Let me preface this by saying that I have just finished Mass Effect 2 and enjoyed it. I am also aware that the Mass Effect games, and their stories, are quite popular. Nonetheless, they bother me. They irk me. The setting is just so… Meh. Not even ‘meh’, in fact: it is annoying. This is despite, or because, of the fact that I have always been a fan of science fiction in pretty much every form. Let me explain.

Bioware has a reputation for taking writing seriously, but although the writing in these games is very competent in a technical sense, the setting seems like a heap of cobbled-together action-movie clichés and Gernsback-era stodge. Star-spanning empires, hard-bitten soldier-hero, uneasy alliance, rogue states, Ultimate Existential Threat, bumbling bureaucrats, criminal power-brokers, sigh. I would say it sits rather oddly with the high-tech setting and meticulous attention to technological detail- one might call the game autistic- if this were not also par for the course. Yes, they set out to write a space opera, but the constrictions of genre are really no excuse when there are so many fine science fiction writers around. In a world in which even Bungie claims to be familiar with Iain Banks’ rather more interesting space operas, it looks as if this stodginess is deliberate.

The representation of aliens is what troubles me the most. Why must every alien be a 21st century North American with a rubber mask on? Why do most of these cultures display no substantial economic, political, or moral differences from us? ‘Culture’ here is that thing which resides harmoniously within contemporary Western capitalism: which is to say, the differences that do not matter. You can have blue skin and exotic sexual preferences, so long as you accept the exigency of warfare, bureaucracy, hierarchy, slums, stock markets and high heels. Nowhere- monsters and Ultimate Existential Threats aside- are we faced with a culture that challenges any of these contemporary norms- such as, for example, the ‘Culture’ and the ‘Idirans’ in Iain Banks’ Consider Phlebas. Yes, we are presented with one alien species with more of a military bent, one with scientific interests, and so on- but these differences are simply stereotypical characteristics drawn from our own societies and writ large as ‘cultures’ in their own right. Nowhere is there a sociable culture that really transcends a common world-view, one that causes actual culture shock. There are the all-female Asari- but, excepting family and reproductive habits (which still seem to include something like monogamy, I might add) the Asari are just like us, economy, warships and all. Only the clan-bound Krogan, portrayed as a violent, primitive evolutionary dead-end, are really different, though still a cliché. It is also interesting to note that in both of these cases, difference is presented as something biological and fixed, to the extent that each species apparently has only one culture, if you can call it that. One only has to pick up an anthropology textbook to see that this is all a bit iffy.

Now, the writers obviously needed to make these aliens human enough that they could write them and we could empathise with them. Granted, too, that ME is set mostly in liminal spaces- where species meet, or where colonists face the void at the edge of civilisation, rather than on the homeworlds which might give a more unique perspective of each species. It is also possible to read ME and ME2 as arguments that superficial biological differences should not be the basis of discrimination- laudable enough, surely. However, this raises an issue. The setting requires that the civilised species of the galaxy be similar- otherwise how could they compete and commingle in ME’s cosmopolitan entrepots and bureaucracies? They only await a common cause- opposition to a standard Ultimate Existential Threat (henceforth UET). Of course, what constitutes ME’s UET, aside from its UET-ness, is that it is (a) genuinely alien and mysterious- represented as both machine and insectiod in both games; and (b) a monolithic entity, incapable of any change of compromise. Since the civilised races of the galaxy are not really different from one another- difference apparently being the change we get after investing our credulity in the idea that contemporary Western(-ised) earth is, substantially, the blueprint for all galactic civilisation from now on- the hero can fight this threat alongside various aliens, in the name of protecting life everywhere. The aliens who are like us can help the hero eliminate the aliens who are alien.

While I doubt the writers of ME intended to encourage any strong ideological reading, it is easy to read a lot into this polarisation of difference into extremes- you scarcely have to look far to find similar views being espoused on this planet. Aside from the obvious tendency toward prejudice, this kind of view- let us say, in its ‘liberal’ form- still closes down creative horizons and the scope of the reader to render critical judgements- every great problem being ‘hard-wired’ beyond the range of civilised difference and the solutions thus being non-negotiable. As I have argued elsewhere, ME greatly restricts the player’s agency in dealing with the game-world: Shepard is able to deal with crime compassionately or callously, but never to inquire into its causes or the justice of the law itself; decisions regarding the fate of the warlike Krogans are artificial moral dilemmas, since they are denied the possibility of evolving into anything but thugs; while the UET can only destroy or be destroyed.

