5087 réponses à ce sujet

[robertthebard]

I have never said that anyone is wrong. Do point that out for me though. What I have said is that conventional victory would be costly, and time comsuming, and have made a thread discussing just how I see it working, and hopefully laying out the costly and time consuming parts.

I have also said that making hard choices is part of what being a leader in a military unit is all about. That sometimes you're going to give orders that get people killed and that you can't allow that to affect your decision. If I can save a whole city by sacrificing one platoon, the needs of the many out weigh the needs of the few. Of course, some people find that hard to swallow, and would instead, I suppose, watch the entire city burn to save that platoon. To somebody sitting nice and cozy in their home/office, reading this discussion it makes me look like a d**k. To the people living in that city, it makes me a bloody hero.

[AresKeith]

3DandBeyond wrote...

robertthebard wrote...

ddraigcoch123 wrote...

yes i have to agree with 3D and drayfish... and i hope that those who dont hold the same opinions come back with some good arguments rather than just misquoting and/or ignoring the well thought through and argued positions...

if we are to have a debate then lets have a decent two sided one... make the argument for why the endings don't suck... and do fit with the story arc, lore and ethics of the whole of the ME series up to the point we move into some weird, short hand, from another game set of endings that dont ring true...

Exactly what arguement is it that you expect one to bring to change another's opinion?  As far as I'm concerned, anyone that plays past London is looking for "...and they all lived happily ever after" fairy tales.  Making all the endings moot.  This is my opinion, should I be telling everyone else they are wrong because they don't share it?  I still believe that, given the circumstances going into ME 3, in the prologue, not the endings, that we should have been completely plowed under within a week.

"Sirs, UK has a visual".  The very first day of the attack, and yet, despite London being in what we now know as the UK, the end battle takes place there, months later?  How does that work, exactly?

On the one hand you are making our case while denying the validity of what we say.  You ridiculed some of my assessment of the beginning where Shepard says we need to stand together and basically do nothing because it's impossible and now you are doing something similar.

We've said there is much about all of ME3 that is incongruous.  The fact that it boiled down to Earth and then London and was touted as taking Earth back is laughable. 

You really do not intend to hear anything others have said.  Sure, a happier ending is desired by many, but the galaxy is in a bad place.  That's not bunnies and rainbows.  It needs fixing and more-time to bury the dead.

The writers set up a scenario where nothing but a MacGuffin and a Deus ex Machina could save the day.  They had supposedly great military minds shooting the equivalent of water pistols into the face of whales and kept on doing that.  That's poor writing.  The beginning is horrible, parts of the middle are too, and the ending completes a bold decent into idiocy.  The game is saved, only in part by stories in miniature within it-Tuchanka and Rannoch, and some other micro stories.  I don't think there's much disagreement anywhere that as is a lot of it is just plain bad.

However, reality exists for a reason.  At this point we only know they intend to release SP DLC.  They probably have things set in stone-but that's not a given.  There's no way to resurrect the whole game and even the ending is what it is except there is room for something more.  They won't do it, but they could do it.

And no for the vast majority of people one silly happy ever after ending was not ever what this was about.  It was the possibility of one happier ending and other very logical scenarios for other endings-Shepard dies, reapers lose.  Shepard lives, reapers win.  Shepard dies, reapers win.  Shepard lives, reapers lose.  And other iterations of the state of the galaxy.  An ending that features different scenarios for the main players-Shepard and friends and LI, galaxy, and reapers.

It was hard enough to get them to change anything about the ending, so saying the beginning and a lot of the game was bad is true, but that is really thinking of the impossible.

They could have made the game better and made a real fight possible if they had set the scenario differently  It's not our fault they decided to make a win without a MacGuffin impossible in an attempt to win game of the year.  But, it's wrong to say it isn't possible-they could have made it possible.

You asked me to give you ideas for fighting them and I did-I gave a few and even one that was supposed to be the original intent of the Crucible, that could have made it make sense.  That could have been a discussion point.

exactly, Bioware promised multiple different endings when hyping ME3 talking about difference based off of your choices, but instead we ended up getting 3 basically the same endings with small differences, we wanted an ending like ME2's ending where what you did mattered if the squad survives or if Shep lives or dies

Modifié par AresKeith, 19 juillet 2012 - 10:44 .

[GodSentinelOmega]

Many great points here.

At Dreyfish
I totally agree. The !do it because the greater good of victory outweighs any petty moral quibbles' way the endings come across is a very disturbing thing. And really flys in the face of the 'i won't let fear compromise who i am' attitude found in ME2. I mean, if the final message of the ME series is 'to defeat the impossible, nothing is unacceptable' then the series has no.real end to me.

ME1s ending was United there is nothing we cannot do. Humanity will join the galaxy and find away to drive the reapers back into darkspace when they come. With Shepard heading to find that way.

ME2s ending was Time is running out! The reapers are coming. But again Shepard made the impossible possible. And the whole kill/keep the collector base seemed to be the 'what are you prepared to do to win?' question. One that allowed you to play the extremist, but not at the expense of the nobler choice that sometimes something is so tainted, that to use it at all, even for noble reasons would taint you.

ME3 simply makes you compromise for no other reason than plot necessity and the narrative assumption that are no alternatives.

What gets me the most on replaying the story is that those sections of 3 given over to finishing the hanging plot threads from earlier games are are overbalanced by all the work done to make the THIRD installment a standalone game that you can play irrespective of the other two.

Also the codex really paints a different picture of the crucible than the glorified battery glowstick labels it as. You know, the powerful dark energy weapon that the alliance was trying to perfect so it targeted reapers.

