5087 réponses à ce sujet

[KitaSaturnyne]

memorysquid wrote...

Well it is an odd point for a space opera, but they've made the point since ME1 that getting tech ahead of time wrecks societies.  Rachni/Krogan/Genophage atrocities are all caused by mass relay technology being utilized by people not ready.  Of course the Rachni being Reaper tools muddies the water, but the shaping of galactic society through technology is a main theme.  Yeah it is an interesting setting but think about it in real terms; due to various snafus, misunderstandings, etc., how many lives have been exterminated thanks to the mass relays?  How many people has Shepard had to put down?  His personal kill count is in the thousands.

In terms of what can be likened to one of us giving a nuclear bomb to a caveman and telling him how to throw the switch? Countless billions.

In terms of the mass relays themselves? None. There are no known cases of anyone going to war over possessing a mass relay.

EDIT: 136 pages and counting. Eat THAT, drayfish.

Modifié par KitaSaturnyne, 15 juin 2012 - 05:00 .

[delta_vee]

memorysquid wrote...

Well it is an odd point for a space opera, but they've made the point since ME1 that getting tech ahead of time wrecks societies.  Rachni/Krogan/Genophage atrocities are all caused by mass relay technology being utilized by people not ready.  Of course the Rachni being Reaper tools muddies the water, but the shaping of galactic society through technology is a main theme.  Yeah it is an interesting setting but think about it in real terms; due to various snafus, misunderstandings, etc., how many lives have been exterminated thanks to the mass relays?  How many people has Shepard had to put down?  His personal kill count is in the thousands.

I see what you're saying, memorysquid, but personally I view that cycle of violence (reference intended) as the fundamental conflict of the series. As above, so below. The smaller patterns resemble the larger ones. And I see the process of the Reaper War, with its unification and common purpose, which breaks the true metaphorical chains of galactic civilization. Tuchanka's power as a sequence was not in gaining points towards the green ending, it was in deciding what the galaxy would look like afterwards.

This is also why I didn't want the Reapers explained, and especially not justified. The larger story of Mass Effect is not in the specific mechanism of the Reapers' defeat (-ish thing, in the case of the ambiguous choices we were given), but in what the galaxy becomes in doing so, and what we had to do to get there.

Modifié par delta_vee, 15 juin 2012 - 05:08 .

[Taboo]

Going over Doctor Who again...Destroy is the best option.

It isn't about inference past the opposing force. It's about stopping it.

The Geth are a blow back, as were the rest of the Time Lords. I don't like it, but I think the Doctor would choose Destroy everytime. Every. Time.

[drayfish]

@ memorysquid: Yes, it does seem that they were so needlessly blinded by the desire to evoke an heroic sacrifice (going a little mental on the religious iconography, frankly) that they forgot where the moment of heroism actually lies. I tried to clumsilly make this distinction earlier, but for me, I think the deciding moment of heroism lies in being willing to die, to sacrifice all. And Shepard proved herself willing to do that repeatedly in the series. ('What was that you said? "Suicide" mission? Sure. Let me just get my coat.') Whether or not the character then goes on to die is irrelevant.

But the writers seemed adamant that Shepard should die whether or not it made logical sense, or was even established to be necessary. That's why my Shepard's death felt so empty - she would have gladly died if it made sense, but being forced down a murder funnel at the behest of Clippy the Ghost didn't feel heroic or sacrificial, it felt cheap.

[Taboo]

He/She survives in Destroy. That's been clarified. Weekes told someone to "wait" in regards to him breathing. SPECULATIONS.

He's alive in my head.

[delta_vee]

@Taboo

With an abundance of respect, let's not go down the favorite-color rabbit hole again.

It's not even about Shepard dying, for me, not really. I think bleeding out with the best seats in the house would be a proper Heroic sacrifice on its own. We were dying since the beam - and we carried out our mission despite it. I think that carries more weight as heroism than being disintegrated or exploded by the Tricolor Doom.

Edit: also, you seem to be forgetting that the Time War drove the Doctor more than a little mad...

Modifié par delta_vee, 15 juin 2012 - 05:22 .

[KitaSaturnyne]

delta_vee wrote...

@Taboo

With an abundance of respect, let's not go down the favorite-color rabbit hole again.

