replayed this through legendary edition. what a remarkably frustrating DLC this is for series lore. by this point, batarians had only been hinted at in lore dumps about the skyllian blitz, and this would be the first chance players would get to see them and what they're about. and turns out. . . bioware wants you to know that they are all irredeemable slavers who seek nothing but the abject suffering of all of humanity. why? because the council favored humanity over them in a critical instance.
the shocking part here is how squandered this premise is. set aside the species essentialism of "you will literally never meet a batarian that is anything approximating moral" mixed with the completely absent info on batarian culture to justify this consistent characterization. . . ignore that. we have objective evidence in this DLC that the council DOES in fact favor humanity in some capacity and IS pulling for them out of either nepotism, quid pro quo, or some potential third reason. the various prejudiced volus and turians are RIGHT, the council did rightfully take away settled worlds from the batarians for the humans. and we're not given nearly enough information on that decision to determine whether or not that's a just call on their part, hell we don't even find out ANY reason for why the council yoinks away land from the batarians and cedes it to the humans. but what you've done is made complexity out of humanity's position in the galaxy and given a species (the batarians) very good reason to resent their presence. organic conflict like this is great and gives the writers so much to build on. what if the council was completely biased against batarians? what if the council made that call based on good evidence that was classified? what if the council only made that decision from the post-contact war fallout in tandem with political pressure from human diplomats like udina? there's literally so many places you can go with this decision.
this unfortunately begins and ends at "the batarians want human colonists to suffer and when they're not torturing human colonists they're doing unambiguously immoral things like slaving". i mean, for fuck's sake, the one batarian you can talk down literally starts his convo with "whoa! don't attack me. i didn't sign up for this (genocide). i thought i was just gonna be slaving.", as if him implying that he would be slaving on a good day is supposed to paint him as the good guy. it's all so dreadfully dull when you get down to the facts of it. the batarians never get humanized in the way any other species like the asari or the turians or the salarians do (or even the less significant ones like the volus and hanar). this sets a bad trend that we see spring up with species like the vorcha, and while you can blame the bad writing in mass effect 2 on mass effect 2, it's worth stating that this was the first step down the slippery slope.
gameplay-wise this DLC is functional. it's certainly better than an average random planet and has more interiors than most. at the same time, it feels like something where you can just autopilot through most of it and not miss much. the only really noteworthy part of the whole thing is the final gameplay section of dealing with all of balak's men prior to talking to him. it feels overwhelming and stressful in a fun way, and evokes the feeling of playing a third person shooter with the enemy AI at its most aggressive. ME1 definitely could've benefited from more "big area with lots of cover to use in a large-scale dogfight" type of arenas if this is anything to go by. after that, you're given the moral choice which the game seems to think is like 90x deeper and grayer than it actually is. no matter what you choose, the game treats you like you like you made the wrong choice, which is a sort of interesting way to go about it but. . . i dunno. this DLC certainly was created with simon's tagline of "choosing between the lives of hostages or letting a terrorist go. . . that's an impossible choice" and it seems to do everything short of suck its own cock on screen over it. this would be a better dilemma if balak existed in any other part of the series and you got any sense that him escaping led to more suffering and death. but no matter what you choose, he disappears from the series and if you let him go, you'll get an email from kate in 2 telling you how nice of a person you are to have not incinerated her via bomb blast. ok.
i just get disappointed with this DLC because mass effect is this english muffin of galactic politics and to squander something as interesting as the batarian/human conflict centered by the citadel is just. . . why even bother? why even make this DLC if you have such a negative interest in fleshing out batarians as a species. it feels like a waste of time. i just don't see the point in crafting this grand world full of scientific fascination and political nuance only to shit the bed in your DLC and go "here are the evil orcs who do bad things and cannot help themselves from being evil". it's just so tired; don't you get tired of orcs after a while?
the shocking part here is how squandered this premise is. set aside the species essentialism of "you will literally never meet a batarian that is anything approximating moral" mixed with the completely absent info on batarian culture to justify this consistent characterization. . . ignore that. we have objective evidence in this DLC that the council DOES in fact favor humanity in some capacity and IS pulling for them out of either nepotism, quid pro quo, or some potential third reason. the various prejudiced volus and turians are RIGHT, the council did rightfully take away settled worlds from the batarians for the humans. and we're not given nearly enough information on that decision to determine whether or not that's a just call on their part, hell we don't even find out ANY reason for why the council yoinks away land from the batarians and cedes it to the humans. but what you've done is made complexity out of humanity's position in the galaxy and given a species (the batarians) very good reason to resent their presence. organic conflict like this is great and gives the writers so much to build on. what if the council was completely biased against batarians? what if the council made that call based on good evidence that was classified? what if the council only made that decision from the post-contact war fallout in tandem with political pressure from human diplomats like udina? there's literally so many places you can go with this decision.
this unfortunately begins and ends at "the batarians want human colonists to suffer and when they're not torturing human colonists they're doing unambiguously immoral things like slaving". i mean, for fuck's sake, the one batarian you can talk down literally starts his convo with "whoa! don't attack me. i didn't sign up for this (genocide). i thought i was just gonna be slaving.", as if him implying that he would be slaving on a good day is supposed to paint him as the good guy. it's all so dreadfully dull when you get down to the facts of it. the batarians never get humanized in the way any other species like the asari or the turians or the salarians do (or even the less significant ones like the volus and hanar). this sets a bad trend that we see spring up with species like the vorcha, and while you can blame the bad writing in mass effect 2 on mass effect 2, it's worth stating that this was the first step down the slippery slope.
gameplay-wise this DLC is functional. it's certainly better than an average random planet and has more interiors than most. at the same time, it feels like something where you can just autopilot through most of it and not miss much. the only really noteworthy part of the whole thing is the final gameplay section of dealing with all of balak's men prior to talking to him. it feels overwhelming and stressful in a fun way, and evokes the feeling of playing a third person shooter with the enemy AI at its most aggressive. ME1 definitely could've benefited from more "big area with lots of cover to use in a large-scale dogfight" type of arenas if this is anything to go by. after that, you're given the moral choice which the game seems to think is like 90x deeper and grayer than it actually is. no matter what you choose, the game treats you like you like you made the wrong choice, which is a sort of interesting way to go about it but. . . i dunno. this DLC certainly was created with simon's tagline of "choosing between the lives of hostages or letting a terrorist go. . . that's an impossible choice" and it seems to do everything short of suck its own cock on screen over it. this would be a better dilemma if balak existed in any other part of the series and you got any sense that him escaping led to more suffering and death. but no matter what you choose, he disappears from the series and if you let him go, you'll get an email from kate in 2 telling you how nice of a person you are to have not incinerated her via bomb blast. ok.
i just get disappointed with this DLC because mass effect is this english muffin of galactic politics and to squander something as interesting as the batarian/human conflict centered by the citadel is just. . . why even bother? why even make this DLC if you have such a negative interest in fleshing out batarians as a species. it feels like a waste of time. i just don't see the point in crafting this grand world full of scientific fascination and political nuance only to shit the bed in your DLC and go "here are the evil orcs who do bad things and cannot help themselves from being evil". it's just so tired; don't you get tired of orcs after a while?