About the Mass Effect 3 ending (*SPOILERS*)
So, there’s been a *LOT* of debate about the ending of Mass Effect 3.
DISCLAIMER: I loved the first 99.999% of Mass Effect 3. I had quibbles and gripes, but it is still one of my favorite games of the recent past. Prior to playing through (I knocked it out in around 45 hours, starting the day it released), I played through ME1 and 2 again to refresh the story details in my mind.
About the petition to change the game ending:
Folks, there’s DLC. I’m sure Bioware is considering (or is already working on) something that will change the outcome (http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2012/02/03/hang-onto-your-mass-effect-3-saves.aspx)
“great multiplayer content and some really great single-player content coming over the air” (From the link above)
All that aside, all the discussion, and what I say below, is only that. We all have our opinions. Demanding the change to a fictional universe is rather silly. Yes, I would have liked a different ending, but it doesn’t mean I need the creator to create one to suit me.
Day 1 DLC. YES. PLEASE. It drove me nuts that on Mass Effect 2, I’d finished my playthrough before any of the DLC hit. Then I had to wait for it to all come out before I did another playthrough. Yes, there are budgets in games. Yes, certain assets need to be bundled in sometimes to make it work. Please stop whining about this.
Short version: I was mostly fine with the choices presented, as well as the first cinematic, with some notable caveats. It was after that when I started head-scratching and feeling unsatisfied with the ending.
So, first. The Star Child Ex Machina appears (“I’ve never seen this part of the Citadel!”), telling you that machines will always rise against their creators. Ok, sure. We’ve got the Geth. Check. Oh, but wait, I was able to negotiate a peace between their race and the Migrant Fleet. Yes, of course they could rebel again, but this was supposed to be a *BIG DEAL*. I am now told that my choice is to destroy ALL THE MACHINES including myself. So, I just saved an entire race, only to destroy them? (Or, optionally, fuse them with organics. That’s kind of cool.) Problem is, Star Child essentially tells us that there can never be peace. Kills that feeling of accomplishment, and gives you the sense that your actions were simply forgotten by the design team. (Even if they weren’t!) This could have been solved with a single line of dialog “Your peace with the Geth is only a temporary solution.” Etc.
Game mechanics:
Requiring a high Galactic Readiness score to get the ideal endings.
I made the mistake of doing the Tuchanka mission before finishing all the Citadel quests. Oh! Surprise! A bunch of quests I needed/wanted to do got locked out, with no warning.
I love the idea of the world changing unexpectedly, in a negative fashion, but that is a significant hit in the enjoyability of the game.
Shepard survived death, a suicide mission, and getting hit by a Reaper Main Gun (WOW!), yet, when it comes down to his choices, it is the “Military Readiness” score that matters? Huh?
This would have been easier to understand, until I actually tried multiplayer, and realized it is a microtransaction mechanism. I rolled my eyes, hard.
I have no problem killing the player’s character in this situation for a dramatic conclusion. I *did* feel like it was a Call of Duty cop-out to some degree with the slo-mo pistol work, but I digress. Yes, you want the story to have a genuine feeling of sacrifice, killing the main character who avid fans have guided through probably a minimum of 120 hours of gameplay (at the very least) is a good way to do it. (Of course, with that kind of time investment, fan backlash is a near certainty.)
So, let’s tackle those final scenes:
1) You destroy all synthetic life, but it may return. Great. You kill yourself (unless you had sufficiently high military power, and you see a glimpse of your character’s chest armor as they take a breath).
2) You control synthetic life. This destroys you, but synthetics are under your control.
3) You fuse organic and synthetic life.
Common to all three choices:
You destroy the Citadel and all Mass Effect relays
You kill however many were still alive on the Citadel (probably a lot, as you still see Ward air traffic in the background during the dialog with TIM).
Not shown:
The Citadel debris, from that height, crashes to Earth with a force that causes unimaginable damage, leaving the world uninhabitable. (Think about how detailed other such scenarios have been in the ME series. You know this would happen.)
