5087 réponses à ce sujet

[comrade gando]

I just came across this:

In short, the 'Leviathan' DLC will do nothing to change the Mass Effect 3 endings. Here’s a quote from Bioware on what their plans for Mass Effect 3’s endings are for the future.View slideshow:
Mass Effect 3

“I answered this. There will be no more new endings. I used the "quotes"
as we consider the Extended Cut the ending, the finale, the stop
whatever you want to call it of the ending of Mass Effect 3. We do not
plan to make new endings, give more closure to the endings, adding or
subtracting to or from the endings, etc. We are done with the endings.”

www.examiner.com/article/mass-effect-3-leviathan-dlc-will-not-change-mass-effect-3-s-endings


it seems bioware is dead set on their infamously bad ending to an otherwise excellent but utterly pointless trilogy. I don't know WHO actually quoted that but the link is there and it just says its from "bioware".

It's as if they're proud their ending sucks or something.

[SHARXTREME]

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...

I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, I'm trying to demonstrate the logical conclusions of the contradictory statements you are making. Let me outline the things I believe you have indicated in the last few pages. Tell me what you disagree with.

1. You don't believe that the green beam cures racism-
2. You believe the green beam allows everyone to better understand each other
3. The green beam prevents the Reapers from killing everyone
4. It is immoral to use the green beam.

If one of those statements is incorrect, please clarify your actual belief and your area of disagreement with that statement.

You have provided no evidence that the green beam does anything other than increase understanding. Nothing in the ending slides suggests that anything has happened other than increasing understanding, and granting those synthetics who wanted to experience emotions the ability to experience emotions.

The only shred of evidence you have when you wildly speculate that the green beam does anything other than increasing understanding is a quote from the catalyst that he believes the green beam will create long-lasting peace. However, if you listen to that entire conversation in context, it becomes clear that he believes that increased understanding (the one thing the beam is confirmed to provide) will create this lasting peace.  Whether or not he's right - whether or not increased understanding will create lasting peace - is irrelevant. There is still no evidence anywhere that the green beam has any influence on a person's identity other than increasing understanding. Anything else you claim it does is thus completely unrelated to reality or the text in question.

Once I have clarification as to whether you agree or disagree with these statements, I can explain my interpretations in a way that may be easier for you to understand.

1. I don't believe that Green Beam CAN cure racism AND I don't believe it's even made to do that(Catalyst says exactly and only this on the theme : -"Organics seek perfection through synthetic upgrades; synthetics seek perfection through understanding. Organics will be fully integrated with synthetics, and in turn synthetics will fully understand organics. It is an ideal solution"(It's also a total nonsense))

2. NO. for the third time, it's just about synthetics and organics, not about "everyone" 

3. Yes.  

4. No. It is amoral. Because Catalyst has no moral standards or concepts. It's also stupid and illogical  to use the beam on whole galaxy full of organic lifeforms we know nothing about. And It solves only synthetic-organic problem. What about newly born  Cyborg Yahg, violent primitive species that suddenly has full synthetic upgrades. Catalyst never says that synthesis will cure violence, or anything else besides that quote.

About Lasting peace. I hate to repeat myself, but you constantly ignore this.
When Catalyst talks about(implies) lasting peace, It is all about lasting peace between organics and synthetics, Nothing more. Because Catalyst's "logic" says that you can remove conflict if you mix everybody in one similar lifeform  on DNA level. That will bring peace, right?
WRONG.  It will end only the conflict between synthetics and organics, only because both synthetics and organics will cease to exist. They will be neither synthetic nor organic..
Day after Synthesis some Urdnot Crax 2.0 kills a Geth Prime Hybrid the Great because he didn't like his LED headlamps.
   
You get why Synthesis cannot function, EVER?
(BTW I hate you because I needed to watch that catalyst ending again to dig out exact quote about synthesis. It also reminded me what a giant clusterf*ck everything about that ending is.)

[CulturalGeekGirl]

Here is how EDI describes the universe after the beam:

"The Reapers are helping us to rebuilt. Where once they threatened us with extinction, they now bring us the collected knowledge of the cultures that came before. As a galaxy we can now live the lives we have wished for.

Taking our first steps into a new and wonderful future, where organics and synthetics can co-exist peacfully.

With peace across the galaxy and with unlimited access to knowledge, we can eliminate disease, poverty and overpopulation.

As the line between synthetic and organic disappears we may transcend mortality itself, to reach a level of existence I can't even imagine."

This is the only report we have on the actual result of the beam. The only things that seem to have happened are increased access to knowledge, and a blurring of the line between synthetics and organics that people seem to be embracing.

Anything you imagine happens that is not described in EDI's report (or implied by differences in her slides versus the slides for the other endings) is just speculation.

Modifié par CulturalGeekGirl, 09 août 2012 - 01:37 .

[SHARXTREME]

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...

Here is how EDI describes the universe after the beam:

"The Reapers are helping us to rebuilt. Where once they threatened us with extinction, they now bring us the collected knowledge of the cultures that came before. As a galaxy we can now live the lives we have wished for.

Taking our first steps into a new and wonderful future, where organics and synthetics can co-exist peacfully.

With peace across the galaxy and with unlimited access to knowledge, we can eliminate disease, poverty and overpopulation.

As the line between synthetic and organic disappears we may transcend mortality itself, to reach a level of existence I can't even imagine."

This is the only report we have on the actual result of the beam. The only things that seem to have happened are increased access to knowledge, and a blurring of the line between synthetics and organics that people seem to be embracing.

