Focus Friday | Thane Krios, Part 3

Today we bring you the final portion, Part 3, of our Focus Friday series on Thane Krios.  In our first two posts we covered player reaction to how Thane’s romance was handled in Mass Effect 3, followed by the “cure debate” and opinions regarding his lack of recruitment.  In this last post we’ll wrap things up by examining player response to how his death was handled in ME3.  This will be followed by a brief summary where we pull together related portions from all 3 posts, and then speculate what steps BioWare could take to end the debate.

For the last time, here are the statements which correspond to Thane’s section of the survey,with those highlighted in green covered in this post:

• I was satisfied with the quantity of content in the romance.
• I was satisfied with the quality of content in the romance.
• I want the option to cure Thane’s Kepral’s Syndrome.
• I want the option to recruit Thane to the Normandy.
• There should be additional scenes and dialogue with a romanced Thane.
• The death scene should have a more visible impact on Shepard, if she romanced Thane.
• Crew members should acknowledge Thane’s death.
• I have other comments.

Focus Friday | Thane Krios, Part 2

On to Part 2 of our Focus Friday series on Thane Krios.  In our last post we covered player reaction to how Thane’s romance was handled in Mass Effect 3.  Today we take a closer look at one of the two most contentious issues on the survey: whether or not players should have been allowed to cure Thane.

Again, here are the statements which correspond to Thane’s section of the survey, with those highlighted in green covered in this post:

• I was satisfied with the quantity of content in the romance.
• I was satisfied with the quality of content in the romance.
• I want the option to cure Thane’s Kepral’s Syndrome.
• I want the option to recruit Thane to the Normandy.
• There should be additional scenes and dialogue with a romanced Thane.
• The death scene should have a more visible impact on Shepard, if she romanced Thane.
• Crew members should acknowledge Thane’s death.
• I have other comments.

We already linked a tribute video for Thane in our previous post, but here’s another one that is mostly just a fun take on his character (by AronaBFC on YouTube)… 

And, yes, if other characters get multiple posts, they will also get multiple videos…assuming I can find them.  Alls fair in love and war around these parts!

Focus Friday | Thane Krios, Part 1

It’s January 3rd, so we hope everyone is getting off to a good start in the new year!  This week we bring you our first character-centric Focus Friday subsequent to our post regarding the Survey Shenanigans.  This means that from now on while we’ll still present the revised results alongside the original results, we will no longer provide discussion comparing the two. All discussion will now be presented in the context of the revised results only.

In today’s FF, we examine our survey results for IGN’s Best Character of the Year for 2010 (Xbox), Thane Krios. Along with Miranda Lawson and John Shepard, Thane was one of the “poster-children” for ME2, and similar to his brethren, he has a much reduced role in the third installment of the trilogy. However, unlike Miranda, Jack and company, Thane is the only Love Interest in the game whose death cannot be prevented.  Like Legion, his death is mandatory. Akin to Jacob, he was removed as a Love Interest for FemShep in Mass Effect 3; he does not grant the Paramour achievement for FemShep — he even lacks an in-game Codex entry. In fact, for a player who does not import a save into ME3, Thane Krios essentially doesn’t exist. This is not dissimilar to how the stories of Samara, Jack, Zaeed, Kasumi, Grunt, and Legion were handled under the same circumstances, and it stands in stark contrast to how the ME1 squad was handled in the same game.  Compound this with the appearance of a few entirely new characters/LIs in the final installment of the trilogy, and it becomes more understandable how many players, especially those who began their Mass Effect journey with Mass Effect 2, found themselves exceedingly…confused…upon importing their Shepards into ME3.

For these reasons and others which we’ll discuss below, Thane’s section of the survey brims with contention. As one of his fans, I actually found it to be a very interesting and enlightening read.  Due to these aspects, along with the greater number of questions on the survey that pertain to Thane, and an attempt to cut down on the length of these posts, this Focus Friday will be broken up into three parts: