Booty

At the time of writing, I've woken up to multiple articles about Mass Effect Legendary Editon's choice to remove or alter certain camera angles in its games, most overtly, MIranda's most overt shot of her rear in Mass Effect 2. 

This of course sparked """"""debate"""""".

It's a little awkward for me personally, because I question many people's needs to be constantly mad about "Gamers" being mad, yet I find the people who "just care about censorship" to more often than not be arguing in bad faith.

Rather than drown myself in the well poisoned by the drivel of all these people though, I'd rather write about a genuinely interesting component to this conversation, something that doesn't fit in a tweet.

What's interesting is this conversation's taking place in a Trilogy Remaster that's overhauling the core-gameplay of Mass Effect 1. All new cover-system, control-scheme, weapon handling, vehicle physics etc. Yet no one seems to bat an eye at this. From all the conversations I've seen, it's welcomed.

This isn't surprising, whenever talking to someone who hasn't finished Mass Effect 1, the reason most often cited is the moment to moment gameplay. Combat's clunky, inventory's a mess, side-missions take place on bland worlds, Mako steers like ass, etc. These are seen by the general community as "fixes " rather than "changes."

Thing is, Mass Effect 1's core-design is where its strengths also stem from. Its lacking emphasis on fast cooldowns and agile player characters is what allows tension in its firefights. It's what produces those really satisfying encounters when you time the abilities of Shepard and Co perfectly. It's what makes Krogan enemies scary to face.

Mass Effect 1 Remastered might very well keep the game's strengths while addressing issues that made them less apparent to some players, but it may very well also remove that it. DOOM 3 BFG infamously attached the flashlight to your character, and what seemed like such a minor adjustment to the casual viewer, became one of its biggest faults, ruining the pacing of combat encounters and rendering the tension in certain set-pieces utterly moot.

Altering gameplay then, isn't a "fix."

It's a change.

Changing gameplay mechanics is just like changing a painter's color palette, a mechanics toolset, or a photographers camera. Were we to view gameplay as artistic rather than strictly mechanically, perhaps these changes would generate as much skepticism and apathy, as moving the camera away from someone's ass during a dramatic scene.