Published article about Mass Effect 2

[Michaël Samyn]

Here's another article in my "Treasures" series, where I play through blockbuster games in search of elements that may be of interest to the notgame-developer and -player. This time it's about relationships in Mass Effect 2.

[Erik Svedäng]

Oh, this is the kind of well-written article that even gets my mom and dad want to play some video games. It should be in a newspaper!

[Michaël Samyn]

Thank you!

Ultimately that's the goal, isn't it, to have everyone enjoy this new medium?

I wouldn't advise your parents to start just yet, though. My "Treasures" series involves purposely ignoring all the "game ballast" that most blockbusters still carry around as dead weight (ball and chain...). Confrontation with said ballast may be detrimental to the enjoyment of the game by anyone but seasoned gamers (who either enjoy it or have the capacity to ignore it).

[QXD-me]

I really liked this article, largely because I found the 'dating' aspect to be one of the parts of the original Mass Effect that I enjoyed the most (even if it's not been that prominent so far as I've currently played).

While playing the original one I found it strange to come to the point where romantic decisions had to be made for a couple of reasons. Firstly because I hadn't realised that I'd been giving off those kinds of signals (although I'm fairly oblivious to these sorts of things in real life so maybe I was), I thought I was just being nice to everyone. Secondly because it seemed weird that they'd just come out and say it, maybe it's just my personal experiences that make that seem strange though.

But still, this was definitely the most emotionally moving point in the game for me because I'd decided early on in the game to play Shepard as though he were me, so the choice of woman (because obviously men should choose women as though they were objects in a shop (saying that, presumably female characters get the same choice, thus negating the chauvinistic tones)) was a personal one and I was left with a real life question. Given the choice between two potential life partners should one choose someone who they think would make a better partner (//form a better couple), or someone that they like more as a person?*

I was kind of torn on the issue and just made a snap judgement, but within minutes I regretted my choice and wished I'd chosen the other one. Thinking on the question more I'd say it's a choice between being practical and being an idealist, I chose the former despite being more of the latter. For a few days I didn't want to go back to playing it, I couldn't bear to continue playing through my mistake, but eventually I did. I'm not sure why, maybe I just wanted to see how the main story played out? Anyway, when I did get back to it I found I had a savepoint just before the decision so I loaded that one instead and re-chose, I think I'd often do that in real life if I could. Although I still haven't finished it yet despite starting it over 6 months ago.

Also of note is that the one I really liked was Tali, though there seems to be no 'romance' with her in the first game (though some quick google-ing couldn't confirm this and merely provided me with some quotes to remind me why gamers often depress me). This could provide incentive to get the second one (maybe).

So on the whole, while the 'romance' subplot-things were one of the better aspects of the first game, I still think they have a very long way to go before they're done properly.


*I'm sure someone with more life experience than me can give a much more useful answer to this question than I can.

[Michaël Samyn]

The characters being so forward does betray the still very "systematic" backend of the game. To develop this kind of play further, game designers will need to start thinking more about their presentation and what makes sense in the narrative, and less about the logical structure of action-reaction-reward. A bit more like interface designers and less like engineers. When we were web designers, we called this "The metaphor wants to be free."

An application of this would be to allow you to undo your mistake in game, in the narrative, by talking to characters, instead of having to reload a previous save.

[Thomas]

Just wanted to chime in and say that is was a nice article!

I played through the first mass effect for a few hours and like some of the dialog. However, the game had so many tedious parts and so many different things for me to do, that I could not continue.

[Michaël Samyn]

Thank you.

I'm sure it was only thanks to "easy mode" that I was able to play it at all.

[Michaël Samyn]

By the way, the notgames blog is open for every member. If you'd like to post there, I can give you a log in.
The blog runs on Wordpress. So many of you are probably familiar with it.

[Erik Svedäng]

No, I won't let them try this one. They both made a brave attempt with Shadow of The Colossus (which they were really psyched to try) but the tricky camera and the 30 min intro movie made it very unenjoyable.