How about a semi conventional victory that makes of jamming the reapers indoc control signals, short circuits their shields, thus allowing the fleet to inflict heavy damage to the reapers around earth. A ginal confontation with Harbinger that leads his epic and well deserved destruction. And then in a final use of the crucible shepard becomes the catalyst to its activation of a galaxy wide mass relay effect that pills all reapers back through the network and out into darkspace. Detonates their extrgalactic relay. Which if that doesn' kill them all, will trap them in darspace for good.

Also the way i see Shepard being the catalyst is similar to the way John Crichton uses thevwormhole weapon generator in Farscape Peacekeeper wars. No need for glowstick, no need for any of his logic, no need for the grey, immoral choices.

Thats how i wish it could have gone bsed off of the ideas in this thread.

[drayfish]

Thank you everyone for the kind words – but honestly, I find myself stunned daily by the thrilling level of discourse and imagination I find in this thread every time I open up my browser. You are all an exceptional group of thinkers and some damned-fine persuasive writers. It is truly a joy to read everyone's work.
 
Immediate case in point:
 

3DandBeyond wrote...
 
I once read a story with the most poignant statement for me on what losing even just one person could mean. "There's a hole in my heart in exactly the shape of you." The book was "Written on the Body" by Jeannette Winterson. That to me says it all. You are irreplaceable. I will not be so quick to lose you.

Ah! I love this book! So poetic, so exquisitely celebratory and sad. Beautifully said, 3DandBeyond.

[drayfish]

robertthebard wrote...
 
I do love, however, how people can sit in a chair, in a nice comfortable home, and make character judgements about what is needed to win a war. I can only presume that none of them have ever had any experience with it, other than what they saw on the news, or maybe from peace marches.

My apologies if I'm misreading you, but I legitimately do not understand what you are saying here. If your premise is that unless you've actually pulled a trigger and killed another person you have no right to express an opinion on death and warfare then I'm not sure that you understand the purpose of debate or fiction. The point of creating fictional analogies to real world issues is to have an imaginative space in which to play out the complexities of these subjects with the relative disconnect of narrative.
 
I've never slashed a Trojan soldier to death and dragged his corpse around behind my chariot, but that doesn't exclude me from discussing the merits or otherwise of Achilles' actions. I have never cured an entire species of a crippling genetic virus, but I can, through playing this game, explore the weighty ramifications of such an idea. 
 
Secondly, wars may be fought for self-defence, but in a civilised world they are governed by principles. As I've alluded to earlier, we have Articles of War, we have the Geneva Conventions, and Shepard uses diplomacy to gather her army rather than just put a gun in everyone's face and threaten to ice them if they don't fight for her. If both sides of a war devolve their principles into 'do-whatever-it-takes-to-win-no-matter-what' then, frankly, there is nothing left worth fighting for. Both sides prove themselves to be little more than animals that stand for nothing but a meaningless amoral desire to just exist.
 
If that is really the vision of Shepard and the Mass Effect universe that you have in your mind then I am sad to say that we will not be able to come to any kind of understanding of one another's position regarding this text. However, I see that you do go on to say in a further post:
 

robertthebard wrote...
 
Ends the war, EDI, and possibly geth, depending on Rannoch, die. In the only playthrough I did where I actually played the ending, this was my option. The geth were already wiped out by the Quarians, evidently I did something wrong, and couldn't get the option to pick paragon/renegade to stop them from attacking. My logic at the time, and I can stand by this even now, is that it's sacrifice one friend, or lose trillions of lives. I'm sorry that it seems like my moral compass may be off, but as you can tell Miranda and Jacob in ME 2 on the Shuttle ride to meet TIM, sometimes you give orders that mean people will die, you can't let that affect your decision.

And perhaps this is where our disconnect lies. I should make this clear again: I would never call you genocidal for being forced to make that decision. Nor would I call Synthesis or Control supporters authoritarian nut-jobs just because I believe that the ending they were compelled to choose strips the universe of fundamental freedoms. We players are all the victims in this scenario, wrestled into defending atrocities because we were given no other options. My issue is – and will remain – with the creators of the game who forced players to align themselves with these beliefs against their will.
 
The recurring catch-phrase from Bioware now appears to be 'conventional warfare' would not have beaten the Reapers - so they therefore made the ugly decision that the only solution was to use war crimes in order to win. (Again, even Destroy forces you to choose a race of people to be targeted; true, in some play-throughs only one character may die, but the weapon still discerns between 'races', that is its metaphorical and literal purpose).  They escalated the price of victory to a grotesquely unethical extreme (mistaking this as somehow 'artistic' or meaningful), and then demanded that we players agree with this notion by not allowing us to finish the game in any other way. Indeed, were it not for the outcry of fans demanding a new ending, we would not even have the watered down 'Refuse' option, where Shepard makes a mighty fine speech, but is then choked by the indignity of standing like an ineffectual goon as the newly-revealed Reaper-King callously wanders away, happy to continue its meaningless slaughter.  (And with the Bioware writers implying that the next cycle just went ahead and performed one of the crimes you weren't willing to do anyway...)
 
So, again, I am not (and will never be) judging you or anyone for their decision at the end of this game. I judge the writers who designed the false either-or scenario that damned us all. By concocting this impossible win-state it is they who are waving the flag for amoral acquiescence, we are simply the invested players who were funnelled into this nihilistic conclusion, mislead by the preceding fiction's proclamations of unity of strength and faith in the indomitable tenacity of will.

Modifié par drayfish, 20 juillet 2012 - 02:17 .

[drayfish]

Obadiah wrote...
 
@drayfish
Response to post 1: I'd have to agree, but since it seems to me a fair number of people had difficulty making this decision, I wouldn't characterize it as "easy" or "cheap". Certainly a decision which had no moral or ethical cost would be "cheap" and comfortable.

