5087 réponses à ce sujet

[Versidious]

All those things bother me about the ending as well. But what *most* bothers me is this:

"Hello, I'm the head of the Reapers. If you want to beat me, you must either grab hold of a couple of crackling electrodes, throw yourself into a great big glowing beam of energy, or shoot a part of the machine that you *thought* would kill us... at point blank range."
"How can I trust you that any of those things would work. You're the head of the Reapers, you might be lying, or trying to indoctrinate me!"
"Because I'm a glowing, ethereal child, and the music sounds really profound."
"Oh, well, OK. I'm convinced!"

[Sable Phoenix]

I can only relate to Synthesis, or any of the endings, really, as my own visceral response to them. And it is visceral.

When I got to the ending on my first, and only, playthrough, I was tired. It was very late (or very early, depending on your perspective). The dreamlike presentation of everything from the time Shepard is "struck" by Harbinger's beam only served to disassociate me even further from what I was seeing and hearing. After Ghostyboy's spiel, I was more confused than anything. I literally could not remember which direction, red or blue, left or right, represented which option. I sat debating for some time, but ultimately, the presentation of the three options, even with the lack of information, makes it fairly clear that Synthesis is the "best" ending. So I sent Shepard staggering forward into the central beam.

I watched her toss aside her gun, begin running (how, when she was bleeding out and barely able to stand, was she suddenly running?), cast herself into light that covered her like blazing water. I watched her skin peel and flake and whirl away like ash, exposing mechanical gray sinews underneath. I watched her open her eyes that now gleamed with cybernetic rings, like the Illusive Man's. And then in a flash of light, she was gone, accompanied by a mournful yet triumphant swelling of music informing me that dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.

And I felt literally, physically ill.

I watched the nonsensical results of this erstwhile sacrifice, turned off the game, and felt numb for days afterwards (before eventually getting angry). I could not put my finger on why, but I knew what I had seen was fundamentally, irretrievably wrong, if not for Mass Effect as a whole, then at least for Jessica Shepard.

Now, of course, I realize what struck me as so subtly hideous. It has nothing to do with the conceptual or thematic implications of the endings, which are so nebulous as to be indefinable. It has everything to do with the character of Shepard herself.

Synthesis, and Control as well, represent surrender; complete and total surrender, not only of action but of will and even of personality. Shepard exposes herself to external energies, her identity is wiped out as all distinguishing features burn away into mechanical sameness, and finally she is disintegrated until nothing at all is left of her. It is acquiescing to oblivion. It is giving up. Any time I see these endings, regardless of the custom or default Shepard displayed in the video, I still feel an echo of the physical revulsion that struck me the first time I played through the ending, a whisper of nausea as my gorge rises in response to the individual being rendered down to nothingness before me.

Only in Destroy does Shepard retain her agency, and more importantly, her identity. She takes action, she fires her weapon, she moves forward with purpose. She refuses to surrender; to the end, she retains her own will and pushes the decision to its conclusion with her own focused effort. Out of the whole forced, contrived, ridiculous quandary, it is the only option that is not acquiescence.

Needless to say, I eventually went back, replayed the Citadel, and chose the red option, just as Anderson would have. The first decision was an error. Jessica Shepard did not give up; she fought to the very last.

(Although I did get the scene of her taking a breath amid the rubble, which cannot happen given the visuals of an exploding Citadel that we were presented with in the cutscene, so for her, my headcanon holds to the Indoc Theory and everything after Harbinger's beam strike must have been figurative.)

Modifié par Sable Phoenix, 31 mai 2012 - 05:16 .

[Fraevar]

@Sable Phoenix: Well that tears it - after months of watching this thread intensely, I finally have cause to reply to something. Let me say firstly, that I have been amazed at the depth of the discussion that's taking place here, it's really wonderful to see, especially in this day and age where we seem to be expected to just passively accept whatever a developer puts in their game.

Pardon the tangent: What you describe regarding Control, Destroy and Synthesis is pretty much my own view of them. Two of those three represents Shepard giving in to this external force/logic, whereas the last one shows her determination and resolve restored.

I know the particulars of the cutscenes have been brought up before, most notably how Shepard gets TIM's eyes in the Control and Synthesis endings and seems to be struggling to retain some semblance of self as the beams annihilate her. Destroy on the other hand, has Shepard as I'd like to remember her, should she give her life - head held high and owning her choice. Not being tricked or coerced, but actually owning it. Illustration below.



