Mass Effect 2 came out a couple of weeks ago, which anyone with an eye glancing near the realm of computer games would know about and think was old news. It showed up to my apartment on release day, having been preordered by my boyfriend David, which he quickly installed once his new computer arrived. I had heard enough about the series to be interested, so once he got his fill and played ME2 all the way through, let me start my own character on ME1.
So I went through the process of making a new character - first and foremost, my character was going to be female - cause you don't have to be a man to save the galaxy. I then had some fun tweaking her appearance, giving her blue eyes and dark brown hair pulled back in a ponytail (I had to submit to the "I am a hero, look my character looks like me!!" complex), and then had to give her a background. David told me that this didn't really impact on the story line, but was important to the character development, so I read through my options and actually had a hard time choosing.
The first choice, belonging to your upbringing, wasn't too difficult. I stuck with the spacer option, being a navy brat of sorts and jumping from spaceship to spaceship with my parents until I enlisted myself. The second choice, of what happens to you after you enlist, was a little harder. I was torn - do I want to be the war hero, risking my life to save others and ending up saving the colony, or do I want to be the sole survivor, through sheer might and will surviving when everyone else around me fell?
War hero seemed too pompous. Sole survivor seemed too dark. But there was a certain appeal to being the dark survivor - I could play a character with a hidden knowledge that other characters would respect or fear, which would give me clout. I could mow down enemies without remorse, be brutal, but also be forgiving to others, possibly with a hint of sadness or regret glinting in my computer-generated eyes, before walking off alone.
I stopped here. I realized that I hadn't even started the game, and yet I was struggling with minor choices and extrapolating to potential gameplay. And then I realized, if I was to play myself the first time through, since my character looked enough like me, then I should stay away from the sole survivor past. I would want to save others, at a potentially high cost, so I went with the war hero.
I stumbled through the first mission, David sitting next to me watching me get used to the controls, commenting on when I was getting shot and didn't notice, giving hints like, "Maybe you should use your sniper rifle," because I would forget that I had that item on me. The first time I brought out the sniper rifle I was expecting to remove the enemy several hundred feet from me easily, but when I aimed with the sight, I couldn't keep it steady. My character didn't have enough skill points to aim well, so struggling with the sight probably turns out to be fairly realistic. (And with enough patience I was able to blast that guy away and some of his friends, which led to a "Nice shot" or two from David.)
I actually had more problems with dialogue and interactions, since I knew that THOSE were important. And there are so many chances to interact with people, to be good or to be bad or indifferent, that I would stop at a point when my character needed to say something and I would turn to David and ask him, "Is this a good thing to do?" And pretty much every time he would shrug, tell me that it was my character, and I would feel frustrated. There were several times when I didn't know - do I let the jellyfish-looking character preach in a public place, or do I get rid of him like the guard wants me to? Do I help certain side characters by giving them items or information, or do I stick with the mission at hand and be dismissive of everyone else? In other games I felt it was easy to pick right and wrong; this game mimicked life, where right and wrong are not obvious, where you do what seems like the best idea at the time, and go from there.
Now that I feel better about selecting dialogue options, and have dusted off my Call of Duty and Resident Evil shooting skills, I'm looking forward to the rest of this game. That is, if I can get access to David's computer again. :)
Friday, February 12, 2010
Thursday, February 4, 2010
A scientific misunderstanding, perhaps
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/02/health/02seco.html
I have a problem with this article.
It's mostly that I feel the author of the article, and quite possibly the author of the book, are viewing Ms. Lacks as a victim of something other than cancer, that by the pure virtue of her cancer cells surviving and doing things to advance medicine, something terrible has happened. And that terrible thing was led by the cold-blooded scientists in white lab coats, without a shred of sympathy for the poor man's plight, only looking to create a product that can be sold as a drug and thus make money.
See, as a scientist, that offends me.
As a biologist, I know a thing or two about cells. In fact, my college major could have been classified as having a concentration in cell biology. My thesis was part cell biology. Cells are kindof important. But small numbers of cells are not that important to you as a being.
Think about it. There are trillions of cells in your body. Scratch your skin - there go thousands of them. Do you miss them? No. So why does this matter?
Ms. Lacks died of incredibly invasive and aggressive cervical cancer. Once she's dead, she's got no need for those cells. In fact, I think that she would want them gone - after all, that was the whole purpose of the treatment, right? And in the course of treatment, there are biopsies completed - and now the doctors and researchers have these cells. This is standard practice, and yes, there are consent forms now before patients go on trials where they KNOW that their samples will go to research. Researchers like myself use the samples, do some experiments, learn information, and try to advance scientific knowledge.