Response to post 2: I believe I understand your position, but (just my perspective) though I find such concerns worthy, I do find them more abstract and academic than practical. I do not subscribe to the argument that there are certain actions or tools that can never be justified or validated - certainly not in fiction where the stakes can be raised to such dizzying and unrealistic heights, as Mass Effect has done.

Sometimes the ends do justify the means. It is a fallacy is to assert otherwise. There can be ugly consequences, and it is a slippery slope. However, the decisions can still be justified, and ugly consequences are not restricted to morally probablematic decisions.

With respect your characterization of what I think of "life" - my Shepard did not expect to survive the choice, the Crucible is fired so that the rest of civilization and life itself can continue without the intervention of the Reapers.

With respect to what I think of as Shepard's defining moment - I haven't really thought of it.

 
@ Obadiah:
 
To your first point: absolutely. Much as I indicated in my previous post to RoberttheBard, when I said 'cheap' and 'easy' I wasn't referring to the players at all, nor their inevitable discomfort and angst at making this choice. I was referring specifically to the writers, who I feel crafted a lazy ethical dilemma in the mistaken belief that it would seem 'deep'.  It is the writers who have forced everyone to pick one of these options, and, in doing so, excuse their usage.
 
Again, this is fiction.  Bioware could have done anything that they wanted to for their conclusion (the fact that they employed the glowy-space-child to dump a bunch of exposition on us shows they weren't even afraid of being clumsy in what they offered). Instead, they chose to force their players to commit an atrocity (one of three) in order to end their journey. No matter what the player selects (the choice is essentially irrelevant) Bioware has decided that the ultimate message of the Mass Effect series is that only someone willing to sell out everything they believe in can save the universe.
 
...Unless, much as CulturalGeekGirl has said, that person is already cool with genocide or authoritarian domination. That person would love these endings unquestioning, and appreciate the 'uncompromised' hero it declares them to be. And I don't like finishing a narrative of 'heroism' in which I can literally imagine some of the worst dictators and villains in human history nodding their head in agreement with the premise that has been presented. I find that shocking.
 
To me this is the videogame equivalent of those tedious hypotheticals people sometimes like to play:
 
'Okay, so a psychopath breaks into your house with a gun, and he says he's going to slowly kill you and your family unless you agree to do one of three things. Do you (a) kill another family so that he'll spare yours? Do you ( agree to let him take one of your children and raise them, so that he'll leave the others alone?' Do you © kill your family yourself so that they will suffer less? He says you have to choose one. What's it going to be, huh? Huh?!'
 
No.
 
The answer is you tell whoever wants you to play such a horrible game to f**k off.

[Sajuro]

I still don't feel the choices are any more repugnant than your normal rpg heroes slaughtering their way through the hordes of mooks standing between them and the bad guys. Also I don't think  that the ending is thematically different from the rest of the series if we take a theme of the series to be one of the lines in the first Mass Effect trailer "Many choices lie ahead, none of them easy" you might disagree with me on what that means but given Garrus and Javik telling us we might have to make sacrifices and the whole "trillion dead souls and honor" deal. We have to dominate or destroy the Reapers because there are no ma and pa reaper to send whatever remained of Ranny the Rannoch Reaper back to, they won't retreat, they won't show us mercy, and they will never expect any.

[MetioricTest]

Sajuro wrote...

I still don't feel the choices are any more repugnant than your normal rpg heroes slaughtering their way through the hordes of mooks standing between them and the bad guys.

I don't remember having the option to control Sarevok for myself.

Or merge my little gnome diddies with everyone on the sword coast.


Although BG2 did ruin it by letting you control Sarevok as a teammate so there you go.

[3DandBeyond]

drayfish wrote...


To me this is the videogame equivalent of those tedious hypotheticals people sometimes like to play:
 
'Okay, so a psychopath breaks into your house with a gun, and he says he's going to slowly kill you and your family unless you agree to do one of three things. Do you (a) kill another family so that he'll spare yours? Do you ( agree to let him take one of your children and raise them, so that he'll leave the others alone?' Do you © kill your family yourself so that they will suffer less? He says you have to choose one. What's it going to be, huh? Huh?!'
 
No.
 
The answer is you tell whoever wants you to play such a horrible game to f**k off.

This is exactly what the endings feel like to me.  You want me to do what?  I ain't playin'.

It so reminds me of these studies of human behavior that are often done as psych tests.  I won't even pretend to remember all the facts, but there's the one from the '70s where they had some students be prisoners and some be prison guards and then waited to see what would happen and before long the "guards" were abusing the "prisoners".

The other one was another on just what people will do for an authority figure and they had to give other people an electric shock (not real) for answering questions wrong.  Each wrong answer also required a more powerful electric shock until it got to the point where the victim would scream and say s/he has heart trouble.  The person giving the shock might object but would be told they had to complete the project and they needed to give the shock and most would.  It tested to see what it took to overcome that authority (IIRC).

I know there is one specific test this reminds me of, and if I find it I will post it, but since to me a lot of these are somewhat sadistic and I think the game ending is as well, I may just have it all jumbled up.

Both of my parents, all of my uncles, and my one grandfather served in WWII.  My mother and father served in Halifax in what was considered a war zone.  They had Uboats come nearby.  My mother was a clerk in the Canadian Women's Army Corp--we'd joke she was a CWAC.  She helped out in the military hospital and would read to injured soldiers, read their mail, keep them company, and generally act as their connection to home.  She told me story after story of their bravery and their never say die spirit in the face of some incredible odds.  And no matter how bleak a situation or how dire any battle, to a man even guys with no legs or the blinded and so on, to a man they wanted to get back into that hellhole of impossibilities.  The human spirit when told that's impossible rises up and says, "not if I say it isn't."

