An Evening At the Inn Issue 11 - Mass Effect Changed My Life
What else could I talk about this week? BioWare isn't the first studio to close this year, and I, sadly, think it also won't be the last. And although the writing had been on the wall for a while, I found myself experiencing far more grief over this one than I expected.
A large part of that is because, like so many others, I simply wouldn't be where I am right now without BioWare. The fact that I'm working on video games and trying to still write about them is something that's never lost on me. I could list all of the great BioWare games, and I dearly love almost all of them (looking at you Sonic Chronicles), but for my purposes here, I have to talk about Mass Effect. The series that single-handedly, in so many ways, changed my life forever. The series my only tattoo is from. The series I named my cat after. Yeah, Mass Effect is pretty important to me.
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From the Innkeeper
Farewell, Commander
To this day, I remember the three-hour conversation I had with a stranger in college. For whatever reason, we didn't exchange numbers or become friends, but for four hours I talked to someone I'd never met about Mass Effect; what story choices we'd made, romances, speculation for Mass Effect 3, and even some headcanon. And this all started simply because I'd been wearing an N7 hoodie. I kid you not, something similar happened nearly a half-dozen times while I owned that hoodie.
That alone should give you an impression of how important Mass Effect has been, and I'd argue it still continues to be in many ways. From the morality and choice systems to the way party members are written and integrated – you can see so much of BioWare's flavor in today's current games. And while I already wrote something talking more broadly about BioWare's influence (go read it), I want to focus on Mass Effect here. Because it changed my life.
By the time Mass Effect came around, I was already high on BioWare, so much so that I remember buying the tie-in book Mass Effect Revelation, and then being desperately excited for the game to come out. If you haven't read Revelation, do it. The novel puts some fascinating detail onto Saren's motivations and his relationship with Anderson.
Playing Mass Effect 1 felt like a revelatory moment for me, like those galaxy brain memes. I grew up steeped in Star Wars and Star Trek, largely because my dad founded the official fan club for both. But the catch there is that I didn't discover either of those series, they were just a part of my life from my earliest memories. Mass Effect, on the other hand, was that moment of discovery for me. I found a universe that I wanted to live in, that I simply couldn't get enough of – I devoured every single piece of media that existed around Mass Effect. The way BioWare constructed what felt like a living, breathing universe was impeccable. What's truly remarkable, of course, is how much of this is smoke and mirrors when you get down to it.
The first Mass Effect layered in a galaxy map, plaents you could visit and scan, roam on with the Mako, and more. Although the amount of "playable" content in Mass Effect is low and focused, it gives this impression of this vast universe filled with history, and potential. It was an escape for me in the time I needed it the most as a teenager.
And I think a large part of that was how much I felt seen by Mass Effect. In 2007 I would have been 16 years old, the age that I really started to ask the big questions about my sexuality. I didn't feel comfortable tackling that issue in real life, and wouldn't come out until nearly 13 years later – but in the digital world of Mass Effect, I could be who I wanted. My Shepard could be not just gay, but bisexual, and that was huge.
I don't know if this is a common thing, but I do sometimes think, "What was the moment games turned into more for me?" Can I pinpoint when I started seeing games as more than just toys, and as something that can be examined, critiqued, and deconstructed? My answer is undoubtedly Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2.
That moment of being seen and represented by a game, in the way Mass Effect did, felt like a singularity. Before long, I'd started to wonder about why I felt myself so much in Shepard, despite the fact that they were a character with a defined personality. I started wondering why I felt put off by Ashley, and just why I felt such an affinity for Garrus. In most games I'd played before, good and evil felt like arbitrary choices I didn't put much stock into – but with Mass Effect I went Paragon 99 percent of the time, because I agonized over what that Renegade choice might mean in the long run.
Mass Effect was so unlike anything I'd ever experienced in video games, even having played Knights of the Old Republic and Jade Empire. That enthusiasm then carried over to Mass Effect 2.
The sequel came out while I was in junior year in high school. I had Mass Effect 2 pre-ordered, and I beat the game in three days (while going to school every day). It's the fastest I've ever binged anything in my life, even to this day.
Around this time, I'd also gotten more active in forums and conversations on Game Informer's website. As embarrassing as this might be to admit, I was so amped by Mass Effect 2 that it inspired me to do something: my very first piece of writing about video games – a user blog on Game Informer titled "The Great Debate: Are Video Games Art?" This blog has, blessedly, been wiped from the face of the internet, so both myself and you dear readers don't have to suffer the psychic damage from it.
