[quote]Cpl_Facehugger wrote...
ME1 was an epic mainstream space opera, but I don't think ME2 was meant to be. From what I can tell, it was meant to be smaller, more compact, and much more character driven. [/quote]
It's the second act of an epic space opera trilogy! Why in the world would you make it smaller when you've already established what its going to be? This is like ignoring the Jedi and the Empire in Empire Strikes Back and just showing us the daily lives of moisture farmers on Tatooine.
Second acts need to build action and have a reversal of some sort, at least in classical 3-act structure. Had Bioware devoted 20 more hours to main plot quests involving the characters they fleshed out, yes, I could see the reason for doing so, but right now, this is a weak follow up to a great first act.
[quote]Yes, you
can have both if you're skilled, but the point was that a story can stand on its characters alone, while the same is not necessarily true for a story's plot. For instance, during my storywriting workshop, I read a peer's story where the plot was basically "I drove around, then I got pulled over, but the cop was attractive and single so it was all good," yet this story was one of the better ones that I read for that class because the characters were all very well written.
In the same class, I also read a story with an interesting plot; it was about a torrid affair between a student and teacher, and it had lots of conflict culminating with the teacher's husband finding out and attacking the student. And yet this story, despite the conflict-laden plot wasn't very good because the characters were empty and possessed little depth.[/quote]
You're making my point for me, though. If ME1 was a small, character based ensemble piece, I'd agree that ME2 was a good follow up, despite the numerous plot holes and story flaws. But ME1 set the stage for a grand Space opera in the vein of Star Wars, and then the writers turn around and write the Dirty Dozen in Outter Space while almost completely ignoring the plot points set up in ME1.
Good characters are important, I do not dispute that. But Good characters thrust into a weak plot make for a mediocre story, just like bad characters thrust into a great plot make for a mediocre story. You can't sacrifice one for the sake of the other if you're doing an Epic tale like Mass Effect is set up to be. A small character piece is more suited to side-stories than the main plot.
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[quote][/quote][quote]The difference here is that what you're referring to from ME1 drove the story forward and gave us revelations into the reaper's plans while creating higher stakes for our characters.[/quote]
What? Rescuing Liara from the Geth on Therum told us nothing about the reaper's plans and it didn't give us much higher stakes for the characters either, since none of them were connected to Liara at all.[/quote]
And yet, Liara was an important plot point that we needed to drive the story forward because her MOM was part of Saren's plan!
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[quote]In ME2, there was a serious lack of urgency and rising action.[/quote]
Human colonies getting scooped up and later your crew getting grabbed didn't give you a sense of urgency? [/quote]
Human colonies, no. Because there was no emotional investment there. It was happening and no one cared to do anything about it save Cerebus. But even then, we just saw the collectors cart humans away. it was nefarious, sure, but without clues as to the ultimate goal, and the random nature of the attacks, there was no propulsion to move the story forward.
The crew getting kidnapped did give a sense of urgency, however that's gone as soon as they're rescued and doesn't carry through to the final climax.
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[quote]and there was no sense of the impending Reaper invasion.[/quote]
Obviously. You'd just delayed it at the end of ME1.[/quote]
Granted. But they couldn't have foreshadowed it to make the events in ME2 seem more important? We literally hear nothing about the reaper threat until the very end when we see the reveal of them headed for us.
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[quote]But the focus of those quests are on the supporting character he's with, not with Shepherd himself.[/quote]
You can still have a subplot be "focused" on a character yet contribute to the development of the protagonist though. [/quote]
True. But this did not happen here. Shepherd was just there to listen to their feelings and help them kill stuff ultimately. his goal was recruitment and loyalty, but beyond that, I didn't see much of a character arc for him. If you did, please, let me in on it.
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[quote]We don't see him grow, even though he makes a lot of choices in this game.[/quote]
How much can the character really grow (except in terms of character relationships)? He started out as an elite soldier and then became a spectre. There's not many places to go except down, unless we're defining Shepherd in context of the relationships he forms in ME2 and the way he acts. That's part of the problem of writing a video game where the player defines the character to a large extent. I mean, if we started with a renegade Shep from ME1 who slowly gets more paragon-like after he sees what the underbelly of the galaxy has to offer (or conversely, a paragon shep who slowly gets corrupted by the vices of the Terminus systems), that would be character development and growth to be sure, yet that sort of development is dependent upon the player choosing to play Shep to that end.
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You're right, but there's still a character arc he can play to. In ME1, we saw Shepherd grow into a true Spectre and a hero of the galaxy, despite his renegade or paragon choices. You could do the same in this one. The guy, after all, DIED at the beginning of the story. If he was brought back to life, he could be faced with a whole new set of character dilemas that could grow him as a character. His connection to Prothean technology, his visions of the Reaper apocalypse, his "destiny" are all things that could have been developed. Even his place as a modern day hero, or his journey to gain back his Spectre rank could have been brought in, but instead he's just playing second fiddle to his team most of the time.
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[quote]A reversal is necessary to create rising action and a final crisis for the hero to confront. It's storytelling 101.[/quote]
I do not believe this is the case. You can easily have a crisis for the character to confront without a reversal; the reapers coming in for the third act, for instance.
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You can have numerous crisis for characters to confront, but in a three act structure, there is always a reversal in the second act. Period. It makes for good storytelling. The reversal doesn't HAVE to be a big game changer, but it has to be significant to the main character in some way, and we did not see that in ME2. you can argue there was one, but there plainly wasn't, because the character of Shepherd hasn't changed and the galaxy is fundamentally the same as it was when the story of ME2 started.
