SmokePants wrote...
Two closely related teams, who -- if you haven't been following Dragon Age 2 -- tend to cross-polinate ideas. Two teams with the exact same challenges. If the ME team has some magic solutions to handling nightmarish branching continuity issues, then they should be quick to share with the DA team or the TOR team, for that matter.
Or are we trying to paint the ME team as the golden child, while the DA team is the red-headed bastard? "The ME team is going to go to Harvard, but the DA team? GED-city." Or perhaps it's a difference in stylistic approach? The DA team takes big steamers on continuity because it suits their game? Somehow?
Anyway, the biggest thing I noticed about Awakening was how unsatisfying dialogue can be, when the writers aren't sure if the characters are best friends or have an antagonistic relationship. They try to write one set of dialogue that covers both possibilities and hope people buy it.
The more ME3 tries to handle continuity, the more awkward, "middle of the road" dialogue there will be, and the poorer the end product. Potentially. When characters start off fresh, from a position of certainty -- ie, they were trying to kill you -- that's when the dialogue makes the most sense and is the most natural and engaging.
It's already been demonstrated in ME2. Liara, Ashley, and Kaiden had virtually identical dialogue, whether you romanced them or not. It didn't work so well.
Character continuity requires a fair bit more work than plot continuity, because characters include a fair bit of detail that does not relate to the plot. In ME1 & 2, there's more than a fair bit of material or scenes (side-missions) that are unrelated to the plot.
Some feel that the plot is the most interesting/important element in the series. If they feel the characters bring nothing to the plot, they are boring. And if the "irrelevant" character was apparently brought back purely for fan service, then boredom/indifference may give way to actual spite (Tali being the most glaring example). At the same time, the "plot-centric" players will be quick to notice inconsistencies that will annoy them, while other players will blissfully ignore the same. They'll buy and like the game if the plot is solid and entertaining. Let's call them "intellectuals" (keeping in mind that most of us will share some characteristics with more than a single stereotype).
Other players feel that what makes the ME series great is actually the characters more than the plot... They don't care about wether the character has plot-relevance or not. They are social creatures who enjoy life-like emotional characters. They do not get into the plot itself so much as into the game characters' experience. Let's call them "gregarious".
Finally there are the harcore gamers who enjoy shooting stuff. Gears, Halo, CoD... to whom both plot AND characters are "fluff" tying the levels together. The gamers don't care about this discussion thread, so I'll leave them out.
What sold ME1 and ME2? What made them a commercial success? Was it the "intellectuals"? Was it the "gregarious"? Or the "gamers"?
Bioware has been accused of "dumbing down" ME2 to cater to gamers... Pure FPS or TPS will give ME2 a try and quickly get bored by "all this fluff" that gets in the way of their action. So if BW wasn't catering to the hardcore FPS and TPS players out there. They were trying to cater to the "largest possible audience". That includes "intellectuals" and "gregarious" players who have different interests.
Casey Hudson stated in his more recent interview that while the team has a rough idea of where they want to take the story, they are more or less making up their minds as they work on each sequel. Even the decision to make the Virmire Survivor and Liara play a role in ME3 was made AFTER datamining and fans comments revealed how much players appreciated them; the rest of the ME1 characters come back as full characters or a cameo/ placeholder. There is more than a fair bit of "improvisation on the fly" going on here...
BW learns from experience. In a world where no video game sequel is garanteed, I very much doubt ME2 characters were PRIMARILY designed to be used in ME3. Some thought may have been given to it, but in the end they were designed to appeal to the player so that he/she would come to value them so the final suicide mission would feel like the stakes are high. A game HAS to be designed as a stand alone product first, with allowances for a possible sequel being secondary.
ME2 had many new characters, with wildly differing personalities. Why? Because in a game that allows to play morally different Shepards, you have to allow for "renegade" and "paragon" -friendly squaddies. In ME1, unused squaddies could simply be left on the Normandy. In ME2 they play a part in the Suicide Mission. In order for you to care about the people who hold the line, you have to have developped some sort of emotional attachement to at least SOME of them. Or you can simply be a ruthless bastard who couldn't care less about any of them surviving (an absolutely acceptable attitude, depending on your Shepard's background).
So you have to cover all bases and you need a larger number of characters in ME2 for this to work.
Will ME3 require a large number of characters? Maybe, maybe not... Our "intellectual" side likes a well-told story and that may involve a small team. Our "gregarious" side would like to have them all back... and our "gamer" side wants a game that plays well. BW wil have to try and balance this, while respecting whatever the writers intend as a plot conclusion.
So to summarize:
a) I think everyone will agree that all surviving squadmates CAN be brought back in ME3 in some form.
None of the returning ME1 were insulted by using a simple e-mail; they all got at least a cameo. We can expect at least that in ME3.
c) Some cameos were dissappointing, BW will try to improve on this.
d) Several squaddies were never plot relevant and only offered the player a "morally compatible" choice. We can expect some ME3 squadmates to be just as irrelevant to the plot yet catering to the preferences of the "gregarious" players.
e) ME3 will be as much of a hodge-podge mix of storytelling, character interaction as the previous 2 were.
f) ME2 squaddies returning in ME3 will be limited as to the type/complexity of cutscenes they will have. We may see more squad interaction but they will likely involve a single surviving ME2 + Shepard + crew + 1 or more ME3 and not 2 or more ME2 survivors together in the same scene.
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