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Fasicsmtalk on the internet is always really annoying, because on one hand its the internet where the national sport is acting like an obtuse dunce lawyering the application of terms to avoid engagement with core premises. On the other hand, fascism really is poorly understood and misapplied when a more in-depth discussion and application of the term would allow for some better discussion, so the exercise becomes being juuuuuuuuuust pedantic enough up until the point where discussion becomes insufferable. ME isn't "not-fascist" because of anything its digetic political and social entities do or do not do, its not-fascist because it's not an anticapitalist subsumption of individuals into a militarized state motivated against a clearly delineated outgroup. The narrative is fiercely worshipful of the individual over the effort of the generalized group, the only possible fascist reading would be a really abstract three-steps-back one where the player is subsumed into worship of hero figures as they, IRL, willingly and pleasurably allow themselves to be molded into a series of predetermined gameplay, genre, and character tropes to be motivated against an unreasonable antagonist, by extension castigating most to all of AAA gaming for using those same processes to the point of creating an ideology of what an AAA game should be/is. And I totally would! But will not because: a) its really boring because ME3 doesn't subvert those ideas so much as embody them real, real hard. b) in embodying them it does so in a fundamentally capitalist way for capitalist motivations which *IS* pretty emblematic of Capital's propensity to deterritorialize and commodify with some pretty interesting linkages to The Reapers, but does leave the matter under discussion fundamentally not-fascist. c) it's not even noon and effortposting about ideology in pop media is thirsty work.
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Sep 27, 2014 16:40
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Willie Tomg posted:ME isn't "not-fascist" because of anything its digetic Is digetic even a word?
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Sep 27, 2014 17:23
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monster on a stick posted:Is digetic even a word? As long as it pertains to elements which compose a diegesis, yes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diegesis (unless you're talking about how i misspelled "diegetic" which is true, but really not helping the whole "internet discussions are exercises in empty pedantry" thing  )
Willie Tomg fucked around with this message at 17:47 on Sep 27, 2014 |
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Sep 27, 2014 17:41
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Xander77 posted:Are you under the impression that "fascist" and "revolutionary" are mutually exclusive? The ultimate goal of Mass Effect 3's revolution is not just deposing the Council but the annihilation of the galactic-state as a (fictional) construct, which may explain why we spend so much time wrapping up old plot threads and character arcs and leave nothing left over.
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Sep 27, 2014 17:46
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Willie Tomg posted:As long as it pertains to elements which compose a diegesis, then yes. Then you mean diegetic, in which case: 1. How are the political and social structures in ME1 "diegetic"; and 2. If you are going to pull words out of a hat to make your argument seem more academic, at least spell them right.
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Sep 27, 2014 17:46
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monster on a stick posted:Is digetic even a word? http://lmgtfy.com/?q=diegetic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diegesis#In_film E: Truth be told, I have no idea where he's going with this, but all of the knowledge of humanity is at your fingertips, you could make an attempt to understand his ramblings The Door Frame fucked around with this message at 17:49 on Sep 27, 2014 |
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Sep 27, 2014 17:46
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monster on a stick posted:Then you mean diegetic, in which case: I'm sorry but for a second it sounded like you asked, like, for serious, why elements as presented in the game are elements that are present in the game, and then got lovely over me dropping an E. Is this a fair assessment of your post? Is there a punchline coming up I should be aware of?
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Sep 27, 2014 17:49
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The Council, the Reapers, the Alliance, and Cerberus are all diegetic structures in mass effect, because they exist in the video game mass effect, yes. I'm sorry if dropping a vowel clouded this issue, somewhat.
