15 réponses à ce sujet

[catabuca]

Unless you live in a cave on a planet that has never been connected to the relay system, you'll be well aware of the furore over the ending to Mass Effect 3. While it's inevitable this thread will end up with people going over well-trodden ground from those debates, I wanted to look at it from a slightly different point of view, in terms of the context of morality and choice.

There are lots of different reasons that lots of different people are unhappy with the ending. Not everyone shares the same gripes: some want completely new endings; some want a chance to be happy with their LI; some want every memory of the Catalyst to be scrubbed from their minds; and some would be happy with just a bit more explanation to what is already there. My hypothesis, and the reason for this thread, is that at least some of the dissatisfaction (not all, just some) with the ending is that there isn't a single, recognisable 'good' ending.

This isn't to suggest that everyone wants sunshine, rainbows, flying off into the sunset, or even for Shepard to be alive at the end. No, what I mean by 'good' is that previous delineation along black and white lines (or blue and red, as they are presented in Mass Effect) is confused, problematised, and as a result, completely done away with.

Up until now, our moral decision-making has been based on blue = paragon/good; red = renegade/bad (or perhaps 'pragmatic'). This is a very black and white way of looking at morality. It's the reason I don't like morality systems as gameplay mechanics, because, as we all know, morality is actually shades of grey, and something will always be lost in translation, it will always feel like we are 'gaming the system' in order to get the outcomes we desire, whether that be identifiable narrative changes, or internal identifications of our Shepard's personality. In other words, it's not very realistic or representative of how we actually make decisions in the real world.

But that is, nevertheless, what we've come to recognise as the morality of the Mass Effect universe. Of course, shades of grey have always been presented to us: we contemplate the context of the uplifting of the krogan and subsequent genophage, and are asked to see it from all sides; we think about the ethics of creating a race of synthetic slave AIs, the geth, and then the complexity of trying to decide who is right or wrong in the resulting war as they become sentient and ask 'why do I exist.' However, despite the presence of shades of grey--which we are always asked to think about--all decision-making is brought back to black and white, or blue and red. There is always a clear dichotomy in the options we are given. This is the Mass Effect we understand.

And then we get to the end of Mass Effect 3. Regardless of plot holes, the sudden appearance of the Catalyst, improbabilities and inconsistencies and whatever else, all of a sudden the system we have always known is abandoned. How do we deal with that? This is not what we expect from Mass Effect.

The signifiers for 'good' and 'bad' are all of a sudden confused. Red is Anderson, but Anderson is good. Killing the reapers is good, but destroying synthetics is bad, Anderson is good!, but red is bad. Blue is the Illusive Man, but blue is good, and yet TIM is bad. Green is unknown, we've not had that before. Harmony is good, non-violence is good, peace is good, a new third way, but unilaterally altering the path of evolution is bad.

How do we deal with that?

There are so many conflicting emotions flying around, because everything we knew about the universe and its morality system has been turned upside-down, and there's nothing familiar to grasp onto at the very time we need it, the point of ultimate tension.

Personally, I welcome this, probably because, as I said earlier, I don't like morality systems as game mechanics. However, it was a gamble, and one I don't think paid off. Everything we have done previously has been presented to us as blue and red, black and white, good and bad, this and that. They have always directed our attention towards the shades of grey, but we were given a very clear choice. What's more, even if we were able to pick 'red' options and still have everything turn out ok (where red = pragmatism and a 'get things done no matter the cost' view of life), there was always at the end of it a 'good' outcome, a win, whereby everything else (like losing various squad mates at the end of ME2) was merely degrees of either not-quite a win, or degrees of failure.

At the end of Mass Effect 3, everything is technically a win, and yet there is no true 'blue' end goal. Each of the three choices is morally ambiguous, and none represent that 'ideal' of the perfect playthrough. For someone like me, that's great. But I am not everyone. And, in fact, it's fair to say that a lot of people will logically not like that, because it's not what Mass Effect has provided before.

