207 réponses à ce sujet

[Ludica]

As a Russian, i feel deeply offended by a WW2 Leningrad comparison.

I could go on and on but i'd rather remember what the words "political ****storm" mean to me and not start flames here. If you want to know why exactly this analogy fails, feel free to PM.

[hector7rau]

Yeah with this kind of ending we might as well have never fought any battle and let the reapers restart the cycle. It was never about saving the galaxy so that life could continue just for the sake of it, it would have continued anyway, cycle or not the reapers would have let other civilizations live. To kill them at the end, but life would find a way anyway. The whole point was to save the galaxy YOU KNOW, your civilization, your people, to prove that it was possible to defeat the reapers against all odds and still mantain what you fought for. Not just the eventual rise of the new screwed civilization.

[JohnCena94]

that even if they can do FTL travel in a reasonable time, the Relays negated the problem of running into ****. Th

Militarized wrote...

I have to admit I do not have... as huge a problem with destroying the relays and citadels as others do. The Protheans unlocked the secret of the Relays. Why can't the entire galactic community?

Oh what's that you say? The Crucible scientists are trapped in a special/hidden system, the best and brightest of each civilization? So.... they're stuck there? Great.

The other problem with not having the ME relays is ere are no star charts to navigate the galaxy with... you could potentially run into a star and be molten goo because you're blindly running straight at Thessia to provide logistical support(if they even bother because Earth is such a mess).

I was lead to belive that the reapers gave the protheans the relays, so I believe you are wrong, if you are not can you show me evidence?

[Deztyn]

The Conduit was a mini relay created by the Protheans.

[raeting]

Be careful about assumptions on the ability of planets to rebuild. Even without FTL travel the galaxy could recover. If conventional FTL travel (no relays, but ships still work fine), then it is even easier.

So, lets assume, for a moment, that FTL travel is gone entirely.

The damage done during the attack? Well, most every major metropolitan area is flattened. Or, at least looks like it suffered a nasy carbet-bombing. Remember what Anderson said, though. The Reapers were after the major metropolitan areas. Not the countryside. The resistance held out for a long time -- even traveled across an ocean to make it to London. Reapers aren't everywhere.

So, the Earth was overwhelmed by reapers, but not blanketed by them. A lot of people died. But not all of them. Large portions of rural areas, even farmland, likely remained relatively untouched. Shepard only gave them a few months to try and wipe out 57 million square miles of land. The Reapers are strong, but given that they split their effort around most of the galaxy, a good portion of those 57 million square miles is just fine. We are talking about hundreds, maybe low-thousands, of reaper ships. Not millions.

Furthermore, the amount of non-perishable food stored around the world, even today, is far more than you might imagine. It takes time for cereal, canned goods, rice, and so on to make it to your local grocery store. Until then, it sits in a warehouse. Given that the Earth is now supporting a much smaller population, those stores could last a while on their own. Plus what you can scavenge from the cities. Assuming, as well, the oceans aren't overfished by then, a huge source of relatively easy to capture protein is available.

So, yeah, food is an issue, but we aren't looking at mass starvation.

Now, there's good reason to think every space-faring ship was knocked out of orbit. Less reason to think, however, that all technology is gone. Humans have a great deal of shuttles, fighters, and other small ships as logisitical support. Plus, a huge workforce of civilians eager to see some sense of normalcy return to their lives. 

All in all, Earth has a good chance to do just fine. It has plenty of farmland to sustain itself -- even with all the aliens. I would be deeply surprised if any krogan females are even on earth, so overpopulation there is probably not a problem.

Just a matter of humans picking themselves up and getting to work. Even with AIs wiped out, it looks like most technology survives, so the re-establishment of a central government shouldn't be a problem. Especially if that government is the one that kicked the reapers out. Stand up, rebuild, get things back to normal, and move on. May take a couple hundred years before Earth is gleaming again, but it will get there. Some cities may remain rubble for a long time, even be abandoned, but not all of them.

There are a few planets, Noveria, for example, that do not have arable land. Those people will starve. But, Earth, Eden Prime, Horizon, and so on should all be just fine. Along with all the homeworlds of the major races and some of their primary colonies. All you need is enough arable land to farm, and some food supplies to last you a couple years and make up for farming shortfalls. Difficult, but not impossible.

