ME2 | Just Another Routine Mission

Please note that this game is rated M for Mature. The adult content includes: blood, drug references, sexual content, strong language, and violence. For more information on game ratings, visit http://www.esrb.org/.

Also, I would suggest to click the title of each post (in this case, ME2 | Just Another Routine Mission) so that you only view this post and there's less on your screen. I'm a bit meticulous and tend to write long posts, so it would be easier on you to have one post open at a time.

My first official blog post will be about the main plot of the game (covering the events from Mass Effect 1), the beginning of ME2, and the creation of this playthrough’s Commander Shepard. What better way to have a quick summary of the first game than to show the Genesis DLC? (DLC means “downloadable content”, for those who are unaware.) I purchased this on my Xbox a while back. Its purpose is that gamers who hadn’t played the first ME game could make the critical choices that will affect the story in ME2, while simultaneously summarizing what took place. This video features FemShep (a term fans created for the female Commander Shepard), since I will be playing as a female.

Plot

That video covers the basics of ME1, critical to understanding ME2. With the exclusion of the relationship option – since there is no good or bad choice to make – my character will take all of the evil options, which will be highlighted in a red color.

Commander Shepard is on a “quest to stop the rogue Spectre named Saren Arterius from leading an army of Geth (electronic-based creatures) to conquer the galaxy. Shepard learns of a far greater threat in the form of the Reapers. Saren has been mentally enslaved by the Reaper ‘Soverign’, a vanguard sent into Citadel Space to initiate the purge of all advanced sentient life in the galaxy, a cycle repeated by the Reapers every 50,000 years.” (Gotta love Wikipedia, eh?) The end of the first game shows Shepard and his team defeating both Saren and Sovereign, at a great cost. I would recommend looking into the first game in greater detail, if you aren’t already familiar with it.

The beginning of ME2 has to outdo all that. And it totally does. In the first ten minutes, Shepard dies. The makers killed the lead character that you control. I can’t imagine how that must have felt for first-time gamers who had no idea what would happen. (I started the game knowing how it began, so it wasn’t a surprise for me.) But it’s okay, because the future has such fantastic technologically-advanced science that it can bring Shepard back to life. It may cost a lot of credits (this game’s term for electronic and intergalactic currency), but the fact remains that it’s possible, let alone expensive. The main plot of the Mass Effect series is about the progression of Shepard’s mission to protect the galaxy from the Reapers. ME2 is about Shepard teaming up with Cerberus – a human paramilitary organization – to gather some of the best of the best in the galaxy to fight the Collectors, a mysterious species that has a connection to the Reapers. From their interactions with the Collectors, they hope to learn more about the Reapers and find a way to prevent the massive and villainous aliens from leaving dark space to destroy all life. Again.

As a sidenote, I can’t help but compare the Reapers to giant, armed squid, which is a ridiculous image. And then there’s the obvious comparison to the Drej in Titan A.E. that I can’t put out of my head.

If you would like to physically see what’s happening, go to the video bar at the right side of the screen titled ME2 Walkthrough. I’ve added a YouTube channel that shows a walkthrough of a FemShep Renegade character. Yes, there is a guy who comments on his walkthrough, which can be highly annoying to some, but you can always mute it and read the subtitles. While his character is not the same as mine, the choices made are almost entirely the same as what I’ve done/will do. (Be sure to start with the Part 1 clip to spare yourself the confusion.)

Choices Made in Genesis

·         Relationship: Kaiden. What the heck, right? The way I see it, a Renegade FemShep would mess around with a fellow human crew member and not take it seriously. This game seems to follow a strong sense of selfish bias for one’s own species, so that further justifies her choosing. It…ah…releases tension, which is important to keep a leader focused. Right? 

·         Rachni Queen: Killed. Is terminating her really so bad, when looking at the greater good? Murder is murder, but sacrificing one life to potentially save millions doesn’t give it such a lowly perspective. Eliminating one less threat to galactic destruction is a mark on the checklist of to-do’s.