At its most basic level, "the colours don't match" and that causes dissonance. They aren't, of course, meant to match, and that's why I love, despite any other problems with the end, the premise of making a choice based on shades of grey with no 'ideal' outcome. If, perhaps, the whole trilogy had used this mismatching of colour-coded morality in order to make us tackle the shades of grey, if the trilogy had presented us with choice in such a manner that there was never an 'ideal' path, and there weren't degrees of 'not-quite-win' or 'more-or-less-failure,' then we might not be having the problems that this immense shock to the system have caused. I suspect that they wanted us to experience this dissonance, and that's not automatically a bad or unworthy thing. However, it's my belief that the previous colour-coding of morality had been so ingrained in the universe and us, the players, to such a successful degree, that it caused altogether too much of a break from what we knew that it was, sadly, bound to cause these problems. Something I find incredibly sad because, again, I rather like the ability to finally be presented with real shades of grey. If only it hadn't been doomed by the trilogy's own success at creating such a binary system of morality to begin with.

Modifié par catabuca, 23 mars 2012 - 07:03 .

[mybudgee]

Meh

[kalle90]

I can say that at the ending I didn't atleast consciously align the choices red or blue based on the paragon/renegade system. I took them as they were.

[General Tiberius]

I agree with this. You can look at youtube and see that people have automatically linked the Control ending with being Paragon, pretty much because of the colour.

[Arctorus]

catabuca wrote...

However, it's my belief that the previous colour-coding of morality had been so ingrained in the universe and us, the players, to such a successful degree, that it caused altogether too much of a break from what we knew that it was, sadly, bound to cause these problems. Something I find incredibly sad because, again, I rather like the ability to finally be presented with real shades of grey. If only it hadn't been doomed by the trilogy's own success at creating such a binary system of morality to begin with.

You've just summarized my whole take on this issue, but far more eloquently than I could have at the moment, since I haven't finished ME3 yet (almost there [and here's where the ruly angry readers stop reading what I've written]).

I will add that the whole problem with the BioWare morality system is that it fails so profoundly in modeling any kind of reality. It is, in fact, as you point out, so binary, that it comes across as nothing more than a hollow simulation of the complexities of life. In real life, a person's choices don't pre-exist on a decision tree, because there is no decision tree. There is only chaos and random chance. One choice does not necessarily - if ever - lead to the next. They are rarely connected in any way. 

I'm a huge fan of non-standard narratives - and let's be honest - these are narratives we are interacting with, not arcade games from the 1980s. I dislike standard story structure. I hate beginnings, middles, and ends, arranged in that order, and then presented to the unthinking masses who just want the next fix of mini-catharsis, embedded/trapped/mired, as we all are, in a culture where catharsis is extraordinarily rare. I was actually very excited by the uproar about the endings, because it suggested to me that the silly choice/consequence simulation that is the hallmark of the ME series had been upended, or at least diluted.

This controversy has been entertaining to me. It suggests that modern gamers are so accustomed to this binary system of decision-making that anything that falls outside of it is considered awful or a failure (e.g., the "Meh" Response). Of course, I also sense a bit of cosmicism in the endings (what I've allowed myself so far to read about), so I have to applaud BioWare for that. After all, the scary thing about life is that nothing is out to get you. Bad stuff just happens. What you did - what anyone did - the choices you made - leading up to this moment have had no effect whatsoever on the fact that you've just been diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor (for instance). That idea is mingled in, at the core, in the cosmicist outlook, and it appears that a small subset of ME3 players just had something very bad happen to them. But unlike in real life, they seem to think they can do something about it. 

Modifié par Arctorus, 23 mars 2012 - 08:11 .

[Arkitekt]

Destroying all synthetics and all the previous civilizations-turned-reapers seems like a Renegade action to me.

Controlling not so Paragon.

So I would tweak it like this:

Synthesis end: PARAGON.
Control end: RENEGADE.

Interrupt the kid, smash his face and go all beserk on the device, killing all synthetics and Reapers end: SUPERMEGAAWESOME.

Modifié par Arkitekt, 23 mars 2012 - 08:05 .

