Ack, reformatting, missed some quotation marks
Well, I just like to point out that being a writer's pet can be both a good thing AND a bad thing. If the writer does not love his creation, could he make the audience care?
Xion66 wrote...
Nº1 Kai Leng,
...here he is, awkwardly introduced and injected into highly climatic moments of the storyline, when he should have been nothing more than a cameo, in the most emotionally charged moments, and revelation/confrontation situations he is a placeholder for actual villains that the player would want to face in those determined moments.
Well, the problem with Kai Leng was that he was the
wrong writer's pet - Drew's. It felt as if ME3 did not care about him enough. He was probably written by multiple people responsible for different chapers, and to each of them he was handed via the design document as 'that villain who ties us in to the novels'. They do recognize this failure - at least Weekes does in his interview. So, yeah, Kai Leng failed because
noone on the team loved him enough.Xion66 wrote...
Nº2 Liara T'soni Liara is the definition of a writer's pet.
Liara serves as a plot device and as Shepard's main pillar of strength wether you like it or not, you will get thrown into moving speeches, heartfelt moments, and even almost romantic scenes when you might not even romance her.
Oh well, yeah, she is indeed the classical writer's pet, and can theoretically be annoying as such. But hey, she's also the most favourite LI across the board, so being a writer's pet paid off, huh?
My Shepard could never warm up to Liara precisely because she had too many cutscenes and forced 'heartfelt moments', but I managed to roleplay around it. Nothing wrong with having that mildly annoying person who madly craves your attention around, and pretending to be nice to her while secretly eyerolling. I don't need to like everyone in the group, right?
Now, whether or not she has used up precious development resources at the expense of ME2 characters is another issue entirely. More resources are allocated to characters they like, it's only natural. Mechanically reallocating resources to characters
they like less could result in more Kai Lengs.
Xion66 wrote...
Nº3 The Illusive Man/Cerberus Remember in ME1 who Cerberus was? A bunch of colour-swapped mooks that you ran over for quick XP.
I enjoy TIM, I really do, I think he invokes the best and worse of mankind in one character, as well as being the perfect counter-point to Shepard, and retaining an antagonist, mysterious facade. Well, I guess Bioware thought the same because the game that should have been about the Reapers sounded more like TIM & the other guys who show up at the end.
Not only does TIM's never ending amount of resources expand, while every project they conduct blows in their faces time after time.
Oh, but I really loved the idea behind these mooks I ran over for quick XP, and therefore made them an (artificially) big deal in my own ME1 playthrough. So I would not be the one to complain about Cerberus.
I do agree that TIM is the writer's pet, and the fact that Cerberus projects fail so mindboggly often does give me pause. But their failure does give shepard something to do, so I can kinda overlook it.
So I'm probably not qualified to be an objective obserevr here. I did dislike the fact that Cerberus was overly vilified in ME3, at the expense of TIM's character development, but I can live with it.
Xion66 wrote...
Nº4 Earth Kid/Catalawsgeuywrgz
The whole introduction of the character before the twist was already awkward and alien, the dream sequences feel dettached from the narrative-style and the dimensions of the story and Shepard as a character, plus the writing feels really subpar in those moments as well as way too much leaning towards the melodromatic.
Catalyst is more like Kai Leng, but on a different level entirely. I believe he fails because
noone on the team loves him at all. So while Kai Leng is still a character, thus posessing at least some level of integrity due to his background in the novels, Catalyst is just a failed plot device. He was a narrative construct, an empty placeholder noone cared to fill with personality. If they did not care about him, why should we?
Why do they keep pushing him? Well, I guess he was in design documents,
deeply embedded into the framework, even before they started fleshing everything out. But that's not love, that's just planning, there's no soul there.
Xion66 wrote...
Thank you for your time.
Hey, thanks for typing all of this out.
Modifié par WindOverTuchanka, 14 avril 2012 - 06:44 .
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