hai gaiz I always liked this really cool article breaking down Samara/Morinth characters and the mission, so I thought I'd share some of it
II. Samara's Mission
Parent-child interactions in Mass Effect 2 get a little tense.
You may have noticed! Jacob's father disappoints him, Tali's father
misleads her about his dangerous research, Thane abandons his son, and
Miranda runs away from her controlling father. I don't suggest some
elaborate anxiety
of influence bull**** about the game's status as a sequel, mainly
because ME1 and ME2 were made by the same people, but I
think "relationship to your predecessors" is clearly a theme. Samara and
Morinth have the most predatory mother-daughter relationship since
Flemeth and Morrigan, and their story hit me harder than any of the
others.
Samara is the most visible exception to the things I said above about
character in ME2. As a member of an ancient monastic order, she
has little use for Shepard's judgment, because her inflexible Justicar
code governs all of her decisions. (Whether any code of behavior could
be wholly unaffected by the prejudices of its interpreter is likely a
question Bioware doesn't want us to ask, and we don't meet any other
Justicars to compare Samara to.) She symbolically submits to Shepard's
authority, but never allows you to make meaningful decisions for
her, the way other characters do(2).
Samara also happens to be the only notable female character aboard the
Normandy who won't sleep with a male Shepard (besides Chakwas; no charge
for that mental image). I can't tell you how heartening it was to
discover that the "hit on Samara" option had been included in the game
only so she could shoot the player down. I don't want to make too much
of this, but the rejection provides some needed ego deflation in a game
where half the cast is batting their eyelashes at the protagonist.
Samara's apparent detachment is integral to her personality. Samara's
monastic discipline approaches self-effacement, or "self-denial" in
Morinth's pointed language (which always hints at an undisclosed but
available pleasure). Though Samara calls Shepard a "friend," she
mentions casually that had she not taken the Oath of Subsumation, she
would have already been forced to kill Shepard(3). Her absolute
adherence to a set of precise rules gives her critical distance from
other people; she judges them regardless of their feelings toward her
and her feelings toward them. She fondly remembers Nihlus, an old enemy,
for playing on her Code in order to escape. She maintains her own
opinions, in some sort of mental compartment, but (supposedly) never
acts on them. It makes for one of the most intriguing portraits of a
devout (fanatical, even) individual I've encountered in a game.
Sympathetic religious characters are too often simply wise, serious, or
impassive.
You discover that Samara became a Justicar in order to kill her daughter
Morinth, who has an unusual genetic condition that makes her a
brain-leeching serial killer party animal. Unlike some other loyalty
quests (Jacob's, for instance) briefly introduced aboard the Normandy,
Samara's mission starts building as soon as Shepard meets her. As you
learn, Samara only ventured outside Asari space in order to pursue
Morinth, whom the Eclipse mercenaries on Illium vaguely mention as some
monster they've smuggled offworld. Samara's pursuit of Morinth has gone
on for almost half her lifetime, so the player knows the stakes are
high.
Samara's task is further distinguished from other missions in that
Shepard/the player is uniquely qualified to perform it. In loyalty
missions for Zaeed and Thane, Shepard isn't much more than competent
hired muscle, or half of a buddy-cop team; for Garrus and Tali, you're a
trusted old friend or a captain (and they've got some nerve not
starting the game loyal to Shepard, after saving the galaxy with her
before); for others, you're half-enforcer, half moral compass. But
Samara needs to bait her trap for Morinth with a person who has two very
specific skills: force of will and a talent for role playing.
Before I drop the word "self-referential" and horrify everyone, let me
go over the mission. After Samara gives you the heads-up about her
daughter, you travel to Illium and play amateur detective in the
apartment of one of Morinth's victims, Nef. Shepard and Samara talk to
Nef's distraught mother, who asks you to kill Morinth to avenge her
daughter. This effective stakes-raising scene (which introduces another
mother-daughter pair) turns the quest into more than a favor for a
friend, and the player begins to feel they have some responsibility for
stopping Morinth. Samara warned you that Morinth was destructive by
nature, and now you see what she meant -- a corpse couldn't say this as
well as the surviving mother and Nef's diaries do.