The one race I'd put in dire straits is the Quarians. Their liveships took part in the battle. Hopefully they kept enough in reserve to feed their people on Rannoch (assuming they weren't outright destroyed by the mass relays). Otherwise, the Quarians will have to figure out farming very, very quickly.

So, yeah, I can see the galaxy becoming little pockets of rebuilt civilization relatively quickly. The absence of FTL just means it may be a very, very long time before trade between planets resume. 

If FTL is available, then it becomes even easier. Take a cruiser, fill it with fuel, now you can run limited supplies and information between the races. Doing so will speed recovery significantly. Someone will figure out there's money to be made in making FTL travel more reasonable. It'll happen and the galaxy will get back to business.

[JohnCena94]

Deztyn wrote...

The Conduit was a mini relay created by the Protheans.

Excellent point, but it is only one way, and it aimed them at the citidal, seemingly where all roads lead to.

[jestermarcus]

FTL is far too slow for the species to ever see each other again. It would take years, maybe centuries for a ship flying at FTL to make it to Thessia from Earth. Interstellar trade is over.

[starscreamerx31]

Bottom line a bad ending is a bad ending no explanation will fix that

[kramerfan86]

Militarized wrote...

I have to admit I do not have... as huge a problem with destroying the relays and citadels as others do. The Protheans unlocked the secret of the Relays. Why can't the entire galactic community?

Oh what's that you say? The Crucible scientists are trapped in a special/hidden system, the best and brightest of each civilization? So.... they're stuck there? Great.

The other problem with not having the ME relays is that even if they can do FTL travel in a reasonable time, the Relays negated the problem of running into ****. There are no star charts to navigate the galaxy with... you could potentially run into a star and be molten goo because you're blindly running straight at Thessia to provide logistical support(if they even bother because Earth is such a mess).

Dont forget the Protheans had working mass relays to study while making their clone relay.  Its a bit harder to make your own relay when you cant do some reverse engineering.

[Chief Martini]

Although I appreciate the developer team taking the time to reply to this fan question, it really doesn't make me feel any better. Looking at the other responses I'm far from the only one who feels that way.

It's not the future of civilization I'm worried about; It's the future of Commander Shepard and their squad.

[ApplesauceBandit]

So basically i don't get to be with my LI? and my crew. cause thats really all i cared about. I'm pissed. I couldn't give a crap less about the rest of the galaxy, if they added an ending where my crew and a small portion of each civilization got stranded on a small planet, i would have been happy with that. Jeez, even if it was just me and my LI that got stranded on some nameless planet i would have preferred that over these crappy endings

[raeting]

jestermarcus wrote...

FTL is far too slow for the species to ever see each other again. It would take years, maybe centuries for a ship flying at FTL to make it to Thessia from Earth. Interstellar trade is over.

It would take 22.8 years for a ship to go from one end of the galaxy to another with Mass Effect's conventional FTL travel. Not that anyone would, or a ship could carry that much fuel. Still, it leaves plenty of room open for FTL communication, high-value items (Wrex, technology, etc.) and so on to be shared. 

Earth to Palaven is just a fraction of that, a few years perhaps, and Palaven to Thessia is around the same. Plenty of room for long-lived krogans or asari to take up the banner of merchants.

Quarians won't see anyone for a while though. They are way, way out there.

[Kloborgg711]

raeting wrote...

Be careful about assumptions on the ability of planets to rebuild. Even without FTL travel the galaxy could recover. If conventional FTL travel (no relays, but ships still work fine), then it is even easier.

So, lets assume, for a moment, that FTL travel is gone entirely.

The damage done during the attack? Well, most every major metropolitan area is flattened. Or, at least looks like it suffered a nasy carbet-bombing. Remember what Anderson said, though. The Reapers were after the major metropolitan areas. Not the countryside. The resistance held out for a long time -- even traveled across an ocean to make it to London. Reapers aren't everywhere.

So, the Earth was overwhelmed by reapers, but not blanketed by them. A lot of people died. But not all of them. Large portions of rural areas, even farmland, likely remained relatively untouched. Shepard only gave them a few months to try and wipe out 57 million square miles of land. The Reapers are strong, but given that they split their effort around most of the galaxy, a good portion of those 57 million square miles is just fine. We are talking about hundreds, maybe low-thousands, of reaper ships. Not millions.

