KaiserShep wrote...
I find the indignation over Liara's recovery of Shepard's body kind of funny, given the alternative.
Yeah, I laugh every time I read someone complaining about that.
It's called bodily autonomy - there's a number of people out there who put Do Not Resuscitate orders on file with medical practitioners because they're of the opinion that if they die, they should remain dead. For whatever reason, some people just do not want to have medical action taken to bring them back in the event that they are to flatline. And some of those people are playing the games. Yet the way that Liara's actions are presented are that she did the right thing and there is no arguing that fact, that it is completely one hundred percent the only option that was available to her. There is one buried comment about it that is bugged to disappear if you don't take it the first time you come across it AND loops around to the standard and neutral 'let me know if you need anything else' dialogue, and then it is entirely forgotten.
And before you say it, yes, on the terms of the overall story, Liara did the right thing for the galaxy, as Shepard was needed to stop the Reapers. BUT on the personal level, she has potentially disregarded the bodily autonomy of the person she looks up to and (unrequited or not) loves. And she does not show regret for the action, justifying it with the reasoning that she "couldn't let [Shepard] go." A sweet but still troublesome statement if romanced, just plain troublesome if she is not. But she says it regardless of romance status AND does not cite the importance of Shepard to combat the Reapers. The only reason that she gives for these actions is that she could not let Shepard go. And so, people like me want the ability to genuinely be upset and hear her apologize for putting her wants, needs, and desires above Shepard's. We want to address this elephant in the room - if someone I was friends with told the doctors to disregard my DNR and bring me back, I would be pissed at them and if there was any chance to repair the friendship, which there might not be, it would require us sitting down and having a serious conversation about this. If you're able to find it, there's the pissed off reaction, but there is never the follow up conversation directly addressing this.
Miranda regrets wanting to put a control chip in Shepard's head. Liara shows no regret that she handed off Shepard's body to Cerberus for them to play god on the off chance that their Frankensteinian science would pay off. Especially for Sole Survivors but even if you just did the Cerberus missions, this should cause some kind of visceral negative reaction in Liara now being complicit in their science experiments on Shepard - let's say they had put in that control chip, which would lead to TIM using Shepard in Kai Leng's place. Liara would then bear a burden of responsibility for enabling them to do that to Shepard because she directly gave them access to Shepard.
I'm not asking for an hour long discussion on the merits and disadvantages of Liara's actions. But I do feel that a serious conversation on this matter needed to have taken place and taken place on screen, and the fact that there isn't one gives the impression that the writing of the game wants me to see this as an implicitly good and proper thing that she has done, and I vehemently disagree with that stance. And, as a result, it taints her as a character for me because it was her taking this action.
Modifié par dgcatanisiri, 10 août 2013 - 09:49 .
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