5087 réponses à ce sujet

[uwyz]

@delta_vee

thank you very much for that most thoughful response to my post. I appreciate your insight. Looking back, I can see that I went too far to declare that "the part defines the whole, and overrides other parts". There are flaws in my reasoning.

At the end of ME1, as Shepard reactivated the Widow relay, he is presented a dilemma: whether to sacrifice human lives to save the council, or whether to sacrfice the council to preserve human strength. If he saved the council, Shepard receives an uplifting speech at the end honoring human sacrifice, and affirms the paragon virtues of sticking to protocol and treating all races as equal. If he does not, Shepard becomes involved in political scheming that place humanity as the dominant race of galatic government, rewarding the renegade virtue of "mission above all else" and "exploiting opportunities at every turn". If the writers tried to send messages through those 2 endings, then messages are mixed and contradictory - and yet I cannot find any point in them to blame for 'forcng me into act against my values'.

Similarly on Tuchunka, if I as a player killed Wrex and destroyed Maelon's data, then i am left to deal with Wreav and confronted with the prospect of a bloody Krogan expansion. This experience undermines the 'all race deserve the right to self-determine' theme. Even Mordin could be forced to agree that the Krogan are not (yet) worthy of salvation. The conclusion one draws in this case can be "No one exists in isolation. Sometimes, the well being of one group have to be trampled to serve the good of the majority. The world is a complicated place, inflexible adherence to ehtics and moral posturing result in tragic consequences." And that serves a cautionary tale against paragon choices made for paragon values.

This does not rebutt my specific complaint - that the ending is thematically contradictory and morally abhorrent - since many excellent contributors have already argued so persuasively that all 3 ending are immoral and contradict key themes to some degree. And like you pointed out, Legion's humanity maybe omitted but is not directly countered - that the game rewards but does not penalize one for finding this information. However, I acknowledge that my critique of video games (especially games that like ME have branching narratives) as a story telling medium was juvenile, and I thank you for expanding my understanding.

[uwyz]

@Seijin8

Thank you, my passion had gotten the better side of my manners.

Regarding narrative intent in their message of the endings, we unfortunately have to peer outside the fiction to see that the narrative has always been collaborative with each gestalt revealing/emphasizing different perspectives. It would seem that Hudson/Walters either *did* want to push "intolerance, betrayal and dehumanization", or were unaware that their narrative was doing so. (Probably the latter.)

I don't like presuming the lead writer's intent (on their own forum no less), but I will digress this once. I think it is a bit of both, because I believe no writer worth their salary would fail to notice these obvious problems. I am an vulgar engineer uneducated in the arts, and even I can detect these issues by common sense.

"Look man, we have to shoehorn this sacrifice, new beginning thing into the ending, so we took liberties with established themes. We figured, you know, who'd notice? But you caught us. So for the record, our company support free will, and we don't endorse dehumanization or genocide, all right? But we ain't going to release a public statement about it and we ain't going to fix it cause, you know, who'd notice? Most people are just here to hit up on blue & purple aliens and shoot sh**, right?"

That kind of attitude would have been disappointing. When they said ME is 'art', I think they meant to say it is 'good art' or 'high art'. But by willfully ignoring the core values of their creation they doomed the chance of ME making it to that category.

[KitaSaturnyne]

Seijin8 wrote...

WOW. I had never considered that perspective before. Really, that opens the door for a lot of subtexts. Does Legion *really* not understand organics, or are our conversations with it purely manipulative? EDI is aruably even more suspect in this light.

It does all come down to trust, but if we are to take the endings as canon, on their face (which disgusts me to consider), then perhaps Shepard is unable to tell when an AI is lying to him/her. (Not that I believe this is a serious possibility.)

I personally think that it comes down to a matter of actions being stronger than words. In the cases of Legion and EDI, they not only communicate what they think and believe in their interactions with Shepard, they demonstrate them, which is to me is much more important.

[DOHC46]

This has to be the most eloquent expression of what I've been complaining about the whole time.  Well ...er... said.

[uwyz]

@Seijin8

WOW. I had never considered that perspective before. Really, that opens the door for a lot of subtexts. Does Legion *really* not understand organics, or are our conversations with it purely manipulative? EDI is aruably even more suspect in this light.

