356 réponses à ce sujet

[lillitheris]

Wow, I'm making slow work through this. One note about TMS/EMS quick:

- MP doesn't exist.
- iOS doesn't exist.
- Future DLC War Assets don't exist.

[Kunari801]

I still like this idea.

If I could turn into a ShepardAI on the Citadel that controls the Reapers yet can help rebuild the galaxy and protect it that would be.... more acceptable ending that it is now.

[someone else]

@Versidious

Also, your block of reasoning above appears to endorse the notion that all of ME3 is now a story, otherwise it would be irrelevant as to whether or not detailed records were present of previous occurences.

Please help me understand why this is so? Why can't it just be the unreal part of the end, - you know, the part with the bushes from nowhere, instant slo-mo, magic guns with unlimited ammo that sometimes works and sometimes isn't there, anderson cutting in line (haha), wounds that can't remember what body there're on, etc.

Maybe I'm just dense.

I realize you don't like the Legend idea and I'm beyond seeking anyone's buy-in, and yes it requires some kind of new or expanded ending, but the reason for it was to keep the current game intact (as BW insists they will), trivialize StarBrat within the lore of the game without writing him out, and create an opening for a better version of events, without resorting to IT or Shepard's deliriums. I think it accomplishes those goals.

@Lillitheris

Before getting to specifics, for me the real failing of the ending is in emotional tenor - suppose Tolkien had ended Frodo's story on the slopes of Oroduin - a sadder conclusion, but one I think we'd find we could live with - not so with BW's disposal of Shepard - then again, Hudson standing on Walters shoulders hardly makes to JRR's boot laces. EC cannot fix this without rewriting the ending.

Abrogation of player choice comes next. This is where EC may be helpful - depending on how complex it branches, it is possible that EC may show a player how some of his or her choices play out in a post reaper world. What it can't do is show how they shaped the final outcome - except in terms of aggregate EMS.

GameLore consistency - this includes ME "science" as well as host of other things. EC can help here too, explaining perhaps the mechanics and effects of the crucible, the how and where of the Normandy and her crew, etc.

And again, before discussing specifics, please remember all I said was that the concepts were interesting - not that they fit the game particularly well, or were well-implemented in any way. It is these intellectual aspects that I think attracts the end-lovers - they work for me on that level, but fail miserably in the overall context of the game.

The "solution"
Insanity is where you find it (usually on the gameplay options screen) - but I think it may pay to put oneself in the position of a being with a lifespan of at least 37 million and possibly billions of our years. This is basically impossible to do - humans simply cannot grasp geologic much less astronomical time scales - you can perhaps imagine living for 500, a thousand years - but a human life - your own - extending for 100,000 years? 1,000,000 years? Would you be "you"? Would even be human? "It is beyond your comprehension" - truly.

So - from such a beings' perspective, it may be as you said, just culling - we have of late understood the need for periodic forest fires, and have set some intentionally - but it is crude and primitive - perhaps because the pattern was set a couple of billion years ago?  And are you really so sure, based on your 20, 30, 40 years that your perspective is superior?

And they have, for all that's wrong, been successful - civilizations rise, flower and are harvested - over and over through the eons. The reapers are just a bunch of galactic farmers.

But now this changes. Shepard is a cusp - galactic responsibility for the dynamic stability of sentinent organic life passes from reaper control into the untried hands of humanity, the Asari, Turians, Salarians and their successors, from nearly timeless beings to evanscent ones. The Reapers have cultivated the first 13 billion years of galactic existence - we have wrested that control from them - how well we manage the next 20 billion?

Spacebrat's rationalizations can be almost totally ignored - right or wrong about synthetics and organics, the process has prevented any one race from achieving galactic domination, and so achieved its purpose - but that era is at an end.

This is all well within canon, incidentally.

But the devs ignore or are ignorant of these implications, and deprive us of appreciating the gravity of events and sobering burden humanity has placed on its shoulders and upon all other races as well.

Instead, as you observe, this crux in the evolution of galactic awareness is trivialized and reduced to mawkish, ridiculous antics.

gtg

ps read ur story & hope to comment later...

Modifié par someone else, 03 mai 2012 - 01:34 .