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Sep 27, 2014 17:52
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Willie Tomg posted:a) its really boring because ME3 doesn't subvert those ideas so much as embody them real, real hard. Capitalism and fascism are not exclusive. Capitalism is a doctrine around organizing an economy through the use of capital, which usually just means a state backed currency. A state is perfectly capable of using capitalism to organize its economy regardless of the structure of its agreements with the economic entities operating under its protection/control. At some point in my life I noticed that the descriptions of state and social structures that I'd been taught when I was young were getting displaced by a new, weirdly reductive set of definitions that made everything an alternative to something else, when, really, no society on earth has ever pursued anything so singlemindedly that you could characterize the whole society that way. You may be in a democracy, but it's likely your family or job is an autocracy. It's likely that, to some degree, fascist organizations come to be in response to disasters, social ills, or as a political tool to mobilize support. The end of It's a Wonderful Life is partly fascist, in that the people subsume themselves in the Building and Loan as a symbol of their community against an evil Potter Corp. It's also communist. Your church group or circle of friends are likely fairly communist. Hey I brought in donuts for everybody in the office, because I'm a filthy commie. ME3 is fascist to the degree that it covers fascism as a topic and behavior, and is about subsuming yourself in the narratives of another person and coming to believe that your will is the anima for that narrative. When in reality, it's Bioware's writing channeling dozens of other stories, each drawing on tropes that form a reader's digest of the weird conceits of our society. When you see a race of gentle blue women, who, despite being wise, ancient, and incredibly advanced technologically, aren't the most powerful society in the galaxy because, you know, chicks man, (amirite?), that's a fascist expression of the ideal of womanhood being a horn-dog/nurturer/breeder for the greater good of the society. Because you need to pump out more units, and keep your worker bees happy and cared for. I guess the internet isn't a great place for talking about fascism, but that's probably because people love to have opinions about things they don't understand and don't care to learn about. TheCosmicMuffet fucked around with this message at 17:54 on Sep 27, 2014 |
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Sep 27, 2014 17:52
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Can we agree that that the game is militaristic to the point of fetishizing military service? Can we also agree that a counterpoint to that worship of big manly men of action is a disdain for short-sighted politicians and their petty concerns about stuff like "what people want/need"? Note that this is something drawn from the current climate and other shooty games (the next Call of Duty and all that) rather than the classic sci-fi that Mass Effect ostensibly draws inspiration from - that media usually went in the opposite direction of casting military men as blundering oafs and the intelligentsia as the protagonists that must overcome entrenched "charge!" stupidity. ... And skipping everything in between... one of the major foundational... stones, I guess? For fascist ideology is the eliding of differences within society as it unites under the single leader. If democracy is about acknowledging that different classes, populations and social strata have different, often conflicting, desires that should be haggled over in the democratic process, fascism is about denying that entirely. The "people" as a whole are a single organic being with a single organic will that will be directed by the leader - anyone claiming a different desire from what whole, much less imply that the leader is actually only working for the benefit of a small portions of the countries population is declared an enemy of the people. On a completely unrelated note, what did this thread unilaterally declare to be the best ending?
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Sep 27, 2014 17:52
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Willie Tomg posted:I'm sorry but for a second it sounded like you asked, like, for serious, why elements as presented in the game are elements that are present in the game, and then got lovely over me dropping an E. Is this a fair assessment of your post? Is there a punchline coming up I should be aware of? Per the wikipedia definition of diegesis, it also consists of the characters in the story telling/narrating versus showing/enacting; I always thought ME did more of the latter except when it came to something like a codex entry or basic universe background stuff like "oh yeah there was a genophage a while back."
