It's a hyper-alienated end-stage capitalist world, you morons. Also
spoiler
The good ending can only be achieved if you choose to accept help from the close knit community of outcasts
Capitalists not entirely missing the point of media challenge.
It's a hyper-alienated end-stage capitalist world, you morons. Also
The good ending can only be achieved if you choose to accept help from the close knit community of outcasts
Capitalists not entirely missing the point of media challenge.
So many thoughts on this article. The list of desired romances is pretty fucking weird. Among others wished for are Placide (the Voodoo Boy who sends you to die to fulfill his purposes and refers to you as a "floor rag"), Hanako (the corporate heiress who literally forgets you exist a month or two after you help her save her family's fortune), and the Peralezes (a man running for mayor and his wife, who are being manipulated by some nefarious technology). So maybe these people don't have the most considered opinions.
But the romance thing in video games is always so fucking weird. Making them into pseudo-pansexuals who have no preferences for physical attraction or personality kind of cheapens them a bit. So too does the usual Bioware route of doing all the boyfriend quests so you can get the awkwardly-animated sex scene. I always did like Tali and Garrus in ME2 for romances, because they made sense. The characters had an established history to build a believable relationship off of. Tali only realizes how she feels about Shepard after he's dead,and she goes through the grieving process only to find out that actually he's Space Robocop now, and she has to process all these feelings again. Garrus has lost absolutely everything and by the time you recruit him he is a broken man, psychologically and physically. He's nearly killed by a missile that blasts a quarter of his face clean off, so he's got involuntary cyborg kinship with Shepard, who as we established earlier is now Lady Space Robocop. They're both in search of healing and can see themselves reflected in each other, and she's the only person Garrus trusts enough to let his guard down around. They both know what it's like to see people you command die because you fucked up. There's a powerful kinship in that trauma. Your other choices are people you met ten minutes ago, and none of them are Zaeed Massani so who the fuck cares?
Video games tend to do relationships poorly. It's rare that we find a game with an actual good depiction of one. Like Cole and Zeke's friendship in Infamous 2, or Kratos and his son Atreus in Dad of Boy. Or Ezio and Leonardo in Assassin's Creed 2. But I guess that's just a subset of the problem of video games being poorly-written in general.
Also hard disagree on that spoiler:
spoiler
The "good" ending is achieved by having first gained Johnny's trust and then waiting out all the options to get the secret ending, where you do a balls-out solo assault on Arasaka HQ by walking in through the front door and killing everything that moves, which turns you into a living legend. You get to hear about Arasaka going to shit in the news, learn you now own the Afterlife, and take your personal AV to a launchpad to go to SPAAAAAAAAAAAAACE
The reason this is the good ending, though, because none of your NPC friends get killed by Adam Smasher
I always felt like Tali being the first game's Mission Vao spunky teenager equivalent kind of made the romance in 2 a bit awkward
Granted, but Shepard's not that much older than her, and he technically didn't age for two years, so it's only borderline :libertarian-approaching:
My Shepard looked like Marcus Fenix's long lost brother so it may have heightened that feeling
I always just stuck with vanilla ManShep because it was better than anything I could be bothered to make. His blunt dialogue just feels right coming out of that blank himbo face.
You give me a character editor and by God, I will use it
I need a good character editor, though.
I found a thread once where Cyberpunk TTRPG players were just listing out all their different character builds that could wipe the floor with Smasher in one round, all with far far less chrome than V has.
The only time where a legendary character's rules stack up to his lore in a TTRPG was Caine for the Gehenna modules in Vampire: The Masquerade.
They read, simply: "You lose."
Thane was always my favourite romance in ME2. He's terminally ill and trying to clean up his last loose ends before he dies.
His whole romantic arc with Shepard has him facing the guilt he feels both from the consequences of his life as an assassin and for pursuing a relationship knowing that he's dying soon and will be leaving his partner to grieve for him.
Garrus was my favorite for reasons listed, and I always made my FemShep a renegade with the spacer sole survivor origin, so she knows what it's like to lose everyone and have to start over carrying that guilt with you
ME2 opened up my mind to the concept of xenophilia having some story and character merit. I read Perdido Street Station soon after and adored Isaac and Lin's relationship. There's just something so heartwarming and joyous about seeing two people who are so utterly different from each other finding love with some other alien weirdo who is into boning aliens just like them. An emotional connection that trumps physical and cultural difference, and then they have weird alien sex