BlueStorm83 wrote...
--- AlienShagger, you bring up good points, and I understand what you're going for, but there are two holes in your argument. While these holes shouldn't stop you from enjoying your ending, they make it impossible for me and many others to enjoy it in the same way.
First, your ending hypothesis hinges on the Indoctrination Theory, and this wasn't implied in the game. I'm not a nitwit, and I didn't get the feel that Shepard may have been undergoing a gradual indoctrination until the internet filled me in on it. And after BioWare saying that Mass Effect 3 is a complete game out of the box, I shouldn't have to go to the internet to be let in on the real meaning.
Second, and this is much the same as the first, you say that it is left open beyond the "Shepard Waking Up" scene, for the player to form whatever he opines in his own mind as to what should happen next. The problem with this is that I can do this WITHOUT paying seventy dollars for a video game. A Video Game is information, it is ideas, it is freedom to choose and do, this is true. But at the same time, it exists in a concrete form, be it two DVDs and a small download, a Blu-Ray disc and a small download, or a rather large download for the Digital Deluxe customers. It should contain a beginning, a middle, and an end within its own existence.
--- Please excuse me, I once again said that you had an ending opinion. You keep saying that it's not an ending, it's a collection of final scenes. You're right in this, the game's "Ending" is skipped over and instead we get an epilogue starring Buzz Alrdin and a child. We are listening. We being me, not BioWare.
But anyway, yes, I can't see the same hope in the way that the game concluded, because its conclusion was not an ending. Many stories seem to be coming to open conclusions these days, trying to be artistic, but ending up unsatisfying to the masses. And, art aside, BioWare and EA are businesses, and you've got to give the people (yeah, yeah,) give the people what they want. This is generating a ton of buzz on the internet, but at least half of it is negative, and that can turn people off of a company.
Lost ended artistically, but vaguely without answering any questions. I'd bought every season's boxed set, but cancelled my pre-order for the final, because I felt like I was left to determine my own answers, and that's not what I want when I take part in someone else's story.
Battlestar Galactica ended artistically and vaguely, to a lesser degree than lost, and suffered the same fate. Recently my uncle wanted to start watching it, but asked "Did they ever finish the show, or did it get cancelled?" I said, "Yeah, they finished it, but they finished it badly, don't waste your time." Yeah, it's my opinion, but my opinion is all I can act on.
None of that was as open and vague as the ME3 ending can be construed as. And yes, you have to construe it, as the work presented as a "whole" (as BioWare has insisted that it is) does not give the sense of hope or engery. All that has to happen entirely within the player, without any real prompting through our digital self, Shepard. For the player to feel hope in Mass Effect 3, our Sheperd has to feel hope. For the Player to be energized, Shepard must feel energized (or at the very least die in an energetic manner for us to piggyback into reality on.) Instead, my last interactions with Shepard felt like having a conversation with a stranger who looked much like, and thought he was, my brother.
This hits upon it all exactly. The game was said to have a real ending. It did not just as it is, it didn't. If you compound that with the idea that Shepard and/or the player has been indoctrinated, well that means that at some point it didn't even have a real middle or beginnig or wherever the hallucination began. The game in and of itself then was not real? I may have dumb days, senior moments, and all, but I don't think as a whole I cannot discern meaning from something offered to me (heck, I often assign meaning where none is intended).
I, too never thought of IT until and after I finished ME3 and wondered how the heck I got the ending I did. I then searched the internet and found the theory. I could see why people would hold onto it. It satisfies them. But it does not satisfy me, because in order to do that it would have to include things it is now missing. Redemption being one. The game is often totally about redemption. And indoctrinated Shepard has none, but Shepard played a certain way has always given others the chance at it. Why then deny Shepard the opportunity?
Liara is featured in the comic Redemption about the search for Shepard's body. The title is at once about the redemption of Shepard's lost life, but it means something bigger. Liara realizes she has only one choice when given two. But, she figures Shepard will hate her for the one she makes. She finds redemption in the things that happen after-being the Shadow Broker and helping Shepard. Even in Shepard giving in and working temporarily with Cerberus gives some redemption to Liara.
Shepard dooms 300k Batarians to death in The Arrival. Admittedly there was no option but to do this. Shepard must seek some redemption by being detained for doing this-Hackett even tells Shepard that s/he will be required to do it. We can debate what this did game-wise, but so much was always made of this core ideal. Mordin could redeem himself. The Quarians could for trying to kill their children, the Geth. And if reunited the Geth and Quarians together might help redeem Rannoch. The Turians could. If Wrex and Eve were to lead the Krogan and the genophage was cured, it can be assumed that the Krogan would at least try to redeem themselves and their whole planet.
People that had followed Cerberus could redeem themselves. Saren might, if he was able to deny indoctrination and shoot himself. TIM, too. Benezia does. Every single person that followed Shepard into the ME2 suicide mission is a story of redemption. They may have followed Shepard for money, but as Saeed said the went off to become "goddamn heroes". Jack, the same Jack that had hated and killed kids, becomes a mentor and more to her biotic kids. You have the option of getting Garrus to stand down in his loyalty mission or to get Saeed to back off. EDI, a Cerberus construct, denies her programming, throws off her chains and not only redeems herself, but redeems the body of Dr. Eva Core and uses it for good. Joker, who just wisecracks his way along, and is shown as all but helpless except when in the cockpit goes outside himself when the Collectors board the Normandy and then further redeems his own life if advised to try love with EDI. Jacob must redeem his family in denying his father. Dr. Chakwas finds redemption in anything she may have done because for her it was all about following Shepard. Kelly, by denying Cerberus and changing her name, continues to help refugees. Thane redeems himself. Kolyat as well. Bailey was corrupt, but is a real asset and help and thus redeems himself.
I've shown a lot of what I think the core lesson of the game, if there is one, is. It is one of redemption. Even Shepard is redeemed from ME1 to finally ME3 when people admit the reapers exist and are there.
So why, when everything has been geared to either working toward redemption for others and for self, would the game totally deny at the end that that matters and allow Shepard to sink into a hallucination controlled by the kid and the reapers and then offer no redemption or rejection of that? It was good enough for everyone else, but ultimately not Shepard in a view that says IT is the ending. And rejection of the kid's choices isn't making a choice (destroy) unless we have the context within the game to show that it somehow didn't do what the kid says it does.
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