Mass Effect

Again, this will be spoilerific... perhaps more so than my Call of Duty 4 post.

So, before I begin, I will gladly admit that I am a BioWare fan... and dare I say it? Yes, I dare. I am a BioWare fanboy. While I'm not hardcore enough to have MDK... I have the two Baldur's Gate games, Neverwinter Nights, Knights of the Old Republic, Jade Empire and the recently released Mass Effect. In fact, I am probably one of 50 people in the world who would openly admit to being a David Gaider fan and while I hate displays of nationalistic pride when it comes to art or sports (USA! USA!), I am genuinely proud that BioWare is a Canadian company.

With all that preamble out of the way, I'll say that I have forgiven the game for many of its game breaking and technological problems. Some of the classes are just unbalanced for even normal difficulty while some of the classes are essentially invulnerable once you reach level 25. There's the classic loading problems (people ignored Portal's elevators, didn't they?), screen tearing and Unreal Engine 3 related texture pop-up problems. I also think Jennifer Hale is the best voice actress in the industry and I would pay her to read the back of cereal boxes, so having her be the voice of (female) Shepard didn't hurt either.

But, let's ignore all that reviewey stuff. At this point, you've either played the game or you've ignored it to play Halo 3 or Lost Odyssey. Mass Effect is the latest game in BioWare's opus of interactive ethics games. The twist this time is that the binary isn't good vs evil... it's good cop vs bad cop or Paragon vs Renegade. "Jack Bauer in space", as one of the designers put it. In many ways, the system has been greatly simplified from previous BioWare games. Being Paragon unlocks some Charm points and opens up more Charm slots to allocate points to, which in turn unlocks various dialogue options in the game and to make shopping at stores cheaper. But unlike KoTOR or JE, there are no specific gameplay advantages to being a full Paragon. The light side character in KoTOR has a special advantage when using light side powers and is penalized for using dark side powers. In ME, a rifle is a rifle... it doesn't matter if you're good or bad. The end result is that you are maxing out your Paragon slot in order to max out your Charm and to unlock new dialogue options and nothing more.

The huge problem here is that you are forced to choose a path one way or the other. There are no shades of gray here (in KoTOR, there was a specific item that you could only equip as a "gray" Jedi, and Jolee Bindo encouraged you to ride the line and not choose one or the other). If you want to unlock the "Charismatic" achievement where you "Use Charm or Intimidate to resolve an impossible situation", you must have 10-12 points in Charm or Intimidate. (This is when you convince Wrex to stand down on Virmire or convince Saren to commit suicide at the Citadel). The only way to do that in a single playthrough is to stick to a course and rack up as many Paragon or Renegade points as possible. The only advantage to this system is that unlike past BioWare games, there is no one single point where you choose your ending. In both KoTOR and JE, your previous actions had no bearing on the game ending... it came down to one specific choice you made near the end game. Here, your ending is based on your Paragon or Renegade values at the end of the game, even in spite of your decision to save or kill the Council.

Despite the simplified morality system, some of the complex emotions still exist. Just like many other gamers out there, I slowly grew more uncomfortable making Renegade choices. I felt horrible while my Shepard gleefully pushed the button that killed the Rachni queen. And Feros? That planet nearly broke me. Not only did I have to kill every colonist who was being controlled by the Thorian, an event which is horrible enough... but the aftermath of the battle with the Thorian? In case you haven't seen this part, after you kill the Thorian, the Asari is set free. She tells you everything she knows about the Conduit and in the end, you have to decide her fate. The Renegade choice here is to "make her pay for her crimes". But this isn't just a simple case of shooting her. She looks at you, agrees with your choice, turns around and kneels down so that you have a perfect shot at the back of her head. It was perhaps one of the most disturbing moments in the game for me.

The deeper question is why was this disturbing? For me, the answer is player agency. The mere fact that you personally choose to drive your character down this path makes you complicit in a way that you aren't when you read a novel or watch a film. Like the famous ending of Metal Gear Solid 3, you pulled the trigger... not the author of the text. This is something I've wanted to explore for the last three years, but I haven't found the right framework. Psychology? Sociology? Philosophy? Narratology? Or God forbid, Ludology? There are also a lot of questions, of course. Is this system of ethics culturally located? For the few Japanese players who have finished the game, did they have the same experience? Is it "wrong" if you do not feel guilty after making "bad" choices? Many players can, as with novels and film, separate themselves from the text. Even though they are personally making the decisions, to them it's "just a game". While I'm far, far away from contemplating my dissertation, I know that I will be answering these questions and more.

For a game of choices, there is also one moment in the game where player agency is constructed in a, as a Star Trek fan might put it, "Kobyashi Maru" scenario. On Virmire, near the end of the mission your team splits up and at some point, both members of your team are under attack. You have to make a choice to save either Kaidan or Ashley. Now, there is of course the larger meta-game at play here - if you are pursuing a romantic relationship with one of the characters, obviously you would want to save them. Also, if you need a strong Soldier or Sentinel in your party, that might inform your decision as well. But let's ignore that for a moment. Here you are presented with the illusion of choice, since either decision you make you are condemning one of your characters to death by nuclear explosion. This is a scene that replicates the "tough choice" that we see military officers make in various war films, only this time you are the one who is forced to make the choice and deal with the consequences. Indeed, if you choose to save your love interest, the character will wonder if you saved them because of that relationship, questioning your ability to make rational judgements (and perhaps reinforcing the idea that superior officers should not sleep with their subordinates). However you read it, narratologically, it is a moment of player agency that isn't agency at all. You choose who to save, but in an ideal game situation, you would be able to save both characters and still kick Saren's ass.

Peter Molyneux suggested that most game players simply could not accept negative outcomes as a natural property of video games. In Fable 2, when you are knocked out your character is permanently physically scarred. He pointed out that in testing, most players would simply turn of their consoles and restart the game rather than deal with the consequences of their failure. As a result, he was forced to remove that aspect from the game entirely. By building in failure right into the game narrative, Drew Karpyshyn (and his writing team) created a narrative where failure was inescapable and the player was complicit with that failure. While you can react to that failure with compassion or anger after the fact, this is an failure you must face whether you are a Paragon or Renegade player.

In a year where player agency was the new focus of major games - see Bioshock, Portal and The Darkness - this moment was as much a standout as the nuclear weapon going off in Call of Duty 4 and potentially says as much about the text itself and its underlying themes of leadership, command and ethics.

One final point. As someone who saw the anxiety over the series finale of The Sopranos, both in public discourse and within academia, the lack of narrative closure in Mass Effect did bother me. For all their successes, BioWare's writing teams seem to have a problem with denouements. KoTOR just ends, regardless of your choices. JE gives you an ending, but they are a series of text pages that perhaps foreshadow the ungainly reading that Sakaguchi put into Lost Odyssey. Mass Effect is no different. Yes, the game is the first in a trilogy... but does that mean that your characters can't take the time to mourn the death of Kaidan or Ashley? Or that your character can't take the time to help Tali find her way back to her fleet? Or perhaps help Wrex use Saren's research to save his people from extinction? Or have your character simply spend time with your love interest, if you chose one?

Maybe the sequel will address some of these unfinished plot threads... we can only hope.