it’s still mildly disappointing in light of the fine job BioWare did with other games.

OK, assuming that you’re installed, logged in, character created and ready to play, let’s move on to the game itself. The game is controllable through mouse and keyboard using a fairly standard WASD configuration. Keys may be remapped to whatever works for you. Camera control is not the best, though. In most areas, where you have a lot of room for the camera to swing, this is not so much of a problem. But it’s really bad when you’re in interior areas where various pieces of decoration (hanging lamps, roots, rock piles, walls and the like) frequently get in the way. In this respect, DAO hasn’t improved significantly from its older siblings like NWN/NWN2. This may simply be “the nature of the beast” when you’re dealing with a 3rd-person game, but it’s something that could have seen improvement in the eight years since NWN.

Movement and NPC interaction are very simple and straightforward. The only odd thing is that because the spaces are sometimes so big, finding all of the things that you can interact with in an area might be hit or miss. To correct this problem, BioWare kindly added sparkly animations to most containers, making them a bit easier to see. For those things without sparkly animations, you can almost always find them by holding (TAB) and rotating the camera. Anything that you can activate has a name that is visible from quite a long distance. This was a feature added in NWN2 (might have been in NWN, too – memory’s a bit fuzzy in that regard) and I’m happy to see that they team kept the idea.

NPC dialogue is completely voiced (it’s just the Warden who is mute) and very well done. Conversations work through the usual system of dialogue trees. Since I’m picking up the game with the 1.04 patch, any prior problems may have been fixed, but I’m not holding my breath. A couple of threads on the official support forum appear to show that some players, at least, are having problems with conversations cutting short for some reason. I have not run into it yet (I’m a bit less than halfway through the basic game), but that does not mean that it does not exist.

One very annoying gameplay issue relates to the one DLC that I purchased (Wardens’ Keep). Although I did not know it at the time, if you leave the keep before finding everything related to the Ancient History side-quest, you will not be able to finish since you cannot re-enter the keep. It’s annoying because there is apparently one thing that I forgot to do and now I can’t go back to do it. Since I have several hours of play in the time since, reloading a save to correct that means replaying those hours to get back to where I was. BioWare could at least have given me a notice or something that there were quests that I needed to finish before simply locking me out. Bad BioWare! Go to your room!

Combat is very straightforward and there is very little surprising about it. As with any game, you’ll want to be upgrading your equipment as the better stuff becomes available. But spells and talents work on a very simple progression system. There are a few combinations of spells that can have some surprising results (like creating a flaming floor by following a “Grease” spell with a fire spell). There might be codex entries to tell you about them, but it seems that you’ll need to discover most of them on your own. On the whole, I rather like the apparent decision to let players discover some of these things for themselves. There are various sites to help out with spoiler info, but the joy of discovery makes me feel positively mage-like. Good BioWare! Have some Cheetos!

Combat hasn’t changed significantly in the years since Baldur’s Gate. Expect to spend a lot of time with the game paused while you select targets and actions for your party members. I suppose I shouldn’t complain too loudly about that as most shooters suffer from the same problem. Since this is a 3rd-person game with multiple members in your party, it’s not unsurprising. Pausing and unpausing are simple, quick and efficient. Target selection can be a little tedious at times, but it doesn’t sink below that to the point of becoming annoying. It’s just something that you get used to and keep going.

Character classes feel a bit restrictive. There doesn’t seem to be much of an opportunity to combine aspects of different classes, aside from the “Arcane Warrior” specialization. So no sneaky warriors or spell-casting sneaks. This means that your party will almost always need to contain two members from one of the classes; two mages or two warriors, for example, but two thieves is probably a bit much. I’m fairly used to Bethesda’s more open-ended progression systems, so this probably accounts for my perception. For those who are used to more rigid systems, this will not be an issue.

Levels come through an experience point system. Gain x-points, gain a level. Subject to a possible level limitation that I haven’t hit yet, you’ll probably get three attribute points to spread among your attributes at each level. You’ll also gain a talent/spell point at each level and a skill point every two or three levels, depending on your class (two levels for Thieves; three levels for Mages and Warriors).  To keep things interesting, there is almost always one stat that can be left alone for each class. Warriors, for example, would not need to pump any points into Magic, Mages would not need to pump any points into Strength, and so forth. All in all, the level progression system works pretty well and can be a lot of fun to play around with. Good BioWare! Have a donut!

