The majority of gameplay is not story. Interesting, eh? Gathering teammates and achieving their loyalty missions is what clocks the hours. This means lots of fighting, which is good. How much plot is left, though? Let’s see.
LEFTOVER NINE
First of all, Shepard’s dead. How we die and how we’re brought back, at least from Shepard’s perspective, is the end of another tale. Miranda has a movie, let’s say, where she struggles to resurrect a person with no life signs. Waking Shepard is the Eight of that story, but what is it for this story? Is this a Leftover Nine or a One? Is the state of the world at the beginning the fact that Shepard died, or what happens when Shepard’s alive again? Either option has a good argument for it. I’m going to call it a Leftover Nine and see how the story unfolds from there.
ONE
Shepard’s alive. She has no idea what’s happening. Her last memory is of being spaced. The station where she awakes is under attack. Miranda’s voice, a stranger’s voice, tells her where to go (and directs a tutorial). She meets Jacob, who continues the tutorial and leads the escape from the science station.
TWO
Before they rejoin Miranda and leave this location, Jacob reveals that we’re on a Cerberus facility. Cerberus, a monstrous organization in ME1, has rebuilt Shepard. Working with Cerberus, owing life itself to Cerberus, must be the Trouble.
THREE
So, what happens next? Shepard meets the Illusive Man for the first time. I have a hard time justifying that as a Three, though. The Illusive Man comes In, but he never really goes Out, certainly not at a Six position.
Shepard completes the first mission and the Collectors are revealed, but only on video feed. Veetor the Quarian’s data — Collectors In — is a possible Three.
After Freedom’s Progress Shepard is reunited with Joker and the Normandy, hired and built, respectively, by Cerberus. Like the Illusive Man moment, Joker has an In but not an Out. The ship and the pilot carry through the Eight and Nine.
I’m getting an inkling of an Enneagram problem, lol. It’s possible the Illusive Man is the Six, he’s just in the wrong position. Let’s carry on and see. Whoo, boy, I think I’m right, though. Interesting.
FOUR
Like ME1, much of the Four is about world-building and team gathering. The characters are given much backstory and detail, so there’s nothing wrong with this Four. The game has a bit of a railroad (a determined path the gamer must follow rather than a sandbox the gamer can explore at will) but it doesn’t feel too restrictive. Enough variety in locations and characters provide plenty of enjoyment. When the first round of the team is built, we go to Horizon. We see the Collectors with our own eyes and fight them.
Remember, though, that if I’m right about the Two, Cerberus is our main antagonist, not the Collectors or the Reapers. That means the Switch will revolve around Cerberus, even as we’re fighting against something else in the gameplay.
SWITCH
It’s going to be the Ghost Ship, the Illusive Man’s trick. He sets us up. Yes, he wants to keep the team intact and he has faith that Shepard can handle a huge surprise battle, but he still treats his people as toys to manipulate. He’s not a partner, he’s a puppet master.
I don’t think the game is written to emphasize this Switch. Shepard comes back outraged when she learns from EDI that the whole mission has been hinky. She confronts the Illusive Man and objects, but he deflects. It feels like every other time he’s tweaked his team. This is a game of consequences and decisions. Shepard gets no such moment here. Obviously, she must continue to work with the Illusive Man through the Five, but dang. Something else needed to happen. A branching path is what’s called for, renegade or paragon. Wow, interesting.
Also, let me interject another point of confusion. If I’m looking at the entire trilogy, Ghost Ship is quite possibly the Switch for the entire series. It’s here that we learn the Protheans aren’t extinct. Some of them were genetically altered to become the Collectors. This is a huge point in our search for the mystery of the Reapers and how they harvest civilizations. All of ME1 is about the wisdom of the Protheans. Heck, the Hanar worship them as the Enkindlers, a god. Now they’re just another bug species under thrall to the Reapers. Big Switching point.
However, because the trilogy Switch happens very near the ME2 Switch, it can be confusing to winnow out what belongs to what. All to say that this game needed a bigger, more impactful moment to distinguish itself. This Switch is weak.
FIVE
Gathering the second part of our team, including the confrontations between Miranda and Jack (Cerberus vs. anti-Cerberus) and Tali and Legion (organic vs. machine), forms most of the Five. Key themes are explored. The decision by Joker to unshackle EDI is a big moment. He even has a great line: he hopes EDI won’t start singing “Daisy Bell”. (Lol, I had to look it up for the details, but I got the gist from the line delivery.)
