Whatever666343431431654324 wrote...
JKoopman wrote...
I'm just going to say one more thing and then I'm out for the night (I'm getting a headache). As soon as people start inventing narrative and using supposition to fill in plot holes, they're no longer defending Mass Effect 2's story; they're defending their own personal fanfiction. This is a point that smudboy has tried to get across to varying degrees of success throughout his multiple analyses.
Complete and utter nonsense.
Story: Shepard walks to the bridge.
Person 1: Why didn't he go to the washroom? It was closer!
Person 2: Because he didn't need to use any of the facilities in the washroom?
Person 1: You're inventing narrative! They should have explained it! It's a plothole!
Person 2: ...
I'm not saying every supposed plothole is this ridiculous, some are legit. But pointing to every action that had alternative actions and demanding a full accounting of why that action was chosen is ridiculous.
Normally when this happens, people respond that they must have done it because they thought it was the best action. TIM ressurected Shepard and outfitted a new Normandy because he thought it was the best course of action. But then the plothole conspiracy theorist starts listing alternative courses of action and demands to know why TIM didn't pursue them.
So we play along. We list possible reasons why TIM wouldn't have chosen those - although of course its all fiction. We don't know why TIM didn't decide to murder the entire council and turn the presidium into a football stadium. We can only assume its because the idea was stupid. But if you want to play "what if", it's entertaining so we'll play along.
You keep making these fantastical leaps of logic where you presume that anyone who takes issue with the lack of exposition regarding a subject like Shepard's death and resurrection or the purpose of the Human Reaper must also take issue with trivialities like Shepard not stopping to use the restroom (?) or coming home to an unexplained bag of groceries sitting on the counter (?). When a strawman is the only way you can defend a position, perhaps it's time to re-examine that position.
Shepard not using the restroom in no way impacts the narrative or affects my understanding of the plot. One doesn't even need to
bother inventing a narrative to explain that because it's
irrelevant to the story. To quote smudboy, I don't need to deduce that the strippers on Omega are moonlighting as prostitutes, since it has nothing to do with the plot. But things that
do pertain to and impact the plot better d*mn well be explained.
These are the major issues with ME2 as I see them:
1. The Lazarus Project, it's lack of explanation or exposition and the flimsy reasoning behind resurrecting Shepard in the first place.
2. Shepard's blatant railroading into Cerberus.
3. The irrational, inconsistent and out of character reaction towards Shepard by the VS/LI on Horizon and Shepard's subsequent onset mental disability that prevented him from communicating effectively with them, and how the VS inexplicably avoided being collected in the first place.
4. The inexeplicable progression of Joker's Vrolik's Syndrome to his entire skeleton (as opposed to just his legs) and his inexplicable ability to suddenly shrug it off, walk around without leg braces, fire an assault rifle and lift a giant steel girder whenever it's convenient to the story.
5. The
contrived plot device inexplicable and nonexistant mission that for some reason requires Shepard to take his entire crew of 12 badasses with him in the shuttle immediately after Joker finishes installing untested Reaper technology in the Normandy's systems, and why Joker was chosen to connect EDI to the Normandy's control systems instead of Dr. Chakwas who was literally
right there already.
5. The purpose of collecting your ragtag group of soldiers to "fight a ground war in asia" when all signs point to it being a galactic spaceship battle
in space and the fact that events turn out in such a conveniently coincidental way as to
suit that ragtag group like a glove despite there being no prior intel whatsoever regarding the nature of the threat faced opposite the Omega-4 relay before engaging the Suicide Mission.
6. Last but certainly not least, the purpose of the Human Reaper,
what possible use it could be and how the Collectors/Reapers
EVER thought that this plan was capable of succeeding in any reasonable capacity to make it worthwhile or preferable to the Alpha Relay/conventional invasion plan.
Now this is separate from the aspects of the story that one simply finds disagreable or ridiculous, like for example the illogical and contrived way that loyalty is handled in the Suicide Mission or the idea that humans are being melted down into grey goo that somehow preserves their minds and "essence" and that this is how Reapers procreate, or from smaller and less plot-relevant inconsistencies like the GUARDIAN system on Horizon being portrayed as cannons and not pulsing lasers as described in the codex.
If you can't recognize how the above is perhaps a bit more relevant to the narrative than "How did that unexplained bag of groceries get on the counter?" then I can only shrug.
To date,
none of those points have been answered by supporters of ME2's plot with exposition from the game's own narrative; they've simply been [attempted to be] dismissed away with imagined narrative, supposition and a whole lot of "ifs" and "maybes". This is why I say that they aren't defending ME2's narrative, they're defending their own subjective made-up fanfiction. It's great that someone can concoct a rationalization for why an unexplained event transpired, but if the game's own narrative doesn't
suggest that explanation then what reason do we have to assume it? If it was the writer's intention to make the implication that, for example, Shepard's kinetic barriers protected his body from it's fall to Alchera then the writer needs to make that impication clear to the reader. As smudboy says in his last video, it is not the job of the reader to construct a coherent story
for the writer, and being told that you shouldn't care or implying that you need to turn your brain off to enjoy a narrative is both self-defeating and a defining characteristic of bad writing. A good story is supposed to
stimulate thought, not abhor it. If the audience is just expected to figure things out for themselves,
that's bad storytelling. If the writer can't be bothered to properly invest in his own story, then why should I?
Now, again, I would love it if ME3 would shed some light on these issues and explain them away with some elaborate exposition that makes perfect sense and makes me feel like a total fool for ever doubting Mac Walters' brilliance but, as smudboy even says, I just don't see how
anything that happens in ME2's plot is going to have
any impact on or signifigance in ME3. It seems like ME2's entire story was completely irrelevant to the overarching plotline.
And lets get one thing straight. I don't hate ME2. I don't necessarily agree with every design change made from ME1, but it's a fun enough game in it's own right. The graphics are good. The sound effects, music and voice acting are better than before. The production values are clearly impressive. I've been playing ME2 off and on for more than a year now and I'm heavily invested in the characters and universe, so it must be doing
something right, no? It's a good
game. It just doesn't have a particularly
coherent narrative to support it.
Modifié par JKoopman, 03 avril 2011 - 10:22 .
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smudboy is considered an ahole and arrogant, not moron
