RPG on Rails: Mass Effect 3 and the Illusion of Choice
To kill or spare the rachni queen was one of the players biggest decisions in the first Mass Effect, and we knew early on we wanted to bring the species back.
If you open the art book that comes with certain editions of Mass Effect 3, youll find this quote sitting on page 33. It is, in many ways, a telling quote, and one that exemplifies a lot of BioWares design ethos heading into the game
. I had the misfortune to read it before I played the game, and my brow immediately creased into a tiny frown - as somebody who ruthlessly exterminated the rachni queen back in the original game, I had always feared that BioWare would eventually just hand-wave them back into existence. And here they were, warts and all, with a tiny line of text that explicitly reminded me that BioWare were going to do whatever they wanted, regardless of my actual decision.
When you do meet the rachni in game, theyre corrupted and mutated, sustained by reaper technology. Their return is explained away with the most inane line of dialogue, which essentially boils down to the reapers did it somehow - an almost literal deus ex machina that indicates that BioWare were so keen on bringing them back that they didnt even figure out how it was going to happen. The mission in which they appear also serves as a way to reintroduce Grunt, who gleefully talks about how much hed love it if the Rachni were to appear so he could punch them back to death again. I love Grunt. I giggled.
But it still felt hollow, a sham, like BioWare were playing their game with my character.
How it could have been
The most frustrating part about this is how trivial it would have been to do it differently: if you let the rachni live, then you get the mission to go greet and rescue them, turning them into a war asset. If you killed the rachni, then you get nothing. You miss out on the mission, and maybe you have less military strength heading into the end, but thats what you get for exterminating an entire species.
Id be okay with that, with living with the consequences of my decision. Its not like the reaper-rachni even play a huge part in the rest of the game, as they only contribute one unit to the reaper forces in the occasional battle - probably literally only on four or five occasions. Just replace that with another generic corrupted race (its a big galaxy out there), and youre set to go. Everybodys happy.
The rachni are hardly the only example of this, either. Regardless of whether you choose Anderson or Udina to become the human council representative at the end of ME1, it will always be Udina when ME3 rolls around - Anderson steps down to make way for Udina between ME2 and ME3 so that he can betray everyone and side with Cerberus.
Did you blow up the Collector base at the end of ME2, or choose to give it to Cerberus? Whoops, it doesnt matter: the Illusive Man still has the human proto-reaper in his headquarters anyway.
Some of these things are clearly a big part of the story, like the Anderson/Udina switch. It would have been difficult to achieve the betrayal on the Citadel any other way. The proto-reaper in the Illusive Mans base, however, is almost farcical in its inclusion: all you get is a line of dialogue saying that Cerberus recovered it despite you blowing it up. Why not just... leave that line of dialogue out?
................
The cycle completes
BioWares move from game developers to directors is complete when, at the end of the game, you are shunted into a series of deliciously brutal urban fights towards the Citadel transport beam.
It doesnt matter whether you bring the geth, the quarians (or both), the krogans, the salarians, or even your collectors edition robotic dog. No matter what you do, you get the same take back earth scenario, with absolutely no variation whatsoever. This is frustrating, and doubly so because the suicide mission at the end of Mass Effect 2 was a perfect example of how it should have been done, how resources gathered in game can be used to create even more interesting decision trees. Instead, all of your resources gathered simply give you a bigger choice of buttons to push at the end... and determine whether or not Shepard lives afterwards.
People like to complain about the ending of ME3 as ignoring all their hard work and player choice, and theres some merit in that. However the reality is that, right from the beginning of the game, ME3 is on rails. Y
ou get maybe four or five big decisions in the game, and while those are immensely satisfying in terms of the games storyline and meta-plot (Im personally very excited for Wrex to start popping out kids), they still mean precisely nothing in terms of your actions having a measurable outcome.
As a fairly regular game master of tabletop RPGs, railroading is something I have to wrestle with every session. Sometimes you do it for the good of the players, to avoid them getting bogged down in silly decisions that waste vital real-world time, or so you can get to fun bits. Sometimes, however, you do it because youre determined to tell your story, not to let the players tell theirs. BioWares work in ME3 smacks decidedly of the latter, and although that doesnt stop it being one hell of a story - we all enjoy a good rollercoaster ride, even though we cant control it -
at this point, its clear that it stopped being our story some time ago.
http://games.on.net/article/15190/RPG_on_Rails_Mass_Effect_3_and_the_Illusion_of_Choice
