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[edisnooM]

TheMarshal wrote...

 Oh lordy...  after a week of reading (Darn work and school getting in the way of my Mass Effectin'!) I've finally got through the entirety of this thread!  It's all amazing stuff, and I wish I had the background to contribute to the literary analysis.  Alas, I'm just an engineer playing at being a writer...

I really want the option to argue with the ReaperChild, to point out the flaws in its arguments and just show it how broken it is.  I mean, thinking that you can control chaos, that you can somehow stamp it out completely.  That such a thing is even desirable.  We've got the ReaperChild, who presumably has reached the "pinnacle" of evolution, and for billions of years has been stuck like that because they've tried to stamp out chaos.  Whereas we, organics, have slowly but surely been beating it, been proving it wrong by ensuring our thoughts survive between cycles through the Crucible plans.  We don't know how homogenous the cycles which predate the Protheans were, but I find it telling that this cycle, with so many various forms of advanced life, was the one which managed to complete the Crucible and reach the ReaperChild.  We made the ReaperChild realize that it made a mistake (omg, did you just learn something?) and it's new solution is...

More of the same.

Stamp out chaos by trying to dominate it.  Stamp out chaos by trying to destroy it.  Or stamp out chaos by trying to eliminate the source of it and homogenize the galaxy (don't even get me started on how ridiculous that notion is).  Where's the fourth option?  To let it be?  To accept that chaos is going to be a part of life?  If you're so advanced, if you've reached the pinnacle of evolution, then surely you have the power to call off the Reapers.  The power to tell them the war is over, and we have earned our right to live our lives as we choose.  No?  Don't have that power?  It's impossible, you say?  Bull...  I don't have enough fingers on my hands to count the number of impossible things that I had to do to get here.  Maybe you're not as done evolving as you think you are if you're okay with "impossible."  Maybe you need something like a little chaos in your life, poking and prodding you, egging you on, urging you to make yourself more than you were yesterday.  Maybe you need that fourth option.

But you don't have it, because billions of years ago you decided you were done evolving, and that rather than taking on the difficulties that beset your life and trying to overcome them you decided to try and attack reality itself and prevent the very thing that introduced chaos into the universe.  And yet here I am.  You've lost.  You're broken.  You can't be fixed because you don't have the capacity to fix yourself.  And if you're not going to call the Reapers off, if you can't call the Reapers off, then I'm done with you.

Whew...  Sorry.  That was cathartic.

Welcome to the party, I think its sort of BYOB but I'm sure people probably wouldn't mind sharing. 

I agree with the arguing. I really wanted an option to challenge what we had just been told.

I had thought it might have been interesting to somehow work our past choices into our defiance, that perhaps the more we had done, the more we'd saved and sacrificed, the more we'd won and lost, would fuel Shepards argumentative fury at this thing that dares dictate terms to us.

I mean my Shepard challenged Sovereign, stared down Harbinger on a hurtling asteroid, demanded answers from a dying reaper on Rannoch, but now facing the Reapers master he can only muster a "Maybe". 

That's not the Shepard I thought I knew.

[M0keys]

edisnooM: What happened to "Moonside?"

[edisnooM]

M0keys wrote...

edisnooM: What happened to "Moonside?"

It disappeared when the Mani Mani statue was destroyed, but did it ever really exist? Was it only in your mind or was it a realm of existance beyond our comprehension? 

[TheMarshal]

edisnooM wrote...

I had actually wondered about the people that been harvested to make the Reapers. I wondered if perhaps the Catalyst "dampens" them somehow and that if it were removed would they become aware of what they are.I can't really imagine anyone being harvested by the Reapers and being ok with it. 

I'm not sure if anyone here watches Doctor Who, but in the Christmas Special "The Next Doctor", a woman had been hooked up to a system that gave her control of a race of beings called  the Cybermen, however the Doctor disabled something (forget what they called it) that made her aware of what she had become and she was horrified at it. I wondered if something like this might be the case of the Reapers.

Another story that I am reminded of is Fullmetal Alchemist, a Japanese manga. SPOILERS if you haven't read it before and intend to do so.

In the story Philosphers stones are created by breaking down humans, essentially taking there life force or "soul" and using it as a power source. There are then beings called Homunculous that are created by using a Philosphers stone as a core, however several times in the story you are shown that the people that were used to create the stone and are now part of the Homunculous are still aware of themselves and their existance.

There was a storyline in Astonishing X-Men where a mega-Sentinel gone rogue wound up being responsible for the deaths of millions of mutants all at once.  It was resurrected by another rogue AI, but the part of its memory which stored that genocide was blocked, purposefully so.  Once the block was removed, it realized what it had done.  An organic wouldn't have been able to comprehend the murder of millions.  But a synthetic mind was able to, and because of that it removed itself from the battle to...  go think, I guess.

