Auld Wulf wrote...
One of the core problems with gamers, as a subculture, is that the vast majority (over 90%) are locked into binary thinking as their sole means of perception. That's terrifying. What this means is that there can be no nuances, no subtlety, no tenets of human nature even; everyone has to be 1 or 0. You are a good guy (1), you have allies (1), you are opposed by a great, faceless evil (0), you must destroy the evil (0). Good (1) can only do good, evil (0) can only do evil. There are no grey zones, no in-between.
This is one, true reason behind why so many gamers hated the ending of ME3. They were 1, and tehy wanted to see 0 destroyed. Those gamers, as 1, wanted to be celebrated for having removed 0 from existence. It's kind of like extreme racism and propaganda, these people would be very easy to brainwash. Very easy. And that's also terrifying. At the end of ME3, we discover that the reapers are, indeed, not 0. And that we are not technically 1, and that holy ****, binary thinking may be entirely the wrong way of looking at reality all together.
This made too many minds snap like so many dry twigs. I could almost hear the snapping sounds as people took to the Internet with torches and pitchforks. ME1 was very much implicative of the gamer psyche, in that it was very black & white. Sovereign was 0, Saren was 0, Shepard was 1. It was all so very easy to understand. In fact, if you remove the somewhat nicely written dialogue and boil it down, Mass Effect 1 reads like a Saturday morning cartoon in its intellectual simplicity.
That's why I disliked ME1. If I wanted a Saturday morning cartoon, I'd go watch one. And the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were better at doing what ME1 was than ME1, thank you. If I wanted something that simple and corny, I'd just watch it. I mean, really, I couldn't stop facepalming at ME1 because it was just that bad. And that's what gamers have been trained to like, simple plots with good guy (1) versus bad guy (0).
Give them anything more complicated than that and they feel so amazingly challenged that they throw their toys out of the pram. I was actually delighted by ME3 and its ending, a complete dismissal of binary thinking and gaming tenets, in favour of telling an intelligent, emotionally charged story. I consider myself a gamer, but very few games live up to my standards in regards to story. Mask of the Betrayer, Fallout: New Vegas, Spec-ops: The Line, and Mass Effect 3 have been a few of the very few highlights of the last decade.
For me, I really have no interest in how complicated the game mechanics are, I just want an intellectually mature and emotionally charged storyline (with choice and consequence, if possible, and based upon more complex ethics). What I don't want is binary thinking. I'm glad the reapers weren't portrayed as a faceless evil, as they were so foolishly in Mass Effect 1 (the bloody Saturday morning cartoon that it was). I'm happy about that. And I want to see BioWare do more of that.
Gaming needs to become less gamey, frankly. It needs to grow up. Binary thinking is for kids.
You're right, the Mass Effect 3 ending wasn't binary. It was trinary. The addition of a third choice is completely unprecedented and morally challenging; it crushed my previous conception of video game choices. Definitely wasn't just a silly A,B,C choice differing almost entirely on a superficial level... hey, wait a second.
Here's the thing, you can characterize Mass Effect 1 as a Saturday morning cartoon as much as you like. But at least the story was well told and consistent. Hell, actual Saturday morning cartoons have better stories than Mass Effect 3.
Edit: Also, haven't you sort of outed yourself as a dichotomous thinker by splitting the entire videogaming subculture as the 90% (proles and Huxlein Deltas) vs. the other 10%(enlightened and multifarious).
Modifié par Dark_Caduceus, 06 février 2013 - 03:40 .
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