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[quote]The Council shunning Shepherd is not a reversal because it doesn't change the character's circumstances in a way where his job is harder, plus it comes too early in the story.[/quote]
The council shunning Shep means they
aren't preparing for the war with the reapers. Intuitively, that is making Shep's job much harder, if we take the main job/plot to be "defeat the reapers."
It doesn't do anything against the collectors, granted, but the reapers were the ones pulling the collectors' strings. [/quote]
That's what I'd consider a complication/obstacle, not a reversal. A reversal is where the main character is put on a different path and the story must change direction. Had the Reapers actually arrived at the climax of ME2, THAT would be a reversal. As it is now, their impending arrival is just a cliffhanger. Right now, there was no reversal to the over-arching story of Mass Effect 2.
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[quote]However, the destruction of the Citadel or the Destruction of Earth is a major reversal because the galaxy is weakened against a major threat in some way.[/quote]
The Citadel ignoring the threat (until it's too late?) is also a large reversal because the galaxy is weakened against the reaper threat. Two years of potential shipbuilding and preparation have been wasted just as ME2 opens.
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Again, not a reversal. its an obstacle to the main character. A reversal would be something like the destruction of the Citadel and collapse of central government by the Reapers.
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[quote]i think much of the debate on these boards go towards proving that the story was not as clear as it needed to be.[/quote]
I don't agree, some of the best stories have ambiguious elements. Something would be lost if, for instance, we had Harbinger droning on about his plan like some kind of Bond villain. In fact, it was rather lame in ME1 when Sovereign did exactly that.[/quote]
I agree it's okay to leave some questions unanswered, but if you have a plan the main character is fighting against, you need the audience to know what it is, or else the audience is lost. It wouldn't have taken a lot of exposition to clearly explain to the characters and the audience what the plan was. As it is right now, the Collectors plan wasn't clearly enough defined to satisfy the bulk of the audience of this game, in my opinion.
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[quote]Yes, it does. But it's not a very satisfying or epic ending in my book. It might work for some, but it could have been much stronger had the good guys suffered a reversal of some sort.[/quote]
I don't think it's supposed to be an epic ending in the sense of ME1's ending. The scale's smaller[/quote]
Which is the problem. The scale shouldn't be smaller. it should keep building in scope, like Lord Of the Rings. The suicide mission in the game definitely wasn't small, but the plot was so poorly written, its impact was diminished.
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[quote]Good stories don't change. Even as far back as Shakespear we knew that good drama follows certain structure. Writing is the same as plotting, because your plot dictates your writing. Yes, no one is arguing the character writing was good, but the over-all plot was weak and neglected and poorly plotted. Great characters are no substitute for great plots. You need both to succeed at crafting a memorable story.[/quote]
I do not agree. Dramatic structure and even the purpose of drama has changed through the ages, compared to its roots in ancient Greece and Rome; many good dramatic pieces have diverged from the classical structure throughout the years; what makes a "good story" is dependent upon lots of things, including cultural background and audience. So yeah, good stories can change, both over time and and through purposeful divergence from the norm. Take Everyman, the medieval morality play. That was considered "good" in its time. And yet now, most people consider it rather... Less good. Or take Shakespeare; his works aren't considered good because of their plotting so much as the rediculously genuine characters and the resonance that has with a human audience.
And I definitely disagree with the last two lines. All my experiences writing and reading have told me that most audiences will forgive a flawed plot a lot more than they will forgive a one dimensional character.
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You're not wrong, but changing the storytelling after you've already established it in a strong first act makes no sense. Had this not been a Mass Effect game, I'd agree with you. But you can't take a radically different narrative for the second act of a three act story! you need to stay consistent and build on what's come before, not change everything like the writers with this game did.
Audiences will forgive a flawed plot, as it seems lots of people are willing to do with ME2. However, the strong plotting in ME1 leads me to ask "why?" I would think Bioware would be able to match, if not surpass, the story they had in the first game, but they didn't, and to make it worse, they had a game rife with plot holes and confusing story elements, while lacking the exciting rising action the first act had in droves.
I'm not saying you're wrong for liking it. I'm just saying for a writing perspective, this game had major problems.
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Certainly. My only issue is that a "writing perspective" is just as subjective as anything else, which is why I object to any attempts to paint it as somehow objective.
Of course, you might not be doing that. It's just what appears to be happening from where I'm sitting. If you aren't, I apologize for the misunderstanding.
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I can honestly tell you that my critique, from the point of view of a story that established itself as an epic, three-act, sci-fi tale is dead on. From a purely structural perspective. We can argue character vs. plot all day, but when you analyze ME2's story from a structural perspective, it is horribly flawed.
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You asked what motivation Shep had and gave the example of how good it would be for Shep's former crew to be taken by the collectors from a dramatic perspective. To which I reply he's had his current crew taken, which should provide just as much motivation, assuming he started to empathize with them over the course of his adventure.
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Yes, when his crew was kidnapped, that was a good rising adventure. But for someone who seems to hate contrived plot devices so much, I'm surprised you didn't notice that right before that, Shepherd and his entire team "conveniently" had a mysterious shuttle mission which left the ship ripe for the taking, simple for no other reason than the plot demanded it because the writers were like "Crap, now we need to kidnap the crew but can't let any of Shepherd's teammates stop us!'
Had the characterization and loyalty missions somehow tied into the Collector threat, I wouldn't have as many problems with this narrative as I do. But none of the stories tied into anything other than the characters they were based around, and that made for a weak, over-all act 2 in the Mass Effect saga.
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