Interiority Effect: Diminishing Consciousness and Player Agency in the Mass Effect Trilogy
Spoilers for the Mass Effect game series' - Mainly the third entry
In front of me is the large, tealish beam. I limp towards it, slowly, achingly getting closer. I know what my decision means, I know what will happen, and yet, I inch forward. Did it always take this long? I ask myself, the platform seemingly stretching on forever. And then the cutscene kicks in. I drop my pistol, I break into a run, and I jump. The music swells. Flashing images of those I have lost, and those I’m leaving behind appear before me. I am falling, and I am being torn apart by the beam of energy, but I close my eyes in acceptance. The hero’s sacrifice is made, the galaxy is saved, those that I’ve come to care about, live on.
The scene above is one of four potential endings of the Mass Effect Trilogy. It’s a video game series whose enduring legacy is still felt to this day, but for some, it is felt for the wrong reasons. It’s a series that I have loved for a long time, replayed a significant number of times, and yet, most recently, after finishing the three games and over two hundred hours of story, I felt something that I had never felt before upon completing the final game: I felt miserable. The ending of the series is infamous, but I knew what I was getting into when I replayed the games this year, but this time, the dissatisfaction of the ending hit me in a way it had never had before. So, I asked myself, why?
Now, I don’t know much about video game design. I’ve dabbled in interactive storytelling through Dungeons and Dragons campaigns, but I do find it hard to compare the two when D&D lacks the same collaborative components within the development phase of planning and writing. Because of this, I’ve been cautious about my assessment of the infamous Mass Effect 3 ending[1], and the series as a whole. But as someone who knows about character, and an audience’s connection to character, over the course of replaying all three games it became apparent to me that the issue with Mass Effect 3’s ending was down to one simple notion: Shepard, the character you play as for all three games, for the first time, was given interiority.
In prose writing, interiority is a term used to describe the character’s internal viewpoint of themselves and what’s going on around them. However, prose writing often grounds the reader within singular interior perspectives at a time, without much influence on that interiority, or when they engage with it. That’s why in interactive story-telling, like that of a role-playing game (RPG), the interiority or mind-set of the character(s) is often designed to match, or be the responsibility of, the player. Mass Effect, as a series, is an RPG, as you, the player, can choose to play as either a male or female Commander Shepard, attempting to thwart the threat of galaxy-ending sentient robots from dark space, The Reapers. So, as an RPG, it’s par-the-course that you would role, play—inhabit the character—and provide interiority.
As the player, we are encouraged to formulate a character in our own image (not in a biblical sense), crafting their looks, their morality, and making decisions for them that will impact and shape events around them. We develop a sense of interiority and motivations which dictate how they respond to particular situations, and often, that comes with a degree of personal influence. Now, I might not speak for everyone, some people might map out an entire backstory and moral code for their character before beginning the RPG, but for me, the most satisfying way of playing comes from the notion of putting myself in the world, and seeing how I would deal with the situations and consequences presented before me.
I am continuously in awe of story-tellers who manage to pull this off—not just from a narrative perspective, but from a technical one as well. And for the developers behind the Mass Effect series, Bioware, they took it one step further: your progress and decisions of one game didn’t just impact the story of one entry in the series, they impacted the entirety of the series. Each game had its own story, its own set of characters, and you, as Shepard, could influence and transform the universe through your actions and decisions across all three games, and each game imports the information from the first game to the last, ultimately leading to a culmination of all of your decisions and actions in the final, third game. Pretty impressive stuff. However, wouldn’t that mean that the ending, and my dissatisfaction from it, stems from the consequences of my own decisions? From my own lack of interiority if I consider that to be the issue of my dissatisfaction? Well, not exactly, because it turns out that taking into account every permeation of a decision amongst multiple decisions, and stretching and compounding them across hundreds of hours of audio, visual, and interactive gameplay is really hard to do. And the solution that Bioware’s team put forward in trying to attempt such a feat, had mixed results, which ultimately boils down to two things: the technical systems[2] of play in place and how the player interacts with those systems.
