Upon receiving your notification today
Upon receiving your interest on Facebook
I remembered your face
the countless times
you screamed at me
for all my many
and varied
INFIDELITIES
which never existed
any old place
outside of your head
and I cringed
because I remember
the infidelities were yours
and you punished me for it
and I am not
particularly
INTERESTED IN THAT
Upon receiving your interest on Facebook
Upon reflecting on my abiding interest in men
I remembered your daughter
and the pets who died
well after leaving my house
including Max
who I
LOVED
and how you
continued to punish me
by insisting
I was responsible
for what you did
that I was in charge
of
YOUR FEAR
and I thought maybe
I might decline
because while I should forgive
and to forgive is divine
I'm not convinced I'll know you
if you say hello
and I hear
"HAIL SATAN"
Tuesday, June 24, 2014
Upon Receiving
Upon receiving your notification today
Upon receiving your interest on Facebook
I remembered your son
And how you told the rest of us
his friends
YOUR SON
that because he had revealed to you
of his abiding interest in other men
and for refusing to be ashamed
he had now been sent to his mother
where he could
as I recall
"SERVE SATAN"
Upon receiving your interest on Facebook
Upon reflecting on my abiding interest in men
I remembered your son
And how you taught love
but could not abide love for other men
for fear of not being loved
by the man-god of love
but not
MAN-LOVE
and I thought maybe
I might decline
because while I should forgive
and to forgive is divine
I'm not convinced you'll know me
if I say hello
and you hear
"HAIL SATAN"
Upon receiving your interest on Facebook
I remembered your son
And how you told the rest of us
his friends
YOUR SON
that because he had revealed to you
of his abiding interest in other men
and for refusing to be ashamed
he had now been sent to his mother
where he could
as I recall
"SERVE SATAN"
Upon receiving your interest on Facebook
Upon reflecting on my abiding interest in men
I remembered your son
And how you taught love
but could not abide love for other men
for fear of not being loved
by the man-god of love
but not
MAN-LOVE
and I thought maybe
I might decline
because while I should forgive
and to forgive is divine
I'm not convinced you'll know me
if I say hello
and you hear
"HAIL SATAN"
Friday, June 20, 2014
Much Effect About Nothing
MASS EFFECT 3 SPOILERS
So, in very timely fashion, I have finally finished the mass effect trilogy this week. Which, naturally, brought me to the much-maligned ending of the series. Having played the original 3 choices and then again with the extended cut DLC with the same save file, I have some thoughts. I guess.
I should probably mention first, that I didn't hate it. I scratched my head a little, but I've seen much worse endings in other games and other SF stories. This ending is roughly the same as Matrix Revolutions or BSG, which I didn't hate either, but also didn't love. I feel like there was as philosophical bioware-esque decision tree in bioware where they got to choose the ending they were going to give to people and, for some reason, they chose hand-wavey philosophical navel-gazing that unnecessarily undercut earlier narrative, gave very little closure on what had come before and introduced a number of unnecessary plot holes. So I consider the ending mediocre, with problems, but acceptable. What can I say, I have a soft spot for philosophical wanking, no matter how out of place or wrong-headed in context.
But before we get into some critiques of the story's ending, I'd like to discuss the ending in terms of gameplay, which actually irritated me a little bit. In terms of what you're expecting as gameplay leading up to the end, we more or less expect it to play out like the previous two games, some hard waves of tough enemies, culminating in a boss fight or two against the illusive man and maybe another reaper. In fact, I fully expected to actually reach the citadel with my squad, and fight my way to the control room through cerberus and reaper forces, fight the illusive man and win. The game gives this impression so strongly I can only assumed they changed their mind about it at the last minute for monetary, deadline, or political reasons. So it was disappointing not to fight through a corrupted citadel to start. The real kick in the nuts gameplay-wise is the actual final bit of combat you do, which is a completely obnoxious slow motion sequence where enemies you would normally eat as an appetizer for lunch, rush you in slow motion and you are given an unsteady gun with sloppy controls to fight them. It feels incredibly cheap, especially on a ps3 controller, which made it near impossible to beat that stupid shielded marauder. After the sixth stupid death because of all the stupid, artificial ham-stringing, I just switched to narrative difficulty so I could finish the story from here. All in all, it wasn't really a triumphant finale in terms of gameplay, which is a bummer, because it could have been. Not that the end fights in ME1 and 2 were really all that epic and challenging, but because they delivered on the promise of the story up to that point. You get to do what you set out to do and fight fun(ish) bosses.
