Sable Rhapsody wrote...
Out of curiosity, what other route would they have taken? If you're still using Shepard, that makes you the first human Spectre. Kind of a big deal, and it makes sense story-wise to focus on your species if you represent them at their best. The alternative is this: hey, look, here's ME1. You're playing as an alien race you know nothing about? And you're supposed to care because...?
Some franchises come off really weird or have trouble getting off the ground because there's no point of contact or familiarity. You need SOMETHING for the reader, viewer, gamer, whatever to hold on to, something that gets them to care right off the bat. Sci-fi without humans, and without humans playing prominent roles, just doesn't cut it. Can you imagine Star Wars without humans? There's a reason why most of that franchise--or most other franchises'--major characters are human or near-human. To top it off, most of ME's aliens are REALLY alien, not like Chiss, Zeltron, Vulcan, etc. BioWare does have a bottom line to meet, and while I'm sure we all would love a game about turians with no humans involved or minimal human involvement, I doubt that game would've sold millions of copies 
Humans didn't have to be the Reaper's focus. There are any number of routes the story can take besides that. But more than anything, it really didn't have to go back to earth - it's been done. Many times. Would it be cool to stop at an earth city? Eh, I don't really care. I never had any desire to go to earth in the game, because my interest is in the unique Universe of Mass Effect, and all the different aliens in it - I find them interesting so yeah, I care, because the concept is intriguing, and I want to know more. .
What makes a story engaging are the characters and how well they are created, whether it be in a vidoe game or a book. They don't have to be human to empathise with them, or at least they
shouldn't have to be. In the parameters of this Universe, all the races involved have emotions, they feel much like we do, they understand there is a right and a wrong, just like we do, and they love. What more do we need in order to relate?
Any fictional story that has ever been created is about non-existent people, so why should them being human be the difference between caring and not? Whether you care about a character is in the writer's hands - it doesn't matter if it's human, alien, or whatever. I appreciate good story telling and well written characters - that
does cut it for me.
Take for exampe the movie District 9. Of all the characters in that movie, I cared about the alien, Christopher, and his son the most, because the writers did such a powerful job in portraying their characters - I can familiarize with them and I want them to get home. And yeah, there were humans in the movie, but with the exception of one, they didn't drive the story.
The human characters in Mass Effect do not inspire me. I could do away with just about all of them. The aliens interest me more because they don't exist in real life, and I like to imagine a world where they did.
But I never said I didn't want humans in the game - what I said was that I don't need or desire for the human race to be the primary focus of the plot. I don't like the feeling of entitlement and I really don't like it when anyone tells me that "we have to look out for ourselves" because I don't owe loyalty to the human race by dint of being human.
As for being the first Spectre, well yeah, that is always a momentus occasion when you're the first to break a barrier. I never said it wasn't, but the idea that the Reapers are only interseted in humans is a bit cheesy.
If I didn't get to have all my favorite aliens fighting along side in my party, the game wouldn't be the same.
They are what make it worth while, not the human characters.
Modifié par Faerlyte, 13 décembre 2010 - 04:21 .
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