“A story without emotion is no story at all.”
Mass Effect 3 exhibits a remarkable and emotional ending to such a beloved trilogy and distinguishes this series as a vital experience to the role-playing genre of video games.
Mass Effect is a sci-fi action role-playing video game where players assume the role of Commander Shepard of the alliance military and guide his/her mission to save the galaxy from a race of malevolent sentient machines, known as Reapers. The Reapers hibernate in dark space and return to the galaxy periodically to destroy and/or enslave all sapient organic life. The player decides Shepard’s sex, background and class. To further customize the experience, Shepard is given different dialogue options and choices that affect gameplay in the current and/or following games depending on how each player reacts.
I purchased the first Mass Effect game on a whim years ago, never really believing I’d enjoy it because I had never been a fan of first person shooters. The depth of the characters and plot pulled me in and I soon became emotionally invested in my version of Commander Shepard and her teammates. I poured a little bit of myself into each decision my Shepard made. Her morals were my morals, her actions were what my actions would be; she was me.
The first Mass Effect set the stage and established a time and place. The player discovers the galaxy; learning its planets, races and cultures. The Reaper conflict is introduced and we see Shepard facing Sovereign, a vanguard Reaper who plans to usher in the Reaper fleet to continue its mysterious cycle of destruction.
Mass Effect 2 focuses on people: gaining loyalty and forming relationships with your crew and other characters. The story takes place two years after the first and sees Shepard reluctantly working for Cerberus, a xenophobic human-first organization whose full intentions are unclear, but for the moment seem to want to save humans from the Reapers. With Cerberus’ help, Shepard and his/her crew battle the Collectors, an alien race abducting entire human colonies in a second contingency plan to help the Reapers return.
In Mass Effect 3, despite Shepard’s efforts in the previous games, the Reapers have brought the battle to Earth and it is…devastating... The first 15 minutes of gameplay are enough to make you sob at amount of destruction and death the Reapers are capable of. While Anderson stays behind on Earth to rally a resistance, Shepard leaves to plea to the Council for help. Whether the council rejects or accepts Shepard’s claims, it is up to him/her to unite rival civilizations into an army for the final battle against the Reapers.
Spoiler barrier! Spoiler barrier! Spoiler barrier!
I had heard rumors of Mass Effect 3’s controversial ending since the game’s release in March and it really worried me. The only (and worst) detail I had known was that it was pretty much impossible to keep your Shepard alive. At first this upset me greatly. No matter how hopeless the circumstances were, Shepard had always managed to survive. It seemed really unfair to me that those of us who had spent so long creating our characters, would lose them. Apparently this outraged many others to the point of acting out, spurring BioWare to release downloadable content to round out the end game content (which turns it out is basically an epilogue). I saved and waited to finish the game until this extended DLC was released at the end of June. Even then I avoided the ending for weeks.
And then it dawned on me.
This trilogy is a spectacular demonstration of coexistence, sacrifice and acceptance. Tensions between the different races of the galaxy threaten to destroy everything and it is up to Shepard to unite them all through hard work and sacrifice. Over and over throughout this series we’ve seen our teammates sacrifice themselves for the good of the many: a single soul willing to end their own life to save so many more. It hurts losing those close to us fictitious or not, and each time I lost one of my team my eyes burned and my throat felt raw, but it taught me a lot about acceptance.
I chose to sacrifice my Shepard. She died so that life throughout the galaxy could be synthesized and peace would prevail. I accepted that. I could not choose to wipe out all synthetics (for the sake of EDI and the Geth), nor would I become a Reaper. Neither of the latter options would result in a lasting peace, which is what I wanted.
EDI was by far one of my favorite characters in Mass Effect 3 and the literal embodiment of this story. Introduced in Mass Effect 2 as the virtual intelligence aboard the Normandy (Shepard’s ship), EDI is unshackled by her pilot Jeff “Joker” Moreau to become a true artificial intelligence capable of free thought and action. In Mass Effect 3, EDI takes control of a lifelike humanoid robot giving her the capacity to join Shepard on missions and begin to learn how to “live” and understand organic life. She coexists with organic life where the Quarian and Geth originally failed (I reconciled their differences), where organics and Reapers fail. She endearingly learns to love Joker and looks to Shepard for advice in navigating human thoughts and behaviors.
By choosing to save her and the rest of synthetic life. EDI narrated my epilogue. I cannot express how moved I was by her words or the outcome of my Shepard’s sacrifice.
Do yourself a favor and play Mass Effect, not just one game, the whole trilogy. Don’t listen to the negatives floating around the Internet, play it for yourself and form your own opinion. You owe it to yourself to experience these remarkable games full of emotion and depth. This series can easily become one of the best you’ll ever experience.
I will be posting screenshots from my Shepard on Thursday so stay tuned!
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