It's not even about Shepard dying, for me, not really. I think bleeding out with the best seats in the house would be a proper Heroic sacrifice on its own. We were dying since the beam - and we carried out our mission despite it. I think that carries more weight as heroism than being disintegrated or exploded by the Tricolor Doom.

Agreed. Also, having to reach outside the narrative space and relying on tweets by the dev team for the closure we need reeks of the failure of the ending on levels I can't even comprehend.

Modifié par KitaSaturnyne, 15 juin 2012 - 05:23 .

[Taboo]

War is madness. A forced death is a manipulative tool in literature. You use it to invoke a response.

Heroic sacrifice is over-used and trite.

And no, the Doctor may have been mad, but it was the best choice.

[CulturalGeekGirl]

Oh come on. A man with that much glee on his face when he says "nobody dies today" is going to pick destroy? Please.

Edit: actually, I think delta may have the right of it: bleeding out, well and truly dying, no regeneration, rather than become that kind of a monster. That sounds... more right.

I can't believe I'm having to draw this distinction again, but the Time Lords made the decision to sacrifice themselves to defeat an evil that was otherwise going to take over the galaxy. Shepard is making a decision where, no matter what he decides, the evil is no longer a threat... only in one case, he makes the decision to murder an entire race to achieve it, because he's slightly more confident that that method will work. It's totally different from how many people phrase it, the whole "it's the only way to stop the Reapers" thing. It bloody well isn't.

So no, this isn't the time lords valiantly sacrificing themselves to save the universe.

It's Shepard sending a memo to the Geth:
"Hey, we could have stopped the bloodshed without anyone dying but you know... we would have had to become a little more like you, so I'm sure you understand that we decided to genocide you instead, without asking your opinion or letting you know that there were other options.

Well, cheers!"

Modifié par CulturalGeekGirl, 15 juin 2012 - 05:51 .

[delta_vee]

@CGG

I was under the very distinct impression that the Doctor made the decision on his own (also possessing a Crucible, I might add) to stop the Time Lords from sacrificing the rest of the universe to enable their own ascension. (A decision, I'll point out, which is fundamentally different than the one we got.)

And seriously, everybody, do not go down the rabbit hole again. I refuse to see a hundred and thirty-six pages of awesome go down in flames.

[drayfish]

Taboo-XX wrote...

Going over Doctor Who again...Destroy is the best option.

It isn't about inference past the opposing force. It's about stopping it.

The Geth are a blow back, as were the rest of the Time Lords. I don't like it, but I think the Doctor would choose Destroy everytime. Every. Time.

Although I definitely appreciate what you're saying, Tabbo-XX, I'm certain the Doctor would have a fourth option. Any time he is presented with unwinnable, morally suspect scenarios, he finds a way through, always by thinking outside of the false parameters presented to him. Give the Doctor two choices: death or moral corruption, and he will select, and deliver back to you, a third. Much like Shepard was (before the conclusion of the game) the Doctor is an interloping arbiter into other people's conflicts, but he (like she) would never violate the sanctity of another's right to live and be free. The death of the Geth and EDI would be utterly unacceptable for him, and he would find another way.
 
(...And not just because the addition of a sonic screwdriver could fiddle with the Crucible itself; the thematic drive of his universe would never allow it. Indeed, we are led to believe that the only time the Doctor (perhaps) faltered in this was during the Time War crisis, and his actions were so repugnant to him, and so psychologically scarring, that we the audience were not even permitted to see them. )
 
Actually, the thought of the Doctor turning up in this universe has again highlighted my largest complaint with the ending of the game... (ohs noes... I feel a rant coming on... overtaking me... RAAARGH!)
 
Because the Doctor chooses hope. Every time. That's who he is. Hope, and the betterment of life. And that's what was fundamentally missing from the end of Mass Effect 3 – a theme that had been present in every aspect of the preceding two and three quarter games. A belief that by respecting others, by celebrating their unique qualities, there are other options beyond controlling and destroying those we disagree with.

