1086 réponses à ce sujet

[TheMadBlimper]

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

I'll drink to that, sir.

[knightoftaurus]

dragonage200200 wrote...

Ummmm, you have to remember, this is just a video game, and considering that as far as I know, a AI like the geth has yet to be invented so yea.....

Everything we make is a reflection of society as it is right now. Video games, movies, books, etc.... do not develop in a bubble.

[Mystical_Gaming]

I don't know about it really being racist but I agree with the part like many others none of the choices felt anywhere concrete or good to choose.

When I got to the point I had to choose a color I almost just stopped playing. I felt hopeless with those choices and to be honest it went against everything my femshep stood for. I felt like I was betraying her character by choosing any of the options.

It just sucked to be honest. If it was any other game I would have probably stopped playing.

[turian_rage]

Well.... damn! D: More reasons to demand for change!

[VelvetStraitjacket]

It's not racist, it's just bad writing.

[Capone666]

These arguements are what Bioware wants! Interprative ones designed to create an analysis of the story and intention.

NO! STOP IT! This depth you are seeing is manufactured. It was a badly written and badly implemented ending.
Stop it.

[In Exile]

GnusmasTHX wrote...

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.

All of the endings justify genocide because all of them assume the reapers are right.

[Zine2]

GnusmasTHX wrote...

The Catalyst is simply genre savvy.

He's watched his BSG.

Actually, BSG's ending showed that Cylons and Humans weren't so different after all, and that they could indeed live together in peace. The human-looking Cylons essentally became one society with the humans, while the Centurions are still out there leaving the humans alone.

So if the Catalyst watched BSG, he clearly didn't get the ending. Synthetics and Organics can come together in peace without the need for genocide.

Modifié par Zine2, 16 mars 2012 - 04:27 .

[Zolt51]

Skyblade012 wrote...

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.

No it isn't. To say that just because peace is possible means peace will always happen or last forever is a fallacy.
Its like paying russian roulette. It won't kill you every time, but once is plenty enough.

It's not the logic that's wrong. It's the very fact of letting that logic take over on your moral values.

And again, in both Control and Destruction ending, you essentially reject the catalyst. Neither of these is perfect, but the catalyst is well and truly f*cked in both.

[Jadebaby]

Cuttlebone wrote...

What did you expected? it was done by humans after all.

lol this.

[In Exile]

Capone666 wrote...

These arguements are what Bioware wants! Interprative ones designed to create an analysis of the story and intention.

NO! STOP IT! This depth you are seeing is manufactured. It was a badly written and badly implemented ending.
Stop it.

I'm pretty sure Bioware were not aiming for interpretations that include statements like "the lead writer and project lead condone real world genocide and racism".

Modifié par In Exile, 16 mars 2012 - 04:27 .

[agathokakological]

Guardian is Immortal Hitler. No wonder the ending was so bad!

[nevar00]

Zine2 wrote...

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.

To be fair, the Reapers (and AI kid if you believe he's real and not just Harbinger via indoctrination) are the antagonists regardless of whether or not they attempt to justify their position.  We aren't supposed to think they make sense or are justified in any way.

The only problem Bioware made in this racist point is the lack of dialogue options to argue against the AI: a problem that persists throughout the entire game.  Shepard just goes along with the 3 awful options without being able to argue.  

Plot holes, no choices mattering at the end and a lack of closure aside, this is just another pretty big problem for the final conversation.

[Zine2]

In Exile wrote...

I'm pretty sure Bioware were not aiming for interpretations that include statements like "the lead writer and project lead condone real world genocide and racism".

You would be surprised at how often writers don't think things through. And note that I did not say it was deliberate.

[Peer of the Empire]

Ok.  But the Jews are not the only ones who have been genocided.

People are racist and true AIs are dangerous.  It is the order of things.  Your essay is like complaining the universe is not Heaven

Modifié par Peer of the Empire, 16 mars 2012 - 04:30 .

[magicalpoop]

I agree.

That stupid catalyst just looks at you and judges you due to your DNA build up.

What a freaking dick, it's like the year 3000, not 2012. I never really thought of it this way, but yes you are right on profound levels.

[daigakuinsei]

The rationale for the cycle is racist/speciesist/form-of-lifeist. It's that deterministic thinking about synthetic life justifies period genocide.

The Catalyst is full of BS, which is why I blew everything up.

[Wintermancer]

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.]

This is a very, very interesting and well thought out observation. I will have to ponder this.

[Flashlegend]

SandTrout wrote...

Hey, if they wanted the ending to be open to interpretation, this seems perfectly valid to me.

Yup. Love it OP.

[Mysterious Stranger 0.0]

This ending hate is getting out of hand.

The ending may not be great, but racist? REALLY?

[TFulls]

HEY EVERYONE THE REAPERS HATE BLACK PEOPLE!!!!!

[DavianBurke]

I agree wholeheartedly. Ironically, the Destroy option would have been ideal for me if I hadn't spent my playthrough developing an understanding with the Geth and helping them to become fully sentient individuals... a true living species. Knowing that Destroy would sentence them all to death led me to discard that decision on moral grounds alone.

Synthesis to me was too high handed. What right does Shepard have to impose such an evolutionary dictate upon all galactic life, synthetic and organic? Discard.

This left me with Control being the only viable option... saves the galaxy, ends the reaper threat... but still has me accepting a path that I spent the entire game (including the final encounter mere seconds prior to this) denying.

/sigh.

[ShepnTali]

I hate robots. Flame me.

[BrotherFluffy]

Might be reading into this a tad too much, but you make good points.