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Sep 27, 2014 17:53
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Willie Tomg posted:The Council, the Reapers, the Alliance, and Cerberus are all diegetic structures in mass effect, because they exist in the video game mass effect, yes. I'm sorry if dropping a vowel clouded this issue, somewhat. Your wording is obtuse, and quite frankly wrong. The little asides where the Illusive Man pops in and you can see his work station and his conversations with outside parties are diegesis, the shots of Saren and the Matriarch were diegesis, the lack of overt narration is diegesis. The characters of the game are a living part of the world, but that doesn't mean anything. Like at all. It's a narrative style and not a statement on the story or the characters that inhabit the world.... In fact, most of the deeper parts of the world are relayed in codex entries, so that is the opposite of diegetic narration. What was your point? Xander77 posted:Can we agree that that the game is militaristic to the point of fetishizing military service? Can we also agree that a counterpoint to that worship of big manly men of action is a disdain for short-sighted politicians and their petty concerns about stuff like "what people want/need"? I'd agree with the first one, in ME1, the sole survivor backstory has everyone walk on eggshells/get down on their knees and blow Shepard any time they meet him because he's just THAT famous in the galaxy for a relatively obscure thing that should've never got farther than alliance military personnel directly involved in the operation. The Door Frame fucked around with this message at 18:09 on Sep 27, 2014 |
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Sep 27, 2014 18:03
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The Door Frame posted:I just love how this part is supposed to be a kind of scary, survival horror thing, but for everyone I talked to, they played the multiplayer first since it was essential to the war effort. We all saw the banshees, knew what the screams were and didn't react with fear or anticipation, more boredom Anyway, I hadn't played the multiplayer, but it was a real letdown anyway when it turned out the dark section was just for atmosphere and they waited for a nice well-lit arena before revealing what was doing all the screaming.
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Sep 27, 2014 18:13
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TheCosmicMuffet posted:When you see a race of gentle blue women, who, despite being wise, ancient, and incredibly advanced technologically, aren't the most powerful society in the galaxy Aren't they? quote:Can we agree that that the game is militaristic to the point of fetishizing military service? Agreed, though I think the depiction of the quarian admirals does a lot to dispel this. quote:Your wording is obtuse, and quite frankly wrong. The little asides where the Illusive Man pops in and you can see his work station and his conversations with outside parties are diegesis, the shots of Saren and the Matriarch were diegesis, the lack of overt narration is diegesis. The antagonists of the game are a living part of the world, but that doesn't mean anything. Like at all. It's a narrative style and not a statement on the story or the characters that inhabit the world.... I think the suggestion here is that it doesn't matter whether individual characters or organisations in Mass Effect are fascist, nor whether they're portrayed sympathetically or not - the 'diegetic' argument. Instead what matters is whether those elements are put together in a way to create a narrative that is fascist. One of the common suggested alternative storylines for ME3 is that it should just be about Shepard and company tooling around the galaxy, rallying everyone behind one banner and blasting the hell out of the Reapers with their united galactic fleet. I'd say that such a storyline would be 'fascist' - at least, more so than what we have here, where Shepard heals and transforms the galaxy spiritually in order to overcome the inevitable crisis that the Reapers represent. That, I'd hazard, is not fascist at all, though Willie Tomg may or may not agree. quote:Anyway, I hadn't played the multiplayer, but it was a real letdown anyway when it turned out the dark section was just for atmosphere and they waited for a nice well-lit arena before revealing what was doing all the screaming. It is a shame. I think the mechanic comes up on Tuchanka in the ancient krogan ruins, but it's ultimately just cosmetic.
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Sep 27, 2014 18:16
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monster on a stick posted:Per the wikipedia definition of diegesis, it also consists of the characters in the story telling/narrating versus showing/enacting; I always thought ME did more of the latter except when it came to something like a codex entry or basic universe background stuff like "oh yeah there was a genophage a while back." Diegesis is everything within the inhabited world of the characters. Consider the distinction between diegetic and nondiegetic sound. The elevator music in ME1 is diegetic, Vigil's Theme is nondiegetic. ME has diegetic internal politics because the entities that create and further those politics are part of the diegesis i.e. the thing you interact with, the game. The Door Frame posted:In fact, most of the deeper parts of the world are relayed in codex entries, so that is the opposite of diegetic narration. That's interesting juxtaposed with this: monster on a stick posted:it also consists of the characters in the story telling/narrating versus showing/enacting; I always thought ME did more of the latter because it means cumulatively I'm getting the gears for writing off the codex entries AND the visual elements of the diegesis (hint: in the context of a videogame where you "find" codex entries in the course of gameplay, the codices are themselves diegetic) by two people who've read the wikipedia entry for "diegesis" and have come to the conclusion that they're talking to a goddamned Aristotelian playwright. I'm from a professional film background IRL, by the way. The Door Frame posted:What was your point? Originally that Mass Effect was a poor fit for being called "fascist" in the same way one could call the works of Robert Heinlen "fascist" but as this tangent goes on, increasingly that quote:its the internet where the national sport is acting like an obtuse dunce lawyering the application of terms to avoid engagement with core premises.
