Babylon 5: Midnight on the Firing Line

This may be the very first time in history that I've come to a television show (other than Doctor Who since 2008) with no idea what happens later on. (Okay, I know Sinclair doesn't stick around. But that's it.)

Now you might reasonably expect the first episode of a television show to set up all the characters, spend up to 20 minutes getting to know our cast before we start dropping anvils on their heads. And yeah you can do that if you've got a 2-part opening (as in every modern incarnation of Star Trek - not that either Voyager or Enterprise bothered with this approach) or a 3-hour miniseries (Battlesomething-or-other).

Babylon 5 doesn't have that luxury. Although it does share at least one thing in common with Battlestar: it starts with a space station blowing up. With effects that put a Nintendo 64 to shame, too.
(As someone who adores classic Doctor Who, that shall be the last "cheap-looking effects" joke I ever make in regards to this show. I would also like to point out that every single reference I make from this point on refers to things that came after this episode aired.)

So then we meet a guy who decided to grow out his hair in the shape of Napoleon's hat (this gets even better later in the episode, when he wears a cape and is shot from the back in mostly shadow... you get the idea). He's the Centauri ambassador. I think Centauri is both their homeworld and the name of their species, because of course all humans are called Earthers or Terrans. (Sorry, but since Mass Effect deliberately avoided this practice, I've started calling out the other science-fiction franchises on it. At least the Klingons come from Kronos.)

We also meet the security chief, who is also apparently a fighter pilot, but then so is the station's commander, so that's not quite as weird as it might sound. By the way, this role is perfectly cast. Even though he's given a bunch of obviously expository dialogue in his first scene, Jerry Doyle's appearance and mannerisms all scream "space cop," but not in the hokey way you're probably thinking of. (Actually, on re-watching this, he screams "Captain Jack Harkness.")

See, the Centauri (Centauris? I'm still getting used to this setting) and the Narns kinda hate each other, but the Centauri government isn't going to press the issue of the Narns attacking one of their colonies, um, because. Earth isn't either, because even though we're only one episode in, I can already tell we're taking the Honor Harrington approach to politicians: they're stupid, shortsighted, officious red-tape dispensers and nothing else. Of course, not doing anything will just entice the Narns to take another colony, so the Council is convened, but of course, this being a Council aboard a giant space station, anyone who's played Mass Effect will know that they're utterly useless.

By the way, a few paragraphs from now I'm going to lay into this episode for wrapping up too neatly, so I just want to pause and point out that I love the way G'Kar commandeers this scene and gets the council to not sanction his people when all he's got is obviously doctored evidence and one additional key fact.

I'm not really going to go into characterizations too much here, because the episode itself doesn't.  There are some broad strokes to be painted, of course: Sinclair doesn't have time for political nonsense, Ivanova is an ice queen (and resident Strong Female Character(tm)), Londo is a Sicilian, G'Kar is slimy but clever, and Vir is played by Flounder from Animal House.

There are three plotlines running simultaneously: there's a presidential election that's confined to the background, but it's used to show that Ivanova is completely apolitical and that Sinclair isn't a fan of the budget-cutting winner. There's the raid on Raghesh 3 and the political fallout. Then there's the pirate raiders who are, um, raiding.

Sinclair eventually hunts down the raiders - this involves Security Chief Garibaldi pissing Ivanova off (which he accomplishes by sitting in her chair - alas, her reaction isn't as funny as the Illusive Man's) and Sinclair doing the "whoops, I never told you I got orders to do the stupid thing" routine with Ivanova* - and discovers that the raiders got their weapons from the Narns.

*And at the risk of provoking the most inevitable flame war when discussing Babylon 5, Deep Space Nine did that routine to death. I hope B5 doesn't follow suit.

Not only does he find that evidence, but he conveniently finds evidence that the Narns did in fact make an unprovoked attack on the Centauri colony.

The conclusion bugs me for two reasons. Why the hell would a weapons merchant have incriminating evidence about an attack on a Centauri colony? And why is Sinclair so convinced the Narn government is involved in the raids? (I guess an individual acting independently from his government is just not possible, right, Commander "I never told you that we're not supposed to vote for sanctions" Sinclair?)