[Heather Cline]

I disagree about the 3 different so called choices being color coded. The fact is they abandoned their promise of 16 varying different endings altogether for this abc ending which was actually just 1 ending with different colors and minor tweaks to make them seem different but actually aren't different.

It's not about color coding, it's not about renegade vs paragon. It's about to me not getting what we were promised. You can have shades of grey in 16 different endings because there are 16 different endings you can have your pure black ending all the way to pure white ending or pure red and pure blue in this case. The fact is they didn't deliver as promised.

I understand your reasoning and though I support what you have to say I have to disagree. But that is just me. I don't know if anyone else disagree's either.

[catabuca]

@Arctorus -- I haven't actually done much reading about the cosmicism angle, though I should really. From what (very) little I have read with regard to how it fits with ME3, while I agreed on some level, to an extent it didn't quite fit with what I had experienced. As I say, I shall have to read more about it.

I don't agree with saying 'unthinking masses want this or that' because, quite apart from it being rather patronising, I'd have to lump myself into that crowd as well, because while I love challenging my preconceptions with non-standard narratives and complex reasoning and so on, it's not always what I want, and is highly dependent on the type of entertainment I'm consuming. In this instance, one of my points was that if BioWare had gone with that template from the beginning of Mass Effect, it may have been far more successful than it was having it thrust upon us seemingly out of nowhere right at the very end of the final instalment. Yes, I made the comment that I welcome the attempt to subvert the traditional binary morality system, but at the same time, I tried to make a case for why I think that it didn't work. It was too late in the day.

@Arkitekt -- I agree that the Destroy ending appears more traditionally 'renegade' to me as well. Which is why it's interesting that it also comes with Anderson's image (which we would associate as 'good' or 'paragon' when set aside TIM's 'bad' or 'renegade' image). Hence all the mixed messages and conflicts to our previously-colour-coded morality understanding.

@Heather -- I'm not trying to comment on any of the other reasons people have legitimately brought up as to why the end is unsatisfactory (in fact, perhaps I should have made that clearer at the beginning of my OP?). I fully recognise that BioWare went out of their way to tell us we would have 16 different endings, and that the 16 subtle degrees of difference that they delivered are in no way what anyone would probably expect when told "they will be divergent and different." I'm on board with that. But that's not my point. I'm putting forward a thesis on the nature of choice in the trilogy, and how changing what we understand as choice right at the very end causes dissonance. That's not to assume that's the main, primary reason why people are upset. It's not to suggest it's even something people are talking about. This was intended more as a 'thought-piece' to look at more abstract notions of choice and morality. It's not intended to defend or attack the ending in any way at all.

When I talk about 'colour-coding,' I'm talking about the associations we make, consciously or unconsciously, as we play a game. We know we make these associations because we'd all agree we automatically have a sense that top-right/left = blue/paragon, and bottom-right/left = renegade. That's because the game mechanic has instilled that in us from the start. We've imbibed it over time, and whether we consciously do so or not, it's what we reference when thinking, to some extent, about the choices we make. To have those associations mixed up at the end throws everything we understand to be 'true' out the window. Even if they had given us wildly divergent endings, not had plot holes, and so on, if they had still so fundamentally altered the way we identify the moral dichotomy of the trilogy, I think we would still be utterly thrown by it. Our disappointments, discussions, and frustrations might be fewer, they might be different, but it would still have caused dissonance. And it's from that more abstract point of view I wanted to discuss the issue.

Modifié par catabuca, 23 mars 2012 - 08:46 .

[vallore]

catabuca wrote...

Unless you live in a cave on a planet that has never been connected to the relay system, you'll be well aware of the furore over the ending to Mass Effect 3. While it's inevitable this thread will end up with people going over well-trodden ground from those debates, I wanted to look at it from a slightly different point of view, in terms of the context of morality and choice.

There are lots of different reasons that lots of different people are unhappy with the ending. Not everyone shares the same gripes: some want completely new endings; some want a chance to be happy with their LI; some want every memory of the Catalyst to be scrubbed from their minds; and some would be happy with just a bit more explanation to what is already there. My hypothesis, and the reason for this thread, is that at least some of the dissatisfaction (not all, just some) with the ending is that there isn't a single, recognisable 'good' ending.