All of this being said - I was going through the Final Hours of ME3 app earlier this week and it is *staggering* what comes up there. You have Mac Walters giving an interview where he deliberately says he didn't want to do the standard Q&A back-and-forth style with the Catalyst but completely oblivious to how the very premise flies in the face of the themes and experiences so many people have taken away from these games. It boggles the mind, it really does.

[CulturalGeekGirl]

For me, the destroy cutscene just reinforces everything I hate about the ending. You guys have managed to make me feel the hatred and pain again, as viscerally as I felt it the first time. You've managed to remind me that in no form of the ending cutscene does any vestige of anything I remember as Shepard exist.

The destroy cutscene It portrays Shepard as arrogant and thoughtless about committing genocide. There's no acknowledgment that Shepard is thinking about the lives and world he's destroying... destroy Shepard is murdering an entire race and a loyal companion without hesitation, thought, remorse or regret.

In someone who commits such an atrocity without hesitation, without expressing any emotion, you see your Shepard.

I see a monster as far removed from my Shepard as it is possible for a fictional character to be.

The thing is, the way the game "locks" you into cutscenes before the actual decision point is one of the most sickening things about the entire affair. There is no universe where my Shepard would not stop to contemplate, no universe where she's just "shut her brain off" in the way I feel every single one of those cutscenes implies.

Modifié par CulturalGeekGirl, 31 mai 2012 - 01:59 .

[Xellith]

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...

For me, the destroy cutscene just reinforces everything I hate about the ending. You guys have managed to make me feel the hatred and pain again, as viscerally as I felt it the first time. You've managed to remind me that in no form of the ending cutscene does any vestige of anything I remember as Shepard exist.

The destroy cutscene It portrays Shepard as arrogant and thoughtless about committing genocide. There's no acknowledgment that Shepard is thinking about the lives and world he's destroying, not a shred or hesitation or regret... destroy Shepard is murdering an entire race and a loyal companion without hesitation, thought, remorse or regret.

In someone who commits such an atrocity without hesitation, without expressing any emotion, you see your Shepard.

I see a monster as far removed from my Shepard as it is possible for a fictional character to be.

I dsagree with this.  Destroy is quite weird really.  Shepard goes from limping and shooting to walking on sunshine while shooting.  Its more of a defiant look than one of arrogance too.  Synthesis is almost the same but not quite.  You start running but you still run like you are in some kinda physical pain.

Modifié par Xellith, 31 mai 2012 - 01:59 .

[CulturalGeekGirl]

However you choose to interpret it, the look is not one that implies any level of regret. I can't see that set of animations and see a Shepard who is thinking "I do not want to do this and take no pleasure in it, you're making me into a monster." which is the only thought that could possibly be running through the head of any of my Shepards other than Crow upon choosing destroy.

[CulturalGeekGirl]

I've said before that my interpretations of the implications of the ending are wildly different for people who didn't or couldn't save the Geth on Rannoc... but I don't specify that every time I mention the ending, and every piece of data I've seen on choices made seems to suggest that the vast majority of people did manage to save both, so most of my assessments relate to that scenario.

That said, I'm not saying all renegades are xenophobic scumbags. I'm only saying that someone can safely be thought of as a xenophobic scumbag if they can murder an entire race of people who are at that very second fighting with them as allies without expressing a moment's sorrow or regret.

If your Shepard does not have the Geth as allies, this obviously doesn't apply to you. If the Geth are already extinct, the same.

I was explicitly not saying that anyone who would make the Destroy choice is a scumbag, rather I was saying that the decision of whoever made the cutscene to portray the act of destruction as free of hesitation, thought, or regret deliberately chose not to portray a version of Shepard who seems like they are conscious of making a terrible sacrifice that they know is wrong but cannot see any way out of.

Someone above said that the Destroy Shepard doesn't seem like they feel trapped or tricked, and for me that is a problem. Anyone who can conclude the conversation with the Starchild and not feel trapped is no longer a person I want anything to do with.

Modifié par CulturalGeekGirl, 31 mai 2012 - 02:22 .

[Xellith]

I guess I interperted Legion conversations differently than you did.

[Fraevar]

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...

For me, the destroy cutscene just reinforces everything I hate about the ending. You guys have managed to make me feel the hatred and pain again, as viscerally as I felt it the first time. You've managed to remind me that in no form of the ending cutscene does any vestige of anything I remember as Shepard exist.

