after a while she just came off as so goddamm whiney. same with miranda. suggesting that child imprisonment and indoctrination was bad pissed off miranda, and sleeping with anyone other than jack pissed off jack, which was kind of annoying, but at least a human reaction, which i can respect (/run-on sentence). i feel like the exterior badass but interior tortured heroine is kind of a cliche in video games, and i'm kind of bored of it. i would have been vaguely more impressed if jack had been more badass than tortured soul. we already have tali (under danger of excommunication from her fleet), and samara (essentially forced to kill her own daughter) that imply badassery on the surface but internal torment within. most characters fall into this archetype in one way or another in most action games, but i feel like that at least on some level jack should have been powerful instead of vulnerable: instead of dwelling on her rather depressing past i would have liked her more as a character if she had climbed out of the snake pit with a new jacket, so to speak. if she had regarded her status as the most powerful human biotic as a chance to inflict pain on everyone she met i would be more impressed than if she used her confinement as an excuse to whine incessantly. of course, in real life, long term imprisonment usually leads to psychological damage in some form or another, but i feel like they could at least save the whininess for ME3 (if she's used in ME3). if you imply that she's a total badass who wants to exact revenge on her former place of imprisonment, rather than a tortured soul who wants to destroy the symbol of her imprisonment, that sets you up for character development down the line that allows you to reveal a weaker, more human facet of her character without betraying her underlying strength. You can imply weakness without explicitly stating it (to be fair i played through nearly every convrsation permutation of KOTOR, so most of Bioware's character developments seem obvious). mordin was my 2nd least favorite character (idk why i just felt like he was a dick), and mordin's loyalty mission showed, (at least if you played paragon), an underlying compassion for life, and a secret regret at the genophage he helped develop. most player missions allow you to impact teh character's motivations, health, happiness, etc. through your paragon/renegade choices, but i feel like jack's revenge quest was just that: a glorified kill these enemies and blow this base up. theres no way to make jack happy without blowing up the base, and while i understand that a place of childhood imprisonment would naturally be a place of hatred in that person's future, but it would be more impressive if she realized that she could exact much more revenge against cerberus by going rogue and fucking with the illusive man in ME3. ending child imprisonment is all well and good, but that being the primary goal of the mission would have made me much happier (i'm and extreme paragon player for the most part if you couldn't tell: i empathize too strongly with video game characters to steal a widow's money for a champion-level skull plate, etc.). Idk, i suppose a decent summation would have been: Jack is too weak physically for how well she is introduced and too strong mentally for how conformistish she thinks. (/wall of text)dancinginfernal said:
tldr: i don't like how Jack is characterized in ME2
PS. maybe if she didn't die so often during the actual serious battles i would have more respect for her
