Filling Swiss Cheese: Explaining ME3's Ending Without Indoctrination Theory

Okay, once again, I'm going to write about the ending of Mass Effect 3. Before anyone starts groaning, this time I have a little bit of a different angle to take. This time, I'm going to attempt to give my own alternative to the Indoctrination Theory, in which I attempt to explain the ending as-is without resorting to the idea that it was all a dream. Naturally, your mileage may vary on this, and it's a difficult task to undertake considering the massive Swiss cheese of plotholes, but I think I do a decent job.

Without having to go into too much detail for those of my readers who are unfamiliar with the games, just before the game reaches its climax, the protagonist, Commander Shepard, and his/her team recapture an ancient virtual intelligence, or VI, a sort of computer that behaves to mimic intelligence for ease of interface but is not actually intelligent, that contains information on where the MacGuffin, known as the Catalyst, is located. Supposedly, the MacGuffin is the key component to a super weapon, referred to as the Crucible, of ancient design intended to be used against the Reapers, the ancient, synthetic entities assaulting the galaxy.

Mind you, up to this point, the Catalyst is simply a MacGuffin. It is nothing more and nothing less; so far as we, the audience, have been informed, the Catalyst is just a plot device meant to be used with the Crucible to stop the Reapers. Up until now, no one even knows what they actually do, let alone what they are, so we're kind of just meant to accept them at face value as plot devices. The Crucible, for further explanation, has supposedly been constructed by different civilizations over numerous Reaper cycles, the period of approximately 50,000 years between when the Reapers arrive and wipe out civilization, and it has never been completed, essentially meaning that you have numerous civilizations attempting to build it in the hopes that it might save them. Such behavior is nonsensical, but plausible enough that I can work with it.

The VI reveals that the Catalyst is, in fact, the Citadel, a huge space station/city in the Serpent Nebula that has served for thousands of cycles as a sort of "galactic capital", with no one really knowing its origins. It even serves in the game as the main hub from which the player can find side missions and purchase goods. It is then revealed that a major antagonist, "the Illusive Man", affectionately referred to by fans as "TIM", who runs a secret organization, Cerberus, devoted to "furthering the goals of Humanity", has informed the Reapers that Shepard has obtained the VI and is now aware of the Catalyst's identity/location. It is not clear how TIM managed to communicate with the Reapers directly, but since it's obvious at this point that he's been Indoctrinated, despite not knowing it himself, we can assume the Reapers were willing to listen, if, indeed, they even needed to speak. Whatever the means, Shepard is then informed that the Citadel has been moved to Earth's orbit.

Now, here is where the first major plot hole enters into the ending. Why Earth? Why do the Reapers suddenly, discovering that their greatest foe has discovered the secret to defeating them, immediately take the Citadel to the human homeworld? Isn't that just a little TOO convenient? Well, in a sense, yes, it is a little too convenient, but it is also explainable. Earth was the second planet the Reapers assaulted directly, and we already know the reason for this. In fact, the only reason it wasn't the first was because the Reapers essentially had to fly through Batarian space just to get there, so they, of course, proceeded to start destroying the Batarians on the way. The reason they target Earth is exactly because it is the human homeworld.

Let me put it this way: you are an entity several hundreds of thousands of years old. In all those hundreds of thousands of years, you've never once even been scratched by another living being. Then, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, some little bug comes along and pokes out your eye. In this analogy, you are the Reapers and Shepard is the bug. In the first Mass Effect, Shepard managed to do what had never been done -- EVER -- by preventing the Reapers' arrival when the Reaper Sovereign attempted to open a Mass Relay, a form of extremely rapid faster-than-light travel, in the middle of the Citadel. In the second game, Shepard manages to lead a team into the heart of the galaxy and either capture or destroy a human Reaper (I'd attempt to explain this one, but it'd really take way too much time than I have for writing and you have for reading to be worth it). So, yes, the Reapers have every reason to think that humans are special, as it is a human that has managed to be the only being in hundreds of thousands of years that could manage to make them rethink their strategy.

So, in that case, why bring the Catalyst straight to Earth? Why not take it somewhere out of the way? Well, I can answer that question with a single word: Harbinger. Harbinger is the oldest known Reaper, effectively the oldest living thing in the known universe, and is, arguably, the leader of the Reapers. Little is known about the Reapers and their origins, but there are a few things that we can say for sure, and especially about Harbinger in particular. Harbinger has an almost fetishistic desire to oversee its plans personally, as we hear over and over again when it "assumes control" of various minions in the second game. Harbinger gets a hard-on for doing the most important jobs itself, which makes its minimal role in Mass Effect 3 seem all the more bizarre, but, well, for arguments' sake I'm taking this for what it is. It makes sense, then, that if Harbinger wants to protect something, it would keep whatever it wants to protect as close by as possible. And, if Harbinger wants to destroy something, it would either be there for its destruction or assume control of something that is. In short, Harbinger would be at Earth in order to destroy humanity, and the Citadel would be at Earth because Harbinger would want to be able to personally keep an eye on it.

