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mtreebeardiles · 2 years

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Lost Horizons, Ch. 14

Short chapter, but we’re getting into the end game for ME2 so the rest are liable to be a bit beefier

Full piece over on AO3

Words reverberating in his head and he was certain they were hers, could see her mouth moving from where she sat across from him, but the sounds refused to coalesce into something he could understand.

The break happened after Hackett left, as if the Admiral took all of Everett's poise and control, his carefully constructed façade with him. Identities caught, twisted, pulled back, failures echoing and maybe Hackett didn't blame him, maybe Hackett had said he believed him, even, but it didn't change anything.

Hundreds of thousands of Batarians were dead, and it was Everett's fault.

"It's not your fault, Commander."

These words hit, so close to his own with one significant difference, but he was able to focus again. Meet Chambers's eyes, start to parse her words.

"Pretty sure it is."

A sigh, and she leaned forward until her elbows were resting on her knees. "The Bahak system was officially part of the Hegemony, Shepard. They don't automatically accept transmissions from outside sources, and definitely not from humans. Incoming messages are scrubbed first, always. Even if you had managed to get the message out there…" She shook her head. "There was no guarantee they would have listened."

He'd heard this before, some scrap of information he'd learned a long time ago after a few personal brushes with the Hegemony and their proxies after Elysium. Had already gone over the reports, had already come to the logical conclusion: casualties were inevitable, whether by destruction of the Mass Relay or by the Reapers slipping through.

The Bahak System had been doomed from the start.

These facts just didn't matter much to the traitorous whispers that picked up in frequency and volume whenever something like this happened, a cruel series of what if's and why not's leaving him feeling…

Disconnected.

What if you'd spotted the fact that they were Indoctrinated sooner?

What if you'd disabled them faster, bought more time to get that message out there, make the Batarians listen to you?

What if you'd convinced the Council to believe you about the Reapers?

What if we hadn't lost two years and counting to prepare? Why couldn't you make them see?

What if you were good enough, for once?

Each question adding to the weight until he couldn't breathe, lungs on fire, and --

"I need a smoke."

On his feet, and he wasn't sure if Chambers called after him or not. He couldn't do this, not right now. There were no answers here, none that mattered. The Bahak System was gone and it still wasn't going to stop the Reapers from coming.

He had work to do.

Maybe he could worry about forgiveness after.

#my writing #Everett Shepard #Miranda Lawson #Kelly Chambers #Me2 #Lost Horizons #i s2g the ME3 long fic will be less sad o'clock

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zahra-hydris · 7 years

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thoughts upon just reaching the tempest (I know, I know, i’m still so early; I spent way too much in the cc)

[andr*meda spoilers]

let me preface all of this with an important qualification: I am going into this game expecting shit. after me3, after the tonedeaf politics of da:i, after the very fucking premise of this game (colonialism’s okay when it’s in space, right???), i’m not expecting a great story. I’m going in to make a new kid, collect some new companions, see some pretty worlds, and criticise everything else.

I’ve seen a lot of hostility on my dash lately about this. from each side. like anything about the game and you’re naive. criticise anything and being unnecessarily critical and you’re ruining fans’ experiences. i’m going to do both, tag both, and if you don’t like it, I would much rather you unfollow than whine at me for critically engaging a series that I’ve loved for years.

pros:

the combat is fun. it’s very much an expansion of me2/3 but with a faster pace and the ability to jet around.

the environment is gorgeous. “habitat 7″ was legitimately spooky but with a strange beauty to it.

it’s mainly well-acted? admittedly, liam’s delivery has been kind of off at times, but his voice is lovely. addison on the nexus was awful, okay. but cora’s been wonderful, I want to marry vetra’s voice, and, perhaps most importantly, fryda wolff has been doing a pretty great job. also shout out to kumail nanjiani as jarun tann, who is FANTASTIC.

the tempest looks really pretty. haven’t left the nexus yet, but it’s pretty inside.

ehhhhs:

so I’m kind of in two minds here. on the one hand, I can definitely see things in the companions that I love. i’ve met cora, liam, and vetra so far and I’m fond of them. but I don’t really know them? vetra, I’m willing to make concessions for since I literally just met her, but I haven’t had one proper conversation with either cora or liam? I feel really disconnected from them, other than maggie and liam getting a little chat during the first mission (that I really had no part in?). but then liam was saddled with the loaded position of ‘justifying killing the aliens’ or outright killing them for you if you refuse. he gets the cliche ‘overkilling’ scene because god! these aliens are so bad! so worthy of death!!!!. yet, when you actually get to chat a little to the guy (a little!), I like him. but i’m about 5 hours in and I still feel disconnected so....