This isn't to suggest that everyone wants sunshine, rainbows, flying off into the sunset, or even for Shepard to be alive at the end. No, what I mean by 'good' is that previous delineation along black and white lines (or blue and red, as they are presented in Mass Effect) is confused, problematised, and as a result, completely done away with.

Up until now, our moral decision-making has been based on blue = paragon/good; red = renegade/bad (or perhaps 'pragmatic'). This is a very black and white way of looking at morality. It's the reason I don't like morality systems as gameplay mechanics, because, as we all know, morality is actually shades of grey, and something will always be lost in translation, it will always feel like we are 'gaming the system' in order to get the outcomes we desire, whether that be identifiable narrative changes, or internal identifications of our Shepard's personality. In other words, it's not very realistic or representative of how we actually make decisions in the real world.

But that is, nevertheless, what we've come to recognise as the morality of the Mass Effect universe. Of course, shades of grey have always been presented to us: we contemplate the context of the uplifting of the krogan and subsequent genophage, and are asked to see it from all sides; we think about the ethics of creating a race of synthetic slave AIs, the geth, and then the complexity of trying to decide who is right or wrong in the resulting war as they become sentient and ask 'why do I exist.' However, despite the presence of shades of grey--which we are always asked to think about--all decision-making is brought back to black and white, or blue and red. There is always a clear dichotomy in the options we are given. This is the Mass Effect we understand.

And then we get to the end of Mass Effect 3. Regardless of plot holes, the sudden appearance of the Catalyst, improbabilities and inconsistencies and whatever else, all of a sudden the system we have always known is abandoned. How do we deal with that? This is not what we expect from Mass Effect.

The signifiers for 'good' and 'bad' are all of a sudden confused. Red is Anderson, but Anderson is good. Killing the reapers is good, but destroying synthetics is bad, Anderson is good!, but red is bad. Blue is the Illusive Man, but blue is good, and yet TIM is bad. Green is unknown, we've not had that before. Harmony is good, non-violence is good, peace is good, a new third way, but unilaterally altering the path of evolution is bad.

How do we deal with that?

There are so many conflicting emotions flying around, because everything we knew about the universe and its morality system has been turned upside-down, and there's nothing familiar to grasp onto at the very time we need it, the point of ultimate tension.

Personally, I welcome this, probably because, as I said earlier, I don't like morality systems as game mechanics. However, it was a gamble, and one I don't think paid off. Everything we have done previously has been presented to us as blue and red, black and white, good and bad, this and that. They have always directed our attention towards the shades of grey, but we were given a very clear choice. What's more, even if we were able to pick 'red' options and still have everything turn out ok (where red = pragmatism and a 'get things done no matter the cost' view of life), there was always at the end of it a 'good' outcome, a win, whereby everything else (like losing various squad mates at the end of ME2) was merely degrees of either not-quite a win, or degrees of failure.

At the end of Mass Effect 3, everything is technically a win, and yet there is no true 'blue' end goal. Each of the three choices is morally ambiguous, and none represent that 'ideal' of the perfect playthrough. For someone like me, that's great. But I am not everyone. And, in fact, it's fair to say that a lot of people will logically not like that, because it's not what Mass Effect has provided before.

At its most basic level, "the colours don't match" and that causes dissonance. They aren't, of course, meant to match, and that's why I love, despite any other problems with the end, the premise of making a choice based on shades of grey with no 'ideal' outcome. If, perhaps, the whole trilogy had used this mismatching of colour-coded morality in order to make us tackle the shades of grey, if the trilogy had presented us with choice in such a manner that there was never an 'ideal' path, and there weren't degrees of 'not-quite-win' or 'more-or-less-failure,' then we might not be having the problems that this immense shock to the system have caused. I suspect that they wanted us to experience this dissonance, and that's not automatically a bad or unworthy thing. However, it's my belief that the previous colour-coding of morality had been so ingrained in the universe and us, the players, to such a successful degree, that it caused altogether too much of a break from what we knew that it was, sadly, bound to cause these problems. Something I find incredibly sad because, again, I rather like the ability to finally be presented with real shades of grey. If only it hadn't been doomed by the trilogy's own success at creating such a binary system of morality to begin with.