We now return to our stupid-ass ending, already in progress. After using the combined fleets he/she has gathered from around the galaxy, Shepard breaks through the Reapers in orbit around Earth, making it possible for the Shepard's ship, the Normandy, to dispatch a landing party. With Shepard in the lead, the landing party break through the front lines and establish a forward position near the space below the Citadel's geosynchronous orbit over London. Alliance troops line up for a final run toward what the military leaders refer to as a "conduit", a weird beam of light running from the ground up into the Citadel. What is the conduit? The only explanation I can come up with is that it is some sort of built in function of the Citadel designed to hold it in geosynchronous orbit. Alliance troops, including Shepard and his/her mentor, Admiral David Anderson, charge the conduit on foot in a momentary bout of stupidity, and after fighting off a massive onslaught of Reaper-created monstrosities, are met with none other than our old friend Harbinger in the sky, who proceeds to blast the crap out of Shepard and the remaining soldiers with a death ray, and Shepard blacks out. That's it for Harbinger. Thanks for the cameo!

Shepard awakens right where he/she blacked out, armor decimated, limping and down to just a pistol to fight off the remaining Reaper forces, all the troops in the immediate area dead or dying. Radio chatter reveals that everyone is dead, giving the order to all remaining soldiers to retreat. Shepard limps on toward the conduit, bravely shooting down a few weak enemies. Finally, Shepard makes it to the conduit and... is transported upward, into the Citadel. Apparently it functions as beaming technology, too. Who knew? Finding him/herself in a dark chamber among the bodies of thousands of people who didn't manage to escape the Citadel before the Reapers claimed it, and discovers Anderson is on the Citadel somehow too via radio communication. Shepard limps forward, meets Anderson, who is also badly wounded, at a terminal that they hope can be used to open the arms of the Citadel in order to let the Crucible in. In walks TIM, to reveal that he thinks it would be much better to CONTROL the Reapers than to destroy them, and he proceeds to begin controlling Shepard and Anderson, forcing Shepard to shoot Anderson in the left abdomen.

Here is where we meet our next major plot hole. If TIM is actually Indoctrinated, how is it that he is able to seemingly control Shepard and Anderson through Indoctrination? This is simple, naturally. TIM is a puppet of the Reapers, and the Reapers are in full control. He only thinks he has free will because the Reapers let him. Meanwhile, the Reapers exert their own control on Shepard and Anderson, killing to birds with one stone: Shepard and Anderson are reminded of the power the Reapers hold, and TIM continues to be a willing pawn doing the Reapers' bidding without even being aware. The alternative in this scenario would be the Reapers attacking directly, but they would deem this too dangerous because it would risk damaging the Catalyst. More on that in a minute.

We continue to go through an exchange in which TIM tries to convince Shepard that his plan of controlling the Reapers is the best plan and can work. This ends either with Shepard shooting TIM to save Anderson or Shepard managing to convince TIM that he's been indoctrinated, at which point TIM realizes the only way out is to kill himself, which he promptly does.

Shepard and Anderson then have a moment to chat, both exhausted from their wounds. This is the one redeeming feature of the ending, in my opinion, and I think most people agree with me. It's a touching moment in which Shepard and his/her father figure throughout the trilogy get to have a real heart-to-heart connection, both sure of their own impending deaths. Indeed, Anderson, a moment later, quietly passes on with Shepard looking on solemnly.

Some people point to a fresh, bleeding wound in Shepards left abdomen as evidence of Shepard's Indoctrination. The argument, in this case, usually points out that it's the same location that Shepard shot Anderson, claiming Anderson represents Shepard's resistance to Indoctrination and that Shepard is, in fact, shooting him/herself. This, of course, requires you to assume that Anderson is, in fact, a representation of Shepard's subconscious, which is at the very least as large a leap to make as simply making the assumption that Shepard accidentally reopened an earlier wound in via stress.

The radio then crackles to life again and we hear the voice of Admiral Hackett, who asks if Shepard can hear him and proceeds to say that the arms of the Citadel still aren't open and they need to be if there is to be any hope of getting the Crucible inside. Some people question how Hackett could know Shepard was on the Citadel if everyone supposedly died in the charge to the conduit, but I don't bother with this one too much. It's a relatively minor plot hole, and can easily be explained away with a handwave, ie. something about trackers being placed on all Alliance soldiers or something. Yes, such handwaves are cheap, but they exist because they are easy explanations for minor detail issues.

Shepard opens the arms of the Citadel, and the Crucible floats in. Hackett's voice over the radio informs us that nothing's happening and the problem must be on Shepard's end. This is when any idea that the ending was at least decent firmly plants itself in the crapper and proceeds to flush itself down into the municipal water system of Dumbassville. Suddenly, a patch of floor beneath Shepard's feet begins to levitate into the air, lifting Shepard up to a level above the terminal that apparently no one noticed was up there. Dogs CAN look up, but apparently every other species in the galaxy seems to have lost this ability. And what is there to welcome Shepard to this hidden chamber of one of the most populous locales in the known universe? Why, the Catalyst, of course! Wait... what? Yes, you heard right, that MacGuffin we've been chasing all this time is, in fact, a fully sentient AI that has been literally beneath your feet the entire time.

