Bioware’s 2007 masterpiece Mass Effect stirred conversation in the gaming community. Gamers raved about the narrative and its characters. They would compare how they solved different moral quandaries, which side in a philosophical debate they took, and which character they romanced. Yet, the majority of the game involved running around and shooting things in the face (with space rifles!), which was decidedly less subtle then nice conversation.
For example, there’s one situation where you encounter an alien who tries to spread his religion on a space station, but is prohibited from speaking out without a special license. You can turn him in for breaking the law (earning you morally dubious “renegade” points), tell him to deal with it (and get nothing), or you can pay for his license out of your own pocket (and be rewarded with feel-good “paragon” points). It got you thinking about free speech rights in an unfamiliar context, which is the same thing the classic Golden Age sci-fi did so very well.
And after all of this, you precede to gun down a few dozen bandits.
I don’t mean to bee too hard on Mass Effect, because it works within the context set before it. You’re a space-sheriff and they’re nasty banditos. Yet the “texture” is so very different. I think that’s why it was what everyone loved about it. It was a bit of a shock; it pulled you out of the normal tactical mindset and made you think about well-written characters with depth.
It stands as a great example of games as a worthy art form, but proponents cannot refer to it out of the context of the majority of the game. The very reason the moral situations of Mass Effect are so interesting is because they are not typical of the rest of the game. It’s a mistake to use a game like Mass Effect as an example of breaking out of the stigmatized adolescent mindsets for the very reason Watchmen is not a good example of comic books breaking out of the same. Both require knowledge of the adolescent mindsets ingrained in their respective medias, because in contrasting it with a deeper aspect, we understand both more then we otherwise would. Someone can be well versed in existentialist literature, but without knowledge of action movies, they will be lost when they watch The Matrix.
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