Money, Winning, and Emotions · 11:59am May 20th, 2015
I had an experience once, while playing Mass Effect 3, that, despite my every intention, I've never expressed in public. I'd like to get it on the record now.
Spoilers for a 3 yr old game. So. Y'know. Whatever.
And yes, I play games, though these days I am loathe to identify as a 'gamer', whatever that means. (I will say that the industry can only be strengthened by a greater diversity of people playing and creating games, and that there's room for everyone. And that's all I have to say regarding anything involving 'gates', or 'gamers', or any combination thereof.)
What I really want to talk about is the nature of DLC, paying to win, and destroyed emotional moments.
There's a mission in ME3 where you partner with a salarian to ferret out an indoctrinated hanar. At the climax of the mission, you have to choose between saving the salarian and saving the hanar home world. In the middle of this, there was a renegade 'interrupt'. Interrupts were usually the 'win' buttons. No matter what was going on, you usually got a better outcome by hitting them in time.
This time was an exception. I triggered the interrupt and saved the salarian. The hanar home world was destroyed. There was no 'win'. No perfect outcome. No victory.
I turned off the game without saving, and didn't go back for a couple days.
When I went back, I played through the 'right' path, sacrificing the salarian, whom I'd been working with, for the planet.
This is when the game, the series, changed for me. No longer could I expect everything to work out. No longer could I save everyone. Now I had to make choices. The good of the one, or the good of the many? What was I willing to sacrifice to win a war? How many was I prepared to lose?
These questions came back again when Mordin, who was a character from ME2, sacrificed himself to cure a disease.
It all came to a head during the Grunt mission. 'Here we go again,' I thought. 'I'm going to sacrifice another friend for the greater good.' I'd already sacrificed his whole team to get to where I was. What was one more life?
'How many friends am I going to lose?' I thought. 'Will I end up killing them all?'
And then Grunt lived.
And I was elated.
I don't know if it could have ended differently. I never felt the need to find out. This was MY ending. This was where I learned that things might be okay.
I can't tell you how much that journey, from the hanar mission, through the Mordin mission, to the Grunt mission affected me. I ran the gamut of emotion, from sadness, anger, depression, joy... .
I played through again after having gone back to ME2 and buying some of the DLC. Specifically, I bought the Kasumi package, which, even disregarding the character, is pretty much worth it for the only good SMG in the game.
I returned to the hanar mission in ME3. I braced myself for the sacrifice of the first of many lambs I was going to lead to the slaughter. I entered the end of the mission, ready to do my duty...
...and it didn't happen.
Kasumi popped out and pounded away on the computer to save the hanar home world, leaving me free to rescue the salarian. Everything worked out okay.
I was conflicted.
I wanted everything to work out. I wanted everything to be okay. Was this telling me the only way to make that happen was to pay for it?
At the same time, I felt like I'd lost something. I'd lost that moment of realization that this was war, and war meant losing people. Losing friends.
I know what I was supposed to feel. I was supposed to be happy that a character I liked from a previous game had popped up and we had a fun little mission together, and that was supposed to be the end of it.
What I did feel, was that I had to pay for a happy ending, and lost something in the bargain.
I know I shouldn't let it affect me, and obviously it does since I'm writing about it three years later. I should let it go, but that initial moment I had was so powerful...
...but, hey. It's only a game, right?
To get Kasumi's help saving the Hanar homeworld, you had to complete her ME2 Loyalty mission (Stolen Memory) and she had to survive the ME2 Suicide Mission. She's there to help you in ME3 because you helped her in ME2. You didn't pay for a happy ending. You paid for the possibility of one, but with smarts, gunplay, and friendship, not money.
Almost all the Loyalty Missions are like that: if you completed them, you got rewarded with help, sometimes waaaay down the line.
Magic of Friendship strikes again!
3083249 what you say is true, and I don't disagree at all... but...
But.
First, keep in mind I'm talking about emotion, not fact. My experience is that emotions and facts have little to do with each other. At best they sit near each other in an awkward silence, and at worst they glare at each other across the aisle in undisguised hatred.
Second, there was no way to get a good outcome in the Hanar mission without paying for the Kasumi DLC. None. No number of 'right' decisions or hard work could change that. I paid money, and a better option opened up.
I realize it's not that cut and dried. I didn't pay for DLC in ME2 specifically to get a better ending in ME3. I didn't know it was going to happen that way, nor was it advertised as such. Also, had I bought the Kasumi DLC before playing ME3, I likely would never had known there was another outcome. I also feel a little strange that, at least in part, I'm arguing against the happy ending I got. I wanted the happy ending. I wanted it bad. That's partly why not getting that first time had so much impact.
What it comes down to, is that I had a powerful, emotional experience playing that game that probably couldn't be repeated even if I hadn't bought the Kasumi DLC in the meantime. The fact that I had only reinforced the fact that I couldn't repeat that experience. Did anyone else share this experience? I don't know. Either way, I felt I needed to share it, if for no other reason than to get it off my chest.
Again, I'm simply talking about emotions I had at the time. I love the Mass Effect series, and the fact that I had such an emotional journey through the course of 3 is to the game's credit. I don't find their DLC policy particularly abusive or offensive.
They only thing I hold against them is the change in Mordin's dialog with the extended cut.
I loved all the ME games, even 3, despite the un-patched ending. Full disclosure: I had to look up the Hanar mission on the ME Wiki. I didn't know there was an interrupt, or a Salarian vs. Hanar Homeworld option at all, because I had Kasumi from the start. And I wouldn't have known what I was missing because I never took the Renegade interrupts (or paths, or dialogue choices) anyway. Full Paragon, all the way through 3 games and all the DLCs.
Major regrets: in 3 they made Jack look suspiciously Caucasian, and they never gave me an option to go back and try romancing that one green Asari. Shiala, I think her name was. Also I lost my savegame file where my FemShep dumped everyone and hooked up with Traynor, and I had to go back and finish the game with Liara.
Sometimes I still find myself humming "Scientist Salarian".