I kind of really wish they'd gotten rid of the need to fuel your ship in this iteration. It was okay in ME2 but coupled with the New Thing about travelling around the galaxy it makes for an awful lot of back-and-forth and jumping back to systems with a fuel depot and spending all your money on fuel.
it'd be fine if there was a fuel depot in every system with a mass relay like in ME2
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BugBoyboy.EXE has stopped functioning.only bugs remainRegistered Userregular
I'm really surprised at just how well the squadmates are integrated into each mission
taking liara to the dlc mission made sense, but taking garrus and the prothean to SurKesh resulted in some really great dialogue with wrex
also I'm still bowled over by how cool it is that David recognizes EDI if you bring her to grissom
BugBoyboy.EXE has stopped functioning.only bugs remainRegistered Userregular
speaking of surkesh
I didn't get a good look at it, but was that thing at the beginning a yahg?
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JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
Some nonspoilery, very general thoughts on the ending. Prepare for an essay!
The frustrating thing with the ending for me is that it suffers from a problem so common in science fiction that the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction has an entry for it - "sense of wonder." The sense of wonder is the thing that appeals to people about sci-fi when they're young, and it's what a lot of sci-fi writers spend their careers trying to replicate. It's an addictive sensation. The problem is that while trying to blow your mind with the revelation of some heretofore unguessed-at universal truth is an awesome idea for a story, it's hard to just invent transcendent universal truths out of thin air.
Some sci-fi writers cleverly cheat a sense of transcendence into their stories through a dirty trick called "conceptual breakthrough," which is a flavor of plot twist that involves the sudden, shocking realignment of the narrative's perspective, so the story you thought you were reading becomes something else entirely. That moment in Book of the New Sun where the reader finally catches on that the castles and towers are actually old rotting spaceships is a good one - holy shit, this fantasy story is actually science fiction! The bit in ME1 where you find out Sovereign is actually a Reaper is a good example as well - suddenly, your sense of the entire plot and the stakes involved become completely realigned. Or there's an infamous last sentence in an otherwise not actually very good book called The Weapon Shops of Isher by A.E. van Vogt where the story, which to this point has been a third-person narrative about a heroic human space badass (kind of a proto-Shepard), suddenly ends with the line "This much we know: This is the race which will rule the Sevagram." Bear in mind that that is the first time that word has appeared in the book. It blew a bunch of 1950s kids' heads wide open as they argued about what it could possibly mean: was the story being told to us by a third party within the story? What is the Sevagram? Has someone been watching the hero this whole time?
Basically, the vibe you're going for with conceptual breakthrough is this:
It's a good way to generate the sense of wonder, but it suffers from the usual caveats involving any plot twist - it has to be surprising but feel fair, it can't invalidate what has come before, and so on. There are plenty of bad examples of it, like some of the cheesier Twilight Zone twist endings.
Other writers try to achieve the sense of wonder by sheer scale, often by literally just throwing a big object like a Dyson Sphere or Alderson Disk into the story. Which is cool, I like that crazy stuff as much as the next guy, but the sense of bigness and scale only works for so long, and often the actual stories being told are incredibly prosaic and don't reinforce that sense of bigness at all. Often they involve heroic space marines fighting evil aliens for control of the object.
Other writers try to go for the sense of wonder obliquely, deploying powerful symbols and appealing to the emotions with hints and suggestions rather than actually delivering explanations that can't possibly satisfy. I like this approach a lot, and I think it's part of the reason Dan Simmons' book Hyperion works so well - he used to be a horror writer, so he just sticks a bunch of vivid, memorable imagery in his sci-fi and leaves it to you to guess at the meaning rather than sitting down and going "well, robots and humans hate each other, and..."
very specific, spoilery discussion about the end:
I feel like with ME3 they felt some crazy pressure to deliver a mind-blowing ending and just kind of flailed at a bunch of ideas that hadn't really been given much significance up to that point. The sad thing is I don't think it was necessary! If the crucible had blown up the Reapers, Shepard had sacrificed himself, and there was a cutscene showing geth and quarians living happily together etc etc - if everything had fallen into place exactly as we all kind of expected it would - that would have been basically mission accomplished right there.
There were some moments in the main game of ME3 that did trigger that fantastic, tingling sense of wonder, and ironically they used all three techniques successfully on Thessia:
Learning that the Crucible wasn't a Prothean device but an ongoing project worked on by thousands of races over millions of years was fantastic. That was an example of the sense-of-scale approach actually working, because suddenly you're entrusted with not just a rinkydink Prothean laser but the collected heritage of all life in the galaxy ever.
The Asari were secretly hoarding Prothean knowledge to ensure their preeminence as a species? Wham. That's conceptual breakthrough - a plot twist that makes you reassess everything that's come before, but also makes perfect, seamless sense in context.
The cycles repeat each other down to something as specific as machine uprisings and deluded Reaper collaborators? That's a great example of the less-is-more, oblique approach. It's a suggestive idea that hints tantalizingly at a larger, unfathomable cosmic order behind events without actually explaining anything and ruining the magic.
The ending, though, is like a perfect storm of trying all those things at once and accomplishing none. Conceptual breakthrough: the Catalyst is actually the Citadel, and it's actually alive, and the Reapers are actually working for it? That's plot hopscotch. It's not that it's a bad idea - I firmly believe that there aren't really bad or good ideas so much as appropriate or inappropriate ones - the problem is that it's not suggested, hinted at, or supported anywhere in the text. It comes completely out of left field and doesn't illuminate anything that came before.
Sense of scale: EVERYTHING BLOWS UP. Including everything you had been invested in accomplishing for the previous thirty hours - effectively trading away all the personal, small-scale choices and relationships you'd made in hopes of impressing you with the apocalyptic scale of events. Except we've already gone through one apocalypse and fatigue has set in.
Oblique: it's a ghost kid and he's speaking cryptically and you're not actually going to get any meaty answers about motivation or even just the basic, nuts and bolts mechanics of what's going on. Why does taking choice A do this one thing that doesn't seem to logically follow at all, and taking choice B does this other thing that doesn't seem to logically follow at all? Why are these the choices being offered to us instead of other things? Who knows?
I need to emphasize that I did really, really love the game. I think in many ways it represents the apex and fulfillment of what Bioware have been trying to accomplish with their mode of storytelling since Baldur's Gate. The game was filled with payoff after payoff and made me think and feel. You can't ask for more than that.
In a way, that's kind of the irony here. All the ridiculous hatemongering and bullshit coming from the internet quarters turned out to be just bullshit and hot air. EA didn't ruin ME3: the multiplayer was great, Ashley having her hair down wasn't the end of the world, the DLC character didn't mug me in an alleyway and take my wallet, and the collectible preorder guns did not violate the essence of my being. The problem with ME3 was a problem of writing, straight up. No soulless corporate executive could have asked for that. Just as I give Bioware credit for their successes, the stumble at the end is theirs and theirs alone.
The Paragon and Synthesis endings are Shepard going above and beyond the call of duty for yoomanity and everyone around the galaxy. They are, in and of themselves, the reward.
Renegade? Well, you did exactly what you set out to do. With some collateral damage. So how's a player going to feel rewarded for that compared to the (arguably) better intrinsic rewards of the other two endings?
Well, you can keep your Shep.
Not saying it's valid, but that's probably the line of thinking that led to that.
