1086 réponses à ce sujet

[TheMadBlimper]

thinicer wrote...

TheMadBlimper wrote...

thinicer wrote...

TheMadBlimper wrote...

This is why I chose to destroy that little #@$!er, and everything associated with him.

Unfortunately, technology as a whole was wiped out, along with the Geth, as collateral damage.

I didn't choose the red ending because it would have completely undermined what I set out to accomplish in the 2nd and 3rd games and ultimately succeeded in: reconcilng the Geth and Quarians. If I choose the red ending, then I kill all Geth and ruin everything I did in the 2nd and 3rd games. I also kill EDI who I grew very fond of.

I hate saying this, I really do, but they were acceptable losses. In the grand scheme of things, they were martyred along with Shepard, dying for the only cause worth dying for (at least in Mass Effect.)

Except that destroying the Reapers was unnecessary because the blue and green endings also stopped their attack on Earth and on the galaxy, so they were not acceptable losses as all three endings end the Reaper threat.

....

Agree to disagree?


(Personally, if we take the endings at face value, I found Synthesis to be ideal.)

[Zolt51]

millich wrote...

BioWare wrote the catalyst and prevented Shepard from rebuting it.
The Catalyst's message is BioWare's message.

That is simply untrue on so many levels.

Both destruction and control endings intrinsically reject the catalysts's rationale. Synthesis accepts them but tries to achieve galactic peace in a more humane way.

Modifié par Zolt51, 16 mars 2012 - 04:12 .

[Zine2]

Okay, for people a little confused about the racism angle...

Racism starts by arbitrarily defining people based on what they are, as opposed to who they are. This is why MLK had a dream wherein people will be judged by the strength of their character as opposed to the color of their skin.

In a fictional sci-fi world, "People" are not just humans. It is every sentient being in the galaxy.

The Catalyst attempts to divide the people of the galaxy into two camps: Organic and Synthethic. But again, there is no actual good reason why Organics and Synthethics should hate one another.

That is why it is racist. It attempts - arbitrarily - to divide the Galaxy between "Organics", and "Synthetics", when in reality we're all just sentient beings sharing ONE galaxy.
 
The Catalyst never looks at the character of Geth as a people. It simply looked at their component parts, saw they were made of metal, and went, "Okay, you're in the Synthetic camp! Congratulations! We must now protect you from the Organic camp". That's what makes his premise for "fixing" the galaxy nothing more than racist ideology gone mad.

Modifié par Zine2, 16 mars 2012 - 04:13 .

[xeNNN]

Walrusninja wrote...

Well this is new ....

i was thinking that when i read the title ... i thought it was a joke...

oh boy was a wrong. 


normally its THE ENDINGS ARE HORRIBLE WTF 

now its THE ENDINGS ARE RACIST AND OFFENSIVE! 

its just gonna get stupider rofl. 

EDIT: removed my last bit bah lol 

Modifié par xeNNN, 16 mars 2012 - 04:14 .

[millich]

SandTrout wrote...

millich wrote...

Ok, sure. But it was the Catalyst saying and doing those things, not Bioware.

BioWare wrote the catalyst and prevented Shepard from rebuting it.

The Catalyst's message is BioWare's message.

lol, I thought right after posting that, "But wait, you couldn't interupt it or refuse."
Guess I wasted everyones time...

[Zolt51]

dragonage200200 wrote...

I do see your point, I just highly doubt Bioware intended the endings to be racist, but I can see how you interpreted them that way after I re-read your post.

To clarify: The catalyst's reasoning can be defined as racist. The ending is not.

[thinicer]

TheMadBlimper wrote...

thinicer wrote...

TheMadBlimper wrote...

thinicer wrote...

TheMadBlimper wrote...

This is why I chose to destroy that little #@$!er, and everything associated with him.

Unfortunately, technology as a whole was wiped out, along with the Geth, as collateral damage.

I didn't choose the red ending because it would have completely undermined what I set out to accomplish in the 2nd and 3rd games and ultimately succeeded in: reconcilng the Geth and Quarians. If I choose the red ending, then I kill all Geth and ruin everything I did in the 2nd and 3rd games. I also kill EDI who I grew very fond of.

