SPOILER ALERTZ SORTA
Maybe meaningless is a bit harsh. More like, are butt-holes.
I played through Mass Effect 2 enjoying it very much. The characters were realistic (even the scaly ones and the robots!) and I felt a connection to all of them. Shephard is bad ass, and the plot is fairly interesting.
I like this game. It is fun. I enjoyed playing it.
BUT
(and this is a huge but) the characters are stupid (hypocrite!) . The selling point of this game is that anyone can die, and your choices affect the game and I agree with this statement, in the sense that yes, any character can die, and yes it does affect the game. It just doesn't affect the plot , doh!
Basically, all of the characters are interchangeable. It doesn't matter who dies, you will still get the same ending (yes I know there are two, but you get my point). Well rounded, interesting and awesome-sweet characters directly influence the plot, through their actions and personalities and death and life and guns and shooting things and the way they speak or interact with other characters or even just walk. They MUST influence the plot in some way. The characters forward the plot. That is the way story telling works.
In the end, it actually doesn't matter if they live or die. Sure, you might be sad that Miranda is dead or Tali or Garrus, but the way Mass Effect presents itself (not on purpose) it doesn't really matter. The ending is still goes one or two ways. What kind of choice is this?
I would speculate that the Bioware folks thought up hundreds of different characters for the game, all unique and interesting and fun and cool. It is kind of embarrassing when you know that any one of those characters could have been in the game, and it wouldn't have made a difference. It is important to establish characters and what not so that the audience can respond to them and care for them, but it is equally important for those characters to actually be important within the story. I feel like I'm repeating myself.
I don't ever expect a game to have full freedom of choice, not even the Sims. There would be too many endings, too many possibilities. It's just too much. I do expect that the characters that I love have some sort of sway in what happens in the game.
Is that too much to ask?
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medalgeertom's blog
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I mean, i loved the ability to have any character die, but 5the structure of it is a little simple, just a loyalty mission and the upgrades, and being a good leader means 100% survival.and the thing is none of those deaths really change anything,i would have wished Bioware could have created at least some relevance to the plot which would change depending on a characters loyalty or even existence ( ie. Maybe pissing Grunt off means you miss out on information taht helps you in a story plot, which creates a conflict and hard choice.) Im not saying they should do what Me 1 did, i hated that, choosing for the sake of choosing, and it still having no plot relevance, but a happy medium could be attained. I feel Mass Effect 2 is receiving a little early praise on their narrative and system of story telling then should be warranted at this point, although id love to be proven wrong.
Who's going to die this episode?!? Find out on the next episode of Mass Effect!
That sort of thing. The TV "Death hype" scenario means one of two things, usually:
(1) Only the inconsequential really die.
(2) A writer/director/actor won't be returning, so write their characters out.
Assuming #1 since in ME's case # isn't that likely, that would mean practically everyone was inconsequential to the next plot. Not everyone would have to die for this to be the case, they can just be laying low as to not draw attention to themselves after "death." Or maybe they did all die.
But here's the other things about TV "death" - its almost always arbitrary. Someone wants to write their character out of the canon for good or maybe they just want a fresh set of characters to replace the main cast. The latter is often done as a guise to stage a big "comeback" character. Maybe Shepard will lie low the majority of the next game and then emerge as a party member later.
Calling it now, in fact.
Obviously I wasn't the only one who noticed the problems in the game, so it confused me that forums were being lit up of talk that this was the best thing to happen to video games ever.
I only thought about the death thing being gimmicky after the game, so my thoughts on it were a little different while I was playing.
You don't get a story payout from the deaths, true. I found it a little dissappointing that I couldn't/didn't have to return to the floatila to tell Tali's family about her death. But did that take away from the fact that, moving into Mass Effect 3, this long running crew member just won't be around? I'll miss having her there from a crew composition standpoint, and I'm sure, considering how helpful her upgrade suggestion was, that I'll be missing out when ME3 comes around.
I think the characters and their personal stories, as well as what ever personal affinty you have for them, outweighs not getting some token reward for killing/not killing them. :/
Well there's one thing I saw, at least. In my run through to keep Tali alive (MESSING WITH THE TIMELINE!), I swapped in Miranda. There was a moment near the end where, I'm guessing depending on her loyalty, she has a chance to change the course of events. I'm not so sure what would actually happen if she was loyal. Possibly, that could be the type of thing you were looking for?
On the other hand, and obviously from my comments, I don't see the general lack of gravity that any given team member lends to the plot as a great negative. They are telling me the story of Shepard and his suicide mission. Though there's an implied inevitability to the building of the team from the gameplay (You're gonna recruit all these dudes, for the achievements at least, right?), I think the journey is the thing. In this interactive storytelling, I'm deciding responses that deal out different information and perspectives from my crew. From keeping Legion turned off, to recruiting Samara's daughter, to disagreeing with Mordin about the Genophage, this makes up the nuance of the mission.
And by the end, your actions create a finite number of endpoints. I don't know if it dips into an argument about inevitability/fate/karma, but I don't think its unreasonable to think that Shepard, who is such a charasmatic and influential figure, has more than a protagonist's share of pull on the narrative end.
Also, considering this to be act 2 of 3, there's plenty of room for characters to exert their influence on the larger plot.
@beverlynoelle
I also felt responsible for these characters, and this added an insane amount of emotional depth, but I don't know. I guess I felt that it was almost a disservice to these characters that were so cool, yet didn't mean all that much.
Who knows? I understand where you're coming from, but I feel like waiting for Mass Effect 3 before I get upset. If it's still all meaningless after playing the last game in the trilogy, I will probably feel pissed.