The destroy cutscene It portrays Shepard as arrogant and thoughtless about committing genocide. There's no acknowledgment that Shepard is thinking about the lives and world he's destroying... destroy Shepard is murdering an entire race and a loyal companion without hesitation, thought, remorse or regret.

In someone who commits such an atrocity without hesitation, without expressing any emotion, you see your Shepard.

I see a monster as far removed from my Shepard as it is possible for a fictional character to be.

The thing is, the way the game "locks" you into cutscenes before the actual decision point is one of the most sickening things about the entire affair. There is no universe where my Shepard would not stop to contemplate, no universe where she's just "shut her brain off" in the way I feel every single one of those cutscenes implies.

Actually I would agree somewhat with a lot of what you're saying as well. I don't like any of the options available, but from my own interpretations of them, I picked the one that let Shepard retain some sense of self. But then again, I never took anything the Catalyst said as face-value, so the way it plays out to me, is that Destroy combined with the Breathing scene means Shepard just blew up the Reapers. But you're right - nothing on-screen actually reinforces Shepard's Paragon nature (in my case) , instead I'm filling it all in myself. Especially since I don't consider Shepard a mindless automaton and actually fought hard for them to acknowledge Shepard's humanity more in ME3 compared to the Cerberus Killbot she was in ME2 only to see it all thrown out the airlock in those last ten minutes.

It is a constant source of frustration brought on by it being complete nonsense and so against everything the series embodied.

[CulturalGeekGirl]

I also want to make it clear that I think the Synthesis cutscene is just as bad. It wasn't until it was described again here that I remembered the moronic running and the nonsensical grim whatever-that-was after. (I don't share your interpretation of it, but I didn't like it and I think it's wretched.)

I realized that, in the past few weeks, I'd actually replaced that sequence in my mind. In my head, Shepard limps toward the green beam, stops on the threshold, surveys it with a sort of world-weary "so, it has come to this. Well, easy come, easy go, I guess" look on her face, and then jumps. Fade to white.

With my memory of the sequence overwritten, I had actually forgotten a significant source of my disgust and anger, and started coming to terms with things. So... thanks for reminding me? I guess?

Modifié par CulturalGeekGirl, 31 mai 2012 - 02:45 .

[ed87]

Versidious wrote...

All those things bother me about the ending as well. But what *most* bothers me is this:

"Hello, I'm the head of the Reapers. If you want to beat me, you must either grab hold of a couple of crackling electrodes, throw yourself into a great big glowing beam of energy, or shoot a part of the machine that you *thought* would kill us... at point blank range."
"How can I trust you that any of those things would work. You're the head of the Reapers, you might be lying, or trying to indoctrinate me!"
"Because I'm a glowing, ethereal child, and the music sounds really profound."
"Oh, well, OK. I'm convinced!"

Shepard likes running into the light. I suspect he will be reborn as a moth

[Sable Phoenix]

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...

For me, the destroy cutscene just reinforces everything I hate about the ending. You guys have managed to make me feel the hatred and pain again, as viscerally as I felt it the first time. You've managed to remind me that in no form of the ending cutscene does any vestige of anything I remember as Shepard exist.

The destroy cutscene It portrays Shepard as arrogant and thoughtless about committing genocide. There's no acknowledgment that Shepard is thinking about the lives and world he's destroying... destroy Shepard is murdering an entire race and a loyal companion without hesitation, thought, remorse or regret.

In someone who commits such an atrocity without hesitation, without expressing any emotion, you see your Shepard.

I see a monster as far removed from my Shepard as it is possible for a fictional character to be.

The thing is, the way the game "locks" you into cutscenes before the actual decision point is one of the most sickening things about the entire affair. There is no universe where my Shepard would not stop to contemplate, no universe where she's just "shut her brain off" in the way I feel every single one of those cutscenes implies.

Yes, CGG.  There is nothing you say here that is wrong or that I disagree with.  There is a caveat, in that your conclusions are being drawn out of a (deliberate) pool of speculation (FOR EVERYONE!!!) engendered by the severe paucity of the information we're given on the true, actual effects of the endings as presented.  Since obviously Shepard and EDI can both survive Destroy (as well as your squaddies who charged the beam mechanism with you and were presumably killed by Harbinger's attack like everyone else in Hammer Team), I believe that the Catalyst can be proven empirically to be lying, at least partially.