·         Wrex: Killed. Perhaps it’s a rash decision to kill a squad member – especially since I have the previous bias of a Paragon character, who liked him and kept him alive – but he was interfering with a major game-changer in defeating Saren and the Reapers. The Virmire facility had to be destroyed. They were more robotic monsters than Krogan, and their deaths would mean saving trillions of lives.

·         Who Stays Behind: Ashley. Both are good soldiers and loyal to the cause, so the decision isn’t based on competence. I chose because I think Ash is similar to Shepard in that they’re both intense soldiers who do what’s necessary to get the job done. (Ash is probably a bit less cold-hearted, though.) I believe that Shepard would have made the choice for her leader, were she in the same position. FemShep acknowledges – even as a Renegade, I might add – that Ash was a good friend and the decision wasn’t easy to make. Plus, I usually save Ash and changing things up is meant to mess with my mojo. It did. I wasn’t used to seeing or reading about Kaiden being alive.

·         Council: Sacrificed. Just as it was with the Rachni and Wrex, this decision was made to sacrifice a few and save many, in regards to a ratio. Helping the Council would mean less ships attacking Sovereign, threatening not just billions or trillions of lives – many of which are innocent – but imposing the destruction of intergalactic stability. An easy choice, when ignoring the idea that they’re living beings and not statistics. As FemShep notes: “The Council could be replaced.” They represent political ideologies, not people, and thus would continue.

·         New Council Leader: Udina. While Anderson is considered a trusted friend, Udina represents what Shepard believes in and fights for: getting things done. If it takes a hard hand and ruthless ambition, so be it. While he’s not as trustworthy as a person, he knows how to lead and deal with political bombshells. Another FemShep note: Udina is “someone willing to be a bad guy…for the sake of the greater good”.

Commander Shepard Specs

·         Gender: Female. This seems strange to everyone I’ve mentioned it to, but I usually choose to play as a male character in video games. I don’t really know why. Perhaps I’m subconsciously attuned to the stereotype, or maybe I just like making the guy super attractive so I can look at him all the time. Anyway, I picked a female for this runthrough because it’s something I don’t normally do, thus a slight increase in discomfort.

·         Difficulty: Hardcore. The Mass Effect series has five levels of difficulty – Easy, Normal, Veteran, Hardcore, and Insanity. I’ve started and abandoned many of my games with ME, and this will be the second completion of the Hardcore setting. I usually play at the Veteran level. The main difference is that it makes the bosses more difficult to beat due to better protection.

·         Name: Luc Dolores. Weird, I know, but I wanted something original. Luc is pronounced “Loose” and is short for “Lucifer”. Ha. Dolores is a reference to my most-hated character from the Harry Potter series, Professor Umbridge. Two villainous names. I found it quaint. The name you choose doesn't matter with the game at all, since he/she will always be referred to as Commander Shepard. I will likely refer to her as FemShep.

·         Class: Soldier. I’m going for a quintessentially human FemShep (since Cerberus is supposed to be an evil corporation with a pro-human bias), and the Soldier class is the least influenced by the future. The biotics and tech classes clearly show scientific and technological advancement. In addition to that, I think it gives a huge advantage to weaponry because I can use all five types of guns and reap the benefits of their upgrades.

·         Background: Earthborn. Again, I’m sticking to human roots, and she’s better than the “petty crime and underworld gangs”, as the description states. Good or evil, Shepard cares about saving people and doing good for the galaxy. The Renegade route simply goes by a more logical and less compassionate manner.

·         Psychological Profile: Ruthless. This is a defining feature of a Renegade Shepard. “Throughout your military career, you have held fast to one basic rule: get the job done. You’ve been called cold, calculating, and brutal. Your reputation for ruthless efficiency makes your fellow soldiers wary of you. But when failure is not an option, the military always goes to you first. You sent 3/4^ths of your unit to its death and murdered surrendering batarians on Torfan.” Basically, Renegade Shepard is a heroic and efficient pain in the ass.

