808 réponses à ce sujet

[tookrunk1991]

liar*

[Diablos2525]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

Sweawm wrote...

I would actually like to ask a question myself, if you will:
Why does Anderson's survival affect the ending? Correct me if I'm wrong, but according to all I've read: if you save Anderson from The Illusive Man, you avoid the bad ending with over 4000+ War Assets. Though, if you let the Illusive Man shoot and kill Anderson right there, it takes 5000+ War Assets.
How does Anderson's living for just a little longer affect our ending? Is *Gasp!*, Anderson the true Catalyst?

That.... I have no idea haha.  I'm surprised that it does too (I didn't realize that it did actually).  Best rationalization I can think of is the death of Anderson is an emotional blow to Shepard because it was Shepard failing Anderson?  Whereas he has his moment to make peace with Anderson after?  It's probably more the conversation he has with Anderson than when Anderson dies specifically.  (Although you're referring to an ending that leads to Shepard breathing, right?)

Ok, I lol'd at this for a good minute!  Thank you for coming here and
dispersing a little humor about the endings - it's refereshing to hear
this instead of denial or anger.

HAHA.  I've had some fun chatting with friends about some of the sillier interpretations we have.  I laughed my ass off at some of ACAVYOS' Mass Deffect Videos XDXDXD

After reading up on Indoctrination Theory we started hypothesizing that all of ME2 and ME3 was an oxygen deprived hallucination by Shepard as he comes to terms with his death as he falls back down to Earth.  "NOOO I'M Gonna die.... but maybe I'll come back.  Yeah.. Cerberus will revive me, and we'll work together... but then I'll betray them and it'll all be awesome"

I have a rather serious question for you. Are you familiar with the intoxication theory?

social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/355/index/10676720/1
www.youtube.com/watch

[tookrunk1991]

the starchild is a liar... didnt he say you would die if you picked destroy... since you are like 95% synthetic yourself....

[Adain878]

Btw, what do we have to do to get you a promotion? Having someone come on here and speak candidly even if its not in an official position has done a lot for my faith in bioware as a game developer.

[Allan Schumacher]

Khajiit Jzargo wrote...

I have three questions Alan
1. Are you worried that if this problem about fans being mad at the ending never gets resolve, any new upcoming Bioware game won't sell as much.

I'm not really qualified or knowledgable enough to answer this.  I think that there will be some people that are disappointed enough that they're willing to move on and we may not be able to win them back.  I think that there are some people that are emotional and desperate, and willing to declare that they will move on in hopes of presenting a stronger argument to BioWare to do something.  By the same token there wil probably be some that go "What's all this brujhahah about?" that maybe hadn't heard of BioWare before and we've now piqued their interest.

But yeah, it's just not something I could state yes or no about.  The crux for me is that, ultimately the outrage at the ending is as much a reflection of how much these people loved the franchise.  A poorly received ending to a poor game doesn't register a blip on the radar.  A poorly received ending to a great game (franchise) is what causes this commotion.  I don't think it's impossible for BioWare to win people back because deep down I think many of these people really want to.  It's just up to us to make the game so that they want to.

2. In a nutshell how would you have ended this game.

This is a very difficult question to answer.  In large part because my thoughts of the ending will be influenced by what exists currently in the ending, what some of the fan feedback has been, and so forth.  It's important to note that I am definitely a "tough choices" type of guy, so I actually don't know if my vision for an ending would have made fans happier.  Two of my favourite game endings are Fallout 1 and Planescape: Torment.  Neither have particularly happy outcomes regardless of what the player chooses.

One of my favourite moments in ME was choosing between Ashley and Kaiden, because they were my two favourite (and most used) NPCs.  It sucked to have to make that choice, which is what makes it so memorable for me.  In the end I loved that the game would challenge me to make a choice like that.  When I replayed it I actually hoped that the game had a way to determine who your favourite NPCs were so that you always had to choose between them.  It'd be a nightmare for reactivity in future games, but man would it be powerful.

So I don't know if people would have liked an ending I created.  It would have likely involved sacrifice, probably from one or more of the fan favourites types HAHA.  I'm sure somewhere Tali and Garrus are tip toeing away from me >.>

Though I probably wouldn't have left the ending as open.  I enjoyed the 'post-mortems' of games like Fallout and DAO and see it as a relatively easy way to provide some reactivity to the PC's agency.

