Games I Should Have Played: Mass Effect 2

Over the next few weeks, I'm going to be looking at games I've had sitting on my shelf, silently mocking me for having not played them yet. Some are undoubtedly classics; some are probably just steaming shitpiles. But I'm going to find that out for myself, and hopefully have some fun in the process.

In every way that probably matters to most reviewers, Mass Effect 2 is an improvement over the original. Gone are the clunky vehicular sequences, the subpar shooting mechanics, the copy-paste world design. The adventure has been lengthened, the menus have been streamlined, the graphics have been greatly improved, and many of the pesky RPG elements from the previous game have been excised. It is, in many respects, exactly what most sequels try to be, albeit with one, huge caveat: Mass Effect 2 is hugely problematic in many, many ways.

Some of these problems are of course carried over from the first game. Essentially, the idea of a "personal" narrative is undercut by the game's wonky and broken morality system. Sure, it's an amazing technical feat that you're able to port your Shepard over from the first game and have this game continue as if the two games were one continuous narrative. But when your decisions are so ultimately bloodless, basically getting you to the same place while allowing you to be "nicer" or "meaner" about it, it doesn't feel like you're directing a grand space opera so much as engaging in an exceptionally complicated Choose Your Own Adventure Novel. To some degree, this is the case in many Western RPGs, but at least games like Fallout or The Elder Scrolls series obfuscate your decisions so that you actually do feel in control. Mass Effect's morality system is just as arbitrary as the "emotion response" system of the Golden Sun games, but at least those games are upfront about it.

At least Mass Effect 2 relies less on complicated space jargon and more on pure spectacle, which works to its advantage. All of the various alien races are back from the original, once again essentially appearing as if they were humans in alien makeup, speaking English and everything. That brings me to one of my first massive (no pun intended) problems with the game: its backwards relationship to race politics.

I know, I know: Mass Effect 2 is science fiction and real-world rules shouldn't apply. But we don't live in a science fiction reality, we only live in our own reality, and the way that Mass Effect 2 seems to go out of its way to present an interstellar political system based almost entirely on different alien races standing in for different human races is horrifying at best. I know that this is a standard space opera trope – hell, Star Wars pulls no punches about saying "all Wookies are the same" or whatever – but here, it gives off a very uneasy atmosphere. It's largely the same problem that cropped up in Dragon Age: having dark elves stand in as black people is just as awful as having Quarians stand in for Palestinians. The game largely treats all members of an alien race as having the same characteristics – all Salarians are sneaky and manipulative, all Asaris are mysterious and Amazonian, all Turians are fierce warriors, etc. etc. Sure, sometimes there will be a character or two who will break this stereotype, but the assumption by the game is that unless otherwise noted, all members of an alien race will essentially carry the same traits.

This isn't really helped by the fact that there are very few races represented on the human side as well – besides the well-written Jacob, I didn't see another single person of colour in my playthrough. Apparently the future is a post-racial society for humans, I guess. In any case, basing all alien relations on race might seem OK for a sci-fi game, but it's not hard to see the awful parallels.

The game continues to stick its foot in its mouth with its uneasy relationship with colonialism. Human colonies and colonialism are treated as a birthright rather than something to abhor. Essentially, it's Manifest Destiny in space, and as someone who has seen the effects of colonialism on the colonized first-hand, this blase acceptance of the necessity of colonization, even if it is just "space colonization," is simply unacceptable. The game never gives you, as Shepard, the ability to take a stand against this. In fact, the whole plot revolves around saving colonists from a race of bodysnatchers (oh, it's very cliched and strangely Independence Day-like), so the entire assumption is that humans belonged in the far reaches of space to begin with. I realize that Shepard is a military person and takes orders and believes, essentially, in the order of things (at least in a Paragon playthrough), but one wishes you didn't have to play as Shepard and got to play as a character more interesting.

That's perhaps my problem with the game on the whole – it feints at presenting interesting scenarios but then just has you shoot at those scenarios instead. The game can't have it both ways: it can't be a balls-out action shooter AND a deep, sci-fi, political thriller. It's just far too uneven and makes all the shooting sequences so unnecessary. Are there really that many situations that can be solved using a gun and a team of murderers? Apparently the game thinks so, as it sees fit to throw thousands of faceless drones at you to shoot down. Sure, the mechanics here are a lot better than in the first game, but who gives a fuck? After this game, I'm officially done with games that try to pass off shooting as a normal, acceptable behaviour. I'm planning on writing more on this subject, but enough with the space marines and the military men and the guns and the belief in the corrective power of military might.

Because Mass Effect 2 is essentially trying to pass itself off as the thinking man's shooter, it becomes far more disappointing that the structure of the first game – essentially a chase narrative that required you to uncover a conspiracy – has been turned into your standard space western. The job of the player now is to put together a team of supersoldiers so that you can finish the game with a "suicide mission." What this means is that for 80% of the game, you'll be finding and putting together your team, and then trying to get their loyalty by doing a variety of missions for them.

Apparently loyalty is gained by killing any number of your team's former enemies – all of the loyalty missions revolve around heading to some planet and killing wave after wave of disposable henchmen. Why couldn't loyalty be accrued through relationships or discussions or actions that don't involve killing? Sure, Samara's loyalty quest doesn't require any shots to be fired at all, but it's the only one – all of the other loyalty missions are banal and nonsensical, requiring you to hide behind yet another strategically placed crate and kill another hapless mercenary.

That's not the only problem with the game's awful approach to "building relationships." As with the first game, you can start a romantic relationship with one of your crew members. Apparently, getting someone to love you involves talking with them as much as possible and always choosing the Paragon choice. Then your hardwork is rewarded with a sex scene. It's embarrassing and antiquated and seems to belie a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of human relationships.

More problematic, however, is the fact that the game seems to be hostile towards gay male players. The game is obviously heteronormative and geared towards male players – BioWare will never, ever put the female Shepard on the box art, for example. The relationship mechanic solidifies this: there are three female characters that the male Shepard can romance, and three male characters the female Shepard can romance. In addition to this, there are three characters that either male Shepard or female Shepard can go after, and… they're all female. Gay romance is apparently verboten in the future? Lesbianism is acceptable because the male players of the game are going to find it "hot?" Like, seriously, fuck off BioWare – this is some pretty regressive bullshit here. Either be sure to cover all your bases or don't have the broken, stupid relationship mechanics at all.

So Mass Effect 2 is a big-budget game that's not nearly as intelligent or meaningful as it seems to think it is. It doesn't have half the writing quality of many TV shows or movies, it's overly concerned with shit blowing up and cool stuff happening, and it's actively horrible in many ways. I said I enjoyed the first game on a purely popcorn level, but Mass Effect 2 seems to equate action movie aesthetics with a complete lack of cognitive functions. Turn off your brain, get through the shooting sections as quickly as possible, and Mass Effect 2 can almost lull you into a sense of enjoying the game for being brazen enough to include so many talking sections in what is otherwise not all that different from a Call of Duty game. But I can't for the life of me enjoy this game outright. It's too offensive and, for my tastes (and I wish the tastes of others), too "shoot-y" to be any good at all. At the end of the game, I was left with this sense of, "what did any of that mean?" and not in a good way.

But clearly, Mass Effect 2 is the Game of the Year, AMIRITE.

(Also, you can see my original thoughts on the tiny-text issue in the game here.)