1) Yeah, this is another "how I would do the ending" thread. There must've been tons of 'em already, I know. I don't really care, I just had to get this all off my chest.
2) This is a motherf***ing wall of text if there ever was one, I do realize. In essence, it is somewhat similar to this, only that the graph puts too much emphasis on the quarians for my taste.
3) This is not a complete rewriting of current endings. I attempted to incorporate the existing variants into my version, but I added a thing or two to make them make more sense.
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My second biggest issue with the endings, besides them being criminally inconsistent with the story of all three games, is that the war assets concept was never put to any use. The player spends the entire game amassing the war assets and then they play no role at all. No, don't tell me that EMS affects what ending I get. I have 10 dreadnoughts, so the blastwave from the Crucible incinerates Earth, but when I have 20, it only blows the reapers up and Big Ben stays safe? What kind of relation is that??
No, war assets require proper implementation. Remember Garrus's recruitment mission from ME2? Did you take the time to sabotage the heavy mech? You just saved yourself a lot of trouble. You ignored it? Shame, now the mech and the mercs will all be shooting at you. You stabbed that batarian in the back? Cool, less fuss with the gunship. Simple, yet effective. I was astonished to find out that war assets were not dealt with in the same manner in ME3.
Simple conclusion: USE the assets. SHOW THEM to the player. MAKE THEM VISIBLE so he knows his efforts have had an impact on what's going on.
a) the push towards the teleport beam
This is the time to show some of the ground assets the player has gathered. Maybe let Zaeed's mercs help Shepard clear the building for the advancing armoured units. Or have a detachment from an engineering corps (humans and turians both have one listed) bring the building down, so the enemies lose their height advantage and have a harder time blowing up the tanks (not that it matters). Remember when Shepard kills the reaper with the thanix missiles (oh, and change those to javelin missiles or whatever; thanix missiles make no sense) and Anderson tells him to hold ground while the rest of the force converge on their position? It was a pretty hard fight at times, so let Grunt and the Aralahk Company (or what's left of it) get there ahead of the main group and help Shepard till everybody else arrives. Or the Krogan First. Or the Serrice Guard. Or whoever.
at the teleport siteHere war assets can have even more influence on what happens. Harby arrives, starts shooting lasers all around, people die. At one point even Shepard finds himself in the way of one of the beams. He's Commander Motherf***ing Shepard, so he can survive even getting hit by a weapon that blasts through capital ships - but tough as he is, he gets terribly wounded. And reasonably speaking, no one else should be able to live through that. Certainly not his squadmates, who were running just behind him. At this point, they should die. Irreversibly. But do they have to? Well, say Shepard enlisted the help of the volus heavy bomber fleet. Why not have a squadron or two make an attack run on Harby at the critical moment? I'm sure a lot of people would be pleased to see some badass volus pilots come to their rescue. Harbinger is tough and would never suffer any damage from such weak weapons. But they might throw him off-balance a little, just so that his beam misses Shepard and his buddies. Or maybe the experimental, AI-controlled fighter squadron liberated from Cerberus labs could do that. Or just some regular attack craft formation from the fleet, if EMS is high enough. Shepard could get to the Citadel unscathed, thanks to the war assets he gathered - or suffer the consequences if he neglected them. One way or another, war assets would have an impact on events.
c) at the Citadel
When I heard that the Citadel was moved to Earth's orbit and I'd have to get on board, I was relieved - I finally understood what that Citadel Defence Force was there for in the first place. I was sure I'd have to fight through the Citadel's corridors and witness how well, or how bad the CDF would fare. You can imagine how disappointed I was. So when Shepard gets teleported to the Cidatel, have him arrive in the middle of fighting. In a CDF outpost or nearby, for example. Half dead and alone if he rode Harby's beam first, or alive and kicking (and with his squadmates, more importantly) if he dodged it. Slap some medigel on him and get him some weapons and armour if he needs it, or let him keep what he came with, if he doesn't. The Citadel should be crawling with enemies - and people trying to fight them off. Not an empty slaughterhouse like it is now. Shepard should have to blast his way to the Crucible control room - and get some help from the CDF along the way. Or not, if he did nothing to strengthen it.
d) TIM and the Crucible VI sequence
First and foremost: the star child reaper-god thing is simply terrible. Get rid of it. Make it a VI for the Crucible. Give it another form, because the kid from Shepard's dreams just doesn't make sense - even if it was along the lines of "we have assumed a form you would be comfortable with", since when can computers read minds in ME universe? Because otherwise a VI couldn't know about that boy. And if all else fails, there are heaps of forms Shepard would react better to - Mordin for instance. Or Legion. Or don't give the VI a form at all. Vigil had none and it worked perfectly well. Oh, and this VI is probably just Harbinger talking.
Second - don't explain the reapers. Or at the very least, don't make them a tool. For the entirety of the series they were the ultimate threat to the galaxy and did a good job in that role. They were powerful, ominous and took personal interest in Shepard. And in turn everybody treated fighting them very personally too. They were our own, private enemies, not just a general threat to all around. Revealing them to be nothing more than unthinking tools invalidates all the emotions that people had for them - all the fear, determination, desperation, hate... Basically, turns out that all that time we weren't fighting the reapers, but some entity that we didn't even know about. It's not a revelation, it's a disappointment. Make the reapers our real enemies, so it's worth fighting them again.
