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[Aesieru]

xtorma wrote...

Aesieru wrote...

xtorma wrote...

2.1 The reaper derelect pretty much died when it went into the brown dwarf, so they are not unkillable gods. If they were , they would not have done all the subterfuge with saren, or with the collectors. they would have simply arrived, . All they were interested in was humans, they could have isolated earth by shutting down that mass relay, killed all the other races and then mined earth for grey goo at thier leisure.

so sorry , I don't buy your explaination.

Actually, they can't just suddenly appear, it takes time, and they weren't all awake, it seems the destruction of Sovereign alerted Harbinger to the fact something went wrong, and since Sovereign couldn't activate the gateway to Dark Space, Harbinger used one of his previous things left over, assuming control over his collector-prothean abomination legions and investigating Humanity while also preparing for the Alpha Relay arrival. Since that failed, they decided to instead head straight in a path to Earth regarding the next closest relay.

Accumulated and in total, the Reaper fleets are monstrously powerful in themselves they are indeed god like. Also, while the derelict reaper was dead the innate organic indoctrination methods were not, nor were all the programs in it, more likely, the machine itself was merely critcally damaged and unable to repair itself with present materials.

Technology is actually a type of slavery in this game because it prevents others from developing along a path that may or may not be prepared for. Pretty much every alien race despite their alien-origins and thought patterns, has relegated themselves to using relay-based technology which appears superior but the Reapers have already mastered and know the counters for.

If they can not just appear...they are not gods. if they can die...they are not gods... if they cant shut down thier own technology, they are not gods. That was my point.

You missed the whole "definition of a god" that was in ME2 on the derelict reaper. That's pretty much what a god is, an essence or presence that is untimely and undying, even if its body is destroyed.

[SilencedScream]

XX55XX wrote...

dw99027 wrote...

They promised you cholce and they gave you choice. Do not misinterpret 'choice' as 'consequence'.

Good one. I lol'd. That's going to be their primary defense. 

What choice? The endings are 90% the same, with only minor adjustments. Sure - they present long-range consequences for NPCs. But what about us? What happened to the connection we made with Shepard and with our crewmates? Wasn't the focus supposed to be on building relationships? All the endings do is affect the people we've never seen or spoken to.

[WeWant]

the_one_54321 wrote...

WeWant wrote...
Nobody is demanding the possibility to completely change the story. It's simply normal to demand that the decisions made through the game keep up to their promise.

Why? Who ever actually does that?
(that is when they promise so much choice, I mean)

Why? Because they let you import your choices through the sequels, that's why.
The actual presence of those choices presage a consequence.

It's not too much asking that those choices somehow influence the course of the story.
Alpha Protocol did it in one game.
Don't confound medium limitation with lazy writing please.

[dw99027]

Minority opinion excluded??? Are you serious?

And 'choice' is fundamentally different ftom 'consequence' . Really, I can't be the only one who saw Shepard as a 'steerable' pre-determined fictional character and not as a blank canvas..

[Aesieru]

scotkrow wrote...

MelfinaofOutlawStar wrote...

And we are deifinitely left with more questions than answers.

What happens to the crew?

Shepard?

The galaxy?

What are the repercussions of losing the relays, space travel, merging both the synthetics and organics?

They answered the end of the Reapers with way more questions. And considering they're not continuing the story that leaves us Lost.

Except that it's just the end of Shepards story, another game can be released that takes place a couple hundred years later, a few relays rebuilt here and there, and FTL travel is still viable, it just takes a long time and a  lot of fuel.  This is the end of Shepard, as it should be, but not the end of the galaxy, not the end of the Mass Effect story, because while the first portion of the story follows Shepard, the next can follow any number of future heros or leaders centuries after Shepard is gone.

With the reapers controlled you could more than likely make that technology again or something better in time if you focused on leading to that point, with the synthesis ending, you're more apt to also advance technology and rebuild, and with the destroy act, depending on the damage to the planet and regardless of it, you'll be able to directly reverse engineer from them. Just look at how they made the Thanix from some pieces of the Reaper Sovereign, obviously they can do even more with entire reapers that are no longer indoctrinating people (hopefully their active indoctrination protocol defense isn't still enabled).

[Aesieru]

dw99027 wrote...

Minority opinion excluded??? Are you serious?

And 'choice' is fundamentally different ftom 'consequence' . Really, I can't be the only one who saw Shepard as a 'steerable' pre-determined fictional character and not as a blank canvas..

