Why I Prefer to Alt F4 after killing the Illusive Man
Let me preface this by saying I realize this is just a game.
I realize this post was probably a giant waste of my time. The thing is I love the
art of storytelling. I read books for fun. Who does that anymore? I played Mass
Effect for this reason. The storytelling. I did not play it for the oft times clumsy
attempt at Gears of War style combat. This is why the ending is so egregious.
I completed the game with over 5000 mad skill war points (or
something like that), so this will be from that perspective.
I. Events Occurring in ME3
II. Missed Opportunities
I. Events Occurring in ME3
This part will cover events that occur in Mass Effect 3 that
either contradict the previous games or do not make sense given the ending.
We start with the Reapers attacking Earth. This sets the
tone, desperation, mood and motivation for us as the player). This is good. We
have much wailing and gnashing of teeth over having to leave Earth behind.
Realistic from what you’d expect of soldiers. As a side note in the section,
from a consistency standpoint, I think they showed the Reapers destroying at
too fast of a pace for the rest of the game to make sense, but I think that was
there for a sense of urgency. I don’t think anyone would care if you escaped
from Earth and the Reapers had so far managed to destroy Bill Gates’ house.
Next we move to Mars. We find there was a whole other set of
Prothean ruins there that went previously undiscovered. This has problems, but
ones I am willing to forgive. I knew there would have to be some device, for
lack of a better word, to kill the Reapers, given their number and power. I
would have liked it to be introduced in a way that did not conflict with the
universe though. We are talking about a universe that highly prizes Prothean
ruins for the technology they can bring, but somehow it escaped their notice
that there were more where they had already dug. I can accept this as an excuse
for them wanting to show us Mars given its place in the games lore. All in all,
this is not a huge issue. I was prepared coming in for a elaborate solution to
the Reapers, so I soldiered on.
The next portion of the game is largely running around and
assembling allies to bolster the all important Effective Military Strength
statistic (More on this in missed opportunities). The stuff here largely makes
sense, and is the main part of why I think this game could have been brilliant.
Shepard is spending his time acquiring allies and working out problems, as he
has been wont to do throughout the series. By now this is what we expect of
Shepard. We blow up many enemies and then talk others into doing things like
were the damn champion of the universe, because we are. For the purposes of
this, I won’t go in to how boring the planet scanning still was. I’m sure
everyone is capable of understanding why on their own.
Obviously, during this part of the game we met the new Cerberus.
This is where we start getting some major problems. First off, Bioware seems to
put a lot of effort in to making it look like Cerberus is not indoctrinated.
The attack on their facility in order for the Reapers to protect themselves is
the most obvious example. In the end the citadel-reaper-god-kid (CRGK) of
course confirms that they were indoctrinated. This was not a hard conclusion
for the player to come to, considering they had a bunch of Reaper tech stuck in
them and Reaper tech all over their bases. Of course they are indoctrinated.
As such, why the hell are the Reapers bothering to attack
that base at all? Bioware could have just filled it with a bunch of Cerberus
troops and it would have been fine. As it is, we’re left to wonder why the
Reapers were so worried if they already had Cerberus under control. This is
never resolved, and the actions of the Illusive Man seem rather bizarre as a
result. In addition, it turns out studying the Reapers was not even necessary in
order to control them, since Shepard could do it as one of the ending choices.
At least Cerberus keeps up its record of colossal failures. I was worried for a
while after they managed to successfully resurrect Shepard.
As a side note on Cerberus, who is this Kai Leng guy? I feel
like he was just shoved in our face as an antagonist. From a story telling
perspective, I feel like Thanes death was used as a literary hammer to beat us
into disliking Leng. Literary hammers tend to pull me out of the story (and I’m
sure this is true for others), which isn’t what you want to do to the player.
All in all, he felt kind of ham-fisted and ridiculous with his hilarious poses
and flips. My understanding is he is from the books or something. That’s fine
if you want to use a character from there, but they should be introduced to the
games if you want to use them in such a fashion (that is, not a hammer).
Anyway, we keep cruising along. Make Turians and Krogans all
friendly. Mordin makes some golden rain on Tuchanka and has one of the best
deaths I’ve seen in a game. Many times I think writers are guilty of using
death as the aforementioned literary hammer. Mordin’s was a completion of his
character. It was the culmination of his redemption, and I honestly felt sad to
watch him go, but happy that he was singing as he went out. Obviously, this
doesn’t apply if you renegade shot him, but it’s still fine from a storytelling
perspective.
