Well, jymoward, setting the perk aside, I - well, I can't really say I enjoyed the mission, but it did wonders for immersion. It made the rest of the game feel more important, by showing me (rather than simply telling me) exactly why the Empire is collapsing, and how horrible some of the things boiling up out of the cracks are. Now I'm fighting not just because the Tal Shiar attacked my world, or because they tried to kill Tovan's old girlfriend, or because my new Fed buddies don't like them - I'm fighting them because they have no mnhei'sahe, and have revealed themselves as the very worst monsters the Rihannsu have created to date. They must be stopped!
Personally, I did not enjoy the mission in the traditional sense, but it does a fantastic job in doing what it was made to do. The entire mission is designed to show you the insanity and the evil being carried out by the Tal Shiar and the remains of the Romulan Empire. It does a great job conveying emotion and evoking an emotional response in the player. It isn't designed to be fun. It's designed to be disturbing. It's there to show you the inhumanity of the enemy and to make them more than just a generic cliche bad guy in a video game.
I can understand why some people would find this mission to be disturbing, even obscene. However, it is important to remember that in this mission you are not acting out your own will. The entire point is that you have no choice. You can fight, but you won't succeed. It makes you just as much of a victim as the people and creatures that you are forced to harm. And in that, it reaches its goal of creating that emotional response. It may not be pretty, but the mission itself serves a vital purpose in the entire story line. As I said before, it escalates Hakeev, Sela, and the Tal Shiar from cliche bad guys to an emotionally impactful group.
I can say first hand you ppl where a small group paladins/death knights are the 2 most over played classes in the game
Well Paladins are only a tangent to this conversation since they don't require you to play a back story that involves cold blooded murder.
However, I agree that people like me were a definite minority.
Most gamers do not think of their actions in a game being reflective of a genuine moral choice. Some gamers do think of it being reflective of a genuine moral choice, but revel in choosing something "evil" or "taboo." Witness the number of people who enjoy playing a Dark Brotherhood assassin in Skyrim, for example.
People like myself who see it as both reflective of a moral choice and who aren't attracted to that particular choice are the minority, for sure.
My point was simply that this is something that comes up from time to time in MMOs, and will probably come up again, as long as "story" is considered important to players and developers.
To the credit of the devs, a player CAN skip this mission if they want to, plus, if they are armed with foreknowledge, they can take comfort in the fact that even within the game universe, the events are not considered to have actually happened.
There are actually two way to approach that moment in the Death Knight backstory. If you wait long enough, your friend actually asks you to do it - because he/she trusts you to kill quickly, and with minimum pain. It's more a mercy killing by that point; the other option would be to leave your friend to the nonexistent mercies of the Lich King's inquisitors, after all.
After getting to the end of "Installation 18", I finally realized what good writing was involved in "Mindgames". In the secret Tal Shiar installation, you find a lab that is being used for indoctrination techniques similar to what you experienced.
My character's experiences in "Mindgames" had struck me more deeply than I had realized. I was angry. I kept looking for the option that would let me burn that installation to the ground and sow salt over its ashes. I wanted to see every sub-Romulan involved executed.
I can't recall the last time a video game did that to me...
There are actually two way to approach that moment in the Death Knight backstory. If you wait long enough, your friend actually asks you to do it - because he/she trusts you to kill quickly, and with minimum pain. It's more a mercy killing by that point; the other option would be to leave your friend to the nonexistent mercies of the Lich King's inquisitors, after all.
After getting to the end of "Installation 18", I finally realized what good writing was involved in "Mindgames". In the secret Tal Shiar installation, you find a lab that is being used for indoctrination techniques similar to what you experienced.
My character's experiences in "Mindgames" had struck me more deeply than I had realized. I was angry. I kept looking for the option that would let me burn that installation to the ground and sow salt over its ashes. I wanted to see every sub-Romulan involved executed.
I can't recall the last time a video game did that to me...
"Mind Games" is just a piece of the entire story. It's a part of the building up to the climax in "Cutting the Cord". When I first did the Romulan version of the "Cutting the Cord" I knew there would be some customiation for Romulans. But I didn't really have any expectations. I thought hte climax in the last cutscene with Hakeev would play out as I knew it. But how the scene ended truely surprised me and shocked me a bit. After my surprise and some reflectection, that scene ended exactly as I wanted it too. The writing of the entire series of arcs did have a profound impact on me as well. I just hadn't realized how much until the climax.
Comments
It makes you really hate sela and the tal shiar they force you to do things against your will
they surgicly (I cant spell today ) do something to your head which makes it impossible to resist what they instruct you to do.
by the end of mind game your so pissed off at hakeev you want to hack his other eye out with a hatchet and take a .....nvm you get the point.
Mind games shows just how far sela and the tal shiar will go to hurt someone or get what they want.
By the end you understand why you have to stop them why the tal shiar and hakeev MUST be stopped by any and all means possible.
mind games sets the tone for the rest of the story and if you skip it your missing out on a big portion of the whys and what fors.
YMMV, obviously...
I can understand why some people would find this mission to be disturbing, even obscene. However, it is important to remember that in this mission you are not acting out your own will. The entire point is that you have no choice. You can fight, but you won't succeed. It makes you just as much of a victim as the people and creatures that you are forced to harm. And in that, it reaches its goal of creating that emotional response. It may not be pretty, but the mission itself serves a vital purpose in the entire story line. As I said before, it escalates Hakeev, Sela, and the Tal Shiar from cliche bad guys to an emotionally impactful group.
yeah this is what i was tryign to say you just did it better then i could
Well Paladins are only a tangent to this conversation since they don't require you to play a back story that involves cold blooded murder.
However, I agree that people like me were a definite minority.
Most gamers do not think of their actions in a game being reflective of a genuine moral choice. Some gamers do think of it being reflective of a genuine moral choice, but revel in choosing something "evil" or "taboo." Witness the number of people who enjoy playing a Dark Brotherhood assassin in Skyrim, for example.
People like myself who see it as both reflective of a moral choice and who aren't attracted to that particular choice are the minority, for sure.
My point was simply that this is something that comes up from time to time in MMOs, and will probably come up again, as long as "story" is considered important to players and developers.
To the credit of the devs, a player CAN skip this mission if they want to, plus, if they are armed with foreknowledge, they can take comfort in the fact that even within the game universe, the events are not considered to have actually happened.
After getting to the end of "Installation 18", I finally realized what good writing was involved in "Mindgames". In the secret Tal Shiar installation, you find a lab that is being used for indoctrination techniques similar to what you experienced.
My character's experiences in "Mindgames" had struck me more deeply than I had realized. I was angry. I kept looking for the option that would let me burn that installation to the ground and sow salt over its ashes. I wanted to see every sub-Romulan involved executed.
I can't recall the last time a video game did that to me...
"Mind Games" is just a piece of the entire story. It's a part of the building up to the climax in "Cutting the Cord". When I first did the Romulan version of the "Cutting the Cord" I knew there would be some customiation for Romulans. But I didn't really have any expectations. I thought hte climax in the last cutscene with Hakeev would play out as I knew it. But how the scene ended truely surprised me and shocked me a bit. After my surprise and some reflectection, that scene ended exactly as I wanted it too. The writing of the entire series of arcs did have a profound impact on me as well. I just hadn't realized how much until the climax.