Hawk227 wrote...
This got me wondering about how the Rannoch arc plays out without Legion. After a little research, it appears (note: I've note played through it) it plays out very similarly to Tuchanka without Wrex. If Legion is sold to Cerberus or dies in the suicide mission, he is replaced by a Geth VI. This replacement does not have the same experiences as Legion, and thus has a more pessimistic and distrustful outlook towards organics, but the history is still presented to the player. What is missing is the mutual empathy and trust shared between Legion and Shepard. This trust obviously colors the decision a great deal, but it does not change the history of the Geth/Quarian conflict.
This is useful. Legion was alive in my playthrough, so I didn't know what the Legion-less throughline was like.
Which, of course, brings up the difficulty of criticism when the critic doesn't necessarily have access to the full text. It's a problem even greater than the usual question of understanding the context of a work (its history, conventions, idioms, precedents, antecedents, et cetera). We're used to being able to evaluate the text as a whole, which is not necessarily true in the general case of ergodic texts, but videogames especially, with their dynamic systems and often-large possibility spaces.
KitaSaturnyne wrote...
I'd just like to point out that the trip into the Geth Consensus, and therefore the revelations regarding the Morning War, is NOT a required mission. You can go straight to the Reaper base without playing it, the only prerequisite being that you rescue Admiral Koris.
This is an important point, and the fact that the Consensus mission is
optional as opposed to
required is relevant to any discussion of authorial intent. More on this below.
uwyz wrote...
[...]The fact that this data exist speaks of the author's intent.
If Legion and the geth's action were based on Shepard's intent - say if they became model citizens on Shepard's encourage, or became unredeemable destroyers in response to Shepard's aggressions, then I can see a point in arguing that the "player" chooses the predominate 'theme/pov' of the narrative.
[...]
Just because Shepard screwed up in failing to broker peace through the player's own missteps does not mean peace is never, and can never be possible. it is not that the 'synthetic vs. organics' theme doesn't work for some people - it doesn't work for the story at all.
I should be clear that I'm playing Devil's Advocate here, and working through larger, thornier questions of videogame criticism. I don't necessarily disagree with you in this case. My reasoning, however, may be somewhat...different. Bear with me.
I don't think we can say unequivocally that simply because the data exists within the possibility space of the game at large that we are bound to consider it. Videogames are not only ergodic texts, requiring nontrivial effort in their traversal, but
systems, wherein portions of the text may be rendered inaccessible or even invalid. My throughline is not yours, my subjective experience can differ wildly, and while both are valid they may conflict on multiple levels.
I liken this critical tension to wave-particle duality. The game exists as a set of potential states (like a wavefunction). A given playthrough represents the actualization of a single state (like a particle). We cannot ignore any given single playthrough, since we cannot assume a player will ever complete more than one, and thus when discussing the player's experience whatever subset of the whole is exposed has to be treated as if it were all that existed. That said, the rest of the game does exist, if only as potential, so any judgements of what the game itself intends must compare how it responds to varying input. Both perspectives are required for a full understanding of the system, but the type of answer depends on the question asked.
In the case of the Geth, the fact that so much of the humanizing interaction is optional suggests that the game allows for the legitimacy of an anti-synthetic perspective. They
begin the series as "unredeemable destroyers", after all, and (as far as I can tell) all the redeeming information can be bypassed by the player. Compare this to EDI's treatment: she must be unshackled to progress in ME2, and she must be given control of Eva's body to progress in ME3. The player is given the option to express mistrust, even revulsion, but we as players are forced to confront the issue.
Where I end up agreeing with your view, uwyz, is one step past that. Mass Effect, you see rewards
completion above all else. The game never punishes the player for the decision to unlock more content. Accepting new squadmates never places Shepard in true danger. Pursuing sidequests never places others out of reach (except for the timing issues in ME2 surrounding the Collector abduction, but that was a failure of communication with the player on some level, and was rectified in ME3). And completionism is rewarded with more experience, more levels, more weapons, more options, higher reputation, better upgrades, and often more insight into the world and its characters. Sometimes, in fact, completionism is rewarded to the detriment of narrative urgency - a fact most evident in ME1. For all the (occasionally forced) pleas to continue the main plotline right away, further exploration was (excepting the abduction bit) never punished.
In that light, a player which never engaged with Legion's story was playing the game
wrong to a degree, and studied consideration of the issue in full is rewarded directly by the mechanics. And in this light, the genocide of the Geth does indeed appear to violate the thematic intent of the game as a whole.
[Edited for clarity.]
Modifié par delta_vee, 05 mai 2012 - 12:17 .
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