Mass Effect 3 (2012)

No fancy "Video Game Assessment" title this time. No, we're getting serious with this game. We're getting serious. First thing, I'm not going to throw bad names around at anybody. Second thing, I literally made these opinions up myself without any contact to the fan community until my opinions had been made. Third thing, this is an honest review of the game, not sullied by either or positive or a negative outlook before the game came out.

I did have some apprehension about the game though. I can't say that I didn't. The multiplayer component made me nervous, especially when it might have had something to do with the single-player game, but I figured that this is BioWare. How could they screw up a fantastic franchise like this? And even if they screwed it up a little, the game would still be pretty decent and I'd get my money's worth. The whole idea that the game is also seemingly made for a more "mainstream" audience also made me apprehensive, what with a mode to not have any RPG elements at all, with your character making all of his/her own decisions.

So, I went into this a tiny bit apprehensive, but I never would have expected this. I'm going to be citing a lot of things here, by the way. I don't think I can bring my point across if I can't. So, spoilers are everywhere in this review, watch out. Also, this review is a negative one, I'm sorry to say.

In my twenty years of playing video games I have only been disappointed... really disappointed... all of twice. The first was Alan Wake, which if you read my review you'll find that I couldn't stand. I mean, I bought the Xbox 360 for two video games originally: Alan Wake and Mass Effect. Oh, the irony. Mass Effect 3 is incredibly disappointing, especially compared with its earlier games. As my reviews of the two earlier games point out, there are many things wrong with the Mass Effect games, but those things that are wrong are usually in the forms of extras like sidequests, extra costumes, and a plethora of DLC. Neither of those games are perfect, but they have amazing elements to them. The first game is a tranwreck, but a gorgeous trainwreck. It has some great characters and a great main plot as well. Everything else about the game is pretty mediocre, but the universe itself is amazingly well done and intricate. The second game is more of the same, maybe a little less intricate, but you have more companion characters to make up the difference. In general, Mass Effect 2 is a really good game, and I thought it would be an excellent setup for the third game.

That being stated, let's begin from the beginning. Reapers, the main cyborg-spaceship enemies from the other games come back with a vengeance and attack Earth. This obviously cannot be good at all. But the game... I don't know. I guess I never felt the gravity of the situation. The game made it play out more like a "this is the reason you are playing this game" scenario than a realistic one. I felt it moved too quickly and had no real plot. The beginning just felt awkward. The visuals weren't as good as I thought they would be, and, in fact, seemed worse than the visuals of either Mass Effect or Mass Effect 2. But okay, visuals don't make the game. That's why Deadly Premonition can be one of my favorite games. So, okay, let's not call out visuals. Instead, lets call out gameplay. Mass Effect 3 has decent gameplay, but it feels worse than Mass Effect 2's gameplay. I mean, maybe its just not as polished or something, but I had a hell of a time at points trying to be pinpoint accurate with my powers or guns... something I never had a problem with in the second game at all. I mean, the gameplay is still miles ahead of the first game, but it shouldn't have gotten worse over time.

The music and sound in general are also really well done. Although the music that stuck with me the most was the music that I remember from the first or second games. So, the original music of this game didn't really stick out to me. The voice acting is also very good, as to be expected, with only a few missteps, but I was fine with them all, so it's all good there too.

The main problem with me came from the story, the pacing, the sidequests, and, of course, the ending. But first I''ll talk more positives for a while interspersed with some criticisms for good measure.

The characters, companions and other lead characters alike, are very well done in general. I liked most of the characters and felt like their stories actually mattered to me. Tali and Garrus are certainly two of the outstanding characters that are in this game, but Liara also has an excellent arc. James Vega, a new character to the series, really shines as well, easily being one of the most enjoyable companions in the adventure, despite my apprehensions about him. And Javik, a Prothean companion that was offered in day 1 DLC (I'll get back to that later.) also shines, even though he's a gigantic jerk. The characters all fit the setting and work really well... but why weren't there more? There are some characters who were companions in the second game that could have EASILY been companions in this game. Hell, their stories are so focused on in the main plot of the game (or the big and nearly essential sidequests) that they could have easily been a companion character on the Normandy from their lines alone. Miranda really stands out in this regard, but there are others as well, like Legion, Mordin, Wrex, Zaeed, Jacob, Kasumi, Samara, Grunt, and Jack. Thane at least has an excuse for not being a companion. Dude's sick. The others on the other hand have contrived stories about how they can't be companions anymore. It was stupid and really broke my immersion from the game. All I wanted to say was, hey... hey you... I'm recruiting you and it would make so much more sense than you just standing somewhere doing nothing like Jacob and Zaeed certainly do throughout the entire second half of the game. And I'm not even saying I like all of these characters, I'm simply saying why didn't BioWare even give this as an option? It seems needlessly lazy.

And that's kind of the problem to this game: laziness. It could be the subtitle of Mass Effect 3. There is so much laziness... certainly in the writing which... goes from good to bad to decent to bad to worse. The image of Tali without her helmet on is laughable. Why does she look like a human who has some tattoos on her? Is she like a Star Trek alien or something? Are Quarians distantly related to humans somehow? It's weird. Wouldn't she be kind of pasty in that suit all of the time? Maybe unpigmented or something? She has a completely different anatomy and physiology as well. This wouldn't even be a case of convergent evolution. I'm annoyed because I liked the character, romanced her, and then found out that what she looks like is a Google image search image of some random chick. Are you serious, BioWare? Are you pulling my leg here? Is this some kind of joke on everybody who plays and enjoys your games? What?

Here's Tali

Okay, so let's just say they took the easy way out then. No laziness, just ease. I can understand that. Making up the visuals of an entire species that has always worn a suit in all of the other games might be really hard work. Hell, the fandom probably would be unhappy regardless. I mean, she could be hideous inside of there. You really have to make attractive people in video games. We want everybody to be as shallow as possible in a game series that touts being able to have gay romances and forbidden alien romances. But they all have to be attractive. Have to leave that shallowness in there. Stay classy, BioWare.

Oh, and speaking of attractiveness, let's call cheesecake right now at EDI. Yes, our old AI on the Normandy from the second game had an upgrade. Now, she's a full companion character with

...certain... uh... attributes.

I mean, seriously, BioWare? Seriously? Seriously. You... why do this? Why did she have to look like this? I mean, she a freaking AI. I understand that it was kind of neat being able to have her as a companion and she's really interesting and now Joker and her can have a romance, but seriously? She's the new Miranda, cheesecake everywhere for everybody!

