5087 réponses à ce sujet

[Flayed Man of A-Ton]

3DandBeyond wrote...

Book of Mazarbul wrote...


If you prefer sci fi, that's perfectly fine - but I don't get the point of dwelling on it so much. I have a limited budget as well, and blew 80 bucks on ME3 only to be utterly betrayed. Yes, it's unfortunate for the people who only had this money to spend and now have no way to pass the time for the next year. But there is no reason to nurse the wound, picking a scab doesn't make it heal, it just makes the scar all the worse. It's over, it's done, and there are dozens of other movies, video games, books and television shows that are superior to Mass Effect in every way that you can experience affordably, or even for free. 


It's terrible that the endings were so bad, but playing Mass Effect 3 as your only hobby for the next year is pretty pathetic however you slice it. Even if the endings were super varied and brilliant, it's seriously putting all your eggs in one basket - and everyone who did lost, badly. People are free to keep rationalizing it and wallowing in grief and reflection, but I still am baffled at everyone's inability to move on and let go. Mass Effect is not the meaning of life, it's a just another failed sci fi franchise now. No game is worth that amount of time, because life is just too short. There's more entertainment out there to be experienced - and these days (as aforementioned) nobody needs a tv subscription to watch the shows they want, and if you want free books hit up a library. 

Well, you didn't read some of what I said-I've had great discussions with some great people that were based on the game but spanned a lot of things and consider the time better spent than just always watching tv (which I do).  At present I am writing a book (more than one).  I am also reading 2 others.  I have been swimming and visiting my nephew's new baby.  I've happened to meet some interesting people here and we will surely part ways, but much of it has been of value since exchanging ideas is doing something.

But you have to realize not everyone has even what you have.  I am doing fine and can afford enough.  But others don't have a library to go to or whatever.  But your whole premise is based on concluding that people have no lives other than here and that's not so.  I'm on here quite a lot, but when I'm not here I have very full days and I have in fact led a very full life.  This is not all I do and the presumption that it is is not too nice.  I know that I have and still do live life.  I've posted here but this isn't my life, it's one thing in it.  I also talk with people I know at the grocery store but that isn't my life either. Yes for some games are their main hobby-so what?

You've had some good discussions. If you've discovered the meaning of life, congratulations, but that doesn't vindicate all of the denialist dwelling seen on this board. So much of the discussion here attempts to analyze or complain about an ending that no longer deserves either treatment.

Mass Effect is a fun game, but ultimately the writing is rather shallow and cliche. The end is 'thematically revolting.' Even if you don't personally like Breaking Bad, it's a far more cleverly written, intellectual piece of entertainment than Mass Effect. And yes I know, it's not always fair to compare across mediums.

[drayfish]

Great posts, everyone – always such marvellous interpretations, all around. I've been gone the past few days, but it's always such a marvellous wealth of material to return to and sink into. This thread continues to be a joy when there is such a depth of interpretation and analysis at work. Thank you all.
 

SHARXTREME wrote...
 
Yeah, I know, before your basic point was that you cannot judge Shepard's decisions because you lack similar experience. (I would say perspective) and that is exactly the point.
I have lost all perspective/connection with that ****** Shepard that runs bare-handed on foot against a giant f..king space meat-grill and later is found chatting half.dead with an enemy of everything.
There was a line there crossed by catalyst and Bw where I just needed to shoot him in the face and renegade-out against his rules and symbolism.

I've loved many of your summaries, SHARXTREME, and that one seemed particularly true for my experience also. I completely agree: my Shepard would have shaken that Crucible apart with rage, but instead, the shadow of a character Bioware left me with whimpered, sagged in place, and died.
 
Clearly that was meant to be the point of the narrative, but I can't help but resent it.
 
And 3DandBeyond:
 

3DandBeyond wrote...
 
We are also told that we have an even chance of winning (on the war asset screen) and are told as soon as we load the game that we are winning in key locations. Why include vulnerabilities and show reapers being destroyed as well as the other dead reaper in ME2 (the derelict one and other things that they found that had been used to destroy reapers)?

I never had the sense they were impossible to beat no matter what they said because it was deja vu all over again. And sometimes predicable is preferable. But they had to keep asserting it was impossible or the crucible wouldn't have been needed. The fact that not one single person raised a hand and asked why they were building some unknown device to the exclusion of all else indicates the galaxy has a drinking problem.

Brilliant. And:
 

It's not my fault the writers lacked imagination. Not my fault they chose to ignore what they'd written previously. Not my fault they decided to ignore weaknesses they wrote into the game in favor of fantasy (real silliness) and the crucible (nonsense).

Absogoddamn right. I too have really resented that false pass on to us, the players, under the guise of 'artistic integrity' – that suggestion that somehow anyone unhappy or disappointed by the endings was too obtuse to see their underlying message. I know that in many cases this form of insult grew first from overzealous gaming publications (perhaps eager to justify their own failure to cite any concerns with the game's final moments), however Bioware's position since the ending debacle also seems to have been: well, ultimately it's our story not yours (no matter what we were telling you in our promotional materials for over half a decade), and if a number of players remain unsatisfied, then that is just because they misunderstood it, and need further clarity. ...Because they do not have imaginations.
 
I would petulantly respond: No. They fumbled the ball. They misunderstood their fiction (or at the very least fundamentally misinterpreted how that fiction was communicating itself to a large portion of its audience), and in the wake of this disconnect between artist and audience they then compelled the player to just run with it, no matter what their gut was screaming in protest.
 
Sometimes artists don't understand their own creation: Jack Snyder faithfully believed that Suckerpunch was a film about female empowerment; the Wachowskis thought The Matrix films ended with a triumphant, techno-messianic message of human perseverance; the creators of Flubber thought ...well, okay, some things cannot be explained. But you get my point.
 
To me, this seems to be one of those times. Whoever wrote the ending was simply connecting to themes and concepts that intrigued them personally, but one that had no organic (I am not using that word as a pun) connection to the story that the text itself had been communicating for the past three games.
 
Again, perhaps this was the point: an abrupt, unjustified shift in the narrative flow; a cynical message about the ultimate irrationality and chaos of life, but it was in no way signalled by the text that proceeded it, and simply invites a comprehensive break with all immersion in the narrative's universe, inviting the kind of justified backlash and criticisms of ham-fisted laziness that the text has subsequently received.
 
And 3DandBeyond, one last quote of yours before I shamelessly slide into just reprinting your marvellous words wholesale:
 

I almost feel like some of us will be the last ones out the door shutting off the light of rational thought-and I mean that rational thought coming from both sides of the argument. In this thread, by and large most discussion has been as to what was in the game and not ****** for tat attacks. ME3 was a game of contrasts-abandoned themes, abandoned characters, abandoned stories, abandoned heart. The controversy has created its own contrasts as well. It calls into question exactly what is and what isn't prone to rightful consumer complaint. But for me it also calls into question just what is intellectual property. People throw it around and are implicitly using it as a shield for what BW did here, but in doing so they are actively ignoring the use and abuse of the intellectual property of others that was utilized within this ending. At what point do we stop saying it's just fine for game devs to "borrow" heavily from other people's work? At what point do we decide and say that intellectual property should be applied to video games-more broadly than as a shield for awful stories or writing, that it should be used to say that the intellectual property, the art, the integrity of your work should be what is contained within your work and that it should be absent not the influence, but the obvious complete intent of someone else's work. I for one am unwilling to characterize any story or game as a dev's hands off intellectual property or art, if it is not originally their own.

