I'm tired of saving the universe

I am.

I just finished Mass Effect 2 and, though I might call it Bioware's best game ever, its ending was bittersweet. On the one hand, it was a thrilling action RPG with the most interesting cast of characters in any Western RPG I can think of. On the other, I was expected to dedicate only a little of my attention on these fascinating side-stories, and be mostly concerned with the act of (wait for it!) saving the galaxy. Whooptidoo. As I made my heroic thrusts into the stars, I found that my various thrustees were far less interesting than an odd little Salarian in my medical bay, a party NPC named Mordin.

Mordin has some specific back-story to him, and without getting into spoilers, helping him tie up some loose ends, and talking to him about the implications of his history, was the best part of the whole game. It was a big let-down to finish that up, and return to hunting, *sigh*, the magical (sorry, technological) hoojiwatzit that can save all Milky Way-going life. Despite being smaller in scale, his story was infinitely more engaging, intellectually and emotionally. It had multifaceted characters with complex motivations, a moral quandry that was genuinely quandry-y, and more than enough justification for set piece action moments. I wanted to play a 30-hour RPG about THAT story, even though the stakes were much smaller and the through-line potentially lacking in easy moral inertia.

The philic need to make every game have the (country/world/galaxy/universe/multiverse) hang in the balance is getting genuinely tiresome. It's not only because the expansion from the local to the grand is so easy to see coming ("It turns out this plot is much bigger than we could have imagined!") but because it severely limits the places the story can go, and robs it of any moral complexity, whatsoever.

I guess I'm just burnt out on sweeping, epic trilogies and grand adventures. I think it would be more than possible for any of the few dozen super-talented developers to make an accessible game with a less conventional conflict than universe-threatening evil. Often these sorts of issues are blamed on the market, and the need to "play it safe," but I don't see anything dangerous about changing, not the content of the adventure, but the context, especially in an RPG that is ostensibly about clearing your own moral path. I think the slavvering, change-resisting neanderthal known as the "average consumer" is a near-total straw man.

Anyone else feel that way?

Yes. Unfortunately there are very few games that do a small, tighter story well.

Time for you to go out and get Heavy Rain I think.

This is why I love the Silent Hill games so much. You're never tasked with saving the world or really anyone other than a handful of people, at most. Similarly, the first Thief game never expands beyond a single city, and it barely expands to that size.

Well, I like the the implications of the main story line to be momentous. I think Bioware could have tweaked the main plot line to make it as interesting as the some of the character stories, but I still want to be a big damn hero. I don't have to save the universe, per se, but I want the stakes to be high and far reaching.

I spent a great deal of time thinking about it. I must have started to, then turned away from posting in the ME2 thread at least 5 times by now. Primarily because what I want to post is a scathing rebuke of the actual game quality, in the context of greater considerations.

I am personally becoming very disillusioned with Bioware. In part due to the very essence of what you presented. When I was a small time Jedi, on his way to stop a specific bad guy with aspirations of unbalancing the balance of the galaxy, I could understand the need to stop on my journey and save the kittens. It is what Jedi do. I was also tracking an unknown person, without true knowledge of how far the threat has gone or what the urgency of the quest is. The galactic salvation was quite secondary and easily suppressed in the grand scheme of things.

But then Bioware continues the trend, while taking all the wrong queues. They made the kitten saving ever more mandatory, and galactic liberation ever more primary in focus. If I am the only person capable of stopping an unstoppable force that will annihilate all life in the galaxy, why am I risking injury chasing down broken robots and small pirate gangs? What are single labs, towns, ships, and colonies in the scope of all life in the galaxy? You lost a datapad in the ghetto alley? Get a new one, damnit!

I find it extremely difficult to suspend my belief with such an immense gap between micro and macro story telling.

And I agree with you. Mordin was, after HK-47, my favourite sidekick of all times. Primarily because he had substance. He had colour. There was some meaning behind what he represented and espoused. He was well thought out and lacked the omni-present childishness and moral/mental hypocrisy of most Bioware characters.

This is why I'm so excited about Heavy Rain.

I mean, come on...how many video games have you brushing your teeth, taking a shower, helping your wife unpack groceries, or playing out back with your son? Sure, it sounds like The Sims, but unlike the ant-farm that is The Sims, Heavy Rain is a full on story, full of the gloriously mundane activities of everyday life. There's not a wizard, emo spike-haired teen or bald space marine in sight.