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Sep 27, 2014 18:19
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Lt. Danger posted:One of the common suggested alternative storylines for ME3 is that it should just be about Shepard and company tooling around the galaxy, rallying everyone behind one banner and blasting the hell out of the Reapers with their united galactic fleet. I'd say that such a storyline would be 'fascist' - at least, more so than what we have here, where Shepard heals and transforms the galaxy spiritually in order to overcome the inevitable crisis that the Reapers represent. That, I'd hazard, is not fascist at all, though Willie Tomg may or may not agree. Enforced unity for the greater good is hella fascist though. Lt. Danger posted:Agreed, though I think the depiction of the quarian admirals does a lot to dispel this. I' not entirely fond of the Geth arc, particularly the conclusion, but what was done with the admiral characters between ME2 and 3 was more or less exactly what should have been done with Udina though. Willie Tomg posted:Originally that Mass Effect was a poor fit for being called "fascist" in the same way one could call the works of Robert Heinlen "fascist" but as this tangent goes on, increasingly that Xander77 fucked around with this message at 18:28 on Sep 27, 2014 |
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Sep 27, 2014 18:24
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The Door Frame posted:I just love how this part is supposed to be a kind of scary, survival horror thing, but for everyone I talked to, they played the multiplayer first since it was essential to the war effort. We all saw the banshees, knew what the screams were and didn't react with fear or anticipation, more boredom Playing multiplayer before finishing singleplayer always weirds me out. Singleplayer usually introduces you to the multiplayer concepts, especially if the singleplayer is just an excuse for you to get prepared for the multiplayer (in this case, it is).
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Sep 27, 2014 18:32
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Soricidus posted:I was disappointed that they didn't do more with darkness in this game. They introduce the whole mechanic, and then there's that short bit on Mars, and this section, and ... are there even any others? I feel like there are but gently caress if I can remember them. The underground ruins on Tuchanka as previously mentioned. I'm speculating that playtesters may have thought the darkness was a cool concept in small batches. I've watched Geop's Dark Souls LP, which has large areas of darkness - at first it was "whoa this is cool" and it didn't take all that long to get old, even as an observer. Xander77 posted:Can we agree that that the game is militaristic to the point of fetishizing military service? Can we also agree that a counterpoint to that worship of big manly men of action is a disdain for short-sighted politicians and their petty concerns about stuff like "what people want/need"? The funny part is that mostly Shepard fights to get people to stop fighting (each other.)
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Sep 27, 2014 18:37
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Lt. Danger posted:I think the suggestion here is that it doesn't matter whether individual characters or organisations in Mass Effect are fascist, nor whether they're portrayed sympathetically or not - the 'diegetic' argument. Instead what matters is whether those elements are put together in a way to create a narrative that is fascist. Ok, this makes more sense now, I couldn't quite parse his argument. I always heard diegesis as a movie thing about the story being told and the world being built by character interactions, like Tarantino or Spielberg do in their films as opposed to someone like Scorsese who has their characters say it directly to the audience, so saying that the politicians were diegetic just sounded really stupid and obvious to me. I don't know how fascist this game is, but the united under Shepard one sounds much less... liberal? than the current one
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Sep 27, 2014 18:39
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Lt. Danger posted:One of the common suggested alternative storylines for ME3 is that it should just be about Shepard and company tooling around the galaxy, rallying everyone behind one banner and blasting the hell out of the Reapers with their united galactic fleet. I'd say that such a storyline would be 'fascist' - at least, more so than what we have here, where Shepard heals and transforms the galaxy spiritually in order to overcome the inevitable crisis that the Reapers represent. That, I'd hazard, is not fascist at all, though Willie Tomg may or may not agree. The thing is those are end goals, and not a praxis through which ideology is manifest. Mussolini was healing the fractured Italian peoples and transforming them into a revanchist Roman Empire. 