And that notion leads me to my ultimate point with the ending of this game – and it's something that CulturalGeekGirl has already expressed with far more elegance than I will manage – but what the hell is wrong with hope? What is so embarrassing about creating a finale that ends with victory and optimism? The endings that have been forced on this tale, all with some kind of moral or emotional sacrifice, demean everything that this series seemed to propagate for two and a half games. This universe was about expansion, inclusivity, wonder; the promise of a brighter, bolder experience of life – and yet every one of these final choices, be necessity, chips away at that growth in some form or another.  And I don't really understand why. Why do the Relays, symbols of our adventures into bold new worlds have to be torched? Why do our friends have to be shot across the galaxy with no idea where we are?  Why does an arbitrary death and the corruption of our moral centres have to be accepted?  Unless it's simply to pander to some grim, tedious notion that speculative fiction must involve sacrifice, a cold stark vision of a world of compromise, in order to be validated as literature.
 
Because, as we've all been discusing, this could not be more untrue. As I mentioned earlier in a separate tedious rant, The Odyssey, one of western civilisation's oldest works of narrative, has the ultimate happy ending: reunion, reaffirmation, reclamation. Lord of the Rings ends in a celebratory state so absolute that when it was made into a movie people even mocked the narrative for going on too long after the climax was reached (and this is even with them cutting out the return to the Shire). ...Although, yes: bouncing happily on Frodo's bed in slow-mo for what felt like twenty minutes may have been pushing it.
 
But the most clear example of all is the Doctor. Tell the Doctor that he has three options: to kill innocent casualties; to pervert free will; or to change everyone without their consent, and he would take out his sonic screwdriver and carve an utterly new ending into the tale.

Modifié par drayfish, 15 juin 2012 - 05:55 .

[memorysquid]

@Drayfish In context, I thought the synthesis ending was very hopeful and was portrayed as such. For magic hand wavey reasons the Catalyst needed someone to splatter so it could advance all life into a new, better form and Shepard's response was to take a running jump in. Sheer heroism and if no hope for the hero, certainly hope for an entire galaxy. I don't like the sacrifice model of heroism, but there are situations that simply require it. Shep leapt on the grenade without a second thought. Good man. What's wrong with a story that explores the best way to die in a situation that ethically demands it?

Every option affects the entire galaxy without its consent. Someone has to choose how to stop the slaughter and the options included a whole form of life-icide plus multiple galacticide, Reaper tyranny but dominated by Shepard [and how many examples had he seen of successful domination of synthetics] again without consent or lastly some funky magic that gives flora, fauna and robots roboDNA. The issue isn't really about consent, it's about which choice you make in a vacuum of further information and in an emergency situation. Some decision must be made and the results are not clear in advance; inaction results in another Reaping.

Not being a big fan of Doctor Who, I can't say much, but in reality, usually you simply have to make due with what is there. It sounds like the Doctor sidesteps moral di[tri]lemmas usually; that isn't really a story about a moral dilemma then, which is what Mass Effect was always about, making REALLY hard choices and being satisfied with them.

[CulturalGeekGirl]

I agree wholeheartedly with "the fourth option" assessment of the Doctor; amazing.

I don't want to go down the ending hole, but I do have a post "in the hopper" from weeks past, which I had decided not to post because it wasn't relevant before... and now it's relevant again, sort of.

A little while ago, drayfish wrote a post about civility on the forums, and I felt shame (as a minor action). I know I'm one of the more vocal and emotional posters in this particular thread at times, and I know I should be able to hold it together more, and while I knew he wasn't criticizing me specifically... it's a personal failing that I am constantly, keenly aware of.

But now I want to explain why.

Stories are gorram powerful. If we see an idea consistently reinforced by story, we start to internalize it. There's a lot of media studies stuff lately about how positive portrayals of gay people on TV has helped make significant inroads towards raising general acceptance in society. It may sound foolish to give credit for that kind of social change to media, but it's true... the problem is, it's also true for bad stuff.

Any story where torture works makes me sick. Torture doesn't work. I've spoken with former military interrogators who explained why it doesn't work, but I've had people literally laugh in my face when I try to explain this, or roll their eyes as if I am being impossibly naive. On TV there's always a ticking time bomb, we always torture, and it always works. So it stands to reason that similar things happen in real life, right?

Because of this, I react really strongly to story points that seem to reinforce problematic ways of thinking, especially ones that are already endemic to our culture. Some that I've noticed cropping up a lot lately are these:

"Collateral damage in huge amounts is usually required to defeat evil."
"Collateral damage is acceptable when it's a group that is different from us"
"There are some situations when any atrocity is acceptable."

