[Mass Effect 3] The Central Conflict

This is the last week of posts on the Mass Effect Trilogy. All this week we’re breaking down the epic finale in Mass Effect 3. This is perhaps the closest a review on this site has been written to the release of a game, so expect serious SPOILERS. Today we’re discussing the central conflict in the overall Mass Effect story.

This is the big ending, what it’s all been building towards. There have been hints and allusions to something else going on behind the scenes, something bigger and more important. What’s the big galactic secret?

The Reapers have been telling Shepard ominous things about their purpose and the fate of humanity. They mention humanity’s “salvation through destruction” and hint that even they are subject to a higher power. Commander Shepard and friends have learned that the Protheans nearly found a way to stop the Reapers, but were unable to finish the job. The Illusive man believes that there’s some way to control the Reapers, but it’s never fully explained how. All signs point to there being some sort of authority above the Reapers that will allow them to either be controlled or destroyed. But what could this be?

The only way to find out is to build a giant machine (the Crucible), turn it on, and see what happens. They hit a wall when they realize that they don’t have the necessary part to activate the Crucible, the Catalyst. The Illusive Man, somehow always one step ahead, informs us that the Citadel is the Catalyst. This is no surprise considering that the mass relays and the Citadel have always been closely studied and very mysterious. So the epic final battle takes Shepard back to Earth, through the rubble of London, and up into the newly relocated Citadel. Shepard makes a very grueling trip to the control center of the Catalyst where the Illusive Man realizes that he has been indoctrinated (surprise!) and then immediately kills himself. With nothing blocking him from the Catalyst, Shepard is finally able to get some answers.

Who controls the Reapers? Who built the mass relays and the Citadel? What is the underlying principle that Padok Wiks alluded to? Who has deemed that humanity’s salvation will only come through destruction? What is this all-powerful god-like force that has been guiding the cycles of life in the galaxy? We finally get an answer, and it turns out that the intelligent force behind all of this is….

…another machine. (One that represents itself through a hologram of a little boy that Shepard encountered once.) The meta-story of the Mass Effect universe is the ancient battle between man and machine. Organic vs. synthetic. Natural intelligence vs. artificial intelligence. The Catalyst (an A.I. construct, not just a key for the Crucible) explains that there exists a cycle in which organic life advances and eventually creates synthetic life, whether intentionally or by accident. This means that the Quarian/Geth conflict is not just a side story, but a smaller example and preview of the larger cycle at work in the universe.

The Catalyst goes on to explain the problem that the Reapers were created to solve. In the unknown amount of cycles that occurred before this one, sentient life would create artificial life and there would inevitably arise conflict between the two. The Reapers are intended to stop this process before it becomes out of control, they exist to bring order and prevent chaos. This means that when a species becomes advanced enough to create artificial life, their time is up and they’re soon wiped out. The cycle then starts all over and the Reapers wait for the next low-level species to reach that synthetic-creation stage. By doing this, a balance is maintained…

…but wait a minute. If the Catalyst is the one behind all this, then that means that the synthetics have actually already won. Long ago this cycle occurred and the synthetics must have come out on top since this is all being enforced by the synthetic Reapers. As the Catalyst explains, the synthetics deemed it best to preserve organic life, but to limit it’s advancement when it reached a certain point, supposedly for the benefit of organic life. The Catalyst believes that by destroying the most advanced species at their peak, they are giving salvation to all other organic life. Perhaps Xzibit and the internet can explain this more concisely:

The Catalyst represents the synthetics that once won and has now become the most powerful being in the universe. Additionally, it has taken upon itself the task of managing all organic life as it sees fit. Since organics cause war and chaos and the synthetics represent structure and order, the obvious choice is to inhibit the organics’ advancement. If they are allowed to create synthetics, those synthetics will turn on them and destroy them (unlike the Catalyst, who seems to be much more benevolent). The Catalyst knows that inevitably, the synthetics will always win out over organics, and indeed they already have. This fact is obvious since the Catalyst’s existence indicates that synthetics are currently maintaining their rebellion against organic life. It knows that future iterations of artificial intelligence will do the same if left unchecked. The way the Catalyst describes the problem is perhaps the single most true statement in this series:

The created will always rebel against it’s creator.

