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[SimonTheFrog]

Well said

[shinder]

Eternalsteelfan wrote...

shinder wrote...

Eternalsteelfan wrote...

Thanks for taking the time, it's a good read.

I think the argument can be made that the Illusive Man is the primary antagonist, but I personally find the Reapers to be the larger antagonistic force. Cerberus plays a minimal part in the first game and TIM isn't even mentioned if I recall correctly; it's typically in the first act that the conflict between the protagonist and antagonist is revealed and the trilogy is really just the three act structure writ large. In the second game he's the protagonist ally and it's not until the finale that he turns coat. Even TIM's indoctrination is a result of the Reapers play. I believe in the third game, as an individual story rather than part of a trilogy, TIM is the antagonist, but in the scope of the series it's the Reapers.

In regards to ME 1, the reapers are barely mentioned there, as well--they're sort of just mentioned as being this terrible curse, and we see them in the final battle--but Saren is still the antagonist. The REAPERS themselves could be seen as being an antagonistic force--but not Harbinger as an individual. That is why, at least to me, TIM is the antagonist.

Although you are sort of right--any good writer shouldn't reveal a primary antagonist so late in a piece of writing that essentially just follows the basic structure three act structure. It's one thing if you want to make it into a plot twist at the end, sort of like a "Oh my goodness, so YOU'VE been behind it all along!" but, they didn't do that. Maybe you're right in the sense that TIM is the antagonist of ME3 and The Reapers are the antagonist of the series--but the writers shouldn't have done that. Regardless, I think it's pretty apparent no matter what your opinion of how well written the endgame was that TIM has a very strong case for being considered the main antagonist of ME3--and that is why the final battle is with him, not Harbinger.

In many regards, ME3 as a standalone story is strong, it's when you view it as part of a trilogy that it falters.

I wholeheartedly agree. When you take out the ending, the game is actually incredibly well-written. We already knew going into this that it was going to be exceptionally well directed in terms of aesthetics and we knew it was going to be well voice acted (unless you play as a Male Shepard ) but the writing in this game is rather exceptional until the end. It wasn't the most well-written game out there, but it served it's purpose: everything we did was incredibly epic. Everything said was incredibly epic. There were a lot of well-done emotionally-stirring scenes, such as Mordin's death or the burial of Eve, or the death of Tali, so on and so forth...it was just the last 10-15 minutes or so that really got messed up

[knightnblu]

Very well put and that blows BioWare's "clarity" position out of the water. Will they listen? Doubtful.

[Hoot42]

I cant believe iam just now reading this post. At any rate. Very  good job. Your ending is more of what I exspected.

[LinkPMW]

But the Star Child is a deus ex machina. In ancient Greek literature we know the existence of gods and that even if they are not mentioned in the story we know they are still a part of the piece being written. The gods and their powers are in the canon of every Greek story even if they are not mentioned in the beginning it is always implied that they are there but when the events get to the end of a plot and then suddenly the god intervenes and resolves the plot unexpectedly is deus ex machina. So the Crucible isn't a deus ex machina it is understood as some sort of weapon to stop the Reapers but the fact that it is not activated by the player character but by a god-like entity which explicitly states that these are his solutions for the organic, synthetic problem. Remember Shepard passed out and didn't know how to activate the Crucible. He was then suddenly raised by a platform to the Star Child. This is not by the result of the player character or from previous actions in the plot but by an unidentified and unexpected god-like character at the END of the story. That is why it is, this new player in the story is not introduced until the end of the plot. If he was introduced at the beginning or the middle and we knew his existence and had to work to specifically achieve one of the solutions he offered then it wouldn't be a deus ex machina. I don't know about you but I didn't work so hard to achieve what I had to have a god child tell me the only way to destroy the Reapers is to kill all synthetic life with it or to merge synthetics and organics together or to do what the story was telling us that could never be done in controlling the Reapers. All solutions of the plot are not from the actions of you or the rest of the story but are given at the last second unexpectedly by a god from a machine, deus ex machina.

[Addictress]

A. First, a few pet peeves. Tropes are very popular for making generalizations about parts of stories we dislike, but they have a tendency to be overused and misused.

The Crucible isn't a MacGuffin. The best and most common example of an actual MacGuffin is the briefcase in Pulp Fiction; we don't know what is in the briefcase and we don't know how or why it functions, but it's important because it motivates the characters and drives the plot. Basically, a MacGuffin is important only because it's important. The Crucible in Mass Effect 3 is an actual plot device (a MacGuffin is a very specific subset of this); we are told what it is and what it's function is right from the beginning and it's use in the climax is in line with this.