It does all come down to trust, but if we are to take the endings as canon, on their face (which disgusts me to consider), then perhaps Shepard is unable to tell when an AI is lying to him/her. (Not that I believe this is a serious possibility.)

Em, I didn't meant to suggest that Legion or EDI tried to deceive or manipulate Shepard - in fact I don't t even think Saren did that to Sovereign. I meant to say that Legion, like the naive machine that he is, trusted the better part of human nature, and believed that by setting himself up as an examplar representative of synthetic races, serving Shepard with honor and good faith, he can demonstrate the value and dignity of his people, and thereby persuade Shepard and the rest of the organic races to accept the Geth into their community. So if Shepard chooses to kill Legion, it has bigger moral implications than "it is not murder cause Legion is not alive" - it is also betrayal and ingratitude of basest kind. (Of course some player choose to kill Legion because they had no better alternative, because they believe it to be a sacrifice for the greater good - that sentiment is more sympathetic, but the moral implication remains)

By drawing parallel between Shepard and Sovereign, I wished to emphasize how terrible this choice is, in the eyes of Legion and EDI.

Modifié par uwyz, 05 mai 2012 - 01:53 .

[delta_vee]

@uwyz:

Similarly on Tuchunka, if I as a player killed Wrex and destroyed Maelon's data, then i am left to deal with Wreav and confronted with the prospect of a bloody Krogan expansion. This experience undermines the 'all race deserve the right to self-determine' theme. Even Mordin could be forced to agree that the Krogan are not (yet) worthy of salvation. The conclusion one draws in this case can be "No one exists in isolation. Sometimes, the well being of one group have to be trampled to serve the good of the majority. The world is a complicated place, inflexible adherence to ehtics and moral posturing result in tragic consequences." And that serves a cautionary tale against paragon choices made for paragon values.

Indeed. In fact, that particular conclusion is supported directly by the EMS mechanic. The highest EMS value to be derived from Tuchanka (not by a lot, but by a non-trivial amount) is to have killed Wrex, destroyed Maelon's data, and convince Mordin against the cure. Some paragon choices, some renegade choices, and a willingness to see past the binary. If the whole game had been designed in that fashion, well, we'd have a much better game.

This does not rebutt my specific complaint - that the ending is thematically contradictory and morally abhorrent - since many excellent contributors have already argued so persuasively that all 3 ending are immoral and contradict key themes to some degree. And like you pointed out, Legion's humanity maybe omitted but is not directly countered - that the game rewards but does not penalize one for finding this information.

Here I have to play Devil's Advocate again, well into the realm of "know your enemy", and believe me, this part isn't easy...

I don't think Hudson & Walters agree with Destroy, either. I think they prefer Synthesis, as ill-defined as it is. I think they view Destroy, in the form we got, to be as abhorrent as we do. I think they see Synthesis as a galaxy-wide extension of what the game encourages us to see in EDI/Joker and Geth/Quarians. I think the Catalyst's recalcitrance towards Destroy is a reflection of their own distaste for the option. I think they purposefully made Synthesis encouraged by the mechanics (it's the option you get when you fill the bar you're told to fill). I think they made the imagery of Synthesis as hopeful and triumphant and symbolic as they possibly could.

And I think they were floored when many of saw the exact opposite of what they were trying to convey.

I don't think they handled any of it well, mind you. All of my arguments against the ending on mechanical, thematic and narrative grounds still stand. I think they grossly misinterpreted their own work on multiple levels. But I genuinely believe they genuinely believed in what they thought they were trying to say.

However, I acknowledge that my critique of video games (especially games that like ME have branching narratives) as a story telling medium was juvenile, and I thank you for expanding my understanding.

Don't say that. The entire nascent field of game criticism is asking themselves all these questions and more. Or rather, the parts of the field which are interested in progression. I probably sound far more sure of all of this than I really am.

[nategator]

Seijin8 wrote...

@uwyz

Never apologize for passionately stating your point of view. I did not see your reply as an attack, and appreciate your perspective.