Indeed. Bioware pulled the proverbial virtual rug from under the player’s virtual feet with the ending, yours may very well be on one of the reasons for the problem, however I personally attribute more importance to other factors.

It may be because I don’t follow the game mechanics morality when I play, but the fact is I see the issue being more a matter of the Endings being unsatisfying due to their flawed nature. I never felt constrained by being a paragon or a renegade, (the default game morality).

When I create a Shepard, I take more care in fleshing her psyche. What are her motivations? What is her personality? What caused her to be that way?

An example:
Is she ruthless due to her story as a colony kid? Perhaps she is driven because she can’t stand the idea of others going through what she did. Likewise the same events cause an innate desire to compensate for her lost family, driving her to befriend her crew.. perhaps she distrust corporations because the security of her colony was once the responsibility of a corporation that was more interested to pocked the earning than providing protection, etc… the result being that paragon and renegade were at best tools, at worse limitations. So I end not playing for a paragon or renegade ending.

Still, despite not playing in a more “conventional” way, I still do not get any feeling of satisfaction with the ending. I still feel the ending invalidating the journey:

It feels that Shepard just, “shouted long enough and loud enough,” for the star-child to come and see what all the fuss was all about. And after doing so, ”It” grudgingly picked three imperfect solutions and demanded for Shepard to choose. Unfortunately, those were answers more to “It’s” problem than that of Shepard’s, (despite overlapping with hers). Worse, then it requires a sacrifice; that of the hero, for no discernibly logical purpose, that I can fathom, (discounting potential space magic workings). The player then sees all her efforts invalidated:

At a galactic level:
The new end choices exist exclusively because the star-god so wills it:
Two are uncertain, possibly just postponing a galactic end, another is an enforced fundamental change upon the very nature of sentient beings, violating their most basic rights.

Result of these choices? Unsatisfying. (they were meant to be so).
True, the confusion then can be amplified by the use of colours and the disconnection between the previous morality code and the the ending, but I feel it was not caused by it at a fundamental level.

At a galactic level, the ending is therefore at best a partial victory/defeat, regardless.

However worse happens to the hero at personal level:
All his decisions and actions previously made? Rend void and null. Regardless if the player was playing using the game morality code as a reference or not, (as in my case I wasn't), they have no consequence in the resolution of the ending. Therefore there is a very high probability that the player will be left feeling frustrated, regardless.

Further, is there any form of little personal victory, compensating for the imperfect galactic victory?
No. The character always dies. (the last gasp Easter egg does not invalidates this for me) Worse, it done in a way that not only is outside of player control, it doesn’t makes much logic if you never felt the sacrifice as the fundamental theme of the game trilogy.

At a personal level, Shepard’s journey ends in a bitter note.

So, in conclusion, It is perfectly possible that this disconnection between the endings and the game morality code may indeed potentiate and increase the disappointment and frustration of many players, but I believe it does not triggers it, nor is the fundamental cause of it.

As a note, I find interesting that you consider every ending a technical win, personally I feel they are all different shades of defeat.

[Ieldra]

Hmm...OP you may have a point, but I don't tend to think in Paragon/Renegade terms unless I get a persuasion option.

Instead, my main problem with the endings is this:

Blue ending: A massive doomsday holocaust terrible nightmare scenario where everyone is screwed.
Red ending: A massive doomsday holocaust terrible nightmare scenario where everyone is screwed.
Green ending: A massive doomsday holocaust terrible nightmare scenario where everyone is screwed.

