Le-WHY-athan
In the interest of sparing you the hassle of pushing through several paragraphs of my pompously long, comma-ridden sentences just to get to the beginning of the point I’m trying to make, I’ve decided to give you a glimpse of my conclusion right up front (and, in doing so, conveniently present my thesis):
STOP TRYING TO FIX THINGS.
In its latest Sisyphean attempt to clarify the genius intrinsic to--yet somehow indecipherable within--Mass Effect 3, BioWare has given us “Leviathan,” a DLC that, at its core, means to provide greater context and explanation for the Reapers, the Catalyst, and the it-was-always-about-organics-versus-synthetics-guys-no-seriously-why-won’t-you-believe-us ending that, you may recall, some people didn’t find terribly enj…
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Catalyst
Mass Effect 3 was not a good game.
No, I don’t mean that it was an awesome game that got ruined by a crappy ending. I mean it was not a good game, full stop.
See, long before I got to the ending, I thought ME3 was a lazy, weak, choppy, frustrating heap with a few bright spots that only served to highlight just how bad the rest of the game actually was. From story to gameplay to (lack of) character interaction, the net failures greatly outweighed the net accomplishments and made the game feel--at best--like an extended demo rather than a finished product. (Oh--I know there’s a Modest Mouse joke in there somewhere….)
And then I reached the ending, and…well.
The point is: it was always going to take a lot more than a revamped ending to change my …
I Love You, Ashley--Now Stop Punishing Me for It
I love Leliana.
You know, the red-haired bard companion from Dragon Age: Origins? Love her. Looooove her.
I mean, I haven’t hit the point of total obsession, of course, where I get territorial and make impassioned speeches on the Dragon Age Wiki about how no one else can romance her because she is mine and only mine (...emphasis on the plural, “speeches,” there). But I will admit that I am firmly entrenched in that little box that runs adjacent to it. With my nose pressed against the glass. Shouting poetry.
See, because...I’m one of those people who gets emotionally invested in stuff, like books and movies and TV shows. Because books and movies and TV shows are so much more rewarding when you care about what’s going on inside them. When you giv…
Indoctrination or Not, It's Problematic
I'm not a big fan of the Indoctrination Theory.
It's not that I think its supporters are wrong in thinking that the end of the game is all in Shepard's head as he struggles to either cave in to or overcome the Reapers' last-ditch attempt to take him out ('cus vaporizing him just will not work). Honestly, that may very well be exactly what's going on. It makes a hell of a lot more sense than the Anderson/TIM/Space Ghost stuff being real.
Except it doesn't.
No, I don't mean that I believe incontrovertibly that all of the events on the Citadel at the end are easier to justify as real events than as hallucinated ones. Nor do I mean the opposite. What I mean is that saying it was all a hallucination makes sense as a justification for why it was all …