Spoiler warning for Mass Effect 1 below. Trigger Warning for Suicide, Torture, and Trauma.
If you are having suicidal thoughts immediately get help through these hotlines and resources. You are not alone. There is no shame in reaching out to anyone for help. And you are not a burden.
“Don’t push her too hard” Lieutenant Girard advised the Commander “If she seems liable to pull the trigger, back off. Or walk away. I’m willing to wait her out.”
Having her squad stay behind with the officers, Shephard approached the trembling girl.
The sunken eyes and stutter briefly made Shephard think of what could have happened on Mindoir had Shephard been captured instead of left for dead. If she hadn’t been buried under that rubble and found by the Alliance patrol…
Shephard forced herself back into the present in time to the gun pointed at her face. Even if she didn’t have the transparent energy shields protecting her, Shephard had to keep a firm stance and stay strong.
“S- Stop! What do you— What are you?”
“My name is Shephard. What is your name?”
“Animals don’t get names.” The girl hissed, still aiming the gun at Shephard. Then proceeding to rumble about symbols and hot metal being applied painfully to her.
And Shephard noticed the girl kept referring to herself in the third person with a strong tone of disdain and disgust in her voice.
“You’re not an animal. You’re parents…what they call you? Do you remember them?” Shephard asked, unflinching but choosing her words carefully.
Finally, the girl lowered the gun, and started to take a few breathes she was holding in. Emotionally exhausted, the tension in her tone and face dropped, giving way to numbness and loss.
“Talitha. They call her that…She…she doesn’t remember the rest.”
The following above is an image from the Mass Effect quest, “I Remember Me.” For those unfamiliar with the game Mass Effect, it’s a story-focused, choice-driven, sci-fi, role-playing video game made by BioWare, where choices both minor and major are regarded as critical in determining the fate of the galaxy. You play as Commander Shephard.
When the remaster of Mass Effect came out I took the opportunity to try out the colonist backstory. The colonist backstory has Shephard be the sole survivor of a slaver raid on your home colony of Mindoir. Some of the colonists are said to be dead, and those that survived were taken in as slaves. Despite being 16 when the raid happened, Shephard was lucky to be saved by an alliance patrol. Unfortunately, the same couldn’t be said for Talitha, enslaved at the age of 6 during the raid and kept captive for 13 years, developing Stockholm syndrome during that time.
In the first third of the game Shepherd arrives at a docking bay and is asked to assist in helping talk Talitha down from suicide, since Shephard is also a survivor of Mindoir. Should the player have Shephard accept this task, the officer currently at the scene, Lieutenant Girard, briefs Shephard on the details as well as telling the Commander to not push her too hard.
Talitha at first doesn’t want to listen or connect with Shephard, thinking Shephard is just lying about surviving Mindoir. When Shephard explains how they fought back the raiders on Mindoir before an artillery strike killed their parents and buried them in rubble, Talitha observes that Shephard “stands up” to their problems and remorsefully adds “(Talitha) wishes she could stand up.”
While Shephard is opening up about her experiences on Mindoir was a good way to start a connection with Talitha it’s important to note that if you approach someone by saying “I know what you’ve gone through” that can be both a true and false statement. Everyone goes through traumatic experiences differently, meaning everyone is going to come out of the events differently. Both Shephard and Talitha went through the horror of experiencing a slaver raid and even seeing their parents die in front of them, but Shephard was old enough to fight and understand what was going on; Talitha was still a child and probably not able to process things as well as Shephard even before Talitha was captured.
I didn’t fully grasp the hidden mechanic so like any other NPC I selected all the dialogue options. When I exhausted all my options and had Shephard took two steps forward, Talitha became overwhelmed and died by suicide.
I was confused so I looked at a guide to figure out how to complete this quest to get a good ending. I didn’t want to keep retying this quest over and over if it meant losing Talitha to suicide. The guide I did find however made me realize something.
It listed that the most straightforward way to save Talitha was to take a dialogue option and then follow it up with a “step forward” option. If Talitha was feeling like she was being pushed too far, the playing can take a step back and restart, instead of putting more pressure on Talitha.
This is a very great way to support people with mental health or even be a good listener.