3.How would you personally fix this ending, would you use the Indoc theory?

I find Indoctrination Theory actually quite interesting.  In fact, shortly after beating the game I came across it when reading up on ending reactions.  It actually had me wondering if we had something epic planned up our sleeves.  As long as it was free, I was like "This could be potentially quite awesome!"  It was pretty well thought out and I think it's pretty easy to let yourself see the connections to make it work out.

As for your question, I think Indoctrination Theory would work well if it's something we always planned.  If it wasn't, then I think it reflects poorly to essentially take someone else's work and go "ta-da new ending."  Ultimately if we planned to make changes to the ending, though, I'd leave it up to the writers to decide how (if at all) to address it.  They're the good ones, not me.

*Note: Just a reminder I have no idea what our plans are for the ending DLC.  My expectations are based on the same press releases that you guys have.  Even my friends on the ME team ignore my inquiries!!!    LOL

[palician]

palician wrote...

Hi Allan thanks for taking the time to talk to us.

I just wanted to say that the thing that got me interested in mass effect in the first place was that it was based on real world science(where as say star wars has a mix of real science & space magic as people call it)but it was the synthesis ending that really confused me.As someone who has been interested in evolutionary biology & ecology since I was a child,ive built up a pretty good understanding of how D.N.A. evolves & how it can or could evolve in many ways.The synthesis ending implies that there is a new kind of D.N.A.(one that has organic & synthetic parts evolving together in a symbiosis).But a symbiosis is a two way relationship.Now the organic part can perhaps absorb minerals from the synthetic part(as metals come from rocks that some extremeophiles can live off of).But that would end up destroying the synthetic part & would be more like predation or at least a parasite.
The synthetic part also gets nothing out of this relationship & therefore this symbiosis is impossible.That means the organic parts & the synthetic parts(the synthetic parts would have to be similar to nanides that build upon them selves)would never be seeking the same resourses & would have to push against eachover.So they cannot exist in reality.
So does that mean that the mass effect universe has changed course & is now going to include space magic?.

Thanks in advance.

I hit send by accident before I finished & I think it got lost someway back with the earlier threats.

[Allan Schumacher]

Diablos2525 wrote...

I have a rather serious question for you. Are you familiar with the intoxication theory?

social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/355/index/10676720/1
www.youtube.com/watch

Ladies and gentleman.... I HAVE SEEN THE LIGHT!

I will totally pass this on to the dev team first thing next week!  Wait.... I don't need to... it's their idea!!!

(Seriously I hadn't seen that thanks for the laugh LOL)

[Grudge_NL]

Just wondering here people. Why is everyone complaining about genocide against the synethetics, while the entire history of the Modern Man is about systematically controlled murdering and eating of several animal species on our planet ?


Just wondering...  Because my question makes as much sense as asking clarification for the destruction ending

Modifié par Grudge_NL, 08 avril 2012 - 07:44 .

[Sweawm]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

Khajiit Jzargo wrote...

I have three questions Alan
1. Are you worried that if this problem about fans being mad at the ending never gets resolve, any new upcoming Bioware game won't sell as much.

I'm not really qualified or knowledgable enough to answer this.  I think that there will be some people that are disappointed enough that they're willing to move on and we may not be able to win them back.  I think that there are some people that are emotional and desperate, and willing to declare that they will move on in hopes of presenting a stronger argument to BioWare to do something.  By the same token there wil probably be some that go "What's all this brujhahah about?" that maybe hadn't heard of BioWare before and we've now piqued their interest.

But yeah, it's just not something I could state yes or no about.  The crux for me is that, ultimately the outrage at the ending is as much a reflection of how much these people loved the franchise.  A poorly received ending to a poor game doesn't register a blip on the radar.  A poorly received ending to a great game (franchise) is what causes this commotion.  I don't think it's impossible for BioWare to win people back because deep down I think many of these people really want to.  It's just up to us to make the game so that they want to.

Your correct when your saying that all this Ending stuff is actually creating free marketing for Bioware. A few other people told me that they are simply getting Mass Effect 3 so they can find out what all this Ending stuff is about.
Seriously. I know someone who played up to half way through Mass Effect 2 till Horizon then put it down and never played again. After the Ending crisis, he told me he was suddenly compelled to pick it up again and finish the trilogy.

