5087 réponses à ce sujet

[Jorji Costava]

@Sajuro:

It looks to me that accepting that the Reapers have all the right ideas about what the problems of the universe are, and how to solve them, is pretty close to turning to the dark side. The final choice exists to accomplish their goals, not yours. It is in effect a kind of appeasement: "If I agree with them about all this synthetic/organic stuff, and synthesis or whatever, then maybe they'll stop trying to kill me." The options are all calibrated to accomplish the Catalyst's goals, not Shepard's.

I don't want to cover too much old ground, so I'll just say that if you ever get bored or have some time to kill, I'd invite you to read a lot of the earlier pages of this thread. There's absolutely nothing wrong with you enjoying (or at least accepting) the endings, but reading those back pages may help you understanding the perspectives of those who don't. Also, there's just a lot of really great stuff there in general, not just on the endings.

[Zan51]

It should bite them in the ass, 3D! The only time I had such a big FAIL in my writing was when I was on long term low level antibiotics and got poisoned by them to the point the words literally grew legs and ran off the page of the newspaper I was reading! That cold, hard Writer part of my hind brain sat there and said, "Ooh, that's what it looks like!" and the rest of me is going like "meeep!" I had an excuse, and my editor caught it and made me rework it ALL. They don't have an excuse.

You got it in one, 3D. We cannot win, so where is the carrot they give us to replay the game? MP? Can't be, it's OK, but not a game with an immersive universe. It's kinda like playing Quake Arena or Unreal Tournament, not a game. And the endings of ME3 are not game endings meant to satisfy you and have you coming back for more Bioware products.

Part of me is hoping they really have something awesome planned when they said to the effect, "If you knew what we had planned you wouldn't be like this." Maybe they are planning to make this whole ending a dream and there is more coming, drip by drip, the REAL ending in the SP DLCs. But much as I want to believe, I am not very hopeful.

Tinkerbell, sorry, girl, you gonna have to keep on lying in the rubble from the explosion for now. Maybe one day I can clap my hands and say "I believe!" again though. (and yes, I intentionally compared the Destroy ending to Peter Pan! as they are both fairy tales!)

Modifié par Zan51, 20 juillet 2012 - 04:22 .

[Sajuro]

osbornep wrote...

@Sajuro:

It looks to me that accepting that the Reapers have all the right ideas about what the problems of the universe are, and how to solve them, is pretty close to turning to the dark side. The final choice exists to accomplish their goals, not yours. It is in effect a kind of appeasement: "If I agree with them about all this synthetic/organic stuff, and synthesis or whatever, then maybe they'll stop trying to kill me." The options are all calibrated to accomplish the Catalyst's goals, not Shepard's.

I don't want to cover too much old ground, so I'll just say that if you ever get bored or have some time to kill, I'd invite you to read a lot of the earlier pages of this thread. There's absolutely nothing wrong with you enjoying (or at least accepting) the endings, but reading those back pages may help you understanding the perspectives of those who don't. Also, there's just a lot of really great stuff there in general, not just on the endings.

I have posted in this thread before but I could never bring myself to read through it because it always seemed to be one closed feedback loop of "Mass Effect 3's ending sucked" and "yeah it did suck". The Catalyst's goal is to foster peace between synthetics and organics, but it is a crazy AI who thinks that the only way to help organics is to keep them from destroying themselves from destroying them first. If part of appeasing your enemies means you can shoot a tube and blow them all to hell or take control of them, hell I'll take that.
Sorry GeekGirl, I got a little butthurt and just read the first line of your no pants post. Not all of the choices are hard (unless you're a psycho and it is a hard choice whether or not to to shoot someone who is kneeling in front of you) but I think the ending was one of the hardest choices even if it was only thing that made me really roleplay as Shepard, was he willing to die and destroy the geth if it meant he could destroy the reapers, the answer was yes by the way

[Obadiah]

@drayfish

It is easy to come up with ethical dilemmas, but since this one was delivered so plausibly, I don't consider it easy or cheap.

With respect to hypotheticals - tedious indeed. Which is why I haven't raised them.

The options you gave for yours aren't in the game. The options in the game are:
a) kill the pyscho and one of your family members; the rest survive
die yourself, assume control of him and his buddies and make them do communitiy service for the rest of their lives; your family survives
c) die youself and "upgrade" your family until they meet some standard the psycho feels they are worthy of to go on living; then the psycho turns into a benevolent librarian helping your family build a better life.
d) you attack, you and your whole family dies, and the next family the psycho threatens is able to kill him becasue you weakened him..

I only mention that to illustrate the fact that, as distasteful as you think this game is (perfectly legitimate response to look my options and say "f**k off"), you aren't actually talking about it.