The only inconsistency there is:
ENDING spoilers
That the Citadel blows up in the destroy ending. Even the best one. So was Shepard teleported back down the surface of the Earth? But during the cutscene prior we saw the explosion engulf him. He's as dead as dead can be, and not in a 'project lazarus can bring him back manner'.
The second he blows up the thing, the explosion takes him out and we see the entire citadel crumble and disintegrate.
Forgetting the philosophical ramifications of the Destroy ending, the physicalalities need explaining. How is Shepard still alive, not why.
Some nonspoilery, very general thoughts on the ending. Prepare for an essay!
The frustrating thing with the ending for me is that it suffers from a problem so common in science fiction that the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction has an entry for it - "sense of wonder." The sense of wonder is the thing that appeals to people about sci-fi when they're young, and it's what a lot of sci-fi writers spend their careers trying to replicate. It's an addictive sensation. The problem is that while trying to blow your mind with the revelation of some heretofore unguessed-at universal truth is an awesome idea for a story, it's hard to just invent transcendent universal truths out of thin air.
Some sci-fi writers cleverly cheat a sense of transcendence into their stories through a dirty trick called "conceptual breakthrough," which is a flavor of plot twist that involves the sudden, shocking realignment of the narrative's perspective, so the story you thought you were reading becomes something else entirely. That moment in Book of the New Sun where the reader finally catches on that the castles and towers are actually old rotting spaceships is a good one - holy shit, this fantasy story is actually science fiction! The bit in ME1 where you find out Sovereign is actually a Reaper is a good example as well - suddenly, your sense of the entire plot and the stakes involved become completely realigned. Or there's an infamous last sentence in an otherwise not actually very good book called The Weapon Shops of Isher by A.E. van Vogt where the story, which to this point has been a third-person narrative about a heroic human space badass (kind of a proto-Shepard), suddenly ends with the line "This much we know: This is the race which will rule the Sevagram." Bear in mind that that is the first time that word has appeared in the book. It blew a bunch of 1950s kids' heads wide open as they argued about what it could possibly mean: was the story being told to us by a third party within the story? What is the Sevagram? Has someone been watching the hero this whole time?
Basically, the vibe you're going for with conceptual breakthrough is this:
It's a good way to generate the sense of wonder, but it suffers from the usual caveats involving any plot twist - it has to be surprising but feel fair, it can't invalidate what has come before, and so on. There are plenty of bad examples of it, like some of the cheesier Twilight Zone twist endings.
Other writers try to achieve the sense of wonder by sheer scale, often by literally just throwing a big object like a Dyson Sphere or Alderson Disk into the story. Which is cool, I like that crazy stuff as much as the next guy, but the sense of bigness and scale only works for so long, and often the actual stories being told are incredibly prosaic and don't reinforce that sense of bigness at all. Often they involve heroic space marines fighting evil aliens for control of the object.
Other writers try to go for the sense of wonder obliquely, deploying powerful symbols and appealing to the emotions with hints and suggestions rather than actually delivering explanations that can't possibly satisfy. I like this approach a lot, and I think it's part of the reason Dan Simmons' book Hyperion works so well - he used to be a horror writer, so he just sticks a bunch of vivid, memorable imagery in his sci-fi and leaves it to you to guess at the meaning rather than sitting down and going "well, robots and humans hate each other, and..."
very specific, spoilery discussion about the end:
I feel like with ME3 they felt some crazy pressure to deliver a mind-blowing ending and just kind of flailed at a bunch of ideas that hadn't really been given much significance up to that point. The sad thing is I don't think it was necessary! If the crucible had blown up the Reapers, Shepard had sacrificed himself, and there was a cutscene showing geth and quarians living happily together etc etc - if everything had fallen into place exactly as we all kind of expected it would - that would have been basically mission accomplished right there.
There were some moments in the main game of ME3 that did trigger that fantastic, tingling sense of wonder, and ironically they used all three techniques successfully on Thessia:
Learning that the Crucible wasn't a Prothean device but an ongoing project worked on by thousands of races over millions of years was fantastic. That was an example of the sense-of-scale approach actually working, because suddenly you're entrusted with not just a rinkydink Prothean laser but the collected heritage of all life in the galaxy ever.
The Asari were secretly hoarding Prothean knowledge to ensure their preeminence as a species? Wham. That's conceptual breakthrough - a plot twist that makes you reassess everything that's come before, but also makes perfect, seamless sense in context.
The cycles repeat each other down to something as specific as machine uprisings and deluded Reaper collaborators? That's a great example of the less-is-more, oblique approach. It's a suggestive idea that hints tantalizingly at a larger, unfathomable cosmic order behind events without actually explaining anything and ruining the magic.
The ending, though, is like a perfect storm of trying all those things at once and accomplishing none. Conceptual breakthrough: the Catalyst is actually the Citadel, and it's actually alive, and the Reapers are actually working for it? That's plot hopscotch. It's not that it's a bad idea - I firmly believe that there aren't really bad or good ideas so much as appropriate or inappropriate ones - the problem is that it's not suggested, hinted at, or supported anywhere in the text. It comes completely out of left field and doesn't illuminate anything that came before.
Sense of scale: EVERYTHING BLOWS UP. Including everything you had been invested in accomplishing for the previous thirty hours - effectively trading away all the personal, small-scale choices and relationships you'd made in hopes of impressing you with the apocalyptic scale of events. Except we've already gone through one apocalypse and fatigue has set in.
Oblique: it's a ghost kid and he's speaking cryptically and you're not actually going to get any meaty answers about motivation or even just the basic, nuts and bolts mechanics of what's going on. Why does taking choice A do this one thing that doesn't seem to logically follow at all, and taking choice B does this other thing that doesn't seem to logically follow at all? Why are these the choices being offered to us instead of other things? Who knows?
I need to emphasize that I did really, really love the game. I think in many ways it represents the apex and fulfillment of what Bioware have been trying to accomplish with their mode of storytelling since Baldur's Gate. The game was filled with payoff after payoff and made me think and feel. You can't ask for more than that.
In a way, that's kind of the irony here. All the ridiculous hatemongering and bullshit coming from the internet quarters turned out to be just bullshit and hot air. EA didn't ruin ME3: the multiplayer was great, Ashley having her hair down wasn't the end of the world, the DLC character didn't mug me in an alleyway and take my wallet, and the collectible preorder guns did not violate the essence of my being. The problem with ME3 was a problem of writing, straight up. No soulless corporate executive could have asked for that. Just as I give Bioware credit for their successes, the stumble at the end is theirs and theirs alone.
You should just report yourself for awesome right now and approve it.
}
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
I didn't get a good look at it, but was that thing at the beginning a yahg?
yes.
they have tons of them there in cages, and one even escapes.
if you bring Garrus and Liara with you, the dialog is pretty funny
I only took Garrus, not Liara, but when that one escapes Shepard says "There goes the next shadow broker!" and Garrus replies "I'm sure I heard him muttering "T'soni" "
I love, love, love all the squad banter in this game.
I didn't get a good look at it, but was that thing at the beginning a yahg?
yes.
they have tons of them there in cages, and one even escapes.
if you bring Garrus and Liara with you, the dialog is pretty funny
I only took Garrus, not Liara, but when that one escapes Shepard says "There goes the next shadow broker!" and Garrus replies "I'm sure I heard him muttering "T'soni" "
I love, love, love all the squad banter in this game.