But yeah, put me in the camp of wanting my nigh-omnipotent god-machines to remain unknowable.  A relatable bad guy works when it's a guy, a human person or some other anthropomorphized thing.  But not the Reapers.  They worked as bad guys specifically because their existence was so far beyond our own that we could not hope to comprehend them.  Psh... Fine by me.  Still gonna kill you, though!

[edisnooM]

TheMarshal wrote...

edisnooM wrote...

I had actually wondered about the people that been harvested to make the Reapers. I wondered if perhaps the Catalyst "dampens" them somehow and that if it were removed would they become aware of what they are.I can't really imagine anyone being harvested by the Reapers and being ok with it. 

I'm not sure if anyone here watches Doctor Who, but in the Christmas Special "The Next Doctor", a woman had been hooked up to a system that gave her control of a race of beings called  the Cybermen, however the Doctor disabled something (forget what they called it) that made her aware of what she had become and she was horrified at it. I wondered if something like this might be the case of the Reapers.

Another story that I am reminded of is Fullmetal Alchemist, a Japanese manga. SPOILERS if you haven't read it before and intend to do so.

In the story Philosphers stones are created by breaking down humans, essentially taking there life force or "soul" and using it as a power source. There are then beings called Homunculous that are created by using a Philosphers stone as a core, however several times in the story you are shown that the people that were used to create the stone and are now part of the Homunculous are still aware of themselves and their existance.

There was a storyline in Astonishing X-Men where a mega-Sentinel gone rogue wound up being responsible for the deaths of millions of mutants all at once.  It was resurrected by another rogue AI, but the part of its memory which stored that genocide was blocked, purposefully so.  Once the block was removed, it realized what it had done.  An organic wouldn't have been able to comprehend the murder of millions.  But a synthetic mind was able to, and because of that it removed itself from the battle to...  go think, I guess.

But yeah, put me in the camp of wanting my nigh-omnipotent god-machines to remain unknowable.  A relatable bad guy works when it's a guy, a human person or some other anthropomorphized thing.  But not the Reapers.  They worked as bad guys specifically because their existence was so far beyond our own that we could not hope to comprehend them.  Psh... Fine by me.  Still gonna kill you, though!

I think its a strong temptation to make villains multifaceted and not so one dimensional. The problem is though that cliches are popular for a reason, people like them, we like villains that we can hate, and heros we can love.

The Reapers as a Lovecraftian horror were effective, they represented a villain that could not be reasoned with, that would not stop until we were dead. It has been mentioned before that attempting to make them "sympathetic" was doomed to fail from the start. 

Now that said, I have seen cases where multifacetted villains were done effectively and to the benefit of the story, however I think that may have been a mistake here. But it's always fun to imagine what might have been. 

Modifié par edisnooM, 08 mai 2012 - 10:25 .

[soundfanatic]

So, where can I sign up for all his classes?

Even though I can't be as eloquent about it, these were/are my sentiments exactly. I'm so glad I came across a link to this on tumblr. Well done, sir. 

[edisnooM]

I can't remember if someone had already mentioned something along these lines here, but the OP in this thread: social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/355/index/11943438, has come up with the hypothesis that the end was not indoctrination but was instead taking place within the Reaper consensus. It's an interesting theory that I thought others might be interested in taking a look at.

[jbauck]

JadedLibertine wrote...

NorDee65 wrote...

Sorry to backtrack a bit, but a few pages earlier people were discussing, whether the originally intended ending (read "dark energie") would have worked better. (Anything would have been better than what we have got...)

To break it down, the ending would have involved a choice between certain death now and probable universe-wide annihilation later.

When I first played ME1 I was wondering how BW were going to explain the Reapers. Sovereigns speech on Virmire was magnificent and fueled speculation. The endings we got do, not in any way honor that. But would the "dark energy" scenario have worked, instead? The problem is that (just as the endings now) it is based on sketchy scientific detail. What IS dark energy? does it actually exist? The vote is still out on that one. (Just as it is out on "dark matter"). To incorporate an idea so unfinished as an ending scenario might have been nigh unto impossible; hence these alternative endings. (I kind of imagined the writers -or maybe just 2 people- running around saying,"what should we do, we do not understand dark energy. Wait! Why not use ....")

Mabe it would have been better to portray the Reapers as a program gone rogue. There is still enough stuff for nightmares especially if one recollects the trillions of minds within the Reapers (information received from Legion). Are they aware on some level? do they go "Go Reaper Go" or are they perpetually screaming "we want out?". Were the humans aware in the Reaper larva and shouting for Shepard to save them or destroy them? Is beeing sloshed into a Reaper tantamount to entering The Matrix? If Shepard would have becomne aware that within each Reaper a nation resides (maybe indoctrinated or not), how would that effect the "destroy-option"? Could the quest to save this cycle also include "saving" every cycle that has come before?

