Caz Neerg wrote...
True, the meteorite argument is stupid. It's observably the case, with the only relay we actually see explode, that the energy from that explosion is all directed into the beam that leaves the system.
What we also observe is that the Crucible-destruction of the relays is different: energy is being used to power the Crucible effect, which is itself FTL in speed. Power isn't just being converted into an Arrival-style destruction.
But the mere fact that FTL exists, while it provides the theoretical possibility for the *next* generation of some species, it does absolutely nothing for any of the characters you actually meet or care about over the course of the trilogy.
Sure it does. They have the speed.
Bar short-lived people like the Salarians.
The Quarian and Turian fleets? Going to run out of food and starve to death long before being able to resupply.
Food can be grown on ships, like the Quarians do. Fuel can be salvaged from intact or destroyed colonies along the way, or processing capability can be taken along with.
The peace Shepard built? Unlikely to last with all of the military forces of every species crammed together in Sol system.
It's a big system, an empty planet, and those who want to leave can prepare to do so.
His crew? More likely than not stuck on ME Edition Gilligan's Island, where either Garrus and Tali or everybody else will starve.
Unless they have communications ability and call/simply are found and rescued.
It's clearly a garden world, of course, so some part of the crew will survive.
The fundamental problem is that the way the series was presented, up until the last five minutes, was as being primarily about characters, not plot, and the way it treats all of those characters in the end is fundamentally nihilistic. The absolute best case scenario for anyone Shepard actually cares about is that they get to die slow of starvation, or in some other way previously preventable by galactic infrastructure or easy access to technology. This ending makes "grimdark" look like rainbows and unicorns. It makes the Chronicles of Riddick look like Care Bears: the Movie.
Besides that the 'primarily about characters' is an opinion of the series as a whole, it still isn't nihilistic. You might be, but people who aren't don't have to take the same thing away from it as you do.
The best case scenario is that the people Shepard cares about suffer a reduced but livable level of society, with the people of the Normandy who can't live be picked up and with the fellow armies gradually making a long trip home. Many of the largest worlds, ie the ones which couldn't survive on their own, are already reduced, while galactic civilization will indisputably regrow from those that can even without readjustments.
A post-war always has famine and rebalancing, but only the extent, not the nature, is affected by the loss of the Relays.
Retour en haut
