Andromeda: First Impressions

This long-awaited day has finally come: Mass Effect: Andromeda opened for 10-hour trial play.  This remains in anticipation of its full release next week on the 21st, when the story will finally make a full appearance.

If you thought a fangirl like me would wait to post until then, you were sadly mistaken.

It's here! I don't care how many days until I get the full game!

However, like so many other big-name releases in years past, Andromeda is not without its detractors, nor its issues.  There are bugs in animation, in gameplay, awkward menus, and talk of a day-one patch long before the trial ever opened to Origin Access subscribers.  This, for whatever reason, is sending the video game critics into a frantic tailspin.

I'm not totally sure why.  Maybe because it's been five years since ME3?  Maybe because EA marketed the shit outta this game online, so more people than ever are aware and pre-ordering and paying attention?  I'm not sure -- I joined the video game scene long after ME3 had come out and disappointed so many of its fans, and to this day, I'm one of the only people I know who worships the ending of ME3 (it's beautiful and tragic and I love it).  And when DAI came out, I was plugged in but not so heavily since I didn't enjoy DA2.

So I've never experienced anything like this.

Nevertheless, let me explain why it doesn't bother me:  Andromeda, from what I've seen so far, is good.

I admit, I haven't touched the single player campaign at all.  After reading some reviews and learning that it stops the campaign at a crucial moment -- right when it's about to get amazing, from what I understand -- I decided not to spoil it until I can play past it.  Good stories take time to get off the ground, something the gaming industry doesn't seem to understand, and I don't want to get bogged down in frustration waiting the extra days until I can continue it.

Plus, I took the 21st off from work specifically to play, so I'll have time.

The single player campaign is also the subject of much scrutiny and derision online.  No doubt if you follow pcgamer, IGN, and others, you'll have seen some of the headlines:  "Why I Hate ME: Andromeda's Planet Scanning System" comes to mind, as does "The Internet is Brutally Mocking ME: Andromeda's Animations" (these are direct quotes from PC Gamer - not exactly objective reviews).

Some authors seem like they have a bone to pick with the series.  The guy who hates the scanning system, for example, is irritated that you can't drive the Nomad up a vertical cliff without shifting into 6-wheel mode, something akin to 4 wheel drive in modern SUVs.  This seems a) realistic, to have to change modes for different terrain, and b) incredibly nitpicky.  When has the vehicle system in Mass Effect ever been good?  The characters even make fun of it in the ME3: Citadel DLC, it's so bad.  And really, you can't drive up a vertical cliff?  Maybe the game didn't mean for you to go that way.

But rants about video game critics aside (which is an essay unto itself), there do seem to be some actual issues with animation, including poorly animated faces and bugs with character movement.  They are things that might drive away critics, and perhaps even some incoming fans, but to me, it's not that bad.  No faces I've seen are missing half their skin a la Assassin's Creed Unity, nor so badly rendered that they are collapsing into piles of skin and clothing, or falling through the floors at random.

Instead, you get moments like this:

Frankly, this is hilarious.  I've been walking around my basement like this for two days, it amuses me so much.  So does this:

This is like they made a ballerina into a colonist! It's awesome!  I get that that's probably not what the programmers were going for, but I love it anyway.

Some errors I frankly wonder how people missed in previous games, like this one of poor Cora...

... which gets compared to a gorilla walking away.  Okay, yes, this is hilarious too.  But it's not new! The female Inquisitor in DAI walks just like that all the time, stomping all over Skyhold like a water buffalo.  I can't imagine being so annoyed over it that I wouldn't play, or that I'd cancel my pre-order, or anything else.

And Sara Ryder's giant toothy smile is just adorable, let's be honest.

I realize that I haven't played the campaign yet, so maybe this is more intrusive than I think.  But if there's a good story, and if the characters are as developed and interesting as always, and I can crush the ever-living shit out of whatever enemies stand in my way, I don't foresee any real issues.  I'm not playing for the animation, after all.

Once you get over the animation, the reports of cheesy dialogue are, frankly, a non-issue.  The Mass Effect stories have always been incredibly well-written: They are massive and far-reaching, have great continuity, and clearly the writers devote hours into putting all those puzzle pieces together.

But the dialogue has never been Shakespeare.