(Phrasing taken from AngryJoe's video, so very apt)

[catabuca]

@vallore -- I consider them a win because the cycle of reaping is stopped. The ultimate over-arching problem we were trying to solve in the trilogy was how to stop the reapers. In every ending, we do that. That's what I mean by it being a win. Whether Shepard, Shepard's friends and comrades, the fleets, the relays, or anything else is still standing at the end doesn't matter in the long term, because we weren't fighting only for them. We were fighting for every other living being that will ever be born, so that they might live free of the reaper tyranny. So, with that in mind, we won. That doesn't mean it's satisfying. But we did officially achieve our objective.

To your other points, and I apologise in advance if I have misunderstood anything you have said: whether we as individual players decide to stick to blue or red or a mixture or don't let colour-coding play any role in our decision-making at all is, more or less, immaterial. The point is that, regardless of how we personally choose the options we choose, we can only choose what we are provided with, and in the case of all three games up until the end of ME3, they are presented using the binary morality model.

Whether we choose options that end in a specific, identifiable outcome, like saving the collector base, killing the rachni queen, or letting the geth become individuals; or choose options that merely give us a sense of who Shepard is, without an identifiable outcome, like responding to the journalist with patience, or urging the biotic god to run ahead and fight for us, we are still working within the binary framework that BioWare inscribed on the game. It doesn't matter our motivation, our role playing, or anything else. The framework remains the same. At the end of ME3, that framework changed.

I think perhaps getting caught up on the colours is obfuscating my more specific point, which is perhaps my own fault for using colour-coding as the vehicle for driving the argument. This is, really, about how we choose, and what we are allowed to choose, and where it takes us. I made the point in my OP that even if we pick red, we can still end up with an 'ideal' ending, for example at the end of ME2, whereby everyone surviving, regardless of whether we choose to save or destroy the base, is considered a 'win.' We are given one 'win' scenario, and then degrees of 'not-quite-win' all the way down to 'complete failure' should Shepard die as well. Whether we reach the ultimate 'win' depends on our choices throughout the rest of the game, but it isn't ever really presented to us as an actual, ultimate choice. The ultimate win is what we all strive for. It's not really a choice at all at the end, because we've already been doing all we can throughout the rest of the game to ensure that win at the end. I personally didn't like the loyalty system, and felt it simplified things too much. It was far too easy to get that win, and the choice to keep the base or not at the end was a different type of choice, akin to letting the rachni queen live in ME1. It wasn't a measure of our success or failure.

In ME3, there isn't one 'win' scenario that we are working toward. The thing is, we don't realise that until the last 10 minutes. All the way through the rest of the game our decision-making and progress through the game continues as we have always understood it would in a Mass Effect game. We are preparing an army, there must, surely, be an ultimate 'win' scenario at the end, if only we can fulfil the right criteria, right? There always has been previously. But no. All of a sudden, everything we have understood about how the universe, choice and consequence works in the game is changed, right at the very end. When we're presented with the 3 choices (and, in fact, whether we get access to those 3 is still dependent on the old style of game progress we are used to -- tick the right boxes, fulfil the right criteria, to get access to them all) we become aware that there isn't an ultimate win scenario. The final outcome is a moral choice. We're used to making moral choices in Mass Effect, but they've never been tied so intimately to the final outcome of the game. And what's more, the way that they are presented, as convoluted mish-mashes of the good/bad, blue/red, black/white system we're used to, confuses us even more, because Mass Effect gives us binary choices that are relatively easy to take a stance on--it doesn't usually take us outside of our comfort zone and force us to pick our 'win' from three morally-ambiguous options where there is no clearly 'good-guy' choice.

Again, I'm not presuming that this is the sole reason why people don't like the premise of the ending. I wouldn't even go as far as to say it's something that many have even considered as part of the reason they don't like the ending. There are many other reasons, each of them valid. This is merely an interesting phenomena that I noticed about the game(s) and I thought was interesting enough to talk about.

[vallore]

catabuca wrote...

@vallore -- I consider them a win because the cycle of reaping is stopped. The ultimate over-arching problem we were trying to solve in the trilogy was how to stop the reapers. In every ending, we do that. That's what I mean by it being a win. Whether Shepard, Shepard's friends and comrades, the fleets, the relays, or anything else is still standing at the end doesn't matter in the long term, because we weren't fighting only for them. We were fighting for every other living being that will ever be born, so that they might live free of the reaper tyranny. So, with that in mind, we won. That doesn't mean it's satisfying. But we did officially achieve our objective.

