I appreciate getting a chance to try and think through the problems which have been niggling at me all the way through my ME3 experience - as a creature of my education (though that is by no means all of me) I appreciate the power inherent in dialectical synthesis and the contributions such a discussion can make. With that in mind, do bear with me.
References to his/him/etc must be understood to be for readability. English is slightly useless in not having a gender neutral pronoun which is still reserved for individuals and not objects.
[quote]frostajulie wrote...
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The following are statements that I have read from those who oppose the endings. They are common opinions circulating around the ‘net, and I decided to examine each before giving my own reasons in support of Bioware’s story choices:
“The ending does not reflect the choices Shepard made through the course of three games.”
It is entirely accurate to make this statement: the end of the game presents you with three choices and those choices do not change no matter what you do before that point. However, this final choice was not supposed to be about what Shepard has done in the past…it was about what Shepard is going to do right now. Shepard held the fate of all known organic and synthetic life in her hands (which is how I view the pistol symbolism…Shepard either lays it down to embrace synthetics or shoots it to oppose them).[/quote]
This is interesting; I have seen this comment made before in a slightly different form, to the effect that ME3 in its entirety is the ending as the stories developed in 1 and 2 are wrapped up piece by piece. I think that there is truth to this statement, but it is a narrow truth which once extrapolated out of any specific storyline to Mass Effect as a whole looses relevance. The problem is that while any given story may be wrapped up, the very act of completing that story either begins or advances another story. With specific reference to your argument, if the final decision of the Mass Effect series is to be made in a vacuum of context (since this is a new scale) but by an organically developed individual whose motivations we should intimately understand, then the ending fails as a singular unit. In all cases, Shepard believes the dictatorial and manipulative phantasm and abides by its logic, plays its game.
Now, in some respects this is a noble goal. Assuming that it is within the realms of possibility for video games to have didactic purposes, educating people as to the fact that sometimes life can force unfair choices upon you, choices you're not prepared to make at that point (or possibly ever) is definitely a valuable and worthy goal. I would contend, however, that it is just as critical in the spirit of enlightened humanist and democratic principles, particularly in light of the history of assorted 18th through 20th century protest movements to demonstrate that it is substantially possible and even morally right to refuse to participate in the coercive subset of choices offered by evil or opressive forces, particularly when they rationalize their actions and your participation with flawed logic and emotional pressure.
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The reason this choice was so difficult and felt so weighted is because not only was there no paragon option, but the choice ultimately was made based on what the player’s moral code was. Let me put this into context by using my endgame as an example. I had played as a paragon Shepard for three games, uniting galaxies and uplifting the hope and spirits of everyone. I hated Cerberus and I hated the Illusive Man’s ideas of controlling Reapers. At the end of the game, staring down those choices, I had to sit and think about which one was right. I knew that the Reaper threat would be stopped, Shepard would die and the relays would be destroyed. In theory this choice will have the same immediate outcomes, but Shepard is ultimately rewriting generations of life in the future!
This choice is bigger than one individual can truly comprehend no matter how epic of a hero they were previously. The way I played Shepard reflected her desire for free will and her hope that organic life’s ability to control their destiny will prevail. With those morals in mind, I chose the option to destroy synthetic life and not break the cycle permanently. I reasoned this as the best option because now Shepard once again gave humanity and other civilizations a chance to fight like she did.
While destroying synthetics was a hard pill to swallow (the Geth and EDI make that choice bittersweet), I was confident like the Catalyst was that synthetic life would rise once again, but hopefully this time chaos would not occur. So you see this ending was not about where Shepard has been, or even about what happens ten minutes after Shepard makes her decision. It is about what kind of person Shepard, and by extension the player, is.