The thing is, this polarisation in ME is only the corollary of the representation of cultural difference as both innate and superficial. If the game presented powerful and mysterious aliens who were really alien, who thought alien thoughts and pursued diverse alien goals- and not always contingent, earth-monkey preoccupations like genocide, dominance, and certain kinds of wealth and power–the setting of ME would become a little more interesting. If these cultures were not presented as static- if aliens had ideas, goals and economies that were not only alien but infectious, fractured and changing- the game would lose its blinders, and the liminal spaces the game explores would be fraught with a potential for conflict and mystery on a whole other order of magnitude.

Choice in RPGs, I am beginning to think, deserves some serious consideration. When the player-character speaks, chooses, or is constructed, who is actually speaking, choosing or constructing? Player, writer and character are all implicated- but the exact configuration can have profound consequences.

Bioware’s Mass Effect, which strikes me as an extreme example of one kind of storytelling, allows the player to choose from a small number of back-stories for the PC, with dialogue options generally reflecting emotional reactions or attitudes rather than choice or intellectual nuance. These allow the player to establish ‘character’ within a narrowly defined role; the player’s interaction with the story, with a few notable exceptions, cuts across the plot rather than directing it, and is strictly curtailed by the rigid dramatic elements of the ‘official’ plot. As a role-playing exercise in ‘realist’ agency or ‘naturalist’ interpretation, I found Mass Effect very frustrating; the role-playing pleasure lay in, effectively, choosing my character’s dark past and love interests and which lines I thought it was best or ‘coolest’ for his actor to speak.

I think it is interesting that this twin focus- on player-written character within rigid story- is achieved by allowing the player auctorial leeway mostly in those areas- childhood, sex, emotional life- which are traditionally considered private. These elements are strictly segregated from the main arc of the story: I can choose for my character to seduce the marine or the alien, or to save his lover or his comrade, but aside from determining, in the latter case, which of these NPCs is available to assist me in future missions (a nice twist, which raises interesting ‘game versus story’ issues), there is no effect on gameplay or the ‘main’ plot. The one big choice in the game- whether to lead your invariably militaristic, corrupt, intolerant and frankly intolerable people to fight Ultimate Existential Threat unilaterally and damn the rest of the universe, or to do so in alliance with the namby-pamby aliens- is no choice at all, unless you happen to have a penchant for xenophobia. Likewise, when confronted by a sect of escaped military test-subjects who killed those sent to recapture them, the player may either execute them all or convince their leader to surrender to the authorities, but never leave them be.

These non-choices have obvious parallels in life and fiction, which could be used as the basis of a moral or ideological critique of the game. On the other hand, focussing on the narrative per se, we might or might not disregard these as pastiche; that is, as ‘blank’ genre or thematic tropes which do not have to be interpreted as meaningful. In other words, you could say that Mass Effect’s narrative is an artistic failure, but not offensive, since one does not have to relish evil in order to relish sending one’s PC to the Dark Side in Bioware’s Knights of the Old Republic; the pleasure is in constructing a character by enacting familiar themes or narrative elements, rather than approving of the available choices. According to this interpretation, the player is not choosing an outcome (the death or surrender of the deserters) so much as constructing a character (a soldier who executes his orders with sensitivity or with prejudice). Elements of the narrative are of course contingent upon this choice, but these could be interpreted as reflections of the protagonist’s character in the game-world, necessary to illustrate the character.

While I am not entirely convinced by the above approach, I think it might be interesting to dwell on the consequences of the player’s limited agency in this game; that is, the curious paradox whereby the game’s gun-toting, straight-talking, masculine (even when female) protagonist Sheppard, who operates in a military world of violence, danger and authority, seems so passive from the player’s perspective: I sometimes had the feeling that I was playing dolls while playing Mass Effect, so focussed is the story-related gameplay on ethics and interpersonal relationships. This is not to deny that the game’s narrative affords pleasure or engagement; I became quite preoccupied with these same ethical dilemmas and interpersonal relationships while playing the game. Also, it is always possible that other players may have experienced the game differently.

Nonetheless, spaceship-commanding Sheppard is no Kirk: he is so hedged-in by narrative assumptions and his chain of command that while playing him I did not feel (as I ought to have) like an important spaceship commander, wandering the galaxy and dispensing justice in my own fashion; the character always obeys orders, and seems to be totally devoid of imagination. Sheppard, as experienced, is not a rounded human being, but an emotional anima whose robotic masculine animus is really only a tool of higher powers, expressed mostly through talking big and killing faceless enemies. I suppose one could thereby interpret the game as a subtle critique of social regimentation or the idea of strength propagated by an authoritarian ethos, but I doubt this was the writers’ intention.

The effect of the decision to compartmentalise the story in this way is that the ‘official’ story may strong and dramatic, but is really secondary, while the story the player generates is melodramatic and weak, but more important to the player. This narrative, which does not allow the player to make decisions of real importance, thereby inverts the player’s hero into the passive object of the ‘official’ narrative, creating one of those infamous breaches between mechanics and story.