Furthermore, the amount of non-perishable food stored around the world, even today, is far more than you might imagine. It takes time for cereal, canned goods, rice, and so on to make it to your local grocery store. Until then, it sits in a warehouse. Given that the Earth is now supporting a much smaller population, those stores could last a while on their own. Plus what you can scavenge from the cities. Assuming, as well, the oceans aren't overfished by then, a huge source of relatively easy to capture protein is available.

So, yeah, food is an issue, but we aren't looking at mass starvation.

Now, there's good reason to think every space-faring ship was knocked out of orbit. Less reason to think, however, that all technology is gone. Humans have a great deal of shuttles, fighters, and other small ships as logisitical support. Plus, a huge workforce of civilians eager to see some sense of normalcy return to their lives. 

All in all, Earth has a good chance to do just fine. It has plenty of farmland to sustain itself -- even with all the aliens. I would be deeply surprised if any krogan females are even on earth, so overpopulation there is probably not a problem.

Just a matter of humans picking themselves up and getting to work. Even with AIs wiped out, it looks like most technology survives, so the re-establishment of a central government shouldn't be a problem. Especially if that government is the one that kicked the reapers out. Stand up, rebuild, get things back to normal, and move on. May take a couple hundred years before Earth is gleaming again, but it will get there. Some cities may remain rubble for a long time, even be abandoned, but not all of them.

There are a few planets, Noveria, for example, that do not have arable land. Those people will starve. But, Earth, Eden Prime, Horizon, and so on should all be just fine. Along with all the homeworlds of the major races and some of their primary colonies. All you need is enough arable land to farm, and some food supplies to last you a couple years and make up for farming shortfalls. Difficult, but not impossible.

The one race I'd put in dire straits is the Quarians. Their liveships took part in the battle. Hopefully they kept enough in reserve to feed their people on Rannoch (assuming they weren't outright destroyed by the mass relays). Otherwise, the Quarians will have to figure out farming very, very quickly.

So, yeah, I can see the galaxy becoming little pockets of rebuilt civilization relatively quickly. The absence of FTL just means it may be a very, very long time before trade between planets resume. 

If FTL is available, then it becomes even easier. Take a cruiser, fill it with fuel, now you can run limited supplies and information between the races. Doing so will speed recovery significantly. Someone will figure out there's money to be made in making FTL travel more reasonable. It'll happen and the galaxy will get back to business.

Incredible that we have to think this hard to convince ourselves that there just may be some light at the end of the tunnel for characters that we never really cared about. So much for closure. No, we have to write up multiple page essays to convince ourselves that things aren't really quite as ****ty as they appear.

[Headshotmaster]

Deztyn wrote...

Paxcorpus wrote...

That's the way it looks. You don't get the present you want for christmas so you stand around and stomp, cross your arms and make mean faces until your parents do something about it. Except this is a mob of kids on christmas morning and they're all feeding off of each other like this is 4chan or something.

Fail analogy. ME3 wasn't a gift.  I paid over $200, and invested several hundred hours of my life for a product that ultimately disappointed me. I'll complain and commiserate as much as I like.

This.^^

A gift is given freely, to be ether be passed on or consumed. It's that 'free' part that people seem to forget.

We weren't 'given' mass effect 3.  We payed into it, starting mass effect 1. We payed their salaries, wages, we payed of their invenstment debt... We payed for their computers, staff, CGI cutscenes... For 3 god-damned games.

This is why I'm most upset... We live in a world of tough socio-economic times, where the light of the tunnel is most likely decades away... Where I have to turn on the news to hear about how many dead kids are worth an oil pipe-line, and that I should accept casualties... I hear of school shootings, of poor families struggling... And then I have to deal with the problems my family has went through over the last decade, and come to the fact that I'm just as screwed, because of insurance, and medicine...

And so I bought a game, with what little money i have earned... I wanted my god-damned happy ending. So I could feel complete for a few hours, after playing it for a couple days... I wanted that. I payed for it. I.****ing.payed.for.it.


The ending to mass effect 3 was SO dissapointing, not because of the blatant plot-holes(although they didn't help)... but because I had to suffer the reality that everything has to be s**t. Just like in real life.