Regarding narrative intent in their message of the endings, we unfortunately have to peer outside the fiction to see that the narrative has always been collaborative with each gestalt revealing/emphasizing different perspectives. It would seem that Hudson/Walters either *did* want to push "intolerance, betrayal and dehumanization", or were unaware that their narrative was doing so. (Probably the latter.)

On one hand Shepard has the choice to decide for himself whether EDI and the Geth are 'alive', on the other hand EDI and the Geth firmly believes themselves to be alive. In a way, the Geth stood in relation with Shepard as Shepard once stood in relation to Sovereign. Legion makes an argument to Shepard for the Geth's continued existence and future, as Shepard once argued against Sovereign. Sovereign's reply is well known - "You (organics) represent Chaos, we (reapers) represent order ... You flourish because we allow it, and you will end because we demand" - the implication being that organic lives have no value and no saving grace, and that their future and survival is not theirs to decide - it is the reapers' right to decide. If Shepard ended the Geth (and all synthetic life forms in the destory option) based on the premise "geth aren't alive" - then he has done to the Geth what the reapers have done to the world. This robs Shepard's fight of moral appeal - he is simply fighting for his own survival and future (and that of all organics), but he is no longer really fighting for a moral principle.

Seen in that light, EDI and Legion's roles are not unlike that of Saren - they ingratiated themselves with the "Enemy", in the vain hope that by demonstrating their value they could persuade the "Great Destoryer" to spare their kin of destruction. My, EDI and legion really should have knock Shepard out while they had the chance and handed him to the collectors.

WOW. I had never considered that perspective before. Really, that opens the door for a lot of subtexts. Does Legion *really* not understand organics, or are our conversations with it purely manipulative? EDI is aruably even more suspect in this light.

It does all come down to trust, but if we are to take the endings as canon, on their face (which disgusts me to consider), then perhaps Shepard is unable to tell when an AI is lying to him/her. (Not that I believe this is a serious possibility.)

Well, I'm skeptical of indoctrination theory but it is important that EDI was built from Reaper tech, the Geth were influenced by Reapers several times and are left Reaper upgraded, following the Cerbus base attack the Crucible was powered by the human Reaper's heart (in the war assets), and the Catalyst is the Citiadel and thusRreaper tech as well.  So, if you buy that Reaper tech = indoctrination trojan horses, then all of Shepard's interactions with synthetics are suspect. 

Lots of C's there, like breaking the 3 options into A, B, & C...hmmm...

But I'm still of the opinion that everything stated by Bioware post-game suggests that IT is false.

[Seijin8]

@uwyz and KitaSaturnyne

I understood that uwyz's intent was not to cast doubt on the motivations of Legion/Geth or EDI, but that's where my... erm... speculations took it.

It would take a very different kind of game overall to make deceptions of this sort work well within the story. Ice-Pick Ledge's "The Void" is an excellent example of that sort of manipulative narrative. (Probably not the best example out there, but the first that popped into my head.)

For the record, I don't believe ME was intended to be that kind of story, and it doesn't fit well in any event.

And KitaSaturnyne is right, it is the actions of the synthetics we come to know that matter most. Those actions parallel their words, and as Shepard, I trusted both Legion and EDI implicitly. I gave the Geth - a race I was neutral toward, at best - the benefit of the doubt solely on Legion's recommendation.

[bc525]

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...

...

Picture this: your Shepard goes into a room, and the game auto-dialogues him to say "I will murder everyone on the normandy for no good raisin!" Then you get a play section where you decide which of your friends you will shoot first.  Would you feel like that was still your Shepard?

That's what I felt like with Jane. I literally could not process the things that the person on screen was saying to the Starkid as the same character. It felt like during that transition someone had pulled a face/off on her, and it was another person who behaved entirely different and had different mannerisms.

As for Jane's origin, she was all one playthrough, though there were occasional resets and rewinds. The first time I played the end mission of ME1, I hadn't slept in 48 hours (picking up on a theme here?) and I thought the Destiny Ascention was literally a lifepod with just the council and like two other people inside. I thought I was being asked to sacrifice the lives of thousands of soldiers to save like four people, which I wasn't willing to do.  Later I was like "wait, that didn't make sense," and found out what the Destiny Ascention actually was (a giant warship carrying tons of refugees). I feel like that is something Shepard would have known (in character), so I replayed that section.