[Broganisity]

Sisterofshane wrote...

Broganisity wrote...

-snip!-
If the civilizations created new AIs, what's to say they wouldn't side with us if we treated them as equals from the start instead of try to blow them up out of fear and mistrust?
-snip!-

What I like about the bolded sentence is that I personally feel that if you KNOW what the future is going to be, then you can change it.

We now KNOW (thanks star child!) that conflicts with synthetics might lead to this singularity - why can't we now change our attitudes and treat AI as true equals?  Isn't it this very attitude from shepard that makes EDI feel "alive" and helps to gain the alliance of the Geth (with or without the Quarians)?

The fact the Starchild claims it will happen but we KNOW otherwise, that alone gave me closure in des- no, killing the Geth. As much as I liked the other characters and would like closure, I was already satisfied knowing I did the right thing: even if I felt like the worst person to ever be born.

[Allan Schumacher]

palician wrote...

palician wrote...

Hi Allan thanks for taking the time to talk to us.

I just wanted to say that the thing that got me interested in mass effect in the first place was that it was based on real world science(where as say star wars has a mix of real science & space magic as people call it)but it was the synthesis ending that really confused me.As someone who has been interested in evolutionary biology & ecology since I was a child,ive built up a pretty good understanding of how D.N.A. evolves & how it can or could evolve in many ways.The synthesis ending implies that there is a new kind of D.N.A.(one that has organic & synthetic parts evolving together in a symbiosis).But a symbiosis is a two way relationship.Now the organic part can perhaps absorb minerals from the synthetic part(as metals come from rocks that some extremeophiles can live off of).But that would end up destroying the synthetic part & would be more like predation or at least a parasite.
The synthetic part also gets nothing out of this relationship & therefore this symbiosis is impossible.That means the organic parts & the synthetic parts(the synthetic parts would have to be similar to nanides that build upon them selves)would never be seeking the same resourses & would have to push against eachover.So they cannot exist in reality.
So does that mean that the mass effect universe has changed course & is now going to include space magic?.

Thanks in advance.

I hit send by accident before I finished & I think it got lost someway back with the earlier threats.

Hey there,

I agree that Star Wars is really more like Space Opera than "SciFi" but as for your question, it's not something I know.  I was never a biology guy in school, and I think the fundamental idea of any sort of synthesis like this is innately difficult to understand because it's not really something we can comprehend.

As for the direction of the ME series, just a reminder in case those missed it but I work on the DA franchise and have no real insight into the ME franchise as a result.  Just speaking as a fan to other fans as waaaaaaaay earlier in this thread someone made a comment I wanted to respond to lol.

[Direwolf0294]

I hate that the only way to have Shepard survive is to pick the evil genocide ending. Given that Shepard dies in the other two endings it pretty much means getting a happy ending is impossible, which sucks because that's all I want for this series, a happy ending.

[Diablos2525]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

Diablos2525 wrote...

I have a rather serious question for you. Are you familiar with the intoxication theory?

social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/355/index/10676720/1
www.youtube.com/watch

Ladies and gentleman.... I HAVE SEEN THE LIGHT!

I will totally pass this on to the dev team first thing next week!  Wait.... I don't need to... it's their idea!!!

(Seriously I hadn't seen that thanks for the laugh LOL)

Your welcome. I'm glad someone from Bioware has finally decided to Hold the Wine with the fans. :happy:

Modifié par Diablos2525, 08 avril 2012 - 08:14 .

[Allan Schumacher]

As long as they have some delicious screwdrivers I'm game!

[Khevan77]

@Allan: Thanks for giving us your perspective on the ending. I realize this is your perspective, and not Bioware's, but I had one question that I haven't seen you address, and I'm not about to read this whole thread to see if it's been asked, lol.

My biggest complaint about the ending is specific to the Catalyst himself. He states that he controls the reapers (or it's implied by him saying something about the reapers being his solution to the chaos,etc.)

If he controls the reapers, why then does Sovereign need to be around to send a signal to the Citadel in ME1? If the Catalyst was on the Citadel (it's a part of him), why need an outside source? The Citadel is the heart of galactic civilization, the Catalyst would have known that organics had reached a point where Reaping was in order, and he could have opened the relay himself, instead of relying on Sovereign to send a signal to the keepers to do it for him.

