Good points but I have to disagree with the two first sentences
Originally Posted by LordCrash
Shepard didn't stay blank at all. What you seem to miss is that a party RPG is much about group dynamics, just like in real life.
Shepard stayed blank because aside from one or two lines of dialogues, there were no signs of him beeing affected by the horrors around him or what happened to him. He could be an stonecold sociopath, that says things, because he knows that the people around him want to hear it (my personal interpretation of the character), not helped by his dead fish-eyes and his emotionless expression. And besides some few lines, there exists no group-dynamic. Everything is build around Commander Shepard, your companions have no life besides Shepard, who most of the time knows what to say, because there exists most of the time only two lines of dialogue (beeing a jerk or saying what they want to hear). You are Commander Shepard, you are the Center of the Universe. It helps for being self-indulgent, but it doesn't gives you a real character, not helped that there isn't any real personality in your lines.
What you say is true but sadly DOS was worse than that in single element of character interactions imo...
I fear you might missed an important point of mine: The question is not whether ME was perfect here (it wasn't, no question) but whether you build upon it or whether you just cut its relationship mechanics. And that's what DOS largely did. In no way is the SP epxerience in DOS in terms of character interactions, relationships and narrative better than anything(!) Bioware created for a SP game so far (DAI included, sadly). We can of course talk about the narrative and technical shortcomings (and honstely, many narrative shortcomings are just limited by budget and technical possiblities, not by skill) in Bioware games but that has no real value for DOS and DOS 2 imo, at least not if we think about ways how DOS could make it better or even just gets on par...
And you really want to compare technical stuff? Sorry, but it's pointless to talk about Shepard's facial expressions here, given the fact that you don't ever see a face in DOS...