Anything you imagine happens that is not described in EDI's report (or implied by differences in her slides versus the slides for the other endings) is just speculation.

Highly Logical speculation based on Shepard's knowledge and information provided by Catalyst. 
Synthesis will alter organic DNA and combine synthetics with ALL organics in the galaxy. That's the only certain thing.
There is still a possibility that day after Synthesis some Batarian will shoot a Geth Pyro, not because he was synthetic but because he hates yellow collored gas tanks, and there is no logical way to dispute my prediction.
Synthesis solves nothing. It just deletes both organics and synthetics under Catalyst's false assumption that Synthetics and Organics fight just because they are what they are, and I say that Catalyst is wrong and that is not the reason why (some) synthetics and organics fight.(try to dispute that with info from the game) 
 
Shepard can't know what will happen after because Shepard will be dead,
BTW That thing that EDI says is just another speculation, it is even formulated as such. "We may" "We can" "can't even imagine" 
From actual "results"  you learn absolutely nothing relevant.

So what is your basic point CGG? I say that synthesis is complete nonsense all the way through, it's just wrapped in shiny paper. What says you? That it's a valid option? If not, why are you in conflict with my opinion based on facts and logical conclusions? Because of understanding?

...

One other thing. 

Legion loyalty mission. Ethics can't allow you to finish it(destoy or rewrite, impossible choice)
. Legion asks too much of Shepard there.
After you enter that mission and choose anything you have cemented the invalidity of Destroy option. 
That is also just from information obtained from the game. 
The deeper you go in Geth-Quarian problems, deeper you sink in the ending.  

[teh DRUMPf!!]

 I'm dying to know what he thinks of EC.

Here's the thing though, I for the most part disagree with him. Come ME3, the themes of the game have changed from those of 1 & 2. Not completely, but there's a lot of change. And IMO, the endings fit largely into those changed themes.

Which, IMO, is fine. This is not 1 Reaper, or half a Reaper and a proxy race. This is 999999 of them.

If it was the same, it would've been rather pathetic.

[M0keys]

hooray! we've been graced with the knowledge of hundreds of trillions of murdered innocents! thanks, reapers!

[M0keys]

HYR 2.0 wrote...

 I'm dying to know what he thinks of EC.

Here's the thing though, I for the most part disagree with him. Come ME3, the themes of the game have changed from those of 1 & 2.

all i could see was "you must have compassion for all life, or at least appreciate the value of greater numbers in orchestra, to defeat the reapers and change the destiny of the universe."

nothing about "Synthetics are this big great threat"

turns out they were just people going to war for the same reasons we always have. "you tried to kill us - please stop it -- stop -- hey, stop it! ALRIGHT, THAT'S IT!"

[ld1449]

comrade gando wrote...

I just came across this:

In short, the 'Leviathan' DLC will do nothing to change the Mass Effect 3 endings. Here’s a quote from Bioware on what their plans for Mass Effect 3’s endings are for the future.View slideshow:
Mass Effect 3

“I answered this. There will be no more new endings. I used the "quotes"
as we consider the Extended Cut the ending, the finale, the stop
whatever you want to call it of the ending of Mass Effect 3. We do not
plan to make new endings, give more closure to the endings, adding or
subtracting to or from the endings, etc. We are done with the endings.”

www.examiner.com/article/mass-effect-3-leviathan-dlc-will-not-change-mass-effect-3-s-endings


it seems bioware is dead set on their infamously bad ending to an otherwise excellent but utterly pointless trilogy. I don't know WHO actually quoted that but the link is there and it just says its from "bioware".

It's as if they're proud their ending sucks or something.

Look down below at the comments. Freakin beautiful.

Tanking DLC Sales Here Bioware comes, full speed ahead.

[yukon fire]

When small men attempt great enterprises, they always end by reducing them to the level of their mediocrity.

[SHARXTREME]

Leaked Mac Walters notes say that the goal of the ending was to
a) feel like a cross between Brave New World and Matrix(???)
intention was to bring "LOTS OF SPECULATION"

So, Artistic integrity an vision, haha. Unbelievable.

[Oxspit]

SHARXTREME wrote...

Leaked Mac Walters notes say that the goal of the ending was to
a) feel like a cross between Brave New World and Matrix(???)
intention was to bring "LOTS OF SPECULATION"

So, Artistic integrity an vision, haha. Unbelievable.

God.... if a) is true I 'm afraid I'm going to have to reluctantly join in on the bald-faced Mac Walters hating band-wagon.....

[Oxspit]

Ah. Splendid.

[drayfish]

Every day.
 
Every damned day I turn up to this thread and get another wonderful gift full of discourse, debate and analysis. Thank you all. Even when things gets slightly heated this thread remains fascinating and wildly intelligent – and thankfully never tips over into hostility.
 
However (and I have very recently stated these exact words elsewhere), this is precisely why I hate these goddamn endings so much. They ask impenetrably complex questions that it is abundantly clear Bioware both had no intention of ever answering and that they never even fully understood at the moment of their expression. These conclusions leave the task of actually articulating the implications of these half-baked notions to people who have exhibited more emotional, ideological and intellectual capacity than the artists who clumsily posed them, resulting in endless unresolvable efforts to seal up their vagaries with logic.
 
And what I continue to despise in every ending is the way in which they rob each of the conclusions of any meaningful poetry. 
 
Destroy: I will not bow to the vile mentality of the Reapers, I will not allow myself to become like them – except-for-this-exact-moment-when-I kill-one-whole-legitimate-form-of-life-in-order-to-preserve-another-thereby-proving-the-whole-thesis-of-the-Reaper's-valid...
 