I still feel trapped and tricked and forced by the Destroy ending as well; I thought I made that clear with my post earlier in this page, but perhaps not.  Nevertheless, the Destroy ending I can at least watch occurring without the physical sickness, emotional horror and cloying sense of wrongness that I get when I see Shepard being burned into a flurry of ash over a Husk skeleton.

However I just neatly sidestep the whole issue by choosing to believe that everything we see after the physical run towards the transport beam is, in fact, metaphorical imagery inside Shepard's mind, whether because of hypoxia or Indoctrination.

If not, then the Shepard we see in the glowing room of final choice is so removed from the Jessica Shepard I spent three games with that I cannot believe they are the same person.  If the endings are literal, then Jessica Shepard went aboard the Citadel and... vanished.  I don't know what happened to her.  What I saw afterwards happened to another Shepard, not mine, in some alternate universe that spun off of my own decision path like a quantum soap bubble.

Pop.

Modifié par Sable Phoenix, 31 mai 2012 - 05:29 .

[CulturalGeekGirl]

I've still never seen any real confirmation that EDI surviving the destroy ending is intended, and I've never seen any video of it. I've read several articles where people go through the game in ways solely designed to try to prove that she can and every single one has failed. The Catalyst also never says that Shepard will die in destroy, I didn't even think it was really implied that Shepard would die in destroy. So none of this empirically shows that he's lying.

I don't know whether he's deliberately lying, stupid, or insane, and it doens't really matter which. To even say "I'm going to pick destroy" you have to at least believe that when he says "red will destroy us" he's not lying, and blue is really the button that destroys them. So the decision to only disbelieve the parts you dislike gives me the screaming heebie jeebies.

Modifié par CulturalGeekGirl, 31 mai 2012 - 05:32 .

[Sable Phoenix]

Well, granted.  Of course , it's also possible to argue successfully that nothing we see after Harbinger's beam or the God Elevator (depending on which cutoff point you prefer) is actually physically happening. The whole mess is so divorced from cause and effect that you can make it say pretty much anything you want to say.

Which, again, a certain pitiful excuse for a lead writer said, in notes that we actually have preserved in the Final Hours app, was intentional. It's apparently better to be left with lots of speculation (FOR EVERYONE!!!) than to show us the concrete results of our actions. Like, you know. The entire rest of the trilogy did.

Modifié par Sable Phoenix, 31 mai 2012 - 05:33 .

[edisnooM]

Someone a while ago (I forget who and where) made the point that the Catalyst may not be lying as such but choosing his words and phrases carefully. He says:

"You can wipe out all synthetic life if you want, including the Geth. Even you are partly synthetic."

Well I reckon Shepard probably could do that, and Shepard is indeed partly synthetic, so that's true. And it is implied here that Shepard will die which can turn out to be false. Then he says:

"Yes, but the peace won't last. Soon your children will create synthetics, and the cycle will start again."(Think I might have butchered that line)

Now again he never expressly states that the Geth will be destroyed, and it is entirely possible that our children will create new synthetics, and from his view they will turn on the creators, so again this is true at least from his point of view.

"Luke, you're going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view." (Thanks Obi Wan)

Now it is entirely possible that this means absolutely nothing, and I'm not advocating this one way or the other, but it's something I thought was interesting to consider or, dare I say it, "Speculate". And if it is him playing word games that might explain the tacked on feeling with destroy.

[CulturalGeekGirl]

I honestly do wish that the two things that utterly destroy IT for me weren't true, because I'd like to believe that.

I have a friend who has a non-completionist Shepard who rarely makes strongly paragon and renegade decisions. He didn't have a lot of time to play when the game came out, and after hearing that the endings weren't all that different no matter your EMS, he just rushed through the plot and the parts that people said were "good," and skipped everything else. So he ended up with a low enough EMS that only the destroy option was available. I really don't understand how people who only have the destroy option fit into the idea of IT.

My second problem with it is much, much bigger - though it has a very simple solution. It's the presumption that Shepard's resistance can only manifest in one way. I feel like the decision to try to escape, or try to kill the Starkid, or refusal to participate are much clearer manifestations of rebellion and refusal to accept any kind of indoctrination than choosing the Red ending is. This would be easy to remedy: just make the "letting time expire/refusing to choose" ending a real ending rather than just a critical mission failure.

[Hawk227]

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...