I cannot agree more. On every single point.
 
I have loved this thread and every one of its inhabitants, visitors, and passers-by, firstly because (with the most miniscule aberrations) they have all shown respect for each other's opinions and viewpoints, secondly because they have all exhibited a depth of creativity and a intuitive capacity for reading (and often been funny as hell), and thirdly because they have treated a videogame as worthy of being discussed as a work of art.
 
We have reached an exciting point in the videogaming word where games (not all, but more and more each passing day) are exhibiting their capacity to expand the medium to its full expressive potential, to unquestionably validate the form as a means of artistic expression that outstrips film, fiction and music as the most interactive and engaging Art in modern culture.
 
Personally, I had hoped that Mass Effect would be the most shining symbol of that evolution toward a new videogame state. And until those final ten minutes, and the company's curiously reductive response with the EC, I had thought they could achieve that goal.
 
Perhaps by being a warning, however, by inciting such exquisite discussion as those we have seen here, they can still be an essential part of that evolution toward a more mainstream validation of the medium (not that the industry ultimately needs it – it would just be nice to not have to always be fighting against critics like Ebert who see it all as juvenile distraction).

[NobodyOwens]

Its weird - your prof writes like a kid scrabbling to sound academic. Almost as if the author of this post is actually...

[3DandBeyond]

NobodyOwens wrote...

Its weird - your prof writes like a kid scrabbling to sound academic. Almost as if the author of this post is actually...

Posts such as this speak volumes about the author rather than the person intended to defame.  Maturity exists in the ability to not show your own lack thereof by attempting to insult others with whom you disagree.

Modifié par 3DandBeyond, 05 août 2012 - 11:22 .

[Galbrant]

Modifié par Galbrant, 05 août 2012 - 11:25 .

[SHARXTREME]

Some signs of life here, again. Nice to see. As both drayfish and 3DandBeyond said it was good to read almost everything in this thread. So many different, creative and interesting views, points and counterpoints. Somebody said that it is almost a shame to spend so much attention to the story that came-out ultimately unsatisfying, and I have found myself, many times, face to face with that dilemma: Am I(are we) validating something we don't like by "being vocal about it"?(like Chris Priestly would say)
There was a thread few days ago where that gentleman basically said that majority of fans like the game but are not vocal about it, opposed to the "vocal minority"..
What's the problem here?
If I look at the ending BioWare is so determined to defend, such statements from developers fit nicely with the logic introduced by Senor Catalystano. You know, that logic, "we decide who's vocal minority" and "then we side with the silent majority". Yeah, just like poor Shepard that must save all galaxy sheep from bad, bad wolves without even a dog on his side to occasionally bark on transparency-boy.

But, was extended discussion here really been worth it? Drayfish said it, and I agree completely

drayfish wrote...
I have loved this thread and every one of its inhabitants, visitors, and passers-by, firstly because (with the most miniscule aberrations) they have all shown respect for each other's opinions and viewpoints, secondly because they have all exhibited a depth of creativity and a intuitive capacity for reading (and often been funny as hell), and thirdly because they have treated a videogame as worthy of being discussed as a work of art.

Here's the real shocker: We have deemed it worthy, but BioWare themselves wasn't too interested in seeing what they have missed by throwing around such incomprehensible statements such as:
"Artistic vision" "Artistic integrity"(this one is really the key, the integrity part) and most shockingly to "Move on".
"Move on?" "and if you happen to dislike it, don't be vocal about it". "Even if you're vocal about it, you will be deemed as a minority" "So we will presume that majority really likes our twist on our own story" "So, just move on"
Here's the kicker, It seems that BW don't really consider their own video game story as Art, even though they were very fast to call it art. I will assume here that by saying "Artistic integrity" they tried to raise the shield against critique, but when the shield was getting hot they dropped the "art" talk and moved-on to "Move on".

So to move on, to real art.

drayfish wrote...
Personally, I had hoped that Mass Effect would be the most shining symbol of that evolution toward a new videogame state. And until those final ten minutes, and the company's curiously reductive response with the EC, I had thought they could achieve that goal.

I thought that too. It was a nice SF story with, maybe too high, stakes. Since I love SF, and seeing that not many SF is present these days in videogame and film industry I was really pumped-up for this. It gave me the chance to somehow be part of SF story with my decisions.
But, no. They have resorted to some baaaaad philosophy preference in the end. Limitation of the individual choice and opinion by imposed inability of main character, inevitability of the situation, irrelevance of previous decisions and impossibility of FREE choice.
Story could have gone in so many(countless) different directions, but instead it hit the wall so hard that the talk of future mid game DLC that does not change the ending is even more insulting.
Art, even though it's rooted in "artificial" is more organic then it seems. It grows, connects itself with the "consumer", or just withers and dies.
They have missed a giant ball there, and they had all the ingredients.
Virtual Intelligence, Artificial Intelligence, Organic Intelligence and Synthetic Intelligence.
They have sided with limited, fake, Virtual Intelligence in the end by saying that you must pick sides: You must decide to exterminate all Synthetic intelligence(Destroy) or become one(Control, Synthesis, Refuse). Is that a choice? Or is it an ultimatum?
Art? No.
For me, at least, (SF) art is all about potential. not about inevitability or ultimatums.
Heroes in art are all about potential, anti-heroes are all about limitations, desperation, indifference, impossibility of choice. Irrelevance of choice.
That's Shepard. An Anti-Hero. Faceless pusher of a kill button. and Sir Catalyst of Mindsex is the one who makes Shepard to abandon all his story-heroism and all his potential and offers completely new "heroism" to him.
It's sad, that in this fiction there is no room for diversity of life, opinions, voices, for small drop of chaos that light(en)s-up the eternal darkness and desperation of self-imposed order.

"It's either them or us". That's a vision? Of future? Really?

[drayfish]

 
Wow. So, 'Leviathan'? That's quite a name to have chosen for the DLC... Leviathan: gatekeeper of hell. A sprawling, monstrous, incomprehensibly ancient fiend, whose motives bewilder us all, and who, if one draws too near, will drag its thrashing prey into the darkness of a crushing watery void. Tastes good with a little lemon and tartar sauce.
 
Pretty cheery stuff.
 
...It probably goes without saying I don't think I'm going to pick it up. No, I'm going to refuse...
 
Wait – was that me trying to set up a pitiful segue? Am I really willing to embarrass myself that much by being so transparent? 'Refuse'? Really? Am I that lame?
 
Shut up. And hey, look at that over there!
 
What? You didn't see anything? Oh well, never mind. So what was I saying? Oh yeah: the 'Refuse' ending...
 
(Segue complete. ...Seamless.)
 
 
I've heard a lot of people belittling the 'Refuse' option in a number of other threads. This, of course, is nothing new to any one of the endings – perhaps the most sad legacies of the game as a whole is the subsequent fractious in-fighting between the fans over 'which war crime was the bestest', and 'why everyone who didn't pick this option is wrong'. 
 
Ultimately there is no right answer, they're all heart-numbingly awful (thanks Bioware); and all we can do is content ourselves with whatever option was the lesser evil for our individual playthrough. (What a spectacular end to an epic narrative... Did I mention thanks Bioware? Real way to go out on a bang.)
 