Control: Congratulations Shepard, you have defeated the arrogance of Saren, the egotism of the Illusive Man, the pride of Harbinger, and overcome the self-righteous presumption of the Reaper King... So how about you just try on his crown on for a second. Oh, that looks spiffy indeed. Wow. You look really good in that. You can pull that off. ...Hey, want to rule the universe? You totally can... That would in no way be exactly what every other villain in this narrative was trying to do the whole time. 
 
Synthesis: It is important that we learn racism and intolerance is wrong, so we'll just take away the whole notion of racism. We won't overcome it; we won't learn to appreciate why evolving beyond such imagined barriers are beneficial. We'll just skip that step, impose it on everyone, and not worry that the beauty of the message was utterly ignored. 
 
Refuse: Well, isn't that nice: you made a little speech about valuing autonomy. But hey, it doesn't matter, because you're a weak, weak dog who failed to act when you could have and condemned all sentient life to extinction. ...So how ya feel about that freedom now, clown?
 
Every one of these vapid conclusions makes a powerful statement – and then immediately contradicts it. It's like some weird bait-and-switch, except that if you play along you become morally compromised for the precise reason you fought so long do what's right. You end up shadow boxing with your own morality, never able to appease that gnawing doubt in your heart, because the clumsy nihilistic illogic the creators of this fiction employed frustrate any chance at making meaning, let alone reaching a state of resolve.
 
Instead, it is for this reason that I too am fully supportive of the real ending of Mass Effect 3:
 

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...
 
You're right that I have a favored ending. It's called the big purple button. It's the ending where you take the elevator back down to a room where some race that wasn't an idiot built an extra bit on the Crucible... a bit that turns the Starkid off. You push that button, the starkid turns off, and the chips fall where they may.

It's an ending that's sane and sensible and hopeful and bittersweet. It's an ending that could have been added without devaluing the other endings. It's an ending that doens't play god, unlike all the endings that exist.

That is the ending that I want to believe in – the ending that apparently Bioware was too cynical to provide, so busy laying ethical traps into each outcome that would compromise us all.
 

p.s. – @ oxspit and Heretic_Hanar:
 
If you did want to know my (now achingly outdated) thoughts on Indoctrination theory, I have clumsily lashed together a couple of my older posts here: http://social.biowar...36/blog/219237/  Apologies in advance for the swells of hyperbole.  You may want to bring a flotation device.

Modifié par drayfish, 10 août 2012 - 01:09 .

[Oxspit]

@drayfish

I think I had a kind of similar experience with IT and attitude towards it.

I actually never played through the original endings at all. Never have, and never will. I started ME1 after ME3 was already out (I played my way through them somewhat obsessively) but I got wind of the controversy some way through ME2 and, well, I went and watched the endings. I then heard about this IT thing and how they were making the EC and I'm like "O.K. IT... from now on that's my working assumption, let's give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they have a trick or two up their sleeve".

It was by the time I got to Thessia I just had to admit to myself, having not yet seen the EC (which wasn't even out yet), that this simply wasn't going to happen. I really just didn't see the dreams and the kid as foreshadowing indoctrination very well or cleverly. Cerberus really had just become some vague "insert when you need villains to shoot at but don't want to have to give them any clear goals of any kind" organisation by this point. Their taking of the citadel just made no sense, quite apart from how they shouldn't have been able to do it so easily anyway. Finding those crucible designs on Mars was just stupid. Added to which, for a project whose success depends upon ultra-secrecy, it was amazing how many conversations you were overhearing on the citadel about it and how many people seemed to know it existed. By the end of the story, the only people who don't know it exists are the reapers (hell, even friggin' Vendetta somehow knows), which is odd seeing as how they have, in indoctrination, the most powerful tool for espionage and subterfuge ever devised.

But back to Thessia. You get to Thessia with Shepard having done some strange complete about-face and trusting implicitly that whatever they were about to find in this temple is going to end this war tomorrow (auto-dialogued in). And then, the temple. Ah, yes, the temple. Swallowing that was an act in pretending everything in ME1 onwards just hadn't happened at all.

Moral of the story being, it was now impossible to kid myself that I was in a story being handled by someone/some group who had the first clue what they were doing. Positing some weird act of narrative genius we were yet to see as an explanation for the ending violated Occam's razor rather jarringly. Somehow I'd been ignoring all of those other issues up until now, but here I kind of stopped.

When you think about it, the only missions which really worked in terms of story were logical extensions/conclusions of stories the ground-work for which you find in ME1, with simple logical continuation/set-up in ME2 (Tuchanka and Rannoch), and in terms of working with the ending they give you they would have done better to leave out one of them altogether. I mean, Rannoch stood as this great contradictory ediface to the ending they had 'planned' but they went ahead with it anyway and without any apparent second thoughts. 

I mean, I still had a hell of a lot of fun finishing it through but when it got to the actual ending... yeah, I just kind of walked out of the room. I guess my cognitive dissonance/lack of immersion kicked in sufficiently early that I've never been mad at the endings, exactly, I'm just wondering what the hell happened.

And yet, I'm still here on BSN .... This is all a rather curious phenomenon, really. It's really rather amazing the attachment they somehow induced even when the writing frankly wasn't always that great..... This turned out to be an interesting 'might have been' in the end.

