MASS EFFECT 3

In Summary (read-me for those yet to play):

It feels like this game is a pared down hybrid of it's predecessors; all extraneous features lopped off to make room for multiplayer mode to be sutured cleanly into place. The result is an even less bona fide RPG, however, the tweaks to the fighting mechanics that make ME3's co-op mode so very viable also raise the single player experience as far above ME2 as it was, in turn, beyond ME1.

ME3's rich inheritance of narrative, established in ME1, and vivid characters, developed in ME2, allows the single player game to easily get away with lacking the ingenuity of either of it's parents. This is a BIG GAME by most standards, yielding over 30 hours for one play through (excluding multiplayer). Story progression is smooth, more organic than ME2's shopping list of missions, but simultaneously more constrained and shorter (by raw single player mission count). Matters are somewhat more impersonal in their larger scope: your attentions are drawn outwards and upwards, vying for the loyalty of entire civilisations instead of squad mates. Gratifyingly though, romance options also extend beyond your personal involvement.

There are hilarious lines (though less frequent than in it's predecessor) and some brilliant moments, especially during the mid game section. However, in addition to the aforementioned cut corners, the game's concluding mission(s) did start to feel like a triumph of project management crushing creativity that would have further delayed the release date. Setting the specifics of the ending controversy aside, I still can not help but feel that a opportunity for monumental greatness was casually shrugged aside at the last minute. Thus, rather than earnestly shouting it's praises, I am now hesitant to recommend that any new comers play this series.

If you are the type who is intending to replay the previous game(s) first, aiming to cover every side quest and/or spend a couple of hours thinking about/reading up on the game afterwards, then the ending will probably be somewhat of an issue. For those just wanting something to fill 30 hours of spare time, or are more interested in multiplayer action, the 'controversy' will just be a bunch of gibber-jabber.

Contents:

• Summary
• Contents
• Quick opinions:
• Liked
• Ambivalent
• Disliked
• Extended Critique
• EMS
• Superior Gameplay
• Multiplayer
• Diversity
• Difficulty
• Graphical Quibbles
• Money
• Discussion of Concepts Raised
• Ethics
• AI Treatment
• Religion
• Racism
• Feminism
• My Predictions Reviewed
• To The End
• Overview
• The Ending that I Loved
• Major Flaws and Nit Picking
• Clarification
• Indoctrination Theory
• Supporting Evidence
• Implications of Indoctrination
• My Ending(s)
• London Game Play
• Final Explanation
• Perspective

Zeno Clash VS Arkham Asylum

Zeno Clash is the artistic antithesis of Arkham Asylum's purely derivative, design-by-committee, bland, sexiness: it is a celebration of ugliness and asymmetry; the stranger realms of "Heavy Metal" (1981) with the soft core nudity supplanted by the broken detritus of an steam punk brawl between H. R. Giger and Pablo Picasso (during his surrealist phase).

In the same vein, the storyline is impenetrably mysterious and schizophrenic, very much "Through the Looking-Glass". The entire game experience could well have just been the oddest dream you've ever had. Batman, on the other hand, is Batman; you're getting the whole multi-billion dollar franchise shoe-horned (very successfully) into a Bioshock meets Streets of Rage framework with a side helping of Assassins creed. It incorporates the current characterisation of the whole mythology quite nicely; an epic win for Batman fans (of which there are many, hence the guaranteed return necessary for investing the effort of a large game developer) but perhaps a pretty uninspiring prospect for some regular folk.

Admittedly Zeno Clash is a rail shooter corridor fighter, which makes it positively  claustrophobic compared to some of the spaces available in Arkham Asylum's sandbox-ish environment. However, it's arguable how much all that freedom adds to the game: a lack of location discontinuities does make the story more immersive, but this was balanced (for me) by constantly wondering if I was pointed in vaguely the right direction, or if I had understood correctly which part of the shopping centre island I should be rendezvousing at next. Of course, Zeno Clash is very low budget in comparison, it's creators having had to scale back from a much more ambitious project to get it done at all.