One thought has always struck me because of all this about sending others to war to fight for any cause is not only that we send them off to possibly die for us, but also to kill for us.  And we can send them off for reasons that are hard to comprehend and we ask them all the time to do the impossible, which often means "come back alive".  And they do everything they can do for odd and even unjust reasons.  No reason makes more sense than self-preservation and the fight for one's home.  You will raise heaven and hell for that.  You will do the impossible.  In war, soldiers fight for the buddy next to them.  And they will fight until they can fight no more and still try to get up and keep going.  What is more real than fighting for home and life and those you love?

The writers deny any kind of real opportunity to say, "this is what this was all for."  There's no fight to prove that and no ending that says that.

[Eterna]

Am I supposed to care what your lit professor says or something?

[3DandBeyond]

Eterna5 wrote...

Am I supposed to care what your lit professor says or something?

No, but as a human being you should at least try to be decent to others who have done nothing to you.

[Jorji Costava]

Sajuro wrote...

I still don't feel the choices are any more repugnant than your normal rpg heroes slaughtering their way through the hordes of mooks standing between them and the bad guys. Also I don't think  that the ending is thematically different from the rest of the series if we take a theme of the series to be one of the lines in the first Mass Effect trailer "Many choices lie ahead, none of them easy" you might disagree with me on what that means but given Garrus and Javik telling us we might have to make sacrifices and the whole "trillion dead souls and honor" deal. We have to dominate or destroy the Reapers because there are no ma and pa reaper to send whatever remained of Ranny the Rannoch Reaper back to, they won't retreat, they won't show us mercy, and they will never expect any.

Very interesting points, but I disagree on two counts. The first is that there seems to be a clear difference between sending soldiers under one's command to their near certain deaths to accomplish some military objective, and killing those samd soldiers in order to appease one's enemy. The destroy ending, for instance, more closely resembles the latter, and that's part of what's so bothersome about it.

Second, I don't really think it's the element of sacrifice or hard choices which makes the endings so awful. If for instance, activating the crucible caused some unintented effect that resulted in the destruction of most of the Victory Fleet, that would be a big sacrifice to make, but it wouldn't be so off-putting as what we have. Here's a silly analogy: Imagine that at the end of Return of the Jedi, the Emperor tells Luke, "You know, if you turn to the Dark side, all of the galaxy's problems will be solved. There will be utopia." Then, Luke turns to the Dark side, and that really does solve all the galaxy's problems. Nominally, you could call this a happy end, but it's incredibly stupid. All of Luke's efforts to become a Jedi, resist the dark side, and fight against the Emperor were a complete waste of time. Victory is earned by recognizing that after all, you were wrong and the cackling, murderous villians were right.

To me, accepting any of the three options given to you by the catalyst is equivalent to this ridiculous re-imagining of the Star Wars ending. As a matter of fact, they were just trying to save you from yourselves the whole time. True victory comes about when you come to recognize the infinite wisdom of the catalyst, who is arguably one of the most murderous characters ever portrayed in fiction. It's the bad guys who have all the right ideas about how to save the galaxy, and you win when you accept that. To me, that's just not the way to end a story about a war against homicidal machines.

@3DandBeyond:

Here are some links regarding those psychological experiments that might be of interest:

Philip Zimbardo's Stanford prison experiment

Stanley Milgram's experiment

[CulturalGeekGirl]

Sajuro wrote...

I still don't feel the choices are any more repugnant than your normal rpg heroes slaughtering their way through the hordes of mooks standing between them and the bad guys. Also I don't think  that the ending is thematically different from the rest of the series if we take a theme of the series to be one of the lines in the first Mass Effect trailer "Many choices lie ahead, none of them easy" you might disagree with me on what that means but given Garrus and Javik telling us we might have to make sacrifices and the whole "trillion dead souls and honor" deal. We have to dominate or destroy the Reapers because there are no ma and pa reaper to send whatever remained of Ranny the Rannoch Reaper back to, they won't retreat, they won't show us mercy, and they will never expect any.

I dearly, dearly wish I could go back in time and ask people what they thought the theme of Mass Effect was without ME3 influencing the answers. A lot of incredibly minor themes that I wouldn't have even put on the top ten list of "themes of Mass Effect" are being put forward as "themes all along."

As for Mass Effect being about "many choices ahead, none of them easy," if you really found the decision in Mass Effect hard, I wonder how you manage to decide what pair of pants to wear every morning. Maybe you have just one pair? Keep it simple. Choices are hard.

In all of Mass Effect, there are only three decisions I found difficult. The first was whether or not to save the Council, and I only found that difficult because I misunderstood the question. (I though the ship they were escaping on was essentially a life pod, so I was being asked to spend thousands of lives to save four.) The second was the Kill vs. Control the heretic geth decision (if you tell me human morality doesn't apply, it makes a question very interesting to think about.)  The third was whether or not to save the Rachnii queen a second time in ME3 (if a friend hadn't spoiled that Grunt can live, I might not have risked it.)

Other decisions that might potentially have been difficult if they were written differently are: Keeping vs. destroying the Collector Base (at that point, I'd come to  think of pretty much everything associated with Reapers as an indoctrination trap, so that was a no brainer. But if they hadn't been hammering INDOCTRINATION! so hard, I might have considered keeping it.), curing the genophage (if Mordin had been against it and Wrex for it, I don't know how I would have made the call). the Quarians vs the Geth (if they hadn't made the "out" achievable, it would have rended my heart.) I can't immediately think of any other decisions that were actually difficult.

