ashdrake1 wrote...
I love the majority of your argument, though I disagree with the point. I love to think about the various points you brought up. It's top notch speculation. I also think it's a fine example of the ending being great for letting us think and dwell upon what comes next.
I got all sorts of text out of dragon age telling me exactly what happened. I forgot most of it in a week. It was satisfying right then, but forgettable in the long run. I can't stop thinking about what could be in me3.
That's a fundemental issue to disagree though I understand what you mean. That said, I'm also the kind of person who can look up at the sky and just come up with my own stories or ideas. The problem I have with ME3 is that I didn't get it to proverbially look up at the sky and make up my own story, I got it because it was supposed to be guiding me along, whether that be definitively or lightly, and to me that ending wasn't guided at all, it was as informative as a blank page. Yes, you can do a lot with a blank page if you want to but it wasn't what I went into it for nor was it the impression the company had been giving since ME1.
AtlasMickey wrote...
Transhumanism and the Singularity may not be spelled out in the dialogue
but their issues are totally ingrained in the narrative, first by their
total rejection in the first game, their partial acceptance in the
second game, finally leading up to their full embrace by the ending of
the third game (e. g. the blanket galactic condemnation of AI, Shepard's
resurrection as a cyborg, reliance on EDI).The topics really don't need
to be understood as Transhumanism and Singularity for their moral
conflicts to feel prescient. These are issues that humanity will have to
face someday and the narrative accepts that.
The Geth and EDI aren't transhumanist concepts though, they are at best Singularity without actually touching on the self-evolution aspect central to Singularity. The Geth and EDI are focused more around the ethics of AI and sentient life then they are transhumanism or the Singularity. Their treatment in the series has nothing to do with the merger of organic and synthetic to create a "better human being" and is instead an exploration into the nature of individuality and conciousness. That is what I mean because the morality of the Geth and EDI had little to anything to do with whether they could evolve themselves but everything to do with whether they were people.
As a science fiction story, one must necessarily go outside the
narrative to define the terms and concepts to a limited extent.
Sometimes it goes the other way, and science fiction ends up defining
terms and concepts in real world science. But there's doubting that, if
you have never been exposed to real world science, you will be lost in a
science fiction narrative. Even outside of science, if you are not
exposed to the cultural zeitgeist, you may be lost on some issues in any
fictional story. There are passages in Shakespeare where the meaning is
lost if you don't understand certain Biblical issues. The entire
significance of "The Tempest" may be lost if you were not alive during
the British Empire's expansion into the Americas. So there's no question
that discussions about fiction are made more meaningful and richer with
knowledge outside the narrative and, yes, in some cases it is even
necessary.
Certainly however those were, for the most part, things which made the plot more meaningful. Within the narrative of most of Shakespeare though it focused on and explored it's own central themes using outside materials as allusions and references to reinforce it's own point. That said, within it's own narrative it defined it's core concepts and focused on those such that even without looking outside you could figure out it's core ideas through nothing more then examination of the source work.
I agree with you that they are certainly made more meaningful and interesting when you refer to other topics. That however isn't my point; my point is that within the Mass Effect trilogy the end concepts of transhumanism, singularities, and so on, are not expressed significantly within the rest of the trilogy. In order to get those ideas you'd have to go outside of the series and in order to discuss the ideas and concepts you wouldn't be discussing Mass Effect because what Mass Effect contributes to that discussion is next to nothing. Furthermore to explore those concepts within Mass Effect iself is difficult at best because little of all three games spent time delving into the topics; even the biggest focus on potential transhumanism as embodied in Shepard's resurrection is not focused on the nature of the technological grafts or alteration of self through technology but instead on the nature of his associates and the nature of conciousness.
Basically my point with Synthesis is that Mass Effect doesn't define Synthesis; in order to figure out what it is in any way you'd have to relate it to other literature and then try to fit Synthesis into it. In short you can't have a discussion on Synthesis because Synthesis is a non-topic; you aren't discussing Synthesis, you're instead discussing the ramifications of something like Transhumanism or a Singularity in the Mass Effect universe IF that is what Synthesis is... which we cannot say for certain.
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