We keep trucking, and start playing Tron with Legion. I’ll
bring up a minor issue here, just because it really annoyed me. We kill the
Reaper that is coordinating the Geth with an orbital bombardment from a huge
amount of ships. Firstly, why did I have to aim my targeting laser so precisely
if they were just going to bombard the crap out of the whole area? I didn’t
really understand that. Secondly, how come that one took so much firepower, but
you drop the one on Earth with two small missiles? Who knows?
Some of this is off topic so I people don’t think I’m just a
crazy hater. Throughout this phase of the game, there are many great
conversations that you have with your squad mates, both on ship and in the
Citadel, etc. I greatly enjoyed how your squad seemed more alive in this one,
compared to ME1 and 2.
We then reach the final phases of the game, starting with
Literary Hammer Leng stealing the Prothean VI from us on Thessia. Hey this
works, Shepard can fail. We see some humanity. Good stuff. Unfortunately this
is going to Cerberus who the Reapers are controlling into thinking they can
control the Reapers even though they would fail per CRGK because they are
controlled already. Something like that. Blah blah blah, we blow up Cerberus
because god dammit we need the catalyst. Turns out it’s the Citadel. Okay, nice
twist. I’ll buy it. The Reapers have moved it to Earth to protect it from our
plans. At this point I’m thinking “Okay, yes. The final epic fight. This is
going to be so awesome.” And it was! Tearful goodbyes, Anderson delivering
lines like boss, a Shepard speech to his crew, wading through lines of Reaperites
as people lay down their lives for the galaxy. It was all there. You could feel
the loss. You could feel the need to win. You could feel the determination.
We bleed and crawl our way to the control room in the
Citadel, waiting for epicness, but unaware of the tragic piece of storytelling
that will soon be revealed to us. The Illusive Man shows up. We hearken back to
the Saren-Shepard conversation from the first game where Illusive Man thinks he
is his own man. Anderson gets executed, or doesn’t. Anderson bleeds out in my
game because apparently I didn’t have enough of a reputation so far. Who is
that Shepard guy anyway? Probably that
lunatic that ran around the galaxy and did every side quest except a couple he
forgot to turn in because he couldn’t tell in the journal that he had gotten
the part necessary for it. I digress. We blow away the Illusive Man. The game
ends. The credits roll. We know Shepard finished blowing up the Reapers. Earth
is devastated. Shepard crawls out bloodily as the hero. Or maybe he dies heroically,
whatever you want. (S)He lives by the beach with Ashley/Liara/Miranda/Jack/Tali/Traynor/Cortez/Garrus/Kaidan/Vega/Jacob/(poor
thane)/that news reporter that I left in the basement. You can think up
something suitably dark if that suits you. The series obviously was going to
have a dark tone considering it opens with one of your squad mate’s deaths.
Plenty of things could work here. I’ll have more on this later, when I bring up
lack of attachment to the ending that actually occurs.
But, no. This wasn’t the end. I didn’t alt f4. And I watched
the franchise come to the most embarrassing and pathetic conclusion I could
imagine. Turns out the Citadel is actually a part of a being, CRGK, that
controls the Reapers as a way to ensure that organic life continues.
Allllllllllright. Okay so what do we do from here? Okay. We blow them all up.
Hey that sounds good, that fits with the game. Or we assume direct control
(Hey, why did we never have a conversation with Harbinger anyway. We just got
dying-mc-lame-voice-reaper). Alright…… Or we synthesize a new being that is a
hybrid.
The kid. Oh, the kid. Where did this come from? Here, in a
single moment, we destroy the Reapers malice. We destroy the Lovecraftian
horror of the Reapers. They’re just minions of the CRGK. This is the moment I
felt like the entire series came crashing down. People don’t need some insane
story to consider something worthwhile. It’s how the story is written. It’s how
the characters pull you in. It’s the believability. The foundations of the
fantasy. The CRGK tossed it all out the
window. Huge problems occur in this moment. First of all is, if the Citadel is
a sentient thing controlling the Reapers, the first game should not have
occurred as it did. It should have been like oh hey, some bug dudes screwed
with my signal. Guess I should do something about that and let the Reapers
through. BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRR, everyone dies. (That was my text
version of the Reaper roar; great sound, by the way). Another issue is I’m not
really sure why the CRGK’s MO is now ruined. Shepard made it there by consuming
all the previous civilizations warnings of the Reapers, and being stupendously
awesome. This cycle hasn’t put any effort in to preserving knowledge, except
Liara. We can assume it will have the same problems as the beacons did, except
we don’t have a safe house set up anywhere, and no Thorian to be a cipher anymore.