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Genocide. It's a big word, should not be used lightly, and perhaps has been used too much already. Nevertheless, that's what is being decided in the last five minutes of ME3. The reapers are a genocidal event in and of themselves, but Shepard's choice in that moment is whether to participate and precipitate genocide in two out of three, perhaps even all three cases. I think the complete and utter lack of explanation before and after the fact makes this so much more complicated. For questions I need answered to make my choice make any sense at all, aside from questions others have asked:
1. Do or will the reapers harvest the Geth in this cycle? This is very important, because if the answer is yes, then Shepard's decision about Red ending is making a philosophical choice about maximising The Good - by sacrificing the Geth and EDI (even though she is not specifically mentioned by the diminutive totalitarian) a larger number of unique and individuated existences are guaranteed to be preserved. This all, of course, assumes that you can even trust the spectral so-and-so, but whether that is possible or you should is even more down the line, so we'll struggle on for now. If, however, the reapers do not or will not harvest the Geth, for whatever reason, then choosing the Red option is even more morally troubling than before, since Shepard is being asked to balance the value he assigns to different parts of his galaxy and choose who lives and dies in a, well, there is no better word than racist, racist fasion, since to choose Red at that point is to choose to say that a race which is under no threat or danger from the reaper presence should be destroyed instead of those who are in danger. There is precedent in this, both actively (virmire) and passively (whether you chose to pay for and obtain every upgrade for Normandy SR2) and so that choice is not unacceptable in and of itself. What is unacceptable is that we do not know whether this even matters - the significance of the Red decision is entirely contained within the answer to the question I have posed above. I realize that the Old Machine plotline in ME2 does set up an antithetical relationship between the Geth and the Reapers, but that is entirely from the Geth's perspective and I do not recall whether it ever actually answered my question anyway, so I shall for now assume that this queston is legitimately unanswered.
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This choice actually represents what the role-playing genre of video games should be all about: the player must make an excruciatingly hard decision that changes the direction of the game entirely…in this case it changes the canon of the Mass Effect universe in potentially three very different ways.
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Here I think you're on to something, but only in that it changes the canon of Mass Effect in three very different ways. The problem with assuming that this choice represents role-playing in any way is that for it to be considered "role playing" the decision must have a logical consistency to the role being played. To participate in this tripartite decision does not have a logical consistency with a number of possible Shepards as I understand them (I've only played one all the way through, personally, so I cannot speak with personal experience) and so it fails this test straight off. Worse still, however, is that the change in canon fails to matter. As has been pointed out on this forum time and time again the cutscenes after you make your choice vary in precisely three details, the first two of which are binary checks and also mutually exclusive - Does Shepard Live? Does EDI Live? and then What Color Is Your Blast? While there is a vast potential change in the universe's canon, that divergence is robbed of its impact through sloppy plot design and execution.
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Mass Effect 4 (if set in the future after Shepard dies) cannot ignore Shepard’s choice; either we will see the Reaper cycle beginning again, Reapers being controlled in some form, or all life will now be a synthetic-organic hybrid made to resemble Shepard. Those are three very different outcomes…we just don’t get to see that future because we were looking at the universe through Shepard’s eyes and her story came to a very dramatic end.
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Is Mass Effect 4 even possible? Is there a Mass Effect any more in the universe? How far down the road are we going to have to go to have a meaningful civilization to explore, and can it be considered a Mass Effect game without the characters which have been an inextricable part of the series for three games?
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There is also another, much less long-winded reason why Shepard’s choices were not going to reflect the end game. Shepard’s choice reflected the journey she took; yes Shepard got to destroy the Reapers, but how did she do it? Did she resolve the turian/krogan conflict peacefully? Were the geth destroyed, or were the quarians? If Shepard didn’t make the choices she made in Mass Effect 3’s build-up to the climax at the end, Shepard couldn’t have even GOTTEN to Earth to take it back. The game did an excellent job of showing cause and effect and tying up loose ends from the previous two installments.
I never went into the end of the game expecting whether I saved the Rachni or not to be the ultimate decision-maker in how this finished.
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I rather feel like this is missing the point. See earlier, where I cover why wrapping up any one storyline or narrative unit does not allow you to not incorporate the impact of those choices into the story in a nonnegligible fashion. I did not expect whether I had saved the Rachni to be the ultimate decision-maker and I do not think people have suggested that this should be the case. No one decision of yours in previous Mass Effect games should be allowed to be the ultimate decision-hinge simply because that's poor storytelling. The climax of the last game in this trilogy should be a unique blend of each of your significant decisions because your choices have created a different universe from each other possible suite of choices.
