5087 réponses à ce sujet

[CulturalGeekGirl]

TheMarshal wrote...

IT always felt to me a bit like people were grasping at straws, stringing together oddities in storytelling and visuals that were more easily explained by simple design whims than by any overarching plan.

That said, I will applaud Bioware if this clarification DLC fills in some more of the gaps of IT. Bravo, I would say to them. It only took you two tries.

I don't think it feels like grasping at straws. I think it feels like... Mirror Matter Moon.

What's that, you say? It was an intricate, scientific, and philosophical theory about the end of Lost which, of course, ended up not really being what the show was about. It went through many iterations as the show went on, refining itself episode after episode. The first version I encountered had a literal and mathematically precise description of the link between plot points in Lost and the idea of a kind of dark matter called "mirror matter."

When I read that, my first thought is "I really doubt a major network TV show is going to have, as its central premise, a physics principle so obscure that I had never heard of it prior to reading this article." As the theory became more about yin and yang, it became slightly more plausible, but still seemed based on a fundamental idea that was more interesting than it was practical.

That's how I see IT: not "grasping at straws" (a pejorative that I feel we'd be better off not using), but analyzing from an angle more sophisticated than the text likely suggests.

[KitaSaturnyne]

Ugh. Indoctrination Theory.

[edisnooM]

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...

TheMarshal wrote...

IT always felt to me a bit like people were grasping at straws, stringing together oddities in storytelling and visuals that were more easily explained by simple design whims than by any overarching plan.

That said, I will applaud Bioware if this clarification DLC fills in some more of the gaps of IT. Bravo, I would say to them. It only took you two tries.

I don't think it feels like grasping at straws. I think it feels like... Mirror Matter Moon.

What's that, you say? It was an intricate, scientific, and philosophical theory about the end of Lost which, of course, ended up not really being what the show was about. It went through many iterations as the show went on, refining itself episode after episode. The first version I encountered had a literal and mathematically precise description of the link between plot points in Lost and the idea of a kind of dark matter called "mirror matter."

When I read that, my first thought is "I really doubt a major network TV show is going to have, as its central premise, a physics principle so obscure that I had never heard of it prior to reading this article." As the theory became more about yin and yang, it became slightly more plausible, but still seemed based on a fundamental idea that was more interesting than it was practical.

That's how I see IT: not "grasping at straws" (a pejorative that I feel we'd be better off not using), but analyzing from an angle more sophisticated than the text likely suggests.

While I don't think that BioWare will use IT now, I do find it a fascinating theory which does have some compelling and interesting things to support it. That said I fully acknowledge that it could just be a case of "Hindsight is 20/20".

[CulturalGeekGirl]

Yeah, Basically, I think that IT has its own problems... which I think would become much, much more apparent if it were canonized.

I'd say that IT is notably less bad than the current endings taken as read, but not "less-bad" enough to be actually good (without some major tweaks being made earlier in the game). It betrays a number of fundamental principles and themes in much the same way that the current ending does if interpreted literally; they're just a different set of themes that upset a different set of people.

Modifié par CulturalGeekGirl, 15 mai 2012 - 02:23 .

[CARL_DF90]

@ CulturalGeekGirl

I don't see how it would. There is more than enough lore wise to make the I.T. a plausible explaination so the few lingering issues that might come up would be taken care of with some good writing, assuming of course the Bioware devs still remember HOW to write something good.

[delta_vee]

[Double-post formatting-related gremlins of the darkness.]

Modifié par delta_vee, 15 mai 2012 - 03:27 .

[delta_vee]

@ KitaSaturnyne:

[quote]I must be some kind of anomaly on this board, let alone this thread.
[/quote]
Nah. You obviously seem to have avoided the maze of flamewars which remind me of nothing so much as the digital form of trench warfare circa 1915. I'm certainly not going to be prescriptive about how emotional your reaction should be, and I doubt anyone else here would, either.

