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“The fans are all upset. They’re always going to be upset. Why did he do it like this? And why didn’t he do it like this? They write their own movie, and then, if you don’t do their movie, they get upset about it.”–George Lucas

I was thinking a bit more about the Mass Effect 3 ending.  I may do a post later on with my thoughts on it specifically, but while I was thinking about it, the idea occurred to me that it was so disappointing because it was so anticipated.  Fans had years to think about how the Mass Effect series would end; and so whatever happened would likely disappoint them.  It is an intrinsically bad ending, don’t get me wrong, but its badness was amplified by how much everyone had been thinking about it.

The same thing happened, for me anyway, with the Harry Potter series.  A big plot point, discussed by fans and even used in the advance marketing of the last book was “is Snape good or evil”?  Everybody had two years to think about this question, and we all knew what was going to happen.  Even if you bet on the wrong outcome, chances were you’d heard alternate theories that turned out to be correct. It may have made it sell better to promote the debate, but it weakened the book’s dramatic power.

It’s hard to surprise your audience with twists when you are telling a story with long intervals between each installment.  The only way out is to not leave clues to what’s coming, but then the endings or plot twists will feel unsatisfying; like they just came out of nowhere.  The best plot resolutions have to have been logically set up beforehand.

Sometimes a writer can stumble on some good twist in the middle of a series.  For instance, few people see the famous twist in The Empire Strikes Back coming, unless someone has spoiled them on it.  I’ve heard that this is because George Lucas only decided to do it after A New Hope was released, so he hadn’t left enough clues to give it away before hand, but was able to satisfactorily retrofit his twist on to the second film with the vague setup given in the first. But he was very lucky.

Lucas also didn’t have the internet to contend with.  If he had, some random fan probably would have accurately guessed the ending by pure chance while speculating on some forum.  I see this as the inevitable fate of the Half-Life video game series: if they ever do release Half-Life 3, there is no way someone won’t have already guessed what the deal is with the G-Man and posted a huge essay about their theories to be discussed on some forum.

There’s no question that internet fandom has intensified this problem; for it enables like-minded people to interact and ponder their favorite series.  I don’t think this was as much of a problem before the internet, even though there were stories that appeared in installments in magazines and the like.

This problem is lessened a bit if you are not doing a sequel that directly continues a particular story.  J.J. Abrams was very smart to come up with the alternate timeline business for his new Star Trek movies, because it pretty much allowed him to do whatever he wanted.   And although it still does not really live up to its title, I think a lot of criticism from Fallout fans of Fallout 3 was blunted because it was set far away from the other games.  In other words, it’s easier to do a series that is a loosely-related group of stories in a certain setting or around a set of themes than it is to tell one coherent story over installments. And it’s easiest of all to just tell your story in one shot.  To bring us back to Mass Effect 3, I’m convinced that had they condensed the story of the whole series into one game–with the same endings–they would have gotten way fewer complaints.  On the other hand, they also would have made less money.

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I see  that Electronic Arts has gotten the exclusive rights to Star Wars video games.  I remember another thing EA got exclusive rights to, and that didn’t work out so great…  but we’ll see.

I’m not saying this is necessarily bad news–for one thing, if I understand correctly, EA can still publish games that other developers make. To my mind, it could be good or bad.

I’ve been thinking about the Mass Effect series again, and how weirdly uneven it was for a trilogy that was supposedly mapped out in advance.  The first Mass Effect had a very interesting story, but the gameplay was a little wonky, at least to people like me who aren’t really familiar with RPG mechanics.  Combat in ME1 feels very awkward.

Then Mass Effect 2 streamlined the combat, making it much more like the popular Gears of War series.  The hardcore RPG people may disagree, but I think this made for a superior game, even if they had to mess with some established background information of the setting to make it work.  ME 2 is still my favorite in the series, even though parts of the story don’t make sense.  And I think it’s interesting that EA acquired BioWare between ME1 and 2, and in the latter, the game suddenly became much more  accessible to the average gamer.

But then you have Mass Effect 3, which had many well-known problems with its infamously unsatisfying ending.  BioWare insists that they had total creative control, so you can’t blame EA for the ending.  (Then again, the Illusive Man insisted he had control of the Reapers, too…) But in addition to all the in-game problems, it was criticized for forcing players to buy a bunch of additional stuff in order to get the “full” ending.  Again, it’s just interesting to me that there was no comparable marketing scheme for, say, BioWare’s Knights of the Old Republic (2003) or Jade Empire (2005) or even the first Mass Effect (2007).