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2. “The ending makes no sense and has too many large plot holes!”
The ending makes perfect sense; after the mission on Thessia we learned that there is some greater AI controlling the Reapers. A master plan akin to the theory of intelligent design has been in motion since way, way before the current events in the game. Basically, this AI has been preserving space by controlling the organics that cause chaos in the form of space discovery and creating synthetics while allowing simpler organic races to develop. In Mass Effect 1 and 2, Shepard showed the Reapers that humans were not a simple race…perhaps we could argue that the attention humanity got from them really was all Shepard’s fault (along with those who discovered the mass effect technology in the first place).
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I don't think we all got the same thing out of the Thessia mission - there was definitely a conspiracy hinted at, but the purpose of that conspiracy and its conspirators are not laid out, certainly not to the point that they justfy or permit the existence of the Phantasmic Manipulator.
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Fans arguing against the plausibility of this Catalyst plot seem to believe the point of all of this needed to be explained. What these fans do not realize though, is that explaining this would be akin to trying to answer questions about life beyond Earth and if there is a God…it is too big of a concept to just give some dialogue about.
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I disagree. The plausiblity of the catalyst plot hinges entirely on the fact that you cannot write something which is not possible and have it be accepted as possible in any meaningful fashion. Others have explained, I think very eloquently and clearly, why Shepard is not and cannot be a tragic hero and yet why others in the series are, why the introduction of a new character in the resolution of the story is poor craftsmanship, and so on. I will not rehash those arguments here both for the sake of space and because I think as a standalone point I think that if the catalyst's existence and purpose is so large that it cannot be adequately introduced and unfolded for the player in the time alloted, it is impossible to expect our character to understand or accept this either.
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The Catalyst and intelligent design are similar concepts that are largely open to interpretation of the individual playing Shepard…for Bioware to create a story and universe that makes players question their own humanity and reason for existing in space is nothing short of magnificent.
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To encourage players to question their own humanity, their purpose, their existence, and their willingness to make difficult decisions in an ultimately safe environment is very much a worthy goal. Bioware has not achieved this with the catalyst. What they have achieved is instead to create a situation where players are abruptly and violently ejected out of their in-game immersion by a surprise character with a limited group of choices and yet without the option to reject or question those choices, where the player stops asking questions of the world around them and instead focuses very narrowly on "who are you, you transparently manipulative and admittedly multiple-genocidal thing, and why are you suddenly here?"
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Now I’ll examine the plot holes that many fans are pointing out. In the ending cinematic, several things are shown including the Normandy jumping through a relay, the mass relays being destroyed, and Shepard’s squad landing on an unknown planet. The first question people have been asking is why was the Normandy in a relay jump? The Normandy was holding the front lines with the rest of the naval fleets flying about above Earth. We see the Crucible activated and charging up to fire…
I can only assume that the following happened:
-Fleets were told to retreat for fear of being destroyed by the Crucible…no one knew what exactly it would do beyond destroy the Reapers somehow.
-Joker was escaping in fear of the Crucible’s power like everyone else. The Normandy had Hackett still on board and I’m guessing he gave commands to retreat from the Crucible after it activated. I realize this is hypothetical and we can’t possibly know what Joker was doing, but unfortunately this was not explained.
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There are several possible explanations here, but none of them quite hold up. The fleets would only be given the order to retreat if, as is suggested by Hackett's increasingly desperate messages after TIM has been dealt with, they thought that the crucible and citadel had failed. In that case, dispersing the fleet would have meant a return to asymmetric warfare on a conventional level by the remaining forces, not a palatable concept after that unification and failure. However, this does not hold up as during the entire talk with the Tinpot Midget we see the fleet continuing to harass Reaper space forces. Now, with the fleet still fighting, by the time they noticed the citadel had "fired" it would have been too late to outrun the pulse, surely, even for the Normandy?
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Another issue fans have is how could the Normandy have picked up the two squad mates that were with Shepard before she entered the beam?
Again, here are some points to consider:
-There could have been time for the Normandy to land and get them to safety.
