A few weeks ago I found my mind wandering as I ran on the elliptical machine at my gym, and my mind went wandering back to Mass Effect.  In particular I found myself pondering the fate of the clone from the DLC CITADEL.  The writers gave us a pretty ambivalent ending for that particular adventure.  Yes, the clone fell from the cargo bay of the Normandy either by his/her own choice or because of an action by Shepard prime, but this is Shepard so is he/she really dead?  My assumption was no he didn’t die, so what did he do after surviving that fall?  Did he end up fighting the Reaper takeover of the Citadel?  Stow away or highjack another ship and head out?  And if he survived the end of the Reaper war what did he choose to do with his life?  (I”m going to use the male pronoun since I played a male Shepard and that’s how I think of him.)

I did a pretty exhaustive analysis of the Mass Effect DLC CITADEL, and you can find those posts here – Citadel and A Failure in Tone, but there is something about Mass Effect that keeps pulling me back.  An inability to let it go and stop fulminating over the missed opportunity with that game.  Since I am currently slogging along in SKYRIM, the contrast with Mass Effect and Dragon Age:  Origins is profound, and I once again found myself ruminating about Shepard and his Scooby gang.

Once again I felt that Citadel was another missed opportunity.  I didn’t mind the whole “evil clone” plot.  God knows it’s a classic science fiction trope, but what struck me as I thought about Citadel was how the issue of clones has been explored in far more interesting and thoughtful ways in science fiction literature.  Lois McMasters Bujould does a particularly fine job in her Miles Vorkosigan series.

It seemed like the entire clone plot was written purely as a lark and that the writers seemed to have lost all memory or knowledge of their universe, and the motivations of the various characters.  Shepard’s in particular.  Which ever origin you picked they were exemplified by loss, abandonment, catastrophe and struggle.  His character was forged in adversity.

But let’s start with The Illusive Man.  Cerberus had the technology to literally bring someone back from the dead, and keep an exact replica in case something happened to the new improved Shepard.  Now I understand that TIM was indoctrinated by the Reaper tech he had been putting in his body to extend his life, but TIM was no fool.  It struck me that TIM would have used this technology to create a clone of himself, and let that version become indoctrinated.  TIM knew the power of the Reapers, and the dangers of indoctrination.  He had Miranda’s daddy researching the phenomenon.  It strains credulity to believe he would have taken this risk if he had an alternative, and clearly he did.  How much better to let the clone take all the risk and TIM observe the outcome.

The greater violation was the pre-ordained outcome between Shepard and his clone.  Having a renegade option makes sense — kill the bastard, but the paragon choice should not have had the exact same end — the Clone taking a swan dive off the Normandy.  It would have been more interesting to offer an alternative where the clone remains and isn’t just shuffled off stage for the convenience of the writers.  In every Shepard origin you have a character who has suffered loss and loneliness.  Colonist — your colony gets wiped out, Earther — you’re an orphan who grew up in the streets and found a “family” in the Alliance.  Even the spacer origin (the one I selected) you have a child raised by a single mother, constantly moving, often in the care of others as Captain Hannah built her career.  And in every origin there is no mention of siblings.

Now you are faced with virtually a twin brother or sister.  I have to think that a possible outcome is a desperate desire to have that relationship with this twin.  One of the underlying themes of the game is forging family as exemplified by the crew of the Normandy.  Shouldn’t there have been an option to bring this genetic copy into the embrace of that family?  There should have been an option to have had the clone taken into custody.  To later learn that this second Shepard helped coordinate the defense and battle for the Citadel.  I mean, this is Shepard.

It would also offer BioWare and EA a way around the intractable problem that most fans when polled want a sequel to the three games, and that many players want to play their Shepard.  I know I feel that way.  We put in a lot of hours of thought and care into the games, and I’m betting most players did more than a bit of headcanon.  I know I did.  Granted I’m a crazy writer, but judging from the amount of fan fiction that has been generated so did a lot of other people.

The writers and producers wanted Citadel to be fun which as I’ve detailed in other posts utterly undercut the tension and what was at stake in the main game.  Which is why it probably should have been a concluding adventure to the game rather than being shoehorned into the main narrative.  Unfortunately the bad endings made that rather impossible.

In terms of story telling and thinking through the ramification I think the writers were too quick to dismiss a plot that they considered silly.  Evil clones how silly is that?  But most of Mass Effect is a rehash of hoary old science fiction tropes that we all love and enjoy even if they are cliched.  For the most part these tropes were handled very well.  I just wish they had done as well by this story.