Modifié par Obadiah, 20 juillet 2012 - 05:07 .

[Jorji Costava]

@Sajuro:

Part of the problem is that I think the ending does as much as it can to convince you that the AI isn't crazy; it's the being with the answers to the universe. I think it's very likely that the flame analogy, for instance, was intended as a direct response to the 'yo dawg' meme. If it's supposed to be nuts, then why does everything it says about synthesis, control and destroy turn out right? That was the point of the comparison with the Emperor: If the Emperor says, "Do X and everything will be great," and then that turns out to be right, there's a big problem with the writing. It seems like a bad idea to have the villain be the one who has the correct answers to the problems of the universe.

There's nothing wrong with ambiguous villains in general; there's nothing wrong in principle with the suggestion that maybe the protagonists are wrong after all. But I don't think ME is the kind of story that will sustain this sort of twist. It's a story about us versus what have up until the final 10 minutes been unambiguously evil machines out to kill all sentient life. That's why I chose the comparison with the Emperor; throughout the rest of the movies, the Emperor is just a cackling villain. To reveal him as really being the wisest one in the land at the end would be absurd. You couldn't rationalize that particular twist by rhetorically asking, "What's wrong with ambiguous villains?"

Again, it doesn't necessarily have to do with the concrete outcomes. The ending of that Star Wars revision I made up is pretty happy: After all, galactic peace is achieved. It has everything to do with the incongruity of making the characters who are unambiguous villains also be the guys who know all the answers. More than anything, it's the fact that the content of those answers (that synthetic/organic conflict is the most fundamental problem of the universe) runs so contrary to everything that happened before.

As far as this thread being a feedback loop, I can assure you there have been some substantive and frequently passionate disagreements about a large number of issues in the game (IT, which ending choice is best, etc.). True, most of the people who have regularly posted here have disliked the ending, but obviously we have no control over who wants to post here and how often they do. I can't speak for anyone else, but my impression is that dissenting voices have always been treated with respect.

/night

[robertthebard]

drayfish wrote...

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.

Nice post, thanks for the reply.  To the first point, the comment is not directed at anyone in particular, but does address some of the attitude that I have seen displayed here and in other threads.  I made a post somewhere that some would rather keep a platoon alive than give an order that would result in the death of a platoon, but save a city.  When I point out that this is the "greater good" some get kind of offended at the notion that people dieing can serve a "greater good".  I have been in the military, and understand that orders can result in dead soldiers, and would like to think that people giving these orders know what they're doing.  I am also a realist, and know that sometimes they don't.

The endings don't bother me, because I don't play them.  I am of the opinion that the game should end in London.  Because I am of this opinion, I quit there, and don't complain about the endings, as they don't apply to me.  The way I see it, that's where the war should end, for me.  I did exactly what I said I would do when I opted to not hit the reporter in the Embassy area of the Citadel:  Stop them, or die trying.  I died trying, and I got a hell of a force for them to work with.  In some games, I can see my EMS being high enough that maybe they retook Earth, but lost anyway.  In others, that defeat so close to the goal demoralizes my army, and we just lose.  I am content with these ending scenarios because I enjoyed the journey to get to that point.  I'm not going to judge whether others can relate to that or not.  Nor am I going to go on a Crusade to get BioWare to change the game, unless I could get them to add an export point at the beam, so that I can reuse more than one character for future play throughs.

[Sajuro]

osbornep wrote...

@Sajuro:

Part of the problem is that I think the ending does as much as it can to convince you that the AI isn't crazy; it's the being with the answers to the universe. I think it's very likely that the flame analogy, for instance, was intended as a direct response to the 'yo dawg' meme. If it's supposed to be nuts, then why does everything it says about synthesis, control and destroy turn out right? That was the point of the comparison with the Emperor: If the Emperor says, "Do X and everything will be great," and then that turns out to be right, there's a big problem with the writing. It seems like a bad idea to have the villain be the one who has the correct answers to the problems of the universe.

There's nothing wrong with ambiguous villains in general; there's nothing wrong in principle with the suggestion that maybe the protagonists are wrong after all. But I don't think ME is the kind of story that will sustain this sort of twist. It's a story about us versus what have up until the final 10 minutes been unambiguously evil machines out to kill all sentient life. That's why I chose the comparison with the Emperor; throughout the rest of the movies, the Emperor is just a cackling villain. To reveal him as really being the wisest one in the land at the end would be absurd. You couldn't rationalize that particular twist by rhetorically asking, "What's wrong with ambiguous villains?"