I have run into intermittent crashes and lags in the game that have no apparent cause, so I’m not sure whether this is a problem with the game or a symptom of something on my particular system. Since I don’t experience it with most of my other games, I suspect that it could be a compatibility issue with Vista. No finger-pointing on this one and no down-grading the game for it, but players on Vista systems might want to keep it in mind. Save frequently and you’ll be fine.

Graphics

Graphics are very good. At the time the game was released, running it at high settings would have taxed most systems. I’m running with dual GT9800s in SLI at 1440×900 and have almost everything set to high. Aside from occasional disc access issues (and I defragment regularly – grrr!), the game runs very smoothly. The Warden seems to always have this slightly surprised expression on his face, but the NPCs have well–animated and expressive faces that sync pretty well with the lip movement and dialogue. The character design team at BioWare did a marvelous job.

The game does not appear to use a tileset like NWN/NWN2 did. Consequently, environments look very good. Pathing can be problematic at times, though. You just have to keep an eye on the cursor. Gold means you can probably go there; gray/silver means you can’t. The vast majority of the time, this is not an issue, but you’ll spend considerable time trying to figure out how to get from here to there. This was a problem with the D&D games that used the Infinity and Aurora engines and it doesn’t seem to have improved much in the decade since. NPC path-finding has seen significant improvement, though.

Lighting and shading work very well, but I haven’t seen much in the way of water effects. I’m not sure whether this is an engine limitation, a design choice or simply that I have not reached an area where water is a common feature. The few puddles and one moonlit shore that I have encountered thus far came out very well, though a bit muddy-looking. BioWare did not try to implement any of the DirectX 10 features, choosing instead to focus on DX9 capabilities. This was a conscious design decision and an understandable one, so no finger-wagging from me. I didn’t take Bethesda to task for the same decision and see no reason to change that stance.

Character movement is not as fluid as I might have expected considering the two years that had elapsed since Mass Effect’s release. But ME used a version of the Unreal engine rather than DAO’s Eclipse engine, so this might account for the difference. Again, no finger-wagging. Just a heads-up that this is an older game, so don’t be expecting 2012-era graphic razzle-dazzle from it. For it’s time, it wasn’t clunky, but DAO doesn’t rise very far above a time-adjusted “meh!” for graphics.

Sound

I wasn’t bowled over by the voicing, but it’s more than solid. Each character comes across as unique and someone you’d like to know (or love to hate). I absolutely adore some of the NPCs and would like to shove a sock in the mouths of a couple of others. My suspicion is that this was intentional and major kudos go to the actors. Some of the voice actors should be familiar to players of other BioWare games (Claudia Black as Morrigan, for example), while others might not be so recognizable. All of them created very memorable and believable characters simply through the power of their voice and the abilities of the writers and development team. Good BioWare! Good cast!!! Rangers and hamsters everywhere, rejoice! Sorry – wrong game.

The music is more than solid. It’s outstanding. I don’t know that I’d want to go spring the $10 or so for the soundtrack, but the music adds so much to the game that it can’t be under-rated. The score was composed by Inon Zur and performed by full orchestra. “I am the One” garnered some well-earned awards (link goes to YouTube). The sound track has a wonderful Celtic/Norse/Fantasy feel to it, very reminiscent of “Lord of the Rings” to my ear (link is to the main theme at YouTube). This is one area where I’d award the full 100 out of a possible 100. This is better than “Good BioWare!”

Story

OK, it’s fantasy. Little guy from nowhere suddenly has to man up to the fact that he/she must save the world from certain annihilation. I won’t give BioWare any points for originality, but I will certainly give them points for their implementation of the heroic fantasy formula. Ignoring a certain game with a questionable ending, BioWare has always known how to spin a great tale. The game reflects the idea that you hire the best writers and then get the hell out of their way.

At almost every part of the story, there is a sense of urgency and immediacy that draws you in and keeps you going. It’s far from un-put-downable (it’s a word), but the story is exceptional. It left plenty of room for expansions that would not interfere with the main story (and BioWare did its best to capitalize on that). The characters and their backgrounds are easy to empathize with, although some (Wynne, for example) probably wouldn’t resonate a great deal with younger players.

