I'd like to forward the idea that it has to do with game immersion and strong emotional ties to the story of a particular character, along with the side effect of all RPG games "the alternative life".
First what is this alternative life? it's something you see in general on the internet every day, Hordes of people leading different lives in many cases saying things they wouldn't in "real life"(such a horrible term for offline activity) and doing many things they wouldn't. Ranging from everything from terribly abusive and agressive behaviors like cyber "bullying" to cyber romances(ones that just stay online and are typically secret) The type of RPG you see where your "2nd life" (no pun intended) is generally thought to take over and make a drooling husk out of you is the WoW style MMO which as i can atest does not make you a dribbling husk offline (at least in my case) Now i bring this up and define it because it is very important in looking at this. Why? because this is an immensely important part of game immersion for the player to feel like they are actually in the world they are playing and
they are the main character. In BW games story is heavy and very important it's like reading a good book or a movie that keeps you on the edge of your seat and has you constantly trying to tell the characters what not to do so they don't die in the movie or book. One element of a good story, in alot of cases not all or most just alot, is well fleshed out romance a deep emotional tie the main character has to another character in the book.
This brings on all those threads for or against various NPCs Because the NPCs in question tend to embody desires, dreams, aspects that the main character(the immersed player, ultimately you) has(in the case of dreams and desires) or wants,needs, and admires(in the case of aspects). When viewed this way it's easy to see how players end up favoring and in some cases having strong emotions over various NPCs, and presents no real problem nor does it indicate anything lacking on the player(s)' side of things. for example say the married man love his wife yet still really likes tali as a romance option So long as it doesn't cross the line of exceptionally weird(i.e making wife dress like tali for some reason) there is no problem as long as when it comes to the Real world he is still mentally stable enough to seperate Story Romance from Life Love (which i'm certain most people do) If this division of fake and real isn't made then Honestly some mental problems exist and have existed for some time and BW should include the same warnings as GTA does on it's ESRB label(look at it for 5 minutes you'll see what i'm talkin about).
Now what you have to remember is when people post on here they are typically posting as fans of the series and subsequently their favorite characters. Supporting a favored characters return, for whatever reason (in the BSN case mostly romance) is a normal occurence It's like expecting mario luigi and princess peach (a good character equivelant for this would be Shepard, Garrus, and Tali respectively) to come back in the next mario game which we know they will or Link and Zelda to obviosly be present in the Skyward sword Who wants to play a mario game as that other random plumber down the street from mario named quazi modo and have his love interest be idk....J.Lo and his brother be terry Mc. Ginus? No one. Absolutely no one wants to play that game(one guy in the background as he is reading this is thinking.."I do" well to him i say "stfu you don't matter"). Why? The characters are too random. What makes them random you ask? The fact that the player has no emotional ties to them, No reason to feel "in tune" with them. This not only makes them random but unfamiliar.(yes i'm implying that the only thing that makes a character random in a video game is unfamiliarity.)
Now i'm gonna use tali and garrus as an example. In ME 1 for some reason many of us found tali adorable, i can't say i understand why because i didn't find Tali in ME 1 adorable until after i played ME2, had they rplaced tali completely in ME 2 people probably on the whole wouldn't have cared much because she didn't develop alot in ME 1, unlike Garrus who we felt, typically, changed his outlook on life dependent on shepards lessons this gave us a personal tie into garrus. personally when playing ME i feel like Garrus is my best bud. My real best bud is named james and he lives about 2 miles north of me and i visited him at least 4 times amonth to play games and eat pizza and discuss politics. Garrus sorta reminds me of him in the sense they're both Cops (or will be once james gets through the academy) and that's about it. aside from that storywise garrus to me seems like sheps protoge if not best friend. And that's how i play the game, Though i really wish that ME 2 garrus had more dialogue. apparently garrus made enough of an impact on the girls in this community to warrant a romance, which is a bit more understandable and less out of the blue than tali (who's, I think, perceived innocence, shyness, and naivity ultimately won her the fancy of many guys this was played on alot in ME 2 for the rommance) .
Now to finnish leading back into the concept of Familiarity in the video game. As nintendo said, at least to some extent, at this years E3 "people want to play the familiar in new ways" is a very true statement. They don't want a whole new cast of characters and ect... They want the ones from number 1 played out in new yet familiar ways that makes sense with their ideas. Part of ME 2s poor reception was there was soo much speculation as to what could of been going on. Ultimately very few of those ideas panned out leaving forumites who embraced the concepts concieved here to feel alienated by bioware like bioware had failed them because the familiar ideas they went over in their heads werent the ones they encountered in ME 2. (that is not to say ME 2 didn't have some major plot holes/problems and in some cases total collapse of story/lore Project overlord vs geth don't communicate verbally) In the end fans want to see familiar characters who they felt tied to return so that they can get the same yet a slightly different experience in the storyline. in a weird twist.
So in conclusion 1)most of the gruops/people that are proponets of an "**NPC_NAME**love" thread are just fans who emotionally meshed well with the characters given the story set up and were successfully immersed into the "2nd life"(still no pun intended) of Mass Effect.
2)Most people who participate in these threads are just people who want the familiar presence to return or overall felt the character was well done and really liked the character (sorta like how we post on this forums our ideas about the game suggestions plot ideas etc... because we like the game, i'm fairly certain if asked most forumites here would say they loved or liked the games so far.)
3) the only time a mental problem might exist is if someone in their private time decided to break the boundry of fiction and create a real insert *sexual/emotional icon here* and even then i'm not so sure that denotes a mental problem than more of some weird sexual fantasy and who doesn't have a sexual fantasy of some kind.
4) It's normal for fans to act this way.
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edit 2: more spelling >.>
Modifié par darth_lopez, 14 juin 2011 - 08:51 .
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Which is icing on the cake. 
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