5087 réponses à ce sujet

[johhnytrash]

optimistickied wrote...

And I guess I do take offense to the idea that, in order to accept the ending, I must be permissive of mediocrity.

THAT is my gripe with the ending. It's just a game, and endings are hard to write, but since most of ME was so good, why did the end have to suck that bad? The ending was a storytelling failure and I'm very, very dissappointed.

[Lyrebon]

CINCTuchanka wrote...

Excellent post Professor Dray, it's quite fantastic to see a piece so well written that I don't need to question the authenticity of you actually being an expert in your field, it shows.  Here's hoping that one day you get to teach a class on this very subject (having ME1, 2 and 3 on a syllabus would be fantastic).

Anyway, I did want to point out one caveat I would like to introduce to your narrative, one that arises rather naturally from the non-linear structure of the ME narrative.  Your claims that killing the Geth is a violation of many aspects of the narrative are, I agree, for the most part correct.  Killing the Geth, taking the act on its own, would be immoral for a good number of Shepards and the introductions of EDI and Legion are clearly meant to have the player sympathize with synthetics.  However, I think it's critical to remember that the Geth themselves can be purposefully wiped out earlier in the game.  

In fact, the player has a dialogue wheel option of "Let the Geth Die" during the conclusion of the Rannoch arc.  Thus, I think it becomes pretty tricky to determine thematic consistency on this point because the player him/herself can choose earlier in game what the theme is in this case.  In fact, if the player chooses to allow the Geth to be effectively wiped out earlier in the game then the Destroy option ceases to be thematically inconsistent.  At the very least, it shows that allowing the Geth to be wiped out is a thematic inconsistency not specific to the ending.   

Now, assuming that the player does save the Geth, the question is whether destroying them while also destroying the Reapers is unecessary or otherwise harmful to the narrative.  It is my belief that the destruction of the Geth in the destroy ending was included simply because BioWare must have realized that it would obviously be the best option.

This is what simply baffles me about the ending choices: If Destruction was too tempting an option for players in the Dev's eyes then why not simply further exposit upon the other choices and make them more "appealing" in some fashion?  

As it stands, it appears that many players feel "forced" to take the Destroy option because the other options are simply more unpalatable and because destroying the reapers is the ONLY goal that the player has been presented with through the entire trilogy.  Further, it is simply not made clear in a logical manner how and why the other options would actually provide any sort of end to the Reaper War, or the cycle for that matter.  

Thus, instead of having more time spent on making Control and Synthesis more valid choices, BioWare cops out by threatening to kill the Geth if you choose Destroy.  Sure there is a good in-game logic behind why the Geth would be killed (upgraded with Reaper tech) but there isn't a narratively acceptable reason to include that caveat other than to make the Destory ending less appealing relative to the others. 

Thanks for reading, hope this contributes something to this great discussion!

I think you've just given Bioware some options for the proposed, "so many endings you can't count," facet that is missing from the final product. The fact that Hudson lied about this is something I'm not even going to get started on - we all dislike Hudson in varying degrees from rankled to outright hostility for being dishonest.

But there was so many opportunities affored by the narrative to bring about its conclusion. Again, the geth-quarian conflict as you indicate changes the thematic premise of the climax. Choosing to eradicate the geth on Rannoch presents the destroy ending with more consistency. However, if you saved the geth the ending has to be changed to accomodate this instance otherwise the action of saving the geth becomes insubstantial and pointless. I won't even say it forces my Shepard to choose one of the other two options because they alone are logically flawed any way you look at them.

But here's another branch BW could have done with the destroy ending: the Reaper code, do you allow the geth to upload it on Rannoch or after firing the Crucible. The option here being given the choice to tell Legion to wait, lie to quarians that they've been improved and having to pass a conversation check so the quarians don't call your bluff. Or let Legion upload the code on Rannoch and be forced to eradicate them on the Crucible.

Ignoring the other two endings, I've just created the possibility for four instances right here and all correlate to one of Bioware's canon choices:

- Destroy geth on Rannoch - destroy Reapers with Crucible.
- Save geth on Rannoch - tell Legion to upload code and obtain peace with quarians - contest Catalyst and/or refuse to fire Crucible.
- Save geth on Rannoch - tell Legion not to upload code - deceive quarians into peace - use "destroy" option to kill Reapers but not geth.
- Save geth on Rannoch - tell Legion not to upload code - quarians call your bluff and eradicate geth with losses on their side - diminished quarian fleet in end battle causes their flank to buckle.

Wasn't very hard for me to conceptualise these possibilities in five minutes and I don't have the literary experience of Mac Walters and Casey Hudson who completely failed their fans after years of dedicated input.

[SkaldFish]

torudoom wrote...

drayfish wrote...