It's feasible even that the majority that are on these threads do not represent what the majority opinion of the games conclusion will be.

[the_one_54321]

WeWant wrote...

the_one_54321 wrote...

WeWant wrote...
Nobody is demanding the possibility to completely change the story. It's simply normal to demand that the decisions made through the game keep up to their promise.

Why? Who ever actually does that?
(that is when they promise so much choice, I mean)

Why? Because they let you import your choices through the sequels, that's why.
The actual presence of those choices presage a consequence.

It's not too much asking that those choices somehow influence the course of the story.
Alpha Protocol did it in one game.
Don't confound medium limitation with lazy writing please.

What I'm saying is that you were fooling yourself if you thought they were going to actually live up to that. No one really makes video games that way. In fact, there's no really way to make AAA video games like that because it would be too expensive to fully flesh out and write so many different variable scripts. No one does this.

[Varonine]

You know what would have been a good renegade ending?

Giving the Illusive man control of the reapers and letting humanity rise to power.

[Aesieru]

Varonine wrote...

You know what would have been a good renegade ending?

Giving the Illusive man control of the reapers and letting humanity rise to power.

That's less renegade and more stupid.

[Favourite store on the CitadeI]

NeMounet wrote...

1) I'm not english / American, and this is a wall of text, so sorry in advance for misspelling, grammar errors, etc.

2) for the tl;dr version, juste read intro / concl

3)This post is splitted in (nearly) independtant section, if you are interrested in a specific point only.

----------------------------------

 Introduction
In this post I will discuss the leaked endings of ME3, and (try to) explain why these endings are great.I'll try to give an insight on why they completly make sense and show that Bioware has great writers, who areable to mix old storytelling canon together to produce a great story, with strong references to past literary masterpiece.I'll try to mention every major concern of the forum's community, and explain why mostly are not pointless.

1 - Preliminaries
First, I'll start with some generalities about Bioware, and some consideration about fiability of the leaked Endings


1.1 BiowareFor me Bioware is not about making great new story, nor about making great game from sucessful concept.
Bioware's games can be summarized in two words : Storytelling and innovative gameplay.
Bioware makes gameplay-innovative game (story-driven MMO) with a very classic story (kill the big dragon with elves / dwarves / human) but great storytelling.
On a personal note, all bioware's games were great, at the exception of DA2 which has been utterly rushed (but it's still good)
As this post is not about what is and what isn't Bioware, I'll won't go too deep here.



1.2 Leaked content
I'll assume in the reminder of this, that the leaked endings are true.Objectivly, there are a lot of chance that there are true, and we get more and more evidences every days.I remember the DA2 demo, when peoples fear a bad game, and have completly unlikly hopes of beta-non-final-whatever version of the game/story. The fact is : mostly, demo and leaked content are representative of the final product



2 General concern, story telling, mass effect universe
2.1 Ending is more important than Walkthrough
Some peoples claim that no matter the actual content, this game will be bad, because endings are bad. And that no matterwhat happen during the game, the important bit is the endings of it.This is incredibly wrong, and even if the endings are bad, the game isn't ruined.This is a basic thing about telling a great story : a story is not great because of its endings, it's greatbecause what happen during the story.There is no way for a story to be great only because of its endings. Moreover, typical epic journey are not about the finalgoal but about the journey itself. Look at Greek's Myth Ulysse. The ending has nothing incredible in comparison withUlysse's journey.Actually, this is the whole point of the quest of the graal. No matter the final goal, the true interest is in the way to achieve your goal.


2.1 Reaper are no gods

Some says that reapers are no-god, and that ME2 has make reapers "mortal".
So in ME1 Reapers are clearly some kind of Cthulhian gods. Unstoppable, and  non-Understandable. Just read sovereign dialogs with Shepard to see that.Reapers are basically master of the world, the whole galaxy can live, because they allow them, and give the mass relay to them.The only direct apparence of the reapers in ME2 is the derelic reaper. And, as a reminder, this level is full of cthulhu references.Actually, ME2 focus is on something else than reaper, it sets the background for ME3, but when a reaper is encountered, Bioware remember us thata reaper IS a unkillable god.
Basically, ME series is all about galactic peoples wanting being free of their masters. This is not about the masters, but aboutthe galactic peoples. That's why there is so few informations about reapers. This is not the point of the series, the point is being free.