Here is where I have to be very, very careful. I'm not saying that everyone who picked destroy thinks any of those things. I'm saying that anyone who already thinks these things would have that way of thinking reinforced by the Destroy ending.

Control represents some problematic ideas as well: keeping an obliterating superweapon in "good hands," just in case. The Hubris of believing that you can succeed in a morally fraught enterprise where everyone else has failed, because you're the first person to try it who is "good enough."

Synthesis's horrors are more oblique. The inherent philosophies behind it (that forced homogenization is the best way to achieve peace, and that technological integration is both necessary and good), are just as wrong as the other bad assumptions inherent in the other endings. I just don't think those particular ideas have a huge potential to cause damage to our society right now which is, I think, why that specific horror bothers me the least.

And yet, when it all comes down to it, at the end of Mass Effect, we leave the universe worse off than it would have been if the Reapers had just decided to fly off and leave us alone... something they were free to do at any time. So no matter what, our final choice makes the universe worse.

The question isn't "which ending is horrific," it's "why does this specific horror bother you more than the other ones?" And yes, that's always going to be personal.

And I think what bothers me the most about destroy is... just how easy most people seem to be finding it to make those justifications. The widespread popularity of the destroy ending, and the particular, consistent rhetoric of its defense, shows those particular justifications are taken as fundamental truths by a huge portion of the population.

Modifié par CulturalGeekGirl, 15 juin 2012 - 06:52 .

[memorysquid]

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...

It's Shepard sending a memo to the Geth:
"Hey, we could have stopped the bloodshed without anyone dying but you know... we would have had to become a little more like you, so I'm sure you understand that we decided to genocide you instead, without asking your opinion or letting you know that there were other options.

Well, cheers!"

And that last bit is why I chose synthesis myself.  Well that plus the control option didn't seem likely to work long run and I would have felt like a jerk about talking both TIM into offing himself just so I could take his place.  Bleeding out watching the Reapers get their asses handed to them wouldn't have sucked but you still had work to do.  Plus that would have felt like even more of a rip off of Saving Private Ryan than that stumbling into the conduit thing already did.

[Sable Phoenix]

re: many previous posts...

Ahhh, Wing Commander.  I may have only played it on the Super NES, but that remains one of my favorite games of all time.  The fantastic opening theme evokes an emotional response very similar to that of Star Wars.

[Sable Phoenix]

drayfish wrote...

Because the Doctor chooses hope. Every time. That's who he is. Hope, and the betterment of life. And that's what was fundamentally missing from the end of Mass Effect 3 – a theme that had been present in every aspect of the preceding two and three quarter games. A belief that by respecting others, by celebrating their unique qualities, there are other options beyond controlling and destroying those we disagree with.

"Mind you I quite like hope.  Hope's a good emotion."

[memorysquid]

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...

And yet, when it all comes down to it, at the end of Mass Effect, we leave the universe worse off than it would have been if the Reapers had just decided to fly off and leave us alone... something they were free to do at any time. So no matter what, our final choice makes the universe worse.

The question isn't "which ending is horrific," it's "why does this specific horror bother you more than the other ones?" And yes, that's always going to be personal.

And I think what bothers me the most about destroy is... just how easy most people seem to be finding it to make those justifications. How close-to-the-surface the widespread popularity of the destroy ending shows those justifications, those false truths to be.

Well no, reading between the lines, the Catalyst is directly aware of how far south organic/synthetic relations can go.  I don't think the synthesis ending leaves anyone worse off than the synthetic/organic war cycle continuing.  The Geth/Quarian war, for instance, wouldn't have resolved peacefully except in the face of the Reaper threat.  And the Reapers were controlled by the Catalyst and not free to just beat it and enjoy retirement.

Plato was warning people about the influence of the poets millennia ago.  The problem isn't that the choice is presented, the problem isn't that art shapes ethics, the problem is that most people don't study ethics systematically and so make illogical decisions.  Acceptance of homosexuality and the decline of the religious ethic is why it is portrayed on TV; not the other way around.  If it were a stoning offense in the US, you wouldn't see many shows featuring it. 

