Mass Effect 3 in 3 1/2 weeks!

There are two things I wanna touch on tonight. #1: a rumor that Mass Effect 3 won't be the end of the franchise after all.

Now if you'll permit me, I'd like to compare a hypothetical end to Mass Effect, the greatest science-fiction story ever told in the video-game medium, to the widely-disliked end of Battlestar Galactica, the greatest science-fiction story ever told in the television medium (shut up, Trekkies).

Gripe all you like about the utter stupidity of the humans' decision to give up all their technology because it's the best way to break the cycle (and conveniently fit history). One thing I will always defend BSG for doing in its finale is making the finale final. It killed off two regulars (for certain definitions of "killed"), seven supporting characters, and the Galactica itself for good measure. Because I love looking at BSG as a deconstruction of Star Trek, it seemed to me that Ron Moore was saying, "right, you souless, moneygrubbing studio loons, try to extend this story past the finale the way you made us do with, say, Star Trek Generations."* (Of course, then they went and made The Plan, which was terrible, but that's a different story, one I intend to tell rather soon.)

*Yes, Ron Moore co-wrote Generations, but the only stupid thing in it that wasn't studio-mandated was Data's emotion chip. That project was doomed from the start. For an even better example, see Insurrection and Nemesis.

Now, as much as I love Battlestar, I'm glad it ended. Once you've found out who all twelve Cylons are, gotten to Earth, and learned what the deal was with the opera house, there isn't much of a story left to tell (and even as it is, the first half of season four does a lot of marking time).

The thing that frustrates me about Mass Effect 2 when trying to analyse it as a work of art (as was mastefully done by SF Debris here) is that it didn't really have an ending. The main game did, but then they tacked on a bunch of DLC ranging from the fantastic (Lair of the Shadow Broker) to the inane (Arrival) - and that's just the two that bridge 2 and 3. It kind of makes me wonder what kind of DLC we're going to see for the third installment. ME1 went the route of ending the game at the end - what I mean by that is, if you wanted to keep playing or download the DLC, you had to start all over again. Well, not all over again because you could keep your character, but the story reset. ME2 is more flexible (perhaps in part because it's the middle child); you can continued exploring the galaxy and murdering half its population after you've completed the main game. While I'm hoping that 3 follows 2's example, so that you can enjoy your happy ending on the off-chance that you actually get one, the question of what kind of DLC we'll get remains.

The other thing that I wanted to touch on in this post was this stunning article on the franchise. The only thing I'd point out is that it's not as godless as the author wants you to believe; the protagonist gets resurrected and goes to locales named Afterlife, Purgatory, Eternity, etc. There may be some deeper meaning to that. (And I'd be remiss if I started this post with some BSG/Mass Effect comparisons and then neglected to mention that BSG's resident angel of God showed up in Mass Effect 2.)