The problem with ME3's tone wasn't that it should have been light and airy--like you say, the backdrop of a giant war is hardly going to be a terribly happy time, no matter how it's portrayed--But if you're going to make a story somber and dark, at least do it well. Mordin's death scene; That was a good example. Not because they're talking about 'this damn war' or 'we're gonna beat the damn reapers, graah!' but because the conflict, despite the overarching story, remains tightly focused in the characters and their interactions.
Honestly, I could care less about Shepard moaning and groaning about there being tough decisions to make and having nightmares and stuff, because it never affected me. You never have to make tough calls that actually make any difference. Oh, sure, you've got Ash and Kaidan, but that doesn't have any repercussions at all! You get one squadmate or another, with practically no difference between the two, and certainly no sense of loss. There wasn't any significant sections where you are prevented from doing something because you didn't have one of them available, or anything like that. ME2 had no decisions like that at all, and ME3 didn't really, either. Oh, sure, you've got the Quarian/Geth war, that might end up being pretty bad, but that's well into the end of the game, while Shepard's been feeling guilty the entire time. You can't have pointless, meaningless acting like that without some explanation at some point.
If you really wanted some sort of guilt, make the player make a decision at the very start of the game that has a serious impact on the lore progression of the game from there on in. Decide what to do with the fleets, for example. Even better, make the choice morally ambiguous, so you can't just pick the paragon or renegade options. Then have news reports of the results of that single choice show up every now and then throughout the story. That serves as a constant reminder of the war you're in. "We saved Grissom Academy! Go Team Shepard!" "*And now, somber news from Earth; the Third Battalion, sent to London to fight back against the Reaper Threat, has been utterly annihilated. More news as the story progresses.*" "Aww...crap.".
Instead we had blatantly heavyhanded dialogue complaining about the 'damn war' and no character development at all. And what the heck was with that kid, anyway? We had no connection to that kid at all, why is he showing up in all our dreams? Without established character development in him, the dreams were completely meaningless. "Oh, there's a kid, he's burning up, that's...weird? Sad, I guess, but we've barely even seen the guy." Instead, they should have had characters we failed to save show up in the dreams, and then throw the Kid in as a riddle; why is the kid there when he's practically insignificant compared to the other characters we're dreaming about that we actually care about?
All this falls back to what I think the fundamental concept of maturity is; not the themes in the story, but the way the characters react to those themes. A child thinks as a child and responds to the story as a child. An adult thinks as an adult and responds to the story as an adult; namely, with maturity.
Retour en haut
