The Ballad of Tara Shepard (or: Why I’m playing the first Mass Effect again)
Mar 2, 2010 | Filed under Games
Playing through the first Mass Effect was one of the most gratifying single player video game experiences I’ve ever had. The second time I played it, that is.
The first time I played through the RPG dressed-up as a shooter, I played through as “Mark Shepard”, and I did what I usually do in games that offer you a lot of choices: I did what I’d do if I were there. And it turns out, I’m kind of a Boy Scout. I scored very high as a “Paragon” on the morality scale, meaning most of my decisions were selfless, and I always tried to talk things through before things got violent. The universe that BioWare crafted was deep and engaging, and the characters colorful and interesting, but the game was just good, not truly great.
Then I started my second playthrough as “Tara Shepard” — and I decided to do something different. Instead of playing as myself, I crafted a character, as though I were writing a story. Tara wasn’t a straight “Renegade” — the opposite of Paragon on the game’s morality scale, but she was a badass. [Note: spoilers from the plot of the first Mass Effect follow - no ME2 spoilers]
Tara kicked ass and took names. She didn’t have any patience for bureaucrats or politics, or playing nice, and she had an itchy trigger-finger. But she did have a sense of justice, and a soft spot for a hard luck story. She made tough calls, she got the job done, and most importantly, Wrex – the most awesome character in the entire game – lived! That annoying brat Ashley didn’t shoot him in the back like she did in my first game, thanks to the choices I made for Tara. And that’s when I noticed the game had really come to life. Instead of just experiencing the universe, I was helping to create it. The universe seemed more real, more flushed-out, and the characters invoked even deeper responses from myself as a player. I wasn’t in the movie anymore, I was directing it. It was zen: storytelling, gaming, and entertainment nirvana.
I’ve had the sequel, Mass Effect 2, since Christmas, but had been waiting to break it out until I’d gotten more done (I haven’t) and my office was clean (it isn’t). I finally cracked it open and attempted to import Tara into the sequel, ready to continue her adventures…but the character import tool didn’t work. Some cursory googling told me that the issue may be due to my last 360 repair which broke the DRM on my console, and it didn’t help that I’d started a second playthrough as Tara and never finished.
I started the sequel up anyway, creating a new Tara, and re-entered the universe again. The game is impressive, sure, but this isn’t my Shepard. The choices you make in the first game will carry-over to the sequel, if you can import your character, but if not, the sequel assumes you made the easiest decisions from the first game. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was missing out on a lot. And most importantly, even though he never came up, I knew Wrex was dead. I played through the shooter dressed-up as an RPG long enough to round up all my party members, and it still wasn’t sitting right. I found out that your character will actually be importable into Mass Effect 3, and that gave me even more pause. Did I really want to keep going with this…impostor? This wasn’t the Shepard I’d created, and this wasn’t the universe that sucked me in the last time I played it.
So, I put up the Mass Effect 2 discs, and pulled out the original. I fired it up, and continued my second playthrough as Tara. It felt good, choppy framerate, elevator rides and all. And when I’ve finished, then I’ll be able to play the sequel the way it was meant to be played.
Just to be on the safe side, I deleted the Mass Effect 2 save data, since my Shepard and the faux-Shepard share the same first name. I didn’t hesitate. Tara Shepard wouldn’t have, either.
March 15th, 2010 at 9:02 pm
Since this post, I finished up ME 1 and am well into ME 2 again. It’s a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT game when you import a ME 1 character, there’s SO MUCH MORE. Seriously, it’s worth renting the original or picking up a copy (it’s like $30 new) so you can see all the extra stuff.
And, completing my third playthrough of the first Mass Effect means I killed Ashley three times. I thought about sending Kaidan to his death at least once, just to see how differently things would play, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Ashley was just too damn annoying.