Fans: ME3 ruined TIM. He used to be so cool and grey. And now he’s just your basic bad guy.

TIM, as supported by the novels written by Drew Karpyshyn: *mentioned to say exactly what you want to hear and disguise his actual intentions, master manipulator who managed to get Aria on his side because he needed to punish his rogue agent*

And now when they decide to “put the franchise on ice” I get so frustrated, because this could have been stopped, Andromeda could have been a good game if EA just would have decided to pull their asses out and give the studio resources they needed? Like, projects tend to not become as good as you thought them to be when you start pulling off A LOT of people from the team what did you think???

This made me laugh so hard. This self-proclaiming racist is shocked that other racists are "mean-spirited."

What the actual fuck.

People think that being a "race realist" actually makes you a "nice" racist?

There's no such thing as a nice racist.

Because it's not right to be racist. It's very, very wrong.

I remember some years back, I talked about how Ashley from Mass Effect considered herself a "realist" and not a "pessimist" but she was actually just a fucking racist.

Or a space racist, if you will. Which made it really ironic that she would hate a group of human nationalists like Cerberus, whose moto is to put humanity first, even at the cost of non-human lives.

I always loved Ashley because she was a very realistic character. And, yes, she was racist. In the first game, it was done so well, and her character was given so much thought. But after the first game when her writer left . . . she became something of a cardboard cut out. She was Flanderized, and being a racist hypocrite just took over her entire personality instead of just being one part of it.

I pointed out in an older post here that Ashley was right about the council. They did ultimately toss Shepard to the wolves and treat her like a tool, a distraction that allowed them escape to safety while she took all the blows.

But then . . . so did the Alliance. So did Cerberus.

Pay attention to Mass Effect.

The entire reason Shepard was put forward as a spectre was so that humans could make a grab for more power. Humans had been in contact with aliens for barely thirty years (or something) and yet were already pushing for power and playing skeevy politics, and Shepard was just a tool in all that.

Humans needed council power because they were asshole wannabe-imperialists who brutally shoved the bartarians off their own land, then got confused when the batarians didn't just lay down and take it. Instead, the batarains fought back by trying to wipe out human colonies.

I really don't blame the council for not giving a fuck. Humans caused their own problems, couldn't solve them, and then cried to the council, demanding help. (The council also refused to help the batarians survive against human brutality, likely because they believed humans could be useful down the line and didn’t want to make an enemy.) Humans really were the weakest aliens in the galaxy precisely because they were so young. Even the damn vorlus didn't let themselves get in such a situation.

The only reason the humans have Shepard is because there is a two out of three chance that fighting the batarians made Shepard the soldier they are. Given that sort of playthrough, the galaxy has batarians to thank for Shepard.

My first Sheperd was Akuze/Mindoir because I thought it would be intersting to have such a fucked up background. It proved to be the most interesting playthrough I ever did, as it gave me the most chances to roleplay given the Thresher Maw lore and the batarian dlcs for the first game.

So yeah. The Alliance tried to use Shepard to get humans out of their pickle.

Cerberus did the same thing, resurrecting Shepard and trying to use her like a puppet to ensure humanity's survival against the Collectors and the Reapers (because they sure as hell didn't care if any other races survived).

This is not a race thing. All people have the ability to be equally shitty when it comes to their survival. But Ashley could only see it in terms of racism because she's a fucking racist.

So to Ashley, the council will toss Shepard to the wolves because they're asari, turian, and salarian -- not because they're frightened people who act shitty when fearing for their lives.

Racism is racism. "Race realism" is something cowards claim so that they can cling to the idea of being good people who just see it like it is. In reality, they see nothing.

People who are racist do not live in reality. As I've often said before, they see what they want to see, through the filter of their emotions and how some races made them feel once. They see what they want to see based solely on what society told them and not anything they discovered for themselves. Which more than proves that humans are irrational fools guided purely by emotion (we always remember how people made us feel more than anything else and this is one way prejudice happens -- most misogynists are just mad at their mother or some girlfriend who cheated on them once).

Shepard immediately points out that Ashley has never been exposed to aliens, which is an apt observation: this is part of why she is racist. Ashley grew up in a human world, surrounded by other humans who were bitter against the turian after the war. Her family's entire life was ruined by something she perceives as the turians' fault, as if the overarching war were so simple, as if both sides had not committed atrocity.

Ashley's life experiences, topped with the fact that she was sheltered growing up, are what made her become a racist. It was great to see her slowly changing in the first game and also learning better, but by the last game, she's back at square 1, with zero personal growth at all.

Bottomline, racism is racism. It's all shitty. Maybe you're not Hitler, but that time you locked your door because a black person walked by your car was still a pretty shitty thing to do. And black people notice when you behave that way and it HURTS.

(I can't cound the times non-black people have been afraid of me over thier stupid idea that black people are violent and dangerous and then treated me like some scary monster.)

Just because you think you're a nice person doesn't mean your shitty views are incapable of hurting people of color. Your actions and atttitudes affect people negatively, no matter how good you think you are.

There's no such thing as "race realist." Because racism requires you to step outside of reality.

Sorry for explaining everything in terms of video games, but this WAS originally a video game blog. Also, I just suck at explaining things.

But this is a place where I can talk about whatever I want, however I want.

And then AGAIN you have the option of hardening or softening Garrus via his loyalty mission...and again, it makes no difference to his personality in ME3. And while I know always having Shepard’s back is his whole schtick, I feel like there should have been something you could do to make him angry at your or waver in his trust - like killing Mordin, shooting Wrex and especially causing Tali to kill herself.

