I think the best way to illustrate how a lot of us feel about the endings is to break it down piece by piece.
I. On the battle for Earth, and the implications of decisions and war assets:At the end of the day, it doesn't "feel" like the war assets we collected were meaningful. Our effective military strength (EMS) determines the manner in which some events play out (e.g. seeing your squad mates lying dead on the ground in the final charge if your EMS was too low), but the game doesn't effectively communicate that EMS was the reason for those kinds of things happening. It seems like the system focuses too much on negative reinforcement (not enough EMS, so this bad thing happened), and not enough on positive reinforcement (things like, "look at those 'living tanks' in action you got for recruiting the Elcor!").
Additionally, the war assets and readiness systems seem to cheapen the meaning of a lot of the decisions you made over the course of the previous two games. What did I get for saving the Rachni from extinction (ME1) and then again from the Reapers (ME3)? About 100 war assets for the engineering and construction of the crucible. No soldiers. No fleets. To put things into perspective, a single full extraction multiplayer game that only takes about 15 minutes to complete is worth ~4% toward your readiness rating. Assuming a roughly average "completionist" playthrough gets you ~7200 total war assets over the course of the game, that single multiplayer game (~288 EMS) is worth nearly 3 times as much as the life or death of an entire species (up to 100 EMS, assuming 100% readiness rating).
II. On the race to the beam, the Harbinger gauntlet, and its immediate aftermath:I like the concept of this scene, but I think a couple of elements were executed poorly. Drawing again from the first point, I think the war assets we spent so much time collecting should have been reflected better in this charge (beyond whether or not you see the body of your 2 squad mates after the laser beam grazes you). Where are the Krogan? Where are the Turians? Where is the Salarian STG? Where are the living Elcor tanks? Where are our ME2 squad mates?
What's the deal with Harbinger's sudden change of character? He sure seemed to like taunting you throughout the
entirety of ME2, but he doesn't say a word throughout this entire game - not even when he's directly engaged in stopping your charge to the Citadel. Why? After having such a prominent role in the second game, the fact that his presence is barely distinguishable from a generic reaper seems ... off.
The immediate aftermath of being grazed by the harbinger beam is also executed poorly. Given a high enough EMS, you don't see the corpses of the squad mates you took with you to the charge, but where did they go? It seems like they made their way back to the Normandy (somehow), but their motivations are never explained, and the whole thing seems totally out of character given the lack of explanation. I have a hard time believing that they'd willingly abandon Shepard even if he gave them a direct order to do so. Moreover, the timeline doesn't make sense. We know they were with Shepard right up until the point that he got hit with the laser and that they weren't injured by this event themselves (post-game Normandy scene), so why didn't they continue the charge? It feels like a critical scene is missing from this event (e.g. maybe Harbinger destroyed a building and it cut off their path, forcing them to retreat (high EMS) or having them die in the rubble (low EMS) - something like that).
III. On the lead-up and ultimate confrontation with the Illusive Man:Pretty much everything here was spot-on. The only things I really have a problem with are a couple of continuity issues (mainly dealing with Anderson, how he got to the beam "after" you despite not being injured, and how he got to the control console before you in spite of this).
IV. On the Catalyst, the Normandy scene, and where it all went wrong:These last 5-10 minutes of the game are on the same level as Mass Effect: Deception when it comes to blatantly ignoring established lore and throwing continuity out the window.
The big reveal of the Catalyst's existance seems to contradict the
entire premise of ME1. Why does Sovereign describe the Reapers as "each a nation, independent" if the Catalyst actually controls them all? Why does the Catalyst just casually refer to them as reapers, in spite of the first 2 games making a pretty clear point that it was a label invented by the Protheans and not themselves? Why did Sovereign have to be the one to activate the Citadel relay if the Citadel was alive the whole time? Why didn't the Catalyst bother to undo the signal tampering the Protheans did? If it was incapable of doing that itself,
why not call Sovereign back to the Citadel at some point in the thousands and thousands year-long period between the Protheans' extinction and the rediscovery of the citadel by the Asari and have IT fix the problem? The list of issues goes on and on. Most of them could probably be explained, but the explanations aren't obvious, and at the end of the day we were left without one.