Gaming Segment (3.5 hours)

I already have a different feeling than I normally do, knowing that I'm playing as a female Renegade. Furthermore, I did something unique - I customized FemShep's appearance to be ugly. Now, what I view as attractive is purely based on my opinions and perspective, but what I did was push the eyes, mouth, chin, and other facial features to extreme levels by making them too big, pushing them too close together, etc. The purpose was to make me feel uncomfortable, since I will have to look at the product of my alterations for several hours. Initially, it's working, but not because I find her so hideously ugly - I feel guilty for having put that upon her. She's not even real - nothing more than numbers put into a machine - yet I feel an emotional response to the visual I created.

When Miranda kills Wilson and I make the Renegade dialogue option, the game seems to show that trusting no one but yourself is a good thing. I can understand that. If there's no one to trust, there's no one to hurt you, and in a world rampant with betrayal and deception, that can be a strong safeguard. In the interview aboard the transport vehicle to the Cerberus facility, Miranda and Jacob ask FemShep questions about her past - the event in her background on Torfan and her decision on Virmire between Ashley or Kaiden. Her responses involve "[doing] what was necessary", but acknowledging that she sent "good soldiers" to their deaths. She can't let morals affect important decisions. Later, when FemShep boards the Normandy SR2, EDI appears to agree with FemShep's lack of desire to trust others, concluding that it is "irrational". AI's are seen as some form of perfection, or at least technical upgrades to the heavily-flawed human race. (Miranda's background is another example of this.) It reminds me of an episode of Fringe that aired on February 17th of this year called "A Better Human Being". A scientist created various beings that were made to be perfect versions of himself combined with other genetic material. We strive so ardently for perfection, but it results in two ways: either we screw up because we try to hard, or it was a futile attempt in the first place since perfection is an ideal that doesn't actually exist. (How pessimistic.)

I can already tell that Renegade dialogue is more direct and "cut to the chase" than Paragon dialogue, disregarding emotional reactions. I can also tell that this game sets up Miranda and Jacob as a physical representation of the differences between Renegade and Paragon, respectively.

Something I suspect will prove to be very consistent is the industrial, boxy feel to each environment. The Cerberus facility and Freedom's Progress colony certainly attest to that. Neither are places I would like to call home, though I'm accustomed to grass and trees and thus have a bias. They both seem clean and shiny, certainly, but that's not necessarily a great thing. Part of my dislike for it may come from an innate modern human feature - fearing technology. Moreover, the mechs and geth are a futuristic technology capable of automatic choices to kill and can be programmed to do what humans or sentient beings can't. They're a common staple of most civilizations to protect them from danger, yet they can easily become the dangerous creatures themselves. (Perhaps this is a statement about our current technology?) 

Why do they put so much emphasis on the Normandy? Don't get me wrong - it's a great ship. I've tried to imagine what it would be like to board it. The futuristic tech alone is reason enough to be fascinated, but it's a sleek, powerful, and more than sufficient ship. I just have to laugh when the big, melodic music booms as the Normandy SR2 is introduced - music that's solely used for the big reveal of the ship. 

Everything Else

At this point, I’m already over halfway through the game and have taken a variety of notes. I got so caught up in it that I neglected to actually get my thoughts to the blog. It’s a testament to humanity’s obsession with technology. For my next post, I’ll continue to discuss the plot and my character’s decisions, as well as the implications of what each subplot and what themes and undertones are present in each mission. In at least one of my posts, I’d love to discuss the depth of this game and how much effort and technology was put into it. I’m still awed by the sheer vastness of it and the vast attention to detail. I'd also like to pick apart Cerberus and the Systems Alliance (the representative government for the entire human race). But that's for another post. 


~Mel

Starting Out

Welcome to Vault 101! Where you are safely shielded from all the nuclear wasteland that is the "real world" above you, and above ground. Right off the bat you choose whether you want to be a girl or a boy, then your name, race, face, hair style and color. I stuck with what I actually look like, I mean- just because I am going to play like I normally wouldn't, doesn't mean that I have to look any different than I do in real life, right? In fact I think it hits harder to home for me because I will be able to actually see a character that looks like me do all these bad things, bringing forth true emotion.

