Allan Schumacher wrote...
dreaming_raithe wrote...
To be honest, the game sets you up to believe you're going to beat the Reapers no matter what, especially with Javik's bit about how the unified galaxy is something never achieved in his time. Throw in that Thanix cannons are standard issue (when they weren't in ME1) and I think an ending involving ignoring the Catalyst would have been feasible enough. The Catalyst/Crucible having the three magic buttons that it does barely makes any sense in the first place, and I'm still really frustrated with the three choices we were presented with.
Hmmm, I don't know if I necessarily got the vibe that we were going to beat the Reapers no matter what. Although it's true that Hacket estimates that our odds are "even" but I don't know if he's factoring in the potential effects of the Crucible into his estimate. One bad thing about not requiring the Crucible's use is that it makes the Crucible irrelevant. It truly becomes a MacGuffin and I think weakens other aspects of the story.
It would have been better, imo, to have "Destroy" be the only ending, but the level of destruction would be determined by War Assets/EMS. Low enough, the Relays, Earth, Shepard, and all Synthetic life are all gone. With more EMS, the beam is able to precision target, saving more of those things at each stage. This would have echoed the style of ME2's ending somewhat, which is honestly what I assumed would be the case up until the Catalyst made his appearance.
I was expecting something more along this lines when I made it to the end. Not an ostensible choice to be made, but rather the reapers defeated with our past decisions and war score playing their part in the resolution afterward. Much more inline with the ME1 and ME2 endings that really didn't provide any choice, either.
I think, ultimately, part of why I got that vibe was because of the beating the odds theme that the first two games have. At the end of ME, Shepard (well, the fleet) takes down a Reaper. At the beginning of ME2, Shepard dies and is resurrected, and at the end of ME2, survives a suicide mission (and possibly with everyone making it out alive). Especially with ME2's loyalty structure, I think there was an expectation that ME3 would be similar. It even follows the ME2 structure, except on a larger scale: you're not getting Garrus' loyalty, you're gaining the support of the entire turian race (and so on). Throughout it all, you do two major things once thought impossible or improbable: earning krogan *and* salarian support (yes, I shot Mordin
) and uniting the geth and the quarians after 300. Hell, you even take out a Reaper
on foot.
Then you have Javik expressing more than once how better prepared this cycle is to face the Reapers and before the final mission, giving that awesome speech about how much we've accomplished. More than one of your squadmates mention drinks *after the battle* (though two of them are ME2 ones available only by telecom, which I suppose people could have missed). Other squadmates are more somber (like Liara), but there's definitely a belief that we can win. I went into the final battle feeling
hopeful--I wanted my drinks with Kasumi and Jacob, dammit!
So when, essentially, the Crucible didn't work and the elevator carries Shepard up to Central Control (or whatever), I thought we were still going to win somehow. I didn't think the Crucible was going to have anything to do with it anymore. I figured, well, I got everyone's loyalty like I did in ME2, I did all the sidequests...It seems like we're gonna have to do this the old fashioned way. (I do agree that without the Crucible having a function it ends up being little more than a silly MacGuffin, but...I'd take that over every single thing to do with the Catalyst and the choices we were presented, as I think they damage the story far more).
Then the Catalyst shows up and basically ignores the structure of the entire game up to that point, dumping exposition onto Shepard and expecting me to make a decision with no real context. Walters and his "you don't need to know the answers to the Mass Effect universe" thing was absolutely infuriating--that scene
needed an Investigate option, even if only to allow us more clarity about the decisions we were making. So we get stuck with these three ambiguous choices (two of which, again, were the positions of
the enemy for the
entire trilogy).
I would have rather taken my gamble with the Thanix Cannons. I know it's what my Shepard would have done. "We fight or we die" was like her mantra even before the beginning of ME3. Taking the Catalyst's trap options felt like giving up. If the writers were trying to set us up for these three choices (and the tone of the ending in general), they did a slipshod job of setting the tone properly. Yes, a lot of the game is dark, but so much of it is hopeful, too, and that makes the ending we got feel incredibly out of place.
Retour en haut
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.