-However Cortez managed to make it out, the other squad mates possibly did the same thing…maybe there was a shuttle they used or maybe the Normandy itself landed on Earth. We don’t know how long it took for Shepard to make it to the Citadel controls and activate the Crucible. I personally have difficulty in believing the Normandy landed that close to the beam to pick up people, but again it is not a plot hole exactly because there could easily have been an explanation.
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Time... for the Normandy to land? Have we ever seen the Normandy SR2 make landfall? You must forgive me for not knowing this one, but I don't think it has. I recall that Cortez survived, since I'd made him have something to live for, but as I recall, he'd crashed the shuttle in so doing, which is why Anderson had to come and pick you up in his ride instead. Given that a number of Dreadnought class Reapers came down to stop Hammer's attack, the odds of anything making it offplanet are incredibly slim when in the opening sequence we see a single destroyer-class Reaper destroying several shuttles as they attempt to escape.
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Much like everyone else I would love for Bioware to comment on these particular parts of the ending, but unlike everyone else I am not calling it a plot hole until the ending is proven to contradict canonized information which so far there is no evidence to support or refute anything that occurred.
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However, plot holes do not require the contradiction of in-story canon, so far as I know. There is no need to wait for proof of contradiction for a poorly constructed plot to have official holes.
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3. “The last message telling people to play DLC and multiplayer cheapens the experience and is a shameless attempt to get more money out of us!” Mass Effect 2 had amazing DLC…from new characters to bridging the gap between ME2 and 3, it greatly added to the experience of the storyline. No one complained when ME2’s ending came with an option to keep playing to experience DLC or to start a new game plus.
Bioware wants people to remember that though the story of Shepard has ended, Mass Effect as a whole has not. DLC will come and probably expand an already rich story with new missions. Multiplayer’s influence on the end game is something I haven’t seen for myself yet and personally I want to make that happen. I also estimate that if Bioware even has a vague idea for a Mass Effect 4, eventually DLC like the Arrival will bridge some transition.
Bioware has provided excellent reasons for fans to keep playing Mass Effect even after the story has ended…it isn’t a crime for them to want to remind you of that. They deserve to try and make profit off of the highly successful game that they have devoted a lot of time and effort on.
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In fact, I think a creditable argument could be made that because of the perspective of three games, and the fact that three quite memorable and otherwise enjoyable video games' worth of content have been entirely about Shepard, Mass Effect does end with Shepard. Regardless, however, I do not think that the company's right to profit by selling me DLC to increase the number of things I can do in games or make further playthroughs different and more rewarding is being challenged in and of itself. I intend no such challenge with my expressions of dissatisfaction with the game as is. The point I want to make is that DLC is irrelevant to the fact that for X sum of money, I got a game which is in my estimation, defective. I wish for a non-defective product. At that point, then I will buy just as much DLC for 3 as I did for 2, and enjoy all of it at least as much, if not more.
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4. “The ending makes everything that happened in three games irrelevant!” This is perhaps the argument that makes the least bit of sense. Over the span of three games Shepard discovered the Reapers, the origin of mass relays, the truth behind the Citadel, and that there is a cycle that purges all organic life for reasons unknown (until ME3 that is).
In order for Shepard to even have gotten to the end of the trilogy, the following had to have happened:
-The fight against Saren
-Project Lazarus and the suicide mission
-Uniting the races to take back Earth If even one of those failed, Shepard would have never gotten to the beam. That is pretty obvious.
I realize though that more people harbor feelings of irrelevance because they spent all this time getting invested in a character and didn’t see any pay off in the form of a “happy” ending. Obvious foreshadowing through the game hinted at Shepard’s death and by extension the player also dies. The ending continues a story that was never just about Shepard, but the fates of all races and synthetics in the Mass Effect universe. I won’t go into more detail about how Shepard was ultimately the vehicle of a much larger story, but know that the ending was achieved thanks to plot cohesion in three games.
