Oh crap.

Oh crapcrapcrap.

I just realized something about Mass Effect 2 that... unsettles me. Because if it turns out I'm right in my suspicion, it's going to be a hard choice on a level that the first ME only dreamed of. This is only idle speculation, obviously, but it would be massively cool if it happened.

So your save from the first game carries over to the second and third installments.

And Bioware is keen on romantic subplots in their games.

And they just recently revealed a trailer for ME2 that shows Dr. Liara T'Soni, who happened to be my (and, by extension, Shepard's) flame of choice in the first game, seeing Commander Shepard come out of the shadows and saying something along the lines of "Shepard! But... you're dead!"

Anybody connecting the dots here?

Let's assume that Bioware has another romantic subplot in ME2. If you romanced Liara in the first game, does this mean that you aren't still together with her? If you're not still together with her, can you get back together with her? Perhaps she has someone else now? What if you fancy a new character more than Liara, but Liara has been chastely waiting for your safe return? Do you cheat with the newcomer, or do you stay with Liara? How would she react to the revelation that you cheated? Would Ashley (the other girl you could bump uglies with) react the same way? Do you stay with the character you've grown to love, or do you risk pissing that character off by finding someone new?

Yes, that's right. For the first time in a video game (that I'm aware of, anyway), you would have the conscious decision to cheat and the potential for meaningful consequences as a result of that. I submit that if you've already spent a whole game with one character by your side, that character's disapproval would carry a great deal of emotional weight. You have been through shit with this character, and now you're gonna throw it all away?

But what if New Character is really cool? What if you really have "moved on?" And what if you could somehow finesse a threesome, as you could in Jade Empire? ;)

See? It boggles the mind. If there is a romance subplot in ME2, it will be genuinely hard for me to pursue a new girl, but if I like her enough... I mean, I honestly don't know what my choice would be. It would be damn hard to make either way....

Anyway, I just thought that would be really cool if Bioware did it. Anyone else think so?

Just posted this as a comment here, but I figured the relevant portion was important enough to warrant its own post. Changed slightly to make it feel more complete as a piece of writing:

With video game storytelling, the biggest problem is pretty simple: devs are usually so focused on making the game a "good" experience for the player that they feel compelled to take fewer risks with storytelling. As a result, you get a lot of cliches that could be easily subverted but aren't, and very few genuinely surprising moments of real emotion. As long as developers confuse positive emotions with real emotions, we won't see nearly as many truly great stories in games as we see in other mediums. Think about, for example, how you felt when Aeris died. Now imagine that you could have saved her, but didn't make it in time. Oh, and it autosaves as soon as she dies. I submit that that moment would have been substantially more affecting. It would not, however, be a moment most devs would dare put into their games, because that would "negatively affect the player experience."

Not that gamers aren't to blame as well. Consider the example of a game like Dead Spsce; I was often amused to see reviewers mention that Isaac felt "like a glorified repairman" at certain points, completely missing the fact that Isaac's job is that of - shock horror! - a repairman. But because the game didn't go out of its way to "make you feel like a badass," it was criticized.

So yes, this idea that the player is entitled to "feeling good" throughout a game is messing up otherwise interesting stories, and I won't stand for it any more.

[rousingspeech]Now who's with me!?[/rousingspeech]

Anyway. Something to consider next time you're hammering away at the buttons.

First blog post at Dtoid. Shame it couldn't have been more positive.

----

Here's the truth:

I love Dtoid as much as the next guy, but 1UP is and always has been the best in the business. Not everything they've put out has elevated the discussion, but the vast majority of it has. Even the stuff that wasn't very stimulating intellectually has still been written in clear, focused prose by people who are not just passionate about games, but legitimately excellent writers. These people have defined and refined the vocabulary of games criticism for damn near a quarter-century, and they have done it with panache to spare.

UGO seems to have come in and shat all over that proud history. Even more insulting, they have done this while praising 1UP's "authentic voice" and "tenured writers."

Really, UGO? You just kicked every one of those "tenured writers" you value so much in the balls with spiked boots, and those people WERE that "authentic voice."

I will be interested to see what 1UP.com becomes, but I greatly doubt that the standard set by these fine people will ever be matched by any others, let alone surpassed. 1UP as it was no longer exists. Perhaps others under the UGO umbrella will do fine things with the brand, and perhaps they will even do great things. All is certainly not lost, and change is, on balance, a good thing.

But the real 1UP is gone, and it's never coming back as it was. We shall see what transpires in the days ahead, but today is, without exaggeration, the end of a golden era in games journalism, and we should all mourn, because that era is never coming back.

Let us all take a moment to pray for those let go, and to wish them godspeed as they do new and exciting things in the months ahead. Because the present is - and there's no other phrase that fits here - monumentally shitty.

That, at least, is how it seems to me on this bleak January day.

Any thoughts?