YouTuber, Game Maker’s Toolkit, dives into this a bit more deeply, as he assesses the systems surrounding Commander Shepard as both playable-protagonist and avatar-protagonist[3]. The playable protagonist is a character that is already well defined through their personalities and traits, they are a three-dimensional person. And within the role-playing genre, you, the player, still play a role in the decision making of that defined person, and as such, their reactions towards the actions that you make affect them in particular ways, but they remain themselves. Their interiority is their own. One example of this would be in the video game adaptation of The Witcher book series. You, as the player, play Geralt of Rivia, and throughout hunting monsters and traversing the lands, you make decisions that affect the world around you. Though the world changes, and the characters around you change depending on what you do, Geralt is still Geralt, and is written in such a way that allows for that. Geralt is a complicated character, and operates within a moral grey area constantly. Therefore, the choices that are made as a player aren’t as binary as “good” or “bad”. Those choices and their consequences give you different versions of Geralt but at their core, those versions of Geralt are true to who he is as a person, and the system of a playable character allows for that. There is an apparent and disciplined line between Geralt’s interiority and that of the player. And that line between the player and Geralt is established in the simplest of ways: Geralt talks to himself.
It's this self-reflection that occurs as both a mechanic—tutorial or guidance for the player within the world—and as the internal boundary between Geralt and the player. The player does not have to reflect on their actions and their consequences as much because Geralt does so as well. It’s the player reacting and reflecting on Geralt’s reactions’ and reflections’. He has a conscious that is separate to the players’ and the player has no internal control or influence over that, though their external actions do.
Conversely, I believe that Mass Effect uses the “avatar” protagonist approach, at least initially. In Mass Effect 1 the player can customize their Shepard from scratch, deciding how they look and what gender[4] they are. Change anything about your Shepard—hair, eyes, face shape, skin-tone, complexion—whatever you want to create to best reflect who you are before going off on your adventure. You are Commander Shepard, and the systems in place allow you to be so. However, it’s still a pretty linear narrative experience, meaning that there’s a check list of things that must be done before the story can progress. You can still decide how you want to check that list off, and who you want to check it off with since you have companions throughout the journey, but the consequences of your actions, as Shepard, are on you. Shepard has no internal reflection on the player’s actions. It’s up to the player to reflect on their decisions as Shepard.
To really explore the impact of such interiority, through multiple decisions with multiple outcomes, technologically, would have been quiet a stretch for any game back in 2007. To give the player choices and control over interiority, while operating within the parameters of what was available at the time, it makes sense that Bioware would look for a solution that would streamline decisions and their consequences. Thus, the paragon and renegade system was born. It is a system that frames the players choices in two ways: are you a diplomatic, empathetic Shepard who values life? Or are you a shoot first, ask questions later, willing to do whatever it takes to get the job done kind of Shepard? On the surface, this might seem a little binary, and for the most part, it is, but there is a degree of nuance that still makes you, the player, feel like you are still Commander Shepard. A nuance that is born from that control over interiority.
The consequences and actions of the player are yours and yours alone. The characters and companions that you surround yourself with may react to what actions you take, but those reactions are side-comments, and often you as the character are given a chance to respond. It’s through this intricate dialogue system that the feeling of agency and interiority are conveyed, even while the narrative which moves you forward appears rather linear. Game Maker Toolkit argues that Shepard is in fact somewhere between avatar and playable protagonist, referencing an interview with the game’s Game Director, Casey Hudson[5]. I would argue, though, that regardless of how much design is put into a particular character, interiority is what allows the player to inhabit them, and to create their avatar within the game world. The lengths of which becomes fully apparent in Mass Effect’s sequel, Mass Effect 2, through the inclusion of a new narrative system, the loyalty system.
As part of this system, Shepard has to gain the loyalty of his companions through particular actions and quests, and certain characters require certain decisions (good or bad) to be done in order to secure their loyalty. These quests and missions are linked intrinsically to their pasts, and they are varied: from helping a Krogan[6] companion go through puberty to assisting an Asari[7] Jedi track down and kill a space-vampire. So, as you learn more about the characters, they too are formulating opinions about you, making “loyalty” manifest in sometimes[8] unique and different ways.
