Requesting a Natural Law for Checkpoints

It has been said that Man cannot create laws, he can merely accept or reject the laws of God. And I must say I feel the same way about checkpoints.

Imagine me, if you will, thrashing wildly on my wife's Recumbent Bicycle while enjoying some Mass Effect. I am engaged in a mission on the moon, which is now named Luna.

The mission is ordinary and perhaps a little boring. It mostly involves traveling with a little shooting thrown in. As I am roughly thirty minutes into the mission (and my workout) the shooting gets the better of me and I find myself staring at a loading screen. It was not the first loading screen I had seen in that half hour (it was the fifth or so) but it was what loaded that surprised me.

After half an hour of play, I find myself staring at the mission area from the outside. Not coincidentally, this was the same sight that greeted me when I began playing half an hour prior.

It is these sorts of things that never cease to confound me. Mass Effect is, in so many ways, a grand achievement. It is beautiful and horrible and clever. If given a million years I could not replicate the work nor equal it. And yet here I am, before this wonderful work of art, ready to cause physical violence tothe controller in my hands. Why must games have this vulgar disconnect between mechanics and design and story and art -- and execution?

Perhaps we should tell Bioware that they cannot devise a checkpoint mechanic -- they can only accept or reject the way people will play their game. And it is clear that our ways have been rejected.