CmnDwnWrkn wrote...
"And if one of these three (and only these three) options must be selected in order to sustain life in the universe, then that life has been so devalued by that act as to make the sacrifice meaningless."
Possibly the greatest sentence ever written.
Modifié par SkaldFish, 24 avril 2012 - 06:50 .
Sable Phoenix wrote...
This plays into my belief that, even if the Indoctrination Theory is not true (and as much as I want it to be true I fully admit that BioWare has indicated it is not), everything we see from the point Shepard ascends into the light (look, SYMBOLISM!) onward is, in fact, metaphorical. The conversation with the ghosty boy takes place inside Shepard's dying, suffocating brain. How else can someone who just collapsed from blood loss be able to stand and walk? How else could her arms now be miraculously clean when they were drenched with blood not two minutes previous? Her strange acquiescence to the Catalyst's dreamlike appearance is probably hypoxia taking hold; she literally has no fight left in her. Nevertheless, Shepard, due to her partially synthetic nature, directly interfaces with the systems of the Crucible/Citadel/Catalyst through that metaphorical vision while still physically lying in front of the computer console, and activates it with her dying breath (of course, we have the possibility she wakes up buried in rubble back in London, which just makes no sense, but we'll leave that for the Extended Cut to explain I suppose). She is the only human who could do so.
It still doesn't address the thematic concerns, or the narrative inconsistencies, but based on what we know of Shepard's character it at least makes more sense than taking everything at face value.
drayfish wrote...
[...]
It's not a huge deal, but I just wanted to clarify: like you (and it sounds, like Sable Phoenix also), I actually love
the image of Shepard beaten down at the ending, revealed once again to
be merely mortal in a swirling galactic stage that almost comically
dwarfs his/her individual fight. That's always been the journey for
Shepard: human soldier elevated to the symbol of Spectre because of
his/her capacity to endure, and fight tenaciously despite the
overwhelming odds.
My issue is that in this final, broken state on the Crucible, it felt that his/her core beliefs
had to be also violated, and it is at this point at which I don't
believe Shepard would bend or bow. (And again, this is entirely my own
subjective opinion.) Bruised, bloodied, beaten to death, dragging
him/herself across the gorram floor to keep fighting? Absolutely.
Nodding almost-voicelessly as some snot-nosed self-confessed cosmic
serial killer offered three new arbitrary options? No.
As
other astute posters have pointed out in this thread, this moral
quandary need not be true if Shepard was a raging sociopath, or if
Shepard's definition of 'life' remains inside the parameters of human biological existence, but for every variation of my Shepard, Control, Synthesise and Destroy all have reprehensible moral implications.
Modifié par Hawk227, 24 avril 2012 - 06:54 .
Hawk227 wrote...
Sable Phoenix wrote...
This plays into my belief that, even if the Indoctrination Theory is not true (and as much as I want it to be true I fully admit that BioWare has indicated it is not), everything we see from the point Shepard ascends into the light (look, SYMBOLISM!) onward is, in fact, metaphorical. The conversation with the ghosty boy takes place inside Shepard's dying, suffocating brain. How else can someone who just collapsed from blood loss be able to stand and walk? How else could her arms now be miraculously clean when they were drenched with blood not two minutes previous? Her strange acquiescence to the Catalyst's dreamlike appearance is probably hypoxia taking hold; she literally has no fight left in her. Nevertheless, Shepard, due to her partially synthetic nature, directly interfaces with the systems of the Crucible/Citadel/Catalyst through that metaphorical vision while still physically lying in front of the computer console, and activates it with her dying breath (of course, we have the possibility she wakes up buried in rubble back in London, which just makes no sense, but we'll leave that for the Extended Cut to explain I suppose). She is the only human who could do so.
It still doesn't address the thematic concerns, or the narrative inconsistencies, but based on what we know of Shepard's character it at least makes more sense than taking everything at face value.
I just wanted to chime in real quick about the indoctrination theory. The broadly accepted interpretation is that the hallucination begins when Harbingers blasts you on London. It helps explain why much of the Citadel scene feels sloppy (finding the console with anderson), why TIM is more intent on convincing you than actually controlling the Reapers. It also explains why the final 3 choices are seem narratively inconsistent and revolting. Because they are Harbinger's options. You(the player) succumb to him, or you call BS, pick destroy, and break free. Waking up in London.
Also, Bioware has been incredibly tight lipped about it. Nothing they've said has either confirmed nor eliminated the possibility of IT. Although, this could be down to preserving their "speculation for everyone" rather than the veracity of the theory.drayfish wrote...
[...]