So, I think we have a pretty good roadmap already for what is going to happen to a beloved science-fiction franchise whose video games department is now being run by EA.  But wait!  There’s more!

Everyone thinks that this means Star Wars game will become increasingly Call of Duty-like, and you will see a lot of polished but simplistic games.  Pretty much everyone feels that the  Battlefront series or something like it will be making a comeback. And why not?  If EA can make something Star Wars themed that can compete with the highest-grossing game series in history, why wouldn’t they?

This isn’t so bad, really.  Battlefront was a fun game.  It’s just that I think everyone feels EA is just too big, and when a company gets that big, it’s hard for them to function the right way.  They can keep making money off of AAA blockbuster games for a while yet, but they can’t really innovate, because that involves risk. Which means we probably won’t be seeing any deep, philosophical,  Star Wars RPGs like the great Knights of the Old Republic II anytime soon.

But more than that, there are indications that EA is just generally mismanaged.  As Shamus Young says in that article, they are not running their company as well as they might, just from a pure business point of view.  However, I think their model is sustainable for the near-term future.  Star Wars has been popular since the 1970s–people will continue to buy any heavily-hyped game that ties with that franchise for a few more years.  This is where we see the similarity to EA’s NFL license monopoly–the NFL has been popular since the 1960s, and for those who play sports games, it’s the only show in town.

The difference, of course, is that the NFL, while not technically a monopoly is the only widely-watched pro football league in America. Star Wars is not the only major science-fiction franchise. There are still more of those to compete with Star Wars games.

That’s why I think the monopoly on Star Wars has a greater chance of blowing up in EA’s face than their NFL  monopoly–the latter is essentially a monopoly on a near-monopoly, because the NFL controls a huge amount of market share in the market for football.  EA is building off of that. But it’s different with the market for sci-fi games–it’s more of an oligopoly, with just a few competitors: Star Wars, Star Trek, and so on.

If we assume that consumers are indifferent as to which science-fiction franchise’s video games they choose to spend money on, this means there is still an element of competition in the market.  But, of course, not all consumers are not indifferent–they have preferences for franchises.  So, I want Star Wars to have the better video games, among other reasons, to show up the Trekkies. (Not that I dislike Star Trek, but still.) Branding is always very important in oligopolies.

The point is, this arrangement coupled with EA’s past problems with understanding different markets as mentioned in the Shamus Young article linked above and… well, the title of this post says it all.

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The word is that J.J. Abrams might be making a movie based on the inexplicably popular video game series Half-Life. (My analysis of the overrated Half-Life 2 is here.)

Adaptations fail in the majority of cases because a story is usually engineered specifically for its original medium.  As mediocre as Half-Life the game is, it would be way worse as a movie.  So, they really can’t do an adaptation.  It would have to be some other story in the Half-Life universe.   But the Half-Life universe is, honestly, pretty mediocre itself.

I frankly don’t see any way this could turn out well, unless they get Ross Scott to play Gordon Freeman.  I’m sorry, but Freeman’s Mind is the best thing to come out of that franchise, and hopefully at some point the contractual imbroglio will be resolved and Scott can resume making it.

As for Valve’s Portal series, which Abrams might also adapt, it is a much better game, but again it seems like a waste of time to adapt it. This is precisely because it is so well-suited to game form.  The gameplay is an integral part of what makes it fun.  It would still be amusing, I guess, to hear the humorous lines, but the game lets you do that and enjoy the gameplay. You can have your cake and eat it too.

Now, there are cases where the original medium is not the best, and there are some games that might have been better as something else.  Metal Gear Solid is probably better as a movie, at least from Sons of Liberty onward. Neverwinter Nights 2 probably would be better as a book.  Duke Nukem would have been better if it had never existed at all. But in general, stories are designed for the medium they were originally created in.

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[Again, huge spoilers, obviously.]

I’ve been mulling over it since I finished the game, and I have to say that I think I like the ending where Shepard chooses to control the Reapers the best.  Commenter xmenxpert disagrees, favoring the “Destroy” ending.  I can definitely understand why one would feel that way; indeed, I had been planning to destroy the Reapers, but the final talk with the Catalyst changed my mind.

