My theory is that storytelling in the 21st century has an opportunity to be transformative in a way that enables those formerly known as the audience to become collaborators. Thanks to the democratization of tools to create and distribute media, the …
Is just one choice all it takes to turn a novel into a video game? Before you say yes, consider when a game is created out of many choices and when we are left with none.
Richard Eisenbeis looks at Katawa Shoujo in an April 24 Kotaku article. Eisenbeis holds up the dating sim/visual novel as proof that one choice is all it takes to turn a novel into a game. It is a shallow analysis and the implication that one can stick a choice in a novel and have a game is just false.
If we step away from the screen with only Eisenbeis’s assertion, we lose out on understanding what developers have to do to take a story and turn it interactive.
Creating a good game means understanding the times when a million choices create an interactive work and the instances where no choices are required.
No matter how many 100s Mass Effect 2 received from the gaming press, it was a deeply flawed game. This post examines the abominable writing.
To prepare for the release of the demo for Mass Effect 3, I’m revisiting Mass Effect 2 in a four part series. Let’s examine 20 instances of the terrible writing in Mass Effect 2. The series will then conclude with the five worst elements of the game.
20: Don’t invent a lame excuse to take away all my stuff.
I think the only reason they killed you in the beginning was so they’d have an excuse not to transfer over your items. Being killed off and coming back to life doesn’t seem to have had any real impact past the first 30 minutes of the story. You don’t struggle with the existential crisis that should come with having been dead for two years and come back. You don’t spend more than perhaps a line or two on thoughts about the afterlife.
You were dead, then you “got better.” This should be a major plot point, in Shepard’s character arc in ME2. At the very least, there should have been more questions about the process.
Instead Shepard walks through the game like an unthinking automaton, stumbling around the edge of this enormous plot hole. They missed an amazing storytelling opportunity.
Shepard’s death in ME2 also negates anything you might have accomplished with multiple play-throughs on the same character in the first game.
As a result, Shepard’s death and unexplained recovery seem only to be an excuse to take away your stuff.
I liked my stuff.
I’m thinking for Fridays I need to do something different. Perhaps put out a few quick ideas, pulling on previous posts. I’m going to give it a try today and you should tell me what you think down in the comments. The idea is this synthesis post. Since I’m trying to build new ideas that […]
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