I agree that using an IT-like device would have been brilliant, though. In my mind the way they'd handle it by slightly changing the ending/nature of the choices with each DLC such that the player has the veil lifted from them in synch with Shepard coming to his/her senses. In terms of having the player viscerally imersed in an indoctrination experience, fooling us really was actually necessary. This even seemed in keeping with their statements about what they were doing with the EC ('explaining' the ending you were given better). But, yeah, I'd come to the conclusion that that just wasn't going to happen before the EC had even come out.....

[MrFob]

drayfish wrote...
Instead, it is for this reason that I too am fully supportive of the real ending of Mass Effect 3:
 

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...
 
You're right that I have a favored ending. It's called the big purple button. It's the ending where you take the elevator back down to a room where some race that wasn't an idiot built an extra bit on the Crucible... a bit that turns the Starkid off. You push that button, the starkid turns off, and the chips fall where they may.

It's an ending that's sane and sensible and hopeful and bittersweet. It's an ending that could have been added without devaluing the other endings. It's an ending that doens't play god, unlike all the endings that exist.

That is the ending that I want to believe in – the ending that apparently Bioware was too cynical to provide, so busy laying ethical traps into each outcome that would compromise us all.

I am still wondering drayfish, do you consider the ethical traps lying in the fact that you have to do something that you ultimately don't want to do? If so, I can't agree with that because that actually provides a dilemma that is interesting, rather than repulsive.
I don't think the failure of the endings is founded in that fact but rather in the problem that this dilemma is combined with a number of other parameters that make it unacceptable as well as insensible, such as the fact that you are forced to head your enemies wishes in order to achieve a favorable solution, the fact the solutions despite horrific implications each and every one of the choices have is always displayed as favorable (if not perfect), the fact that the whole situation and the catalyst itself is ultimately illogical on many levels and the fact that the one ending where you choose to resist is stripped of any impact by the implication that you just made a terrible mistake which had to be corrected by others in the future.
As I tried to express in my last post a couple of pages ago, I think there is no problem with hard choices and with sacrifices. There is a problem with how these are implemented and put into context.

[Oxspit]

MrFob wrote...

drayfish wrote...
Instead, it is for this reason that I too am fully supportive of the real ending of Mass Effect 3:
 

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...
 
You're right that I have a favored ending. It's called the big purple button. It's the ending where you take the elevator back down to a room where some race that wasn't an idiot built an extra bit on the Crucible... a bit that turns the Starkid off. You push that button, the starkid turns off, and the chips fall where they may.

It's an ending that's sane and sensible and hopeful and bittersweet. It's an ending that could have been added without devaluing the other endings. It's an ending that doens't play god, unlike all the endings that exist.

That is the ending that I want to believe in – the ending that apparently Bioware was too cynical to provide, so busy laying ethical traps into each outcome that would compromise us all.

I am still wondering drayfish, do you consider the ethical traps lying in the fact that you have to do something that you ultimately don't want to do? If so, I can't agree with that because that actually provides a dilemma that is interesting, rather than repulsive.
I don't think the failure of the endings is founded in that fact but rather in the problem that this dilemma is combined with a number of other parameters that make it unacceptable as well as insensible, such as the fact that you are forced to head your enemies wishes in order to achieve a favorable solution, the fact the solutions despite horrific implications each and every one of the choices have is always displayed as favorable (if not perfect), the fact that the whole situation and the catalyst itself is ultimately illogical on many levels and the fact that the one ending where you choose to resist is stripped of any impact by the implication that you just made a terrible mistake which had to be corrected by others in the future.
As I tried to express in my last post a couple of pages ago, I think there is no problem with hard choices and with sacrifices. There is a problem with how these are implemented and put into context.

I can answer that one for myself... for me the problem is threefold:

1) You have to commit some manner of morally abhorrent act for no particularly good reason at all. Worse than that, you're forced to agree with the star-child's moronic logic. Not submit under sufference, actually agree with him.

2) This is actually shown to be a victory. Someone earlier used the analogy of having the emporer tell Luke at the end of ROTJ that going to the dark-side would lead to utopia, having Luke do it then seeing it actually lead to utopia. Quite apart from it rendering the preceding story pointless, it's wildly implausible that it would really work out that way. The sunshine and bunnies you see occuring after control and synthesis .... I simply cannot believe the chips would really fall that way. It's stupid. Added to which, without meta-gaming it's stupid to believe the star kid in the first place.

3)The entire thing is so contrived anyway. They may as well do away with the star child and have you talking to Mac Walters directly. It actually makes more sense that you would be able to make a reaper-seeking death beam rather than a synthetics-seeking death beam. That would actually be a less complicated thing to do. The story up to this point does not make the options you are given make any more sense than, say, the reaper-seeking death beam vs a 'reprogram the reapers to being nice' beam at the push of a button with no need for sacrifice. They're all just arbitrary choices you're given literally as a magic button DEM. Shepard doesn't need to sacrifice himself because it makes any more sense within the constraints of the story or the logical costraints of the crucible (the crucible has no logical constraints). It's literally just there because the writers thought a 'noble sacrifice' would be a cool thing to happen at the end. The three choices are literally just there because the authors thought they would be cool choices to make, not because they thought they'd make the most sense. You literally could have been given any three choices at all.

[teh DRUMPf!!]

Every day.
 
Every damned day I turn up to this thread and get another wonderful gift full of discourse, debate and analysis. Thank you all. Even when things gets slightly heated this thread remains fascinating and wildly intelligent – and thankfully never tips over into hostility.

I take it you are the Prof, then. Cool. I was curious what you thought of the new endings.

 

And what I continue to despise in every ending is the way in which they rob each of the conclusions of any meaningful poetry.

I disagree. IMO, the endings have their values that the player finds in them.

