Monday, February 8, 2010
The Elcor
Mass Effect 2 is now one of the best reviewed video games of the current generation, and even if the provenance of some of those reviews can't withstand close scrutiny, the game deserves it.
I've never been fond of the vast accretion of item management tools that have dogged RPGs since they moved from the tabletop onto the screen, even in the case of Bioware RPGs. Finding stuff, jettisoning stuff, acquiring stuff, most of it undifferentiated, except by increments of power and efficacy the gameworld's conflict engine scales to match; this is the sort of zero-sum game electronic entertainment too often mistakes for depth. RPGs are like crack to the meritorious, and the "experience point" is among the most ideologically suspect conventions in video games. XP suggests that money does not quantify our experience enough on a paycheck-to-paycheck basis--the RPG player wants it dribbling around her head, instantly quantified, for every conflict resolved either by word or by hammer. In Mass Effect 2, however, advancements in weapon load-outs and powers make sense and jibe rhythmically with the justifiably praised conversation system Bioware has produced. It's the same wish-fulfilling reward system of absurd responsiveness, of course, but it doesn't keep you constantly counting, selling, counting, as happens in a game like Fallout 3. Mass Effect 2, in short, is an incredibly fun and addictive experience.
Yet video games are quibble machines, and I have one: where are the Elcor?
I met my first Elcor early in Mass Effect 1. He was arbitrating a dispute in The Citadel, which is Mass Effect's galactic United Nations. The Elcor are the type of creature that never get a line in most science fiction movies. They look as if they weigh the better part of a ton and have the rhinocerine skin to match their heft. This one was standing behind a computer console, which was strange, as they appear to be quadrupeds; their front legs, though massive, are long and nearly elegant, but probably not fine enough for a computer keyboard. No matter. He had a voice like Eeyore, lugubrious and sad. He was doing something arbitrative between another member of his species and a small, temperamental Volus.
The best thing about the Elcor, however, is that instead of mouths they have something like a cross between a cabbage and the flume of a violin. In order to express emotion to non-Elcor sentients they very thoughtfully append their emotional state verbally to their conversations-- as in, "Annoyed: I cannot help you right now, human," or, "Pleasantly amazed: Thank you for the gift, human," or "Venomous sarcasm: 'What a piece of work is a man...'"
The particularly economic problem of filmmaking made it so that all film aliens are either bipeds or sacks of cloth and rubber. The Elcor represent something that could only exist in video games--an elegant solution to an overworked animator having one more mouth to sync to a vocal track.
Where did they go in Mass Effect 2? The only Elcor I've been able to talk to so far has been a short exchange on a criminal waystation called Omega. They are entirely in the peripheral in this new iteration of the franchise. I miss their gentle ways. ¶ 4:16 PM
Mass Effect 2 is now one of the best reviewed video games of the current generation, and even if the provenance of some of those reviews can't withstand close scrutiny, the game deserves it.
I've never been fond of the vast accretion of item management tools that have dogged RPGs since they moved from the tabletop onto the screen, even in the case of Bioware RPGs. Finding stuff, jettisoning stuff, acquiring stuff, most of it undifferentiated, except by increments of power and efficacy the gameworld's conflict engine scales to match; this is the sort of zero-sum game electronic entertainment too often mistakes for depth. RPGs are like crack to the meritorious, and the "experience point" is among the most ideologically suspect conventions in video games. XP suggests that money does not quantify our experience enough on a paycheck-to-paycheck basis--the RPG player wants it dribbling around her head, instantly quantified, for every conflict resolved either by word or by hammer. In Mass Effect 2, however, advancements in weapon load-outs and powers make sense and jibe rhythmically with the justifiably praised conversation system Bioware has produced. It's the same wish-fulfilling reward system of absurd responsiveness, of course, but it doesn't keep you constantly counting, selling, counting, as happens in a game like Fallout 3. Mass Effect 2, in short, is an incredibly fun and addictive experience.
Yet video games are quibble machines, and I have one: where are the Elcor?
I met my first Elcor early in Mass Effect 1. He was arbitrating a dispute in The Citadel, which is Mass Effect's galactic United Nations. The Elcor are the type of creature that never get a line in most science fiction movies. They look as if they weigh the better part of a ton and have the rhinocerine skin to match their heft. This one was standing behind a computer console, which was strange, as they appear to be quadrupeds; their front legs, though massive, are long and nearly elegant, but probably not fine enough for a computer keyboard. No matter. He had a voice like Eeyore, lugubrious and sad. He was doing something arbitrative between another member of his species and a small, temperamental Volus.
The best thing about the Elcor, however, is that instead of mouths they have something like a cross between a cabbage and the flume of a violin. In order to express emotion to non-Elcor sentients they very thoughtfully append their emotional state verbally to their conversations-- as in, "Annoyed: I cannot help you right now, human," or, "Pleasantly amazed: Thank you for the gift, human," or "Venomous sarcasm: 'What a piece of work is a man...'"
The particularly economic problem of filmmaking made it so that all film aliens are either bipeds or sacks of cloth and rubber. The Elcor represent something that could only exist in video games--an elegant solution to an overworked animator having one more mouth to sync to a vocal track.
Where did they go in Mass Effect 2? The only Elcor I've been able to talk to so far has been a short exchange on a criminal waystation called Omega. They are entirely in the peripheral in this new iteration of the franchise. I miss their gentle ways. ¶ 4:16 PM
