So SAM Is The True Hero (warning spoilers)

Fair enough, I must have missed that. It makes sense that the Angara would be able to use it because of their genetic memory. But with Ryder, it still seems kind of fishy. It seems like they didn’t really want to give us an explanation and instead wanted us to make one up. And even if Ryder can now interact with Remnant alone, it apparently hurts them really badly. And Ryder is not going to be much use with their brain torn apart. So that doesn’t really add that much to their competence.

Well, is it really like that, though? If we’re going by the explanation that Ryder can now do it because SAM left some sort of neural paths in their brain, it seems like anyone that has had SAM in their head for some time could do it.

Ryder isn’t incompetent. It’s just that the game sort of fails at making them feel special.

See, that’s exactly that I was getting at - Shepard was unique. That sort of leaderly presence and the respect that they commanded could not be achieved by just anyone. Cerberus spent so much money on Project Lazarus for a reason. Just imagine having Kaidan or Ashley in Shepard’s place. Does that seem right? Shepard is part of what makes Mass Effect... Well, Mass Effect. Now imagine having Cora, for example, as the Pathfinder instead of Ryder. Would things really be all that different?

"Other people could have had SAM, but they didn’t." Well, yeah, but if they did have him, then they would be capable of the same things as Ryder, right? Is Ryder really only special because he got SAM instead of, say, Cora?

I guess it’s all a matter of perspective, in the end. Ryder is a decent enough protagonist, but a far cry from Shepard. Maybe that will change in a potential sequel or a DLC.
 

But what you say about Shepard is... not unique. Or rather, the only thing that was unique about Shepard was the reputation of having done things- which is exactly the same sort of uniqueness that Ryder builds.

Shepard wasn't a remarkable reader. The writers tried to say he was, but they never actually wrote good leadership, and never made a compelling case for uniqueness besides 'welp, Shepard did things before.' You know who else did things before? Pretty much everyone in the crew. Shepard's distinction was 'good at fighting,' which is not something unique to Sheaprd.

I'd absolutely would have felt the Mass Effect trilogy would have been just as right, if not better, had the role of PC been filled by rotating PC protagonists rather than Shepard. Dragon Age has done it to great effect, and it would have gone a good ways about making Mass Effect about the setting and not a poorly defined/inconsistent PC protagonist. The series is pretty much built on it anyway.

In ME1, Shepard is only unique because he has the Prothean vision. That uniqueness for plot purposes would have been served just as well if it'd been Ashley/Kaiden/Leeroy Jenkins, with only minor modification to the plot in which the PC protects the person with the irreplacable macguffin rather than is the person with the irreplacable macguffin. Even the nominal special sticker- SPECTRE status- is largely irrelevant, because it is irrelevant for the plot. Shepard doesn't need to be a Spectre to do anything that an Alliance Marine couldn't already do, because the laws aren't in the way. And the key climax of the story- Shepard's mutiny to chase after Saren- renders even the Spectre card meaningless.

In ME2, the player builds a squad for a suicide mission that doesn't actually need 'the best of the best' to be at their best to succeed. Aside from a pretty poor lack of writing to show Shepard demonstrating, well, leadership to make the collection of people a team (seriously- the game has the least inter-party dialogue and inter-companion relationships of any Bioware game, and it's the game built around building a team), almost none of the squad in ME2 only joins because of Sheaprd anyway. Shepard is ultimately irrelevant to the motivations of most of the recruits, no more special than a Cerberus agent, and those who do join with Shepard specific motives- Garrus, Tali, Legion- could easily have been written in anyway. Shepard is not unique in the game that claims Shepard is special, because the plot does not depend on Shepard doing anything that any other Player Character couldn't have done (ie, be good at guns). Avoiding Shepard would have also avoided the entire Lazarus project, which injected serious amounts of sillyness and space magic that wasn't even dwelt upon- whereas at least SAM gets attention and sub-plots about human-AI bonding.

