“No one ever accused this game of being subtle.”

Or

Detroit: Become Human Isn’t About Race (but it is tho)

Okay, so, I’ve gotten just…a tad obsessed with the new IP from Quantic Dream, Detroit: Become Human. Guys, I love this game. So much. But, unfortunately, it’s the kind of game that is so wildly problematic that I have to qualify that love. It’s gonna take a lot of words to do this, so strap in. I’ll be as spoiler free as possible.

First, things you should know about me: I have never played a Quantic Dream game before. Based on what I know about the other games they’ve made, I have very little interest in playing them. I saw, and enjoyed, the Kara short they released several years ago, and when they announced they were going to make a game based on it, I was intrigued. Then I saw some trailers and was excited. I still wasn’t sure if I would play the game myself, since Quantic Dream games are infamously full of QTEs (which I’m bad at) and that failing them can cause characters to die and storylines to end, but that didn’t completely turn me off. Then I heard some things about it, and about the lead writer, that left me unsure about the game, and I ended up deciding to watch Ryan Haywood’s play through on Twitch to see if I wanted to some day get the game for myself.

Detroit: Become Human (DBH) takes place in the year 2038, a near future where androids (created by CyberLife) are as common as cellphones, pretty affordable, and completely obedient. Businesses use them as cheap labour, and the result is an Earth similar to the one imagined by Isaac Asimov in The Caves of Steel. That is to say, a lot of humans are unemployed because machines took their jobs, and humans are pretty upset about it. Someone at CyberLife did a bad job with Asimov’s laws of robotics, though, because some androids, called deviants, don’t want to take orders anymore and have gone rogue (and can very much harm humans and themselves). Deviants are hunted down to be either reprogrammed or destroyed.

The player alternates between controlling three main characters throughout the story, all androids. One is Kara, a deviant who broke her programming to save the life of her owner’s abused daughter, Alice, and is now on the run with her. Another is Markus, a deviant who gets tired of hiding pretty damn fast and starts the robot rebellion that’s the main unifying story arc for the game. Finally, we have Connor, an android that CyberLife created with the sole purpose of hunting down deviants, and he’s partnered with a human police lieutenant to do it. Interestingly, Connor spends most of the game as an antagonist to the other two player characters, and, depending on your choices, can become the main antagonist by the end.

Markus

Kara

Connor

So You Wanna Play Mass Effect: General Advice

Previous Posts: Introduction / Character Creation

Before we get too deep into the game itself, now is as good a time as any to let you in on some fandom nicknames. Shepard goes by a few. Lots of people will just call Shepard “Shep” for short, but there are other variations.

Some of my FemSheps: Jaime Shepard, Rani Shepard, Janice Shepard, and Breq Shepard

So You Wanna Play Mass Effect: Character Creation

You decided to fight through the archive panic of starting a new RPG series and picked up a copy of Mass Effect. I’m so excited for you! If you haven’t picked one up yet, the whole trilogy pops up on sale every now and again on EA Origin, and the first two games can be super cheap during the Steam winter and summer sales. I’m sure the PSN and Xbox Gold have sales too, but my experience is mainly with PC.

So, let’s go! You “started a new career,” now what? The character you create is (very minor series spoilers) going to be your protagonist for all three games (/end spoilers), so what you do with them now is worth some careful consideration.

So You Wanna Play Mass Effect: Why You Should

I don’t know how you heard about Mass Effect. Maybe you remember all the fuss people made over Mass Effect 3, first the hype for its release, then the controversy about its ending. Maybe you’re a BioWare fan, and in your Dragon Age: Inquisition hangover after completing the Trespasser DLC for the fifth time, you’re looking for a new story-and-choice driven series to tide you over until there’s new Dragon Age news. Maybe your two older sisters are huge fans of the series and you’ve decided it’s time to try out their obsession. Maybe your roommate did you a favour and you promised to play her favourite video game trilogy in return. Maybe this post is the first you’ve heard of it. Regardless, you find yourself a little intimidated by the thought of embarking on a journey that will take hundreds of hours to complete. This guide is not a walk through, but is intended to help you take on the first game in manageable chunks while also getting the most out of your Mass Effect experience. There will be four of these posts for the first game, including this introductory one. The other three will be a guide to character creation, general advice, and a recommended mission order, all as spoiler-free as possible (expectation spoilers are inevitable, but I’ve tried to limit them).