I spent hours in-game searching for great quotes from Shepard a few years back, when I got my Mass Effect tattoo.  I'm covered in quotes from books, movies, philosophers, etc, and I thought Shepard might have something profound to add to this.  Nope.  I ended up with an N7 tattoo I adore, and that fits the spirit of the series, far better than "I should go" ever could.

Nor, frankly, was the animation ever that amazing.  One walk into the battery to talk to Garrus, only to have him turn his head around Exorcist-style just to say "Can it wait for a bit? I'm in the middle of the calibrations?" was enough to know that.

Don't believe me? Just watch Shepard dance:

So I'm not passing judgment based on some animation issues.  I want the GAME, not some critic's issues with it.

Nor have I maxed out my 10 hours on multiplayer, but I'm getting close.  And that... whew.  That might be worth the money in and of itself -- it's awe-inspiring. It's fast-paced and brutal, full of challenges and new enemies, and some stunning new combat effects that frankly, I am having a ton of fun playing.  Every time I jet-pack over some destructive enemy, only to drop a biotic punch on them that reverberates through the field, I absolutely adore it.

I've seen criticism here too, and again, I'm not sure what people were truly expecting.  It's often the same set-up as the ME3 multiplayer: cooperative teams fighting waves of enemies, each wave tougher than the last.  There are a mix of hacking, disruption, and survival goals, and as before, having a mix of races and classes offers you the best chance for success.

Bioware has also eliminated the part that made ME3's multiplayer so irritating: It is no longer mandatory, and instead a way to earn additional points, tech, and rewards should you be so inclined.

Then again, I don't play FPS online games like CoD or Battlefield or anything else.  FPSs make me motion sick, so there's that, but I also don't like the attitude of noobs vs. people with too much time on their hands vs. casual gamers; I prefer the cooperative aspect in ME where I don't have to be the best to enjoy myself.  This gives me the chance to play with others, to explore incredible combat styles, and still have fun.  To me, that's the best of all worlds.

Sure, there are opportunities for microtransactions, and the multiplayer menus aren't the easiest to navigate, and of course, playing the maps without knowing anything about the enemies you're fighting from in-game experience makes things difficult.  But no game, no matter the time investment  of the developers or its fans, is without flaws.  I don't expect it to be.

It helps that it's fabulously fun to play.  When I can do THIS...

... and take some enemy out, I don't really care if there are micro-transactions or difficulties muting other players.  I just wanna crush a bitch and get up for the next wave.

Get ready: Only 3 days until we hit Andromeda.

April Fool's Day

I'm back!

Just kidding,  but it won't be much longer.

In the meantime, enjoy this April Fool's clip from my favorite video game creator!

Fanfiction Confliction, Part 2

About six months ago, I gave in.

I'd been fighting it for months, trying hard not to be one of those people.  I gave it my best effort, I really did.

But I was powerless to resist.

I started writing fanfiction.

It started small -- I'm a writer by nature (I bet you couldn't tell! #sarcasm), and I spent most of early 2015 world-building in preparation for a bigger project.  When I started writing fiction for the first time soon after, I realized something: I needed practice.

I hadn't written fiction in probably 6 or 7 years, and while I had lots of nonfiction writing experience, the skills just aren't the same.

This was probably in July.

I started small: a short story, only about 2,000 words, that was a character study of my forever favorite DAI Commander.  That turned out well, if a little serious, so I took on some humor via Alistair in DAO.   And before long, I found that I was enjoying myself immensely in creating these new scenes, new moments, within my characters' lives.

I spent the first 10K words or so laboring under the illusion that I was just practicing styles for my bigger fiction writing projects, telling myself that as soon as I finished the next story, I was putting fanfiction away and moving on with my own work.

That didn't happen.  Instead suddenly I found myself so immersed in Bioware's Dragon Age sandbox that I couldn't get back out -- and I didn't want to.  I loved my Inquisitor, and I loved the story I was creating inside DAI:  the relationships I was growing, the conflicts I'd created, and exploring the themes of the game and its story in such depth and detail.

So now, when I'm writing this, I'm finally accepting that I'm a fanfiction writer.  It took a long time, and many thousands of words before I was willing to add that to my list of accomplishments on this particular blog -- about two weeks ago, I officially broke 100K words, and this is the first mention I've made of my fanfic hobby to anyone other than my husband.