To your other points, and I apologise in advance if I have misunderstood anything you have said: whether we as individual players decide to stick to blue or red or a mixture or don't let colour-coding play any role in our decision-making at all is, more or less, immaterial. The point is that, regardless of how we personally choose the options we choose, we can only choose what we are provided with, and in the case of all three games up until the end of ME3, they are presented using the binary morality model.

Whether we choose options that end in a specific, identifiable outcome, like saving the collector base, killing the rachni queen, or letting the geth become individuals; or choose options that merely give us a sense of who Shepard is, without an identifiable outcome, like responding to the journalist with patience, or urging the biotic god to run ahead and fight for us, we are still working within the binary framework that BioWare inscribed on the game. It doesn't matter our motivation, our role playing, or anything else. The framework remains the same. At the end of ME3, that framework changed.

I think perhaps getting caught up on the colours is obfuscating my more specific point, which is perhaps my own fault for using colour-coding as the vehicle for driving the argument. This is, really, about how we choose, and what we are allowed to choose, and where it takes us. I made the point in my OP that even if we pick red, we can still end up with an 'ideal' ending, for example at the end of ME2, whereby everyone surviving, regardless of whether we choose to save or destroy the base, is considered a 'win.' We are given one 'win' scenario, and then degrees of 'not-quite-win' all the way down to 'complete failure' should Shepard die as well. Whether we reach the ultimate 'win' depends on our choices throughout the rest of the game, but it isn't ever really presented to us as an actual, ultimate choice. The ultimate win is what we all strive for. It's not really a choice at all at the end, because we've already been doing all we can throughout the rest of the game to ensure that win at the end. I personally didn't like the loyalty system, and felt it simplified things too much. It was far too easy to get that win, and the choice to keep the base or not at the end was a different type of choice, akin to letting the rachni queen live in ME1. It wasn't a measure of our success or failure.

In ME3, there isn't one 'win' scenario that we are working toward. The thing is, we don't realise that until the last 10 minutes. All the way through the rest of the game our decision-making and progress through the game continues as we have always understood it would in a Mass Effect game. We are preparing an army, there must, surely, be an ultimate 'win' scenario at the end, if only we can fulfil the right criteria, right? There always has been previously. But no. All of a sudden, everything we have understood about how the universe, choice and consequence works in the game is changed, right at the very end. When we're presented with the 3 choices (and, in fact, whether we get access to those 3 is still dependent on the old style of game progress we are used to -- tick the right boxes, fulfil the right criteria, to get access to them all) we become aware that there isn't an ultimate win scenario. The final outcome is a moral choice. We're used to making moral choices in Mass Effect, but they've never been tied so intimately to the final outcome of the game. And what's more, the way that they are presented, as convoluted mish-mashes of the good/bad, blue/red, black/white system we're used to, confuses us even more, because Mass Effect gives us binary choices that are relatively easy to take a stance on--it doesn't usually take us outside of our comfort zone and force us to pick our 'win' from three morally-ambiguous options where there is no clearly 'good-guy' choice.

Again, I'm not presuming that this is the sole reason why people don't like the premise of the ending. I wouldn't even go as far as to say it's something that many have even considered as part of the reason they don't like the ending. There are many other reasons, each of them valid. This is merely an interesting phenomena that I noticed about the game(s) and I thought was interesting enough to talk about.

And indeed it is.

To clarify the issue: For me, the framework was at best a tool and at worse a limitation, so then it matters not if it was taken or not.

if they had reversed the colour codes, or substituted the wheel with grey “laundry lists,” or juggled the answers to offer no spatial reference point about what they mean in terms of gaming morality, (top =paragon, botton=renegade). It wouldn’t matter, beyond momentarily lost of reference. But, I agree, this is just “skin dip.” Visual reference.

So what would happen if the “morality” system was itself blurred? With no paragon-like or renegade-like answer available, would I feel affected?