But let's take a step back. This is a serious story. People are dying. War is happening everywhere. So, what do we do? Do we rush and get all the forces we can and try to save everybody? No, we screw around for the better part of half the game trying to eke out every single war asset one can find to get the "best ending." Oh, and it's not even possible to get the "best ending" in a game where you only play single player. You have to play multiplayer to be able to have the chance to get the best ending if you make the right choice between three incredibly similar choices at the very end. And all the "best ending" has to it is a few frames of Shepard breathing and alive rather than dead in all the other scenarios. I don't care about freaking bad endings or endings where the hero dies! Don't even dare accuse me of that. I loved Nier and that game has probably one of the most depressing endings to any video game ever. I loved Dragon Age: Origins and in that game your character can easily die. I loved Silent Hill 2 and usually put its "In Water" ending up as my personal canon because it is so true to the character and the story. Some of my favorite book series end with major characters' deaths: Animorphs, The Dark Tower, even The Lord of the Rings. So, don't tell me I don't like endings that are less than perfect. I LOVE horror movies for goodness sake, and most of the horror movies that I consider my favorite do not have happy endings, okay? My point is that this game does not have a fitting ending. The ending as a measured quality, is not "good," regardless of who lives and dies and whatever else happens. It is not well-written, it is not well done.

And yes, I'm up in arms about it. I played through the games, all of the games, multiple times, waiting for Mass Effect 3 to come out. And BioWare had never really let me down. I loved Dragon Age II, even though that one has its controversies as well. But I still loved it. I thought that it was supremely enjoyable. I even defended the game against people hating on it. I freaking recommended both the Dragon Age series and the Mass Effect series to multiple people, and this is what we get? An ending that has nothing really to do with our accomplishments through ninety or more hours of gameplay for a single character. An ending that is a choose what you want to do choice without anything determined from your choices before. And the choices are all basically the same anyway. The mass relays are always destroyed (and why aren't the star systems destroyed as well? It's established canon that destroying a mass relay destroyed the system too: see Mass Effect 2: Arrival DLC). The Reapers always fail somehow. The Normandy makes an inexplicable "jump?" to an unknown world with my companion characters who were with me in the final run to the light to get to the Citadel in the final mission... and are either presumably dead... or at the very least, not easily picked up by Joker who is fighting in the skies above Earth. Why in the HELL would he have made that jump? Why was he trying to outrun colors? Why did he look behind himself in the cockpit when there's no way he can see what's out there? How did he get to the Charon mass relay so quickly when he was fighting on Earth. Did he skip out on the fight? Would he have finally turned coward after all the times he was a hero in his own right throughout the first two games? And why were the endings so similar? Why give an illusion of choice when there really weren't any choices at all?

The ending was the greatest disappointment I have ever seen in a video game, and I bought the collector's edition of Alan Wake, a game I literally had a venomous reaction to. But I'd rather play Alan Wake a thousand times over than see the endings of Mass Effect 3 one more time. The story of Mass Effect has always been a space opera, like Star Wars... hell, call it space fantasy even. And it worked. The tones throughout the games were always well done and appropriate. But making the end of the series have a tone that was more 2001: A Space Odyssey than space opera... and it wasn't even that. I mean, jeez... a kid dies at the beginning, and at the end of the game the kid comes back as an AI-Force ghost to talk to Shepard and tell him that none of his choices mattered and that Shepard has to listen to this damn "Catalyst" to get rid of the Reapers.So, instead of Shepard finding another way he/she just listens and does exactly what the Catalyst says. This ghost thing. Are you serious? Ghosts in my MASS EFFECT? And the Crucible is just a big giant and annoying way of not having more Reaper fights and not owning your victory. Calling it a deus ex machina would be inconsiderate to dei ex machinis everywhere. They are all better than this. Pushing that Crucible into the story left a bad taste in my mouth from the Mars mission (about an hour or so into the game) and on.

And the problem is, yes, the ending sucks, but parts of the story are well done. The whole genophage part of the story is incredibly well done (Well, with the exception of Wrex's character, whom they butchered beyond repair. I mean, seriously, Wrex, what happened? You were a completely different character in this game.), and the Quarian versus Geth story is amazing as well, easily one of the best parts of the entire trilogy of games. There are other smaller places the game shines as well, but mostly the focus on Cerberus rather than the Reapers makes the story very limp. I wanted to take out Reapers. I wanted to fight until the last man, and I never even had that choice. I had to use the deus ex machina. I was forced to use it. Why? Why?

Speaking of Cerberus, Kai Leng is easily one of the worst character BioWare has ever written. It's a dead heat between him and Jacob (I don't want to fight because I'm boning some chick.) for the some of the worst characters I have ever seen. And I don't mean that I don't like them (I don't but that's besides the point.), I mean that they are poorly written and their stories are poorly executed. Kai Leng kills off Thane for no other reason than to show he's a tough man and then he's just a pest. I thought that he was pushed into the story to make him seem like such an awesome character when all I saw was a one-dimensional, incredibly poorly written character. His whole character made me have a strong distaste for this game all over the place.

And I'm not even getting started on the terrible qualities of this game. Strap yourselves in.

Okay, let's get started with Metacritic. I know I've said many a time that critics don't have any clue what they're talking about, but here it really shows. 94% score for the game for critics while the actual players of the game have given it a 49% rating. That is a failing mark, BioWare. For shame. A 49% is really bad. I mean, the game is mostly pretty solid, with some exceptions, but the ending just killed it for people. It's ridiculous.

Next, I'm going to mention bugs and glitches. This game is one of the buggiest and glitchiest messes I have ever played. I mean, Dragon Age: Origins: Awakening is a pretty close second (also a BioWare game too. Fancy that.), but that expansion pack was still nowhere near as bug-ridden as Mass Effect 3. I couldn't import my Shepard's face and had to make a new one. This is an inconvenience, but okay... not really terrible, just kind of dumb on BioWare's part. The bugs that get to me are the gameplay ones. Sometimes when I'm behind cover, I'll go to shoot and my character will blink out of existence and go flying through the map for about five seconds only to reappear back when he was in cover. It's the weirdest glitch and I have no idea how something like that can even happen. I've had character models just disappear from the game when I'm talking to them. I'll literally be talking to the air. There are quests that you cannot complete if you don't do exactly the right order of things. One quest in particular has the issue of once you get it you can't even leave the area until you finish it, and due to the nature of quests in the game, sometimes it's hard to tell where you have to go for these quests and you'll search around a bit only to find that you can't complete that quest because you left the area or started a new quest while you were looking. It's absolutely ridiculous. Sometimes the dodge roll won't work as advertised to the point that it's sometimes impossible to dodge out of enemy's way simply because the game doesn't like that course of action or something. I have no idea, but it's incredibly annoying in tough firefights. Oh, and melee is annoying too. If you are not pixel-perfect with lining up a melee hit, you're hit will miss completely, and, in my experience, you will die. It's awful. I don't usually complain about gameplay, but why is it worse than the second game? And why is it so damn clunky? There are some nice touches and additions to gameplay, but I don't really think I ever had fun fighting the same two groups of enemies over and over again. In the first game there were many different types of enemies, from many different alien species, the Geth, and any kind of mercenary you can think of. In the second game the same held true although mechs were kind of the main enemy type in that game, but there were others. But in this game you get two factions you fight against: Cerberus and the Reaper forces (as well as like three missions against the Geth). And that's it. No fighting aliens, no fighting other factions. You fight freaking Cerberus and the freaking Reaper forces and you like it. To me it was repetitive and kind of boring in general. Some fights were better than others, but I never really enjoyed the combat... and that's weird for me. I'm usually all cool with any type of combat. I just never really got into it, I guess.