Oh and concerning the universe-wide annihilation idea...That's still out there and nevermind the Reapers (Big Crash, Big Rip, or Big Freeze, take your pick)

That is brilliant and very close to how I imagined the Reapers.  They were not some higher power bringing order to the Universe, nothing they ever said was true they just believed it to be.   They cannot remember who created them or what purpose they were created for, the creators have either died or long lost interest and forgotten about them.  The Catalyst is simply a manifestation of thir collective consciousness.  Their very existence is a mistake and their endless cycles of genocide stunt and retard life in the galaxy, preventing it from ever reaching it's full potential.  They are a parasitic species who have to use the genetic material of other races to reproduce, they have no culture, they innovate nothing, they have immense power but display little intelligence, their long lives should have given them some perspective and wisdom but they have none.  Surely after so many cycles they should harvest quickly and efficently but they do so with spite and petty cruelty.  The ending changed them from Lovecraftian horror to pathetically ignorant and deluded, which made them even more monstrous and irredeemable.  We owe it to all the species they wiped out to use their technology as there is no way they invented any of it themselves.

Though I can't see how it would have been any better than what we got, the dark energy ending would have had some resonance with real life environmental concerns.  Whether our planet is able to support us as a species.  As opposed to synthetic v organics, I suspect the chances of my computer, consoles and phone becoming self aware and then trying to wipe me out is not terribly likely.

I really like these scenarios for the nature of the Reapers.  That said, though, the Reaper's motivations never really interested me.  To my way of thinking, there are only two reasons to explain the villain's motivations: to give the hero an opportunity to make them see reason, or to introduce moral nuance and shades of gray into a clear-cut "Good vs. Evil" scenario.

The Reapers have killed so many sentient beings across so many cycles that they are completely irredeemable.  There is no way in which they are not evil.  The general ideas above - that they're horrible aberrations/mistakes that shouldn't exist at all - don't make the mistake of trying to give them a motivation that muddies the moral waters we've been treading for three games.  The idea that, no, really, they're the guardians of the galaxy and they're the only thing standing between organic life and permanent death-by-robot is just ... well, it smacks of an attempt to justify their methods, because once the game insists that the Reapers are a Real Solution to a Real Problem, it's trying to make us rethink the Reapers.

But I don't want to rethink the Reapers.  It's a video game, and they would've wiped out all life in the galaxy except maybe the Yahg and the Pyjaks if they could have.

*sigh* As much as I wish there were a Shepard Lives And Gets A Real Epilogue ending, I also really, really wish there were an ending where a Yahg, a Pyjak and maybe one of the sneaky space-cows from ME1 have become the heirs to galactic civilization, and they're the new Council on the Citadel, and some Pyjak archaeologist is playing Liara's recording for them ...

[Xellith]

The reapers would be a better enemy had their motives remained mysterious. The AI singularity concept cheapens the entire thing.

[TheMarshal]

edisnooM wrote...

I think its a strong temptation to make villains multifaceted and not so one dimensional. The problem is though that cliches are popular for a reason, people like them, we like villains that we can hate, and heros we can love.

The Reapers as a Lovecraftian horror were effective, they represented a villain that could not be reasoned with, that would not stop until we were dead. It has been mentioned before that attempting to make them "sympathetic" was doomed to fail from the start. 

Now that said, I have seen cases where multifacetted villains were done effectively and to the benefit of the story, however I think that may have been a mistake here. But it's always fun to imagine what might have been. 

Oh, sure.  Some of the best villains aren't very one-dimensional.  Hannibal Lecter.  Magneto.  Modern storytelling is chock full of villains who aren't "evil" per se.  They just believe that what they are doing is right and justified.  And that makes for a very believable, and dare I say relateable villain.  However, those were all actual people.  Flawed mortals who, if we had had a different upbrining, we might have even become!  But the Reapers are Cthulu god-machines from time unknowable.  They're not relateable, and trying to make them as such results in... well...  this.

[drayfish]

@ KitaSaturnyne:
 
Yes, I was, as you suspected, referring to Ghost-Biscuit when referring to the deus ex machina. 
 
From what I understand, in the simplest terms, in Ancient Greek theatre someone dressed as a God would be tied up onto something like a pole (that was the machine) and swung awkwardly onto the stage. (A number of Euripides' plays had this contrivance; I believe, but am almost certainly wrong, that he was attributed with the concept's invention.) The actors would pantomime amazement, the god would probably piff an unconvincing thunderbolt to punish wrong-doers or rectify a misapprehension, and then be unceremoniously winched off again, leaving the audience unsatisfied with the abrupt shift and Aristotle crunching his opera glasses, tossing down his popcorn, and storming off to email in a bad review (some historical inaccuracy may have just occurred).
 
Space-Ghost may not step in to flip the narrative switch from 'sad' to 'happy' as was more classically done in poorly crafted narrative, but the idea of a previously unintroduced figure, beyond the narrative's established parameters, arriving in the final minutes to dramatically shift the outcome of the conclusion, fits the description well enough. As Hawk227 points out, the strict definition is slightly unwieldy in this situation, but the fact that he is, as you say, literally a god from a machine, just seems so on the nose that it's impossible not to see him as such, whether one agrees with the negative connotations of the term or not.

