Hey swaps, hope you're doing well! I reread "The Words That Change Us" from the Opus Multiverse series the other day and it brought back a concept I've wondered about for months since reading Opus for the first time, but never got around to asking until now 🤔
Where do you think Sam would be if it weren't for his posting on the 'Yang and that fateful morning meeting Kaidan over pancakes? Would he still have finished the N program and risen in the ranks? Would he still have wound up on the Normandy and gotten plagued by the prothean visions? Or would he have ended up somewhere else, set adrift without Kaidan as his stable ground?
Cantata is such a huge part of Opus that I struggle to imagine Sam becoming the Commander Shepard we know and love from the game timeline without those years spent finding a family with the 'Yang Gang and that lasting bond with Kaidan. Mezzo has been especially interesting (and heartbreaking) to watch as Sam is forced to endure without Kaidan at his side for the first time in so many years. But while it's clear he can find some way to keep going even "on his own," I've been imagining that a history without Kaidan at all is a very different one for Sam. So I'm curious to hear your thoughts!
'The Words That Change Us' is probably the multiverse story I revisit the most, and I just love it when other people connect with it.
You ask a wonderful question, one that I more or less asked myself all the way through Cantata, because Cantata is very much the story that builds Commander Shepard.
Without the 'Yang, does Sam get the Normandy? Probably. With all the strings attached to him, he was being steered in that direction no matter what happened on the 'Yang. The important thing about the 'Yang and the people he found there was that he had advocates - people who cared about the human behind the soldier, and people who brought that human out of his shell. They didn't change his trajectory; they made him more successful in his path.
So what happens, then, if you take away the 'Yang?
Quite simply - he fails. The galaxy falls to the reapers.
I see Sam and Saren as two beings cut from the same cloth. Two people ordered to protect the galaxy, who were ruthless enough to do whatever had to be done to accomplish that goal. Saren went astray. Sam didn't.
The reason Sam didn't follow in Saren's footsteps was the five years he spent on the 'Yang that taught him not just how to save a galaxy - but why he was doing it in the first place. The 'Yang taught him that he isn't in that fight alone, and that he's stronger when he works through other people rather than just depending on himself. If he doesn't learn those things, he can still make N7, he can still be humanity's first Spectre, but he can't save a galaxy.
We're seeing that Mezzo. It's not Commander Shepard who needs saving in Mezzo - it's Sam - and you may be surprised at who ultimately rescues him.
Or maybe you won't. We'll see!