(It's odd that Samara accompanies you on the visit, as you'd think those
who knew Morinth's victims would likely confuse the mother with her
identical daughter, which Samara would want to avoid. However, this
would ruin the surprise currently in place, when you come face-to-face
with Morinth for the first time and see the resemblance yourself.)
Once you find that Morinth frequents the Afterlife VIP area, Samara
outlines a series of rules the player must follow to attract her. Trying
to pick up a strange girl in a bar is itself an unusual activity in
video gaming, and here it's compounded by a host of ironies, not least
of which is Samara's coaching. Of course, Samara will approach the
problem with a list of guidelines; she views her own life as the
performance of a set of rules.
After receiving Samara's directions, players must act the part they've
been given. Morinth doesn't want a bully, but she wants a killer; she
doesn't want "chivalry," but she wants charisma. In a neat touch, we
learn that Morinth preys on creative individuals, and will notice
Shepard because she is "an artist in battle." The scenario works as a
neat reversal of show-don't-tell storytelling, because it lets you get
to know Morinth before you ever meet her. And you don't even realize
this has happened, really, because it is so ingrained in you, as a
gamer, that you must focus on these rules and follow them to satisfy the
game.
Once inside Afterlife, the player completes miniature quests, but only
the correct actions bring you closer to Morinth; as Samara suggests,
picking a fight with a random jerk on the dancefloor won't get you far.
It's a clever game-within-a-game, and it's one of the only times in Mass
Effect 2 where your success depends on your understanding of other
characters. Although you're given enough information to make the task
easy, it still reminds of those DA:O conversations, or the Baldur's
Gate 2 romances, where consideration of other individuals counted
for something.
The bar sequence also stands out as just about the only role-playing
most players will do in Mass Effect 2. It's a performance, first
and foremost, like the low-level acting gamers used to do, in a bygone
era, when they consciously affected the personality of their character.
It's a bit of a joke, I think, to combine the performative acts of
gender at play in a sexy pick-up scene with the hoary, nerd-steeped
traditions of role playing. In the past, RPGs sometimes encouraged the
latter by giving players a detailed background and many options during
character creation. If you play the old Fallout games with an INT
below 8, for example, your character will speak like the moron she is.
Games can also organically build a sense of character by reminding
players of the consequences of their actions, so that the choices
they've made will, by the end of the game, clarify a hazy template into
something emotionally meaningful. Mass Effect 2 doesn't really do
either of these things, but it does present clever scenarios, like
these bar mini-quests, that partly make up for it.
Why claim there's no role playing in ME? Some players I know will
select all Paragon or all Renegade dialogue options for their entire
run, but this activity is brainlessly automated by the conversation
wheel, which drains the ambiguity from decision-making. When I play ME
games, I tend to balance my desire to achieve best outcomes through
pragmatic choices against my drive to screw over characters I dislike as
hard as I can. It isn't role-playing, exactly. But it's the pattern I
fall into when the narrative of the game isn't built on some bedrock of
consequences that would force me to respect the diegesis. The Samara
quest stands apart, though, both as a witty reminder of what
role-playing is about, and as a sequence that actually leads to a harsh,
compelling choice.
If you play your part adequately, Morinth appears. She appears to be
wearing the same clothes that Shiala wore on Feros in ME1,
probably a coincidental recycling of assets from the first game.
Shepard's initial conversation with her is, perhaps intentionally,
extremely shallow. You name-drop artists, bands, and TV shows you know
Morinth likes, then compare notes about your interest in all things
sinister. The scene would have played better if the player had been
required to do some guesswork, but sadly it's nothing but regurgitating a
few names when prompted.
One of the loading screens in ME2 claims that each loyalty
mission plays to its featured character's strengths. And missions'
style, not simply their combat elements, do seem to suit their givers.