Questions: what are the implications of the presidential election? How will the feud between G'Kar and Londo unfold? Why the hell would a weapons merchant have incriminating evidence about an attack on a Centauri colony? How long before someone files a sexual harrassment suit against Garibaldi?

Leviathan pre-view

No, I do not know anything about the Leviathan DLC. No, I haven't played it. Nobody at BioWare knows who I am and that's not likely to change soon.

So this blog post is just going to be me pre-emptively complaining about it. Because we all like that.

So there are two things I know about it: that you're hunting Leviathan, a Reaper-killer; and that you'll be cruising around underwater in a special ATLAS mech.

Psst, if Leviathan could kill Reapers, recruiting it sucessfully would totally change the ending, not just "foreshadow" it or whatever word BioWare wants to use. So my guess is that Leviathan is dead or dying, and won't really make that big a contribution to the overall war effort. Or best case scenario, it's about as useful as the Rachni Queen.

As for the ATLAS mech... look, Mass Effect 3 has the greatest gameplay of the three games, everything's smoothed out, the added diving/rolling mechanic is pretty awesome. That said, the ATLAS stuff is the most boringest part of any combat. At least on the PC, the thing takes forever to turn around, you can't use the shift key to access your radar like you normally can, and its very low firing rate honestly makes hijacking the thing more trouble than it's worth.

By the way, I'm totally buying the DLC anyway.

More "What could have been"

Here are two images from The Art of Mass Effect 3.

Yes, that's a Cerberus enemy (at least I assume it's Cerberus) landing on your bed on the Normandy. My only question: why was this cut from the game? No, I have no idea how the logistics would work, but Cerberus trying to take back the Normandy would be cool.

Remember, way back when, I was arguing that the big asari mission should have been on Ilium, not Thessia, because Ilium was familiar to us. I said that one of the biggest gut-punches in the trilogy was running through the burning carcass of the Normandy SR-1 at the beginning of Mass Effect 2. That ship is home, Shepard's Fortress of Solitude. When a bad guy penetrates it one way or another, you know things are serious.

Second image:

That's much creepier than the version of the Illusive Man we faced at the end of the game. Also this art seems to imply that the final confrontation would have taken place inside Cerberus HQ. I have mixed feelings about that. On the one hand, I thought that letting you get back on the Normandy and then cutting off every destination but the Sol system was obnoxious railroading. On the other hand, 1) if they didn't do that, you wouldn't be able to see Garrus and Tali have their last-minute hookup, and 2) ending the game on Cerberus HQ instead of Earth wouldn't be as emotionally satisfying (in theory! Not necessarily compared to what we got). It would have been Mass Effect 2 Part 2.

At the same time... is TIM dying? Is he dependent on Reaper tech to survive? That would have been a fascinating character twist, if handled properly. Not "I'm crazy indoctrinated because I'm power-mad," but "I got myself indoctrinated because I just want to stay alive." That would have made him, you know, a more complex character.

Mass Effect 3's weapons DLC (UPDATED!)

So there's the first DLC you have to pay for (aside from From Ashes). Here's what I think of it. (Now with updates, since I've had the chance to play more of the game with these weapons.)

The Blood Pack Punisher is the new weapon that I'm getting the most out of at the moment (mostly because "at the moment" happens to be "just starting the game with an Adept, or finishing Act 1 with an Infiltrator"). If your other weapon is a sniper rifle or a pistol - a super-accurate gun with a low firing rate - you'll probably want this SMG. It has a fairly large spread, but it also has a nice damage output. The drawback is the weight, but slap an Ultralight Materials mod on there to mostly negate it.

(Holy crap this gun is overpowered. Seriously, I'm running around with it as my Soldier's primary weapon right now. Adrenaline Rush + maxed out Incendiary Ammo = dead Brute, really, really quickly.)