The Catalyst appears to Shepard in the form of a ghostly image, the shape of a young boy Shepard witnessed being killed by the Reapers on Earth, and has haunted Shepard's dreams throughout the game. There might be lots of things open to interpretation in this ending, but one thing has been made almost painfully clear by BioWare: the boy is intended to represent all the people Shepard could not save. Why the Catalyst chooses to present itself this way is anyone's guess, but it must be able to read Shepard's mind in order for this explanation to work. Considering that the Reapers are established to be able to control people's minds absolutely, it is not a huge leap in logic to assume that similar technology could be used to read minds.

Now here's where things get complicated. The Catalyst proceeds to explain to Shepard that it controls the Reapers, and that the Reapers exist in order to harvest organic civilizations and preserve them as Reapers every 50,000 years in order to prevent organics from developing synthetic life that will inevitably destroy organic life. Naturally, this notion is ridiculously circular logic, but their is a sort of brilliance behind it that I have worked out. This brilliance, of course, even if it proved true, would never counter the execution so bad it could only have been written by a drunk chimpanzee, but it does make sense. First, the Reapers claim to have more-or-less always existed. They claim to have witnessed synthetics destroying organics. Indeed, they even claim to have originally been victims of this tragedy. That's the first step in the equation. The Reapers have seen this happen, and work to prevent it from occurring again.

From that, we can suppose that, much in the same way that the Reapers "harvest" organics and preserve them as Reapers, the Reapers were, themselves, originally organics. This is the easy conclusion we make in this. It gets more complicated from here. The Catalyst claims to control the Reapers. Some people believe this to be contradictory to the idea that the Reapers are artificial intelligence, but it is and it isn't. The Reapers are still intelligent and capable of acting on their own, but that does not make the Catalyst's claim of controlling them a lie. We could suppose that the Catalyst was the central control of the Reaper cycle, maintaining their purpose and directing them to perform their tasks, but that it somehow lost control. The Reapers, for sake of argument, began to act against the will of the Catalyst.

Why would this system exist? Well, I take a large part of the inspiration for this theory from the conflict between the Geth, another artificial intelligence in the Mass Effect universe, and their creators, the Quarians. Much like the Geth, the first Reapers were created but feared by those among their creators that did not understand them. This resulted in a war that ultimately led to the destruction of the organic species that created the first Reapers. Much as the Geth remained mostly loyal to the Quarians even though they would fight for their own survival, the Reapers would be upset at the loss of their creators, so they begin a process of maintaining the galaxy in their stead. They create the Catalyst to function as a form of central computer to observe and guide their efforts, but over time the Reapers begin to slowly deviate from their original intentions. After witnessing further wars between organics and synthetics, they draw the conclusion that destruction is inevitable and begin the cycles as we see them in the Mass Effect games.

That leaves one major plot hole, however: the Crucible. How is it that a device, designed, added onto and constructed over numerous cycles, could ever perfectly connect to the Catalyst and manage to carry out a function? The answer comes from the only possibility: the Crucible was originally designed by the Reapers themselves. The Reapers are not stupid. They might do things that seem ridiculous to humans, but they never do them because they just weren't thinking. Everything they do is done with specific intent, even when that intent is flawed. The Reapers foresaw the possibility that they would become the very thing they hoped to prevent, so they designed a failsafe, the Crucible, to be used in order to stop them from destroying everything. The core design of the Crucible was the necessary function, but the added devices managed to modify its use, both empowering it and adding additional capabilities, such as being able to control the Reapers directly or to take a template and imprint that template on all life in the galaxy, thus explaining the differing results of the ending.

The rest is mostly little details that can be explained with handwaves, and I really don't feel like going into every little thing. I think I've covered the major points here. Again, a lot of speculation goes into it, but I don't think it requires any more assumptions than the Indoctrination Theory. In essence, it's a sort of Murphy's Law counter to IT more than a "better explanation". It does no better of a job tying all the plot holes together, just ties them together differently. It doesn't change the sheer massive fail that is the ending, but it is an alternative perspective.

Can "Mass Effect 3: Extended Cut" Fix the Ending?

So, this morning BioWare announced "Mass Effect 3: Extended Cut", a free downloadable content extension to the ending of the game that is supposed to help clarify some of the things people were confused about as well as provide closure through " additional cinematic sequences and epilogue scenes," due to be released sometime this summer. These words suggest to me that what I wrote the other day is correct: the so-called "Indoctrination Theory" is wrong. The ending we got is, for better or worse, exactly as bad as it seems.

