5087 réponses à ce sujet

[edisnooM]

@osbornep

Good post.

Though it always puzzled me that if they never intended to use the Dark Energy ending why they left in things like Haelstrom, Gianna Parasini, further mentioning on Tali's loyalty mission.

Also it seemed to be Drew Karpyshyn's plot and according to the Final Hours app he seemed to bow out fairly early in the project which makes it even stranger.

Edit: <_< Ok Main Theme from Chrono Trigger: www.youtube.com/watch (with the added bonus of cinematics to add to the epicness)

Modifié par edisnooM, 30 juin 2012 - 05:09 .

[delta_vee]

@osbornep

That all sounds distressingly plausible - and ties into orgs/synths being the core conflict in the original concept for the first game. It may have been that Hudson nurtured his particular idea of What The Whole Shebang Was About through the entirety of the trilogy's development, and finally got his chance to elucidate it, to make it count, in a position where the other, frankly better writers lower on the totem pole couldn't interfere.

@edisnooM

As far as Dark Energy went, I'm pretty sure that got tossed long before ME3 was nailed down. Where I thought it would show up again was an outgrowth of the various mentions of the Crucible being powered by DE, as well as the Reapers' DE-based drive cores - I figured that the Reapers were timing their harvest to ensure the current crop never quite mastered the technology they were left to discover, never quite understood how to manufacture more eezo (inducing premature star death, natch), and thus never quite equaled the Reapers in understanding.

But no, we got Yo Dawg instead.

[drayfish]

Must say I agree with the osbornep's predictions of why we get no possibility of an untainted end. There seems to be some (I think rather misguided) presumption on the part of the writers that Artistic merit can only be achieved by bumming everyone out.  And I think the fundamentally flawed thematic concepts they used to lead into these sacrifices were profoundly to blame also.

Quite a ways back CulturalGeekGirl wrote of the possibility that the writers came to the ending of the work, thought, oh, damn, how do we end this? and decided to play it safe (if safe it can be called) by falling back on the original bullet points that no doubt inspired the very first game: synthetics versus organics; mind control; organic-cybernetic hybrids. 
 
And the more I think of the endings that we got, and the more I look at the elaborated Extended Cuts of those conclusions, the more convinced I become that this was the case. (Again, this is all baseless speculation; although presumably 'speculation' in relation to the endings is invited by its creators). 

If the sprawling ending was refusing to tie itself back into the narrative, if a timeline crunch was closing in, then these endings would all make (on paper) the perfect resolutions. Just ask the player to select what component of the story had always been most important to them:
 
Were you most concerned with wiping the synthetic problem out? They're pretty dangerous... Remember all those crazy Geth and weird A.I.s and freaky Reapers? Well this way you can wipe them all out. Done and done.
 
Did you like the premise of Indoctination, but just not who was wielding it? Those Reapers were bad dudes all right, and when Sovereign got all up in your face telling you how weak puny humans are it was inviting to think: if I could convince you to fly into a sun, I would. 
 
And synthesis, the plan justified by the presumed inevitability of warfare (again ignoring the facts on the ground), and that at least in strict, emotionless principle seems to answer the conundrum of division (but which is in fact King Solomon's wisdom in some monstrous reverse: Can't decide which is better, robots or fleshbags? Well just smoosh them together, natch!)
 
To me the whole thing smacks of concept over context. 
 
But in any narrative you have to respect the flow of the journey. Often in an expansive tale the motivations of characters, the drive of the quest itself, can change. (I'm almost certain I'm stealing this example directly from CulturalGeekGirl's earlier argument, but:) Sure in Mass Effect 1 the Geth were evil inhuman monsters we had to kill or allow kill us, but as we came to discover in Mass Effect 2 with the appearance of Legion, there was a lot more complexity to this race than we had first assumed. By the point of Mass Effect 3 they are the persecuted victims we are invited (nay, encouraged) to protect from harm. 
 
And it seems that rather than observe and respond to where the narrative had organically developed, Mass Effect's writers reached back into the concepts that had given birth to it, not realising how dated and comically limited those perspectives now are.
 
In the Extended Cut this is explained, it seems, by the clarification that the Catalyst A.I. is himself motivated by a tediously outdated mission statement, programmed by a long-forgotten peoples - but it still never resolves why exactly we therefore have to go along with it. Ironically, despite his timeless perspective, we've seen more, experienced more, know more, than this presumptuous little predictive-text-program ever could. We know just how pitiful and constrained his vision is, and yet we still have to agree to do what he says, because he (and by extension his creators: both aliens and screenwriters) are blindly hooked on an ancient idea that we've all outgrown.
 

Modifié par drayfish, 30 juin 2012 - 05:33 .

[KitaSaturnyne]

@Mani Mani

Read? Yes. Followed? No. My paraphrasing of the Silent Hill 2 wall remains solid and true.

@drayfish

It doesn't really matter either way, and never did. Mass Effect is dead. If BioWare goes with it, I'll make the five hour drive north to turn the office space into a high-priced port-o-john.

Modifié par KitaSaturnyne, 30 juin 2012 - 05:33 .

