5087 réponses à ce sujet

[palanora]

Strange Aeons i sure hope you never get mad at me
good write !

[ReXspec]

Opsrbest wrote...

Made Nightwing wrote...

So, my lit professor and I are nerds. I throw in 'but the prize' references on my essays about Odysseus and Achilles, he throws in Firefly references in his lectures, we get on great. Now, I've previously mentioned that he disliked the endings, but today he gave me a full rundown on what exactly he found displeasing about the endgame:

"I don't get it. You get a choice between control. I just shot The Illusive Man five minutes ago because I said that we weren't ready for that power. Why on Earth isn't there an option to express how faulty that choice is? And then Destroy? Dammit, I just saved the geth and quarians, they're working together as a re-united race. Why is genocide an option? WHY? And then Synthesis just completely mistakes everything about evolution. There is no apex of evolution, we continue to adapt and move forward or we die. Aside from that, I'm forcing a choice on the entire galaxy, without the option to tell the damn thing to go to hell! All three endings were so entirely removed from the themes of the whole series that they were completely unrecognisable! It's like Casey had just finished playing Deus Ex and Mac had just watcched teh season finale of BSG."

"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. Aside from that, saying that artistic integrity forbids them from changing the ending is ridiculous. Many novelists have re-written entire works because of negative feedback on them. Charles Dickens wrote Oliver Twist in chapters, publishing each one as they went, and each chapter would be based on the feedback that he got for that chapter. Conan Doyle brought Holmes back from the dead. Those are just wo examples, there are many more. BW broke their own artistic integrity when they allowed EA to set their deadline. Now there are many things that you can say about ME1, but you can never say that it was rushed. The graphics were glitchy, sure, but the characters and dialogue were finely polished."

"In conclusion, I must say again that all the endings were thematically revolting. It is absolutely critical in the name of good writing that the ending of a story must match the journey. Mass Effect has never been a story about the disparity between synthetics and organics. As a matter of fact, it has been quite the obvious. For three games, BW has hinted and pointed out that life could be so much more greater and mysterious than the organic perception. It's driven the point home, time and time again, that unity is possible. So why, then, at the very end of a series that has clearly been about unity and co-existence, would they end it with the point that different forms of life simply cannot co-exist unless their diversity is totally stripped away? It makes no sense. Furthermore, it is emotionally crushing that all this hope of co-existence that has been built up from the quarian-geth storyline  (Geth Prime:...and then we will help you rebuild your world.) is suddenly yanked away at the last second. Good day."

Dr. C. Dray.

Highlighting things are fun.

Anyone for the first highlight we have conformation that it was indeed a two man show and not just the rampant speculation based from a posting on Penny Arcade?

The second point while your proffesor has a point he is complete ignoring EA's right to set that date. Maybe he may not fully understand that relationship, between developer and publisher/owner, maybe he does and he has a valid point. I just find that an odd premiss for an eglish proffesor to hold and to form a bias on that by evidence isn't exactly a strong arguement.

As much as I want to agree or disagree with this statement I won't, more so that your proffesor isn't here to state his own opinions and ideas. I will simply say that in ME1 the dichotomy of the synthetic vs organic relationship in the galaxy isn't heavily noted but is presented in the game. ME2 has a more sustained tone of it but it isn't relatively noticable based on the precession of information the player recieves and when that information is given, say for example, when retrieving the Reaper IFF. And well, ME3 had a pretty heavy dose of it.

The italicized is done because thats an emotional response to an aspect of development. And isn't symbotic with the actual story of ME but rather a player generated choice.

Off topic:
Masking an opinion as a English Lit proffesor because it may or may not give your arguements some form of subsatnce is poor form. And I say that because if there was an actual English Lit masters degree behind the information you are posting you wouldn't be relying on information used evidentiary that is readibly and easily located on these forms by those that are "Anti-Enders".

Either way have a nice day.

A good attempt at a troll, but it doesn't change the fact that your post is well-written idiocy because YOU ARE DIVERTING FROM THE OP'S ORIGINAL POINT.

So then you favor cynicism and a sneer by trying to tear apart the OP's "merit" to stating an opinion such as this for what?  Because you support the ending?  That is garbage.  The point that the OP was trying to make (regardless of whether he/she can prove his/her credentials) is that the ending to Mass Effect 3 was garbage from a literary, thematical, and emotional standpoint.  Period.

Flaying open the OP's "credentials" or "merits" is also in poor form and does nothing but spread the cancerous notion that anyone in this community is more entitled then the next guy.

[JadedLibertine]

I must reiterate my respect and admiration for those who have made this the very best thread here. Not just the good Professor and Strange Aeons and many others who have so incisively critiqued the endings but those on the other side of the debate such as optimistickled who has given the most intelligent and thought provoking defence of the ending.

[2484Stryker]

Occam's razor: choose the hypothesis that makes the fewest number of assumptions.

In this case, the endings are meant to be taken literally, and they are broken.

[drayfish]

There is so much fruitful conversation and discussion going on throughout this thread that when I read through the posts I hardly know where to start – you take one step in any direction and stumble into analytical gold. I know I keep blathering on about this, but thank you all so much for such worthwhile inquisition into this text. My comments for now are going to therefore be more dispersed (and frankly not very helpful to anyone) because I am just thrilled to be a exploring everyone else's wonderful analysis.
 
I step in one direction and find a particularly enjoyable discussion into authorship currently going on between Deliphicovenant42 and Optimistickied... These are intriguing (albeit loaded) questions, speaking directly to the heart of a number of very contentious notions of signification. Does a text begin its life with the intent of the creators? Or does it in fact take its first metaphorical breath the moment it is received by its audience? 
 
As you rightly acknowledge in your discussion, Deliphicovenant42, technical proficiency in narrative is a tricky thing. If you look at a number of cinema script-writing text books they frequently use the first Matrix film as an example of a perfectly crafted three-act structure, even commending the plotting down to the fall of action on a page-by-page breakdown. And it is fairly universally considered a successful tale. (I said 'first' film, goodly-pitch-fork-wielding horde – I'll join you to hunt down the second and third films momentarily...) However, if you perform the same examination of Love, Actually, although it is made up of several structurally sound narratives, each perfectly aligned for effect, the film makes me want to tear out my eyes whenever I hear its cheery strains.  CulturalGeekGirl expressed much the same sentiment (though in a much finer phrasing) in an earlier discussion of Art, but: somehow – inexplicably – great narratives emerge from that wonderfully indefinable way in which great writers manage to modulate familiar tropes, and it's always a frustratingly individual instance every time.
 
And I suspect you might have something in your theory that the more abstracted from familiar patterns one gets the more vehemently a lover of those patterns become – but I say that because I happily include the whole of nerd culture within such categories. We can celebrate what others fail to see value in (I still love you Firefly!) our passions only elevated by the sense that we have a window into its true purpose and worth.
 