As a result, CRGK should just tell Shepard, “Haha, this was all a trick to
control your response” and watch him die of despair and depression. The final problem with CRGK is, in the words
of what I said out loud when he started talking, “AGAGLGLABABLEGLAGLBLRLBARLBALBLAFLLBLB”.
How does this fit with the Mass Effect universe? There’s no consistency between
the games we played and the last five minutes where we talk to this kid. It’s
extremely frustrating. Where does the Reapers’s god-like complex come from?
“You exist because we allow it and you will end because we demand it.” How do
the Reapers even represent a preservation of life? Shepard has to state the
most obvious thing when he tells CRGK that taking away free will takes away the
point. This shouldn’t be enlightening to someone who could design the Reapers
and control the fate of the galaxy for that long. They shouldn’t need it
explained that that’s not really living. Mass Effect has always had an element
of struggle to it. Colony life is hard, AI’s causing problems, etc. The CRGK
takes away the entire struggle. Everything is just assembly line Reaper
production to suit the CRGK’s desires, which is based on an unproven
hypothesis. The hypothesis of synthetic life will dominate organic life is
contrary to what we have been doing through the three games. Namely, the Mass
Effect universe shows that synthetic beings can coexist and indeed seem to move
toward behaving as organic beings. There is no option to call the kid out on
this. Presumably he could just stop the Reaper’s himself since he controls
them, but Shepard loses his talking powers at the most crucial moment.
Now to address each of the choices. Reaper destruction. Hell
yeah. This side was all colored in red, so I guess it was supposed to be the “renegade”
ending, even though the whole series was about destroying the Reapers. This
should have been the ONLY (successful) ending, just not executed through CRGK.
And not resulting in your squad being on some random planet via a method that
seems counter to the universe. And blowing up all the mass relays for no discernable
reason. (Incidentally, all the armies of the galaxy are now stuck on some
decimated Earth, so I am forced to assume lots of starvation is on the way for
them). Okay, so anyway, this destroys all synthetic life. They even make a
point to mention how Shepard is partially synthetic. But mine was still alive
at the end because of my >5000 awesome points (however that matters). EDI
gets roasted, poor Joker. Geth all get obliterated. This is all dumb because
people can just rebuild them anyway.
Assuming Direct Control. This seems to be the “paragon”
ending, given it is bathed in blue. The thing is paragon Shepard was almost militantly
following the maxim of free will when he made decisions. He presented the case
and tried to not use force. Of course there were some exceptions (rewriting the
Geth), but in general he did not seem the type who wanted to enslave a sentient
race. But there it is. This ending sucks due to not fulfilling the purpose of Mass
Effect, namely, kill some Reapers baby. How is it satisfying for Shepard to be
the new Reaper god? Why would anyone set out for that as their goal as they are
playing this game? It runs counter to everything we have tried to accomplish so
far. It also has the same problems as the previously mentioned one. All the
relays blow up. Everyone is stuck on earth, blah blah. Crew winds up on random
ass planet still.
Synthesis. We create organic synthetic life that is the
pinnacle of evolution. Golly. This sounds a lot like Reapers. Sorry, I’m
forgetting they’re actually just synthetic now, even though we established in
Mass Effect 2 that they are organic synthetic hybrids. I think that’s all I
need to say about that. Who knows what was going on here? At least Joker can
get it on with EDI in this one.
My problem with this device of the ending is that nothing
here evoked catharsis. All it evoked was an “Uhh, what?” This isn’t Fringe,
guys. This isn’t the response you should want here. There’s no emotional payout
at the end. Great, my squad is stuck on random planet. They’re going back to
caveman-hood. Shepard dies never seeing his friends again. His friends don’t
even seem to give a damn about the sacrifice he made. Come on Bioware. Show us
a ceremony of sadness or something. Give us some form of emotional investment
in the ending. There was nothing, just Shepard being not quiet dead. Suck on my
>5000 points. The only satisfying part of the ending is I assume CRGK died
when the Citadel went nova. At least we took out on tragedy of writing with
this ending.
II. Missed opportunities
Oh boy, did ME3 miss a lot of opportunities. But, let me
start with what I think they didn’t miss. The biggest thing here was the presentation of
the universe at war. All the side quests were related to war readiness. The
section of refugees was done well. You could feel the crowding and the desperation
to get in. People’s lives were being torn apart by the Reapers and that was
made apparent throughout the game. Bioware set the mood and tone brilliantly
throughout the game. From leaving Earth, to the final assault on the conduit,
it was all done excellently.
There were, I felt, large opportunities missed. I’ve covered
two already. Namely, any form of emotional payout from the ending and
exploiting the Lovecraftian horror of the Reapers. I did enjoy that we got to
see a more human side of Shepard, but I think they missed some opportunities
here. I think they missed a chance to have Shepard dealing with indoctrination.