Modifié par drayfish, 09 mai 2012 - 02:29 .

[drayfish]

TheMarshal wrote...

But you don't have it, because billions of years ago you decided you were done evolving, and that rather than taking on the difficulties that beset your life and trying to overcome them you decided to try and attack reality itself and prevent the very thing that introduced chaos into the universe.  And yet here I am.  You've lost.  You're broken.  You can't be fixed because you don't have the capacity to fix yourself.  And if you're not going to call the Reapers off, if you can't call the Reapers off, then I'm done with you.

Whew...  Sorry.  That was cathartic.

I love that, TheMarshal.  Wonderfully said.

[drayfish]

Sorry to go back a bit in the conversation, but I just wanted to quickly touch upon the Crucible...

I must say, I was originally quite happy with the building of the Crucible. I've watched enough hitchcock films to be alert to a MacGuffin, particularly one found so conveniently at the beginning of this final push toward the end (really, how can we get Seijin8's earlier suggestion for earning that information into the Extended Cut?), so I was ready for the Crucible to be more than meets the eye, and almost certainly not what would ultimately win the day – it might have been a Reaper trap, it could have been some Cerberus ploy, maybe some final, mysterious Prothean booby trap that Javik never saw (well of course they're not going to show it to you, dude.  You rag on everything...)
 
It seems that what they went with instead was to rather use the Crucible as a symbol of the enduring, indomitable spirit of Life – proof that even in the face of overwhelming, incomprehensible slaughter, in violation of a callous, unsympathetic universe, the intellect, adaptability and imagination of Life would persevere. The Crucible constructs itself as a kind of adaptive biological imperative, echoed through eons of carnage as a tenacious expression of will. I really like that image. You have to muddle the science to embrace the poetry, but that's always fundamental to speculative fiction. I was willing to go with it.
 
...What shocked me was that they then took this symbol – generations of sacrifice, persistence and hope – and used it as the stage upon which to enact a horrific morality play, where Shepard is compelled to decide which atrocity is most palatable to achieve victory: dominate, obliterate, or purge diversity.
 
And I petulantly (pointlessly) reject this as a satisfying or necessary cap on the tale.
 
In the simplest terms, hasn't the price already been enough? Several millennia of devastation? Countless life forms and civilisations wiped from existence?  All they stood for, all they believed in, burned to ash to build this symbol of fortitude, and still the Reapers still want more? 
 
The Reapers end up looking like the worst service industry workers in the universe. It's as if, at the end of all our struggle, we're confronted with one last Reaper-In-A-Bowtie. He sneers, says, 'We hope you've enjoyed the being mercilessly exterminated without a right of reply', then coughs, extending one long cuttlefish leg, waiting for a tip...
 
I felt that was the ultimate betrayal of this symbol of Life. It's not enough that Shepard's body has to be tossed onto the pile of countless dead, but her morality must be sacrificed too? I say nay, Reaper-Man. Nay I say. When you light up that metaphoric beacon of light it should banish the monsters, return them to the grim uncivil dark, not confirm their hackneyed vision of a universe of moral ruin.



EDIT: Wow, why will the word 'hitchcock' not capitalise?

Modifié par drayfish, 09 mai 2012 - 02:47 .

[drayfish]

Double post Gremlins.  Sorry.

...This is why technology will rise up to destroy us.

Modifié par drayfish, 09 mai 2012 - 02:26 .

[Cplhunter]

drayfish wrote...

Double post Gremlins.  Sorry.

...This is why technology will rise up to destroy us.

Ah but will you take the red, blue, or green destruction by machines?

[CulturalGeekGirl]

drayfish wrote...
 
Space-Ghost may not step in to flip the narrative switch from 'sad' to 'happy' as was more classically done in poorly crafted narrative, but the idea of a previously unintroduced figure, beyond the narrative's established parameters, arriving in the final minutes to dramatically shift the outcome of the conclusion, fits the description well enough. As Hawk227 points out, the strict definition is slightly unwieldy in this situation, but the fact that he is, as you say, literally a god from a machine, just seems so on the nose that it's impossible not to see him as such, whether one agrees with the negative connotations of the term or not.

Oh. My. God.

Ok... picture the ending sequence, only now, instead of some weird Godchild, the dialogue is being delivered by Spaceghost Coast-to-Coast era Space Ghost.

drayfish... you may have just fixed the ending

Modifié par CulturalGeekGirl, 09 mai 2012 - 03:14 .

[Devil Mingy]

drayfish wrote...

Sorry to go back a bit in the conversation, but I just wanted to quickly touch upon the Crucible...

I must say, I was originally quite happy with the building of the Crucible. I've watched enough hitchcock films to be alert to a MacGuffin, particularly one found so conveniently at the beginning of this final push toward the end (really, how can we get Seijin8's earlier suggestion for earning that information into the Extended Cut?), so I was ready for the Crucible to be more than meets the eye, and almost certainly not what would ultimately win the day – it might have been a Reaper trap, it could have been some Cerberus ploy, maybe some final, mysterious Prothean booby trap that Javik never saw (well of course they're not going to show it to you, dude.  You rag on everything...)
 