There's a whole army of literary theorists (usually fronted by Roland Barthes in the 'Death of the Author'), that would argue that the meaning of a text only lies in its interaction with the audience – with their engagement with the work and their estimation of its purpose - and we've already seen in this thread that people are engaging with this text in an array of legitimate responses that could not possibly have been foreseen nor predicted. (By the way, they are not really an army of literary theorists. That would be a terrible army.)
 
And I must say, in light of such freedom to interact with a text, I really admire players like Optimistickied (and although I don't want to put words in anyone's mouth, I think bc525 also) seeing the endings as a chrysalis from which an entirely new narrative paradigm can stem; one that now (like the post-Shepard universe) opens up to a wealth of fresh thematic possibilities. Again, unfortunately, my own reading of the text struggles with this premise (as it seems a number of other interpreters here do), but for audience members alert to such a reading it's an exciting speculative launching point, and a bold way forward. One of which I am genuinely envious...
 
Then, heartened by such multiplicity of reading, I take a step in another direction and find a revolutionary way of interacting with narrative entirely – for, as Keyrlis points out, if you don't want to take that step into the current ending's wilderness, and remain profoundly unsatisfied with the conclusion, the Indoctrination Theory seems to offer a legitimate means of sublimating the current canon. The Mass Effect universe has continuously positioned itself as a fundamentally interactive narrative: the player's investment in and manipulation of the fiction has been central to its communication for years now, so it seems the perfect vehicle through which to further a dynamic meta-fictional progression of these characters and their ongoing fight.
 
As I mentioned to Keyrlis (and I apologise for tediously repeating myself), I was just recently introduced to a comic series on  DeviantArt by an extraordinarily talented artist named koobismo that follows the further adventures of Marauder Shields, running parallel with the events of Shepard's moment of ascent to the Crucible. It's a series of short narratives that – although beginning as something of a pithy jab at the ending – now seems to be evolving into a legitimate and emotional alternate conclusion to the work that I would struggle to dismiss as mere 'fan-fiction'.)

Thank you everyone for this fabulous interpretive buffet. You are all addressing principle elements of text and meaning in adaptive, ingenious ways that would make turgid academics proud. Truly, I'm just desperately trying to fill my tray and avoid sneezing on anyone else's plate.  ...Okay, that metaphor went to a weird place.

(p.s. – Keyrlis, did you call me a seahorse? If not, I'm afraid to say I missed the reference; if so: I like it. As long as I'm riding a seahorse. Maybe wielding a trident or something.)

Modifié par drayfish, 23 avril 2012 - 11:50 .

[The Elite Elite]

The Elite Elite wrote...

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.

I hate to quote myself, but I was rather hoping to hear Drayfish's response to this, and I assume he didn't see it in this huge sea of a thread.

[delta_vee]

Strange Aeons wrote...

Maybe they genuinely thought this was what people wanted; maybe they just didn’t understand their own creation; or maybe the temptation to make their presence known and place their distinctive stamp on the outcome was just too much for Casey Hudson & Co. to resist. Whatever the reason, straightforward plot progression gave way to cryptic, surreal, slow-motion sequences straight out of Max Payne. Your friends and allies who had been at your side the whole journey helping you overcome every obstacle were summarily sent packing; the new high-concept story has no time for such trifles (note that even before reaching the Citadel, not one previous character or decision you’ve influenced has any significant impact on the way either the ground or space battles play out). And lest the ignorant peasants muck up the grand design, meaningful interaction via the dialogue wheel—the defining gameplay mechanic of the series—was done away with when it was needed the most.

The shift from a thoroughly literalist approach to a highly impressionistic one in the final minutes was, for me at least, quite dissociative. The layout of the choice resembling the dialogue wheel; Control depicted as Shepard wrestling with the mechanisms of power as they consumed her; Synthesis as a running leap into an unknowable future; Destroy as a determined advance into danger -- all were done in as suggestive a manner as possible, while forgetting that Mass Effect has always, always been what-you-see-is-what-you-get. This decision, frankly, is the core reason IT gained as much traction as it did.

Strange Aeons wrote...

As the widespread, visceral revulsion to ME3’s ending indicates, even an audience “brainwashed to equate artsiness with art,” to use Myers’ apt phrase, can sense the emperor has no clothes.

The reaction to the ending reminds me quite a bit of the reception of Rites of Spring.

[JamieCOTC]

2484Stryker wrote...

Occam's razor: choose the hypothesis that makes the fewest number of assumptions.

In this case, the endings are meant to be taken literally, and they are broken.

I think you win a cookie. 

Seriously. When you start bringing in assumptions, you get crazy crap like Boba Fett was Luke Skywalker's father  because he shot at Luke and missed in that one scene in Empire.  (This was a real theory). 

[delta_vee]

drayfish wrote...

Then, heartened by such multiplicity of reading, I take a step in another direction and find a revolutionary way of interacting with narrative entirely – for, as Keyrlis points out, if you don't want to take that step into the current ending's wilderness, and remain profoundly unsatisfied with the conclusion, the Indoctrination Theory seems to offer a legitimate means of sublimating the current canon. The Mass Effect universe has continuously positioned itself as a fundamentally interactive narrative: the player's investment in and manipulation of the fiction has been central to its communication for years now, so it seems the perfect vehicle through which to further a dynamic meta-fictional progression of these characters and their ongoing fight.

I believe IT works as a paratextual device if and only if it is accompanied by a textual conclusion. Otherwise, the idea of "screwing with the player's perception" (as opposed to manipulating the avatar's) has already been done, several times over (Psycho Mantis in MGS, the player-engaging MPD in Deadly Premonition, the fake-shutdowns of Eternal Darkness), and thus imposes an additional requirement on ME3 to deliver a more thorough and satisfying version. It's certainly interesting to see the paratextual interpretations of the ending to carry such weight amongst the audience, but I believe that's born less out of intent and more from textual failure - a phenomenon which has been extant since the invention of fanfiction.

Modifié par delta_vee, 22 avril 2012 - 09:35 .

[CulturalGeekGirl]

I've been away from this thread for a few days, so I want to go back to something from a few pages ago. It made me spend the last few days ruminating on why the ending does work for some people, despite the thematic incongruity.

bc525 wrote...

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...

Art doesn't have hard and fast rules, and any intentional transgression you imagine has been classified, cataloged, lost, found, made fun of, and reinvented.
...

You can decide to discard consistency of theme, but you have to be aware that you are sacrificing emotional investment and cognitive engagement with the main narrative itself to do so. If you do so, you are saying that you care more about breaking with convention than you do about the reader's immersion and investment. You want the reader to focus on the fact that you're breaking literature, more than on the story itself.

That's some great stuff there.  Thank you for the thoughtful post, that was some cool reading.