After all, Shepard has been around a lot of Reapers. Actually, I found the
malice of indoctrination was largely absent from this game. Other than Cerberus
trying to harness it, the Reaper’s indoctrination was mainly mentioned in side
notes and the occasional side quest. We know from the previous games that will
power is a factor in indoctrination, and I would have liked to see that driving
some of Shepard’s character development. This would have been perfect in the
dark theme of the Mass Effect universe. The set up of the game ignores this
completely.
Another aspect of Shepard is the fact that he is full of
Reaper tech. We got a brief conversation about what Shepard thought of being
rebuilt, but we have no closure on the Reaper tech. In general, it seems that
the potency of Reaper tech has been diminished from the previous games. Whereas
before, any Reaper tech would grind a will down, in Mass Effect 3 this effect
seems largely to be arbitrarily decided. The Geth are no loaded with Reaper
technology, to no apparent adverse effect. Even in the presence of all the
Reapers at the final battle we are just given “They’re high tech now and they
stopped the possibility of indoctrination.” Oh, really? Would you care to
share, guys (its?)? I was hoping with some struggles with EDI over this.
Nothing. Mainly, I was hoping for something more with regards to Shepard and
the Reaper tech. Ashley seems to be the only one who holds suspicions, but that
wasn’t really about the Reaper tech, but that Shepard was willing to work with
Cerberus. It was obviously a substantial amount of tech used to bring someone
back from the dead, and I think it was a missed chance for further character
development. As a side note, shouldn’t cyborg Shepard just be able to pick up
Vega and toss him across the room?
The most egregious missed opportunity occurs in what I will
call the illusion of choice. Throughout Mass Effect 3 we are very blatantly
shown that our choices had almost no impact, while playing the game where they
should have had the most. I felt like decisions had more impact in Mass Effect
2 than 3. This problem is highlighted best in the Effective Military Strength
rating. Every choice you made just boils down to a small adjustment on the EMS
rating. I won’t even go into the essentially mandatory multiplayer to get
>5000 EMS. Where was the connection we made with these people in the
previous games? In ME3 we barely got emails from them like we did in ME2. I
didn’t find Parasini anywhere, for example. Shiala was just cut down to 20
points or something on my EMS. I can’t even remember impacts from my side
quests in ME2 that I did. And I did all of them. Every choice we made just
adjusted our EMS without any influence on the world. Obviously, saving the Council
or not had some impact, but no effective difference in the possible endings. The
biggest example of the illusion Bioware presented with Mass Effect was the
Rachni. I’m sure this pissed off many other people. If you kill the Rachni
queen, you are treated to a synthetically created queen that creates Rachni for
the Reapers to then convert into Reaperites. Excuse me, but holy **** Bioware.
Could you more explicitly tell me that you don’t give a damn about what I chose
in the previous games?
This illusion of choice was one of the biggest failings that
the ending offered. Not only did any combination of choices lead to the same
possible endings assuming you had enough to get your EMS high enough, those
three endings were essentially identical. I picked the destroy Reapers, since
that was the point of Mass Effect to me, but I watched videos of the other two.
We are treated to the exact same ending with a different color shockwave. Did
Bioware just not care at this point? Not only did our choices from the first
two not really present different opportunities, but even the final choice of
how to solve the Reaper threat results in roughly the same outcome, tweaked in various
ways. Is it too much to think that Bioware should have given us three distinct
ending videos? For crying out loud, Joker still limps in the synthesis ending.
At least they could have fixed that. That wouldn’t have solved the flaw created
by the citadel reaper-god kid, but at least it would have lessened the sting of
bad story telling a fraction.
I know it is impossible to write an ending that will please
everyone. I’m sure there are people who were upset when Frodo did not have the
will to throw the Ring into the fire. The thing is, I suspect this ending
pleased very few, and it is definitely possible to write an ending (dark,
merry, whatever) that pleases many.
As I said when I started, I know this is just a game, but
like when some people were upset that Han didn’t shoot first, I feel like
Bioware essentially ruined the point of the franchise with the ending.
Hopefully Mass Effect spawns more epic storytelling in the gaming sector, but
hopefully they do not continue the tradition of Mass Effect’s pointless and
unsatisfying ending. I did enjoy the game for all but the last few minutes, and
if the ending was good I probably would not have even thought about the flaws.
To that end, any subsequent play through I do, like a renegade play, I will
just alt f4 after shooting the Illusive Man and leave my imagination to finish
off a great space opera.
Modifié par sighineedname, 09 mars 2012 - 09:54 .
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