I always forget that whatever career I play first, the dominant feeling of much of that career will be frustration, as I run around trying to figure out where the next objective is. Thus, as I moved towards the completion of an important diplomatic cum military mission to rescue a Turian VIP, I spent ten minutes running in circles shouting "Why don't I have a map? Why don't I have a map?"
I did, thankfully, arrive in the nick of time.
One thing I notice looking at the "War Situation" through my Renegade's eyes; I feel real despair based on the amount of time it will take to build the resources, and the learning curve involved in figuring out how to do so. Along with that feeling comes the idea that it's well to encounter these odds with this character: she's tough enough to take it, and tough enough even to lose. I have the feeling that I wouldn't want to let my Paragons try to find their ways through this maze of mechanics.
It's this interference of player concerns and performative concerns, of course, that I'm trying to analyze. I take my inspiration from the way the bards of Iliad and Odyssey (particularly the latter) let their own concerns as bards shape their tellings of the stories of their heroes. Immersion is nice, but if we want to understand how it works, we have to see it in the context of performances by players who live outside the world into which their performances immerse them; pretending that there's some, I don't know, "Magic Circle" that prevents my frustrating at not having a map from mattering within the gamespace would be silly.