So, now that we've talked about some of the negative aspects of the actual game, especially with the nonsensical ending that completely transforms that entire tone of the games (all three games by the way, not just this one. Mass Effect 3 makes the other games worse in retrospect. That's really something there.), we're going to address a few other issues. First the epilogue to playing the game through twice or when a character is imported. The epilogue that tells that the story of Shepard is being told from an old "Stargazer" to a child. Instead of focusing on characters like the entire series has, it focused on telling us that "Well, that sure was a story, wasn't it?" If you haven't seen it, go search it on YouTube. I'll wait.

Did you see it?

Did you?

Is that good writing? Is that the grand epilogue that Mass Effect and Shepard deserves? I guess that's everybody's own decision to make. But no. The answer to both questions is no. It is the worst stinger at the end of credits or at the end of a book I've seen since the last Harry Potter  book. I mean, come on. Most games, books, movies... whatever... most stories get better towards the end. You get more invested in it. But this game just got worse. Hell, even Alan Wake was pretty decent in the ending. And that's saying something coming from me.

So, now the DLC controversy. So, it kind of happens that the DLC companion character for Mass Effect 3 (that costs 10$) is already on the disc and is really not DLC at all... just an easy way for BioWare to make money. Oh, that's really bad, isn't it? That's rough guys. Why couldn't you just do what you did with your last two games and give us the character for free. You did it with Zaeed for the second game and Sebastian for Dragon Age II if it were pre-ordered (I pre-ordered mine.). Why not do it here with Javik? Are you guys seriously that incompetent and money-hungry? I have to believe that you are. All evidence points towards it, and that's really disheartening.

I've liked BioWare since KotOR that came out nearly ten years ago now. I've been in love with the company and their products. I even loved DAII, but with this game, I've been let down. I've been brought down, and I don't understand it. What did we, the fans, do to you guys that you had to make the third game like this? Did we insult you? I certainly didn't. I've been simply telling it like it is, recommending your games even, ranting and raving about how good I think they all are. I even dressed up like the default Hawke from Dragon Age II because I liked the game so much! So, no, I'm not a hater, I'm just giving my impressions, as they are, to a bunch of anonymous readers on the internet.

Here are some other things to read if you are interested and before I get into another big issues entirely: http://kotaku.com/5892676/why-mass-effect-3s-ending-was-so-terrible, http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2012/03/12/how-bioware-could-find-redemption-using-mass-effect-3/2/, http://www.g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/721651/gamers-petition-to-change-mass-effect-3-ending/ (read the comments on this one), http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/category/355/index (check out any of the forums, but this one really shows the controversy behind the game in full force).

Anyway, a few more things to write, and then I'm done. I don't like how BioWare could go and say that the game wouldn't be influenced by the multiplayer. I know multiplayer is an aspect of the game itself, but I don't play multplayer. I don't have the time or energy to get invested in multiplayer. I don't like it. I play a single player game. I don't have Xbox Live Gold and I don't want to spend my money on it when I DON'T ENJOY MULTIPLAYER. So, why can't I get the "best" ending (it's not the best, but this is the principle of the thing here) when I make all the right decisions and everything else and still am way off from being able to get the "best" ending? The whole ending is determined by something called "EMS" or Effective Military Strength, which is your Total Military Strength (your number of war assets) divided by  your percentage of Galactic Readiness. The problem is that Galactic Readiness can only be improved by playing multiplayer and there are not enough war assets in the actual game to be able to get the "best" ending without playing multiplayer. I've actually tested this out myself. I did EVERY SINGLE MISSION and dialogue prompt and everything else in ALL THREE GAMES. I looked up how to go about getting the best War Assets, and besides maybe fifty points, I have all of them, and I'm still way off from the goal of 4000 EMS. I'm closer to 3500. Which means that BioWare lied to the players of this game when they repeatedly said that the ending would in no way be influenced by multiplayer and the "best" ending could be gotten in game just by playing through the single player as a completionist or whatever. So, I'm pissed off because I WON'T PLAY multiplayer, but I would at least like to have the ability to get the best ending even though all the endings suck because it's the principle of it. I wasted countless hours on this series and I want to see the "best" ending play out even if it's going to make me even angrier. I deserve that as a person who spent seventy dollars on this game. Every single last player of the game deserves that.

So, in conclusion, the game feels unfinished, rushed, and lazy. The writing, although good in places, is not as good as the other games except in a few very specific areas and with a few very specific characters. The tone of the game is all over the place. For some reason my party won't walk with me on the Citadel and I don't understand that one at all when they did the other two games. I like the companions and the dialogue on the Normandy for the most part. I like what the game should have or could have been. I dislike how important plot points are either utterly forgotten (the Dark Matter plot) or ruined (the main plot itself). I hate the deus ex machina of the Crucible and the ghost-AI-boy Catalyst was easily one of the worst things I have ever seen in a video game. But the worst thing I have ever seen are the endings which are all mostly the same, involve losses in logic that are absolutely astounding, and have an epilogue that feels both out of place and does not work at all with the material. And I hate that multiplayer actually has a HUGE influence on the single player story (The main portion of Mass Effect.) to the extent that the "best" ending cannot be received unless multiplayer is played.

So, yeah, I'm never buying a Mass Effect product again. This game ruined the series. It ruined the other games in retrospect and I would have never believed that to be possible. The writing was poorly done, and even though I might still support BioWare, they are walking down a very dark path right now. I can only hope that Dragon Age III is something fantastic... but after this... I don't even know anymore.

Also, for people to call out, start with EA, then go to the director, Casey Hudson, the producer, Jesse Houston, the writers (specifically), Mac Walters and Neil Pollner. You also have to wonder how much Drew Karpyshyn leaving BioWare and not working on Mass Effect 3 was a big issue for this game. Because it didn't feel like the other games at all. It lacked heart, and... I think that was the biggest disappointment of all.

Video games should be coherent. They should have a plot that stays with the right tone the whole way through and doesn't sacrifice the story for money, not enough time, or because they want the game to attract a wider audience. I love developers like Valve who are willing to give free DLC to their games, great games that they are. I would have gladly paid for Portal 2's DLC, but I could acquire it for free, and that's good business and the mark of a good company who really is looking out for the players' best interests. We're the ones giving them our money, showing them we like their games through sales or not. And I'd be hard pressed not to like Valve's approach to video games or Obsidian's approach or Bethesda's. But EA and BioWare have been walking a very fine line for a while now with day 1 DLCs, trying to gauge money out of the people that love these games. It's ridiculous. It's unconscionable. I would gladly pay for a DLC that isn't packaged with the game, one that is really great and adds a lot to the overarching plot or characters or whatnot. I will not pay for something that has been stripped out of the game. Mass Effect 3 deserves a coherent and sensical ending for all those people who put their time and energy into loving the games and these characters. The tagline for the game was "TAKE EARTH BACK" but I never did. I never had the chance. The endings wouldn't allow me to take earth back. I understand how sometimes there cannot be happy endings. I like sad endings or bittersweet ones, but the ending here feels so utterly inappropriate to the series and for the people who cared so much about these characters and situations.

I didn't care that my Shepard couldn't possibly survive because I didn't play multiplayer. In my head he did survive and the whole ending is a bunch of bullshit. In my head my Shepard fought every last Reaper he could, and maybe he died running to that beam, running for the Citadel. Maybe he died as his love interest, Tali in his case, ran with him, both hoping for an end, both finding that they couldn't stand against the onslaught. And that would have been enough, ending it before the end, before that final excursion. It certainly wouldn't have answered anything, but it would have been beautiful regardless. Instead the heart of the game was ripped away... if it ever even existed at all. Tali inexplicably teleports to the Normandy that teleports to Charon and the rest is the rest, I suppose.

I guess the logic bothers me, the what the hell just happened. I feel kicked in the gut. I feel like I was just beat up by a schoolyard bully who then proceeded to insult every little thing about me. I've been sitting on this review for a few days, desperately hoping that I would feel better about everything, and finding that... no, I don't. If anything the time has caused me to become more irate. Why doesn't BioWare answer the people who have issues with this? Why didn't they try to make something somewhat satisfying however dark it had to be? I just wan to feel like my playthroughs of the games mattered. I want to feel like my Shepard, my awkward looking, big-lipped, fuzzy-haired, and somewhat awkward Shepard, mattered in the long run... that his decisions mattered. That the people he helped on the Citadel weren't all dead. That he didn't die for a terrible ending, listening to some ghost-AI thing that made no sense. Why didn't my Shepard speak up and say how he made peace between the Geth and the Quarians, how synthetic life could coexist with organic life as seen with EDI and Joker? That there didn't need to be some synthesis to tie into the game when all that was needed were the desire for those feelings.

Mass Effect as a series has always been progressive about its thoughts on love, AI thought, and everything else, and showing that these things mattered, that they could happen... that feelings in an AI could actually evolve over time as seen in EDI, as seen in Legion... instead of the copout that nope, they're all the same now, synthesized together and whatnot...

I guess the ending left a bad taste in my mouth. It made me think of all of the other better ways BioWare could have handled the ending. It made me think of how I would have done it, and it would have been fantastic if I had done it. I wouldn't have relied on multiplayer or getting new players to buy my product. I would have focused on the people that mattered, the players who had been buying and playing my game all along. Screw the profit. Screw the money. I would have wanted to tell the story, a brilliant story with brilliant characters... and it would have mattered. The heart and soul of the game would have been there, would have existed, and we could have all come away from the game a little better off. Maybe a little happier, maybe a little sadder, but all better for it. Instead we get this abomination of an ending that answers nothing, that does nothing different or new, that feels like fanfiction unto itself. Why? How can I accept this game on these merits? How can I make the pain of this terrible game disappear?

I can't.

Nobody can.

We're left to forever have to deal with this, this ending that BioWare gave us to one of the best sci-fi video game series of all time. We're left to feel empty, to feel like we didn't matter... that the decisions we made, the time we spent playing... none of it mattered when it comes down to a deus ex machina and a choice between three of the same decisions. And maybe BioWare doesn't understand. Maybe I'm just a hater who hates everything and can't see any goodness.

But I wanted to. I loved this series. I wanted to fall in love with it all over again, play it until I couldn't... but I can't anymore. Mass Effect 3 is a failure despite all the good it has to offer. The ending ruined the series, and it took a little happiness and hope out of the lives of many. I hope you're happy, BioWare. I hope this was all worth it to you.

Series Criticism: Star Wars (Part 1.75: Where did the fun go?)

Okay, now we're getting into the bread-and-butter of my criticisms of the franchise itself. Look, the prequels are bad. We all know that. (Well, besides some writers who want to be controversial and go against the crowd, often saying that the prequels are better because of... uh... reasons? I'm guessing stuff like OH CGI IS BETTER and THE PREQUELS ARE SMART... but come on, does anybody really believe those things?) The prequels failed, maybe not in terms of money, but certainly in terms of support in the thinking people of the world because there was no heart to them.

Now, this is going to get complex and very opinionated, and I can't help that. All of this is opinion, and my opinions can sometimes be controversial or downright insane. Most of my reviews don't really go into some of my more crackpot theories, and I tend to try to avoid complex ideas of what people (actors, directors, writers) were thinking. But sometimes I have to point out when I think people are having fun or when they're not... and also when there are more abstract ideas of what makes something good or bad.

I don't like sell-outs. I like my moral high ground. I like having this idea that nobody ever has to sell out. Selling out=bad to me. And that's the problem. Star Wars was already a franchise based on selling crap, selling media, selling toys to the kids who would see it, but it always had a soul, a heart, in the center of it. Watch A New Hope or Empire Strikes Back and go and tell me that there wasn't a heart to those movies. The actors had passion for their parts. The directors and writers had passion for the story. Yes, they were making money, but there was care for quality. Everybody put in their time and effort. They went to locations and shot their scenes in deserts, in tundras... forests for Return of the Jedi. They built sets, sometimes, like with the original Death Star, from thousands of battleship models put together. That's insane and brilliant. It made the whole movie feel not only more real, but used up in so many ways. It added to the aesthetic which added to the mood which added to why the movies were so good. Practical sets are hard, but they pay off in the end by having stunning visuals that CGI just cannot replicate.

CGI is the bane of existence today. It makes good movies into cartoons and makes bad movies so much worse. George Lucas wanted to push the boundaries of CGI with the prequels and he did. I can't argue that. He pushed the boundaries of what can be done with CGI and movies. The problem is that he sacrificed story, characters, and the Star Wars franchise to do so. You can tell what he wanted. He wanted full control, he wanted to make money, and he wanted the movies to hold up against modern movies in terms of the look of the movies. He wanted to compete with other gorgeous movies, using every trick in his book to make his movies better. He wanted to appeal to every demographic, wanted Star Wars to be KING.

The problem is the movies, at their center, had no soul. There was no reason to care about Anakin or Obi-Wan. Hell, I barely had any reason to care about any of the characters. Anakin was a supreme jerk in the latter two movies of the prequels and in the first he was an annoying kid. Yes, he had some moments of trying to appeal to the audience, like when his mother died and whatnot, but ultimately it failed and fell extremely flat. I don't care about Hayden Christiansen as an actor one way or another. He could have been the best actor ever, his emotions still would have fell flat. Christopher Lee is a case in point. The guy is a very good, very accomplished actor. He's certainly had some bad films, but he's always had dignity in his roles. Compare his role as Count Dooku in the prequels to his role as Saruman in The Lord of the Rings films. There is no comparison. Count Dooku is both lackluster and unneeded. He has no personality, no reason for me to care about him or think about him at all. In fact he's become the punchline to a lot of jokes I make. But then you see Saruman and see that Christopher Lee is a damn good actor who can put in a performance that is simply brilliant. The Star Wars prequels didn't have the good direction that LotR did. That's for sure. But they also didn't have the well-written, well thought of characters. None of them mattered. Yes, we knew the story, we knew what would happen, but did it have to be so full of nothing? I mean, I've seen very few movies where both the settings and characters suffered so much because of issues on the filmmaker's part. Was the plot okay? I have no idea. Maybe it could have been, but the characters were so flat that I didn't care about that either.