I believe not. Even if the choices of the ending do not fit themselves in the paragon/renegade dichotomy at all, that does not affect me either, (it just makes the tool unnecessary). What does affect is that I consider the answers provided intrinsically unsatisfying, due to their flawed nature, (as far as I perceive them).

Likewise, I can conceive an ending with clear paragon/renegade answers that I could feel utterly unsatisfying:

i,e: renegade: allow the destruction of every species but the Humans (selling out the others so we can buy our survival).

Paragon: allow the harvest of every Human because you know ours is the only species the Reapers are interested about this time, and we cannot save Humanity no matter what, (therefore we would be saving everyone else of certain doom).

My point of reference in this instance is the character morality, and personality (done outside game mechanics), and my personal goals as a player. So long and those references are applicable, it is only a matter of adjustment. However, I feel very strongly the problem wasn’t (essentially) one of adjustment.

Ultimately, however, I agree there is no clean cut answer to the question. What was the cause for failure?

True, there is no single unifying problem, instead we have a multitude of concurring issues, whose individual relevance depends much of the player. Bioware just made a series of unfortunate mistakes, that, unfortunately potentiate each other. Quite the “perfect storm.”

Out of curiosity, I find interesting that some of those mistakes are considered classical taboos in pen & paper RPGs. (Like the GM taking control of the player’s character and killing it, or the introduction of all powerful entities that invalidate the players efforts during the campaign, for the sake of the plot).

[Mighty_BOB_cnc]

Woah, this is like, deep and stuff.

Definitely a part of the reason why the ending is so unsatisfying.

It's a no-win scenario. All 3 choices have ethical problems involved and the way they are presented just flies in the face of the rest of the trilogy.

If we had been presented with these themes from the beginning, that the grand scheme of continuing life in the future is more important than our own personal survival then maybe it could have worked, but we weren't and it doesn't.

[Lmaoboat]

Arkitekt wrote...

Destroying all synthetics and all the previous civilizations-turned-reapers seems like a Renegade action to me.

Controlling not so Paragon.

So I would tweak it like this:

Synthesis end: PARAGON.
Control end: RENEGADE.

Interrupt the kid, smash his face and go all beserk on the device, killing all synthetics and Reapers end: SUPERMEGAAWESOME.

More like
Control: Paragade
Destroy: Paragade
Synthesis: JC Denton.

[Mighty_BOB_cnc]

All 3 choices are immoral. They are more renegade than they are paragon. In fact I would call them exclusively renegade choices if it weren't for the fact that all 3 do technically get rid of the Reaper threat for future civilizations. I can choose to murder an entire species (Geth), I can unilaterally decide to force every living being in the galaxy to become half machine (or half organic) without consulting any of them, or I can become supreme dictator of all Reapers, and through their immense power, possibly all life in the galaxy. Oh also all 3 choices result in a galactic dark age and destroy galactic civilization as we know it.

[parasite23]

I agree with most parts.

But I wouldn't say that the morality system is just black and white or blue and red.

First blue and red are technically separated. It's not one scale but two independent ones. Ok, we have a black and a white scale then.

Second I would rather describe blue as "morality comes first, regardless the consequences" and red as "goal comes first, regardless the consequences" which is the same as "at all cost" or "the end justifies the means".
The problem is not that there is only blue and red (and in most dialogues you don't have to choose either, you can pick one of the non colored answers).
The real problem that makes it someway black and white is that we learned throughout the three games that choosing blue has never real negative consequences and gives the best reward (besides something like letting that terrorist get away in that DLC for ME1 but that has no relevance for the rest of the game). It feels the same way as it was in Star Trek where choosing to act accordingly to the high moral standards pays nearly always off.
We learned choosing blue gets the job done really well and you are the hero in everyone's eyes.

As a side note, blue is not always the absolute morally good decision. In ME2 deciding to keep the data Maelon produced utilizing brutal and disturbing experiments is blue. But using data gathered with unethical methods is usually considered as immoral, so blue should be the destroy-data-choice with the according negative effect in ME3.