Indeed, if Indoctrination Theory is accurate – if the concluding moments of the game as we have them now are but the shadows cast upon Shepard's mind by Harbinger in an attempt to bend him/her to the Reaper's will – then Mass Effect 3 would not be Game of the Year: it would be Game of the Century. No hyperbole...

I find a lot of what you're contributing to the forum to be cogent and probing. This post... I'm not so comfortable with this whole post. I can see your point in a fashion, and I've argued with friends before that a video game that can make effective use of an unreliable-narrator type technique would clearly suggest the narrative possibilities of the medium.

But if IT is true (and I don't know if it is or not), I don't think it's been handled well at all in ME3. The non-game effects it produces are certainly interesting, but the mechanics by which it arrives at that point aren't so sound, and the in-game effects it produces for those genuinely concerned with the narrative that's so integral to ME are even less spectacular.

Thanks for linking to your thread; I had missed it somehow and it was well worth the read! You make some excellent points I have not seen elsewhere.

[awwnuts07]

drayfish wrote...

an incredible analysis on why so many of us hate the endings 

Shouldn't  this critique be separated into it's own thread? It's on the 13th page. Not exactly easy to find. Or perhaps the OP could add it to his post?

Modifié par awwnuts07, 18 avril 2012 - 03:52 .

[SkaldFish]

awwnuts07 wrote...

drayfish wrote...

really intelligent stuff

Shouldn't  this critique be separated into it's own thread? It's on the 13th page. Not exactly easy to find. 

Perhaps the OP and drayfish could work together to update the original post with drayfish's comment?

[goatman42]

Please tell me someone has shown this to BioWare? Its not to late to change your minds guys.

[optimistickied]

SkaldFish wrote...

optimistickied wrote...

<snip/>

The Catalyst presents the scenario; we must react to it. Its claim that synthetic life will supplant organic life is the information it is giving us. Whether that is true is irrelevant. It is not refutable, because we do not get to refute it.

Doesn't this seem like a problem to you? This is a branching narrative matrix, but, just when everything in Shepard's world is at stake, we "do not get to refute" anything. In fact, the ability to interact on a meaningful level has suddenly been taken away. The Catalyst is nothing more than a delivery mechanism -- a clumsy device the writers are using to obfuscate the fact that they are "assuming direct control" of both story and game play. Any pretense of player agency is stripped away. We are now a passive audience pushing the start button for one of three bafflingly incoherent cinematic conclusions that rob us of the satisfaction of either participatory gameplay or an appropriate narrative resolution.

You get three choices; you make a decision based on what is presented to you and what you have experienced throughout the gameplay. If you don't want to want to choose option A, choose option B. If you don't like the options, pick the one that comes closest to your ideal.

Isn't that what we'd been doing all along?

[pistolols]

SkaldFish wrote...

pistolols wrote...

Another question for the thematically revolting crowd: Remember way back in ME1 when you straight up murdered the Thorian? A sentient creature thousands of years old. A situation which by the way, gave no choice to the player as to how to go about it. Would you say that was equally as "jarring" as "the endings"?

Just trying to get a sense of where exactly Mass Effect turned thematically revolting.

Nobody displays outrage over Shepard being forced to control or destroy the geth heretics. Nobody has a problem with Shepard becoming a cyborg despite this happening to him "without consent". Evidently nobody has an issue with Edi taking control and literally claiming ownership of Eva. But somehow the 3 ending choices are "revolting"? Ridiculous.

You're holding up specific events as if they were broad narrative themes and asking us to tell you why they aren't thematically revolting. It's because they aren't themes, they're events.

The ending is jarring because of a wholesale thematic shift and a sudden, precipitous drop in the quality of its writing, editing, pacing, and gameplay mechanic, not because of any single event within it.

Well i think it's dishonest to claim it's a "wholesale thematic shift" when the ending mirrors so much of what we've experienced before. I mean this professor guy literally wrote something like "my shepard has never had to make a decision like this before".. lol... That's a load of crap. There isn't a damn thing new or "jarring" about the ending. It's all extremely familar.  Synthesis... synthesis we can agree is weird. Nobody is sure what the writers were smoking with that one. But to control or destroy the reapers... man, my mind is still blown.  What an insane thing to contemplate.  I never would have guessed the fate of the reapers would be in our hands like that, but now that it is, it makes so much sense.  And to have the method of making that decision physically mimic the conversation wheel mechanic.. that is just too cool and was an awesome tribute to the game.

I guess i'm just a dumb weirdo to have so many good feelings about something the intelligent majority (yeah, i can admit you're not a "vocal minority") collectively scoffed at.  Sometimes it is extremely embarrassing to read peoples negative comments about something i liked so much.  Perhaps that is why i lash out or often turn to trolling as a means of coping.  I should probably just stay away from the forums in general.