The Crucible isn't an example of deus ex machina. Again, we know all along that the Crucible's function is to stop the Reapers, it's introduced at the beginning of the story, it's importance is reinforced throughout, and it's function during the climax is in line with what is expected. An example of Mass Effect ending with deus ex machina would be: the Reapers win the battle of Earth and are seemingly unstoppable, suddenly, and with no previous justification, an even more advanced race emerges from deep space and destroys the Reapers, saving Earth. The difference is obvious; one is a clearly defined plot device, the other is a magical fix with no precedent in the story.

Being the only time I'm going to talk about tropes, and for humorous purposes only, here are some I find more accurate for the ending: the lack of resolution after all the setting-shifting events, especially the lack of clarity in regards to the future of the setting and it's characters (including the protagonist and in some cases the antagonist force) may be considered no ending, the Reaper-God-Child and unexpected side effects of the Crucible may be considered diabolus ex machina, and the sudden shift of themes from hope and fighting the impossible fight to that of true art is angsty can be seen as an example of a sudden downer ending. I'm certain there are more we can shoehorn as applicable, but this is as far as I'm willing to go into tropes.

I want to iterate that I dislike how much we over analyze tropes and assign them as labels to similar and overgeneralized devices and themes. Stories are usually divergent enough from other stories that generalizing aspects of them with tropes rarely do them justice and are ambigous enough that what tropes a story actually uses are debatable. I only addressed the aforementioned devices of deus ex machina and MacGuffin because they are venerable and distinct enough that their usage in reference to Mass Effect 3 is clearly wrong. TL;DR: tropes are convenient but our time is better spent looking at the specifics of a given story.


B. The resolution of Mass Effect 3 falls short for many reasons. More than I'd care to get into, truth be told,  so I'll try to punch on at least some of the major failings through the eyes of a screenwriter.


1. The ending feels jarring and out of place and there is little closure, this is a sympton of the ending failing to live up to what we come expect from the story. As I've previously said, "Mass Effect is a conventional story with conventional expectations". A conventional story, almost all stories, follow a pretty standard plotline: Introduction - Ascending Action - Climax - Descending Action - Resolution. In film we break it up into 3 acts, roughly: the first act is the introduction, the second act is the rising action and longest act of the story, and the third act is the climax and resolution.

Mass Effect 3 and the previous games follow this plotline both as individual stories and in the grand scheme of things as a trilogy (a trilogy is basically the three act structure writ large), that is until the final moments of 3. For reference, The battle for Earth is the climax of the series and the run across no man's land to the Citadel beam is the climax of the specific game; with this in mind, the Citadel sequence is the final part of the descending action and the resolution for both the game and series, the part where the antagonist is finally defeated, the themes and dramatic questions are answered, and the loose ends are tied. Or rather, it should be. After the defeat of the Illusive Man (the antagonist role is somewhat muddled and blurry towards the end of the story, more on that briefly), the protagonist has reached his goal, the defeat of the Reapers is at hand; conventionally, this is where the protagonist would succeed, the Crucible fire, and the Reapers destroyed. Instead, the story grows convoluted (once again, this is supposed to be the resolution) at the height of the scene by jarring us out of it with the bizarre, dreamlike sequence of Shepard's ascent on the magic platform and the introduction of an ancient and seemingly god-like form who expounds the final choice between three options, all presented symbolically in appearance and action: one which mirrors a co-antagonist's desire which has been reinforced throughout as wrong and contradictory of the protagonist's; one which is downright bizarre and is almost completely outside the scope of the game's main themes save for being somewhat in line with the primary antagonistic forces' goal; and one which accurately mirrors the protagonist's goal from since the beginning. The results of these choices vary and are wide-reaching, creating a massive upheaval of the story world, while being unclear.  All of the characters and the entire setting are left to an uncertain and sometimes confusing fate.

Just looking at what I've typed, it's apparent this is not a resolution. New information is introduced throughout the entire sequence rather than tying loose ends. New information shouldn't be introduced in a resolution unless it directly resolves something or is quickly resolved itself; definitively, it's the opposite of what a resolution is. In layman's terms, this is what makes us feel like there are more questions than answers.

The fate of the characters and the final destination they reach in the story are crucial to the resolution, especially on the scale of a trilogy. During the ascending action, right before the climax of the no man's land run, we are given a send off from all of the characters; this is both out of order for a conventional plotline (more fitting the descending action rather than ascending) and dimished by the implications of the ending. Ultimately, it is through the characters that we most directly identify with the story and find the meaning, the lack of resolution in this regard is especially unsatisfying.

