Ultimately, I believe Bioware (or at least Casey and Mac) forgot they we're creating a video game's story.
In a movie, a character is just that, a character. Its another person. What happens to that character has a different effect on the audience. When they die, its at most like watching a friend die. Someone we know.
Video Games are different. When we directly control the actions of the main character (and Mass Effect gives us significantly more control over the character then most games with the dialog choices) what happens to that character feels not like its happening to somebody we know, but rather that its happening to ourselves.
The Matrix had an ending that worked for a movie, or a book, or any other non-interactive form. Neo’s heroic sacrifice is tolerable, its even to some an enjoyable story mechanics because the viewer can watch this character they've come to know become a martyr. When somebody you know sacrifices themselves heroicly you are proud of them. But when the audience IS the main character, and they die, we do not all feel like a martyr, as most real martyrs don’t themselves. We do not feel proud of our actions, we feel like we failed to truly win on our own terms and instead we’re forced to make sacrifices we didn’t want to make in order to achieve victory.
Obviously there are people who can accept these things. Who can feel good about their own death in the context of the story. Everyones different, everyone interprets and consumes a story in a different way. And they got that option, and thats great for them. But other people don't like that, don't want that. They don’t want to feel like they failed to win on their own terms. Thats not what video games are supposed to be about.
Now in the game we did barely manage to get our survival, despite it being an unnessisarily ambiguous one. But apply this logic to the LI. When you watch a movie character's love interest, you treat them as THEIR LI, not YOUR LI. But in a game, if you take the roleplayign seriously then that character feels like YOUR LI, thus you feel more attached to it. Now obviously I'm not saying we literally believe they our are girlfriend/boyfriend whatever. I'm talking about a connection thats more on a subconscious level. But it still has this effect on us. When Shepard is denied reunion with his/her LI, it makes some of us feel like WE were denied reunion with OUR LI.
I don't think Bioware understand this mentality, or at least the lead writer forgot about it or simply doesn't care. I think they wanted to create a movie like ending and forgot that games are just different and must be written differently as it effects the audience differently. Or maybe they do know it and are trying to break our subconscious connection to these characters to allow us to move on, who knows lol. I don't really want to give them that much credit though.
And yeah yeah, I'm sure somebody reading this will misinterpret what I'm saying and think I believe Liara is my literal LI. No.
Modifié par Doctor Moustache, 28 juin 2012 - 11:09 .
Retour en haut
