Dear Commander: My Journey to Save the Galaxy

If you asked me what my favorite movie is I would have to answer Star Wars. 

This gets a variety of responses.

Most often a follow up question: Which Star Wars?

To which the answer is The Empire Strikes Back.  We see our heroes challenged, secrets revealed, pain, suffering, and motivations questioned.  Ending on such a downer leaves us to question how the heroes will triumph in the end, ultimately leading to a more satisfying conclusion.  Plus it's awesome.

Perhaps you think you're being treated Awesome?

 If you asked me what I thought the Best Film of All Time was, the answer would most definitely NOT be Star Wars.  Are they good movies? IV, V, and (arguably) VI are.  The prequel trilogy is full of flaws, but does end rather well.  And I'll still watch it, because it's in the Star Wars Universe, which is itself quite fantastic. But Best Film of All Time? Casablanca? Shawshank Redemption? The Godfather? I really couldn't say.

So why is Star Wars my favorite movie?  Childhood nostalgia is a big part of it.  More importantly, however, is that it remains an excellent example of The Hero's Journey. If you haven't read Joseph Campbell, you really should.  The timeless theme of personal growth is excellently coated in an exciting Space Opera that sings directly to the heart. 

But being who I am, the way my brain and heart work, Star Wars spoke more directly to my motivations. (Thinking on this subject, it might also be the source of my own sense of self disappointment and disappointment with Reality vs Fantasy; but I'm going to focus on the positive here) 

I wanted to be Luke Skywalker.  But I would always want to be Han Solo more.  Han was cool.  I desperately wanted to be cool, because that's what 80s & 90s TV and movies told me I should be.  And since I'm a huge nerd, when I thought of examples of "cool" I immediately thought Han Solo.

I can't really help how cool I am.

But Luke represents the hero in all of us.  You could be on a moisture farm on some backwater planet, or stuck in the suburbs of middle America, or in a Conservative overrun small city in the hills of North Carolina where the idea of being different was looked down upon and talking about your dreams was responded to with false smiles, sideways glances, and patronizing pats on the back. 

Way to close to my childhood. . .

It didn't matter. You, like Luke, could escape that place and go on to save the galaxy!

In all my naiveté as a child, through the cynicism of my teens, and finally my early adulthood, I have come to know a little bit about myself.  I'm a believer.

Not Believer in the religious sense.  Or believer like the Monkees.  

A British Man in a Bow Tie = Teen Girls Stand No Chance

But a believer in what people say.  Teachers all throughout elementary school only encouraged us to follow our dreams.  Maybe other children have dreams of more practical things.  But not me.  I wanted to save the world.  I wanted to fly in Space.  I wanted to be a wizard.  I wanted to achieve great things.  I wanted to save the Galaxy.  I wasn't sure how, I probably needed to become a Jedi and hook up with a rag tag group of Rebels fighting an evil Empire, but my teachers said I could, and so I believed them.

I continued my belief though High School and College.  Though my dreams did change a bit.  Acting.  I loved it, still do love it.  And people do make their living doing it.  Some people make A LOT of money doing it.  Also praise and adoration from thousands of people had a nice ring to it, since "being cool" was still a priority though ironically of much less importance once I "found myself" in theatre.  

It's not nearly as gay as you think.  And yes that's me with the striped pants.

  

But life has a way of not giving you everything you want, especially when networking and self marketing seem to be much more important than acting ability and education.  College programs should really work on that end as much as the other. None the less, I do work in the film & tv industry, so that's something. 

Dreams fulfilled? No.

Happy with where I am? Kind of.

General Happiness? More often than not.  So I can't complain much.

It took a while but I realized that, most likely, I will never be a Jedi. If I save the Galaxy it will have to be through more conventional means.  Creating entertainment that celebrates the human condition and gives hope to the hopeless.  Or being part of a documentary that leads people to think differently.  Perhaps all that recycling and "green" effort will actually make a difference and my actions will lead to saving the planet, altering the course of history from where we destroy the universe, to where we join an interplanetary council of galactic cooperation. Why not?