Sur'Kesh
if you also take Liara, after Garrus says his piece she just says "That's not funny!" and it is just delivered so well
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BugBoyboy.EXE has stopped functioning.only bugs remainRegistered Userregular
I've already said it a few times, but the way that the room is shaped like a conversation wheel, I would fucking love it if, after Catalyst explained the Paragon, Neutral, and Renegade choices and gave you control, you could do a 180 and see that there were Charm and Intimidate options that he didn't mention, which involve killing him and disabling the Reapers remotely, without releasing the Citadel's energy and destroying the relays.
Also, another reason that the Synthesis option is moronic: that's already what the reapers are. They're already a mix of organic and synthetic. That was the shocking plot twist of Mass Effect 2.
the synthesis option isn't moronic, although the ending video to show what it is is stupid.
-The catalyst can't just snap its fingers and make everyone a synthetic/organic hybrid, it had to have the huge fucking machine you spent the entire game building, that no one had been able to build up to that point. That was the goal of the entire game.
- The reapers are an inferior synthetic hybrid, in that they have to collect genetic material and force the process like that, precisely because they do not have the crucible, or the plans for the crucible. The AI sees it as the only way
Synthesis is an interesting choice, and one that changes the paradigm in a fundamental way, rather than delaying the inevitable. People keep saying that the AI was just completely crazy so nothing it says is valid, but synthetics did ultimately always destroy or try to destroy organics (as seen when Javik describes their own synthetic wars), without any Reaper influence at all. Just because you can convince the geth to not wipe you out, doesn't mean another synthetic race wouldn't, or that the geth wouldn't later.
It isn't a decision to be dismissed out of hand, it's just implemented in a dumb way, like the other two options.
edit
also, it's the only ending that ends in a hug so you know it's the best
Langly on
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QuirkyLittleTyrantA Mug Featuring Pichu On A CloudRegistered Userregular
haha uh...dragon age was in part about mages vs templar, that was one of the themes, and mass effect was about organics vs synthetics. Since, you know, the war is between organics and synthetics, the geth are synthetics that fight their creators, shepard becomes a hybrid of synthetic/organic, and legion and edi are major story elements.
Super Mega Ending Spoilers (also some Dragon Age spoilers)
I know mages vs Templars was one of the things Dragon Age was about, but I always thought the whole point was killing all the orcs Darkspawn so that everyone didn't die. Then the second game gave me a more grounded, personal story and the suddenly it basically screamed NO DRAGON AGE IS REALLY ALL ABOUT TEMPLARS AND MAGES and made me choose which side was less stupid. Maybe not. I don't know. Maybe I just have really poor reading comprehension.
And I know ME has the whole synthetic vs organic thing going on in the geth/quarian deal and in the Reapers themselves, but it just always seemed more important that the Reapers were huge assholes who were killing everyone I cared about than the fact they were synthetic.
I'd buy an ending DLC with absolutely no shame. But it has to include a stupid little slideshow or tiny cutscenes about my crew and galactic politics. Because that's what I thought Mass Effect was about - this incredible union of species from all over the galaxy and the people I knew and lived in it. Not some last minute transhumance bullshit.
I didn't get a good look at it, but was that thing at the beginning a yahg?
yes.
they have tons of them there in cages, and one even escapes.
if you bring Garrus and Liara with you, the dialog is pretty funny
I only took Garrus, not Liara, but when that one escapes Shepard says "There goes the next shadow broker!" and Garrus replies "I'm sure I heard him muttering "T'soni" "
I love, love, love all the squad banter in this game.
Sur'Kesh
if you also take Liara, after Garrus says his piece she just says "That's not funny!" and it is just delivered so well
Sur'Kesh
EDI says, "I don't think Liara would find that funny."
I really want to use different people, but I can't get away from bringing the Prothean and EDI to every mission (I am a soldier). The mix of powers is perfect, and, damn, they have good banter. The Prothean has such interesting things to say about everything. Brought him along on the rachni quest last night, and he reiterated over and over how dangerous the rachni were, even in his cycle.
Sense of scale: EVERYTHING BLOWS UP. Including everything you had been invested in accomplishing for the previous thirty hours - effectively trading away all the personal, small-scale choices and relationships you'd made in hopes of impressing you with the apocalyptic scale of events. Except we've already gone through one apocalypse and fatigue has set in.
"Conflict escalation" is a big problem in SF. The modern Doctor Who was awful for it. Save England! Save the planet! Save the galaxy! SAVE THE TOTALITY OF REALITY. Go away already.
You've utterly nailed my biggest issue with it; that resorting to THE STATUS QUO HAS EXPLODED is a cheap attempt at dramatic escalation at the best of times and outright terrible in the specific terms of the Mass Effect series. The culmination of all your little choices and actions in prior titles, and recent ones in the third game itself... how do we process them now? How do we parse the unification of the geth and quarians, how do we look at the curing of the genophage in this fresh new context of abject technological destruction/inexplicable synthetic-organic fusion?
Thematically, I always took Mass Effect to have more than a little cosmic horror to it. Except that cosmic horror runs slap-bang into the indomitable human (...sorry, sapient) spirit. That we are nothing before these abominable forces, but one (wo)man straight up did not give a fuck and did everything in their power to resist them. And (s)he believes so firmly in the cause that it even affects change in the mindsets of others.
Shepard tells Miranda in ME2 that her spirit is hers; her resolve, her values are her own and fuck-all to do with her father's genetic modification. Yes, I thought, this is what Mass Effect is all about. Shepard is a mere human but it's his drive and willpower that sets him above the nihilism inherent to a story that deals with an unstoppable, repeating cataclysm. The series, I thought, is all about hope. The triumph of will. The abject refusal to sit back and accept "fate".
Turns out... nah. I had it all wrong.
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UnbrokenEvaHIGH ON THE WIREBUT I WON'T TRIP ITRegistered Userregular
first mission of the endgame spoiler, background data from a video feed:
The origins of EDI videos from the Cerberus base. "After our last attempt, EDI flooded our server with seven zettabytes of explicit images. I think she was making a joke."
Sense of scale: EVERYTHING BLOWS UP. Including everything you had been invested in accomplishing for the previous thirty hours - effectively trading away all the personal, small-scale choices and relationships you'd made in hopes of impressing you with the apocalyptic scale of events. Except we've already gone through one apocalypse and fatigue has set in.
"Conflict escalation" is a big problem in SF. The modern Doctor Who was awful for it. Save England! Save the planet! Save the galaxy! SAVE THE TOTALITY OF REALITY. Go away already.
You've utterly nailed my biggest issue with it; that resorting to THE STATUS QUO HAS EXPLODED is a cheap attempt at dramatic escalation at the best of times and outright terrible in the specific terms of the Mass Effect series. The culmination of all your little choices and actions in prior titles, and recent ones in the third game itself... how do we process them now? How do we parse the unification of the geth and quarians, how do we look at the curing of the genophage in this fresh new context of abject technological destruction/inexplicable synthetic-organic fusion?
Thematically, I always took Mass Effect to have more than a little cosmic horror to it. Except that cosmic horror runs slap-bang into the indomitable human (...sorry, sapient) spirit. That we are nothing before these abominable forces, but one (wo)man straight up did not give a fuck and did everything in their power to resist them. And (s)he believes so firmly in the cause that it even affects change in the mindsets of others.
Shepard tells Miranda in ME2 that her spirit is hers; her resolve, her values are her own and fuck-all to do with her father's genetic modification. Yes, I thought, this is what Mass Effect is all about. Shepard is a mere human but it's his drive and willpower that sets him above the nihilism inherent to a story that deals with an unstoppable, repeating cataclysm. The series, I thought, is all about hope. The triumph of will. The abject refusal to sit back and accept "fate".