[Jorji Costava]

One thing that struck me as really strange comes from this video. At around 2:25, Rob Blake, the audio lead for Mass Effect, says that it was at Casey Hudson's insistence that he try to mix Legion's voice so that it retains some humanity. That's odd, given the ending they went with. The only thing I can say is that it's clear the authors changed their minds about a lot of things in between games. For instance, I seriously doubt they ever intended for Cerberus to play a central role in the plot circa ME1. Perhaps this tendency played some role in explaining why the ending is so disconnected from the rest of the game.

/night

[edisnooM]

@osbornep

That is weird about the audio

And according to the Final Hours app, Walters wanted Cerberus to play a bigger role in ME1 but they couldn't fit it in. So when he became lead on ME2 he brought them back in as central to the story.

[TrevorHill]

edisnooM wrote...

@osbornep

Good post.

Though it always puzzled me that if they never intended to use the Dark Energy ending why they left in things like Haelstrom, Gianna Parasini, further mentioning on Tali's loyalty mission.

Also it seemed to be Drew Karpyshyn's plot and according to the Final Hours app he seemed to bow out fairly early in the project which makes it even stranger.

Edit: <_< Ok Main Theme from Chrono Trigger: www.youtube.com/watch (with the added bonus of cinematics to add to the epicness)

I smell dlc.....

[SHARXTREME]

For me, the biggest problem is that many people still think the Reapers are main enemy in the ending, but they're not.
Catalyst/his purpose is the biggest enemy, That is where bioware took the wrong turn in story(choices) in the last 10 minutes of the game.

According to new lines in dialogue:
Reapers.are species that created powerfull sintetic species/or upgrades(like cybernetics) to improve themselves.
Problems arise, so they create Catalyst AI to solve the conflict.
Catalyst merges sintetics and organics in creator form against the will of first Reaper(and all following) species due to invalid reasoning that was maybe valid for that species at that time, but not for every species for all eternity.

Countless cycles pass with Reapers assimilating advanced species, with one constant that never changed-Catalyst AI stuck in logic loop.

Quarians make Geth. Geth gain self-awareness. Quarians panic. War beggins. Reapers come again. Geth turn to Reapers in prospect of certain destruction, but Legion sacrifices itself to improve the Geth with Shepards help. Quarian and Geth make peace and break from the organic-syntetic cycle of destruction.Geth were in fact never violent towards organics, but Quarian fear drove them to conflict.
This fact somehow isn't mentioned in the ending, but it's crucial to the story as it is now.

Shepard meets Catalyst, a creation that Shepard has absolutely no reason to trust, catalyst solutions, Catalysts creators judgement, nor its judgement.
In its confined world of problem-solution logic loop Catalyst can't accept that things (can)change without its influence or solutions.
It is standard broken AI SF plot used so many times.

That's the mistake on part of the writers, player needs the option to correct the original mistake, but player instead gets 4 options that came from AI who sticks to his original programming no matter what is the situation.

So you are left with original Reapers, species that made the mistake thinking that their problems will last an eternity and be transfered to all species. Their creation - Catalyst - forced his solution on them, reaperised them. Then the cycle beggins while nature tries to find the answer.

Synthesis is not the answer because that is the original mistake(problem that will never be resolved, problem that evolves).
Destruction is also not the answer because you will erase so many cultures that were harvested against their will and destroying the Geth, sintetics who helped to solve the problem.
Control is also evolving the problem/not solving the problem .
Refuse is inaction.

There needs to be just one other option, Shepards option, optimal solution: To correct the original problem- Catalyst. He controls the Reapers. He IS the problem that needs to be solved, he is the main enemy, he represents the wrong idea, he can be shut down/rewritten/convinced, he can tell the Reapers to back of without any destruction of anybody.
That would be real and only choice.
Otherwise the conflict or problem will just be restarted/prolonged/evolve.

That is why the ending is not ending anything and is so unsatisfying, even when you look the other way on insane plot twist and numerous plot holes that ending introduced to the ME storyline..

[january42]

I just wanted to say I agree with the above.  Although, I would say the problem wasn't that no ending address the underlying problem, the problem was, it was never esteblished that it couldn't be addressed.


At minimum, if you could have argued with the catatlyst, pointed out the counterexamples in the allied fleet, etc, etc....and it still wouldn't listen.   Well, then I can see Shepard givin in and picking a color, because that's all he can do. Now that would been incredibly depressing, esp given that the rest of the series is space opera(2+ esp), but it would have worked. It does make the entire thing into a tragedy however.  It would be depressing, but it would be ok.



Even "we chose to take our chances with our creations wiping us out" would have worked.

It seems like the player was supposed to accept the catalyst's premise without question.  Which kinda fails when the theme of the rest of the game is "unify the galaxy". You had rogue AI's and all, but you also had Legion, being able to end the Geth war, and EDI.  If the rest of the series had supported the Catalyst's premise, it would have worked better. As it is, it felt like something that was tacked on to make an ending.

In the end, it felt like the two forces driving the ending where, time pressure  and the fact that it was predetermined ahead of time that there were no happing endings. 