I have, however, found it really strange to hear people labelling the Shepards who chose 'Refuse' to be 'selfish', or 'arrogant', or 'self-righteous'. Not only do I think that these kind of labels are a might unfair (personally, just because I'm a self-righteous bastard has no impact either way on my decision to 'Refuse'), but, as others have already cited on this thread, I too would argue that the only way such a judgement can even be made is by critiquing Shepard with knowledge well outside her experience – by levelling our omniscient gamer-awareness on her, as players who have already seen the ending through at least once before.
 
Indeed, I would have been extremely interested to have seen how many people would have chosen to 'Refuse' the first time around if it had been part of the game at launch. Again, I'm in no way trying to say it's the 'right' answer, and frankly I'm working on nothing but my own speculations (that word! that horrid word!) – but I do wonder how the option to 'Refuse' might have been perceived without the meta-knowledge that it was an unwilling addition to the text to appease/tell-to-shut-up fans.
 
As 3DandBeyond has said, as it stands now the ending will forever remain clouded with the knowledge that the designers of the game never intended (or wanted) players to have that choice (which, if I'm honest, actually makes it infinitely sweeter), but I think that were we given the opportunity to buck the Catscan's scheme from the very beginning, to tell him to screw off when he started laying out his mental 'solution' to nothing, that ending would have been far more widely embraced.
 
At this point there is no way to separate ourselves from the knowledge that there were only originally three possible outcomes, and that no matter what we chose, all three did indeed end with the destruction of the Reapers and Shepard's name being celebrated for countless generations. But had there been a fourth option all along, had we been able to call bullcrap on the Castor Oil's plan, to question his bipolar flip*, I can't imagine the numbers being so high.
 
With this metagaming awareness stripped out – by ignoring the foreknowledge that no matter what horrendous choice you make it's all going to end in a Candy Land fantasy of good will; the atrocity that brought this new age of peace into being gleefully dismissed – this whole end sequence seems more like a game of galactic Russian Roulette. 

To exist only in the moment of the fiction as it unfolds: you are handed a super weapon by an enemy who has expressly and repeatedly announced his desire to kill you and everything that you care about, who cheerfully admits to wanting to wipe you and your whole species out of the universe by any means necessary in order to serve his mad ideology. Then he tells you to pull the trigger.
 
That this scenario all turns out 'happy' in the end seems like a ludicrous stroke of luck. Had there been a 'Wait a minute, what the hell?!' interrupt feature in the original version of the game, many would surely have never seen that fantastically illogical conclusion on the first run through.
 
Because, surely none of it makes any sense without that meta-knowledge.  In any other fictional circumstance, if you were faced with the serial killer responsible for all the deaths you're trying to prevent, then he offers up his mental reasons for why he's been doing all that he's done, only to then, finally, ask you to complete his work – surely at that point you say no.
 
You say, good goddamn no, you dribbling maniac.
 
(...And you also don't look in the box.)
 
Instead, in Mass Effect we get to enjoy the villain say: 'Thank you for filling in my ghoulish survey, Shepard. Congratulations on validating my whole world-view: For the purposes of survival it's okay to obliterate freedom. Be sure to enjoy your universe born from a war crime you inflicted.  I'll just be lurking over here like the spectre of death, a perpetual hateful reminder of all that you thought was worth sacrificing. ...Gee, I hope that doesn't cloud whatever joys this burgeoning world offers. I'd feel really bad if that happened.'
 
Hooray.
 
Reaper's win.
 
 
...So, yeah, I can probably stand to avoid having 'Leviathan' help expand those overarching themes out for me even further.
 
'Leviathan': gatekeeper of hell. Intent on devastating its victims in the unremitting pressure of the ocean's depths. 
 
Yeah, no thanks.
 
I already feel insubstantial, waterlogged and crushed enough in this new Mass Effect universe.
 
 
 
* 'I want to destroy you, I want to destroy you, I want to destroy you... Oh, look at you: you're in my house completely helpless. Oh, well – for no reason why don't you come help me out with a project I've got going. It's kind of like Scrapbooking, only it's horrifying. What's that? Oh, of course I won't totally destroy you and everything you believe in... Huh. What an odd thing to ask.'


[EDIT: Always fixing grammar...]

Modifié par drayfish, 06 août 2012 - 10:53 .

[robertthebard]

drayfish wrote...

 
Wow. So, 'Leviathan'? That's quite a name to have chosen for the DLC... Leviathan: gatekeeper of hell. A sprawling, monstrous, incomprehensibly ancient fiend, whose motives bewilder us all, and who, if one draws too near, will drag its thrashing prey into the darkness of a crushing watery void. Tastes good with a little lemon and tartar sauce.
 
Pretty cheery stuff.
 
...It probably goes without saying I don't think I'm going to pick it up. No, I'm going to refuse...
 
Wait – was that me trying to set up a pitiful segue? Am I really willing to embarrass myself that much by being so transparent? 'Refuse'? Really? Am I that lame?
 
Shut up. And hey, look at that over there!
 
What? You didn't see anything? Oh well, never mind. So what was I saying? Oh yeah: the 'Refuse' ending...
 
(Segue complete. ...Seamless.)
 
 
I've heard a lot of people belittling the 'Refuse' option in a number of other threads. This, of course, is nothing new to any one of the endings – perhaps the most sad legacies of the game as a whole is the subsequent fractious in-fighting between the fans over 'which war crime was the bestest', and 'why everyone who didn't pick this option is wrong'. 
 
Ultimately there is no right answer, they're all heart-numbingly awful (thanks Bioware); and all we can do is content ourselves with whatever option was the lesser evil for our individual playthrough. (What a spectacular end to an epic narrative... Did I mention thanks Bioware? Real way to go out on a bang.)
 
I have, however, found it really strange to hear people labelling the Shepards who chose 'Refuse' to be 'selfish', or 'arrogant', or 'self-righteous'. Not only do I think that these kind of labels are a might unfair (personally, just because I'm a self-righteous bastard has no impact either way on my decision to 'Refuse'), but, as others have already cited on this thread, I too would argue that the only way such a judgement can even be made is by critiquing Shepard with knowledge well outside her experience – by levelling our omniscient gamer-awareness on her, as players who have already seen the ending through at least once before.
 
Indeed, I would have been extremely interested to have seen how many people would have chosen to 'Refuse' the first time around if it had been part of the game at launch. Again, I'm in no way trying to say it's the 'right' answer, and frankly I'm working on nothing but my own speculations (that word! that horrid word!) – but I do wonder how he options to 'Refuse' might have been perceived without the meta-knowledge that it was an unwilling addition to the text to appease/tell-to-shut-up fans.
 
As 3DandBeyond has said, as it stands now the ending will forever remain clouded with the knowledge that the designers of the game never intended (or wanted) players to have that choice (which, if I'm honest, actually makes it infinitely sweeter), but I think that were we given the opportunity to buck the Catscan's scheme from the very beginning, to tell him to screw off when he started laying out his mental 'solution' to nothing, that ending would have been far more widely embraced.
 
At this point there is no way to separate ourselves from the knowledge that there were only originally three possible outcomes, and that no matter what we chose, all three did indeed end with the destruction of the Reapers and Shepard's name being celebrated for countless generations. But had there been a fourth option all along, had we been able to call bullcrap on the Castor Oil's plan, to question his bipolar flip*, I can't imagine the numbers being so high.
 