Turns out... nah. I had it all wrong.
You're precisely right:
ENDING spoilers
Mass Effect as a series is about self-determination. The Geth just want to choose their own fate, they don't need the Reapers to give it to them. The Krogan want to build a future of their own, free from the control of the genophage. Time and time again, the game reinforces the idea that you are what you make of yourself. That Shepard can decide what his fate will be, no-one else. It's not just thematic, its mechanical. The new reputation system reinforces this idea, that you can choose.
And the ending takes away choice. Even though it is a choice, it's not allowing you to determine your own fate. It is three different flavours of the same decision. The fate of the galaxy has been taken out of your hands and put into the God-like power of the Catalyst.
The third option should not have been synthesis. The third option should have been 'screw your false dichotomy, we don't need you to give us a get out of jail free card, we can decide our own future' and then let the fleets battle it out without any assistance, letting your war assets and galactic readiness decide your end.
Having a deus ex machina in a literal sense be the solution to all of your problems invalidates the hard work you put into the decisions you made. Forget the fact that so much changes in the final moments that all the major conflicts are rendered almost moot by the destruction of the relays, but they're rendered pointless because you're not deciding the fate of the galaxy. You're letting someone else decide and then picking whichever one you most agree with.
Sense of scale: EVERYTHING BLOWS UP. Including everything you had been invested in accomplishing for the previous thirty hours - effectively trading away all the personal, small-scale choices and relationships you'd made in hopes of impressing you with the apocalyptic scale of events. Except we've already gone through one apocalypse and fatigue has set in.
"Conflict escalation" is a big problem in SF. The modern Doctor Who was awful for it. Save England! Save the planet! Save the galaxy! SAVE THE TOTALITY OF REALITY. Go away already.
You've utterly nailed my biggest issue with it; that resorting to THE STATUS QUO HAS EXPLODED is a cheap attempt at dramatic escalation at the best of times and outright terrible in the specific terms of the Mass Effect series. The culmination of all your little choices and actions in prior titles, and recent ones in the third game itself... how do we process them now? How do we parse the unification of the geth and quarians, how do we look at the curing of the genophage in this fresh new context of abject technological destruction/inexplicable synthetic-organic fusion?
Thematically, I always took Mass Effect to have more than a little cosmic horror to it. Except that cosmic horror runs slap-bang into the indomitable human (...sorry, sapient) spirit. That we are nothing before these abominable forces, but one (wo)man straight up did not give a fuck and did everything in their power to resist them. And (s)he believes so firmly in the cause that it even affects change in the mindsets of others.
Shepard tells Miranda in ME2 that her spirit is hers; her resolve, her values are her own and fuck-all to do with her father's genetic modification. Yes, I thought, this is what Mass Effect is all about. Shepard is a mere human but it's his drive and willpower that sets him above the nihilism inherent to a story that deals with an unstoppable, repeating cataclysm. The series, I thought, is all about hope. The triumph of will. The abject refusal to sit back and accept "fate".
Turns out... nah. I had it all wrong.
You're precisely right:
ENDING spoilers
Mass Effect as a series is about self-determination. The Geth just want to choose their own fate, they don't need the Reapers to give it to them. The Krogan want to build a future of their own, free from the control of the genophage. Time and time again, the game reinforces the idea that you are what you make of yourself. That Shepard can decide what his fate will be, no-one else. It's not just thematic, its mechanical. The new reputation system reinforces this idea, that you can choose.
And the ending takes away choice. Even though it is a choice, it's not allowing you to determine your own fate. It is three different flavours of the same decision. The fate of the galaxy has been taken out of your hands and put into the God-like power of the Catalyst.
The third option should not have been synthesis. The third option should have been 'screw your false dichotomy, we don't need you to give us a get out of jail free card, we can decide our own future' and then let the fleets battle it out without any assistance, letting your war assets and galactic readiness decide your end.
Having a deus ex machina in a literal sense be the solution to all of your problems invalidates the hard work you put into the decisions you made. Forget the fact that so much changes in the final moments that all the major conflicts are rendered almost moot by the destruction of the relays, but they're rendered pointless because you're not deciding the fate of the galaxy. You're letting someone else decide and then picking whichever one you most agree with.
The worst part, if the ending had been exactly the same, but removed everything involving the Catalyst, it would have been exactly that.. Until the Catalyst, it was a really good ending
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Olivawgood name, isn't it?the foot of mt fujiRegistered Userregular
Sense of scale: EVERYTHING BLOWS UP. Including everything you had been invested in accomplishing for the previous thirty hours - effectively trading away all the personal, small-scale choices and relationships you'd made in hopes of impressing you with the apocalyptic scale of events. Except we've already gone through one apocalypse and fatigue has set in.
"Conflict escalation" is a big problem in SF. The modern Doctor Who was awful for it. Save England! Save the planet! Save the galaxy! SAVE THE TOTALITY OF REALITY. Go away already.
You've utterly nailed my biggest issue with it; that resorting to THE STATUS QUO HAS EXPLODED is a cheap attempt at dramatic escalation at the best of times and outright terrible in the specific terms of the Mass Effect series. The culmination of all your little choices and actions in prior titles, and recent ones in the third game itself... how do we process them now? How do we parse the unification of the geth and quarians, how do we look at the curing of the genophage in this fresh new context of abject technological destruction/inexplicable synthetic-organic fusion?
Thematically, I always took Mass Effect to have more than a little cosmic horror to it. Except that cosmic horror runs slap-bang into the indomitable human (...sorry, sapient) spirit. That we are nothing before these abominable forces, but one (wo)man straight up did not give a fuck and did everything in their power to resist them. And (s)he believes so firmly in the cause that it even affects change in the mindsets of others.
Shepard tells Miranda in ME2 that her spirit is hers; her resolve, her values are her own and fuck-all to do with her father's genetic modification. Yes, I thought, this is what Mass Effect is all about. Shepard is a mere human but it's his drive and willpower that sets him above the nihilism inherent to a story that deals with an unstoppable, repeating cataclysm. The series, I thought, is all about hope. The triumph of will. The abject refusal to sit back and accept "fate".
One request: if you all are talking about ending stuff, could you practice the phrases "I heard" or "I bet" and then use them any time you feel tempted to say "Tacky said"?
Based on important people looking perplexed Thursday and harried Friday, I suspect this one is going to get political, which means I reeeeeally need to be saying absolutely nothing in public.
I don't mind the Catalyst as a concept, but I may have a higher tolerance for that kind of thing than a lot of other people do. And I certainly don't believe that "nothing I did in this game maters because of the Catalyst" is a necessarily valid complaint. All those sacrifices you made, everything that you do along the way is building to you making that final push.
I do wish, that if we were going to talk to the Catalyst, that there would be more things to say. He talks about you being the first organic to make it that far, and how that changes things, but I wish you could point to EDI and the Geth as examples of why the SYNTHETICS WILL ALWAYS REBEL line of thinking is flawed. I ended up choosing the cyborg option in the end, because I didn't trust the "control the reapers" option and I didn't believe that the DESTROY EVERYTHING ending was fair to the Geth or EDI.
I'm glad I finished it, so at least now I can read the criticism and understand some of the consternation. And I'm definitely not going to try and convince anyone that they're wrong and that it's a fantastic ending.
I don't think, however, that everything that you did in the games is in any way negated by the Catalyst.