2.3 Galaxy is screw upAs said before, the point of the serie is being free and independant. This is a common theme in story. A slave want to be free of his master.and in every story about this, freedom came with a very hight price !The situation is simple, reapers can domine galaxy because they provide tool to bend the univers laws, if the galactic's peoples want to be free,they have to abandon the tools of theirs masters. Keeping relay intact would be a big error about how this kind of story ends.The idea is that freedom come with a great price.If you want, think Adam and Eve. They live under the control of god, with a symbolic forbidden fruit : the apple. But humans want to be completly free,so they loose god's present, namely the eden.Actually, the whole serie start at new Eden, this is a strong hint about what all of this is about. Being conscient that there is a god, and becomeindependant of him. But in the process (new) eden is lost for ever.


3. More Mass effect-centric considerations
3.1 SHepard IS a Hero
So obviously, shepard is a hero. Indeed, he is a mythological hero, the kind of hero who fight gods, and beat them.Again there are plenty of exemples in greek's mythology.There is one point about this kind of heroes : they don't get old.Hero are always a Hero, They are born as hero, they live as hero, and they die as hero. Being old is not heroic at all.Having a wheelchair is not heroic, being weak is not heroic.
In that case what are the possiblities of ending shepard's story ?
1) The hero die in action, This is very good ending, because the ultimate heroic act is sacrifice.
2) THe hero is physically lifted of his human status (symbolically he is already not a human) and become a god (this is what happen with tiber septim in Skyrim's lore)
3) We introduce difference between the human and the hero. This is the purpose of costume in comics. In that case there is two entities,the human, and the hero. We can see shepard as a space hero, space being his costume. Indeed, shepard action of glory are in a spacialcontext, and so, lifted of his access to space, shepard is no more a hero, he's just a human.
These 3 possibility are exactly corresponding to the 3 endings for shepard in ME3 confirming that Bioware know what there are doing, andthey doing it very well.



3.2 Choices that matters
3.2.1 Long term choices.
Long term choices, in fact are very important. Long term choices are about your character, how you build it, and how he willend. The possibility of keeping shepard alive or not, is just awesome, it allow you to choose what kind of hero shepard is.Is he a hero with a costume, or is he must die, because he has no more purpose ? (see shepard section for details)
An other point, is that choices will matter during game walkthrough. This is more interresting actually. In a game about choices,it is logical to really have to deal with past choices during the game, than having an epilogue at the end.Moreover, as the story end here, there is absolutly no point in delaying choices at the end of the game. it is better to have consequenciesduring the game, to deal with them.Again see the part about walkthrough vs endings for more insights of why walktrhough is important.


3.2.2 Ending choices
This is basically the big choice in the end. Some complain that it is completly unrelated to war effort. As seen above, long term things are aboutshepard's fate. Ending choice is more philosophical, and it is very important.First it is a decision that will affect the whole nature of the galaxy, this make a full sequel nearly impossible as the galaxywill be completly changed from one choice to the other.
The question of the final choice is very hard, and very interesting and can be stated like that :Given two kind of sentient, who can't live together in the same place, what is the thing to do :-merge them, and make everyone the same, but you'll loose diversity-Wipe one side for the sake of the other-Stay here, and spend the eternity in managing the two (imply becoming permanent god for shepard)
A good exemple is magnets.You have a positive magnet and a negative magnet. do you ?-just leave one magnet here and trash the other ?-Scotch / glue them together, but you will lost their magnetic field properties ?-keep them manually in contact, and use one or the other, depends on your needs ?

3.3 LIs are not with shepard
So the point here is that LIs are a story of passion between two person.if shepard and LIs want to build a long-term relationship, they just have to wait to be sure everything will be alright, 2-3 yrs in a life are nothing.But this isn't this kind of relationship, THe shadow broker's DLC's dialog is just shepard and liara joking about that.So Love story between shepard and Lis are about passion.That's really good, because stable long term relationship are not exciting, great love story are about passion.This love is about passion, passion is an emotion, and emotions do not last forever.Think the canon love-story : romeo and juliet. There is no point in juliet being a mother, and cleaning the house  (or Romeo).And so, LIs must die, or at least being unable to be with shepard at the end of the story. it will be ruin the pasion betweenthem, and make an uninteresting love story.(NB : disney's princess movies are not about love story but about an epic quest)


Conclusion :
To conclude, I would mention that Bioware totally could go the forum-fanbase-way, with an easy-happy-predictable-senseless ending.Instead Bioware demonstrated that there are still a great studio, which can make hard CHoices, for the sake of artistical quality.They're staying true to their previous statement about the end of the Shepard's franchise, and definitly ended the story, against all fan-wish and market-wish consideration, which is something not so usual for such a sucessful saga.


thanks for reading BSN, try to not troll too hard 

CAPS

ARE YOU JOKING
/CAPS

[SilencedScream]

the_one_54321 wrote...