Let me explain how I arrived at my ending.  For all of ME 2, my Shepard was pretty loyal to the Illusive Man, since he did save his life and no one else seemed to take the Reaper issue seriously.  I preserved the Collector base at the end, because I figured having it gave us options, whereas destroying it was irreversible.  I liked it the idea of controlling the Reapers and their technology for humanity’s benefit. To quote another BioWare game: “What greater weapon is there than to turn an enemy to your cause?”

I was planning to go along with whatever the Illusive Man wanted to do in ME 3, right up until the scene on Thessia when the Prothean V.I. states that at the end of the last Reaper cycle, the Protheans’ efforts to thwart the harvest were ruined by a rogue group that wanted to control, not destroy the Reapers.  Later, it turned out that the Protheans in this group had been indoctrinated by the Reapers to sabotage their efforts.

This meant that Cerberus was nothing new, and siding with them would be playing right into the Reaper’s plans, and would cause the cycle to continue.  So, I reconsidered, and resolved not to do what Cerberus wanted after all.

This was my plan right up to the last scene when Shepard meets the Catalyst, at which point the following exchange takes place:

Catalyst: Or do you think you can control us?

Shepard: Huh… so the Illusive Man was right after all.

Catalyst: Yes, but he could never have taken control, because we already controlled him.

Control of the Reapers was possible, the Illusive Man had just screwed it up.  But Shepard hadn’t made the same mistakes, and so he could take control.  I think this was the significance of the blue (Paragon) color being used for the control ending and red (Renegade) being used for the destroy ending.  It was a plot twist of sorts: the Illusive Man had wanted to do the right thing, but out of evil motivations, and Anderson had wanted the wrong thing, but out of pure motivations. So I chose Control.

Now, you may object that this decision rests solely on trusting that the Catalyst is telling the truth, which is a gigantic leap of faith given that (a) you just met it 5 minutes before, (b) most of what it says to explain the choice is vague nonsense, and (c) its original plan and reason for creating the Reapers is a patchwork solution at best and utterly insane at worst.

All of these are valid objections, and in a really good ending, you wouldn‘t have to trust the Catalyst. But, with the choices the game gives you, you have to take Its word for it or else let the cycle continue.  Consequently, I would argue that the Control ending is the best of the available choices.

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[NOTE: If you plan to play the Mass Effect series, know that this post contains massive spoilers.  And if you haven’t played any of the Mass Effect games and don’t plan to, this post will probably make no sense whatsoever.]

I think I got the “control/bad ending”, although it’s hard to tell for sure.  Personally, I didn’t hate it as much as most people did, but I do think the ME3 endings should forever exonerate the vastly-superior Knights of the Old Republic II from charges of having an “incomplete” or “unsatisfying” ending.

So… where to begin… I guess first of all I should say that I don’t know what to make of the “Renegade” or Paragon” interrupt options.  The first time it really struck me as odd was when Kai Leng (who I kept wanting to ask “did you escape from Jade Empire or what?”) was sneaking up behind Shepard with his sword drawn, and you have a renegade interrupt button. I pressed it, on the logic that doing something is better than doing nothing.  I wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t.

Then, during the climactic end scene with Shepard and the Illusive Man pointing their pistols at each other, I got another Renegade interrupt.  Again, I took it; figuring that the sooner I could end the Illusive Man’s career, the better.  I read later that if you don’t do this, Illusive Man will shoot Shepard, and the game will end.  If this is true, it’s kind of a weird game mechanic.

So, having done this, I proceeded to the controversial endgame sequence, where Shepard meets the Catalyst.  The Catalyst is an artificial (I think, as opposed to “virtual”) intelligence that governs pretty much everything, including the Reapers.  It presents Shepard with three choices to end the game, none of them very pleasant.  This parody video sums them up fairly well:

I can’t imagine that others haven’t pointed this out, but the Catalyst is literally “God from the machine”, or, as they say, deus ex machina. Deus ex machina is, as Wikipedia describes:

a plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem is suddenly and abruptly solved with the contrived and unexpected intervention of some new event, character, ability, or object.

All fit the Catalyst, except for the part about solving things.  The Catalyst solves nothing, but it does end things.

Having said that, it’s not such a bad ending.  You could argue that all Shepard’s thousands of choices amounting to only a minor difference makes a grand philosophical point about the Universe.  Or you could argue that the writers were lazy.  Your choice.

Looking back, the Mass Effect series is surprisingly uneven.  The mechanics of the first one feel very different from the sequels.  It kind of morphed from an action, sci-fi RPG into a third-person FPS with dialogue.  Which is okay with me, although the fighting did grow tiresome after a time.