There are a few times when the conversation option on the wheel has not corresponded with the actual line at all, and sometimes I reset in that case, but I consider that poor UI design rather than a real "replay". I've fallen asleep while playing once or twice, and then just replayed those sections the next day. Oh, and when I first played ME3, I didn't understand that "priority" meant "put this off as long as possible" so I finished Tuchanka before doing Grissom, and so I restarted. Those are the only changes from my very first instinctual decisions in the entire game, that I can remember anyway.

Anway, back to the elevator and the chamber and all that stuff.

I literally almost cannot describe this because it makes me feel hollow inside. Remembering it causes me to have a physical pain in my chest, which I am embarassed to describe. I heard the starchild's speech, and nothing. I mean... none of the options left showed anything of Jane. none of the words uttered were what she would say. It was just so obviously clearly not HER.  It had cut to another game, featuring another character, one I had never met before.

So this new protagonist I was trying to inhabit was thinking this: "This is so stupid. Why can't I say the words of how stupid this is? Loss of blood? Did I just say 'I don't know,' what is wrong with me? Oh well, I don't want to commit genocide, and I know that control is dumb. I've been up for 36 hours and I need to sleep soon. Wait, who had that thought? Anyway, I guess I'll try the green one because I just had a sequence explaining that blue is dumb and I don't want to commit genocide. Ok. Green. ugh. And now... don't care... don't care... don't care... It's over. What happened? Why does my heart hurt? I feel like something inside me has died."

My main character was Malcolm Shepard, and it's so interesting to me that we had such different emotional responses to the ME3 ending.  Again, no right or wrong ... just different.

I think I described the ending experience many pages ago, and I'll expand it a bit here.  CulturalGeekGirl please excuse my limited writing skills, I'm not even close to your league when it comes to your eloquent style.  Bear with me, I'll try to touch on some relevant points so this won't be in any particular order.

In ME3 Malcolm set out to stop the Reapers, and he clearly understood that goal would most likely require destroying them.  All paths led to some version of the Destroy option.  There wasn't much compassion for synthetics, such as the Geth and EDI - although watching EDI 'evolve' right before his eyes dampened some of that prejudice, but didn't remove it.  He took EDI on exactly one mission, the Cerberus base.  The distrust for the Geth Collective was there from ME1 and it remained strong throughout.

In ME2 Malcolm hit it off with Jack, right from the moment those two met.  Something about that bad girl was just so ... right.  She had lost someone, and Malcolm had regrettably (and mistakenly) sacrificed Ashley on Virmire - which speaks to my conviction of riding it out with a first playthrough.  He was falling for Ashley, but things played out that she ended up at the bomb site.  Her loss hit like a ton of bricks, and it scarred him.  Oh yeah, Malcolm made plenty of errors, mistakes, and outright blunders along the way, but he also hit a homerun on many occasions too.  No rewinds, no mulligans, just choice and consequence.

If they were available in ME1 or ME2, Garrus and Tali were on every possible expedition with him, and he trusted them completely.  To see them together at the end was just perfect, it made absolute sense.  One of the happiest moments of the journey.

In ME3 Garrus and Vega were on nearly every possible expedition, unless it was needed to bring along another squad member for mission purposes.  Garrus had become Malcolm's closest and most trusted friend, and James quickly became a brother-in-arms ... the three of them were quite the wrecking crew.  Good gosh they tore through those little N7 missions like a precision drill team, and of course that was the team that would hit the ground for Priority Earth.  He could only talk with Jack through a holographic link, and that conversation had an ominous finality to it.  So did the conversation with Garrus at the base before the final push.

And to the elevator and the chamber ....

There was an eerie calm.  The Catalyst presenting itself as the child from the dreams immediately made sense (much as the scene from Contact when Ellie meets an alien being that takes the form of her father made sense).  Somehow this intelligence had downloaded Malcolm's thoughts and memories during the trip up through the Conduit, or maybe on the rising platform.  There wasn't suspicion, but more a sense of fulfillment.  This was it, this was his destiny.  And then the path was laid out before him in glowing Renegade crimson.  "You can choose to destroy us ...."