I don't mind the Catalyst as a concept, but I may have a higher tolerance for that kind of thing than a lot of other people do. And I certainly don't believe that "nothing I did in this game maters because of the Catalyst" is a necessarily valid complaint. All those sacrifices you made, everything that you do along the way is building to you making that final push.
I do wish, that if we were going to talk to the Catalyst, that there would be more things to say. He talks about you being the first organic to make it that far, and how that changes things, but I wish you could point to EDI and the Geth as examples of why the SYNTHETICS WILL ALWAYS REBEL line of thinking is flawed. I ended up choosing the cyborg option in the end, because I didn't trust the "control the reapers" option and I didn't believe that the DESTROY EVERYTHING ending was fair to the Geth or EDI.
I'm glad I finished it, so at least now I can read the criticism and understand some of the consternation. And I'm definitely not going to try and convince anyone that they're wrong and that it's a fantastic ending.
I don't think, however, that everything that you did in the games is in any way negated by the Catalyst.
Well, I think a lot of what you did is negated by the aftermath of using the Crucible. Destroying the Mass Relays essentially segregated each cluster that was linked by a Relay, since so many fuel sources were destroyed by the Reapers, and travel between arms of the galaxy now takes years or decades, even through conventional FTL travel. So it's hard to say 'fuck yeah cured the genophage!' when most of the incentive for the player to cure the genophage has to do with Wrex and Eve, who, concerning Wrex, is at best, on Earth, and at worst, really dead. The Quarians/Geth I'm a little less concerned about. It's just weird to make these decisions that impact the entire future of an entire galaxy, then effectively making the galaxy a much smaller place.
Especially since the relays are destroyed so matter what you do. I mean, I guess it's possible with the Prothean VI on Thessia or the Archives on Mars to rebuild them, since the Protheans HAD figured out how they worked and built one of their own
Sense of scale: EVERYTHING BLOWS UP. Including everything you had been invested in accomplishing for the previous thirty hours - effectively trading away all the personal, small-scale choices and relationships you'd made in hopes of impressing you with the apocalyptic scale of events. Except we've already gone through one apocalypse and fatigue has set in.
"Conflict escalation" is a big problem in SF. The modern Doctor Who was awful for it. Save England! Save the planet! Save the galaxy! SAVE THE TOTALITY OF REALITY. Go away already.
You've utterly nailed my biggest issue with it; that resorting to THE STATUS QUO HAS EXPLODED is a cheap attempt at dramatic escalation at the best of times and outright terrible in the specific terms of the Mass Effect series. The culmination of all your little choices and actions in prior titles, and recent ones in the third game itself... how do we process them now? How do we parse the unification of the geth and quarians, how do we look at the curing of the genophage in this fresh new context of abject technological destruction/inexplicable synthetic-organic fusion?
Thematically, I always took Mass Effect to have more than a little cosmic horror to it. Except that cosmic horror runs slap-bang into the indomitable human (...sorry, sapient) spirit. That we are nothing before these abominable forces, but one (wo)man straight up did not give a fuck and did everything in their power to resist them. And (s)he believes so firmly in the cause that it even affects change in the mindsets of others.
Shepard tells Miranda in ME2 that her spirit is hers; her resolve, her values are her own and fuck-all to do with her father's genetic modification. Yes, I thought, this is what Mass Effect is all about. Shepard is a mere human but it's his drive and willpower that sets him above the nihilism inherent to a story that deals with an unstoppable, repeating cataclysm. The series, I thought, is all about hope. The triumph of will. The abject refusal to sit back and accept "fate".
Turns out... nah. I had it all wrong.
You're precisely right:
ENDING spoilers
Mass Effect as a series is about self-determination. The Geth just want to choose their own fate, they don't need the Reapers to give it to them. The Krogan want to build a future of their own, free from the control of the genophage. Time and time again, the game reinforces the idea that you are what you make of yourself. That Shepard can decide what his fate will be, no-one else. It's not just thematic, its mechanical. The new reputation system reinforces this idea, that you can choose.
And the ending takes away choice. Even though it is a choice, it's not allowing you to determine your own fate. It is three different flavours of the same decision. The fate of the galaxy has been taken out of your hands and put into the God-like power of the Catalyst.
The third option should not have been synthesis. The third option should have been 'screw your false dichotomy, we don't need you to give us a get out of jail free card, we can decide our own future' and then let the fleets battle it out without any assistance, letting your war assets and galactic readiness decide your end.
Having a deus ex machina in a literal sense be the solution to all of your problems invalidates the hard work you put into the decisions you made. Forget the fact that so much changes in the final moments that all the major conflicts are rendered almost moot by the destruction of the relays, but they're rendered pointless because you're not deciding the fate of the galaxy. You're letting someone else decide and then picking whichever one you most agree with.
The worst part, if the ending had been exactly the same, but removed everything involving the Catalyst, it would have been exactly that.. Until the Catalyst, it was a really good ending
Seriously this.
ENDING spoilers
If the Crucible had just been a conventional weapon, that when activated destroys the Reapers. The ending would have been legitimately perfect. Shepard and Anderson lie back, mission completed. Father and son/daughter, having earned their rest after years of strife.
If they wanted to leave it open ended for a continuation of the series, then that accomplishes that. All the alliances and decisions you made in the game have radical changes on the galactic community. There are enough hooks there to do anything you wanted. It's completely uncertain. That's the point. With the Reapers destroyed, the cycle broken, the future is not written. The galaxy has a chance to determine its own fate for once.
You don't even need to do a big montage to wrap it up. The briefest of shots of, say, Garrus looking up at the Citadel exploding, knowing that Shepard has died to save the galaxy. That's enough. That is the emotional high point and a tremendously satisfying conclusion.
Why, why why why was the scene after that added in? Did they honestly think the fanbase wanted a three-choice ending like Deus Ex. That we'd be annoyed with a railroaded set ending? No! We'de have loved that. But the entire Godchild sequence adds confusion and uncertainty to a story that needed neither.
Nobody wanted the Reapers fully explained. Just as we don't need to know how Anakin became Darth Vader. Less is more and BioWare kept adding.
I will say that most of these choices were no brainers to me. Not that I don't see how they would be difficult, but given who my Shepard is, and given how I think...I feel I made the best decisions I could.
General game spoilers (like, all of it)
I cured the Genophage, even though I really valued the Salarians as allies, because, well...because of Wrex and Eve. Is it foolproof? No. But if I'm going to take a chance, I'm going to take a chance on giving a species a shot at redemption.
And on Rannoch, well, after seeing how the Geth rebellion went down, and after talking to Legion and Tali, peace seemed like the only solution. And when I had the chance to seize that, I took it. Both options cost me friends, but I feel like they left the galaxy a better place.
the only thing I really don't like about this game is kei leng
don't even know if that's how you spell his first name but that motherfucker is boring as hell
i am a badass unstoppable assassin you guys check out my sweet shades, monotone and ninja sword
and then they try to paint him as this guy that might be better than shepard
fuuuuuuuuuck that
I looooooved how he seemed to have this huge rivalry going with Shepard, and Shepard hardly even seems aware of it.
It just seemed so perfect to have KL totally gunning for Shepard to prove he's "the better man" or whatever, and Shepard always just thinks of him as another Cerberus assassin.
the only thing I really don't like about this game is kei leng
don't even know if that's how you spell his first name but that motherfucker is boring as hell
i am a badass unstoppable assassin you guys check out my sweet shades, monotone and ninja sword
and then they try to paint him as this guy that might be better than shepard
fuuuuuuuuuck that
I looooooved how he seemed to have this huge rivalry going with Shepard, and Shepard hardly even seems aware of it.