Go ahead and tell me there characters are well-done. Go ahead. I dare you. You can't even do it with a straight face, can you? It would make your brain explode to call Anakin or Padme great characters worthy of being etched in history. I mean, Palpatine was the only character I enjoyed watching in the prequels and only because he was evil and didn't give a damn. His complications come from the fact he's playing both sides, acting both good and bad simultaneously. It gives him the illusion of complexity while he remains just as flat and stupid as every other character. Yoda was ruined by the prequels, although I guess everybody knows that by now. Mace Windu was garbage. And do any of the others even matter?

Compare any character from the prequels to the original trilogy and tell me what you get. The original trilogy, is always better. The characters are almost never flat, and the situations and scripts are well done. Watch The Empire Strikes Back and tell me that Luke and Han don't seem like best friends despite spending almost no time in the actual movie together. They do. And yet Anakin and Obi-Wan say they're best friends, spend half of Attack of the Clones together and never feel close at all. Do you see?

The prequels and Star Wars in general has lost their respective hearts and souls. They have sold out beyond comprehension, hoping to sell, to appeal, to look great, to be funny, serious, tragic, comedic... the list goes on and on, but the ending is always the same: the spirit of Star Wars was sacrificed to make room for a "vision," a vision that couldn't work, didn't work, and alienated people away from the franchise. And that's all I can say. The fun of the movies, the enjoyment... the adventure... was stripped out in favor of looks and flashing lights and a focus on a romance that not only didn't work, but couldn't work. The characters were broken beyond repair, flat and dead on arrival. And there was nothing that could be done once that happened.

I used to read the Star Wars novels back in my misspent youth. Most of them were not good, but they weren't brain-crushingly terrible either. They had silly plots sometimes, and each of them (before 1997 or so) seemed to be intent on getting Luke to marry their girl of the month or whatever, but in general, although there were some very high quality ones and some very bad ones, most were humbly mediocre... and that's fine. I still read them. I still pretty much enjoyed them. But after the prequels came out, the whole soul of Star Wars seemed to shift. First it was the genre shifts as seen in The New Jedi Order books with the Yuuzhan Vong, bringing out a focus on both gore, grittiness, horror, and realism that Star Wars had long lacked. These elements were a break from the romantic and adventurous ideal Star Wars had been based upon, but maybe it was time for a change. maybe it could work. There were a few of the books in the, I believe, 19 book series that were pretty good. Some were awful too, but that's to be expected. On the whole though, the books and Star Wars, were stepping on thin ice, pushing the boundaries of what is Star Wars.

The problem was that despite the seriousness, the characters never seemed to change. Luke, Han, and Leia were essentially the same characters from the original trilogy of movies. Their twenty years of character development, relationships, and losses were all but forgotten under the guise of a new series, with new writers trying their best to make these characters their own. And the series fell into what I like to consider at the best of times "Fanfiction" and the worst of times something unspeakable. The things that are called Star Wars novels today are but a shadow of even the worst of the novels of the nineties. And that's terrible. I haven't read any new novels in years... probably since the Legacy of the Force novels, where I became so insulted at the writers of that series that I actually quit Star Wars. How could I not with such egregious violations of the fans' trust? Killing off a popular character in order to prop up an unpopular one? How is that even... I'm not getting into this. My point is that there were a lot of bad decisions and I hope that the teenage girls reading the Star Wars novels now are really happy in just how screwed up the franchise is. It has been a long fall,and it's still going.

Again, the heart of the franchise has been torn out and eaten. There's nothing left but the terrible parts of Star Wars. When no KotOR III established itself, I knew the franchise, to me, was dead, finally. Have there been some good thing in the past few years? Yeah, I guess. I liked some parts of the Legacy comics, and I like the idea of horror and Star Wars combining... but beyond that, I'm done with the series.

In a way Star Wars reminds me of some of my more hated franchises, like Harry Potter, which I felt sold out a long time ago... or, and I may like the webcomic all right, but the soul of it is now gone: Homestuck. Now, these two franchises are certainly, at this point in time, examples, in my opinion, of creators selling out, forgetting original visions, and appealing to the blind mass of fans rather than the art of the thing. Maybe it's just me, but that's how I feel: utterly disappointed in the creators.

I need to take a breath for a while, but Part 2 in which I rant about the early Star Wars expanded universe and Return of the Jedi will be coming soon.

Video Game Assessment: Mass Effect 2 (2010)

Mass Effect 2 is on a basic level The Dirty Dozen IN SPACE. And on an even more basic level, a huge variety of recruitment missions for a big damn suicide mission in the endgame. What more can I say about the story? It isn't complex or full of riddles or even a seriously important part of the game. Instead this game's focus is on characters, dialogue, and the beginning of a massive galactic conflict that leads directly into Mass Effect 3.

I tend to like the Mass Effect games. They're like Star Wars without lightsabers, with more aliens in leading parts, and no insipid prequels in sight. I think that the games are massively fun and enjoyable, and have a ton to offer despite the overdone cover-based gameplay. The gameplay here is not what you're playing this game for. It's definitely the characters and story instead. Well, that doesn't mean the gameplay is bad. In all honesty, they really streamlined it from the last game and all around it feels much better, even if it is simplified.

One of the BIG changes from the first game to the second, and one of my least favorite changes, as stupid as it might sound, is the amount of customization. This is also a big complaint that I have for the Dragon Age series as well. Seriously, why did both sequels take away fun aspects of the first game? I mean, no it wasn't the most fun thing in the world to navigate the TERRIBLE inventory system of the first Mass Effect, but it was kind of fun to put Wrex in a bright green costume, or to put Ashley in her best red armor. I mean, not that it's necessarily OH MY GOD THIS IS SO GREAT, it still feels kind of fun. It's party customization, and it works really well. I also liked the amount of guns that you could get in the first game, something that the second game cut down on. Another thing to rant about is why have a game where you can't even use some of the core gameplay mechanics (in this case certain guns) if you play a certain class? It's weird and I've never really liked that. I guess I want to be able to use all the weapons rather than being restricted to a pistol or something crappy like that. I mean, it wouldn't even change anything at all since most classes have extra stuff that make them better at certain types of combat. So, why limit it? I've never used an assault rifle in any of the Mass Effect games because I never play a soldier class. So, why even implement it in the game at all? I mean, I like the fact that other characters are customizable in what weapons and powers they use, and I like that I can have different powers depending on what class I choose... but why are some of the powers chosen so arbitrarily? Or maybe I just think it's arbitrary. This is the biggest issue I have with this game. I feel like it really cuts out the RPG elements of the game, which subsequently is one of the biggest complaints about this game and Dragon Age II. I will argue that Dragon Age II is worse in this regard though as there is ABSOLUTELY NO CUSTOMIZATION in terms of character clothing, except for your own character, which makes most of the loot you get in the game absolutely useless, especially if some are for mages and you're playing as a rogue. Or you get a Hawke specific sword, but can't use it because again, you can't use swords, you need to use daggers as a rogue. It's dumb, and really makes me wonder about some of the arguments that people make about BioWare really dumbing these games down.