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Sep 27, 2014 18:59
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The Door Frame posted:Ok, this makes more sense now, I couldn't quite parse his argument. I always heard diegesis as a movie thing about the story being told and the world being built by character interactions, like Tarantino or Spielberg do in their films as opposed to someone like Scorsese who has their characters say it directly to the audience, so saying that the politicians were diegetic just sounded really stupid and obvious to me. I don't know how fascist this game is, but the united under Shepard one sounds much less... liberal? than the current one Well, a lot of it is in how it's presented. Fascism is (intended to seem) a populist movement and takes ideas from all over the place. As others have said, cooperation isn't particularly fascist, but I'd suggest cooperation in the name of defeating a greater enemy is closer, and cooperation to defeat an enemy where the only dissenters are indoctrinated inhuman slaves is closer still.
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Sep 27, 2014 19:01
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Hitlers Gay Secret posted:Playing multiplayer before finishing singleplayer always weirds me out. Singleplayer usually introduces you to the multiplayer concepts, especially if the singleplayer is just an excuse for you to get prepared for the multiplayer (in this case, it is). Yeah, I normally never do, even in lovely FPS games or whatever, but this game requires you to have galactic readiness for the ending, so multiplayer needs to be played before you beat the story monster on a stick posted:The underground ruins on Tuchanka as previously mentioned. I'm speculating that playtesters may have thought the darkness was a cool concept in small batches. I've watched Geop's Dark Souls LP, which has large areas of darkness - at first it was "whoa this is cool" and it didn't take all that long to get old, even as an observer. I don't care if it would be just some husks in the dark as a jump scare, as long it was a part of the game that we got to use outside of that one evacuated room on mars And be careful when bringing up darkness in  after DS2, there are some salty nerds out thereSo we were both thinking about movies, I was just thinking strictly narrative and you were looking at a bigger picture. I never thought about the codex locations and thought they were heavy-handed exposition dumps for people who like to read Star-Trek ship diagrams (especially the handwave in ME2 about the thermal clips), but I guess the mechanic behind getting the entries in the first place makes it less bad I wouldn't say the books were intentionally fascist, Heinlein was a navy man who rode out the start of the depression on a battleship and got out of WWII because of TB, so he had a very high opinion of military service and none of the disillusionment of Vonnegut or other veteran authors, but some of the earlier books really come across as fascist. Even though most of his famous books are crazy hippy stuff, most people go straight to Starship Troopers
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Sep 27, 2014 19:03
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Willie Tomg posted:The thing is those are end goals, and not a praxis through which ideology is manifest. Mussolini was healing the fractured Italian peoples and transforming them into a revanchist Roman Empire. Hmm, fair point. But our end goal is reconciliation with the Other/the Reapers/the parent-and-or-child, not destruction. Isn't that an important distinction?
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Sep 27, 2014 19:04
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The Door Frame posted:Yeah, I normally never do, even in lovely FPS games or whatever, but this game requires you to have galactic readiness for the ending, so multiplayer needs to be played before you beat the story I didn't touch multiplayer until I finished the game and I had 100% galactic readiness. I know they tried to fear you into doing that but it was a load of bullshit.
