Vid: Machine [Mass Effect]
This premiered at the WisCon Vid Party last night! :D
Title: Machine
Video: Mass Effect // Bioware
Audio: Machine // Regina Spektor
Summary: The war is in your body. The future is here. The future is a machine.
Notes: Spoilers for all three games. Vid features close variations on the default FemShep model from ME1 & ME2 (due to impossibility ( Read more... )
Title: Machine
Video: Mass Effect // Bioware
Audio: Machine // Regina Spektor
Summary: The war is in your body. The future is here. The future is a machine.
Notes: Spoilers for all three games. Vid features close variations on the default FemShep model from ME1 & ME2 (due to impossibility ( Read more... )
Thank you so much for letting me know you enjoyed it - I'm so glad I got the chance to premiere it at WisCon. Before ME3 I don't think I would have thought I could vid Mass Effect (though I know other people have), but the third game was just so cinematic, I knew I had to try and it turned out to be so much more rewarding than I'd hoped.
I'm so happy you enjoyed it and that it made you want to play the game. I want you to play the game so I can hear your thoughts on it!
I much preferred the directional radar thingy in ME2 when it literally told you what direction to walk in right now and when you got to the next corridor it would reorient itself again, so it was like satnav or whatever but then in ME3 suddenly it was this general direction thing and I was like, wtf, HOW DO I GET THERE?! So yeah, I empathise, but it was worth getting over, and once I stopped stressing about it and just started wandering around, I found that usually you can just swan off in whatever general direction the corridors are leading you and you get to where you need to be.
If you have articulate thoughts, I would, of course, love to hear them, but if not, these are more than wonderful enough already. *draws hearts all over your comment*
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Randomly, one of the best panels so far has been the Identity in Video Games panel, which I had been to right before the Vid Party, so your video really sort of brought the themes of that panel ALL together in an awesome way for me?
I mean, there are definitely OTHER themes here that are intriguing me VERY much? But I probably don't know enough about the game to comment on them in a meaningful manner, but just the realization that this story CAN be told in this medium? Very powerful. To have a female heroine that you can lead on a journey that doesn't screw her over because you ACTUALLY have agency with the narrative? Just <3.
And just the EPICNESS of the video (and Femshep!) and the realization that that's the PRIMARY story the game is telling, and of course, your own interpretation of the events is going into it, too, but it's a VALID interpretation and not one that's challenged by authorial intent to a degree it would be in other mediums, if that makes ANY sense. I can't wait to watch this again after playing the games.
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I saw you mention that panel on your LJ and was immediately hugely jealous that I wouldn't get to go - I'd love to have been there, particularly in wake of the outcry over the ending. I'm sad about that for a bunch of reasons, but partly it's because it's effectively overshadowed everything else about the ending, including the role of Shepard as a character in terms of gender representation. And there are...so many things to say about that. I mean, the universe in general, while not awful at it, is hardly free of the sexualisation of women, but Shepard as a female character is fascinating in part because of, well, the fact Bioware either deliberately or due to laziness didn't even rework the motion capture for the male and female versions. She moves the same way, she says, in 99% of situations, the same lines. She physically gets up into people's space in an identical way. It's empowering and interesting in ways I didn't expect.
I've seen some people claim that she's not as much of a landmark character as Lara Croft or Samus Aran, and in some ways she isn't. It's a sad fact that most will always see her as an alternate version, not even included in official marketing until the third game (although she was included eventually because of her fan following). On the other hand, she's never been sexualised in the way Lara Croft has either. She's in the fairly unique position of being a character whose story arc we know for sure wasn't affected by her gender. And yet stars in an epic, and character-focused journey. And I agree, there's something freaking amazing about that.
And that's aside from the fact that, yeah, there are a bunch of other transhumanist and technological/scifi ideas that permeate the series that I find fascinating. This article (written shortly before the release of the third game) does a good job of explaining some of why I feel this way (even if I don't agree with everything he's saying. But it's an interesting argument that the Mass Effect universe is one of the few that so directly confront the ideas of cosmicism, existentialism and a potentially meaningless, godless universe. Might be worth a bookmark for the future if you find yourself enjoying the games.
In some ways I enjoy the world of Dragon Age more, and I love the NPCs more too (err, broadly speaking, exceptions exist of course!), but I love (GIRL!) Commander Shepard and the themes of the Mass Effect universe just...more than I can even express.
And now I've babbled all over you. But just, GAH, GAH, *FLAILS*. I'm just SO thrilled that you picked up on both the epicness and the, you know, validity of her existence. Because she's just there and real and AAAAAAAAAAAAAH. <3
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If it helps, Mass Effect games didn't get discussed in the panels much, so you didn't miss much. The year you are able to go, you should totally purpose and RUN a panel on Mass Effect, because that would be epic, and I'll happily be a part of that audience.
