not an outcome we can control. We write to draw a conclusion to our journey. Because the game itself didn’t provide that conclusion we needed, we still need.
The Indoctrination Theory is an attempt at re-writing the ending, for the same reason. I’m afraid it’s wrong. Bioware’s reaction to fan outrage leads me to think this way, though I’d love to be mistaken.
In this post I won’t try to convince Bioware to change the ending, or provide new and insightful reasons on why they should. That would be a futile effort, since I can’t control the result. I will just try to express my feelings, to understand
why I am so depressed since I finished the game.
The end of Mass Effect 3 has had a profound impact in me. It has affected my mood. I feel sad all the time. I am stressed. My girlfriend wonders what’s wrong with me. I have tried to understand what’s happening to me and I have realized a videogame is the reason I feel like this.
Someone has said ME3 seems like Star Wars with the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey. The latter is my favorite movie of all time, and I love how it ends. But ME was not 2001, it never was; at least for us, the players. It seems the developers were designing a completely different game from the beginning. Now the illusion has faded away and both sides are suffering the consequences.
The fans thought the trilogy had two Leit Motifs: Free Will and Unity in Diversity. Apparently, the developers thought they were Machines Are Bad and Hyperdeterminism. We learned that there is strength in diversity, that tolerance makes us better, that united we can overcome all adversity. The developers were building up a different universe; one where organic life can only survive to the machines by destroying or becoming one with them. We didn’t see that coming because we thought the Geth and EDI invalidated that position. The developers didn’t think the same.
The fans thought the Atmosphere was an epic space opera, where a Hero (defined in classic studies as the protagonist that overcomes all obstacles) can achieve victory through determination against all odds, regardless of the opinions of
the narrow-minded. The developers were doing something different. For them, Mass Effect was a dark future where obstacles are insurmountable, and prophesies are always self-fulfilling, regardless of our efforts to prove them
wrong. Shepard was not a Hero for them, but an Antihero (defined as the protagonist that cannot overcome all obstacles).
The fans thought the enemies were the Reapers, but we were wrong. It was ourselves, who were unable to understand that artificial life was bad for us. The Reapers were here to help us, because the machines would kill us otherwise. We cannot understand this reasoning because we haven’t paid attention to what the trilogy was trying to tell us the whole time.
The fans thought our companions cared about us, at least as much as we cared for them. But they didn’t, they were lying. They chose to escape in the final hour, to live another day (or die, depending on what kind of food they need to eat, and what kind of planet they are stranded in).
We thought we needed a massive fleet to fight the reapers on Earth, but actually we only needed a set amount of space ships around the Citadel for the green beam in the center of the Crucible to light up. I wonder if the Crucible could have been tricked, and empty ships would have worked the same. We could have saved an awful lot of people, because we also failed to understand we were dooming our allies to die in the Sol system, or force them to travel for decades or
centuries to get back to their homeworlds. Or maybe they will be fine, somehow. We sadly lack the vision to understand why we should be happy with it.
The fans thought the developers were trying to teach us a lesson: that our decisions mattered, that they make a difference. But we were not paying attention. They were trying to tell us the opposite. We are small grains of dust in a universe we cannot understand, and all our efforts are in vain. The ending, as Harbinger predicted, was inevitable. We thought we would prove him wrong, as we had done every single time in the past with everyone else that failed to have our hope and determination. But, again, we failed to understand the grand scheme of things. We thought defeat was an option if we didn’t work hard enough. But it never was. The cycle was predestined to end with Shepard, regardless of his actions, one way or another. It was written in the stars from the beginning by the Catalyst, that essential character we failed to see coming.
Is it our fault that we didn’t understand what the developers were putting in front of our eyes for 2.99 games? Are we that stupid? Why didn’t we prepare for a 2001: A Space Odyssey ending? Had we been smarter, we would have loved it. But we naively, stupidly, expected a different thing. And hence the stress, the sadness and the regret.
And meanwhile, my girlfriend still wonders what’s wrong with me.
And I can’t answer. Because I feel so stupid to tell her it’s all for a videogame.
Modifié par Nolorfin, 26 mars 2012 - 04:24 .
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