People pass on stories, and fables, to teach us lessons and to pass on hope. I wanted a story of a hero, which I could amalgamate with my own ideals. I wanted to feel good, after having spent hundreds of dollars and hundreds of hours on a single franchise. I bought into it all...

The game itself talks about hope, but I don't feel hopeful... I woke up the next day and heard some news of a suicide attack in afganistan...and I was sad... I want to escape the harshness of reality with the game I love so much... because its done that up until this point.

I woke up severly depressed for the first time in 6 months. Because I was reminded how s***ty the world really is... And I was given no room to hope.


Bioware wrote this ending in a bubble. They wrote this ending for themselves. They did not write it for us, the fans. 

At least that what I hope happened. Because if they didn't write this ending out of ignorance... then there is only one possible word  used to describe what they did:  Schadenfreude

There's my rant, at least...

Modifié par Headshotmaster, 10 mars 2012 - 10:00 .

[ArmyKnifeX]

Don't forget, too, the original plot - that the Galaxy's dependence on Eezo is killing stars through its generation of dark energy (remember Haestrom?) and that the Reapers exist to limit Eezo use. Destruction of FTL travel in the ORIGINAL context would make this an even better ending. Unfortunately not only was the ending's mechanics changed, true choice removed, and the galaxy plunged into a dark age without any true emotional satisfaction for the players, but the plotline that actually makes sense in the context of the universe already established was abandoned.

The writers for ME3 don't understand the ME universe. It's ****** poor fanfic ghostwritten by someone who wasn't a fan to begin with.

[aimlessgun]

Thanks for posting this. It's one one of the smaller issues with the ending, to be honest. And the answer is not really satisfactory. He dodged the issue of travel being cut off.

And his dodge (it's a great thing! the relays were a tool of the reapers!) really rings false to me, considering they are a very neutral tool once the reapers are gone. Yes, they still direct galactic development, but without any nefarious ends. Much like rivers and mountains direct urban development. They're simply part of the galactic landscape now.

[raeting]

Kloborgg711 wrote...

Incredible that we have to think this hard to convince ourselves that there just may be some light at the end of the tunnel for characters that we never really cared about. So much for closure. No, we have to write up multiple page essays to convince ourselves that things aren't really quite as ****ty as they appear.

Yeah, I definitely agree with that. It shouldn't take any thought or scouring the ending & game for facts and clues. It is ok to keep things open to interpretation on a morality sense. ME was built on that in several ways. But to keep everything so vague in a factual sense is just painful.

[Kloborgg711]

ApplesauceBandit wrote...

So basically i don't get to be with my LI? and my crew. cause thats really all i cared about. I'm pissed. I couldn't give a crap less about the rest of the galaxy, if they added an ending where my crew and a small portion of each civilization got stranded on a small planet, i would have been happy with that. Jeez, even if it was just me and my LI that got stranded on some nameless planet i would have preferred that over these crappy endings

This. It hurts me to say this, but I would pay $60 for the option to take Liara up on her idea of floating away into space in a single small ship until the end of our days. That's how bad the supplied endings are.Maybe some people played the story for the sole purpose of making sure the cycle is somehow changed.. but I played to protect the characters and the galaxy that I came to love.

[cgvhjb]

manwiththemachinegun wrote...

I know we're all still processing the ending. But I thought this dev comment gave me a lot of hope for the future of the Mass Effect universe (especially since people are screaming for Dev responses).

This is from the awesome, awesome dude who wrote a lot of Mordin's lines and ME3 sidequests.

Fan Question: A'ight, you don't have to answer this if you don't want too, but is every ending you losing? The one I read was the mass relays being destroyed or somesuch, I didn't dig too deep but it sounded like the reapers got rid of effective FTL travel.

Dev response: That's one way to look at it. Another way to look at it is that the galaxy is free from the specially limited technology that the Reapers have been using to guide evolution from time before memory.

My boss talks about Leningrad after WW2. A whole lotta dead people. A whole lotta buildings knocked down. The war really kicked the crap out of it.

I went to Saint Petersburg (aka Leningrad) back in 2004. It's a gorgeous city full of vibrant people, wonderful art, great food (and sure, crime, pollution, poverty, and all the bad stuff, too). From the end of the war, that's, what, 60 years?