Of the top statement that I quoted, I believe that you speak truth CG girl.  I liken it to fashion design that has been invented, cast away, and then brought back.  It's very subjective, and it never truly dies.  Good Social Network quote there.  A more technical example is Formula 1, where once discarded suspension arrangements have suddenly become vogue again (i.e push-rod vs pull-rod).

Of the bottom statement, I don't particularly agree.  I'm going on personal experience here and I'm going to stay specific here, so forgive me if I sound ignorant.  We've established ME3 broke from a consistency of theme?  Correct?

My emotional investment (as the player) wasn't broken.  My investment clearly continues (after all, I am posting here).  The end sequence breaking from previously established themes didn't kill my buzz.  On some levels it worked for me.  I wish I could articulate it better than that, but simply put, it worked for me.

Whether or not the thematic shift in a piece breaks your immersion will vary based on how invested you were in that theme. I've actually read works that seemed to be about one thing, only to completely paradigm shift at the end, refuting everything they'd stood for before that. I'll admit it isn't always nihilistic or absurdist to do so; my Infernokrusher post was just outlining some of my feelings about aesthetic principles vs. artistic freedom.

Two of my favorite themes are free will and diversity. If a story that seems like it's all about destiny breaks into a story about free will at the end, I'm usually pleased. This kind of shift is tricky to pull off, and if you do, you've got to make sure the theme you're switching to resonates as well or better than the one you started out with. In modern culture, free will tends to be pretty popular, as are individualism, rebellion, and diversity.

One of the problems with the Mass Effect endings is that it sacrificed these themes, which are usually seen as fairly life affirming and positive, for bleaker, darker, less hopeful themes. It's not impossible to do such a thing well - end a novel of mirth and hope with a dark and dour realization - but it is phenomenally difficult to accomplish.

Not impossible, though. Take The Third Policeman as an example. I entered into that tale knowing nothing about it save snippets of clever text I'd heard bandied about by my friends. I expected a light absurdist fantastical novel, something in line with Italo Calvino or Douglas Adams. What I got was funny and strange and dreamlike, very pleasant to read, until I approached the end, wherein it became a picture of darkness and despair and inevitability. The transition was jarring, yet, looking back at the text, I could see that the theme had been there all along. The nonsensical rhetorical jaunts and ridiculous scenarios that had brought me great enjoyment as a reader were distressing to the protagonist throughout the story. Due to the protagonist's very nature, his ultimate revelation would not be a shift towards sharing the reader's enjoyment of the absurd; instead, his torment and discomfort in the face of a nonsensical world were to be never-ending. All the rhetorical building blocks for a story about misery were there from the first page, I had just been neglecting them in favor of my own personal amusement. It is still, to this day, one of the most startling denouements I have ever experienced.

So why does Mass Effect not work for me like the Third Policeman, or the Prestige, or any of the other works I enjoy which culminate in a dark realization or troubling sacrifice. And why does it work for some people?

In large part, it correlates to the priorities and perspective of the reader. There are several modes of thinking which allow the ending to satisfy, and I want to examine them a little more deeply.

This next part is going to get a bit wild and wooly. I'm going to descirbe some patterns I've seen in the "pro-ender" rhetorical modes. I don't think all pro-enders feel this way, and if you have a reason for enjoying the ending that doesn't fit into these categories, I'd be genuinely interested in hearing it.

Category One:

The Believers.

Some people are good at not digging too deeply into artificial universes. To paraphrase another great work of science fiction, instead of wondering how the characters eat and breathe and other science facts, they repeat to themselves "It's just a show, I should really just relax." They take the Catalyst's word for everything, weigh the potential choices in light of what he says, and pick the one they like best without overthinking the consequences.  If they pick Control, they really don't think it's likely it'll backfire. If they pick synthesis, they think "yay, my Shepard died so Joker and Edi and everyone could live happily ever after, the end." and don't think about the implications of fundamentally changing every being in the universe without their permission. Happy music is playing, that means everything is OK. 

Some universes honestly require this kind of lightweight refusal-to-overthink. I don't spend a lot of time thinking about the economy of the Mushroom kingdom, or worrying about Kirby's digestive system, but to me the Mass Effect universe invited diving in, picking apart, and analyzing. Every time I made a decision, I had to think long and hard about all the implications. The easiest way to enjoy this ending is to refrain from going into these things too deeply.

Category Two: 

Epimetheus and the Clairvoyants

There are people who have decided they're OK with the destroy ending because EDI doesn't die (based on the occasional cutscene) and because various internet social media responses have stated that the geth may be able to survive the destroy ending. Because they know the result, the way the choices were presented prior to the result have become irrelevant.

This group also contains those who claim they knew that the Starchild was lying about Edi and the Geth dying, so picking destroy was the obvious option.

These first two groups are distinguished by their style of engaging with the work. It's difficult to delve deeper into either of these justifications for enjoying the ending. The level of rhetorical and analytical engagement appropriate for a given world has long been a subject of debate in the science fiction community, and there's never a clear answer. Similarly, if one has found justification for one of the endings that seems to be upheld by the narrative, realigning your perspectives in such a way that the work becomes cohesive is a fairly productive means of engaging with it.

Now I'm going to talk about the third category of opinions I've seen expressed by those who enjoy the ending. This one is more closely connected to the original topic of this thread: theme, and how the endings either reinforce or defy it.

Category Three

Destiny or the In-Group.

This category is inhabited by very different people, but they have something in common: they lack deep investment in one of the three primary themes of the piece, the ones that the endings clash with. First are those who lack deep investment in free will or rebellion as a theme. Some see no difference between choices that are handed down to you from an unknowable being and choices brought about as a consequence of your own actions. Some don't think it's particularly immoral to force a fundamental change on every living thing in the galaxy, if you believe it happens to be for the greater good at the time.

The second group are those who really don't care about diversity, at least when it involves synthetics or the Geth. They say "Kill 'em all, and there's nothing for any god to sort out, because they weren't really life and were worthless." Or possibly, more gently: "Well it was sad to have to kill the Geth to save the Quarians, but I had to, and there really wasn't much of a reason not to pick destroy."  I'd tentatively include those who don't really believe that any real diversity is lost by making everyone half synthetic in this group as well.

If either free will or diversity just isn't that important to you, then you can easily find at least one of the endings that works. Destroy is the obliteration of diversity through the defiant exercise of free will. Control is the subsumation of free will and personal identity to an authority for the greater good. Synthesis is the sacrifice of self to authority in order to bring about peace through homogeneity.

This is where the thematic ground gets even more muddied. Having to choose between two important themes is not inherently problematic, but mass effect has always had a third theme: the maintenance of personal morality in the face of difficult decisions.