[Jonata]

I don't want to sound bitter, but you lost me when you wrote "basically, Synthesis makes no sense whatsoever". As someone who felt very natural the Synthesis choice for his Shepard and got the "deep" implications of that ending without a grade in philosophy I just feel very distracted by that line.I can't help but hope that your endings don't get considered. I don't want to lose my ending because people want to go all "Christopher Nolan" about Mass Effect.

[lillitheris]

Jonata wrote...

I don't want to sound bitter, but you lost me when you wrote "basically, Synthesis makes no sense whatsoever". As someone who felt very natural the Synthesis choice for his Shepard and got the "deep" implications of that ending without a grade in philosophy I just feel very distracted by that line.I can't help but hope that your endings don't get considered. I don't want to lose my ending because people want to go all "Christopher Nolan" about Mass Effect.

It doesn't make any sense. I won't make apologies for that. If you like it anyway, and/or see implications in it, deep or otherwise, that's great.

The technical (and moral) issues have been detailed in various threads, but if you do have something that you could use to explain it better, I'll certainly hear you out.

As written, I don't really touch Synthesis much – because I can't come up with anything sensible – except for pushing it from an instant transformation into one that happens over a few days or weeks instead.

[someone else]

Jonata wrote...
I don't want to sound bitter, but you lost me when you wrote "basically, Synthesis makes no sense whatsoever". As someone who felt very natural the Synthesis choice for his Shepard and got the "deep" implications of that ending without a grade in philosophy I just feel very distracted by that line.I can't help but hope that your endings don't get considered. I don't want to lose my ending because people want to go all "Christopher Nolan" about Mass Effect.

It doesn't make sense as science, pseudo-science, nor within the lore of the game.  I don't mean to be deprecating, but a new "instant" DNA?  (I assume you have some familiarity with the complexity of eukarotic organisms, cellular mechanics, protein coding, mitochondrial DNA and the like?)  And how do you convert a non-DNA based form - EDI for instance - into a DNA based creature - does she now have something like real sexuality?  Joker will be pleased, but I'm more confused as to how tech acquires flesh and blood than the other way round - condundrums like this are why "synthesis" fails - and is dismissed as space magic.  (btw, Joker still limps, and EDI hasn't visibly changed - I would have though the hair at least, since she mentions she already can make it more "life-like" - apparently even BW doesn't take it all that seriously) 

It does "make sense" as a concept - sci-fi is replete with the theme of cyborgs and the union of "man and machine"  - this just one more variation on a  well-vetted idea.   Correct me if I am wrong, but I would guess your attraction to the idea is as a philosophical and conceptual proposition and much less, if at all, as good drama or narrative artistry.
 

Modifié par someone else, 03 mai 2012 - 03:37 .

[Jonata]

someone else wrote...

It doesn't make sense as science, pseudo-science, nor within the lore of the game.  I don't mean to be deprecating, but a new "instant" DNA?  (I assume you have some familiarity with the complexity of eukarotic organisms, cellular mechanics, protein coding, mitochondrial DNA and the like?)  And how do you convert a non-DNA based form - EDI for instance - into a DNA based creature - does she now have something like real sexuality?  Joker will be pleased, but I'm more confused as to how tech acquires flesh and blood than the other way round - condundrums like this are why "synthesis" fails - and is dismissed as space magic.  (btw, Joker still limps, and EDI hasn't visibly changed - I would have though the hair at least, since she mentions she already can make it more "life-like" - apparently even BW doesn't take it all that seriously) 

It does "make sense" as a concept - sci-fi is replete with the theme of cyborgs and the union of "man and machine"  - this just one more variation on a  well-vetted idea.   Correct me if I am wrong, but I would guess your attraction to the idea is as a philosophical and conceptual proposition and much less, if at all, as good drama or narrative artistry.

While I liked the Synthesis idea on a more conceptual level, I don't think that ending is outside the rules of good drama or narrative artistry. The main problems that are discussed here are about tech and plausibility, but I just firmly believe that "what happens" is what matters most. And here, to put it simple, this is what happens: Shepard sacrifice himself and becomes the evolutionary jumpstarter of the Galaxy.

I don't need to be reminded that creating a "new DNA" and just putting it in everyone's cells with a green wave isn't possible, because that's not a problem for me: I just assume I cannot understand the powerful tech of the Catalyst and I'm done with that. While I'm happy to read all the Codex entries for how the Omni-Blade works, that's not what makes the game so beautiful and I can stand something that is not completely explained, if that means that I can have such a vast and meaningful ending.