SilencedScream wrote...
I'm slightly off topic, but I'd like to point out something.

Bioware locked all of the "extra" ending threads because there was already a thread talking about endings. Why don't they lock this one as well?

Because it's the only one that expresses support of their ending.

Where's End of Line at? Where's Chris at?

I mean, the thread's basically been overwhelmed by people (myself included) who don't like the endings, so it isn't like anything beyond 3-4 posts at maximum are in their favor.

And the major voice of "support" is the guy that's not going to buy or play the game until EA ditches Origin!

(and I do mean that btw. still have not touched DAII over the changes they made from DA:O and don't even have a desire to anymore)

Exactly. I don't want the thread closed, but I do find it funny that their main source of pride is a thread started by someone not planning on purchasing the game.

[WeWant]

the_one_54321 wrote...

WeWant wrote...

the_one_54321 wrote...

WeWant wrote...
Nobody is demanding the possibility to completely change the story. It's simply normal to demand that the decisions made through the game keep up to their promise.

Why? Who ever actually does that?
(that is when they promise so much choice, I mean)

Why? Because they let you import your choices through the sequels, that's why.
The actual presence of those choices presage a consequence.

It's not too much asking that those choices somehow influence the course of the story.
Alpha Protocol did it in one game.
Don't confound medium limitation with lazy writing please.

What I'm saying is that you were fooling yourself if you thought they were going to actually live up to that. No one really makes video games that way. In fact, there's no really way to make AAA video games like that because it would be too expensive to fully flesh out and write so many different variable scripts. No one does this.

Again, Alpha Protocol did it.

Again, no one is asking major plot twist, just to be taken into acount.

Again, medium limitation =/= lazy writing.

[Varonine]

Aesieru wrote...

Varonine wrote...

You know what would have been a good renegade ending?

Giving the Illusive man control of the reapers and letting humanity rise to power.

That's less renegade and more stupid.

>insults
nice argument there bra.

[xtorma]

the_one_54321 wrote...

WeWant wrote...

the_one_54321 wrote...

WeWant wrote...
Nobody is demanding the possibility to completely change the story. It's simply normal to demand that the decisions made through the game keep up to their promise.

Why? Who ever actually does that?
(that is when they promise so much choice, I mean)

Why? Because they let you import your choices through the sequels, that's why.
The actual presence of those choices presage a consequence.

It's not too much asking that those choices somehow influence the course of the story.
Alpha Protocol did it in one game.
Don't confound medium limitation with lazy writing please.

What I'm saying is that you were fooling yourself if you thought they were going to actually live up to that. No one really makes video games that way. In fact, there's no really way to make AAA video games like that because it would be too expensive to fully flesh out and write so many different variable scripts. No one does this.

Perhaps you are right. I can promise you though , bioware will never get the opportunity to allow me to fool myself again.

[Aesieru]

Varonine wrote...

Aesieru wrote...

Varonine wrote...

You know what would have been a good renegade ending?

Giving the Illusive man control of the reapers and letting humanity rise to power.

That's less renegade and more stupid.

>insults
nice argument there bra.

That's not an insult, you misunderstand.

Renegade is less reckless and more "no matter the cost", and yes it can have a focus on Humanity.

But trusting Cerberus to lead the Alliance and Humanity into the next era with the Reaper technology under his control... that's giving him the keys to the kingdom. That's not a Renegade or Paragon act, that'd be a sign of stupidity on whichever character thought it was a good idea, there's no redeeming values to it.

Also, why not the Alliance? That'd be more renegade.

Modifié par Aesieru, 02 mars 2012 - 10:12 .

[the_one_54321]

WeWant wrote...
Again, Alpha Protocol did it.

Again, no one is asking major plot twist, just to be taken into acount.

Again, medium limitation =/= lazy writing.

How did Alpha Protocol do this exactly? 

And I don't see it as lazy writing. Just selective writing. There were literally like a dozen choices that could have been completely fleshed out between the start of ME1 and the end of ME2 through ME3. No matter what they chose to cover, there was going to areas where people say "hey, what happened to my choice??" Sticking one of those spots at the end of the game just makes it pretty darn obvious that it's happening.