But I'm ready.

(That's not totally true; I'm still a little hesitant.  But honestly, that's not because I'm ashamed of my work, but because my mom reads this blog sometimes and frankly, several of my stories are quite Not Safe for Work.  At all.  Like, explicitly NSFW.  Adult content ahead.  You've been warned.

Mom, if you're reading this, please skip all the ones rated "E" :-/

Anyway.)

Below, you'll find a link to my work, all of which is posted through Archive of Our Own.  I know there are other, bigger, fanfic sites out there, but AO3 is my favorite, and I'm proud to be part of their community.

Without further ado, and in the spirit of celebrating International Fanworks Day today, I give you: Once More to the Breach, my Shakespeare-allusion-titled series about Dragon Age: Inquisition.
Please enjoy, and thanks for reading!!

N7 Day

It's weird to be a Mass Effect fangirl and share my birthday with N7 Day.

I never even knew there WAS an N7 day until after I got my Mass Effect tattoo -- which of course features the N7 logo straight from my femShep's gear.  When I had it done and people questioned the wisdom of getting a video game tattoo, I just sort of shrugged and went, "Oh, if someday I hate the game, then the tat will just be for my birthday!"

It never occurred to me that Bioware had already appropriated that day for its own purposes.

Then November 2014 rolled around, and the Internet (or, at least the pages I was frequenting), blew up with N7 ads for merch, Gaming Heads statues, and so on.

I felt so lucky.  Now, I have yet another reason to love on Mass Effect.  I had lots -- I follow both Bioware and Mass Effect (and Dragon Age, as if anyone's surprised) on social media, for goodness' sake -- but now I had another! The sales! The promotions! The outpouring of love for my favorite game series!

Of course, I get weird looks when I'm more excited for N7 Day than I am for November 7th, my birthday, but I don't care.

I'm not one of those people who loves their birthday.  Sure, they were a blast when I was a kid, but once I started to grow up, I just didn't have that kind of life that fosters an obsession with the anniversary of the day I was born.  I've never cared that much -- I've spent too many birthdays stressed out over schedules of how many hours I'm spending with each parent so my time is divided equally, per the divorce 'rules,' to get overly excited.  Nor have I, as a blossoming adult, ever found good reason to get too excited when history says that I'm going to be tired, pressured into hanging out with people I don't want to see, and receiving domestic-style gifts (like the memorable instance when, on my 21st birthday, my mom gave me a brownie pan and a recipe book.  Fun.).

Bishop knows all this, and thankfully he's a strong advocate for the "do whatever the fuck you want for your birthday" school of thought.  If I'm stressing out, he cancels plans with my family.  If I'm up for it, he tags along to every single event.  I think that in part, he agreed to getting married in early November just to give me something more exciting to celebrate than my birthday.

If only we'd known that all he had to do was introduce me to Shepard and her story, and I'd have been all over November 7th.

Of course, now that I've discovered Mass Effect, Bishop has taken that love to heart on N7 day, and he spoils me rotten -- mostly by handing over his "Equinox's Birthday Present Budget" to me and letting me go nuts on the Bioware Store's enormous Mass Effect-themed sale.

Come N7 Day 2016, I'll be decked out in ME shit and fit to party with the most hardcore of fans.

I love this day -- there are times when I feel isolated as a ME fan because too many of my fellow nerd friends hate ME3 and have thus abandoned the series.  I've been teased for my Spectre t-shirt in Kaiden Alenko blue and yellow, and despite how cool my to-scale Gaming Heads statue of Garrus is, non-nerds still give me funny looks and eye rolls over how much I was willing to spend to house a model of my favorite turian.

They'll laugh even harder when Tali arrives, I'm sure.

N7 Day gives me the chance to embrace my love of Mass Effect with fans all around the world, and I love it.  I can't wait for the saga to continue next year -- to Andromeda and beyond.

ANDROMEDA!!!!!

I was watching this trailer for like the 1000th time this morning and realized I hadn't posted it. 

I don't even know where to begin!! A fresh galaxy -- the graphics -- IN ENGINE! -- the new Mako -- the N7 -- and the Johnny Cash SONG, the perfect choice for an exploration-style game!!!

