ME3: Thessia and Kai Leng (Spoilers)

[Lupus80]

Other than the ending there is another part I have issue with the story and gameplay of Mass Effect 3: the Priority: Thessia mission and the villian Kai Leng.

Unlike the ending, I can see what the writers and director was going for when Shepard is trying to save Thessia from the Reapers. It is a losing battle, a conflict that no matter how much you try and what you do you lose. I get that. The theme and mood were very well presented in the story and dialog. But when the mission was over, and you are shown Shepard agonizing over the defeat; I just didn't feel it. I felt cheated.

It's because the game had to "cheat" in order for me to lose. I know it was meant to be a forgone conclusion, all wrapped up in the joke of a villian Kai Leng.

The first time I saw the guy (I didn't watch any spoilers until I played the game) I laughed at how silly he looked. But whatever; lots of badasses look silly (just look at the Final Fantasy series). Even before the first battle with him whenever he talked I just heard a high-pitched-Eric-Cartman-whining voice saying "Look at me, I'm so coo! I'm all ninja-like and have a katana! I can do everything and have no weaknesses! I have to be protected by the plot! I'm so coo! Please believe me! I'm coo right! So coo!"

So at the battle on Thessia I actually managed to take down most of his health until his life-saving cutscene intervened and totally denied my ass kicking of the cyber-ninja wannabe. So when he gets away with the Prothean VI and Thessia is destroyed, I didn't feel like I failed. I just felt cheated. I didn't share Shepard's agnozing after the fact (even though it was well acted and portrayed) because I kept thinking "I didn't fail, the stupid cyber-ninja cheated to win."

Maybe if the game handled it a bit differently I would have shared Shepard's agony in defeat. If they made it so you could save someone important, or give time for people to flee the planet, but make it really, really hard to do so than that would give me something to latch onto emotionally.

It was not a complete failure though. It was still satisfying to skewer Kai Leng a new one in the end (Renegade interupt or not). Compared with the other villians of Mass Effect Kai Leng fails on so many levels to intimidate me or leave a good impression in any way.

 

[The_Blue_Rider]

Eh, its a war, you cant really cheat, to me the purpose of that was to show that Kai Leng thinks way, way too highly of himself. Shepard makes him their ***** in every fight they have, and the end of Thessia was Kai Leng going, "Oh shit, this guys too good, better do what i shouldve done from the start"

Captcha: Easy as cake, somewhat appropriate for Kai Lengs difficulty

 

[Vanitas likes Bubbles]

Eh, its a war, you cant really cheat, to me the purpose of that was to show that Kai Leng thinks way, way too highly of himself. Shepard makes him their ***** in every fight they have, and the end of Thessia was Kai Leng going, "Oh shit, this guys too good, better do what i shouldve done from the start"

Captcha: Easy as cake, somewhat appropriate for Kai Lengs difficulty

Even the Phantoms were harder then Kai Leng. But I think the purpose of you losing was to show you that you aren't unstoppable and you have your weaknesses.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

I didn't have a problem with that mission, but I do have a problem with Kai Lang. Did he really have to look that stupid and over the top? Remember how in Mass Effect 1 everyone looked normal and it all made sense. Then in ME2 they went kinda crazy with super assassin Thane and a JRPG-like Samara and even Kasumi was a bit unrealistic. But it wasn't really bad because those characters were written very well and because it helped to introduce a darker aspect of the Mass Effect universe not seen in ME1. But Kai Lang? There are no excuses. He's just a retarded villain's right hand man. And a walking cliche. He feels like he stepped out of a Metal Gear Solid game.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

I agree completely with the OP. Whenever I saw Kai Leng I just wanted to chew out whoever designed the character and Shephard's defeat at his hands on Thessia feels so contrieved it is just silly. It is one thing to make an antagonist that you really want to defeat because the antagonist is well written and keeps you from achieving your goal. It is another thing entirely to make a Kai Leng, which has plot armor, goes into parodical territory of himself (unintentionally, I believe) when trying to look, be and feel bad ass and just feels completely out of sync with the game around him. Look at the difference between Kai Leng and the epitome of super-powered antagonists: Liquid Snake and The Boss, the latter two are way more powerful than Snake, but neither feels as embarassingly contrieved as Kai Leng, despite getting cutscene powers to hand snake his ass a few times and having near omniscient awareness.

 

[Zhukov]

Kai Leng never really bothered me, but I see where the OP is coming from.