So, now that we have some idea of what BioWare is doing to address the concerns of the fans, will it manage to satisfy those who have been so angered? Maybe. BioWare's founder and CEO, Dr. Ray Muzyka, has stated that he believes they've managed to find the right balance between addressing the biggest issues the fans had with the ending, while also maintaining the "artistic integrity" of the team (I put "artistic integrity" in quotes mainly just because I don't think the original ending had much "integrity" in it at all).

First, we have the problem of the destruction of the Mass Relays themselves. It is established canon in Mass Effect, starting with the Arrival DLC for Mass Effect 2, and reaffirmed in the Codex in Mass Effect 3 itself, that rupturing a Mass Relay will release an amount of energy roughly equivalent to a star roughly the size of our sun going supernova. This would mean that destroying ALL the Mass Relays throughout the Milky Way would cause untold amounts of destruction, becoming, effectively, galactic genocide. Now, since the energy released during the ending of ME3 is a special color, we might assume that this is somehow a special case that would NOT cause said destruction. This leads to another problem, however: galactic populations and the importance of trade.

There are two significant species in the Mass Effect universe, the Turians and the Quarians, whose biology is based upon dextro-amino acids, as opposed to levo-amino acids, which almost every other sentient species in the galaxy is based on (yes, including humans). Now, at the ending of the game, when the Mass Relays are destroyed, huge numbers of the military force of both of these species, and perhaps even the entirety of the Quarians in the galaxy, are in the Sol system, on or orbiting Earth. Dextro-based lifeforms cannot subsist on levo-based foods, and it is almost unheard of that the two would be found in the same star system, meaning that neither of these two species would be able to survive indefinitely in our solar system. Since the Mass Relays are the only means of traveling rapidly across the galaxy, that leaves only conventional Faster-Than-Light travel, meaning that if they started traveling immediately, it could be years, perhaps even decades, before they reach a star system with any renewable food sources.

Now, even worse than the idea that these two huge fleets would starve to death is the idea that, with so many billions of people of all different species stranded in the Sol system, which has only one habitable planet, how could all those people survive long on such limited resources? It seems inevitable that war will break out sooner or later as groups begin fighting for survival against starvation, unless they can manage to discover the technology to build Mass Relays on their own REALLY fast.

These are just the BIGGEST issues I feel would have to be addressed in an "extended" ending. There are others, but those are the biggest, and certainly not the only ones that would need to be there for me to feel like it's even worth it. Other issues include:

The fate of your crew. The crew of the Normandy includes a Turian and a Quarian, who, along with the rest of the crew, are stranded on an uninhabited garden world. Either the life on that planet is levo based, in which case both those characters will inevitably starve to death if they don't die of an allergic reaction first, or it is dextro based, which means everyone else will starve to death.

The Catalyst and the Crucible. It is still entirely unexplained how the two devices, built hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years apart with no prior knowledge of the existence of the other, become somehow compatible. Did the Reapers design the initial version of the Crucible? Is the Catalyst just magic? The convenience of this is never even mentioned, let alone explained.

The Reapers. So, the Reapers were created to harvest organic life every 50,000 years before it can develop synthetic life that will destroy them? Ignoring the circular logic there for a moment, what exactly does that mean? Who created them to do this? Does this mean they just ignore the Geth, an already existing synthetic lifeform? More than that, they actually through the course of the game EMPOWER the Geth by providing them with more advanced technology. If synthetic life is so dangerous, why make them MORE dangerous? Furthermore, if the Catalyst "controls" the Reapers, as it says it does, does that mean the Reapers are not really AI because they have no free will? By extension, since the Catalyst is all of a sudden able to do something differently but can't (or won't) do so on its own, does that mean that it isn't truly an AI? I have my own theories, but they are all based entirely on conjecture at this point. While some things can be vague, things being too vague can just become ridiculous.

And finally, pardon my French, but what the fuck is "Synergy?" In the Synergy ending, in which all life, synthetic and organic, are supposed to be merged somehow to create a "perfect evolution" somewhere between the two. What does that mean? We see that the Normandy's crew, climbing out of the crashed ship, now have glowing green "circuitry" on their skin, including EDI, who was already a machine, so are we to assume that the green "circuitry" is also somehow representative of organic life? Does it flow with glowing, digital sap?

Okay, that last one is just me ranting a little bit, and I really don't care that much, but it does feel nice to just let my mind screw around with it. As for the rest, though, these are legitimate concerns I have. I could accept an expanded ending if it at least addresses these clear problems. It doesn't need to be perfect, but I would at least like to know if these major questions can be answered. If not, then it will just seem like a Band-Aid on a bullet wound.

Why I Think the Indoctrination Theory is Bullshit

So, there is a major theory regarding the ending to Mass Effect 3 that has been making its way around the Internets that attempts to claim that the ending is actually so clever it just goes over people's heads. It is explained in detail in a long video on YouTube, but for those with ADHD who don't have time or energy to watch the whole video, I'll attempt to sum it up.