Furthermore, the Catalyst's entire existence seems to be a huge, walking contradiction. I'll start with a general definition of the word catalyst - something that instigates change. This is the polar opposite of both the Catalyst's self-identification as an opponent to change ("chaos") and the Catalyst's track record of billions of years of maintaining the status quo ("the cycle"). More importantly, the Catalyst is a synthetic with the self-described interest of preserving organic life (albeit "in Reaper form"), again directly contradicting his notion that the created
always rise up against their creators.
But perhaps most importantly of all, Shepard is not allowed to call the Catalyst out on its nonsensical "logic." The Catalyst is not the first "godlike" presence he or she has stood before while being openly defiant (Sovereign, Harbinger), so why the sudden change of character? Why does Shepard take what the Catalyst says as fact? This whole thing seemed like a perfect opportunity to make at least one of your decisions
actually matter (brokering peace between the Quarians and the Geth), but your character remains silent and obedient, instead. For most of us, this out-of-character performance by what is
supposed to be the player's character completely shattered the immersion.
At the end of it all, we're given a choice between 3 equally depressing endings. Although each of the endings has its own philosophical implications, they all share the same practical implications (relays destroyed, the fleets and the armies you gathered are stranded on Earth, Shepard (usually) dies, the Normandy goes AWOL, etc.), and that is why most of us say the game really only had 1 ending.
Worst of all, the game forces Shepard to compromise his or her morals to achieve "victory" - either by accepting the catalyst's logic that the cycle is needed and assuming control of the reapers, accepting the catalyst's logic that synthetics and organics can't coexist (again, going against Shepard's own experience with EDI and the Geth) and synthesizing all life (against their will, I might add) at the cost of what makes them unique, or by destroying the Reapers IN ADDITION TO ALL OTHER SYNTHETIC LIFE. These are
NOT meaningful choices - it's merely a representation of the Catalyst giving Shepard the middle finger, and Shepard just puts a smile on his or her face and accepts it.
Put another way, these choices feel less like Shepard making a "heroic sacrifice" and more like Shepard laying down in resignation.
And it's those practical implications I referenced earlier that make it seem like a lot of the choices we made were all for naught. Finally patched up relations between the Turians and the Krogan? Great! They'll probably never see each other again within the lifetime of anyone who participated in the battle against the Reapers (Asari included). Saved the Rachni? Who cares? They're just as cut off from the rest of the galaxy as everyone else, so the implications of their continued existance is entirely meaningless. Saved Wrex and cured the genophase, ushering in a new, "enlightened" age of the Krogan? I guess it's too bad he's stuck on Earth for the foreseeable future, leaving Tuchanka to fracture back into its pointless and bloody clan wars. Convinced Javik to help Liara right her book on the Protheans? Oh well, they're stuck on Gilligan's planet with the rest of Normandy's crew, light years away from civilization.
Speaking of the Normandy, the best way to describe that entire scene is "wtf?" I imagine it was supposed to be the "sweet" part of the "bittersweet" ending, but the interpretation of it by the great majority of players seems to have been the polar opposite. I imagine the developers were trying to convey a sense of hope for the future with the crew landing on a garden world, but the "practical implications" (Tali and Garrus dying of starvation) ruins any potential for happiness.
Additionally, it's never explained why: (1) your squad got back onto the Normandy in the first place, abandoning the ground battle, or (2) why Joker decided to take the Normandy's crew on a field trip, abandoning the space battle. Again, the
implications here aren't good. Absent an explanation of these bizarre behaviors, the player is left wondering why everyone Shepard loved abandoned him/her at the final hour, fleeing from the battle against the Reapers in a seemingly cowardly fashion.
Also, that wave of energy from the Crucible wasn't kind to the Normandy - you can clearly see the ship's engines being torn off. This adds further weight to the
implication that the fleet you gathered and brought to Earth is stranded barring extensive ship repairs
at best, and that's assuming everyone else gets to be as lucky as the people on the Normandy were in surviving their ships being torn apart and crash-landing on the nearest planet/moon.
V. Closing thoughts:The list of issues with the practical implications of the ending (singular) goes on and on, and it's a big reason why a lot of us feel like there's no reason to do a 2nd playthrough of ME3 or to purchase any DLC that doesn't address the endings - the complete absence of our choices being realized at the end of the game totally kills the game's replayability.
Modifié par hippanda, 19 mars 2012 - 05:36 .