This is my biggest complaint about ME3's ending, that it invalidates the plot of ME1 and ME2. It doesn't fit with estabilished lore in the MEverse. Just wanted to get your thoughts on this if you were willing to respond. Thanks.

[M Hedonist]

More importantly, if there is some kind of argument why the Catalyst couldn't directly interfer in the plot of the first ME, why haven't the devs thought of putting it in the game? Surely they must have known fans would eventually catch that contradiction.

[Diablos2525]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

As long as they have some delicious screwdrivers I'm game!

Clearly sending the cupcakes was a mistake, we should have sent alcohol .

Seriously though, I'd just like to say it's really refreshing to have a dialogue going with you. I know your not on the Mass Effect team but you work for Bioware and you're being frank with us. I know Jessica Merizan and Patrick Weekes and a few others get asked some tough questions, as well as you in this thread, and speaking for myself and I (think) quite a few fans even if we disagree on a lot of things at least we know that YOU ARE LISTENING because you are actually coherently responding. (Yup we should of sent that alcohol and maybe then we would of got new endings and probably incoherent ones at that, but at least they would have been funny, oh well hindsight is 20/20 ).


I know one of the main reasons people are so upset is because of broken promises and
Bioware is being cautious not to promise anything at this point, but I really feel that if we had gotten more of a response from people at Bioware it wouldn't of wound up this bad. It's sort of like when you have a debate with someone if that person responds to you in a fairly logical fashion, even if you disagree with him you can sort of respect his viewpoint. Whereas if the person responds to you by plugging his ears, it kind of just pisses you off more. Sometimes I think we all need to just calm down (especially myself included) and remind ourselves this is just a game.

That is where intoxication theory comes in.

Modifié par Diablos2525, 08 avril 2012 - 08:33 .

[Khevan77]

The thing about the endings to ME3, is that they are relatively decent endings for a game, if confusing at times, with apparent plot issues that'll hopefully be clarified in the ending DLC. Joker, the crash landing on the garden planet, the relays, etc, all of these can be clarified in my opinion in such a way as to make sense.

So, for a game, the ending is "meh, ok" and with clarification DLC, could be pretty decent.

For the ending to this trilogy, the ending of ME3 dropped the ball because of this one glaring oversite, because it invalidates the plot of the entire series.

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

Khajiit Jzargo wrote...

I have three questions Alan
1. Are you worried that if this problem about fans being mad at the ending never gets resolve, any new upcoming Bioware game won't sell as much.

I'm not really qualified or knowledgable enough to answer this.  I think that there will be some people that are disappointed enough that they're willing to move on and we may not be able to win them back.  I think that there are some people that are emotional and desperate, and willing to declare that they will move on in hopes of presenting a stronger argument to BioWare to do something.  By the same token there wil probably be some that go "What's all this brujhahah about?" that maybe hadn't heard of BioWare before and we've now piqued their interest.

But yeah, it's just not something I could state yes or no about.  The crux for me is that, ultimately the outrage at the ending is as much a reflection of how much these people loved the franchise.  A poorly received ending to a poor game doesn't register a blip on the radar.  A poorly received ending to a great game (franchise) is what causes this commotion.  I don't think it's impossible for BioWare to win people back because deep down I think many of these people really want to.  It's just up to us to make the game so that they want to.

2. In a nutshell how would you have ended this game.

This is a very difficult question to answer.  In large part because my thoughts of the ending will be influenced by what exists currently in the ending, what some of the fan feedback has been, and so forth.  It's important to note that I am definitely a "tough choices" type of guy, so I actually don't know if my vision for an ending would have made fans happier.  Two of my favourite game endings are Fallout 1 and Planescape: Torment.  Neither have particularly happy outcomes regardless of what the player chooses.

One of my favourite moments in ME was choosing between Ashley and Kaiden, because they were my two favourite (and most used) NPCs.  It sucked to have to make that choice, which is what makes it so memorable for me.  In the end I loved that the game would challenge me to make a choice like that.  When I replayed it I actually hoped that the game had a way to determine who your favourite NPCs were so that you always had to choose between them.  It'd be a nightmare for reactivity in future games, but man would it be powerful.