[SHARXTREME]

january42 wrote...

Even "we chose to take our chances with our creations wiping us out" would have worked.

Yes. That would be a choice. That would aknowledge that Shepard is in position to choose.
But catalyst leaves you with no choice, he wants you to pick his "solutions". To validate him.
This must be first ending in history where you must choose to not choose at all(refuse) so the story, logic of story and main character don't get completely destroyed.

They have put Catalyst in "God/master position" where Shepard must choose how will he aknowledge his own inferiority, or his punishment.
All that in the moment when united galaxy has achieved something that's never been achieved before, In a moment of victory you submit to enemy. Not compromise or negotiate with enemy. You submit to his faulty reasoning. You can't even scratch him because he is so high up. 

I remember the line from Star Trek DS9 where Cardassian leader discusses plans to take Earth:
- "Real victory is not the moment when you destroy your enemy. Real victory is when your enemy aknowledges his own inferiority, and that he was wrong to fight you in the first place" (fans fight Bioware, Bioware fights fans. fans must aknowledge their inferiority)

Yep, the player had to take that insult hidden in the figure of Catalyst. You didn't fight the Reapers for 3 games to win. You in fact did fight them to lose. And you get to choose how badly you will lose. And what's worse, nobody informed the player that he lost.
  
Extended cut introduced Refuse option, as a way for player to accept defeat. Irony is, Bioware obviously intended this ending to be "middle finger- you get no chance to "choose" hehe"  option.

[Onishiro]

I sat here and read the whole post. I would like to say that i agree with a vast majority of what Dr. Dray said. As the protagonist of this epic dialog the mindset i have put myself in is the writers gave us choices throughout this game, but had to make the final choices hard and to make me challenge my beliefs. I myself do not worry about those choices as much as where does this leave the story for the next chapter. I am hoping that the final chapter is a good conquers evil and i have actually saved the galaxy by playing the game and i get to blow up the heads of aliens on my career path as i attain this goal. In ME3 i did not feel as if this goal has been satisfide thus i am going to egerly await ME4. Will shepard be a good guy or bad guy in it...will all his friends be there helping him.. or will they be the ones to stop him. And my mind ponders....

[SkaldFish]

Reading all your comments and thinking about this some more (I wish I could stop), it occurs to me that there is another possible explanation (not an excuse) for what happened to ME 3 (and in some ways, ME 2 as well). Over a span of years, ME writers developed their own individual headcanons. These, plus internal team discussions, meant the aggregate story made complete sense to each writer, but in fact their "internal" stories were quite divergent. Worse, none of them was actually reflected in the published realization of the story, but each influenced the tone, narrative focus, and philosophical foundation of the content each writer produced.

Hudson and Walters, in particular, each developed a headcanon heavily influenced by their personal preferences, biases, and desire to break the narrative mold of modern games. Over time, these preferences bore increasingly heavily on the realization of the narrative arc, to the point where serious inconsistencies developed in the product. They were blind to these inconsistencies because, to them, they were perfectly consistent. In their minds, actual content and headcanon were inseperable. Plot holes, dead ends, and narrative divergence were invisible to them because that merging of internal canon and product completely masked the fatal flaws in the actual headcanon-free result.

This possibility is reinforced by many comments we've heard from team members like (I paraphrase) "it never occurred to us that our fans wouldn't pick up on X' or "we were surprised at the fans' reaction to Y."

This is not artistic vision. This is failure to maintain the objectivity required to perform thorough and successful consistency checks at all structural levels.

I know I am typically very hard on the ME writers, but I've deeply appreciated their accomplishment and AM disappointed in them. I DO want to think they could have done better, but I think it's quite possible that initial success bred a hubris that terminally impaired their creativity and ability to work together to produce a high-quality product. If not acknowledged and addressed, it will certainly continue to do so. Hubris is anathema to creativity.

As always, apologies if someone has already pointed this out. I've been unable to spend much time here lately, and am still trying to catch up on the past month's posts.

[edisnooM]

@SkaldFish

Good post. A sombre and highly possible explanation.


@Onishiro

I hate to burst your bubble but BioWare has stated that they do not intend to go any further past ME3 and Shepard, and that anything they do now will take place during or before ME3.

[frypan]

Nice post Skaldfish, those are all relevant points. Certainly what you describe could be applied to many situations where a team ends up following a problematic path.

There is a another possibility too. Its entirely possible that the darker themes of the third game came to be retrospectively applied to the whole series, not over time, but in the process of making ME3 consistently grim and dark. The inevitable and soul crusihing movement towards the "you cannot win on your terms" ending came to define how they saw the game and the victories of the first two games. Those were against all odds, seen as the aberration, and were reagrded as in need of a "correcting" redefinition at the end. Hence the miserable or incomplete victories in the secondary story arcs of ME3.

Certainly this explains the 4th option in the EC. They are just making the message clear. Trouble is, this makes the catalyst all so more jarring. They had to tack a "win" scenario on at the end, but follow the grimdark message through. Hence the garbled nature of the ending and the wierd manner the catalyst offers a compromise when it is winning.

