I wrote this instead of playing Mass Effect. I want to play Mass Effect. I wish they’d just hand out a list of stuff that changes your ME 2 play through, as one of my biggest complaints about ME 1 was the lack of consequences for your actions. I’m doing a FemShep, Paragon soldier who romances Liara and sacrifices Ashley.

But, I’m not playing Mass Effect because it crashes my computer whenever a cutscene plays. (The long, unskipable cutscenes that I’ve seen at least a dozen times already) I have no idea what the problem is. I’ve played the game previously on this computer with no problem. I can only assume there’s a conflict with the game and the latest driver from NVidia. Bizarrely enough, when it crashes my desktop, it also cleans out all my cookies.

I was able to make it through the first cutscene by turning all textures and particle effects to low, and setting my resolution at 1024 x [whatever it is], but that’s rather unsatisfying when I can play the rest of the game with settings at maximum at a resolution of 1650 x 1050. Then again, when ME first came out, I played the entire thing at 800 x 600 at the lowest possible settings, and I was glad for it because my computer was woefully underspec.

I even remember the horror of the conduit run. A sequence that CANNOT be finished if your FPS is under 20. I literally went through that one section over fifty times and could not do it. It too featured an unskipable cutscene (We must protect the council!) though never once did my computer crash while I played.

This is, and has always been, the big problem with computer games: they’re just so finicky. I’ve just done a clean install on Vista (goodbye achievements/previous playthroughs) and now I can’t launch the configure utility. I’m sure the available patch will fix this. At the same time, the opening cutscene didn’t make my game crash. Why mess with a good thing?

Of course, that means I won’t be able to play Bring Down the Sky, which is something I’m looking forward to.

I mentioned that the lack of visible consequences for actions in ME was a complaint of mine I hope to see remedied in ME2. In fact, I’d say that a great deal of my eventually evaluation of the second game will depend on how well it fulfills the promises of the first. My other major complaint about the game is the alignment system.

I am not anti-alignment. In a computer RPG, choices are limited, so I think having an explicit ethical system with measurable increases, decrease, and consequences is a fine model to base actions and dialogue on. My problem is when we’re presented with an ethical system that claims to be more than good and evil, but isn’t. I had the same issue with Jade Empire and its Open Palm/Closed Fist. There’s the opportunity to explore issues and values that haven’t been tackled before, and we’re reduced to Be Nice and Helpful or Be a Violent Asshole.

In one of the newly released ME2 demos, we have a renegade option that involves kicking a guy off a roof because he gives you lip. In ME, we had punching out insane people and reporters. I realize some people love it, but I feel cheated when my options are to act like the perfect soldier or an eight-year-old in an adult’s body. Likewise, one of the ‘big choices’ in ME failed to take into account the most paragon of actions. On Noverria, I’m given the choice to kill the Queen or let her go. Garris remarks that we should leave this up to the Council. Er, good point. This is something a soldier who’s interested in protocol and following orders would definitely want to do.

I wish alignment systems in games were similar to the Hierarchy of Sins in Vampire: the Masquerade. The original rulebook gave us one that looked a great deal like conventional morality, but some of the splatbooks presented ethical systems that ranged from eccentric to inhuman. The thing is though that they were all based around an ideal, and when you read them, you quickly understood what that ideal was and why the ‘sins’ violated it.

And I think it’s important that the developers actually have an ideal in mind other than random jerkery. Take Open Palm in Jade Empire. The Open Palm respects harmony and social conventions. In the Jade Empire some people are considered inherently better or worse than others, and slavery has a long history. Therefore, a follower of the Open Palm ought to condone slavery, but if you do so in the game, you get Closed Fist points.

It seems in ME2, they’re abandoning the original notion of Paragon altogether. When asked if you’re going to stop an assassin, your dialogue options are ‘Why?’ and ‘No.’ Where is the ‘Hell, yeah’ option? Last time I checked, assassination is rather illegal; if a Spectre considers themselves an officer of the law, they’d stop an assassination.

I understand that the story is supposed to be darker, and the PC is gathering together a band of scum and ruffians (the most elite scum and ruffians available), but I’d rather have the option to play Paragon and suffer for it, instead of having to play Renegade or Indifferent.