<\/div>In Mass Effect 1, Liara was a shy, bookish, gentle, polite, socially awkward introvert who specialized in archaeology and geeked out over Prothean ruins. Then we bump into her here in Mass Effect 2 and she’s a tough-talking hard case with her own team of Asari commandos, and she runs some sort of cutthroat information business. That’s not “character growth”. That’s a complete re-write of her personality.<\/p>\n
But even if we’re incredibly generous and pretend that this new Liara has simply been transformed by the events of the last two years, this character change feels completely unearned. In the last game she discovered a dire threat to the entire galaxy, killed her own mother<\/i>, fought in several massive battles, and saved all of known space. It was a big deal and she had a little character growth in the process, but it was nothing compared to this jarring transformation that takes place entirely off-screen. <\/p>\n
Worse, this change obliterated one of the most unique personalities in the game. The cast is packed with various flavors of badasses. We’ve got stoic, mercenary, philosophical, military, and berzerker badasses. Liara’s idealism and introversion made her unique. Her Prothean expertise and knowledge of history linked her to the overall plot of breaking a cycle that’s been repeating for longer than anyone knows. Now she’s just another swaggering biotic hardass with a gun.<\/p>\n
And now we’re supposed to believe that not only does she have a completely new personality, but she’s changed to a completely unrelated career as an information broker? Somehow she’s even become “one of the best” information brokers on Illium, despite her ignoble backgroundPure-blood Asari are looked down on.<\/span>, lack of experienceBeing socially awkward would actually be a huge disadvantage in a job that involves so much interpersonal wheeling and dealing.<\/span>, lack of starting capitalThere’s a reason “rich like an archaeologist” isn’t a common rap lyric.<\/span>, limited time investmentTwo years is a short time for any career change, and she spent a lot of that time rescuing Shepard for Cerberus.<\/span>, and relative young ageShe’s only 100, on a planet of people who live to be 1,000.<\/span>. <\/p>\n Sure, it’s “possible” for this change to have happened in some fan-imagined side-story, but this is not how you handle characters in fiction<\/em>. You don’t radically change their personality entirely off-screen, particularly not between works. Especially if it doesn’t even lead to some dramatic flashback, emotional payoff, or something else that serves the needs of the overall story. Especially not in a game that seems to be selling itself so hard on the characters. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Thane is a quiet, circumspect, philosophical assassin. He also highlights just how little sense it makes to run around the galaxy getting people to join a team to accomplish an unknown task. In reality, his recruitment conversation ought to go like this:<\/p>\n Thane: I would be honored to help you fight the collectors, Shepard. Who is my target?<\/p>\n Shepard: Pardon?<\/p>\n Thane: I’m assassin. I assume you need me to assassinate somebody?<\/p>\n Shepard: (Shrugs) Beats me. We have no idea what the collectors are like or how we’re going to stop them.<\/p>\n Thane: So why are you asking me to join you now?<\/p>\n Shepard: I dunno. The quest journal says to go get people to join. I figure it’ll all just work out somehow.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n And Shepard is right. It does work out “somehow”. But unless your story is about having faith, or destiny, or fulfilling a prophesy, then this is not a good enough as a framework for player action. <\/p>\n You can have mystery elements in your story. The Consort on the Citadel has a soothsayer vibe about her. The Prothean visions in Mass Effect 1 were pretty fantastical. There was a terrified worker on Eden Prime that had a crazed hobo doomsayer thing going on. But those things weren’t our only source of guidance and motivation. They were things used to give our motivation emotional weight or give the dry technical stuff an air of mystery.<\/p>\n As people are always so eager to remind me, the writer can’t possibly explain and justify every possible action in the story. I agree. But when you have a plot element that intersects with player action, then you need to make sure it can survive them thinking about it. If the player stops to ask, “Why am I doing this and how does it advance my goal?” then there needs to be a good answer, and assuming you’re not doing something subversive and meta with player choice, that answer can’t be the author saying, “Trust me, it’ll make sense later.” <\/p>\n From Shepard’s perspective, it’s possible he might reach the Collector’s realm and find out what he really needs is a hundred engineers. Or a fleet. Or robots that can withstand extreme heat and radiation. Or a bunch of biotics. People even call the other end of the Omega-4 relay the “Collector Homeworld”. What would he have done if there was actually a planet of Collectors on the other end? Conquer it on foot with his 3-person squad? Shrug and apologize to the team and send everyone home?<\/p>\n “Oh geeze. What a waste of time gathering up all you people. Looks like I don’t need your help after all. Sorry! Let Joker know if we can drop you off somewhere.”<\/p>\n You spend a majority of the game rounding up people when you have no idea if their skills will be relevant or useful because you don’t know what the job entails. BioWare mostly got away with this because the characters we’re rounding up are so fun and interesting that we’re happy to have them on board, even if the in-universe explanation for this does not stand up to any level of scrutiny.<\/p>\n This is a game the writers have been playing throughout Mass Effect 2: Bullshit plots that don’t follow reason, but the audience goes along with it because we love the characters. It’s a trick that works right up until the end of the trilogy, when they take the characters away and all we’re left with is the last few threads of this quickly-unravelling world.<\/p>\n Samara is a fine concept for a character. Yes, “Fanatical Space Paladin” is extremely trope-ish, but this is BioWare we’re talking about. Tropes are in their DNA. Star Wars was assembled almost entirely from tropes, and it’s a beloved classic. Building atop tropes is not a sinAlthough some people fault BioWare for returning to a small handful of particular tropes again and again. But that’s another discussion.<\/span>. <\/p>\n Samara’s problem isn’t the character concept, it’s that nobody ever settled on a specific tone for her. Her character is pulled in several different directions as her super-serious demeanor is comically undermined by her towering heels and a neckline that goes down to her belly button. <\/p>\n Here’s a few of her concept sketches from the Mass Effect 2 art book. Click for the full view, it’s way to big to stick in the middle of an article:<\/p>\nThane<\/h3>\n
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<\/div>Samara<\/h3>\n
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