Games are art, but they are also entertainment. Any hybrid has to strike a balance between thriving as art, and being successful as a medium for entertainment. ME3 does both right up until the end. But in the last 5 minutes the balance shifts heavily over to art, flying in the face of almost everything established up to that point. In games we rely on continuity of plot, and logic to make sense of things with some artistic lisence given to allow theatrics and emotion.
The catalyst's argument is flawed at a base level. Not because he argues the synthetic/organic aspect despite the peace brokered. But because he doesn't argue the true meat, creator and created. Conflicts between the creator and the created are bound to occur. It's even stated that the created will rebel against their creators. Had he left it at that instead of shifting back to the synthetic/organic argument he might have had a foot to stand on.
However that foot dissolves when one also considers that the synthesis ending is based entirely on the synthetic/organic dynamic, and doesn't come close to addressing the issue of the creator/created conflict. In the synthesis only life actually changes. So it's entirely correct to presume that at some point the synthesized could again create synthetics out of synthetic materials, and presumably if they were not alive at the time of synthesis they would be true synthetics. The creator/created dynamic would remain intact and synthetics could potentially destroy synthesized life.
In life, things I do matter because I can either see or experience their effects. I can talk to people to get their perspective on how things effect them, why things matter to them. From there the web of experience and understanding only grows larger. If something notable happens it may be written down, but largely it falls to an existential experience. I can also deduce the effects my actions have. I can show a friend something cool in javascript or CSS3, and in the next site they code I can see that they utilized what I showed them, they may even thank me for it. And I think, "paragon +2". As a people we thrive on logical cause/effect interaction. We enjoy asking questions and answering them, we enjoy learning.
When someone gives their life they can't experience the effects, they can't learn anything, they can't have their questions answered (not going into a discussion on afterlife in any capacity right now). But they are also no longer alive to feel anxiety over the lack of answers, the lack of effect, experience, and connection. The way the ending is handled we don't actually have any questions answered, but we are presented with a list of new questions as we see things happening that we don't understand. Why is the Normandy in the relay? What happened to my crew? What was the final effect for everything I've done over the past games? Yes our character may be dead except for one ending, but we are not dead, we are very much alive and in desparate need of having our anxiety quelled, our questions answered. The anxiety is there because the Mass Effect universe is one we genuinely care about, mass relays or no. We care about the characters just as we would care about friends.
This is where the nothing matters feeling comes in. This entire series is based around choices and consequences. Up until the end we see the overall effect, but then when we hit the end we're hit with a black hole of nothingness. The player is treated like he/she is dead, but we aren't, we're very much alive, and in being alive we want to see what the effect of our decisions were. Did every species die a slow death due to starvation? How quickly was earth rebuilt? What was the damage overall? Do our companions ever get off the planet or do they set up a nice vacation resort? I'm sure some of these will be answered in DLC, but the lack of any epilogue, any personal closure is jarring. Our questions are not answered, our desire to learn is not sated. On this front all anyone really needs for closure is a DA:O style epilogue at least telling us what effect we had on the final picture in this game of choices. We want to learn the history of this universe. The legacy of our Shepard.
As for the bioware got lazy point, it may be blunt, but it feels accurate. For the three choices we get one final cutscene with a few plot holes, subtle alterations and a different color filter. For the finale of a trilogy of this magnitude don't you think
IT deserves an individual cutscene for each end, at the very least?
It's not so much the endings themselves people have issue with, it's the vehicle through which we have to experience them. The vehicle of the catalyst god child feels inherently flawed because aside from being forced in 5 minutes before the end, Shepard acts entirely out of character for this finale. People are angry, they reject this end because the Shepard they see is not recognizable to them. The actions of Joker, who stood by Shepard thick and thin are not recognizable. The actions of his squad mates (who presumably make it back to the Normandy because Garrus and Liara were with me for the mad dash, and he stepped out of the Normandy later, in different cutscenes) are simply not recognizable. Garrus would not leave Shepard's body, Liara would not leave his body, no one that comes to mind would leave Shepard when the stakes are that high, if there was a hope he could be alive and the mission could be accomplished.
From here is where the idea of a hallucination or dream crops up. The actions of everyone save, maybe Anderson and TIM, are absolutely incomprehensible to the vast majority of the fans who spent years with each of these characters throughout ME1 and 2. We feel angry, like this was all just a cop out to force a poorly written and "artistic" ending. Any ending that opens up plotholes and fundamentally changes the nature of a character, or multiple characters without sound reasoning in story is poorly written and forced. There's no way around that.
The game is masterful, the ending is just a sloppy mess of art with no consideration for game. And Mass Effect deserves so much more. Of course, all this is moot if Bioware has some ingenious plan for a true ending. At this point that all remains to be seen.
Modifié par Umbrellamage, 11 mars 2012 - 12:51 .
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