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I disagree with your assumption that these key plot points defend the ending's nullification of three games' worth of choices. Even these key plot points are not the same from game to game. While the fight against Saren must happen, how it happens differs. While Project Lazarus must happen, Shepard's reaction to this and the impact he has on the worlds he visits differs from game to game. The suicide mission must happen, but by no means is any suicide mission the same as any other. Everything from who accompanies you in each phase, whether anyone or everyone survives, where they do or don't surivive, all the way to whether the crew of the Normandy survives can all vary. The most critical factor is that you yourself are different in every playthrough - Shepard can bring different weapons, use them in different ways, and can be one of six different classes. I can guarantee that I didn't fight my way through the collector hordes the same way as others did simply because I had weapons I particularly favored, powers I particularly favored, ways I chose to use these powers, and even a different power depending on whose bonus power I brought along. The event, as penciled in, in other words, might be the same if you zoom waaaaaaaaay out, but the experience of going through the event is by no means the same, and that difference is meaningful. One does not even have to unite all the races in ME3. Thanks to a number of choices in previous games and your personal inclinations, there are places where you can avoid uniting everyone if you so choose.
And then, at the end of ME3... it doesn't matter. Are you male, or female? Nope. Are you an infiltrator, a vanguard, a soldier, a sentinel, do you carry sniper rifles, assault rifles, pistols, or SMGs? Nobody cares. You have the infinte ammo pistol, no powers, no technology, and thanks to the lack of conversational options and context, no character. You are not everyman, you are a nobody, stripped of everything that makes you the person you have been and instead are reduced to electricity rushing through an OR gate, to chemicals jumping synapse gaps between nerves, to a laboratory gerbil running through the maze of a psychotic behavioral-sciences professor. You have one choice between three options after the dialogue and, what, two binary choices within the dialogue? No. Three games' worth of character development is now irrelevant unless the reasons why this has happened are very carefully and thoroughly explained, since at this point and upon the word of one never-before-met character, Shepard must choose between his own death and the death of at least two races, plus a friend, even assuming the Mad Mite is credible.
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Now I shall give my evidence in support of the ending’s brilliance:
The ending was a very gratifying final nod at the symbolism of Shepard.
No one really talks about why Shepard was chosen as the name of our protagonist. It doesn’t take a genius to figure it out either. Shepard’s name is an intentional play on what a Shepard is; through her actions Shepard led and united others under one common mission and ultimately delivered them to a brighter future (we hope).
Shepard first was the leader of humanity in ME1, and then the leader of a group of unlikely allies in ME2…in ME3 Shepard led galaxies to rise up against the Reapers. Did you catch the scene after the credits though? The child in the scene referred to our commander as “The Shepard.”
Considering that Shepard made a God-like decision at the end of ME3, Shepard being revered as quite omnipotent makes sense.
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If this is art, try again? I think the symbolism of Commander Shepard is much more significant than a salvationist parable with the moral that the appearance of omniscience justifies and enables sacrifice to have meaning. In its most technical sense, Shepard does not have omnipotence at all in the ending of ME3. As I have said, his powers, his potency, his personality are all stripped out and therefore he cannot be omnipotent. He is nullipotent, impotent, able only to accept what is offered him.
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2. The ending is open to interpretation and leaves the plot ripe for expanding in future games. Though Shepard was informed of the immediate results of her actions, the sonic boom-like impact her choice has on all life in space will be felt for centuries. We don’t know how the future will be though; what will happen when the cycle starts again if you chose the right path? How does controlling the Reapers change things for humanity if you chose the left? What will a generation of synthetic-organic hybrids be like if you chose the path straight ahead? Consider how far into the future that scene after the credits was.
What was really going on in that moment? Were the grandfather and child completely organic? How advanced is space travel again? The glimpse of the future was purposefully vague so that players can determine for themselves what exactly was going on.
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I still contend that there is no possibility for a future game without a lot more work on ME3, first. I agree that there are many, many questions, but answering those questions cannot wait for ME4.
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3. The end game decision had no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ choice. There was no red or blue text to tell you how to respond. There was no dialogue wheel to show which choice was the paragon move or which was a renegade ending.
Bioware created a moment where you could ponder the pros and cons of your choices without wondering how this might affect any preconceived notions someone had about doing a ‘paragon-only’ play through or getting just renegade points.