[MinnieLincoln]

Varonine wrote...

You know what would have been a good renegade ending?

Giving the Illusive man control of the reapers and letting humanity rise to power.

This would be a cool ending actually!!

[Varonine]

>>Aesieru
Renegade as in evil, bad, not nice, like most renegade options.
Also "renegade" does not mean "no matter the cost."

abusing the post editor
Definition of RENEGADE1 : a deserter from one faith, cause, or allegiance to another 2 : an individual who rejects lawful or conventional behavior

Modifié par Varonine, 02 mars 2012 - 10:20 .

[WeWant]

the_one_54321 wrote...

WeWant wrote...
Again, Alpha Protocol did it.

Again, no one is asking major plot twist, just to be taken into acount.

Again, medium limitation =/= lazy writing.

How did Alpha Protocol do this exactly? 

And I don't see it as lazy writing. Just selective writing. There were literally like a dozen choices that could have been completely fleshed out between the start of ME1 and the end of ME2 through ME3. No matter what they chose to cover, there was going to areas where people say "hey, what happened to my choice??" Sticking one of those spots at the end of the game just makes it pretty darn obvious that it's happening.

You should play Alpha Protocol and you too would trade Obsidian writers with Bioware writers anytime.

I am talking about MAJOR choices you get to make through ME and ME2. Like the Ratchni for example.

You let the queen be = she get indoctrinated by the reapers.
You kill her = the reapers go find a new queen.

Don't tell me this couldn't have been handled way better.

[the_one_54321]

WeWant wrote...
You should play Alpha Protocol and you too would trade Obsidian writers with Bioware writers anytime.

I am talking about MAJOR choices you get to make through ME and ME2. Like the Ratchni for example.

You let the queen be = she get indoctrinated by the reapers.
You kill her = the reapers go find a new queen.

Don't tell me this couldn't have been handled way better.

Or you could tell me about Alpha Protocol?

Anyway, you're providing a good example. Because, in ME3, what about the previous LIs? What about also including all the same potential options for the new ones? What about side character development like for Joker and EDI? And of course the list goes on. Each one of these can open up just how many potential options? How many hours of script could be included before everyone is completely satisfied? 

[eye basher]

People keep talking about choice in ME there is none just an illusion of choice besides i don't play games for the ending just the entertaiment story that's just icing on the cake.

[WeWant]

the_one_54321 wrote...

WeWant wrote...
You should play Alpha Protocol and you too would trade Obsidian writers with Bioware writers anytime.

I am talking about MAJOR choices you get to make through ME and ME2. Like the Ratchni for example.

You let the queen be = she get indoctrinated by the reapers.
You kill her = the reapers go find a new queen.

Don't tell me this couldn't have been handled way better.

Or you could tell me about Alpha Protocol?

Anyway, you're providing a good example. Because, in ME3, what about the previous LIs? What about also including all the same potential options for the new ones? What about side character development like for Joker and EDI? And of course the list goes on. Each one of these can open up just how many potential options? How many hours of script could be included before everyone is completely satisfied? 

Alpha Protocol takes every choice and variable into account. With a much more restricted budget.

"How many hours of script could be included before everyone is completely satisfied? "

Enough to actually make them feel that (even if the main story takes them where the writers want) their decisions still matter.

They didn't even try with some MAJOR stuff. 
Example: you killed the Rachi = no Rachni in ME3.
It's not that hard is it?

[the_one_54321]

WeWant wrote...
Alpha Protocol takes every choice and variable into account. With a much more restricted budget.

"How many hours of script could be included before everyone is completely satisfied? "

Enough to actually make them feel that (even if the main story takes them where the writers want) their decisions still matter.

They didn't even try with some MAJOR stuff. 
Example: you killed the Rachi = no Rachni in ME3.
It's not that hard is it?

You're not giving me much to go on with AP, but I certainly can't contest the Rachni example. I'm still going to say that if you've been following the trends then you shouldn't have expected them to really take the script as far as you're asking.

[WeWant]

Well I don't know what to say about AP except that choice and consequence wise, it's what ME always pretended to be but it's not.


EDIT:

"you shouldn't have expected them to really take the script as far as you're asking.  "


As far? You really thing that this is too far?

Modifié par WeWant, 02 mars 2012 - 10:48 .

[the_one_54321]

WeWant wrote...
As far? You really thing that this is too far?

No, not exactly. Expectations and desires are not always one and the same.

Either way, there's still the point that a sad ending without extra options can be done incredibly well.