Again, it doesn't necessarily have to do with the concrete outcomes. The ending of that Star Wars revision I made up is pretty happy: After all, galactic peace is achieved. It has everything to do with the incongruity of making the characters who are unambiguous villains also be the guys who know all the answers. More than anything, it's the fact that the content of those answers (that synthetic/organic conflict is the most fundamental problem of the universe) runs so contrary to everything that happened before.

As far as this thread being a feedback loop, I can assure you there have been some substantive and frequently passionate disagreements about a large number of issues in the game (IT, which ending choice is best, etc.). True, most of the people who have regularly posted here have disliked the ending, but obviously we have no control over who wants to post here and how often they do. I can't speak for anyone else, but my impression is that dissenting voices have always been treated with respect.

/night

I don't think I would have been satisfied if the Reapers did it for the Evulz, if they didn't have some kind of reason, not from Mass Effect at least. But thank you for being respectful of my opinion and I hope that you can come to some kind of peace with the ending. I guess we agree to disagree, but apparently the extended universe use the Yuuzahn Vong (spelling?) as a way to justify the Emperor's fetish for planet destroying super weapons. The Reapers always had the goal of imposing order on chaos, it was expanded in me3. Also I thought one of the writers said "yeah, the catalyst is insane in its special way"

[Oxspit]

Obadiah wrote...

@drayfish

It is easy to come up with ethical dilemmas, but since this one was delivered so plausibly, I don't consider it easy or cheap.

I honestly just can't understand how people can believe that..... I guess I'll just have to accept that people do.

Whenever someone says "The choices you are presented with, and the way in which they were presented made a lot of sense to me and was completely plausible" I have to wonder if we're operating under different definitions of "sense" and "plausible". I feel similar to how I would feel if someone said to me "I felt the plot of Independence Day to be, on the whole, really well thought out and I just bought it".

I mean, I guess the whole 'was the ending just contrived and silly?' is slightly different to the 'did it almost seem to go out of its way to contradict the themes of the the entire preceding story?', and there are threads for the first question already so we should probably not go into that in this one .... but dear god, the answer is "yes" to both questions!

[Sajuro]

Obadiah wrote...

@drayfish

It is easy to come up with ethical dilemmas, but since this one was delivered so plausibly, I don't consider it easy or cheap.

With respect to hypotheticals - tedious indeed. Which is why I haven't raised them.

The options you gave for yours aren't in the game. The options in the game are:
a) kill the pyscho and one of your family members; the rest survive
die yourself, assume control of him and his buddies and make them do communitiy service for the rest of their lives; your family survives
c) die youself and "upgrade" your family until they meet some standard the psycho feels they are worthy of to go on living; then the psycho turns into a benevolent librarian helping your family build a better life.
d) you attack, you and your whole family dies, and the next family the psycho threatens is able to kill him becasue you weakened him..

I only mention that to illustrate the fact that, as distasteful as you think this game is (perfectly legitimate response to look my options and say "f**k off"), you aren't actually talking about it.

Not perfect analogy, Control would be joining the psychos so you could exert a positive influence over them, giving up everything you are in the process. Synthesis would be marrying the psychos.

[Oxspit]

Actually, to be fair, I suppose what Obadiah is saying is that, supposing we are supposed to take the star child as a demented psychopath (which, I would hasten to add, I really don't think we are, with each choice presented as a victory for Shepard), who offers us a sadistic choice for his own (I would really have to say rather nonsensical) reasons.

Supposing that, and that Shepard has no real choice but submit to one of the star child's choices however grudgingly. That is to say that ME3 is re-cast as a kind of defeat in the above terms.

In this instance, is the ending still thematically revolting? If so, how?

[robertthebard]

Oxspit wrote...

Actually, to be fair, I suppose what Obadiah is saying is that, supposing we are supposed to take the star child as a demented psychopath (which, I would hasten to add, I really don't think we are, with each choice presented as a victory for Shepard), who offers us a sadistic choice for his own (I would really have to say rather nonsensical) reasons.

Supposing that, and that Shepard has no real choice but submit to one of the star child's choices however grudgingly. That is to say that ME3 is re-cast as a kind of defeat in the above terms.

In this instance, is the ending still thematically revolting? If so, how?

I don't know, but points for the gratuitous Spiderman reference.

[Oxspit]

Gratuitous? I think not.

[Obadiah]

@Sajuro I accept the correction.

@osbornep I bought into the idea that the Reapers were part of some logical system since Mass Effect 1. Evil may be an appropriate description for them, but it is beside the point. The Reapers don't care about us - we're like talking ants to them. They might be curious about a few of us in an academic way, but they have an agenda which they intend to fulfill which necessitates our destruction, and that doesn't trouble them too much.

When the Catalyst started talking about the inevitable war in the control room, that seemed plausible and I assumed it was probably correct. That fact however was irrelevant; the Reapers had to be stopped.