In a departure from the Mass Effect series, the game isn’t overly moralistic. Decisions affect your own party members, who will either like, not like or be ambivalent about them, but don’t go much beyond the immediate party. There is absolutely nothing resembling the Paragon/Renegade system of Mass Effect or the Fame/Infamy system of The Elder Scrolls. If your party members reach the point of hating you, they’ll jump ship (not too far removed from Baldur’s Gate), but nothing aside from the quests seems to have much of an impact on the rest of the world.

Overall, the story is solid, if a bit formulaic. It’s fantasy, after all, so it’s both understandable and expected. On the whole, then, it’s “Good BioWare!”

Replayability

The game has a fair amount of replay value. Perhaps more so because BioWare released a toolkit to allow modders into the picture. Those modders went to town, at least somewhat, and the results can be found at dragonage.nexusmods.com. The site is not completely supported by the Nexus Mod Manager, so you’ll likely want to be manually downloading and installing any mods from there. Please do not expect the range and variety of mods generated by the Elder Scrolls and Fallout games, but there is some good work in there.

Because of the differences in sex/race/class in the origin stories, most players will probably want to take two or three runs through the game. Each class requires slightly different tactics and each origin story makes for a slightly different take on the game. Because of these two things (mods and origin stories), the game has very good replay value.

Wrap Up

Dragon Age: Origins was the start of a solid fantasy franchise for BioWare. Most of my issues with the game boil down to support issues in the time since the game’s release and how low they set the bar with the original game. Taken on its own and in its time, it’s a very good game. Were I writing this review at or near the time of release, I’d give it an 8.5 out of 10 with all of the point loss coming from graphics and gameplay. Since it’s long past its release date, it’s an 8.0 out of 10 because of support issues that have still not been resolved in the three years post-release.

Picking up the Ultimate Edition for $30 to $35 (which comes out to about $10 each for DAO, Awakening and DA2) is money well-spent. You’ll get many hours of good gameplay out of it. It’s decently stable. There are a few unresolved issues, so frequent saves are strongly recommended. For its time, the graphics are not top-notch, but they have aged well. It should run pretty well on a mid-range system today. In spite of its issues, this is something which should be part of any FRPG gamer’s library.

If anyone is of a mind to pick it up, GameStop is currently offering Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age II and a small DLC for $19.99. You need to use their client to download it, but they even went so far as to discount me the sales tax and it certainly beats the $20 that Steam wanted to charge me for just one of the games. No idea of how long they’ll hold that price, but they’re pushing their digital download service, so have a bunch of games at 75% off.

In spite of my complaints about BioWare of late, I’ll play almost anything if you give it to me cheap and won’t have much cause to bitch about it if it turns out to be a turkey (you get what you pay for, after all).

As reported at gamesindustry.biz this morning, Eidos-Montreal made a haul at the 2012 Canadian Video Game Awards with “Deus Ex: Human Revolution”, including Best Console Game, Best Audio, Best Game Design, Best Writing and Best New Character, although it lost out to “FIFA Soccer 12” from EA for Game of the Year.

The Canadian Video Game Awards recognize Canadian game designers, and there was some serious competition in there this year. Deus Ex beat out “Assassin’s Creed: Revelations” for all of its awards except Best New Character. AC:R won in the Best Visual Arts category. I’m thankful that I didn’t have to do the judging. Both are very strong games, as were many of the other nominees.

Kudos all around to the Eidos-Montreal and Ubisoft teams.

Stumbled across a petition addressed to Namco Bandai asking them to either ditch their plans to release their PC port of “Dark Souls” on GFWL in favor of releasing through Steam or to at least release it through both. My only experiences with the GFWL client software were with “Halo 2” and “Fallout 3”. “Halo 2” wasn’t too bad once you managed to get the game started, but my FO3 experience was so bad that I eventually resorted to turning GFWL off entirely and have successfully avoided any GFWL games since.

I haven’t signed the petition since it involves a game that is way down on my “want to play” list, but the link will take you to the petition if it’s on yours (the PS3 and XBox versions have decent ratings on Metacritic). I suspect that the release conditions are already a done deal, though. Companies usually don’t make these kinds of announcements if the contracts haven’t already been negotiated and signed.