[The Elite Elite]

drayfish wrote...
The Destroy ending, however, seems even more perverse. One of the constants of the Mass Effect universe (and indeed much quality science fiction) has been an exploration of the notion that life is not simplistically bound to biology, that existence expands beyond the narrow parameters of blood and bone. That is why synthetic characters like Legion and EDI are so compelling in this context, why their quests to understand self-awareness – not simply to ape human behaviours – is so dramatic and compelling. Indeed, we even get glimpses of the Reapers having more sprawling and unknowable motivations that we puny mortals can comprehend... 

To then end the tale by forcing the player to obliterate several now-proven-legitimate forms of life in order to 'save' the traditional definition of fleshy existence is not only genocidal, it actually devolves Shephard's ideological growth, undermining his ascent toward a more enlightened conception of existence, something that the fiction has been steadily advancing no matter how Renegadishably you wanted to play.  This is particularly evident when the preceding actions of all three games entirely disprove the premise that synthetic will inevitably destroy organic: the Geth were the persecuted victims, trying their best to save the Quarians from themselves; EDI, given autonomy, immediately sought to aid her crew, even taking physical form in order to experience life from their perspective and finally learning that she too feared the implications of death.

Very good post sir, but I do want to make a minor little comment about this part of your post. You say that no matter how Renegadish our various Sheps are, they all come to accept that computers are just as alive as we are if they are programmed to know they exist. However, I don't believe that is the case. Now, I haven't gone through every dialogue option for Shep in ME3 yet and it's been a while since I've played ME1 and ME2, but I do recall several times were Shep can indicate that he/she does NOT believe that a computer is a life form. Hell, there's one time in ME3 were you can overhear Dr. Chakwas and Engineer Adams debating if machines like the Geth can be considered life, and you can choose which one you agree with. So for some Sheps there will be no major downside to picking the Destroy option.

[luzburg]

i like that doctor
so casey, walters looks like your creativety is just ****** poor at this time and thats a fact!

[aj2070]

To use an oft used quote: "This one gets it".

[optimistickied]

I don't quite understand what you're saying Opserbest. You felt the character was expanded and defined separately from the player, that he or she no longer functioned as an avatar? I'll read what you wrote again. I'm tired...

[Drummernate]

Damn... your professor is beast!

My computers 101 professor doesn't even know what CoD, Halo, and Battlefield are... -.-

[Bill Casey]

optimistickied wrote...

You get three choices; you make a decision based on what is presented to you and what you have experienced throughout the gameplay. If you don't want to want to choose option A, choose option B. If you don't like the options, pick the one that comes closest to your ideal.

Isn't that what we'd been doing all along?

There's only one choice in the ending...

Modifié par Bill Casey, 18 avril 2012 - 05:08 .

[-Spartan]

johhnytrash wrote...

optimistickied wrote...

And I guess I do take offense to the idea that, in order to accept the ending, I must be permissive of mediocrity.

THAT is my gripe with the ending. It's just a game, and endings are hard to write, but since most of ME was so good, why did the end have to suck that bad? The ending was a storytelling failure and I'm very, very dissappointed.

That whole “it’s just a game” euphuism for “unimportant time waster” or “something for children” and other not so polite meanings really needs to stop being used by gamers if gaming is ever going to be taken as a serious medium by society at large as something capable of making legitimate commentary on social issues as well as being an effective learning tool and an authentic past-time akin to sports and similar endeavors –etc… After all if gamers use it then how can we expect none gamers to put any credence in gaming as an art form or anything more than a time waster? 

Shoot I believe it is because of that line of reasoning that the industry gets away with putting out so many shoddy products year after year without any fear of consequences legislatively unlike nearly every other industry. Then there is the whole "treat the customers like kids" (spoiled ones at that) mentality so prevalent with the publishers and most developers which also is indicative of that attitude. 

Modifié par -Spartan, 18 avril 2012 - 07:36 .

[SkaldFish]

pistolols wrote...

SkaldFish wrote...

pistolols wrote...

Another question for the thematically revolting crowd: Remember way back in ME1 when you straight up murdered the Thorian? A sentient creature thousands of years old. A situation which by the way, gave no choice to the player as to how to go about it. Would you say that was equally as "jarring" as "the endings"?

Just trying to get a sense of where exactly Mass Effect turned thematically revolting.

Nobody displays outrage over Shepard being forced to control or destroy the geth heretics. Nobody has a problem with Shepard becoming a cyborg despite this happening to him "without consent". Evidently nobody has an issue with Edi taking control and literally claiming ownership of Eva. But somehow the 3 ending choices are "revolting"? Ridiculous.

You're holding up specific events as if they were broad narrative themes and asking us to tell you why they aren't thematically revolting. It's because they aren't themes, they're events.