Modifié par frypan, 30 juin 2012 - 11:33 .

[drayfish]

@ Skaldfish: Great post, and everything you said sounded unnervingly apt. It would completely explain why there's that strange disconnect between the lead up to the end (with all its reiterations of hope, and promise for the future, and 'I'll see you when this is all over') and the ending in which ...not so much.
 
I'm sure I burbled something about this earlier, but it seemed like Hudson and Walters reached back to the themes that had originally inspired the franchise, hoping to tap into the core of the experience in its final moments, but in doing so they failed to see that the narrative had organically moved well beyond that limited framework. In many ways the Catalyst – mired in broken ancient thinking – therefore becomes a fitting metaphor for that authorial intrusion; but it's hard to see why then being compelled to simply fall into line with a belief that, as a player, your experience has proved laughably inept could be considered a satisfying resolve.
 
 
@ SHARXTREME: I totally agree about the whole disconnect in the synthetic/organic narrative. I can't believe that even given the option to expand the ending, to fully flesh out the argument that leads into those final choices, Shepard still at no point goes 'Whoa, hey there, fella. We got Robots and Fleshbags aplenty, working together and waiting outside to stomp you into the curb.'
 

SHARXTREME wrote...
 
Yep, the player had to take that insult hidden in the figure of Catalyst. You didn't fight the Reapers for 3 games to win. You in fact did fight them to lose. And you get to choose how badly you will lose. And what's worse, nobody informed the player that he lost.

Wow. I wish I didn't agree that was so true.
 
Although, now that I've come down from the ledge a little, and inspired by all of your posts here, I think I'm starting to see the poetry (I believe unintentional on Bioware's part) in the Refuse ending.
 
I've said this elsewhere, but whatever Bioware's intention was (and I do still see it as a well-if-you-can't-play-the-game-to-its-final-moral-compromise-then-out-you-go statement) the fact that they gave us that fourth choice (and expanded more hopeful visions of the other three) is symbolic of our resilience as fans, and an unintentionally elegant message that a corrupted universe (and a corrupted narrative) can be purged and restored to life if one retains their faith.
 
Ignore the ugly idiocy of Gamble's tweet that the next generation just used the Crucible anyway and one can indeed headcanon this cycle's sacrifice into beauty.  Again, probably not the message they meant to send, but who gives a damn.  In many ways they've already proved they didn't quite know what they were trying to say, or how they were trying to say it, in the end.
 
In fact, in case anyone hasn't already seen it, I'd recommend this article as a way of rekindling that reconnect with hope in the Refuse conclusion:
 
http://www.forbes.co...of-mass-effect/

Modifié par drayfish, 01 juillet 2012 - 01:00 .

[SHARXTREME]

@frypan
žI don't think that ME3 is dark, or is themed dark. On the contrary, ME3 is full of hope, curing genophage, evolving Krogan from violent savages into species that wants to rebuild their world, uniting Krogan and Turian, evolving Geth, Making peace, unifying the galaxy while fighting powerful enemy with unknown reasoning behind their actions.
You know you might lose without ever finding out the Reapers goals, and it's OK. It fits the story.
But then comes Catalyst and he says(something like this):
"Reapers are like fire. It's their purpose and function to burn everything down. They don't want war, they just want to destroy you."
What? After all this talk by Reapers about "You cannot comprehend us" "we are your salvation through destruction" and Legions first hand experience :" Their every thought is immense, magnitudes above us, unknowable" you get the "scorpion will sting you-fire burns-nonsense"
By the way almost the same thing is used in Star Trek Voyager when 1st officer argues Captain Janeway about alliance with the Borg. He used the Scorpion-fox story trying to explain how Borg can't overcome their nature, that they will assimilate them anyway once the alliance is not needed anymore.

So yeah, Reapers are similar concept to the Borg, that's not big news to anybody. What is new in this EC is that Reapers have no reason to destroy you/assimilate you, they are not even smarter then Geth before upgrades, they're in fact victims of Catalyst and controlled by him, so they have no free will.

Remove the Catalyst-remove the Reaper threat. Win. Maybe make peace with Reapers once Catalyst is gone. Win. Destroy the catalyst. Win. Convince the Catalyst. Win. Rewrite the Catalyst. Win. Destroy the Citadel. Win.

Instead you get to lose in 4 different ways without the courtesy of writers to tell you who's your enemy(in original ending you have no clue that Catalyst made the Reapers what they are against their will). Many still think that Catalyst is Reaper, hallucination, dream, when he is in fact the only enemy.
All this confusion could have been avoided if they didn't need to introduce character Catalyst, 5 minutes before the end without any background story, and like January 42 said:

Although, I would say the problem wasn't that no ending address the underlying problem, the problem was, it was never esteblished that it couldn't be addressed.

Yeah, they could write: "You can't destroy me because i'm not here, hehe" . Untill the very end the ME story is Science Fiction based on Mass Relay network technology, many species who use that technology and technological, advanced ruthless enemy. Main problem-Catalyst is technological construct. And every technology can be destroyed, AIs rewritten, tricked, switched off. When you can't there is well established reason why you can't.

