#mass effect analysis

Having just finished Virmire in my latest Mass Effect playthrough, I wanted to revisit a fairly well-worn topic; that big infamous choice of whether Ashley or Kaiden gets to be in the rest of the trilogy, and which one gets to be atomized.

Now some might remember a few years back I did a lengthy analysis musing on if there was a way we could tease out some kind of ‘canon’ Virmire Survivor based on a combination of factors outside of the players control and what simply might make ‘sense’ for Shepard.

And while I still stand by most if not all of the points I made in that post, particularly the take that saving whoever you sent with the Salarians really SHOULD have been a requirement for saving Kirrehe and his team, I also now feel there is a better way to approach this question. Namely, by expanding on a few details I only touched on in the original post.

Instead of trying to say Shepard choosing to save Ashley or Kaiden makes ‘logical’ sense or that there is some underlying ‘canon’ choice hidden in the details, or simply personal preference over which character you like more, or the rather unsettling/moronic ‘I want Ashley/Kaiden to DIE because they’re racist/boring!’ takes that feel sadly common…

I feel like the more interesting and probably more meaningful question is simply ‘What makes more sense narratively?’ What version plays best into the characters and their arcs up to this point and going forward? What would have the bigger emotional impact?

At the end of the day, what choice could make for the better STORY?

So to that end, let’s actually apply some media literacy to this question and examine Kaiden and Ashley as proper characters who are part of a larger narrative.

Starting with Kaiden Alenko, there is a very interesting quality to him that actually makes him entirely unique among the ME1 Squadmates. Now a lot of fans call Kaiden ‘boring’ in the first game, but this is really a massive misinterpretation. It’s not that Kaiden somehow ‘doesn’t have anything going on’ as a character, but instead he is the only member of the squad who quite notably doesn’t have some major personal character conflict in the first game.

Think about it; Liara is central to the conflict concerning the Protheans and has the baggage with her mother to deal with, Wrex has his broad cultural depression and feelings of hopelessness about his people, Tali has major anxiety about living up to her peoples’ expectations, Garrus has his hangups on really wanting to be a case-study on copaganda and Ashley has her intense family baggage and martyr-complex, and also some bigotry.

But Kaiden? He doesn’t really have any major hangups. And what makes this interesting is that it’s because if you think about it, Kaiden basically already figured his shit out BEFORE we actually meet him. He had all of his major character conflict about his Biotics training, issues with aliens and having his big character epiphany that aliens were really no different than humans, in his backstory. Unlike the rest of the squad, Kaiden basically has everything figured out.

Which by standard narrative convention, sadly makes him the ideal choice for the big, dramatic, heart-breaking third-act heroic sacrifice. Especially when compared to Ashley.

As I brought up in the previous post; consider how much Ashley is completely fixated on ‘atoning’ for the ‘shame’ of her grandfather, to very self-destructive degrees. She spends the first game basically looking for a big proverbial sword to throw herself on to ‘redeem her family name’, something that Shepard will directly call her out on if she survives Virmire.

So by law of dramatic and tragic irony, it really does make more sense for Kaiden to be the one to die on Virmire instead of Ashley, doesn’t it? The one who seems to have his life figured out dies, and the one who’s looking to make a big heroic sacrifice is the one who lives.

If you think about it, Kaiden in the first game occupies a similar position to a lot of Doomed-Mentor characters. A character who has already finished their development and basically figured themselves out in contrast to the other characters, which in turn leaves them as one most likely to be killed off. Heck, given their contrasting views on non-humans and his seniority (seven years to be precise), I think it’s easy to imagine Kaiden taking on a bit of a mentoring role to Ashley over the course of the first game. The cool-headed officer who takes the hot-headed solider under his wing. Which in turn would make his death over hers hit all the harder.

And again, Ashley is the one with the more unresolved character development. Heck, we can even read Kaiden’s death on Virmire combined with Shepard calling her out as Ashley’s big wake-up call that actually spurs her development gets her to let go of her self-destructive martyr complex.

Additionally, I feel like Kaiden’s position in the story as your first squadmate makes his death hit all the harder. This is the guy who’s been with Shepard since the very beginning of the game, one of the very first characters we’re even introduced to. He’s the squadmate who’s been here from the very start. Which of course when tied into the aforementioned ‘guy who’s more or less got things figured out’ trait can potentially make him feel all the more pivotal. I feel like Kaiden can easily considered to be ‘the reliable one’, the one who’s got his shit together. Pretty much the most likely to be Shepard’s Number 2 in the first game.

Which of course would make his death hit all the harder.

And as I discussed in the previous post, I feel like the writing for the Virmire Survivor in the following two games does ultimately fit Ashely quite a bit better than Kaiden, ie; Kaiden seems the type to be more thoughtful, read between the lines and ultimately give Shepard more the benefit of the doubt about working with Cerberus, whereas Ashely is exactly the type to immediately distrust Shepard, and of course get completely suckered by Udina in ME3.

Now of course as I also brought up in the original post, this overview in no way covers all possible scenarios. Obviously Kaiden being romanced by Shepard does potentially change this narrative quite a bit and gives Kaiden’s character a much bigger reason to be kept around. As well as actually making him fit the post-ME1 writing for the Virmire Survivor a fair bit better.

