No, this is a rant about the middle, and this chimera called "player choice" that we've all thought we had this whole time. Turns out, our choices in the first two games meant NOTHING, or almost nothing. My Boy Scout Vanguard saved everyone in the first two games, if there was a way that he could save someone, Devon Shepard went out of his way to do it. My Soldier was just the opposite, Ashley Shepard killed, or arranged to be killed, everyone who had the opportunity to meet their maker in the first two games. She had great lulz pitting Gianna Parasini and Administrator Anoleis against each other. Good times.
So, in Mass Effect 3, the ultimate result of these wildly divergent play styles is that Devon Shepard got to have some conversations that Ashley Shepard didn't. He got to chat up Miranda, Jacob, Jack, Mordin, Garrus, Tali, Legion, Thane, Wrex, Samara and all the other fun characters Mass Effect has given us over the years. Ashley Shepard missed out on all those conversations.
But you know what? She didn't miss much.
Everything Miranda said is just flavor for the Sanctuary mission, and the resolution isn't all that different if she's not involved. Oriana sends you an email that her father is bringing her to Sanctuary, and you don't get Miranda's play-by-play on the terminals.
Jacob doesn't knock up Brynn, but there's some other dude hanging around to mimic Jacob's actions in key cutscenes. It's nice to know his being there makes such a difference for those scientists and their families. Not.
Jack's death in ME2 results in Prangley getting killed on Grissom Academy Station. Poor Prangley—oh wait, I don't care.
Mordin and Padok Wiks must have been separated at birth, because they have the exact same dedication to curing the genophage, and they even name the female krogan "Eve" independently.
Garrus being dead has almost no impact on the game whatsoever, you just miss out on some extra dialogue on Palaven's moon, and of course you don't get your downtime with him.
Everything Tali tells you on the Rannoch mission is parroted by either Shala'Raan or Daro'Xen, sometimes verbatim. Her presence might tip the scales of the situation, but it's hardly a game-changer.
If Legion is dead, or was sold to Cerberus, you run into LEGION in his place. Yep, that's right, it's a copy of Legion, who says "I'm not Legion" that was reconstructed from the bits and bobs left from Collector Station or whatever. He's got hologram thingies to recreate the N7 shoulder guard and the hole in his chest. I mean, REALLY? Other than him saying "I'm not Legion" (and even the subtitles still call him Legion), everything he says that is mission-specific is identical to what Real Legion would have said. There is literally no difference in the game whether Legion lived or died in your playthrough. I almost dropped my controller several times during those missions, and the AYFKM look on my face was pretty constant.
Thane is either there to save the salarian councilor (who behaves exactly the same whether it's the familiar Valern or the new dalatrass, regardless of the gender switch, they even hide under the same table) or Kirrahe saves him/her, or the councilor dies. That's it, other than the character stuff. Impact on bigger events: Zero (unless you're the salarian councilor, but we've already established that they might as well come out of a Pez dispenser).
Samara either tags along on your mission to Lessus, or she doesn't, but her presence doesn't change any of the events that transpire at the ardat-yakshi monastery other than some character moments between herself and her daughter Falere. She doesn't change Rila's actions, or anything that Falere does. Banshees overrun the joint, and Rila goes all martyr-tastic, and Falere can be killed or spared by Shepard in either scenario.
And it's almost laughable how much Wrex and Wreav do that is exactly the same. They could have been twins, the events related to the krogan are only superficially different, with Wreav just putting a more "after the game is over we're going to make more trouble for the galaxy" spin on his lines. Well, that's convenient, since the game doesn't address any of the events that transpire that Wreav could influence. I'm sure they'd find a way to neuter that choice too, were it ever to become an issue.
And then there were the "key choices" that we made in the games. Remember in ME1, when we saved or killed the rachni queen? Well, other than the weirdest singing telegram of all time on Illium in ME2, the only difference that decision results in is the details of the conversation you have with the rachni queen when you run into her on Utukku. Like Legion, if she's dead, you get an ersatz replica to have a strikingly similar conversation with.
Remember Ashley and Kaidan? Well, saving one or the other was a purely cosmetic decision in the final analysis. Other than character-specific stuff like romance, they might as well be clones of each other. Each is given the same role in the Alliance, regardless of the fact that Kaidan is a major and Ashley is a lieutenant commander. They both grill you about Cerberus on Mars at the exact same time, they both have the exact same injury at the hands of Sexbot Coré, the exact same convalescence at Huerta Memorial, they both have the exact same candidacy for the Spectres, and they both have the exact same confrontation with Shepard on the Citadel after the Cerberus attack. Your relationship with Kaidan or Ashley is far more important in that conflict than the simple fact that you're dealing with one of them rather than the other. Never mind that they were in theory two separate individuals, they're reading from the same script in a lot of places.
We've already covered the impact of your decision of whether to spare Wrex on Virmire, but what about your decision to spare the Council? Great, you either have conversations with the familar faces of Tevos, Sparatus and Valern, or you have virtually identical conversations with their successors, at the exact same points in the game. Purely cosmetic effect of that decision.
Oh, and how about recommending Anderson for Councilor? They don't even pretend to preserve that, Anderson quits if he was ever Councilor, and it makes no difference in the way events unfold.
And your Mass Effect 2 choices? Did you destroy the Collector Base, or did you save it? Doesn't matter, it comes up in conversation a few times, but the repercussions are hardly far-reaching. Did you save this character and allow this other character to die? Well, you don't see a few cameos, as I detailed above. Did you neglect to do the Shadow Broker DLC? Well, Liara got it done without you, and she's Shadow Broker now. Didn't do Overlord? Doesn't matter. Didn't do Arrival? Well, you did, you just don't remember doing it, and we all know that was on rails.
I guess what I'm trying to say that now that it's all said and done, Mass Effect has always been more about the illusion of choice, rather than actually delivering a game that offered a real taste of a story in which your decisions as a player influenced the way the larger events in the narrative would unfold. Obviously this is just a reality of the situation, dictated by the limitations of the hardware and the business of making video games. I just wish I had realized that sooner. The clues were there, I just didn't see them.
So yeah, the endings, how about those endings? But truth be told, even if the endings had been awesome, I'd still be very disappointed with that pesky middle. This wasn't the game I thought it would be, and maybe that game can't ever be made, or at least, not for years to come.
It's a bummer, but I've learned something, and I don't think I'll be as naïve next time. That's a good take-away, I think.
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