A review by kukushka
Mass Effect, Volume 1: Redemption by Mac Walters, Michael Atiyeh, John Jackson Miller, Michael Heisler, Omar Francia
2.0
Redemption follows the search for Commander Shepard's body, taking place after Shepard's disappearance at the beginning of Mass Effect 2.
I'd venture to call myself something of a Mass Effect fan, and it's the story and characters that have always drawn me to the series (as well as BioWare's other big'un, Dragon Age). Unfortunately, this comic doesn't have much of either.
The plot follows Liara T'Soni in her search for Shepard's body, but she isn't alone. Cerberus and the Shadow Broker are both looking for it, too. Helping Liara is Feron, who seems to be sometimes working for Cerberus, sometimes for the Shadow Broker, sometimes for himself. As the comic puts it, he's "a double -- no, a triple agent". Pro tip from someone who has never written a comic: You can't have a triple agent in a 100 page graphic novel. You can barely have one in a 700 page prose novel.
So that's the whole story - the reader is given whiplash as we're given a guided tour through some of the games' set pieces, we get to see a few of the games' characters, and every couple pages gets punctuated by a shocking twist.
Who is Feron, anyway? What, in the end, does he stand for? *shrug*
I realize it's a little odd to complain about how Liara is presented here, since the games are pretty bad for sexualizing their female characters. But at least in the games they have some personality. Here, she just reacts to stuff while she models her skin-tight outfits in a series of spine-snapping poses. The closest Liara gets to arc is the hint we get from the title and a throwaway line toward the end - that she feels bad about leaving Shepard to die alone, and wants some kind of redemption by finding the commander's body. Okay...
There's a cutesy little gag toward the end about Shepard's body being so disfigured by the blast that it's "hard to tell if it's even a man or a woman". It's an obvious joke, but I'll admit to having a bit of a chuckle.
I'd venture to call myself something of a Mass Effect fan, and it's the story and characters that have always drawn me to the series (as well as BioWare's other big'un, Dragon Age). Unfortunately, this comic doesn't have much of either.
The plot follows Liara T'Soni in her search for Shepard's body, but she isn't alone. Cerberus and the Shadow Broker are both looking for it, too. Helping Liara is Feron, who seems to be sometimes working for Cerberus, sometimes for the Shadow Broker, sometimes for himself. As the comic puts it, he's "a double -- no, a triple agent". Pro tip from someone who has never written a comic: You can't have a triple agent in a 100 page graphic novel. You can barely have one in a 700 page prose novel.
So that's the whole story - the reader is given whiplash as we're given a guided tour through some of the games' set pieces, we get to see a few of the games' characters, and every couple pages gets punctuated by a shocking twist.
Who is Feron, anyway? What, in the end, does he stand for? *shrug*
I realize it's a little odd to complain about how Liara is presented here, since the games are pretty bad for sexualizing their female characters. But at least in the games they have some personality. Here, she just reacts to stuff while she models her skin-tight outfits in a series of spine-snapping poses. The closest Liara gets to arc is the hint we get from the title and a throwaway line toward the end - that she feels bad about leaving Shepard to die alone, and wants some kind of redemption by finding the commander's body. Okay...
There's a cutesy little gag toward the end about Shepard's body being so disfigured by the blast that it's "hard to tell if it's even a man or a woman". It's an obvious joke, but I'll admit to having a bit of a chuckle.