It seems that what they went with instead was to rather use the Crucible as a symbol of the enduring, indomitable spirit of Life – proof that even in the face of overwhelming, incomprehensible slaughter, in violation of a callous, unsympathetic universe, the intellect, adaptability and imagination of Life would persevere. The Crucible constructs itself as a kind of adaptive biological imperative, echoed through eons of carnage as a tenacious expression of will. I really like that image. You have to muddle the science to embrace the poetry, but that's always fundamental to speculative fiction. I was willing to go with it.
 

You know, I was actually thinking to myself why the whole Crucible plot never bothered me until my second playthrough, and I think you just described it perfectly. As a plot device taken literally, I found it incredibly silly. It is a device of unknown power that we and other cycles could construct and even refine/improve despite having little to no idea how it worked. It was akin to me handing parts of my laptop and a schematic to a Rennaissance era group and having them not only rebuild it perfectly but upgrade my video card.

However, it works as a symbolic crucible: a test of will and strength... until the end. I definitely do not think this is intentional, as I really do believe Bioware intended these endings to be satisfying, uplifting, and hopeful.

If I bend over backwards and accept the Catalyst on his word (as my Shepard does), I can see the Reapers as a force for good, or at the very least a necessary evil. The three lovely choices fit their perspective well and mirror the original Dark Energy idea where you either accept the Reaper's idealogy or reject it to figure out the problem on your own (with Control added as a middle ground). Instead of being atrocious crimes against the optimism of the series, they are instead sacrifices that are made to ensure that something far, far worse doesn't happen to cycles down the line. Even if you destroy the Reapers, you still get rid of the current synthetic life so that their inherent evilness doesn't instantly overtake a weakened galaxy. In this kind of scenario, the Crucible still works as a symbol of the triumph of life, particularly if we go the route of synthesis to ascend from the problem entirely.

It falters for a couple of reasons: It assumes we care more about the abstract concept of life than we do about the characters and world we already know, and it assumes that we accept the Catalyst and his authority with no evidence provided that he isn't trying to screw us. Given that my Shepard made peace between the quarians and geth, I didn't even see the problem, let alone the beauty of the solutions.

Sadly, I don't see how the Extended Cut can fix this. They can add as much explanatory dialogue to the ending scenes if they want, but some earlier foreshadowing from someone besides the enraged Prothean zealot would've been much better.

Modifié par Devil Mingy, 09 mai 2012 - 03:25 .

[Sable Phoenix]

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...

drayfish wrote...
 
Space-Ghost may not step in to flip the narrative switch from 'sad' to 'happy' as was more classically done in poorly crafted narrative, but the idea of a previously unintroduced figure, beyond the narrative's established parameters, arriving in the final minutes to dramatically shift the outcome of the conclusion, fits the description well enough. As Hawk227 points out, the strict definition is slightly unwieldy in this situation, but the fact that he is, as you say, literally a god from a machine, just seems so on the nose that it's impossible not to see him as such, whether one agrees with the negative connotations of the term or not.

Oh. My. God.

Ok... picture the ending sequence, only now, instead of some weird Godchild, the dialogue is being delivered by Spaceghost Coast-to-Coast era Space Ghost.

drayfish... you may have just fixed the ending

"The Reapers!  They seem to be feeding on the ray!"
"Then stop shooting them!"

That would be classic.

Modifié par Sable Phoenix, 09 mai 2012 - 03:29 .

[edisnooM]

Sable Phoenix wrote...

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...

drayfish wrote...
 
Space-Ghost may not step in to flip the narrative switch from 'sad' to 'happy' as was more classically done in poorly crafted narrative, but the idea of a previously unintroduced figure, beyond the narrative's established parameters, arriving in the final minutes to dramatically shift the outcome of the conclusion, fits the description well enough. As Hawk227 points out, the strict definition is slightly unwieldy in this situation, but the fact that he is, as you say, literally a god from a machine, just seems so on the nose that it's impossible not to see him as such, whether one agrees with the negative connotations of the term or not.

Oh. My. God.

Ok... picture the ending sequence, only now, instead of some weird Godchild, the dialogue is being delivered by Spaceghost Coast-to-Coast era Space Ghost.

drayfish... you may have just fixed the ending

"The Reapers!  They seem to be feeding on the ray!"
"Then stop shooting them!"

That would be classic.

Oddly that could have made the endings more palatable. Another option could have been to have the MST 3000 crew commenting on the scene as it progressed.

[delta_vee]

 A brief bit before bed. Apologies for the alliteration.

edisnooM wrote...

On the topic of Shepard being more Catalysty than the Catalyst, I was just thinking how interesting it might have been if that had turned out to be the case. That the Catalyst for the crucible turned out to be a person, that it required someone to willingly sacrifice themselves into it in order for it to fire. In this way at the end Shepard could have had the choice of choosing how it had fired, whether to control the Reapers or destroy them, in way that made a bit more sense (not really sure how Synthesis would have fit here though).

