Even as I load this response in I notice that posters like GodSentinelomega and 3DandBeyond have already articulated many of the responses I would hope to make far more elegantly than I could – so forgive me for retracing their already artfully explored arguments. In particular:
3DandBeyond wrote:
This is a very cynical world view. It's not one I share. We are people with disparate thoughts. We are chaotic. We have conflict. But, through chaos we can grow and through conflict we can change. Through diversity and individuality and different thought, we can learn. This game says that's all wrong. Zoloft for all!
Lovely.
However, I am obnoxious, and love hearing myself type, so...
@ Obadiah:
Thank you for articulating your reaction to the ending of the game, it is helping me to see the way in which the narrative functions for people who do enjoy the ending and what it imposes upon the player in the final moments. Although I remain personally unmoved, I see your perspective that your Shepard intended to use the Crucible no matter what, the conversation with Stanky just gave him/her further context for its operation.
For me, however, my Shepard's reaction to the Crucible and the nutty little AI dancing around inside it did fundamentally, and necessarily, alter her intent to use it. The plot twist you cited did more than simply reveal the machine's purpose, it exposed it as a Reaper tool, symbolic of their core principles and beliefs, and at that point there was no way that she was going to fall into line with her enemy's narrow vision of galactic order, particularly not given the sum-total of experiences that had led her to that point.
I understand that the ending is meant to construct an unwinnable scenario – the Reaper threat is so immense that one cannot defeat them 'conventionally', etc. That currently appears to be a catch-cry hurled against anyone who chooses to reject the ending and still feels maligned for being told that they consequentially 'lost'; but needing to succeed through 'unconventional' means does not,
should not, mean that therefore
anything in war is okay. That's why in the real world we have articles of war, the Geneva conventions, dictates on how human beings should behave; because as a species we consider some things more sacred than just
survival. If we sacrifice what we are in order to keep sucking air, then what was the point?
The nihilistic endings of
Mass Effect 3 – where you
must finally give over your faith that there is another way –utterly contradicts the message that has been fuelling the entirety of the series. For the whole rest of the story, if you were prepared enough, if you tried hard enough, if you worked at it, you could find a way through the most 'impossible' of circumstances. But here, in the final seconds of the game's interactivity, we are explicitly told:
'Nope. You gotta sell your soul too. You have to work
for the bad guys, and you have to do
one of the three disgusting things that they consider an appropriate way to dominate the universe: kill, brainwash, or make super-husks. No fourth choices; that's insta-death, you cowardly bastard.'
This is a deceptive, and rather cruel bait-and-switch on the part of the writers. Suddenly it is as if the entire purpose of the game, with its breadcrumb trail of scenarios in which you can control the situation (or at least have the theoretical capacity to sway it your way) while keeping whatever morality you subscribe to legitimised by the text, was only a misleading prologue to the ending, where we find out once and for all that it was really only the most amoral Renegades who were welcome in the narrative in the first place.
Perhaps that's the disconnect at work here between those who like and those despise the endings. Some players
appreciate that moral compromise, not seeing it as the total and irreversible perversion of character and universe that a player like myself does.
For example in your case, it appears you are saying that for those such as yourself who enjoyed the ending (and I must say, despite my own issues with it, I am extremely glad to hear that you
did enjoy it) you appreciated it
because it forced you into a moral compromise. This is the nature of war; what are you prepared to do if you have a gun to your head; what are you willing to sacrifice to survive? (Please do correct me if I've misrepresented your thoughts there, it was not my intention).
For me, though, that brings with it all manner of ethical and philosophical horrors that up until that point in the game were not signalled appropriately at all. You are right –
other character back stories and conversation can signify a willingness to do tragic things for the greater good (decisions made in the heat of battle, a kill or be killed, us or them) - but even of that is where they start, they do not
remain that way.
Firstly, I would argue that none of those heroic characters ever performs an act of racial genocide, mass-mind control, or unwilling eugenic purge. Those kinds of beliefs and actions are left solely for the characters we are meant to
challenge for their corrupted morals, the once-hero antagonists we must overcome because they have now utterly lost their way by compromising what they believed: Saren, the Illusive Man, Henry Lawson. We defeat them because at one time, long ago, they made exactly the same moral compromise we are being asked to perform, and they could not come back from it.
But secondly I would point out that at no point throughout the games does that kind of mentality have to be
Shepard's. At every moment before the conclusion Shepard can find alternate paths through such situations if she is prepared and imaginative enough. Indeed, those very same people that you site as having at one time begrudgingly given up hope (Garrus, Hackett, etc.) – by the end of the game – are themselves looking at Shepard with wonder, now also capable of
believing in a
better way of doing things, because this heroic figure has shown them time and again that there are alternatives to surrender, that there are
genuine alternatives to compromise. Hell, even Javik, the universe's Alpha-Troll, sends Shepard off with a speech about how, because of her, he now has faith, something that he was never able to muster in his own cycle.
Again, perhaps the game was just ultimately intended to deceive the player into believing this possibility too (just as these characters come to); perhaps the intent truly was to guide us toward the end thinking that as long as we were fighting for what was right we at least had hope, so that in the last moments the game could utterly strip that away by making you the Reaper's assistant.
Sure, you can win, but you have to
become what you most despise in order to do so.
But dear God, what a vile and unforgivable prank to play on your audience. You can be a hero, you can be a hero, you can be... No. No, you're just another thug forcing you will upon the universe.
The only way to defeat evil is to become it.
Sleep well, little Stargazer.
Despite all of the evidence to the contrary throughout the fiction, we realise in these moments that this isn't a tenacity-will-triumph-over-adversity narrative, it's a the-psychopath-holds-you-hostage-until-you-become-like-him tale. But that's not what I signed up for, and was
ever led to believe until those final ten (now twenty) minutes of game.
Modifié par drayfish, 16 juillet 2012 - 02:11 .
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