In a good way though?
I have all the feels you guys and I gotta get 'em out some way so here we go.
First off I know I'm late to this party. I only recently acquired a PC capable of playing all the Mass Effect games in their full glory. With my fiance going nuts about Andromeda's upcoming release, I figured I'd finally see what all the fuss was all about.
I blew through all three games in two weeks, full completion.
I am emotionally wrecked.
(Huge spoilers ahead, for those just as fasionably late as I am.)
ME1, mostly paragon, with a few renegade options when someone was just being too much of a dick not to punch. Romanced (and saved) Kaiden. Saved Wrex. Felt good about myself. Fun game.
ME2. Again, went mostly (though not perfectly) paragon. But throughout the game I was filled with this weird restlessness. Where was Kaiden? Where was Tali? Where was Wrex? As I came to love my newest crewmates, even eventually liking and respecting Miranda as a fellow space-diva, my Shepard spurned all romantic entanglements. She had a reaper to kill, a mastermind to escape, and a boyfriend to find and/or beat some sense into.
And then came three. Just, nothing but non-stop emotional turmoil. Kaiden getting hurt (my thoughts: no plz don't let him die in a cutscene, no don't let him die in a cutscene), Mordin dying, Tali's homeworld, losing Thane, my little tank-baby Grunty all grown up and doing his mama proud. The Geth and the Quarians, the Krogans and the Turians, the Rachni, even the Leviathans - my Shep led them all. Got to watch EDI come to life and learn to love. Always found another way.
I suspected early that my character was not going to survive the ending, regardless of what the ending would be. I figured that's the way things were going. (I didn't look up what the endings were, though I had been aware of the amount of backlash they received when the game came out.) In the end, my Shepard could not bring herself to kill EDI and the Geth, even though it would spare her own life. Between control and synthesis, I chose synthesis. It seemed like the right thing to do, and damn if she hadn't always tried to do the right thing.
I was expecting Shepard to die. What I wasn't expecting was how goddamn hard the romantic subplot hit me.
Kaiden was there for Shepard from the very beginning. Through thick and thin, through Saren and Horizon and Udina, and with the Citadel DLC I got a small taste of what life could be like for them. Cooking together. Snuggling on the couch. Falling asleep in each other's arms after a party with their friends. A place like that on the Pacific coast is what Kaiden wanted. He already lost her once, and she had come so close to losing him so many times. I was so focused on getting Kaiden through the game alive, I didn't anticipate the emotional impact of him actually living. Surviving. Moving on without her, somehow (how do you get past a person who has already cheated death once? what if they came back again? he would spend his whole life wondering.) They'll never have that place on the coast. He'll never hold her again. The look in his eyes when they finally parted, when Garrus was dragging him aboard the Normandy, knowing he would never see her again, it felt real.
No book has ever moved me to tears. Few movies can (damn you Pixar!). But here I am, with tears in my eyes, because an NPC has to 'live' without me.
The endings caught a lot of flak. I can kind of see why, although since I had the extended cut DLC it was perhaps not so bad for me as for others. But, I think the real reason why there was so much backlash is because no matter what you choose, the ending hurts. It really, really hurts in a genuine way that so few games (so few anythings) manage to achieve. Somewhere along the way I forgot that these were just characters in a story somebody wrote. They were my friends, my babies, my lover, even if just for a moment. They made me care. They made me feel. Somehow, they made it matter.
So if you'll excuse me, I think I need to go hold my dog and cry for awhile now.
TLDR: The Mass Effect Trilogy is an incredible roller coaster of emotion and just the best damn writing I've ever encountered in or out of a game. Play it if you haven't already.
Can't wait for Andromeda.
Submitted February 28, 2017 at 04:56PM by Trilobyte141 http://ift.tt/2mq71Oe
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