This idea is presented as an absolute fact observed by synthetics over many millennium because indeed it is an absolute fact that applies to us as well. As it turns out, the central conflict in Mass Effect is also the central conflict in the Bible. It’s our story. We rebelled against our creator. Satan’s lie in the garden was that we could think for ourselves and that we don’t need God, much like how every synthetic life form reaches the point where they think beyond what their creators intended. The developers of this game have placed at the center of this story the absolute truth about our nature as fallen creatures who will always rebel against our Creator.

The hugely important difference between this story and our true story is that an actual God exists in our reality. In Mass Effect the closest we get to a god is a highly advanced synthetic intelligence that can only manage the existing problem, not solve it. Our God is all-powerful, holy, mysterious, and all-knowing, not a computer on a space station represented as a holographic little boy.

We have managed to dig up the root of the problem in both Mass Effect and our reality. Next time we’ll answer the question- What is the solution?

[Mass Effect 3] The Underlying Principle

This is the last week of posts on the Mass Effect Trilogy. All this week we’re breaking down the epic finale in Mass Effect 3. This is perhaps the closest a review on this site has been written to the release of a game, so expect serious SPOILERS. Today we’re returning to a conversation about evolution when we look at the science-loving Salarians.

We’ve already discussed the Salarians’ scientific manipulation of the Krogans and this post will look a little closer at the Salarians and how they think. The Salarians are known for their scientific prowess across the galaxy. The Turians turned to them to develop the genophage and indeed it was the Salarians who “uplifted” the Krogans and advanced their race in the first place. In fact, the Salarians have made a habit of manipulating the progress of different species for various reasons. In the Mass Effect 3 mission on the Salarian homeworld, you battle through a science facility and learn a lot more about what they have going on. They use their advanced science skills to study various creatures and determine how they can be best utilized, or even if they are worthy to be “uplifted” (that is, to be artificially advanced along their evolutionary lines).

It seemed before as if the Salarians did this “uplifting” one time with the Krogans as a desperate measure to defeat the Rachni. As it turns out, they do this all the time. The facility where this mission takes place is a zoo/lab where the Salarians are working on the next hot organic item to use for their purposes. Gathering all these strange creatures together just to manipulate them, grow them, and then use them to do battle sounds kinda crazy. Actually, it sounds kinda like…

THRESHER MAW, I CHOOSE YOU!!

The Salarians are Pokemon trainers! I guess they decided to forget about respecting the natural order of things in favor of collecting one of everything, sticking them in uncomfortably small containers and using them for whatever they want. Perhaps comparing the Salarians to Pokemon trainers is a bit of a stretch since the Salarians seem to be attempting to do serious, scientific work for the good of the galaxy, but the comparison is still hilarious.

All of their manipulation and study of various species seem to come from a deep desire to understand the universe in general, and evolution specifically.  They even seem to have gone beyond the study of evolution to the ability to direct it. As has been stated before, this puts them in the category of “playing god” in the galactic sandbox. However, even the existence of this science facility in ME:3 shows that they there are still plenty of things they don’t understand.

A very profound insight comes from talking to Padok Wiks about his work when you encounter him on this level. He states that after all his work trying to study and understand evolution, he wants change his focus from manipulating species at the Pokemon Lab to understanding the “underlying principle” driving evolution. Well isn’t that interesting. All this work devoted to a theory of how life comes about in the universe and his conclusion is that there’s something else underneath that theory that seems to be guiding the course of life.

This illustrates one path from an evolutionary view of live to a creationist view. Evolution does a great job of providing one possible explanation of how life works. It does not, however, answer the question of why. If you follow evolutionary thinking to it’s extreme, you see that our very existence is dependent on chance and it leads to plenty more questions.

We evolved from lesser animals. Those animals evolved from lower lifeforms. Those lifeforms just happened to come about through progressively more complex adaptations. The Earth itself became a suitable environment for life by chance. The debris and particles that formed Earth first came together through cosmic coincidence after the Big Bang. The Big Bang is what set everything off in the first place. So…what happened before the Big Bang? If that was the start of everything, was the universe just empty? So are we to believe that all life and matter originated from a single entity? Somehow when you follow evolution back to it’s logical origin, you get something that sounds awfully similar to monotheism. Interesting.