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Sep 27, 2014 19:11
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Hitlers Gay Secret posted:I didn't touch multiplayer until I finished the game and I had 100% galactic readiness. I know they tried to fear you into doing that but it was a load of bullshit. The Extended Cut DLC lowered all the EMS requirements and the other DLCs added a decent amount of war assets. So yeah, doing multiplayer isn't required unless you're doing a failShep run of sorts and still want to get the "best" ending. Raygereio fucked around with this message at 20:47 on Sep 27, 2014 |
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Sep 27, 2014 20:44
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Raygereio posted:Without any DLC, the max War Asset score you can get with an optimal run through all three games is around 7500. If you didn't do any multiplayer, your EMS will be 50% of that, so 3750. That's enough to get you access to all endings, except for one tiny thing: The bit where Shep is shown alive after the Destroy ending requires 4000/5000 EMS. 3750 is enough if you don't care about an extra ending that you wont see because you chose the one true blue ending. 
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Sep 27, 2014 21:24
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Hitlers Gay Secret posted:3750 is enough if you don't care about an extra ending that you wont see because you chose the only correct green ending. Fixed that for you.
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Sep 28, 2014 06:00
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Lt. Danger posted:Hmm, fair point. A problem I already see coming with this line of thinking is how such a reconciliation can take place, what form it will take. What kind of force would you need to accomplish this? And just how willing will the parties involved be towards reconciling, will you have to force one or both of them into accepting it? Can that really be called... "right?" To use an example of this playthrough you have, Wiks may have done some reconciling with the krogan, but under Wreav's leadership there will be severe opposition by the salarians in the long run. Can they really reconcile under these conditions? Reconciliation might have to be forced on them by stronger powers, to ensure galactic peace, baring some magical intervention event. I know now probably isn't the best time to go into this in detail, but it's something to think about when that time comes. Now the big question is if I can resist all the "UNDERSTANDING" jokes and criticisms I've stored up as a Gundam fan...
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Sep 28, 2014 07:25
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There is no realistic way to reliably reconcile all parties in reality, that's why you need the magic green bomb.
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Sep 28, 2014 07:53
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Neruz posted:There is no realistic way to reliably reconcile all parties in reality, that's why you need the magic green bomb. Wasn't part of that blowing up the mass relays? I rather liked the idea of stranding everyone in their own systems for a while to sort out their race's issues before being able to rejoin the galactic communities when the reapers fly over there from Earth and Palaven, where most of them are or maybe it would make stuff worse, but it makes me feel better about the future of the Mass Effect universe either way What happens to the collectors? I was thinking about the Omega 4 relay, and realized that they might be able to become Protheans again, but they aren't even acknowledged in the main story. You know, the main enemy that you fought in the last game that are hinted at still being active at the start of 3, still valuable to the reapers because of the extensive weapons designed to kill the species of this cycle, including plagues, seekers, super strong biotics and insane warships. But that whole race must have been destroyed in the suicide mission, even though there was a reaper that worked exclusively with that race and they can be created out of nothing except processed biomass...
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Sep 28, 2014 08:22
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The Door Frame posted:Wasn't part of that blowing up the mass relays? I rather liked the idea of stranding everyone in their own systems for a while to sort out their race's issues before being able to rejoin the galactic communities when the reapers fly over there from Earth and Palaven, where most of them are or maybe it would make stuff worse, but it makes me feel better about the future of the Mass Effect universe either way The mass relays do 'explode' to propagate the magic green reality-altering shockwave, but that doesn't matter because the Green ending involves everyone deciding to stop killing each other and be friends friends instead because there's no reason to fight anymore so the Reapers can just rebuild them.
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Sep 28, 2014 08:35
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StrifeHira posted:I honestly think there's potential in the asari as a race. Beings that live for a millennium, highly adapted/modified to utilize telekinesis with the Vulcan mind meld tossed in for good measure, they have the potential for very different, very, truly alien thought processes and perspectives, while still able to understand and engage in dialogues with the less long-lived species that populate the galaxy. That's really the thing about Mass Effect, isn't it? There is potential for a lot of things, but there are numerous punches it pulls, and other punches where it either misses or hits the wrong thing. All of the things it could have done, but did not. I'd say the theoretical Mass Effect that we come up with individually will always be better than the Mass Effect that exists in reality, though Mass Effect wouldn't be the first in that regard.