[quote]A book, movie or game can't just pull an emotional reaction from us. They have to earn it. And from what I've seen, Mac Walters only knows how to manipulate us into gut-level, 'spur of the moment' reactions during his scenes, failing to grasp that he also needs to provide meaning behind these reactions.[/quote]
Astute, and agreed.

@ MrFob:

[quote]Hi delta, sorry for the late response, real life is getting in the way of these more important things as it does so often .Since the discussion has probably moved on and I am pressed for time as it is, just a short reply.

[Short reply snipped for length.]

My point here hardly takes care of all the problems you mentioned above but maybe (hopefully) I got across how I think this could play out in a positive way (and if I say positive, I don't mean positive in the sense of a happy ending but positive in the sense that the audience leaves the theater with many enticing moral questions in their head while still getting the feeling of having done the best they could either way).[/quote]
There's a good example of this reversal of perspective (minus the choice element): Shadow of the Colossus. By the end of the game, you discover that the supposed monsters you were killing were innocent, and you were in fact the villain of the piece. That realization was a powerful moment for those who played it.

That said, when the realization came it was fully supported by the entirety of the preceding game - the slowly-growing horns on your character's head, the remnants of history of the empty lands now occupied by giants, and the creeping horror of the methods by which you toppled them. It was a point of revelation, but carried with it the sense that the player should have realized this all along. This, I believe, is the key.

[quote]But as a last ditch effort, they reveal their true purpose. This way you make the final decision not from a position of weakness and desperation but from strength. You dictate how this whole thing plays out. You can argue that all your sacrifices were worth it because they brought you into this position of choice in the first place.[/quote]
This here, I believe, is what was intended by the Crucible and the Catalyst. The revelation of the futility of the protagonist's cause, with an option to continue along either course (Shepard's or the Reapers'), and a third option to strike out upon a new, untested path. What you describe is, frankly, the basic structure of what we received, however orthogonal the god-child's purpose and inscrutable his solution.

To succeed at such a reversal requires us to be able to discern at the crux both the methods and the goals of the antagonist - the how and the why. Only one of those elements, I believe, can be the subject of the revelation, or shall I say that one of them must be immediately obvious upon the other's discovery. Think of it as a pair of entangled particles: once we know the spin of one, we also know the other, even though we knew neither before. For the Reapers and their holographic king, we are told both at once; neither the why (preventing the Singularity) nor the how (the extinction of capable races) are obvious in hindsight. This divorces the decision from any useful context at best, and runs directly counter to the evidence at hand at worst. I argue thus that to use dark energy as the greater threat, it would be required to establish said threat alongside and above the Reapers, or at least to give us players a much more detailed idea of how Reaper form would prove more advantageous in its combat. That would have been a very different game, I think.

@ sH0tgUn jUliA:

For me to accept such a catalog of conspiracy requires a descent so far into the rabbit hole that neither I nor Lewis Carroll would be comfortable.

@ edisnooM:

[quote]I think the problem with that is EA. I assume that they have control of the Mass Effect franchise so if they decide they want to continue forward with the universe, Hudson and BioWare might not have much say.[/quote]
Differentiating between Bioware and EA, at this point, is rather moot. The latter owns the former in full. Bioware is EA, and their goals are, if not one and the same, at least intertwined.

@ CulturalGeekGirl:

I vaguely skimmed the first version of MMM until the "swan time" chart. At which point I spewed beer on my keyboard. I'm blaming you.

@ edisnooM again:

[quote]That said I fully acknowledge that it could just be a case of "Hindsight is 20/20".[/quote]
A triumph of Epimetheus, I'd agree.

I say that without malice, though. Considering how eager Bioware seems to be about interpretive views of the ending, I can't entirely condemn it.[/quote]

Modifié par delta_vee, 15 mai 2012 - 03:26 .

[MrFob]

delta_vee wrote...
@ MrFob:

There's a good example of this reversal of perspective (minus the choice element): Shadow of the Colossus. By the end of the game, you discover that the supposed monsters you were killing were innocent, and you were in fact the villain of the piece. That realization was a powerful moment for those who played it.

That said, when the realization came it was fully supported by the entirety of the preceding game - the slowly-growing horns on your character's head, the remnants of history of the empty lands now occupied by giants, and the creeping horror of the methods by which you toppled them. It was a point of revelation, but carried with it the sense that the player should have realized this all along. This, I believe, is the key.

Just to be clear, I am not at all proposing that Shep would reverse to be the villain in the end. His/Her actions will always be justifiable in the context and s/he would still be the hero of the story.
I guess in the end I am proposing that it is possible to remove the villain from the story completely by giving every party a real reason beyond evilness for their actions.

But as a last ditch effort, they reveal their true purpose. This way you make the final decision not from a position of weakness and desperation but from strength. You dictate how this whole thing plays out. You can argue that all your sacrifices were worth it because they brought you into this position of choice in the first place.

This here, I believe, is what was intended by the Crucible and the Catalyst. The revelation of the futility of the protagonist's cause, with an option to continue along either course (Shepard's or the Reapers'), and a third option to strike out upon a new, untested path. What you describe is, frankly, the basic structure of what we received, however orthogonal the god-child's purpose and inscrutable his solution.

And yet, whatever BW intended, there is a huge difference between the two scenarios.
As things are right now, the reapers are about to win (if you wait too long before making the RGB choice, the crucible will be destroyed). Thus Shepard did not win. S/he is in a desperate situation and actually gets really lucky that the head of the enemy suddenly wants to negotiate different options. True, the cause of this is the crucible but that doesn't change the fact the Shepard never really beats the reapers. /he never wins but just goes along with one of the three options the enemy presents him/her with. The fact that they all come at great cost doesn't help but even if the destroy ending would not destroy the geth and the relays it ultimately amounts to the reapers committing suicide rather than Shepard really beating them. They (or their master) let it happen.
If in that scenario you just switch the singularity issue against the dark matter issue, I agree, nothing is gained.

What I mean when I say it is possible to give the reapers a reason for their actions and still provide a powerful conclusion with a twist is a whole different scenario. In that one, Shepard wins in his/her own right. That victory must validate the sacrifices made before. Be it through the crucible or not, he/she basically has the reapers beaten and as he/she puts the gun to their head in an effort to finish the job, here comes the revelation that the reapers do have a very important function. And now Shepard has a new decision to make.

A very different situation and not really related to the actual ending? Yes but remember, this discussion started (at least in my mind, I might not have been clear on that though, sorry) with the question if the reapers could have had a reason for what they are doing after being set up as the ultimate evil beings. I think in this way it would have been possible. In the way things were set up in ME3 right now, it is probably not feasible.

*snip for length*
That would have been a very different game, I think.

Yes, as I said, major restructuring would necessar.


As for IT: I am with CultralGeekGirl on this one. A fascinating theory to explore and discuss on the boards and better than the ending we have got now but with its very own probes, not to mention that its implementation at tis point is more than doubtful.

Modifié par MrFob, 15 mai 2012 - 04:33 .

[TheMarshal]

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...

I don't think it feels like grasping at straws. I think it feels like... Mirror Matter Moon.

What's that, you say? It was an intricate, scientific, and philosophical theory about the end of Lost which, of course, ended up not really being what the show was about. It went through many iterations as the show went on, refining itself episode after episode. The first version I encountered had a literal and mathematically precise description of the link between plot points in Lost and the idea of a kind of dark matter called "mirror matter."

When I read that, my first thought is "I really doubt a major network TV show is going to have, as its central premise, a physics principle so obscure that I had never heard of it prior to reading this article." As the theory became more about yin and yang, it became slightly more plausible, but still seemed based on a fundamental idea that was more interesting than it was practical.

That's how I see IT: not "grasping at straws" (a pejorative that I feel we'd be better off not using), but analyzing from an angle more sophisticated than the text likely suggests.