Which brings us back to the story. I basically consider bioware stories glorified "choose your own adventure" books, so it doesn't really bother me when I make a choice and get a brick to the face, because that kind of goes with the genre. But the original ending was kind of a head-scratcher even given my low expectations. For one, they kind of kill any mystique associated with the reapers. There were exactly two moments that really interested me in the first game. The plant/spore consciousness on Feros and the conversation with Sovereign, where you realize the ship is actually alive and the real villain. Those moments were fun. And through most of 1, 2 and 3 they use those moments sparingly and keep the reaper's motivations mysterious. In fact, they outright state several times that the reaper consciousness is playing on fields we can't comprehend, for reasons we'll never understand and I was okay with that. It didn't really matter why they were doing what they were doing, just that they were dark machine gods and we were going to stop them.
So, you can imagine my dismay when the collective reaper consciousness explains its purpose in two sentences.
1. Machines always fight their creators.
2. Selective harvesting of organics is what keeps synthetic life from wiping out organic life forever.
See, not only is that unknowable, it's not even complicated. So basically the awe and terror of dark gods harvesting humanity is reduced to a fart noise. Personally, it would have been perfectly satisfying to kill the reapers or defeat their dark purpose, without ever understanding why they're doing it. It's a better metaphor relating to technology anyway: we're not sure what we're doing, but we're going to keep trying. Plus it has the benefit of fitting everything that came before in the story.
Which is the second problem with the original, and to some degree the extended, ending: it doesn't really fit what the story is about previous to that. Like I said, I'm a fan of metaphysical and/or philosophical navel-gazing in my SF, but not when you just dump it randomly into a story that heretofore has NOT been particularly philosophical. I like the movie Solaris, but it's weird, artsy SF from start to finish. This game is mostly an action space adventure which dabbles in certain themes yes, but is mostly about over-coming all odds, defying authority and doing what you think is right anyway and yes, the relationship of the geth to the Quarians (and the rest of the galaxy). But I wouldn't say it's a philosophical treatise about man's relationship to machines up until this point. It's mostly a series of smaller character arcs, action-packed military adventure and SF short story style missions. So it's really jarring for the game to turn around at the very end and tell you it's about something different than you thought it was, and oh yeah the bad guy (in this case the illusive man) was right all along. So they write a story about defying corrupt, evil, incompetent authority at every turn only to end by insisting that actually authority was right all along and don't you feel foolish. I like story twists fine, but not when they seem like a gratuitous "haha fuck you" to the audience. To be honest, all 3 original endings just seem like either the result of running out of money or time. Or a writing team that just couldn't decide so they wrote a compromise that pleased no one.
Beyond those problems, there were a number of plot holes and plot threads left extremely dangling that, for me, the extended DLC more or less resolves. Playing the ending again with the DLC enabled, I was relatively satisfied with how things wrapped up for both the paragon and singularity endings. I spent two games trying to make sure my choose-your-own adventure ended with the geth and the quarians reconciled, and it was nice to see that work didn't go to waste, like the original ending implied. In fact, after the DLC the only issues I really have are the ones mentioned above.
As for Shepherd dying, I was fully prepared for that and think it's a fine choice. They more or less telegraph the fact that she's going to sacrifice herself for the galaxy at the end of the game through more or less the entirety of ME3. You say goodbye to everyone at least once, sometimes twice. And while I do wish there were some way I could have arranged events that left Liara and my femshep popping out blue babies happily ever after, losing a long, happy life just makes it a more dramatic sacrifice, right? So yeah, I'm okay with hero's journeys that end in the ultimate sacrifice. That's kind of the deal with choosing heroism as a career.