So based mostly on artictic originality, we have an early leader:
Zeno Clash 1-0 Arkham Asylum

Why Wealth Inequality is *Actually* Bad

After putting all moralistic ideals to one side for a moment, income/wealth inequality is still fundamentally bad for a society. (I'll come back to ethics later, along with the Occupy movement and much more besides.)

The monetary system is immensely complex these days, so as a thought experiment I like to imagine money away: ignore it altogether as it has no intrinsic utility itself. It merely directs the allocation of man power and resources, as a dictator might. But hopefully our system has more effective priorities: promoting the spread of useful innovations and keeping society healthy.

Moai - 'Easter Island Heads' are misnamed,
 they've been buried to their shoulders by time. 

A conservative/neo-liberal might argue that rich people are no problem because they spend more, putting money back into the economy via the people they pay for products and services. However, I think the real problem is with the specific things they spend their enhanced incomes on.

Someone with 100 times more money than the average Joe doesn't buy 100 reasonably priced cars. Maybe they buy twice as many cars, but each one costs 50 times as much. It's actually quite difficult to spend that much money, so they will tend to purchase luxury items across the board, either impractically expensive versions of everyday goods or totally exclusive items like super-yachts.

Gucci handbags, jewel encrusted gold watches, $200M private yachts, giant mansions, hand made super-cars and fancy soirées are all about as useful at stimulating an increase in societal productivity as were the standing stones of Easter Island. For those unfamiliar: Moai (right) were erected all over the small Island as an expression of ancestor worship by clans. Making the statues took a heavy toll; there was total deforestation and ecosystem collapse. The isolated population of islanders had plunged from 15000 to 3000 by the time Europeans arrived in 1722. A 500% decrease, in under a century, with cannibalism. Shortly thereafter the 900 statues were toppled.

The monolith erecting game is taxing indeed for the people of Nias Island, Indonesia, 1915.

Back to the present day, the other thing wealthy people tend to use much of their money for is gaining *more* wealth. So, in a laissez-faire economy, an ever greater percentage of societal effort tends to be directed towards useless extravagances for an elite. Whether or not the top percent or two *deserve* extravagant pay for their services/resources is irrelevant, left unchecked this wealth concentration will destroy society. And in retrospect we will look every bit as dumb as those who built 10 meter tall maoi when all that was left to eat was each other.

"Adjustment Beauro" Critique

Adjustment Beauro is [SPOILERS!!!] The Matrix with a benevolent Architect who is blatantly THE man upstairs. As a white Obama in the making, Matt Damon gets his own Inception as he dances gracefully through NY city reenacting parts of Eternal Sunshine. At least they cast the beautiful Emily Blunt as the worryingly gullible supporting actress, and the plot does move along at a comfortable lick.

We're supposed to believe earth has been running continuously under watchful eyes since before the Roman empire (at least), so Christianity's wrong. And, as in the Wackowski's masterpiece, us cretinous humans have proved ourselves insufferably reckless when we were previously allowed behind the wheel of our own world.

Yet another K.Dick adaptation, it pisses me off by being so cliche: blame the stereotypically bad events of Western history on human nature, saving God the embarrassment of holocaust responsibility. Also, his children sat around in the 'dark ages' just sucking our thumbs, but were able to discover nuclear fission unaided because *that's* so reckless...

What would be the point of a society perpetually tweaked by some 'God'? Other than as a game for the entertainment of a massively transhuman AI I suppose:

At least they made this God fallible; being unable to see indefinitely far into the exact future of a impossibly complex ensemble system that is human global society, that is something quite probably computationally impossible, even in a completely deterministic simulation one would have to run it in it's entirety to know for sure what the outcome was going to be when it was run...

Kondratieff Waves... Crashed Our Economy!

This article presents a divergent hypothesis from Tyler Cowen's lack of 'low hanging fruit' hypothesis for the current Stagnation (discussed in my previous post).