It's not that I think the choices presented are artistically bankrupt in and of themselves... indeed, I have previously been moved by situations where characters are forced to decide which of their most fundamental values they must betray. But Mass Effect has never been about that. It could have been, easily. They could have created a story about the loss of idealism, where every decision was lose-lose, every battle created a vicious scar on Paragon Shepard's character, where the protagonist was in a constant struggle to resist the destruction of everything he was, with this ending providing the final capstone, a decision between the two most fundamental shreds of Shepard's being. This gradual erosion of the self through self-sacrifice is not a new or innovative story... it's the story of the Giving Tree, a childhood classic. It's a story found everywhere in literature, but that kind of story needs to be nurtured from the beginning, and Mass Effect has not been built that way. Mass Effect has always used the language of triumph, and strength, and remaining who you are in the face of the worst pressures imaginable.

When she blows the Collector Base, Shepard's defiant proclamation is "I won't let fear compromise who I am." Yet in the ending, no matter what, a Shepard who believes in both free will and diversity is forced to compromise who he is.

In a story about compromise, about the wearing down, about the gradual loss of self, I would have seen the endings as quite appropriate. For those for whom sacrificing either diversity or free will does not represent a sacrifice of Shepard's "self," the ending would not cut nearly so deep. But I think that Bioware ultimately failed to predict how deeply all three of these themes had resonated with the vast majority of its audience.

Modifié par CulturalGeekGirl, 22 avril 2012 - 11:35 .

[TheLostGenius]

I dissent. Its likely they planned tons of money making DLC so they left us with an ending that would leave most susceptible players desperately wanting more from the game, which is totally bankable. Academic status does not equal opinion of authority.

[Strange Aeons]

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...


It's not that I think the choices presented are artistically bankrupt in and of themselves... indeed, I have previously been moved by situations where characters are forced to decide which of their most fundamental values they must betray. But Mass Effect has never been about that. It could have been, easily. They could have created a story about the loss of idealism, where every decision was lose-lose, every battle created a vicious scar on Paragon Shepard's character, where the protagonist was in a constant struggle to resist the destruction of everything he was, with this ending providing the final capstone, a decision between the two most fundamental shreds of Shepard's being. This gradual erosion of the self through self-sacrifice is not a new or innovative story... it's the story of the Giving Tree, a childhood classic. It's a story found everywhere in literature, but that kind of story needs to be nurtured from the beginning, and Mass Effect has not been built that way. Mass Effect has always used the language of triumph, and strength, and remaining who you are in the face of the worst pressures imaginable.
 

I enjoyed reading your post

They basically took a story like this and gave it an ending like this. 

[SkaldFish]

Strange Aeons wrote...

As the widespread, visceral revulsion to ME3’s ending indicates, even an audience “brainwashed to equate artsiness with art,” to use Myers’ apt phrase, can sense the emperor has no clothes.

Excellent point.

We are also being conditioned by most popular forms of entertainment to find mediocrity perfectly acceptable. Eventually a tipping point is reached. When most people can no longer distinguish art from kitsch (or perhaps fail to acknowledge the value of such a distinction), any outliers begin to experience significant pressure to conform to conventional wisdom. If we couple that with a growing reliance on deconstructionist approaches to criticism, we condemn ourselves to a future in which creative genius is irrelevant. Exceptional ability is rendered moot; we can no longer even recognize it. Nothing matters except our ability as viewer/listener/reader/player to manufacture a personally satisfying experience in response to a stimulus.

[SkaldFish]

TheLostGenius wrote...

I dissent. Its likely they planned tons of money making DLC so they left us with an ending that would leave most susceptible players desperately wanting more from the game, which is totally bankable. Academic status does not equal opinion of authority.

I may be misunderstanding you. Are you saying that a decision to obfuscate the ending as part of a strategy that a sales/marketing professional would consider perfectly valid means that a literary criticism of the resulting mess is therefore irrelevant?

[Cobra's_back]

First of all thanks for the post. Dayfish wrote:


“In the Control ending, Shepard is invited to pursue the previously impossible path of attempting to dominate the reapers and bend them to his will. Momentarily putting aside the vulgarity of dominating a species to achieve one's own ends (and I will get to complaining about that premise soon enough), this has proved to be the failed modus operandi of every antagonist in this fiction up until this point – including the Illusive Man and Saren – all of whom have been chewed up and destroyed by their blind ambition, incapable of controlling forces beyond their comprehension. Nothing in the vague prognostication of the exposition-ghost offers any tangible justification for why Shepard's plunge into Reaper-control should play out any differently. In fact, as many people have already pointed out, Shepard has literally not five minutes before this moment watched the Illusive Man die as a consequence of this arrogant misconception.”


First do we even understand control? I agree I don’t think Shepard will be able to control the reapers over time. The Catalyst states “you will die and lose everything you have”. This could mean that the crucible when fired will transmit Shepard’s last message. I don’t think this last message includes fly into the Sun. After all, that is the destroy option. This means the reapers are around to do this again at another time. Even if Shepard was the new Catalyst, Shepard loses everything and probably act just like the current Catalyst, i.e., Shepard is not Shepard anymore.

So kill all synthesis or buy into into the Catayst's plan.


Many of us don’t believe this crap. I’m not afraid of a crazy AI. The thinking here is that no problem can be solved by using your wit. The strongest most powerful is the smartest! There are different types of smart. The best negotiators and leaders don’t need the highest IQ. Who would have made a better Prime Minister Steve Hawkins or Winston Churchill? Why compare these two. Steve is very smart. Winston’s Latin teacher thought Winston was a failure. We all know that wasn’t true.


Many of us are not afraid of the Geth. Legion is intelligent and naïve. There was no real danger in our eyes. The Catalyst solution doesn’t even make sense. To say in the future it could happen and that is why we need to kill every man women and child is also non-sense. Man-kind can adapt and can solve problems without killing everything. We all understand this as the art of negotiations.
Now I understand the writer wanted to make this about singularity. Okay, I get it. I just don’t buy it as the destruction of man-kind..

[pistolols]

The Elite Elite wrote...

The Elite Elite wrote...

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.

I hate to quote myself, but I was rather hoping to hear Drayfish's response to this, and I assume he didn't see it in this huge sea of a thread.

Yeah you're correct.  Renegade Shep does not see synthetics as actual life.  He's very much in line with Javik's thinking on that subject.   In fact it's discussed over and over in many different conversations.  It's somewhat curious the professor could be so mistaken about that.



EDIT: i don't know how to make that bigger, but it's EDI asking "What is the purpose of synthetic life?"  Paragon response is "Whatever it wants to be" and renegade response is "The job it was designed for".

Modifié par pistolols, 23 avril 2012 - 12:46 .

[Cobra's_back]

The Elite Elite wrote...

The Elite Elite wrote...

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.

I hate to quote myself, but I was rather hoping to hear Drayfish's response to this, and I assume he didn't see it in this huge sea of a thread.