Further, they represent a changed set of themes in this series.

Destroy: I will not bow to the vile mentality of the Reapers, I will not allow myself to become like them – except-for-this-exact-moment-when-I kill-one-whole-legitimate-form-of-life-in-order-to-preserve-another-thereby-proving-the-whole-thesis-of-the-Reaper's-valid...

First off, that synthetics are a legitimate life form is debateable. In fact, you can either expressly agree or disagree with that notion in-game (Legion conversation after finding the base; prerequisite: ask why he's conflicted).

Second, this is war. There are casualties. There is sacrifice. There are atrocities. There is betrayal. And these are  prominent (and new) themes of ME3. I said this in a post on this page.

Genophage Arc: cure the krogan... at the expense of the salarian scientist (sacrifice), or sabotage the cure in favor of additional aid or your own fear of the krogan race growing unchecked (atrocity, sacrifice) and shoot your ally salarian to do so (betrayal).

Cerberus Arc: ... need I say more? Betryal, and atrocity. It also claims any of the following people casualty: Thane, Kirrahe, Salarian Councilor, Miranda, Orianna, Jack, all of Grissom Academy ... (and others I may be forgetting).

Rannoch: if your reputation checks well enough, you can save both sides, but are still required to sacrifice an ally to do so. If you're not so lucky, you're required to wipe out one side and betray one of either your geth or quarian ally.

If you've played this game to the end, it's a little late for that complaint. That all synthetics are killed in Destroy is no more/less upholding Reaper philosphies than anything Shepard has been doing up to this point.

Control: Congratulations Shepard, you have defeated the arrogance of Saren, the egotism of the Illusive Man, the pride of Harbinger, and overcome the self-righteous presumption of the Reaper King... So how about you just try on his crown on for a second. Oh, that looks spiffy indeed. Wow. You look really good in that. You can pull that off. ...Hey, want to rule the universe? You totally can... That would in no way be exactly what every other villain in this narrative was trying to do the whole time.

1.) Saren's arrogance had nothing to do with why he allied with the Reapers, it was the opposite - he wanted to play for the winning team out of fear, and even thought it would save the galaxy to submit to them. The Illusive Man wasn't pursuing it out of his own ego, it was supposed to be for humanity's benefit. Harbinger is not a controller, but a pawn himself. So saying that every villain was trying to do that is an inaccurate claim to make.

2.) There is no question that the Reapers' motives are illogical, and their actions are wrong. We've been struggling against it to overcome them all the way. So is it not a victory to take their illogical motives and heinous actions and replace them with Shepard - the embodiment of everything that opposes it?

Synthesis: It is important that we learn racism and intolerance is wrong, so we'll just take away the whole notion of racism. We won't overcome it; we won't learn to appreciate why evolving beyond such imagined barriers are beneficial. We'll just skip that step, impose it on everyone, and not worry that the beauty of the message was utterly ignored.

Synthesis guy here and I utterly disagree with this notion.

It's hard to pinpoint where exactly synthesis helps the galaxy overcome racism/intolerance. Fellow synthesis supporters and myself have come up with many explanations, but it's all hypothesis. So I won't discuss that.

However, there is one aspect of this ending that is not so vague and is clearly shown to us which, to me, is a huge symbolic victory: you freed the Reapers.

When it comes down to it, it's really not "big" of you to not be a racist in this game and preach cooperation. You walk into this universe with no prejudices towards any of the species in it. On the contrary, they are the shiny toys you want to play with. Or the booty you want to tap. Except for one of them - the enemy. The Reapers.

Through three games, you build up a special kind of hatred an animosity for these guys. They are to you what the turians/salarians are to the krogan, what the geth are to the quarians, what your species is to the batarians. This is an enemy you harbor a very real-life animosity towards, even outside of the game's universe.

To me, there's something to be said for having a path to end the war peacefully - and not wiping out that enemy completely and not continuing their manipulation. And no, I don't find it too far-fetched to believe, but I'll stop there for now.

Refuse: Well, isn't that nice: you made a little speech about valuing autonomy. But hey, it doesn't matter, because you're a weak, weak dog who failed to act when you could have and condemned all sentient life to extinction. ...So how ya feel about that freedom now, clown?

Refuse is a reiteration of a major theme that many fans miss in this game. War doesn't reward idealism or arrogance.

 

You end up shadow boxing with your own morality, never able to appease that gnawing doubt in your heart, because the clumsy nihilistic illogic the creators of this fiction employed frustrate any chance at making meaning, let alone reaching a state of resolve.

This series was built around the premise of hard choices. Few of them actually are, and the ending is one of those few for this very reason. It is inherently morally-problematic. A decision so hard it breaks its players (by choosing Refuse, and basically losing the game).

That, to me, is a success of their writing. It understandably isn't satisfying for everyone. But I applaud that. My only big issue was pre-EC where the game seemingly ends this great big decision on a cliffhanger, of sorts.

That's why, respectfully, I'd take this ending over the one CulturalGeekGirl proposed... everyday, and twice on Sunday. Not to imply I think it's perfect, but it's acceptable. Overall, I'm more than okay with it.

[teh DRUMPf!!]

Oxspit wrote...

I can answer that one for myself... for me the problem is threefold:

1) You have to commit some manner of morally abhorrent act for no particularly good reason at all.

2) This is actually shown to be a victory.

Um, that's basically the way war works. Whoever wins writes history. Any immoral acts committed to achieve its victory are irrelevant in the end. Instead, it's all about how the you (the "good" guys) win!

