OdanUrr wrote...
I'm talking about the story of the game, not what the game might have inspired others to create. What I meant is that if the story of the game is not good enough that you have to make up your own to explain the game, then there must be a problem.
This dissertation is essentially an academic reading of a media text, kinda what all humantities are, not a making up of the story to explain the game.
This is how people study films, and books, and paintings. Once a work is 'complete', and in the hands of the audience, then these kind of studies become perfectly valid. An author's intentions are generally quite opaque, especially if the author is dead. There are whole faculties worth of academics doing this kind of thing with Shakespeare, and he's no longer around to explain his intentions. (Note, that is not comparing the writing of Mass Effect to the plays of Shakespeare.
All 'texts' require the 'reader' to interpret them. In a book, even one without much literally merit, the reader has to fill in the pictures themselves. In a film, the audience has to be able to follow the editing, ie: fill in the what happens between cuts, themselves. In some cases, the storyteller tries to lead the reader by the nose, and in others, the author will leave their audience to interpret some things themselves. It is one of the reasons Blade Runner is so interesting; Ridley Scott's original intentions are now more or less irrelevant - the discussion of whether Deckard is a replicant or not in interesting by itself.
With Mass Effect, this aspect of literary criticism is even more interesting, as ME is an interactive narrative. There's an element of shared authorship between the studio and the player: within confined limits, the player is writing their own story. It has nothing to do with whether the 'story is good enough' - it is wholly appropriate to this kind of fiction to do the kind of analysis the OP is attempting.
Basically, any reading of the narrative of ME is an opinion. This is true even for the authors of the game. The difference between opinions, in this case, is that this analysis is well argued and backed up with plenty of evidence. The writers of ME could put up a differing opinion, especially about their intentions, but it would require those intentions to be realised for it to be truly valid. And this is the point of literary criticism.
Sorry, that was really longwinded, but I hope my point comes across.
Modifié par Klijpope, 12 janvier 2012 - 06:36 .
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