With this metagaming awareness stripped out – by ignoring the foreknowledge that no matter what horrendous choice you make it's all going to end in a Candy Land fantasy of good will; the atrocity that brought this new age of peace into being gleefully dismissed – this whole end sequence seems more like a game of galactic Russian Roulette. 

To exist only in the moment of the fiction as it unfolds: you are handed a super weapon by an enemy who has expressly and repeatedly announced his desire to kill you and everything that you care about, who cheerfully admits to wanting to wipe you and your whole species out of the universe by any means necessary in order to serve his mad ideology. Then he tells you to pull the trigger.
 
That this scenario all turns out 'happy' in the end seems like a ludicrous stroke of luck. Had there been a 'Wait a minute, what the hell?!' interrupt feature in the original version of the game, many would surely have never seen that fantastically illogical conclusion on the first run through.
 
Because, surely none of it makes any sense without that meta-knowledge.  In any other fictional circumstance, if you were faced with the serial killer responsible for all the deaths you're trying to prevent, then he offers up his mental reasons for why he's been doing all that he's done, only to then, finally, asks you to complete his work – surely at that point you say no.
 
You say, good goddamn no, you dribbling maniac.
 
(...And you also don't look in the box.)
 
Instead, in Mass Effect we get to enjoy the villain say: 'Thank you for filling in my ghoulish survey, Shepard. Congratulations on validating my whole world-view: For the purposes of survival it's okay to obliterate freedom. Be sure to enjoy your universe born from a war crime you inflicted.  I'll just be lurking over here like the spectre of death, a perpetual hateful reminder of all that you thought was worth sacrificing. ...Gee, I hope that doesn't cloud whatever joys this burgeoning world offers. I'd feel really bad if that happened.'
 
Hooray.
 
Reaper's win.
 
 
...So, yeah, I can probably stand to avoid having 'Leviathan' help expand those overarching themes out for me even further.
 
'Leviathan': gatekeeper of hell. Intent on devastating its victims in the unremitting pressure of the ocean's depths. 
 
Yeah, no thanks.
 
I already feel insubstantial, waterlogged and crushed enough in this new Mass Effect universe.
 
 
 
* 'I want to destroy you, I want to destroy you, I want to destroy you... Oh, look at you: you're in my house completely helpless. Oh, well – for no reason why don't you come help me out with a project I've got going. It's kind of like Scrapbooking, only it's horrifying. What's that? Oh, of course I won't totally destroy you and everything you believe in... Huh. What an odd thing to ask.'

In case anyone ever wonders why I say screw it at the beam, take a gander at this.  Although, I must admit that my Brutal Renegade, outlined here earlier, was immensely satisfying.  I just treated SC just like TIM at the Collector base, and laughed while shooting the tube.

Modifié par robertthebard, 06 août 2012 - 10:46 .

[SHARXTREME]

drayfish wrote...
..It probably goes without saying I don't think I'm going to pick it up. No, I'm going to refuse...

Yes.

and this was especially on target(target that we others miss so often):

drayfish wrote...
Because, surely none of it makes any sense without that meta-knowledge. In any other fictional circumstance, if you were faced with the serial killer responsible for all the deaths you're trying to prevent, then he offers up his mental reasons for why he's been doing all that he's done, only to then, finally, ask you to complete his work – surely at that point you say no.

You say, good goddamn no, you dribbling maniac.

(...And you also don't look in the box.)

There are no ending movies on screens in background when Shepard "must" choose, He cannot know anything, because he just cannot trust anything that comes from Chaos-boy.
So that's the crucial point where Shepard must be Shepard. Must stay Shepard.


BTW, about the name of the DLC.
They are using many names from mythology and philosophy in ME3.

Sovereign, definition by Jean Bodin(absolute):
-"On this point he said that the sovereign must not be hedged in with obligations and conditions, must be able to legislate without his (or its) subjects' consent, must not be bound by the laws of his predecessors, and could not, because it is illogical, be bound by his own laws." *

Read carefully and see that this is the exact description of what Catalyst was and what is imposed on Shepard by choosing 3 choices in the ending.

Next, definition by Thomas Hobbes:
"Hobbes, in Leviathan (1651) introduced an early version of the social contract (or contractarian) theory, arguing that to overcome the "nasty, brutish and short" quality of life without the cooperation of other human beings, people must join in a "commonwealth" and submit to a "Soveraigne [sic] Power" that is able to compel them to act in the common good. This expediency argument attracted many of the early proponents of sovereignty. *


Next: Cerberus
Three headed hound which guards the gates of the Underworld, to prevent those who have crossed the river Styx from ever escaping. *

Nothing to add here, except the Heracles's story..

Next, Leviathan: drayfish already said everything there

Next, Harbinger: "Harbinger, a person or thing that foreshadows or foretells the coming of someone or something" *

But, who or what is he foreshadowing? Catalyst or:

Shepard: What does the Shepard in the game and then in the ending? If he chooses? If he refuses?

BioWare writers were obviously obsessed with the symbolism and power they armed Reapers with so they created even more powerful enemy: Catalyst.
But what then: How can a simple human defeat/face such odds?
-By succession.
-By submission
-By collaboration
- and finally by acceptance
So what happened then, they have missed to include a counterpoint, they forgot to give Shepard a logical tool to dispute such absolutism and it all can be traced back to to their absolute view of Sovereignty. They have forgot that even a Sovereign must be under natural and divine law by same definition from 16th century.

Shepard, by choosing anything breaks that natural law, unless he refuses to choose at all OR(to give some unearned benefit of the doubt here) unless BW thought that (making)synthetic life is unnatural and therefore must be destroyed.

Shepard is not left with the option to remain a simple human.(how non-heroic that sounds, ha BioWare?)
No, after his resurrection from the dead(yeah) Bioware thought they must make Shepard larger then life. In the end, Shepard is his biggest enemy, like TIM and Saren were.

Yes, it's a complete mess made from bits of ancient mythologies, bits of archaic philosophies and large quantity of amoral, and logical errors. With sprinkles(to quote somebody's signature here).

@robertthebard

Yes, screw it at the beam. Even long,long before that.

* quick quotes from Wiki


EDIT: 
I did forget to mention Crucible and Catalyst
 Add  a little Reapers, little humans, krogans, geth etc. into Crucible, add Catalyst and Shepard and mix it all together in thick green soup. Who the Fu.k designed and named that thing?

Modifié par SHARXTREME, 07 août 2012 - 02:45 .

[MandaPanda81]

drayfish wrote...
 
Indeed, I would have been extremely interested to have seen how many people would have chosen to 'Refuse' the first time around if it had been part of the game at launch. Again, I'm in no way trying to say it's the 'right' answer, and frankly I'm working on nothing but my own speculations (that word! that horrid word!) – but I do wonder how the option to 'Refuse' might have been perceived without the meta-knowledge that it was an unwilling addition to the text to appease/tell-to-shut-up fans.
 
As 3DandBeyond has said, as it stands now the ending will forever remain clouded with the knowledge that the designers of the game never intended (or wanted) players to have that choice (which, if I'm honest, actually makes it infinitely sweeter), but I think that were we given the opportunity to buck the Catscan's scheme from the very beginning, to tell him to screw off when he started laying out his mental 'solution' to nothing, that ending would have been far more widely embraced.
 
