Mission Introductions and Conclusions
In a lot of ways, Arrival represents how I feel half of new missions/assignments should be issued: Admiral Hackett/Illusive Man/Liara/Random distress beacon/other hails your ship and you receive your briefing in an audio(/visual) format explaining the what, when, and where of a developing situation. This is how main plot missions are issued. The other half of missions/assignments should be issued through conversations, news stories, and the like. At the end of the mission or assignment, one returns to the console or issuer to be debriefed about how things went and receive completion bonuses.
I suggest that it should be this way because this is how it was done in Mass Effect and this is the way that will most engage the player in the mission/assignment. You see, the problem I had with a lot of Mass Effect 2 assignments is that they were introduced through the planet scanning mechanic or by a text message to your private console, they were explained only in written form, and they were not very interactive. Even story arcs like the one with the malfunctioning mechs and the hijacked distress beacon/javelin missiles, and Dossier missions had very little to reinforce the gravity of the situation, and the importance of the individuals involved. Text is fine if it is used sparingly or to augment the audio-visual experience, but this is not a text-based adventure from 30 years ago.
Morality of Killing Cannon Fodder
The second thing I wanted to point out about Arrival is the way that morality plays into it. For this, there was some good and some bad. First, the good: In Arrival, one faces indoctrinated enemies. One knows that these individuals are lost. They make for good adversaries because of this - fanatical zealots with unwavering devotion suicidally attacking the player without regard for their own safety who are acceptable to kill because they might as well already be dead.
This stands in contrast to the more usual missions and assignments of Mass Effect 2. I remember when I was playing Garrus' loyalty mission and it just struck me how totally inconsistent Shepard and Garrus were being when they were talking about how to handle Harkin - the conversation sounds conflicted about whether they should kill or otherwise harm Harkin, yet they don't seem to have any remorse or second thoughts about killing the 50 or so people protecting him. Nobody ever seems to question the morality of killing wave after wave of mercs. Instead they are just viewed as cannon fodder protecting the 'important' people of the galaxy. Sure, these might not be the most pleasant people in the galaxy, and their leaders make them do some downright despicable things, but there doesn't seem to be even so much as a sentence or thought regarding the morality of killing these people. What if they just had kids to feed and a mortgage to pay and the only job openings were in the apparently very high-turnover field of mercenaries? The problem with this is two-fold: first, it results in very boring and repetitive gameplay that can be found with any cookie-cutter FPS; and second, it disconnects the player from the humanity (for lack of a better word) of the galaxy by having totally abstracted morality.
Abstracted Morality and Repetitive Gameplay
That brings me to my next issue with morality that plagues Mass Effect 2: abstracted morality. What I mean by that term is that morality decisions in general are no longer an integrated part of the story, but instead something that simply exists alongside it. In Mass Effect, one of the things I found very interesting was how different conversation options could result in entirely different outcomes for almost every assignment. Assignments and missions did not HAVE to result in fight-to-the-last-man shootouts - instead, players' choices could defuse tense situations or, alternatively, cause a complete breakdown of negotiation. Shepards choices could lead to peaceful reconciliation, or severe depopulation. What was important was that there were CHOICES.
In Mass Effect 2, one simply forces their way through hundreds of mercs - every Dossier and Loyalty mission except Thane's and Samara's Loyalty (two of my favorite missions) unavoidably involves killing waves of enemies. Sure, it makes sense for Grunt's loyalty, but what about Tali's? Did there really have to be shoot-first-ask-questions-later people defending the abandoned Pragia facility? Did Donovan Hock really have to find out that we were stealing the Graybox? At the end of the mission or assignment, we are given the formulaic set up for our morality decision. Almost every mission follows this format: told that one must obtain something --> told that there are 50 or so enemies in the way --> kill enemies --> presented with moral 'dilemma' --> dilemma resolved, mission ends. I remember I was able to guess that Miranda's friend had betrayed her in her loyalty mission, but who didn't: it was obvious. It reminds me of how I used to point out to my mother and sister that you could determine whether the investigators in a procedural crime drama had the right suspect based solely on the amount of time left in the show.
Arrival suffers from a similar problem. Once again and unavoidably, I must kill waves of enemies to rescue Kenson. Once again, at the end I am faced with the formulaic morality choice - warn the colonists of the system or just go, and they die either way. It is not the most interesting storytelling.
Conclusion
Mass Effect 2 is still my second favorite game of all time (shouldn't take much to guess the first). However, these weaknesses in the game worry me. I wonder if Mass Effect 3 missions will just be one firefight after another punctuated by predictable plot developments, and culminating in a meaningless morality decision the only purpose of which is to raise one's paragon or renegade rating. I certainly hope not, and I am still optimistic. Nevertheless, I will finish with the following statement: I like a good shootout, and killing waves of enemies isn't totally devoid of entertainment, but I can get that anywhere.
-NoSoyBueno
Post Scriptum: sorry about the TLDR. Kind of got carried away.
Modifié par NoSoyBueno, 15 avril 2011 - 02:35 .
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