the exact details of your particular ending to be a true culmination of your
actions across the entire trilogy. (Yes, it is long, but I'm rewriting the entire ending)
First, this assumes that some variant of the indoctrination theory was correct and Shepard
wakes up in the rubble in London, and then finds / is found by his squad mates.
The basic idea is that the crucible is a giant, ridiculously-powerful transmitter that
uses the same technology that the reapers do to communicate with their ground
forces and between each other. (If you felt the need, you could make this
communication dark-energy-based just for added prior-reference goodness). And
it interacts with the relay network to allow the signal to reach all of the
reapers everywhere.
The catalyst determines the exact nature of the signal produced by the crucible, with two
options:
The “original” one that simply jams the reapers communications, causing their husks to go
berserk and out of control, as well as preventing the reapers from communicating
between each other. if you don’t feel this is enough to allow a military
victory, you could go the extra step and have it interfere with the internal communications
of the reaper programs themselves, causing the reapers to become much weaker /
more vulnerable, to allow a conventional military victory (this would allow the
war assets to be used in a way that makes sense)
And one based on Cerberus tech from sanctuary that attempts (successfully or unsuccessfully)
to take control of the reaper ground forces, and (again successfully or unsuccessfully)
to influence the reapers themselves (not real control, but perhaps subtle misdirection
and manipulation). This would require you to have “helped” Cerberus by getting them
enough technology (directly or by helping others create tech which Cerberus
then steals). So this would require things like keeping the collector base, giving
them legion, allowing overlord to continue, allowing the alliance to continue
examining Nirali Bhatia, uploading the data from the captured Cerberus operative
to Cerberus, etc. With enough of this, you can actually succeed in controlling
the husks, and potentially mess with the reapers themselves. This would require
a smaller number of “conventional” war assets in order to defeat the reapers;
which makes sense logically, as well as matching up nicely with the game play
mechanics, as going straight renegade tends to give fewer war assets.
Each of these would also have a unique “failure” ending:
The first one ends with you not having enough forces to beat the reapers, and they eventually
rally and destroy the crucible.
The second option could end with your “new” catalyst not being advanced / complete enough
to control anything (and possibly causing you to be controlled yourself) which
ends with you or the reapers destroying the crucible.
This makes the final choice reflect more of (what I consider) the two paths offered over
the course of the entire trilogy: a peacemaker who unites everybody and does
the “right” thing, and somebody who believe the ends justify the means, the “cold
calculus of war,” power at any cost, etc. It also gives two entirely different
forms to the “do the impossible” scenario: unite the galaxy, stand together,
grand final battle, etc. or succeed in using the reapers’ own tech against them
(without getting indoctrinated yourself). Having a final choice that allows a distinct
style of victory based on your “path” really lets both paragons and renegades
feel their decisions are vindicated; as opposed to the paragon getting a “happy”
ending where everybody survives and the renegade -having killed or betrayed
nearly everybody themselves – getting the same ending with fewer survivors.
It also continues the theme / game play mechanic of the paragon path being “harder” in
that it requires fighting all of the enemies that could have been dealt with
earlier by unsavory “renegade” methods. This is reflected in the higher
requirements for war assets in order to “win” the paragon ending. While the
renegade path is about making hard choices / doing less-than-nice things in
order to get the job done, making the actual fight (when it comes) easier than
it otherwise would have been. This is reflected in the non-war-asset requirements
(collector base, overlord, etc), as well as the lower war asset numbers
required to ultimately beat the reapers.
This method also rewards sticking to an “idea” rather than just blue / red. If you are a
jerk to pretty much everybody (alienating them and thus not getting their
support for the final battle) but also shy away from making the really “hard”
choices, it is entirely possible you will fail despite having a really high
renegade score. Likewise, if you are generally nice and talk about “right” and “good”
but then kill the Rachni queen and / or destroy the Geth, you won’t have enough
forces to beat the reapers when the time comes. This allows you to indulge your
“opposite” side every once in a while, as long as you are consistent with the
choices that “really” matter.
By having the reapers ultimately defeated by military might, this gives Bioware a chance
to have some cut scenes that show off the forces that we have (or have not)
amassed over the course of the game. They don’t need to be terribly long
(individually) maybe a second or two, but there need to be a lot of them (so
you can string them into a unique “final battle” montage or something). Show
Wrex / Wreave leading the Krogan into battle, show (or don’t) the Rachni
fighting alongside (or potentially against) the alliance, show waves of
controlled husks swarming over a destroyer, show the Quarians / Geth / both
fighting reapers in space, show Jack & the other biotics either supporting “normal”
alliance soldiers or fighting on the front lines as “artillery,” etc. I feel
that this modularity is probably the best way to handle the huge amount of
potential army combinations that exist.