GAAHHHHH I can't even convey how excited I am.

Fall 2016 is SO far away, what am I going to do until then??

*goes to rewatch the Andromeda trailer again.... many more times*

Not Great, Not Terrible: Dragon Age 2

Ok, I get it.  Dragon Age 2 isn't a great game.

The first time I tried to play it, I was so disenchanted with the map set-up that I bailed after like 3-5 hours.  I hated the menus: too dark, too hard to see my character or her abilities, too many things to click.  I didn't like that I couldn't customize my companions' armor.  I felt confined by the city and the re-used dungeons surrounding it.

And I was definitely not on board with my romance options.  I mean: a slutty pirate, a super creepy abomination, the overly-innocent elf, the former and definitely traumatized slave, and ... oh wait, that's it.  And not ONE of them has a sexy voice.  That's a fail, in my book.

Plus it kept doing this:

I mean really.  My computer can run Inquisition --which is brand new still-- on its highest graphics with no issues, and it can't texturize a game from 2011??

So I turned it off.  I'd loved Origins, but felt let down by DA2.

Then, almost a year later, I played Inquisition.

Anyone reading this knows I love Inquisition -- I won't get back up on my soapbox about it.
One of the biggest things I love about Inquisition (aside from Cullen, brief swoon before I refocus) is the world of Thedas: it's not huge, like the Mass Effect universe, but it is so richly imagined that I get sucked in almost instantaneously.

And as I played Inquisition, I started to realize: I was missing something.  Sure, I could figure out the mages vs. the templars war, and Varric and Cassandra's tension combined with Cullen's backstory was enough to piece together what happened in Kirkwall, but I was missing the details -- the details of Dragon Age 2.

I picked it up again.  It was still incredibly hard to play -- none of my former issues with it had vanished, plus now I'd played like 100+ hours of Inquisition, which has a really easy combat system and a combination keyboard/mouse control style that I found very intuitive.  Yeah, that doesn't happen with Dragon Age 2.  

It is difficult to express how much I hate this menu. 

But the more I played/forced myself to play it, the more I started to appreciate DA2.  It's not a great game -- too much weird stuff that I've already bitched about for that.  But it did attempt something new, which was to keep the story running over measurable years, and to keep the main character stable in a city.

In this way, DA2 is more realistic in terms of real life, and I think that's why a lot of people didn't like it.

Think about it: this game covers roughly 7-10 years of time.  It breaks up the storyline with big events, much like a real life.  I can, for example, break up my life according to big events, and most of them aren't within a year of each other -- they're spread out.  So that's realistic of the game.
The other part, the city, is also pretty realistic.  If you live in the same area for almost ten years, you are bound to re-visit some spots.  You'll hit the same bars, explore the same areas, and while you might not be killing dragons or fighting Arishoks, you'll see the same places multiple times.  Again, that's realistic.  Hawke lives in Kirkwall for a long time; it makes sense for her to visit the same market place, the same church, her friends' homes, over and over.

But that level of realism reminds people too much of their actual lives, and thus the reviews for the game suffer.  I understand that, and at times, I agree.  Walking to the top of Sundermount for what feels like the thousandth time gets tiring.  I'm not playing a video game in order to experience that kind of mundane daily event -- I'm playing it to escape that, to explore a different world, to try on a different life! So I get it.

I don't think that inherently makes DA2 a bad game though.  It's a pretty unique concept, and it's executed reasonably well.
What I think actually hurts DA2 is that it is not a plot-driven game.  In that way, again, it's realistic -- few people are set up as the one person who can stand against evil, and I know almost no one who has an actual villain as an active part of their lives.  Instead, events trundle along and occasionally shitty people pop up and must be dealt with.

This is what DA2 has done -- Hawke scrounges up money for a year or so and then heads off into the Deep Roads.  Politics with the qunari in the city gradually bubble over in the course of about three years and then Hawke has to fight the Arishok.  Things are quiet for a few years, and then Anders blows up the Chantry.  There is no one bad guy, no one driving force for the plot that carries throughout the game.

Yes, realistic, but it doesn't not make for great game-play, and that's my biggest argument against Dragon Age 2.