Now, dumbing the games down is something important to me. I'm a big Obsidian Entertainment junkie, but Valve is a good example of this too. You should not dumb a game down, making it easier for a different audience to get into it. You appeal to your base first, then everybody else afterwards. It's as simple as that. Every time I play a BioWare game I expect KotOR, not a shooter with RPG elements or a hack-and-slash with romantic interests. I like Dragon Age II, but not because of the things that were taken away. I liked the writing, the story, the characters, and some bits of the plot, but I hated what they took away from Origins. One of my favorite parts in that game, and this is going to sound dumb, but I loved the descriptions to each weapon. It showed that there was a lot of love and care going into each weapon's description. If, when you first get to Ostagar, you take a sword from a messenger, you get a great little blurb about some knight fighting with a spoon because you STOLE HIS SWORD. I love that. It opens up the world and gives the whole world more immersion. And that's the big problem here. Again, I like Dragon Age II and I also like Mass Effect 2, but I also think that they've dumbed down RPG mechanics either because they want to appeal to a new audience... or because of pure laziness, and I hope it's not the latter. I'm not really a PC gamer, and I played all of these games on the Xbox, which is probably why I'm not being as harsh as many of them can be. I guess I just want there to be customization and being able to dress characters in different clothing if you so desire is kind of a big deal to me. Also weapons. I want more weapons that feel unique, either through description or just by finding them on the ground or something.

Crap, I've gone off topic. Mass Effect 2. Mass Effect 2. All right. So, the game has very few weapons to it, probably no more than five of any weapon type, usually one of which is far superior to any of the other options if you're actually good at using the weapons at all. Also, no customization on the armor really, other than purely aesthetically. I mean, yes, it's kind of nice to be able to change colors around... or if you buy the DLC, you can make them wear sunglasses, kind of. Okay. Okay. I think I kind of understand, maybe? No. No, I don't. Why can't they get bonuses for new costumes? Or different stats or something? Oh... because stats were taken away. Oh. Oh no.

All in all, what I've been talking about are my biggest complaints. I know they've, as far as I've heard, fixed most of these issues for the upcoming Mass Effect 3, but the damage was already done here.

Now, after all that ranting, I have to admit that I do like the game. It has a compelling story, a lot of interesting things that can happen to your party, and... did I mention the party themselves? They are the main set-pieces of the game. There are up to... uh... 13, 14, or 15 (16 altogether, I think) unique party members in the game, although some are unique to DLC only, some are added by DLC to the main game itself, and some are optional. I guess I can talk about them all, although it will only make this review longer. I'll start with the first introduced and move on from that. The story follows these characters except at key story points, which involve Shepard looking for these aliens called Collectors collecting (har har) human colonies, and eventually bringing the fight straight to them. There, that's the story. Yes, some set-pieces are really fun and look fantastic, but they really only matter as much as OH HERE'S A STORY! LOOK AT IT!

So, we'll start with our fanservice of the hour. Miranda. Okay, skin-tight jumpsuit. Nicely rendered rear, nicely rendered boobage... well, I know why you're here, Miranda. I mean, yes, I guess she's kind of interesting, but the game itself undermines that interest by showing blatant shots of her rump. I mean, look game, I love video games, but I don't need pixelated babe to get me off, thank you very much. I'd much rather have no fanservice and giving her a sweater. And look, if you argue that it's her character, then I'd say why does the camera linger on her caboose? That has nothing to do with her character shaking that trunk in Shepard's face. She's turned to face Shepard. No, it's all about the camera focusing there to bring about a reaction in the fanbase. Wonderful.

Jacob. Stupid insipid characters are terrible. Stop making simple characters like this. He has no real personality and even though his loyalty sidequest is among the best in terms of story, he is just about the worst character I've ever seen in a video game. They dropped the ball on writing him. Period.

Then we have Wilson, who spoiler, dies in the very beginning.

All right, Mordin. I love Mordin. The first three characters are all human. Mordin is the first Salarian party member. He speaks really quickly without pronouns and while taking as few breaths as possible. He's a scientist as well, and well, he's kind of awesome. He has a good personality that fits him, and, in general, he works as a character all around. He is deep and engaging, and it's kind of cool to talk to him when you get the chance.

Garrus. Well, there's a spoiler, so there are going to more. I didn't love Garrus in the first game, and I don't love him amazingly in this one either. I mean, he's cool, and I use him a ton, but he says so little in the game itself at times I kind of forget about him. In general he reminds me of Shepard light... maybe even a secondary renegade Shepard.

Jack is kind of obviously a reference to space prison movies. I guess they're a genre nowadays. She (yes, she's a she) is supposed to be a very obviously emotionally stunted character who has gone through the worst life has to offer. It just... it doesn't work for me. It never has the weight I feel that it should. It's like the writers really tried to do something with her by telling her story, but it all just felt... paper-thin. Her entire story, which I guess works with a lot of people, just did not work for me. I mean, there's this feeling that there's way too much telling and not enough showing with her. Yes, she's obviously emotionally problematic, but her character only tells what's going on... there's never really that quiet scene where you just see  all the issues and just understand. Part of it is on the voice actress, but most of it is certainly on the writing. It didn't feel right to me. It didn't work well.

Grunt is the Krogan, and even though he's no Wrex, he is pretty awesome. I like him a lot. He grows up within the Normandy SR-2 and you get to see his development basically from a child into an adult. I love it. It works so well, in my opinion. And he really comes off as an interesting and deep character despite his single-mindedness. We get to SEE his aggression (unlike Jack) and get to experience his story along with him. There's not the shoehorning in of emotional baggage that never really come out in game proper. I hate when things are told to me, but not shown. It's such a lazy way of doing things. But Grunt works really well as the heavy type of character with a healthy dose of rage-insanity.

Now for DLC characters: Kasumi and Zaeed. Zaeed is a walking and talking Firefly reference, basically a gruff bounty hunter, who's in it for the money and the adventure rather than the good of what they're doing. He's absolutely great. A lot of his lines are really interesting and he grows on you as a character as long as you spend time with him. Easily one of the best written characters in the game. Kasumi is another great character, well-written and interesting, with a great story besides. She has the emotional baggage like Miranda, like Jack, but she's actually written well and it comes off in her character much stronger than the others. You get to see what's going on with her, rather than having it told to you by the character in question. This is how good writing works, and Kasumi is a great example of it. Kasumi is a Japanese thief, and she's cute as hell. Her story is almost heartbreaking, and in general I have to admit that I really like her.

Then there was Tali. Tali is yet another character from the last game. And yes, yes, yes... I'm basically a Tali guy. I think she was lovingly written and incredibly well-done. She seems, in my opinion, to be the only sensible love interest for males in the game, besides the girls from the last game, I suppose. She has one of the most well-done scenes in the entire game with her loyalty quest, and everything with her feels personal. She feels like a friend (or lover, or whatever) unlike some of the other characters that we've seen so far with the exceptions of Grunt, Mordin, Zaeed, and Kasumi. Oh boy, though... she really is a good character.

