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[JFZeigler]

I generally don't comment on these boards, but since there appears to be some . . . healthy discussion going on about the ME3 endings I thought I would put in my two centicredits.

I've played through the game twice now, and I think my issues with the ending-as-presented boil down to these:

1) Everything through Admiral Hackett's last call and Shepard's response is just fine. I'd even say letter-perfect. The afterlife symbolism (hell-purgatory-heaven) is good. The interactions with the Illusive Man and with Anderson are very good. Even Shepard's last line before collapsing is nicely done - really in character, and sold by both voice actors.

2) The appearance of the Catalyst and the conversation that follows are where the trouble starts. Mind you, I don't have any real trouble with the deus ex machina trope that appears here as such. It's perhaps a bit overused, but if well done it can still work. But it's not very well done here. There's almost no branching in the conversation - Shepard is portrayed as accepting the Catalyst's position uncritically, with no opportunity to ask any of the questions or raise any of the objections that the player is bound to have. Meanwhile, the Catalyst's explication isn't consistent with what the rest of the series has shown us, and doesn't address most of the themes that have been developed thus far. The final rationale for the Reapers comes across as very ill-considered . . . especially disappointing since there's at least one other rationale that's consistent with everything we've seen and is well-attested in the high-concept space SF genre the series is designed to reconstruct.

3) The notion that Shepard might have to make a choice regarding the future of the galaxy is perfectly acceptable. But given 2) the choice that's presented isn't motivated very well. And the "third option" makes no sense at all, given what we've seen so far. Mind you, a lot of high-concept space SF has played with the idea of some kind of synthesis of biological and machine intelligence. But in Mass Effect there are very few hints that such a thing might be a positive development. For the rest of the series, mashing together biology and machinery is almost invariably a bad idea - only Shepard himself gives us a positive example. The mechanism for carrying out the synthesis makes no sense either. Just how does a burst of mass-effect energy interweave every biological cell in the galaxy with nanomachines, so seamlessly that currently living organisms can just carry on with their lives and behavior without a pause? What effect does this have on the existing machine intelligences? How does this even solve the problem the Catalyst claims to have?

4) And then there's the final flight of the Normandy. From a symbolic standpoint it's not a bad scene - you get a lttle tension before you see that the crew have apparently survived, they're in a place where life is possible, things can continue. But the logical problems with the scene are enormous. Others have analyzed those in detail, so I won't go on at length. Suffice it to say that the scene is downright absurd if taken as an objective portrayal of events.

5) Afterward, there's a short scene (the Stargazer and child vignette) suggesting that life went on, the stars are still within reach, Shepard is remembered as a legend. So in the broadest terms the ending provides positive closure for the setting and story. But as far as finding out the fate of the specific setting elements and characters the player has come to care about? We don't get any of that. And given the drastic consequences of any of Shepard's final choices it's very easy to infer that most of his actions have been for naught - maybe not an inevitable deduction, but a very easy conclusion to reach. Not satisfying at all.

Overall, no, this isn't going to cause me to boycott anything. But the ending was really disappointing, and it doesn't surprise me at all that many people are upset.

[JMJ_91]

Very well written, I can see that you obviously put some time into this.

I agree with you mostly, especially about Shepard being not himself during the conversation with the kid. I honestly was at that point just waiting for the opportunity to tell him to p*** off, since I had proven the reapers motivation (how stupid/senseless it might be) to be wrong, by bringing peace to the geth/quarian situation and the AI-geth actually wanting the help and not destroy the quarians.

Modifié par JMJ_91, 17 mars 2012 - 05:07 .

[MPSai]

Well even before the Catalyst the plotholes start. They didn't think anyone made it to the beam, I'm pretty sure Shepard didn't call in. So how the **** did Hackett know Shepard was there?