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Hello again, old friend
Jan. 28th, 2010 01:04 pmMy anticipation of Mass Effect 2 has not diminished the game for me at all. I am still very much in love with its world. It's funny, though--the gameplay can actually bore me, and I've messed up and had to redo parts so I had to listen to conversations over which wasn't fun--but I'm still having a great time.
Part of it is due to my prior investment, of course. I ran into an old friend last night while playing (this is a fictional, in-game, actually-just-a-friend-of-my-character friend), and I nearly let out a whoop of joy. He/she/it came with me, too, which almost made me cry. I remain intrigued, even optimistic about coming to love my first two available squad members, but they're not my old team. I really, really loved my old team. I'd take my least favorite old team member over the new guys thus far. I'm sure that will change, but still. (It might be because they're humans. In the first game, I had a definite bias in favor of the aliens, too.)
Besides my own fangirlishness, I spent a lot of my first night playing just marveling at how huge the world of this game is. There are entire backstories between races of aliens that I'd forgotten and had to read up on again. But the fact that there are volumes of things to learn about each race is so very impressive. It makes it feel like there's a universe that exists and runs and functions and fractures whether or not my player character is doing anything to it. It's not to say all the races are unique snowflakes (the more I watch Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the more analogues I see), just that their interactions are so richly developed. The alien races, planets, space stations, criminal and lawful elements alike feel so lived in.
I think that makes all the difference--the idea that a place doesn't just start and stop existing as you come and go. I can see the interplay of interspecies politics, why some races have some advances and not others. Of all the races, too, I don't find that any are stupidly designed or inorganically sprung from their native environments. Are individual aspects of their culture heritage maddening? Oh hell yes. Does it make sense that they would think/behave that way? Absolutely.
Better still? Not every member of an alien race believes in the same things! There are prevailing norms, but there are still individuals who buck the system, who are biased by their upbringing but to whom exposure to the rest of the universe was a revelation and a catalyst for individuality. It helps that I'm sort of an unusual player character; it explains why I would attract or else keep running into the exceptions to the rule. But it's the acknowledgment that no society of millions, if not billions, would ever be homogenous that makes this game so mature. (Well, that and the sexing. I'm hoping I get to that soon!)
Part of it is due to my prior investment, of course. I ran into an old friend last night while playing (this is a fictional, in-game, actually-just-a-friend-of-my-character friend), and I nearly let out a whoop of joy. He/she/it came with me, too, which almost made me cry. I remain intrigued, even optimistic about coming to love my first two available squad members, but they're not my old team. I really, really loved my old team. I'd take my least favorite old team member over the new guys thus far. I'm sure that will change, but still. (It might be because they're humans. In the first game, I had a definite bias in favor of the aliens, too.)
Besides my own fangirlishness, I spent a lot of my first night playing just marveling at how huge the world of this game is. There are entire backstories between races of aliens that I'd forgotten and had to read up on again. But the fact that there are volumes of things to learn about each race is so very impressive. It makes it feel like there's a universe that exists and runs and functions and fractures whether or not my player character is doing anything to it. It's not to say all the races are unique snowflakes (the more I watch Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the more analogues I see), just that their interactions are so richly developed. The alien races, planets, space stations, criminal and lawful elements alike feel so lived in.
I think that makes all the difference--the idea that a place doesn't just start and stop existing as you come and go. I can see the interplay of interspecies politics, why some races have some advances and not others. Of all the races, too, I don't find that any are stupidly designed or inorganically sprung from their native environments. Are individual aspects of their culture heritage maddening? Oh hell yes. Does it make sense that they would think/behave that way? Absolutely.
Better still? Not every member of an alien race believes in the same things! There are prevailing norms, but there are still individuals who buck the system, who are biased by their upbringing but to whom exposure to the rest of the universe was a revelation and a catalyst for individuality. It helps that I'm sort of an unusual player character; it explains why I would attract or else keep running into the exceptions to the rule. But it's the acknowledgment that no society of millions, if not billions, would ever be homogenous that makes this game so mature. (Well, that and the sexing. I'm hoping I get to that soon!)