(Miranda's mission is flashy and shallow, while Jacob's mission seems
like half of a good concept.) Again, Samara's quest throws in a twist,
in that its style fits both Samara and Morinth, because they each
turn out to be a potential crewmember. The mission opens with a request
for bloody vengeance from Nef's mother, suggesting that the correct
course would be to follow the Justicar example of summary execution for
the wicked. As detailed above, Shepard is then given an explicit set of
rules to follow, in a rough imitation of Samara's mode of action. But
inside Afterlife the focus shifts to emulation of Morinth. You meet
Morinth, the game's consummate liar -- the one person who remains
gloriously insincere in every conversation with Shepard she ever has --
by deceiving her about your intentions. (At the end of the mission,
Morinth reveals that she herself is an actor of no ordinary talent.) And
after you leave with Morinth, the conversation turns into an open
contest for dominance, which is, again, what she's all about.
You're taken to Morinth's apartment, which is decorated with a number of
trophies from former lovers/victims (oddly Batcave-esque). According to
Samara's instructions, you're supposed to pretend to fall under
Morinth's influence. It's worth remembering Samara's entire plan: she
gives Shepard detailed instructions on how to seduce her rapacious
daughter, with the expectation that Samara will burst in at the last
minute to ****block and then kill Morinth. Again, I won't advance a
rickety Lacanian theory about the forms of parental
prohibition and rebellion going on (it might make a tortuous kind of
sense, as Samara is technically neither male or female, Morinth is
identical to her mother yet perversely opposite in thinking, "Morinth"
is apparently not the original name Samara gave her, etc.) I'm just
struck by how odd the Samara-Morinth relationship is by itself. In video
games, where narratives tend to be more generic and less creative than
in any other major medium, strangeness is next to godliness.
Morinth keeps trophies in her apartment because she's a hunter. Samara
calls Morinth a "predator" and tells Shepard that "the hunt interests
her as much as the conquest." Morinth isn't the only hunter in ME2;
both Thane and Samara are described as such, though Samara's quarry is
Morinth herself. Samara and Thane rationalize violent action through
religious convictions, but Morinth is an unapologetic "hedonist"
addicted to her sexual brain-draining routine and the power over others
it gives her. The contrast in their styles of hunting suggests that
Samara is the most selfless character in ME2, Morinth the most
selfish. While Bioware packed your ME2 crew with Renegade types,
Morinth seems the greatest outsider, her actions not driven by revenge
or insecurity or whatever, but by a nature deeply contrary to the
institutions and social norms of Asari or any galactic society.
Because Morinth's killing routine depends on her dominant position, she
and Shepard have a serious disagreement. I said earlier that Samara was
one of the only characters not subject to Shepard's decisions; Morinth
is the other major exception. As far as Shepard's good judgment goes,
Morinth's interested only in overriding it to get what she wants. This
naturally conflicts with the fantasy of control that composes most of
the game, where events are rarely out of the player's hands(4). In
Morinth's apartment, this jockeying for position manifests as a series
of alignment checks:
If you pass every check without feigning obedience (which Samara told
you to do) Samara will burst in and kick off a Gandalf v. Saruman wizard
duel. The final check requires around 75% Paragon or Renegade status,
so some players miss it if they play Samara's mission early. If you fail
the last check, Samara and Morinth reach a deadlock and Shepard assists
Samara, who quickly finishes Morinth. If you pass the last check,
Shepard decides who to kill.
Naturally, there's no resolution where both Samara and Morinth can live.
As characters, they both have extreme -- nearly absolute -- needs that
pit them against each other and prevent Shepard from influencing them.
In another story their stark opposition might become ridiculous, but in ME2
they stand out for acting, violently, on their personal animosity. It's
an unfortunate byproduct of ME2's structure that most other
characters' needs appear to be one mission deep. You accompany someone
on one crucial personal mission, more or less solve their issues with
some advice, and then, unless they're romanceable, they're pretty much
done playing an active role in the story. But the conflict between
Samara and Morinth shaped both their lives, and talking them out of a
violent resolution is impossible. It seems entirely right that
you must kill one of them, because they are each immovable.