I liked this game.  It's been my experience that I won't play a game for more than a few hours if I'm not enjoying myself, and I played this one for close to 30 hours.  It was entertaining, and it definitely filled in the lore about the world of Thedas that I'd been missing before.

The big question is this: Would I play it again?  Thus far, I've played every Bioware game I've touched at least twice all the way through.  Some, like Mass Effect 2 and 3 and Inquisition, I've even started a third time.  But I don't think I'd play Dragon Age 2 again.

I've enjoyed my time in Kirkwall, but much like Hawke, Varric, and even Cullen by the end, I think I'm done. Once is more than enough.

Choices, Indeed

I am loving Dragon Age: Inquisition.  The story, the enemies, the characters, all of it.  I restarted a few times to get my Herald looking perfect, and now the plot is in full-swing.  I can do what I want, travel where I want, run down as many or as few fetch-quests as I want... the world is so wide and welcoming, there are so many people to get to know, and so many convoluted plot lines to tease apart! I anticipate something like 50-60 hours of gameplay, I really do.

But so far, I am a little disappointed in my romance options.

In Dragon Age: Origins, I can't say the romance options were overly plentiful.  If you played as a human female Hero of Ferelden, which I did, you could get involved with Alistair, Zevran, or Leliana; that was it.  I didn't want to play as a lesbian (I identify as straight in real life, so I tend to play my characters straight as well), and Zevran really rubbed me the wrong way (no pun intended, haha).  That left Alistair, who became my default romance option.  I didn't have a problem with this, because let's face it, Alistair is SEXY.

He might spend most of the game with a confused look on his face...

... but he's still delicious.  That adorable face + his accent = my heart swoons, every time.

I've written about him before, so I won't bore you.  But suffice it to say that even with basically just the one option in my play-through of Origins, I never once felt cheated.

But now that I've booted up Inquisition (I didn't get more than 5 hours into DA2, so I'm ignoring it)... I'm a little disappointed.  I know there are lots of options, LOTS in fact, but right now... they all kind of suck.

There's Solas, the snooty bald-headed elf mage:

He's interesting, to be sure, and yet I can't muster up a lot of empathy for him yet.  He seems too cold, too removed from my Herald to be a good romance option.

And Varric, the dwarf who never buttons up his shirt, leaving his chest hair spilling out, is the funniest character thus far, and he's not an option according to Bishop, who loved DA2 and said that no one could ever romance Varric.  Not that I would -- the chest hair is a little too much for me.

So my starter companions were out.  How about some of the ones I was picking up as I played?

Oh, you mean Iron Bull, the gigantic qunari with the horns?

Not only would he crush my Herald like a bug (she comes up to about his ever-present nipples), he has horns.  Yes, I'm judging, but come on?? Alistair to him??? No thank you.

If I was still looking for a connection to Alistair, I could go with my Grey Warden companion, Blackwall.  There's just a minor issue with Blackwall: He's old.

I mean, yeah, fine, he's not old like Wynne from Origins, who was in her 80s, but he's certainly not young either.  I dress my heroes down; they're young and fairly attractive, nothing insane but certainly pretty, probably around 30ish.  Blackwall comes across as at least 45-50, which for a Grey Warden is *really* old.  So there's that strike against him.  On top of that, Blackwall is really a downer of a character.  He hasn't cracked a smile or told a joke all game, and I recruited him fairly early.  Every time I go talk to him, he's got some new doom and gloom issue to discuss with the Herald.  Oddly enough, the option to hit on him pops up instantly, so I guess he's who the game wants me to hook up with? So not interested...

Or there's Cullen, my templar advisor:

He seems polite enough, fine, but the fur coat coupled with his arrogant attitude? Look at that smug face!  Again, no thank you.  I find nothing relate-able about Cullen, other than he and Alistair, who appears in a brief mage-related cameo, now have the same haircut. That is not enough of a reason to start a romance with the guy, come on.

If those aren't enough 'options,' there's Dorian, or as I fondly call him, Snidely Whiplash:

I just can't.  I can not.  I laugh every time I see his face! and on top of that, he's unbelievably cocky with really no reason to be.  I leveled him up so he's a pretty bad-ass electricity mage, but before that? He sucked the big one, and then was all bragging like "hey, don't kill anyone without me!" Every time, my Herald is rolling her eyes, going "We aren't killing anyone WITH you either there, Snidely!"  (Update: turns out, Dorian is gay.  You can flirt with him if you're a girl, and he'll flirt right back, but he's definitely gay.  As in, he and Iron Bull are together.  Horny, indeed.)

