Copying and pasting
from my blog here...
To preface this post, I'd like to say a couple of things about me and my relationship with BioWare's games, which I've played since
Knights of the Old Republic brought me in via my love for the Star Wars universe.
I've never been one for participating in boycotts or similar organized efforts. Yes, I've participated in the
Fight For The Love group that asked for more homosexual romance options for Mass Effect 3, but that issue alone was never going to decide whether or not I would purchase the game. I've always figured that I'll buy the games I want, and if they're not for me for one reason or another I'll simply leave them be.
I've also been there to
defend BioWare and Electronic Arts when I've felt others were overreacting to
development and marketing decisions. I was there with my pre-orders for
Dragon Age: Origins,
Mass Effect 2: Collector's Edition,
Dragon Age II: BioWare Signature Edition,
Star Wars: The Old Republic - Collector's Edition, and
Mass Effect 3: N7 Collector's Edition.
Yet here I am, among a legion of upset and/or angry BioWare fans who are protesting critical development decisions made for the final part of the Mass Effect trilogy. Rest assured, most of the game was absolutely fantastic, despite the doubts I had about the Crucible plot device introduced at the beginning of the game. It would certainly be my preference that the entire Crucible project was changed into an extension of the fleet-building process that the entire game focused on. But I can stand the presence of an ancient superweapon being introduced in the final part of the trilogy as long as its use in the big finale is properly executed. Which it is
not.
The ending, as it has been since release, can most easily be described as heartbreaking. It manages, it seems, to do the exact opposite of what one would expect. It creates more questions rather than delivers answers. It is a source of anxiety and unfulfillment rather than closure. It forces you to accept someone else's terms when you've set out to reach victory on your own. It just plain fails to make sense within the context of the series' lore and themes. It is
not a bittersweet ending as much as it is simply
bitter.
The ending has failed to the point where I'm doubting if I'll ever want to actually replay the game, or its predecessors. And this is coming from someone who has played through Mass Effect 1 and 2 at least four times each.
PRIMARY PROBLEMSTo start, Mass Effect 3's ending
disregards and undermines choices made throughout the series. With the exception of the moment you're given to talk to former and current squad mates in the resistance HQ in London, all your choices are basically condensed into the number that is your Effective Military Strength. Then, in the end, every player is presented with the same color-coded choices that are completely disconnected from the choices and themes you were presented with earlier. All ending variants have roughly the same devastating consequences, and seem to all be designed to
sabotage the player's past efforts.
Then there's the seemingly changing
purpose of the Crucible. Throughout the game, even when talking to the
Prothean VI
Vendetta near the end, you are given the impression that the Crucible was meant to utilize the Catalyst for its own purposes, but once you do reach the Catalyst it somehow turns out to be the other way around: the Citadel/Catalyst utilizes the Crucible to modify its own capabilities in ways that are more than a
little hard to swallow.
Lastly, there's
the fallacies of the Catalyst that is introduced in the very final minutes of the game. Not only is
its existence entirely inappropriate for the series, especially as a thing introduced simply to tell you what your options are at the very end, but its motivation is highly flawed. It asserts that synthetics will always strive to eradicate all organics, when all the evidence presented throughout the series seems to point towards that only being applicable to the Reapers... even if the Reapers do it a few species at a time every 50,000 years. It's just not a motivation that works for the Reapers.
We impose order on the chaos of organic evolution. You
exist because we allow it, and you will end because we demand
it.
--Sovereign
The Catalyst claims that the Reapers exist to save organic life from synthetic life, but if you go back to
Mass Effect 1 and 2 and listen to
Sovereign and
Harbinger, you'll find that they
express distaste for organic life.
Sovereign says that
organic life is chaotic and a genetic accident, whereas
Harbinger later concludes
that
humanity is the only sentient species worth ascending into Reaper form. Whatever their purpose,
it clearly is not to save organics from synthetics.
Your worlds will become our laboratories.