How many loyalty missions will Shepard complete? All of this establishes the rules of the team. Again, really interesting character missions are revealed.
SIX
And so, here we are at the mirror. Let’s say the Three was Joker and the Normandy. I could argue that Joker’s Rescue, the final moment from that scene, is the Six. The Normandy has come a long way, and in order to keep it intact EDI must be let loose. The AI running the weaponry system is now a separate entity, housed within the ship but also existing independently. (This becomes more clear in ME3.) Let’s call this an expected Six. Normandy (as we’ve known it) In, Normandy (as it shall become) Out.
SEVEN
With the Normandy as the Three/Six mirror, the Seven becomes the decision to enter the Omega 4 Relay. The game has established many consequences for this decision and when it will happen, so this is a sound reading of the Enneagram. This is probably what Bioware intended. The Eight becomes the endgame of the Suicide Mission. Easy peazy.
The problem with this is the insertion of the Illusive Man near the end of the Eight. It’s weird, jarring. His virtual presence doesn’t feel technologically realistic. WTF is he doing there at my final battle? It’s wrong.
Hold that thought.
EIGHT
The battle through the Collector base, endgame, is the Eight by any reading of the Enneagram. This is where all the consequences land, and the choices are critically important. Brilliant! The human husk Reaper is not the greatest boss in terms of fight mechanics, but thematically it’s on point. Visually it’s pretty impressive. The base is about to blow, and Shepard must book for the Normandy while everything explodes. Perfection.
NINE
Back on the Normandy, we take stock of who lived and died. We get a brief mourning period for the fallen. The Collectors are gone, human colonies are safe, and the Reapers’ arrival is postponed. The world isn’t completely free, but we get a respite. Well done.
CRITICAL NOTES
Okay, let’s change things up a little and examine what happens if the Illusive Man is the Three. That means we need to move his final appearance to the Six. Instead of the petulant Illusive Man near the end of the game — almost at the conclusion of the Eight — let’s put him at the beginning of the Collector base mission.
Coming through the Omega 4 Relay is a necessity of this game. No other decision is possible. With a tone change I can excuse it as a game mechanic rather than a critical beat. It could be written so that it reads as Five stuff rather than the Seven. Let’s say, though, that when we land and prepare to set out to conquer the base and retrieve our crew that the Illusive Man pops up. First of all, we’re right next to the ship, so the technology is more relevant. At this point we’re still thinking of our connection back in human space. A pep talk from him makes more sense here.
And let’s say that the Seven, the key decision, is whether or not to destroy the base. It’s a great Seven. Remember, Cerberus is the Two. The Eight needs to be about more than the Collectors; it must include the wants of the Illusive Man. Decide about the base here and now before the final mission, and let the fight reflect that decision. Is the explosion on a ticking clock? Does a teammate thwart us?
This section is called the Suicide Mission. The team hopes to return, but the odds are very bad. If we have the chance to set a bomb that will explode the station in, say, ten hours, we’d take it. If we died, we wouldn’t have rescued the kidnapped humans, but at least we’d have destroyed the Collectors. Establishing the bomb and rigging it before we go in actually makes a ton of sense.
What becomes of Cerberus if we destroy the data? One of the (myriad) complaints about ME3 is that some choices have no consequences at all. This is one of them. Destroy the base or save it, the Illusive Man in the next game has the same data. He goes in after the base is blown and retrieves everything. Somehow. It’s completely ridiculous.
Here’s my theory: if the Story Enneagram of ME2 had been handled differently, if the Illusive Man’s appearance at the Collector base had been given the weight of a story beat, ME3 would’ve been written differently. Right now, with his demand placed awkwardly at the wind up of the Eight, the writers can ignore him and elide over his ask. If his moment had been delineated as a Seven, he couldn’t hide. Cerberus would’ve changed. For this game, it’s a clumsy writing mistake; for the next game it’s a crippling failure that doomed the franchise. I think that, using the Enneagram to check their work, Bioware could’ve done better and laid a stronger foundation for their final game.
They’re so close, though! Not as tidy as ME1, this game is still one of the greats. Its replayability is huge. The Illusive Man — Sheen’s voice work and the animation team’s dead-on capture of him — is still so unique and his villainy is compelling. The fight mechanics are fast and satisfying. The epic sense of walking through a space opera is not as strong here as it is in ME1 — the scope of this story is smaller — but the noir-quality hits a sweet spot. In my opinion the Enneagram could’ve been tighter, which would’ve launched a less controversial sequel, but the Enneagram as delivered is satisfactory.