Modifié par Obadiah, 20 juillet 2012 - 12:56 .

[GodSentinelOmega]

Everybody at some will look at how bad things are in the world and go if i could choose here's how i'd do it.

As i've said before, in the real world hard and grey choices happen all the time. Sacrifices are made, and 'the greater good' does take precedence sometimes in that some are sacrificed so that many can live.

The problems with ME3 don't really happen till the end, because up to that point we are fighting the bad guys on our terms. And calling soldiers in even though you know they will die happens in the thessia mission when the asari give you air support to get to the temple yes?

The reason the catalyst and options fail isn't just that he's the head reaper, or that he rebelled aginst his creators and made them the first reaper. No, its that during his explanation of his purpose to find a way for synthetics and organics to coexist. Because he failed that means there is no way. And so the created will Always rebel.

Not thats its unlikely or one potential outcome. It is absolutely inevitable. So he created a cycle.of slaughter to prevent this. Nothing is absolute. Nothing is or should inevitable.

And making one of the three choices does validate glowboys viewpoint because no matter what you choose the solution is based on the inevitable conflict.

Control means the you decide to replace the catalyst as ultimate autocrat and stand ready for the conflict.

Synthesis means that you accept that only a monumental change can force peace. So all differences in life are removed, this taking away the fundamental reason for godchilds assertion that death is only a matter of time.

And destroy means you accept that coexistence was impossible, so the best way is to wipe out all synthetic life and prevent any more being made.

Oh and the reapers are stopped as a bonus to all of them. Sending troops into a bad situation with very little chance of getting out to save many is a hard choice yes. Destroying the reapers but having every synthetic life die too is not the same. Not to me.

[SHARXTREME]

robertthebard wrote...
Let me start by saying that the "Shepard" you present here wouldn't be talking to Wrex. Wrex would be dead on Virmire. 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.

You misunderstood fully my intention.
I was trying to say that my Shepard that
-spared the Racchni Queen
-saved the council(which was without consequence)
-saved Wrex
-saved Maelons research
-decided to overwrite geth heretics(tough decision)
-destroyed collector base(strategically questionable, ethically "right", ultimately without consequence)
-helped Mordin cure the genophage
-helped Legion(which is the most important person in whole game given that focus of ME shifted to synthetics-organics eternal war)
-helped Geth and persuaded Quarians to make peace with Geth
-defended EDI's rights as a person in debates on the Normandy
-spared the Racchni queen again
-said that we cannot sacrifice the soul of our species
That Shepard became the complete opposite by choosing any of the options given by Catalyst.
Game(Bioware) said indirectly that none of those actions were relevant, changed anything, and that is unacceptable for me. Based on pure logic, causality and known laws of science that is absolutely impossible. Based on psychology, to choose any of the 3 options in such situation must mean that that particular Shepard lost his judgement and mind suddenly.

As for the other part of your post, you missed the point of (this) debate completely. That is a known logical fallacy in debate - Argumentum ad verecundiam . You invoked authority/prerequisite of "participation in war" in debate that is not about it at all, .

BTW sadly, I do know about war not from the news. I was born in Bosnia, I live in Croatia. 17 years ago war has finished here. My both grandfathers were in WWII, fighting the occupying forces of Italy and Germany and domestic collaborators..My father was in Serbian concentration camp. I myself was forced to leave my home and later, after the war, I served some time in the army. But, that does not carry any weight in debate about ME3. It's not even close to the topic.

[GodSentinelOmega]

Sorry fo the double post but a few more things occurred to me.

In transformers (bear with me) Decepticon leader Megatrons motto has generally been 'Peace through Tyranny'. To make peace, use force and exercise absolute control. The catalysts choices to me, really advocate this.

You either become the tyrant. Agree with the tyrant and Homogenise the galaxy to force peace. Or fully accept the tyrants logic and slaughter those chosen few to acheive victory. They are simply tyrants choices.

Also as i've said before, its really hard if not impossible to reconcile the characters of the reapers from the first to games, and even the destroyer on Rannoch in 3 with the 'they are as uncaring as fire' logic of the catalyst. I was happy with vague but perfectly acceptable way Soverign spoke of the reapers with his clear contempt for organic life.. Along with the ultimate predator thing from 2. The idea that they leave tech around so as to advance organic life, then harvest us in so twisted reproductive cycle. Scouring the galaxy clean because they see us as a mistake that they exist to fix. If they're supposed to be unfeeling, why put so much feeling into their voices. Legions voice is designed to be emotionless as he is a hive mind to begin with, and grows into an individual personality.

The reapers are either malevalent cthullu monsters from space who want to slaughter and harvest us. Or they're simple drones designed for purpose as casperlyst says.

