The Effect of Mass: Gravity

Here it is, 2:50 in the morning.  I've been awake for the last hour, and had only 3 hours of sleep to this point.  I'm tired, but my brain won't turn off.


It's because I've finished my Mass Effect story.  I've always considered my soldier-class character with the heart of gold to be my "real" character, my "real" story.  All the other characters have been somehow copies or shadows of the "real" universe.  As such, I've always taken my soldier character through the game first.  In fact, after the hard drive crash a few months ago that cost me all of my saved games, the soldier is the only one I'd remade all the way through the first two games.  (Though I do have Michelle's character through the first game and my second, "mirror universe" character through the first game as well.)


Finishing my story has been an emotional roller coaster, particularly in the 3rd game.  Now that it's over, there's a void.  A hole in my heart.


It seems so silly, and makes me feel like I have to turn in my man card, but...when I finished earlier today, I laid down and cried for half an hour.


I don't expect anyone to understand, even Michelle.  (She didn't understand, but she was sympathetic and didn't make fun of me; she supported me as best she could.  I'm so glad I have her.)  I'm not even sure I fully understand, and I think that's why I'm awake at 3:00.  I imagine that I seem obsessed or crazy to other people, and I'm OK with that.  I've tried to articulate what has hooked me into the the ME universe before, but I'm not sure I've ever sufficiently explained myself.  Perhaps my attachment is simply unfathomable.


So what got to me today?  I don't think there's one, single factor that put me in that particular place. In fact, I think there are 3 factors that led me there.

1. The final installment of the trilogy is a war.  I can say that without delivering spoilers, because if you're reading this, then you're either a fan of the game and knew this was coming; or you're not inclined to play it and so don't really care to witness the lead-in.  Either way, there've been trailers on the Internet and even TV commercials that have revealed that fact.  Being a soldier in a war, it's expected that not everyone you know will see the end of the war.  So I mourn the loss of characters who I consider friends.  They'll be missed.  These losses have been increasingly weighing on me as I've progressed through the last game and through the whole trilogy.  
2. The ending that I experienced wasn't as tidy as the earlier games.  In the first game, I took down the antagonists, looked like I might not have survived the destruction of the enemy ship, but climbed out of the rubble to soldier on.  In the second game, I took a team of specialists on a suicide mission and managed to not lose a single one.  In the third...there are permanent consequences to my actions and choices.  Galaxy-altering consequences.  It's not that I'm upset that BioWare made me a universe that didn't end up with a "happily ever after" that's bothering me.  As a story device, I'm satisfied with the ending I experienced.  No, it's more that I've altered the way things work in that universe, and it's messy.  I'm trying to communicate this without spoiling anything, and it's not easy.  There's a sense of loss, rather than dissatisfaction, that goes with how my story turned out.  It was a gritty, non-fairy-tale ending; satisfying, but leaving me with a hole in my heart.
3. There's no more to the story.  It's done.  In fact, it's so done that it has occurred to me to not actually play it again, as if another playthrough would somehow diminish what has occurred before.  Clearly that won't be the case--I need to see how the universe changes as I make different choices throughout the story.  Even if BioWare ever decided to make a Mass Effect 4 (and being owned by EA, I could certainly see them having to make a 4th game), I'm not sure I could play it.  My favorite game series EVER, and the story is so wrapped up and completed that I don't think I could play another one.  So the story is done, gone, never going to be new again.  It's like catching up with an old friend with terminal cancer and when you part at the end of your time together, you actually KNOW that you will never see this person again.  I can never again have a first-time experience with a chapter of the Mass Effect story, and that is creating far more sadness than I ever thought possible for just a game.

It's all weighing heavily.  It has my brain in a constant turmoil, preventing rest.  (I'm down to a sleep availability of 2.5 hours for the night.  I just finished a 3-day weekend to live this story, so there's no way I'm going to call in sick!)

I don't know if anyone will understand me or sympathize.  I don't even think Michelle really gets what I'm going through, but she's trying to help me in any way she can.  (Even as she's prodding me to get "her" character through ME2, so that I can start making her movies of ME3, which is how she experiences the story.)  I don't know whether this blog entry will bring me peace so that I can sleep, or if my friends and co-workers will simply make fun of me for being a wuss who cried because of a game...

For me though, the story was as close to perfect as I could ever expect or hope to encounter.

There are books in the game universe.  They're peripheral to this story, though ME3 did have some characters from those books show up.  The writing of those books isn't great; it's OK, but more like pulp science fiction than an epic saga.  In some ways though, I wish that the main story of the game was told in a series of books, just so that more people could share in it--the kind of people who wouldn't be at all inclined to play the games for the story.  That's why I've made movies of the game story, just so I could share with Michelle.  (And why I'm remaking those movies, after their loss in the great hard-drive crash.  Hell, I spent $80 on movie-editing software because I was sick of the free Windows one.)

So there it is.  I've told the world that the game made me cry.  That won't come back to haunt me...

Maybe, just maybe, I can finally sleep.