I see what you mean. But does the Renegade Shepard really see the AI as a threat? I'm thinking Renegade takes Red. Paragon has issues with the Blue and Green option mainly because they really don't see the threat. Paragon has a friendly AI and made peace with the Geth and Quarians.
 
It might have made more sense if the paragon Shepard was fighting a powerful cunning AI like the one in Terminator Salvation. Here the bad guys are organic cuttlefish.

[The Elite Elite]

ghostbusters101 wrote...
I see what you mean. But does the Renegade Shepard really see the AI as a threat? I'm thinking Renegade takes Red. Paragon has issues with the Blue and Green option mainly because they really don't see the threat. Paragon has a friendly AI and made peace with the Geth and Quarians.
 
It might have made more sense if the paragon Shepard was fighting a powerful cunning AI like the one in Terminator Salvation. Here the bad guys are organic cuttlefish.

A threat? No, Renegade Shep likely doesn't. I think for Renegade Shep, losing advance tech such as EDI is a negative, but an acceptable loss. You'd be sad if all your computers in your house were destroyed, but you'd find it acceptable if the alternative was your house and everything in it burning down. Better to lose AI like EDI and the Geth which can someday be replaced, maybe not in Shep's lifetime but someday down the road, than to keep the Reapers intact and risk the cycle continuing.

[Cobra's_back]

The Elite Elite wrote...

ghostbusters101 wrote...
I see what you mean. But does the Renegade Shepard really see the AI as a threat? I'm thinking Renegade takes Red. Paragon has issues with the Blue and Green option mainly because they really don't see the threat. Paragon has a friendly AI and made peace with the Geth and Quarians.
 
It might have made more sense if the paragon Shepard was fighting a powerful cunning AI like the one in Terminator Salvation. Here the bad guys are organic cuttlefish.

A threat? No, Renegade Shep likely doesn't. I think for Renegade Shep, losing advance tech such as EDI is a negative, but an acceptable loss. You'd be sad if all your computers in your house were destroyed, but you'd find it acceptable if the alternative was your house and everything in it burning down. Better to lose AI like EDI and the Geth which can someday be replaced, maybe not in Shep's lifetime but someday down the road, than to keep the Reapers intact and risk the cycle continuing.

Makes good sense.

[fle6isnow]

Destiny or the In-Group.

This category is inhabited by very different people, but they have something in common: they lack deep investment in one of the three primary themes of the piece, the ones that the endings clash with. First are those who lack deep investment in free will or rebellion as a theme. Some see no difference between choices that are handed down to you from an unknowable being and choices brought about as a consequence of your own actions. Some don't think it's particularly immoral to force a fundamental change on every living thing in the galaxy, if you believe it happens to be for the greater good at the time.

The second group are those who really don't care about diversity, at least when it involves synthetics or the Geth. They say "Kill 'em all, and there's nothing for any god to sort out, because they weren't really life and were worthless." Or possibly, more gently: "Well it was sad to have to kill the Geth to save the Quarians, but I had to, and there really wasn't much of a reason not to pick destroy."  I'd tentatively include those who don't really believe that any real diversity is lost by making everyone half synthetic in this group as well.

If either free will or diversity just isn't that important to you, then you can easily find at least one of the endings that works. Destroy is the obliteration of diversity through the defiant exercise of free will. Control is the subsumation of free will and personal identity to an authority for the greater good. Synthesis is the sacrifice of self to authority in order to bring about peace through homogeneity.

This is where the thematic ground gets even more muddied. Having to choose between two important themes is not inherently problematic, but mass effect has always had a third theme: the maintenance of personal morality in the face of difficult decisions.

It's not that I think the choices presented are artistically bankrupt in and of themselves... indeed, I have previously been moved by situations where characters are forced to decide which of their most fundamental values they must betray. But Mass Effect has never been about that. It could have been, easily. They could have created a story about the loss of idealism, where every decision was lose-lose, every battle created a vicious scar on Paragon Shepard's character, where the protagonist was in a constant struggle to resist the destruction of everything he was, with this ending providing the final capstone, a decision between the two most fundamental shreds of Shepard's being. This gradual erosion of the self through self-sacrifice is not a new or innovative story... it's the story of the Giving Tree, a childhood classic. It's a story found everywhere in literature, but that kind of story needs to be nurtured from the beginning, and Mass Effect has not been built that way. Mass Effect has always used the language of triumph, and strength, and remaining who you are in the face of the worst pressures imaginable.

When she blows the Collector Base, Shepard's defiant proclamation is "I won't let fear compromise who I am." Yet in the ending, no matter what, a Shepard who believes in both free will and diversity is forced to compromise who he is.

In a story about compromise, about the wearing down, about the gradual loss of self, I would have seen the endings as quite appropriate. For those for whom sacrificing either diversity or free will does not represent a sacrifice of Shepard's "self," the ending would not cut nearly so deep. But I think that Bioware ultimately failed to predict how deeply all three of these themes had resonated with the vast majority of its audience.

I suppose as a "pro-ender" I am part of this third group. It all boils down, really, to what you think the main themes of Mass Effect are. To me, they are:

Sacrifice (a.k.a. having to make difficult choices)

This theme is huge in the Mass Effect series. As we go along in the game, bigger and bigger sacrifices are required to stop the Reapers.

In ME1, we can choose to sacrifice the Rachni Queen, sacrifice either Kaidan or Ashley to stop Saren on Virmire, and finally, sacrifice either a huge part of the human fleet or the Council to stop Sovereign.

In Mass Effect 2, the story literally starts with the sacrifice of Shepard to save the rest of her crew and Joker. She is brought back to life, but again she is sent on a mission that will require huge sacrifices of her and her crew--the suicide mission. Yes, there is a way to go through the mission without anyone on your main team dying, but honestly, unless you look online, this is difficult. Little themes of sacrifice are scattered everywhere as well. Tali will want to sacrifice her place in the quarian flotilla to save her father's memory. Samara will want to sacrifice her daughter to save the hundreds or thousands that Morinth will kill in her lifetime; conversely, you can choose to sacrifice Samara and her ideals if you believe that Morinth's power is what you need to stop the Reapers. In Legion's loyalty mission, you either sacrifice the heretic geth outright, or sacrifice the heretic geth's free will.

The ending choice is a sacrifice as well--do you sacrifice the collector base for your idealism, or do you sacrifice your idealism to give humanity an edge over the Reapers? As a counterpoint to "I won't let fear compromise who I am" if you destroy the collector base, if you save the collector base, TIM tells you "don't let idealism blind you."

If we add in Arrival, again, we see huge sacrifices. Shepard has no choice but to let 300,000 batarians die on Aratoht, just so that she can give the galaxy more time to deal with the Reapers.

In Mass Effect 3, the sacrifices you have to make are even bigger. There's just so many instances of this that I'll just list them.