It just seemed so perfect to have KL totally gunning for Shepard to prove he's "the better man" or whatever, and Shepard always just thinks of him as another Cerberus assassin.
I wish that were the case but shep was always all LEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEENG and then miranda was all WATCH OUT FOR HIM OHMYGOD HE'S SO TOUGH
was worth it for thane's sick deathbed burn I guess
and the renegade interrupt when he tries to kill you at the end
fool bringin' swords to a fistfight
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Olivawgood name, isn't it?the foot of mt fujiRegistered Userregular
the only thing I really don't like about this game is kei leng
don't even know if that's how you spell his first name but that motherfucker is boring as hell
i am a badass unstoppable assassin you guys check out my sweet shades, monotone and ninja sword
and then they try to paint him as this guy that might be better than shepard
fuuuuuuuuuck that
I looooooved how he seemed to have this huge rivalry going with Shepard, and Shepard hardly even seems aware of it.
It just seemed so perfect to have KL totally gunning for Shepard to prove he's "the better man" or whatever, and Shepard always just thinks of him as another Cerberus assassin.
I wish that were the case but shep was always all LEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEENG and then miranda was all WATCH OUT FOR HIM OHMYGOD HE'S SO TOUGH
was worth it for thane's sick deathbed burn I guess
and the renegade interrupt when he tries to kill you at the end
fool bringin' swords to a fistfight
It did kind of bother me the way they built him up as a threat, simply by everyone telling you 'WATCH OUT THAT GUY HE'S SUCH A THREAT'
I don't think, however, that everything that you did in the games is in any way negated by the Catalyst.
Negated? No, I agree. Although I guess it depends on your application of the word.
It's a gigantic game-changer, no pun intended. Your experiences are not discounted, they are not eliminated and erased from your memory just because the closing events are... meh. Enjoyment of prior story events is separate. My fondness for the recruit-gathering for ME2's suicide mission remains unharmed and intact. But it does change the context of everything that came before, and that is no small quibble in terms of the finale of a trilogy lauded for its continuity. Negated? Maybe not. Diluted, perhaps. A connection is lessened (if not severed) because your understanding of the situation is now entirely removed from your initial choices. I wanted to examine past triumphs as a sum of all actions, seeing the end results of my Shep's approach, and instead those moments are trapped in vacuum lest I release them into the updated future of ME3 and realise... I'm no closer to seeing how things turn out.
While that kind of thing can be clever and thought-provoking, not here. It's completely out of left field and I can't help feeling it's utterly unnecessary. Where was Harbinger? Why wasn't there anything equivalent to the first game's Sovereign conversation? Who thought it was a great idea for a goddamn ghost kid to tell Shepard how shit was going to go down, like it or lump it?
I was honestly expecting something like ME2's closing choices: the default outcome has people dying, but a completionist playthrough would grant the equivalent of everyone surviving the suicide mission; no one emerges unscathed, but there's minimal allied casualties. That you, Shepard, made choices regarding what fleet/army did what, and the galaxy deploys the Deus Ex Machina on their own terms and wipes out the Reapers.
In the end all my choices just added to my war assets score. And that was it. They were reduced to a number. There was no loyal Jack maintaining a barrier where lesser biotics would falter, there was no Garrus leading a parallel assault and keeping me updated with radio chatter. Instead all the decisions come in the meat of the game itself, and the ending proper is hollow and strangely disconnected from everything that came before; not just the third game's events, but those of the prior two titles as well.
So negated? No, of course not. But left hanging? Yeah. Those story threads are all dangling, isolated and alone with no closure, because now they're being considered in the wider setting of a completely different galaxy.
Edcrab on
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Olivawgood name, isn't it?the foot of mt fujiRegistered Userregular
Why, why why why was the scene after that added in? Did they honestly think the fanbase wanted a three-choice ending like Deus Ex. That we'd be annoyed with a railroaded set ending?
No! We'de have loved that. But the entire Godchild sequence adds confusion and uncertainty to a story that needed neither.
More Ending Comments
One thing I always loved about this series is that the "morality" system is not Good/Evil. Paragon and Renegade Shep still want the same thing: to save the galaxy. It's just how you go about doing it, and how the galaxy will look when you're done.
ME1 and ME2 had railroaded endings. Things will look different depending on your Shep. There is no reason that this game needed to end in a choice. A railroaded ending based on your decisions and your Military Resources would have not only been accepted, it probably would have been praised.
The thing that makes it so bad is that we had our railroad ending, but it overshot. It should have just had an ending sequence play based on your decisions. A total fail run ending, and an ending that shows shots of the planets/races you helped/didn't help.
When I beat 1 and 2, I immediately went back to them to see how things would be different. With this one, I won't bother. Which is interesting, because with the other two "railroad endings" I can't change how it ends, but it feels like it's different.
Fighting for a galaxy and failing to save it is different than fighting for a galaxy and then having none of that fighting matter. Showing Shep's impact on it is the only way I can think of that would be a universally accepted send-off.
All the ending discussion honestly pains me. I want to talk about all the awesome moments. This game made me feel things; I can't listen to "Leaving Earth" without being sad/shuddering.
JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
Generally speaking, I try to avoid the "Mass Effect is about X" line of thinking because X is so wildly variable. It can be an inspirational story of one hero who refuses to compromise his ethics in the face of extinction and beats the odds to prove that trust and diversity win the day, or it can be about a violent cynic who imposes her will on the universe through sheer bloody-minded viciousness.
But I will say that I never in a million years would have guessed it was about
ending spoilers
human and robot are doomed to fight forever!
We literally are told that just as we're finishing a game where, regardless of our choices, an AI is dating our pilot and where we learn that the Geth bent over backwards not to hurt the Quarians until they were backed into a corner.
But the real problem is that it's not about anything. It's a made-up conflict about made-up things. "How much are you willing to sacrifice for sheer survival?" is a theme. It's not a direct allegory for anything most of us are likely to encounter in our workaday lives, but it's a worthwhile, human question to ask and that is asked periodically throughout our history. "How do you make peace between man and robot?" is not.
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it'd be fine if there was a fuel depot in every system with a mass relay like in ME2
also I'm still bowled over by how cool it is that David recognizes EDI if you bring her to grissom
speaking of grissom, jack is great
and it's awesome
Some sci-fi writers cleverly cheat a sense of transcendence into their stories through a dirty trick called "conceptual breakthrough," which is a flavor of plot twist that involves the sudden, shocking realignment of the narrative's perspective, so the story you thought you were reading becomes something else entirely. That moment in Book of the New Sun where the reader finally catches on that the castles and towers are actually old rotting spaceships is a good one - holy shit, this fantasy story is actually science fiction! The bit in ME1 where you find out Sovereign is actually a Reaper is a good example as well - suddenly, your sense of the entire plot and the stakes involved become completely realigned. Or there's an infamous last sentence in an otherwise not actually very good book called The Weapon Shops of Isher by A.E. van Vogt where the story, which to this point has been a third-person narrative about a heroic human space badass (kind of a proto-Shepard), suddenly ends with the line "This much we know: This is the race which will rule the Sevagram." Bear in mind that that is the first time that word has appeared in the book. It blew a bunch of 1950s kids' heads wide open as they argued about what it could possibly mean: was the story being told to us by a third party within the story? What is the Sevagram? Has someone been watching the hero this whole time?
