Mass Effect Wrap-Up: Why I Had Sex With The Alien
So I’m coughing up a review on Mass Effect right now, and I’ll spare you the gory details and the final letter grade (hint: not an A) that I’ll be giving it over at The Onion. After my excited posts of last week, I felt more lukewarm by the end of the game – still one of the better BioWare RPGs, but it was less a classic like Knights of the Old Republic and more like – well, you know when you start a genre book and you just can’t put the damn thing down, and the writing’s sloppy and there are typos and the cover’s cheesy, but you just have to get to the end? And the end still doesn’t knock you out? I could go on about how the incredible hype and AAA-prestige that latches onto titles like this blinds critics and fans to the not-quite-awesome product that finally hits the stores. Leigh among others has been blogging on that tip.
But instead, let’s wrap up my earlier post about the girl-girl alien thing.
So I wound up creating a female character. Stop looking at me like that. Given a choice, I always play women, and the female Commander Shepard is voiced by the inimitable Jennifer Hale. If you don’t play as a woman, and specifically as a kick-ass renegade woman, you’re missing some of the most entertaining dialogue of the year. So I picked a woman – but I wasn’t one of those guys who was slack-jawedly jonesing for a sex scene. In fact, I figured I would probably skip the romance subplots. Even as an observer, none of the NPCs I was meeting were that interesting. You meet the handsome, earnest guy with a sensitive backstory – who’s a total drip. And then you meet Liara, the blue-skinned alien chick, who also turns out to be a drip: she’s a scientist and researcher of ancient history who gets all nerdy and nervous whenever you talk to her one-on-one. She’s nice enough, but not really my type.
Let me also add that the NPCs in this game are a major step back for BioWare. They never talk with you in the field, aside from a couple generic lines about how “This building is very cold” or “This planet is very hot.” The extended get-to-know-you conversations I’m used to never happen. And as for flirting? Your romance options basically hand themselves up on a platter: the first time you get to talking with them, they start dribbling about how impressive and intriguing you are and, hey, space is lonely and sometimes it’s fun to share a bunk. In fact, they don’t even say anything that romantic. They basically just say, “Keep talking to me and someday we’ll have that sex scene you saw on YouTube.”
Like I said, neither one of them did it for me. But of the two, Liara was the less obnoxious. She gave me a whole spiel about how her race is entirely female, meaning they reproduce bisexually, and their matings are a serious union of body and spirit, and it’s really a whole credible thing that they go around the galaxy banging aliens of either gender. Like, it just made perfect sense the way she explained it. Also, maybe if we had sex, I would get to father a kid. In real life I’m a dad, and in virtual life I’ve been a mom. But a lesbian dad? That would be new.
Also – and I don’t mean any disrespect to Liara, or any other fictional characters in this game – but have you ever been far away from civilization, and you really wanted a cheeseburger? That’s how I role-played this one. I figured Commander Shephard could use a good, hot cheeseburger.
But that didn’t mean we hooked up. No sir. We kept working, saving the galaxy a planet at a time, chatting between missions. Liara was all into me, but at the same time, nervous about taking things too fast – plus, the galaxy’s about to blow up, and it didn’t seem like a good time to start something serious. About halfway through the game she said she wasn’t ready, I said that’s fine, and then – she dropped the subject! That was it. Somehow I’d blown the romance subplot. And I was never going to get that Paramour achievement (worth 10 points).
Or so I thought. The night before the last mission of the game, I’m typing away at some space age keyboard thing when there’s a knock on my door. It’s Liara. She wants to come in and talk, but – well, clearly she wants something more than that. She was lonely, she was nervous and – well, don’t we all feel that way sometimes? Don’t we all need a little company? And well, I don’t need to tell you, she got it.
But look. That wasn’t my goal. It just happened. I didn’t get this game, choose that character and follow all those options just so I could say that I became a lesbian dad in space. I didn’t set out to watch a sex scene in a video game. I mean, how hard up would anyone be to play hours of a video game just for a cutscene? And I don’t even think it was as persuasive as some of the other romance subplots out there – I mean, I could go on for pages about Annah in Planescape, and that just ends in a smooch. Sure, this was a lot more cinematic, but I never bought Liara’s attraction to me, I didn’t like how little conversation and build-up we had, I just didn’t buy the whole thing. Liara promised me a “life-altering experience”: I sure didn’t get that.
But at least I got my cheeseburger.
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PSST: If you enjoyed this, check out my new GameSetWatch column.
at least the scene is better the one than with the alien from citadel thats on you tube thats something atleast
godpinch
November 27, 2007 at 1:04 am
I just wanted to say that I thought the cheeseburger refrence was absolutely hilarious.
Buddy
December 6, 2007 at 4:14 am
mass effect is the most perfect blend of shooter and rpg that has been released to date. if u think any KOTOR was a better game, then ur just a star wars fanboy.
blokeasmunt
December 6, 2007 at 8:59 am
I wanted to take a second to say that I absolutely loved this review. It provided a well-needed chuckle.