Essentially, the theory claims that the protagonist of the game, Commander Shepard, is experiencing the process of Reaper Indoctrination. Indoctrination, in this sense, is a literal form of technological mind-control that, with prolonged exposure, makes it essentially impossible for an individual to fight the Reapers, and usually results in active, even willing, servitude to them. The events in the final moments of the game are essentially hallucinations brought on by the finalizing of Shepard's Indoctrination, and the ending cinematic after Shepard makes his/her choice is, essentially, hopeful visions of the future rather than an actual conclusion.

Many people have argued for or against the truth to this claim, and I personally am of the opinion that there is some truth to it. That does not, however, mean that it is in any way brilliant or even fully true. I have a feeling that the intention behind it is somewhere in the middle.

The game's developers have hinted as much by saying they were trying to make an ending that would be talked about for a long time (and Obi-Wan told Luke his father was dead, but that's another story). This suggests, so far as I can guess, that they intended for things to be a bit vague, and if they wanted to be vague, Indoctrination would have been the way to go. Ever since the very first game, Indoctrination has been known to be something that causes hallucinations and can cause people to guess what is and is not real. In fact, I would go so far as to say that would have been an ending truly worthy of the word "awesome." It would have been a brilliant plot twist worthy of high praise. However, it isn't.

My reasoning for this is twofold. First, there are major flaws in the logic used to explain the theory. First, of the three options the player is given at the end of the game, the one that supposedly would be the only choice in which Shepard actually resists the Indoctrination is the only one available no matter what. In the game, you have to gather War Assets in preparation for the final fight against the Reapers. You earn an Effective War Asset value, and the higher it is, the better the ending is supposed to be. The theory claims that the choice of "controlling" the Reapers or "merging all organic and synthetic life" are, supposedly, the wrong choices and would indicate Shepard giving in to the Indoctrination. However, those options are only presented at all if your Effective War Assets are high enough. The supposedly correct choice, "destroying all synthetic life," is the only one available no matter how low your score might be. It makes little sense that the options offered would provide no reward at all for doing better. The only part of this that would suggest truth to the Indoctrination Theory is that, if your score is low enough, you actually wind up destroying all life in the galaxy, not just synthetic life. It's never explained why that would be, so my only guess would be that there weren't enough scientists working to complete the Crucible and fix certain flaws. Regardless, it doesn't make sense that it would be the only option the Catalyst offers, because it would be directly counter to the Reapers' goals, both if what the Catalyst says is taken at face value and if it is, in fact, lying, since it would destroy the Reapers as well.

The second reason I think the Indoctrination Theory is wrong is my issue with the claim that it is somehow "so brilliant" that it just "goes over our heads." Perhaps it does go over our heads, but that does not mean it is brilliant. In fact, I would argue that the reason it fails is exactly because it goes over our heads. It comes down to a matter of understanding the audience. It is wise not to fall into the trap of thinking your audience is stupid, but it is also important to avoid the idea that your audience is too smart. Part of the reason the Indoctrination Theory has become so popular is because it fills in all the blanks. Unfortunately, the fact that there are so many blanks is a problem in and of itself: it is exactly the same as the "God of the Gaps" argument, in which one makes a claim that something is true because there is no other reasonable explanation for things we don't know. In essence, it's trying to justify things that can't otherwise be explained by drawing inferences and conjecture based on clues that are sketchy at best. In fact, some of the "clues" cited in the video are SO sketchy, it is arguable whether they were even things anyone ever intended to be noticed at all, including one-off lines from the first Mass Effect game that are so vague they could be interpreted almost any way one likes and may not even have any connection at all.

Occam's Razor, which can be paraphrased as "the simplest explanation is usually the correct one," leads me to conclude that, in fact, the idea that the Indoctrination Theory is true is based so much on conjecture and speculation that, while it might be the only explanation that accounts for all the plot holes and continuity errors, it is little more than grasping at straws at best. In short, even though the ideas proposed in it might be very clever, if it is, in fact, true, then it is so ineptly executed as to cancel out any genius inherent in its conception. In fact, in this case, it would go so far as to undermine any brilliance, as has been seen in the many blogs, videos, magazine articles, etc., that have analyzed the ending.

The Ending Must Not Be Abstract

Fiction is about characters. There are many styles of writing, and many ways to tell a story, but in order for the audience to connect on an emotional level, the story must be about characters. Not in the abstract sense, either: if the audience is to feel something about the story, they must be able to relate to the story, and that means there must be people that the audience likes.

Without likable, relatable characters that the audience can invest in, the story becomes little more than a thought experiment. This, I think, is the largest part of why Mass Effect 3's ending was so unsatisfying: it disconnected from the characters that held us in the story so much that it became abstract and lost its connection to the people who clearly cared so much. The choice provided at the end of the game makes for an interesting thought experiment in which the player is asked to think of what the implications of their choice might be, but at the end of the day, it was the characters that held the player's interest. They were likable and many players would go so far as to claim they even fell in love with them, and to have their fate glossed over in a broad few seconds of footage showing that they essentially had "not died in a crash landing" does little to resolve the concerns of the fans who had grown so attached.