Anyway, moving on from my Tali-love, let's talk about Thane. Thane is the absolute... um... drell. Yes. He's the assassin of the group, and he really has deep characterizations. Again we see him, underneath the surface. We get to see what's underneath unlike some of the worse-written characters. The voice actor and the writer do a great job with Thane, who, in some ways, maybe even most ways, is the best companion character in the game. Well, arguably, at least.

Then there's Samara. Another fanservice asari. Wonderful. I love asari cleavage. Do you hear that dry sarcasm in my voice? DO YOU SEE IT OVER THE INTERNET!? BECAUSE I DO. Seriously, I can't stand this kind of fanservice and the kind of character that Samara is. I might dislike Jacob the most, but Samara is a close second. She's a dedicated knight, the kind of character I really like... but she's done in the most aggressive and stupid way possible. There's a reason why I...

...usually choose the next character over her. Morinth. Now, yes, Morinth is evil, she's very evil, but I like her so much more than her mother. Morinth is over-the-top evil. Yes, she might not have the depth of other characters, but at the same time she really does not disappoint. You get exactly what you ask for with her. Even if you have to betray and basically kill Samara to get Morinth in your party. Eh, stuff happens to insipid characters. Also, the scene where you get to choose between them is one of the best scenes in the game. I have to point that out. It surprised me the first time I saw it.

Okay, one more main character, and... well, I think it's my favorite character. I would like to introduce Legion. Yay! A geth party member who is basically fantastic in every way and has more personality than half of the rest of the party. I'm not going to rant about this character. I love him and think that he was well-done in every single way. His dialogue is one of the best in the game... by the way.

Then there are two other "companions" both of which pop up in DLCs. The first is Liara, our friendly asari from the first game. She's pretty cool all around and eventually becomes an information broker called the Shadow Broker. I did say there would be spoilers, right? Her character is interesting although possibly a little bland as well. But that was Liara in the last game too. I don't mind her, I just find her a middling sort of character. The antagonists of the Lair of the Shadow Broker DLC are much stronger characters in general.

And then there's the last character Dr. Amanda Kenson. I won't spoil her. You don't get her as a companion for long. You get to meet her in the Arrival DLC. It's pretty good, although not the best DLC. Arguably the Shadow Broker one or Overlord would be the best. I have a special liking for Overlord because of how it plays with your mind and preconceptions about the game itself.

The DLCs, in general, are okay. The three that I mentioned are by far the best of them, with most of the rest being gun packs or Firewalker, which is frankly not great.

The main story... or I guess the plot, or whatever... is pretty good in general. The game starts off with Shepard's death... with a fantastic sequence of the Normandy, the ship from the first game, getting wrecked and ruined. Yup. And then Shepard dies. And obviously gets brought back to life. I've never liked this whole idea of Shepard being the chosen one... but barring that it is a fun sequence. And the rest of everything is about unlucky moments when mechs around Shepard go insane, or dealing with the characters I listed, or dealing with the Collectors. And that's it.

I mean, the voice acting is mostly good barring some exceptions, but BioWare games always do good with that stuff. Some of the voice acting is among the best I've ever heard in a video game. The music is also fantastic and well done, with special mention going to Tali's theme and the main theme itself. A lot of them are really well done though, and I think it deserves mention.

Changing the overheating feature of weapons and guns to ammo (heat-sinks), I think is a good idea. I liked it more than constantly overheating weapons, but that might just be me.

As far as everything else, the last boss battle is fairly well done, and the game is actually decently well done in terms of difficulty... even if some sequences and scenes are nearly impossible on Insanity difficulty if you pick the "wrong" class, which I think is absolutely ridiculous and one of the reasons that I like Obsidian more... because at least you can play most of their games through with any build on your character.

I think... I think that's all I have to say about Mass Effect 2. I liked it for the most part despite my complaints. I think there are some missteps... especially in the fanservice department. I mean, come on. If you're going to do fanservice, make it with a character who actually has some depth. I hate to say this, but Isabela in Dragon Age II is a very good example of a fanservice character done with characterization and depth. Well, she's also not as blatantly fanservice as some of these in this game... or maybe it literally doesn't appear that way because she DOES HAVE DEPTH, even if she's PIXELATED SEXY... or whatever. My point is, I don't care about fanservice. What I care about are interesting characters done well. Again, mostly a good game, but with some missteps, arguably going in the wrong direction from the first game... although getting rid of the Mako was a great idea. Wow, let me tell you... And the probing minigame is a much better thing to do even if it takes away from the expansiveness of the game. And this game DOES NOT feel as expansive as the first one, kind of sadly, really.

This is a better game than the first one, but only barely, mostly through characters. My complaints still hold and I wish the next game really does address them. Anyway, it's well done mostly, and I do enjoy the game and the series despite my ranting. Well, there you go.

Video Game Assessment: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (2011)

 

This game is a juggernaut of immersion and space. This is... you know what? It's not just a game. It can't be simply a game. It feels like a reality simulation. Not that it, in fact, deals with reality at all, being fantasy and all, but it feels more real than reality, looks more real than reality, and takes you in more than reality. It's incredible. This game has an immersion level that, I think, is unprecedented. Its locales are topnotch, beautiful and wonderfully rendered. The weapons have weight behind them as you swing them, or shoot them at enemies. The items are all there, from cups to any kind of food a fantasy realm should have, to books full of words. It's incredible how much detail is in this game.

Now, I'm going to put a few things out in the open right now. In my opinion these kinds of games have very specific weaknesses, and I'll get into that in a few lines. The biggest thing to remember though is that this game is quality whether you like it or not, and you'll probably like it, it is a well put together video game that is basically everything a video game should be. You fight things, you explore, you do quests, you level up. BAM. And that's just on a basic level. You want to do other things, you can do those things too. Kill off an entire village? Go ahead and do it, buddy. Want to go and explore thousand year old ruins of a forgotten civilization ending up in a place called Blackreach that glows and is full of that civilization's former slaves that are now insane and evil creatures bent on destruction of all other forms of life? Well, you can do that too.

There's so much here for Bethesda to be proud of, and I hope they are. Their sales numbers for the game should be making them happy at least. And that's fantastic. Despite what I'm going to say later on, this is the direction video games should be taking. This is the right direction despite Skyrim's faults and missteps. And thats what you should take away from this review. I have a huge recommendation for you to go out and buy this game and play it if you have the time and the console (or PC) for it. Seriously, if you haven't played it yet, you're missing something special. It will take up a bunch of your time. There's no escaping that. There's no 100% in this game either. It goes on, quite literally, forever, having sidequests that appear randomly and the ability to just keep doing things for as long as you want to do things.

The exploration is done well in that Oblivion and Fallout 3 kind of way in which dungeon exploration is unique and feels like an adventure within itself. You'll want to explore every dungeon, but God speed on that. There are a lot, and by a lot, I mean a ton, of dungeons to explore. And every one is unique and worth exploring. WOW.