The resolution is where the audience is supposed to find the tale's "ever after", be it happy or sad. Mass Effect 3 completely lacks any sense of "ever after".

You say you want to avoid looking at this through plot devices and instead assess the particulars of the story itself. But then you look at classic plot structure (exposition, ascending, climax, descending action, then resolution).  Are you sure that is the only structure acceptable in modern drama? Supposedly you look at it through this because the previous two games are conventional.
 
 
 
 
 
 

2. Video games, like film, are a visual medium; the ending tells us what happens rather than shows us what happens. This is easy to overlook but very important. Visual mediums for story are all about what we see. Another cardinal sin of storytelling commited during the ending is the description of, and differences between, the options in the final choice are almost all conveyed through exposition. The cinematics themselves, what we actually see, are extremely similar and all the implications of the choice we make are conveyed through what the exposition had told us. This is very poor storytelling and worse still to be considered the resolution.

Yeah, this is a good point. One which DA:I failed to fix.
...

 
 

4. Nothing is gained by breaking convention and attempting to make the ending enigmatic or profound. Assuming this was the writers' goal, this is another failing. Some believe, myself included, that the writers' tried to use the jarring impact of an unconventional, imperfect ending to hammer home a message or theme (presumably: pre-destination, the uncontrollable nature of fate, and the individual's limited ability to impact the world). This, however, comes at the cost of the story and the audience's pleasure, a cost that is far too high for the nature of storytelling.

Well I got pleasure from it. I didn't feel any cost here.


 
 
 
 
 

5. The resurgence and emphasis on The Illusive Man during the resolution as well as the lack of interaction with the Reapers and, more specifically, Harbinger,  detracts from the Reapers as the antagonist. A lot of people expected a "boss fight" of sorts or a closing discussion with Harbinger at the end. This is a perfectly understandable and legitimate expectation. During the climax, we are almost defeated by Harbinger, the avatar for the Reapers as antagonist, however, during the resolution, it is the indoctrinated Illusive Man that takes takes center stage. Though he unwittingly is an assisting force for the Reapers, he is not directly representative of them, merely their influence. TIM's role is more fitting that of an obstacle to be overcome during the rising action.

The prominance of The Illusive Man as the final foe to be overcome detracts from the overall threat and importance of the true antagonist, the Reapers.

The Illusive Man is the climactic struggle. He isn't an antagonist. He's just a representation of the kind of crap that always befell all the other cycles before. The organic tendency for self-doubt and the grey area of morality. That's all he is. Facing the Illusive Man isn't so much facing a second, competing antagonist as it is facing the themes which have been building in Mass Effect - it is Gollum's struggle with Frodo as they are in Mount Doom, as Gollum tries to bite the ring off Frodo's hand.

 
 
 
 
 

6. Shephard is not a tragic hero. A common debate I see is between people who think there should be a happy ending and people who think such an ending would be out of place or impossible, sometimes refering to Shephard as "tragic". The simple fact is, Shephard has no tragic flaw nor does he make a tragic mistake; had such a tragic characteristic existed, it could be a foregone conclusion he would die. Overcoming the Reapers may be an impossible task, but the impossible is routinely overcome in the Mass Effect trilogy and other epics. As is, there is nothing in the story that would railroad Shephard towards an inevitable demise, the difficulty of his task makes his death likely, but there's nothing that should remove the possibility of a happy ending. This may be why many people want a "happy" or "brighter" ending, there's no setup nor payoff to Shephard's death and without those it may feel cheap; storytelling is all about setup and payoff.

For an example of a good tragic hero, look no further than Mordin Solus. His tragic mistake was the modification of the genophage. When a desperate need for krogan intervention arose and the genophage was the reason they refused, Mordin fulfilled his tragic role by sacrificing and redeeming himself. There's a big setup for the genophage throughout the series and Mordin's involvement is setup in the second game as a huge internal conflict for him. In three, this all pays off beautifully with either his redemption or brutal murder at Shephard's hands before he can succeed. This is proper execution for a tragic character. From what I've seen, this is one of the most beloved and well-received storylines in the game; compare that to the ending's reception.

The problem with this point is that it's not Shepard that is the tragic hero - it is humanity. Shepard is humanity. This representation begins in Mass Effect 2, as Shepard is running away from the collector base and Harbinger condescends, :You have changed nothing." Harbinger became increasingly stalkery and personal with Shepard during Mass Effect 2. But on the flipside, it became such that all of humanity was embodied in one guy. Humanity is the flawed, tragic hero, not Shepard.

[BioWareMod11]

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