@ganymede said in General Video Game Thread:
Comparing ME:A to Star Wars is a problem.
If I were a writer, you'd have a more elegant response. You asked, I answered.
If I were prepared for the challenge I would be able to link how Star Wars hit the Hero's Journey beat for beat. If you are saying that Ryder refuses the call for more than a few moment or ever meets a mentor, I'm going to have to ask for more. (n.b., I don't consider the AI a mentor. He's slightly less lost than Ryder.)
You think that ME:A does this better than Star Wars?
Comparing it to DA2 is also problematic, given that they are of different genres entirely.
Telling a good story is independent of genre. The way the story is told is almost certainly different, but if you want a better parallel:
The Marathon trilogy was created by a small Mac-only game company called Bungie. Its story was beautiful. Even Marathon (original) was weak on the whole but pulled it together by creating a compelling reason to move on beyond "shoot the bad guy and reach the end of the level".
The story told in Halo was a little above average (and IMO went downhill). It was made by a medium Xbox-only game company called Bungie. There was little to no compelling storytelling, and call be bizarre but I liked the Library level.
Both were FPS. One had a storyline, a plot, and arcs. The other was Halo.
Still, like some, I think ME:A got unfairly pooped on.
I don't know how many times I have to say that I found ME:A a playable game, so let me reiterate: It was fine. It was average. It had its moments, but to me has the same problem as Skyrim where the plot is not as strong as I enjoy. (Skyrim is very much a game not for me. Man that thing is boring as hell, and my over 130 hours of gameplay prove how compelling boring can be. Don't ask me about my FO4 hours. *cough*370*cough*)
I think ME:A got a little more poop than it should have, but EA shit the bed in early stages of development. The game was doomed from the start and as a franchise that I really, deeply like, it is heartbreaking but not at all surprising.
Incidentally, my favorite part was the end which felt like an even more open race-to-the-end call-back to ME1.
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Incidentally, I don't think that Blizzard deserve the crap it's getting from Blizzcon. I think they're poorly handling it, so a little crap is understandable, but bloody hell, people.