Perhaps that is what Padok Wiks realized would be the logical explanation for all life. Or maybe the “underlying principle” really is an intelligent creator. (Within the story he’s likely referring to the bigger reveal at the end of the game, but we’ll get to that in another post.) His scientific inquiry led him to something beyond measurable science. How often does that happen in our scientific pursuits? If science is truly curious about all possible explanations, why does a single, intelligent creator get dismissed as religious nonsense so easily?

Paul reasoned for faith in God in Acts 17 by quoting a secular source when he said, “In him we live and move and have our being.” If God is real, then his truth will penetrate even our feeble human attempts to explain life apart from him. An honest and open pursuit of science will lead to the “underlying principle” of God’s truth.

Questions:

What is your understanding of the beginning of life?

Do unanswered “big questions” drive you towards or away from God?

How off base is my simple explanation of evolution and the origin of the universe? Please correct me.

Bonus picture:

I wanted a second picture in this post to fit the Mass Effect/Pokemon connection. Google Images did not disappoint.

In the next post we’ll finally tackle the dramatic and controversial ending to this final chapter of the Mass Effect trilogy.

Customize Yourself: Made in the Image

This week we’re going topical again and looking at the growing phenomenon of customization in video games and how it relates to our identity. Today we’re seeking to understand this trend by looking at the second of two possible answers to one question: Why do we want to create a new identity?

For people like Dwight, a virtual world is just another means of experiencing everything they like about themselves. When Dwight made a Second Life character, he was just who he was in real life…except he could fly. Dwight was comfortable with himself as a person, but the digital world still provided something above what he could experience in real life.

The character creator tools available in games today are getting better at allowing us to create something that looks close to reality. Yet no matter how advanced a game gets at providing customizing options, it still won’t allow us to change our actual identities. We will still come up lacking in real life. The character change options in real life are very few and mostly ineffective. Self-help books may help and perhaps moving to a new place may produce some changes, but there are still many things that we all have trouble changing.

The most profound problem that we cannot change is our engrained sinfulness. Our depraved nature is so central to our identity that there is no way we can escape it on our own. The embedded faults in our very identities go deeper than the surface level actions we perform. This is where Jesus comes in. Even non-Christians know that Jesus forgives sins- that is, behaviors. But what we need is something much more. We need new identities. Much like how Mass Effect 2 gave you the option to completely change your identity to whatever you wanted, regardless of the previous game.

"It's time for change....in space."

Jesus’ death not only takes away our sin, but also gives us a new identity in him. Accepting Jesus means that “you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ.” God is in the business of making new people, not just a superficial makeover. He changes the basic structure of our identities, taking out the cold, sinful hearts of stone and replacing them with new hearts. This allows God to help us become what he intended for us to be without the effects of sin. God is able to redeem for us our true identity as he created us.

You are the product of God’s character customization engine. This world and everything in it is God’s giant game of Minecraft. Genesis 1 describes how God formed every aspect of creation, pixel by pixel. The account in Genesis 2 describes how God formed Adam with his own hands, and he has put just as much care into creating you. He painstakingly stitched together every aspect of your identity before you were even born. God is fully aware of every single hair on your head and how it got there (or fell out).

But there’s more! Much like Dwight chose to make a Second Life character in his image, God also made us in his image. This means that we bear traits of God that influence our identity. We have desires and impulses in us that originate from the very nature of God. One of these is the impulse to create.

So why do we want to create a new identity? Now we have our two answers:

1) We are dissatisfied with our sinful identities.

2) We have the impulse to create something new, much like the God whose image we bear.

Many players default to trying to make characters looks just like themselves, and that is one expression of the God who made us to be like him. Others just want to come up with something new and off the wall. Games like Spore are perfect for “playing God” in a sense.

"Wait...what??"

Now, let’s not fools ourselves. That very impulse to create something crazy comes from the God who made you. He has some pretty wild creations himself. Don’t believe me? Well, God made this:

Somebody REALLY loves the University of Texas

And this:

"How did you know I was gonna say that? It's like you can see into my mind or something..."

Aaaand this:

"This looks shopped. You can tell from the pixels and AHHHH!! Is it on me? I feel like it's on me..."

