I was pretty excited about the third (and supposedly final) entry in the Mass Effect franchise. I ordered the N7 Collector’s Edition, not something someone cheap like me usually does, but I had enjoyed the previous games enough to justify it in my mind. I tried to draw out the game as long as possible, and once I figured out a workaround for the face import bug, enjoyed it immensely.

Of course, by the time I received the game others had all ready finished and the rumblings had started. It was becoming increasingly difficult to avoid spoilers as more and more disgruntled players began voicing their complaints everywhere they could. I became a mite concerned but began to convince myself that it couldn’t be that bad.

SPACE MAGIC

I was wrong.

Describing how disappointing the conclusion is to non-players is a bit difficult. However, considering how short it was, going over it in detail is an easy task. Well, in theory; having to relive it isn’t very fun.

(As an aside, I do not think Bioware should go back and change the ending, although if they did, I wouldn’t see anything wrong with that either: such is their right. But I still think it was bad.)

First, the Starchild’s circular logic.  I remember feeling my sleep deprived brain fluster at trying to grasp and comprehend what I had heard.

Logic

An AI and/or “god” thing (a.k.a Starchild) we had never encountered before is revealed to be the creator of the Reapers. The Reapers are synthetics made to kill/harvest organic life every 50,000 years. The reason? To prevent organics from inventing synthetics that will kill them. That makes perfect sense! How Shepard manages to not question this is odd, but then she’s bleeding from practically every orifice so perhaps she can be excused.

So many options!

So now we get our choice of an ending. Sure we were promised variety:

There are many different endings. We wouldn’t do it any other way. How could you go through all three campaigns playing as your Shepard and then be forced into a bespoke ending that everyone gets? -Mike Gamble

But promises were made to be broken!

Shepard can choose to control the Reapers, which is what the Illusive Man wanted and Shepard rallied against, not to mention it will kill her. She could destroy them, but in so doing kill all synthetics including the Geth who she (in my game) fought for and EDI, and maybe even herself. Or she can merge with the Reapers which will somehow cause every organic life (including leaves) and synthetic to become more like each other in synthesis. And is also what Saren from ME1 wanted and we fought against but never-you-mind. It will also get Shepard killed.

All these options suck. I picked destroy because that seemed to be the only logical choice. But it doesn’t really matter! No matter what you pick, you get the same light show just different colors.

The thing that gets me though is how did my squad, who were running alongside me toward the death beams, manage to get on the Normandy, and do a costume change, even?

What really gnaws is that all those choices in the series you made are worth diddly squat. The only time war assets/galactic readiness  come into play is in allowing you to choose the synthesis option or Shepard surviving the destroy option if high, or if low seeing Earth get vaporized. But all else stays the same. Doesn’t matter if you killed or saved the Rachni

Patrick Star: Lead Writer of Mass Effect

Queen, if you built an alliance between the Geth and Quarians, saved the Krogan, etc. If you play enough multiplayer you can avoid side mission grinding and get the same results. Either way the mass relays blow up (killing billions and stranding millions) and the Normandy crashes (why wasn’t it with the other ships?), and Shepard usually dies.

I did not necessarily want an ending with rainbows, unicorns, and flying puppies (I prefer cats), but something that makes sense and varies depending on the actions you took throughout the game and series. I was more than willing to sacrifice all the Geth if it meant my Shepard could finally have her blue babies with Liara. After everything she’s been through why not give her a little reward?

“There is a huge set of consequences that start stacking up as you approach the end-game. And
even in terms of the ending itself, it continues to break down to
some very large decisions. So it’s not like a classic game ending
where everything is linear and you make a choice between a few things
- it really does layer in many, many different choices, up to the
final moments, where it’s going to be different for everyone who
plays it.” -Casey Hudson

So now Bioware says they plan to release additional content to clarify the ending and provide further closure. Some critics have wrongly interpreted that as Bioware actually changing that horrid ending whole scale, and how “wrong” that is to them.

Look, I graduated college with a degree in liberal arts: I know pretentious BS when I see it, and that’s what a number of the “pro-ending” crowd are guilty of sprouting. Mass Effect has always offered a bit of variety of results based on your game play, so the idea that there is something unholy of players to ask for more than just those three endings (if you even want to think of them as being separate endings in the first place) is ridiculous. An optional, more than likely paid for, DLC  is not akin to demanding Tolstoy come back to life and rewrite War and Peace. But mostly I hate how they always sprout off how they “got” the ending…and never actually explain what they “got”.

All I want is Liara back on Earth so she can birth same damn blue babies.

:(

2011 was a pretty good year overall, I would say. I can’t really remember much from the first half of the year, if I’m being perfectly honest, nothing too exciting to report there other than losing some weight. Yay.

However! The last half was pretty great: new job, new doll (in celebration of new job), news that favorite band (Garbage) are recording a new album, saw Hanson twice even if one of the shows was meh, and I’m sure there is something I’m forgetting.

In terms of goals for this year, I’d like to finish the weight lose goal I started last year. Not that much further to go, but we all know how lazy I am. Speaking of being lazy, I would like to finish that stupid book I started writing God knows how long ago. That’d be nice!

I’m saving up for a new apartment which puts my England vacation savings on a bit of a hold. But I look forward to picking out dishes and a couch. Exciting times. I haven’t picked which area of the city I want to live in as of yet, although I would prefer to be near the light rail. Not having to drive to work would be awesome. Not that my commute is all that long now.

Anyway, this year I want to read more books, go to some concerts, build up my nest egg and other boring stuff. Oh, I also want to go to Disneyland. That’s not so boring!