I understand this is strictly my point of view and I don't want you to agree with it, just like I don't wanted to say that this theory is somehow wrong: I'm just afraid that if people are willing to accept a "it was all just a vision" explanation in the name of scientific plausibility we can lose the best parts of the actual endings.

Modifié par Jonata, 03 mai 2012 - 12:37 .

[Versidious]

someone else wrote...

@Versidious

Also, your block of reasoning above appears to endorse the notion that all of ME3 is now a story, otherwise it would be irrelevant as to whether or not detailed records were present of previous occurences.

Please help me understand why this is so? Why can't it just be the unreal part of the end, - you know, the part with the bushes from nowhere, instant slo-mo, magic guns with unlimited ammo that sometimes works and sometimes isn't there, anderson cutting in line (haha), wounds that can't remember what body there're on, etc.

Maybe I'm just dense.

I'm not sure I can...  But I'll try again. So, until the end, we have *been* Commander Shepard. We have experienced things as they actually happened, because we were making them happen. No, commander Shepard *always* knows exactly what he's doing them (IT aside), because, you know,m he's the one who's doing them. So, why would the narrative suddenly switch to 'how people thought it might have happened', when you could just continue being Commander Shepard? It might work as a headcanon excuse to replace the endings with your own, but actual official built-in canon? Hell no. There's no logical in-game reason for the change, and that's where it's inferior to somehting like IT, which at least uses game law and lore for a 'clever twist' (Admittedly it's subjective as to whether you think it's clever or not) which had been foreshadowed as a possibility for both previous games, and much of ME3 itself. A sudden unexplained change in narrative mode is just bad writing.

If you reached the end of a book to find a line which said 'The last four chapters were not what really happened, they're just what people in the future thought happened.' You'd furrow your brow like a mother, even if they then said 'LOL , U mad? Here, have the real last chapter.', and it would be worse if you chose Control/Synthesis and never found out what actually happened.
If however that epilogue line said 'And that's what people thought of the whole story in the future. They were uncertain about parts of it, of course.' You wouldn't automatically assume that it just meant the last chapter, would you?

The last section of the game is somehwat dreamlike, but is being told a story dreamlike? Would bushes come out of nowhere? Would the guy even go 'And there were small dead bushes near where he lay' in an oral recital of a story? Incidentally, there is dead/burned foliage there during the actual Beam Run itself. Not that that solves all the inconsistencies with the ending, of course. But most of these, in my view, are explained mostly by Bioware's rushing stuff out the door because they didn't allocate themselves enough development time.

someone else wrote...

And again, before discussing specifics, please remember all I said was that the concepts were interesting - not that they fit the game particularly well, or were well-implemented in any way. It is these intellectual aspects that I think attracts the end-lovers - they work for me on that level, but fail miserably in the overall context of the game.

That's something we can agree on. I was not averse to the concepts of the endings, but they were not well executed. Almost like the endings had been rushed....

someone else wrote...
The "solution"
Insanity is where you find it (usually on the gameplay options screen) - but I think it may pay to put oneself in the position of a being with a lifespan of at least 37 million and possibly billions of our years. This is basically impossible to do - humans simply cannot grasp geologic much less astronomical time scales - you can perhaps imagine living for 500, a thousand years - but a human life - your own - extending for 100,000 years? 1,000,000 years? Would you be "you"? Would even be human? "It is beyond your comprehension" - truly.

So - from such a beings' perspective, it may be as you said, just culling - we have of late understood the need for periodic forest fires, and have set some intentionally - but it is crude and primitive - perhaps because the pattern was set a couple of billion years ago?  And are you really so sure, based on your 20, 30, 40 years that your perspective is superior?

And they have, for all that's wrong, been successful - civilizations rise, flower and are harvested - over and over through the eons. The reapers are just a bunch of galactic farmers.

But now this changes. Shepard is a cusp - galactic responsibility for the dynamic stability of sentinent organic life passes from reaper control into the untried hands of humanity, the Asari, Turians, Salarians and their successors, from nearly timeless beings to evanscent ones. The Reapers have cultivated the first 13 billion years of galactic existence - we have wrested that control from them - how well we manage the next 20 billion?