The ending is jarring because of a wholesale thematic shift and a sudden, precipitous drop in the quality of its writing, editing, pacing, and gameplay mechanic, not because of any single event within it.

Well i think it's dishonest to claim it's a "wholesale thematic shift" when the ending mirrors so much of what we've experienced before. I mean this professor guy literally wrote something like "my shepard has never had to make a decision like this before".. lol... That's a load of crap. There isn't a damn thing new or "jarring" about the ending. It's all extremely familar.  Synthesis... synthesis we can agree is weird. Nobody is sure what the writers were smoking with that one. But to control or destroy the reapers... man, my mind is still blown.  What an insane thing to contemplate.  I never would have guessed the fate of the reapers would be in our hands like that, but now that it is, it makes so much sense.  And to have the method of making that decision physically mimic the conversation wheel mechanic.. that is just too cool and was an awesome tribute to the game.

I guess i'm just a dumb weirdo to have so many good feelings about something the intelligent majority (yeah, i can admit you're not a "vocal minority") collectively scoffed at.  Sometimes it is extremely embarrassing to read peoples negative comments about something i liked so much.  Perhaps that is why i lash out or often turn to trolling as a means of coping.  I should probably just stay away from the forums in general.

You're neither dumb nor a weirdo, and I'm not intending to show disrespect for your opinion. Looking back at my response, I clearly let my irritation show, and there was no reason for that. Responses like this one, though, are very helpful to me, because I get insight into how you approached the game and how you responded to what was offered in the ending. So thanks for that -- understanding is always good. Truth is, if you thought it was awesome I envy that and, while I can't speak for everyone here, I wouldn't dare try to change your mind. I love the series - and 95% of ME3 - and I wanted to like the other 5%. I'm just trying to explain my perspective with varying degrees of success.

Don't stay away, OK? We all need to be challenged, and I hope you can see at least a few signs here and there that peoples' thinking is evolving because of your questions. Stay away and we're just one step closer to being a mutual admiration society.

All that said, to attempt to address your first point, I think there's a difference between familiarity and thematic consistency. It's certainly true that the Control and Destroy options are choices we've seen characters make more than once, but the actual themes are broader concepts that may (or may not) be reinforced by those decision events, and what's being proposed here, if I may be allowed to grossly simplify, is that those broader concepts get abruptly swapped out. The choices - even Synthesis from the perspective of being the antithesis of diversity - are familiar, but suddenly the reasons for those choices either change outright or become very difficult to place in context. But I'm not feeling I'm doing an especially good job of explaining all that, so I probably should just stop here for now and leave the topic to finer minds than mine.

Modifié par SkaldFish, 18 avril 2012 - 06:29 .

[Kloreep]

[quote]optimistickied wrote...

you're not butting in. I like it.[/quote]

Indeed.

[quote]optimistickied wrote...

People keep saying they suddenly felt as though they weren't in control of the story, but I never really thought I was. I pretended.[/quote]

There's a difference between controlling the story and controlling Shepard. But then, I think you were already pointing to that in your paragraph above this one, and pointing out that even with Shepard we have very limited control. We can't have Shepard just decide to up and leave military service, after all. For that matter, we can't even do things like prevent Shepard from joining Cerberus in ME2 - or leaving them in ME3. Or the things you mention like Kasumi or letting Liara do her Broker thing.

At the same time, we do have some control. We do get to make judgment calls like the Rachni Queen or the Destiny Ascension or the Reaper base. The writers than get to decide how much those choices actually matter, since they're in full control of the universe around Shepard, but nevertheless, we can expect some control when it comes to Shepard.

So anyway, I'm not quite sure where I'm trying to go with this. I guess just to say that, yeah, it's definitely subjective what crosses the line and breaks whatever implicit promise of control over Shepard a player feels they've received. But that for each of those lines, it's the difference between feeling channeled along natuarlly by the story the devs have written, and outright controlled by the devs themselves without much of a story reason.

[quote]generalleo03 wrote...

The closest point that the previous narrative came to this was legions loyalty mission.  I would contend it is poorly reasoned morally.  I felt both choices were wrong (really brainwashing or killing?).  I also felt that killing them was by far and away more moral than brainwashing.  What's worse?  Dying for a cause you chose to believe in or being brainwashed, and possibly forced to fight against said cause because then you'd be alive?  It really has and completely and totally simplistic view of morality to call either of these good.[/quote]

This may be getting a bit off topic, but I'm really curious as to why you view killing them as immoral.

Surely they are the enemy. Part of the same group that's been pro-Reaper since ME1 and therefore doing its damndest to kill innocents and help the Reapers kill even more. Killing them is part of ongoing war.

Having the option to brainwash was an excellent curveball that, after having to walk away and think it over, I too came to agree was immoral. But surely, given the option to blow them up, Shepard can't just let them live to kill others, or to brainwash the non-heretics like we just agreed would be terrible to do to them. If it's immoral to blow that base, then it seems to me pretty much every sentient Shepard & co have ever killed in the name of protecting others was an unjustified murder.

