Incidentally, while that article does capture some of the brilliance of Mass Effect universe it misses one thing that Mass Effect II does incredibly well. Mass Effect II causes you to come to care about a small core cast of characters, who can (and do) die due to your actions -- in an inescapable and irreversible way which you feel guilty for. This doesn't sound like too much of a trick. The tragic death of a companion has long been part of videogames -- Floyd the droid in 1983's Planetfall was the first companion death in game that I can think of... it was very sad, and written to be so. However, it was inevitable. You could not feel true guilt because to win the game you had to make those moves. In other games which cause you to care about companions then their death is often either "non-avoidable" (necessary to win) or "completely avoidable" (if it happens, the "restore from saved" feature means that you can simply not accept it happened).
In Mass Effect II the player had to confront the idea that the other characters that you have got to know and like often die, die because of something that you have done, but also that the something was so far back in the timeline that you can't simply reverse it. It's a really powerful trick. You grow to like a character (often over many hours of gameplay) and then are made obviously responsible for their death.
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momijizukamori
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Date: 2012-02-20 12:20 pm (UTC)In Mass Effect II the player had to confront the idea that the other characters that you have got to know and like often die, die because of something that you have done, but also that the something was so far back in the timeline that you can't simply reverse it. It's a really powerful trick. You grow to like a character (often over many hours of gameplay) and then are made obviously responsible for their death.