On a side note, I remember Bandai as a toy company that made the most awesome 1:48 scale model tanks. No idea what they’re up to today (aside from game publishing, obviously), but if their game quality is anywhere near the quality of their models, maybe I need to move that game up the list.

In the speculation of my last post, I seem to have overlooked the truth of ZeniMax Media’s filing of six applications for trademarks for “Fus Ro Dah!”. I’m sure that they’re just trying to protect their brand (wink, wink, nudge, nudge), but the wide variety of items addressed by their applications would seem to indicate otherwise. And here I would have thought that they’d have gone for “arrow in the knee”.

The rumor mill abounds with speculation regarding the next generation of consoles, most notably the PlayStation 4 Orbis and the next XBox (currently being called “720”, but who knows? Microsoft certainly isn’t saying). Both are supposedly due out in the next year or two. Best guess would be that a 2012 release probably ain’t happening and Microsoft has categorically denied that they will be demoing any new console at E3 this year. The next-gen Wii is supposed to be out for the holidays this year, though.

One “feature” that is generating an excessively large amount of heat in next-gen discussions is the idea that next-gen consoles will not support used games. I can certainly understand why that would be an issue of concern from both the publisher’s and the players’ perspectives.

From the players’ perspective, used games net them a bit of a discount toward the purchase of another game. It’s also a good way to get a real turkey of a game out of your library with the ability to recoup at least a little of that ill-spent money. The presence of outlets that deal in used games (GameStop, most notably), would seem to make that a win-win for both parties. But the publisher is kind of cut out of that deal.

From the publisher’s/developer’s perspective, being able to prevent players from trading games means more money for them, at least in theory. The publisher and developer make their money on the sale of new games, but they are completely cut out of the sales of used games, since that transaction is strictly between the retailer and the player. So tossing a bone to developers in the form of no support for used games would seem to match up with their wants, but doesn’t add up in the real world.

A work-around that seems to be more common with current games is online content. If you purchase the game new, then you get access to some online content (multiplayer, for example) as part of the original purchase, but it does not transfer to a player of your used game. The player of the used game will need to pony up a few bucks to get access to that content. My suspicion is that this approach will become the norm for games rather than the “exclusive license” that some other types of software might favor or even a hardware lockout from the console makers.

As for the rumors regarding the possibility of such a lockout, I don’t see it happening. Let’s suppose that I am a console maker and I include such a feature in my console. Let’s also pretend that gamers really don’t like that feature. All my competition has to do is not include that feature and that sale is almost a slam-dunk for them. They make money and I don’t, so it is not in my best interest to do it unless everyone does it. And if everyone does it, it would be in my best interest to stop doing it. But it would be in the interest of the game developer/publisher to tie some critical content to a particular user account, since that would mean the used game would run on the console, but some of the content would be inaccessible until a few extra bucks were coughed up.

Another work-around is digitally delivered content rather than physical media. I’m seeing a serious trend in that direction on the PC through services such as Steam, Direct2Drive (now GameFly, but I still think of them as D2D), Origin and others. Why bother buying from a brick-and-mortar store when you can buy digitally? No drive, no standing in line, no sales clerk hassles, no typical installation headaches. Click to start the download, go do something constructive while the download finishes, play. But the catch is that there is no physical media that can be traded in, so there are no used copies available.

Whether that model will work for consoles is still up-in-the-air, but it’s feasible as long as the console is hooked to a fast internet connection and has a hard drive to store the game files. For my money, digital distribution is a bigger threat to the used games market than any potential console lockout. And it has a longer shelf life than regular physical media since it can be put in the “bargain bin” whenever the publisher or distributor might want to churn out a few more sales without the necessity of shipping the media.

Looking into my crystal ball (admittedly foggy and I’m not wearing glasses), the idea of consoles not supporting used games seems a bit ludicrous. It’s bad business for everyone. More likely for the future will be more online content tied to individual user accounts and more digitally distributed games. So rumors based on Kotaku stories and various doom-and-gloom stories predicting the imminent failure of GameStop are just that – stories good for scaring the little ones around the campfire, but hardly things that rational adults need worry about.

As reported at GamesIndustry International last week, EA is still defending itself against the inclusion of same-sex relationships in some of their video games, most notably “Mass Effect 3” and “Star Wars: The Old Republic”. Not a word, apparently, about inter-species relationships or the gooey gore you get from a successful “Carnage” strike or that abortion of an ending. Just same-sex relationships.