Then there's that magic that
"adds your energy to the Crucible"
"you're dead but you control us"
and my favorite :"you shoot this conduit and every sentient machine gets destroyed, because the energy release won't discriminate, but normal machines will still fuction/be discriminated because, you know, magic "

ME2 on the other hand has a coherent story and it's maybe more dark and has more suspense then ME3.
I also tought that destroying /not destroying the human reaper would have more/any consequences in ME3. I even kept separate saves. I was wrong, i admit.

Modifié par SHARXTREME, 01 juillet 2012 - 01:23 .

[CulturalGeekGirl]

OK GUYS, I AM REALLY TIRED OF SEEING BAD WRITING DESCRIBED AS MAGIC.

Sorry, sorry. I feel so much rage, sometimes it comes out in all caps. I just have a great deal of respect for well-written fantasy, and I believe that there is no tangible, consistent difference between good fantasy and good soft SciFi. (Hard SciFi being stories in which no known law of physics or chemistry is ever bent or broken in any way. This is its own category, however few modern works of SF have this. Hint: If there is FTL and/or very human-looking aliens that are not genetically related to humans, it's not Hard SF.)

I also think a lot of my objections to the ending come from this: the ending is bad science fiction and it also would be bad fantasy, because the devices and their respective effects (excluding, possibly, Control) are so poorly explained and developed as to have no sane place in the Mass Effect universe.

I really wish people would stop equating bad writing with "magic." In the vast majority of fantasy series, magic makes sense, and is used as a tool to throw essential truths about human nature and sociology into sharper effect. The endings to DA:O make far more sense than the endings to ME3, and they involve "magic."

My point isn't that all the endings are good science. It's that they aren't good magic either. They're simply bad writing.

Eezo isn't great science either, but it's good writing: it's introduced very early in the story, we quickly learn what to expect, what it can and can't do, and thus we incorporate it into our mental picture of what constitutes valid "science" in the universe. Because it's written well, we believe it; because it's presented in a way that relates to science-as-we-understand-it, it gets added to the "science" tally in our conception of the universe.

The green beam has as much scientific validity as eezo or FTL travel or a universe full of aliens who just happen to be humanoid: hat is to say, very, very little. Good writing allows science fiction to incorporate these other scientific impossibilities by introducing them well. When an idea is not introduced well, or when it directly contradicts another universal rule previously presented, that's not magic: it's bad writing.

Bad writing means inexplicable, thematically bizarre, declared-by-mysterious-fiat events of any kind. If, at the end of Game of Thrones, someone did a magic spell that turned everyone into unicorns and created peace on earth, then people would say that was bad writing and bad magic. The presence of magic in a narrative doesn't give you blanket permission to have anything happen regardless of logic, and illogical things happening cannot be interpreted as evidence that a narrative contains "magic."

Modifié par CulturalGeekGirl, 01 juillet 2012 - 01:41 .

[edisnooM]

@drayfish

That's an interesting article and take on Refuse. The thing is though that it requires a great deal of speculation, and much of it I doubt BioWare had any intention of conveying. And while I might headcanon myself some sort of happy place, I still can't ignore BioWare's statements on the next cycles Crucible (Our Crucible).

And does anyone else find it weird that the Crucible is described by the Catalyst as more or less a glorified AA battery, but somehow it changed him and added new possibilities? Also I think one of the most galling things about the ending is how he "allows" us to choose from his solutions when we built the damn thing.

Related to this I had a thought the other day (and then saw the same idea posted by someone else. It's always depressing when someone beats you to your own brilliant idea.), what if the Crucible had been a massive jamming device. It broadcasts out a galaxy wide signal keyed to the Reapers barrier systems and brings them down. That's how we took down Sovereign, and sure their hulls might still be tough but we got an awful lot of Thannix cannons out there, not to mention Thannix missiles and Cains evidently.

[SHARXTREME]

@drayfish

Yes,there is some poetry in this ending expansion. Fully unintentional I agree.
It is the ending that is talked about, but for all the wrong reasons.

Yes the underlying logic of the whole extended Catalyst construct is also unintentional.
In the original ending I think Catalyst was supposed to be a presenter of options, a neutral element,
But there were few things that "he" said; "I control the Reapers" then "you can destroy US" "this is MY solution" "WE have tried" "WE controlled him"."that proves that MY solution won't work anymore" etc. That just introduced mass confusion amongst fans.
Yes the whole ending feels tacked on, rushed, disconnected, even graphically inferior.
What's the reason for such rushed ending, I don't know. But I know with absolute certainty that players felt that. You can with precision pinpoint where original ME3 ending gets disconnected. Jump to the beam and you are in some completely different game. Characters talk differently, and sporadically.
Anderson talks about many ways to get to that central chamber, when there is only one etc. Illusive man stiil somehow fits, but not character animations and the whole setting which are far worse then rest of the game. And the players noticed that en masse.