But since the more fantastic desires of my brain, the promises of the Star Wars story to my childhood, are on the slimmer side of actually happening. (notice I refuse to say impossible, but I'll give you the improbable.) Another means of action has arisen to help satisfy that ever present need.

Video games.

yeah, it's kinda like that

Gamers know exactly what I'm talking about.

Gaming allows us to work together, to achieve seemingly impossible goals, to be rewarded for those goals, and, most importantly, to be given the opportunity. Reality has shown me an amazing lack of opportunities.

Jane McGonigal excellently discusses this in "Reality is Broken", which if you have criticism of the gaming world or gaming culture, you really should read.  Or you can watch this video to get a good idea of what I'm talking about:

Jane also has a desire to apply these gaming principles to solving real world problems, which is fantastic in every way, but just pointing out what games do for you, the player, is what I'm talking about here.

I've played just about every Star Wars game that has been brought into existence.  Even Yoda Stories.  Which while it looks kind of silly, is actually pretty well ranked.

Yoda Frakin Stories

X-Wing & Tie Fighter were definitely among the best gaming experiences that I ever had.  Rogue Squadron was a lot of fun. The Dark Forces saga was damn close to the epic ideals of my childhood imagination.  But nothing quite satisfied that need.  I couldn't quite scratch the itch that I was looking for.  In truth there were very few games out there with the scope that I desired.  Games just weren't that deep.  That big.  Sure the old D&D games were close.  Pools of Radiance and all that. I wouldn't discover Baldur's Gate until later.  But they were not what I needed.  The only games that had almost changed my life were Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy III(VI) on the SNES.  

Cartridges. Load times? What are those?

Then KotOR came out.

It was like scratching an itch for the first time.  So exciting.  So epic.  So Star Wars.

Yes, this story of Ancient Jedi History, with the option of being a Jedi or succumbing to the Dark Side and being a Sith Lord and those choices actually had in game consequences.  

Wow.

And while the statute of limitations is definitely out on spoilers for KotOR, if you haven't played it.  Definitely play it Light Side first, then go Dark Side in your second time through.  Because the Dark Side ending (while not the cannon ending) is so awesome that you will never play light side again.

Then KotOR II came out.  More of the same.  Not as revolutionary, but in continuing with the game play that worked and fixing some issues that didn't quite work, it carried on the goodness that the first installment created.  An "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" type of attitude which was much appreciated by fans. 

Now we're going to jump through time to much nearer to the present. My fat PS3 was on the fritz. Yellow light of death. The horror. The horror! And while I had "fixed" it multiple times.  It was definitely on its last legs. But being in the financial state that I was in, a new system wasn't quite on the horizon.  Throwing out complaints to the social network, a friend of mine said I could have his old XBOX360, it had already produced the Red Ring of Death once, and he was sure it would again, so he was buying a new one.  I could have his old one to try out. I got the system up and running.  Bought a new controller.  Figured out the differences in the console and how to use the interface.  Quite different from the simplicity of the PS3.

A noticeable difference in XBOX and PS3 was the amount of things that the XBOX tried to sell you.  So many things cost money.  Many things that came free with the PS3.  I still hold that that PS3 is a superior system, though I really don't have a console allegiance.  Not like in the old days. 

This was a real thing.

With the new system up and running I decided to head out to ye old game store and look for some used titles about which I had heard good things.  I grabbed Gears of War & Mass Effect.

I had also seen some amazing cosplay of Mass Effects' hero Shepard at PAXEast.  The game had the added bonus of being developed by Bioware, the same folks who delivered KotOR.  So my expectations were high.

A RPG in a space setting with choices that affect how others interact with your character and how the game ends?  This sounds right up my alley.

That was an understatement.

Mass Effect definitely sits as one of my favorite games of all time. 

I was blissfully unaware of some of the "controversies" of this game until after I played it.  Upon character creation I was given the option of Male or Female.

why would you pick DudeShep?