At this point there is no way to separate ourselves from the knowledge that there were only originally three possible outcomes, and that no matter what we chose, all three did indeed end with the destruction of the Reapers and Shepard's name being celebrated for countless generations. But had there been a fourth option all along, had we been able to call bullcrap on the Castor Oil's plan, to question his bipolar flip*, I can't imagine the numbers being so high.
 
With this metagaming awareness stripped out – by ignoring the foreknowledge that no matter what horrendous choice you make it's all going to end in a Candy Land fantasy of good will; the atrocity that brought this new age of peace into being gleefully dismissed – this whole end sequence seems more like a game of galactic Russian Roulette. 

To exist only in the moment of the fiction as it unfolds: you are handed a super weapon by an enemy who has expressly and repeatedly announced his desire to kill you and everything that you care about, who cheerfully admits to wanting to wipe you and your whole species out of the universe by any means necessary in order to serve his mad ideology. Then he tells you to pull the trigger.
 
That this scenario all turns out 'happy' in the end seems like a ludicrous stroke of luck. Had there been a 'Wait a minute, what the hell?!' interrupt feature in the original version of the game, many would surely have never seen that fantastically illogical conclusion on the first run through.

I've often wondered myself how many people would have chosen refusal vs. the original endings.  Even after playing through them once and seeing the outcomes (galaxy screwed, galaxy screwed, galaxy screwed-- oh, and everyone's part robot), it still seems a logical choice.  Considering the consequences of destroying the relays, the possible consequences of Shepard trying to control them, and the horror that is synthesis, telling Starboy where he can stick his choices and trying to find another way to win doesn't seem like a bad idea.

On the other hand, I've realized that I can't even consider the EC endings except from a metagaming perspective.  But unlike some folks who then proceed to pick the option that has, to them, the best outcome; I can only look at them in light of how they were before.  And starboy has gone from being a character (a poorly written, poorly inserted, completely abhorrent character, but still a character) to a developer mouthpiece.
"He's evil/crazy/lying" - I'm only doing what I'm programmed to do.
"The fleets will be stranded at Earth" - You'll rebuild, everything will be fine, really.
"That doesn't even make sense" - It totally does, there's just no time to explain.  Now pick an ending already.

At that point I'm so thoroughly sucked out of the narrative it doesn't really matter what I pick, since none of it's real.  At that point Refusal is just a formal way of saying "I reject your endings and substitue my own."

[Jadebaby]

hoping this post gets top of page 200...

If it does, my wish will come true.

*fingers crossed*

edit: "oh the pain."

Modifié par Jade8aby88, 07 août 2012 - 08:31 .

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

Well with 7650 EMS (lots of multiplayer and promotions) 100% GR. No Geth around. There was little the Starbrat AI held over my head. See with Geth VI due to Legion taking a bullet in the flashlight on the Suicide Mission it made peace impossible so I had the choice of a smaller Geth force or a larger Quarian force since I didn't rewrite the Heretics.

This changes the ethics of the ending a bit in that situation. Yes, the death of EDI was a tragedy, but hardly worth sacrificing the entire rest of the galaxy by refusing.

And Controlling them? Ah yes, become the "God Empress of the Galaxy" with an armada none shall oppose for the next billion or so years, and be able to control them after I'm dead. Hmmm.... something sounds fishy to me. How can I control anything after I'm dead? Somehow I just don't believe the Starbrat. Maybe that AI I was supposed to become would go nuts in a few millenia and start it all over again? So "Control the Reapers?" We've dismissed that myth.

And Synthesis? The Swan Dive into the Green Beam from hell. I'm afraid of heights. So that's out of the question right there. Oh but it's a sacrifice for the greater good of the galaxy! it tells me. It also said it tried it once before, and that it failed. It also said it is something that cannot be forced, yet isn't this forcing it? So again something smells fishy here....

-------------------------------

If you want my opinion here it is. The Starbrat AI is not the Catalyst. Shepard is the Catalyst. Reason is the definition of the word. Catalyst: A person who precipitates and action. This thing can't even open the Citadel arms. This is the reason Shepard was never able to find the Catalyst. Walters is trying to get all symbolic, and going all Matrixy here. Think Zen. Shepard was looking everywhere for the Catalyst except within herself.

You got your hand close enough to the panel to activate the elevator (you did, watch the video). The AI didn't bring you there. I've gathered that this Crucible was originally designed to destroy the reapers. We've also learned that different indoctrinated factions wanted Control, so that's why the Control option is there. Now this thing is supposed to be a giant battery, and if you protected it well enough it will provide enough power to power the Starbrat's dream of Synthesis. The only thing the AI can do is disconnect the battery if you refuse to use it -- actually he can't but Walters doesn't give you the option to use it once you "refused" even though logically you still should be able to use it.

The AI's assumption that your children will create synthetics that will rebel and start the cycle all over again is shall we say a bunch of horsehockey. It doesn't know. It gets into String Theory, Chaos Theory, Multi-verse Quantum Mechanics, and a bunch of stuff that it can't possibly know without going into "flying spaghetti monster" territory. Its entire premise is founded on a belief system. So is it right about that? Who knows? It doesn't really even know. It just believes it knows and presents its beliefs as fact trying to indoctrinate you.

Basically the Starbrat is trying to indoctrinate you, the player, with a bunch of propaganda and emotional manipulation so you won't pick destroy. As distasteful as Destroy might be in some circumstances it is the only one that gives a win. I don't think the people are going to accept the reapers as long lost buddies in the other two scenarios, not in control anyway.

In Synthesis you fundamentally change who people are. This is similar to rewriting the heretics. Control, Synthesis, and Refuse IMO are the indoctrinated endings.

[CulturalGeekGirl]

The posts arguing for the inherent rectitude of one single choice are emblematic of one of the worst qualities of the ending. The way it tears at cognition, the way it plays with atrocity and horror pretty much inevitably transforms its adherents into narrow-minded dogmatics, as fervently certain that their path is the One True Path as the most extreme ideologue.

It irrevocably sunders a fandom into factions, each one cheerleading an indefensible atrocity.

I see people who reached an end state because of incompetence, xenophobia, or paranoia - an end state that breaks apart the moral quandary because the atrocity has already been committed - only through incompetence, not malice. Then they proceed to analyze the ending based only on their already abominable world state, and behave as if this is the only grounds upon which it should be examined.

It creates a rhetorical witch hunt, in which subscribers to an alternate system of ideals are strung up and bullied. It takes a once-interesting board with many colors of nuanced debates and reduces it to a bloody, unthinking battleground; with lines drawn on the sand, and everyone willing to do what it takes to defend the validity of their own beliefs, to argue for the inherent superiority of their own kind.

And the majority, as usual, arrogantly proclaims a moral high ground, demanding special gifts, special privileges, demanding that things be tailored for them and then alone, insisting that they define reality and morality.

If what Bioware wanted to do with this game was destroy the nurturing and welcoming community that they had built, they have succeeded. They created a narrative moral wasteland free of nuance or understanding.

Maybe that's what they wanted. The galaxy is a wasteland.

Modifié par CulturalGeekGirl, 07 août 2012 - 08:56 .

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

Walters totally blew it with the ending, IMO. He could have been a hell of a lot more devious, but he was hell bent on destroying the galaxy and leaving it a wasteland. Me? If you picked Destroy, I would have dropped you into a second playthrough and a "wake up in a terror gasping for air" cutscene on the Normandy right after your first sleep (no child dreams this time). You just dreamed about the ending. Now you go from there. Some dialogues change in this playthrough. This playthrough you'd get the real ending, and it would have been different. Game would have needed 3 disks and probably cost $80.