This is an important lesson for writing in general, but I believe video game designers in particular should take note. The investment people give in a story in which they make key decisions and literally become involved in the outcomes such as this means that people will make attachments that become difficult to disentangle. Even in a tragedy, it is relieving to know that the characters you sought to aid would have not died in vain. To rush past all this and pretend that it was just about "saving the world" or "fighting the enemy" misses the point of having a story altogether. While some games, such as games heavily focused on multiplayer deathmatches like Team Fortress, can get away with minimal focus on plot, it is notable that to create a game that is heavily focused on storytelling such as BioWare tends to make, you cannot simply pretend the players will not care about the characters.

A great example to look at is Halo: Reach. While the game is heavily focused on action, it does have a well thought-out story in the single-player campaign. In particular [spoiler alert, for those of you who care and have had your heads stuck in the sand], it is relevant in that the story IS a tragedy that does end with the protagonists, including the player's character, dying in battle. While I had actually bought the game to play with a friend, I found myself deeply involved in the story and the characters. They had likable personalities, unique quirks, and, above all, they were watching MY back. Not just each others', but MINE. That is a key thing that you don't get in any other medium: not only do these people become likable personalities, but they can become people you TRUST, in spite of being fictional.

The ending, in contrast to Mass Effect 3, is sad, but not disappointing. That is a key thing that is so often missed by critics of the fans' complaints: it is NOT about wanting a happy ending; it is about wanting an ending that feels like an ending. Noble Team, in Halo: Reach, dies off throughout the course of the story while fighting to get critical strategic resources safely off-world, as well as helping to get the people evacuated. Yes, they die, but they die fighting for a chance. Even if they hadn't succeeded in securing the cargo they needed onto a transport, it would have meant something that they died fighting.

By comparison, it is also possible to have a happy ending that is totally meaningless. Deus Ex Machina, a narrative device in which something or someone shows up to save the day without the need of the heroes' help, is not always a poor plot development when used sparingly, but it is an easy one to misuse. If victory is achieved and the heroes did not struggle, had no triumph of their own, then the ending will feel hollow because it is disconnected from the characters themselves. This often comes directly into gameplay when it comes to video games: there is a fine line to walk between cinematic immersion and technical gameplay. On the one hand, gameplay can seem rather dull from a storytelling perspective. Fighting a boss is often more instinct than drama. On the other hand, it can feel incredibly disappointing if you had a boss you wanted to fight and instead it was relegated to a simple cutscene in which your character performs a spectacular move.

To put it all together: a satisfying ending in fiction must include the characters heavily. While it is interesting to explore complicated ideas in science fiction, it is always abstract if not viewed through the eyes of characters we have come to identify with. The ending must include triumph of some kind, even if that "triumph" is emotional instead of literal, such as dying in battle failing your mission; the "triumph," in this example, being that the character did not succumb to despair even when all hope for success was crushed. It is the "triumph" that brings catharsis to the audience, and without that catharsis we find ourselves left hanging as though the final episode of our favorite tv show never saw the light of day. You'll never know what happened to the characters you were so worried about, and now you don't only have to mourn the show but to do so knowing that you will be left on a cliffhanger forever.

Mass Effect is the Gaming Industry's Star Wars

I recently watched a video that made the argument for a positive side to all the drama over the lackluster (to use the understatement of the century) ending to Mass Effect 3. The argument Jim Sterling makes in the video is that, regardless of what your thoughts might be on the ending or the ENORMOUS outcry over it, the outrage, itself, is a good thing. That Mass Effect can generate such a loud and even potentially destructive response means that, regardless of the "destruction" people might see to video games as an art form or the possibly demeaning behavior of some fans, means that video games have officially made it as a legitimate entertainment industry. And, you know what? He's right.

I have argued for years that Mass Effect is the video game world's Star Wars: an epic that manages to be both a critical success as well as having, no pun intended, mass appeal. It's a trilogy with spectacular action; enjoyable, innovative gameplay; clearly identified heroes and villains; but it also has thought provoking themes; a memorable, likable cast of characters; exploration of choice and consequences; and explorations of morality beyond the simple black-and-white of "good and evil." It is, like Star Wars, not the first blockbuster in its medium, but it is one that has set a standard going forward by which others will attempt to imitate.

Of course, Mass Effect being the video game world's Star Wars, comes with the obvious downside: Mass Effect is the video game world's Star Wars. Along with all the great things about Star Wars, there is a definite dark side (once again, no pun intended) to the fandom. With that level of success, you inevitably open up a Pandora's box of criticisms, with fans who have been around longer believing themselves to be the "true fans," newer fans feeling they have a better understanding of the series, and of course, people who, no matter what is done, will always feel they had better ideas and be upset when those are not the outcome they get. There is also, inevitably, fan fiction written to "fix" the problems their writers perceive in content.