After the "birth" scene, it's now one year later and you learn how to walk and talk. Cutscene- nine years later, and it's your birthday. Everybody came out for your birthday, old . . young . . and your dad. The most important gift is the presentation of pip boy 3000 from the vault overseer. 
 The pip boy is crucial to gameplay as it is what you access for weapons, attire, aid, maps, etc. Due to choosing the rude and mean route throughout the game, when I had the option to talk to my fellow party-mates- I was a flat out ass to them. Please excuse the language, but there really isn't any other way to put it! Every option to pick the straight up meanest thing I could say, I picked. While it was somewhat funny, I am not sure how I actually felt about treating all the characters that way :/

Six years later, it was time to take the GOAT exam. So naturally when the prompt came, I told the teacher that I thought "the test is bullshit"- and I made him to do it for me. After the test I didn't have to take, I was prompted with a skills select screen, I choose: lock pick, repair and sneak. All those skills would start out a little higher than the other 15 or so choices.

Three years later, turns out my dad up and left the joint without me! After being violently woken up, I decide to follow him outside the vault and into "the capital wasteland." On the way I had to kill some Vault Security agents and some 'rad-roaches' (radiation infected cockroaches). I also killed one of the boys that called me names as a ten year old kid at my birthday party. After, of course, I refused to help save his mom from the roaches. Eventually I killed the overseer himself, and was able to open his secret tunnel to the vault door. Freedom was mine!

Newly acquainted to the outside world, I was offered some perks. It seemed only fitting to add the thief perk to my collection I had going. My main mission now is to go to megaton to find my faja.

Outside the vault is desolate, barren land. Most of the landscape is large rocks with dying grass, charred trees, radioactive pools of water and killer zombie-like-animals. Some of the animals, if you can even call them that, consist of mole-rats, boat-flys, viscous dogs and I am sure there is more I haven't even seen yet. Among the priorly mentioned in the landscape, there are still dilapidated buildings, freeway overpasses, and whole cities just wanting to be discovered.

First place I did discover was that of the city of Springvale, small but pretty much abandoned. Soon after I found a sign that was spray painted and said megaton with an arrow underneath it. On my way to Megaton I found the Super-Duper Mart! It was filled with raiders! Downright evil bastards, who shoot you as soon as they see you. But, eventually, I killed them all, of course. I especially want to note that I even decapitated someone! One shot to the head and there it went. I also picked my first lock in the Super-Duper Mart! You use both of the joysticks to rotate a bobby pick and the lock.
After looking around their stuff, I found the key to the back room and picked up some nuka colas, (radioactive cola) that are worth a lot in the game- but hard to come by.

Finally after exhausting my ammo supply, food and health from the Mart, I made it to Megaton!
 So, first thing in the door . .apparently I said the wrong thing and had to kill the Sheriff? oops. After that I wasn't sure if I was going to be welcome in the city. But, it seems that the other townspeople didn't hear of the death- so, dodged a bullet there. literally. Megaton visually is what living in a large hole would be like. The sides of the hole are lined in walkways and houses, and at the very bottom is what appears to be a bomb. A large bomb. Not sure how it got there? But I am sure there is a story behind it. So I talked around, stole some food (made a woman mad I stole her food), and eventually found out that after providing some bottle caps to a man my dad had talked to, that I could find out where he went. The unfortunate thing for me, was that I didn't have enough bottle caps to pay the man, so I needed to go back to Springvale to talk to a woman who owed the man bottle caps. I said I would, but then here is where things get interesting! Turns out my game and/or controller glitched right there and then. I 'accidentally' shot at the guy trying to help me and caused a whole uproar of a giant floating robot trying to kill me with another guy as well trying to kill me. Lets just say, I died a lot in between that house and the door to Megaton. About 5 times. Finally I outran them though, and made it outside the doors! Hopefully he will still want to help me when I get back . .? :)

I ventured over to Springvale again and talked to the woman needed for the bottle caps. With some smooth talking, and the speech skill, I was able to talk her into giving me her entire bottle cap collection! 400 caps pocketed :) With that, I hit the save button and turned off the system.

