I did not mean to put words in your mouth. I hasten to note that that's what I took away from your comments. This post clarifies most of that, however. I must note that a couple of the characters who do act immature is because they are: Subject Zero is basically a bitter child, Grunt is no more than a few days old, and Tali is a very young Quarian. If that is the basis for your dislike or disinterest in these characters, then indeed it is a matter of taste. I would say that emotion gets to even the most rational among us, so it didn't strike me as terribly unusual.Orchomene wrote...
FlyingWalrus wrote...
Orchomene seems to be one who prefers anti-heroes and morally ambiguous misanthropy to enduring themes of heroism that have existed since the earliest dawn of literature. At least that's as much as I can glean from his comments that describe the notion of a "hero saving the world" as "immature," not to mention his praise of Nietzschean principles and self-interested ideals.
I think it would be more respectful to avoid puting words in my mouth. There is no specific correlation between maturity and anti heroism or immaturity and heroism. The points were seperated. I feel the NPC characters in ME2 are essentially immature (not childish, just puting emotions above rational and adult attitudes). But it may be a matter of taste. I do feel that a lot of mechanism in our society exploit a lot of the immaturity that can be found. This is notable in communication technics using Parent/Child relations as seen too often in companies. But this is not related to the heroism.
I really think that an heroic character in a RPG is less interesting than a non heroic (not specifically anti-heroic, just not qualified a priori as heroic). That's just to add a lot of freedom in roleplaying. At first playthrough of a cRPG, I tend to generally play a character I feel safe with, generally heroic but with a small dose of pragmatism (i.e., not extremist in heroism, but overall a good guy). Then, I enjoy playing some character I don't appreciate at all. This is where there are a lot of issues in games that are tailored to a character that will "save the world". Because some reactions seem a bit unnatural.
In the Planescape example (or even in Kotor2 if you want), playing a good guy or bad guy is equallty logical since the main quest is a personnal quest. No world will be saved. Thus, a RPG that has not as a focus to "save the world" or any heroic attribute given a priori offers more freedom in roleplay. For books, it's different. The character is defined by the author and only marginaly by the reader, the story is fixed. It's thus logical to see more good guys than bad guys, people tend to more identify with an heroic character than an anti-hero.
About Nietzsche, you may want to read more closely this great humanist that had very high expectations from humanity. Overall, Nietzsche has been overused by people in some ideologies of which he condemned the emergency. Like he has strongly condemned antisemitism. But that's not the debate here.
On heroism, now that I see where you are coming from, I can agree with that. I suppose my expectations for that kind of malleability were already low, however, having played Mass Effect with no expectations and then going into the sequel with similar sentiments. Even then, you can play Shepard as someone cruel, so then it becomes a story more of angry survival than of actual valor.
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