It's not a huge deal, but I just wanted to clarify: like you (and it sounds, like Sable Phoenix also), I actually love
the image of Shepard beaten down at the ending, revealed once again to
be merely mortal in a swirling galactic stage that almost comically
dwarfs his/her individual fight. That's always been the journey for
Shepard: human soldier elevated to the symbol of Spectre because of
his/her capacity to endure, and fight tenaciously despite the
overwhelming odds.
My issue is that in this final, broken state on the Crucible, it felt that his/her core beliefs
had to be also violated, and it is at this point at which I don't
believe Shepard would bend or bow. (And again, this is entirely my own
subjective opinion.) Bruised, bloodied, beaten to death, dragging
him/herself across the gorram floor to keep fighting? Absolutely.
Nodding almost-voicelessly as some snot-nosed self-confessed cosmic
serial killer offered three new arbitrary options? No.
As
other astute posters have pointed out in this thread, this moral
quandary need not be true if Shepard was a raging sociopath, or if
Shepard's definition of 'life' remains inside the parameters of human biological existence, but for every variation of my Shepard, Control, Synthesise and Destroy all have reprehensible moral implications.
I agree, and I wanted to add that while sacrifice has been a consistent theme (at least in ME3) it has always been an individual sacrificing their life for their beliefs. Mordin sacrificed himself to cure the Genophage. Primarch Victus' son sacrificed himself to disarm the nuke and preserve peace with the Krogan. Legion sacrificed himself to bring individuality to the Geth. Even in ME2, when you were given difficult decisions (ex: rewriting the geth) the option to stand by your principles was always available. I fully expected Shepard to have to sacrifice himself to bring an end to the Reapers. A little part of me hoped it wouldn't come to that, because I wanted to see Garrus and Shepard relaxing and toasting their victory. But I was more than willing to sacrifice that for a proper victory. Instead we were forced to sacrifice both Shepard's life and his ideals. The ending boiled down to which atrocity are you most comfortable commiting.
Others have said better than I could, that the game always gave you an option that made sense for your shepard. Paragon, Renegade, Paragade, or Renegon, there was always a choice that seemed to make sense, but this was an ending fit only for CG Girl's nihilistic, sociopathic "crow".
bc525 wrote...
... So when the Catalyst Child revealed the trigger that would launch some doom at the Reapers, understandably my Shepard had the reaction of “Let’s light this candle!” However, it did complicate matters when the Calalyst also revealed the Geth, EDI, synthetics, technology, etc. would be destroyed as well. I was prepared for Shepard to make the ultimate sacrifice himself, but I wasn’t quite prepared for the extent of the collateral damage that would come with that.
But I noticed while firing at the pressure point that would launch our Crucible into action, Shepard seemed to straighten and gain strength as he was firing. To me that confirmed Shepard was totally committed to this course of action, so much so that he actually moved into the blast.
I related with the Diversity theme extremely well, and that point was wonderfully depicted by the Prothean character’s attitudes. Through discussions with Javik, it was discovered that a major reason the Protheans did in fact fail was the lack of diversity throughout their empire. I saw the Synthesis option in complete conflict with our cycle’s notable strength – our diversity. Synthesis was a no-go.
I equated the Control option with Indoctrination, which confused me that this option was colored in Paragon Blue. As many have pointed out, the confrontation with The Illusive Man was very fresh in my mind, and the Control option just had failure written all over it. Control was a no-go.
So through the ending sequence, my Shepard’s feelings during the entire journey were being confirmed. The Destroy option was indeed present, and of his available options, it was the way to proceed. At some point I was willing to understand my Shepard’s free will would be compromised and his hand could be forced to fulfill his destiny. That breaking of the theme of free will seems to be the largest obstacle for many folks...
DoctorCrowtgamer wrote...
My problem is that by making the three options the only options and not even given us the option to reject them and go down fight(ing)
Modifié par Kunari801, 24 avril 2012 - 08:05 .
Kunari801 wrote...
DoctorCrowtgamer wrote...
My problem is that by making the three options the only options and not even given us the option to reject them and go down fight(ing)
Agreed, I wanted to tell the Star-child, as Jack would have put it, "Go ***k youself" but alas we were not given that option. I've read some ideas in the "conventional warfare" threads and I'm not convinced we'd win, I too feel victory would go to the Reapers and the cycle would continue. That would mean I sacrifice all to preserve my ideals and I'm not sure my Shepard would do that either.
DoctorCrowtgamer wrote...
Sadly there seems to be a wall in video games that keeps game companies from hiring real writers who know about writing. There seems to be this idea that the people who program the games have to be the people who write them even if they know nothing about script writing and it strikes me as odd. I mean you don't see films or Tv letting the light sound and editing people write their scripts,they hire real writers. Why can't games hire real writers?
jkthunder wrote...