I just don't get the horror of the synth ending.  I mean it would be ideal for free willed synthetics and organics to realize they are equals, sure.  But that isn't a realistic option in the middle of a one shot all or nothing push in a galactic war of total victory.  What is so bad about life incorporating a synthetic component, whatever that is supposed to mean beyond glowy eyes and circuit skin?

Modifié par memorysquid, 15 juin 2012 - 06:58 .

[delta_vee]

All of this, all, feeds into my staunch belief that everything past "best seats in the house" was above all unnecessary. Minirants ahead. Engage TLDR fields.

@memorysquid

I don't like the sacrifice model of heroism, but there are situations that simply require it. Shep leapt on the grenade without a second thought. Good man. What's wrong with a story that explores the best way to die in a situation that ethically demands it?

It is my firm conviction that it was not the situation which demanded it, but the authors, for reasons which I can perhaps conceive but with which I cannot agree.

Much of the Three Roads to Doom was steeped in (lousy) attempts to evoke religious symbolism. If that's what they were going for, they should've stuck to bleeding out, dying by inches, on a hill, alone. Gethsemane and Calvary both. And I think it would have been fitting, in the same manner as many claim Shepard's multicolored deaths were. We would all end up in the same place, we would all die that final death which was so foreshadowed, all our Shepards would converge on that single point, and after Shepard's story was done we could as players watch from our virtual afterlives as the universe responded to our stint as savior.

Bleeding out watching the Reapers get their asses handed to them wouldn't have sucked but you still had work to do.

From a ludonarrative perspective, we had no more work to do. We'd achieved the goals the game had presented us with from the beginning. We'd assembled the Crucible, gathered what fleets and armies we could, and faced down the devil which plagued us throughout. There were no more open quests in the journal. We were done. Everything from the Magic Elevator onwards was at the authors' behest, not that the structure nor the narrative of the game itself.

And to expand on my earlier thoughts, I believe the central conflict of the series was never with the Reapers, nor with synthetics in general. The latter was an imposition from on high. The former was necessary, as metaphorical Crucible and Catalyst, for the real conflict, which was with ourselves. As characters, as factions, as species, as belief systems. We spent so little time over the course of the three games, ultimately, fighting the Reapers directly. It was always about clearing varren out of colonial tunnels, putting personal histories to rest, resolving ages-long conflicts in whichever manner one could. The meat of the three games was about the galaxy as it stood - the Reapers were only the crux of the galaxy's change, with Shepard our means of pushing this way or that.

@CulturalGeekGirl

And yet, when it all comes down to it, at the end of Mass Effect, we leave the universe worse off than it would have been if the Reapers had just decided to fly off and leave us alone... something they were free to do at any time. So no matter what, our final choice makes the universe worse.

This is what I find both unnecessary and cruel about the very concept of the post-Elevator sequence. No matter what, the relays are lost. No matter what, we choose one horror over two others. However well executed the sequence might have been (and may yet be), nothing in it suggests to me that it was the inevitable, inexorable endpoint the narrative required. Instead, it feels like a metatextual form of deus ex machina, wherein the author-god reaches down and imposes their divine will upon the story.

@Sable Phoenix

The Wing Commander theme keeps sneaking into my memory versions of both Star Wars and Star Trek after a few bars.

G'night all. Try not to burn the place down before morning.

Modifié par delta_vee, 15 juin 2012 - 07:18 .

[FamilyManFirst]

memorysquid wrote...
Plato was warning people about the influence of the poets millennia ago.  The problem isn't that the choice is presented, the problem isn't that art shapes ethics, the problem is that most people don't study ethics systematically and so make illogical decisions.  Acceptance of homosexuality and the decline of the religious ethic is why it is portrayed on TV; not the other way around.  If it were a stoning offense in the US, you wouldn't see many shows featuring it. 

I don't think I entirely agree with you, memorysquid.  I think that society and media influence each other.  Changing values get reflected in media which further reinforces the changing values.  Stories push societal changes which get reflected into more stories.  Sorting out the origin is a chicken-and-egg question.  However, we can potentially affect the reinforcement by choosing what stories to listen to and tell.  I never watched the TV series "24," but some of the things I heard tag it as a set of stories that we may want to let die, as it apparently exemplifies some of the attitudes that CulturalGeekGirl is, justifiably, concerned about.