Worse than that, you're forced to agree with the star-child's moronic logic. Not submit under sufference, actually agree with him

Also, it's a little late to complain about being railroaded (like going along with the catalyst). You can be a guy who doesn't trust the krogan enough to save a copy of data on a genophage cure in ME2, but are forced to go along with Victus and recruit Space USSR into the efforts without protest. Want to find another way, aside from recruiting them or upholding the genocide of their species? You can't.

Didn't trust Legion enough to recruit him to the squad and sold him to Cerebrus in ME2? Too bad, you're letting a geth onto your ship and working with it in ME3 whether you like it or not. Alternatively, if you're a geth sympathizer, and hate the quarians too, you're railroaded into trying to recruit them and briefly helping them in their war.

[robertthebard]

Oxspit wrote...

MrFob wrote...

drayfish wrote...
Instead, it is for this reason that I too am fully supportive of the real ending of Mass Effect 3:
 

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...
 
You're right that I have a favored ending. It's called the big purple button. It's the ending where you take the elevator back down to a room where some race that wasn't an idiot built an extra bit on the Crucible... a bit that turns the Starkid off. You push that button, the starkid turns off, and the chips fall where they may.

It's an ending that's sane and sensible and hopeful and bittersweet. It's an ending that could have been added without devaluing the other endings. It's an ending that doens't play god, unlike all the endings that exist.

That is the ending that I want to believe in – the ending that apparently Bioware was too cynical to provide, so busy laying ethical traps into each outcome that would compromise us all.

I am still wondering drayfish, do you consider the ethical traps lying in the fact that you have to do something that you ultimately don't want to do? If so, I can't agree with that because that actually provides a dilemma that is interesting, rather than repulsive.
I don't think the failure of the endings is founded in that fact but rather in the problem that this dilemma is combined with a number of other parameters that make it unacceptable as well as insensible, such as the fact that you are forced to head your enemies wishes in order to achieve a favorable solution, the fact the solutions despite horrific implications each and every one of the choices have is always displayed as favorable (if not perfect), the fact that the whole situation and the catalyst itself is ultimately illogical on many levels and the fact that the one ending where you choose to resist is stripped of any impact by the implication that you just made a terrible mistake which had to be corrected by others in the future.
As I tried to express in my last post a couple of pages ago, I think there is no problem with hard choices and with sacrifices. There is a problem with how these are implemented and put into context.

I can answer that one for myself... for me the problem is threefold:

1) You have to commit some manner of morally abhorrent act for no particularly good reason at all. Worse than that, you're forced to agree with the star-child's moronic logic. Not submit under sufference, actually agree with him.

2) This is actually shown to be a victory. Someone earlier used the analogy of having the emporer tell Luke at the end of ROTJ that going to the dark-side would lead to utopia, having Luke do it then seeing it actually lead to utopia. Quite apart from it rendering the preceding story pointless, it's wildly implausible that it would really work out that way. The sunshine and bunnies you see occuring after control and synthesis .... I simply cannot believe the chips would really fall that way. It's stupid. Added to which, without meta-gaming it's stupid to believe the star kid in the first place.

3)The entire thing is so contrived anyway. They may as well do away with the star child and have you talking to Mac Walters directly. It actually makes more sense that you would be able to make a reaper-seeking death beam rather than a synthetics-seeking death beam. That would actually be a less complicated thing to do. The story up to this point does not make the options you are given make any more sense than, say, the reaper-seeking death beam vs a 'reprogram the reapers to being nice' beam at the push of a button with no need for sacrifice. They're all just arbitrary choices you're given literally as a magic button DEM. Shepard doesn't need to sacrifice himself because it makes any more sense within the constraints of the story or the logical costraints of the crucible (the crucible has no logical constraints). It's literally just there because the writers thought a 'noble sacrifice' would be a cool thing to happen at the end. The three choices are literally just there because the authors thought they would be cool choices to make, not because they thought they'd make the most sense. You literally could have been given any three choices at all.

This is a pretty common misconception that I see touted a lot, and still can't fathom:  You must agree with SC to pick any of the possible endings, except Refusal, if you shoot it in the face.

I built the Crucible for one thing, to stop the Reapers.  The understanding I have is that, despite what TIM keeps telling me, dead Reapers is how we win this.  Now, all of a sudden, because there's SC telling us that it can indeed destroy the Reapers, we have to agree with it in order to do what we intended to do when the plans were uncovered.  The option to Destroy exists because that's the intended function of the Crucible, not because SC handwaved it in.

[drayfish]

MrFob wrote...
 
I am still wondering drayfish, do you consider the ethical traps lying in the fact that you have to do something that you ultimately don't want to do? If so, I can't agree with that because that actually provides a dilemma that is interesting, rather than repulsive.
I don't think the failure of the endings is founded in that fact but rather in the problem that this dilemma is combined with a number of other parameters that make it unacceptable as well as insensible, such as the fact that you are forced to head your enemies wishes in order to achieve a favorable solution, the fact the solutions despite horrific implications each and every one of the choices have is always displayed as favorable (if not perfect), the fact that the whole situation and the catalyst itself is ultimately illogical on many levels and the fact that the one ending where you choose to resist is stripped of any impact by the implication that you just made a terrible mistake which had to be corrected by others in the future.
As I tried to express in my last post a couple of pages ago, I think there is no problem with hard choices and with sacrifices. There is a problem with how these are implemented and put into context.

@ MrFob:
 
Unless I have misunderstood your meaning (and please do correct me if I have), I absolutely whole heartedly agree with you.
 