I love these two girls. But I haven’t spent much of any time with them in uh, years really. For instance, I had forgotten that Sachiko only refers to Megan by her nickname “Zen”. And since Megan’s piece was in first-person I can’t really say what she would refer to herself as, in her head at least. Aloud she calls herself “Zen” too.

Anyway, the point is I want to expand on this story of theirs I’ve created but I am so out of practice! I am not sure where to even start the, I don’t know, novella form of the story. I think it’d make most since to start from near where the first short story did, I also am thinking first-person might be the best option.

I’m fairly certain I’ve forced both shorts onto everyone who is currently reading this blog post.

The thing that is so horrible about the pre-sale is that there is NO demo, NO live site anywhere that shows this new VB, and you are basically paying for vaporware. Some argue given the software’s history you are purchasing on faith, except the vast majority of the team that made VB what it is are now gone. One former member’s twitter post about watching a train wreck doesn’t really build one’s confidence in the future of the company.

Basically Internet Brands wants me to spend $180 (or more) every couple of years in order to have access to the most stable vBulletin version. IP.Board costs $150 plus renewals, however unlike VB they have this history of honoring previous license agreements. So even if they changed ala VB if you bought your board before the change nothing will happen to your agreement with the company. I find this so ironic because one of the primary reasons I choose VB over IPB was because I felt Jelsoft (which for all intents and purposes is no more) was more of an honorable company than IPB.

To be frank IPB didn’t handle their going from a free script to paid solution very well. Not very well at all, in fact. And yet it seems as this years draws on VB keeps sending new customers their way. Indeed, nowadays it seems Internet Brands is the best thing to have happened to IPB.

But converting isn’t easy. As an end user I am far more familiar with VB than any other board software except maybe phpBB albeit the phpBB 2 series. Not to mention I have no real idea how hard or easy it would be to skin IPB, although I can’t see it being any more of a pain in the ass than the current VB. I’d have to make a new style for version four anyway.

This whole situation is so disappointing. Thank god I renewed VB right when I did because this announcement came out not even a full week later. So if I feel inclined I can download VB 4, but then when next October rolls around I’d have to cough up the $180 to continue to receive updates. I suppose that means I have a year to decide/get used to the idea of converting. Even so, I was semi-looking forward to the new VB. They had some nifty improvements planned, just not nifty enough to justify the increased cost. And a lot of the features they were pimping weren’t even things I cared for, like SEO links and removing valuable info from the HTML title of threads (like the Page 1, Page 2 stuff).

It is becoming more clear as the days wear on that Internet Brands doesn’t give two sticks about their customers.

ETA: Someone has broken down the new pricing plan.

I just want to sew some damn pillows! *shakes fist*

Sometimes I think of making the Westlands only, well, the Westlands, but the benefit of doing it as a module and just adding the civs onto the base ones outweighs the desire for “realism”. I do plan to eventually add custom (well, custom as in not from Civ ) music for the leaders, but since I listen to my iPod while playing I don’t really think about that that often. What I really need to do is focus on finishing up the civilopedia and all the language the leaders use.

Talk to the hand

I added two new leaders to the Westlands mod for Cairhien and Whitecloak nation (haha). I made them a little more aggressive than the other leaders on purpose, and the result is I am in war a lot.

However, I really would like to add another civ to the mix, but making the Aiel seems a bit difficult: They don’t use swords OR horses, and the latter would remove a heck of a lot of units. Not that I use any of them, really, not a huge horse fan, but the point still stands. It also makes me think of making a non-modular version which would remove all non-WOT civs. That of course would be more “realistic” but also a major pain in the ass. I originally went with the modular version to avoid having to deal with those huge XML files.

The other issue is that there just aren’t that many nations to do. Or, I should say, that many city names known to us. Making up names for WOT crap isn’t easy, and I struggle to just figure out what to name their unique units because of course they couldn’t just call the stupid things “canons” and “guns” oh no we have to get poetic and call them “dragons”. But having every nation call their UU the same thing is boring, so, I have to get poetic in turn.

Anyway, the Seanchan will be the next civ I add. All the city names will have to be made up except for maybe two, and that’s assuming we know the capital name (is it Seanchan? I have no clue), otherwise, I can only think of one city name off hand. And I’m not going to go look up more info right now because I’m not making it right now!

Two weeks later at work, my ear starts to hurt. It felt like the inner ear was swelling up, although it wasn’t nearly as bad as the past Sunday. Even so, I wanted to kill my ear.

Mother was of no help, she didn’t even have any old wives tales to give me for a cure. She did suggest it might be swimmers ear from getting water in my ear from the shower.

So far, ear has not been in pain for awhile. I hope this time it lasts. I do think my mother’s wild guess about swimmers ear might have actually been correct.

For Christmas I got my mother a compact computer desk, because she really needed one. We got it almost all finished except we were missing these two thin bars that go on the back. So small, but those two things kept the desk from being shaky so…that following Saturday we came by, picked it up, and went back to Target with it. Oh yes, I got it at Target.

Now we have an exchanged one, which I had to pay .20 for since this store had higher tax than the one I bought it from (hardy har har) and we put it together. We are almost done when one of the wheels snaps off. I asked in desperation “do you really need wheels?” The answer was silence, so, we returned that one too.

At this point I wanted nothing to do with Target furniture. Off to Ikea!

Ikea furniture can be a bitch to put together, but it had all the pieces, and the wheels didn’t snap off. Maybe they have better factories in China.