14 DAY TRIAL // I sometimes feel like a bit of a pervert when playing Mass Effect 3, mainly because Commander Shepard seems very much inclined to listen to the conversations of other people on the Citadel, without giving any thought to privacy, and then tends to even act on the information he finds out via the eavesdrop method.
I like the small confrontations that pop up in each area, where two different points of view clash and Commander Shepard needs to decide which position is the best one, but I feel that it’s really not my job or responsibility to handle these conflicts.
Unfortunately, the lure of those conversation prompts is too much for me as a player, and I always end up listening and choosing, usually going for the pragmatic points of view over the idealist one.
But the more disturbing situations are those where a character on the Citadel is just minding his own business, trying to save one problem or another via communication device and Shepard just stops and listens to his words.
The good Commander then infers what the character is talking about, even though at times the lines aren’t very clear, and quickly builds a quest around them.
The player does not interact with the character who needs a certain object in any meaningful way and, despite the fact that I do all these quests (they contribute to the War Assets screen), I feel like I am imposing on the quest originators rather than actually helping them.
It would have been easy for BioWare to simply make the characters come to Shepard, who by now is a known hero in the galaxy, with their requests rather than allow him to overhear their needs.
It would have made the gameplay clearer and would have shown players how important their character is to the war effort, beyond the core story missions.