In reference to bloke: You don’t need to be a Star Wars fanboy to come to the conclusion that the first KOTOR was better than Mass Effect. I can go on and on about how great the first KOTOR was and how Mass Effect came up short in its respects. As for “the most perfect blend,” you may want to revise your writing for future references. For the record, I’m no fanboy.
orlyowl
December 13, 2007 at 12:46 pm
so let me get this straight… one of the reasons you dont like this game is because you werent in love with the asari
does that mean you base games on how much you enjoy your “true loves” company
maybe you should find a real girlfriend, and start rating games based on their actual gameplay, not the relationship subplots…
josh
February 26, 2008 at 1:27 am
The NPC relationships in general were one of the things about the game that fell short. It wasn’t the most important, but it was the most fun to write about.
savetherobot
February 27, 2008 at 10:27 pm
Just to clear up any confusion, the female Shepard is not actually voiced by Stefanie Powers’ character from “Hart to Hart”, but by voice actress Jennifer HALE.:)
Bloody well done though, can’t argue with that!
Frasse
April 25, 2008 at 4:43 pm
Frasse: Dang. Fixed!
savetherobot
April 26, 2008 at 9:45 am
I didn’t get the sex scene lol
me
January 21, 2009 at 5:57 pm
Look, I loved the review. Hilarious with a hint of truth. I agree with a lot of it. Still, I found that Mass Effect was an intriguing game. Mostly what I’ve played from Bioware was melee oriented and I appreciated a break from that, getting into guns. the characters had very little depth and the sex scene (if you can really call it that, I mean, it was mostly just a passionate kiss where the alien damn near rips your neck off and then a quick cut where Liara is crawling on top of you after her eyes turn black) was pretty lame. It sort of reminded me of Jade Empire, an earlier game from original X-box, in the way that right before the big climax, there’s a romance scene. I appreciated that break from action a bit. But whatever. It’s your review. You have to give Bioware props though, the characters were extremely life like.
love,
Courtney.
P.S. Did anyone else hate the design a character thing? It was absolutely obnoxious. The only way I could get a character that didn’t wholly remind me of the old one was to make her butt ugly or a guy.
Courtney
June 2, 2009 at 11:23 am
Perhaps a little late for a response, but hah, I just got and finished the game.
At first I was enthralled by ME, right away thinking it was going to blow KOTOR out of the water. Sadly, ME fell short — I mean, ME has better graphics, story, and setting (I personally found the settings for KOTOR to be a bit of a drab for a Star Wars game), but it fell short in all the right places. KOTOR has an epic feel to it that ME is trying to promise us (like Liara does), and I think it almost gets there, but I think the game could have been expanded to a different angle. Like the sudden “twist” in KOTOR, I needed a break from the machinations of the story.
Beyond that, the characters /were/ flatter than KOTOR’s (though I think Wrex wasn’t bad)…. though I do like the concept of Liara, I felt her dialogue was poorly written. Actually, I can’t recall how well KOTOR was scripted, but ME’s script felt very amateurish (a lot of it is awkwardly abrupt or over-worded) , and bordered on terrible, at least for Bioware’s standards.
really I don’t know why ME isn’t better than KOTOR, it should be… perhaps it was the combat, through it all? Although it was nice to have firefights, ducking and strafing along walls, it got boring quick. A little variance couldn’t have hurt (oh, and the planet exploration side quests were simply terrible) – am I the only one who felt all the classes but soldier were useless? I mean, you need someone who can decrypt and open electronics-based containers, but the special skills are very hard to use in narrow corridors. Oh and, the ai was just bad. My allies would try shooting enemies through walls and would clumsily give away my position before I could unleash my opening attack.
But honestly? Mass Effect is a great game. Considering how /abominable/ games like Oblivion and Fallout 3 are, I’m just glad Bioware is still making playable games like this. I don’t care that it isn’t a gem.
anon
June 3, 2009 at 11:35 pm
I am currently on my first play through on Virmire. Some things that have sucked.
1) Exploring the planets for mineral deposits. Some of those mountainous planets are a pain in the a** to navigate.
2) Having the Mako flipped over on its back. I’ve had this happen twice, once while I was battling a Thresher Maw. It made me go splat shortly after.
3) Getting stuck in terrain. I had this happen 3 times in 1 hour of playing. This has to do mostly with the mountainous landscape. Once when this happened, it was because Benezia used a power on me, and I was lying on the floor, and couldn’t do anything.
4) NPC AI is terrible. My teammates keep running into my firing line.
5) Not a lot to do on the planets. The Mako drop scene was cool the first 3 times I watched it, but became old hat very quickly.
6) The Mako is a pain in the a** to drive. The little scenario where you have to play follow the leader with the ABXY buttons every time you want to scan a mineral deposit, or open a crate gets tiring. I must’ve done it about 1000 times now. I would much rather they just say “That’s too difficult for you to open. Use Omni-gel.” if the thing is too difficult to open.
7) Some of the conversations are out of whack (especially on Noveria I think). You’ll complete a quest, and NPCs still talk to you like you didn’t do the quest.
bcr666
June 10, 2009 at 10:45 am