[bc525]

Sable Phoenix wrote...

bc525, if I understand you correctly (and I readily admit I may not be), you feel that the initial playthrough contains more narrative "weight" because the choices were all made, essentially, while flying blind.  That somehow, this makes what occured more valid than anything that occurs on subsequent playthroughs.  Decisions made in the heat of the moment burn brighter, if you will, and later playthroughs, because of the inevitable metagaming perspective, are somehow inherently flawed in comparison.

Basically, you view the player and their choices as being impossible to separate from the character and their choices.

Okay, that's fine.  Let's then approach that viewpoint from a slightly different angle.  Did you die at any point during your playthrough?  I know I did.  I bet you did too.  I will wager that every single person who ever played the game died at least once.

Well, that's it.  Game over.  Turn off the console; you're done.

Wait, you didn't do that?  You hit "Load" and started up again from where you left off?  But... but Shepard died.  The initial playthrough is sacrosanct.  That's what happened and any change to it is metagaming.

Of course that's silly, but my point isn't.  Metagaming is inherent to the gaming experience.  We all know that Shepard didn't really get impaled on that Banshee claw.  That was just the author (player) screwing up the recounting of Shepard's story, so he has to go back and tell it correctly.  "No no, I'm kidding, that's not what really happened.  What really happened was this..."  And thus you, too, have metagamed your Shepard, even the one that went through your very first playthrough.

This one's a little more ambiguous, but have you ever chosen a dialogue option or an interrupt, watched it play out and thought, "Ugh, my Shepard wouldn't say/do that," and hit reload to go through again and pick a different option?  I certainly have.  You may not have, but whether you did or not, there is no inherent difference between doing that, and hitting "Load Save" after Banshee-impalement.  It's all metagaming.

Jane Shepard didn't crumple and do nothing when confronted by Ghostyboy.  Her player didn't black out.  What happened was that the narrative switched to a tale about a different character (I know, because it happened to me too, just as it happened to CulturalGeekGirl).  How do we know that?  Because the character we were shown exhibited none of the traits or personality that we have come to recognize as Shepard.  Somewhere, somehow, something like what we were shown happened.  It just didn't happen to our characters.

I finished ME3 and felt like Jessica Shepard had been kidnapped.  Like I needed to go file a missing persons report.  Like someone I loved, a family member, had vanished with no explanation.  It's a painful thing to go through.  You know how you always hear the families of kidnapping victims on the radio, tearful, pleading for the kidnapper to just let them know what has been done to their family member, even if they're dead?

It's that whole "closure" thing.  Yeah.  We didn't get that.

I just want Jessica back.


P.S.: I'll add my praise onto your retelling of Jane's story, CulturalGeekGirl.  Thanks for sharing that.

I know just how you feel.

Yeah I have to chuckle at myself that I allowed a 'do-over' each time Shepard died in combat.  And trust me that happened quite alot, as he blindly walked into ambushes, got stuck against walls, killed himself with his own grenade, tried to sprint and accidentily went into cover and vice versa ... oh man the hilarity of some of his deaths were things of comical beauty.  If a death was final I'd still be stuck in ME1.

Anyways, I think you were understanding me correctly that I do place the most narrative weight on my initial playthrough.  Don't get me wrong, I run through the games multiple times to explore and experiment, but that first playthrough always stands out to me as my true Shepard.  It was my gut reaction to the experience, and yes it most certainly was flying blind.  That's an exhilarating feeling.

You also made a great point that I hadn't considered.  There is a most definite connection between me and my main charcter, I'm reacting to the choices and situations right along with him.  Malcolm Shepard is not me, nor am I him, but I can't deny that we are intertwined at a very deep level.

I can see that others enjoy tweaking the decisions and consquences and such to stay within their vision of what their character should be, and that works for them.  That makes it right for them.  I liked having the journey develop my character, he seemed more dynamic that way - not some preconceived notion that I was constantly trying to fit with the story.  Different strokes for different folks.

That would probably help explain why I was more or less okay with the Catalyst and the ending choices.  There was a sense of closure for me, and Shepard's story arc came to an end when he died in the Citadel explosion.  That death was final.