I was going to make one quick mention of a pure economics based thought that might have contributed to our current depression but it was based on an understanding inversion (see tiny writing below):

The 1970s switch of Government policy away from Keynesian practises towards monetary policies that buffered the economy from depressions and recessions may have precipitated the financial crisis by their very success: economic fluctuations shake the wastage out of the system, forcing inefficient businesses to shut down, reform or lay off unproductive staff. Keeping things steady just allowed more detritus to accumulate on the buckaroo donkey, saving all the pain for one big, inevitable mess... Well, actually that's complete nonsense!; It was *Keynesianism* that involved strong state intervention (like The New Deal). The 70s and 80s saw the rise of neo-liberalist policies promoting deregulated, free markets and privatisation. So, if anything one would have to blame *over* optimisation for the crash. 

+ Introducing Kondratieff waves:

To say that (inter)national economies are complex things is a blatant understatement. Many factors can effect a short term change in GDP growth rate; changes in: money supply, taxation, national interest rate, financial/business regulations (or removal of), public sector redundancies, etcetera. These have each caused quick and apparently large fluctuations in the past, but ultimately such disturbances only manifest for a couple of years at most before return to equilibrium. No amount of fiddling with these factors can stimulate sustained economic growth. Period. Yet on aggregate, since records began, the world GDP has *always* grown, year on year, even during the great depression, world wars and right now.

US GDP per person - "The Singularity is Near"

This continual rise in per-person wealth, standard of living and productivity has come from a succession of  technological innovations that have permeated society. Although, from an historical distance, the long term growth trend of a country looks pretty smooth, innovation uptake by members of a society tends to following a wave of adoption. Very gradual at first, rapid as it gains widespread popularity, but then perhaps never quite reaching *everyone*.

Wikipedia - Diffusion of innovations

There are only a discrete few innovations that are such majorly influential improvements to life as to have become ubiquitous (for example: mains electricity, automobiles, the internet), so they are spaced along our past. Each major innovation stimulated frenzied economic activity, indeed much employment was necessary to build, from nothing, massive infrastructure or industry (e.g. the railway/motorway network, industrial revolution). Lulls occur after each wave of innovation (because science takes time and) because the start of a wave is dependant on the new environment created by the previous one. So one should expect GDP growth history to be a little lumpy; a series of economic revolutions.

Nikolai Kondratieff wrote of his observation of a long wave economic cycle, back in 1925. It earned him Soviet Gulag, death by Stalin, and title to this theory (respectively). He estimated a fixed period of 50-60 years per cycle of: expansion, stagnation, recession. Since then it has been more commonly split into 4 seasons or irruption, frenzy, synergy, maturity (or such like).

The Great Stagnation(?) by Tyler Cowen:

This mini-book appeals to me because it talks about economic progress/stagnation/crisis as primarily attributable to innovations. However, his surprisingly compelling idea, to account for our global economic finance bubble, seems to clash directly with Kurzweil's portrayal of miraculously smooth technological advance. (Although Ray does talk about an overall exponential composed from S-curves through successive paradigms.)

I came upon this (£2 Kindle app special) book via a link to this blog post considering stagnation vs relocation (of the world's economic centre to China).

* The Book's Central Thesis in A Nutshell Painted by Me:

The natural course of technological innovation, following the tree of scientific discovery, yielded many 'low hanging fruit' from 1870-1970 that greatly benefited the whole of western society. Transport, communications, home conveniences, mass production, free fertile land for US settlers and perhaps cheap fossil fuels. These rapidly raised the standard of living for just about everyone (in America), doubling it ~ every 25 years, also creating universal employment.

However, in the the last 40 years there have been no innovations with the same level of wide ranging public utility. We, in the developed world reached a plateau of of technological productivity gains in the 1970s. Advances since then have been *marginal improvements* that have mostly benefited private consumers (to an extent dependant on wealth). The lack true economic growth was hidden by the uncertain value of growing government expenditure. [Perhaps outright "Pollyanna Creep" too (my thought, or rather Douglas Rushcoff's from "Life Inc.").] Markets and individuals, caught up in the endemic false expectation of continuously strong growth (from the previous period of reaping 'low hanging fruit') all simultaneously overstretched to the point of buckling.