I hate saying this, I really do, but they were acceptable losses. In the grand scheme of things, they were martyred along with Shepard, dying for the only cause worth dying for (at least in Mass Effect.)

Except that destroying the Reapers was unnecessary because the blue and green endings also stopped their attack on Earth and on the galaxy, so they were not acceptable losses as all three endings end the Reaper threat.

....

Agree to disagree?


(Personally, if we take the endings at face value, I found Synthesis to be ideal.)

Choose whatever ending you want. I thought they were all terrible. I think we probably agree on that point.

[TheNexus]

Lambchopz wrote...

Think you might be reading into it a bit too much here. You may feel this way. I think most just think it's a bad ending because it was poorly written, not because they oppose it morally.

Yeah... this.

The second you connect anything on the internet to Hitler....isn't there an internet rule for that or something?

[Zolt51]

millich wrote...

SandTrout wrote...

millich wrote...

Ok, sure. But it was the Catalyst saying and doing those things, not Bioware.

BioWare wrote the catalyst and prevented Shepard from rebuting it.

The Catalyst's message is BioWare's message.

lol, I thought right after posting that, "But wait, you couldn't interupt it or refuse."
Guess I wasted everyones time...

So you refuse and do... what? Sit on your ass?

[Baine10]

I'm racist and i find this offensive.

On the other hand, he's just fulfilling the "open to interpretation" label on the ending here. Give him credit people!

[dragonage200200]

Zolt51 wrote...

dragonage200200 wrote...

I do see your point, I just highly doubt Bioware intended the endings to be racist, but I can see how you interpreted them that way after I re-read your post.

To clarify: The catalyst's reasoning can be defined as racist. The ending is not.

Yea, this is what I meant, my wording was just terrible.

[Reign Tsumiraki]

 You make a good point. It's not racism, really, but you're spot on about the genocide part.

[Skyblade012]

TheRedVipress wrote...

You have a point.
You may have blown the thing out of proportion, but you still have a point.

I think the original idea was to try and create a logic that is very far from human mind,
whice is of course a paradox, because to us It's Ilogical.
And that is why it failed epicly.

Having something operating in a way that seems illogical to humans is ok, except that humans shouldn't accept it, because it doesn't seem logical to them.  So when Shepard goes along unquestioningly, it doesn't add up.

Then too, the machine's illogic is proven wrong in-game.  Twice.

[Amagoi]

The great thing is, this is a totally legitimate interpretation of the endings. There's your speculation for you. Not only does the ending give you no closure, has plotholes, space magic, but it turns Shepard into a ****.

Very nice, very classy Bioware. First you point out throughout 1 and 2 that politicians are worthless and it always falls on the soldiers to save us all not only from the monsters, but the politicians and their ineptitude, which more often than not causes more problems than the monsters threatening to wipe out all life. But now you go against your very own message of acceptance of others, and tolerance for all walks of life. Sex, religion, race, organic or synthetic.

Sure is facist in the future.

Modifié par Amagoi, 16 mars 2012 - 04:18 .

[GnusmasTHX]

OP is a good joke.

[rizengrad]

You made a valid point, OP. I didn't see it that way.

[Zine2]

Zolt51 wrote...

One flaw in the reasoning however is that organics can pretty much do the same thing. Take the Krogan for example. If they hadn't been stopped by the genophage, they could have kept breeding like rabbits on an IV of viagra and eventually overrun the whole galaxy. Preventing other organic civilizations from rising, ever. again. I'm stereotyping on the Krogan here, but it could happen with other species.

As I mentioned however, there will always be conflict in an imperfect Galaxy. Turian will fight Krogan. Krogan will fight Salarian. Human will fight Human.

Therefore any attempt to further deepen any differences between sentient beings (by arbitrarily them under the "Organic" or "Synthetic" camp) does not actually lessen the violence. It does not solve "Chaos". It actually increases it. This is yet another reason why the Catalyst's premise was completely flawed.

[wesr]

It's amazing what people can see racism in. If they wanted to show some sort of racism against the machines they really didn't do a good job of it.

[ManOfSteeL1618]

Zine2 wrote...

This is not meant to be nice. This is meant to be a blunt, honest, and to the point assessment - because everyone seems to be trying to avoid the Elephant in the room.