The entire remaining fleet, with no ability to travel between distant stars is stuck in a system which has been annihilated, probably ends up fighting for resources.
So, 3 is hypothetically the happiest ending, as you get to see Joker and EDI embrace on a deserted jungle planet…
Wait. What?
Yes, despite having EDI in my squad during the final charge, she is now on the Normandy with Joker and the rest of the crew, travelling through FTL. The cascading detonation of the relays damages the Normandy and flings it toward a lush planet, outside the reach of the relay network. The third, after-the-credits cinematic, makes it evident that no one has left that planet since that day.
What would have been wrong with having the Normandy stranded on Earth like every other ship in the fleet? Liara (or whoever) is widowed, Joker and EDI become Humanity’s Robotic Overlords, and everyone is more or less happy.
Oh, and Tali & Garrus were missing from final scene. Would have been nice to see them together.
So, you’re left with a brief view of military victory on Earth, but no sense of recovery. No evidence that your sacrifice actually *did* anything, other than stopping the KILL ALL HUMANS that was happening at the moment.
I honestly believe that there wouldn’t be the uproar if there was a sense of the greater good being served, even if it was “1000 years later…” showing the Earth at the height of civilization. There’s just a general lack of resolution.
Lingering questions & quibbles (feel free to stop here)
Why did the Alliance not go through the Omega relay after Shepards return? It’s not like Cerberus could have just carted the whole station off if you chose not to destroy it. It would have been easy to start the game at the same place with Shepard taking responsibility for the destruction of the colony, and a lot more plausible. (I may be remembering the details incorrectly here, but wouldn’t Cerberus have needed the IFF to even get through the relay? Perhaps not, after the base’s destruction.) It’s not like we haven’t seen lots of other stray Reaper tech show up inconveniently in sub-plots that could have filled in the gaps for TIM.
Was there a reason that the council couldn’t believe Shepard before they arrived? We know that it was already too late. It wouldn’t have made a tangible difference to the outcome.
Emotional attachment: Really surprised that Shepards mother was no more than a footnote, despite her introduction previously. Seems odd, in a game designed to tug at your heartstrings *cough* Thane.
Jack should damn well have been in the final battle, either in the role with her students of support or artillery. Even if they too were wiped out in the final charge. It adds gravity to your choices, seeing your character’s decisions play out with consequences like that. (Which was done SO WELL elsewhere in the game.) She was worth more than a few points on the galaxy map.
SO, WHAT’S MY POINT, ANYWAY?
Really, it’s pretty simple. All that in mind:
Why was the Normandy in FTL?
First novel complete
So, yeah. Life may have done its best to derail me a few times, but I finally finished the thing.
Tonight I completed the process of processing all my reader feedback and my own notes, and there are zero pending changes remaining in the document. Final version saved-as->a non-beta name, and is ready to go off to an agent or three.
For those of you who have NO idea what I’m writing about, here’s the elevator pitch I’ve been flinging at anyone who asks. 
“When descendants of alien abductees contact Earth, they reveal that there is an alien invasion coming which will arrive in ten years. They give us a dump of technology and wish us good luck before vanishing again.”
Step 1: Write book
Step 2: Find agent
Step 3: ???
Step 4: It seems too optimistic to talk about Step 4 yet.
Sample from “Indoctrination” in the “Space Tramps” anthology
Here’s a short clip from “Indoctrination”, the story of a war orphan given the chance to make a difference.
————————–
Rajani turned the small gun over in her hand. It was a holdout pistol, meant for a last-ditch effort to shoot and escape, not a drawn-out gunfight. It wasn’t the first of its kind that she’d seen on the streets. There was no sight on the weapon, and it only held two rounds—the second of which had to be indexed manually. If she used it, she’d be close enough to touch her target … but once she pulled the trigger, she could be assured that whatever she hit would die.
And that was the problem.
Despite Rajani’s five years of living as an orphan, hopping from station to station and planet to planet, on the money from other peoples’ pockets, she’d never killed anyone. She was hardened against many things, but murder was not one of them. Her rational mind told her that self-defense was not murder. It also told her that if she was smart, she’d never be in a situation to defend herself with deadly force. She wasn’t a scholar, but she was fairly certain her loosely Hindu-based belief system didn’t allow for it either—and that had been good enough for her so far.