Midway through Mass Effect, I realized that the decisions weren't about what the result would be, they were almost always about what kind of person your Shepard was going to be. Decisions didn't seem to have many consequences, and I honestly didn't really expect them to. Mass Effect became a game about creating different characters, and exploring their personalities through the decisions that came naturally to them. Optimistic Jane, Cynical Crow, Paranoid Madge. Bioware's determination to not be too punitive in choice consequences meant that decisions were practically never difficult. It actually allowed you to make more interesting choices, rather than being limited to the ones you knew yielded the best results. This emphasis on "choice as character development" rather than "choice as consequence-generator" was probably originally a design investment decision: that way they wouldn't have to create vast swaths of different content that most players would never see. Still, the format taught a consistent lesson: there's no wrong way to play, there's no wrong person to be, you can stick to your guns (whatever those guns might be) throughout the series and you won't screw yourself over.

For the vast majority of people, the ending decision isn't hard. Look at any of the "what ending did you pick?" threads: they're heavily, heavily overburdened with "destroy, every time, never thought twice for a second," or "destroy, thought about it for a minute or two, but I'm confident it is the only answer." That doesn't sound like a tough decision to me.

All the "tough decision" people show up, say their thing, and then leave. They never respond to the assertion that the decision isn't actually tough or punishing for more than 50% of the players, at least based purely on board scuttlebutt. If the point was to make a decision that was tough for everyone, they failed horribly.

Modifié par CulturalGeekGirl, 20 juillet 2012 - 03:17 .

[3DandBeyond]

osbornep wrote...

Sajuro wrote...

I still don't feel the choices are any more repugnant than your normal rpg heroes slaughtering their way through the hordes of mooks standing between them and the bad guys. Also I don't think  that the ending is thematically different from the rest of the series if we take a theme of the series to be one of the lines in the first Mass Effect trailer "Many choices lie ahead, none of them easy" you might disagree with me on what that means but given Garrus and Javik telling us we might have to make sacrifices and the whole "trillion dead souls and honor" deal. We have to dominate or destroy the Reapers because there are no ma and pa reaper to send whatever remained of Ranny the Rannoch Reaper back to, they won't retreat, they won't show us mercy, and they will never expect any.

Very interesting points, but I disagree on two counts. The first is that there seems to be a clear difference between sending soldiers under one's command to their near certain deaths to accomplish some military objective, and killing those samd soldiers in order to appease one's enemy. The destroy ending, for instance, more closely resembles the latter, and that's part of what's so bothersome about it.

Second, I don't really think it's the element of sacrifice or hard choices which makes the endings so awful. If for instance, activating the crucible caused some unintented effect that resulted in the destruction of most of the Victory Fleet, that would be a big sacrifice to make, but it wouldn't be so off-putting as what we have. Here's a silly analogy: Imagine that at the end of Return of the Jedi, the Emperor tells Luke, "You know, if you turn to the Dark side, all of the galaxy's problems will be solved. There will be utopia." Then, Luke turns to the Dark side, and that really does solve all the galaxy's problems. Nominally, you could call this a happy end, but it's incredibly stupid. All of Luke's efforts to become a Jedi, resist the dark side, and fight against the Emperor were a complete waste of time. Victory is earned by recognizing that after all, you were wrong and the cackling, murderous villians were right.

To me, accepting any of the three options given to you by the catalyst is equivalent to this ridiculous re-imagining of the Star Wars ending. As a matter of fact, they were just trying to save you from yourselves the whole time. True victory comes about when you come to recognize the infinite wisdom of the catalyst, who is arguably one of the most murderous characters ever portrayed in fiction. It's the bad guys who have all the right ideas about how to save the galaxy, and you win when you accept that. To me, that's just not the way to end a story about a war against homicidal machines.

@3DandBeyond:

Here are some links regarding those psychological experiments that might be of interest:

Philip Zimbardo's Stanford prison experiment

Stanley Milgram's experiment

Great post and thanks so much for the links! 

Let us all remove our hearts and destroy our values and suspend our morality in the fight for our enemy's cause.

[Eterna]

3DandBeyond wrote...

Eterna5 wrote...

Am I supposed to care what your lit professor says or something?

No, but as a human being you should at least try to be decent to others who have done nothing to you.

How am I not being decent? I just don't see why the opinion of a lit professor is important.

[CulturalGeekGirl]

Eterna5 wrote...

3DandBeyond wrote...

Eterna5 wrote...

Am I supposed to care what your lit professor says or something?

No, but as a human being you should at least try to be decent to others who have done nothing to you.

How am I not being decent? I just don't see why the opinion of a lit professor is important.

You're on a board, reading things that others have written. If you don't care about any of the things written on the board, why are you wasting your time here?

As for me, I care what the good doctor says because it is well-written and insightful. If a non-professor had composed the same essay, I would still think the opinion was interesting and intelligent. I care about intelligence,  cleverly wrought language, and insight.

If you don't care about any of those things, that's no skin off my nose. But if you don't care about those things, maybe you would prefer some other thread?

Modifié par CulturalGeekGirl, 20 juillet 2012 - 03:23 .

[Sajuro]

osbornep wrote...

Sajuro wrote...

I still don't feel the choices are any more repugnant than your normal rpg heroes slaughtering their way through the hordes of mooks standing between them and the bad guys. Also I don't think  that the ending is thematically different from the rest of the series if we take a theme of the series to be one of the lines in the first Mass Effect trailer "Many choices lie ahead, none of them easy" you might disagree with me on what that means but given Garrus and Javik telling us we might have to make sacrifices and the whole "trillion dead souls and honor" deal. We have to dominate or destroy the Reapers because there are no ma and pa reaper to send whatever remained of Ranny the Rannoch Reaper back to, they won't retreat, they won't show us mercy, and they will never expect any.

Very interesting points, but I disagree on two counts. The first is that there seems to be a clear difference between sending soldiers under one's command to their near certain deaths to accomplish some military objective, and killing those samd soldiers in order to appease one's enemy. The destroy ending, for instance, more closely resembles the latter, and that's part of what's so bothersome about it.