This made me remember something...
WHERE'S MY SPACE HAMSTER??
Modifié par CulturalGeekGirl, 24 avril 2012 - 08:46 .
Up to a point, this tracks very closely with my thinking as I was trying to make sense of what was being presented to me, but it's stated with far greater clarity than I could have stated it. I dismissed Control and Synthesis for exactly the reasons you did, and so Destroy seemed to be the only choice left. This, though, is where we part ways. My Shepard had just brokered a peace between the Quarians and the Geth, and had been horrified to then watch Legion choose to sacrifice himself in order to secure that peace. In fact, both the Quarians and the Geth were choosing peace, and would have to actively continue to choose it every day to make it last.bc525 wrote...
<snip/>CulturalGeekGirl wrote...
<snip/>
Yet in the ending, no matter what, a Shepard who believes in both free will and diversity is forced to compromise who he is.
As I wrote a while back, my Shepard was of a single-minded motivation to stop the Reapers, most logically by destroying them. It was my Shepard’s mode and modus, his central kick. We had gone to extensive effort to construct our Crucible super-weapon, but for some reason at the moment of truth, the dang thing wouldn’t work. My Shepard shared Hackett’s bewilderment … “Nothing’s happening!”
Shepard had very likely been mortally wounded. He’d staggered past piles of corpses, he’d finally dispatched The Illusive Man, and he’d watched his buddy Anderson die. And now our wonderful super-weapon had fizzled?! A pretty dark frame of mind at that point, to say the least. Basically, this was not going well. Ultimate failure was becoming a real possibility.
So when the Catalyst Child revealed the trigger that would launch some doom at the Reapers, understandably my Shepard had the reaction of “Let’s light this candle!” However, it did complicate matters when the Calalyst also revealed the Geth, EDI, synthetics, technology, etc. would be destroyed as well. I was prepared for Shepard to make the ultimate sacrifice himself, but I wasn’t quite prepared for the extent of the collateral damage that would come with that.
But I noticed while firing at the pressure point that would launch our Crucible into action, Shepard seemed to straighten and gain strength as he was firing. To me that confirmed Shepard was totally committed to this course of action, so much so that he actually moved into the blast.
I related with the Diversity theme extremely well, and that point was wonderfully depicted by the Prothean character’s attitudes. Through discussions with Javik, it was discovered that a major reason the Protheans did in fact fail was the lack of diversity throughout their empire. I saw the Synthesis option in complete conflict with our cycle’s notable strength – our diversity. Synthesis was a no-go.
I equated the Control option with Indoctrination, which confused me that this option was colored in Paragon Blue. As many have pointed out, the confrontation with The Illusive Man was very fresh in my mind, and the Control option just had failure written all over it. Control was a no-go.
So through the ending sequence, my Shepard’s feelings during the entire journey were being confirmed. The Destroy option was indeed present, and of his available options, it was the way to proceed. At some point I was willing to understand my Shepard’s free will would be compromised and his hand could be forced to fulfill his destiny. That breaking of the theme of free will seems to be the largest obstacle for many folks.
Looking back at your pro-ender categories, I just don’t see that Cat one would apply to me. I guess I somewhat fall into Cat’s two and three. I did feel that the Destroy option was the most acceptable available option, and for the most part I didn’t totally invest in the theme of complete and utter free will. I was aware of a sense of destiny for Shepard, albeit a somewhat dark and difficult one.
(update = fixed some bad formatting problems)
Modifié par SkaldFish, 24 avril 2012 - 09:45 .
CulturalGeekGirl wrote...
But forget all that. I'll agree that sacrifice is a theme, if not so much for Shepard, for her companions and the universe as a whole. Still, let's look at those sacrifices. Nearly every other death we see in the series, every other sacrifice... very few people die alone. Everyone dies for something they really believe in, with confidence that it will be successful. Shepard, and Shepard alone, is asked to die alone for something she really doesn't believe in, for something that deeply contradicts her core beliefs about the universe. She's asked to die with no certainty of achieving the results she seeks. She's asked to die on the say-so of a genocidal maniac who is clearly either lying or incorrect in his description of how the universe works.
She's asked to die alone.
Bugger. That. Noise.
SkaldFish wrote...
I realize you make a larger point, so I snip hesitantly, but I do want to point out here that we should be careful about assignment of events to themes. Here, I think the problem is in a very loose definition of "sacrifice." In order to qualify as a sacrifice, your decision has to meet two criteria: (1) You have to give up something important for the sake of another thing deemed even more important; (2) that thing you give up has to be yours to give, so that you are personally impacted by the loss.CulturalGeekGirl wrote...
