BIOWAAAAAAAAAARREEEEE
Mar. 16th, 2012 08:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alias_sqbrSo I just finished Mass Effect 3. I think it was brilliant. But also VERY BIOWARE.
Thoughts under the cut, so very very spoilery. Also very self indulgent, it's all feelings about the ending and my Shepard. Because I am full of feelings right now.
SPOOOOOOOIIIIILLLLLLEEEERRRRRSSSSSSS
Man I am so full of adrenalin right now, I just finished playing for like...ten hours? Something ridiculous. Died a couple of times, just often enough to make me extra keyed up but not enough to make it go sour and make me feel crappy.
Ok. So this Shepard was designed to make bad decisions in character. Because I always make bad decisions on first playthroughs, so I thought I might as well come to terms with it. She is kind, and compassionate, believes in honour and the basic goodness of people, but has also experienced a lot of pain and done terrible things. She knows that sometimes you have to make the hard choices, but she clings to her...love I guess. Yes. This Shepard is full of love, for everyone. And so by the end of the game she was pretty broken.
She loved Kaiden and Liara, and had to choose, so she chose Kaidan, and he abandoned her in hour hour of need. She loved her team on Akuze and it hurt every time people reminded her of their deaths. She could deal with small scale death, accepted it as part of her lot as a soldier, but the idea of genocide, of death on a large scale, was completely intolerable. Not. On. Her. Watch. She ALWAYS chose the "not genocide" option, no matter how dangerous, no matter how many people told her no. She saved the Rachni Queen, she saved Wrex, she let anyone who begged forgiveness go, she trusted everyone who had been controlled by Cerberus or the Reapers even though they might have been indoctrinated. But she knew that her choices were just as likely to result in the deaths of innocents as any other, had already done so, and that there was no way for her to be innocent.
The reason she romanced Thane in Mass Effect 2 was that he understood her: he did not value death, did not take joy in it's giving, but saw himself as an instrument of powers bigger than himself. (She empathised with Samara too, all three of them had the same calm melancholy, though Shepard was slightly perkier) He saw the pain and ugliness inside her and accepted it without celebrating it. And then, of course, he died. Like Kelly and Ashley and so many others. His final act was to request forgiveness from the gods for Shepard's actions, past and future.
The game repeatedly brought up themes of death, of endings. So much had been destroyed, so much death, so many sacrifices, and all of it probably for nothing. She loved the people of Earth, the planet itself, all the people she'd met, and so many of them were dead.
And so of course she chose to destroy herself in the end, to sacrifice herself, because she would never, ever willingly choose genocide. There always has to be another way.
I, as a player, was happy with this outcome for about ten minutes, until I added![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
masseffect back to my reading list and started reading through people's responses, specifically this one. And now I feel Shepard levels of melancholy, which is very much in keeping with her character and story. I had a feeling something like this would happen, Paragon choices were working out for me way too often. And I just knew, deep down, that Shepard was going to die. But it's the choice she would make.
EDIT: Oh god and if I DON'T choose "control" I'm going to kill EDI and the geth. I don't want to kill EDI and the geth ;_; ;_;
I will probably make a more coherent and less introspective squee post (I got to end the genophage! And see Tali drunk! And make out with sexy female British scientists! SO MUCH AWESOME) but right now I'm not in the space for it.
Thoughts under the cut, so very very spoilery. Also very self indulgent, it's all feelings about the ending and my Shepard. Because I am full of feelings right now.
SPOOOOOOOIIIIILLLLLLEEEERRRRRSSSSSSS
Man I am so full of adrenalin right now, I just finished playing for like...ten hours? Something ridiculous. Died a couple of times, just often enough to make me extra keyed up but not enough to make it go sour and make me feel crappy.
Ok. So this Shepard was designed to make bad decisions in character. Because I always make bad decisions on first playthroughs, so I thought I might as well come to terms with it. She is kind, and compassionate, believes in honour and the basic goodness of people, but has also experienced a lot of pain and done terrible things. She knows that sometimes you have to make the hard choices, but she clings to her...love I guess. Yes. This Shepard is full of love, for everyone. And so by the end of the game she was pretty broken.
She loved Kaiden and Liara, and had to choose, so she chose Kaidan, and he abandoned her in hour hour of need. She loved her team on Akuze and it hurt every time people reminded her of their deaths. She could deal with small scale death, accepted it as part of her lot as a soldier, but the idea of genocide, of death on a large scale, was completely intolerable. Not. On. Her. Watch. She ALWAYS chose the "not genocide" option, no matter how dangerous, no matter how many people told her no. She saved the Rachni Queen, she saved Wrex, she let anyone who begged forgiveness go, she trusted everyone who had been controlled by Cerberus or the Reapers even though they might have been indoctrinated. But she knew that her choices were just as likely to result in the deaths of innocents as any other, had already done so, and that there was no way for her to be innocent.
The reason she romanced Thane in Mass Effect 2 was that he understood her: he did not value death, did not take joy in it's giving, but saw himself as an instrument of powers bigger than himself. (She empathised with Samara too, all three of them had the same calm melancholy, though Shepard was slightly perkier) He saw the pain and ugliness inside her and accepted it without celebrating it. And then, of course, he died. Like Kelly and Ashley and so many others. His final act was to request forgiveness from the gods for Shepard's actions, past and future.
The game repeatedly brought up themes of death, of endings. So much had been destroyed, so much death, so many sacrifices, and all of it probably for nothing. She loved the people of Earth, the planet itself, all the people she'd met, and so many of them were dead.
And so of course she chose to destroy herself in the end, to sacrifice herself, because she would never, ever willingly choose genocide. There always has to be another way.
I, as a player, was happy with this outcome for about ten minutes, until I added
masseffect back to my reading list and started reading through people's responses, specifically this one. And now I feel Shepard levels of melancholy, which is very much in keeping with her character and story. I had a feeling something like this would happen, Paragon choices were working out for me way too often. And I just knew, deep down, that Shepard was going to die. But it's the choice she would make. EDIT: Oh god and if I DON'T choose "control" I'm going to kill EDI and the geth. I don't want to kill EDI and the geth ;_; ;_;
I will probably make a more coherent and less introspective squee post (I got to end the genophage! And see Tali drunk! And make out with sexy female British scientists! SO MUCH AWESOME) but right now I'm not in the space for it.