Second, I don't really think it's the element of sacrifice or hard choices which makes the endings so awful. If for instance, activating the crucible caused some unintented effect that resulted in the destruction of most of the Victory Fleet, that would be a big sacrifice to make, but it wouldn't be so off-putting as what we have. Here's a silly analogy: Imagine that at the end of Return of the Jedi, the Emperor tells Luke, "You know, if you turn to the Dark side, all of the galaxy's problems will be solved. There will be utopia." Then, Luke turns to the Dark side, and that really does solve all the galaxy's problems. Nominally, you could call this a happy end, but it's incredibly stupid. All of Luke's efforts to become a Jedi, resist the dark side, and fight against the Emperor were a complete waste of time. Victory is earned by recognizing that after all, you were wrong and the cackling, murderous villians were right.

To me, accepting any of the three options given to you by the catalyst is equivalent to this ridiculous re-imagining of the Star Wars ending. As a matter of fact, they were just trying to save you from yourselves the whole time. True victory comes about when you come to recognize the infinite wisdom of the catalyst, who is arguably one of the most murderous characters ever portrayed in fiction. It's the bad guys who have all the right ideas about how to save the galaxy, and you win when you accept that. To me, that's just not the way to end a story about a war against homicidal machines.

@3DandBeyond:

Here are some links regarding those psychological experiments that might be of interest:

Philip Zimbardo's Stanford prison experiment

Stanley Milgram's experiment

I don't think your comparisons are valid, Shepard isn't giving into the darkside or some **** like that. The Catalyst isn't evil, it is an AI, the way it thinks is completely different from the way organics think. It started the cycle because that was the best solution at the time. Shepard comes up and the fact that the galaxy could work together to create the crucible and get it to the Citadel was proof that his solution to the problem wouldn't work so three other solutions were offered. Control is imprinting Shepard's memory and perspective of the Catalyst and using the Reapers as Guardians. Destroy was saying that you had faith that the Catalyst was wrong about synthetics and the only reason the geth had to die was because legion had a hard on for sentience. Synthesis is saying that the Catalyst is right but the best way is to combine synthetic and organic so Organics won't have to create more synthetics and the synthetics will have a greater understanding of organics. I know there are valid reasons for people to be upset with the endings and I think that EC answered a lot of questions but now there are people who are just looking for reasons to be disgusted by the ending.

@ Culturalgeekgirl, I found some of the choices in the Mass Effect series to be difficult, even when they are differentiated by paragon and renegade. First was the council choice in my first playthrough of Mass Effect, there was also Virmire (though because I didn't like either one). Thank you for your concern about what I wear though.

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

The endings are so bad that I sometimes wonder if indeed the thing was a psychological test rather than a game.

All the choices are monstrous. There is no "none of the above". They had to put the caveats on the destroy option to sell the other two, and the new fourth option is Mac & Casey's big middle finger (just to be funny if you shot the hologram).

This is going to come back and bite them in the ass.

[Oxspit]

Sajuro wrote...

I don't think your comparisons are valid, Shepard isn't giving into the darkside or some **** like that. The Catalyst isn't evil, it is an AI, the way it thinks is completely different from the way organics think. It started the cycle because that was the best solution at the time. Shepard comes up and the fact that the galaxy could work together to create the crucible and get it to the Citadel was proof that his solution to the problem wouldn't work so three other solutions were offered. Control is imprinting Shepard's memory and perspective of the Catalyst and using the Reapers as Guardians. Destroy was saying that you had faith that the Catalyst was wrong about synthetics and the only reason the geth had to die was because legion had a hard on for sentience. Synthesis is saying that the Catalyst is right but the best way is to combine synthetic and organic so Organics won't have to create more synthetics and the synthetics will have a greater understanding of organics. I know there are valid reasons for people to be upset with the endings and I think that EC answered a lot of questions but now there are people who are just looking for reasons to be disgusted by the ending.

@ Culturalgeekgirl, I found some of the choices in the Mass Effect series to be difficult, even when they are differentiated by paragon and renegade. First was the council choice in my first playthrough of Mass Effect, there was also Virmire (though because I didn't like either one). Thank you for your concern about what I wear though.

Speaking as someone who tends to find words like 'evil' clumsy and largely pointless, you do realise you can say exactly the same thing about Hilter and suchlike.

"Stalin wasn't evil, he just thought differently about stuff. Like he had no value for human life and didn't care about anything but his own power. Just a different set of priorities, really."

I suppose you can't call EDI a nice person, either. Personally, I find it hard not to since, quite apart from anything else, when I first met her (as Lunar VI) I killed her, but she was able to move past that and be generally very helpful and understanding. But I guess from AI-viewpoint she's actually heartless and cruel.

But you do sum up quite nicely some good reasons why people hated having to abide by the Catalyst's choices was so terrible. They were all his choices. They were all monstrous to some degree and seemingly arbitrarily so (just his conception of how to fix things with the crucible) - quite apart from which, based upon the evidence you actually have to hand, as completely unnecessary as his stupid cycles.

Modifié par Oxspit, 20 juillet 2012 - 03:49 .

[CulturalGeekGirl]

Sajuro wrote...

osbornep wrote...

Sajuro wrote...

I still don't feel the choices are any more repugnant than your normal rpg heroes slaughtering their way through the hordes of mooks standing between them and the bad guys. Also I don't think  that the ending is thematically different from the rest of the series if we take a theme of the series to be one of the lines in the first Mass Effect trailer "Many choices lie ahead, none of them easy" you might disagree with me on what that means but given Garrus and Javik telling us we might have to make sacrifices and the whole "trillion dead souls and honor" deal. We have to dominate or destroy the Reapers because there are no ma and pa reaper to send whatever remained of Ranny the Rannoch Reaper back to, they won't retreat, they won't show us mercy, and they will never expect any.