Ii was actually hoping for an ending in which some of the last lines would be. So what were they really? I guess we'll never know for certain. Artistic? Maybe not. But i would have bought it.

Modifié par GodSentinelOmega, 20 juillet 2012 - 11:44 .

[SHARXTREME]

Sajuro wrote...
I think the ending was one of the hardest choices even if it was only thing that made me really roleplay as Shepard, was he willing to die and destroy the geth if it meant he could destroy the reapers, the answer was yes by the way

I can't see how, after all, Catalyst's main premise is that "created will always rebel against their creators"(he is speaking about himself mainly)
"synthetics and organics can't live in peace"(Geth, Legion and EDI disproved this)
"peace won't last" (this he cannot know)
Why? He can't foresee the future.
Why? Because if he could, he would made the Reapers make the Crucible themselves and use his "ideal solution".
And because he can't see the future and acts like he can by killing everything in sight that opposes his vision of the future that makes him delusional, genocidal lunatic.
Everything about the end is not logical, unless you choose to submit to his completely twisted reasoning.

[Chaotic-Fusion]

If the catalysts had been presented from the start as untrustworthy, delusional and with a twisted understanding of how the galaxy works, it could have worked. We don't necessarily have to agree with him, but we're forced to cooperate as there is no other choice. But the way he was written made it seem like we were supposed, even expected, to trust him implicitly, the way it was presented it seemed like the presumption that the created always rebel against their creators was the definite truth and not the product of the catalyst's own, twisted logic. Never mind that his reapers, until now, had been trying to kill us all for the past few years, we're just supposed to trust him, because you know, he looks like a kid, and that's enough.

[ddraigcoch123]

robertthebard wrote...

drayfish wrote...

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.

Nice post, thanks for the reply.  To the first point, the comment is not directed at anyone in particular, but does address some of the attitude that I have seen displayed here and in other threads.  I made a post somewhere that some would rather keep a platoon alive than give an order that would result in the death of a platoon, but save a city.  When I point out that this is the "greater good" some get kind of offended at the notion that people dieing can serve a "greater good".  I have been in the military, and understand that orders can result in dead soldiers, and would like to think that people giving these orders know what they're doing.  I am also a realist, and know that sometimes they don't.

The endings don't bother me, because I don't play them.  I am of the opinion that the game should end in London.  Because I am of this opinion, I quit there, and don't complain about the endings, as they don't apply to me.  The way I see it, that's where the war should end, for me.  I did exactly what I said I would do when I opted to not hit the reporter in the Embassy area of the Citadel:  Stop them, or die trying.  I died trying, and I got a hell of a force for them to work with.  In some games, I can see my EMS being high enough that maybe they retook Earth, but lost anyway.  In others, that defeat so close to the goal demoralizes my army, and we just lose.  I am content with these ending scenarios because I enjoyed the journey to get to that point.  I'm not going to judge whether others can relate to that or not.  Nor am I going to go on a Crusade to get BioWare to change the game, unless I could get them to add an export point at the beam, so that I can reuse more than one character for future play throughs.

i really do think its unhelpful to talk about peoples experience in real life of conflict and war... as has been very clearly demonstrated by the previous post by SHARXTREME....  lets not get to carried away this is a game and there is a lot of really freakin appaling stuff going in in the real world, but it is a game that created a galaxy with its own science, technology and art of war...

its great that you can head cannon your own range of endings and choose to stop at a point in the game at which you are in disagreement with BW... some of us keep playing and get to that point later...

it is becomming more and more an issue of integrity... BW, evidenced by its lead writer, clearly wanted the end of the game to result in a galactic wasteland, the choices offered by the enemy are the only ones on offer that created the game endings... which all result in the hero dying and in dying having to make (in the terms of the game, shepard and all key paragon characters) immoral choices... is this what ME has been about...

BW gave us the galaxy, gave us our hero and to a great extent put the parameters around our hero's behaviour... at no stage did i have the option just to shoot Legion... or random Batarians because of what my personal attitude may have been... my attitude and decision making has been (as it should) mediated through my Shepard... so why hasnt BW adhered to its own parameters...

BW either needed to be very explicit in its wasteland ending, with a dead Shepard whichever way you cut it,  and stick with it... thus ensuring their 'artistic integrity' or when they took feedback from the majority of people who 'live' in the ME galaxy should have done a proper make over of the ending and not something that is neither fish nor fowl...

Someone made a really great comment earlier... that some of you (and i think i may have made up the time in the year i've beenplaying) have been fighting to save the galaxy as Shepard for a long time so we dont give up that easy... perhaps we need to start a campaign that asks...

WHAT WOULD SHEPARD DO? 

Modifié par ddraigcoch123, 20 juillet 2012 - 01:10 .