 While the option of a female protagonist is sadly lacking in gaming in general, this option of gender is quite common in my favorite genre the RPG.  Generally it is only an aesthetic choice as the main character, you, is silent and/or just given written dialogue choices to represent your thoughts.  Mass Effect on the other hand is fully voice acted.  You are given options of ideas you would like to express, pick that option, then your Shepard will say a line expressing your idea but different in language than your written options.

I say "your Shepard" because she or he is you, but not you.  You are given more than gender or dialogue choices, but choices of your morality.  Your actions lead to different options, all that slightly change your experience from another player.

That is awesome.

Now back to gender.  I picked "Femshep" because I heard that Jennifer Hale's performance was far superior to that of the "Dudeshep" actor Mark Meer.   That's it.

I wasn't thinking, "finally gender equality in gaming" or "staring at this female toon is far superior to looking at a dude all the time, no homo".

My choice was guided by the fact that I had only heard good things about the acting.

After playing it and reading about the game, these issue start to take the lead in what people talk about. The legend of why Femshep is as amazing a female character goes like this:

Bioware, not expecting a male dominated target market to play as female, decided to not put a lot of effort into the female main character.  They didn't "girl her up" or whatever marketers do.  They had some different romance options, changed "he/him" to "she/her" when people refer to Shep and that was basically it.  And because gender wasn't really an issue, Shepard was the same male or female, it went to the performance of the actors to bring her/him to life. 

Thus FemShep, fully unintentionally, became one of the strongest female characters in the history of fiction.  To me, I will always play FemShep.  Will I change her looks, who she romances, her personality? Of course. But will I play as DudeShep? No.  Shepard is female to me.  There is no other reality.

 

The advertising for Mass Effect 3 disappointed me in this.  You only saw DudeShep.  Marketers, they unintentionally do terrible things sometimes.

Another ingenious bit of game design is the Paragon (good?) or Renegade (bad?) action options that appear during cutscenes.  Paragon with the left shoulder button, Renegade on the right shoulder.  With most people being right handed, the right index finger is quicker than the left, thus Renegade actions are more likely to happen by accident but are also easier.  Much like how the Dark Side is the quicker, easier path compared to that of the Jedi.  Often these actions are killing people, or punching them, or whatnot.  Generally Renegade comes first, but if you wait a moment Paragon will appear and give a much more reasonable outcome.  I'm not so good that I never pressed the Renegade option.  Often the renegade option was WAAAAAY cooler than the Paragon option.  Also, they are not always good or bad, but a way to add some color to your experience. Hitting Renegade after the Kai Leng fight was immensely satisfying. 

I completed the Trilogy today.  I received the third installment for Christmas.  Quite excited about it, I began to play immediately when I got home.  I was warned that it played a lot like ME2, which was fine with me since I very much enjoyed ME2. 

I was late to the game, so I had purposefully avoided reading anything about it, lest a spoiler was unmarked and something was ruined for me.  All I knew was that there was a bunch of hoopla about the ending.  That players had felt mislead by the advertising. (once again, marketers) So Bioware released the "Extended Cut DLC" to resolve these issues.  That was fine with me, because that would be the game that I was going to play.

I'm quite impressed with the entire franchise.  Having played the first game on the XBOX, I could not import my character onto my (new slim) PS3, so there was DLC waiting for me to input the choices that I had made in the first game that would affect the second game.  I'm what we call "a completionist", meaning I play every bit of a game.  Every quest.  Every side quest.  If there is something to explore with a character, I do that too.  In ME2, I only failed one quest, and that was Zaeed's personal revenge quest.  At the time, since I basically play my morality as "Jedi", not quite helping a violent, damaged, morally compromised individual in his personal affairs didn't quite make me feel bad.  So I didn't replay it. I kept it as is.  This wasn't a problem for me in ME2.

These choices, whether you succeeded in your companion's personal quests, whether you gained their loyalty, did have some effect on if they survived the events of ME2 (mine did), but they also had effects on the plot of ME3.