@CulturalGeekGirl

I used the term "magic" to express my dislike on the endings for a very simple reason.
Magic doesn't fit in the story of Mass Effect.
Mass effect is SF, not very elaborate one on scientific/technical side(as it could be), but it had established ground rules, also story logic and common logic is established. That logic gets broken in the end so badly without any explanation, so that explanation could be presented by Catalyst to Shepard with words "because, you know, magic" with same result. No offense to magic or fantasy genre.

Hard SF is one that doesn't even bend the known laws of physics? Hmm. SF is Science Fiction. Even the trip to Mars is on the edge of known laws of physics. So Hard SF then would be just Fiction then.
To put it more clearly. When someone writes SF story about trip to Mars that respects known laws of physics, that story would be immediately applicable in making first drive/or enviromental system that could really get us to Mars. That I would call a Hard SF:)  
. 

Modifié par SHARXTREME, 01 juillet 2012 - 02:18 .

[Jorji Costava]

@Skaldfish:

That's a very plausible analysis of what may have happened with the developers. It does especially well at explaining the brevity of the original endings. Of course the destruction of the mass relays and the Normandy crash signified the beginning of a new era, so how could everybody interpret them as the galaxy blowing up and Joker running away?

@drayfish:

That's an excellent article on the Refuse ending. I'm kinda in the same spot I suspect edisnooM is in, though; I'm not very good at headcanoning stuff, partly because when I go through the ending, I can't help but feel that the game itself is struggling against my efforts to do so. Part of this has to do with how illogically the choice is structured; it's been pointed out elsewhere on these boards that it makes no sense for the catalyst to give you the means to destroy his entire race, but through a hissy fit if you have the gall to disagree with him or shoot at his hologram. But I don't want to be a party-pooper; by no means should my own limitations prevent anyone else from interpreting the refuse ending however he or she sees fit.

[Dabnat]

To preface the end of my lurking, I have to say that almost every reaction I have had to both the original endings and the EC have been stated already, far more eloquently than I could have managed. (Hence, the lurking)

However, one point that I feel has been insufficiently addressed are the consequences of our choices on the Reapers themselves. SHARXTREME has touched on this, but I think it bears repeating. No matter what we feel about the decision to include (and double down on) Starby as the crux of our final moments of ME3, Starby makes it abundantly clear that the Reapers are not the enemy: he is. The first two games paint them as sentient beings, collaborating to harvest us for unknowable reasons. As conscious beings choosing to commit cyclical genocide, we call the Reapers evil and attempt to stop them. However, the reality is that they are not making this decision themselves, Starby is forcing them to do it (“I control them.”). Each Reaper is the “preserved” consciousness of both the organic and synthetic life of a cycle.* At the smallest, they are “each a nation;” at the worst they are all of the life of an entire cycle. And every single one of them is Starby’s slave. Unless Starby is lying about the preservation, and the Reapers are just automatons,

killing a Reaper is genocide.

The Reapers aren’t an enemy to be killed; they are prisoners to be liberated.

From this standpoint, Synthesis begins to look slightly more attractive and the others look even more morally repugnant.


Control: This is not simply choosing absolute power with the danger of corruption; this is the continued mind-rape of every sentient species from the last billion years**. We want our cycle to be free, and all we must do is keep every other cycle enslaved.

Destroy: You end the Reaper threat, but as others have said at the cost of genocide. The Destroy apologists say, it is only one species to free your entire cycle. The moral calculus is clear. But really, this is the genocide of all the cycles that preceded us.

Reject: The cycle continues for another round, and there is peace. If as many people in this thread hope, the Crucible is not used, and the Reapers are defeated conventionally, it is still the largest genocide in the history of the galaxy, worse even than the Reaper harvests. The Reapers at least preserved the life they destroyed.*** Ironically, now we are also most likely a Reaper. If the Crucible is used, then the problems with the other two choices remain.

Synthesis: The Reapers are left alive, and they may even be free (contributing their cultural knowledge and whatnot). Starby is probably still alive though, so that might not even be the case. The other moral objections others have raised remain unchanged.

 

I still reject that this forced choice had to occur, and as CGG and others have pointed out, there are multiple ways to get the Reapers to leave/free them without these three options

 

*Some people have been implying that it is just organic. Starby claims that both types are used, and though it may be a retcon, it still fits with EDI’s claim from ME2 that they are a synthesis of organic and synthetic.

**See http://masseffect.wi...eviathan_of_Dis

*** We have no idea what the subjective nature of Reaper consciousness is. It could very well be that the liquefying boxes scan an individual’s neural network before turning you to goo, and each person is like
a single one of Legion’s programs, all reaching consensus in the Reaper.

EDIT: Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal, formatting. 

Modifié par Dabnat, 01 juillet 2012 - 02:24 .

[frypan]

SHARXTREME wrote...

I don't think that ME3 is dark, or is themed dark. On the contrary, ME3 is full of hope, curing genophage, evolving Krogan from violent savages into species that wants to rebuild their world, uniting Krogan and Turian, evolving Geth, Making peace, unifying the galaxy while fighting powerful enemy with unknown reasoning behind their actions.