The characters and plot likewise are uneven.  There are some deep philosophical concepts in the story–the Prothean V.I’s dialogue with Shepard on  Thessia reminded me a little of Oswald Spengler’s writings–but there are also quite a few space-cowboy movie cliches.

The characters are sometimes believable and emotionally compelling.  I liked the scene where Shepard and Garrus go to the top of the Presidium, for instance.  The Illusive Man himself is a fairly complex and interesting character.  But then again, you have Shepard and Ashley’s messed up relationship, which felt like artificially-created drama, especially in ME2. And don’t get me started on the forced relationship with Liara.  I liked both Ashley and Miranda better.

The voice acting was all pretty good, though much of the dialogue was corny.  I lost track of how many times people said “This is it,” during the final hour or so.  Most of the Big Inspirational Speeches in all three games were pretty hackneyed, I thought.  But the actors did their part; and frankly, I’d listen to Jennifer Hale or Yvonne Strahovski read the phonebook.  Or Codex, as it were.

Mass Effect is not a great series, it’s just a good one. I think it got a little too “franchisified” too early, and tried to be all things to all players, and of course it could not be.  But it’s still a very enjoyable sci-fi adventure series.  It’s not the best series of games ever, but I’m still glad I got to play it.

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Finally got it this Christmas, and have been playing it this weekend.  It’s good, but the missions are kind of repetitive: go to base held by Geth/Cerberus forces, choose who you want to either activate or deactivate the Anti-Aircraft gun, defend them, wash, rinse, repeat.  Anti-Aircraft guns are the new rogue V.I.s, it seems.

Also, the whole idea that “well, yes, the Reapers are destroying the Galaxy, but we refuse to ally with [whatever other species of alien] because we’ve been at war with them forever” is a little unbelievable. I think intelligent beings could put aside their differences long enough to fight the attack of the Metal Cthulhus. As Ronald Reagan–yes, that Ronald Reagan–once said:

“In our obsession with antagonisms of the moment, we often forget how much unites all the members of humanity. Perhaps we need some outside, universal threat to make us recognize this common bond. I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world. “

Same principle here, except it would be all the members of the galaxy uniting to stop the threat from outside the galaxy, not just the planet.  It seems kind of unbelievable they could be so petty.

I’m sure there will be more plot developments, of course, and maybe it will be explained.  It’s still a fun adventure game.  I’m sure I’ll post a lot more when I finish it.

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As long-time readers may know, I love the video games made by Obsidian Entertainment.  They are exceptionally well-written, and feature very deep, thought-provoking stories.  Their works are what have convinced me that games are just as legitimate an art form as movies, books etc.

Their latest project is an isometric fantasy RPG, tentatively called “Project Eternity“.  I was quite disappointed when I heard that, simply because I usually hate isometric fantasy RPGs.  The faux-medieval fantasy settings bore me; I prefer a modern or futuristic setting.  The isometric view annoys me to no end. It feels more like I’m playing a board game.

Of course, that won’t stop me from playing it.  Chris Avellone and J.E. Sawyer are making it; and such is my faith in their abilities that I’ll still have to play the thing.  Avellone’s Planescape: Torment was an isometric fantasy RPG, and one of my favorite games. So, naturally, I have high hopes for “Project Eternity”.

I guess you could call this “brand loyalty“, but in my mind it’s not the same.  I’m loyal to the Obsidian “brand”, I guess, but only as long as they still employ the same guys who made the games I enjoyed in the past.  “Brand loyalty” is a term I always take literally, as meaning “loyalty to the symbol”. I’m not loyal to symbols per se, I’m loyal to the people who make what I consider high-quality products.

I think that for the most part, the idea of cultivating brand loyalty is companies fooling themselves and putting the cart before the horse.  They advertise to try to persuade people to like their products for various nebulous reasons.  In my opinion, the only way to get loyalty is by making good products.

A lot of this goes back to my belief that most advertising is a waste of money.  I don’t think celebrity endorsements or clever marketing or whatever will do anything to help out a lousy product.  The recently-concluded Presidential election is an example of this; all the Romney-supporting Super-PACs and their multi-million dollar ad purchases couldn’t make up for a rotten candidate.  And as for the loyal Republicans who voted for Romney, they probably didn’t care about the ads; they just voted for him because in their minds anyone who wasn’t Obama was automatically the better candidate.  Their loyalty, I suspect, is based in their own beliefs and ideas and prejudices, not in anything some ad told them.