The Geth SMG functions like a cross between the Geth Spitfire heavy weapon and the Prothean Particle Rifle? It's an interesting concept, and its accuracy is welcome for an SMG.

And on a side note, when are they gonna give us a geth pistol? Or are pistols tactical weaknesses?

But this gun has a major drawback: it's not very powerful. And while 600 shots may seem like a lot, it took me about 60 to bring down a Cerberus trooper on normal difficulty. (Now granted, this was with an Adept on Mars, who thus had no weapon damage bonuses from either class stats or armor. I believe I had Vega's Squad Incendiary Ammo going, but honestly that penalized bonus is tiny.) It does become noticeably more powerful after the first 50 shots, but any class that needs the weight benefit of this gun versus the Prothean Particle Rifle doesn't have the durability to stay out of cover for that long. My advice: stick a scope on it, and have your Vanguard use it as a weak long-range weapon.

This brings us to the M-90 Indra, an automatic sniper rifle. Or as I call it, an assault/sniper hybrid. Honestly, if you took the scope off this thing and put it on the Mattock, those two weapons would switch classifications. Because its individual shot damage is so low, I can't recommend it for Infiltrators who like using Tactical Cloak for the weapon damage bonus. However, if, say, your soldier pairs it up with the Falcon (grenade launcher), it basically covers the drawbacks of that weapon. (Or, your Soldier could pair the Blood Pack Punisher with the Falcon. Because that gun is crazy. And lighter.)

The Krysae Sniper Rifle is the second-best sniper rifle in the game. (The Javelin is first and will continue to be first until they make a sniper rifle that can not only see and shoot through walls but also shoot, I don't know, dragons that then incinerate your enemies for you.) Your Infiltrator will love this gun (unless you have a very, very unorthodix Infiltrator playstyle). It has low clip capacity and a long reload time, but those are the ony weaknesses.

(Er, actually it also has this weird gimmick where the shot takes a moment to hit the target, and also it can't punch through walls. I'm using it as the other half of my Soldier's loadout until better weapons unlock later in the game. We'll see.)

The Reegar Carbine is a flamethrower that shoots electricity instead of fire. It gobbles up ammo like nobody's business and it has a very short range. It's not a dispersion issue; it just won't damage anything beyond about ten feet. Your Vanguard will probably love it (and it goes in the shotgun slot, so if you evolved your Vanguard for more shotgun damage, you'll get an extra boost). The rest of the classes need to leave this one on the rack.

(My Vanguard loves this, although the Shredder mod mechanics seem a bit... off.  The reload time is a bit of a snag, too, since I'm used to the Eviscerator and this one reloads like the Disciple or the Spike Thrower.)

None of my Shepards happen to be anywhere near Act Two right now, so alas I didn't get to test the Adas Anti-Synthetic Rifle on its prey of choice (and it's too heavy for my Infiltrator to use my preferred strategy). Still, it's pretty good against turrets.

(Did the Geth Dreadnought mission with this thing. I only died once during the Main Battery section, which has got to be a record. Whether that's because I'm getting better at the most frustrating level in the game or because of this gun, I can't say.)

As for the Cerberus Harrier, I understand it's a multiplayer favorite, but it's not really my cup of tea. This is mostly because when it comes to assault rifles, I've already got the Falcon, the Prothean Particle Rifle, or the M-76 Revenant, and those three pretty much cover all my needs.

(Yeah, I touched this once and decided it wasn't worth it.)

Is it worth your money? It's a weapons pack. This means that, unlike new missions, you can use them anytime during your playthrough. Unless you're a pistols-only guy, in which case there's nothing for you, chances are you'll find something useful here. For example, even though I personally like neither of the assault rifles, I'm doing a few missions with a Soldier who has a Falcon Blood Pack Punisher and an Indra. (The Falcon's not new, but it eats up your assault rifle slot, and the Indra can fill both the assault rifle and sniper rifle roles.)

I expect Infiltrators and Vanguards will probably get the most out of this pack, Infiltrators with the Krysae and Vanguards with the Reegar. And every class that uses SMGs will like the Punisher. But that's just my opinion.