I was explicitly not saying that anyone who would make the Destroy choice is a scumbag, rather I was saying that the decision of whoever made the cutscene to portray the act of destruction as free of hesitation, thought, or regret deliberately chose not to portray a version of Shepard who seems like they are conscious of making a terrible sacrifice that they know is wrong but cannot see any way out of.

Someone above said that the Destroy Shepard doesn't seem like they feel trapped or tricked, and for me that is a problem. Anyone who can conclude the conversation with the Starchild and not feel trapped is no longer a person I want anything to do with.

I've still never seen any real confirmation that EDI surviving the destroy ending is intended, and I've never seen any video of it. I've read several articles where people go through the game in ways solely designed to try to prove that she can and every single one has failed. The Catalyst also never says that Shepard will die in destroy, I didn't even think it was really implied that Shepard would die in destroy. So none of this empirically shows that he's lying.

I don't know whether he's deliberately lying, stupid, or insane, and it doens't really matter which. To even say "I'm going to pick destroy" you have to at least believe that when he says "red will destroy us" he's not lying, and blue is really the button that destroys them. So the decision to only disbelieve the parts you dislike gives me the screaming heebie jeebies.

Patrick Weekes alledgedly agreed she could survive in that paraphrased interview, but beyond that I haven't seen any confirmation either. Though the Catalyst pretty strongly implies Shepard will die.

Beyond that, I understand what your saying about the look of arrogance, but I also interpreted it as defiance. I think how you view it depends on how you view the Starkid. I think he's full of crap. I think he's either Harbinger come to indoctrinate us in our imagination, or Harbinger/Reaper boss making a last ditch effort to steer us off our endgame. Nothing he says in the entire scene rings true. I realize the slippery slope means that he could be lying about everything and blue  is really destroy, but at some point the lying drives it to uselessness. It becomes a charade reminiscent of that moment with Vizzini and Dread Pirate Roberts in the The Princess Bride.

Shepard - "I know, that you know, that I'm a Paragon and I'm likely to choose blue, so you would trick me with it. But then, you know, that I know that, so obviously you would leave destroy as Red while I think you're trying to trick me. But then you know about the child from Earth, so you know, that I know, that you know that..."

For me, he's dishonestly coloring the choices in order to steer you.

Catalyst - "You could do what you meant to do, but it will.... kill all your friends, yeah that's it! Better yet, you could Control us. Don't mind the illusive man, he was a tool, you're awesome! That giant laser in the middle that looks like it will just vaporize you? Well it'll do that too, but first it'll make everyone awesome, just like you. It's totally the best!"

From that vantage, the defiance seems more appropriate, but not quite completely appropriate. The look of resignation and regret and having to do what must be done, would have been better (unless they were genuinely going for IT), but it doesn't repulse me the way it does others.

My second problem with it is much, much bigger - though it has a very simple solution. It's the presumption that Shepard's resistance can only manifest in one way. I feel like the decision to try to escape, or try to kill the Starkid, or refusal to participate are much clearer manifestations of rebellion and refusal to accept any kind of indoctrination than choosing the Red ending is. This would be easy to remedy: just make the "letting time expire/refusing to choose" ending a real ending rather than just a critical mission failure.

I said I wouldn't discuss IT, and except for this I mean it!

If IT is true, Shepard is in a Reaper induced hallucination in the middle of a battlefield, possibly not breathing. Refusing not to participate accomplishes nothing. He bleeds out, or asphyxiates, or is just trapped forever. To break control requires actual force. That's what excaping requires. Indoctrination is about subverting your motives, convincing you that what you thought must be done is bad, and something else is better. We were always trying to destroy the Reapers, that was what we thought must be done. If it is still what we think must be done, then they have failed to subvert our motives.

Modifié par Hawk227, 31 mai 2012 - 07:20 .

[KitaSaturnyne]

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...

I honestly do wish that the two things that utterly destroy IT for me weren't true, because I'd like to believe that.

I have a friend who has a non-completionist Shepard who rarely makes strongly paragon and renegade decisions. He didn't have a lot of time to play when the game came out, and after hearing that the endings weren't all that different no matter your EMS, he just rushed through the plot and the parts that people said were "good," and skipped everything else. So he ended up with a low enough EMS that only the destroy option was available. I really don't understand how people who only have the destroy option fit into the idea of IT.

