10 minute read
Pandemic Pride pt.2
Game review: Mass Effect Legendary Edition
Bioware’s remaster of the Mass Effect series serves up sweet nostalgia, but fails to shock
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matt thomson
arts writer
Wikipedia Commons
We all know that should be Jane Shepard on that promo material, let’s be real.
Over the past 14 months, between unemployment, COVID restrictions, and a dreadful mix of boredom and existential uncertainty, I spent most of my time either exploring the internet, buying stuff online, or numbing my dull existence by latching onto any form of audio-visual stimuli within reach. Well, here I am, 40 pounds heavier, significantly more broke, and with nothing but a bunch of random stuff in my apartment to show for it. Until a remastered version of one of gaming’s beloved trilogies, Mass Effect: Legendary Edition, was released to shuffle up my regular routine!
For those who don’t know, Mass Effect is a sci-fi RPG videogame series from the Edmonton based game studio Bioware, first released for the Xbox 360 in 2007. To oversimplify things, you play as a Human Alliance commander named Shepard aboard the S.S.V. Normandy and travel around the galaxy interacting with a variety of alien species while making friends with your crew mates, shooting stuff, and making important decisions throughout the entire series. The initial trilogy ended in 2013 with the final DLC release for ME 3, after which a spin-off, Mass Effect Andromeda, was developed by a new team and eventually released as a complete disaster in early 2017. During the 2020 Game Awards, Bioware (or what was left of it) released a teaser trailer for a new Mass Effect game to the surprise of basically everyone before announcing a remastered version of the original trilogy for Playstation 4, Xbox One, and PC, titled “Legendary Edition”.
My history with the franchise started in 2010, after I bought the PS3 version of ME 2. At the time, I was a 14-year-old pubescent who spent almost all of his free time in his parent’s basement playing video games, so naturally I took to Mass Effect like an 80’s glam-rocker to cocaine. A year and a half later, I pre-ordered the collector’s edition of ME 3, played it for almost a week straight, and like many others was met
with sheer disappointment upon reaching the end. Still, even with the abysmal ending, I held mostly fond memories of the games going into my recent playthrough of Legendary Edition, and in all honesty, that fondness has only grown.
So, how do the games stack up 13 years later? Out of the trilogy, the first game has received the most TLC and overall improvements from this round of remastering. While the graphics are acceptable, the gameplay and exploration components have been sharpened to a fine point, and the overall writing and story elements (while clunky at times) still largely hold up. ME 1 has the most traditional RPG elements out of the three, as looting equipment and managing your team’s weapons, armor, and special abilities are all core parts of the game. You’re also constantly flooded by a billion side quests throughout the entire game which vary widely in terms of enjoyment from fun, to repetitive, to a tad drawn out. Overall, the game holds up as an enjoyable, unique experience filled with hours of great content,
a fantastic musical score, a memorable bastard of a villain, and a great ensemble of side characters. While many, including myself, held ME 2 up as a shining masterpiece and the uncontested best in the series years ago, upon replaying it I can certainly say that attitude has changed. The dialogue, banter, and crewmates are all extremely well-written and performed, yet the story itself is somewhat lackluster. The villain(s), while serviceable, aren’t especially awe-inspiring and lack any real charisma or memorability, and the story beats are disjointedly mediocre. The crew, however, along with their loyalty missions, are arguably the best part of the entire series, and are the glue which holds the rest of the game together. The gameplay, unfortunately, has aged very poorly, and is the barest bones example of seventh-generation third-person shooter I can think of. This isn’t helped by the fact that combat sections are much more frequent and are an absolute slog to get through from start to finish. Compared to the first
game, ME 2 has received relatively little attention in the way of remastering, and a few details aside is basically just a slightly shinier port of the original game.
ME 3 is bit of an odd entity. The gameplay is easily the best of the three, as it strikes a nice balance between ME 2’s cover-based shooting and ME 1’s RPG elements. The combat overall has been refined to a sharp edge – it’s fast-paced enough to keep from becoming a drag and includes a wide enough range of enemy types and weaponry to stay interesting. Crew members, character dialogue, and mission-stages are all incredibly well done, even if the overall experience is somewhat narrow and incomplete. There is no online component this time around, though, which is a bit of a shame but not entirely surprising. Overall, ME 3 is probably the best of the trilogy, with a rather good plot; except that Legendary Edition opts to retain the original ending of the series. Which, frankly, is absolute garbage even nine years later.
