It is not ours to reason why...

It's June which means it’s E3, the biggest industry expo for the “interactive entertainment industry” a huge event of conferences and promotional speeches about the best in upcoming games and technology. As part of their efforts to pour more kerosene on the Flaming Catherine wheel of hype Ubisoft have released their cinematic trailer for Assassin’s Creed 3. As ever it’s a damnably entertaining 3or so minutes which gives a reasonable impression of the game-play but making the most of their marketers licence to make it as bombastic as possible.

Set in the Revolutionary war our hero manages to turn the tide of a battle being fought by the British against the nascent American revolutionaries. What’s interesting is that ever since the new setting was revealed Ubisoft have been adamant in stressing that Asscreed 3 will not just be The Patriot 2:Now with Assassins. For those of you who haven’t seen The Patriot it’s Mel Gibson’s admirably balanced and unsentimental dramatisation of the American Revolution.

This hand-wringing over whether or not the Brits will take umbrage at the scores of red-coats you’ll likely be mowing down got me thinking. Assassin’s Creed have always been very careful in taking a politically correct stance, yet their less than edifying depictions of characters from history, be they Christian, Muslim, French, Italian, Turkish or otherwise has never really been particularly controversial. Assassin’s Creed 2 ends with a fist-fight with The Pope but there was narry a peep from the Vatican press office. No doubt much of this has to do with the fantastical framing of their re-telling of history. The people you murder are not chosen because of their race, gender or religious beliefs, they are all either “Templars” or their agents. In the game the Templars were not an order of Christian warrior monks who guarded pilgrims and holy sites in the 11^thcentury, they were a secret society who seek to reshape the world using alien artifacts, restructuring society according to their own dogmatic views which sacrifice humanity’s free-will. The Assassins are the guardians of that free-will, hence their creed “nothing is true, everything is permitted.” The autocratic philosophy of the Templars is attributed to many a historical figure, and though its complete bunk historically, it provides a great narrative context for an entertaining and politically uncomplicated stabathon through history.

Why then did Ubisoft feel the need to reassert the position that Assassin’s Creed isn’t about pitting one nationality against the other? After all, as anyone familiar with the franchise knows, it’s about Templars and Assassins, both of whom recruit from any race, religion or nationality. Perhaps it’s because that while the medium is maturing, many of it’s consumers are not, you only need read under the comments section of a Youtube video about a game and you’ll quickly find comments in which someone will refer to someone as a “n****r loving fag, who should eat my ballsack” for simply expressing a preference for one game or another. The internet has allowed for this very loud, very public feed-back to influence consumer opinion. Being British we have the advantage of being fluent in the chosen language of the worldwide web and the second biggest market for games after the United States. Perhaps Ubisoft are worried that without subsequent placation the infuriatingly loud and entitled minority will prove a significance enough disturbance to effect the units shipped come October. I’d call them out for their lack of backbone were it not for the significant financial risk all AAA game-developers put themselves under, and the recent fan furore over Mass Effect 3, which has forced the released of unscheduled additional content.

However I wonder what the gaming world would like if all games had to worry about how they portrayed the nations of the world, and in what context they framed their interactive conflicts. For the moment games are predominantly experience the world through violent action, even the apparently innocently innocuous Mario mainly interacts with people by stomping them to death. Whom then do we aim our guns at? Most games involve an inordinate amount of murder, so if we’re going to be doing a lot of it, we have to be sure there’s at least a modicum of justification for doing so.

Nazis are a popular choice, as in terms of politics they are pretty much unambiguously evil, and not just because they’d force everyone into their versions of Scouts and Brownies. Zombies are great too, humanoid, unthinking, unfeeling, they are the cultural canon-fodder of countless games, comics and films. A zombie can be shot, beheaded or bludgeoned to death with a frying pan and you need never worry about the moral implications. He wants to eat you, you don’t want to be eaten, he can’t help it and neither can you, so we might as well get on with the killing have fun while we’re doing it.