My second problem with it is much, much bigger - though it has a very simple solution. It's the presumption that Shepard's resistance can only manifest in one way. I feel like the decision to try to escape, or try to kill the Starkid, or refusal to participate are much clearer manifestations of rebellion and refusal to accept any kind of indoctrination than choosing the Red ending is. This would be easy to remedy: just make the "letting time expire/refusing to choose" ending a real ending rather than just a critical mission failure.

There's also the fact that as far as narrative structure goes, the worst place for Shepard to "overcome" indoctrination (which is apparently possible, despite the fact that it's been IMpossible all this time) is the end. See, you still have to defeat the Reapers, so to end the whole trilogy on "be the one living being in the history of EVER to resist and outright refuse indoctrination" would be a terrible idea.

And then there's still the matter of Harbinger deciding to complete Shepard's indoctrination despite him/ her lying on the ground of London, bleeding profusely and dying, in addition to a host of other problems that this causes.

Hell, even when you get down to the matter of pacing, IT butchers the ending even further than it already is. We've made it to the end of the story, but we're getting over indoctrination now? Are we to believe then that BioWare released the game, called it complete, but only did maybe a third of an ending? Because after Shepard magically overcomes indoctrination, the Reapers still have to be defeated.

Hell, it trivializes the last choices of the game even more than they already are, because it makes only one of them the 'right' one. Instead of everyone being able to make a choice in a space where its effects are your responsibility no matter how monstrous, instead it's just "two choices (including the bonus one you unlocked for being a completionist) mean you're indoctrinated. One (that you get by default, before the other two) means you're not." Who would go with the other two choices if just one is the 'correct' one? Nobody would, unless out of curiosity, "I just want to see what happens this time."

There's a bunch of other stuff I've addressed when this thread went down the IT road before, but I can't remember it off the top of my head. For now, what I have to say on the matter is what I've always said when this subject comes up: Ugh. Indoctrination Theory.

Modifié par KitaSaturnyne, 31 mai 2012 - 07:31 .

[KitaSaturnyne]

Hawk227 wrote...

I said I wouldn't discuss IT, and except for this I mean it!

If IT is true, Shepard is in a Reaper induced hallucination in the middle of a battlefield, possibly not breathing. Refusing not to participate accomplishes nothing. He bleeds out, or asphyxiates, or is just trapped forever. To break control requires actual force. That's what excaping requires. Indoctrination is about subverting your motives, convincing you that what you thought must be done is bad, and something else is better. We were always trying to destroy the Reapers, that was what we thought must be done. If it is still what we think must be done, then they have failed to subvert our motives.

Sorry Hawk, I just wanted to comment on this.

Refusing to participate in this scene would have the same effect as participating. Both would be equally useless, as Shepard would still be lying there, blasted to hell, unconcsious and not breathing. Nobody's going to send a husk or something to CPR Shepard into Reaper awesomeness or whatever.

[Seijin8]

KitaSaturnyne wrote:

"Are we to believe then that BioWare released the game, called it complete, but only did maybe a third of an ending?"

Yes. Just not in the way you meant it

[KitaSaturnyne]

Seijin8 wrote...

KitaSaturnyne wrote:

"Are we to believe then that BioWare released the game, called it complete, but only did maybe a third of an ending?"

Yes. Just not in the way you meant it

Ha! Indeed.

@CGG

I wanted to add to your arguments against IT, along the lines of the completionist point, that we only really get the "true" ending if we join the secret multiplayer club. Shepard ONLY draws breath if we've taken the time to play the online portion of the game, while those who play only the single player campaign only get Shepard's refusal or acceptance of indoctrination (because Shepard can magically do that, remember), then roll credits. Bad story design, bad game design.

Also, isn't it true that the Reapers indoctrinate those around them just by virtue of being there? They probably don't focus as much attention on each individual subject that Shepard appears to recieve if IT is true. If I'm in line at McDonald's and Harbinger him/itself stands in line behind me, I start to become indoctrinated just because it is there. Meanwhile, Harby could be on his iPhone asking his fellow Reapers why the Catalyst shafted their good friend Sovereign so badly. I mean, really.

PS - I really hated saying "if IT is true."

[CulturalGeekGirl]

The primary problem with IT, as far as I see it, is that it is really close to being something, but fails in major ways, which makes people twist themselves into knots and base their entire identity as humans around the fact that they possessed the moral rectitude to see the hidden picture.