“zero to hero story”. uh, ryder is literally given the pathfinder title after the first mission. like I get that the whole thing is ‘they’ve gotta prove themself!!!’ but that’s not what a zero to hero story is. honestly, I feel like the game needs more interaction with alec in a position of subordination. ryder needs to feel like a zero before the gravity of that title can actually be felt. again, I feel disconnected from this whole aspect. which is bad, because it’s the defining attribute of ryder’s hero story.

i’m not gonna list this as a con about the game because it doesn’t matter that much to me but... the animations. this is a game five years in the making, a AAA game under a massive publisher. releasing a game where a companion’s mouth clearly doesn’t match the words they’re speaking is just arrogant. smaller studios would be crucified for it.

cons:

i’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the character creator is fucking awful. it’s legitimately one of the worst i’ve seen from bioware and a massive step back from da:i’s system. it has one big positive in that actually has two asian presets in the female ryder cc, which is fantastic! but the whole preset limitation is just so fucking ridiculous. everyone’s ryders look the same. and there’s little you can do to change it. worse, if you attempt to drastically change something, the facial animations punish you. move the nose down slightly to make it take up more room on ryder’s face, to make them look different? enjoy watching ryder’s mouth fucking devour it every time they move!

the story. i’m sorry, but i’ve literally seen nothing that makes me interested in what’s going to happen. I keep thinking how fucking awful this initiative is. you dragged hundreds of thousands of people to colonialise a portion of the universe that you had never actually been to? you had no awareness of life forms in it? fully aware that it would take 600 years? with zero contingency plans???? you literally expected to just arrive and settle??? the game tries to make everything urgent by telling you that they’ve got all of these people in cryo and they’re running out of power and food and water and... how was this not planned for? why is there no food production capability built into the nexus or any of the arks? I get that we’ve gotta suspend disbelief with science fantasy like this but... the whole premise of the game is just bad.

and then there’s whole colonialism experience itself! they try to make the whole thing sound better by insisting that the pathfinder team has “first contact protocols” but they’re literally just ‘don’t shoot unless they shoot you’. no ‘how do we actually communicate with beings that don’t understand us’. no ‘is it not perhaps threatening that we suddenly appear carrying rifles’. ryder even says that last bit. before adding ‘guess peace is not an option here’. ...... okay. and then there’s the kett. the writers go to such lengths to demonstrate that you’re perfectly valid in gunning them down. ryder can make a fruitless attempt to talk to them, can even refuse to shoot when the game mechanics kick in and they’re clearly hostile (liam will shoot and then he’ll justify it afterwards, where an option for ryder to say ‘sorry I hesitated’ will pop up), can lament the way it turned out afterwards. like it matters. spoilers: it doesn’t.

and, because this is getting long, let me finish with the whole SAM thing. jfc mac walters can you give your autonomy-denying form of transhumanism a fucking rest? look, normally I really love delving into issues of transhumanism and AI in video games. deus ex and the way mass effect 2 looked at the geth, for instance. but there’s been no actual engagement with this. you get alec’s synthesis (the problem with the quarian and geth was just DIFFERENCE, guys!! if we made everyone the same, there’d be no war!!!! definitely not the basis of liberal/capitalist/christian interventionalism across our history!!!) propaganda memory. you get SAM’s insistence that “trust is important”, while ryder’s only real concern apparently is that SAM will fry her brain. and not, you know, the whole ‘we forced you into physical symbiosis with something you never even really knew’. i’m hoping this gets complicated later on, but idk as I mentioned above, I really have zero faith in bioware to actually engage with these issues.

ALSO i’m gonna call it now: SAM will be (at least partly) the dead wife/mother (can’t have an rpg without a dead wife lately, huh) and that’s why ryder had to become the pathfinder.

look, this sounds really negative, but my overall feelings have been a mixture of positive (it’s fun), waiting for more (esp regards the companions), and having my pessimism regarding the story confirmed. but, I mean, da:i was the theocratic ruler experience and I will criticise the story forever but I still replayed it like four times and love it in certain ways so... yeah.

#mea critical ///#mea spoilers ////#like it's hard to explain: i genuinely have no faith in the writers to make a good story here #but I still want to keep playing #i still look forward to having the actual game #because it's a new mass effect. because new companions. because I actually do love the exploration elements.#this is so long and I'M SO SORRY IF MOBILE DOESN'T CUT IT

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