Thane overcoming his past and reconnecting with his son would have been a much more interesting game. Just sayin'.
Thane was trained from a very young age to be an assassin. He tries to put it behind him after falling in love, but his old enemies find him and kill his wife. His response? He leaves his son to go hunt them down.
This is a very bold move on the part of the writers. Thane literally abandons his son for the sake of vengeance, and yet Thane is clearly a character we are to like and sympathize with. Personally, I thought it worked very well. It gives us insight into how fundamentally messed up (and, yes, tragic) Thane is without glorifying his bad decision making.
His loyalty mission, which is awful from a gameplay perspective, centers around his son taking up his father's trade in some misplaced attempt to connect to Thane. Shepard and Thane intercept Thane's son and keep him from killing his target.
Things get a little shaky here, as Thane and his son have their reunion (you know, the most interesting part of all of this?) entirely off-screen. I understand the decision, because to do it justice, it would have to be a weighty scene in a game that's already stretched too thin, but it's still disappointing.
I do appreciate that, upon Thane returning to Shepard, he says that they've made contact, but it will take more than a few hours to repair all of the damage that has been done. It's nice when game stories acknowledge that things can't be fixed over night (I'm looking at you, Jack).
The only thing that bugged me about Thane was the presentation of his perfect memory. I assumed he had severe PSTD at first because of how shaky and disconcerting the camera work is. I'm also not sure I buy it as a racial trait from an evolutionary point of view, but it does serve well to tell his story in a different way than the others.
No comments:
Post a Comment