Well, whatever phrasing we're using, I think we both agree that it is far more likely that IT is something that's created by the fans than something created by the developers.

[CARL_DF90]

I don't know about that. After doing some homework, the I.T. really does hold some water. We'll see what happens come the release of EC.

[delta_vee]

MrFob wrote...

I guess in the end I am proposing that it is possible to remove the villain from the story completely by giving every party a real reason beyond evilness for their actions.

Perhaps this is where our difference lies. Yes, I'd agree it's certainly possible, but is it desirable to do so within the context of this particular narrative?

To my eyes, the Reapers' value as villains lies in their existence just inside the boundary of incomprehensibility. They have tangible form and occasionally deign to speak to their victims, if only to inform them of their doom, but they descend, and they kill, and until Starbrat we never completely grasp why. The unknowable is a primal fear, and valuable only as long as they cannot be fully understood. Any less anthropomorphized and they would be the equivalent of supernovas - swift and catastrophic, but utterly dispassionate. That they straddle that line between force of nature and recognizable malice, in similar fashion to Lovecraft's cosmic horrors, is what makes them generally compelling in the context of a hero's story (wherein the hero can be quite the holy terror if the player so chooses).

And we do have a litany of relatable aggrieved parties - the krogan, the rachni, the geth, the Illusive Man, and even the pirates and warlords we come across along the way. We're given the chance, and the choice, to acknowledge their motivations as legitimate, if not their actions. But Mass Effect is not a game that allows us to become a galactic despot, gathering an army at our backs for our own power and glory. However close we can get to CGG's Crow in our methods, our goal is still something close to heroism. I'm not sure there's room in that to allow the overarching villains to have aims we can ever agree with.

[TheMarshal]

Several of the things pointed to as evidence - round things in StarChild's room that look vaguely like Mako wheels, what appear to be low-res versions of Ashley's default armor being visible in the piles of rubble/bodies - feel like the bounds of credibility are being stretched. Both of those would be far more easily explained as coincidence.

I actually like the idea of Shepard (and by extension, the player) being indoctrinated at some point (hello, reaper tech is on the Normandy). But indoctrination doesn't necessarily produce hallucinations, rather it's more like inception, where you think that doing this thing would be a good idea and will accomplish everything that you're hoping for. Like building the Crucible, for example...

[Impulse and Compulse]

I always love lit profesors. Yours is no exception.

[CARL_DF90]

Actually, indoctrination does make you see and hear things.

[Hawk227]

delta_vee wrote...

Hawk227 wrote...

EDIT: In case it's unlear. I'm arguing that not only do we not have reason to trust him, we have reason to actively distrust him.

And I should clarify myself. Everything you list are good reasons why we don't trust him. I'm just saying we were supposed to.

Indoc aside (and I know you're partial to it), when has the series ever not let us challenge statements from antagonists we believe to be false? When Hudson and Walters spoke of keeping the conversation "high-level", it was to keep the conclusion moving along, not to make us question it without any way to verify. That the Catalyst calls himself such, despite our previous understanding of the term, is supposed to be an "a ha!" moment instead of a "lolwut?", thus the line of clarification on the matter which managed to escape the "high-level-only" cuts.

It's not that I think you're wrong per se on any point - the dissociation between intent and effect is a failure, nothing more. The outrage we've seen and felt wouldn't be so widespread if they had succeeded.

At the risk of re-treading old ground, the degree of dissociation between intent and effect makes me question what the intent really was. The issues raised earlier, and the unprecedented abandonment of the investigate function, were eminently foreseeable problems. The failure to anticipate that people would distrust the catalyst is absolutely astonishing. Everything it says runs counter to what the game itself has already told us. They established one narrative in the first 100 hours, and then attempted to undo all of it in the last 10 minutes. These are not "hindsight is 20/20" failures. At the culmination of their magnum opus, they deviated from both the mechanic and the narrative that was so successful in the first place. And then, as if to pour salt in the wound, they blew up the symbol of the universe, the things that made it so appealing in the first place. But neither Hudson, nor Walters, nor apparently anyone else foresaw the fans reaction? Really!?