My stats overall are:
2 hours played
21 kills
14 times dying
14 creature kills
3 locks picked
Multiple bad acts and stealing completed

Overall feelings so far:
Intrigued by the evil lifestyle, but needing to play more to really see some true feelings coming out!
-Kels

Fall into Fallout

Hello! I am the other half of the this two person team, Kelsey. Here is a little demo of what my gaming experience will be like:

So that in a nutshell, is Fallout 3! You may ask, why pick Fallout 3 instead of Fallout: New Vegas? (which happens to be the newer one of the two). Simply because I first had the chance to watch my roommate play Fallout 3 before she tried New Vegas. We both came to the conclusion that FO3 was the superior game due to the layout and overall plot line. 

Curiously enough, it wasn't until I lived with my last roommate that I actually got into gaming! She has: Xbox 360, N64, wii and PS2, so with all those consoles it was only a matter of time before I was hooked :) When she bought Zelda: Twilight Princess in 2010, I literally went to class, came back and played, ate, came back and played, went to sleep, and eventually in the morning resumed playing. For two weeks! Nothing but Zelda. It was amazing :)

I currently have a PS3, which I got an amazing deal buying for black friday 2011. The games I own are Bioshock, Bioshock 2, Laura Croft: Tomb Raider, Need for Speed: Carbon, Silent Hill: Homecoming, Demon's souls, and of course, Fallout 3. I tend to find myself drawn to darker games (with the exception of NFS) and absolutely love games with some element of steampunk, and/or great music selection. The music in both Bioshocks and FO3 can be thought to be from the 1930's, taking you back to another era! I have always felt I was supposed to have lived in the 20's and 30's, so I find the music suits me quite well :)

Onto the more technical aspects of FO3, what needs to be broken down is what you can actually do in this game that determines the path of good or evil. In the video above, you see that items can be taken from anywhere in the wasteland, for instance: a refrigerator. When the words are in red, that denotes that you will lose karma for taking  the object, however if the words are in green, then you gain karma. Other ways to "become bad" depends on the decisions you make in the game interacting with people, as well. 

As the video says, there is over 100 hours of gameplay in this open map setting, I am only conquering 20 of it! And with that final thought, I am off to game it up!

-Kels

From Assassins to Aliens

Before I get started, watch this launch trailer for the game:

So, that's Mass Effect 2. Pretty epic, yeah? I'll get into more detail with the plot in my next post, which will be about my first gaming segment, but if you know nothing about the game, at least this video can give you a small taste of what's to come.

When I first got into gaming - not just casually turning on the Gamecube or N64 for half an hour, but becoming invested in it for several hours and actually completing the game - it was for the Assassin's Creed series. Here was a game that turned religion on its head, blurred the lines between good and evil, had a fascinating journey that traced humanity's history as far back as its origins to a not-so-distant future, and created a technology and mythology so awesome that you could believe it all was happening right now. Before I knew about this game, I wasn't interested in gaming much beyond my Pokemon and Super Smash Brothers. (Don't get me wrong - they're good games, and I still play them.) I was a reader, not a gamer. Now, I'm still a reader, but I'm also an avid Xbox gamer with a handful of great games, too many downloaded demos, and a bit of a reputation for it. But further still, AC made me intrigued by technology in a way I never had been before, it drew me to the rich history of Italy and the Renaissance period, and it made me question what I knew and what I thought to be true and real. Perhaps I become too attached to these fictional universes and could use a little more time in the outdoors, but I'm not alone here.

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood - Leap of Faith

You may be thinking, "I thought you were going to talk about Mass Effect, not glorify another game. What does Assassin's Creed have to do with anything?"

Well, AC is the reason I became a gamer, as previously illustrated - the kickoff to my gaming career, so to speak. It's what made me realize that games had elaborate narrative, stunning graphics, and beautiful design. After I finished the first two AC's, I started looking for other games that piqued my curiosity. (I was surprised to find that I enjoyed shooter games like Splinter Cell: Conviction and was able to actually beat them and get a handful of achievements.) I saw commercials and ads for ME and knew it was something special. I had never been much of a fan of the alien stuff; every time I had tried to accept sci-fi, it just didn't bode well with me. But I gave ME a shot on a whim and am so glad I did. It's the most dialogue-driven game I've ever played and enforces the idea that your decisions have far-reaching effects and consequences more than any game I've seen. And, as strange as it sounds, it helped me to accept others. In our society, aliens are made to be seen as strange, ugly, foreign beings that are anything but human. But in the world of ME, aliens are side by side with humans and you learn to not only accept them, but empathize with them.
Consequentially, I also decided to watch Farscape once I had started the first ME game, despite still feeling uneasy about the alien sci-fi aspect, and now I frelling love it. Sci-fi is looking more awesome by the minute.