I'm not sure what I'm going to do.  I thought about trying the lesbian route and flirting with Sera, the rogue elf, but she's so DUMB that I can't make myself do it.  I could learn to deal with the boobs, it's just a game after all, but if I don't want to go talk to her character, nothing's going to happen.

I am now toying with the idea of just flirting with every single character that gives me an option, guy or girl, gay or straight.  Maybe some of these options will get better, or maybe someone will show up who hasn't yet! I'm not giving up hope that my perfect Inquisition love is out there still, waiting for me.

The End of Mass Effect (*Spoilers!*)

I'm about to finish my second play-through of Mass Effect 3, and I really, really don't want to do it.

I've done it before.  Most likely, I'll do it again eventually.  But the ending crushes me every time -- last time, the first time, I ended up sitting in bed, unable to sleep and occasionally crying, over the gut-wrenching agony of the end.  That probably won't happen this time; I'm better prepared, having done it before. Last time I knew what was going to happen though and I still lost it.

The ending is always catastrophic, no matter which end I choose or how my actions play out.
I know, I know, there was a big dispute between fans and Bioware over how the game ended vs. how Bioware said it might end with regards to personal input and all that. Some friends of mine won't even touch ME3, even if they loved ME2, because of that mess. I don't care -- I thought the ending as perfect.  The series has never pretended to be anything other than a tragedy: characters can and sometimes do die in every game. So the end was no surprise, even if that doesn't make it less painful.

The end never gets tough until I reach the Forward Operating Base, after Shepard has taken out the Hades cannon and they're getting ready for the final run to the Beam/Citadel.  All those goodbyes...

Shepard can call each of her (I play as a paragon FemShep, for the record) old squadmates from Mass Effect 2, like Samara and Jack, people she's encountered throughout ME3 but never joined her.  All those calls are short and to the point: no elaboration on events or stories, they're mostly just quick "good luck"s and then it's over.  But seeing some of my favorites -- Samara, for example -- again just for a quick moment brings home that this game is over, the trilogy is over, and who knows what's coming next.

Some of the longer conversations are even worse.  Some, like Tali's or Kaiden's, aren't that bad, even as much as I love Tali, and Liara's offer to blend minds one last time can be rough to watch: I teared up a little at that this time through.  Others, though, brought so much more up to the surface.

I didn't have the From Ashes DLC the first time I played, so I didn't have Javik and didn't know what to expect.  Javik made an interesting contribution to the crew in ME3; as the last Prothean, he can be kind of a douchebag with his focus on victory at any cost, but there's compassion mixed in there for him as well.  They're both warriors, but with a weird dynamic: Javik approaches everything ruthlessly whereas my Shepard has more of a heart. My Shepard and he are always getting into fights over the morality of her choices, and I had to break up more than few fights between him and others. By the end though, they respect each other. When he tells Shepard that she's standing for all people who have faced the Reapers, that all souls are watching her... I was destroyed.  The whole conversation was heartbreaking in its sincerity.  (Those writers/voice actors deserves some serious awards).

And EDI.  oh EDI... I know I'm going to kill her, I do every time because that's my final choice for the Reapers, the choice I think Shepard would really make, given the circumstances and the motives of the game: destruction.  And that kills EDI too, since she's an AI (artificial intelligence). When she talks Shepard for helping her feel alive... my heart breaks.  I miss her, every time, and the prospect of having to explain it all to Joker (assuming I live...)...

In a weird way, I am glad that so many of my favorite characters were already dead.  Mass Effect 3 is a tragedy, an intense, talented one that invests you deeply into the characters even when you know they are doomed, and I got sucked in completely.

Thane's death is expected, though the short prayer he gives for Shepard made me weep.  And Mordin... I don't think I would have been so upset to see Mordin go if he hadn't started singing on the way up to the top of the Shroud.  Legion's death for his people provides an honorable way for Tali to come to terms with the geth, and I appreciated that element of her story.