I think a better way to implement it would have been for the the sequence where he grabs the VI to be a script that takes place within gameplay. He could simply have enough shielding to prevent you from killing him before he gets away. Maybe throw in some Cerberus troops spawns or a barrage from the gunship to keep the player from focussing their full attention on him.

Being defeated in a cutscene never feels like defeat because you had no hand it in. You just watch as your character gets defeated.

 

[Whitbane]

Yeah, Thessia's flooring and stability seem to have it out for Shepard, collapsing and screwing him over more than Kai Leng ever could.

 

[Antitonic]

Someone brought up a good point on Twitter: Gameplay Shepard is an unstoppable badass, never missing a shot with biotics raging. Cutscene Shepard can't hit the broadside of a barn, plinking away with a pistol that only exists in cutscenes.

Makes it a bit harder to buy the villain's credibility.

 

[Xenedus]

I didn't really have so much of a problem with Kai Leng beating you as he did kinda bring a helicopter to a gun fight. The issue I had with that whole sequence is how quickly Shepard got over it. One minute Shepard is sad and depressed and the next minute he's only slightly irritated by it. I was expecting him to be BURNING with rage at this but after the initial wave of grief he came off as pretty emotionless about the whole thing later which was a bit of a letdown for me.

 

[Cranky]

They really did not need to make Leng such an over-the-top antagonist though.

 

[tippy2k2]

I didn't have a problem with that mission, but I do have a problem with Kai Lang. Did he really have to look that stupid and over the top? Remember how in Mass Effect 1 everyone looked normal and it all made sense. Then in ME2 they went kinda crazy with super assassin Thane and a JRPG-like Samara and even Kasumi was a bit unrealistic. But it wasn't really bad because those characters were written very well and because it helped to introduce a darker aspect of the Mass Effect universe not seen in ME1. But Kai Lang? There are no excuses. He's just a retarded villain's right hand man. And a walking cliche. He feels like he stepped out of a Metal Gear Solid game.

See, I thought the reason he looked like that was because of what the Illusive Man did to him. From the sound of it, he was just as killed as Shepard was but the IM brought him back from the dead just as he brought Shepard back. However, this time he went with Miranda's idea for a puppet rather than free-will and put the control chip into him, hence the weird...sun-glass thing? Honestly, I thought he kind of looked like Adam Jensen with Raiden (Metal Gear Solid 4) attributes...both characters that I wouldn't blink an eye to if they showed up.

I thought that was what made Kei Lang a good bad guy; this is what Shepard could have become, a mirror to show a different path.

Cutscene Shepard can't hit the broadside of a barn, plinking away with a pistol that only exists in cutscenes.

Makes it a bit harder to buy the villain's credibility.

I could be wrong about this but I thought Shepard was hitting Kei Lang in the cut-scenes. Game play demonstrated that the dude had shields and even if he didn't have shields, you have to shoot him a lot to get his health to go away.

 

[Antitonic]

Cutscene Shepard can't hit the broadside of a barn, plinking away with a pistol that only exists in cutscenes.

Makes it a bit harder to buy the villain's credibility.

I could be wrong about this but I thought Shepard was hitting Kei Lang in the cut-scenes. Game play demonstrated that the dude had shields and even if he didn't have shields, you have to shoot him a lot to get his health to go away.

It's not just that cutscene though. Right from ME1, Cutscene Shepard is worth less than Cpl. Jenkins.

]Yesh, it's a disparity between the empowerment fantasy the game's meant to serve and the flawed character it's meant to portray. Once the game switches from an interactive medium (gameplay) to a visual medium (cutscenes), the former suddenly disappears and Actually Human Shepard jumps forth from the depths of the plot. They could have made a separate cutscene for each class, showing the powers of each (which would have delayed the game a few more months, cost a few more heaps of money and required an extra DVD) but the plot isn't really designed to be flexible like that: the point is, bad guy gets away, and nothing shepard does would change that. He could have launched a nuclear strike and nothing would change. So just suspend your disbelief on that.

This is a fair point, it's just a jarring experience that probably could've been done in a way so as to not be as noticeable. I mean, my Shepard doesn't even use a pistol, but here's one from Hammerspace for a cutscene. Shepard's already got an assault rifle equipped, why does he need another, more useless one?

 

[AbstractStream]

OP, I felt what you felt the first time around. I was handing his ass to him and right in the middle of my soon to be victory, the cutscene happens and I "lose." It only slightly bothered me, but then I played it on Insanity and I felt rightfully defeated. So that's that.