She's in the fairly unique position of being a character whose story arc we know for sure wasn't affected by her gender. And yet stars in an epic, and character-focused journey. And I agree, there's something freaking amazing about that.
I HAVE SO MANY FIXED FEELINGS ABOUT THAT. On the one hand, yes, I love that that allows her to be written as a PERSON and not a WOMAN, which, well, the fail therein is mostly that the writers tend to somehow...limit themselves when writing for WOMEN, as if we're some mysterious spieces that works COMPLETELY differently from men. On the other hand, it bugs me that the writers' default is constantly the male hero? Like, the whole fandom went all squee-y over David Gaider saying that he wrote the Fenris/Hawke romance with a Male!Hawke in mind, but I am bitter enough to have wondered if he wrote ANY part of the story with the female Hawke in mind. So, um, in theory, I am very bothered by the fact that for the writers and most of the fandom, the female heroes are the alternate version, but also happy that we can have our own headcanon. MIXED FEELINGS, like I said. ;)
In some ways I enjoy the world of Dragon Age more, and I love the NPCs more too (err, broadly speaking, exceptions exist of course!), but I love (GIRL!) Commander Shepard and the themes of the Mass Effect universe just...more than I can even express.
I suspect that I will end up agreeing with you on all of that? Because, yes, with Dragon Age, I mostly just squee over all the awesome, epic women NPCs, and while I love Hawke, I was pretty ambivalent on the warden. I am mostly just happy that I have an epic fantasy series that doesn't ignore women or feels the need to make its FANTASY world a darker place by introducing the social realism of rampant misogyny, um. Which is tragically rare.
But! That article on "Mass Effect" is awesome, and I am looking forward to playing it. And watching your video again after playing it, of course. ;)
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I think in some ways the article takes a harsher view than I would regarding some of the issues of gender portrayal. For instance, the Asari I'd define by the contradiction between their social status as a race that conform to a sort of scifi Ancient Greek archetype - the elder matriarchs who bring democracy and science to the galaxy - and the fact that as young women they essentially all seem to find employment as psychic lesbian strippers or commandos. But, dude, they're psychic lesbian stripper commandos. Ashley I actually don't find as objectionable in the first game as they do; on the other hand, there's nothing redeemable about the way every scene with Miranda begins with a shot of her ass. Similarly, I wouldn't quite characterise the "choose official femshep's look" competition as a beauty pageant, but I that's sort of beside the point when it takes three games for them to even construct an official "canon" face for her, and they don't even use the previous default (as opposed to canon?) face when they do. At least that's a lesson they learned with Hawke. Anyway I think it's a valuable article for the way it deconstructs the notion that FemShep makes the Mass Effect Universe unproblematically feminist without negating the fact that she is an important figure in the ongoing way we negotiate female characters in video games, particularly in games where gender is a choice.
Another thing I find interesting is my own willingness to adopt "FemShep" as a moniker grew exponentially after I noticed that "BroShep" was being used to identify male Shepard with increasing frequency. I wouldn't choose "bro" or "fem" as prefixes myself, but I am pleased that, for example, the official ME twitter account does seem specify gender in both cases now.
Re: Other stuff! I was quite annoyed in DA2 when Aveline started talking about how the King had sent out a decree that she could return and take up her commission in the army again after they finished sorting out the lists of the dead from Ostagar? Like, dude, THERE IS NO KING. DON'T YOU MEAN THE QUEEN?! Gah! I hope that was just a glitch like Dead!Fenris staying at my side.
I'm sad to hear that the ME panel wasn't that great, though. I'd love to GO to a panel like you describe but wouldn't have the first clue about how to run one. I could go and ask pointed questions though! :p
It's interesting how much having a voice actor for the character makes me care more about them, I think? I'm sure part of my feeling that the Warden was a fairly blank slate stemmed from that. I didn't get a sense of consistent tone in the text dialogue choices, so instead I sort of felt like the Warden was a...window through which I was viewing and interacting with this virtual reality, and sure, making the choices I wanted to make, but still...more of a proxy automaton than a living breathing character I was inhabiting, if that makes sense?
And finally, WORD on the rarity of historical fantasies not being misogynistic FOR TEH GRIT. Cus we all know that makes them of objectively higher quality, right? *le sigh*
Anyways, I'm really looking forward to any thoughts you have on Mass Effect but I promise not to be TOO annoyingly impatient. :p
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