I hate that I can't save during this whole process -- it means I can't go back and re-live Shepard and Garrus's goodbye without playing through the first part of Priority: Earth again (which takes a while).  Their goodbye is one of my favorite moments in the game; I cry every single time. The Shepard-Garrus romance feels so real, so tension-filled and desperate as they fight the end of their worlds.  Garrus is written as a deep, complex character throughout the whole series: Shepard is constantly helping him through moral crises, romanced or not, and each one adds layers to his complicated character.  In that way, he feels real to me.  I've always been drawn to people who have a past, who don't just coast through life without getting deeply, intimately involved in something along the way.  Garrus is like that: he's invested in his life, in his world, and I love that about his character.  Throughout their romance, he and Shepard are trying to find a lighter side, trying to enjoy each other in the face of death and destruction.  Their Citadel date about halfway through ME3 highlights that, especially their shooting contest on the top of the Presidium.
So when they have to say goodbye... I love it, even as I'm crying over how desperate those last few exchanges are, how much they are still trying to stay positive and together.

The last moments of the game.  Shepard looks so pissed, so ready to be over and done with the Reapers, so determined to take them down.  I love it.  

The end of Mass Effect 3 depresses me, and not just because the game's over and I have to say goodbye.  It's just that nothing I do will be ever be on that scale -- no matter what I do with my life, I will never save the galaxy.  I will never be the one to make those kinds of sacrifices.  I can choose to make small ones, if I want to, but the world isn't tailored for me to be Shepard.

I knew this before Mass Effect.  I read a lot, and I play enough games, and so many stories hinge on heroes.  Stories with this kind of scope happen a lot in fiction, and let-downs when they're over happen a lot too.
But something about Mass Effect feels different to me.  Maybe I just love Shepard and her world so much -- maybe I see how my life could be, given that several fundamental things about the world/universe were a little different... I believe I could have her kind of courage and determination, if faced with that situation. If saving the world really did come down to me, I think I could do it.

I love this game.  I don't care what other people think about the ending(s), nor do I waste time analyzing all the tiny flaws that no doubt exist.  That doesn't matter to me.

I will always do all the extra work so Shepard can breathe one last time, in the last moment before the credits role.  I don't want her story to end, in the game or otherwise.

Obviously, no one is forcing me to make that final run.  Only the fate of the galaxy is at stake, after all.  And it's time to take back Earth.

Dragon Age Love

I've been absorbed with Bioware's Dragon Age: Origins for the last few weeks, and like any new hobby, I just can't get enough.

The plot may not be the most unique ever -- it's a pretty standard good vs. evil, gather the army to defeat the bad guys type of story -- but the characters elevate its simpler plot to grand heights that I absolutely adore.

No doubt about it: Alistair is my favorite character.

His whole personality hits all my "fall in love with a fictional character" requirements: he's sweet, funny in a dorky, adorable way, and awkward in an endearing, non-Michael-Cera kind of way.  I played as a female human noble Warden, so of course I romanced him (which is perhaps my favorite Bioware feature), and his romance is cute as hell.  He likes to talk to you, and plenty of the conversations feel semi-realistic so it stays fun. I could even come on to him early on, which is hilarious.

Eventually, when I romanced him, Alistair admitted he was a virgin, a character quirk I'm not sure I've seen admitted in a game before.  Sure, there are assumptions one can make -- Morrigan is probably a virgin too, considering her isolated life, and I'm willing to bet that maybe Tali from Mass Effect could be, but I've never heard one of them admit it.  Hell, when I went to romance Garrus in Mass Effect 2, the "come on" line happens right after he tells Shepard about banging some turian chick! Not exactly virgin territory there.  So the Alistair is a virgin element was a unique addition, and one that I found even more endearing.  He's so awkward and cute when he asks to sleep with you! Plus, the speaking options don't write the Warden into a corner -- I could be a virgin or not, and it didn't seem to affect much for him.  There's a hilarious conversations about licking lamposts, wink wink, to walk you through that revelation.

And then of course, there's the ending. Spoiler Alert! You can marry Alistair if you are indeed a female human noble, which I was and so of course I elected to do this.  Eventually, if I can make it all the way through Dragon Age II, some dialogue crops up where Alistair refers to my PC (player character) as 'the old ball and chain' :). I may not be loving II, but I can't wait to get there.

