Actually you changed my mind on the issue, you made some amazing points. I agree that many characters side missions do redirect or completly revert with their inclusion of ME3. I will argue though that this is the effect that seeing the characters again is a reward in and of itself for many players, and that arbitray deaths across the board would have felt cheap in ME2 (Failing no matter what is just as simple and forced as Winning no matter what) And I feel if choice matters, protecting your companions in ME2 is one of the more important ones for a gamer.
So what we needed were more complicated plots for them in ME3.
Unless you're bringing free money from the future with you, this is the exact opposite of what needs to be done if you're going back in time to change the story process. ME3's design doesn't need complexity to make better use of ME2 characters- it needs to be simplified.
The entire mechanic of killing companions in ME2 was the single biggest design-level mistake of the franchise because it knee-capped all practical character considerations for the ME2 cast. In any story involving a character who can die, the baseline of the story isn't what you do if he character lives- it's how the story continues if the character dies.
Because they could be killed, every single ME2 companion dispensable and ignorable for all future plots. This isn't the fault of ME3- this is the fault of ME2 for forcing ME3 to continue any plotline regardless of who survived the suicide mission. This is why there are name and role replacements for practically every ME2 companion, and why the ones who don't are also the most plot-inconsequential. For all major roles and missions involving a killable character, you have to duplicate the cost in order to have a stand-in or substitute available for if the cast member is dead. No matter how complex you make the ME2 companion plot, the ME2 companion is inherently dispensible the moment they can be dispensed with in ME2.
It's the same issue which made the ME2 Collector Base delimma a farce on the meta-level. Despite the (logical) argument that victory in the Reaper War might depend on the technology of keeping the base intact, from a narrative standpoint there was no way the game was going to punish Paragons by denying victory if they destroyed the base. Because the base was a schrodenger's cat that had to carry forward the same plot regardless, both life and death became irrelevant. Either the base would be irrelevant, or the gains and costs would occur regardless of destruction.
That's why character deaths are a really, really bad choice and design strategy for anyone you expect to return. ME2 spent an entire game around creating and gathering a team of characters... all of whom had to have their plotlines finished in ME2, and none of whom could be counted upon for ME3. Better character planning would have been to refuse the allure of short-term drama of killing a character that might have been useful later.
I will argue that saying every Krogan politician when there have hardly been any at all is a bit unfair. And what you are arguing for alternatively seems just as inbalanced the opposite way. Mordin is sympathetic and that is part of his coming around, especially since in DA2 he is shown very much wavering on what is right. Also, lets not forget the majority of players never got Wrex at all, and not the other way around, so Wrex needs to add a bit extra when he lives but not so it disrupts character progression. Add in that the clans are unsure, and hostile towards each other.
The Krogan are imbalanced the other way- that's the point, and that's the problem with the Wrex narrative as it stands. Wrex is the atypical Krogan, Wreave is the typical Krogan. The Krogan aren't equally balanced among reformists and traditionalists, such that Wrex has an even and equal faction with the same level of political support. Wrex's faction is the minority that has to force traditionalists into line in order to get it's policy goals. Wreave just has to let the present dynamics continue- which is that most Krogan live in the clans like we see on Tuchanka or work as mercenaries, not as would-be urbanist reformers like Thrax or the Illium Krogan.
Lets also not forget that Wrex is willing to fight someone he is loyal to in ME1 and join the recognized galactic bad guy who brainwashes people, all based on a Genophage cure, something he obviously cares very much about. Because he changed focus in ME2 based on what he had available, doesn't make it less true. Make Wrex more angry and argue with Mordin over the future of the Krogan, but still be focused on rebuilding compared to Wreav. As far as Eve, it could fix a lot of stuff, if her name was not Eve and she was the one slowly convincing the clans. Not because she was mystical, but because the women of the tribes have united over this issue and shes their leader. Add in Wrex's leadership in ME2, and she feels he is the best option (while in Wreaves case, she wants to keep him in check) due to the females basically forcing the males to form their sacred meeting thing. Eve was interesting partly because she was a female Krogan so making her all about that might be more consolidating. Make the Dalatrass more reasonable, and sympathetic and it works just as well, if not better.