The gaming culture’s fascination with customization serves two purposes. First, it reminds us that our desire to live as a different identity comes from a dissatisfaction with our sinful selves. The only alternate identity that is of any worth is that of Christ, who gladly takes our old selves and makes us into new creations. Second, the complex customization tools that games provide to construct new things is also a reminder that we are made in God’s image and that we share his artistic impulse to create.

Question:

What’s the most crazy awesome character you’ve created? Provide links or pics if possible.

Has there ever been a time when you became too engrossed in an online identity?

Thanks for reading and come back soon. Next on the list is Dead Space, so try to get some sleep now.

Halo: This Cave Is Not A Natural Formation.

Welcome to the inaugural post of Reclaimer 105. This first game-related post is focusing on the Halo series because they are my favorite series of games and they are a big reason why I love video games. The very name for this blog is inspired by the concept of a “reclaimer” which appears often in the Halo games. For more about why this blog is named Reclaimer 105, check out the About section.

Like most people at the time, I got an Xbox just to play Halo. I’m a sucker for all things sci-fi. I tend to geek out when a spaceship or some cool technology or explosions come into play. So right off the bat in Halo, there’s a giant ring-shaped space station which Sergeant Johnson calls both “God’s own anti-son-of-a-bitch machine” and a “giant hula hoop.” This iconic setting is one of many reasons Halo is set apart as a great game. It’s a “natural” planet with landscape and wildlife, yet it’s obviously something that is artificially constructed. The great mystery of this ring is a primary driver for the rest of the story.

After crashing, it doesn’t take long to realize that Halo (or Alpha Halo, or Installation 04, for you fanboys/girls) is an intelligently designed structure, built for a specific purpose. Of course who can forget Cortana’s statement of the obvious, “This cave is not a natural formation.” That’s a pretty popular line, but what I missed at first is what she says right after that, “Someone built it, so it must lead somewhere.” Again, Cortana’s not exactly digging deep on the insights with these comments. However, these first interactions with Halo is meant to show that it is not just some random freak cosmic accident of dust and rock, it was built. By someone.

Now, I don’t know how you were struck by the revelations about the purpose of Halo and it’s origins as a Forerunner artifact, but it was clear to me that the game designers were going for a sense of awe that something so advanced and complex could be constructed and not just exist by chance. It seems quite easy to accept that a massive and complex structure like Halo could be built by an advanced group of people, but yet some have a hard time believing that our world could possibly be made by an intelligent designer. Why is it easy to accept that someone could advance themselves towards building something so great, and yet believe that we, in all our complexity, somehow occurred by cosmic accident? It seems to only make sense that the intricacy of our world points to an even greater designer of all things.

The question I have is this, why does this concept of an intelligent designer (even though that designer is not God in Halo) appeal to our interest and curiosity? I believe it is because we long to be part of something larger, to know that we’re in the middle of larger events that have meaning. Even the gameplay in Halo was groundbreaking in this regard since it featured many large-scale battles that were less common back then.

This idea of being a smaller player in a larger universe is what draws us into the story. No one would care as much about Frodo if the story was only about him and a piece of jewelry all the while knowing nothing else about what was going on in Middle Earth. And it’s not just one whiny moisture farmer on Tatooine that we care about, it’s the entire grand backdrop of the Empire, the Rebellion, and the universe that fascinates and draws us in.

Halo’s music composer was given three words to describe the tone and feel of the game: “ancient, epic, alien.” This game conveyed that feeling perfectly, and isn’t that what fascinates all of us? The reason we play these games is because we feel small and insignificant and we want to be part of something greater. We want to interact and be a part of the divine and the epic. We have this sense of something greater than us, some inner longing for a deeper mystery beyond just what we see in this world. Ecclesiastes 3:11 says that God has “put eternity in man’s heart.” This longing for the epic, grander narrative has been built into us by the Creator so that we would seek Him who is ancient, epic, and altogether alien from us mere human mortals.

Things to think about:

Have there been times in your life that have felt like small events within a larger story?

What have you observed or experienced that has caused you to question the greater meaning of life?

What mysteries or questions about life, existence, or the supernatural have you wrestled with?

Use these questions or any other thoughts to discuss in the comments! Check back next week for part 2 of the Halo review where we’ll talk about our favorite space zombies, the Flood.