If EA wants to put same-sex relationships into their games, that’s cool with me. They were beaten to the punch by a lot of other games, though. The earliest one that I recall was “Singles: Flirt Up Your Life,” developed by Rotobee and Deep Silver back in 2003 or 2004, but I’m sure there were others before them. And if you’re terribly upset by same-sex relationships, might I suggest a very simple solution: DON”T BUY THE GAME IN THE FIRST PLACE!! It’s not like it didn’t come with a fairly good description of what the game entailed. If a game offends you that much, don’t play it.

In deference to this Fruit Loops section of the audience, I’d like to formally announce that I have transgendered my FemShep, terminated her/his relationship with Garrus and am now ardently pursuing Ashley. Am I in a same-sex relationship or am I in a straight relationship? It made for some interesting conversations with Garrus at the beginning of ME3, let me tell you, since I had romanced him in ME2. But that’s OK, though. I intend to reward him by quaffing a few and missing my shot at the can when the opportunity presents itself. As for Ashley, well… She’s got a much nicer rack now.

Probably old news, but Overhaul Games has announced plans to release an iPad/Mac version of the classic “Baldur’s Gate” game. More info (what little there is) can be found at their website: http://www.baldursgate.com.

This is something that I’d consider coughing up a few bucks for. I’m not a Mac kinda guy, but if they can work around my big ol’ fingers, the iPad app sounds interesting. “Make way, evil! I’m armed to the teeth and packing a hamster!”

In a press release Thursday, BioWare announced a free (until April 12, 2014) DLC for Mass Effect 3, entitled “Mass Effect 3: Extended Cut”, due sometime this summer. Casey Hudson, ME3’s Executive Producer, promised “to provide the fans who want more closure with even more context and clarity to the ending of the game, in a way that will feel more personalized for each player.” All of this will be provided through additional cinematics and epilogue scenes. The BioWare panel at PAX East fielded a few questions in this area without straying too far from the official line. One fan was kind enough to upload their camcorder video of the panel discussion to YouTube, although in five pieces and not including the Q&A session at the end. Remember, these folks are not addressing the DLC beyond what was in the press release, so the lack of the final 10 minutes or so isn’t crucial. Most of the relevant stuff about the DLC happens in the first 10 minutes or so.

1. Part 1
2. Part 2
3. Part 3
4. Part 4
5. Part 5

Another fan was kind enough to upload the full hour, again at YouTube, but the audio is pretty poor. It’s audible, but you’ll need to really crank up the sound and/or use headphones to hear it clearly and even that is iffy.

After all of the finger-pointing, name-calling, hand-wringing and assorted post-release hoopla over ME3’s ending, I’m not sure whether I’m in the “Oh, noes!” or “whatever” camp, but I’m certainly not ecstatic over the announcement. Add to this a series of threads on BioWare’s forums to the effect of “Do you feel sorry for (insert group or name here)?” and it gets even murkier.

Perhaps a bit of recap might help. I stand by my original assertion that ME3 is an outstanding game, provided one ignores the last few minutes. There are a few things that I found to be a bit less than satisfying, but it works well on many levels from the start until about 5 or 10 minutes from the end. To that extent, and with the understanding that I’m excluding the last few minutes from that assessment, I have almost no heartburn with what BioWare released. It’s only those last few minutes where I’m taking exception.

I’m not even up in arms over the Day-One DLC nonsense. For those who might not know what that’s all about, the “From Ashes” DLC was released concurrently with the game (for about $10). It introduced a Prothean squad member, Javik, and a mission to recruit him. All of Javik’s in-game assets were apparently on the original game disc, so players essentially paid $10 for a mediocre mission pack that simply unlocked what they already had. Bad marketing and suggestive of a very poor view of the customers, but not the most egregious of things that a gaming company could do. Just very indicative of a “let’s see how many different ways we can get players to part with their money” mentality. Considering that the entire economy is aimed at separating customers from their money, it’s not even unusual. It’s just tacky.