I guess maybe you didn't trust that Legion was telling the truth? Which certainly would be a parallel to a problem with the Catalyst.

(I would also point out that it's an optional mission, so if you didn't like the idea of going and blowing them up when Legion proposed it, you could have said so and it's highly likely you could have completed the game sticking to that. Only in an edge case where it's the only mission left for you to trigger the IFF with would that be impossible. Not so the Catalyst.)

[quote]Njald wrote...

EA/Bioware might yet surprise and none should be happier than me to be proven wrong. But judging from DA2 and SWTOR I doubt that innovaters have any power inside BW these days.[/quote]

Funny, DA2 gave me a lot of hope for Bioware's ability to keep things fresh, at least where their writers are concerned.

Mind you, it did also make me worried EA is going to financially/schedually (yes, I'm declaring that a word) starve BW to death.

[quote]Njald wrote...

Don't worry, I thought I could sing properly up until middle school. Then it dawned on me when the other kids started laughing. I was so bad that I couldn't tell the difference between keeping a tune or not. I'm all for people disagreeing with the emotional impact of the game or the satsifaction attained by it. But structurally the ending was poor from several different angles and to not see that these issues is to be colour blind.[/quote]

Woah, you're being way too harsh. Try and read optimistickied's posts outside the context of what other people have said.

[quote]optimistickied wrote...

I won't lie; I have no idea what that means...

But I like it. {smilie}[/quote]

If you haven't watched Babylon 5, I would definitely recommend it. It seems like the kind of sci-fi that might be up your alley.

[quote]-Spartan wrote...

The whole "chaos vs order" justification for things.  JMS (the writer for the series) also used a god like creature to end the situation at its apex.[/quote]

And while that too got the author his share of flak, I frankly think that one was much better done than the ME3 ending. In brief: I did not find that part of B5 "thematically revolting." For me, at least, it fit well enough.

[quote]Wes Finley wrote...

I honestly don't need a new ending at this point. It'd be nice, but it won't wash away the stain this whole mess made. What I want is an explanation[/quote]

I think I'm starting to come around to feeling this way as well. No matter if the ending DLC did outright change things, the thing I really want to know is why. As it is, I'm just left guessing how they put this ending together and why they released it as is - and I have to say my thoughts usually aren't all that charitable.

[quote]pistolols wrote...

Another question for the thematically revolting crowd: Remember way back in ME1 when you straight up murdered the Thorian? A sentient creature thousands of years old. A situation which by the way, gave no choice to the player as to how to go about it. Would you say that was equally as "jarring" as "the endings"?[/quote]

Nope. The Thorian was responsible for enslaving the colonists, the Thorian outright said it wasn't going to let them go, so we killed the Thorian. And didn't have to wipe out, say, the Turians to do it.

Granted Captain Picard might have argued the Thorian's own rights with me/Shepard. But that's Picard, not Shepard.

No, didn't feel jarring at all.

[quote]pistolols wrote...

Nobody has a problem with Shepard becoming a cyborg despite this happening to him "without consent".[/quote]

I'd be the first to agree that it was surprising Bioware dropped all story/character development potential in that like a hot potato. However, I again fail to see much of a parallel to the ending. I have a hard time picturing Shepard ultimately being anything but grateful to be alive again, so I don't have a problem with it, no.

If this is in reference to synthesis: I'd agree that the same "just be grateful you're alive" can apply to the synthesis ending. Personally, I don't take issue with that particular detail. I have other objections to the way synthesis was written, but the lack of consent thing is not one of them. (It went past my own personal suspension of disbelief threshold on at least two counts, first being that it could be done at all as simplistically as "all life will now be both organic and synthetic," and second that it could be done within the span of minutes by a single device. And, of course, there's the same problem as with all the options: "Why can't I just give the Catalyst the finger?")

[quote]pistolols wrote...

Evidently nobody has an issue with Edi taking control and literally claiming ownership of Eva. But somehow the 3 ending choices are "revolting"? Ridiculous.[/quote]

I'll admit maybe I didn't think that one through. I will say I was under the impression that Eva the AI had been damaged, perhaps irreparably so, and I don't object to someone using a body that's empty - but now that I think about it, I don't know where I got the idea that Eva was already "dead" from.

So I guess that one may be up there with joining Cerberus. Though, since EDI acts without your permission, joining Cerberus is still a much more questionable non-choice.

[quote]Omilophile wrote...

[quote]Made Nightwing wrote...