--Harbinger
The Catalyst's solutions don't make much sense either, and the re-colored ending sequences showing them off are just abysmal. Destroying the Reapers is one thing, but
how are a series of shockwaves seemingly capable of distinguishing synthetic life and implants from other occurrences of metals, minerals, plastics and electrical/magnetic charges? This sounds more like
magic than any kind of science to me, and that only gets worse in the Synthesis ending... which also
spits life's celebrated diversity in the face. The only truly believable ending is the Control one, but choosing The Illusive Man's path is hardly a desirable ending to many players.
As a final note, the destruction of all mass relays seems impossible when you consider how Primary
(paired) and
Secondary
(multidirectional) relays work. Primary relay pairs should be entirely unaffected by the chain reaction, since they can only connect to each other, and Secondary relays wouldn't likely be able to transmit to all other nearby relays due to their own destruction after passing the beam from the Citadel on to the next relay.
(If relay A connects to relay B, C and D, relay A would be destroyed after passing the signal on to relay B, but relay B is probably out of range for relay C and D.)SECONDARY PROBLEMSThe first time the game made me pause and wonder what the hell was going on was when I finished the assault on Cronos Station - the Cerberus base. Being told that the Catalyst was actually the Citadel was one thing, but finding out moments later that the Citadel had been taken to Earth by the Reapers. How is that even possible?
Mass Effect 1 established that the Sovereign couldn't get anyone onboard the Citadel without the Conduit on Ilos, so how did they do this now? And how was the Citadel moved to Earth? It seems too big to be able to travel via mass relays, and it would certainly take it quite some time to make it to Earth via regular FTL? Furthermore, how
does this new Conduit in London work? How does it transport people into the Citadel without a receiver relay, and why would it transport people and corpses into a previously unseen area that
(on top of looking more like a mesh between human and Shadow Broker tech) is for some reason directly connected to another control panel like
the one in the Council chambers?
Wouldn't it have made more sense if the Reapers had salvaged the Prothean Conduit from Ilos, and had people transported into the Presidium, which in turn is only a short trip from the Council chambers' controls?
CLOSING STATEMENTSI realize fully that there's no way to get a "perfect" ending, but it's really hard to wrap my head around how the current ending was even considered; much less approved. I've heard about how script changes were made, and the writing team was basically scrambling to piece something new together with both time and ideas running out. It just saddens me immensely that this is how the most epic space opera conceived could end on such an unfitting note.
I'm not going to pretend that it's just the continuity errors, though. Or the way the game goes from a
plot device(The Crucible), to a
MacGuffin (The Catalyst), and suddenly veers into a
Diabolus Ex Nihilo (The Catalyst being the "Star Child"). I'll openly admit that I wanted my little piece of a happy ending too. I know, I know, saving what remains of the Earth and the rest of the galaxy is a happy thing in itself, but like I said... Mass Effect is a
space
opera.
It's as much about the characters and their relationships as it is about saving the galaxy.Having played through the entire Mass Effect trilogy, I feel deeply invested in its characters. Maybe too much so, because as I took in Mass Effect 3's ending
I felt truly pathetic for caring so much about Joker and EDI, Garrus and Tali, that brandy I was supposed to share with Chakwas, and not least how Shepard and Liara had promised each other they were going to get through this and have their little blue children. This is why I felt betrayed. No matter how well I did, Shepard's life was not in my own hands anymore, and
I felt that last-minute plot twists were destroying all I had fought for just for the hell of it.And there wasn't even a proper epilogue to console me. It was just me and my nihilism.
I don't hate BioWare. I don't want to be angry or disappointed with them. I guess I expected bittersweet endings more akin to those in
Dragon Age: Origins, where self-sacrifice was one of many decisions, and where I felt that the world actually had things for me to look forward to. As I'm typing the very end of this post, I've just read Dr. Muzyka's statement on the future of the game's ending, and I have hope that they'll soon be able to rekindle my trust in them.
Modifié par JediMB, 22 mars 2012 - 02:56 .
Ce sujet est fermé
Retour en haut
Are paid off by EA to give a favorable review.
