You Must Gather Your Party Before Venturing Forth

I've been playing a lot of Dragon Age: Inquisition lately, and I am loving it. It's such a rich game with a lot to explore and think about. It's a high fantasy game, you know the kind with elves, dwarfs, dragons and the like, which is strange for me to enjoy. I'm normally a science-fiction kind of guy. Yet, Bioware has a knack for making games that I truly can enjoy and become immersed in. The studio takes everything that we know and love about RPGs and makes them better, with quality writing that is both well rounded and engaging, and gameplay that is fun and deep.

What I would like to write about today is the party system. Now, every RPG worth its weight in experience points has a party system. Chances are, that there is also a huge cast of characters that you can choose from to create a party that is effective. I started thinking, this is a bit like the relationships that we have in real life, right? We have lots of friends, but only a select few of them we can call our best friends. We see it all the time on Facebook. Sometimes I glance at the number next to the word Friends on my page and wonder how it was that I accumulated over one hundred people. It's really kind of astonishing, given that I feel like I can only claim to have about four or five people in my life that I can truly call a friend. Yet, those are the people who matter most to me. Those are the people whom I would take on an adventure. I can rely on them. I trust them.

This happens a lot in RPGs. There will be over twenty characters to choose from, but you can only take two or three with you when actually playing the game. It almost doesn't seem fair. Each member that you can choose from has a skillset, and are capable at getting things accomplished. It kind of comes down to preference. In Mass Effect, I would always take Garrus and Wrex. These two were my crew. We rolled over everything that stood in our way. The rest of the team would stay on the ship and check their smartphones. Meanwhile, me and my two best friends were out there saving the galaxy. I kind of feel bad for the other teammates, but I just don't enjoy their company as much as I do with Garrus and Wrex. Sometimes, though, we have to let go of the people in our lives because we realize that they might not be the healthiest person to be around.

In Mass Effect 2, which I've played through multiple times, I would do the same thing. Once I discovered that Garrus could be on my team again, you know he was right there at my side. He still needed his Krogan counterpart, though. Then came Grunt. The team was back together, more or less. One day, while playing through Mass Effect 2 for the fifth or sixth time, I decided to take an interest in Thane Krios. I usually play as female Shepard, because Jenifer Hale is my girl and because her voice isn't quite as weird as the male Shepard voice actor Mark Meer. So, being a female, I could romance either Thane or Garrus. In previous runs of ME 2, I would always go with Garrus. After all, he was the guy that I would always take on missions. There was a special bond between him and me. However, the more that I really thought about the character of Garrus, the more I started to question him. Garrus is a former cop, who was always frustrated by the rules and regulations that he had to abide by. When he got the chance to travel across the galaxy with Shepard, and not have to follow those rules, he jumped at the chance. Being that Shepard was now a Specter, a special operatives agent who answered directly to the council, she could do whatever she thought was necessary to complete the mission. What Garrus thought was necessary was a bullet through the skull of whoever was on the business end of his sniper rifle.

In the loyalty mission for Garrus, he goes 100% bad cop. The story of Garrus between Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2, is that Garrus took up residence in Omega, a wretched hive of scum and villainy where there was no laws or regulations to speak of. This was right up Garrus' alley. Garrus didn't like seeing innocent people get hurt, so he became a vigilante for justice. However this justice was his brand of justice, which includes the aforementioned skull bullets. Garrus created a team of people from all around Omega who would join his cause to make the galaxy a little bit of a brighter place, but it would all come crashing down. Garrus was betrayed by one of his own. We find this out in Mass Effect 2, and discover that Garrus is out for blood. At the end of the loyalty mission, we are given a choice to stand in the path of Garrus and his target, allowing him to say what has been going on since the time he had betrayed Garrus and his team. Garrus is furious with Shepard, and begrudgingly lets the target go. I think it was the right thing to let the man live. He was already beaten. Perhaps he wished for death, but murder was not the answer. Garrus wanted nothing more than to kill that man, and he would hurt as many people as he could to make that happen.

Throughout the mission, Garrus is pretty much frothing with anger and rage. He was brutal in his methods to extract information from whomever knew anything about his target. Then we meet Thane, in a completely different place and time.

Thane is an assassin. It isn't the cleanest career, but then again, neither is being a Specter for the council. Once Thane joined the crew, and I started to talk with him more, I discovered more about who he was. I learned about his thoughts and principles. I learned of his religion, and the code by which he abides. I learned of his past, and his wife and child. To gain Thane's loyalty to the crew, Shepard teams up with Thane to track down his son, so that he doesn't become an assassin like his father. Thane is not proud of killing, but he does it because he finds that the assassin is a tool, and not a person. The orders are issued, and then carried out. However, Thane still knew that he was a murderer, and he didn't wish the same for his son. Thane is a caring man, and he is a good man. He settled down, and started a family, and he swore to never kill again. However, an enemy that was made in his past life had caught up to him, and killed his family. Thane struck back by killing everyone who was connected to those who took his family from him. This is rather similar to Garrus' story, the only difference is: Thane regrets killing all of those people.

I eventually chose Thane over Garrus, and it broke my heart. It definitely broke Garrus'. Every time that Garrus went back to his calibrations, it hurt that he wouldn't talk to me anymore. I deserve it. I feel terrible for breaking his heart, and seemingly betraying him after I spent all that time talking with him to get to know him better. In the end, though, I feel as though I made a choice to be with someone whom I respected, and someone whom I admired. I could see myself being with someone more like Thane than Garrus. So, that's my story.

But, don't we all have stories like that? Stories where we realize that someone might not be the best for us. It hurts to cut them loose like that, but at the end of the day, we have to. Perhaps because they are holding us back from becoming better. Perhaps it's because we're holding ourselves back by staying with them, and holding on to the past. We have to have people in our lives that make us feel loved. People who encourage us, and improve us. People who can push us forward, and people that we can rely on. We may have many friends to choose from, but we can only take a few with us on this adventure called life.