Aliens are another popular choice, in Gears of War they burst out of the ground to bring ruin to the human population of Sera, issuing garbled threats and appearing in various terrifying forms. In Halo it was the ambiguously motivated Covenant, a collection of various races all of whom had it in for humanity. They later gave way to the more monstrous Flood a fungus that turns everything into well, a space-zombie. However with both Gears of War and Halo we were given some insight into the alien’s motivation for attack. In the end, the protagonist of Halo teams up with his erstwhile foe and forms a joint alliance of Covenant and Human forces with a view of protecting themselves from the fungal space zombies. Only later finding out that the whole war was just a deliberate misunderstanding by the Covenant's religious overlords. In Gears too the original enemy become overshadowed by a similarly zombified version of themselves, their attack on humanity motivated by their attempt to escape their infected counterparts.

So the most popular gaming conflicts between humanity and an alien races have essentially devolved into a deferred war between humanity and space zombies. Like I said, you can’t sympathise with a zombie whatever form it takes, but it’s hard not to extend some grudging respect to a character given a rationale and a motivation, even if they do have four jaws.

It's cool man, I'm with you

It’s only when we cross into the territory of military shooters do the deviations into why the conflict has occurred become more muddied. Despite their great potential to explore the themes and issues of our most recent conflicts, military shooters have been content to explore war in the most ridiculously and bombastic fashion  possible (Call of Duty) or simply frame the action in the context of you Spec-Op soldier, them terrorist. There was no public conciliation toward the Russian gamers when Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 came out. I understand that diplomatic relations between Russia and the West oscillate between cautiously warm to sub-zero, but having them as the instigators of World War 3 seems a bit much. Perhaps the hyperbole of the action is what gives COD free-reign to play fast and loose with accurate international relations, but nevertheless it can’t be nice to be a Russian gamer mowing down countless of your countrymen because “they started it! C’mon they’re Russian!” I won’t even go into the cultural implications of Call of Duty: Black Ops which has you replaying several missions of the Cold War, Vietnam and the Bay of Pigs included. What next a positive re-telling of America's support of Pinochet? 

If Gears of War and Halo are prepared to explore a sympathetic angle in regards to their inhuman antagonists then it’s surely conceivable that First Person Shooters can do the same to real-world nationalities?

The current fetishisation of black-operatives and global conflicts in games is a somewhat disturbing trend when viewed in conjunction with the wider media narrative on the War on Terror. With the news becoming ever more immediate, right down to the footage from drones of successful strikes against “terrorist outposts” that later turn out to be civilian compounds, the casual re-imagining of these conflicts as a black and white affair between morally vindicated super-powers and its enemies veers dangerously into the territory of propaganda. In years to come the current "War on Terror" will be viewed in the cold-light of historical objectivity, and the alarmist rhetoric regarding the various Islamic and other extremist groups will dissipate. The War on Terror will one day be revaluated outside of the current narrative of us vs the bad-guys, into its component parts of social, economic and political factors all of which resulted in a “war.” A war which has had a terrible human cost for both sides. As a result the attitude of some games’ that reduce nationalities and races into a justifiable target to killed without thought or mercy will look highly dated and somewhat suspect.

However there are signs that attitudes toward the framing of player as US Marine vs world is shifting away from the political and moral certainties of Modern Warfare, Battlefield and Medal of Honour. In Rainbow Six the antagonists are not foreign terrorists but home-grown ones, angry at the financial sectors ability to play the game and lose for almost everyone but themselves, a very real and a very relevant social subject. Watchdogs deals with our current reliance on not only technology, but governments’ willingness to outsource public services to private companies. While Spec-ops: The Line despite being about American spooks being sent to war-torn Dubai will be mainly fighting, other American marines. Here’s hoping that as Games settle into their place in the cultural discourse that their creators are prepared to address the responsibilities that come with artistic legitimacy. 

Mass Effect: Quite Affecting

Released in the bygone days of 2007 Mass Effect was the much anticipated new IP from RPG developer extraordinaire Bioware!  Having won commercial and critical acclaim with Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and refreshing the genre still further with Jade Empire, expectations for their take on science-fiction were high. The resulting game is one that borrows liberally from genre canon; man vs. machine conflict, faster than light travel, and a federation of like-minded aliens who strive for peace. Despite this seemingly shallow retread of old ground Bioware embraces its cinematic and televisual influences while still managing to create a universe that feels fresh and utterly engaging. What they’ve done with science-fiction may not set the world on fire, but what they done with the RPG format most certainly will.