So I don't know if people would have liked an ending I created.  It would have likely involved sacrifice, probably from one or more of the fan favourites types HAHA.  I'm sure somewhere Tali and Garrus are tip toeing away from me >.>

Though I probably wouldn't have left the ending as open.  I enjoyed the 'post-mortems' of games like Fallout and DAO and see it as a relatively easy way to provide some reactivity to the PC's agency.

3.How would you personally fix this ending, would you use the Indoc theory?

I find Indoctrination Theory actually quite interesting.  In fact, shortly after beating the game I came across it when reading up on ending reactions.  It actually had me wondering if we had something epic planned up our sleeves.  As long as it was free, I was like "This could be potentially quite awesome!"  It was pretty well thought out and I think it's pretty easy to let yourself see the connections to make it work out.

As for your question, I think Indoctrination Theory would work well if it's something we always planned.  If it wasn't, then I think it reflects poorly to essentially take someone else's work and go "ta-da new ending."  Ultimately if we planned to make changes to the ending, though, I'd leave it up to the writers to decide how (if at all) to address it.  They're the good ones, not me.

*Note: Just a reminder I have no idea what our plans are for the ending DLC.  My expectations are based on the same press releases that you guys have.  Even my friends on the ME team ignore my inquiries!!!    LOL

My point in RED. I don't think I would have left the ending as open to interpretation either. I think this has caused a lot of unnecessary speculation. I know no one on the BW writing staff is going to take any of my suggestions to heart here because like you pointed out it would be using someone elses idea. But don't count your own ideas out. They've used other people's ideas before. I know this.

The way the original ending to ME3 hit me was not that I didn't get it, but that it just felt out of context. Getting emotionally kicked up, down and sideways throughout the game I felt the ending needed to come across as less of a downer. Here's the type of grim ending I could have handled: The 13th Warrior where mortally wounded Buliwyf fights the final battle against overwhelming odds, and then dies a hero so that his tribe could live on. The clip does not show where he came out dragging his sword to do battle, much like Shepard was mortally wounded.

If Shepard lives in the Red ending, it's fine. I think Shepard should probably lose a limb or something. Killing Shepard off? It's not like they couldn't rebuild Shepard. It's happened before. So actually killing Shepard is totally unnecessary. Rather I think friends and squadmates should be sacrified. Those close to Shepard. Numbers don't mean anything. After 340,000 dead at Shepard's hands over the course of the trilogy, the loss of close friends are the only meaningful losses to the player. Although I can see from BW point that killing off Shepard eliminates the demand for games with Shepard. They just have to say "No," and retire Shep.

Where do we go from here?

This said, the openness of the original ending left us grasping at straws and thus we came up with IT. I'm not bitter that they didn't use it. I have a wait and see right now. I think they need to clean up the graphics to show the relays discharging rather than exploding, and perhaps maybe altering the dialog a little from starkid about the relays being reset rather than destroyed. Resetting them is bad enough. That requires reactivating one, then essentially having to reactivate the entire network which could take years. Destroying them essentially means the end of any expansion into the future without the reapers and leaves only prequels. I hate prequels. It's time to move onward, and if Bioware is going to do more in the Mass Effect universe go about 300-500 yrs into the future.

[Megachaz]

@Allan Thanks for the great discussion!

Do you think an ending where everyone survives, including Shepard, would have seemed out of place given the gravity of the situation?  On one hand, I think that wiping the floor with the Reapers without the loss of any of the main characters or factions might make them seem like pushovers (although Starchild already did this a bit in my mind), but on the other hand, I have a soft spot for the big goddam hero saving everyone's asses.  I would have loved a mechanic where the decisions like saving the council vs. human fleets, being able to talk down Saren, destroying/saving the Collector base, and squadmate survival on the suicide mission could impact the survival and stability of the races after the war.

[Allan Schumacher]

Khevan77 wrote...

@Allan: Thanks for giving us your perspective on the ending. I realize this is your perspective, and not Bioware's, but I had one question that I haven't seen you address, and I'm not about to read this whole thread to see if it's been asked, lol.

My biggest complaint about the ending is specific to the Catalyst himself. He states that he controls the reapers (or it's implied by him saying something about the reapers being his solution to the chaos,etc.)