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Sep 28, 2014 12:00
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The Door Frame posted:I just love how this part is supposed to be a kind of scary, survival horror thing, but for everyone I talked to, they played the multiplayer first since it was essential to the war effort. We all saw the banshees, knew what the screams were and didn't react with fear or anticipation, more boredom Speak for yourself. My Vanguard Shep hated those things. Morroque posted:That's really the thing about Mass Effect, isn't it? There is potential for a lot of things, but there are numerous punches it pulls, and other punches where it either misses or hits the wrong thing. All of the things it could have done, but did not. Sure. And our individual Mass Effect is going to be something other people don't like. I don't disagree with most of the complaints on this thread so much as appreciate the good things it does and grade it on a scale with other video games. And on that very, very forgiving scale it does very well.
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Sep 28, 2014 21:46
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Lt. Danger posted:Well, a lot of it is in how it's presented. Fascism is (intended to seem) a populist movement and takes ideas from all over the place. As others have said, cooperation isn't particularly fascist, but I'd suggest cooperation in the name of defeating a greater enemy is closer, and cooperation to defeat an enemy where the only dissenters are indoctrinated inhuman slaves is closer still. Xander77 fucked around with this message at 22:20 on Sep 28, 2014 |
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Sep 28, 2014 22:07
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Xander77 posted:Thank heavens we avoided that in favor of something that is both far less coherent and actually to forced integration into a single and eradication of differences. That really is far less coherent.
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Sep 28, 2014 22:09
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I rolled my eyes pretty heavily the first time "women in Mass Effect" was brought up in the thread, and I'm going to do so again, but rollier and heavilier. There was a discussion earlier in the thread about the limitations of sci-fi writing, and that seemed to disappear from view in regard to this update. The Asari are a couple of tropes welded together in a slightly odd way, and essentially act no differently to a group of humans with those same traits. As are pretty much every race in the history of the genre, due to the constraints of time and imagination, at least until you reach Asimov stories about blob aliens that form geometric shapes and intersect with each other. To suggest and complain then that people may come to the game and take away deep and complex meanings about Blue Space Vaginas just feels like talisweat.jpg but for people that want to try and convince their dads that video games are just the same as films (they're not) and aren't just escapist fun (they are). And if that's the metric, this certainly isn't the game to apply it to. I mean, is the history of all hitherto existing Salarian society the history of class struggles? I don't know, the guy who designed them probably stopped halfway through a coke binge, wrote down "science lizard" on a post-it and then went back to what he was doing. The game is not written in such a way that the races are particularly more than individual one-line jokes. Trying to then psychoanalyze these is just pure navel-gazing, and I say that as someone who's already written the equivalent of a small novel about this game and why it was bad and disappointed me. If I haven't alienated everyone yet, the question that sprang to mind when watching the video is that a few updates ago, you were very vocal and disapproving of Bioware pandering to a certain section of the audience, perhaps at the expense of the story itself. Yet, in this update, you seem to suggest very strongly that it's incumbent upon Bioware to be aware of LGBT issues and incorporate them into the game, up to and including giving Shepherd the option to be gay as a window. In what way is that not pandering in exactly the same fashion?
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Sep 29, 2014 01:57
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Representing all sexualities equally is not pandering to any one sexuality. And as Mass Effect does not represent all sexualities equally it's even more not-pandering.
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Sep 29, 2014 02:14
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So Samara breaks when the Old Ways restrain her too tightly*. Eve found the Old Ways a source of inspiration and purpose. So does Wreav, actually, albeit in a different manner and direction. All the krogan seem to want to relive the glory days, and just differ on which ones. Javik won't shut up about how things were in his cycle, or stop rubbing it in Liara's face, Cortez wouldn't let go of the man he lost, so on and so forth. Is it me, or is everyone modeling their presents and futures on how wonderful things were in the past? Or comparing them, almost always finding the present lacking? Like they already know the answers to all their problems, they just have to follow the Code or win the unwinnable fight or resurrect some dinosaurs for the krogan to ride. And of course, the Crucible. But that's a bit different, isn't it? The krogan know they'll be heroes for stopping the Reapers, just like they were with the Rachni. The Code has told Samara how to act and react for longer than we can imagine, and she likely knows most of the consequences of those actions and reactions already. Nobody knows what the Crucible's going to do. We have no past experience to go on, no post-Crucible glory days to remember or relive. Which is cool, since all of our past experience ultimately has the "and then the Reapers show up" part. Something new might shake that off. *Amusingly, in the Citadel DLC if Samara is alive and Shepard is single, Shepard can convince her to forget the Code and have sex with him. How's that for a transformative protagonist?