ME2 on the other hand has a coherent story and it's maybe more dark and has more suspense then ME3.
I also tought that destroying /not destroying the human reaper would have more/any consequences in ME3. I even kept separate saves. I was wrong, i admit.

I think we are actually in agreement here, as everthing you say is right regarding the body of the game. I just find that if I am to take the ending as intentional, it retrospectively invalidates so many of those sacrifices or marginalises the positive in the results. As has been discussed upthread, a lot of the fates of individuals are grim, no matter what happens ie Samara loses daughters, Mordin and Thane die, and so forth. All these victories and the price paid are made insignificant in the face of the catalyst's logic, and its solutions that reinterpret what we were doing in those missions.

Aiding everyone was not to save them and provide a future, but only to gain war assets to implement the catalyst. This is why the Krogan solution is a bit off and we have no idea if we have actually done a good thing. The writers thought more about the war assets than whether the Krogan would rise again. For example, solve the Geth /Quarian conflict and get war assets, only to have to possibly kill the Geth, or choose from options that would have ended the conflict anyway. Solve the Krogan issue, and similarly find that through control or synthesis you could have done it anyway, the difference in destroy being that you have no idea if the rest of the galaxy will suffer another Krogan explosion. In each case, the objective is war assets, as the solution itself is unimportant in the end.
  
Right up until the end of my playthrough I would have said that it was a bit grim, but the hope engendered in the resolution of each episode was a positive and hopeful thing. However, what the catalyst does is to marginalise or even invalidate those solutions through the implementation of a bigger solution. Legion dies only so we could get war assets, not to save his people, as they died or had their problems solved by the catalyst.

Hmm, I find myself seeing some logic in what the devs were doing here. While the long term solutions are invalidated by the catalysts solutions, the idea that the war assets are just to get the thing to work seems clearer. We were never solving the bigger issues, only getting enough points to make the end run. I find that oddly comforting as the thematic thrust of the missions makes more sense, even if they are less satisfying as solutions to the problems themselves.

Just to clarify, I dont like the catalyst's solutions any better, but I can see, maybe, what the devs thought they were saying about each conflict. Its only guesswork though,. There might be evidence in those events that does suggest the devs wanted them to be regarded as long term solutions, in which case we are back to a thematic divide regarding the end and the resolution of the episodes. 

EDIT: Tried to make my meaning a bit clearer.

EDIT2: @dabnat. You're right. We've discussed earlier the genocide of the Geth, but most were happy destroying the reapers. As manufactured tools under compulsion, they are also victims of the ending. 

EDIT 3 I give up trying to fix this post. No more edits. "so be it"

Modifié par frypan, 01 juillet 2012 - 02:56 .

[CulturalGeekGirl]

SHARXTREME wrote...

@CulturalGeekGirl

I used the term "magic" to express my dislike on the endings for a very simple reason.
Magic doesn't fit in the story of Mass Effect.
Mass effect is SF, not very elaborate one on scientific/technical side(as it could be), but it had established ground rules, also story logic and common logic is established. That logic gets broken in the end so badly without any explanation, so that explanation could be presented by Catalyst to Shepard with words "because, you know, magic" with same result. No offense to magic or fantasy genre.

Hard SF is one that doesn't even bend the known laws of physics? Hmm. SF is Science Fiction. Even the trip to Mars is on the edge of known laws of physics. So Hard SF then would be just Fiction then.
To put it more clearly. When someone writes SF story about trip to Mars that respects known laws of physics, that story would be immediately applicable in making first drive/or enviromental system that could really get us to Mars. That I would call a Hard SF:) 

You don't read a lot of more serious SF, do you? Have you ever read Red Mars, Beggars in Spain, or a Fall of Moondust? How about Always Coming Home?

Hard SF usually doesn't break the laws of physics as we know them... it instead draws upon what we expect to be possible in the future based on what we know at the time of writing. For instance, there's nothing in the laws of physics that says we can't develop a supertube material that could be used to make a space elevator. In fact, everything we know about physics suggests that this is very likely possible... we just don't know the techniques required to do it yet. The same thing goes for a world where all energy used for every day life is produced by solar, wind, and hydroelectricitly, so all fossil and biofuels can be focused entirely on building things like space elevators and then getting stuff to Mars.

Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars is a good example of mordern hard SF. It's a story about the colonization of Mars where every piece of technology mentioned is just a more active, more durable, or more powerful version of technology that already exists. Technology that allows us to go faster than light is none of these things, and it actively violates known laws of physics.

We could probably go to Mars right now. We don't because it's too expensive and we haven't yet solved the problem of getting the person back to earth. But if we sent an astronaut with the idea that he would get to Mars, and not come home, we'd be able to get a man on mars in less than twenty years. The problem is a psychological one: while many people would be willing to volunteer for such a one-way trip, it's uncertain that we as a country would be able to cope psychologically with the idea of leaving them there, even if they chose it.

There's a difference between "breaking the laws of physics" and "doing things that we strongly believe will be possible soon, but that are not possible yet." The laws of physics forbid FTL. They don't forbit a more efficient and energy-dense fuel than is currently known. In fact, they mostly imply that such things ARE theoretically possible.