As far as the game itself and from a story-telling standpoint, there were only a handful of possible conclusions to the Reaper story arc. Shepard was either going to be successful in destroying the Reapers or not. “Not” might include some other means of removing the threat, but my initial guess would have been that “not” would be synonymous with “failure”, so I would have predicted that the successful ending would have been the destruction of the Reapers. All three of the endings effectively remove the Reaper threat. Whether that removal is permanent or temporary (according to story canon) depends on your final choice in the game.

Since this was to be the final game of a trilogy chronicling Shepard’s adventures, then Shepard was either going to survive or not (survival of squad members was probably going to depend on how you played the game). While a happy ending might have been nice, Shepard needed to be definitively and finally removed from the ME universe. Some heroic final sacrifice was not only within the realm of possibility, but almost certainly required. In fact, had the game gone to credits right after that final scene with Anderson and we simply assumed that the Crucible worked its magic and Shepard peacefully bled out, I probably would have been somewhat happy with it. I don’t like my characters dying, but sometimes that’s what needs to happen in order to make the story work.

As an alternative ending, I would have found some dark humor in Shepard being appointed humanity’s council member to replace Udina and could almost hear Claudia Christian’s voice in the background: "I feel like an old war horse, trotted out after a parade so all the kids can point at it" (my first Shepard to complete all three games was female). Or perhaps something along the lines of “Ulysses” would have done the job (Ashley’s not the only one who reads Tennyson). Any of those would have worked with Buzz Aldrin’s post-credits scene and we would have had a satisfactory ending, or at least mostly so.

But where were the wildly different endings? On both play-throughs, I ended up with three “pick your favorite color” endings. Since I did my best to acquire every war asset that I could during both play-throughs, I’m assuming that all other possible endings are “worse” than the three that I got. I’ve seen video of one ending where the Destruction option was the only one available. In that video, London (and presumably the rest of Earth) is incinerated and Shepard is blown to bits, so I’m pretty sure that I saw the “best” endings. OK, “ending” since the cinematics are almost identical.

BioWare is adamant that this Extended Cut DLC will not add any new endings to the game, so it would seem that we’re pretty much stuck with RGB as canon. The question is whether that can be improved or clarified through the addition of cinematics and epilogue scenes. My initial inclination is to think “not”. As one poster on the BioWare forums so colorfully noted, a turd is still a turd, no matter how much sugar you put on it.

So, if we’re stuck with RGB, then what can be done to provide clarity and insight? How about dropping that whole Star Child thing? Aside from a bit of exposition and presenting the color choices, it served no useful purpose and was probably the biggest “WTF?” moment in the game. A BioWare forum poster managed to dig up an obscure Codex entry from ME1 which might overcome the charge of deus ex machina commonly leveled at it. But it’s an awfully flimsy thread for tying up this monster.

How about we do something about that final Normandy scene with Joker trying to outrun the shockwave (or whatever that glowy thing behind him is) and then crash-landing on some jungle planet where the squad members who were with Shepard just a few minutes early somehow manage to safely disembark. That bit never made a lick of sense on multiple levels. First, if the Normandy has FTL capability, how is it unable to outrun an explosion which, in normal space, cannot go faster than light? Second, how did the crew members who were with Shepard just a few minutes earlier in London manage to get on board? Third, why was Joker running away at all? I don’t remember anyone sending him a “Get the ship out of there” order. All in all, it was pretty cheesy.

Since we have been told “no new endings”, I suppose that those two ideas are out of the picture.

Some of the more vocal fans on the forums are still ranging between dismay and outrage over the whole mess. I’m taking the more philosophical approach to it. BioWare says that they have listened to the fans. Since they would have had to be hiding under a rock or something to not know what the fans were upset about and why, I’ll take them at their word on that. BioWare has decided that they will not change the existing endings. I’m not thrilled, but that’s the decision, I don’t see them changing it and what will be, will be. So with those two points settled, what else is left but to wait and see what comes out in the DLC.

I’m trying to be optimistic about it. These are the folks that cranked out 2.99 really solid games (yeah, I’m still not giving them an ounce of goodwill for the ending). Not just solid games, but games that have developed an enviable fan base. The players love the characters, love the universe and (again, excluding the last few minutes of ME3) love the games. They have proven themselves willing to buy sequels, DLCs, souvenirs and trinkets, you name it. I don’t believe that their feelings about the ending will cause that to change. After all, you don’t passionately fight for something that you don’t care about. In the end, I think the vast majority will simply come to accept the ending. After all, it is what it is and either we learn to like it or go find another game.