Even though many of your companions are not playable in ME3, their relationship with Shepard is still important.  They have been uplifted, so to speak, by being in your company.  They have become the movers and shakers of the Galaxy, and thus, if they respect you, can aid in saving the galaxy from the Reapers.

Poor Zaeed.  Everyone else survived (sort of) when they would have died had I not played through their quests. Zaeed was shot. I had to choose between two good things to help the war.  If I had succeeded with Zaeed, then he would have lived this encounter, and I would have not only gained him as a supporter of the war (thus increasing my score)but also wouldn't have had to choose between the two things.  

sorry Zaeed

In the end, because I'm a completionist, I had united the galaxy with overwhelming odds of success against the reapers. 

The ending showed a few cut scenes that I imagine would change depending on my choices, but overall I was destined to succeed one way or another.  I've played all three choices, (and found a hidden 4th choice of not choosing at all!), and I'm happy with my first choice of ending.  It's my cannon for the game.  Actually, writing this, I'm in a bit of a quandary, due to the last second of one of the endings.  No spoilers here, but if you've seen it, you know what I'm talking about.

I do have one regret, and that is that I didn't romance Kelly Chambers in ME2.  I was loyal to Liara, my romance choice from ME1, and did not romance anyone.  I should have, maybe then Kelly would have been saved.  Unfortunately, I took too long in ME2 and Kelly was killed by the Reapers.  Dr. Chakwas & the rest of the crew were rescued.  But poor Yoeman Chambers was lost.

Does this matter?

Well she didn't have to die, it's just the consequences of my actions.

In ME3 there is a wall put up in the Normandy of those that had been lost in the Reaper War.  Kelly Chambers was up there. Along with the racist Ashley Williams whom I let die in the first game in order to save the not racist Kaiden.  But still, the names are on the wall.  If I had killed and/or let others die, their names would have been on that wall as well.  Personalizing the game experience. Poor Kelly. 

lolz

In other games she is alive and well. Maybe she was romanced, maybe she wasn't.  But she lived.  In other games, everyone died, Shepard barely made it out alive, and had a much harder time in ME3.

But for me, being a Jedi and all, almost everyone lived.  Everyone who did survive brought their best to my aid, and in the end, I chose to sacrifice myself to save the galaxy, instead of sacrificing others.

Maybe that's what it takes.  My childhood brain would only accept the Luke Skywalker version of heroism.  Yes he made sacrifices.  Yes he suffered.  But in the end, he saved the galaxy and was there to enjoy it.  It was youthful optimism. 

Mass Effect 3 wasn't perfect, but it was epic and deep.  I made choices.  Those choices did change the game. They changed dialogue.  They shaped my experience, much like in real life.  I saved the galaxy my way.  I hear there is going to be one more DLC for ME3 that is quite emotional.  I hope it will affect the endings, but I doubt it will.  One more mission for Commander Shepard is welcome in my book, plus Seth Green is one of my heroes so more Joker is always a good thing.

Mass Effect represents more of the modern zeitgeist than its Star Wars heritage.  There is more cynicism.  The player has the option of being a complete dick to everyone.  Luke didn't even consider that option. There are dark consequences to good choices. There are unintended consequences.  And in the end, to save the galaxy for the most people, you have to sacrifice yourself, or possibly not. For me there is no Planet Genesis (Star Trek 3 reference for the uninitiated) to bring Shepard back. At least, not my Shepard.  (now i'm conflicted more, I've just discovered some interesting fan theories, and since I did everything right through all three games, I have been rewarded. At least according to theory.)

That is the story of our time.  You make your choices.  Be they good or ill.  You do what you think best.  Whether it is best for you or best for the galaxy is up to you.  My elementary teachers didn't mention that.  Selfishness wasn't given as a possibility.  My Jedi upbringing taught me that selflessness outweighs the selfish.  That in helping others, you are in turn helped.  That you are made richer by those types of actions.  I've carried these lessons with me.  I haven't had many opportunities in reality to sacrifice myself for the greater good, but I do know that in gaming I will always choose to save others and my real life heart feels better because of it.

                                   Listen to this song. Feel like a goddamn Hero