Mass Effect: Paragon Lost

Mass Effect: Paragon Lost is by no means the worst video game movie adaptation I've seen in my life, but it's the only one we have of the Mass Effect universe, a game series published by Bioware. The problem is the quality of that game series. Mass Effect is all about the story. It is a vast, epic saga of galaxy in peril and is to be counted, at least in my opinion, among the greatest of space operas, along with Star Wars and Star Trek. So you can imagine that in my honest opinion a cheap anime-style direct-to-video tie-in doesn't quite cut it.

Taking place during the events of the second game and telling the backstory of one James Vega, an eventual teammate in the third game, the movie admittedly has a few good things going for it. The character animations and designs, for one, are mostly pretty good. They look like the characters from the game, the facial expressions are evocative and the action scenes work. I have no idea why they made the krogans and the collectors appear almost twice as big as they are in the games, but that's a nitpick.

The ending is also surprisingly good, capturing the essence of the Mass Effect games and their tendency to make you face extremely tough choices, usually between the good of the individual and the good of the society.

But then, the downsides. While the characters are animated decently enough, given the budget, the backgrounds are pure guano. They're cheap CGI garbage, clash horribly with the actual characters and don't convince for a second. Every single background in the actual games was more convincing than anything in this film. And the first one of those came out five years before this film.

The story is also lame, aside from the ending. It shows us nothing new of the Mass Effect universe, thus failing to please the existing fans, and it is pretty much inscrutable by anyone who has not played the games. There are few cutscenes to the previous events, and they're so quick that they don't help much. And it's not like it would have been hard to include a brief segment in the beginning. Like: "In 2147 humanity found a cache of alien technology on Mars. A decade later they managed to join the larger galactic society, which had flourished in the ruins of the civilization that came before them, the Protheans. Later this new galactic society was threatened by an ancient threat, known as the Reapers, led by Sovereign, a dreadnought spaceship of vast technological superiority and might. It was eventually beaten by the joint taskforce led by Commander Shepard, but his warnings about the eventual Reaper invasion were dismissed. And now he is believed dead." See? Not that hard, and would have made the whole movie infinitely more watchable to newcomers.

So yeah, while Mass Effect: Paragon Lost is not as bad as it could have been, it's certainly not good either. That's mostly due to the limitation of the budget, I believe, but it still means that I cannot in good conscience recommend this to anyone. Not fans or newcomers. If you're a die-hard fan of the Mass Effect universe, you're going to see it anyway, in which case I can say that at least there's some good in it, but trust me, it's not worth it.

The game is incredible (to many people, you might not like it as much, though it would make no sense checking the movie, if that is true), but the animated movie (with a sub-story involving a major character from Mass Effect 3 (but not Shepard himself) is nicely told, but there is never a real Mass Effect feeling. It never got hold of me that is.

The cartoon style is made differently than the one of the game on purpose. You might find that one of the reasons you might not connect. You cannot deny EA that they were trying. There is some fun dialog in the movie, but it never evolves to anything more. The question also would be, does it make sense watching it before Mass Effect 3 or after you played it? I watched it after, it's OK as companion piece, but I won't revisit this again (which cannot be said about the games ... re-playable a lot)

This movie is about James Vega, for those who don't know him he is a companion in Mass Effect 3 video game, you don't know much about him. But he loves earth and he is just as loyal as Shepherd and he wanted to make a difference so he decided to join the best, The N7, he stands for the earth's greatest contribution just like Shephard for humanity. This movie made me respect him a lot more and I decided to always take me with him, the more you progress in the game and the more you talk to your companions the more you hear about their background stories and what they've been through. He was not my favorite companion to bring along to missions but after have seen this movie it built up a lot of respect for him so I decided to take me with him even more and he suddenly became my favorite companion, he only hints small information about his background story and you can guess it was something terrible that happened to him and his squad, but you never knew what it was until this movie came. Now when I've seen it I could never have guessed how tragic it was for him to experience what he did. I'd say this movie represented his background story to the fullest. I gave it a 7/10, I had no problem with the cgi/animation and I loved the story, Mass Effect is about tough choices, what you believe is to be the best possible outcome, sacrifice and gain. The movie title speaks for itself. James Vega has my respect, thumbs up for this movie, bring us more Mass! Effect!