I've often wondered when gamer's who grew up on Atari 2600 & NES would finally age enough where their gaming choices would reflect their advancing age and maturity. I want more games like Heavy Rain. Not necessarily QTE-fests, but just something different than your dime-a-dozen teen power fantasies that seem to be all the industry has to offer.

Give me something that I can actually identify with and relate too. I'm so tired of chiche steroid-raged Kratos'es of the gaming landscape.

heavyfeul wrote:

Well, I like the the implications of the main story line to be momentous. I think Bioware could have tweaked the main plot line to make it as interesting as the some of the character stories, but I still want to be a big damn hero. I don't have to save the universe, per se, but I want the stakes to be high and far reaching.

I'm not sure. I think the stakes have to be high but not only for the character themselves and the people involved in the story, they don't have to effect the entire world or universe to make me care. I'm thinking of a game like Planescape: Torment where the focus of the story was really centred around discovering of the Nameless One and the lifes he had affected rather than trying to save the universe.

MoonDragon wrote:

I am personally becoming very disillusioned with Bioware...

Of all the games I play, Bioware games are the only ones that have stories I pay attention to the most. Mass Effect 2, despite it's faults, is my favorite game and Jade Empire is close behind. I think they do a great job of integrating story into a game. Heavy Rain, on the other hand, looks more like an interactive movie. I think Bioware does it right and that they are on the top of their game. Good stories, great characters, and fantastic gameplay.

I'm more tired of running errands while saving the universe.

I'll come out and say it: It didn't help that Mass Effect 2's story telling was bad.

ME1 is awesome, it tells an entertaining yarn of a hero discovering the big evil masterplan and shutting it down with a great big slap to the bad guy.

ME2's story feels weak, it's melodrama feels dull (needs more Udina), the most common enemy you encounter are robots and mercs that mean nothing in the big picture (ME1 had geth everywhere), you see the enemy in the world doing bad things about twice. It doesn't feel like you're not seeking out the biggest threat to the galaxy, but the local youths who throw rocks at windows and run away.

What I find more concerning is that I still find ME2 several levels of awesome above most other games, and given the choice would have no hesitation playing it again over an 'average' game.

Aaron D. wrote:

This is why I'm so excited about Heavy Rain.

I mean, come on...how many video games have you brushing your teeth, taking a shower, helping your wife unpack groceries, or playing out back with your son? Sure, it sounds like The Sims, but unlike the ant-farm that is The Sims, Heavy Rain is a full on story, full of the gloriously mundane activities of everyday life. There's not a wizard, emo spike-haired teen or bald space marine in sight.

This is exactly why I'm not interested in either the Sims or Heavy Rain.

I don't want to have to bother with stuff I can easily do in real life. Good entertainment(or even art) gives me a way to experience something different, and, often, quite incredible.

I don't need to press buttons to do stuff that I do every day.

The Mass Effect 2 story was not what bothers me about the game, it is the scanning; a boring, repetitive task. Not a game. A task. The gameplay was phenomenal and the story was engaging on a character level. That is gold for me. The problem in the main arc did not become apparent to me until post-game commentary time.

Story is only important to me in terms of my character. I feel very attached to my Shepard and her team. Take that and add great gameplay and you have a seminal RPG experience. The story in Heavy Rain may be far superior, but is it a better game?

You'd think there might be a game or two where the player's might choose to take a path towards destroying the universe, though maybe that is just a question of perspective.

One of the great things about Lucasarts ol Tie Fighter, was that you got to be the bad guy and it was refreshing.

I loved Mordins story, mostly because my ME1 crew was Garrus/Wrex. If you talk to Wrex a lot, and wander around the Krogan world, you really get hit with the brutality of the genophage. The two krogans talking about wanting to adopt a child that may or may not be his was saddening to the extreme. It also put a soft side to the otherwise dickish Krogans.

Agreed on the "Commander in the Alliance military, Council Spectre, part time mineral prospector" bit, I think I said in one of the ME2 threads it really should have been cut as 'not fun' for the amount of time you do it. I think part of the design is 'bad ass fixer' and part is 'universe exploration', and I think they could make two complete, but different games out of those two ideas, forcing them together doesn't quite work.

I like side quests. Most of it is flavor, and an opportunity for the devs to tell a silly joke, or provide some backstory, flesh out a character or give an area some atmosphere. I actually thought the atmosphere in ME2 was much superior to the original, because there were so many atmospheric quests. Also, running errands for your sidekicks is very important in the context of this story. You are the only glue holding together a group, some of whom hate each other, on a suicide mission. You don't want to undertake that sort of thing until you're really ready.