[dancarrero]

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.

If you dont give a damn get the hell out.What are you commenting for?

Modifié par dancarrero, 20 juillet 2012 - 01:44 .

[3DandBeyond]

Zan51 wrote...

It should bite them in the ass, 3D! The only time I had such a big FAIL in my writing was when I was on long term low level antibiotics and got poisoned by them to the point the words literally grew legs and ran off the page of the newspaper I was reading! That cold, hard Writer part of my hind brain sat there and said, "Ooh, that's what it looks like!" and the rest of me is going like "meeep!" I had an excuse, and my editor caught it and made me rework it ALL. They don't have an excuse.

You got it in one, 3D. We cannot win, so where is the carrot they give us to replay the game? MP? Can't be, it's OK, but not a game with an immersive universe. It's kinda like playing Quake Arena or Unreal Tournament, not a game. And the endings of ME3 are not game endings meant to satisfy you and have you coming back for more Bioware products.

Part of me is hoping they really have something awesome planned when they said to the effect, "If you knew what we had planned you wouldn't be like this." Maybe they are planning to make this whole ending a dream and there is more coming, drip by drip, the REAL ending in the SP DLCs. But much as I want to believe, I am not very hopeful.

Tinkerbell, sorry, girl, you gonna have to keep on lying in the rubble from the explosion for now. Maybe one day I can clap my hands and say "I believe!" again though. (and yes, I intentionally compared the Destroy ending to Peter Pan! as they are both fairy tales!)

You nailed it.  I may sound pretty cynical at times, but I am exactly the opposite.  Life deals us all a certain sandwich and all of us get the poop sandwich at times.  I think I've gotten it kind of often, but I've always believed you determine which part of that sandwich you remember and how you remember it.  I see true greatness in people everywhere I look.  That doesn't blind me to the bad, but it lets me know that bad isn't all there is.  As such I tend to always remain hopeful at heart.  I hope that Bioware has some redeeming value.  I see so many loose ends and then a complete fantasy ending.  Never adhered to IT because I wanted an ending, a real one.  But, now I'd love that to be what this is or a dream or a nightmare.  I keep wondering how someone that used such recurrent themes as "From Ashes", "redemption", "phoenix", and so on, could come up with the fantasy "child" from hell.  I think, no I know I really wanted that to be what the ending was about. 

All along Shepard had to force the galaxy to get its act together.  Shepard helped others redeem themselves and their lives (Ashley, Jack, Thane, Zaeed, Wrex, Tali, Miranda, and etc.)  I think I figured that having everyone at last unite to fight a common foe would give them all redemption and would give the galaxy redemption.  It would be a "coming of age" story for the galaxy and people everywhere who had always been like the reapers' children.  Not to be so far-in choosing one of the kid's choices you get to help daddy do his chores.  If you refuse, you get a spanking.

I think in some ways writing has a responsibility.  And I mean it has to fufill its own promise of what it is.  Like being asked to paint something.  A Norman Rockwell is not a Jackson ******.  If you have always painted abstracts and I say I really love your work, I'd love you to paint something for me and you pull out something that looks like a Rockwell, well I will think you have flipped your lid. 

I'm predisposed to expect stories (now games) in series where the hero always walks away from some impossible fight to have one way to remain true to that.  ME3 fell off the deep end.  Your Peter Pan reference reminded me of a great ending.  Star Trek The Undiscovered Country.  "Second star to the right and straight on till morning."  I wasn't the biggest fan of the original series, liked the movies well enough, but I always thought this was a great way to end it all with this cast.  It said everything in one line.  It also is kind of how we have always seen them-repeatedly and always young in the original series, kids playing at being in space.  I loved that.  That one line makes me want to see the tv shows and the movies again because I like the idea of them as that-perennially kids, having fun.

Another great ending for me was to the series "Six Feet Under".  I cried through almost the whole scene and just kept thinking how well done that was.  I don't know if you saw the series, but it was totally in keeping with what the series was about and it "put to rest" so to speak all that you wanted to know.  It felt rewarding and finished and as sad (truly bittersweet) as it is I can watch that one long scene again and again.

[Obadiah]

Just a general question: what is the problem with the Crucible Destroy weapon of mass destruction?

Is it some combination of one of the following, or is it something else:
1) It is a weapon of mass destruction
2) Its purpose is explained by the Catalyst, whose affects that Catalyst finds acceptable
3) It targets one type of life-form: Synthetics

From what I've read on this thread it seems like some combination of 1 and 2 make it or its implications unacceptable.

Is there a version of this weapon that is acceptable:
a) targets only Reapers
targets another life-form
c) targets everyone
d) is not explained by or acceptable to the Catalyst

Modifié par Obadiah, 20 juillet 2012 - 02:57 .