The Internet is a sole exception of innovation, in that it has had a great qualitative benefit to peoples lives, for that part of society sufficiently educated to enjoy it's many wonders. However, it has not yet raised standards of living as ubiquitously as did electricity in homes. Furthermore, it contributes very scantly to employment and GDP. Computers do almost all the hard work, so massive companies (Google, Facebook) have few employees, hence (in part) the 'jobless recoveries' of the last 2 decades. Also, it's very difficult (or just plain unnecessary), to monetise most internet content. Time well spent on-line, for the individual, may well decrease spending elsewhere, hence reduce GDP and government tax income. The net is just too damn efficient!

'Recursion' by Tony Ballantyne

From a distance this novel should be right up my street, with a plot about self replicating machines that eat up entire planets. But his visions of the future are generally uninspired and wholly lackluster, mired in the clunky, Simple-English-Wikipedia of his prose.

+ Criticism:

It may be Ballantyne's 2004 debut, but it looks certain that his later work will never progress beyond amateur hour in comparison to (for example) Ian M Bank's fecundly imaginative narrative, or Reynold's brooding atmospherics. The scant few unfamiliar technologies presented in Recursion are named entirely literally, like the pivotal "Von Neumann machines" (or "VNMs"), for example. The number of raw ideas in Recurusion would barely sustain a couple of chapters of a Stross book. Also, either of my aforementioned favourite writers usually leave me with a post-it note full of fun new vocabulary that required Googling (if I'm in a literary mood), I almost feel I might have done a better job myself.

The 2051 (chronologically earliest) storyline was the most compelling in terms of character, and managed to build tension, terminating with a modicum of surprise (although it may as well have been set in 2020 in terms of future-fantastic).

The spy thriller thread (in 2119) was unconvincing and the coherence of the protagonists falters badly when he tries to write a frantic fleeing scene, that incidentally felt like it owed much to 'Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind'. In fact the cumbersome way details are often spelled out, some needlessly arbitrary events and the odd gaping continuity hole leave the whole thing feeling like the synopsis for a Hollywood movie. Which seems to be where much of the author's inspiration comes from.

My impression from the opening page, with 'Herb' in 2210, is that it could have been written in 1964, not 2004. Incidentally, his impression of a black skinned antagonist in this opening chapter left me somewhat uncomfortable (embarrassed on the author's behalf). Herb is the least believable character, supposedly smart (for a human) he is made to act overly retarded, attempting to paint the robot character as implacably smart, and allow many details to be spelled out to the reader through dialogue.

+ Nuts, bolts and spoilers:

Magicka - A Rave Review

I steered clear of this game for a while, mostly because of the fantasy setting gave connotations of WoW to mind, but I was totally wrong, and it's an EXCELLENT game, the most fun I've had for years!

Embark on an adventure to prevent the world from changing... Forever!

Magicka's fictional land of Midgård was conceived of by a bunch of Swedish Uni students to be vaguely Norse Mythological. But is dominated by computer game influences and popular geek culture references, from Return of the Jedi to Disc World via Monty Python and the internet. The fixed view, walk-towards-mouse-pointer format is most reminiscent of Diablo, but there's zero grind in sight; one's success in battle is determined almost entirely by raw ability and knowledge of spell combinations.

It's a game that uses boring legacy PC peripherals like a Guitar Hero controller of pure awesome: with each 'chord' one blasts out a volley of ice shards, a massive fire ball, a freezing electric death beam or random healing bombs that throw you right across the screen. [Tangential Note 1]

In terms of cultural significance, I would say it's the "Scott Pilgrim" of the games industry. The myriad hat tips to geekishness past and present are sandwiched in a satirical narrative that pokes fun at (for example) the ridiculous contrivances necessary to string such a notable story of adventure and battles together.

The overnight success of this £8 Steam wonder is probably largely to do with the multiplayer element. The trailer gave me the impression that combat would be an impenetrable clutter of mayhem; Streets of Rage and Golden Axe played concurrently in a rastafarian laundry explosion. Throw a bunch of rookie Magickians together and it's worst still. Ferment this in an alcohol fuelled LAN party for ultimate LOLZ! (And thank god for 'Revive': the first and most used multiplayer 'Magick'.)