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I posted about the movie The Haunting the other day and Thingy confirmed in the comments that the remake wasn’t very good.  That’s so often the way with remakes.  The great director John Huston was right when he said:

They can’t make them as good as they are in our memories, but they go on doing them and each time it’s a disaster. Why don’t we remake some of our bad pictures – I’d love another shot at ‘Roots of Heaven’ – and make them good?

I found out the other day that they’ve remade the famous N64 video game Goldeneye 007—again!   And today the “Black Mesa” Half-Life mod was released. Granted, that’s just a fan-made effort to satiate the demand for a new Half-Life game, so it’s a bit different.

Huston said it–they should do remakes of lousy movies, books and games.  Not necessarily the worst of the worst, but the ones that had potential and fell flat.  The game Daikatana was actually a good concept, it just didn’t work out.  They should take another try at it.  Alfred Hitchcock remade his own film The Man Who Knew Too Much.  And I think many of H.P. Lovecraft’s stories could have benefited from a reworking, especially The Shadow Out of Time.

Oh, well.  I guess it makes economic sense that only popular things get remade, but it makes no artistic sense.

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The N64 game Turok 2: Seeds of Evil is not a great game.  It may not even be a good game; it’s hard to say.  The graphics were awesome in 1998, but they are somewhat laughable now.  The combat is repetitive.  And the levels are long and confusing, with only one or two checkpoint save areas spread throughout them.  And then there is the whole question of “why is the hero dressed like an 18th century Native American while battling mutant robo-dinosaurs with a machine gun?”  Never could work that out.

But Turok 2 had one very interesting feature: in every level there were these little chambers that would grant Turok special abilities.  But there was also an identical chamber which contained extremely creepy, cyclops-like monsters that would utter threats of cosmic annihilation  in an otherworldly, screeching voice before attacking Turok.

There was, as far as I know, no way of knowing if the portal was a good one or a bad one before entering.  The first time it happened, it freaked me out pretty good.  The resultant uncertainty and trepidation about whether or not to enter a portal was a very nice touch.

But the best thing about this was that these monsters were very different from the game’s normal enemies.  In Turok 3, it’s explained that they are the servants of a somewhat Azathoth-like entity called “Oblivion” that’s out to destroy the Universe for some reason.  But in Turok 2 you don’t know that.  Even Turok’s guide Adon–or, as I called her, “Lost Land 4-1-1”– didn’t really know who they were or what they were doing.  She knew pretty much everything else a dinosaur hunter would care to know in the game, but not that.  That made it even scarier.

In most genres, this wouldn’t work.  To put in unexplained characters out of the blue is usually verboten.  But in the horror genre it’s alright because, well, the idea of monsters showing up out of nowhere is pretty scary.   So it was pretty effective at scaring the player.

People knock video game writing fairly often.  It’s a little unfair, because as I have said time and again, there are some excellent writers in the gaming industry.  But they are exceptions, and most games are definitely not trying to be literary masterpieces.  Certainly, Turok 2 was not looking to win any awards for its script.  (Adon and the cyclops-monsters may be the only speaking characters; I can’t remember for sure.)

But I think that for that reason, games in the horror-genre can succeed even without “good” writing, because what would be considered bad writing outside of horror is actually quite effective in the genre.  The good characters, Turok and Adon, are less interesting because they don’t really have any in-game backstory to make the player care about them.  But by the same token, the fact that the writers don’t give the player the lowdown on the servants of Oblivion just makes them that much scarier.

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I was searching on Knights of the Old Republic II the other day when I stumbled across these awesome custom KotOR II Lego figures made by Justin R. Stebbins, aka Saber-Scorpion.  (My personal favorite of his figures is Mandalore) He also has KotOR I creations, as well as custom Lego  for a bunch of other great games, including Planescape: Torment, Fallout and Metal Gear Solid.  Check it out.

As I was looking around at his work, I did start thinking how awesome a full-length movie adaptation of these games with the Lego figures would be, even though I’m not normally a fan of adapting games into movies.  Since their lips don’t move, you could use the original voice readings from the game.  One of my favorite things about Lego is how easily it lends itself to stop-motion animation.

Actually, though, I know there are video game adaptations of various franchises using Lego characters…  maybe KotOR III should be done in that style, appealing to two fan-bases at once?  And of course, Fallout: Lego Island practically writes itself… no, maybe that wouldn’t be a good idea.