It's bizarre to think about where I might be if I'd never written that blog, stemming from Mass Effect 2. When I started college as a Biology major, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life; Biology simply seemed like the thing I hated the least. But I'd written that blog, and another one later on Game Informer, and one day got the latest issue of the magazine in the mail, and it just sort of clicked. I realized, hey, I could try writing about video games, right? That day I went home and Googled "Video game journalism jobs." To my surprise, there was literally a "video gamejournalismjobs.com," I'm not even kidding, that was a real site. Grim irony that there'd be no reason for a site like that to exist anymore.
In so many ways it feels like BioWare's games, specifically Mass Effect, were the single domino that set off the chain reaction.
Despite my white-hot anger at the video game industry on a near-daily basis, I still do this because I love the people that make games, and the way what they make can influence us personally, or reflect society as a whole. I'm not going to sit here and say the Mass Effect games didn't make any mistakes – they feel remarkably informed by the era of the Iraq War, and the jingoist "oorah" mentality that seeped into media. That's an aspect of Mass Effect I'll always have to grapple with, but doing that grappling is important. Realizing how these pieces of media shaped your worldview is vital work, both in the positive and perhaps the negative you never realized at the time.
But I'm eternally grateful to the many developers that made Mass Effect what it is. And the point I want to stress is that the people made Mass Effect special. As we talk about what happens with the Mass Effect IP, I hope we don't lose sight of the fact that Mass Effect as we knew it, is gone. And maybe it should stay gone. The people that crafted those games are still around, still making other games, and they deserve your support. North Mis Studios, founded by former BioWare devs, made this exact point, and has posted about it on its Patreon.
It's okay to be angry at the ghouls that don't care about the legacy and history of this industry, or even about the immediate survival of the people that make games. It's okay to be disillusioned with this industry and video games as a whole. It's okay to feel sad and disappointed. But at the end of the day, the only way we can build something better is together.
Because I don't want to end on a dour note -
Unfortunately, I also have another embarrassing BioWare-related story that you'll get as a treat. As a baby journalist at my first E3 in 2013, I had the chance to meet BioWare founders Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk. For whatever reason, without thinking, I introduced myself, followed by "Oh, I'm one of the people that actually liked Mass Effect 3's ending." Yes, it still haunts me to this day. Sometimes I think about it going to bed. It was my first E3. Guess I did okay regardless.
Around the Realm
A small collection of my favorite writing on BioWare this week
Kenneth Shepard and Ash Parrish chronicle the most moving and important moments of Mass Effect.
Kenneth Shepard and Ash Parrish
Few people have covered BioWare and its games as meaningfully as Ken over the years, so there's two this time.
Kenneth Shepard
Jade King on the importance of BioWare's queer representation (sorry for the broken bookmark)
Matt Purslow on EA's constant underestimation of BioWare
https://www.ign.com/articles/ea-never-knew-what-it-had-with-bioware-and-its-all-of-our-loss
Lucy James on the sheer impact and importance of BioWare
Guardian staff reporter
Rhiannon Easby on finding themselves in Commander Shepard
Rhiannon Easby
Chris Kerr's vital reporting on the situation inside EA right now
Chris Kerr
The Back Page
I like to cap these things off with a recommendation, and this time I'd love to highlight Aether & Iron – one of the many games that was worked on by former BioWare devs. In fact, a lot of that BioWare juice is in Aether & Iron, especially in terms of complex party members, a multi-faceted main character, and a convincing world. I've honestly been a little floored that this game hasn't gotten more attention this year, as I genuinely think it's brilliant (albeit a bit of a slow burn). The good news is it's on sale right now until November 6, so jump on it. And if you want to read more of my thoughts on it, head to my Indie Informer article.
Hayes Madsen
Now, I usually put the RPG releases of the next month here. But, uh, there's quite literally nothing coming out, and I'm pretty sure everyone knows why. So we'll just skip this for now.
Of course, I'd be remiss not to feature a pet picture this time, considering Garrus' namesake. Ever since I played the first Mass Effect and fell in love with Garrus, I knew I'd want to name a pet after the character someday. But I'd never put more thought into it.
Then five years ago, I went to my partner's grandparents for Thanksgiving, and they found an abandoned kitten underneath their shed – no mother, no siblings, or anything. Let me tell you, this was the first time in my life I'd experienced anything along the lines of "fate." The literal second I saw that kitten I knew that was my cat, and I knew he had to be named Garrus. There was something in the way he looked, as well as the resilience he showed to survive against all odds.
I spent the majority of that Thanksgiving bottle-feeding Garrus, and the rest, as they say, is history.
