Picture chilling with your girl and another example of God's beautiful design decides to introduce herself into your eyes vicinity. The pumper then sends pints of blood straight from your Thinker down to your pants as a sign of acknowledgement of erotic vista, leaving your brain less than capable of explaining to your girl why you're happy to see other girls. Stupid heart.
I don't have major heartbreak stories. My only source of self-cutting moments and throwing rocks at old couples was during video games. Most notably, MASS EFFECT.
Oh Mass Effect … love the way you lied to me. 5 years of my life I gave to you, and in the end, instead of a worthwhile conclusion where we run hand in hand into the sunset as the camera pans skyward and credits roll, you drove your omni-blade straight through my heart, kicked me in the quad and spiked me up like a husk on Eden Prime.
This video game shouldn't have, but it did, take up a large portion of my emotions. I invested my heart into the epic story journey and let my imagination control what I feel for the characters and the situations they were going through. I got to meet Quarians who were kicked out of their home world by walking iPhones, and Krogans who got to have loads of sex without worrying about pregnancy because the Salarians neutered them. A Turian became my best friend as we shared similar military strategies, and I "embraced eternity" with an Asari.
I wanted to know how this fictional world came to be and how my decisions can add to the resolve of all life's problems. This is because, if I could help these bits and pixels in their already scripted and coded lives, I could gain the courage to come back to the real world and do something as equally helpful to the meat bags I call family and friends.
The first two games were like building up the perfect relationship. I would find the right buttons to push and spend all night with my dearest Mass Effect. I would neglect all other girls in my life and only pay attention to the sweet silence of the Normandy's SR1 drive core. The general theme and tone of the game hinted a great step in cementing our love forever in the next game. I was assured that all will be well because of the effort and investment I put in.
And for the first 99% of the game, my investment paid off immensely. I was carrying around a 2-month nerd-boner from the excellent visuals and story depth that the geniuses at Bioware took the time to bring to life. The back-stories of the different alien species and the visit to their home-worlds just kept me replaying save-points just to burn the memory in my head. I'm even proud to say I wore down my girl and friends with so much Mass info until they started taking a some-what interest in the game.
And finally, the final war finale finish off. The might of a galaxy united, coming together for an all-out assault on the Reapers to take back Earth. The tears welled up. Star Wars and Star Trek combined COULD NOT bring this much energy even if they poured a gazillion tonnes of coffee into the MILKY way galaxy. A final approach on foot through a decimated London with your best friend Garrus and your bond-mate Liara, running towards the conduit as Harbinger blasts highways of red lasers at your every side. Your team gets injured, Seth Green flies in to evacuate them as you give Liara a final goodbye and run towards your death. At this point, I wasn't even at the edge of my seat; I was standing with my toes so curled that you'd think I was jizzing.
I couldn't be more in love with this game. Seriously! My heart was Mass Relaying love all over my body. And I could tell that the end was just a few minutes away, once we go head-to-head with Martin Sheen's Illusive Man. "Humanity, blah blah blah ... paragon or renegade response ... open Citadel ... finish the game over-looking the blue planet". Then suddenly, as if I was playing a different game, the end, the last 1% of this great series, was brought down to a weird conversation with a child who has a fetish for synthetics and 3 choices: Destroy, Control, Evolve. I gave each ending a chance and they were all the same. HEARTBREAKING, and not in the good way. It was more like What The Mass just happened and why can't I recoil out of this fetal position?
It's not just a video game that ended badly. This was a love that was given by me, to something worth being loved, only to be ripped apart and hurled back at me, when I needed a reciprocal love for all the time, money and effort I had put into it. I cried and whined so much along with millions of other fans that I eventually just started accepting what had happened, and that I couldn't change it. Maybe this was the lesson to take back to the real world. Serenity to accept things I cannot change. And just like that, this heartbreaking game was back in my life, to be played over and over ... to be heartbroken over and over ... in a never-ending relationship of hurt and love.
... and so cries theBoy Thosh.
@thuita
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