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I think that would be a beautiful moment if we could ponder those pros and cons in an intelligible fashion. As it is, I am left to decide what I think it all means, then make whatever decision I feel, because ultimately, and as I found out, as soon as you make your choice and watch the credits, the game returns you to the moment right before you assault the cerberus base and begin the end, so you can try it all again. There just isn't enough information to do what Bioware wants us to do at that point.
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Shepard’s humanity and own uncertainty in ME3 is one of the central themes to the narrative, and when Shepard is reduced to a broken soldier with only a pistol the game pulls at how the players would respond to that abrupt turn of events.
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The broken soldier with only a pistol, human, and uncertain, is a powerful image. It is undercut by the "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" cinematic where we meet the Wizard of the Klan- I mean, of Oz - I mean, of The Emerald Citadel - you know what I mean. If Shepard the broken is finished after TIM, then I think we might well have just such a potent moment. A man, dying alongside his friend, and the body of an enemy who potentially died because he saw the light and took himself out with what honor he could muster, that's a potent image, I agree. Now, where does the abusive brat with his nonlogic and malevolent Solution help gamers realize more about the nature of their own humanity, especially when the option to refuse to participate in that assumed-but-no-longer-Final Solution does not exist?
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Regardless of how people felt about the ending, I doubt anyone can say they didn’t hesitate in choosing a decision without some serious thought first.
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I hesitate to be the contrarian any further, but I have to say, I stopped caring. When I did my best to argue with Herr Kinder-Killer and then was dumped out of the conversation without so doing, I tried to empty that pistol into him, into anything that looked like an alternate way out, and then went "ah, well. b***** this for a game of soldiers" and just ran straight forwards to get out as fast as possible.
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4. A masterful narrative shift occurs, making this not an ending but a new beginning. The way the ending was planned could not have been acted out more brilliantly. The Reaper beam rips through the charging group of ragtag survivors as they attempt to make an all-out footrace to the beam.
Players watch this happen and get the first jolt of panic when they realize Shepard for the first time will not be okay. The controls, no matter how forcefully you hit the buttons, simply direct a limping commander towards their goal. Shepard sluggishly lifts an arm to shoot a pistol at oncoming husks and staggers into the Citadel. I cannot be the only one who wanted to scream at Shepard to shake it off and sprint ahead to find Anderson, but that is exactly what we are supposed to feel.
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You know, I did quite like that Shepard felt seriously overmatched there - it kept Harbinger lethal, large, and onimous. To then make it in anyway felt somewhat triumphant, and although I wish the husks had come from different spawn points, that was all good.
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It is obvious in this moment that Shepard’s story is ending as she struggles to point her gun at the Illusive Man and falls onto the controls of the Citadel shutters. When the Catalyst begins to speak, the change from Shepard’s story to one that is about just the Mass Effect universe begins.
Shepard has little time to speak to the Catalyst before prompted with a decision; she is confused and suddenly seems small when confronted with a vastly superior AI and an opportunity to rewrite destiny appears in the form of three paths leading to her ultimate demise. I didn’t feel like I was even playing Shepard in those moments; I felt like I was playing God and that to give someone that responsibility seemed unfair.
Through this entire process Shepard has been filled with the hope and support of everyone she rallies…would anyone support her now as she changes the fates of all organic and synthetic life? As we watch Shepard die, the ending doesn’t just stop there…it continues the story as we see Joker and the squad crash land on an unknown planet. Seeing them climb out and simply take in a new world that appears unsullied by technology is like a clean slate or a breath of fresh air.
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This, more than anything else, is where I end up disagreeing and I've tried to express that above. For the sake of a clear rebuttal, Tiny the Terrible Infant did not feel like an omnipotent AI, he was an obnoxious and immersion-breaking railroad of the plot. My story ceased to have anything to do with the Mass Effect world or Shepard and became me trying to figure out what the developers, the writers had been doing, what they were thinking, because the disjunction between the two sections of this game (which I will be calling Mass Effect 3 and Flimsy Rationalizations For Genocide 101) made it impossible to accept what was happening as a meaningful part of this game series.