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Sep 29, 2014 03:48
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aegof posted:*Amusingly, in the Citadel DLC if Samara is alive and Shepard is single, Shepard can convince her to forget the Code and have sex with him. How's that for a transformative protagonist? To be fair given the events of the game is there really any reason to keep upholding the code? Potentially the entire universe has been fundamentally rewritten, at the very least civilized society has effectively collapsed. You're allowed a little flexibility when you come out of the other side of a galactic apocalypse in one piece. And yeah the whole point about the Crucible is that the past is broken; the Reapers have tainted and ruined everything for everyone. The universe is itself fundamentally flawed and regardless of how awesome we think the past was it was actually terrible. The Crucible throws away the past and builds a new future, at least it does if you pick right. Pick wrong and you just end the Reaper threat but do nothing about the actual underlying problem. Neruz fucked around with this message at 05:47 on Sep 29, 2014 |
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Sep 29, 2014 05:39
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FullLeatherJacket posted:To suggest and complain then that people may come to the game and take away deep and complex meanings about Blue Space Vaginas just feels like talisweat.jpg but for people that want to try and convince their dads that video games are just the same as films (they're not) and aren't just escapist fun (they are). FullLeatherJacket posted:Particularly when it's done that smug self-satisfied way where you explain to everyone how much cleverer you are than them because you're the only one that realised that Grown-Ups 2 was just Adam Sandler needing to keep himself in coke and whores for another 12 months, and not actually a satire on the slow death of the movie industry through the gradual slippage of the lowest commmon denominator.  That was a little mean-spirited - you're a good poster - but I don't think this is an either/or thing. Everything has meaning and significance regardless of what it's intended for. The ideas and concepts Bioware is using here don't go away or lose meaning because they don't deploy them very well, and this notion that we need to draw arbitrary lines around these ideas in case they 'mean too much' is more about reinforcing traditional class lines in art and culture than rigorous methodology. Basically, it's both escapist fun and pretentious art. quote:If I haven't alienated everyone yet, the question that sprang to mind when watching the video is that a few updates ago, you were very vocal and disapproving of Bioware pandering to a certain section of the audience, perhaps at the expense of the story itself. Yet, in this update, you seem to suggest very strongly that it's incumbent upon Bioware to be aware of LGBT issues and incorporate them into the game, up to and including giving Shepherd the option to be gay as a window. In what way is that not pandering in exactly the same fashion? Good question! But I'd suggest the issue here isn't so much that Bioware needs to pander to LGBT players as it is that they are conveying meanings that they don't intend and need to tighten up their writing. Again, I'm confident Bioware didn't intend Morinth and the Ardat-Yakshi to repeat the 'moral majority' conservative line on homosexuality and AIDS, but that's the meaning people take away. Even if we put aside the general moral responsibility not to be homophobic (or racist or sexist etc), there's still a problem in that Bioware aren't saying what they mean to say. Morinth-as-gay-menace distracts and obscures what I think was the intended meaning - the asari aren't as squeaky-clean as previously shown, and the galaxy has a lot of problems and moral impurity that needs to be resolved in order to complete this story. If they had intended to be homophobic, then... well, I'm not sure how I'd parse that. Probably I'd lean on how there's a difference between overly catering to a player's base desires and promulgating malicious, actively harmful attitudes.
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Sep 29, 2014 07:32
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