Also, WRT side quests, one of the big points of Shepard's character is that saving the universe is all well and good, but we can't lose our humanity in the process. That's why I think Shepard really would go out of his/her way to take care of things along the way, explore anomalies and chase after distress beacons.

I loved Moridin, too, but he wasn't the only character whose story had some emotion. My opinion of Miranda really turned around over the course of the game. Grunt's story was less about him and more about fleshing out the Krogan society. It was interesting to go there first hand and see them interact with each other and find out what was important to not only Wrex, but the other clans. And don't get me started on the whole Archangel quest line.

One thing I'll agree on is that they needed more story in their story. You spent so much time exploring the other characters and the very well-drawn environments that the thrust of the main story kind of got lost in all the rest of it. The game probably should have had more through-line in its main plot. Bioware could have done a better job tying in the character loyalty quests into the main story, too.

All that really didn't bother me, though, because I enjoyed the game more for the characters, the atmosphere and the gameplay than for the plot.

I'm tired of waiting two years between my attempts to save the universe like it's a seasonal job.

Although it sort of falls into the same "save the world" trap at the very end, Persona 4 might be worth a look. The focus of 90% of the game is all about discovering the culprit behind a series of murders in a sleepy Japanese town and less about saving the whole world.

Bioshock as well is another one - no world saving there, the best you can do is save a few little girls.

Irongut wrote:

You'd think there might be a game or two where the player's might choose to take a path towards destroying the universe, though maybe that is just a question of perspective.

Haven't seen all the different endings but you could probably argue that Vampire : Bloodlines offers this possibility. I don't know a huge amount about the "World of Darkness" outside of this game but if memory serves by this point in time the end of the world is pretty much a foregone conclusion (i.e: they wanted to reset the world to sell more core RPG books ).

Deus Ex also has a couple of unusual ways to end the game which aren't clear cut "good guys win - world saved".

Say what you want about the GTA games, you'll never save the country/planet/galaxy in one of them.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Say what you want about the GTA games, you'll never save the country/planet/galaxy in one of them. :D

Just wait for "GTA: Omega."

Scratched wrote:

it's melodrama feels dull (needs more Udina)

Oh man. That makes me imagine a scene of a massive shouting match with TIM--more or less railing against a man you know is No Damned Good, but who you cannot touch. That would have been awesome. Of course, it's hard to tell a story if you can break down the basic plot that much.

Anyway, the strength of ME2 is really in the "short stories" it contains. Each of your teammates personal arcs has moments. Some more than others, it's true--but they're really what the game is about. The overall plot is really just a framing story for those. (This both explains why it is so weak and why that didn't kill the game.)

And: That's also why I *could* have imagined the scene above with TIM: except for a few crew members who were unfortunately central to the framing plot, everything else could have been done either with Cerberus's support or despite it. Man. So much lost potential there, now that I see it... because after taking off with what TIM set you up with to start, the choice of either accepting additional aid or rejecting it, of possibly trying to convince TIM that his ideas are wrong while he tries to convince you to come to his way of thinking... That could have made the framing story (Shepard's story) much much stronger.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Say what you want about the GTA games, you'll never save the country/planet/galaxy in one of them. :D

Grand Theft Starship? Actually, I'd play that if it let me run around boarding enemy ships in a hybrid space sim/FPS boarding-party game. Of course, saving the galaxy would have nothing to do with it. Regardless, it's important to have some overall driving narrative, so that you can measure your progress and performance, even if it's something mundane and stupid like trying to earn enough space-bucks to buy a new space-holo-vid unit.

cube wrote:
Aaron D. wrote:

This is why I'm so excited about Heavy Rain.

I mean, come on...how many video games have you brushing your teeth, taking a shower, helping your wife unpack groceries, or playing out back with your son? Sure, it sounds like The Sims, but unlike the ant-farm that is The Sims, Heavy Rain is a full on story, full of the gloriously mundane activities of everyday life. There's not a wizard, emo spike-haired teen or bald space marine in sight.

This is exactly why I'm not interested in either the Sims or Heavy Rain.

I don't want to have to bother with stuff I can easily do in real life. Good entertainment(or even art) gives me a way to experience something different, and, often, quite incredible.