Alistair looking all suspicious near the end of the game -- I can just hear him saying, "Swooping is... bad." :)

I can't talk about Alistair without talking about Wynne, the 'grandmotherly' mage full of wisdom, an admittedly cliche character type who thankfully breaks the mold.

Wynne fills the necessary magic role in the game better than Morrigan ever could (in my opinion).  She's funny without being bitchy, and she's a fantastic, strong NPC that adds a lot to the party I've been playing.  Seriously, even though she's old, Wynne is a total bad-ass: I even have her take on Loghain at the end of the game, and she always kills him.

She should be the kind of character I can predict, right? She's got lots to say on how to be a strong Grey Warden, and she always wants to help me or Alistair or anyone else in the party. Wynne comes across as grandmotherly, and Alistair's request for her to mend his socks at one point certainly boosts that point.  But somewhere along the line, some programmer/writer with a sense of humor decided that, underneath it all, Wynne was going to be a dirty old woman. And it works, and it's awesome.  Oghren, the dwarf, and Zevran, the elf assassin, hit on Wynne constantly; Zevran, in particular, is fascinated with her 'bosom,' as he puts it.  And while Wynne might turn them down consistently, her banter with them is full of hints at her former less-than-grandmotherly adventures.

Those boobies have seen some things, apparently.  

Plus, since I was in a romance with Alistair, Wynne continuously teases Alistair about being into the Warden. She calls him on watching my character's ass while we're out on a mission, and eventually, when I brought the two of them on enough quests, she 'lectured' him on where babies come from, an exchange that cracks me up every time I hear it. Listen here and be amused! Their mother-son relationship, even when it goes off the rails, adds even more depth, like they really are friends inside the world of the game.

 Wynne's magic leads me to Morrigan, one of the earliest added NPCs and one that I'm not totally sure I love.  She's an out-there character, a Witch of the Wilds who technically should be chased/threatened by the templars (which include Alistair, to a certain degree).

And Sten.  A qunari, a giant race of warriors, stranded in Ferelden and absorbed into the Warden's party as penance for a crime of rage and loss: his character bleeds darkness, mystery, and a cold detachment that takes lots and lots of work to overcome.  For a long time, Sten is silent, standing off to the side of camp in near-silence. Few conversation options exist, and new ones are few and far between as the game goes on.

This is Sten, when the Warden finds him.  He's gigantic and intimidating, all white hair and purple eyes, and only slightly less so once you get him into some armor and a giant sword

Eventually though, the Warden can get Sten to talk, and even more eventually, I got his personal quest.  By the last push of the game (just barely pre-Landsmeet), I had Sten's approval close to 100 points, although the label of his approval is still "neutral" in a funny twist.  (For comparison, Alistair's at 100 points is "love" and Wynne's at about 80 is "friendly.") I really liked Sten and his warrior mentality, dark as his outlook is.

Other than Alistair though, I think I love Shale the best.  He's a golem, which is basically a huge rock-man brought to life with magic, and he is absolutely hilarious.  I only got him by chance -- the copy of DA:O I bought has all the DLC included and he's part of a quest called The Stone Prisoner.  I am so glad I did.  Shale is somewhat effeminate both in voice inflection and word choice, which creates a fun contrast between his intimidating appearance and his personality, and he really enjoys pushing the buttons on the other characters, who never seem to quite know what to do with him.  There's on exchange where Alistair asks Shale about his sleeping patterns, and Shale expresses that he doesn't sleep, he just watches the rest of the party while they sleep, counting breaths because "it helps to overcome the overwhelming urge to crush their faces."  Yet the way he says it doesn't seem that intimidating, more like a casual, almost joking comment.

Ah, Shale. Intimidating to look at, yet terrified of birds.

He's also got this quirk where he just hates birds, obviously from years spent frozen in place and having pigeons crap on him.  Hilarious.

Also: SPOILER, but apparently on Shale's personal quest, the player discovers that, prior to being a golem, Shale was actually a girl. I didn't know this, and since Shale refers to himself as a "him," that's what I'm going with. It doesn't change how much I love the character, regardless.

I love this game so much, and the characters make it. I may just re-start it again the second I finish it.