That's pretty much exactly what I thought the game was setting up before starkid showed up. Cliche in its own way, certainly, but at least it would have a reason. I figured the justification would be whomever fired it would be used as a targeting mechanism of sorts - which would be a nice excuse to tally up your various responses towards various factions and races and shove them all back in your face at once.

edisnooM wrote...

I think its a strong temptation to make villains multifaceted and not so one dimensional. The problem is though that cliches are popular for a reason, people like them, we like villains that we can hate, and heros we can love.
The Reapers as a Lovecraftian horror were effective, they represented a villain that could not be reasoned with, that would not stop until we were dead. It has been mentioned before that attempting to make them "sympathetic" was doomed to fail from the start.

jbauck wrote...

The Reapers have killed so many sentient beings across so many cycles that they are completely irredeemable.  There is no way in which they are not evil.  The general ideas above - that they're horrible aberrations/mistakes that shouldn't exist at all - don't make the mistake of trying to give them a motivation that muddies the moral waters we've been treading for three games.  The idea that, no, really, they're the guardians of the galaxy and they're the only thing standing between organic life and permanent death-by-robot is just ... well, it smacks of an attempt to justify their methods, because once the game insists that the Reapers are a Real Solution to a Real Problem, it's trying to make us rethink the Reapers.

Agreed. And frankly, all of Mass Effect was littered with smaller sympathetic villains, TIM atop the heap. We weren't lacking for grey areas and moral quandries. Keeping the Reapers as the ultimate evil specifically allowed for ethically complicated scenarios, trading lesser evils for greater ones over and over again, because there was always something worse ahead. Without that perpetually-greater threat, a truly renegade Shepard is simply a genocidal maniac, not the kind of grimly determined antihero we can justify to ourselves.

jbauck wrote...

But I don't want to rethink the Reapers.  It's a video game, and they would've wiped out all life in the galaxy except maybe the Yahg and the Pyjaks if they could have.

*sigh* As much as I wish there were a Shepard Lives And Gets A Real Epilogue ending, I also really, really wish there were an ending where a Yahg, a Pyjak and maybe one of the sneaky space-cows from ME1 have become the heirs to galactic civilization, and they're the new Council on the Citadel, and some Pyjak archaeologist is playing Liara's recording for them ...

Gods be damned, I wish they would've used that somewhere. It seems such a waste of a great scene.

Don't forget the vorcha, though, especially with the revelation that the salarians were breeding them like the Protheans did the rachni.

drayfish wrote...

It seems that what they went with instead was to rather use the Crucible as a symbol of the enduring, indomitable spirit of Life - proof that even in the face of overwhelming, incomprehensible slaughter, in violation of a callous, unsympathetic universe, the intellect, adaptability and imagination of Life would persevere. The Crucible constructs itself as a kind of adaptive biological imperative, echoed through eons of carnage as a tenacious expression of will. I really like that image. You have to muddle the science to embrace the poetry, but that's always fundamental to speculative fiction. I was willing to go with it.

I loved that image, and you don't even have to bend the (pseudo-)science too much to get there. With all the codex expotext about the Crucible using dark energy, combined with the hints about the Reapers' power cores being different somehow that the usual ones used, until the Ten Minutes I thought the Crucible was simply going to be a really fancy anti-Reaper laser. With the revelation of the Citadel being the Catalyst (with the Citadel's links to the entire mass relay network) I was nodding along, foolishly secure in believing they were going to make the combined assembly an anti-Reaper-everywhere laser.

And I was fine with that. Cliche? Yep. Predictable? Mostly. Satisfying? Still a better ending...

Modifié par delta_vee, 09 mai 2012 - 04:11 .

[edisnooM]

I found this post on another thread but I thought it might fit in well with the discussion here as it raises some interesting points on the Catalyst and the endings.

The original post can be found in its orignal thread here: social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/355/index/11932627#11947637.

adrianlocke647 wrote...

No.

Simply no.

I agree that it is not a Deus ex Machina. As defined in literary terms, a deus ex machina is a character or element that is only introduced to a story to provide a way out of an otherwise impossible situation. Mass Effect 3 is a textbook case of DIABOLUS EX MACHINA, the foil to the deus. In this scenario, a character or element is introduced (commonly at the last moment, but like the deus, can actually occur at any time in a narrative) only to make a situation worse, normally to force a bittersweet ending or to ensure the continuation of a series (after all, if the main antagonist was destroyed in Mass Effect 1, what would we do then?) 

For example; 
1) Deus ex Machina; when Saren is choking Shepard over the cliff's edge on Virmire, he is suddenly distracted by an alarm. That is a convenient plot-tool to get Shepard out of an otherwise no-win scenario (read; death)
2) Diabolus ex Machina; again, Virmire. An otherwise perfect mission is suddenly halted when the nuke's fuse is damaged, forcing the player into a situation where they must choose between two squadmates. This is a convenient plot-tool to force character development, as the tragedy gives Shepard and the survivor room to grow through grief.