Mass Effect's Ending attempts to condone and justify genocide. This is why it is almost universally reviled.

The one common element in all the endings is that you will meet an entity known as the "Catalyst". Set aside all of the other plot holes and minor complaints, and focus on the Catalyst for now.

This is the entity that created the Reapers. This is the entity that is directly responsible for the genocide of multiple sentient races over tens of thousands of years. It is his fault that Earth, Palaven, Thessia, and the Galaxy is burning.

The Catalyst is in fact a war criminal on a scale worse than any of our own real-world tyrants. Hitler's gas chambers, Genghis Khan's campaigns of extermination, and Tamerlene's pyramid of skulls is nothing compared to what the Reapers have done. That it tries to disguise itself as a young child does nothing to exonerate it of the magnitude of its crimes - it's actually sickening. It's like Hitler having plastic surgery to look like an innocent child.

Even worse, this is an entity that attempts to justify its genocidal actions - in a way that is bluntly little different from the real world genocide of the Jews.

It uses euphemisms to describe mass murder. It uses the term "Chaos" to describe people, as though they are a problem and not living, breathing, beings. It calls its actions a "Solution", just as the certain people called the Holocaust their "Final Solution". It even goes as far as calling the the liquification of corpses into Reaper components as "Ascension", no different from how the Concentration Camps collected the hair and skin of the dead victims to use as furniture components.

Even worse, the premise of the Catalyst is fundamentally a racist premise. It boils down to "Organics and Synthetics are so different that they will always end up destroying each other". Really? You are now judged by your component parts - metal or protein - instead of the content of your character? How offensive would it be in real life to hear someone say you should be judged by the color of your skin?

To top it all off, the player is not allowed to question its actions. It must stand idly by and accept its justifications. You are not allowed to tell it that is wrong. Mac Walters and Casey Hudson actually thought this was a good thing too, as noted here in the "Final Hours":

Mac Walters on the Star Child/Reapers
"Originally, with the catalyst, the star child at the end of the game, I had written that much more in the guise of a investigative style conversation, where there is something he tells you but then, you get to ask a bunch of questions and you get your questions answered. But then me and Casey talked and decided, lets keep the conversation "High level". Give you the details that you need to know, but don't get into the stuff that you don't need to know. Like "How long have they been reaping?" You don't need to know the answers to the mass effect universe. So we intentionally left those out"

But given that they were planning to allow the player to ask only softball questions ("How long have you been reaping?", as opposed to "Why did you not seek a different solution that did NOT involve mass murder?"), they were apparently so in love with their "Genocide is justifiable!" ending that they didn't think it was a big deal.

======
But it gets even worse. You are not simply prevented from telling the Catalyst that it is wrong. You are also forced to go along with its next plan - its next "solution".

This is why the most popular alternate ending thus far is the "I refuse all of your options" ending. Players would seriously rather have the entire galaxy wiped out than be forced to serve the Catalyst.

And you know what? Because they are absolutely right.

Genocide is wrong. Period. There is no room for debate. Nothing can justify what the Catalyst did, no matter how much it claims it's so much smarter than all of us. No matter how much Mac Walters thinks its smarter than all of us.

And this is ironically a lesson that the rest of the series spends so much time teaching us. It shows us that even beings of another races are people "just like us" with their own hopes and dreams. It doesn't matter if the Elcor are big and look funny. We love them because they have art, and culture, and feelings too, even if we cannot fully comprehend it like they do.
----

This is why the ME3 ending was a total and abject failure. It is not art. It is not deep. It is offensive.

It is about a brat AI proudly explaining his Mein Kampf. That people should be judged along racial lines: Organic vs Synthetic. And that because of these racial lines, he was totally justified in committing genocide over, and over, and over again.

And the player is forced to become one of the pawns in his game. That is why players hate the ending; and why the most popular "alternative" ending is one wherein the player completely and totally rejects the Catalyst's "options", even if it means certain military defeat.
-----
[Also... since some people will argue "But the Catalyst is correct about organics and synthetics!"

The Catalyst was in fact completely and totally wrong. Just because it says it's correct does not mean it is true. That is the trick used by propagandists everywhere.