However, multiplayer is up to 4 player co-op only, no official PvP (yet), squabbles and frequent accidents discounted. There are 2 bonus "Challenge Arenas”, but inevitably you end up only playing the campaign part multiplayer. While we're on the negatives, it has a hideous tendency not to connect. Then if you figure out a work around there were/are more bizarre coding bugs during game play than there are giant spiders, with a roughly zero percent chance you'll make it to the end of the campaign without the game fully crashing out.

Bioshock 2

In one sentence: the Bioshock 2 single player campaign has a worth while story, but the difficulty arc is very iffy.

Summary in more that one sentence:

Game play wise, innovation is comparable to Halo 2 verses it's predecessor, mostly just adding 'dual wield'. There are the same gruesome aesthetics one will have habituated to in the first title, and again they are juxtaposed with the cheery 50/60s style infomercials for deadly plasmid powers. However, the alternative game play section towards the end impressed me in that it genuinely shocked my sensibilities in a very artistic manner. I have not played, and am not commenting on, the multiplayer aspect. The ridiculous protection and Games for Windows Live situation I shall leave alone too.

"All good girls gather"...

Criticism:

Early in the game I found it very tough to successfully defend a little sister from splicers, while she harvested Adam, even on medium difficulty and after careful preparation of traps/defences. I was all out of money, heath packs, eve and trap ammo. But having struggled through, a few upgrades and various weapon acquisitions later, the same situations were far easier. Then the number and difficulty of enemies dropped right off before mid game, making my main problem having so much ammo and money I could rarely pick any up.

Rough Rebuttal to a Kurzweil Critic

This is very much an 'off the top of my head' response to a blog post by my friend, found here: http://www.simonpstevens.com/News/FlawWithTheFuture

A) Nit picking - I guess you are probably just simplifying matters for the sake of a concise introduction paragraph there but:

Vinge popularised the term 'singularity' in this context in 1983, but Stanislaw Ulam talked to von Neumann privately of singularity well before (1958), and Turing spoke of machine thinking taking over (1951). [1]

More significantly, Vinge's expectations for singularity are distinct from Kurzwiel's in that he expects the more sci-fi friendly course of events, with an AI spontaneously boot strapping itself towards super intelligence. He also estimates an early to mid 2030s time scale.

Kurzweil's vision, on the other hand, needs no Skynet (Terminator) type event. He sees little/no distinction between us and our machines. Our computers already form a kind of inseparable hybrid intelligence with our biological selves, and the level of integration will only increase in future (no clear machine/human divide). Kurzweils brand of future fantastic is about as boringly down to earth as his speaking style.

Also, I believe Kurzweil expects human level AI well before 2045 (as you stated), he in fact estimates that one could acquire (for $1000) computing power equivalent to all the brains of all the humans currently alive Earth by that date.


B) Given that the graph of his that you included goes back 10^11 years (most the way to the beginning of the universe) you can't really get away with saying we could be at the * beginning* of the growth curve! ;op  Also, remember that curves are mathematical structures that approximate the real world, not the other way around. Reality is not pootling along trajectories inscribed by God or gods. The 'laws' of the universe emerge from it's increasing complexity, they do not exist outside/before it's existence.

Physical Interweb Pipes for Produce; "FoodTubes"

* From this article on ilookforwardto.com.

Initially this reminded me of a system I envisioned a few years ago. That was more for of a local loop thing: store to household delivery of groceries, post & small parcels or restaurant food. Self powered bogies, the size of supermarket home delivery crates/boxes, that run through rectangular cross-sectioned conduits under roads/pavements, finding their destination by being forwarded like packets of data on the internet.

[ XKCD - http://xkcd.com/827/ ]

I thought my idea would be unlikely to make wide scale implementation, given the massive investment required merely for wiring up households with new data/communications lines. It seems more likely that automated intelligence will solve the problem by utilising existing infrastructure: an extension of driverless cars. Either the recipient of a delivery walks out to collect the package from said robot car (that would not complain about unsociable hours) or, some years later, properly smart humanoid delivery bots could be deployed from the cars for the last 10 meters.