The other two endings? you wouldn't know because I'd need you to believe.

[Reorte]

sH0tgUn jUliA wrote...

The other two endings? you wouldn't know because I'd need you to believe.

Sounds like Tinkerbell to me. I suppose that fits in with space magic.

[CulturalGeekGirl]

The problem with destroy is that it rewards xenophobes willing to do whatever it takes to win. If the final question of indoctrination is "Do a thing that will harm a race that isn't yours in order to gain an easy victory," both Saren and TiM would have easily passed that test. The reason they decided to do the things they decided to do was that they were lead to believe just destroying the machines was impossible, rather than being handed that option on a silver platter.

Tim wanted to control the reapers in order to hurt non-human races. If he'd been handed an option that cemented humanity's strength while destroying other races, he would have picked it in a second. That was his entire MO: harming other races in order to gain benefit for humanity, which is exactly what destroy does. Saren had the same goal, but for Turians.

Saren would have chosen "destroy" even if the entire galaxy was going to be genocided, as long as it left the Turians alive. Same thing is true for TiM and Humans. They only started to want to attempt other things AFTER they were indoctrinated, so the idea that being selfishly willing to commit genocide to further ones own goals is the prerequisite for resisting indoctrination is laughably narrow-minded and contradictory. You're basically saying "embodying the exact mindset of the two most famous cases of indoctrination prior to their indoctrination prevents indoctrination."

Modifié par CulturalGeekGirl, 07 août 2012 - 09:21 .

[SHARXTREME]

I agree here with CulturalGeekGirl. Fan base is found here on Forums arguing about "which world-view(ending) is more valid", "what is selfish", "what is moral". etc.
Many people chose Refuse not because situation in-universe, but as a statement out of that ME universe.

And, the endings were not meant to have anything to do with indoctrination.
Like many of us here mentioned, ending is a classical hostage situation riddled with religious undertones, paradoxes, contradictions, leaps of.."logic" and ritualistic sacrifices.
Pretty much a descent into nonsense. Like Shepard undocked from ME and docked onto Catalyst's barge of the damned.

Only unknown here, for me and BW also, is what the hell they wanted to say with all of Geth story?

In ME2 you find, activate, help Legion(or not), then Legion asks you to rewrite or destroy the Geth heretics. From the start that sounds like lose-lose situation. Both choices are moral rock bottom
(I played Legion's loyalty mission and chose to rewrite, so if anyone did play both ways, or didn't help Legion in ME2 at all, let me know what changes, is peace with geth possible?)
Then in ME3 it's easy to choose Destroy for those that believe that
a) synthetic life is not worth like other forms of life(or it's enemy, or it's not life)
they believe it's equal but not worth sacrificing everybody for just one race
c) didn't help Legion, Geth and didn't help to establish peace between them and Quarians
d) did help them, but only to gain their fleet support

If a) and/or c) then it's a no-brainer when Catalyst says: -"Hey there, pretty boy, shoot tube to destroy all synthetic life.

So, what the hell the game is trying to sell there to me?
A notion that whatever happens, whatever you do, whatever decision is forced upon you, you could/can enjoy it, accept it, don't question it, if you just adjust your moral, attitude, perspective.
That doesn't sound right, does it?

That's amoral and alogical . Ending succeeded to surgically remove ALL objectivity and standards from the story. You, Shepard is alone. His view and position is absolute, sovereign.
One that decides for all. If you only can remove your pity little morals, ethics and that thing that made you who you are and adjust it, you can enjoy any ending you choose regardless of happenings outside your little micro-world.
What kind of message is that BW?
Go mad and rule the galaxy? and it's OK? You have an excuse because Reapers forced it upon you?

Back to Geth-Paragon paradox. You learn through Legion that Quarians started the war, that Geth spared them, then you as Paragon helped them and made peace.
Then comes along Catalyst ultimatum and you.. make the same mistake as Quarian original mistake three-way?
Synthesis = rewrite/create*/reset Geth
Control Reapers = control Geth
Destroy Reapers = destroy Geth




*Creation of intelligent/sentient synthetic or artificial life can be questioned. Before the act of creation. Then, after creation you are forced to question your own moral, sociological and logical standards, because synthetic life becomes fact and you didn't question your ethics while creating synthetic life.
Problem is, that is not Shepard's problem. Shepard walked into it. And Shepard(any organic OR synthetic) lacks objective right to decide and to pass judgement.
(That's what I like about ST Prime Directive. You do not mess with other people's business or enter conflicts that you're not involved in. That is wise and logical. If you do get involved it is because of events you cannot control-natural law. The law that is above sovereignty and your decisions)
That is what is missing there, objective law of the story. Rights, wrongs, dos and don'ts. You cannot destroy that in last 10 minutes of the story.
Which leads me to:

Counterpoint
It seems that playing Paragon in Geth situation from the beggining is not ethical nor logical, in light of end moral decisions and your inherent subjectivity. Basically you have no logical/ethical ground to get involved, pass judgement.
Quarians made some mistakes, they ask you to help them with the geth. You a) don't interfere help them because of Tali in ME2(asset/friend) or because their fleet in ME3 (asset/ally) 
(game makes you to play it out to progress the story).
So if you follow ethics and logic then you're not bound to end in position that will question your moral standards.
But you will miss the bigger picture. If organics are destined to create synthetics then that's a natural law that surpasses your own logical standards.. 


And synthesis
Paragon Shepard can make the peace between Geth and Quarians. Must get involved(situational, but not ethical), Can pass moral judgement to ensure peace.
Final destroy decision becomes that much harder because of series of unethical involvements(and somewhat inescapable Quarian decisions) in Geth-Quarian conflict.
Only logical escape from this is making peace with Reapers because of proof that peace is possible(even short lived periods of peace is better then neverending genocide) . 
Only obstacle for peace is broken Catalyst AI.

BioWare, write the option to win against Catalyst, he represents no thing and no one. 

Modifié par SHARXTREME, 07 août 2012 - 11:50 .

[CulturalGeekGirl]

The thing is... it's easy to create a victory against the Catalyst that isn't the much maligned and amorphous "conventional" victory, one that makes sense within the current fiction and that does no damage to the current endings and those who enjoy them.

If the devices in the Crucible were designed by previous races, and different ones are unlocked depending on how much of the crucible gets finished, then there could have been a past hypothetical race who said "these plans seem to be designed to change something. I want to create an alternate device designed to turn it off."

Everything in the ending could be exactly the same, but after you finish your conversation with the starchild, you have the option to turn around and take the elevator back down. Below, there's another device, one that destroys the room above, the Catalyst, and all the devices inside. This is another part of the Crucible, operating by the same logic and mechanics of all the other endings.

When this button is hit, the Catalyst and all his devices are destroyed, but the Reapers are not. This makes this option not a "better destroy," instead it's an entirely different ending. In the aftermath, we're shown some Reapers continuing the fight while others pack up and leave. What follows is a long, slow slog against the remaining Reapers. Not a complete conventional victory, because the vast majority of Reapers, freed from the Catalyst's influence, chose to simply... leave. We don't know whether or not they will return.

Thus, you'd be trading uncertainty (will the Reapers return?) for guaranteed happiness of a sort (all the rah rah existing epilogues), but it'd offer another use of the crucible that wouldn't change things for the people who like the way things are now, but would provide a satisfying bittersweet uncertain ending for those who feel the Catalyst itself is the problem.