[bc525]

KitaSaturnyne wrote...

bc525 wrote...

drayfish wrote...

To me it is just that while that remains consistent for the individual Shepard, outside of that personal trajectory I get the sense that the larger thematic world is insisting that there is a legitimacy to synthetic life, an evolutionary prerogative that can be personally denied, but universally constant nonetheless.  EDI always wants that body; the Geth are always simply seeking freedom and the right to exist. Perhaps this would have been more consistent if the game was designed so that once you chose to disregard Legion's autonomy in ME2 you were no longer given access to the missions in ME3 where the revelations of the Geth Morning War are made; but for me, forcing you to play through a recollection of their dawning consciousness seems to predispose the player to read them as burgeoning life forms, even if Shepard's personal perspective disagrees. But again, perhaps that is just me. In this instance 'genocide' is a term that I as reader (rather than Shepard as participant), bring to the text with the wider perspective on the world.

Oh man, great point about the game forcing the player to experience the Geth vs Quarian history.  I genuinely didn't think of the Geth as a sentient race until Legion downloaded into the Collective on Rannoch in ME3, but to continue with your thought, we're going back to those very first days, long before ME1 - and the Geth became sentient the exact moment they chose to defend themselves against the Quarians.  I would dismiss this, but as you point out the game forces me (the player) to experience this history.  It's unavoidbable.  Ugh.

fish, you're alright.  If I could I'd buy you a beer.

I'd just like to point out that the trip into the Geth Consensus, and therefore the revelations regarding the Morning War, is NOT a required mission. You can go straight to the Reaper base without playing it, the only prerequisite being that you rescue Admiral Koris.

EDIT: Koris, not Korlis.

You know, you're exactly right.  I'm such a completionist player I hadn't remembered that the Geth Consensus mission was technically optional.  In my playthrough I never considered not doing that mission, but you're correct, the game didn't force me to do it.  Thanks KitaSaturnyne.

But I'd still buy drayfish that beer anyways.

[3DandBeyond]

@uwyz,
I certainly don't mean that anything is redemptive thematically no matter what Shepard you play. Because, even a renegade Shepard has feelings.

I do think some may be even worse thematically than others, but none of the endings fit with any Shepard.

Modifié par 3DandBeyond, 05 mai 2012 - 04:10 .

[drayfish]

delta_vee wrote...

I liken this critical tension to wave-particle duality. The game exists as a set of potential states (like a wavefunction). A given playthrough represents the actualization of a single state (like a particle). We cannot ignore any given single playthrough, since we cannot assume a player will ever complete more than one, and thus when discussing the player's experience whatever subset of the whole is exposed has to be treated as if it were all that existed. That said, the rest of the game does exist, if only as potential, so any judgements of what the game itself intends must compare how it responds to varying input. Both perspectives are required for a full understanding of the system, but the type of answer depends on the question asked.

Okay, sorry, I don't mean to butt in on this incredible conversation about the curious nature of narrative form, but I just had to tip my entirely-imaginary hat to delta_vee for that phenomenal description of game structure: the division between choice and consequence (CNC) and expression of preference (EOP), and the way this plays out in the Mass Effect universe. 
 
I was already impressed, nodding along happily, and then you kicked it up a notch with a discussion of wave-particle duality that I actually understood!  To put that in context: I am a vague, bespectacled, ink-smudged luddite that curls into a ball and weeps when someone tries to explain to me what a 'nucleus' is – and yet you laid out splendidly the shifting dynamics of the branching videogame narrative form that not only made complete sense to my weary poetry-addled head, but was extremely illuminating for my own approach to this malleable text. Fine work.
 
I want to quickly say thank you again to you all. I continue to find every angle of this discussion fascinating. It's like I am engaged in the greatest dinner party conversation in the world. 
 
p.s. –  Also, thanks, bc525. I'd still take that beer, earned or not. And Malcolm Shepard sounds like he was a hell of a guy.

Modifié par drayfish, 05 mai 2012 - 04:57 .

[drayfish]

Okay, sorry.  That was bound to happen; accidental double post.  A product of my excitement, no doubt.

Modifié par drayfish, 05 mai 2012 - 04:59 .