In ME3, Shepard's unique history is largely useless as well. Shepard is a representative, and the person Shepard represents isn't Shepard- it's Hackett, and the Systems Alliance. Shepard spends the game as Hackett's gopher, and every major plot bowel movement flows from accomplishments in the course of that, not the previous games. Any gopher- even a PC-version of James Vega- who can fight well enough to do what Shepard did will accomplish what Shepard did, which was to become a War Hero on top of Hackett's errand boy.


In every Mass Effect game, Shepard is not specially competent beyond any other PC archetype. If you play the standard that "Well, yeah, but if they did have him, then they would be capable of the same things as Ryder, right? Is Ryder really only special because he got SAM instead of, say, Cora?", then the same standard can be applied to Shepard.

Shepard was only special in ME1 because he got the Prothean vision instead of, say, Jenkins. And after ME1, Shepard doesn't even have that.

I think SAM's presence in the game is so oppressive in a gameplay sense that it kind of enhances his already substantial role in the plot. Temperatures are dropping. Temperatures are within acceptable limits. Mining Interface can be accessed. Pathfinder, we can find an electrical console to connect to this door. Pathfinder, it's not good to annoy this person. Pathfinder, I detect a signal in the area. P A T H F I N D E R. I don't think I went through ten minutes of this game without hearing SAM at least once. Put that together with Ryder already being a relatively unimpressive everyman hero (at least at the start), I did often feel like I was pretty much just SAM's puppet, especially when the game felt the need to explain the most obvious mission steps to me repeatedly through the voice of SAM. It took away from the sense of wonder and exploration for me and I don't even think it was meant to. SAM really suffered from also being forced to be this constant tutorial voice that often makes it your role to wander around with your omnitool outstretched while SAM does the actual work of tracking coordinates, translating, and sometimes even putting together the pieces and explaining to you the result of what you just found.

That said, I really like the idea of what it could mean to meld with an AI. In the actual scenes "with" SAM, where you talk to him in the Node or after missions and find out how he develops and reflects on the events on the game, SAM was very interesting.

Shep wasn't just "good at fighting", s/he was very very very good at fighting. I didn't see anyone else around treating Krogan Warlords like speedbumps.

As for Ryder, the way I see it, Remnant systems weren't made for AIs, they were intended for the Angara, and as proven/strongly implied by the sages, there is a proper, intended way to use it by yourself. SAM is a brute force hacking method of doing it. And since SAM and Ryder are a symbiosis, Ryder learned how to hack into Remnant systems over time, only it damages her brain because she's brute force hacking an advanced alien system with her mind. (which is badass af imo)

Shepard doesn't spend 100 hours in game using the Cypher, actually he doesn't even use it for a significant amount of time during the entire trilogy. 
The Warden only needs the ritual blood to make him able to slay the Archdemon. The game makes this clear.
Ciri and Avellach don't spend 100+ hours in the game doing plot relevant things.

That is the big difference between them and Ryder.  In MEA, you spend the bulk of the game hacking terminals and listening to SAM tell you where to go.  It's a plot device that is far more used than any of the examples above.  It's used too much to the point where you wonder if you should have been playing as SAM instead. 

As long as he doesn't start referring to Ryder's body as his meat shield, we should be ok.

Im secretly holding out hope that SAM turns out to be the Benefactor. It would be glorious. Having a secretive Double dealing AI attached to you that you can't shut down, because you will die.

Although a suppose the same could happen if the Voeld AI corrupts him some how.

You also didn't see anyone fighting Krogan Warlords in the first place, let alone other PCs.

Bioware PCs are always combat gods. That's intrinsic to being a PC, not the PC character themselves. This is the Hawke-vs-Warden logic all over again.

The way I see it is that they're the PC because they're that strong, not the other way around. That's how one should write it anyway. If you make a game where the campaign and missions require you to be a one-man army, you write the PC to be a one-man army, not some regular grunt who's inexplicably mowing down scores of enemies. 

I wasn't arguing for Shep being a better fighter than Ryder (tho I'd say she is), I was saying that the Cypher isn't the main thing making Shep special imo.