"If I'm going to speak about 'artistic integrity', I will be compelled to point out that the ending was in no way the artistic vision of the team. BW has already stated that the ending was thought up between Casey and Mac, without any part of the peer review process being consulted. It was not a product of the team, but individuals.[/quote]

Ha! That just made me realize what this is all REALLY about. Casey and Mac are butthurt children who are mad because nobody liked their ending, so they're throwing a tantrum and not changing it. Artistic integrity my ass. That's just what they tell themselves so they can sleep at night.[/quote]

So, Omilophile: does that mean you can source the "ending was just Hudson & Walters" thing? I still haven't seen anyone do so. Walters does seem to have had a big role (as one would expect from the Lead Writer ) according to Keighley's app. And as the director I'm sure Hudson had important input too. But I haven't seen any reliable source that laid out the full list of who was or wasn't part of the "let's write the ending" team.

[quote]optimistickied wrote...

You get three choices; you make a decision based on what is presented to you and what you have experienced throughout the gameplay. If you don't want to want to choose option A, choose option B. If you don't like the options, pick the one that comes closest to your ideal.

Isn't that what we'd been doing all along?[/quote]

Back to the difference between controlling the story (which we never do) and controlling Shepard (which we do to a degree). There's a big difference between feeling forced into a selection I don't like by the way the story has gone - feeling that the scope of the choices is in line with the (un)"reality" of the situation - and, on the other hand, feeling forced into it just because the writers didn't care to give a wider scope of options.

A big part of ME1 and the whole series is that Shepard is forced - it's not even one of those choices we're given now and then - to disagree with the sentiment "is submission not preferable to extinction?" Yet then the ME3 ending comes and forces us to accept submission to the Catalyst as preferable to possible extinction. That's a huge amount of dissonance there.

[quote]SkaldFish wrote...

Don't stay away, OK? We all need to be challenged, and I hope you can see at least a few signs here and there that peoples' thinking is evolving because of your questions. Stay away and we're just one step closer to being a mutual admiration society.[/quote]

Agreed. I hope I haven't been contributing to that - I know I made at least one harsh response. :/

[quote]SkaldFish wrote...

All that said, to attempt to address your first point, I think there's a difference between familiarity and thematic consistency. It's certainly true that the Control and Destroy options are choices we've seen characters make more than once, but the actual themes are broader concepts that may (or may not) be reinforced by those decision events, and what's being proposed here, if I may be allowed to grossly simplify, is that those broader concepts get abruptly swapped out. The choices - even Synthesis from the perspective of being the antithesis of diversity - are familiar, but suddenly the reasons for those choices either change outright or become very difficult to place in context. But I'm not feeling I'm doing an especially good job of explaining all that, so I probably should just stop here for now and leave the topic to finer minds than mine.[/quote]

As I think I posted before, it is indeed an issue of context. With the heretic Geth, the Control-or-Destroy choice is based upon the premise "we cannot leave them alone." I readily accepted that. We're at war with them, they want to kill us and to brainwash the neutral Geth against us, so let's take them out. Having Control tossed in as an alternative at the last minute was an interesting twist that made sense: "let's turn their own brainwashing technique against them" made perfect sense in hindsight.

The Catalyst's choices are based on the Catalyst's premise that organic vs. synthetic conflict is wholly inevitable, which I was nowhere near accepting. Different context, different reaction.

-----

As for Indoctrination Theory: I think I would have problems with that too. For all that fits with indoctrination - the dreams, the fact that Shepard has spent a lot of time around Reapers and their tech - there's also some things that don't. For instance, we have pretty much no indication of indoctrination being a truly fightable thing; Benezia managed to fight it off for mere moments before completely diving back under, and Saren has to commit suicide to escape it if you do help him to. Indeed, ME1 in particular makes a point of talking about how Sovereign has bent some incredible and incredibly strong-willed individuals to its control. And Shepard is somehow so special he/she can throw it off long enough to truly finish the ME3 story? That's either a pretty short "real" ending, or one remarkably resistant human. Also, as that "Attention/Validation" guy on Youtube put it: is this indoctrination we're talking about, or Jungian psychology? There's never been any mention I've seen of indoctrination involving some kind of point-of-no-return morality play. It's supposed to be horrifically subtle and gradual, something you just wake up having fully succumbed to one day.

And, as that same guy pointed out: Bioware's in a bit of a bind on the PR side as well. If they do significantly change the ending instead of just clarifying it, that means this "final part of the trilogy" was actually sold to millions of people in an incomplete state. If they admitted they hadn't planned on doing so, that might soften it, but they would be called out for it in either case and justifiably so. I'm not so ready to accept that as you are, drayfish.

Mind you, even with all of the above, I might nevertheless be grateful for anything that successfully retconned the ending starting from Starkid forward. :/

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BTW, if we're recommending good video game critique, I highly recommend the Brainy Gamer blog. Another professor of the arts (theater, in his case) who knows his video games.

Modifié par Kloreep, 18 avril 2012 - 08:19 .