As for the negatives, sure there are negatives, and anybody who tells you there aren't is just stupid, not paying attention, or maybe they hate you. That could be a good reason for not telling a person the faults in the game.

Well, the first fault is the bugs (and the glitches). Whew boy are there a lot of bugs. People seem to trade the bugs they've seen in Skyrim like old war wounds or something. It's kind of incredible. I've never seen a game's bugs be almost as popular as the game itself before, well except maybe in Red Dead Redemption when people acted like animals. But that was incredibly strange too. The biggest bugs I found in my game were pretty mundane in comparison to a lot of people's bugs. I found a lot of textural issues, especially with water just disappearing and I'd be swimming through... what seemed to be nothing at all. So, yeah, that was odd. I also found myself, once, dying from a foot high fall. For some reason the game decided that I was falling from a huge height when i was just stepping down  about a foot or so. So, yeah, that was odd. Some enemies also acted kind of strangely in my game, not attacking me simply because I was on the opposite side of a door they were standing on the other side of. Well, it made it easy for me to kill them, but it was strange, again. For the most part I didn't encounter a ton of glitches. Floating things happened quite a bit too, like floating cups or corpses, but that happens in all of Bethesda's games, so I'm used to that by now. But the biggest glitch or bug I encountered was rather game breaking though. I was in a dungeon and tried to go back through a door I had come in previously and the game would crash every time I went through that door. I had to go forward. The game was making me go forward. It didn't help that I thought I missed something important in that last room and I was really lost. That was particularly bad.

But those are bugs. Who cares about bugs? I usually don't complain about them unless they are like that one bug in Dragon Age: Origins- Awakening, the expansion pack for the first Dragon Age game, where certain quests literally couldn't be completed, some of them important to characters or plot. I hated that bug so much. I also have to say one more thing, I hate people complaining about some games with bugs and praising other games with bugs. I like Fallout: New Vegas. I like it a lot. It was one of my favorite games last year if not my favorite besides Deadly Premonition, and people constantly complain about it having bugs when I have not seen a single one in THREE PLAYTHROUGHS. Yes, the game crashes on me a few times, but there's a chance that any game will crash. Mass Effect crashed on me last month when I was playing it. It's stupid to complain about something that happens in every game. I hate the people who rag on New Vegas for seemingly no reason. Go get a life, trashwads. If you're not going to complain about Skyrim, Fallout 3, or Oblivion, do not complain about New Vegas when it is clearly better than at least two of those other games. Actually I like it better than Skyrim too, but that is literally personal preference.

And I guess this is the time I go and say why my opinions of Skyrim have gone down since really playing the game in depth. Not that I think it's a bad game. I don't. It's just that there are some very shallow aspects of the game and it really takes me out of the immersion. And they're things that the studio should have concentrated on more. It was always their weakness and... they could make a brilliant game if only they concentrated more on it. The thing I speak of are realistic characters and good plots. Yes, the game goes on forever, but without good quests and sidequests, why the hell would I want to play it forever?

First up: characters. Why, oh why, Bethesda do you insist on making games without good characters? Yes, there are several good characters in this game, almost all exclusively in the Dark brotherhood sidequest like Oblivion, but most of the characters are shallow to the extreme, with no discernible personalities or characteristics. Even the main characters in the game like the ones involved in the rebellion or killing the main enemy of the game... well, even they're mostly very shallow. Why? Companion characters have no real depth besides what the player put on them. They have no sidequests, no real anything... And this is where New Vegas wins, with its focus on character (Think of almost any companion character from that game or House or Benny or Caesar or... the list goes on and on.) and plot. Skyrim's characters are just weak messes on the floor compared to New Vegas and it shows. It shows time and time again. I like strong charactered games. It's why I liked Dragon Age II so much despite seemingly every person who has a computer literally hating that game so much that I feel their brains are going to have rage aneurysms. Characters matter to me and Skyrim did not do its best there, and I feel bad about that. I dislike that failure on their part. The depth and the immersion is gone when I realize that all the characters around me are shallow automatons. And maybe this is just a problem specific to me, but I doubt it. I think it's an issue for everybody. Maybe you don't actively see it as an issue, but your brain certainly does when you finally put the game down because you can't get into it anymore.

Second: plot. Why is the plot so shallow and irrelevant? You don't really even need to do the plot. I know that's almost standard in these types of games but... come on! Go kill a dragon. It's vitally important. Okay, I'll do it after I explore for fifty hours in dungeons and such. But VITALLY IMPORTANT! Nah, bro, game's not going to end. I can do what I want. The whole issue here is that there is never a feeling that you have to do anything... which means that the plot is literally unimportant. It's about exploration, not about story, and, again, there is a shallowness to it. This could very well just be me and my own preference as well. My girlfriend who's been playing the game as well has no issue with this complaint, liking the freedom, but she also hasn't played it anywhere near as long as I have, so there's that. This doesn't bother me as much as characters, but it does bother me when there is a strongly put together plot in the Dark Brotherhood sidequest and the VERY END of the main quest and nowhere else. I mean, yes, I guess the Thieve's Guild quest is all right, but again... the plot is just nowhere near where the Dark Brotherhood's quest is. And I love the Dark Brotherhood and that quest. It works so well and is brilliant through-and-through. I mean, the only good quest with believable characters from Oblivion was the Dark Brotherhood one too. Well, at least they're consistent... I guess I want more from my quests, some sense of urgency, some reason to care and I haven't really gotten those at all, not in Skyrim, not in the way I feel urgent about New Vegas, or even Fallout 3. It just... it feels like it was made to be a wandering simulator with characters and plots as an afterthought, and when those are two of my favorite things about a video game, it ruins my desire to play the game more. I just reviewed War of the Ring and I really liked it. It had good characters and a plot that I could get behind and support. I wanted to end the bad guy and win the game for the good guys because it made me care by good writing and a good plot. Skyrim really has neither with the exception of the Dark Brotherhood. For such a big game, it is quite shallow.

Well, those are my complaints. Altogether though, this is a good game for the people who have the time to play it and get really immersed into it. I complain because I like the game and want it to be better, not because I think it's bad at all. A lot of people have put this game as their best game of the year, and I can see why. It's brilliantly crafted and put together even with the faults, but this isn't my favorite game of the year  because of those faults and because I think another game or two were better in terms of a lot of things including characters and plots. So, this game is tied for third in my game of the year title with Dragon Age II, both good games in their own rights, but both with some fairly fundamental flaws.

My game of the year will be my next review by the way. Portal 2 came in second for me.

Anyway, my final thought for Skyrim: great game, well put together, great music, great gameplay, repetitive voice acting, lack of plot and characters besides Dark Brotherhood, a great time sink, fun game, dragon killing is the BEST, and draugrs appear way too often and lose their mystery. Seriously though, if you have the means and opportunity to play it, I recommend it. It's an experience at least, one that won't soon be forgotten. There's something about wandering the beautiful environments that's ridiculously awesome. And everything looks gorgeous. Get out on your adventure, and have a great time killing those stinkin' dragons!