As for TIM, even though his appearance was a huge "WTF how did he get here" moment, I'm more or less fine with what goes on there, so no major changes needed in my opinion. Of course, this scene requires that Anderson somehow tags along with Shepard's team, but I don't think that's a problem either.
e) final choice. The possible endings should be heavily affected by war assets. I'm thinking along these lines:
1) EMS is below minimum. The gathered fleet is too weak to break through to the Citadel. The Crucible is destroyed long before it can reach its destination, the fleet is decimated and scattered, survivors flee through the relay and spread news of this terrible defeat. The resistance on Earth is crushed quickly and the galaxy soon follows. Liara's plan is implemented, but the reapers are now aware of the Crucible and will adapt, leaving no hope for the races of the next cycle. All is lost.
2) EMS is above minimum, but not quite enough. The Crucible reaches the Citadel but is damaged along the way. Any attempt to use it results in a catastrophic malfunction that destroys the Citadel and everyone on board, Shepard included. The explosion annihilates every human ship that was escorting the Crucible, but also destroys all the reapers that swarmed to the Citadel to prevent the Crucible from firing. This suddenly swings the balance in favour of the Combined Fleet and whoever is in charge (Hackett presumably was in command of the Crucible's escort, so he's just been vaporized) presses on the advantage. In a battle to the last man and the last ship the races of the galaxy emerge victorious and liberate Earth, but only a fraction of the allied forces survive. With galactic industry in ruins, there is no way to rebuild the fleet and retake lost territories. The harvest continues for decades or centuries, and ultimately the reapers complete their cycle and return to dark space. However, Shepard's coalition inflicted such losses on them that they were unable to replenish them fully. Even with the reapers now aware of the Crucible, the races of the next cycle stand a reasonable chance at defeating them - if they heed Liara's warning.
3) EMS is high. The Combined Fleet is strong enough to deliver the Crucible intact. Shepard arrives in the control room and is presented with the three choices that we know: control, merge or destroy. The outcome of any option will be affected by the individual EMS of The Crucible asset. Basically, if it's below a certain threshold, the construction does not follow the prothean blueprints accurately, the scientists did not have enough time to calibrate it properly or whatever. The result is simple: all relays blow up, just as we know it. The Citadel too, along with Shepard and anyone aboard. This is IN ADDITION to the effects of 'destroy' and 'synthesis' choices. In the case of 'control' choice, the relays are gone, but the Citadel survives. If the Crucible's EMS is above the threshold, everything goes as planned.
4) Control. This should be the renegade ending. If TIM was right about the collector base, why shouldn't he be correct now? Use the opportunity that Destiny itself seems to have given you. This would branch out into two sub choices. How are you going to use the reapers?
4a) For the "I just do whatever it takes to get the job done" renegades, kill reapers with reapers, then kill those that are left with conventional forces. But such effort takes a terrible toll on Commander Shepard himself, and also proves that TIM was essentially right. There will be many willing to use what's left of the reapers, reverse-engineering tech and whatnot. God knows what consequences this can have in the long run, maybe even the rebirth of reapers themselves.
4b) And for those truly renegade renegades: "hmmm, so reapers will do whatever I tell them to do, and I can tell them anything I want, is that what you're saying? Now that opens some very interesting possibilities..." Well. He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you. And Shepard is in for a VERY long gaze into the abyss this time... It is inevitable, the reapers will at the very least influence him, probably ruining his mind completely. I don't even want to think of what an insane Shepard with a reaper armada at his command might do.
5) Destroy. This one's simple. Shepard unleashes the Crucible's power to destroy every single reaper in the galaxy. Problem is, he does also wipe out the geth. And EDI. The Crucible is an indiscriminate tool which the protheans had a hand in designing of. Remember what Javik said? They really didn't like synthetics. So why not make an ultimate weapon of mass destruction that gets rid of any AI-driven life forms that may exist undiscovered in the galaxy, in addition to the reapers? Two birds with one stone. Turns out paragon's choices sometimes have consequences all of their own...
6) Synthesis. This would be a weird choice. Basically it means agreeing with Saren and undoing everything Shepard has fought for all the time. But who knows? Perhaps the reapers ARE right after all...
7) If the EMS is really high... and I mean so high as to make this outcome nearly impossible... Shepard sees a fourth way out. He has so much conviction, so much faith in all the races he has brought together, or maybe he's just so damn stubborn and willing to take the risk, that he will not confine himself to the choices offered by the Crucible. He refuses to choose, he will sit there and allow the peoples of the galaxy to win their freedom by and for themselves. Shepard informs Hackett that the Crucible is a no go, this battle must be won by strength of arms alone. And so it happens. While the cost is high, the Combined Fleet is so large and so diverse that the reapers gathered above Earth are unable to come up with an effective defense plan and are overwhelmed. Earth is liberated and the armada then proceeds to cleanse the rest of the galaxy. Only time will tell whether the Crucible VI, or perhaps Harbinger, was right about the synthetic-organic conflict, but now the races of the galaxy at least have a chance to prove him wrong. And, with nothing more to threaten their existence, all the time in the universe as well...
/option 7 is basically a copy of this. Theoretically I could've gotten that idea from anywhere, even come up with it myself, but as a matter of fact that's my source. Hereby acknowledged. And kudos to the author./
Modifié par BrotherArdis, 19 mars 2012 - 01:43 .
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