Every time I try to explain the thematic problems, its adherents seem to repeatedly, almost intentionally miss my point.

The problem I have with IT is the way it manifests Shepard's internal struggle. It does so in a way that dictates Shepards inner life in a way that is utterly unprecedented and destroys the most important achievement of the Mass Effect series and universe. It is a disgusting and distressing imposition onto the one area of Shepard where we truly have the ability to create - Shepard's motivation and inner strength.

There are two interpretations for what kind of hallucination IT is. The first is that it's a metaphorical representation of the inner struggle Shepard is experiencing - a dream created by Shepard's psyche. The way IT is set up, "inner strength" for Shepard is presented metaphorically as "willingness to do anything, no matter how horrible, in order to achieve your goals." If the "dream constructed by Shepard's psyche" version is true, this only makes sense for Shepards for whom those two concepts are related.

The other theory is that it's an elaborate illusion created by Harbringer, and Harbringer is the one who has created the three buttons and determined what they do. If that's the case, it's even more nonsensical: why would Harbringer create a completely inescapable trap for some Failsheps (control only) and not even try to indoctrinate other failsheps (destroy only)? Why would Harbringer make up that stupid anti-motivation for picking destroy, when there are thousands upon thousands of much much more convincing ones? Why would he say "you can destroy us, but only by destroying Synthetics haha! to a Shepard who is known to want nothign but to destroy the Reapers and who also is known to loathe and revile (or at least not care about) synthetics? 

I've heard some vague, wishy-washy answers to these questions, but the reasoning behind them is always pretzel-like, meta-gamey, and often self-contradictory.

Modifié par CulturalGeekGirl, 31 mai 2012 - 11:32 .

[Jorji Costava]

Wow, this thread has been moving at a lightning quick pace. Let me just pick up on some of CulturalGeekGirl's points, as I find myself having considerable sympathy with her objections to IT.

What bothered me about the destroy ending, and about IT, is not only the fact that destroy involves wiping out a lot of sentient beings who are your buddies, but the selective nature of the destruction. I think something like this was suggested upthread, and I want to expand on it because I think there's something importantly right about it. To illustrate, imagine the following two variations on IT:

A: Instead of telling you that Destroy will wipe out the Geth, the catalyst tells you that Destroy will wipe out Earth. That ending's probably got all sorts of problems, but I'll overlook them for the point I want to make here. Otherwise, the same as before: You choose anything other than destroy, you're indoctrinated.

B: Instead of telling you that Destroy wipes out the Geth or Earth, the catalyst tells you it will wipe out all members of some relatively small religious persuasion/ethnicity/race. Otherwise, the same.

From a purely numbers point of view, ( isn't as bad as (A); after all, there are fewer members of that group than there are people on Earth. But still, ( seems worse. ( would make me question the moral motivations of the writers in a way that (A) would not. That's probably for a lot of reasons, but the one I can think to articulate right now is that ( seems to reward morally retrograde attitudes, attitudes that don't even have anything to do with willingness to make sacrifices or a willingness to do "whatever it takes." The suggestion seems to be that people who indiscriminately hate members of the group in question have more moral fiber and determination than I do, since they are far more likely to make the right choice, and I don't particularly care for this implication.

This isn't to say that anyone who would choose the destroy option in ( need actually be prejudiced, and I am in no way shape or form suggesting that anyone here who chose destroy has any morally retrograde tendencies. It's just to say that it's questionable for the writers to structure the dilemma this way, because it gives people with the prejudice an advantage over those who don't as far as the likelihood of making the 'correct' choice.

The point of this exercise is that IT, in its current form, doesn't seem importantly different from ( in any respect, except that the Geth are a fictitious species. But after all, it's the developers who asked me to invest in this universe and the people in it, and if I have to rescind this commitment to make the ending work, then as far as I'm concerned, the ending just doesn't work.

Modifié par osbornep, 01 juin 2012 - 12:04 .

[CulturalGeekGirl]

Sacrificing earth feels much less monstrous, because it's an in-group sacrifice rather than an out-group "sacrifice."

I can't think of any reason for changing the default "price" of destroy from Earth to Synthetics other than that the writers wanted Destroy to be the "favored" ending for Renegades, and they felt that Earth would be too much of a sacrifice for Renegades, many of whom are roleplaying pro-human agendas.

Modifié par CulturalGeekGirl, 01 juin 2012 - 12:23 .