“Loyalty” manifests both in gameplay and narrative, but I’ll only focus on the narrative impact given its relevancy. The narrative manifestation occurs through companions’ interactions with Shepard, and even determining if they survive the final mission. Unlike the duality of the paragon/renegade system[9], the loyalty system has direct effects on what is occurring to those closest to Shepard and the player. In Mass Effect 1, the changes that happen to those around you are very subtle, and can dictate how they behave going forward in small increments, but in Mass Effect 2, the “loyalty” system can literally dictate who lives or dies, and the consequences of the “loyalty” system are once again put on the player, rather than Shepard. Because if a companion becomes disloyal, or dies, Shepard makes no comment, no point of self-reflection, they simply continue on the story. The weight of that decision, therefore, is on the player.
Mass Effect 1 and 2 really emphasize the role-play in role-playing game. Through different systems, they implement and engage player interiority, as they inhabit the role of Shepard, regardless of the “extra sensory aspects…that you can’t get if you just start out with a completely blank character”, as Hudson pointed out. Shepard, within Mass Effect 1 and 2, lacks interiority, inviting the player in to fill it with their own imagination. So, you’d think Mass Effect 3, the culmination of all of these systems in which player choice and interiority are championed, would hone these systems and really come through with an emotional gut punch building on hundreds of hours of storytelling. Well, yes and no.
At the beginning of Mass Effect 3, Shepard witnesses the invasion of Earth by The Reapers. They are forced to leave the planet, and as they do, a shuttle, carrying civilians and a child, is blown out of the sky by the doomsday robots. This event weighs on Shepard throughout the rest of the game as they are haunted by the image of a small child encountered during the invasion of Earth. It is a recurring nightmare throughout the game. A nightmare which indicates a type of survivor’s guilt, an internal struggle, and one that the player has no control over.
Game Maker’s Toolkit has pointed out that this isn’t the first time Shepard has made a decision that the player has no control over[10], but the introduction of those nightmares and guilt draws a solid line between the interiority of Shepard and that of the player. Mass Effect 3 becomes Shepard’s story, not the players. It’s a game that is no longer interested in the interiority of the player, but instead uses Shepard’s interiority to try and prescribe how the player should feel towards particular events. It’s in this decision making that Mass Effect 3 falls apart, even as its storyline does a fantastic job of wrapping up the stories of companion characters who have been with Shepard since the beginning of the series. As long as they haven’t died in Mass Effect 2, of course. Which makes it all the more devastating that within the final, climatic moments of the game, with the emotional stakes really on the line, the player, emotionally, becomes passive.
And it’s with the ending that this passivism is manifested the most.
Shepard is given three choices at the end of the game: control, destroy, or synthesis. Upon selecting whatever option, a slew of sepia-tone images flash on screen, indicating who Shepard is thinking about as they embark on their “final” moment. Once again, the line between character and player interiority is drawn, as Shepard’s own interiority is presented to the player, diminishing the weight of choices made over the past two games, choices that the player could own because the consequences were on the conscious of the player, not Shepard. It’s not an issue that there are only three choices, the issue is that the weight of that decision is on Shepard, and not the player. In those final moments, the player is unable to come to terms with their actions because what follows on from Shepard’s final moments is a quick succession of sequences showing the player the fallout from those choices.
And that is why I must have felt so unsatisfied by the end of my newest playthrough. I knew the endings would be limited, I knew that there were sepia-tone images thrown up at me depending on my choice, and I had readied myself to look past all of that, and just enjoy the journey. It was only through writing this, and reflecting on my feelings, that it was the lack of player agency within those final moments that really irked me. And I mean the final, final moments. I wasn’t able to receive any closure because in the final moment of the series, my lack of interiority with Shepard throughout the final game left me passive, powerless, only able to watch as the strange realization struck me that it was no longer my story, there at the end.