Spacebrat's rationalizations can be almost totally ignored - right or wrong about synthetics and organics, the process has prevented any one race from achieving galactic domination, and so achieved its purpose - but that era is at an end.

This is all well within canon, incidentally.

But the devs ignore or are ignorant of these implications, and deprive us of appreciating the gravity of events and sobering burden humanity has placed on its shoulders and upon all other races as well.

Instead, as you observe, this crux in the evolution of galactic awareness is trivialized and reduced to mawkish, ridiculous antics.

One of the theories floating around the forums about the Crucible is that it is a test of organics made by the Catalyst's creators. Once we were ready, we'd be able to use it and stop the Reapers. That's why the Catalyst caves to it. It's an interesting theory, and addresses the fact that none of the presented solutions (No, not even Synthesis) actually meet the catalyst's requirements of a solution, but doesn't change core logical problems, and is not, in my opinion, well represented by the ending as given, especially since it seems to not be considered in any way by the Catalyst, who also seems unaware of this origin. This explanation would, however, make the options valid - essentially, this organic cycle has matured enough to be able to escape the singularity.

However, its chief problem is that the Reapers themselves do not actually test the unity of a galaxy, or their ability to deal with machines outgrowing their masters. The Protheans had an extremely unified galaxy, they just couldn't get the races to come together because the initial Reaper attack divided the Empire up into its clusters. Indeed, this cycle's success is largely thanks to the sacrifices of a previous cycle, who failed because they did not have sufficient warning from the previous cycle - which must also have known that the Citadel was a trap. If that is indeed what Bioware intended the purpose of the cycles and the Crucible to be, then I don't think it well thought through!

It's also worth noting that the script leaked last year says the following things outright:  That Shepard would become the new Catalyst in the control ending. That the Catalyst was specifically created to address the issues of singularity (Referred to outright in the script). And that the Crucible's docking has ruined his control over the Reapers. Obviously, this is no longer canon, but it does indicate what Bioware's original intentions were. So, the Catalyst did not decide of the need for the Reapers to begin with.

Modifié par Versidious, 03 mai 2012 - 02:21 .

[someone else]

Jonata wrote...

I just firmly believe that "what happens" is what matters most. And here, to put it simple, this is what happens: Shepard sacrifice himself and becomes the evolutionary jumpstarter of the Galaxy.

I just assume I cannot understand the powerful tech of the Catalyst and I'm done with that.

I disagree, obviously, but should you find the need for support for your position, you always have recourse to Arthur C. Clarke's Third Law:

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

[lillitheris]

Clarke really should have formulated that differently.

“The effect of any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

Maybe

[someone else]

Versidious wrote...

So, why would the narrative suddenly switch to 'how people thought it might have happened', when you could just continue being Commander Shepard? It might work as a headcanon excuse to replace the endings with your own, but actual official built-in canon? Hell no. There's no logical in-game reason for the change.

Except for the anomalous character of the post-Harby sequences - unlike anything else in the game, but closest to Shepard's dreams.  - Hard to explain if not as IT, delirium or an imagined climax.   And you still haven't answered my question of the missing witnesses, and how we get any version of events at all -

The last section of the game is somehwat dreamlike, but is being told a story dreamlike?

Not "dreamlike" perhaps, but certainly "unreal" - so yes, telling and hearing a story are both highly imaginative processes -

...bushes...[etc] come out of nowhere? ....most of these, in my view, are explained mostly by Bioware's rushing stuff out the door because they didn't allocate themselves enough development time.

if time were the issue why take the time and trouble make the end so obviously different from the rest of the game - adding bushes, Maruader Shields, oily shadows and other oddities doesn't fit with "rushing stuff out the door"  - and why add the stargazer sequence at all - Buzz Aldrin just happend to drop by with time on his hands?

Until I see the EC and find BW totally ignores Stargazer sequence (which is what I expect, actually) I regard it as a viable alternative to accepting the endings on face value, and on a par with something like IT or delirium.

To be clear, I believe BW will insist that starbrat and RGB are factual and that the EC will do no more than pat us on the rump and turn off the lights.

Modifié par someone else, 04 mai 2012 - 02:37 .

[someone else]

@ lillitheris

Shazaam!

...far be it from me to school the masters...