* However, this FoodTubes concept has more fundamental benefits:
+ Energy efficiency - "1/5th of current freight prices" when HGVs/vans/trains use 92% of their energy to move purely the vehicle.
  - These are based on current scenariors, which is fine for now, and as long as the scheme can recoupe it's cos before the advent of 100% electric lorries, charged of solar PV, AI drivers.

+ Food security (independent of roads and severe congestion or temporary fuel shortages).
     - Though (with a single main loop) I would worry about it's reliability (resistance to natural structure failures, capsule collisions, or even sabotage) and repairability (possible methods to clear out or even replace tunnels that where bored underground.

+ Boon for car drivers; fewer HGVs means:
     - Less getting stuck behind slow or overtaking lorries.
     - Significantly less wear on the roads.

[ Top - Capsule (2m long, 1m diameter). Bellow - conduit construction illustration. ]

* Will it happen?
The FoodTubes website looks very 90s at the moment, and designs are all vague concepts, so a 10 year minimum time-frame might be par. It's basically a set of case study documents that did well in this "St Andrews Prize" competition (ideas for reducing environmental impact or something). Although, there are some pretty high brow members of the team (professors, industry experts, prominent layers). Not sure what type of company would be able to spawn a division capable of this flavour of (inter)national scale undertaking...

As an 'internet for goods' there needs to be common standards, like the shipping container system currently used worldwide on ocean vessels and lorries. Island UK could get away with a bespoke system, but Europe would require more consensus, for example. Having cylindrical capsules rules out direct compatibility with containers, and possibly even pallets, so massive repacking operations will be necessary at ports or other distribution centres.

With China looking set to use our currency from their trade surplus to finance rail links to us, this kind of scheme would make even more sense: as the last leg of a faster, more reliable (than ships and lorries) delivery system for manufactured goods,  which will be increasingly customised, in smaller batches, with ever more desire for shorter lead in times from manufacture to receipt.

Vince Cable produces fallacious mitigations for further science funding cuts

... is what the title of this BBC article should read. [1]

Waving a banner of necessary austerity to reduce public services and support for the lower paid majority of society is borderline morally corrupt, but cutting science funding is outright stupid. It's the equivalent of trying to buoy up a sinking hot air balloon by throwing fuel canisters overboard. But I can't say my dismay is a surprise, even when stimulated by the words of a prominent member of a political party I recently supported as our best hope.

Vince Cable and David Cameron in India (from the Dailymail.co.uk)

UK science is already under too much financial pressure, and has been for some time. Short term (2-4 year) projects are favoured too heavily over those that are more long term ('speculative'). Also, efforts I've heard of to commercialise the information products of university science have only left the universities out of pocket while lining those of layers and other middle men.

It is highly likely that the route to technological advancement is computationally irreducible, i.e. it is impossible to predict which research routes will yield important advances. Viewed from a great height scientific research is a process of memetic evolution. Evolution is not just (or rather rarely) about making gradual improvements to an organism, it mostly involves creating increasingly greater complexity by expanding into and creating as many new niches as possible, spreading tendrils out to every direction of phase space.

Adonna Khare -"Goldfish with Legs" (2008)

If mother nature were incarnate, and on a tight budget for biological evolution, would she have given the go ahead for fish with hydro-dynamically goofy protrusions, unable to know that these whimsical contrivances would eventually be used as the fist ever legs, spawning a vast new evolutionary tree of mammals. Please don't get caught up on my inadequate metaphor here, what I am trying to say is that limiting resources to the 'most promising' could create detriment well beyond a linear contraction in output.

In a previous post [2] I speculated that financial bubbles might be a boon for better businesses/technology, fostering evolutionary explosions after mass extinctions. But these austerity measures are non cyclical: a more gradual squeezing. What is more, the survival criterion are arbitrarily biased away from the most beneficial break throughs, towards short term money spinners and well entrenched "internationally excellent research".

[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11225197
[2] http://lewyland.blogspot.com/2010/04/utility-of-green-energy-bubble.html