For weeks I've wanted to write a post about Mass Effect 3. Anyone with a video game console has probably at least heard of the Mass Effect series. You may also have heard that the much-anticipated final game in the trilogy, Mass Effect 3, came out in March to rave critical reviews. Or you may have heard that its ending created an uproar, prompting massive backlash from fans, write-in campaigns, and even a promise from its creators, Bioware, to build and release an "extended" ending this summer to placate the fans upset by the current ending.
As a quick summary for the uninitiated, the Mass Effect series follows Commander Shepard, a player-character who tries to save the galaxy from a race of monstrous mechanical beings called the Reapers bent on exterminating organic life. Throughout the course of his saga over three games he must deal with the distrust and skepticism of other races in the galaxy, who have little experience with humanity and are distracted by their own concerns. What made the story unique was that the player's choices had long-ranging impacts that carried over from game to game. You could be a "paragon" or a "renegade," take sides in conflicts that could end or save millions of lives, and even lose main characters who would have had an important role to play down the road. It had the scope and the promise of a truly self-made story, and by and large it delivered.
I've been turning it over and over again in my mind, trying to decide what to write about. At first I considered reviewing the game, offering the Culture Brats community my thoughts on--and awe for--the experience I had just completed. Then I considered taking up the debate over video games as an art form, roundly dismissed by both Roger Ebert and my wife, neither of whom have put the effort into Bioshock, Red Dead Redemption, or Portal that would render their opinions meaningful. I even thought of diving into the debate about the ending, and about who really owns a created work shared by the masses: is it the creator whose vision it represents (a la George Lucas) or is it the fans who have adored and adopted it as part of their lives (a la anyone who remembers when Han shot first)?
I thought about it, and thought about it more. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that maybe that was the story.... that I can't stop thinking about the series. Now that I've completed it, I miss it. I desperately miss it.
