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[PsydonZero]

Bioware, I really hope you read this--and if you are right now, I beg you to read right to the end and then tell every single member of your writing staff about this.



I hate The Kid. The one who dies at the beginning, if you're confused.
The art book that comes with the CE has a page dedicated to The Kid. On
the page is a little note saying that The Kid was from the start
intended to be "the face of all the lives Shepard couldn't save from the
Reapers" or something like that. Keep that in mind as you read the rest
of this post.

When I first saw The Kid's death scene in the
demo, I laughed. Why? Because of how hollow the whole thing was. The
close-up shots, the little glance The Kid and Shepard share for just a
second, the pacing of the scene, the Reaper roar mixed with the sad
piano theme, watching "myself" wince at seeing the shuttle destroyed:
Bioware really wanted me to care about The Kid and his demise and I
didn't. Not one bit.

Later on, during my repeated visits to the
Citadel Embassies, I always stopped to listen to this old lady and an
asari receptionist there. I listened to the old lady beg the asari over
and over to help her find her son, complement the asari on reminding her
of her son's girlfriend, begin to blab on about her son and even start
to become good friends with the asari. Then, after one mission, I went
back there to find out whether or not their story would have a happy
ending like some of the other background NPCs...only to find the old
woman, in a much weaker voice, seemingly repeating her original inquiry.
I thought perhaps the script had reached its loop, but then I heard the
asari ask the old lady if she knew who she was. The old lady had no
idea who the asari was, but that didn't stop her from asking about her
son.

Even as I'm typing these words I feel like weeping a bit.
Just through a handful of background chatter for an otherwise static NPC
the player can't in any way interact with, Bioware managed to set up a
complex, interesting and heartbreakingly tragic character. That old
woman and her plight made, and still make, me want to cry.

The same cannot be said of The Kid.

Apparently
he had a big impact on Shepard. She has nightmares about him burning
alive, she's told at least one NPC about her grief over him. Yet I, the
player behind Shepard, don't care about The Kid in the slightest; all
the playable dream sequences and sad music will never change that.

Why? Because Bioware has done nothing to make me care about him.

The
Kid is a fictional character. He doesn't exist. His death is completely
meaningless, as is the death of any fictional character. By default,
there is no reason whatsoever for me to care if he dies. He's a special
effect, nothing more. This is why writers of fiction have to make us
care about their characters: because we're not going to by ourselves.
The Kid is just that: an image of a kid. Shepard never learns anything
about him or has any interesting conversations with him. He has two
lines, both of which are generic, and has a total prehumous screen time
of less than two minutes.

Imagine for a moment if Shepard's dream
sequences featured the character who died on Virmire, or Shepard's love
interest, burning alive instead. That would have a much bigger impact,
because we care about those characters--those people we've
come to know as we fought, laughed, cried, raged and sacrificed
alongside them over tens of hours of our lives. They, the closest people
in Shepard's life, should be the face of everything she stands to lose,
not The Kid.

What's truly baffling to me is how Bioware could
have missed this. All you trolls and fools out there, don't mistake the
message of this thread. Bioware is more than capable of writing
interesting characters and triggering genuine emotional reactions in
players, something they've proven time and time again, including in ME3,
yet they chose to create The Kid and implement him the way they did.
They willingly and intentionally didn't live up to their own standards.

@Bioware: Never again. You are so much better than this. To stoop to something this hollow and superficial is an insult to all of you, everything you do and everything that makes you great.

Please.

Do. Not. Do. This. Again.

Thank you for taking the time to read this through.

[Complicated Stares]

Ventboy as he's come to be known is just something I ignore, those dream sequences are actually very touching after the first one you run into, mainly because you start to feel the weight of the other characters you couldn't save like mordin. The final one where you see yourself burning with ventboy, that one was actually touching to me, I finally felt something or the child. Alas it was too little to late.