So, is there a solution, should there be one? I really debated for a long tie whether I should even write this section. And if it’s here, that means I decided to. But ultimately my wavering came from the fact that I am not a video game designer. I do not know code, I do not know graphic design, I do not know level design, or anything like that. But I do know story, and I have an obtuse awareness as to the process involved with video game design, so in that spirit, if you don’t think I’m qualified or should speak on this matter, just click off now, I’ve already got your “view” ticked to my data. But if you’re still here, that means you’re interested in how I might solve this narrative issue. And perhaps surprisingly, it’s a simple solution: one more nightmare/dream sequence.
Rather than the sepia-toned images of characters flashing up, as Shepard makes the final choice, a final nightmare/dream sequence occurs. Shepard is surprised to find themselves in the space, more aware and cognizant then before. There, in that space, Shepard and the player could talk to various other companions and individuals who are important to them, allowing them to express their feelings towards the decision they made: a reclamation of interiority. The player’s agency is returned in those final moments, allowing them to engage with who they want, how they want, and to say a farewell with the full knowledge and weight of the decision that they made. The decision I made. Because in writing this, I realize now that all I wanted from that ending was a last farewell.
Sure, the game gives you an opportunity to say goodbye before events cascade and go wrong, but those goodbyes aren’t proper. In that, I mean, the interiority still belongs to Shepard. It’s not us the player saying goodbye, it’s Shepard. And to them, they’ve beaten the odds before, they’ve been able to survive the un-survivable, and while they might have doubts, or guilt, the character is not able to really express how they’re feeling about it. Shepard is the main character, the hero, plot armor, so a final moment to say farewell knowing that you, your Shepard, isn’t coming back, would’ve meant the world. Because ultimately, within the sequence I described, the player wouldn’t just be saying goodbye to characters, they’d be saying goodbye to Shepard. Realistically, the nightmare/dream sequence is in Shepard’s mind, so really, everyone the character would be talking to would just be individuals as constructed in Shepard’s mind. So really, I guess the only goodbye that the player doesn’t get, and that the player really needs, is with Shepard themself.
[1] A LOT has been said on this already, but for a more rounded and definitive look as to the controversy behind it, and what happened, I would encourage readers to check out People Make Games’ YouTube video, “The Inside Story of Mass Effect 3’s Ending, Finally Told”,
, 21 October, 2021.
[2] Systems referring to the mechanics that take place within the video game. For instance, your point of view – where the camera is located in relation to the character is a type of technical system. If you are in first-person, you might only see your character’s hands. In third-person, you’d see the whole shape of their person.
[3] Game Maker’s Toolkit, Commanding Shepard,
, 15 June, 2020, a really fantastic video if you’re interested in the relationship between character and player in interactive storytelling.
[4] At least in binary terms…
[5] The direct quote from Hudson follows: “Mass Effect is so much more cinematic and real than anything we've ever done before that we really needed that extra bit, those extra sensory aspects to a story that you can't get if you just start out with a completely blank character.” Erik Brudvig, “Mass Effect Interview”, IGN.com, 19 Jan 2007, https://www.ign.com/articles/2007/01/19/mass-effect-interview-2.
[6] Brutish, warlike alien creatures that resemble bi-pedal turtles that can beat your face in.
[7] Blue humanoid matriarchal race with women being the only sex in their species—they are considered the “leading” species of the universe, being the oldest and most technologically advanced. They specialize in space magic (manipulation of dark matter to do cool stuff like barriers and lift things and chuck stuff).
[8] See Game Maker’s Toolkit’s Commanding Shepard video where he goes into detail about the loyalty quests that work really well (Tali’s), compared to those that don’t (Jack’s).
[9] The system is still existent within Mass Effect 2 (ME2) but instead of only dialogue options, there are now “actions” that can be taken as well, like pulling a gun on someone before they finish speaking or pushing someone out of the way of an oncoming projectile.
[10] The player at the start of Mass Effect 2 must join a terrorist organization from the 1st game in order to investigate why human space-colonies are going missing. The player must join the organization, regardless of paragon/renegade alignment. Game Maker’s Toolkit does an excellent analysis of this moment in their video.