[robertthebard]

I can easily justify Paragon, or Renegade Destroy options. Renegade was much simpler, since I'm doing it to show those pesky Reapers what it means to mess with me. However, and people balk at this due to scope, my Paragon view was "the needs of the many". Yes, I brokered peace between the Geth and Quarians, and not so much for assets as it seemed like the right thing to do. However, when the chips are down, it's do nothing, and doom everybody, or doom one race, and a friend, but save everyone else that can be saved.

Synthesis isn't something I'd consider, although I think it's more because I don't know how I'd feel about altering everybody on a genetic(?) level. I'd feel like I was playing God with it, and I'm not into that.

Control is bad, because power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. As Paragon Shepard, I have seen this at work with TIM recently, and I'm not willing to become him.

So it's Destroy, or Refuse. Refuse is another God mode type decision, I'm not going to do anything because it violates my principles. However, my principles so far has been fighting for those that can't fight, or won't fight, and I'm not sure how I could turn my back on that at this point. With a disclaimer that my Self Righteous Shepard probably could do that. However, since choosing Destroy will end the Reapers, and the cost of doing so is substantially lower than the cost of doing nothing, I'm blowing them out of space.

[CulturalGeekGirl]

"The needs of the many" is exactly the argument the Catalyst is making. It is the principle upon which his entire programming and existence is based. He was created to do "whatever it takes" to ensure organic life isn't wiped out, and so he made a decision to kill a few in order to create what he believed was a better situation for the many.

Using that justification for destroy implicitly endorses the Catalyst's worldview. A Paragon shepard takes over for the Catalyst, doing exactly what the Catalyst was doing... continuing the catalyst's legacy as a "paragon" willing to "do what it takes" to prevent galactic extinction. It supports the Catalyst's view that you can murder any number of people if it accomplishes a result you happen to think is better for everyone.

Modifié par CulturalGeekGirl, 08 août 2012 - 01:01 .

[robertthebard]

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...

"The needs of the many" is exactly the argument the Catalyst is making. It is the principle upon which his entire programming and existence is based. He was created to do "whatever it takes" to ensure organic life isn't wiped out, and so he made a decision to kill a few in order to create what he believed was a better situation for the many.

Using that justification for destroy implicitly endorses the Catalyst's worldview. A Paragon shepard takes over for the Catalyst, doing exactly what the Catalyst was doing... continuing the catalyst's legacy as a "paragon" willing to "do what it takes" to prevent galactic extinction. It supports the Catalyst's view that you can murder any number of people if it accomplishes a result you happen to think is better for everyone.

It supports my view, that saving as many people as possible is preferrable to saving none.  I spent the entire game gathering resources/personnel to build the Crucible to stop the Reapers.  SC isn't going manipulate me into believing that doing exactly what I intended to do is "playing into his hands" since doing what I intend to do destroys him just as effectively, in fact, more effectively than shooting him in the face.

[CulturalGeekGirl]

robertthebard wrote...

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...

"The needs of the many" is exactly the argument the Catalyst is making. It is the principle upon which his entire programming and existence is based. He was created to do "whatever it takes" to ensure organic life isn't wiped out, and so he made a decision to kill a few in order to create what he believed was a better situation for the many.

Using that justification for destroy implicitly endorses the Catalyst's worldview. A Paragon shepard takes over for the Catalyst, doing exactly what the Catalyst was doing... continuing the catalyst's legacy as a "paragon" willing to "do what it takes" to prevent galactic extinction. It supports the Catalyst's view that you can murder any number of people if it accomplishes a result you happen to think is better for everyone.

It supports my view, that saving as many people as possible is preferrable to saving none.  I spent the entire game gathering resources/personnel to build the Crucible to stop the Reapers.  SC isn't going manipulate me into believing that doing exactly what I intended to do is "playing into his hands" since doing what I intend to do destroys him just as effectively, in fact, more effectively than shooting him in the face.

Sure, it destroys him. It also embodies the same motivation as he has.

Shepard is effectively saying "You can't commit genocide for the needs of the many. I'm going to do that instead." 

I'm not saying it's playing into his hands, I'm saying it is operating under the same moral blanket, using the same methods.

If you pick Destroy, you kill someone willing to kill an entire race because the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, and you become someone willing to kill an entire race because the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

You become the same kind of moral entity operating under identical moral principles as the catalyst. This isn't a bad thing, if you agree that killing an entire race to save other races is acceptable.

But there is no way to pick destroy without implicity saying "killing an entire race is OK if it saves more people," which is what the catalyst was doing.

[Oxspit]

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...

The thing is... it's easy to create a victory against the Catalyst that isn't the much maligned and amorphous "conventional" victory, one that makes sense within the current fiction and that does no damage to the current endings and those who enjoy them.

If the devices in the Crucible were designed by previous races, and different ones are unlocked depending on how much of the crucible gets finished, then there could have been a past hypothetical race who said "these plans seem to be designed to change something. I want to create an alternate device designed to turn it off."

Everything in the ending could be exactly the same, but after you finish your conversation with the starchild, you have the option to turn around and take the elevator back down. Below, there's another device, one that destroys the room above, the Catalyst, and all the devices inside. This is another part of the Crucible, operating by the same logic and mechanics of all the other endings.

When this button is hit, the Catalyst and all his devices are destroyed, but the Reapers are not. This makes this option not a "better destroy," instead it's an entirely different ending. In the aftermath, we're shown some Reapers continuing the fight while others pack up and leave. What follows is a long, slow slog against the remaining Reapers. Not a complete conventional victory, because the vast majority of Reapers, freed from the Catalyst's influence, chose to simply... leave. We don't know whether or not they will return.

Thus, you'd be trading uncertainty (will the Reapers return?) for guaranteed happiness of a sort (all the rah rah existing epilogues), but it'd offer another use of the crucible that wouldn't change things for the people who like the way things are now, but would provide a satisfying bittersweet uncertain ending for those who feel the Catalyst itself is the problem.

Personally, I really like the tone of that kind of ending. You don't finish with a resounding victory (although it should really be seen in that light - you actually do break the cycle), you finish with a 'what now?'

And, ultimately, I would have thought the writers would prefer that kind of thing because, well.... sequels.

Actually, I'm just going to take this opportunity to shamelessly recycle the outline I came up with in another thread (with a few edits) about how I thought the IT could be handled, which had a similar kind of ending:

Yeah, I actually agree. I quite like IT , too, as an idea, or at least I quite like the idea that Shepard will be finally resisting indoctrination himself by the end. And it's such a powerful tool, I'm a little surprised it doesn't feature more prominently in the story (I'm not really sure I can bring myself to counting TIM here... that was all pretty incoherent).

What I hate, though, is the whole 'everything was an illusion' thing followed by waking up and insert new ending here idea that people are pushing (i.e. the indoctrination is also kind of just another superflous detail to but the writers a little more time). I'm glad there's no real evidence for that.

Personally, if I had to try and repair the ending with minimal change, I think I'd make much more heavy use of indoctrination in general, though. Best I can come up with at present is something along the following lines:

1) Scrap the star-child. If Shepard is to talk to some form of the child that's been bugging his dreams in the end what he's actually talking to is a figment of his borderline-indoctrinated imagination.

