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I suppose that the fact that the game made me care so much about a character with so little screentime is a good thing. But I really, really need to rant about this one issue.
It's a small thing, but the way that the game treated Nora's death and the resulting fallout got on my nerves after a while. At first I understood Snow and Hope and the way that they were both reacting, with Hope blaming Snow for "dragging her into the fight" and Snow blaming himself for not being able to protect her. I really do understand their emotional reactions to it, but after a while I got irritated that an important factor was being left out in favor of more blame and guilt. I was so glad that Lightning finally said outright that it wasn't Snow's fault that she was dead, but PSICOM's and the Sanctum's faults for instigating the Purge.
She was right, but in my mind, even she didn't quite go far enough.
It's been hard for me to sum this up. Basically, Nora knew very well that she might die when she volunteered to help Snow and the other passengers in the fight. She was a civilian; we have no way of knowing if she'd ever held a gun before, let alone fired one, but the odds are good that she hadn't. She wasn't a warrior. But she fought anyway, because she saw it as her one chance to save her son from death, or a fate just as bad as death (permanent exile on a hell world, and separation from his father with no chance of reconciliation.)
In a nutshell: just about everyone in this game who talked about Nora's death discounted the fact that she volunteered and was willing to take the risk. They make it sound like it's all Snow's "fault" that she was there, when in fact she was fighting for her life too, and the life of her son. And that irritated me so many times. She basically made a heroic sacrifice, and people keep discounting it, and in a way taking the credit away and giving it to Snow as guilt. If that makes sense.
I'm not saying it was Nora's fault that she died - I agree with Lightning on that topic. Just that she ought to get some props for risking her life like that.
Okay, that's finally off my chest. Whew.
It's a small thing, but the way that the game treated Nora's death and the resulting fallout got on my nerves after a while. At first I understood Snow and Hope and the way that they were both reacting, with Hope blaming Snow for "dragging her into the fight" and Snow blaming himself for not being able to protect her. I really do understand their emotional reactions to it, but after a while I got irritated that an important factor was being left out in favor of more blame and guilt. I was so glad that Lightning finally said outright that it wasn't Snow's fault that she was dead, but PSICOM's and the Sanctum's faults for instigating the Purge.
She was right, but in my mind, even she didn't quite go far enough.
It's been hard for me to sum this up. Basically, Nora knew very well that she might die when she volunteered to help Snow and the other passengers in the fight. She was a civilian; we have no way of knowing if she'd ever held a gun before, let alone fired one, but the odds are good that she hadn't. She wasn't a warrior. But she fought anyway, because she saw it as her one chance to save her son from death, or a fate just as bad as death (permanent exile on a hell world, and separation from his father with no chance of reconciliation.)
In a nutshell: just about everyone in this game who talked about Nora's death discounted the fact that she volunteered and was willing to take the risk. They make it sound like it's all Snow's "fault" that she was there, when in fact she was fighting for her life too, and the life of her son. And that irritated me so many times. She basically made a heroic sacrifice, and people keep discounting it, and in a way taking the credit away and giving it to Snow as guilt. If that makes sense.
I'm not saying it was Nora's fault that she died - I agree with Lightning on that topic. Just that she ought to get some props for risking her life like that.
Okay, that's finally off my chest. Whew.
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Date: 2010-08-06 12:47 pm (UTC)From: