The Art of Thrilling Conclusions: Bioware's Mass Effect 3

In 2007, the first Mass Effect game was released.  It was published by the relatively unknown Microsoft Game Studios, and was exclusive to the Xbox 360 console.  Fast forward to 2012: amidst a massive amount of hype across social networks and YouTube, Mass Effect 3 was released (on PC, Xbox 360, and PS3) and concluded the trilogy that can very fairly be called “epic.”  As promised, Bioware has included an official female Shepard protoganist, and ultimately decided on a redhead (see my post from last summer, Mass Effect: Hair Salon).  As the only member of the ScreenFix staff who shared Bioware’s trailers on his Facebook with comments like “AHHHHHH!”, the responsibility falls to me to review the conclusion of the trilogy.  If you’re only here to find out if you should play Mass Effect 3, or if it’s worth the money, let me save you reading the rest of this admittedly lengthy review.  The answer is yes.  Go buy it and play it.  You will not regret the purchase.  For everyone else, here’s a breakdown of the game’s qualities.

The game has not gotten any less pretty in its third installment, although the new facial expressions appear to have come at the cost of some strange lip-synching issues.  Still, for the most part, characters feel more real than ever with their subtle movements, body language, and gestures, which has always been an asset to the franchise.  ME3’s environments are lush and well-drawn, though decidedly more full of Reapers than in the past, which can distract somewhat from the scenery.  There’s no gawking at cityscapes on Illum in this game, though there is some razing of Council capital worlds, if that makes you feel any better.

Bioware appears to have adopted the tried-and-true “if it ain’t broke” policy with regard to its combat mechanics.  Combat in Mass Effect 3 feels very similar to that of its predecessor.  There are some nice new “near miss” animations that have Shepard ducking and wincing as bullets whiz by, and new helpful arrows now indicate if you’ll be rolling, running, or jumping out of cover.  The folks at Bioware have also updated the weapon inventory system, allowing you to select weapon types, variations, and modifications for each mission, and adding the “weight” mechanic that penalizes you (in the form of cooldown penalties) for carrying a full armament.  Fans of the inventory system of the first game will not be appeased, but there is definitely more flexibility than Mass Effect 2 offered.  It’s also worth noting that the “biotic explosion” effect of combining Warp with other biotic powers has been streamlined and expanded, further rewarding players for combining powers with their squadmates.

Mass Effect 3 continues the Bioware trademark of excellent storytelling, although for the final entry in the series, the scope has been pulled way back to focus more on galactic events than the individual plight of Shepard and his or her crew.  Mass Effect 1 and 2 were both very centered on individuals and the specific struggles they faced while they made changes in themselves and others, but Mass Effect 3 is far more interested in the movements and trials of entire civilizations.  We all sort of saw this coming, but I was personally not prepared for how jarring that transition was going to be.  ME3 hits the ground running and the tempo never really slows down.  The Reapers are killing people by the tens of thousands, and individual life just feels cheapened.  This is a very powerful effect and it is created masterfully to give the game a dark, apocalyptic feel, but it also sacrifices a lot of what has driven Mass Effect storylines since the first game.

As a means of tracking the player’s progress throughout the game, Mass Effect 3 introduces the “War Asset” system, a largely numerical database that tracks Shepard’s progress as s/he readies the galaxy to face the threat of the Reapers.  Each time Shepard performs an act of combat, diplomacy, or recruitment that strengthens the galaxy’s unified forces, a new entry appears in the War Asset list, accompanied by a numerical value giving its approximate value to the overall war effort.  This purportedly allows players to gauge how well the war is going, although it appears to ultimately have a negligible effect on the game’s ultimate outcome, which is discussed later in the section flagged as “spoilers.”  Still, it is fun and somewhat rewarding to review the individuals, teams, ships, and fleets that Shepard has brought under the banner of galactic liberty.

For those concerned about the makeup of their personal squad, you are going to see a reduced selection compared to ME2, which boasted a whopping twelve possible team members to accompany you on missions.  This game settles for a modest maximum of seven, a number that can be reduced depending on the choices you make as you progress through the story (and if you decide to buy the DLC).  I will not list them here for those concerned with spoilers, but lists are easily discovered online.  There is also a higher population of NPCs aboard the Normandy in this game, including many who stick around for certain portions of the story and then depart as their quests are resolved.

A brand-new addition to the franchise is Mass Effect 3’s multiplayer option, dubbed Galaxy at War.  In this mode, players are matched into teams of four to defend key positions across the galaxy from encroaching Cerberus forces, geth troopers, or the dreaded Reapers.  These missions technically occur in parallel to the single player campaign, increasing the “Galactic Readiness” score which improves the chances of success in the game’s final mission.  Players can choose any class, but must unlock alternative races, weapons, and appearances using credits earned by defending territory and scoring bonuses for things like headshots, consecutive survivals, and weapon, tech, and biotic kills.  It’s enjoyable, if a bit quaint, and it’s a much more seamless transition than one might have expected.  It avoids the “ability selection” problem, for example, by limiting each character to three active abilities, each mapped to a single button.  Bioware has also been running various “challenges” on the weekends, offering bonuses to experience or credits for certain feats or achievements in the multiplayer levels.

This review would be incomplete if it did not address the fiery controversy that has emerged on the Internet surrounding Mass Effect 3’s ending.  If you have not played the game, and intend to do so, I recommend you skip the rest of the review and return once you have played through it at least once yourself.  In case that was unclear, HERE BE SPOILERS!  Okay?  Okay.  The ending of Mass Effect 3 has come under heavy fire from players who criticized it for a lack of closure, an illusion of choice, and a deficiency of cutscenes.  Many players reached the Citadel at the end of the game, deliberated painfully over their three choices, and were then hugely disappointed when they learned that regardless of the fate they chose for the Reapers and the galaxy, the game showed them the same ending.  The fan community has been so vocal, in fact, that they elicited a special announcement from Bioware co-founder Dr. Ray Muzyka promising to dedicate a team to examine the issue and, eventually, release additional content to clarify, if not change, the game’s ending.  Although specific complaints vary by plaintiff and medium, the consensus is one of overall dissatisfaction.  People have finished this game with more questions than answers, which is unfulfilling and makes us feel cheated.  The game also ends rather abruptly, with no real concept of a final “boss battle” to which gamers have become so accustomed.

A vocal minority has criticized Muzyka’s acknowledgement of what they deem “immature whining.”  By responding to it, they say, Bioware validates and lends credibility to a “spoiled” demographic of videogame consumers.  They cite examples such as J.J. Abrams’ wildly popular television series “Lost,” or the HBO drama “The Sopranos,” both of which wrapped up their series in controversial ways, but ignored criticism to maintain artistic integrity. I tend to agree with this group, although I still have some critical opinions of the game’s conclusion.  Namely, I felt that we lacked individual closure.  I finished the game wondering what happened to… well, anyone, really.  The game is in such a hurry to fast forward to Shepard becoming a legend that it doesn’t stop to show what became of anyone Shepard knew, or even the races s/he spent the game working to unite.  Allow me to demonstrate what I would have liked to see with a dramatized list of things that I did not see during the last sixty minutes or so of the game:

The player is never rewarded for recruiting the krogan, for example, with an epic cutscene of battlemasters charging into lines of cannibals and marauders on the streets of London. We never get to see Jack and her team scaling Big Ben, launching biotic artillery strikes from the burnt out clock tower from the very first trailer.  We never see turian fighter squadrons strafing Reaper lines, or quarian marines engineering massive explosions to cut off Reaper forces from vulnerable flanking positions.  We never see Samara in the center of a horde of husks, blowing them apart with her biotics and going head-to-head with a banshee in an epic confrontation similar to the masterfully choreographed battle with Morinth in ME2.  We are afforded only the briefest glimpse of asari and quarian dreadnoughts laying in to Reapers with their main guns in high orbit.  We never see rachni warriors giving giant bug-hugs to Reaper brutes.  Where were the asari commandos?  Where were the geth Primes?  The Drell wetwork teams?  The elcor armored infantry divisions?  (I confess the last is, perhaps, more of a personal fantasy than a legitimate demand- but how can you promise elephant people with gun turrets on their backs in the codex and then not deliver?)  Even if every single individual was ultimately overrun and every team defeated, at least we would have seen the fruits of our efforts throughout the game (and in some cases, the entire series).

If I had seen all, or even some, of that, I would be far readier to accept whatever ending Bioware wanted to feed me.  We all knew that this was going to be huge, and that Shepard’s survival was unlikely at best.  But the ending really upsets us, I feel, because so much was left merely implied, up to our imagination to fill in the gaps.  The ending sequence of ME2 felt much more climactic and epic, if somewhat less desperate.  We get a brief scene of the Normandy crash-landing on some green planet (not Earth by the enormous moon/planet visible in the sky) and a few seemingly-random crewmembers with Joker.  But that’s it.  I’m not upset that the galaxy has changed forever- how couldn’t it?  But what happened to the dénouement?

Stay tuned to ScreenFix for a more in-depth article on the nature of narrative in videogames and the construction of Mass Effect 3’s story in particular.  Please share your own thoughts on the thrilling conclusion to the Mass Effect trilogy in the comments- though we do ask that you refrain from turning this into yet another battleground over the ending controversy.