Now, all throughout Mass Effect 3, we have suggestions that the Crucible is some sort of superweapon. We don't know how it works or what it does, but every conversation implies that it is, in fact, a superweapon to use against the Reapers. There is exactly one clear case of "foreshadowing" the Calayst's introduction; I believe on Thessia, where there is a line about there being an intelligence behind the Reaper's cycle. That's it. The other "evidence" is just as circumstantial and contrived as the Indoctrination Theory. You can apply the Reapers' motives to his logic only because the motive of the Reapers was intentionally vague throughout the rest of the trilogy. The only other suggestion that was introduced was the prospect of reproduction.

So, we have a superweapon. We intend to use the superweapon. We hook it up.

Bam. Catalyst introduced in quite literally the last ten minutes of the 100+ hour trilogy. It forces on players three downer-choices. There is no other option. It exists purely to ruin your momentum. Up until that moment, there was every indication that with a significant military force and the power of the Crucible, you could save the galaxy, infrastructure and all. With the Catalyst's introduction, we are pigeonholed into either sacrificing the proxy-Pinocchios that the game spent four hours building up as real boys, agreeing with the villain's logic while at the same time negating your entire conflict over the course of three games, or being dissolved and changing all organic life on the whim of just two beings. You don't win the game. You are just a piece in the puzzle that moves as it should, and all of your effort was in vein.

Textbook Diabolus ex Machina.

Modifié par edisnooM, 09 mai 2012 - 04:33 .

[jbauck]

delta_vee wrote...

jbauck wrote...
But I don't want to rethink the Reapers.  It's a video game, and they would've wiped out all life in the galaxy except maybe the Yahg and the Pyjaks if they could have.

*sigh* As much as I wish there were a Shepard Lives And Gets A Real Epilogue ending, I also really, really wish there were an ending where a Yahg, a Pyjak and maybe one of the sneaky space-cows from ME1 have become the heirs to galactic civilization, and they're the new Council on the Citadel, and some Pyjak archaeologist is playing Liara's recording for them ...

Gods be damned, I wish they would've used that somewhere. It seems such a waste of a great scene.

Don't forget the vorcha, though, especially with the revelation that the salarians were breeding them like the Protheans did the rachni.

Vorcha.  Archaeologist.  *Head Explodes*

[frypan]

NorDee65 wrote...

Mabe it would have been better to portray the Reapers as a program gone rogue. There is still enough stuff for nightmares especially if one recollects the trillions of minds within the Reapers (information received from Legion). Are they aware on some level? do they go "Go Reaper Go" or are they perpetually screaming "we want out?". Were the humans aware in the Reaper larva and shouting for Shepard to save them or destroy them? Is beeing sloshed into a Reaper tantamount to entering The Matrix? If Shepard would have becomne aware that within each Reaper a nation resides (maybe indoctrinated or not), how would that effect the "destroy-option"? Could the quest to save this cycle also include "saving" every cycle that has come before?

Hi all, love this thread and havent had anything to contribute so far, but this post really moved me.

The idea of the reapers as an entity composed of their victims is one ripe with potential and congruent with the assimilation scenes of ME2. The idea that people are being forcibly turned into synthetics serves as a horrid counterpart to the more positive message of growth expressed through synthetic life, such as the geth and EDI who are becoming something like organics.

The reapers, galactic parastites that they are, could have made themselves from the essence of their victims and this would have created, for me, a truly beautiful ending if the catalyst had somehow allowed Shepherd to release them from their suffering as a method of destroying the threat. The idea of all those lifeforms finally being able to tear free of their forced bondage could have been a powerful motif driving the fall of the enemy.

Imagine too the renegade path. Shepherd takes control, following the Illusive Man's philosophy,  siezing all that power for humanity, or himself, rather than releasing it.

While quasi mystical in approach, we have seen references to the beliefs of creatures throughout the series that supports the idea of consciousness surviving life. The power of the mind has been  expressed through biotics and Shepherd himself serves as an example of somebody transcending death. These seem to  set up precedents for the idea that people are somehow trapped inside the form of the reapers, and not just as some sort of goo.

All this fits within the existing structure and I'd say was even contemplated - as evidenced by the copies of the Hyperion Cantos on one of the devs's desks. (can't remember which doco I saw that in) In Hyperion, the fate of humanity under the cruciform was very similar to the suffering in ME, as they were being turned into a form of processing power for the malevolent AI's.

I imagine a scene of the destruction of the reapers, watching them collapse and fall apart -knowing that their downfall also brings an end to the suffering of their victims. For me this would have made the ending very moving and allowed some measure of catharsis even if Shepherd had to die. He would have been releasing countless souls as part of winning the war, rather than averting some future singularity catastrophe.

No need for star child either. The catalyst could simply have been the the blueprint for holding the tormented within their reaper hosts, and thus the key to allowing their release. 