[robertthebard]

ddraigcoch123 wrote...

i really do think its unhelpful to talk about peoples experience in real life of conflict and war... as has been very clearly demonstrated by the previous post by SHARXTREME....  lets not get to carried away this is a game and there is a lot of really freakin appaling stuff going in in the real world, but it is a game that created a galaxy with its own science, technology and art of war...

It would be really nice if real life didn't play into internet conversations, but none of us live in a vacuum that consists entirely of this or that internet conversation, or game world.  Everything that we have done, seen or heard about shapes us, directly or indirectly, to one extent or another.

its great that you can head cannon your own range of endings and choose to stop at a point in the game at which you are in disagreement with BW... some of us keep playing and get to that point later...

...and some that do may disagree with the choices, but find that they can make one or the other of them w/out sacrificing what their vision of Shepard was.  Others then tell them that, because their own Shepard would never choose that way, they must be wrong.  Whether I like BioWare's vision of where the game goes or not, that's where it goes.  We have people that are willing to redefine the English language to say that they have no right to Artistic Integrity.  Obviously, I don't agree with the endings, but I also think that 3 or 4 threads a week decrying how bad they were, or how bad how they were delivered were is more akin to stomping one's feet, and holding one's breath in WalMart because they didn't get that toy they wanted than it is honest critique, and nobody need take my word for how many of these threads there are, perusing the first few pages of topics will demonstrate that.

it is becomming more and more an issue of integrity... BW, evidenced by its lead writer, clearly wanted the end of the game to result in a galactic wasteland, the choices offered by the enemy are the only ones on offer that created the game endings... which all result in the hero dying and in dying having to make (in the terms of the game, shepard and all key paragon characters) immoral choices... is this what ME has been about...

Essentially, yes, this is what the game is about.  This may not be what this particular story in the game was about, even though it is the medium through which the overall story is delivered, but the Reapers come every 50,000 years, and harvest the technologically advanced races, essentially leaving those worlds as wastelands.  There is no logical reason to believe, or disbelieve that we can change that fate.  In other words, I see no reason to believe that we can stop the Reapers, but, if we had spent the time the Protheans bought us preparing, I see no reason why we couldn't, and as contradictory as that sounds, it's really simple.  If we do what is presented to us in the story, as written, there is no reason to expect a different outcome.  Although I really wish that the Crucible/Catalyst had been handled differently, as I have stated before.  If, for example, the Council worlds had spent the time we spent goofing off with the Collectors building up defences, and taking advantage of any tech we could salvage from Sovereign to prepare, instead of denying the existance of the threat, we could have been better prepared, and maybe not got caught with our pants down, at which point we're pretty much doomed to repeat history.

BW gave us the galaxy, gave us our hero and to a great extent put the parameters around our hero's behaviour... at no stage did i have the option just to shoot Legion... or random Batarians because of what my personal attitude may have been... my attitude and decision making has been (as it should) mediated through my Shepard... so why hasnt BW adhered to its own parameters...

BW either needed to be very explicit in its wasteland ending, with a dead Shepard whichever way you cut it,  and stick with it... thus ensuring their 'artistic integrity' or when they took feedback from the majority of people who 'live' in the ME galaxy should have done a proper make over of the ending and not something that is neither fish nor fowl...

Someone made a really great comment earlier... that some of you (and i think i may have made up the time in the year i've beenplaying) have been fighting to save the galaxy as Shepard for a long time so we dont give up that easy... perhaps we need to start a campaign that asks...

WHAT WOULD SHEPARD DO? 

As an interesting aside, you request that we leave real world experiences out, while accepting real world morality as a reason for the choices being bad.  I just find the choices to be bad, or potentially bad, depending on the outcome of choices leading up to them, for example, in my own experience the one time I did play through until the end, and chose Destroy since I was only killing one friend, and myself I don't see that choice as being as morally bankrupt, or even out of character for my Shepard.  Others will, of course, disagree, and point to how south my moral compass must be, based purely on their own real life experiences that tell them that all choices are bad.

However, this is far from the first time that you can get your morals checked, if we're going to apply real world morality to the game.  In ME 1, you're given a choice, kill the Rachni queen, or let her go.  Now, regardless of whether or not it matters in ME 3, where that choice can come back, the initial choice is Genocide for "crimes" that this queen had nothing to do with, or letting her go.  Yes, even though you're only killing one queen, you are dooming an entire species to extinction based on something the example you have had nothing to do with.