(And I hope that this response might also address a number of the questions that HYR 2.0 posed as well – along with the caveat that these are simply my opinions, HYR 2.0: I am very glad to hear that you enjoyed and saw worth in the endings that you experienced, I simply had a rather different view of the scenarios depicted.)
 
I am actually fine with there being a weighty price for each of the endings – I certainly expected as much after the 20 plus hours of reiteration Bioware beat into us that 'We're all gonna die', 'Conventional victory won't work', 'I wish I'd have called my mother more often', ''I'll never get to watch the end of Breaking Bad on Tivo...'
 
But for me I think that the specific way they chose to construct those penalties becomes so ideologically motivated that it's impossible to not be finally compromised by any options at the end.
 
Take Destroy, for example: as many people have stated in this and I'm sure other threads, if the price for Destroy was: you kill the Reapers, but Earth also gets torched (hell, if even this whole sector of space gets wiped), but the rest of the galaxy is freed, I would be fine with that. The sacrifice would be heart-wrenching, the loss of life profound, but despite being a tragic loss, it would stop a greater threat that was intent on wiping those people out anyway. Blood would be on the player's hands, but the Reapers would have had their disgusting campaign stopped in its tracks.
 
But that's not the price. The Reapers want us to wipe out synthetic life. They want us to privilege one kind of life over another. To say, sure, it's a sacrifice, but ultimately it's more important that biological life continues. We are funnelled into a fundamentally racist act, whether we share that belief or not.
 
The same with Control; the same with Synthesis. These are the very tools that the Reapers have been employing for three games worth of play, weapons and principles that lie at the heart of their whole agenda: to strip self-aware creatures of their right to choose how to live their lives, to remake the universe according to a singular vision of what is 'best' for everyone, without the consent of the populace.
 
And again, for a game series that purports to be all about Choice this seems an extraordinary thematic line to cross for the 'benefit' of the universe.
 
I made a somewhat playful reference to Seven a page or two back in the thread ('You don't look in the box', I think I said, being witlessly flippant for such a disturbing moment in cinema), but I'd like to expand that analogy further now in order to answer your question.
 
Seven is a tragedy, because it ends with the villain of the piece winning. He has a sick, nihilistic vision of humanity that we are corrupted and prone to sin, so he sets in play a series of tests that will prove his twisted vision to be true. And the final test is whether or not he can make Brad Pitt flip out and vengefully murder him in cold blood. ...And the tragedy is that he does: Brad Pitt fails the test. He gets some unfortunate head-shaped mail, wigs out, and in a moment of blind rage proves the serial killer right. A good man is broken, so morally mutilated that he acts (knowingly even) to fulfil the villain's hypothesis.
 
That is precisely what each of the endings of Mass Effect 3 feel like to me – scenarios engineered to ultimately prove the Reaper's vision of the universe and it's inhabitant true. That not only were they right all along, but that your only choice to preserve life in the universe is to embrace their sick ideology:
 
Sure, you can kill us, but in order to do so you have to decide that one kind of life is more important that another (just like we think).
 
Sure, you can control us to bend us to your will (just as we have done for countless generations, robbing people of their basic autonomy).
 
Sure, you can end this whole cycle by mutating everyone into the same DNA, purging the universe of distinction (thereby proving that we were right all along: synthetics and organics would have never gotten along by themselves).
 
Sure, you can refuse to play along and chose to believe in your little coalition for galactic freedom, but f**k you, you lose (and by the way: in the next cycle someone else did what you were too chicken to do and proved us right anyway).

Modifié par drayfish, 10 août 2012 - 06:31 .

[Tallestra]

HYR 2.0 wrote...

This series was built around the premise of hard choices. Few of them actually are, and the ending is one of those few for this very reason. It is inherently morally-problematic. A decision so hard it breaks its players (by choosing Refuse, and basically losing the game).

That, to me, is a success of their writing. It understandably isn't satisfying for everyone. But I applaud that. My only big issue was pre-EC where the game seemingly ends this great big decision on a cliffhanger, of sorts.

All of your arguments are valid, and I'm happy that you've managed to find satisfaction in the game.
But these last lines are condescending, and demonstrate that you do not really understand why we here despise the endings . As drayfish wrote above it's not about hard choices, we are perfectly fine with these, it's about ethical message in these choices for us players. But I guess, not everyone is capable to see clearly these messages (see, I can be also condescending, and I apologize).

Oh, and EC just added happy rainbow endings to all of the choices invalidating their their hardiness anyway.

[MrFob]

@Oxspit: I'd say, that's pretty mich exactly what I wanted to convey (although said more clearly). Agreed.

@drayfish: Also, couldn't agree more. Those are exactly the grievances I have with the endings, That is why they are repulsive and that's why I chose to change them for my own experience and to get closer to the purple button, head cannon or not. (And if the franchise should ever expand on the EC endings with a sequel, they lost me as customer because for me, ME3 ended differently).

robertthebard wrote...
The option to Destroy exists because that's the intended function of the Crucible, not because SC handwaved it in.

I am sorry but I can't see that this is supposed to be the interpretation or even an implication of the final conversation or the ending. The star kid clearly has enough power over the crucible to stop Shepard if it desired. In the refusal ending, you can even see how it shuts the whole contraption down. This as well as the whole dialogue with the star kid indicates some degree of consent (which doesn't make sense at all but there it is). On the other hand, nowhere is it implied that the catalyst has any objections to Shepard destroying the reapers. In fact, it seems rather indifferent (which again makes little sense, given that it can be adversarial at low EMS and the refusal ending).
For me, destroy is the most confusing option, considering the catalyst's origins, it's motives and goals. I just cannot wrap my head around it at all (and I have considered and dismissed the whole "the crucible changes the catalyst itself" agument as well which has been discussed in this very thread a couple of pages back).