Apologies for the ill formed ideas and poor language. Have been enjoying this thread so much I just had to try and contribute.

EDIT for some of the worst spelling

EDIT  I've often found myself only making one good comment or joke at a party, which I hold onto as validation for the invite. In this case, I feel like a gatecrasher who hopes to be noticed in a good way. Did bring some salty snacks and Tasmanian beer if that helps. 

Modifié par frypan, 09 mai 2012 - 05:03 .

[CulturalGeekGirl]

NorDee65 wrote...

Sorry to backtrack a bit, but a few pages earlier people were discussing, whether the originally intended ending (read "dark energie") would have worked better. (Anything would have been better than what we have got...)

To break it down, the ending would have involved a choice between certain death now and probable universe-wide annihilation later.

When I first played ME1 I was wondering how BW were going to explain the Reapers. Sovereigns speech on Virmire was magnificent and fueled speculation. The endings we got do, not in any way honor that. But would the "dark energy" scenario have worked, instead? The problem is that (just as the endings now) it is based on sketchy scientific detail. What IS dark energy? does it actually exist? The vote is still out on that one. (Just as it is out on "dark matter"). To incorporate an idea so unfinished as an ending scenario might have been nigh unto impossible; hence these alternative endings. (I kind of imagined the writers -or maybe just 2 people- running around saying,"what should we do, we do not understand dark energy. Wait! Why not use ....")

Mabe it would have been better to portray the Reapers as a program gone rogue. There is still enough stuff for nightmares especially if one recollects the trillions of minds within the Reapers (information received from Legion). Are they aware on some level? do they go "Go Reaper Go" or are they perpetually screaming "we want out?". Were the humans aware in the Reaper larva and shouting for Shepard to save them or destroy them? Is beeing sloshed into a Reaper tantamount to entering The Matrix? If Shepard would have becomne aware that within each Reaper a nation resides (maybe indoctrinated or not), how would that effect the "destroy-option"? Could the quest to save this cycle also include "saving" every cycle that has come before?

Oh and concerning the universe-wide annihilation idea...That's still out there and nevermind the Reapers (Big Crash, Big Rip, or Big Freeze, take your pick)

Back to Reaper motivations, only now for serious.

I actually really really like this idea that the Reapers were some rogue program, and the potential that the entities trapped inside are possibly unwilling participants.

Even better, I like the idea that they could have raised this question and then decided in game that they don't have enough information to decide. It'd be interesting if our scientists and crew had firm evidence that the Reapers started out as the solution to some horrible, universe-destroying problem, but we can never know what without further, extremely risky investigation.

That way, there would be a legitimate sense of doubt: are the Reapers a solution to an actual problem that we need to be worried about, or are they just a glitch, a malfunction, an AI gone insane? Could they be the extreme overreaction to a problem that doesn't exist anymore, or are they the only thing that is preventing total galactic destruction?

In this case, the three solutions would make some kind of sense: Destroy them, assuming you know better than a billion-year-old AI; Control them, keeping them in reserve in case whatever they were made to fight against is real; or merge with their consciousness to try to figure out what they were fighting against yourself. This would be especially great if the third option somehow involved "releasing" the captive minds within the reapers.

Modifié par CulturalGeekGirl, 09 mai 2012 - 05:04 .

[KitaSaturnyne]

@drayfish

First, an apology. What I said was a lot more emotionally fuelled than I meant it to be and I stamped my foot down with a "you're wrong" attitude. I'm sorry for that. I remember hearing that the Crucible doesn't fit the criteria for a McGuffin, though. Thoughts?

@edisnooM

A compelling argument. I think I'm more inclined to call the ghost child a Diabolus ex Machina. Not to be confused with a Diablo III Machinima, of course.

I'd like to break from the topic for a second and just mention a gameplay idea I thought was neat.

So, Shepard gets to Earth, and the Earth-to-Citadel beam is right in front of him. He and Hammer begin racing towards it, Harbinger firing away. Like in the game, the beam hits with a devastating, blinding explosion. Harbinger lumbers towards the beam attempting to confirm its kills (something soldiers are trained to do whenever possible, and which Harbinger doesn't do in the game).

Suddenly, an M-35 Mako vaults over a nearby embankment, damaged but operable. Shepard's piloting, having managed to survive the beam explosion, in what could potentially be his final act of defiance against the Reapers. All weapons are go. Shepard points the Mako's cannon at Harbinger's glowing eyes.

Objective: Piloting the M-35 Mako, defeat Harbinger.

As for the gameplay itself, it's been established that the giant Reaper beam emitter is a weak point, so you'd probably have to aim for that. It might take some patience, as it wouldn't just be sitting there open. In the interim, you'll have to contend with dodging giant stomping Reaper feet and other dangers that arise when piloting a tank against a 2 kilometer tall robot.

As stated before, just an idea I wanted to share.

Modifié par KitaSaturnyne, 09 mai 2012 - 05:09 .