[CulturalGeekGirl]

If it were a stoning offense it wouldn't be on TV, no, but I've literally watched someone's opinion on gay marriage change as a direct result of watching a season of Modern Family. It's very chicken-and-egg, sure, but I do sincerely believe that media reinforces and strengthens those ideas in really noticeable ways. If you disagree, that's fine... this is one of those sociological things it is really, really difficult to study.

There's also a difference between a work of media that asks a horrible question (for which there is no right answer) in a way that makes it clear that there is no right answer, and a piece of media that asks a horrible question (for which there is no right answer) in such a way that the "right" answer is "obvious." I think ME3 was trying to be the former but ended up being a pretty terrible case of the latter for the vast majority of its audience.

This is a line that's often danced in comedy. Near the end of his show, Dave Chapelle often wondered if certain sketches reinforced stereotypes more than they lead people to examine them. When he wasn't sure, he cut the sketch... though many of those sketches aired during the final season, which he did not host. It's said that the airing of some of these sketches... ones that could have done more harm than good... may be what made the decision to walk away easier for Dave. This is just scuttlebutt among the comedy community, it could very well mean nothing. Anyway. Onward.

I'm not arguing that difficult questions should never be asked, only that we should never be given easy answers for them. When given a choice that requires such an atrocity, one should be left scarred for the rest of one's life, wondering if they might have made the wrong decision. It's actually the persistent level of certainty that repels me from destroy with such force. It's also why I'd find an EC that reinforces the idea of destroy as the "right" option even more thematically revolting than the current endings are.

While I lean very, very slightly in the direction of synthesis myself, what reinforces that very, very slight, not-certain-at-all leaning is the mutually acknowledged uncertainty in the synthesis-favoring community. To quote my absolute favorite song about internet arguments:

"Save us all from arrogant men,
and all the causes they're for
I won't be righteous again
I'm not that sure anymore."

Ooh, now I get to argue against Synthesis, which will maybe convince some people that I really don't actually advocate it (at least not without heavy assumption-making.)

Point 1 - All signs point to the universe being pretty close to achieving some kind of voluntary transhumanism, and soon. My biggest piece of evidence for this is a really long series of Cerberus News Network posts about finding a ship filled with digitized organic consciousnesses, who, by the end of the narrative, are able to switch bodies with currently living organics, while the currently living organics have their minds digitized and voluntarily choose to go live in the matrix. Oh man, those CNN posts had me giddy with anticipation... what if you downloaded one of those consciousnesses onto a geth platform? What if you let a geth into the simulated world? Wonder of wonders! Of course, this is never addressed in the game proper, but CNN content is both in-game and cannonical. Shut up. Ugh that microfiction got me so good.

Couple that with geth and quarians sharing suits and Joker and EDI knocking... down assumptions about love and person-hood, I'd estimate the ME universe was somewhere between ten and a hundred years away from making some pretty serious inroads into the whole merging of synthetic and organic life thing... only on a smaller scale, and entirely voluntarily. And wouldn't that have been like a billion times better than having electrically active sentient potatoes? OK, fine. Wouldn't it be better than having more electrically active sentient potatoes?

(Note that I don't actually think all plants become sentient in the Synthesis ending. That was a joke.)

That's my pet rant, however I think the biggest thing is a visceral one:

Something is being put in your body that you don't want there. We all saw Prometheus, right? No? Ok, Alien then. I think that's what a lot of people think when they see Synthesis - ohmygod-it's-in-my-skin-get-it-off-get-it-off-get-it-off. It's about an external force disrupting your essential biololgy and using you as an unwilling vessel without your consent. That's a pretty basic horror thing right there, and one that deeply and instantly squicks a lot of people.

On the scale of "things changing about you," synthesis could be anything from "wake up with a different hair color" to "Here's hoping you don't become a robot, clang-clang whoops too late!" Because Joker and EDI and your LI look happy and pretty-much-still-themselves after the crash, synthesis people tend to err on the side of hair color, but it's really important that we acknowledge that our "minimal change, best of all possible worlds" interpretation is the most charitable one, and that the reality could fall anywhere on that spectrum.

[Seijin8]

@CulturalGeekGirl: Well said, as always.

In a lot of ways, we are going around the same topics over and over in this thread. Not a bad thing, as each "cycle" seems to refine or draw more information in, but I am thinking we really need a Table of Contents of some type. 136 pages really is a lot to wade through. I know there are pages about most every topic of the last 24 hours, but it would be a heck of a task to locate them.