[lillitheris]

someone else wrote...

@ lillitheris

Shazaam!

...far be it from me to school the masters...

But isn’t that exactly what Clarke’s laws are about?

[someone else]

Well, here they are - I don't think I want to be the one to edit them -

1.  When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
3.  Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

...but your point is valid, and maybe suggests a corollary to the Third Law

"The more "magical" the effects, the less likely the technology will be questioned."

or

"The more attention is drawn to the effect, the less will be given to the cause."

Seems to explain the reaction of some of the end-lovers...

PS  - far from the most elegant formulation, but perhaps you get the gist.

Modifié par someone else, 04 mai 2012 - 01:03 .

[lillitheris]

Alright, enough Clarke. Also yay over 300 posts!

[lillitheris]

Versidious wrote...

OK, I've thought of a few, admittedly slightly tenuous, possible reasons why the Catalyst admits Shepard to his chamber and helps him:

It's part of his/the Citadel's original purpose, but he perhaps didn't realise it. Maybe the Citadel was built by the early Reapers, before he corrupted them, or by his race before he betrayed them? Or by his own creators? Maybe the Citadel is, much like the FTL drives have built in collision avoidance safeties that prevent them from being used to create FTL missiles, based on technology older than the Catalyst, perhaps on that of his creators, and this area once served a purpose to do with powerful technologies - finding this out is where a previous species got the inspiration for incorporating the Citadel into the Crucible design. Thus, the Citadel is inherently designed to respond to people stepping onto the platform once something is docked. It would also then explain why there are conveniently placed conduits for control/destroy there. The Catalyst's dialogue could then be altered to be more reluctant, maybe state that 'I will give you a choice, so that you do not stumble blindly into destroying everything', or something similar.

This is the least outrageous explanation, I think :happy:

…

Also, sorry about not having gotten the additions done to C/S yet…I was having a hard time formulating them simply enough (and I wasn’t sure we had consensus) and I’ve been spending time writing my story the last couple days instead. Perhaps this weekend!

[lillitheris]

Rewrote parts of the Synthesis section in the OP to sound a bit less strict and to clarify a few points.

[Milkies]

...I like it.
As much as I hated the original ending, I think I would be very satisfied if the extended cut was something like this. Great job.

[lillitheris]

Milkies wrote...

...I like it.
As much as I hated the original ending, I think I would be very satisfied if the extended cut was something like this. Great job.

Awesome! Any wishes/critique? 2 for the price of one!

[Milkies]

lillitheris wrote...

Milkies wrote...

...I like it.
As much as I hated the original ending, I think I would be very satisfied if the extended cut was something like this. Great job.

Awesome! Any wishes/critique? 2 for the price of one!

I think that there should be less focus on EMS and more focus on the decisions made throughout the games. The difference between saving or destroying the collector base is only 10 (unless you have a pitifully low ems) but it should have much more of an impact than that. Same with the rachni, the genophage, the geth/quarian conflict, etc. Many major decisions result in a similar amount of war assets. Maybe the different war assets could provide different situations during the final battle, like if Wrex finds out about sabotaging the genophage and calls off krogan support or Aralakh company dies, you might not have enough ground support and someone dies because of it? (Not a very good example but just to give you an idea). Or if you have very few war assets under the crucible section (you know, for actually building it), it could work less effectively despite how high your EMS is. Not everything about the ending and the future of the Mass Effect universe should be based on one number:wizard:

[lillitheris]

I agree, the war assets should diversify more. Unfortunately, I don’t think they’re willing to ‘punish’ for those choices.

I think some diversity can be achieved simply by injecting some cutscenes, and reflecting those in the epilogues. Some rachni ships fighting off Reapers trying to get to the Crucible, some geth frigates defending the quarian liveships, the krogan overcoming or succumbing to some strategic target, some Primes covering the final approach, and so on.

[lillitheris]

The krogan and the genophage thing is fairly significant, I think, if you sabotage it…but only in the epilogue, when they actually have communications back.

Then you could try for interesting combinations like both having the factors that cause the krogan to get mostly decimated but still win overall. This way the krogan forces threatening you when they found out would be small enough to handle easily.

[lillitheris]

Bump.

[lillitheris]

Updated the Control section slightly. Need to reformat the whole part, though.

[lillitheris]

Here’s a bump yay.