The best way to say goodbye to friends

You can't always say goodbye on your own terms. Most people don't. If you stay put long enough, you say it over and over again. To people you knew too well. To people you wish you knew better. To people you never knew where you stood and then you realize you've always been on the same side. Mass Effect 3 is a game about this phenomenon.

The world is ending. You can't save it. You can fight your way, but when your choices are sacrifice or death, and sacrifice means death, there is no choice at all. Maybe it's better that way. Jumping is always better than pushing. Mass Effect 3 is full of characters jumping around hoping that somewhere down the line a butterfly flaps its wings in Thessia and someone else doesn't get pushed.

Goodbye that was long

Mass-Effect-Legendary-Edition-Suicide-Mission[1]

Mass Effect 3 plays the scene from the last moments of the previous installment. Mass Effect 2, brilliantly, ends with a suicide mission. They are a bunch of disparate souls united by a common passion and personal circumstances who, despite their differences, work together for a common cause. Sure, they work for a massive corporation, but that doesn't make what they do any less special or personal.

With some planning, careful assignment of roles and responsibilities, and of course a brilliantly intelligent leader, they will get through. It's a suicide mission, but no one else has to die. So it can be. You fight and you live. You might even make a difference. That's the beauty of a video game: it lets you dream. It's good bye. But it's also the kind that gets told mid-story when you live to fight another day. Mass Effect 3 real goodbye. Long goodbye. Say goodbye to others over and over until it's their turn to say goodbye to you.

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Mass Effect 3 has its critics. In the context of how the game started, the expectations placed on it, the dilution or erasure of certain arcs, and a million other factors that don't really fit into the general metaphor I'm talking about here, that criticism is valid. But when I look back on it now, like the end of a hard-fought journey, all the little things seem even smaller, until you almost don't see them at all. And all the things that matter remain. They linger with you, just like the things that matter.

We all have a different ending

A lot of criticism of Mass Effect 3 stems from the ending. But when I play it again, especially when I play the entire trilogy, it's not so much the ending that bothers me, but the fact that it's already over. It was one of the best trips I'll ever go on and it all came down to a simple A or B choice.

However, Mass Effect 3 doesn't have just one ending, it's a game of several. You could say it's an end game at its core. Maybe that's why it's so in my head. Some stories end before yours. Mordin. Laird. Depending on your choices and their domino effects, Legion or Tali. Others continue even after you're gone. Liara. Joker. Your trusted second-in-command, Garrus Vakarian, with you to the end of the line.

It is a play not only about saying goodbye, but also about feeling it. Understanding the weight of these syllables; on you, on the people you say it to, on the people you hear it from. Separate your story from and story. Death or Sacrifice. There is no choice and the story goes either way.

There's Shepard, of course, who must decide whether to assimilate with the Overlords or embark on one last suicidal mission to fight them, one that doesn't come with the narrative ejection seat that previous showdowns have offered. There's Thane, a dying man who throws himself on a rookie blade to protect those around him, and dies faster. And there is Mordin, who must accept death to atone for his sins. Maybe they are all the same man.

Mordin's death always stuck with me the most. It's noble, but it's just his own bad work. It's death, it's sacrifice, and it's not a choice at all. He walks the path he paved for himself. He cannot collect shells. But that's the beauty of a video game: it lets you dream.