Did you save the Collector base?  Why?  Was TIM's methodology leading up to that point such that you felt he was completely trustworthy?  Do you stop Jack from killing the other test subject in her loyalty mission?  I'll point out that letting him go is equivalent to killing him on the spot, since there are no other shuttles on the landing site, and no reason for all the people there to hide their own shuttle, which begs the question:  How did they get there?  However, with what's presented, either way, that guy dies.  Do you stop Miranda from killing her friend in her loyalty mission?  Do you maroon Jacob's father, or arrest him?  If you maroon him, is it because you're avenging the mistreatment of the crew?  If so, how is your reasoning any different from his?  You are doing it to satisfy your urges, just as he did what he did to satisfy his own.  I maroon him, and will own that it's petty for me to do so, but ultimately satisfying, and if the option came up, I'd shoot him myself.

The point being, the whole game can lead to shades of grey, depending on what you choose to do.  This is not meant to justify poor handling of the Crucible/Catalyst, but simply to point out that, with the choices you have if you choose to play that far, they aren't too far out of character for choices you may have made leading up to them, if some of them are out of character at all.  If you willingly worked for Cerberus in ME 2, how is Destroy, even if you tried to save the Geth(which, if you're truly as humancentric as TIM, why would you?) an out of character choice?  You are choosing to destroy a synthetic race to further humanity.  There is also the possiblity that, if you willingly followed TIM in 2, that Control would seem the best option to you, since it also furthers humanity.  Considering the steps taken in 3 by Cerberus/TIM it's not too much of a stretch to believe that TIM might find Synthesis preferable to Destroy, since he was essentially doing it making his own husks, although that is rather extreme, and not the end result I've seen on youtube vids for Synthesis, the beings created do seem to be more than they were, instead of less, considering what husks end up being.

[vallore]

GodSentinelOmega wrote...

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.

It reminds me; there was a theory going around that I liked very much: It assumed Harbinger and perhaps other elder reapers controlled the reaper horde in a similar mode to indoctrination, so that most reapers were simply tools of the older ones. The crucible emitted a jamming frequency that cut Harbinger and his cronies control signal, freeing the other reapers from control for the first time in millions of years.

What would they do?

Some would turn on the Harbinger, looking for revenge, others would turn against those that destroyed their own civilization, and others yet would try to flee. With the reaper armada cast into chaos by reapers turning on reapers, it would then be possible to the combined fleet of the galaxy achieve some form of victory.

It would have been ironical if that their best weapon - Indoctrination – the one thing that better express their desire of control over all things, were also the Reapers Achilles heel.

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 something it puzzles me; how come the authors didn’t realize that some decisions are not fun to make, no matter how hard they are? And if they are not fun, what is their point in a game like Mass Effect?

Did they really expect that a player would go through the ending and say:

“Ugh! What a depressing ending! I had to break Shepard’s previously unconquered spirit, I had to force her to betray her most basic convictions, and on top of it, I had to accept her being killed in some form on nonsensical ritual death, just to accomplish her most basic goals.... and If I made a perfect run, I could aspire at a glimpse of a torso on the rubble that may belong to Shepard...now, I can’t wait to experience this again!?”

3DandBeyond wrote...

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.

Very well put.  And the authors did that after getting it so right, like with Mordin’s nephew, (in ME2), or more broadly, with the loyalty missions of ME2. they completely forget that lesson in the ending.

Imo, the main point of the war was not to vanquish the reapers, but the stories of those vanquishing them; their individual tales of heroism, failure and victory. But the ending forgets all that. It attempts to suddenly transcend the realm of mortals so that we are forced to give answers to a mad god's dilemma.

After the brutal advance into the beam, we are suddenly asked to forget about the despair and monstrous acts of the reapers, and quietly sit down having tea and scones with the leader of the enemy, while he justifies his monstruous actions we absently nod, with only the oh- so-slightly, polite hint of disapproval. That is jarring right there. How could Bioware expect such an instantaneous detachment from everything that happen just seconds ago?

And how could Bioware forget that the main character’s sacrifice cannot be gratuitous, just for the sake of adding a bit of bitter in a nearly absent sweet cocktail?

It is one thing to ask the player to sacrifice her character to save the life of a companion, another to do so because the crucible engineers forgot to install a control consol with the red activate button on it.... or to ask the player to have her character jump into a volcano, (I mean a beam of light), because the catalyst apparently never heard of scrubbing for DNA samples.

How could they forget that the desire to see Shepard alive is a powerful emotional motivator that no manner of headcanon can satisfy? Or that the desire to see the reunion, however brief is the natural desire of many a player, as it is the real desire why their Shepards were giving all they got? To have a chance of returning and seeing those she loved?

How could they do, a game, then two, then three games about people, and then nearly completely forget it in the ending?

Edited for clarity (again)

Modifié par vallore, 20 juillet 2012 - 03:15 .