Cue Aerosmith 

Mass Effect has got Bioware’s nerdy paw-marks all over it, whether or not you feel that’s a good thing will probably be influenced by your familiarity with their oeuvre. There’s a customisable protagonist, branching dialogue, moral choices to be made, and a team of squad-mates who accompany you in pairs for each mission, the downtime between action opening up opportunities for developing their characters and possibly a little romance too. These characters are exceptionally well written, if a little familiar and the main story is involving enough to raise Mass Effect above its myriad limitations.

Sometime in the distant future humanity gets its act together about creating world peace and finally starts getting down to some serious inter-planetary exploration. In the wastes of Mars ancient ruins of a long dead alien civilisation known as the Protheans is discovered, leading humanity to a “Mass Relay”, a gateway capable of taking ships across the abyss of space in a flash of electric blue. So far so very Stargate. Humanity suddenly finds itself playing on the galactic stage with a host of other races, playing political catch-up trying to shed the stigma of being the new kid. A bit like early Star Trek. You play as Commander Shepherd, a human soldier in training to join the Spectres, a unit of extrajudicial special agents tasked to maintain galactic peace, a cross between Hans Blix and Simpsons’ Schwarzenegger parody Macbain, Hans McBain. Or if we’re being unkind, exactly like the Jedi.

That'll teach us for trusting the Pixar Lamp

All this background is covered in a brief sweep of text in the soaring opening cienmatic, and sets the precedent for Mass Effect’s approach to creating a vast universe full oftive potential. Before you begin, this being a Bioware game, you can customise the appearance, class, gender and back-story of your Shepherd. Don’t be too disheartened however when the half hour or so spent tweaking the nose and widening the eyes of your Shepherd doesn’t quite translate to the epically, ruggedly handsome bloke or ethereal beauty you were hoping for. Either way seeing your Shepherd gazing dramatically out of a Starship window for the first time is a real thrill. The game quickly introduces you to one of the cornerstones of its success, the dialogue system. Unlike RPGs before it, dialogue is delivered onscreen by an actual voice-actor, a little radial menu giving you abbreviated options for what you want to say. Unlike in previous RPG’s however your options aren’t restricted to good, neutral and evil, though they do fall along those general lines, rather they serve as a means of building your character. Perhaps your Shepherd is sympathetic to the plight of terrorists but has a stick up his ass about corporations; the new dialogue system allows you respond accordingly, leading to humorous exchanges such as this.

“You can’t bludgeon your way through corporate bureaucracy you know”

“I don’t know I can bludgeon pretty hard”

String every option together and Shepherd reads like a crazy person

Visually Mass Effect has a very distinct aesthetic, its retro-contemporary style echoed by the awesome
eighties synth soundtrack. Unfortunately despite the great effort that has gone into making each and every face, be it human or alien express itself with real dynamism, the graphics engine can’t quite keep up with the ambitions of the designers. Texture pop in is frequent and jarring, and the game is liberally stalled by lengthy loading screens or long trips in lifts. It’s a shame as this mars an otherwise striking realisation of imaginative locales, the colossal seat of Galactic government known as the Citadel and the snowy corporate haven of Noveria being particular standouts.

As part of your introduction to the game, Shepherd does some shadowing of a fully inducted Spectre as part of his Spectre work-experience. It’s on this typical “routine mission gone to hell” scenario which teaches you the ins and outs of the combat and allows for your first bite into Mass Effect’s chunky narrative.  Unfortunately Bioware’s divergence from their established turn-based combat to real-time run and gun shooting is a somewhat messy affair. Aiming is imprecise, guns don’t reload but overheat, and the chance to use “Biotics” read: The Force requires you to be constantly pausing the game to micromanage your team-mates’ attacks. Looting enemies and containers yields credits to make purchases, omni-gel to open doors, and guns and weapons modifiers to improve your firepower. Unfortunately due to the unhelpful nature of the inventory screen you’ll soon find yourself popping back to the shops on The Citadel to unload all the Incendiary Ammo version III since rendered obsolete by your acquisition of Incendiary Ammo VII. Cover though invaluable to your survival, is difficult to move into and out of, a situation not helped by your squad stealing all the best spots, or worse yet nudging you out of yours. That said the ammo modifiers do make reducing your enemies to radioactive ash a rare joy, especially when they’ve been suspended weightlessly in the air by one of your biotic attacks.