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5. Foreshadowing and clever story decisions lead to the final, encompassing theme that has always been present in each game: Space is full of infinite possibility. Mass Effect isn’t as cut and dry of a trilogy as many might think it is. Sure, we are largely invested in Shepard’s story to a point where we forget that everything happening is larger than life. Most heroes in video games save the world; Bioware best gives a representation of what it is like to save an entire universe.
In Mass Effect 1, we learn that humans are still pretty new to the intergalactic exploration thing. As a result, humanity seems like the kid eating glue in a room full of gifted kindergarteners. However thanks to the heroism of Commander Shepard, it is humanity that discovers the Protheans (who were vastly superior to all races existing today) and that they were wiped out by the Reapers (who everyone regarded as a folk tale).
We also learn (though it really doesn’t sink in until now) that the Reapers believe it is their job to eliminate all organic life (again, we don’t know why until ME3). Shepard spends the entire game trying to tell people that this enemy is bigger than Saren, and even at the beginning of Mass Effect 2 it is obvious no one still really understands the scope of these events.
In ME2 though, we learn that not even Shepard could have prepared for the information dropped on the universe thanks to a high-stakes mission aided by Cerberus. The Protheans were not the only ones controlled by the Reapers; the geth and collectors all felt the indoctrination of these synthetic foes. We see how the Reapers work, and we see that this suicide mission is really only a small victory in what is soon to be an all-out war spanning star systems.
Mass Effect 3 plot is larger than any previous game; it is quite literally a massive war that is affecting everything in its path. Even beyond the grand scale of the Reaper attack, we learn that even the Reapers are part of someone else’s master plan for all life in space. It is a plan no one can comprehend, not even Shepard.
We learn at the very end that not only was the Illusive Man right, but Shepard’s belief in choosing her own destiny might be just wishful thinking. The ending draws in so many theoretical and hypothetical thoughts it makes sorting through the information a little difficult, but I don’t believe this is a result of vague storytelling…I think Bioware intentionally created a situation where the player is supposed to be confused.
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I don't think anyone could argue that Mass Effect was a huge advance in narrative development, interactivity, and a true textural richness in storytelling. Foreshadowing everything after the final confrontation with TIM is, I think, a stretch. It would be rather like trying to claim that the existence of the theory of humors in medieval science and the simultaneous existence of farming predicts agribusiness. We may have gotten to that point, but nothing about what we eventually have proven to be an incorrect scientific theory when combined with other things which existed at the time led inevitably to modern agricultural practices. The unfolding of the Mass Effect series has been elegant and beautiful, to be sure, but the only thing certain was that the Reapers and their agents, most likely, would both threaten and attack the galaxy. That there would be one singular AI which somehow controls all the reapers, well, I'll just skip to your last statement: if Bioware wanted us confused, they succeded, but confusion is not denouement. When you end with confusion, you loose your audience. I suppose I am still confused. Does Bioware want to loose its audience? Is that how easily we may be discarded?
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Shepard doesn’t know what to say to the AI and neither would I if someone dropped that information on me.
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I cannot with any degree of certainty (or anything other than hubris) claim to say that I know the right thing to say, but I definitely know what I would say and I think Shepard would also, even if it isn't quite what I would say.
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EDI and the geth are two examples of weighing in on what constitute life, and what it means to be alive. The Illusive Man’s goal to control the Reapers seemed flawed and evil ever since ME2, but in ME3 we have to ask ourselves in the very end if really he was right all along: the Reapers indoctrinate organics to allow lesser races evolve and this technically keeps them alive.
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Thorny issue. What constitutes life? Is it a purely medical definition? Is it religious? Is there some middle ground of narrative existence? Regardless, life as all or part of a reaper construct is in no way analogous to any other life and I suspect it would fail most people's abstract tests of what a life is. Even ignoring that question, why does the Reaper Overlord have the sole authority to enforce its childish whim or to force us to participate in the same? To accept this is wrong no matter what you think about what constitutes life.
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If you got prothean, he tells you that they were winning war when Reapers attacked