1) You start the game having to sacrifice millions of people on Earth while you go off and gather resources.
2) You can sacrifice the krogan race and Mordin/Padok (plus Wrex later on, if you still have him) if you believe that curing the genophage is the wrong thing to do.
3) If you cure the genophage, Mordin/Padok sacrifices himself to save the krogan. If Wreav is the leader, you are also pretty much sacrificing the salarians to get krogan support, because you know Wreav will want to wage a war of revenge after the Reaper War.
4) Thane/Kirrahe sacrifices himself to save the salarian councillor; if both Thane and Kirrahe are dead, the salarian councillor is the sacrifice to save the rest of the council.
5) On Rannoch, you can sacrifice Tali and the all the quarians OR the all the geth; legion sacrifices himself either way. Yes, the game gives you an out, just like it did for the suicide mission, but the "vanilla" game makes you choose one or the other.
6) You sacrifice Palaven, Thessia... all the other worlds for the chance to beat the Reapers on Earth.

There are also smaller stories of sacrifice, like Lt. Victus dying to disable the bomb on Tuchanka, Aralakh company (and Grunt, if not loyal) sacrificing itself to save Shepard and the Rachni Queen OR the Racnhi Queen dying to save Aralakh + Grunt, Eve dying to produce the genophage cure, Admiral Koris dying to save his crew (or vice versa), etc.

So, looking at those themes, the fact that each choice you have to make will require a different sacrifice makes sense:

Control: do we sacrifice the "free will" of the Reapers just as we sacrificed the free will of the geth heretics? Do we sacrifice our humanity and our morals to save the rest of the galaxy?
Synthesis: do we sacrifice Shepard to bring unguaranteed peace? Do we sacrifice everyone's choice in the matter?
Destroy: is true self-determination really worth the loss of all Reaper technology, which, unfortunately, includes the geth and EDI? (And before you say they are not Reaper tech, remember that Legion uploaded Reaper code to give the geth individuality, and we learn on Cronos base that EDI is built with parts salvaged from Sovereign).

Loss of Idealism

This is another theme that I believe is huge. Someone else explained this perfectly, so I'll just quote him here.
social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/355/index/11555820#11556659

Bookman230 wrote...

This fits perfectly. you see, in Mass Effect 1, Shepard was in his prime. Younger, especially mentally. He was blissfully unaware of the Reapers, his shoulders unburdened with the weight of the galaxy. He was confident, ****sure, "We'll talk to the Council, and they WILL listen!" "Saren MUST be stopped!" etc. Things were brighter, he had a crew with similar wide-eyed people who belived in the cause(besides Wrex,, who by the end also comes along). The ending reflects this; the Council pledge their support, and even the player is thinking, "The Reapers are going to get their ASSES kicked!"

Fast foward to ME2. Shepard has died, came back to life, and has found that the galaxy has forshaken him. Few believe in the Reapers. It had been for naught. Instead of following the trustworthy Alliance, he's serving under the devious Cerberus, and instead of people he can trust, he's put alongside assassins, convicts, mercs, theives, etc. Gone are the bright days of ME1. Things get grim, dark. Now, he doesn't even have the token support of the Council, not really. Only he can stop the Collectors from killing all of humanity. Publicly, he puts on a brave face, making the same bombastic claims and speeches, but deep down the foolhardy confidence of the man he was two years ago is gone. Lair of the Shadow Broker shows he's finally, truly starying to feel the stress of it all. (Snow note: I would add Arrival to this part. In sacrificing the batarians on Aratoht, suddenly Shepard isn't a big goddamned hero, but a war criminal, even if it was done to give the galaxy more time before the Reapers arrive. She now has to deal with the loss of idealism from this action, and this, more than LotSB, breaks Shepard.)

And ME3 is where it all comes falling apart. Reapers take Earth, and friends like Mordin, Thane, Legion, maybe even more are falling left and right. The galaxy is unprepared;the reapers are stomping everyone's asses. And once again, it's up to Shep to hold it together. But he can't. The deaths are getting to him. So many have fallen; who's next? Everyone concurs that the reapers are winning, that they probably WILL win. Earth, Palaven, Thessia especially.The fallen haunt him, but he doesn't let anyone in besides Garrus, Liara, and his LI. Now, he's at least partly just going through the motions. The Crucible and the Catalyst is what he banked everything on. But Anderson dies, his mentor, and all he's left with, what all the deaths led him to, are three horrible options for the galaxy. Shepard gives up, not on the galaxy, but on himself.

That is the theme of Mass Effect. A deconstruction of the PC of Bioware games, the man who has to deal with the whole galaxy calling for help again and again. The man who comforts others about their daddy issues or whatever over and over, yet lets no one knows how he feels, how he needs help. In the end, it's never one man who saves everyone. Mass Effect is the result of putting that pressure on one man. From ME1's "What About Shepard?" setting him up as the invincible hero, the Revan or Spirit Monk, etc, to Me3's "I don't know", where even Shepard can't believe that he can do this all on his own. And these two lines fully reveal the extent of Bioware's artistic beauty.

.....Nah, I'm talking out of my ass! It's conicidence.

To me, this seems like one of the biggest complaints of people about ME3. You finally see Shepard vulnerable, weak, and beaten, even suffering from survivor's guilt, as evidenced by those annoying dream sequences. She's not the big goddamned hero that she was in the previous games--in fact, in the face of the galactic cycle that has been going on for millions of years, she is nothing. A lot of people, Dr. Dray included, seem to really, really hate this theme. I, however, find it powerful and humbling. The fact that Shepard even has a chance to choose at the end is huge, and as Starbrat says, "you have choice, more than you know", because the alternative is simply the continuation of the cycle.

Imposed Order vs. Chaos and Self-determination

This, to me, was a more minor theme than the other two, but it is still an important theme. In Mass Effect, there is a constant struggle for self-determination against the established order. In ME1, Shepard is struggling against the order imposed upon her by the council and the Alliance. The very fact that she has to steal the Normandy and break away from the Alliance to save the galaxy points to this theme. And of course, in fighting against Sovereign, we are fighting against the order the Reapers impose upon organic civilization.

In ME2, the theme is reversed at first--in the beginning, you are struggling to restore order after the galaxy is thrown into chaos by Shepard's death. The Collectors are wreaking havoc on humanity's colonies, you are suddenly working with a bunch of chaotic, unpredictable people, etc. However, later on you find out that the Collectors are imposing their weird form of order upon humanity. By melting down everyone into goo, the Collectors are bringing humanity into the fold of the Reapers, and destroying the Collectors (not necessarily the Collector base itself, though) is giving the Reapers a big middle finger from us chaotic organics. Of course there are little examples of this theme scattered everywhere. Do you side with Samara, imposing order upon the chaos that is Morinth? Do you rewrite the geth heretics, imposing Legion's order upon them? Do you accept reinstatement as a council Specter, giving your actions a semblance of order, or do you reject that and embrace the chaos?