Very interesting points, but I disagree on two counts. The first is that there seems to be a clear difference between sending soldiers under one's command to their near certain deaths to accomplish some military objective, and killing those samd soldiers in order to appease one's enemy. The destroy ending, for instance, more closely resembles the latter, and that's part of what's so bothersome about it.

Second, I don't really think it's the element of sacrifice or hard choices which makes the endings so awful. If for instance, activating the crucible caused some unintented effect that resulted in the destruction of most of the Victory Fleet, that would be a big sacrifice to make, but it wouldn't be so off-putting as what we have. Here's a silly analogy: Imagine that at the end of Return of the Jedi, the Emperor tells Luke, "You know, if you turn to the Dark side, all of the galaxy's problems will be solved. There will be utopia." Then, Luke turns to the Dark side, and that really does solve all the galaxy's problems. Nominally, you could call this a happy end, but it's incredibly stupid. All of Luke's efforts to become a Jedi, resist the dark side, and fight against the Emperor were a complete waste of time. Victory is earned by recognizing that after all, you were wrong and the cackling, murderous villians were right.

To me, accepting any of the three options given to you by the catalyst is equivalent to this ridiculous re-imagining of the Star Wars ending. As a matter of fact, they were just trying to save you from yourselves the whole time. True victory comes about when you come to recognize the infinite wisdom of the catalyst, who is arguably one of the most murderous characters ever portrayed in fiction. It's the bad guys who have all the right ideas about how to save the galaxy, and you win when you accept that. To me, that's just not the way to end a story about a war against homicidal machines.

@3DandBeyond:

Here are some links regarding those psychological experiments that might be of interest:

Philip Zimbardo's Stanford prison experiment

Stanley Milgram's experiment

I don't think your comparisons are valid, Shepard isn't giving into the darkside or some **** like that. The Catalyst isn't evil, it is an AI, the way it thinks is completely different from the way organics think. It started the cycle because that was the best solution at the time. Shepard comes up and the fact that the galaxy could work together to create the crucible and get it to the Citadel was proof that his solution to the problem wouldn't work so three other solutions were offered. Control is imprinting Shepard's memory and perspective of the Catalyst and using the Reapers as Guardians. Destroy was saying that you had faith that the Catalyst was wrong about synthetics and the only reason the geth had to die was because legion had a hard on for sentience. Synthesis is saying that the Catalyst is right but the best way is to combine synthetic and organic so Organics won't have to create more synthetics and the synthetics will have a greater understanding of organics. I know there are valid reasons for people to be upset with the endings and I think that EC answered a lot of questions but now there are people who are just looking for reasons to be disgusted by the ending.

@ Culturalgeekgirl, I found some of the choices in the Mass Effect series to be difficult, even when they are differentiated by paragon and renegade. First was the council choice in my first playthrough of Mass Effect, there was also Virmire (though because I didn't like either one). Thank you for your concern about what I wear though.

You said "none of them easy," which, to me, implied that you thought none of them were easy. That's different from some of them being easy. Thus I made some jokes. I'm sorry if I offended.

I don't agree that AIs or VIs can't be evil. If "evil" exists, then anything that makes choices and does things can be evil. The catalyst makes choices and does things. Why would you say an AI can't be evil?

The Catalyst  is the embodiment of a single idea: "To protect everyone, there must always be someone willing to do all the most awful things, to violate others, to squelch their compassion. There must always be someone who seeks to murder, control, or change others forcibly, for the greater good. Without someone being willing to force their will on the entire universe and do abominable things, all would be lost."

Choosing any of the three choices concedes that point, thus it reinforces and vindicates the Catalyst.

Modifié par CulturalGeekGirl, 20 juillet 2012 - 03:46 .

[3DandBeyond]

Sajuro wrote...

I don't think your comparisons are valid, Shepard isn't giving into the darkside or some **** like that. The Catalyst isn't evil, it is an AI, the way it thinks is completely different from the way organics think. It started the cycle because that was the best solution at the time. Shepard comes up and the fact that the galaxy could work together to create the crucible and get it to the Citadel was proof that his solution to the problem wouldn't work so three other solutions were offered. Control is imprinting Shepard's memory and perspective of the Catalyst and using the Reapers as Guardians. Destroy was saying that you had faith that the Catalyst was wrong about synthetics and the only reason the geth had to die was because legion had a hard on for sentience. Synthesis is saying that the Catalyst is right but the best way is to combine synthetic and organic so Organics won't have to create more synthetics and the synthetics will have a greater understanding of organics. I know there are valid reasons for people to be upset with the endings and I think that EC answered a lot of questions but now there are people who are just looking for reasons to be disgusted by the ending.

@ Culturalgeekgirl, I found some of the choices in the Mass Effect series to be difficult, even when they are differentiated by paragon and renegade. First was the council choice in my first playthrough of Mass Effect, there was also Virmire (though because I didn't like either one). Thank you for your concern about what I wear though.

You know the opposite is actually true.  People have been looking to reclaim their love for ME and so want to find any ray of hope in the endings.

The kid is not a kid, first off.  If he were Harbinger's VI people would be shouting to kill the beotch and no one would make one of his choices.

He may not personally be classified as evil, but you are choosing semantics over intent.  His actions are evil and he promotes them as if they just are what they are, yet he indicates knowledge of what he is doing.  He understands that it hurts people.  He may not care or feel anything.  He may be thinking his reason is just.  He knows organics do not like his solution and he has lied to people before and has lied to Shepard, contradicting himself.  If you lie, you understand on some level you are doing wrong.  If you know you are doing wrong and do it still, you have intent to do wrong.  Intentionally and repeatedly doing wrong is evil.  This would be from where Shepard is standing.  The kid may think his motives are totally pure.  It doesn't matter.  A man may think God sent him to abuse school children.  He is in no other way crazy or delusional-he merely believes God sent him to do this horrific thing.  I don't care what he thinks-I want it to stop.  If I believe the man might be telling the truth and let him keep doing this or help him to do it, what am I?