I just don't see any of the things cited here as sacrifice being Shepard's sacrifices. Ash's death is Ash's sacrifice. Mordin's death is Mordin's sacrifice. Legion's was Legion's. They all owned their own destinies. I didn't sacrifice them, I let them go.
<snip/>
Modifié par M0keys, 24 avril 2012 - 10:09 .
CulturalGeekGirl wrote...
DoctorCrowtgamer wrote...
Sadly there seems to be a wall in video games that keeps game companies from hiring real writers who know about writing. There seems to be this idea that the people who program the games have to be the people who write them even if they know nothing about script writing and it strikes me as odd. I mean you don't see films or Tv letting the light sound and editing people write their scripts,they hire real writers. Why can't games hire real writers?
Oh come on now. As someone who writes for games, I have to tell you... a decent amount of game writing is done by what you would call "actual writers." Mostly theater and film writers, some novel writers, some people who started in journalism or community work, but writers.
Read any interview with Patrick Weekes or John Dombrow; they seem pretty together, writing-wise. I was at the PAX East panel, and the one thing I really got from it is that they are brilliant, they really thought about the character arcs they were responsible for (Wrex, Mordin, Tali), really needed to make sure that the characters made sense and had their own arcs. I doubt you feel that Tuchanka and Rannoc were poorly written, so it's not a lack of competent writers.
Something else happened, and I don't mean to imply any kind of corporate malfeasance or conspiracy. It could have been something as simple as a miscommunication somewhere in the writer's room, but somehow that well-oiled machine fell apart at the end.jkthunder wrote...
This made me remember something...
WHERE'S MY SPACE HAMSTER??
Check Jack's old room. It may take some time... I missed it my first go.
M0keys wrote...
SkaldFish wrote...
I realize you make a larger point, so I snip hesitantly, but I do want to point out here that we should be careful about assignment of events to themes. Here, I think the problem is in a very loose definition of "sacrifice." In order to qualify as a sacrifice, your decision has to meet two criteria: (1) You have to give up something important for the sake of another thing deemed even more important; (2) that thing you give up has to be yours to give, so that you are personally impacted by the loss.CulturalGeekGirl wrote...
I just don't see any of the things cited here as sacrifice being Shepard's sacrifices. Ash's death is Ash's sacrifice. Mordin's death is Mordin's sacrifice. Legion's was Legion's. They all owned their own destinies. I didn't sacrifice them, I let them go.
<snip/>
That second point is incredibly important, and why certain sacrifices are valid and others are not.
Ashley/Kaidan's sacrifice, Legion's sacrifice, Mordin's sacrifice.. All valid. Why? Because they own themselves.
To call the destroy ending "sacrificing" the Geth is a bit insane because it assumes you own them. That is, if you accept the destroy ending, you've already accepted the Shepard-imposed slavery and immediately successing slave-execution of the Geth. And EDI.
Control is sort of the same way. Only you've enslaved yourself to the Reapers, possibly a force that can't be completely controlled the begin with. It's not as evil as much as it is irresponsible and reckless and hypocritical.
Synthesis is, once again, slavery on a massive scale, but this time of the whole galactic gene pool.
Basically all the ending options force you to become as bad as the Reapers, which is really no big stretch since the Reapers invented all those choices.
Guest_Nyoka_*
Modifié par Nyoka, 24 avril 2012 - 10:34 .
Modifié par CulturalGeekGirl, 24 avril 2012 - 10:33 .
CulturalGeekGirl wrote...
Oh come on now. As someone who writes for games, I have to tell you...
Modifié par drayfish, 24 avril 2012 - 10:39 .
Guest_Nyoka_*
Modifié par Nyoka, 24 avril 2012 - 10:48 .
CulturalGeekGirl wrote...
Oh, I wasn't meaning to suggest that only sociopathic renegades could take destroy. A lot of renegade stuff is very "you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs, any cook will tell you that."
Crow is just my only "real" renegade. The other one is more Renegon, and doesn't quite feel that way. You can see by the hundreds of threads about how destroy is the obvious ending that a lot of Renegades think of this genocide as just another acceptable casualty.
Nyoka wrote...
It just bugged me a bit that people were saying the destruction ending is wrong because the writers of ME3 don't understand that genocide is wrong. Well sorry but my Shepard exterminated the Rachni back in ME1. And the only victim of my destruction was EDI because the geth were already dead by the time the ending takes place. This looks more like having a problem with renegades in general, not with this particular bit of the ending.
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