Well when I saw the trailer for the first time I didn't give it too much attention, even being a huge fan of the game, the animation style and the main character, Vega (a playable character in Mass Effect 3), was too weak, lacking the appeal needed for an animation with the name Mass Effect on it.

But like I said, I'm a huge fan and I had to watch it. So I did. And I found myself enjoying the movie more than I thought.

Basically, Vega leads his squad on a mission to protect a colony on a distant planet from a unknown threat. When they finally strike and take all the colonists hostage, Vega has to figured out what exactly he's facing and save the colony from being abducted and exterminated, having to make some tough decisions on the way.

The catch here is, if you have played Mass Effect 3 you already know what will happen in the movie, as Vega himself can tell you that in the game. And that may be the biggest mistake with this movie. This should've been released when Mass Effect 2 came out, back in 2010. It would make a lot of more sense, as the story here happens few months before the second game's story and would be a good surprise to see Vega in the third game after seeing this movie back then. Oh well...

The animation is pretty average. There's blood and lots of action, but the style they used just doesn't fit to the Mass Effect universe. It doesn't work. Why use Anime style on this anyway? Seriously. And not a great one too. It lacked something, I can't tell exactly what. They did the same mistake with Dragon Age animated movie. EA got it right with the first Dead Space animated movie. Please, go back to that. Mass Effect deserve way better than this. But that's just me, I'm sure there are many people that will enjoy it, I suppose.

All in all, this movie is mostly for fans of the Mass Effect game series. If you've never played the game, you may still enjoy this, but without knowing the universe it just wont be the same. It's a good movie, average animation, good story, but it could be a lot better. Its not enough to have the Mass Effect name on it.

Personal: Firstly, I need to say that I'm not the biggest fan of the game series. I have played only Mass Effect 3 and have read the first of the book series. I considered both to be quite excellent. So now that that's clear I need to say:

Warning: This movie isn't worth the time put into making it. By comparison to the games and the books it's a poor excuse at an attempt to add some other media to the Mass Effect universe.

Summary: The story is focused around the character Vega, which was first introduced in the game, Vega and his team are ordered to protect a researching colony that's working on figuring out some ancient alien tech. Not too far into the movie the colony gets attacked by an enemy who's reasoning and purposes are unknown.

Impressions: I'll grant you the script sounds like it would've had potential in the right hands at making at least a decent action movie, however it was written poorly. Most of it isn't only predictable, it's so cliché you have to slap yourself in order not to fall asleep, not to mention Vega's character is - in the games at least, because there isn't a lot of character development to speak of in the movie - cliché to begin with. To sum him up quickly, he's the guy on the battlefield going 'Yeah! Get some!', and that is cause of a great many problems throughout the movie because when he 'falls in love'(meaning he gets a high school crush), they turn him into a lost puppy. It's like they took out every cliché attribute from Peter Parker and Chuck Norris and slammed it into one with this guy. I shouldn't even mention the fact that the way he's imagined and acted is not at all what I was used to from the game.

Alright, moving on, voice acting... Some of the lines don't fit well with the stress levels in each scene, they're isn't one that's memorable and you can tell from a far they lacked directing.

The animation. Oh boy! Remember the old X-men cartoons? That's about the level this is at. I'm not saying the X-men cartoons weren't great, for that time, they were phenomenal, however for 2012 this animation will feel like it's a blast from the past in a bad way. I think there might even be some scenes that are missing in-between frames, the lip sync is pretty awful and the level of complexity of the angles and scenes is Scooby Doo-ish.

Conclusion: This movie is a shameful attempt at cashing in on an already established name. It has no positive side to it, except maybe giving you a good giggle, when you see just how bad it really is.