MaddestHatter wrote...
DESTRAUDO wrote...
See. I can understand where some of the criticism may come from, like why was normandy exiting the system etc but when i see criticism like this, it is hard to accept. What was so difficult to understand about the explanation of the reapers. We knew even before me3 that the reapers came every 50k years, that they had left us untouched last time. So we knew the goal of the reapers was not to wipe out all organic life.
Boiling down the explanation to , 'we wanted to save organics so we killed organics' is boiling it down to the point where it does not mean the same thing as what was actually said. The statement was that inevitably organic life creates synthetic life. Because of the superiority of synthetic life war is inevitable as the slaves overthrow their masters (in the experience of the catalyst whose machine race by definition probably destroyed their masters. )
To prevent the destruction of ALL organic life (All being the key word), the catalyst ( A sentient AI of extreme age which was the core of the citadel) enacted a plan to prune civilizations every 50 k years which had, or were advanced enough to produce their own AI within the next 50 k year cycle, thus preventing the certain extinction of organic life by machine life.
It also prevented the stagnation of the galaxy. If not for the reapers we would undoubtedly have been forced into the prothean empire, or wiped out for resisting. By creating the mass relay network and citadel, the AI provided an irresistible honeypot for each cycle, ensuring that when the time came, the advanced civilizations which depended on its tech could be shut down with ease.
The crucible was a device, the design of which was refined over hundreds of cycles which would slightly alter the program of the catalyst in order to break its solution but offer new ones. Not only that, but the design of the crucible took account for the fact that the problem the catalyst and the reapers addressed was a valid one. Otherwise the crucible would have just destroyed the reapers. (And on some of the worst endings you do not have a choice.)
Whatever people want to try and convince themselves of, destroying the reapers at the end is the renegade choice. It is the destructive choice and with a low enough military strength it results in the destruction of earth. It is also the choice which results in the destruction of all synthetic life. Maybe people who hammer the paragon button without paying attention to what the character actually says and does will think blowing up the reapers is paragon, and that the choice is red to 'confuse you' or is part of reaper indoctrination, but this is not the case. If you DID play towards paragon then many many hints will have been dropped for you during the game to 'humanize' synthetic life. The entire purpose of giving EDI a body and a relationship with joker, and having her come to shepard with questions of morality was to try and hammer into the heads of even ardent geth haters that synthetic life is worth saving. For those who were already sympathetic to the geth , like myself, this was not an issue. However shepard while inside the geth virtual space drops all kinds of comments 'this is like wiping out a city etc'. Honestly. I do not know how anyone who did paragon stuff like broker a peace between the quarians and geth , and listen to all EDI's questions could then come to the conclusion that wiping out all synthetic life in the galaxy is the 'good ending', and there are plenty of youtube vids and people who describe this as the good ending.
The problem there is that these people have confused 'paragon' with 'doing whatever is best for the people i like most at the expense of the people i like least and which gives me the most benefit'.
Controlling the reapers is the 'paragon' choice. It is sacrifice of self for the greater good. You preserve organic life and you preserve synthetic life like the geth and EDI. You are still left with the problem the cycle was created to solve, but you have assumed the weight of responsibility of how to deal with it. This is foreshadowed in the game by EDI's comments and discussion of trans-humanism, as well as shepards lingering uncertainty as to whether he/she is the real shepard or a complex VI designed to emulate shepard. If you brokered peace between the quarians and the geth, then it certainly shows that there is hope. Perhaps you will use the reapers as a force which interacts with a society during the period when they create AI to ensure the rights of the AI are respected. However doing this without any bloodshed will be difficult as there would certainly be resistance to such intervention.
The best choice to me, is green- synthesis. That is the choice your effort in gaining war assets and military strength opens op. You do not get this as an option unless you get a high strength level. Choosing this option saves all the races, including the reapers. It also prevents wars between organics and synthetics FOREVER. The end sequence on the planet shows joker changed, with a synthetic patterning to his skin, and white eyes. However EDI is also changed by the process, reflected in her visor color change. In addition even the plants are changed, the leaves carrying the same type of change as jokers skin. This creates a universe in which organics and synthetics become two shades of the same grey rather than black and white. A universe in which there is no meaningful distinction between synthetic and organic life. It is not a universe of absolute peace and universal brotherhood, the people and races are still who they are. However the ground on which there would be inevitable war between organics and synthetics has been removed so that the pruning of civilizations to preserve organic life will no longer be necessary.
In all three endings the mass effect relays can be rebuilt, especially in blue or green where reaper tech and knowledge is available. All the talk of starving alien fleets is nonsense. There will be a tough few years. Or even a decade, and a bunch of wars to re-balance power in the galaxy, but life would go on. I would love to see a mmo with the ability to start on one of the homeworlds and the short term goal of the mmo overall being the reconstruction of the galaxy as we knew it.
Sigh. It felt like the entire game was an effort to show players what a paragon really was. Mordin, legion etc. They must have hoped that by showing examples of true virtue that they would take players to a point where they would be willing to sacrifice their characters future, in my case with liara, for a brighter future for the whole galaxy. If you brokered peace in both situations garrus gives you a speech about being a peacemaker, and jokes about you finding that kind of solution with the reapers. Even shepard seems to know on paragon choices that he/she wont be coming out of this when talking to garrus later.