This series was built around the premise of hard choices. Few of them
actually are, and the ending is one of those few for this very reason.
It is inherently morally-problematic. A decision so hard it breaks its
players (by choosing Refuse, and basically losing the game).

But the thing is, the choices could still be hard without all the problems that come with it. In fact, if you change the context of the epilogues, it could be argued that they can be even harder, that the consequences are potentially more dire. In fact, that's exactly what I tried to accomplish in my version. The problem is not the severity of the situation in the end. The problem lies in the implementation of this situation that does not offer Shepard a hard choice, emerging from the causalities of previous actions but that is purely offered by the mass murdering entity that controls the antagonist and the sudden and unexplained inversion of morality in the consequences of any of these decisions. Combine that with logical incoherence and you got a narrative train wreck.

Modifié par MrFob, 10 août 2012 - 07:47 .

[robertthebard]

MrFob wrote...

@Oxspit: I'd say, that's pretty mich exactly what I wanted to convey (although said more clearly). Agreed.

@drayfish: Also, couldn't agree more. Those are exactly the grievances I have with the endings, That is why they are repulsive and that's why I chose to change them for my own experience and to get closer to the purple button, head cannon or not. (And if the franchise should ever expand on the EC endings with a sequel, they lost me as customer because for me, ME3 ended differently).

robertthebard wrote...
The option to Destroy exists because that's the intended function of the Crucible, not because SC handwaved it in.

I am sorry but I can't see that this is supposed to be the interpretation or even an implication of the final conversation or the ending. The star kid clearly has enough power over the crucible to stop Shepard if it desired. In the refusal ending, you can even see how it shuts the whole contraption down. This as well as the whole dialogue with the star kid indicates some degree of consent (which doesn't make sense at all but there it is). On the other hand, nowhere is it implied that the catalyst has any objections to Shepard destroying the reapers. In fact, it seems rather indifferent (which again makes little sense, given that it can be adversarial at low EMS and the refusal ending).
For me, destroy is the most confusing option, considering the catalyst's origins, it's motives and goals. I just cannot wrap my head around it at all (and I have considered and dismissed the whole "the crucible changes the catalyst itself" agument as well which has been discussed in this very thread a couple of pages back).

This series was built around the premise of hard choices. Few of them
actually are, and the ending is one of those few for this very reason.
It is inherently morally-problematic. A decision so hard it breaks its
players (by choosing Refuse, and basically losing the game).

But the thing is, the choices could still be hard without all the problems that come with it. In fact, if you change the context of the epilogues, it could be argued that they can be even harder, that the consequences are potentially more dire. In fact, that's exactly what I tried to accomplish in my version. The problem is not the severity of the situation in the end. The problem lies in the implementation of this situation that does not offer Shepard a hard choice, emerging from the causalities of previous actions but that is purely offered by the mass murdering entity that controls the antagonist and the sudden and unexplained inversion of morality in the consequences of any of these decisions. Combine that with logical incoherence and you got a narrative train wreck.

This is why we are sent to Mars.  Hackett, very brokenly:  way to stop the Reapers....possibly the only way.

Then later, after Mars:  He's wrong, dead Reapers are how we win this.

This is why we pursue the Crucible, to make dead Reapers.  We can overanalyze the presentation, but in the two games I actually finished, out of 12 that I've actually played to London and the beam, Destroy was the logical option.  I wanted to end the Reapers, I didn't want to let them win(Refusal), nor did I want to incorporate them into everybody else(Synthesis), and on my Paragon, I couldn't trust that I wouldn't end up just like SC eventually(Control).  I can't play the game with a 5th oppurtunity, because there is no 5th oppurtunity.  My other 10 games are, I suppose, a kind of 5th oppurtunity, and I just call it Ultimate Refusal, because I refuse to believe I could survive the laser blast to even get to the beam, let alone TIM's or SC's ravings.

To me, saying Destroy is another way to agree with the SC is like saying that using a hammer to drive nails is wrong.  The Crucible is a tool that the galaxy created for one purpose, to stop the Reapers.  Claiming that one must agree with the SC in order to use the Crucible for any reason is a rationalization, like "just one more" for a drunk, or "I have to do drugs in order to feel" for a junky.  I disliked the endings, primarily for how they are presented, but I don't dislike them enough to fabricate a fiction that using a tool for what it's designed to do somehow justifies, or acknowledges SC.  If I could shoot the tube w/out talking to him, I would.

[drayfish]

@ oxspit:
 
Great post (actually, great posts), and a fine summation of a lot of the issues that – as you cite them – I realise were gnawing away at me during my play through also. 
 
You're absolutely right: there was an unusual clumsiness to the narrative through-line this time, a number of allowances that needed to be made in order to buy into the plot, which I never remember having to make in the previous two games. ...Okay, maybe the giant human reaper was a bit naff, but I could give them that.
 
It's strange considering how much more streamlined and linear the overarching plot is in this one that we would be confronted with such awkward plotting:
 
We'll never win this. We're all doomed. Hey, wait a minute. Look at this!  It's a magic Lego kit, and when we finish putting it together a ghost will pop out and tell us how to explode the universe. Now here's a repurposed Windows wallpaper to tell us everything's okay...
 
Yay!

Modifié par drayfish, 10 août 2012 - 10:34 .