To oversimplify things again, my month-long journey with Legendary Edition, while marred occasionally by aged mechanics, distracting quirks, and a total lack of narrative catharsis, was still a pretty-fun jaunt through memory lane. Revisiting the fictional universe I had fallen in love with as a teenager proved a solid experience, and the developers put enough elbow grease into the remaster to make Mass Effect worth another go for old-timers and newcomers alike. The characters you meet along the way remain as iconic as ever, and the overarching story is still compelling and effective, even if the conclusion is as trash as it is. Mass Effect: Legendary Edition made me harken back to all those after school hours I spent with a Dualshock 3 in my hands and has revitalized my appreciation for the experience Bioware first gave me 11 years back. In short, I still like Mass Effect, and for the first time in a decade, I’m actually interested to see where the future takes this series. Andromeda, though, is still terrible.
– Matt Thomson
july, 2021 arts & culture
carillonregina.com | the carillon | 10
Art Out Loud brings hope to local artists
Festival delights community of patrons and artists amidst pandemic concerns
holly funk
editor-in chief
Holly Worby
Art exhibit, or crime scene? Stay tuned to find out.
Though the performance and exhibition of art has been inhibited by the pandemic over the past year and a half, the creation of art has been occurring all the same, and through the festival Art Out Loud, locals were able to showcase much of what has been inspired. Artists and attendees alike gathered in downtown Regina on June 28 for the event, which mainly took place across Victoria Park, the Scarth Street strip, and the Cornwall Centre.
Mackenzy Vida, a mentee artist at Art Out Loud, explained that the event all began with an open call from the National Arts Centre. Vida and others at the Globe Theatre “reached out and said that we would love to be a part of it. Lo and behold, Regina, Saskatchewan got chosen, which is incredible!” The selection was like a breath of fresh air for the individuals involved as they returned to the joys of designing and planning live performances and instalments once again. “This is the first real event that theatre artists and technicians have been able to have,” she said. “This is the first time we’ve had work since the pandemic, and it has been a huge honour.”
Co-artistic director of the festival, Sierra Haynes, said that their selection process for artists and instalments took an openarms approach from the start. “I don’t think it was so much looking for specific things in artists, this was more a showcase to show what artists were doing on their own anyway. There was no audition process, it wasn’t a pickychoosy type of event, just about lifting up the pieces of art that have been made during COVID and getting them in front of an audience.”
Vida described the festival as “an interactive festival of sound, theatre, comedy, dance, and all types of performance.” Live performances included a land acknowledgment performance by Indigenous artist Teddy Bison and his family who graced attendees with dancing and drumming multiple times throughout
the day, poetry in both Arabic and English by Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish read by 3arabizi: عربي/ انجليزي and Arthur Milner, and the live curation of personalized verses done by Greg Ochitwa.
In addition to the land acknowledgment performance, the festival included a small plot of land in the north-east corner of Victoria Park that had been painted like a map of Saskatchewan. This map was further marked with the borders of Treaties 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, and 10 that fall
within what is now Saskatchewan, and had markers with the names of each of the First Nations groups whose land we are on. It was made interactive with the addition of smaller yellow flags for attendees to stake, allowing them to locate and acknowledge which treaty they are a part of while learning the names of the First Nations groups included in that treaty.
Those who were able to find a table at the Copper Kettle, the Fat Badger, Avenue Restaurant, or Circa27 in Hotel Saskatche-
wan were able to listen to radio theatre performances written and performed by local artists and troupes. Haynes mentioned that she contributed a piece, “a voice mail piece, so it’s a series between two people trying to catch each other up on their lives,” which was written specifically with radio theatre in mind. “Adapting theatre in this way is an incredible feat. The arranging and adapting of processes. Once upon a time radio drama was a big deal, but we haven’t seen much of that in the last few decades, so having a festival celebrating that is incredible.”
Vida’s participation in the festival as a mentee artist included the opportunity “to shadow under professional scenic painters, professional carpenters, and it was basically like ‘Here, I’m going to show you how to bring this idea to life and be a part of the creation process.’” She mentioned tearfully that “It’s been really evident, the importance of the arts during these times and how much we all miss it, and how much we all feel like a part of us was missing for so long.” There was a tangible air of excitement among artists, volunteers, and attendees at the festival as they had the chance to get back to the events and opportunities that make them excited about life.
The Art Out Loud festival was just one aspect of a larger event across Canada, Grand Acts of Great Hope, in which Vida said “each of the pieces have to do with reconnecting with the community and what it means to connect with one and other. Just to celebrate being together again.” While the event itself has passed, Vida also mentioned that “At the end of [the festival] each of the groups are having a video made that’s going to be available on social media and the National Arts Centre’s website, as well as it’s going to be playing projected on their [building’s] windows so anyone who walks by in Ottawa is going to see our work in little Regina, Saskatchewan.”
– Mackenzy Vida
