I recently got into a bit of an argument with a man on twitter.
That actually does sound as stupid as I thought I would, having written it down. Regardless, I got into an argument with him over the topic of feminism. He described himself as ‘anti-feminist’ and this was the only thing in his twitter profile, so I really should have known better.
In our longer than I’m proud to admit … well, let’s call it a discussion, I learned a couple things. This post is part rant, part debate primer, and part personal declaration. Before you read on though, I’m going to give a quick warning: this is probably way heavier than anything else you’ll read on my site. It’s rare I post stuff like this. Ye be warned, etc. etc.
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I’ve played a lot of videogames in my time. Not as many as some, but I’ve been playing console games since I was 3 (at least that’s as far back as I can remember). I’ve played Sega Master System games, I’ve played old 386 PC games, I’ve played my share of SNES, Playstation, Gamecube, etc. etc. I’ve played a whole lot of ‘em. But one thing I’ve never really done is played a collection of games all the way through their storyline. I was never good enough at Ultima Underworld, my computer couldn’t handle Warcraft 3, Starcraft 2, or the recently released Diablo III. Hell, even IPs that exist for the Xbox don’t generally entice me to finish them.
I look at my shelf of games, and I see a whole collection of games that just couldn’t keep me engaged: Gears of War, Lego Batman, Bioshock 2, Blue Dragon; the list goes on and on. Most of these fall down on the part that will keep me playing through the worst gaming experiences: Storyline.
I’m a sucker for a well-constructed, properly delivered storyline. You can give me some pretty terrible game controls, some god-awful camera work, and some of the worst textures, and I will endure if your story is compelling and gets me to give a crap. This may sound like something simple to do, as I’m generally pretty open to some far-out storylines, but you would be wrong. I’m probably the most criticle of shoe-horned, akward, or generally stupid plot points that serve only to play on a persons emotions. I cannot generally abide by such tools, and it’s the reason many of the unfinished games on my shelf are there; mediocrity in tale-spinning.
So why Mass Effect? What made me give not one, not two, but three (or more if you count DLC) shits about such a franchise?
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