Mass Effect 2 E3 Prelude

[Gromnir]

"Why do Captain Picard and Will Riker personally beam down to every ultra-dangerous location they come across instead of sending subordinates down while they deal with logistics and strategy?"

 

you mentions one thing that always bugged us 'bout star trek. is not 'nuff to keep us from watching, but is 'nuff to make us wonder if story would be so much worse if command guys stay on ship while other folks gets sent off on potential dangerous missions. sure, you ends up with more cast members, but get rid o' that worthless empath chick and the pinocchio character and you got space for a couple o' "marines" instead. heck, have a star trek show where you rare see the captain or xo... show up like fred thompson on law and order (though Gromnir has only seen a couple episodes of law and order, so maybe fred is a more frequent character than we s'pose). wouldn't be star trek formula, but am not sure why it would have to be less "sexy."

 

am not too concerned in any event. our original comment were simply to note that we find shep lack o' promotion Less baffling than the ambiguous chain 'o command. keep as a Commander. bust his arse down to honorary LT would make us happier.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[GreasyDogMeat]

How can you call that woman in the skintight outfit worthless!? She did... stuff... but who cared about that stuff?

[Maria Caliban]

Mass Effect is soft sci-fi. I wouldn't dig too deeply into the structure of Alliance military organizations and responsibilities, because they're more symbolic and heroic than literal or realistic. Why do Captain Picard and Will Riker personally beam down to every ultra-dangerous location they come across instead of sending subordinates down while they deal with logistics and strategy? Because they're the cool guy stars who leap into harm's way and have sexy adventures. That's usually the way soft sci-fi goes.

 

Could you mean that Mass Effect is a space opera?

 

Hard science fiction means a work that focuses on the physics, chemistry, and engineering. Soft science fiction is one that focuses on biology, sociology, and psychology.

 

Neither term implies intellectual rigorousness. The Cold Equation is a popular example of hard sci-fi, but it

[J.E. Sawyer]

Could you mean that Mass Effect is a space opera?

 

Hard science fiction means a work that focuses on the physics, chemistry, and engineering. Soft science fiction is one that focuses on biology, sociology, and psychology.

"Soft sci-fi" is a broad term. What you described is one use of it; what I described is another.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_science_fiction

 

I was trying to draw a distinction between sci-fi like Mass Effect, Star Wars, and Star Trek and sci-fi like Moon, 2001, Alien, or Sunshine. Even though the latter examples contain questionable or outright wacky/wrong scientific elements, science/technology still are a central focus of discussion and concern. In the former examples, science and technology practically transcend our understanding and become akin to magic, more of a plot device than a real focus. As you (Maria Caliban) suggest, discussing ME as a space opera is probably more helpful, as "soft-sci fi" doesn't necessarily imply the abstracted social structure, though they often go together. Space operas are typically soft on details of science and technology and also usually have romanticized concepts of future civilizations. Ultimately, Shepard is more like Picard than Ripley. Fly all over the galaxy on the best ship in the fleet, taking it wherever you want? Hurling yourself onto any random planet in an all-terrain vehicle manned by a crew of three? Serving on an inter-species council as a special agent whilst gathering a huge array of aliens to chill out on your super secret technology human ship? It all makes sense in the overall context of a space opera, which is to say that it's usually glossed because it really isn't "the point".

[Wrath of Dagon]

Those elements worked well in KOTOR, because it's obviously fantasy anyway. They really were incongruous in ME, which tried for a more realistic feel but couldn't make up its mind.

[Tagaziel]

Well, in KOTOR2 you were pretty much running a private enterprise so it's far more plausible than Mass Effect (for reasons JES enumerated).

[Kaftan Barlast]

I detect a slight possibility that this thread might degenerate into the old "lets argue about whats sci-fi and whats whatever", am I right? Is it brewing?