Basically, the vibe you're going for with conceptual breakthrough is this:
It's a good way to generate the sense of wonder, but it suffers from the usual caveats involving any plot twist - it has to be surprising but feel fair, it can't invalidate what has come before, and so on. There are plenty of bad examples of it, like some of the cheesier Twilight Zone twist endings.
Other writers try to achieve the sense of wonder by sheer scale, often by literally just throwing a big object like a Dyson Sphere or Alderson Disk into the story. Which is cool, I like that crazy stuff as much as the next guy, but the sense of bigness and scale only works for so long, and often the actual stories being told are incredibly prosaic and don't reinforce that sense of bigness at all. Often they involve heroic space marines fighting evil aliens for control of the object.
Other writers try to go for the sense of wonder obliquely, deploying powerful symbols and appealing to the emotions with hints and suggestions rather than actually delivering explanations that can't possibly satisfy. I like this approach a lot, and I think it's part of the reason Dan Simmons' book Hyperion works so well - he used to be a horror writer, so he just sticks a bunch of vivid, memorable imagery in his sci-fi and leaves it to you to guess at the meaning rather than sitting down and going "well, robots and humans hate each other, and..."
very specific, spoilery discussion about the end:
There were some moments in the main game of ME3 that did trigger that fantastic, tingling sense of wonder, and ironically they used all three techniques successfully on Thessia:
Learning that the Crucible wasn't a Prothean device but an ongoing project worked on by thousands of races over millions of years was fantastic. That was an example of the sense-of-scale approach actually working, because suddenly you're entrusted with not just a rinkydink Prothean laser but the collected heritage of all life in the galaxy ever.
The Asari were secretly hoarding Prothean knowledge to ensure their preeminence as a species? Wham. That's conceptual breakthrough - a plot twist that makes you reassess everything that's come before, but also makes perfect, seamless sense in context.
The cycles repeat each other down to something as specific as machine uprisings and deluded Reaper collaborators? That's a great example of the less-is-more, oblique approach. It's a suggestive idea that hints tantalizingly at a larger, unfathomable cosmic order behind events without actually explaining anything and ruining the magic.
The ending, though, is like a perfect storm of trying all those things at once and accomplishing none. Conceptual breakthrough: the Catalyst is actually the Citadel, and it's actually alive, and the Reapers are actually working for it? That's plot hopscotch. It's not that it's a bad idea - I firmly believe that there aren't really bad or good ideas so much as appropriate or inappropriate ones - the problem is that it's not suggested, hinted at, or supported anywhere in the text. It comes completely out of left field and doesn't illuminate anything that came before.
Sense of scale: EVERYTHING BLOWS UP. Including everything you had been invested in accomplishing for the previous thirty hours - effectively trading away all the personal, small-scale choices and relationships you'd made in hopes of impressing you with the apocalyptic scale of events. Except we've already gone through one apocalypse and fatigue has set in.
Oblique: it's a ghost kid and he's speaking cryptically and you're not actually going to get any meaty answers about motivation or even just the basic, nuts and bolts mechanics of what's going on. Why does taking choice A do this one thing that doesn't seem to logically follow at all, and taking choice B does this other thing that doesn't seem to logically follow at all? Why are these the choices being offered to us instead of other things? Who knows?
I need to emphasize that I did really, really love the game. I think in many ways it represents the apex and fulfillment of what Bioware have been trying to accomplish with their mode of storytelling since Baldur's Gate. The game was filled with payoff after payoff and made me think and feel. You can't ask for more than that.
In a way, that's kind of the irony here. All the ridiculous hatemongering and bullshit coming from the internet quarters turned out to be just bullshit and hot air. EA didn't ruin ME3: the multiplayer was great, Ashley having her hair down wasn't the end of the world, the DLC character didn't mug me in an alleyway and take my wallet, and the collectible preorder guns did not violate the essence of my being. The problem with ME3 was a problem of writing, straight up. No soulless corporate executive could have asked for that. Just as I give Bioware credit for their successes, the stumble at the end is theirs and theirs alone.
Well, yeah, the how is still dumb.
yes.
if you bring Garrus and Liara with you, the dialog is pretty funny
You should just report yourself for awesome right now and approve it.
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
this is the one I mean
I love, love, love all the squad banter in this game.
Sur'Kesh
all I need is this one shotgun
-The catalyst can't just snap its fingers and make everyone a synthetic/organic hybrid, it had to have the huge fucking machine you spent the entire game building, that no one had been able to build up to that point. That was the goal of the entire game.
- The reapers are an inferior synthetic hybrid, in that they have to collect genetic material and force the process like that, precisely because they do not have the crucible, or the plans for the crucible. The AI sees it as the only way
Synthesis is an interesting choice, and one that changes the paradigm in a fundamental way, rather than delaying the inevitable. People keep saying that the AI was just completely crazy so nothing it says is valid, but synthetics did ultimately always destroy or try to destroy organics (as seen when Javik describes their own synthetic wars), without any Reaper influence at all. Just because you can convince the geth to not wipe you out, doesn't mean another synthetic race wouldn't, or that the geth wouldn't later.
It isn't a decision to be dismissed out of hand, it's just implemented in a dumb way, like the other two options.
edit
Super Mega Ending Spoilers (also some Dragon Age spoilers)
And I know ME has the whole synthetic vs organic thing going on in the geth/quarian deal and in the Reapers themselves, but it just always seemed more important that the Reapers were huge assholes who were killing everyone I cared about than the fact they were synthetic.
I'd buy an ending DLC with absolutely no shame. But it has to include a stupid little slideshow or tiny cutscenes about my crew and galactic politics. Because that's what I thought Mass Effect was about - this incredible union of species from all over the galaxy and the people I knew and lived in it. Not some last minute transhumance bullshit.
Steam: ZappRowsdower
Sur'Kesh
You've utterly nailed my biggest issue with it; that resorting to THE STATUS QUO HAS EXPLODED is a cheap attempt at dramatic escalation at the best of times and outright terrible in the specific terms of the Mass Effect series. The culmination of all your little choices and actions in prior titles, and recent ones in the third game itself... how do we process them now? How do we parse the unification of the geth and quarians, how do we look at the curing of the genophage in this fresh new context of abject technological destruction/inexplicable synthetic-organic fusion?
Thematically, I always took Mass Effect to have more than a little cosmic horror to it. Except that cosmic horror runs slap-bang into the indomitable human (...sorry, sapient) spirit. That we are nothing before these abominable forces, but one (wo)man straight up did not give a fuck and did everything in their power to resist them. And (s)he believes so firmly in the cause that it even affects change in the mindsets of others.
Shepard tells Miranda in ME2 that her spirit is hers; her resolve, her values are her own and fuck-all to do with her father's genetic modification. Yes, I thought, this is what Mass Effect is all about. Shepard is a mere human but it's his drive and willpower that sets him above the nihilism inherent to a story that deals with an unstoppable, repeating cataclysm. The series, I thought, is all about hope. The triumph of will. The abject refusal to sit back and accept "fate".
Turns out... nah. I had it all wrong.
You're precisely right:
ENDING spoilers
And the ending takes away choice. Even though it is a choice, it's not allowing you to determine your own fate. It is three different flavours of the same decision. The fate of the galaxy has been taken out of your hands and put into the God-like power of the Catalyst.
