Asenza wrote...
Yay, here we go! In no particular order...
The entire crew of ME2 can die, in particular, Garrus, Mordin, and Tali. So just because a character can die in ME2 doesn't mean by default that their role in ME3 has to be dimininshed due to their dead/undead status. A character having no relation to the crew, no other reason to be involved with Shepard, can apply with most of the cast of Mass Effect 2. Garrus and Tali have "no unique key hook to the later plot". Grunt doesn't either.
Actually, the possibility of death DOES require diminished role thereafter. The designs can't afford to build radically different games branching after possible consequences: except when divergence is the point of the narrative, choices in RPGs are notorious for not having the 'Big Effects' in-game that people expect. If a character is dead, all the important story must still carry on. This is why killable characters matter to a point, and then no longer: their roles if they survive have to be fillable if they were dead.
Most of the Mass Effect 2 crew will be irrelevant to the extreme. Garrus's may be a companion, but that's because his fandom was established as exceptional and his role in ME2 concluded with the 'will be around' notation. But even he won't be important to ME3: he'll be given a role on account of his ME1 fandom, but he was never even necessary to the plot in the first game.
Tali and Legion (and arguably Miranda) the exceptions to the rule,, because they
do have hooks no other companion does. Tali and Legion are connected to the ongoing plotlines of the Geth and Quarians. Miranda has obvious ties to Cerberus which remains a major plot.
The rest will not be significant characters. Again, their roles were concluded in ME2. Their appearance in ME3 is as cameos and supplementary, not necessary figures.
If characters are secondary to the galatic war, that means ALL characters are secondary to the war effor, but you seem to be making an exception for Liara. Bioware spent two games and a lot of money in voice-acting to build up the cast. Letting them rot in the final installment of the series is not something a company focused on storytelling and good characters is not the way to go.
Not all characters are created equal. Liara is the Shadow Broker: that is her importance to Shepard and the War Effort. The importance of the galaxy's best information network, as well as the hinted plotline of other prothean anti-Reaper weapons left to be found, are continued story elements into ME3. Samara is just another Justicar.The Justicars themselves are nowhere near the importance of the Shadow Broker. A Justicar in particular won't be as important as the Shadow Broker as well.
Liara, as a character, is secondary. Liara, as her role as the Shadow Broker, is not. Liara's importance to the series has not been concluded.
Not all characters can be major characters. This is a fact. Bioware isn't going to 'let them rot': they'll be doing appropriate, admirable enough things befitting their characters. But characters who do not have a role, whether 'major war asset' or 'established squad mate' are not going to have the storylines of those who are important.
The other issue with your analysis is that the characters will still have to be important to the overall story, because unless Mass Effect 3 is turned into a space-ship flying game, there is still going to be Shepard and two others running around on foot solving objectives and fighting a ground war where possible. Thus characters will still be as important as they were in the previous games. The plot is less than or equal to nothing without the characters.
That's a logical mess. The characters who will be important to ME3 will be the characters important to ME3, not ME2. It is the same reason why Shepard had to build a new crew in ME2 despite the ME1 characters mostly still living.
Fortunately, Bioware already was keeping slots open from the start. The Virmire Survivor. Liara. Two characters minimum. Two additional characters (Vega and un-announced female), to balance the cast and give a guaranteed minimum number of companions (since all characters from Suicide Mission could die, they can not be relied upon to provide diversity).
Shepard only needs two. He will have a minimum of four, for balance. His core crew will always have to be available, regardless of the Suicide Mission results.
All other companions are accessory extras, and former companions are not inherently required to be re-worked back onto Shepard's ship. There is no 'thus': a miniumum supporting cast is necessary, but Shepard's ME2 crew is not necessary to be it, any more than the ME1 supporting cast was necessary to be key in ME2.
If Bioware was focusing on limiting the characters who they introduced in Mass Effect 2, they did a terrible job of it. But they made their bed.
No, they didn't. You're looking at a pile of blankets already folded and calling it a bed, but that doesn't mean it's a bed. Mass Effect 2's characters were designed as self-contained storylines. That's what they were. That's all they have to be. Nothing requires more of them.
I don't see how Mass Effect 3 being a story structured around a galactic war means putting characters aside. The characters are at least half this series. There's no freaking way I would have gotten through (or will continue to go through) Mass Effect 2 as many times as I have without these characters. By your reasoning, no new characters should be introduced in ME3, either.
Since I have never made the position that characters need to be equal and return at all, do stop claiming my reasoning if you clearly don't understand it yourself.
Mass Effect 2 was a character-centric story. I already said this. Infact, it was so character-centric that it was detrimental to the main plot: there were precisely four missions in which the game's primary enemy even appeared: Freedom's Progress, Horizon, the Collector Cruiser, and the Suicide Mission. Add that to that the Collector Abduction, and the Collectors (the reason behind the entire game) appear a grand total of five times.
There are a dozen suicie missions, eight recruitment missions, three major independent DLC stories, and another twodozen N7 missions, and most of them don't even reference the Collectors directly.
Mass Effect 2 was not a game centered around the plot of The Mission. It was a game centered around the 12 variously dysfunctional characters, most of whom got two missions each. A majority of the game had nothing to do with facing the Reapers or Collectors.
You liked ME2? Good for you. But that's not what Mass Effect 1 was (the other half of the series,a game in which the characters were accessory to the story, rather than replacing it), and that's not what Mass Effect 3 will be either. Bioware's already made their point that ME3 is going to be more about the Galaxy than the Characters this time around.
Mass Effect 3 will be almost as busy saving the galaxy as Shepard was at chasing down Saren. That doesn't mean Bioware can't entertain a cast of interesting characters... but it does mean it's going to be a smaller cast, and not at the detriment of the main story.
You are not going to get two intricate story missions focusing on your favorite character, unless your character is one of the lucky few that is actually important enough to be on the ship. That character is not going to constantly around to provide easily-accessible five-part conversation story line.
This shouldn't be beyond reason.
What does seem to be, however, is accepting that if Samara isn't going to be a squadmate on the Normandy, and isn't going to be a major character with a major conversation chain, that Samara will also not be underoing a major change of character that would require 'major character' status to devote the time to.
Modifié par Dean_the_Young, 31 octobre 2011 - 06:45 .
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