Curiosity

Go NASA

Things Mass Effect 3 did right

No, I'm not going to list everything in this game that didn't make me want to scream at my computer. That's not the purpose of this post.

Even though Mass Effect 3 is easily the weakest game in the trilogy, it's still really damn good. And I'm not the sort of person to let unskippable cutscenes/plot developments that make no sense/recycled music/flattened characters/an ending that pissed off the fanbase detract (too much) from the parts of the game that were really, really good.

So without futher ado, here are not the "I didn't hate this" moments. These are the things that Mass Effect 3 did that showed me BioWare was still capable of making awesome video games, no matter what they were surrounded by (the things, not BioWare).

Kai Leng.

Ask George Lucas what a smart idea it is to import a villain from the Expanded Universe.* This could have been a terrible, terrible mistake. But by giving Kai Leng a wicked entrance (no matter how much Thane makes light of it afterwards, this is still the first time you're utterly helpless to prevent the death of an ME2 squadmate), and then unleashing the Phantoms to show you just how deadly that sword and obnoxious that little flipping maneuver can be... and then by making Leng get away with everything in every encounter with him until the final battle... assuming that BioWare were trying to create a villain even Paragons would want to stab in the gut, they succeeded.

*Blah blah books that preceded the first game blah blah Saren blah blah.

That's right: I hate Kai Leng, but I hate him for the right reasons. So score one for them.

This scene.

It took a while for me to see this scene, because my first two playthroughs were with Shepards who both cured the Genophage. (Despite the YouTube description, this scene plays out this way whether you're romancing Garrus or not. The important part starts about one minute in.)

I'm inclined to put "All of Act One" in here, because the Genophage stuff is the best part of the game.  But this one scene is probably the best part of the Genophage story. Shame that it's an out-of-the-way conversation down a very dark morality path.

By the way, I'm really glad they gave this convo to Garrus and not, say, Liara. Despite the fact that Liara's far more ruthless in this game than she was in the previous titles (yay character development), it's still hard to imagine her being able to see both sides of the issue. Seems like Garrus knows what to do with grey after all.

And as the first half of the scene demonstrates, it's just more personal for Garrus. Krogan support for the war effort won't have nearly as big an impact on the fate of Liara's home as Garrus's.

The funny stuff.

Liara meeting her "dad," Ashley and Tali getting smashed, "I don't need luck; I have ammo," Ken and Gabby finally doing it, "I am Garrus Vakarian, and this is now my favorite spot on the citadel," the dinosaur joke in From Ashes, Legion being amazed at Garrus's calibrations, "Infiltrator Tits," Blasto 6, "they used to eat flies," everything to do with EDI/Joker, Joker and Garrus swapping speciesist jokes, "And I gave you the moral strength you needed to dodge them," EDI flooding Cerberus's computers with fourteen times the entire volume of the internet worth of porn, Teacher!Jack, "might run tests on the seashells," Garrus and Tali hooking up...

Why Mass Effect 3's DLC will suck

And no, it has nothing to do with the ending.  Or at least, nothing to do with the fact that most people hated the ending.

Let's review:

Mass Effect 1 was all about stopping Saren from opening the super-Relay at the Citadel and starting the Reaper cycle. The DLC for that game involved you stopping a terrorist from slamming an asteroid into a planet and playing king-of-the-hill with holograms.

Mass Effect 2 was all about stopping the Collectors from, um, collecting. The DLC for that game involved you fighting a science project gone wrong, storming the Lair of the Shadow Broker, and slamming an asteroid into a Mass Relay.

My point is that the DLC for these games was not directly tied in to the plots of these games.  Yes, ME2 gave you two additional squadmates in its DLC, and the whole focus of that game was building a team for the Suicide Mission.  But both of those games felt complete without the DLC, and nothing was added to the main plot of either game after the release. The DLC was like the Tom Bombadil chapter in The Lord of the Rings; enjoyable, but totally extraneous to the plot. You could excise it (as Peter Jackson did) and not lose a thing.

