Hah Yes Reapers wrote...
Dean_the_Young wrote...
It's you.
The vast majority of people put family, loved ones, and close friends as far, far above everyone else.
And that's what I said the first time: can't speak for me.
And I don't think anyone was speaking for you in particular, but people in general.
Which, being the audience as a whole, is the group that actually matters in this sort of argument.
I did give a backfiring: players being upset with the writers/developers, rather than being emotionally affected by the loss - which is ultimately the main goal of having it happen anyway.
'Being upset'
is the reaction the writers want. It shows them that the choice affected you. You being angry that they died, or you being sad, are equally acceptable.
It's the apathetic, or lack of, responses that are bad from the writer's perspective.
See, I'm not convinced the decision on Virmire was worth having, other than to establish them seperately in the rest of the series. As far as I've seen from this board, it's pretty much just a popularity contest because, again, few players approach the game as anything much more than a game.
After years of replay? Everything loses its drama. The Reapers aren't exactly the mecha-Cthulu horrors, Legion isn't ominous, the Citadel isn't impressive.
When it was new? Oh you bet it was big on people's minds.
You can actually watch the same sort of effect in the Dragon Age boards about the DA2 climax. It's gone from 'Maker Damnit, Anders!' to 'after my Nth time playing through, I chose X because I like X better.'
Which is normal and expected. No drama preserves its intensity or effect after prolonged exposure.
In this thread, some just decide that since they happen to know the future they will not talk to Ash/Kaidan (also a backfire, because characters are there for personal experience/attachments to be formed with which in this case is prevented from happening).
Limited talking is a reality of gameplay. The surviving characters didn't get much better: by that point in ME1
everyone's dialogue was just about tapped out, survivor and non-involved, and ME2 was pretty character-poor for the aliens of the team as well. Garrus was vengance and calibrations, Tali was once again encyclopedia and engine cleaning, and Liara... they had to make a dedicated DLC to give her character.
'Don't do much with the survivors' wasn't a weakness of the death-delimma, but Bioware's handling of
all the ME1 characters in ME2. That's more of a 'returning character' flaw in general, then death-flaw kickback in particular.
Then many of those who *were* affected by it are not affected by it in-game as intended, they just get mad it had to be there and come into this thread asking for no scripped-deaths in their game. They are affected by it outside the game.
By definition, everything you bring to Bioware forums is affecting you out of the game, approval or disapproval.
Now, have the 'I don't want anyone to die because it's bad writng' crowd been anything close to a majority? Hardly. By far most of the 'I don't want anyone to die' people are 'because I like them', which is the
reason for doing so from a design perspective.
The 'any death I can not prevent is poor writing' crowd is not the majority.
And in the end, I think this is the bottom-line. The game is meant to be enjoyable, especially in the RPG mold where people want choice. The characters are part of that enjoyment. Some people enjoy drama and tragedy, others do not. The suicide-mission made it possible for both to happen, which was good. If it's guilty of anything, it's making the choices for specialist completely obvious by the way they were presented (choose a tech: biologist, turian cop, assassin, elite engineer from engineer race, and an AI) and ultimately making the main character seem stupid for making it happen. But then, I think they expected players to metagame and replay it a few times anyway.
The nature of all RPGs is that while you have choice, you don't get to choose your choices. This is simply an effect of the medium. You always have, and always will, be restricted to the choices they give you, when they give you any. Demands of 'I want this choice to particular because you said I could have choices' are forgetting the fact of the genre.
You have choices because they give them to you. You don't have choices because you want them. And they are not in the business, role, or responsibility of giving you any choice you want for any circumstance.
If they butcher a bunch of them together to ensure that majority of players feel the loss, well, I don't think that "X's fans lost X too so you're not alone!" will make them less angry about it. It would just feel unfair that some characters get more enjoyment of their own than others. Like the ongoing issue made of paragons getting all the special content, just divided between fanbase lines. A better target (albeit obvious) for scripped-death is someone like Capt. Anderson, who is fairly liked overall, doesn't contribute inherently to the experience, and is not under the player's control anyways.
Here's the word that many of the anti-death arguments revolve around, if not mention:
'fairness'
How is unfair if a character dies? Since when are you entitled to their survival?
Captain Anderson is a poor candidate for any death, let alone a scripted death, because while he is a sympathetic character he isn't the a character the player has strong ties with. Whether scripted (Anderson always dies), or a trade-off (Anderson dies if you choose to save LI X instead), Anderson doesn't have the emotional bonds to be plucked for tragedy.
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