Hold that thought

Shepherd's first day of work experience goes rather badly, a human colony is attacked, he loses first the plucky naïve young team-mate whose characterisation screamed “Red-Shirt Crew member!” and then his mentor Nihlus gets capped in the head by his old friend. To top it all off he discovers that the Protheans were wiped out by a race of colossal mite-like machines called Reapers, and unless they can prove it, a rogue Spectre and his army of robot minions will see to it that they return to wreak their enigmatic genocide.

Unfortunately all this vital information is communicated to him in the form of a mysterious vision, so when it comes to explaining the huge balls up to his would be employers the Citadel Council, they are more than a little sceptical. As in much of science fiction the races of Mass Effect have somewhat overbearing racial traits. The familiar alien archetypes of stoic, sexy, war-like and greedy are all represented here. However it’s what Bioware choose to do differently with these established genre tropes that make Mass Effect worth getting into. Despite the council’s reservations you’re accepted into the ranks of the Spectres and following a little help from some new friends, prove the rogue agent Saren’s culpability and are tasked with taking him down. This is all very handy as it ties into your own quest to stop the return of the Reapers intent on galactic annihilation.

Along the way you’ll level up your Shepherd improving the power of your biotics or your proficiency with a gun, exploring the galaxy and sharing snatches of conversation with the rag-tag bunch of aliens and soldiers. Unfortunately the vastness of the galaxy map, opened on the deck of the SSV Normandy, the sleek and sexy star ship Shepherd calls home, is never full realised.  The few planets you can land on are frustratingly samey barren wastelands of red, green, grey or blue, populated by cookie cutter bunkers and repetitive mercenary bands or robotic Geth. Navigating these un-dynamic deserts is made yet more tedious by your mode of transport, The Mako. A somewhat grandiose title for an APC that handles like a shopping trolley with two missing wheels and pointless booster jets. Despite this however you’ll find yourself doing it all willingly as you follow up every side-mission and distraction, immersing yourself yet further into this well crafted world.

Urgh.

It's Mass Effect’s cast of colourful characters and shades of grey approach to role-playing that are the real highlight, the story directed by your choices that promise multiple endings and outcomes. There’s Wrex a Klingon, sorry “krogan” a hulking lizard bounty hunter in search for a cure for his chemically neutered species, Tali’Zora a teenage space-gypsy looking for adventure, Ashley the bigoted human soldier with a chip on her shoulder and Liara a mono-gendered, blue skinned beauty torn from her lonely life as an archaeologist to share in your rip-roaring adventure. Sure Wrex comes across as an exact blend of the big-hairy bloke from Jade Empire and Canderous Ordo the exiled leader of the Mandolorians from KOTOR. Perhaps it’s true that Kaiden Alenko your trusted lieutenant is just the same whinging wet blanket that Raphael Sbarge gave voice to last time around, nevertheless it’s this blend of the familiar with the fresh that makes Mass Effect so engrossing. The sheer attention to detail and the highly immersive world has you investing in your Shepherd, and their relationships in a way that has never been done before. That’s what gives the moral dilemmas you’re provided real impact, which member of your team do you rescue from certain death? Can you really commit a species to extinction on the basis of their past actions? Do you save the council who have held humanity back for so long, or head straight toward Saren’s ship? Knowing that Mass Effect is but the first instalment of a trilogy helps pile on the pressure, giving as yet unknown consequences to your actions.

In the future people go to bars with the express purpose of not drinking

Though the combat is ropey and unrefined and side-questing formulaic the sheen of the story and lore more than make up for these disappointments. Many of the main story is as good as any sci-fi television series, with self-contained character arcs, betrayals and thrilling climaxes. The bonds you form with your squad feel genuine, and the ability to really invest and customise your own Commander Shepherd is rewarded with the kind of narrative and emotional pathos that Bioware does so well. Fortunately for us, all the potential that was seething beneath Mass Effect’s ungainly surface was fully realised in Mass Effect 2, and if the recent press coverage is anything to go by Mass Effect 3 will blow even that clean out of the water. Bring on March 9^th