If he controls the reapers, why then does Sovereign need to be around to send a signal to the Citadel in ME1? If the Catalyst was on the Citadel (it's a part of him), why need an outside source? The Citadel is the heart of galactic civilization, the Catalyst would have known that organics had reached a point where Reaping was in order, and he could have opened the relay himself, instead of relying on Sovereign to send a signal to the keepers to do it for him.

This is my biggest complaint about ME3's ending, that it invalidates the plot of ME1 and ME2. It doesn't fit with estabilished lore in the MEverse. Just wanted to get your thoughts on this if you were willing to respond. Thanks.

Great question actually, and one that I'm not sure of to be honest.

To give a "lazy" answer, I think (rather conveniently) my mind falls back on most of the "inexplicable" and sees if I can tie it into the very convenient Crucible plot device because given the way that the Crucible is present in game.  Since my mind is very human and I find human minds innately attempt to tie up loose ends, it's probably what prevented me from outright rejecting the Catalyst when I saw him.  I remember thinking "Whoa this is unexpected" but I didn't go "What!?  This is just dumb!"  (though to be fair, I was expecting a bad ending so I was also biased to going into it with an open mind).

I have 'yays and nays' with the Crucible.  On the one hand, I don't mind that it has some mystery, and it prepares me for something unexpected to happen.  On the other hand, it's silly that it has mystery and seems strange to suddenly introduce.

My best rationalization (and it is something that falls into the speculation aspect of the ending for sure) is that it's tied to the unpredictable nature of the crucible.  And I do think the game did a decent job of hinting that there were potentially unanticipated aspects towards the crucible.

That's hardly an answer for your question, but at this point it's pretty much all I got .  The convenience/lameness of the crucible then enables us to either fabricate reason, or accept that technology beyond our understanding looks like magic.  I almost wonder if the Catalyst is just performing an experiment and our cycle finally passed.  It's not great, and I think I find myself resigned to not overthinking it too much, similar to my experienced with The Force in Star Wars, or flying people in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon... <.<

Sorry I can't be more help than that for the question.  I think it's an interesting question for sure.  It leads me to believe that the connection with the Crucible enables the Catalyst.  Perhaps at one point the Citadel had a Crucible like device on it, and it was removed for some reason with the Reapers set in their ways of doing their reaping.  This might also explain why the Catalyst is devoid of knowing about the cooperation with EDI and the Geth (he certainly doesn't strike me as ominpotent).

[Allan Schumacher]

Megachaz wrote...

@Allan Thanks for the great discussion!

Do you think an ending where everyone survives, including Shepard, would have seemed out of place given the gravity of the situation?  On one hand, I think that wiping the floor with the Reapers without the loss of any of the main characters or factions might make them seem like pushovers (although Starchild already did this a bit in my mind), but on the other hand, I have a soft spot for the big goddam hero saving everyone's asses.  I would have loved a mechanic where the decisions like saving the council vs. human fleets, being able to talk down Saren, destroying/saving the Collector base, and squadmate survival on the suicide mission could impact the survival and stability of the races after the war.

I do think so.  As much as I can appreciate "Oh cool, everyone CAN survive" in ME2 from a reactivity standpoint, I actually find the ending not very interesting.  Fighting super powerful foes without any loss of any appreciable kind... I know I'm awesome but am I being TOO awesome?

In my "official" playthrough I lost Thane, which was sad.  I sent him in the tube, in part because he was terminally ill and dammit, if he was going to die it might as well be for something!  IIRC he felt the same way.  So he was in the tube, and then we rendezvous at the door and... BAM!    Thane is dead!  I didn't think that would actually happen!  It created a bit of a cost to complete the mission.  So while Shepard and Co are happy to have destroyed the Collector Base (sorry TIM, I just don't trust you!), there's that twinge of melancholy because you realize that a teammate and friend paid the ultimate price to ensure the mission would succeed.  That's powerful stuff.

I think it also had good balance with the first game, where we're forced to lose a teammate as well.  Given Ash and Kaiden were my favs (don't judge...), that sacrifice was even more memorable for me!

[Hamlor]

Allan is a cool dude.

[Xandurpein]

M0keys wrote...

Shallyah wrote...

