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I was doing a little reflecting earlier about how I'm paragon like 75% of the time and no one ever dies in the Suicide Mission. I asked myself, "Why the hell do I keep doing this? It's unrealistic and stupid to save the galaxy by being a nice person, and coming out of a mission like that unscathed borders on ridiculous."
And then I realized, hey, it's because it's unrealistic that I do it in the first place.
Spoiler alert: Real life sucks. Every day, we have to face how powerless we are, how often we screw up, how bad things will keep happening to good people no matter how hard we try to stop it. Sure, we can contribute our hearts and souls to good causes, work until our backs break to make things better, and offer all the help and comfort to the ones we love, but ultimately, the happy endings don't last. The bad guys stay in power, the good guys get shoved to the wayside, and we retreat into our religions and philosophies to try to make sense of it all and make it hurt less. Pessimistic, I know. I do try hard (and should try harder), but really, I can't get over how insignificant I am in the grand scheme of things.
So then this game comes along. It has cool aliens, good voice acting, and you get to shoot people. Awesome, sign me up. But then when I played it a certain way, I couldn't help but feel a little better about myself.
Basically, Mass Effect (2) offers an elaborate fantasy in which the player has the power to save the world in his or her own way. It gave me a mature, deep, and (despite the sci-fi thing) incredibly realistic environment in which I could take those kindergarten morals I'd never quite let go of and put them in the hands of an unstoppable and charismatic space marine.
Sure, I can't stop genocide or corporate corruption. I can't intervene when a close friend is about to get seriously hurt. I can't fight wars or sway entire populations or protect the innocent. But Shepard can.
And even though it's all just pretend, I can't help but think the experience has been a little therapeutic.
I know it's silly to think I can have sunshine and bunnies in the face of a galactic apocalypse, but I want 'em anyway. I want to keep playing pretend, to screw the rules and do the impossible, to protect the people I care about in a way I can't protect them in real life.
So if the fine folks at Bioware have squeezed in one little possible endgame scenario in which the crew makes it out alive again and I don't have to basically murder my space-BFFs to win, even if there's like a 10% chance of getting that ending, I'd be eternally grateful. Too late to really impact the story at this point, sure, but if the tweets are to be believed, I'm going to spend half the game sobbing anyway, so is wanting to watch the credits roll with a stupid, satisfied grin on my face too much to ask?
Because that's one of the reasons I keep playing these games: Shepard is the hero I wished I could be back in kindergarten, and both the kid and the adult in me would like to see hundreds of hours and dollars conclude with a happy ending. Granted, I'll get over it if it doesn't, but still, I'm more likely to play it again if it makes me feel good when I'm done, right?
And if you think this rant is weird, blame Bioware for making a game good enough for me to care this much. It's hard to get people to care this much about the fate of a few lumps of programming with voices attached. What strange voodoo are you crazy bastards practicing, anyway? I'll bet you can make a god damn plastic bottle that people would get emotionally attached to, sheesh...
Also, I'm a selfish, socially reclusive crybaby in desperate need of therapy. That could also attribute to any and all WTF-ness of this thread.
OVER TO YOU, MY LOVELIES: What weird, childish fantasies has Mass fulfilled for you, if any? Do you think happy endings and No One Left Behinds belong in a game like ME3? If not, why? Would you accept that sort of thing if it was optional/difficult to achieve? How do you want to feel when the credits roll?
EDIT: Bolded the point of the thread since some people think I want to avoid every single dark and gloomy aspect of a war story altogether. Nope, just no completely forced squad deaths.
Modifié par AdmiralCheez, 07 octobre 2011 - 07:06 .
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