Commanding Shepard
Jun. 20th, 2020 02:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pedantherThe latest video essay from Game Maker's Toolkit is Who's Commanding Shepard?, an in-depth look at the Mass Effect trilogy's attempt to strike a balance between the extremes of having a blank-slate main character who does whatever the character wants and having a fully pre-defined main character whose pre-defined personality and choices drive the story.
There are sections on the morality system, Shepard's interactions with the squad members, the parts of the story where Shepard does make significant decisions without player input, etc., looking at what worked well and what didn't.
It has some thoughtful things to say about player agency and so on, and as someone who never made it all the way through the game -- at least partly because some of the things that didn't work well really didn't work for me -- I found it interesting to see another viewpoint on those things, and to find out some of what I missed.
There are sections on the morality system, Shepard's interactions with the squad members, the parts of the story where Shepard does make significant decisions without player input, etc., looking at what worked well and what didn't.
It has some thoughtful things to say about player agency and so on, and as someone who never made it all the way through the game -- at least partly because some of the things that didn't work well really didn't work for me -- I found it interesting to see another viewpoint on those things, and to find out some of what I missed.