Why save Morinth? No sane person could imagine she'd be more useful on a
galaxy-saving mission than Samara. Yet to me, Morinth was a welcome
throwback, a return to a venerable RPG tradition that has fallen into
disrepair -- the Truly Evil party member. They were a dime-a-dozen in
Black Isle and Bioware classics, but where are your Edwins, Xzars,
Korgans, Ignuses, and Viconias today(5)? Everybody loved those
characters. Even playing Neutral or Good, evil people were a blast to
have around. But for some reason, as production values went up, the
sociopaths and lunatics began to drop out of gaming. Some claim that a
convincing evil character is hard to write, what with fully voiced roles
and today's greater focus on characters' backgrounds and motivations.
But nothing could be farther from the truth. Centuries of literature
have shown that evil people have more fun; just ask Milton or Dickens or
Chaucer. And given the number of weak or unconvincing do-gooders who
constantly appear in games, we could do with some over-the-top nasty
individuals. With the occasional concession of a literally inhuman
figure like HK-47 or Shale -- again, among the most fondly remembered
characters from their games -- modern RPGs are sorely lacking in Vitamin
E.
There's my extra-textual reason for killing Samara: I'd rather play an
interesting game than a nice one. My goal is to experience not the
happiest but the best story the game has to offer. I hoped a willfully
bad person like Morinth would create further problems to deal with, and
even shake up the static social space aboard the Normandy. She appeals
exactly because of her lack of deference toward Shepard, and her air of
false intimacy more insidious than outright hostility. As I said before,
Morinth is the one ME2 character who will always lie and never
stop playing head games. Samara joined your crew because her Code
apparently has a "must accept impossible missions" clause -- which may
explain why you don't see many Justicars around -- and because of her
previous knowledge of the Collectors. Morinth will join the crew because
she wants to give Shepard a fatal brain hemorrhage. ("Romance" has
rarely seemed so euphemistic as on the wiki page that
includes Morinth.)
The
hilarious bit is that you actually can agree to sleep with Morinth
after beating the Collectors, and she will kill Shepard. I cannot really
imagine the mentality of a player who lacks the basic grasp of pattern
recognition to see this coming, but apparently they exist, judging from
outraged forum posts on the subject. Their delicious tears remind of
those shed by people who ran sidequests before going through Omega-4,
and were shocked, shocked! when they arrived late and saw their captured
crewmen liquidated by nefarious insects. Bioware has mentioned that
they're probably
too sensitive to criticism from vocal members of their fan base,
and it would kill me if they eliminated the few consequences their game
has. The only people who encountered these slight punishments were those
who missed every hint, who had been so coddled by an easy game that
they really thought they could do no wrong. A better game would give
players many more opportunities to fail, not fewer.
To find the most poignant detail of Samara's mission, you need to listen
to both Samara and Morinth afterward (in separate saves) when they talk
about each other. Morinth gloats, remembering her defiance of her
"terrible mother" and the discipline she represented:
For
Morinth it's a triumph because she loves upsetting expectations,
particularly her mother's, and she would like to consider herself the
complete victor. But she's entirely wrong, and Samara was never
disappointed. Samara remembers the "bravest and smartest" of her
children:
These conclusions are simply right for this pair of characters.
Samara's emotions remain separate from her actions, and she continues to
judge Morinth by her ability and intelligence, rather than the way she
treats others. Morinth does the opposite, recalling nothing but the
injustices done to herself. Part of what I like about this contrast is
the way it wouldn't come naturally to another medium: you only get the
full story, and the character note about Morinth, if you've played the
game both ways. Outright gimmickry in other media, in Run Lola Run
structures, would be needed to compete with the elegant multiple
narratives that separate playthroughs in games can provide.
the main reason I posted it is cause there are some juicy tidbits we can take from it to discuss if we want. enjoy (its really good, and if you read all of it its not all praise and holds bioware accountable for some of the flaws)
Guest_JohnnyDollar_*
Retour en haut
.......wat?
a gift for passing his awesome rite of passage 