You're ignorring Wrex's actual role in ME1 by neglecting to mention how his arc on Virmire ends. If Wrex isn't talked down against viewing the genophage cure as the solution, he dies: the end, thematic fullfillment of what he was saying all along. The only way Wrex lives is if he is talked down against putting Krogan cures over the good of the galaxy, after which any and all living Wrex's go on to start a breeding-control politics. Any ME3 with Wrex is playing with a Wrex who has already had the character development to rise above the delusion that the cure is what will save the Krogan.
Eve's name is irrelevant to her dynamic with the Krogan. The idea that the females can force the males to do what they want- let alone that the females would have the solidarity and common interests/perspectives to want to do so, is why Eve's role is ridiculous. It's not a matter of convincing the clans- it's the matter that she has nothing to offer the clans besides Female Mysticism to convince them with, and there's no reason in the setting to believe that the female Krogan are any less divided and tribal than the males.
In Grissom Academy, we need more segue for Jack, and lets be fair, no one actually cares about these kids in their own right, they don't have plots, and character arcs for them isn't really important. So why not just amp it up? Most of the academy was attacked hard. Most of the kids have fought hard, and everything you mentioned can still happen, instead of heaping praise, Jack can be a someone who heard their distress nearby, and has been fighting for them. She has bonded a bit with them, but she scares them too in her own way. Without her, more kids are dead and out on their own and Sheppard fills in for being their protector.
Alternatively, ME2 should have fixed Jack by allowing her to find emotional healing and a path forward without having her be banged by M!Shepherd's magic healing c***. No matter what ME3 did, it was going to run into the issue that it wouldn't be a progression of ME2's character progression because ME2's character development for Jack was nil. She faces her past and accepts that she's either a murderer or rejects it, and... nothing different. Still no change, and her post-mission dialogue gives no indication of where she might go next, or even what she wants to do.
If Jack ended ME2 coming to terms with what happened to her, and deciding that she should take her Biotic tech to the Alliance to be studied so that no one ever tries to re-invent the wheel and restart Teltin, then her appearance at Grissom Academy would be appropriate and a natural progression of her character arc.
I disagree about Miranda and Samara. It sounds like you don't want anyone to be a hero except Sheppard even if their character arcs have been building to that moment. You may prefer the alternative, but killing all the heroes before resolution so their plots are less about them, isn't always better. Sometimes people are the good guys and not all gray.
Ironic choice of words when talking about Samara, a moral absolutist, but no matter- you misunderstand.
Samara killed one daughter and has 1 more, deciding not to kill her, but to kill herself is her arc.
And I agree- and never said otherwise. In fact, I think that her killing herself in order to resolve her Code is an utterly appropriate conclusion to her arc. I've never said otherwise.
What I dislike about Samara in the course of ME3, specifically her Citadel conversations, is that her clique of moral absolutist fanatics, who live by a Code so uncompromising that even a lawful police station would be considered a legitimate target for blowing up for obstruction of justice, suddenly decided to lower their intolerance levels just because it's the darkest of days. That, gee, guess lesser evils are alright and tolerable after all, if the circumstances are dire enough.
That's, like, completely missing the point of absolutist 'Law' morality that the Justicars were originally sold as. These are the people who not only put the Code before themselves, but the Code before everyone else: they use a tauological definition of 'innocents' that anyone who comes against it is no longer an innocent. They aren't the sort to compromise their morals or their Code- in fact, their uncompromising attitude even in the most dire of times is supposed to be why they're romanticized as heroes in the first placed, even as Serious People are a bit embarrassed at the anachronism.
Plus, their absolutism and ME2 codex lore was an amazing missed opportunity for what the Asari plotline could and should have been about- a possible Justicar coup in the name of fighting evil/indoctrination/corruption in the ranks of the Asari elite. Instead of 'the Asari government was hiding their Prothean Beacon for advantage- shame on them!', that Beacon could have been the prize for siding with either Justicars or Asari Government for the control and direction over the Asari future. (Though, if this were a plot arc of its own, points should totally go to both the Asari government and lead Justicars being indoctrinated.)
This ties into what my dislike of Samara's mission itself is: not that Samara would rather die than see her daughter die, but rather that the choice was focused on Samara in the first place. The twist and hook of the mission was that the Asari High Command's intent was a barely disguised purge of the Ardat Yakshi monastary in the first place: Shepherd is only sent after their own mop-up operation needs to mop-up, and even the 'Paragon' route has Shepherd playing wink-wink-nudge-nudge the AY problem is 'solved' and what do you know, no survivors.
