Dragon Age or Mass Effect

[Wolf Kanno]

That's a rather snobbish way to look at things. Her father is an absolute monster, possibly the most evil man in all of Mass Effect. It wasn't just "daddy didn't care", it was "daddy is a psychopath who made me as a vanity project. I have no reason to exist except to feed a sociopath's ego."

The fact is, Miranda has problems but you overblow them. Her problems aren't as big as Tali's or Wrex's? True, that's why she isn't wallowing in them. She's not spending all her time and effort going 'woe is me." She's functioning as a high-level scientist and operative for a group she believes in. She has her own cause she's fighting for. So while her issues are comparatively minor, she isn't actually as fixated on them as Jack or the others. They simply weigh down her feelings of self-worth. She does things, a lot of things, like reviving Shepard for one, but she feels no pride in them because of how she was created.

It's a wholly different situation to the others. Comparing them is apples and oranges and isn't fair to any of them.

It is comparing apples to oranges but in this case, I like my apples more than oranges. I'm simply explaining why I don't care for the character, cause she was just kind of there for me and her story just comes across a bit selfish compared to the characters who are dealing with serious issues that have far reaching consequences, but are complex enough to not have a simple answer. The reason why Miranda or Jacob never interested me is because their stories are pretty cut and dry which would be nice in most other games but they have the general misfortune of being stuck in the same game as Tali, Wrex, and Mordin who are wrestling with some serious ethical sociopolitical issues so I'm sorry if I wasn't "feeling it" but her problems and characterization never jelled with me and I rather spend time on people who have more interesting problems.

Also Wrex doesn't really whine about his issues, he simply states the facts because he gives off this demeanor of having accepted all this bulltrout awhile back and he only talks about it if you keep pressing him about it. Yes he actually cares but you have to prod his "I don't give a trout" facade to see who he really is.

This might be one of the reasons why I actually preferred ME1's way of doing characterization because it involved your character doing some actual digging and prodding of the cast to actually get anything out of them. Most of the characters you recruit are not the same people you wind up with by game's end because you spent time to really learn about them and the issues that bothered them. Whereas ME2 kind of made their conflict more front and center which kind of killed some of the magic of conversing with people. I know it's still there but most of the really cool info is saved for the loyalty missions instead of being opened up by actually just spending time with them. Again, ME1 felt a bit more organic in it's approach to storytelling while ME2 has that in-your-face Hollywood approach. Nice to see the production values and acting but I kind of liked the way it was handled before.