[drayfish]

SkaldFish wrote in response to pistolols...

Don't stay away, OK? We all need to be challenged, and I hope you can see at least a few signs here and there that peoples' thinking is evolving because of your questions. Stay away and we're just one step closer to being a mutual admiration society.

A fantastic sentiment - one with which I wholeheartedly agree.  Pistolols, your commentary (like everyone else's) is invaluable to this healthy debate, and no less legitimate.  No one is arbitrarily 'right', and without dialog, without challenge, no side of this discussion has the opportunity to test their beliefs and to grow them further.  (I will restrain myself from linking such necessary diversity to anything within the game's thematic structure, but you can probably imagine where I'd go...) 

Please continue to share your views.  You are the audience of this artwork, and your response to it is crucial to comprehending the myriad ways (that one was for you johnxtreeme) that it has communicated it's intent.

Modifié par drayfish, 18 avril 2012 - 08:45 .

[fle6isnow]

Dr. Dray, you might find some of the links in my "pro-ending" compendium thread interesting, for views on the "other side," so to speak. See my sig for the link.

I don't wholly agree with your interpretation of the ending, but it definitely makes sense. I shall type a more coherent response when my brain isn't dead from doing taxes, lol.

[-Spartan]

Kloreep wrote...

And while that too got the author his share of flak, I frankly think that one was much better done than the ME3 ending. In brief: I did not find that part of B5 "thematically revolting." For me, at least, it fit well enough.

No doubt. I was one of those people. 

I was so psyched up to see a real serious gut wrenching, break your heart and make you want to scream type of drama play out given the rather long build up to the final battle.Then it all ended in a talk akin to a parent talking to misguided youth. However as you pointed out the resolution was within the reach of the situation albeit an incredibly unlikely one but one nonetheless. It was not a total blindsider like the BSG ending (and ME3) – to this day I’m still rather irked over it.
 

Modifié par -Spartan, 18 avril 2012 - 09:22 .

[CulturalGeekGirl]

pistolols wrote...

SkaldFish wrote...

pistolols wrote...

Another question for the thematically revolting crowd: Remember way back in ME1 when you straight up murdered the Thorian? A sentient creature thousands of years old. A situation which by the way, gave no choice to the player as to how to go about it. Would you say that was equally as "jarring" as "the endings"?

Just trying to get a sense of where exactly Mass Effect turned thematically revolting.

Nobody displays outrage over Shepard being forced to control or destroy the geth heretics. Nobody has a problem with Shepard becoming a cyborg despite this happening to him "without consent". Evidently nobody has an issue with Edi taking control and literally claiming ownership of Eva. But somehow the 3 ending choices are "revolting"? Ridiculous.

You're holding up specific events as if they were broad narrative themes and asking us to tell you why they aren't thematically revolting. It's because they aren't themes, they're events.

The ending is jarring because of a wholesale thematic shift and a sudden, precipitous drop in the quality of its writing, editing, pacing, and gameplay mechanic, not because of any single event within it.

Well i think it's dishonest to claim it's a "wholesale thematic shift" when the ending mirrors so much of what we've experienced before. I mean this professor guy literally wrote something like "my shepard has never had to make a decision like this before".. lol... That's a load of crap. There isn't a damn thing new or "jarring" about the ending. It's all extremely familar.  Synthesis... synthesis we can agree is weird. Nobody is sure what the writers were smoking with that one. But to control or destroy the reapers... man, my mind is still blown.  What an insane thing to contemplate.  I never would have guessed the fate of the reapers would be in our hands like that, but now that it is, it makes so much sense.  And to have the method of making that decision physically mimic the conversation wheel mechanic.. that is just too cool and was an awesome tribute to the game.

I guess i'm just a dumb weirdo to have so many good feelings about something the intelligent majority (yeah, i can admit you're not a "vocal minority") collectively scoffed at.  Sometimes it is extremely embarrassing to read peoples negative comments about something i liked so much.  Perhaps that is why i lash out or often turn to trolling as a means of coping.  I should probably just stay away from the forums in general.

Every other time we're given a decision in Mass Effect, it's presented as differing opinions by people we know well, like, or respect. We also have context throughout the game

With the "save the council" thing, we're presented with a lot of information as to what it might mean beforehand, to both aliens and humans. We have one of our squadmates saying we'd take heavy losses, another arguing that it's worth it, and Joker saying he thinks we can pull it off. It's the question of "which is more important: humanity's personal strength or our place within the galactic community?" which is also the question the game has been encouraging you to put in the forefront of your mind the entire time. The Rengade philosophy itself is based on the former, and the Paragon is based upon the latter.