The aliens in Mass Effect are more human-like than actual aliens would be. Mass effect has just enough biology to have me interested and just enough biology to infuriate me because i can see all the flaws. Part of it is that mass effect tries to play on classic scifi tropes which themselves were based on bad science. Like aliens in old movies were humans in suits with paint. The second part is that the game was written by a bunch of writers not scientists so a bunch if small inaccuracies are everywhere and i can tell while they did research it's only a basic understanding. Biology serves as a narrative tool and thus lacks the fundamental rules real life science exists on.

Intelligent design, gods' will, creationism, etc. don't exist in reality. Evolution is the process in which random new mutations arise in a population and traits which best allow the population to survive and reproduce in their specific environmental conditions, are differentially selected for over many generations becoming more or less common. So Padok Wilks as a trained biologist should know this. The thing about mass effect is that it includes many common scifi tropes and many scifi tropes in the anglosphere by nature of the history of the anglosphere, include a lot of latent christianity, including intelligent design. On of the common scifi tropes is of the ancient aliens, precursors, creators sometimes. Take for example 2001: A Space Odyssey guiding humans with the monoliths and transcending them into space babies. In Evangelion the game reveals the First Ancestral Race. In mass effect we know certain species like the proteans have meddled with other pre-space species. We know the reapers have been setting up conditions to guide species to harvest. Even if the process of evolution is the same as in the real universe, it's well established in scifi that another ancient species could have meddled with the course of a species development.

What is intelligence. Humans by default are pretty anthropocentric, it is difficult for most to imagine things beyond their own experiences. And so especially historically but even now intelligence has been defined as how close to human an animal acted. The debunked evolutionary ladder concept includes both the concepts above: humanity placed as the pinnacle of evolution and it's goal, a tiered hierarchy where of course humans were at the top and where other animals were ranked as more or less advanced based on how similar to humans they were. Dolphins use tools and toys, slime molds can solve mazes, masting trees or bamboo know exactly when to coordinate reproductive events years apart, octopuses solving puzzles, squirrels and other cache making species like certain birds remember thousands of individual locations more than most humans can. Yet still we see these things in human concepts: tools, memory, problem solving, the classic mirror exercise. In mass effect all the aliens are humanoid (minus the evil reapers (and their creators). The sapient species are pretty much all bipedal bilaterally symmetrical tetrapods with a recognizable head, 2 feet, and 2 hands. It is also the species that most resemble humans that get the most screen time, speaking lines, and other narrative measures of importance. The only non human shaped species are elcor which are quadrupedal and hanar which are mostly a joke. The leviathans and reapers and rachni are my lifeline, and they have non human body plans to make them sinister, villainous, untrustworthy, and well alien. None of them are really characters, they are more exposition and plot points, obstacles for the player to overcome. Where are my mycelium aliens! where are my incomprehensible aliens. like imagine because of the communication gap all the species you don't even know are sapient (what is sapient).

The aliens in Mass Effect are tame. They're made to be palatable to the average person's sexual orientation. Drell were literally designed around Thane who was created to be attractive in an exotic way. This has many causes including the antropocentricism touched upon above. Mass Effect includes a lot of scifi tropes and many of these tropes were from visual media like movies or TV. The thing with video is that the cheapest and easiest way to get an alien character is to paint an actor blue and maybe glue some prostetic antennae on their head. Actually hiring a biologist consultant to design a species, dedicated writers to making it work, prop and puppet builders, puppet actors, artists, special effects teams, is all extremely expensive in effort, money, and time. so no one ever does it. and once people painted green was a short hand for alien other studios feel less shy on using lazy short hand for aliens. Lastly writers are pretty much never scientists, a lot of them are english lit majors. Writing biologically plausible aliens is way out of their field. And I can tell the Bioware writers did try, but just like a bunch of english majors trying to write biology, they lack an understanding of the fundamental principles underpinning biology and science in general. So while it's a good effort, the believability is a veneer and it easily falls away.

From a design perspective sure I can understand the tropes Mass Effect is invoking, but why bother having aliens if they aren't going to be alien. Now Bioware could have leaned into the guided evolution aspect, that reapers have been farming species into convergently evolving humanoid shapes for millions of years. But that isn't a major point in Mass Effect and also the Leviathans aren't humanoid so why would they. A classic scifi trope they also could have invoked would be the precursor/ancestral race trope where all the sapients are descended from a common humanoid species seeded onto different planets. This is tricky to navigate though as it can be very easy to slide into race purity talking points.

Yeah its such a letdown. I did a xenophobic Shepard who didnt recruit Garrus and they were still buddies in ME2.

Hah ohgod that would be EVEN MORE frustrating!! At least w/ a more generically ambivalent or friendly towards aliens Shepard, you could just try to headcanon it away as they hit it off well and became quick friends? (Though, like I've already said, it is oh so frustrating that they have to be bestest buds regardless of how you want to play your Shepard.)

Bleeeh. It's just like the issue with Liara, forcing her to be in love with Shepard no matter what and all.