The Geth are all but peaceful, as they have proven repeatedly. Easily malleable, manipulable and heavily prepared for genocidal warfare.

That is until Legion modified the Geth to evolve them, and turned all Geth into unique individuals. At that point, they'd be much less susceptible to the kind of stuff the Reapers did to them in ME3.

But even then, you run into human issues of the same sort. How many millions of human soldiers died for Germany, Japan and Italy in World War 2? People can be easily swayed too in the right circumstances and cause incaluable suffering. That doesn't mean you prune all of mankind because of its weaknesses -- you save them because of their strengths! And that's the Shepard way of doing things.

I think that one theme people don't see about the Geth is the difference between individual consciousness and hive-minds. In Mass Effect the hive-minds are presented as very capable but vulnerable. The hive-mind Geth are capable of remarkable feats because they all work together for one purpose. This makes them powerful, but also vulnerable, because any outside influence, like the Reapers can control the entire hive. This is exactly mirrored in the organic Rachni, who also have hive-minds and capable of remarkable feats, but are also vulnerable to the Reapers.

[Khevan77]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

Khevan77 wrote...

*snip for space*

Great question actually, and one that I'm not sure of to be honest.

To give a "lazy" answer, I think (rather conveniently) my mind falls back on most of the "inexplicable" and sees if I can tie it into the very convenient Crucible plot device because given the way that the Crucible is present in game.  Since my mind is very human and I find human minds innately attempt to tie up loose ends, it's probably what prevented me from outright rejecting the Catalyst when I saw him.  I remember thinking "Whoa this is unexpected" but I didn't go "What!?  This is just dumb!"  (though to be fair, I was expecting a bad ending so I was also biased to going into it with an open mind).

I have 'yays and nays' with the Crucible.  On the one hand, I don't mind that it has some mystery, and it prepares me for something unexpected to happen.  On the other hand, it's silly that it has mystery and seems strange to suddenly introduce.

My best rationalization (and it is something that falls into the speculation aspect of the ending for sure) is that it's tied to the unpredictable nature of the crucible.  And I do think the game did a decent job of hinting that there were potentially unanticipated aspects towards the crucible.

That's hardly an answer for your question, but at this point it's pretty much all I got .  The convenience/lameness of the crucible then enables us to either fabricate reason, or accept that technology beyond our understanding looks like magic.  I almost wonder if the Catalyst is just performing an experiment and our cycle finally passed.  It's not great, and I think I find myself resigned to not overthinking it too much, similar to my experienced with The Force in Star Wars, or flying people in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon... <.<

Sorry I can't be more help than that for the question.  I think it's an interesting question for sure.  It leads me to believe that the connection with the Crucible enables the Catalyst.  Perhaps at one point the Citadel had a Crucible like device on it, and it was removed for some reason with the Reapers set in their ways of doing their reaping.  This might also explain why the Catalyst is devoid of knowing about the cooperation with EDI and the Geth (he certainly doesn't strike me as ominpotent).

I left your entire quote in so as to not remove context, but I'm specifically responding to the bolded sentence above in your last paragraph.

The Catalyst mentions that the Crucible changed him, opened up new possibilities, other than the reaping cycle.  This leads me to believe that the Catalyst was "active" at the time, and not enabled when the Crucible docked with the Citadel.

I honestly believe that the writers who worked on the ending to ME3 came up with an idea for an ending to the game.  They had their own interpretation of how it was to play out, and it didn't work as they planned.  Players interpreted their open-style ending in ways they hadn't anticipated, and those interpretations are completely valid given the dearth of information we have to extrapolate from.  However, that ending, while working for ME3 itself, wasn't valid when taking into account the plot of ME1.  I can almost forgive this oversite, because I imagine that when working on a game, you can get tunnelvisioned into working on that game, and the fact that it's a part of a series can be pushed off to the side at times.  I just want to know if there's an official reason for this, or if this was, in fact, a mistake.

It probably can't be changed now, since it is so integral to the ending.  Clarification DLC to help remove some of the confusion from the relative lack of information is one thing, completely revamping the ending is probably unfeasible at this point.  I just want the ME team to tell us if this was something they meant, and will be clarified in the Extended Cut, or if this was a mistake.  I would rather believe that the ME team missed this, than think that they're trying to cover it up if it was indeed a mistake.