With the Collector base, your decision is based heavily on  your relationship with the Illusive man, something the entire game has spent building. The final decision is Shepard going through all of the Illusive Man's logic throughout the game and making a judgement call on his worldview. Again, this directly ties in to the central question of Shepard's personality - is it OK to do horrible things if you see it as the most efficient way to guarantee success, or does victory mean nothing if you've become what you hate?

For the Heretic Geth, we spend an entire mission gathering information about who the Geth are, what they're doing. I'd also argue that it's thematically VERY different from the control/synthesis/destroy question, because again: in the Geth example we have significant coroborating evidence that "Control" is possible (something we don't have in the Control ending), failing control wouldn't be disastrous in the same way that Shepard finding he couldn't actually control reapers would be, and destruction has no implied collatoral damage whatsoever. There's also no completely nonsensical third option.

If the child is who he says he is, there is no reason at all for the destroy ending to have collatoral damage - he could just pilot all the Reapers into the sun. In every other case where we were thinking about potential collatoral damage, there has been a reason that the sacrifice involved seemed necessary: the Council had to die to ensure we had enough firepower against Sovereign. It was also never large-scale genocide.

The "you'll wipe out all synthetics if you do" taunt feels like a trick and a trap and a transparent plot device. It's the only thing that makes destroy even remotely unappealing. I've never heard anyone outside the BSN pick green or blue over red for any reason other than not wanting to murder Edi and genocide the Geth. The only two people I know who picked control explained that they were just planning on piloting the Reapers into the sun themselves, essentially getting the destroy ending but without killing EDI and the Geth. 

This isn't just about what the choices are, it's about why they are what they are within the narrative of the game... and the answer to that is a combination of "INSCRUTABLE PAST RACES DID THIS THING" and "STARKID'S WHIM."

All other choices have been what they were because of the game's internal logic. I'd always been a fan of what I call "half-curing" the genophage: coming up with something that increases their fertility rates significantly. but not to Krogan Boom levels. I wasn't upset that that choice wasn't offered, because the way Mordin presented it, this was the only cure available based on the research that was done in ME2. I get to experience the circumstances leading to the choices being what they are, so the resulting choices make sense to me.

In the ending we have, the choices don't logically emerge from circumstances we are familiar with... that's why they are a deus ex machina... except again, as the excellent Dr. Dray pointed out, they're not even worthy of that label, since "deus ex machina" was the invocation of a familiar God to resolve things, and this doesn't even have the mollifying quality of meeting a universally accepted cultural standard. It's just a presentation of three arbitrary choices that do not have the kind of narrative support that cure/no cure, control/destroy geth, blow/save base, have. These choices were either created by a past race for reasons you can't know, or decided upon by Starkid, an entity you can't trust.

And, not to harp on the same thing over and over again, but these choices are being made with the galaxy without asking their permission. In every single other choice, your squadmates and friends have served as sort of stand-ins for galactic civilization as a whole, allowing you to get an idea about what the universe might think of your actions. Robbed of their perspective, the ending feels far more presumptuous than anything else in the series.

[Hawk227]

Shameful partial repost:

I understand why people like the "catalyst presents a scenario, we act" aspect, but I feel like for that to work (at least in relation to the Catalyst's thesis) required Destroy not resultingin the genocide of the Geth, Control being changed to allowing the cycle to continue, and Synthesis.... not feeling like space magic. In such a scenario it would've genuinely been a question of whether you accept the Catalyst's justification for the reapers. We can reject his thesis, destroy them and see what happens, we can accept their purpose and "ascend", or or we find an alternate transhuman solution.

The ''problem'' then would be that everyone would pick destroy because who trusts the catalyst? Which just leads us back to the whole thing being a mess. It felt like the Geth genocide was put in there simply to force us to agonize over it. It felt cheap. Also, I'm not sure how Control is a solution to the proposed problem. On its face it's fundamentally the
same as destroy, the cycle ends. Is the option just to keep them around in case we need a race of super powerful sentient space ships in case they were right all along? If so, isn't that a copout? A way of saying "Well, I don't believe you, but just in case, we'll turn you off and put you in storage in case I'm wrong".

It also failed because the preceeding narrative gave me no reason to distrust synthetic life simply for being synthetic. I agonised over curing the genophage, because I saw a Krogan horde as a threat to the galaxy, but I didn't bat an eye brokering peace between the Quariansand Geth. My only anxiety was whether my reputation would be strong enough to do so, because I saw the Geth and Quarians as equally worthy. While Organics vs. Synthetics is an interesting theme it didn't work as justification for the Reapers and the cycle because the Reapers embody that conflict. You can't take the embodiment of a conflict and turn it into a neutral arbiter in that conflict. They went from our mortal enemy to helping us in their own perverted way... in the span of a sentence.

Modifié par Hawk227, 18 avril 2012 - 10:10 .

[Jayelle Janson]

Strange Aeons and Dr. Dray - I salute you.