Now the plot of ME3 is Stop The Reapers. So the first "real" DLC (by "real" I mean "DLC that didn't ship with the game and was also not a desperate fix designed to maintain enough interest to make DLC profitable expand on our vision for the ending") has been announced. And guess what? You're hunting for a Reaper-killer.

Let's face it: this was inevitable.  A polite way to describe ME3 is "tight," as in "it's a very tight story, with everything being about stopping the Reapers." A less polite way would be "sparse," as in "the sparseness of the side missions is a blatant giveaway that this game was horribly rushed." Remember in Mass Effect 1, when you could land on a planet and explore? Yeah, it padded the sidequests something horrible, and the copy-pasted prefab structures got old really fast, but it made the galaxy look bigger. Mass Effect 2 gave us side-quests that at least involved stumbling across missions on random planets in the middle of nowhere. Now when EDI discovers an anomaly, you just launch a probe and pick it up, rather than going down to the surface and slaughtering a bunch of bad guys.

Now you can decide whether this is an improvement or a necessary sacrifice to the "tight" storyline or a desperate time-saving measure (but it's the last one). But it means that pretty much every single element about Mass Effect 3 is about beating the Reapers.

And now we have more DLC about beating the Reapers. In other words, instead of being an extra, this is going to be an expansion of the plot. Only it's not going to actually expand the plot, because ME3 barely had one to start with. (What it had was a random string of occurences that were not linked by cause and effect, but that's a different post.) Prothy the Prothean couldn't tell you anything new about the Catalyst, remember? Likewise, Leviathan isn't going to be able to wave his magic wand and make the Reapers go away, because then there'd be nothing for the Catalyst Kid to do.

So we're going to get DLC that feels more like "stuff that we didn't have time to put in the game before we shipped it" than "random fun adventure sidequest thing." Hooray.

Now that's not to say I won't buy it. Because I do want more DLC; judging by the content of the previous games' DLC, we can expect to slam an asteroid into a Reaper someday.

This is old, but it amuses

I screenshoted this a while back and never bothered to post it. Enjoy. (click for full-size)

Yet another post about Mass Effect 3

No, I won't let it go.

See unlike 1% of the fanbase, I am unsatisfied by the ending. But unlike the other 99% of the fanbase (that didn't romance Thane or Jacob), I don't for one moment fall into the "that game was awesome except for the last five minutes" camp.

Truthfully, the Mass Effect franchise peters out after the first act of 3.  The quarian/geth conflict is Battlestar Galactica writ large, but as the writers of BSG (perhaps) understood, it's freaking difficult to empathize with people when you can't see their faces. (Yes, yes, the reason the Cylons look like us is because of terrorism and whatnot, but it also means that by the end of the series you're empathizing with Athena and Caprica-Six, at least in theory.)

Seriously, the first time I did Tali's loyalty mission back in 2, the only things I remembered about Zaal'Koris vas Qwib Qwib was that he wore a rediculous pink spacesuit and he had a very silly ship name. Which admiral was all for war with the geth? Why should I care? They're all a bunch of faceless political jackals trying to wreck my crewmate's life.

And don't even get me started about that TRON- style sidequest with Legion in 3. That was the most boring part of a Mass Effect game since Thane's loyalty mission, and at least that one you could fail.

And then there's the Fall of Thessia and all the fallout from that, about how this is supposedly Shepard's darkest hour. I don't know, I figured Shepard's darkest hour was back when they died, or when their love interest didn't trust them anymore. Not when some world I've never been to before falls to the Reapers because the stupid space elves that run it couldn't be bothered to tell me about their big secret before now because the game needed to be padded out or something.

But why does the Fall of Thessia matter so much? Because it's Liara's home, and unless you had a Shakarian import, the third game pretty much throws her at you by shafting your other romance options. We get it, BioWare, you love your blue-skinned space babe. If only you didn't have to flatten every other character in the galaxy. If only your plot twists occasionally made sense. If only you'd realized how unbelievably stupid your original ending (I swear I've already done a post about this) was earlier.