[M0keys]

Drayfish, could you please start up a storytelling course directly centered around the essence of the Mass Effect series? I'd seriously consider moving to the southern hemisphere and enrolling in your university.

[M0keys]

(and you could invite some users from this thread as guest lecturers. we'd have a great time.)

[drayfish]

M0keys wrote...

Drayfish, could you please start up a storytelling course directly centered around the essence of the Mass Effect series? I'd seriously consider moving to the southern hemisphere and enrolling in your university.

Oh, M0keys... Such marvellous ideas...



LIT103: 'Mass Effect Free': Heuristic Model of an Inclusive Universe.
 
LIT201: 'You, sir. You are a blight': Batarians and the Art of Rhetoric.
 
PHIL304: 'We Have Dismissed Those Claims': Epistemology and the Quest for 'Truth'.
 
SCI101: 'Mass Effect Fields and Element Zero': Pseudo-Science and the Art of Nodding Along When Tali is Talking About What That Big Generator Thing Does.
 
PHYS ED 113: The Art of Backward Pull-Ups with James Vega.
 
LIT101: 'Shepard'.
 
LIT102: 'Wrex'.

Modifié par drayfish, 05 mai 2012 - 06:58 .

[KitaSaturnyne]

No engineering course centering on effective calibrating of specialized software and/or hardware?

[edisnooM]

Or a mechanics course on the Mako and Hammerhead?

"Vertically aligned Mass Effect Fields and You"

Ooh and Comparitive Civilizations: "Protheans and the Airlock, an Analysis"

Modifié par edisnooM, 05 mai 2012 - 05:41 .

[KitaSaturnyne]

I suppose EDI could do a series of lectures on whether or not androids do indeed dream of electric sheep.

[DaddyFoxDerek]

drayfish wrote...

LIT101: 'Shepard'.
 
LIT102: 'Wrex'.

Glorious! This definitely elicited a hearty chuckle.

[drayfish]

Sorry, a couple more and I promise to stop – it's too tempting...


JOUR 202: 'Would You Answer A Few Questions For Our Viewers?': Journalistic Ethics and the Art of Kickboxing.

PSYCH 102: 'He's Just Not That Into You': The Cautionary Example of Conrad Verner.

POL 103: 'Knowing Preitor Gavorn's Tricks': Vorcha and the Art of War.

DRAM 222: 'Blasto 6: Partner's in Crime': Method Acting and Sequel Fatigue.

LIT311: 'Post- Post-Modern Porn': Fornax and the Exploitation of Jellyfish.


...Okay, I'm sorry. I'm done. It's out of my system.

Modifié par drayfish, 05 mai 2012 - 06:36 .

[KitaSaturnyne]

I suppose in order to discuss the extent to which something is "awesome", one would first have to decide if they believe it is awesome in the first place.

Of course, to be pedantic, one would also have to define "awesome".

As for your question, it's not entirely clear to me what you're asking. The best answer I can give you is that the character of the Catalyst appears so late in the narrative and we spend so little time with him that there is no clear answer. The audience isn't allowed enough time or dialogue to ascertain his character as clearly as they would Sovereign's or Harbinger's. It also begs the question though, of how human characteristics like pride and vanity could be applied to machines such as the Reapers. In what way is Harbinger proud, or Sovereign vain? It would be like saying Legion is capable of anger - it is not. Even EDI, a fully actualized artificial intelligence, is uncapable of anger even in the final scenes of ME3.

[KitaSaturnyne]

drayfish wrote...

Sorry, a couple more and I promise to stop – it's too tempting...


JOUR 202: 'Would You Answer A Few Questions For Our Viewers?': Journalistic Ethics and the Art of Kickboxing'

PSYCH 102: 'He's Just Not That Into You': The Cautionary Example of Conrad Verner

POL 103: 'Knowing Preitor Gavorn's Tricks': Vorcha and the Art of War

DRAM 222: 'Blasto 6: Partner's in Crime': Method Acting and Sequel Fatigue

LIT311: 'Post- Post-Modern Porn': Fornax and the Exploitation of Jellyfish


...Okay, I'm sorry. I'm done. It's out of my system.

Badassfully: Reading subtle body language would make a great lecture.