The Monastary subtext is that the Asari government wanted to kill all the Ardat Yakshi as part of a cover-up, not save them. And that should have been not only the moral choice (in which the survival of Samara's daughter should have been balanced against Asari support for going along with the cover-up), but also the basis for Samara's character arc as a Justicar. Samara the Justicar wanted to come to protect her daughters and would have protected the innocents inside- the drama should have come from realizing that the Asari government did not.
Instead of 'I must die by the Code so that my daughter can live' (which, annoying, was given a total cop-out and undermining of drama by letting Samara and her daughter live), the mission would have been far better had Samara been balanced against the Asari High Command war criminals offering their support to Shepherd. Independent of the choice to save Samara's daughter or not, Samara herself should have been a Choice: resolving by the Code and herself as a mother to bring the Asari High Command to justice for even attempting to purge the AY monastary. Obviously this would be considered a Bad Thing by the pragmatic people, especially in the middle of a war, and the War Assets lost would more than offset the assets gained via recruiting Samara. Which, appropriately, would reinforce the theme of balancing justice even in the worst of times against pragmaticism and crime.
And Miranda cares so much about her sister and has unresolved things between her father. Whether you only want hard to decide plots vs character arcs is fine, but saying they are worse because it is a culmination of a character arc rather than a gray plot seems to show preference in stories than actual lack of depth.
Things were resolved between Miranda and her father: Oriana was out of her father's grip and safe. There was no reason to reopen and repeat that plot to come to the exact same conclusion.
Even if you want to re-use Oriana, the better option isn't the Father angle- it's the fact that it was Cerberus who was protecting her. Miranda's plot arc could and should have been about Miranda being a traitor, taking advantage of Shepherd's trust, and still working for Cerberus... because her sister's safety is held over her head. That not only creates a much-needed subterfuge plot that doesn't rely on indoctrination, but it also carries forward the idea of Miranda as the Cerberus Loyalist. It would be a progression, rather than a repitition, of her previous arc by finally indicating that while in ME2 she valued both Cerberus and her sister, by the end of ME3 she'd progress to clearly placing her sister first (which, of course, would allow Shepherd to flip Miranda as soon as the sister was safe).
Really, Miranda could have replaced both Kai Leng and her Father to serve as the personal Shepherd antagonist for ME3 if only she weren't killable in ME2. She could have started ME3 as a sort of alternative Virmire Survivor, joining at the end of the Mars mission (when the VS is knocked out), betraying us during the Citadel Coup (when the VS joins back), and replacing Kai Leng on Virmire and her Father on Horizon before finally being confronted on Atlas Station.
I can say absolutely as someone who is not fond of Kasumi, that scene only changes if you have her or not, if you care about Kasumi. Having decisions about character you like isn't necessarily wrong. Yeah it makes you biased, but I mean, if you bought a DLC just to have a couple characters, than you deserve to be biased on a choice about them. Caring about an issue, can make it fun and fullfilled. And absolute gray choices that you never have a leaning are great, but killing a character off because people might like her too much later on to let her die is pretty shaky. Sometimes the fun is, hell yeah I saved Kasumi and lost a war asset doing it. Or hell yeah I saved Kasumi, and because I did everything I get extra dialogue with her and her help.
I'm honestly not sure what your point is here, because it's not addressing what I raised at all. There's no issue with Kasumi as a character- I just prefer the mission resolution because there's an actual (interesting) moral choice if Kasumi isn't there. If she is, the scene has no choice and gets played for (fake) drama.
If Kasumi's presence didn't rob the mission of it's moral choice, I'd put it on the same level with Grunt's.
A plot of a video game with companions needs to focus itself on telling the story and using the companions to humanize it. I agree that ME3 dropped the ball a bit on this. But don't throw the baby out with the bath water. What it needed were the characters to be more linked to their plots in a more natural way. Not for all the companions to die because a regulated ending takes away all say of the character, and completely negates having companions at all.
I agree. Which is why ME2 deserves more of the blame. Not only did ME2 make most of it's characters uninvolved with major carry-over plots through a lack of forward planning (only Tali, Legion, and Mordin are involved in the core ME3 plots), but because of the suicide mission it ensured that they couldn't be critical to the experience of the ME3 plots at all.
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