I feel Garrus described this "villain" the best. "Lieutenant Bastard Kai Leng." Man, it felt good to stab him. >>

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

Sounds like more of the "boo hoo, the story doesn't cater to my every whim" reactions a lot of people have when bioware noticeably shitfs its focus towards an action game approach.

Sometimes the plot just up and kicks you in the balls. Half-Life did it, Baldur's Gate 2 did it (from the VERY START), Deus Ex did it. Not something you should care that much about. You probably just didn't like Kai Leng.

No. There's a very distinct difference between BG2s (or even the original BGs) way of driving home character vulnerability and plot-determined setbacks and Kai Leng's over the top cariacture of a "too cool for school bad boy". Jon Irenicus shares many traits with Leng, they are both powerful and arrogant, Irenicus also manages to have a character development that shows us that he's powerful but ultimately flawed and he's given clear motivations to wish to antagonize the PC. Kai Leng? He runs around looking like emo teenager meets ninja meets seven year olds idea of bad ass (he's only missing a trench coat) and his entire characterization in the game can be summarized with the words "Cool evil guy that keeps messing things up for Shephard".

Remember the Spellhold part of BG2? Where you rush into Jon Irenicus trap? Yeah, that part was great because a) Irenicus was set up to be a cunning opponent (who had it in for you), b) the trap had been foreshadowed and c) the child of bhaal had a good storywise reason to fall for the trap and why Irenicus was too powerful to confront. The Thessia bit is never foreshadowed, it is never established how cerberus found out about the VI (the people who know Shephard is headed there are Shephard, a few people on the Normandy and the Asari Councilor) or even exactly why they want it and it remains dubious that you can't win the scenario at hand (Shephard did blast a gunship out of the sky on Omega, remember?) because the game forces you into a cutscene while you are most likely kicking Leng's behind.

 

[Jaeke]

Well if you play Insanity exclusive like I do, Yes, it did feel like a defeat.

I wanted to rip that bastard in half. And I did.

I don't care how full Paragon you are but if you didn't take that renegade action to kick that jackass's... ass... then you have reached a new level of will my friend.

 

[Jodah]

I didn't have a problem with him cheating so much as him gloating after I roflstomped him without trying. Thesia's fall did have a special meaning to me being that my Shepard was getting it on with Liara.

Sounds like more of the "boo hoo, the story doesn't cater to my every whim" reactions a lot of people have when bioware noticeably shitfs its focus towards an action game approach.

Sometimes the plot just up and kicks you in the balls. Half-Life did it, Baldur's Gate 2 did it (from the VERY START), Deus Ex did it. Not something you should care that much about. You probably just didn't like Kai Leng.

No. There's a very distinct difference between BG2s (or even the original BGs) way of driving home character vulnerability and plot-determined setbacks and Kai Leng's over the top cariacture of a "too cool for school bad boy". Jon Irenicus shares many traits with Leng, they are both powerful and arrogant, Irenicus also manages to have a character development that shows us that he's powerful but ultimately flawed and he's given clear motivations to wish to antagonize the PC. Kai Leng? He runs around looking like emo teenager meets ninja meets seven year olds idea of bad ass (he's only missing a trench coat) and his entire characterization in the game can be summarized with the words "Cool evil guy that keeps messing things up for Shephard".

Remember the Spellhold part of BG2? Where you rush into Jon Irenicus trap? Yeah, that part was great because a) Irenicus was set up to be a cunning opponent (who had it in for you), b) the trap had been foreshadowed and c) the child of bhaal had a good storywise reason to fall for the trap and why Irenicus was too powerful to confront. The Thessia bit is never foreshadowed, it is never established how cerberus found out about the VI (the people who know Shephard is headed there are Shephard, a few people on the Normandy and the Asari Councilor) or even exactly why they want it and it remains dubious that you can't win the scenario at hand (Shephard did blast a gunship out of the sky on Omega, remember?) because the game forces you into a cutscene while you are most likely kicking Leng's behind.

I think half the problem is that they didn't feel the need to characterize Kai Leng because he was in one of the books apparently. That is one of my major (though not to the degree of the part that shall not be named!) complaints about the game. Way too much was brought in from non-game parts of the expanded universe which made me not care.

 

[Avatar Roku]

I remember not really caring too much about it at first. Yeah, Leng cheated, but all's fair in war, etc. No, what got me was the email he sent afterward. Dude, using cheap tactics is acceptable, but then bragging about it? That made me hate him so much.

 

[Major_Tom]

I hated that guy so much and I think he doesn't fit in the game, but that Renegade interrupt in the Cerberus HQ (you know which one) was the most satisfying moment in the game.