Instead, what people should do is to analyze the strength of its arguments. And frankly, anyone with some common sense would realize that this is a very weak argument.

There is nothing that inherently forces Organics and Synthetics to fight each other. Races and people fight all the time. Turians make war on Krogans. Krogans make war on Salarians. Even without synthetics there will still be conflict in the universe.

However, the Catalyst's premise is that there is a divide between Synthetics and Organics, and that they are "fated" to kill each other. That's not a sound argument. That's just racist ideology. Again that's just judging people based on their component parts - metal or protein - rather than the strength of their character. Only a racist in the real world would claim that your character is dictated by the color of your skin, just as the Catalyst's grand assertion that being a Synthetic or an Organic hard-wires you down a particular path is no less racist.

And ironically, you can in fact forge an alliance between an organic and Synthetic race (Quarians and Geth) within the game - proving that the divide between the two is nothing more than a lie.

Therefore, what the Catalyst is saying is not factual. Just because it says "the cycle will continue" without its intervention does not make it true. It's just an arrogant being who is trying to play God, and which has killed trillons of sentient beings in the name of upholding its flawed premise.]

I would have liked to have the option to tell the Catalyst to F off.

[In Exile]

Zolt51 wrote...
The Reapers prevented both scenarios by the most fool-proof possible method: Harvesting sapient species before they could become too powerful to be stopped. It's wrong priorities of course, but you can't say it doesn't make sense.

Of course you can say it doesn't make sense! The plan is "we'll stop the genocide of everything by committing intermittent genocide of everything!"

Let's suppose (1) that time is finite; and (2) that there is a finite number of possible organic forms of life. Let's suppose (3a) that the reapers exist, and (3b) that the reapers don't exist but synthetics will kill all life.

Now let's suppose we're at the end of time. What happens in (1)+(2)+(3a)? Every single organic species that has ever lived was eventually extermited in Reaper genocide. What happens in (1)+(2)+(3b)? Every single species that has ever lived was eventually extermine in synthetic genocide.

Man, what a change! I totally like how in one scenario, everything gets murdered by the Reapers, but in the other scenario, everything gets murdered by synthics, which is basically the general category reapers belong to! Wow!

[CaptainJaques]

In the end, there's no way any entity can EVER justify genocide, and that's why the endings do grate against so many people, even if it's subconsciously. Had the Reaper's intentions been selfish (self-preservation), then at least we could hate them and happily destroy them

But Mass Effect 3 not only attempts to rationalize the genocide, but forces us to bow to the premise and conclusions of the being who came up with it.

[Zine2]

Also, if it's not clear:

I'm dead serious. This is not a joke thread.

I went through that phase too, thinking "Meh, it's just a video game". But upon further analysis and looking at my ethical core, I just found that there was no way I could interpret the ending in any other way.

Calling genocide a "Solution"? Calling mass murder "Ascension"? Trying to sow racial discord by claiming that the Galaxy will always be divided between Organics and Synthetics?

Those are the exact same tactics used by real-world war criminals to justify their crimes. It frankly sickened me to think that Bioware thought this was good writing.

[GnusmasTHX]

The Catalyst is simply genre savvy.

He's watched his BSG.

You should probably choose the endings that don't kill everybody, if it's up your butt so much.

Modifié par GnusmasTHX, 16 mars 2012 - 04:22 .

[millich]

Zolt51 wrote...

millich wrote...

SandTrout wrote...

millich wrote...

Ok, sure. But it was the Catalyst saying and doing those things, not Bioware.

BioWare wrote the catalyst and prevented Shepard from rebuting it.

The Catalyst's message is BioWare's message.

lol, I thought right after posting that, "But wait, you couldn't interupt it or refuse."
Guess I wasted everyones time...

So you refuse and do... what? Sit on your ass?

Hell yeah!
No, beat  (or talk, w/e) some sense in to it

[Raiil]

Yep. It's one of the reasons why I will never, ever, choose the destroy ending, and incidentally why I abhor the Indoc Theory- it's like trying to justify wiping out sentient being by saying it might be a dream, whereas anyone trying like holy hell to avoid genocide is just too derp to get it.


God Child is a racist little ****.