The third option should not have been synthesis. The third option should have been 'screw your false dichotomy, we don't need you to give us a get out of jail free card, we can decide our own future' and then let the fleets battle it out without any assistance, letting your war assets and galactic readiness decide your end.
Having a deus ex machina in a literal sense be the solution to all of your problems invalidates the hard work you put into the decisions you made. Forget the fact that so much changes in the final moments that all the major conflicts are rendered almost moot by the destruction of the relays, but they're rendered pointless because you're not deciding the fate of the galaxy. You're letting someone else decide and then picking whichever one you most agree with.
I love this post and I love jacob's post
These posts are the best posts
I want to show them to Casey Hudson
SEE? SEE? I'll say to him
PSN ID : DetectiveOlivaw | TWITTER | STEAM ID | NEVER FORGET
Based on important people looking perplexed Thursday and harried Friday, I suspect this one is going to get political, which means I reeeeeally need to be saying absolutely nothing in public.
I do wish, that if we were going to talk to the Catalyst, that there would be more things to say. He talks about you being the first organic to make it that far, and how that changes things, but I wish you could point to EDI and the Geth as examples of why the SYNTHETICS WILL ALWAYS REBEL line of thinking is flawed. I ended up choosing the cyborg option in the end, because I didn't trust the "control the reapers" option and I didn't believe that the DESTROY EVERYTHING ending was fair to the Geth or EDI.
I'm glad I finished it, so at least now I can read the criticism and understand some of the consternation. And I'm definitely not going to try and convince anyone that they're wrong and that it's a fantastic ending.
I don't think, however, that everything that you did in the games is in any way negated by the Catalyst.
But I'll go back and check
PSN ID : DetectiveOlivaw | TWITTER | STEAM ID | NEVER FORGET
Especially since the relays are destroyed so matter what you do. I mean, I guess it's possible with the Prothean VI on Thessia or the Archives on Mars to rebuild them, since the Protheans HAD figured out how they worked and built one of their own
Thanks, sorry, lack of clarity on my end: less worried about posts on a messgeboard than actually saying something on a podcast.
Seriously this.
ENDING spoilers
If they wanted to leave it open ended for a continuation of the series, then that accomplishes that. All the alliances and decisions you made in the game have radical changes on the galactic community. There are enough hooks there to do anything you wanted. It's completely uncertain. That's the point. With the Reapers destroyed, the cycle broken, the future is not written. The galaxy has a chance to determine its own fate for once.
You don't even need to do a big montage to wrap it up. The briefest of shots of, say, Garrus looking up at the Citadel exploding, knowing that Shepard has died to save the galaxy. That's enough. That is the emotional high point and a tremendously satisfying conclusion.
Why, why why why was the scene after that added in? Did they honestly think the fanbase wanted a three-choice ending like Deus Ex. That we'd be annoyed with a railroaded set ending? No! We'de have loved that. But the entire Godchild sequence adds confusion and uncertainty to a story that needed neither.
Nobody wanted the Reapers fully explained. Just as we don't need to know how Anakin became Darth Vader. Less is more and BioWare kept adding.
General game spoilers (like, all of it)
And on Rannoch, well, after seeing how the Geth rebellion went down, and after talking to Legion and Tali, peace seemed like the only solution. And when I had the chance to seize that, I took it. Both options cost me friends, but I feel like they left the galaxy a better place.
don't even know if that's how you spell his first name but that motherfucker is boring as hell
and then they try to paint him as this guy that might be better than shepard
fuuuuuuuuuck that
It just seemed so perfect to have KL totally gunning for Shepard to prove he's "the better man" or whatever, and Shepard always just thinks of him as another Cerberus assassin.
was worth it for thane's sick deathbed burn I guess
and the renegade interrupt when he tries to kill you at the end
fool bringin' swords to a fistfight
Oh okay, got it
Consider it done
PSN ID : DetectiveOlivaw | TWITTER | STEAM ID | NEVER FORGET
It's a gigantic game-changer, no pun intended. Your experiences are not discounted, they are not eliminated and erased from your memory just because the closing events are... meh. Enjoyment of prior story events is separate. My fondness for the recruit-gathering for ME2's suicide mission remains unharmed and intact. But it does change the context of everything that came before, and that is no small quibble in terms of the finale of a trilogy lauded for its continuity. Negated? Maybe not. Diluted, perhaps. A connection is lessened (if not severed) because your understanding of the situation is now entirely removed from your initial choices. I wanted to examine past triumphs as a sum of all actions, seeing the end results of my Shep's approach, and instead those moments are trapped in vacuum lest I release them into the updated future of ME3 and realise... I'm no closer to seeing how things turn out.
While that kind of thing can be clever and thought-provoking, not here. It's completely out of left field and I can't help feeling it's utterly unnecessary. Where was Harbinger? Why wasn't there anything equivalent to the first game's Sovereign conversation? Who thought it was a great idea for a goddamn ghost kid to tell Shepard how shit was going to go down, like it or lump it?
I was honestly expecting something like ME2's closing choices: the default outcome has people dying, but a completionist playthrough would grant the equivalent of everyone surviving the suicide mission; no one emerges unscathed, but there's minimal allied casualties. That you, Shepard, made choices regarding what fleet/army did what, and the galaxy deploys the Deus Ex Machina on their own terms and wipes out the Reapers.
In the end all my choices just added to my war assets score. And that was it. They were reduced to a number. There was no loyal Jack maintaining a barrier where lesser biotics would falter, there was no Garrus leading a parallel assault and keeping me updated with radio chatter. Instead all the decisions come in the meat of the game itself, and the ending proper is hollow and strangely disconnected from everything that came before; not just the third game's events, but those of the prior two titles as well.
So negated? No, of course not. But left hanging? Yeah. Those story threads are all dangling, isolated and alone with no closure, because now they're being considered in the wider setting of a completely different galaxy.
God Garrus rules
PSN ID : DetectiveOlivaw | TWITTER | STEAM ID | NEVER FORGET
More Ending Comments
ME1 and ME2 had railroaded endings. Things will look different depending on your Shep. There is no reason that this game needed to end in a choice. A railroaded ending based on your decisions and your Military Resources would have not only been accepted, it probably would have been praised.
The thing that makes it so bad is that we had our railroad ending, but it overshot. It should have just had an ending sequence play based on your decisions. A total fail run ending, and an ending that shows shots of the planets/races you helped/didn't help.
When I beat 1 and 2, I immediately went back to them to see how things would be different. With this one, I won't bother. Which is interesting, because with the other two "railroad endings" I can't change how it ends, but it feels like it's different.
Fighting for a galaxy and failing to save it is different than fighting for a galaxy and then having none of that fighting matter. Showing Shep's impact on it is the only way I can think of that would be a universally accepted send-off.
All the ending discussion honestly pains me. I want to talk about all the awesome moments. This game made me feel things; I can't listen to "Leaving Earth" without being sad/shuddering.
But I will say that I never in a million years would have guessed it was about
ending spoilers
We literally are told that just as we're finishing a game where, regardless of our choices, an AI is dating our pilot and where we learn that the Geth bent over backwards not to hurt the Quarians until they were backed into a corner.
But the real problem is that it's not about anything. It's a made-up conflict about made-up things. "How much are you willing to sacrifice for sheer survival?" is a theme. It's not a direct allegory for anything most of us are likely to encounter in our workaday lives, but it's a worthwhile, human question to ask and that is asked periodically throughout our history. "How do you make peace between man and robot?" is not.