In ME3, there are levels upon levels of this theme. First, Shepard is trying to impose order upon the races thrown into chaos by the Reaper invasion. Every race wants to be self-determining--that is, they want to fight alone and save their homeworlds--but Shepard comes in and says, "no, we have to become ordered, we can't do this alone, we have to work together to defeat the Reapers."

In your talks with EDI and the geth, you are also finding out that in a way, organics were imposing order upon synthetics, who were becoming unpredictable with their questions "does this unit have a soul," or "what is the purpose of synthetic life." If you believe that synthetic life should be self-determining, you can allow that facet of theirs to flourish. However, if you believe that synthetic life should be ordered--that it should do, as Renegade Shepard says, the job it was designed for--then you can also tell them that.

The Reapers, of course, are in the galaxy in full force, imposing their version of order upon organic life. However, on Thessia, something big is dropped upon us--the Prothean VI Vendetta tells us that Reapers are merely slaves to a larger galactic order. Each cycle has the same peaks of evolution and valleys of dissolution, Vendetta says, and the Reapers are NOT the cause of this pattern. In their own horrific way, the Reapers are rebelling against the order imposed by what is implied to be nature itself. That brings us to the 3 choices at the end:

Control: do you control the Reapers and impose your own order upon them?
Synthesis: do you impose order upon the entire galaxy, but within that order, everyone can be self-determining?
Destroy: do you destroy the Reapers and Reaper tech, so that the galaxy will be truly self-determining, but with the caveat that maybe there is a greater pattern of order that we will still be slaves to?

There are, of course, other themes that can apply to the ending and major choices, such as the control vs. destroy themes (e.g. control vs. destroy council, Rachni Queen, Collector base, etc.), but these are what I think the themes of Mass Effect are, and why the endings were not such a big thematic shift as people think.

Modifié par fle6isnow, 23 avril 2012 - 02:43 .

[fle6isnow]

Drayfish, p.13:

And finally Synthesis, the ending that I suspect (unless we are to believe the Indoctrination Theory) is the 'good' option, proves to be the most distasteful of all. Shepard, up until this point has been an instrument though which change is achieved in this universe, and dependent upon your individual Renegade or Paragon choices, this may have resulted in siding with one species or another, letting this person live or that person die, even condemning races to extinction through your actions. But these decisions were always the result of a mediation of disparate opinions, and a consequence of the natural escalation of these disputes – Shepard was merely the fork in the path that decided which way the lava would run. His/her actions had an impact, but was responding to events in the universe that were already in motion before he/she arrived.

To belabour the point: Shepard is an agent for arbitration, the tipping point of dialogues that have, at times, root causes that reach back across generations. Up until this moment in the game the narrative, and Shepard's role within it, has been about the negotiation of diversity, testing the validity of opposing viewpoints and selecting a path through which to evolve on to another layer of questioning. Suddenly with the Synthesis ending, Shepard's capacity to make decisions elevates from offering a moral tipping point to arbitrarily wiping such disparity from the world. Shepard imposes his/her will upon every species, every form of life within the galaxy, making them all a dreary homogenous oneness. At such a point, wiping negotiation and multiplicity from the universe, Shepard moves from being an influential voice amongst a biodiversity of thought to sacrificing him/herself in an omnipotent imposition of will.

Aaand, I really hate to double post with another wall of text, but I forgot to address this part of Dr. Dray's post.

In the Synthesis ending, Shepard is indeed the pebble that changes the path of the stream. If you pay attention to the little details of Mass Effect, you will see that on their own, synthetics and organics have already been going on their own path towards synthesis.

In ME1, there is a side mission on the Citadel about a gambling AI. That AI basically repeats the point that the creators and created will never get along, but it makes an even more important point--it is trying to become like an organic. In your conversation with the Gambling AI, it tells you that it is funnelling money into accounts so that it can upload itself into a starship and seek out the geth. It wants things that organics have--freedom, mobility, self-determination, and community.

In ME2, we are given the biggest example of synthesis: Shepard herself. She is reborn with synthetic parts, yet she is still her badass self. The second biggest example, of course, is EDI. Once you free her from her Cerberus shackles, she becomes more and more like an organic--she jokes around, she starts thinking for herself, and she decides that she does not want to serve Cerberus any more. There are little details as well. Unless I'm forgetting a codex entry in ME1 somewhere, I believe ME2 is where we learn that omnitools are actually implanted and that they interface with and are tuned to the person's nervous system. It seems like everyone and their mom has an omni-tool in the Mass Effect universe, so in a sense, everyone is partially synthetic already. There is also the greybox from Kasumi's loyalty mission--basically a computer that you can upload your memories into.

In ME3, there are a lot of things pointing to synthesis as well. EDI and the geth and their Pinocchio stories are the biggest example of machines trying to be more like organics. On the other side, we can see that organics are still becoming partially synthetic themselves. You can have a conversation with Joker about salarian "transhumans", and Joker says that many salarians actually embrace having synthetic parts. There is this conversation between Chakwas and Adams, and if you side with Adams and say that AI is real life, Chakwas will tell say "of course you would say that. You two are practically machines yourselves." Now, of course Shepard has a lot of synthetic parts from his Project Lazarus rebirth. However, even Adams, who didn't get fancy shmancy Cerberus upgrades, is "practically machine", probably because he has a lot of implants that help him interface with machines for his job as an engineer. Later on, if you save both the geth and the quarians, Tali tells you that they are undergoing a synthesis as well--the geth are uploading themselves onto quarian suits to help their immune systems develop.

Then there are the little details scattered throughout all three games that suggest a lot of organics are part-synthetic already--quarian and volus suits, biotic amps, haptic-optic implant technology (this is how they interact with the holographic UI), etc. So if you think about it, the Mass Effect universe has already been moving towards synthesis--it's just that in the Synthesis ending, Shepard is the tipping point, and she has to make the choice for everyone instead of waiting for organics and synthetics to come to that middle point.

[pistolols]

fle6isnow wrote...

There is this conversation between Chakwas and Adams,

i loved that conversation.  Adams says:  "We're all machines.  Carbon or silicate, is there really a difference?"

That was precisely my epiphany the first time i took psychoactive drugs and i watched everyone come out their houses and goto work around 7 - 8am.  We're just machines.

[MintyCool]

Those who can't do, teach.

[Tony208]

MintyCool wrote...


Those who can't do, teach.

The troll is back.

And another poster who resorts to attacks because they can't refute the argument.

Modifié par Tony208, 23 avril 2012 - 04:24 .

[CulturalGeekGirl]

fle6isnow wrote...

Drayfish, p.13:

And finally Synthesis, the ending that I suspect (unless we are to believe the Indoctrination Theory) is the 'good' option, proves to be the most distasteful of all. Shepard, up until this point has been an instrument though which change is achieved in this universe, and dependent upon your individual Renegade or Paragon choices, this may have resulted in siding with one species or another, letting this person live or that person die, even condemning races to extinction through your actions. But these decisions were always the result of a mediation of disparate opinions, and a consequence of the natural escalation of these disputes – Shepard was merely the fork in the path that decided which way the lava would run. His/her actions had an impact, but was responding to events in the universe that were already in motion before he/she arrived.

To belabour the point: Shepard is an agent for arbitration, the tipping point of dialogues that have, at times, root causes that reach back across generations. Up until this moment in the game the narrative, and Shepard's role within it, has been about the negotiation of diversity, testing the validity of opposing viewpoints and selecting a path through which to evolve on to another layer of questioning. Suddenly with the Synthesis ending, Shepard's capacity to make decisions elevates from offering a moral tipping point to arbitrarily wiping such disparity from the world. Shepard imposes his/her will upon every species, every form of life within the galaxy, making them all a dreary homogenous oneness. At such a point, wiping negotiation and multiplicity from the universe, Shepard moves from being an influential voice amongst a biodiversity of thought to sacrificing him/herself in an omnipotent imposition of will.

Aaand, I really hate to double post with another wall of text, but I forgot to address this part of Dr. Dray's post.

In the Synthesis ending, Shepard is indeed the pebble that changes the path of the stream. If you pay attention to the little details of Mass Effect, you will see that on their own, synthetics and organics have already been going on their own path towards synthesis.

In ME1, there is a side mission on the Citadel about a gambling AI. That AI basically repeats the point that the creators and created will never get along, but it makes an even more important point--it is trying to become like an organic. In your conversation with the Gambling AI, it tells you that it is funnelling money into accounts so that it can upload itself into a starship and seek out the geth. It wants things that organics have--freedom, mobility, self-determination, and community.

In ME2, we are given the biggest example of synthesis: Shepard herself. She is reborn with synthetic parts, yet she is still her badass self. The second biggest example, of course, is EDI. Once you free her from her Cerberus shackles, she becomes more and more like an organic--she jokes around, she starts thinking for herself, and she decides that she does not want to serve Cerberus any more. There are little details as well. Unless I'm forgetting a codex entry in ME1 somewhere, I believe ME2 is where we learn that omnitools are actually implanted and that they interface with and are tuned to the person's nervous system. It seems like everyone and their mom has an omni-tool in the Mass Effect universe, so in a sense, everyone is partially synthetic already. There is also the greybox from Kasumi's loyalty mission--basically a computer that you can upload your memories into.

In ME3, there are a lot of things pointing to synthesis as well. EDI and the geth and their Pinocchio stories are the biggest example of machines trying to be more like organics. On the other side, we can see that organics are still becoming partially synthetic themselves. You can have a conversation with Joker about salarian "transhumans", and Joker says that many salarians actually embrace having synthetic parts. There is this conversation between Chakwas and Adams, and if you side with Adams and say that AI is real life, Chakwas will tell say "of course you would say that. You two are practically machines yourselves." Now, of course Shepard has a lot of synthetic parts from his Project Lazarus rebirth. However, even Adams, who didn't get fancy shmancy Cerberus upgrades, is "practically machine", probably because he has a lot of implants that help him interface with machines for his job as an engineer. Later on, if you save both the geth and the quarians, Tali tells you that they are undergoing a synthesis as well--the geth are uploading themselves onto quarian suits to help their immune systems develop.

Then there are the little details scattered throughout all three games that suggest a lot of organics are part-synthetic already--quarian and volus suits, biotic amps, haptic-optic implant technology (this is how they interact with the holographic UI), etc. So if you think about it, the Mass Effect universe has already been moving towards synthesis--it's just that in the Synthesis ending, Shepard is the tipping point, and she has to make the choice for everyone instead of waiting for organics and synthetics to come to that middle point.

I dislike the Synthesis ending in part because I love transhumanism and the singularity, and I think that the "green button" destroys this idea, and simplifies the concept to the point where it becomes boring and worthless.

There are lot of definitions for transhumanism, and the singularity is similarly ill-defined. My favorite kind of transhumanism is the "ghost in the machine." The question of what makes humans human; if we digitize our consciousness, are we still "us"? 

It's a series of questions that progresses incrementally. If you can digitize memory, record the exact state of a brain, can you recreate the being inside of it? If you put a brain in a clone body, is that person the same person? If you put the impulses from a brain into another genetically identical brain, is that still the same person? If you put the impulses from a brain into an entirely synthetic mobile platform, is that still the same person?

And, if it is, can you create a person... a human person... who has never had a human body at all? If the digitized consciousness of a human is a human, could a digitized consciousness with similar qualities that was created out of thin air be equally human, if it never had an organic body to start with?

And if you can... does humanity really mean anything at all anymore?

If you had told me that the ending of mass effect was going to be a question of destroying synthetic life, controlling synthetic life, or asking the universe to embrace transhumanism, I would have been so happy. To see transhumanism reduced to a simple "green button to homogenize all life," is severely disheartening to me, as a fan of science fiction.

This frustration is amplified by the fact that Mass Effect has productively engaged with transhumanism before, in the interesting narrative margins that the series has created through its codex and other ephemera, like the Cerberus News Network updates. Within that wonderful explosion of creative microfiction,  there's actually a lengthy arc about first contact with an entire alien race that has been living as an immortal, digitized consciousness for thousands of years. It then came out that these consciousnesses could be transferred to living organic bodies, and the consciousnesses of currently living organics could attain digitized simulated immortality.

"Ohmygod," I thought, "what does this mean for the interface of organics with the Geth? What if the geth interfaced with that society? Could we put a geth into an organic body? Could we add organic consciousness to the Geth consensus?" 

And then Mass Effect 3 showed that we could, indeed, put an organic into the consensus in at least some form.  Overlord suggested something similar as; that some organic consciousnesses might be suitable to direct communication with the Geth.

So to see all these beautiful, delicate steps toward transhumanism rendered moot by a freaking choice between destroying all synthetics (thus rendering the progress towards transhumanism moot) versus a button to simplify the philosophical questions of transhumanism into a inexplicable green glow, my science fiction-lovin 'heart wept tears of anger. It was like watching someone build a delicate and beautiful machine in support of a leap to the next level of understanding, only to have it smashed at the end by the sledgehammer of oversimplification.

Picking any one of the endings is basically admitting to the Starchild that transhumanism will not happen without direct intervention, when every other narrative voice in the universe is screaming that we're on the threshold of achieving it on our own terms.

It's a betrayal of all the most interesting ideas of transhumanism, reducing one of the most interesting and nuanced concepts in all of science fiction to a bland message of homogenous divine intervention.

Modifié par CulturalGeekGirl, 23 avril 2012 - 04:36 .