I don't need to press buttons to do stuff that I do every day.

That's totally fair.

The "I play games to escape my real-life reality" is not lost on me in the least and I feel that way often myself. I just detest the fact that this virtually all we have to choose from in gaming.

My angle is that I want to experience game worlds and characters that are more sedate and relatable. Harry Potter is a fun romp into fantasy-land, but I personally find more satisfaction & resonance in mundane movies like Rachel Getting Married. I'd personally like to see this reflected in my gaming choices.

Avatar the movie totally kicks ass, but it's a one-dimensional default landscape that seems exclusive to gaming. I'm just looking for something a little more grounded and tethered to our own real lives here on planet earth.

Bald space marines don't need to be bounced out, imo. but I personally would like to see a broader experience offered in my game selections.

Play Persona 4.

Aaron D. wrote:

Bald space marines don't need to be bounced out, imo. but I personally would like to see a broader experience offered in my game selections.

Indeed. I'm not against saving the world every now and then, but I thin it'd be cool just to have a character go through trials and tribulations, and struggle to get back to where he once was, which was just getting by. I don't hate that idea. As always, it's the execution of it that makes the difference.

I think that's one of the reasons I love Bad Mojo so much; I wish we had more games like this. A perfectly ordinary non-white-hat-wearing, non-black-hat-wearing dude thrust into a rather extra-ordinary situation. Yet, it doesn't culminate in a world-rocking disaster or epiphany about long-dormant powers suddenly bursting into life. In fact, the stage never really grows more broad than the canvas painted in the fantastic intro that I really love and think everyone should watch and if you don't like it I think you a big fat poo-poo-head err, I mean into a movie which I could understand someone having issues with its acting or quality.

Or should I say, roach? Dang, I still use that line at least once a month in ordinary conversation.

I agree with the main thrust. The whole Collectors plotline felt contrived and uninteresting. They could have dropped it and the game would've been just as good. I don't need an excuse to explore an interesting galaxy, recruit interesting characters, and then go on interesting, unrelated side-quests with them. Hello, Firefly!

bnpederson wrote:

Time for you to go out and get Heavy Rain I think.

Kind of what I was thinking. However, also what I often feel in every RPG I play, save Deus Ex. At some point there are threads that are so much more interesting or fun than the save the world/universe plot. When I think of Oblivion or WoW, I think of some really cool sub plots that were infinitely more interesting than the grander story. But something that accentuates what may seem mundane in comparison, like Heavy Rain with the parent/child relationship, or Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble, can just hit a much stronger note thematically.

I don't feel the problem is saving the galaxy as such, it's more the videogame baggage we're always bringing along. If you look at good recent "new space opera" science fiction (Reynolds, Banks), it tends to be about the fate of the entire universe. But being authors, they make it really about something else and most of the joy as a reader is picking up on those clues. Also, books are great in presenting kick-ass characters every which way. Videogames tend to have a couple of good characters, if you're lucky, and lots and lots of throwaway filler.

I haven't played Mass Effect 2 yet and frankly, what you guys and the Idle Thumbs crew is saying is giving me the feeling that I'm not going to like it. ME1 was a flawed, marvellous game. I liked it precisely because I could ignore all the ridiculous side quests and immerse myself in the boots of Ms Shepard. The whole "renegade" line was brilliantly realized. I never felt like a jerk or an "evil" guy - rather, I had a job to do - saving every last one of you ignorant citizens - and I would punch anyone in the face if they got in my way. It was the sensible thing to do, I didn't have a second to waste. Except that the game tried very hard to convince me otherwise.

ME1 was the best attempt I've seen in delivering that literary quality in a game, but it stumbled whenever it tried to be "a Bioware RPG". ME2 sounds like they've perfected all the inconsequential nonsense and skipped the good bits. That does not mean I'm not going to enjoy it, but I have a feeling it won't top ME1.

jlaakso wrote:

I haven't played Mass Effect 2 yet and frankly, what you guys and the Idle Thumbs crew is saying is giving me the feeling that I'm not going to like it...

You would be doing yourself a disservice not giving the game a try. Games that suck don't get articles and multiple threads written about them. They die quiet lonely deaths. Mass Effect 2 was a bombshell of a game. Its story flaws are there because it is inherently difficult to tell a compelling story in any video game and still make it fun to play. What you get, though, is a great RPG experience, because it is backed by good interactive storytelling. The ability to take your character through all three games is almost reason enough to play.