There is seriously some creepy shit going on in regards to TIM.

When you meet TIM, he's all happy to meet you and seems to believe that the two of you are going to buddy up to save the galaxy. For him, it's like his favorite super hero walked out of a comic book. He thinks everything he's doing is for the good of humanity, and he can't even see how he could possibly be the bad guy in this situation.

TIM thinks he's one of the of the good guys and that he's finally got his hero on his side.

Here's where it gets creepy.

TIM knows everything about you. Everything.

He has rebulit the Normandy better than before, hired a few people you know to make you feel comfortable, hired sweet little Kelly to help you relax, and also hired a bunch of people who don't know shit about Cerberus but practically worship Shepard -- all of this is manipulative to the core, an attempt to make Shepard trust TIM and relax into the position of being a Cerberus pet.

And that's what you are: TIM's pet. It's kinda like that episode of The Simpsons where Comic Book Guy captured Xena and was so blinded by hero worship that he couldn't even see she was just a normal person. He took her back to his lair and put her on display.

This is what's going on with Shepard.

If you go up to Shepard's cabin, you can see TIM has done everything to make his caged pet comfortable. There's a picture of Shepard's lover on the desk -- he knows that much about her personal life. And he’s so deluded into thinking he and Shepard are friends, he has the gall to try to talk to her about what happened at Horizon, to which my Shepard always replies, “None of your damn business.” 

There's also an entire closet of armor in Shepard's size -- he knows her bra cup, for fuck's sake. And why shouldn't he? His people have rebuilt your naked body from burnt scratch. He knows every fucking thing about you and has prepared this artificial habitat for his new pet.

It is creepy hero worship to the extreme, and I think the brilliance of Mass Effect 2 is not fighting the enemy but being forced to bite your tongue and work with them against a bigger threat. People say ME2 had no strong story just because we're not out saving the galaxy, but I love the story here. It's a character defining moment for Shepard when they do what's right for the lives of others, in spite of every hardship, in spite of the whole world turning against them.

TIM's anger in ME3 stems from the fact that the person he loved the most and believed in the most has given him the finger and turned their back on him. Just like Saren, he can't see that he's the bad guy because he's indoctrinated.

I think it was important to have a human character screw up this badly. The entire theme of the game is that all species of the galaxy are equal and, therefore, humans should be able to stand shoulder to shoulder with everyone else. Having a villain be a human is a constant reminder (for young fans) that humans are not the “best” and are not perfect and that is not the message here.

Really, I think the writing in all three games is great, with some obvious exceptions here and there: Kai Leng, Thane in ME3, the fact that every alien race is just a bunch of cheap traits rather than a diverse and complex people (for example, all volus seem to care only about money), and of course, that shitty ending.

People keep saying to move on and forget ME3's ending. Those people are stupid. Because Bioware has learned nothing. They aren't going to change because they can't even acknowledge that there's a problem to begin with. So I expect to get more shit from them -- especially with EA pulling their strings -- and I am very cautious about wasting money on any more of their games after ME3's ending, Dragon Age 2, and the lore-destroying, sequel baiting, badly written horror that was Dragon Age Inquisition.

And I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in this feeling. 

I fully anticipate that people are not going to buy Andromeda the second it comes out. People are going to play it on their friend's computer or watch Let's Play vids or probably even pirate it before they buy it, just to make sure Bioware isn't cramming more shit down our throats.

As for me, I will be on Youtube spoiling the game for myself before I waste another $70 bucks on fetch quests, empty worlds, and more sequel baiting.

My Shepard knew Liara had saved her from becoming the human reaper (or at least a big part of it) but was still bitter because there were other ways she could have prevented this from happening. Liara could have just cremated Shepard and scattered the ashes or something. My Shepard felt it was selfish of Liara to assist Cerberus in bringing her back and just really resented her a long time for it. My Shepard felt disturbed and unnatural, like she had no right to be alive when so many others were dead. She hated living with the guilt.

At the same time, I usually head canon that my Shepards have feelings for Liara too, they're just afraid of exploring those feelings and always wind up with someone else. I'm thinking of having my current Shepard romance Kaidan, then Thane, then fall in love with Liara in ME3.

I usually get back with Kaidan but not this time.

Because part of me has always resented Kaidan for constantly riding Shepard about Cerberus in ME3 (on top of saying some really insensitive stuff, like comparing Shepard to one of the indoctrinated Cerberus drones), long after suspicion should have passed. It's also really, reeeeally annoying that Kaidan questions you YET AGAIN right after the Cerberus coup and Thane's death in the hospital . . . It's like I just want to sucker punch Kaidan. My Shepard just watched the love of her life die (Thane will always be my favorite romance) and Kaidan wants to question her fucking integrity? And on top of that, the second Thane dies, every romanceable character is hitting you up and no one acknowledges Thane’s death. It’s just the shitty reality of being someone who romanced Thane.

It takes Kaidan the entire game to trust Shepard. He apologizes at the end of the game when you're poking through the Cerberus files and Shepard is uncertain about what she is (he gets really sweet and says “you’re real enough for me”), but he really should have been apologizing on Mars and the questions and accusations should have fucking stopped. Shepard has been incarcerated for six months. I think the Alliance would know if she was still working with Cerberus and/or an evil clone robot. FFS.

So yeah. That's my current game plan: Kaidan, Thane, Liara.