You could explain the green beams in soft-SF-Star-Trek-style technobabble. I'll show you, using only technological concepts present in Mass Effect or other soft SF. The energy beam does not change anything by itself, instead it signals the release of nanomachines that use tiny, single-particle eezo cores to travel faster than light to every planet and ship in the galaxy. Once there, they instantly transmit a code that is an upload of Shepards consciousness and morals to any proximate synthetics. They also are capable of infusing themselves into any organics, at which point they begin to reproduce, their programming combined with the knowledge of different races stored on the citadel allowing them to customize themselves to provide optimal benefit to all different races and species.

There. I explained Synthesis in soft-SF cliches. It's not any less dumb. It's not any more scientific.

Telekinesis isn't science, either, thought it's a soft SF standby, whether it's the force or biotics or families of psychics who live on asteroids and are used for intergalactic transportation. It can be present in soft SF, because the purpose of soft SF is usually to tell a story with spaceships in, or to examine social structures in a new and interesting environment. I love SF stories that contain telekinetics, but they are never and cannot be "hard" SF.

I also love fantasy, and if you have any level of critical thinking or understanding of how fiction works, you'll realize that "it's magic" isn't a valid answer to any question either. It's exactly the same as if someone asked me how the green beam worked and I said "It's science." Unless you're talking about a comedic or cartoon world, in which case "it's magic" works interchangeably with "it's science."

See the Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy for the "it's science" version of this. See especially the explanation of  the "Bistromathmatic Drive" quoted here.

Modifié par CulturalGeekGirl, 01 juillet 2012 - 03:57 .

[frypan]

And the fact is, good magic always has a decent stab at a set of principles that guide it within the story - think L Sprague de Camp and his Incomplete Enchanter books.

If its there in game or story it needs a good explanation for its non use. Hence the problem with an AI not using its ace up the sleeve from the get go. The whole reason it hadnt is as weak as the hero who blunders along refusing his powers, or the "it will draw the attention of the enemy" guff used to create obstacles to victory.

Modifié par frypan, 01 juillet 2012 - 04:01 .

[Fapmaster5000]

frypan wrote...

And the fact is, good magic always has a decent stab at a set of principles that guide it within the story - think L Sprague de Camp and his Incomplete Enchanter books.

If its there in game or story it needs a good explanation for its non use. Hence the problem with an AI not using its ace up the sleeve from the get go. The whole reason it hadnt is as weak as the hero who blunders along refusing his powers, or the "it will draw the attention of the enemy" guff used to create obstacles to victory.

There is a phrase about magic in stories that I picked up over the years, and I cannot remember its source for the life of me, but I must give credit to some unknown author.  The concept, paraphrased, is this: "The degree to which the magic system must be understood is directly proportional to how relevant it is to the hero resolving the conflict."

This basic concept lays out that magic can be unknown, unexplained, and crazy, but the more it approaches two points (used by the hero, resolves the conflict), the more understood it must be.  Take some examples: Lord of the Rings does not need to explain its magic system, since it is not the solution to the main quest, nor is it used by the primary heroes.  Gandalf does something and something happens, but it really doesn't solve the issue at hand.  Frodo still needs to hoof that damn ring to Mordor, and Aragorn needs to have an army.

Likewise, Lovecraftian horror stories do not need to explain their magic, as the magic is not solving the problem.  Magic is, by design, unknown, horrifying, and alien.  It is there, it does something, and bad things happen.  There may be a clever "oh, this lever makes the color green", but no explanation is ever required for why.  It is, in fact, discouraged.

Now, if the magic is being used by the villain, and the hero must counter that magic, then it becomes necessary to explain.  It moves up on those sliders, as, even though the hero's not using it, it's still relevant to the direct conclusion of the story.  Consider, in a very basic form, the end fo The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.  At the end, Aslan is killed and then resurrected because of an incorrect use of magic rules, and because the player behind Aslan was a rules lawyering munchkin because Jesus this understanding of magic rules directly predicates to the conclusion, even if it is only elucidated ex post facto.

In more modern fantasy, such as The Wheel of Time, the reader is given a very moderately deep understanding of the rules of "Channeling", including what men do, what women do, the way certain powers work and interact, et cetera.  This is because several viewpoint characters use the magic, and it is directly tied to the primary conflict and (inevitable) conclusion to the series.  The magic is both used by the hero, and used to resolve the conflict.

This can be appied to Mass Effect, where the "magic" of soft sci-fi (props to CGG for her breakdown of soft and hard a few posts back) is DIRECTLY tied to the hero resolving the plot.  Shepard (or the Catalyst, whom I now believe is the true protagonist of at least ME3 *see other rants*) must use the space magic to resolve the Reaper problem (or Organic/Synthetic problem, if you ask Starby).  Because of this, the slider of "how much does this need to be explained" is slamming into the "in totality" side of the graph.  

This is why many demean it as magic, but, like CGG said, it's more accurately described as ****** writing.

Modifié par Fapmaster5000, 01 juillet 2012 - 04:44 .