[edisnooM]

@drayfish

I agree with your assessment of the Doctor, though there was that time in The Fires of Pompeii where he had no other alternative but to destroy Pompeii to save the planet.

Edit: Just for kicks, one of my favourite moments from Doctor Who: www.youtube.com/watch
Edit2: Sorry, just thought of another favourite: www.youtube.com/watch

Also since you mentioned the slo-mo reunion scene in LOTR here is a fan made video that is quite amusing:

Modifié par edisnooM, 15 juin 2012 - 08:43 .

[Sable Phoenix]

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...

And wouldn't that have been like a billion times better than having electrically active sentient potatoes? OK, fine. Wouldn't it be better than having more electrically active sentient potatoes?

I really should add something of value to this discussion someday.

Apparently that day is not today, however.

Modifié par Sable Phoenix, 15 juin 2012 - 10:19 .

[JadedLibertine]

The notion of heroic sacrifice.

"I want you to lay down your life, Shepard."
"Right sir!"
"We need a futile gesture at this stage. It will raise the whole tone of the Reaper war."
"Yessir!"
"Shoot the glass tube and when it starts exploding stride purposefully towards it.."
"But sir, the tube is bigger than I am and I have a magical infinite ammo pistol. I can shoot it quite safely from here."
"No Shepard, we need you to be standing right in front of it when it explodes."
"Yessir!"
"Goodbye, Shepard. God, I wish I was going too."
"Goodbye Sah! – Or is it au revoir?"
"No, Shepard."

I do not care much for the religious symbolism of ME3 partly because it shouldn't be there but mainly because it was done so unimaginatively. I had an upbringing immersed in the extreme ecclesiastical camp of Irish Catholicism so I've been conditioned to expect a certain degree of flamboyance from religious imagery. With lurid violence and a generous helping of psychosexual weirdness. Shepard as a Christ figure, Garden of Eden, a god-like being appearing as a small boy made of light. So drab, so dreary, so un-fabulous.  Perhaps it's what the Sistine Chapel would have been like if Lutherans had painted it.   In Bayonetta, God takes the form of a disturbingly sexy androgyne who has been awoken and is about to destroy the Universe in a senseless orgy of creation. So begins an awesome boss battle which climaxes with Bayonetta punching God through the entire solar system into the heart of the sun. I can imagine the makers of that game gazing upon post-Reformation Spanish official religious art and trying to match it (as it would be impossible to top it).

Modifié par JadedLibertine, 15 juin 2012 - 12:07 .

[Hawk227]

My biggest (of numerous) objections to synthesis is that by choosing it, we are tacitly agreeing that diversity is the problem. We are agreeing with the star-kid when he says that Organics and Synthetics cannot co-exist, and only through homogenization can we prevent conflict (or at least outright annihilation). It is saying that true synthetics are inherently suspect, and they must be fundamentally changed (along with organics) to resolve the Organic/Synthetic conflict. There is an undertone of eugenics that is far more revolting to me than the physical violation that comes from the green wave, and I think that eugenics undertone is just as revolting as the message sent by the other two options. Actually, I think it is worse because of it's portrayal as the "best" ending. I also think (like Destroy as it relates to torture) that this is a societal issue that is relevant, important, and disgusting.

When you pick destroy, you are saying there is an extreme situation in which genocide is okay*. But you are not necessarily making a judgment about the worthiness of synthetics as a whole. In Synthesis you are making a judgment about the relationship between organics and synthetics. You are agreeing that they cannot co-exist peacefully.

With the way this thread has approached the precipice of going down the rabbit hole, I think it's important for us to remember (and emphasize) that we all (I'm pretty sure) think all 3 endings are revolting on numerous fronts. When discussing their relative values, it is just that... relative. I may think that destroy is better than synthesis, but I do not think it is good or appropriate or worthy of being within the game**. We are simply discussing the choices within the narrow confines in which they are presented

*And I fully understand (and mostly agree) with CGGirls's objection to this.
** It should be said, I'm in agreement with delta vee in regards to the "best seats in the house" ending. That was (for me) both narratively and thematically appropriate.

Modifié par Hawk227, 15 juin 2012 - 07:29 .