I’M BACK

In a fit of insomnia I wrote a really long, super personal and kind of self indulgent post in the wee hours of the morning that I may or may not post sometime in the future, depending on how much I decide I feel like sharing. Highlights include friendship, thoughts on my first and only past romantic relationship, and anxiety, but the relevant bit to this post was that I expressed some regret at the start about how long it’s been since I posted here. Part of the hold up is that I have an unfinished draft of the final November 8^th post, the series about losing my grandma, and it seemed weird to split those up. Short version of why I wrote those and why I didn’t finish them: I used them as a sort of therapeutic way to vent while grieving, but I stopped doing it when it started feeling like picking at a scab instead of a healing ritual. I’ll finish it someday, when it feels therapeutic again, but in the meantime I’ve decided to keep blogging.

[UPDATED] Social Media’s Coverage of the Texas Filibuster

It’s been almost a year since I’ve posted. Writing about upsetting personal stuff was interrupted by other upsetting personal stuff and so I needed a break from blogging, but I will finish the final part of November 8^th at some point. In the meantime, there’s something else I wanted to talk about, in case you missed it.

Something beautiful and inspiring happened in the face of some disgusting backlash in Texas last night, and I can’t blame you if you heard nothing about it. The media didn’t have a clue until much too late. Thanks to modern live streaming technology and social media, however, hundreds of thousands of people were able to witness the Texas filibuster, including myself. And, boy howdy, was it something incredible to behold. I’d like to share what I saw with you now.

November 8th, Part II: One of the 10%

Part I

Grandma was a rock. I arrived to see Grandpa shortly after he died, having emotionally prepared to be a rock for Grandma, and, well, that didn’t work at all. I broke down pretty much as soon as I saw her, and she just smiled and hugged me. I was all, “Dammit, Grandma, I’m supposed to be comforting you” but she was having none of it. This is a prominent trait in my father as well, and I learned exactly where he got it from that day.

November 8th, Part I: Isabel and Norman

This past week or so, I’ve been in a bit of a funk. Nothing some company and the excitement of the American election couldn’t distract me from, but it’s been persistent enough to make sleeping an issue and having the energy to drag my butt to school a little tricky. Sometimes these moods are unexplainable, but not so much in this case. There’s a pretty simple and obvious root to my feelings right now since, a year ago today, November 8^th, I was at my parents’ house making preparations for my grandmother’s funeral.

[UPDATED FEB. 26, 2013] The Great Misandry Derailment of 2012

[UPDATED: I mention a site, Derailing for Dummies, that was down at the time when this was posted. It has since gone back up and I have added links to it accordingly, including references to specific types of derailment tactics.]

[UPDATED AGAIN: The site is once more down. Luckily, someone backed it up here, and I’ve changed the link destinations below accordingly.]

I was sitting around feeling insecure about my writing abilities (as you do) and therefore re-writing the lyrics to I Kissed a Girl to be about dating Thane Krios from Mass Effect instead of actual productive writing and just generally wasting time on twitter when SHENANNIGANS OCCURED.  My friend Tessa, who runs a sweet feminist blog y’all should check out, tweeted about a frustrating occurrence on FaceBook.  I went to see what was up and found myself similarly infuriated by the ignorance before me.  I proceeded to write a lengthy response (all underneath my re-written Katy Perry lyrics since that was the Word document I happened to have open at the time) and then posted it.  Tessa was so pleased that she asked if she could give it Internet immortality on her blog, and I happily agreed.  You can follow this link and read my response, as well as Tessa’s summary of the preceding events.

Did…did you follow the link?

You probably should. 

The real point of this post is to show my love for Decked Out

two posts in one day no mary what are you doing stop this right now-

AHEM. I just realized that Father’s Day happened over the weekend and thought “Oh, well, yes, I suppose this is a personal blog and I should talk about other things too.”  For Father’s Day, I watched a lot of Decked Out, that show on HGTV where people build decks. This may sound like something I did for the sake of my father, but I think it may have actually been the other way around.  I mean, he enjoys the show, but I’m addicted. And then I realized there was going to be a father’s day marathon and I FLIPPED OUT and started counting down the days.