This is all, normally, manageable, as in the case of the Star Wars prequels, which are generally seen as of significantly less quality than the original trilogy, but still accepted, if somewhat begrudgingly, as canon. Individual complaints about midichlorians, poor acting, excessively padded screenplays, too many digital special effects or what-have-you are ultimately pushed to the fringe and the movies themselves become a central part of the Star Wars universe. This is, largely, the case with Mass Effect, too, with one small caveat: the ending is SO poorly written that even professional writers have come out claiming it completely misses every quality that an ending is supposed to have. Endings being so pivotal to a story, of course, as well as the fact that the ending itself is the last thing we experience in a story, have caused the fervor to achieve critical mass. No where did Star Wars ever have an ending that was literally in dispute. People may not have liked where a film finished, but it was never so bad and so vague that absolutely no one can agree on any in-universe facts about it. In fact, one of the most popular theories about the ending is that NONE of it actually happened, and that it's all something the protagonist essentially dreamed. When what is now known infamously as the "Dallas Ending" is a better ending than what you have, you KNOW there's a problem.

If my feeling is correct that this is the game industry's Star Wars breakthrough, that leaves many things up in the air. If this is the response that comes out of it, where does it lead from here? Do video games now enter a sort of dark age where no developers venture further out to develop compelling stories? Do we never see anything even remotely like Mass Effect EVER again? As always, only time will tell, but I fear we may be entering a period when some of the greatest fiction in the world could be held back because no one is willing to stake their careers on a dream. I am hoping that there are creative and enterprising developers out there who will pick up the pieces and continue to bring forth the world of gaming into new and wondrous experiences.

How Mass Effect and Jennifer Hale Changed My Life

I intended this blog to be a general place for me to put my thoughts on gaming in general, but so far it seems like all I've talked about is Mass Effect. This is not entirely coincidence, as it's been a big topic in the gaming world this past week, but it's also a big deal for me personally. Mass Effect is more than just a series of games to me. It's more than the universe those games are set in. It's so much bigger, in my mind, than I think most people could even truly believe without having understanding of where I'm coming from.

Hang on, folks. Things are about to get VERY heavy here.

In the Fall of 2009 and Winter of 2010, I was going through an extremely rough period in my life. I am transsexual, and in that period of time I was in the early stages of transitioning from living as a man to living openly as a woman. At the same time, my parents were going through a divorce. As I suffer from a rather severe case of social anxiety disorder, I was not exactly able to work, so I lived at home with my mother. As if to cap this all off with a cherry made of pure black comedy, I was also coming to grips with the fact that my mother was very abusive my entire life.

Wow. After reading over that last bit, I'm actually beginning to realize exactly the scope of how crappy my life was at that point. These aren't things you think about at the time. It's just life, so you kind of forget how good or bad things might be in relative terms.

It was during this period that I found myself extremely bored on a sunny November day (I live in Southern California, so sun is pretty much a constant year round. Go fig). I was eager to play a game that I had wanted for several years. That game was, of course, Dragon Age: Origins. However, DA:O was not to be released until some weeks later, so I found myself in a Best Buy looking for something cheap to kill time. That was when I had an encounter that, thinking back on it, seems silly to imagine as anything more than a ridiculous inevitability.

Some necessary background: I have been a gamer all my life, and I suspect I shall be a gamer until the day I die. In particular, I have been a BioWare fan since I first played Baldur's Gate back in the late 1990's. I'm also a big fan of the fantasy genre, as well as Dungeons & Dragons, which was what ultimately led me to Baldur's Gate in the first place, so it was only natural that I would be highly anticipating DA:O, which was being hailed as a "spiritual successor" to Baldur's Gate. So it was not exactly like I had no reason to be interested in Mass Effect, but I had never thought myself to be as big a fan of sci-fi as of fantasy.

Back to that November day in Best Buy: I saw Mass Effect on the shelf, and being that I was already a fan of BioWare and was in the mood to play a BioWare game, I found myself purchasing Mass Effect for $20. I had no idea at the time that it would be the best $20 I had ever spent.

When I booted up the game on my PC for the first time, I was surprised. For the first time I had ever seen, not only was I allowed to pick the dialogue of my character, but that dialogue was fully voiced. But Commander Shepard's voice was not what I had come to expect from women in video games; her voice was husky, deep, and disciplined in a way a person would expect from a military officer, but also carried the timber that is typically associated with speech patterns in women (forgive me if this goes beyond your understanding, as, being transsexual, I actually had to train my voice, so picked up a level of understanding and analysis of speech patterns between genders that most people just take for granted, and sometimes I don't realize how much more I might know). This was wonderful, in my mind, as I've never considered myself to be the most "feminine" person in the world, in spite of identifying as female while living as male.

The game offered two forms of "morality" that you could play Shepard to align with, Paragon and Renegade. I told myself at the time that it made more sense to try to play primarily Paragon on my first run through the game because it made the most sense to start with. This was a complete lie. The truth was that was what I needed at the time: a paragon; a female role-model who was strong and brave and didn't give in to the temptation to be cruel or rude. A true heroine, as it were.