I would agree with culturalgeekgirl-the catalyst is an AI, that means it's sentient.  No one that saw Legion die for the geth could say AIs have no knowledge or understanding of right or wrong, good or evil.  EDI loves Joker.

Modifié par 3DandBeyond, 20 juillet 2012 - 03:53 .

[Sajuro]

sH0tgUn jUliA wrote...

The endings are so bad that I sometimes wonder if indeed the thing was a psychological test rather than a game.

All the choices are monstrous. There is no "none of the above". They had to put the caveats on the destroy option to sell the other two, and the new fourth option is Mac & Casey's big middle finger (just to be funny if you shot the hologram).

This is going to come back and bite them in the ass.

Giving fans a Reaper win ending is an FU
Because they didn't throw out canon to please you
wut?

[3DandBeyond]

Sajuro wrote...

sH0tgUn jUliA wrote...

The endings are so bad that I sometimes wonder if indeed the thing was a psychological test rather than a game.

All the choices are monstrous. There is no "none of the above". They had to put the caveats on the destroy option to sell the other two, and the new fourth option is Mac & Casey's big middle finger (just to be funny if you shot the hologram).

This is going to come back and bite them in the ass.

Giving fans a Reaper win ending is an FU
Because they didn't throw out canon to please you
wut?

It's instant death, no chance, because people didn't like the choices.  It is exactly that.

[AresKeith]

Sajuro wrote...

sH0tgUn jUliA wrote...

The endings are so bad that I sometimes wonder if indeed the thing was a psychological test rather than a game.

All the choices are monstrous. There is no "none of the above". They had to put the caveats on the destroy option to sell the other two, and the new fourth option is Mac & Casey's big middle finger (just to be funny if you shot the hologram).

This is going to come back and bite them in the ass.

Giving fans a Reaper win ending is an FU
Because they didn't throw out canon to please you
wut?

the problem is in the end we still don't have a right choice, each ending is doing what the Starbrat wants, Yes fans wanted a Reaper win ending and Bioware did promise one but didn't do it till now, but it should have been worked around what we did in the game and our EMS, make Players choice matter at the end

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

Sajuro wrote...

osbornep wrote...

@3DandBeyond:

Here are some links regarding those psychological experiments that might be of interest:

Philip Zimbardo's Stanford prison experiment

Stanley Milgram's experiment

I don't think your comparisons are valid, Shepard isn't giving into the darkside or some **** like that. The Catalyst isn't evil, it is an AI, the way it thinks is completely different from the way organics think. It started the cycle because that was the best solution at the time. Shepard comes up and the fact that the galaxy could work together to create the crucible and get it to the Citadel was proof that his solution to the problem wouldn't work so three other solutions were offered. Control is imprinting Shepard's memory and perspective of the Catalyst and using the Reapers as Guardians. Destroy was saying that you had faith that the Catalyst was wrong about synthetics and the only reason the geth had to die was because legion had a hard on for sentience. Synthesis is saying that the Catalyst is right but the best way is to combine synthetic and organic so Organics won't have to create more synthetics and the synthetics will have a greater understanding of organics. I know there are valid reasons for people to be upset with the endings and I think that EC answered a lot of questions but now there are people who are just looking for reasons to be disgusted by the ending.

@ Culturalgeekgirl, I found some of the choices in the Mass Effect series to be difficult, even when they are differentiated by paragon and renegade. First was the council choice in my first playthrough of Mass Effect, there was also Virmire (though because I didn't like either one). Thank you for your concern about what I wear though.

While I agree that the catalyst is an AI and that it thinks differently, there are a lot of issues. See Walters and Hudson wrote the thing. They purposely put the player in this situation. You must choose one of these horrible options just to end the game -- or you could hit CTRL-ALT-DEL and END TASK, or on the XBox you can quit to dashboard.

People aren't just looking for reasons to be disgusted with the ending. The ending hasn't changed that much. The destruction of the relays got retconned in the Control and Synthesis endings, because now you have the reapers rebuilding them, and the reapers help rebuild your civilizations. So they "improved" those endings. On the other hand they did absolutely nothing for the Destroy ending except sweeten it with some Sweet & Low. Ever had Sweet & Low? It's real sweet but has a very bitter aftertaste, and causes cancer in rats.

This is also supposed to be a game, but is it really? A role playing game. It's a role playing something, but it sure doesn't fit into the game category.

Game: (noun) A form of play or sport, esp. a competitive one played according to rules and decided by skill, strength, or luck.

Note the key phrase "decided by skill, strength, or luck." This implies winning or losing. In Mass Effect 1 and Mass Effect 2 there is a distinct point where the game is decided, where you win. In Mass Effect 3 there really is no such point. You can't win Mass Effect 3. It is not a game. The outcome is not decided. If you choose Control, you're dead. You lose. If you choose Synthesis, you're dead. You lose. If you choose Destroy, you're dead or maybe not because BW leaves it up to you to make up your ending, and since they do that there is no decision. Destroy leaves the galaxy a ****ting mess. If you refuse to use the Crucible, you lose. So it's LOSE, LOSE, No Decision, LOSE.

There is no object to the game. Defeat the reapers? Yet you have to commit genocide to do that, unless you let the Quarians wipe out the Geth by refusing to allow Legion or Geth VI to upload the reaper code. Even then it ends up as a No Decision.

This is going to come back and bite BioWare in the ass.