OH but wait - there have been medical breakthroughs using these cells! Breakthroughs that thus created millions of dollars. NOW there's a difference - now there's money involved!! So of course the family wants in on the profits - they were created using Ms. Lacks' cells, so she deserves a cut!!
Bad news folks - they were created using Ms. Lacks' cancer cells. Cancer cells have mutated DNA, and since this is cervical cancer we are talking about, probably HPV infection as well. And now we enter the tricky realm of DNA - when it is still mine?
My personal opinion is that DNA has been over-glorified, where people are placing too much importance on a "unique" sequence that is so elegant, when in reality it's a messy, mostly nonsense strand of nucleic acids. There is not that much variance between us and other primates, not to mention us and other humans. The basic form is the same, just a couple of little letter differences that creates the differences that we see in each other. Sometimes - other times that's based on other influences, but I'll talk about that later.
Cancer cells are inherently immortal - that's the whole point, why they thrive, why it's so hard to kill them without killing good cells in your body, why we have to resort to things like chemotherapy and radiation treatments. If it wasn't this cancer that led to the discovery of indefinite cell lines, then another cancer would have. There was nothing exceedingly special about Ms. Lacks' cells - she was just in the right place and the right time with the right type of tumor (although not for her).
So, family of Ms. Lacks - relish in the fact that while your mother died too young, she provided a contribution to science that is ongoing, that future contributions will continue to advance scientific knowledge, and quit thinking that there is a monetary remuneration required.
I have a problem with this article.
It's mostly that I feel the author of the article, and quite possibly the author of the book, are viewing Ms. Lacks as a victim of something other than cancer, that by the pure virtue of her cancer cells surviving and doing things to advance medicine, something terrible has happened. And that terrible thing was led by the cold-blooded scientists in white lab coats, without a shred of sympathy for the poor man's plight, only looking to create a product that can be sold as a drug and thus make money.
See, as a scientist, that offends me.
As a biologist, I know a thing or two about cells. In fact, my college major could have been classified as having a concentration in cell biology. My thesis was part cell biology. Cells are kindof important. But small numbers of cells are not that important to you as a being.
Think about it. There are trillions of cells in your body. Scratch your skin - there go thousands of them. Do you miss them? No. So why does this matter?
Ms. Lacks died of incredibly invasive and aggressive cervical cancer. Once she's dead, she's got no need for those cells. In fact, I think that she would want them gone - after all, that was the whole purpose of the treatment, right? And in the course of treatment, there are biopsies completed - and now the doctors and researchers have these cells. This is standard practice, and yes, there are consent forms now before patients go on trials where they KNOW that their samples will go to research. Researchers like myself use the samples, do some experiments, learn information, and try to advance scientific knowledge.
OH but wait - there have been medical breakthroughs using these cells! Breakthroughs that thus created millions of dollars. NOW there's a difference - now there's money involved!! So of course the family wants in on the profits - they were created using Ms. Lacks' cells, so she deserves a cut!!
Bad news folks - they were created using Ms. Lacks' cancer cells. Cancer cells have mutated DNA, and since this is cervical cancer we are talking about, probably HPV infection as well. And now we enter the tricky realm of DNA - when it is still mine?
My personal opinion is that DNA has been over-glorified, where people are placing too much importance on a "unique" sequence that is so elegant, when in reality it's a messy, mostly nonsense strand of nucleic acids. There is not that much variance between us and other primates, not to mention us and other humans. The basic form is the same, just a couple of little letter differences that creates the differences that we see in each other. Sometimes - other times that's based on other influences, but I'll talk about that later.
Cancer cells are inherently immortal - that's the whole point, why they thrive, why it's so hard to kill them without killing good cells in your body, why we have to resort to things like chemotherapy and radiation treatments. If it wasn't this cancer that led to the discovery of indefinite cell lines, then another cancer would have. There was nothing exceedingly special about Ms. Lacks' cells - she was just in the right place and the right time with the right type of tumor (although not for her).
So, family of Ms. Lacks - relish in the fact that while your mother died too young, she provided a contribution to science that is ongoing, that future contributions will continue to advance scientific knowledge, and quit thinking that there is a monetary remuneration required.
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