2) The reapers themselves aren't quite so immune from indoctrination as we may have been led to believe. Their minds aren't eventually destroyed by it like ours would be, but it's a powerful thing. They're not really the masters of it or the indoctrinators per se. This maybe goes some way to describing why the hell the reapers do what they do even though we've met them initially as free independant strong-willed individuals. I don't think it goes the whole way, but it's maybe a start. I'm not going to dignify the organics vs synthetics thing as presented in ME3 with a response, frankly. I think this one needs more work, in as much as I think there still needs to be some coherent purpose that the reapers at least think they're following. I do not consider the synthetics vs organics thing coherent.

3) The reapers themselves designed the crucible. It's design conspicuously survives because ultimately/sub-consciously they actually want it to.

4) The crucible is actually an indoctrination breaker. This is what they designed it for. They can't fire it themselves, though, they need a catalyst for that (hell, why not, keep the catalyst idea).

5) The catalyst is Shepard him/her self (or, rather, any mind not yet so enthralled it can't fire the crucible,Shepard needn't be a 'chosen one'), if he can manage to shake  himself/herself free long enough to do so. Again, Shepard isn't talking to a real reaper god-head in the glowing kid, he's kind of talking to himself.

6) Firing the crucible frees the reapers, fundamentally changing the nature of the conflict and destroying the reapers as a unified single-mindedly genocidal force. It doesn't instantaneously make everything better, but it makes surviving the cycle possible.

7) Possibly you could use this to explain ME2 a little better. Humans are painted (sort of, at least) as
diverse individualists who have managed to stand up to and kill a reaper. Maybe they hope there will be something correspondingly special and free about a human reaper, and that's both why they were so keen to create one and why they wanted to include Shepard therein so badly. Like the OP, though, I have a hard time understanding why your choice at the end of ME2 was destroy base or hand it to TIM, rather than hand it to TIM or hand it to the alliance.

That's probably about the best I can do at the moment. I don't think it's that great, though, to be honest. Like I say I think we're in something of a corner at this point.

As far as I can tell, the only thing ME2 actually set us up for in the third act is certain extinction barring something truly miraculous (or wildly implausible, which is kind of what we got). The only major advantage they've really given us as opposed to other cycles is the delay and fore-knowledge afforded to us by the Protheans but they've  almost gone out of their way to make sure that wasn't used at all. They actually seemed to use ME2 as a fast-forward button to reaching the problem they had no idea how to solve.

In either case, I'd still want to re-write a lot more than just the ending of course...

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

EDIT: Dear god, the formatting in that quote. Fixed.

Modifié par Oxspit, 08 août 2012 - 01:34 .

[robertthebard]

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...

robertthebard wrote...

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...

"The needs of the many" is exactly the argument the Catalyst is making. It is the principle upon which his entire programming and existence is based. He was created to do "whatever it takes" to ensure organic life isn't wiped out, and so he made a decision to kill a few in order to create what he believed was a better situation for the many.

Using that justification for destroy implicitly endorses the Catalyst's worldview. A Paragon shepard takes over for the Catalyst, doing exactly what the Catalyst was doing... continuing the catalyst's legacy as a "paragon" willing to "do what it takes" to prevent galactic extinction. It supports the Catalyst's view that you can murder any number of people if it accomplishes a result you happen to think is better for everyone.

It supports my view, that saving as many people as possible is preferrable to saving none.  I spent the entire game gathering resources/personnel to build the Crucible to stop the Reapers.  SC isn't going manipulate me into believing that doing exactly what I intended to do is "playing into his hands" since doing what I intend to do destroys him just as effectively, in fact, more effectively than shooting him in the face.

Sure, it destroys him. It also embodies the same motivation as he has.

Shepard is effectively saying "You can't commit genocide for the needs of the many. I'm going to do that instead." 

I'm not saying it's playing into his hands, I'm saying it is operating under the same moral blanket, using the same methods.

If you pick Destroy, you kill someone willing to kill an entire race because the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, and you become someone willing to kill an entire race because the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

You become the same kind of moral entity operating under identical moral principles as the catalyst. This isn't a bad thing, if you agree that killing an entire race to save other races is acceptable.

But there is no way to pick destroy without implicity saying "killing an entire race is OK if it saves more people," which is what the catalyst was doing.

I am already that somebody.  I'm willing to kill the Reapers to stop them.  In fact, I'm going to have to kill the Reapers to stop them.  Genocide is genocide, it doesn't matter how you go about it.  Refusal is committing genocide on a much grander scale than Destroy, although you do get to rationalize it by saying:  At least somebody else is doing the killing, I just allowed them to do it.  Dead Reapers = win.  Harvested galaxy = loss, and I didn't set out to lose.  I lose a lot, because I have a hard time getting past the Reaper laser, since it rips cruisers in half.  If I'm going past that point, I have a clear goal that is going to drive me there, and that is the destruction of the Reapers.  What were Garrus' numbers?  5 million dead the first day?  So yes, I would sacrifice a couple hundred million to save trillions of people.

[CulturalGeekGirl]

robertthebard wrote...

I am already that somebody.  I'm willing to kill the Reapers to stop them.  In fact, I'm going to have to kill the Reapers to stop them.  Genocide is genocide, it doesn't matter how you go about it.  Refusal is committing genocide on a much grander scale than Destroy, although you do get to rationalize it by saying:  At least somebody else is doing the killing, I just allowed them to do it.  Dead Reapers = win.  Harvested galaxy = loss, and I didn't set out to lose.  I lose a lot, because I have a hard time getting past the Reaper laser, since it rips cruisers in half.  If I'm going past that point, I have a clear goal that is going to drive me there, and that is the destruction of the Reapers.  What were Garrus' numbers?  5 million dead the first day?  So yes, I would sacrifice a couple hundred million to save trillions of people.

So you believe that killing an enemy who is actively attacking you is morally equivalent to stabbing a friend in the back?

If you say "killing the Reapers is genocide. Killing the Geth is genocide, thus they are morally the same," you're being pointlessly reductionist and almost deliberately obtuse. Just being willing to kill the Reapers doesn't make you similar to the catalyst. Being willing to genocide an innocent race who trusts you does.

If you see no moral difference between killing an enemy who is actively trying to kill you and killing an ally who trusts you, then we probably cannot have a sane conversation, because your moral code is utterly incomprehensible to me.

Also, you aren't killing a few million to save a few trillion; if you tell yourself that, you are lying to yourself. If your Shepard believes that destroy is the only way to save the trillions who would die if the reaping proceeds, he is explicitly wrong (as proven by the other endings where everyone lives happily ever after), and Shepard commits genocide merely because he is stupid... again, exactly what the Catalyst is doing.

Destroy isn't "killing billions to save trillions," it's "killing an entire race because I think the other options where everyone lives are troubling in other ways, so in this case I prefer genocide." Which is understandable, because the other choices are problematic, yes.

If that is your decision... that, when given three ways to save people, you believe that genociding a persecuted race who trusts you is less bad than becoming Space Big Brother or turning everyone green and psychic, then I understand. Both Space Big Brother and Strange Powers are scary and morally troubling in other ways.

But to phrase the quandary as if picking red was the only way to save lives is morally dishonest.  You aren't committing genocide because it's the only way to save the rest, you're committing genocide because you personally find genocide less troublesome than Space Big Brother or Transhumanism.

Modifié par CulturalGeekGirl, 08 août 2012 - 01:47 .