There are some fundamental disagreements I have with the OP's analysis.
First, I believe that the residual issue of conflict between synthetic and organic intelligence had already been addressed before the end of Mass Effect 3, specifically by the very well told stories of EDI and the Geth. Certainly by the time I had completed the second act of the game, any notion that the created could not live in peace with their creators was demonstrably false.
Second, Shepard is not the champion of meatbags in the struggle against toasters. Shepard's motivation is to save the galaxy, and its space-faring races. He stands for order against the chaos of destructive change. He begins the game fighting for Earth and the human race, but as he adds allies and unifies the diverse peoples of the galaxy (including synthetic peoples) he begins to stand for something more, for peaceful coexistence among different people, and standing together against common threats.
Third, the Reapers are not a menace because they are robots; they are a menace because they are extremely powerful and hell-bent on the destruction of all "advanced" races in the galaxy. If they were a race of giant, immortal, psychic, hive-minded space cockroaches that came every 50,000 years to eat all the advanced races and add their knowledge to the space-roach collective hive mind, do you think that Shepard would embrace them as fellow organics? No.
Shepard is not fighting the Reapers because they're synthetic, he is fighting them because they threaten everything he values. Not just humanity, but all the races of the galaxy, their cultures, and galactic civilization. That's what he's fighting for.
Shepard loses that fight.
No matter which color you choose for the explosions, galactic civilization is plunged into a dark age--it says so in Mac Walter's notes. Without the relays, whole systems will be unsustainable, whole races will perish, and galactic culture and civilization as we know it has come to an end. Earth, in particular, will need a lot of help to rebuild just to a point of survival, and that help will not be coming. What few resources remain in the Sol system will be fought over as the various races of the "Victory Fleet" begin to starve and die, and it is anyone's guess whether there will be a human race left on Earth after a few generations. In his efforts to prevent the decimation of Earth and galactic civilization, Shepard has failed, regardless of whether he lives or dies or the Reapers live or die.
So what does the ending really offer us? It produces a Deus Ex Machina in the form of the star baby who instantly and immediately strips away Shepard's ability to continue his fight. At that moment, Shepard has lost that war. Instead, we are thrust into another conflict, between created and creator, which (see above) Shepard has already proven to be needless. Unable to point that out, or to argue in any way against the Reaper God, Shepard must choose from among three bad outcomes: destroy the galactic civilization and become an AI; destroy the galactic civilization along with all AI, including friends and allies who have a right to exist (does this unit have a soul?); or destroy galactic civilization and strip all diversity from the galaxy by homogenizing all life with Shepard/Reaper code.
Shepard and the player have been anticipating a showdown with the Reaper Harbinger since the end of Mass Effect 2. The Cerberus research into indoctrination could have provided a counter-agent or device, which could have permitted Shepard to get into Harbinger and fight to the central core, and spike it to send a corruptive signal throughout the Reaper fleet and give his allies an opening for attack, much the way the feedback from Saren stripped Sovereign's kinetic barriers for just long enough at the battle of the Citadel. That's just one example of how the central conflict of Shepard's story could have been resolved. Instead, when that central conflict was stripped away and discarded our nemesis Harbinger was also dismissed and replaced by the star baby Reaper god.
Did you care about beating "the Catalyst?" I didn't. I wasn't even the least bit invested in conflict with it. Compare that with my feelings about Harbinger--before the release of the game I told a friend of mine that I was looking forward to kicking him is his big metal daddy bag, and I was serious.
The ending that shipped with this game isn't bad because Shepard died. It isn't bad because it wasn't happy. It's bad because it centered on things we don't care about, and discarded everything we did care about. Organic/synthetic... we've done that, it's over. Star child... who cares, it's just kind of annoying. Control the Reapers, well... we've just had a conversation where Shepard argued what a stupid idea that was. Destroy all AI, sure... let's make any and all effort we put into the Geth and EDI a complete waste of time, and violate Shepard's principals of tolerance and respect for a being's right to exist. Or, we can re-write all genetics and AI code in the galaxy against its will.
And any way you "choose," Shepard loses his fight to save the galaxy.
Now, please... explain to me how this is "bittersweet." Tell me how it's cool to see Shepard fail in the end, no matter what choices you've made along the way. This isn't simply bleak... this is bad. The conflict we care about is handwaved away, while the choice we're presented with is meaningless.
This can't be resolved by making up an explanation of how your crew teleported or re-spawned on the Normandy, or why Joker broke for the relay at the last minute. This can only be resolved by a fundamental change to the end of the game.
It is becoming pretty clear that time constraints forced Mac Walters to just throw something together at the last minute in November of 2011. As good as the rest of Mass Effect 3 is, don't you think that the respectful thing to do, the course of action that will best honor the artistic integrity of the game and the series, is to let Mac, Casey, and the rest of their talented team have this as a do-over? Give them a chance to do this right, not throw together a last minute phone-in. The game is worth it, and they deserve the chance to erase this blot from their otherwise solid-gold track record. Let them take a Mulligan.
Anyway, that's how I feel about it.
Modifié par durasteel, 22 mars 2012 - 01:53 .
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