Now for some of the “nuts and bolts” of the final level; some of this will be pretty vague,
being more about the idea than the literal implementation of it.
You and your squad get warped to the citadel. Maybe you initially end up in a dark
keeper-corridor filled with dead people, but eventually you get to the “actual”
citadel again, where you find it overrun with reaper forces.
Depending on your choices relating to the citadel and c-sec, maybe some people are still
alive and holed up somewhere like purgatory (Aria, Zaeed, Bailey, some random spectres,
Septimus, etc…) If so, you can save them and then have a few moments of down
time to question them about what exactly happened, how to get somewhere, etc.
This also gives a chance for the results of some smaller citadel-based choices to be
shown. EX: if you supported the guy in selling guns to citizens and you got c-sec
to back off smaller issues, maybe you find a group of armed civilians /
gangsters holed up in an apartment or a shop that would have otherwise been
empty. All they would need to do is have one of them mention off-hand that they
would be dead if not for their guns…
You fight your way across all of the levels of the citadel (along with some
hitherto-unseen elevator shafts or staircases because the elevators don’t work)
until you get to a new section.
You meet TIM, who looks relatively normal (maybe a little huskification around his eyes, but
otherwise the same as before), and a group of Cerberus troops.
TIM is now (thanks to the surgery he had) able to control the various husks scattered
around the citadel, and has with him the “new” catalyst he plans to use to
control the reapers. He explains the nature of the crucible and the catalyst.
If you go paragon during the conversion you end up fighting TIM’s troops as well as some
controlled reaper forces. The stronger Cerberus is (the more tech they got over
the three games) the stronger / more reaper forces you have to fight (mostly
husks / cannibals with maybe a single brute or so, all the way to large numbers
of brutes / banshees). After you beat him, in his desperation TIM goes too far
and draws the attention of the reapers (maybe sovereign in particular) who “assume
direct control” of him as it were. You get a dialog with the reaper. Maybe you
get more information here; maybe you get the standard reaper spiel about their
power and your inability to do anything about it. Sufficient rep allows you to get
TIM to kill himself (paragon) or to kill him in the cut scene (renegade),
otherwise you get a short fight against TIM. Not an actual “boss” fight, but a little
in-game fight nonetheless. Then you have to fight your way to the control
room within X amount of time (with a little countdown timer) before the reapers
win.
If you go along with TIM and his ideas to control the reapers, you begin to make headway
part of the way to the control room during a cut scene, with TIM able to
basically just move the husks aside. Then something happens and TIM becomes possessed
(like in the paragon path), you get to talk to the reaper same as before,
suicide / kill TIM, etc. Now you have to fight all of the reaper forces that
you didn’t deal with before all at once, but you have the Cerberus troops with
you to help. You still have to get to the control room in the same amount of time;
however you have less distance to cover but a higher density of enemies over
that distance.
If you don’t make it in time: critical mission failure.
You get to the control room with untold numbers of reaper troops after you. You seal the
doors and make your final choice: whether or not to use TIM’s new catalyst.
With the choice made, you get a little cut scene of the crucible beginning to power up.
Then it shows the doors being broken down by the husks. Here you can either
have a last “hold the line” battle, or just show it as a cut scene. Finally the
crucible activates and you get a cut scene showing its effect on the reapers /
their troops, followed by the modular “final battle” montage I mentioned
earlier. If you are still stuck on the “color” thing, you could have the
crucible glow red/blue as it activates based on the catalyst used.
Also -if you felt the need- you could find some way to work in the potentially unavoidable
death of one / both of your squad mates here; maybe TIM kills them if you have
to fight him normally, maybe one of them dies holding the door while you
activate the crucible, maybe the VS turns on you if you side with TIM, etc.
There are plenty of ways to handle this depending on how much sacrifice you
feel should be required.
Following the montage, you get whatever type of epilogue scenes you want: a Shepard
statue on the citadel, little blue children, the rebuilding of Tuchanka / Rannoch,
Anderson / Hackett / Shepard being recognized by the council, etc. However I do
feel that there should defiantly be scenes showing the ultimate fate of all of
the current / previous squad members from all three games.
(formatting fixed)
Modifié par HiddenInTheLight, 17 mars 2012 - 05:02 .
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