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Your decisions are tainted by the emotional investments you accumulate, and the more you invest in something the harder it becomes to abandon it.
The Pleasures of Not Knowing:
If you were a consistent member on the Mass Effect forums between the 1st and 2nd, or 2nd and 3rd installments, you would be known as a Knowingness Addict.
You are desperate to consume anything relating to this saga. Whether it be books, comics, etc. When a leak occured or a screenshot was released you would swarm like a pack of cockroaches to analyze it.
During this time you would receive opinions, rants, and raves from others. When hundreds of strangers enter our thoughts, a tiny part of our own self assessment is diminished. You are denying yourself the pleasure of the discovery.
After ME3 was released, what did you do once you finished the tale? More than likely, you went back and either watched the alternative endings on YouTube or replayed alternate paths yourself. Again, fueled only by needing to know everything, desperate to know all other choices one could make.
You ended up learning everything about the man behind the curtain, did you feel better? No, it only fueled your impulses for a more potent fix.
You bend unknowingly to your impulses. You replace others experiences with your own. Under the right conditions, you are prone to losing your individuality by becoming absorbed into a mob mentality. You became part of the Mass Effect Hivemind.
Why In The End Your Opinion Doesn't Matter:
In the end, Bioware views you as a guaranteed asset.
View it in the same light as a diehard sports fan that is upset with his popular team; in protest, he decides to not attend any more games. Does ownership care? No. Why? It's because someone else will fill that void with-in seconds, enjoying the game instead of you. Overtime, your willpower will shatter and you'll end up becoming a fan again the next chance you get.
Bioware is the RPG equivalent to a popular sports team like the Chicago Bulls. When it comes down to it, and everyone is buying the new Bioware AAA blockbuster; your impulses will give way and your brain will be firing synapses at a constant pace... desperate for that fix.
You will dance with the devil, and Bioware knows it.
You may have noticed the outcry about the ending is already dissipating, why?
It takes work to be angry; you're intellectually incapable of focusing for a long enough period of time to actually cause change. Most of you are incapable of even reading to this point of the article. The majority of these people are peers/allies who have joined your cause.
At the moment, the public views you as the political equivalent to the Occupy Wall street crowd. You are a joke. You come up with ridiculous theories that only spook conspirators' would believe; you introduce props and cheap gags like charities that only smudge up your message. You are simply noise.
In the end all of this is great news because; the last 15 minutes of this tale are actually quite good...
Why The Ending Works:
1. Shepard, war torn and exhausted, leaped into the crucibles energy source sacrificing his life to intertwine existences between synthetics and organics.
A few hours ago, this is how my tale ended after five years of Mass Effect; and I was quite satisfied with the ending.
2. The writing team behind Mass Effect 3 was able to elevate the narrative premise by weaving a philosophical debate about the relationship between organic and synthetic coexistence. The entire story throughout the third
addition is laced with the ideas of life, harmony, and self preservation.
More than ever, the story has morphed into a game about big themes and big ideas.
Just some of the thoughts explored throughout this game...
EDI and free will, Synthetic dominance, Lineage, Genophage, Causality, Geth/quarian conflict, Determinism, Legacy - Miranda's father, Synchronicity and Kaiden, False Theology-Asari Prothean Gods, personal fulfillment, etc.
Compared to the previous installments that may have skimmed over some of these topics, all the philosophical and sociological debates/conflicts in this iteration have the main goal of bolstering the main theme of Mass Effect 3,
The existence of The Creators vs. The Created.
3. Two camps are formed because of this instance. The story the writers wish to tell, and the fans who feel entitled to observe the story they themselves envisioned.
The writers, it seems, realized the message that they wanted people to take from this third installment. This had the team shifting the narrative focus to a more elevated dynamic.
The coexistence of Synthetics vs. Organics.
4. To this end, Mass Effect 3 succeeds in weaving a narrative from beginning to end. To say otherwise is disingenuous.
Philosophical themes trounce the Neanderthal-dopamine induced urges people wish to see in this addition. Especially in the end game where this theme becomes the stories main focal point.
Honestly is a cameo appearance from Wrex for the 50th time really going to add anything to the finality of this story? No.
5. Unfortunately I find a Star Wars Syndrome happening with this series. A fan base digesting every bit of corn fructose they can gulp down. Needing everything to be spelled out; desperate to know every last bit of information.
Why must one need to see Tali's face? Why do we need to know a detailed history of the Protheans? How come we need to see the Rachni and Krogan attack the enemy? Isn't the struggle of loss and war already inferred multiple times throughout the story? The focus of the end game is obviously being developed on a much deeper/different theme.
Midichlorians anyone? You do not need to know how exactly the force works...
This desperate need to dig up plot holes and inconsistencies from the hard core is entirely unhealthy for the series and its fans. All stories have inconsistencies, stories you tell to your friends are punched up exaggerations of what really happened. Your Facebook account is not a mirror image of the life you lead, but the life you wish you lived.
You had the chance to say goodbye to the entire main cast in one way or another. Multiple times is it mentioned/inferred that all races are about to battle the Reapers.
Needing to know a detailed resolution of what happens to everyone in the galaxy only dilutes the escapist reality the writers created.
Some things are better left to the imagination. Less is more and allowing the mind to explore possibilities is one of the great strengths of human thought.
6. In the end, it would seem the Bioware writing team effectively succeeded in what they wanted to say in the Mass Effect saga. This is something I can respect. Instead of appeasing to the vocal mob; they finished the story on their own terms.
Mass Effect became a tale about cultural synthesis. The Mass Effect team was finally able to find this series a voice. Knowing this, makes me content that I have finished this series in its entirety in the way it was meant to be seen.
And I enjoyed every minute of it.
Modifié par MintyCool, 15 mars 2012 - 04:32 .
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