The human of Farscape, John Crichton, on an alien ship with alien passengers.

While AC puts you into history, ME launches the player into the future - a future that's still rooted in humanity and our progressive technology. It also enhances some of the issues we see on our planet today within our own species, which I find interesting. The biggest difference for me - and a big part of the reason I chose to use ME as the game for this project - is that I have a great deal of control over the main character, Commander Shepard. I choose where to go, what to say, what actions to take. Arguably, I think this fact makes it easier for players to immerse themselves into the game. Again, I will go more in-depth with this once I actually start playing.

While my main focus will indeed be ME2, this blog has to do with more than the two games we selected. This covers all RPG's (Role Play Games) and, really, all games in general. They are the children of technology and creativity. To non-gamers, I ask you to at least give them a chance and see them for more than what they are at face value. And to those who are gamers, I implore you to look even deeper and enhance your gaming experience by understanding what it is that you're partaking in.

Now, I gotta go play the ME3 demo. I'll leave you with the epic track used in the ME2 trailer. You will feel like a god among men (or goddess among women, to be impartial) if you listen to this while walking down the street.

~Mel

Why We're Here

Welcome to our blog!

This is Melissa (also referred to as Mel), half of the two-person team who will be posting here. As I mentioned in our About Me section, we're here to take an in-depth look at Mass Effect 2 and Fallout 3. But why? What purpose could we have at studying video games? 

First of all, the latest and greatest technology has given us the opportunity to create insanely innovative and visually mesmerizing games. Even if you're not much of a gamer, it's hard to ignore how amazing technology is simply from viewing a trailer for a new game as a commercial. We've come a long way from Pong and pixels. Personally, I'm a huge fan of the ME franchise and I'm stoked for ME3 to be released next month. 

Let's take this one step further, though, and look beyond the graphics. If we can make games this visually realistic and fascinating, what else can we do with technology? Why do artists and programmers go to such great lengths to invent a fictional, three-dimensional world? Why do gamers such as myself feel so compelled and connected to these games? What's the deal with the stereotypes of female gamers? What do all of these things suggest about humanity - where we used to be and where we are today? In the next few weeks, Kelsey (the other half of the brainpower behind this blog) and I will attempt to answer these questions and many more as we explore the worlds of ME2 and F3. 

Here's the overview of our game plan. I will be playing Mass Effect 2, and Kelsey will be playing Fallout 3. Our levels of difficulty will be set one bar higher than we typically play. (For instance, I usually play on the Veteran setting with ME2, so this time I'll play on the Hardcore setting.) What's the point in a video game experiment without a challenge? Also, both of us will be playing as the "evil" character, making not-so-moral choices that result in a higher death count and a decidedly worse-off environment. The reason for this is because we tend to play as "good" characters, and we'd like to see how making uncomfortable choices affects not only the game itself, but us - the players. Other goals or things we may be taking note of as we play are as follows:

• visual aesthetics of the game (description of the environment)
• plot (what happens in the game, what actions our characters take)
• our reactions to each segment of gameplay
• time spent with each segment
• death count (including our own characters, should it come to that)
• critical reception of game (what others think of the game and how they reacted to the same/similar situations)

There's a good chance we'll cover a lot more than that. The sky is the limit. Feel free to give us suggestions or questions to answer and drop us comments on what we post. 

The title of this blog refers to three core concepts that relate to what we're searching for and will be investigating: humanity, video games and their technological advancements, and the world we live in with life as we know it. Hopefully, by the time we've finished our playthroughs and made our last posts, you and I both will have a better understanding of how these three things tie together. 

Two gamers, two games, one mission. 

~ Mel