Jane Shepard wrote...
And here is my FemShep question. Is your Shepard still the same person who she was in ME1 (or ME2 if you started from this game)?
That's a
great question.
Jessica is someone who's spent most of her life on the run from something. Even though to all external appearances she's found a home in the Alliance, on the inside she is still running from her past on Earth, and the Alliance just allows her to keep running. She's gotten to where she is as a War Hero and as Spectre material simply because she can never stop going forward. She has to charge ahead at full speed all the time, crushing any resistance in her path, or her past will catch up and devour her. This is why, when Finch showed up with his threats, he got a bullet through the throat for his trouble. She fights the inevitability of the Reapers because she hates bullies and is constitutionally incapable of backing down from anything that's stronger than her. The lessons of her past have drilled into her that doing so only results in more severe abuse.
ME1: Jessica starts the first game still on the run. This carries her through the events of the game and, by the end, she's finally found a home and a family unlike any she's ever had before. The Normandy SR1 is home, and it's populated by a surrogate family that is the crew. She's even found love, something she still doesn't believe she deserves. Even though Sovereign's defeated, she knuckles under and turns her attention full on the Reaper threat because she'll be damned if she lets anyone take away what she's never had in her life before.
ME2: Jessica starts the game with a great emptiness inside and an overwhelming sense of oppression. Her home and family have been taken away, and she's trapped by one of her former enemies, who seems to have arranged events so that she only has one path to take. So, she does what she always has... put her head down and charge forward, never pausing to actually consider what's happened to her and what she's lost, or she might go mad. The Collectors are crushed under the steamroller of her willpower, and by the end of the game she has cut herself free from her enemy's influence and has reconnected with enough of her surrogate family to feel as if she's putting herself back together. Nevertheless, she's terribly weary and her hope for survival, to say nothing of victory, is at its lowest ebb so far.
ME3: At the start of the game (i.e., the demo), Jessica is dead tired. She has no emotional reserves to draw upon any longer; she's almost on autopilot by this point, still beating her head against the wall of the Alliance and Council because she's been doing it so long it's become a habit. When the Reapers arrive, when she witnesses their gigantic invulnerability first hand, she feels that fighting is utterly pointless, utterly hopeless... yet she picks up her weapons and turns her energies against them because she's simply incapable of lying down to die. The bigger and more powerful the threat is, the harder you have to fight it. It may kill you, but at least you won't let it violate you beforehand. By the end of the game, if she survives, she will want to do nothing but rest, hopefully in the arms of her Shadow Broker. She'll try to find somewhere that she can go to ground and live the rest of her days quietly... finally able to stop running.
"Am I safe now, Liara?"In some ways, Jessica is a totally different person by the time ME3 rolls around... but in the really important ways, she hasn't changed at all. She's still running from the past, pretending to ignore it when in fact it rules all of her actions. She's still fighting, because that's the only response she's capable of.
"Give up? Up yours."
Modifié par Sable Phoenix, 26 février 2012 - 10:48 .