As I posted a couple of days ago, I decided to take a break from Mass Effect 3 and go back to something that I hadn’t played in quite a while: Fallout 3. FO3 was released by Bethesda Softworks back in October-ish 2008 (memory could be playing tricks on me, but somewhere around that time). The main quest line involved a rather heroic effort to take care of the problem of irradiated water in the DC Wasteland. Since it’s a 3-year-old game, I don’t have a problem spoiling the ending. If playing as a good guy on the released version game, you die at the end.

This set me to thinking about Shepard and the Mass Effect 3 ending and I had to seriously ask myself whether it was Shepard dying that was giving me such heartburn at the end. After some fairly serious soul-searching, I concluded that it was not. In every game of FO3 that I played (and my playing time was easily pushing 1000 hours by the time the “Broken Steel” DLC was released), I never sent another character into the control room to finish the job that I started. Yep, I died – tragically, heroically and frequently and didn’t have a major problem with it.

Just to check that my recollection was accurate, I popped over to Metacritic to glance through the a chunk of the 1300 or so player reviews of the game (it averages 7.8 – professional reviewers averaged 9.1). The comments are very telling. There are only a few gripes about the ending of the game. Granted, I ignored favorable reviews and could easily have overlooked comments like mine on ME3 (“great game, ending sucks”), but even among the unfavorable reviews, there were very few comments about the ending. A big chunk of them were along the lines of “I can’t believe that this game gets so many 10/10 ratings, so I’m giving it a 0”. Another batch took issue with the treatment of the Fallout universe in comparison to FO1 and FO2. And there were the usual complaints about the UI, scripting, inability to complete quests, graphic monotony, and the like. But surprisingly, even though the PC probably dies at the end, not too many gripes about it.

On the Bethesda forums, the complaints were of a similar nature. Although I recall (and this is admittedly faulty memory talking) some very vocal disappointment with the PC dying, the main thrust of the complaints were that [A] if the PC avoided dying, you got painted as the bad guy in the final analysis and [B] if you avoided dying, you could not play beyond the end of the main quest. This was rectified by the “Broken Steel” DLC (3rd DLC and released 6 or 8 months after the initial game release), which basically said “just kidding; you didn’t really die” and let you continue playing after completing the main quest.

So where did Mass Effect 3 drop the ball where Fallout 3 did not? I think it all comes back to the story and the ending of that story. In Fallout 3, your choices in the game have consequences. You generally do not find out about those consequences until the final credits roll, but the final slide-show with Ron Perlman’s voice-over pretty much tells you what happens with each and every major character and companion you dealt with (Fallout: New Vegas did pretty much the same thing – I can’t speak to FO1 and FO2 since I haven’t played them) and how your choices affected them. Mass Effect 3 does not do this. You get to talk to each of your companions one last time before the final push to the Citadel and you’ve got a good idea of what they hope will happen, but nothing after you “push the button”.

Second, in Fallout 3’s ending, there were no major surprises. While it was possible to play an ultra-good guy and send someone else into the control room, or to play an ultra-bad guy and take the hit yourself, your final decision affected only your character. Compare that to ME3 (or even the Deus Ex games) where you decide for everyone. Great, if you’re one of those “king of the universe” kind of characters. Not so hot if you’re one of the “consensus and cooperation” types.

Third, in Fallout 3, all of your choices were known before you ever got to the end. Aside from Eden’s genocidal option, no one showed up at the end to add new information to the mix. No one popped in at the last minute to tell you that everything you thought you knew was wrong. So even if you chose to sacrifice yourself, all of the cards were on the table before you ever got to that decision. This is not the case with Mass Effect 3.

The short version of a summation would have to be that Fallout 3 did everything a story should have done. In playing through it again, there are plenty of spots where stuff doesn’t come off nearly as good today as it did 3 years ago. It’s even to the point where I installed a couple of mods for different radio stations simply because Three Dog was getting on my nerves. But taken as a whole, the story worked pretty well from start to finish; a bit cheesy in places, but it worked. I wish I could say the same for ME3. Perhaps I will be able to say that at some point in the future, perhaps not. But I can definitely say that in the here-and-now it doesn’t work.