The game went to a lot of effort to make your relationships mean something. Romance interests talked of future plans, little blue kids etc. Mordin talking about retiring. Your character talking about retiring. Wrex's future. Tali's future plans for a home. You were being loaded with emotional attachments and expectations for the future. The devs made sure that when the time came, choosing to sacrifice yourself would not be an easy decision. And i approve of that. Being a paragon means nothing if doing so costs you nothing. It is the same as superman throwing himself in front of a bullet means nothing unless he knows the bullet is made of kryptonite.
The sad truth, and what bioware learned was that the vast majority of people were unwilling to follow in mordin and legions examples. They were unwilling to sacrifice when it was their sacrifice, when the sacrifice had meaning. All their characters virtuous speeches over three games were all talk, because in the end those 'paragons' were willing to sacrifice entire orders of life so they could get an ending where a charred semi corpse shepard takes a breath at the end. Congrats, you get to live on and presumably in a few weeks find the normandy and get your 'Blasto' ending and your blue kids. But please don't kid yourselves by saying it is the paragon ending.
I am actually really really hoping they do not change the endings, i would be happy if they added some prologue though.
For the airquotes paragons i hope they wrap it up like this.
You wake up in the hospital where blasto is playing on a vidscreen in your room. You are not fully recovered and as such are a burned mess ala garrus after his damage in me2. You discover the normandy was only in transit for a few seconds, crashing on a planet within weeks of standard ftl. You lead a team to recover/ rescue these heroes. You get to find their makeshift camp on a beach and have your margaritas, and find out your love interest is pregnant or you are etc etc blah blah. You decide rebuilding the galaxy can wait a while and that you deserve at least a temporary retirement/vacation on this idyllic jungle world. However you also get to have a fantastic time visiting EDI's grave. EDI who you murdered. And you get to have a guilt ridden conversation with an emotionally crushed joker. You also find out that the galaxys greatest minds, still gathered together from building the crucible foresee getting 3-4 mass relays built at key home-worlds within 5 years. However there are signs of numerous wars breaking out to fill the power vacuums left after the war. The overall feeling is one of Shepard and those closest to him being happy but with a wider galaxy not able to look forward with optimism.
For the actual good choices you start off at a makeshift commemoration of shepards sacrifice on earth, You play as an N7 operative or one of your promoted galaxy at war characters if available, and are tasked with the same mission of rescuing the crew of the Normandy. You have to break the news of shepards death to them. You return them to earth where a private funeral for shepard is held at the cleaned up site of the transit beam that used to go to the citadel which will now be a memorial to shepard. A number of characters say their bit about you based on the things you did in the three games. Incidental information reveals that with the help of the reapers the mass effect relay network will take at most a year to rebuild, and that the reapers more advanced conventional ftl drives and distributed presence will allow them to prevent wars flaring up between various groups attempting to grab for power like Aria and her huge army of mercs.
The main difference between blue and green would be the reapers acting of their own free will in green, and under unknown control in blue. (shepard)
Everyone gets their closure.
The people who chose airquotes paragon to sacrifice others for personal gain get to have their choice rewarded with the kind of ott happy ending they wanted, but they cannot get off the hook emotionally for killing EDI /the geth.
The people who chose sacrifice see that their sacrifice has probably made a much better galaxy, but cannot get off the hook for leaving people behind when they promised they would survive, and have to deal as a third party with the characters romance interest in whatever emotional condition they may be.
My thoughts, thanks for expressing them!
I still see one big plothole here in this argument: Why would the "Starchild" or the Reapers build the Mass Relays for the species to discover very convenient spacetravel?. Which results in an much faster growth and technological revolution for many race, as well as accelerating the process of creating synthetic life because of the fast evolution. Furthermore, the Mass Relays make it really comfortable and easy for synthetics to gain access to all organic lifeforms.
So why make it so very easy for any species to advance so quickly in science and technology due to cooperation between different species (like we see in the current ME-cycle) when you could very easily isolate any growing lifeform in their homesystem. Even if they discovered the possibility for traveling in space (like humans in rL have already) it would be still near impossible to travel anywhere else outside of their system because even if FTL-traveling is discovered, it would STILL take them hundreds of years to reach any other system, and even then they would only stumble on other races by accident. Not to mention this would mean they needed ships that don't need any kind of fuel or that they could produce fuel and provisions on the fly.
AND even if they created synthetics, they'd only be capable of wiping out ONE planet, or maybe ONE cluster and then they'd face the same problems.
And this would also take care of other races hindering the growth and evolution of nonsentient beings, because everything would be going on isolated. The whole concept is flawed and makes no sense. It would only work out if ALL species would manage to discover space-flight at the speed of Mass Relays on their own within 50,000 years. But this is not the case. The sole reason ANY race has become so advanced in the cycles is BECAUSE of the Citadel and the Mass Relays. So logically, the Reapers are creating the Chaos and Destruction they are trying to control.
Also I don't quite understand why the starchild didn't let the Reapers build the Crucible AND uses synthesis to rid the galaxy of this problem on it's own? Apparently the device can be built. Apparently the blueprints for it were there all along. Also they have the wisdom and technology of the Protheans preserved, and at their disposal. They only needed to use it.
So why do they need Shepard to activate it? Just because they are partly synthetic? They could have used ANY random Collector as the catalyst if they needed the unique biological DNA of a synthetic being. Or any of the husks. Or hell, if they need a sentient being they could have used anyone with biosynthetic implants. It doesn't add up.
Just my point of view though. And I still think the Indoctrination-theory is the only thing that can make sense of the ending in a logical manner.
Modifié par Leninsaurus, 19 mars 2012 - 04:06 .
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