As I continued to play through Shepard's adventure, I was enthralled. Not only was the story amazingly well-written and the characters likable, but I found Samantha (as I had named her) Shepard to be an amazing character in her own right, a dimension I was left to imagine entirely on my own in previous BioWare games. It became apparent that my own imagination was not, in fact, as thorough as I had previously believed, since in games where my character never spoke, I never became so attached to that character.

Jennifer Hale, the woman who performs the voice of FemShep (as the fan community has lovingly dubbed the female version of Commander Shepard) was not new to me. I had heard her voice before in several games, including as Bastila Shan in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, a previous BioWare game. But it was her performance as Commander Shepard that literally inspired me. She could look death in the eye and just say "No." It was exactly the thing I needed to experience - to see as well as hear - at a time in my life when I had no one else to believe in. When my mother came to me and decided she would shame me for not dropping to my knees and praising her for no reason, I asked myself, "What would Shepard do?" And the answer was always to hold onto my own self-respect and stand up; to do what was right, regardless of what was safe.

I know Shepard isn't real. I know that most people don't think of Shepard in the same way I do. For some, Shepard is a man, or a jerk, or a racist. A soldier, an adept, an engineer. But none of that matters to me because, to me, Shepard will always be the woman who stood up and delivered a great, big verbal middle finger to the Reapers, an enemy so impossible and powerful that anyone would have been afraid. Shepard does not exist, but the Reapers do; everyone has seen them. The Reapers are those things we fear. For me, it was my mother, and I did what Shepard would do: I stood up and held onto the courage to speak for myself rather than let my abusive mother define me.

So, yes, my first three posts in this blog may make me out to seem like a one-trick pony, but there's good reason for why so much thought has been devoted to Mass Effect lately. To me, Shepard is an ideal. A strength that comes from courage and not physical ability. I am a stronger person now because of these games, their developers, and Jennifer Hale, whose voice personified the heroine I needed.

I am Commander Shepard, and these are my favorite games in the galaxy.

Mass Effect and Midichlorians

At the end of Return of the Jedi, Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader discover that the galaxy will forever remain in a cycle of endless death and destruction as the Light and Dark Sides of the Force constantly vie for control because the “midichlorians demand it.” In order to end this cycle, they both dive into the Death Star's core in order to destroy the Emperor, and in the process destroy both the Force and hyperspace in a colorful explosion that spreads across the galaxy. Fade to black; roll credits.

Obviously, that's not actually how the movie ends, otherwise Star Wars would have faded into obscurity the same way the disappointingly awful Matrix sequels dragged the first film into the mud. The prequels may have done some damage to the series, but as a whole the original trilogy remains intact as an amazing story. However, the Mass Effect trilogy of video games created by BioWare has had an ending much like the one I just described, and as you can probably guess, many of the fans are PISSED.

Let me be clear: I am not a fan of “changing the ending.” To do something like that would be a slap in the face to anyone like myself who considers video games worthy of being considered an art. I do, however, recognize when something is not of a particular quality, much as many critics out there can recognize a bad film, book, or game, many of us can recognize a poorly thought-out ending. The video gaming media has responded to the fan outrage largely by saying “suck it up” and throwing the fans' concerns back in their faces as if they don't matter. It's now time to set the record straight: the fans DO matter, and I intend to demonstrate this using the above described ending to Return of the Jedi.

Imagine that was the actual ending released in theaters back in 1983. How many people would have left the theaters entirely confused? How many people would have seen the sudden change in tone as entirely unfitting of everything up to that point? How many people would be fully insulted by the massive plot holes introduced by the sudden mention of “midichlorians,” a word up to that point never even hinted at, let alone actually UTTERED. Even in spite of the otherwise brilliant quality of the film, the ending makes much of it seem contrived in an attempt to create some incredible light show instead of bringing any meaningful closure to the story. There is no explanation of what happens to the rebels suddenly finding themselves stranded on a remote, unsettled planet, or the civil unrest left in the wake of an entire empire that has essentially had all communication and travel cut off, isolating billions, if not TRILLIONS, of citizens from trade routes critical to their planets' infrastructure.

But the real slap in the face is that word, again, “midichlorians.” What the hell is that? No explanation? No reason for why that is? Just saying “midichlorians did it?” What possible sense would that even make? Ask any Star Wars fan old enough to have been a fan before the prequels came into existence what midichlorians are, and 9 out of 10 of them likely wouldn't even answer the question. It's a topic brought up one time in one film, and was so utterly despised that it has essentially been completely written out of its fictional existence, and most critics would acknowledge that instead of trying to pretend that it somehow enriches the experience.

The fact of the matter is that video games may be an art, but much like film, they are also an industry. This is a business, for good or ill, dependent on customers, and BioWare has taken a step in this case that threatens their credibility, whether that threat is justified or not. Changing the ending is not necessary, nor is acknowledgment of whether the ending was good or bad, but accepting the fact that people are upset is not the same as agreeing with them, nor is attempting to shame them the same as telling them you disagree with them.