———–
Buy here from Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Space-Tramps-Full-Throttle-Tales/dp/0984592741/
Light pollution and what you’re missing when you look up.
The sky was looking fairly clear last night, so I decided to go out and snag some photos with my new DSLR.
I didn’t do anything sophisticated, I simply set up the camera on a tripod with my F/1.8 50mm lens, set it to ISO 800, and adjusted the exposure time.
I could go off on a big rant here, but instead, I’ll just show you. The first image was a 1-second exposure, second, 2 seconds, last, 10 seconds.
/mini-rant
Ambient light and pollution play hell with what we can see in the night sky anymore. The number of stars visible in the 10-second exposure was comparable to what I remember seeing where I grew up. Now you really have to go out into the country to see that many stars.
/end rant
Food of the Gods – Chicago Style
In which I write the most vague recipe ever, while distracted and sleep deprived.
So, I’ve been meaning to post this for a while (after more requests than I can count), and am finally doing so after realizing I already had the pictures taken, and just needed to add words. (Oh, and downres them from 10MP. It’s a bit excessive for web. Also, high-res pepperoni and sausage will make you drool on the keyboard.)
Growing up, my parents made a great pizza that I thought was one of the best things ever. Fast-forward to studying art in Italy (Florence) through BGSU and SACI. After experiencing *real* Italian food, I was spoiled. And yes, I’ll admit, a bit of an Italian food snob.
The one problem: Traditional Northern Italian pizza crust is about as thick as parchment paper. I preferred the fresh toppings of Italy, but the Chicago-style biscuit-ish crust was still my favorite.
So, returning home, I realized it was time to come up with something of my own. Sorry, you won’t find measurements for a recipe here. Everything is measured by eye.
World War II tech & speculative fiction in modern entertainment
(I commented about this exchange on twitter and got a couple responses asking to read it. I’m not claiming great insight here, it’s just my take on the subject)
A friend emailed me today, commenting on the new Aliens: Colonial Marines trailer. He recalled how the pulse rifle designs were based on Thompsons from WWII, as well as the smart guns being a descendant of a German MG design. He followed up by mentioning the use of WWII dogfight films for Wing Commander and Star Wars (episode IV) original dogfight choreography.
In closing, he stated:
“My conclusion is that WWII combat has more romanticism in it (for lack of a better word), and that people can better relate to – and, in turn, “get into” – the simplified hardware and tactics of WWII than the more technical, clinical hardware based combat of the modern era. It seems like it simply makes for better drama.
Thoughts?”
Well, being a SF writer, you knew I couldn’t leave that alone. (And if you know me personally, you know he probably lucked out by not asking me in a face to face conversation, because I’d still be talking. 
I sent an off-the-cuff reply, but I’ve edited it a fair amount for clarity, though it still has the original meandering nature: Read more…
On cancer cures and viral social media
So, the “Cure for Cancer found but no one takes notice” article that’s going around, I did a bit of digging, and the response I got from a friend in the medical field sounded a lot like parts of this article. From 2007.
“In other words, the authors are saying that in their opinion these experiments in the lab and rats suggests that DCA may be a simple, effective treatment for cancer and we should move forward with clinical trials based solely on their theory and their results.”
Follow-up article:
http://www.cancer.org/AboutUs/DrLensBlog/post/2010/05/14/More-On-Dichloroacetate-(DCA)-In-Cancer-Treatment.aspx
Short version: Not only are people aware of it, but it is in active testing. It *does* have promise, but it is not a magic bullet for all forms of cancer.
There are many more articles out there to be found, but I think it’s good to understand that this isn’t a massive conspiracy. It’s a combination of the delays in the drug approval process and the fact that is not even claimed to be a cure-all by the initial study. (Which 404′s on the article that is going around)
Update:
A more recent article on the whole thing:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/05/dichloroacetate_and_cancer.php