For instance, instead of trying to get Talitha to unload her trauma all at once and then have Shephard keep taking a step towards her, Shephard could instead, ask about the raid, advance forward, then ask about her parents, and step forward – and if Talitha expresses she is being pushed too far, Shephard could stop and reinitiate the conversation later.
When you are a therapist, counselor, or are trying to be a good listener, it’s best to let the people you are trying to help lead the conversation and let them do as much of the initiating as possible. By bringing up one topic at a time before stepping towards Talitha, Shephard is also practicing good communication skills, as well as making it clear to Talitha what Shephard herself is doing and that they are tackling one topic of Talitha’s at a time. When you try to tackle too many problems at once, be they practical or emotional problems, you will end up overwhelming yourself and burying yourself in them.
Bringing up these topics is an important step to healing, but it can be a painful process so important to not rush it.
Another good way to continue the conversation is to ask open-ended questions which is what Shephard does when promoted to ask conversations. “What is the last thing you remember on Mindoir?” and “How did you get here? Did you escape?” Asking open ended questions helps avoid “yes, no, maybe” responses which can stop a conversation in its tracks.
Some of the better dialogue options during conversations with Talitha also involve validating her pain. Most of the time when we see something wrong we try to address it with empathy by jumping in with a solution. Approaching these situations with sympathy for the person you are working with, on other hand helps validate their emotions and what they are going through. It helps them feel less like they need to be “fixed” or that they are “wrong” somehow, and that there is a reason for why they are feeling the way they do and that they aren’t alone.
I want to also add that Talitha referring to herself in 3rd person with such hate and disgust in her voice, is a defense mechanism. There are 8 types of defense mechanisms but the ones being displayed by Talitha are Denial and Repression; Talitha will refuse to admit that the traumatized girl standing before Shephard *is* her. Talitha doesn’t want that to become a reality for her. So she denies she is that girl. She speaks as if her events were experienced by someone else. The repression comes into play when she struggles to remember some details of the raid or her being captive.
Once you have talked Talitha down from suicide, Shephard has two options to diffuse the situation; They can inject a sedative into Talitha by force or they can offer the sedative to Talitha and allow her to take it willingly. I choose to let Talitha take it willingly. I felt it was the *only* thing I could do to let Talitha heal;
It’s one thing to try to “make” someone better regardless if they want to or not and it’s another thing if they want to feel better.
When Talitha voluntarily took the sedative she was able to refer to herself in the first person briefly (accepting that this is her reality) and she asked Shephard if she will bad dreams, before passing out. I had my Shephard respond with a hug and whisper “I don’t know” because that was all the comfort Shephard – and I – could do. In any line of work, despite being encouraged to do your best, you will eventually come to the reality you can’t control everything except what you can do with the information, wisdom, skills, time, and abilities you do have.
When Shephard returns to Lieutenant Girard, who is still shaken by the fact a Talitha went through something so horrific for 13 years and was nearly lost to suicide. Girard questions what humanity is doing out here if they can’t keep people like Talitha safe, and Shephard responds.
“Bad things happen to good people – but that’s why you and I are here; don’t wring your arms over her; help her.”
Completing this quest doesn’t qualify you as a therapist, even for your friends – people who are going through depression, trauma, or suicidal professionals should reach out to a professional for help. But I am pleased with how BioWare designed this quest from it’s game mechanics to its dialogue.
Is this the best portrayal of mental health in a video game? I don’t know; I can see how some people could be unsatisfied with the fact that Shephard only gets to help Talitha if Shephard has a colonist background (otherwise the entire quest and the characters are nonexistent from the game). If you have read up on how BioWare has handled elements such as race, mental health, diversity, trauma, queerness, stereotypes, and redemption…. people have numerous opinions on it, especially with Dragon Age and Mass Effect, and for good reason; these are very complex topics to portray in media.
But this quest does show BioWare is capable of implementing mechanics into their games that reflect real-life psychology. Video game quests like these share important lessons and empower gamers to make a positive difference in the world. Whenever the next Dragon Age or Mass Effect are released, I do hope they build upon the strengths of this small but important quest. It’s quests like these that remind people like me and others not to lose heart and to seek help.
Straybard Art 