So yeah, they made some truly gob-smacking choices in gameplay and story right at the end there, but the extended DLC smooths over most of my issues with the original ending. Enough to provide closure at any rate. And even with the remaining problems, well, it doesn't really sour what came before. The gameplay is still quite fun and the over-arching story was never really what I was there for anyway. I enjoyed the smaller character arcs much more (especially Tali, Jack and Garrus) and those are tied up long before the main story ending. And hey, overall it's still pretty good for a choose-your-own-adventure.
So, you can imagine my dismay when the collective reaper consciousness explains its purpose in two sentences.
1. Machines always fight their creators.
2. Selective harvesting of organics is what keeps synthetic life from wiping out organic life forever.
See, not only is that unknowable, it's not even complicated. So basically the awe and terror of dark gods harvesting humanity is reduced to a fart noise. Personally, it would have been perfectly satisfying to kill the reapers or defeat their dark purpose, without ever understanding why they're doing it. It's a better metaphor relating to technology anyway: we're not sure what we're doing, but we're going to keep trying. Plus it has the benefit of fitting everything that came before in the story.
Which is the second problem with the original, and to some degree the extended, ending: it doesn't really fit what the story is about previous to that. Like I said, I'm a fan of metaphysical and/or philosophical navel-gazing in my SF, but not when you just dump it randomly into a story that heretofore has NOT been particularly philosophical. I like the movie Solaris, but it's weird, artsy SF from start to finish. This game is mostly an action space adventure which dabbles in certain themes yes, but is mostly about over-coming all odds, defying authority and doing what you think is right anyway and yes, the relationship of the geth to the Quarians (and the rest of the galaxy). But I wouldn't say it's a philosophical treatise about man's relationship to machines up until this point. It's mostly a series of smaller character arcs, action-packed military adventure and SF short story style missions. So it's really jarring for the game to turn around at the very end and tell you it's about something different than you thought it was, and oh yeah the bad guy (in this case the illusive man) was right all along. So they write a story about defying corrupt, evil, incompetent authority at every turn only to end by insisting that actually authority was right all along and don't you feel foolish. I like story twists fine, but not when they seem like a gratuitous "haha fuck you" to the audience. To be honest, all 3 original endings just seem like either the result of running out of money or time. Or a writing team that just couldn't decide so they wrote a compromise that pleased no one.
Beyond those problems, there were a number of plot holes and plot threads left extremely dangling that, for me, the extended DLC more or less resolves. Playing the ending again with the DLC enabled, I was relatively satisfied with how things wrapped up for both the paragon and singularity endings. I spent two games trying to make sure my choose-your-own adventure ended with the geth and the quarians reconciled, and it was nice to see that work didn't go to waste, like the original ending implied. In fact, after the DLC the only issues I really have are the ones mentioned above.
As for Shepherd dying, I was fully prepared for that and think it's a fine choice. They more or less telegraph the fact that she's going to sacrifice herself for the galaxy at the end of the game through more or less the entirety of ME3. You say goodbye to everyone at least once, sometimes twice. And while I do wish there were some way I could have arranged events that left Liara and my femshep popping out blue babies happily ever after, losing a long, happy life just makes it a more dramatic sacrifice, right? So yeah, I'm okay with hero's journeys that end in the ultimate sacrifice. That's kind of the deal with choosing heroism as a career.
So yeah, they made some truly gob-smacking choices in gameplay and story right at the end there, but the extended DLC smooths over most of my issues with the original ending. Enough to provide closure at any rate. And even with the remaining problems, well, it doesn't really sour what came before. The gameplay is still quite fun and the over-arching story was never really what I was there for anyway. I enjoyed the smaller character arcs much more (especially Tali, Jack and Garrus) and those are tied up long before the main story ending. And hey, overall it's still pretty good for a choose-your-own-adventure.
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