The Many Ways We’re Not Discussing Mass Effect 3
Human comprehension of story isn't all cognitive. That's the lesson taught to us by how humanity constructs myth. There are certain narrative constructions we all understand and they are there for a reason, because they work by speaking to who we are as human beings and what we need from our stories.
BioWare has curb-stomped those psychological narrative underpinnings with the end of Mass Effect 3. It's no wonder pundits have lumped everyone upset about the ending into the same bucket as the extreme haters who are demanding a new ending out of BioWare. Anyone who is really upset about the ending, but doesn't understand or cannot elucidate why, probably does sound like a raving lunatic to someone else who doesn't get it or doesn't care.
When someone says "I demand a new ending to Mass Effect 3!" what they really mean is "This ending has disappointed me deeply," and that could feed constructively into a discussion of what happened to make them feel that way, which is a discussion about narrative construction.
It bothers me that discussion hasn't taken place yet within the pages of the outlets which are meant to hold the authoritative, critical voices about video games. It bothers me even more that it may never take place within the pages of those outlets. Mass Effect 3 is a watershed moment in many ways. One of them is demonstrating the limitations of our traditional methods for talking about video games.
GDC Coverage Roundup
I'm planning on writing about my overall takeaway from GDC 2012 for my First Person column this week, but it was a much better event the second time around (GDC 2011 was my first GDC). The same thing happened with E3 - round one was mostly chaos and learning, round two was about getting some good networking accomplished and getting real work done. Here's everything I wrote from the conference (that isn't under embargo):