A lot of planets are going to be looking like Leningrad at the end of ME3. That doesn't mean that they lost, and it doesn't mean that they've been destroyed forever.

There is light at the end of the tunnel folks.

Wow, no offense but this response to the endings is quite dumb. Clearly they didn't understand 90% of the game was about the races learning to come together and stand as one, so the author needs to ask himself that if Leningrad was rebuild by all the allied nations together how much more could have been acomplished by working togehter. After the reapers were removed their could have been an unprecedented moment when all the races of the galaxy came together and helped each rebuild and see the value of one another. Instead of you got some random deus ex machina thing that just felt... lazy and tossed in that trivialized everything up to that point.

[Hizuka]

jestermarcus wrote...

FTL is far too slow for the species to ever see each other again. It would take years, maybe centuries for a ship flying at FTL to make it to Thessia from Earth. Interstellar trade is over.

Indeed.  I saw a top speed of 12 LY/day listed someplace.  The Milky Way is approximately 100,000 LY across.  Now from what I remember on the map, I'd put Thessia around 20,000 to 25,000 LY from Earth, meaning 1667 days minumum to travel one-way.  Getting the quarians home?  They're on the other end of the galaxy from Sol, so you're talking more like 8334 days (ie - 22.8 YEARS) one-way, assuming no stops for food, fuel, or repairs, and cutting through the galactic core.  Since THAT they can't do, you're looking at closer to 30 years one-way.

Yeah, large-scale galactic civilization is over.

[Madcat 124]

What the heck? Leningrad didn't have a Shepard protecting it. ALso, I'm sure when they rebuilt Leningrad the rest of the world wasn't in shambles and across the galaxy...

[TuringPoint]

We don't get to decide what the ending should be.  Art is not democratic.  If it becomes democratic it becomes generic.

That said... the ending was ultimately a litle too generic :/

Modifié par Alocormin, 10 mars 2012 - 10:06 .

[jestermarcus]

raeting wrote...

jestermarcus wrote...

FTL is far too slow for the species to ever see each other again. It would take years, maybe centuries for a ship flying at FTL to make it to Thessia from Earth. Interstellar trade is over.

It would take 22.8 years for a ship to go from one end of the galaxy to another with Mass Effect's conventional FTL travel. Not that anyone would, or a ship could carry that much fuel. Still, it leaves plenty of room open for FTL communication, high-value items (Wrex, technology, etc.) and so on to be shared. 

Earth to Palaven is just a fraction of that, a few years perhaps, and Palaven to Thessia is around the same. Plenty of room for long-lived krogans or asari to take up the banner of merchants.

Quarians won't see anyone for a while though. They are way, way out there.

They would have to establish hundreds of new colonies between the home worlds for refuling and supply purposes. Meaning finding garden worlds that just happen to be on the way. Not entirely feesible. And doesn't leave us with any chances of a proper new entry in the series.

[Chief Martini]

Kloborgg711 wrote...

ApplesauceBandit wrote...

So basically i don't get to be with my LI? and my crew. cause thats really all i cared about. I'm pissed. I couldn't give a crap less about the rest of the galaxy, if they added an ending where my crew and a small portion of each civilization got stranded on a small planet, i would have been happy with that. Jeez, even if it was just me and my LI that got stranded on some nameless planet i would have preferred that over these crappy endings

This. It hurts me to say this, but I would pay $60 for the option to take Liara up on her idea of floating away into space in a single small ship until the end of our days. That's how bad the supplied endings are.Maybe some people played the story for the sole purpose of making sure the cycle is somehow changed.. but I played to protect the characters and the galaxy that I came to love.

I couldn't agree more. Well-said, friend.

Alocormin wrote...

We don't get to decide what the ending should be. This isn't communist art.

Although we may not have the ability to decide these things, we do have the ability to sway the minds of those who do in the direction we want them to be swayed. 

[aimlessgun]

Alocormin wrote...

We don't get to decide what the ending should be.  Art is not democratic.  If it becomes democratic it becomes generic.

That said... the ending was ultimately a litle too generic :/

Ah, but in ME the idea is not democracy but splintering. Every puts in their opinions, not to come to sort sort of unified consensus, but to create more diversity.