I know. I know. Don't contribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence. But from my perspective, the degree of incompetence is unbelievable. I feel dirty ascribing it to the same people that built this franchise that is otherwise (mostly) fantastic.This disconnect is one factor that makes me partial to IT. It seems more plausible that things are not as they seem than that these mistakes were made, by these people, at this time in the game.

edisnoom wrote...

While I don't think that BioWare will use IT now, I do find it a
fascinating theory which does have some compelling and interesting
things to support it. That said I fully acknowledge that it could just
be a case of "Hindsight is 20/20".

I think if they intended it in the first place, they'll use it. If not, they won't. I don't think they'll adopt it or abandon it to save face. If it was intended, they knew there would be backlash (speculation from everyone!) and presumably had a timetable for when the real end would be released.

I also wouldn't say it's a matter of "hindsight is 20/20". They were shooting for ambiguity, and as a result they got alternate explanations that fit the text (better than what we got).

CulturalGeekGirl wrote....

Yeah, Basically, I think that IT has its own problems... which I think
would become much, much more apparent if it were canonized.

I'd say that IT is notably less bad than the current endings taken as read, but not "less-bad" enough to be actually good (without
some major tweaks being made earlier in the game). It betrays a number
of fundamental principles and themes in much the same way that the
current ending does if interpreted literally; they're just a different
set of themes that upset a different set of people.

If you don't mind, I'm curious which fundamental principles and themes it violates. I feel like IT plays out pretty well from a narrative sense. If you play through the game with IT in mind, it fixes a lot of otherwise incongruous moments, and gives meaning to otherwise inconsequential conversations and moments. To me, it feels like the foreshadowing is there. Once the reveal is made (If IT is true, BW hasn't made it yet), there is that "aha!" moment: No wonder that kid was weird, the final scenes were "dream-like", the Catalyst was so suspect, Shepard is uncharacteristically compliant, and the end choices were essentially Reaper choices. I think a lot of people had this reaction upon seeing the evidence, and why it has gained popularity.

That being said, I've not seen it explored thematically, and I don't have a good sense of how well it holds up in that regard.

[TheMarshal]

CARL_DF90 wrote...

Actually, indoctrination does make you see and hear things.

Right, but that's seeing something out of the corner of your eye or hearing noises that aren't there, more akin to schizophrenia.  What IT is proposing is that the entire scene with the StarChild is made up from nothing.

That said, put headphones on next time you are in the War Room right after finishing up Rannoch.  LOTS of whispers that weren't there before...

Modifié par TheMarshal, 15 mai 2012 - 04:55 .

[CARL_DF90]

Remember, hallucinations from indoctrination can be constructed by the Reapers itself, seeing what it wants you to see, or a hallucination constructed from your own memories and experiences, and ol' Shep has seen and been through a LOT. 

@Hawk227

I think I love you.

You hit a lot of nails on the head. Oh, and FYI there was a planned sequence in ME3 where Shep was fully indoctroctrinated and the player lost control of the character, but was pull at the last minute for whatever half-arsed reason. Personally, that would have been a great mechanic, and I would have loved to have seen it.  Wish I had a link to show where I got this info from. Sadly, I don't

Modifié par CARL_DF90, 15 mai 2012 - 05:03 .

[Hawk227]

TheMarshal wrote...

Several of the things pointed to as evidence - round things in StarChild's room that look vaguely like Mako wheels, what appear to be low-res versions of Ashley's default armor being visible in the piles of rubble/bodies - feel like the bounds of credibility are being stretched. Both of those would be far more easily explained as coincidence.

I actually like the idea of Shepard (and by extension, the player) being indoctrinated at some point (hello, reaper tech is on the Normandy). But indoctrination doesn't necessarily produce hallucinations, rather it's more like inception, where you think that doing this thing would be a good idea and will accomplish everything that you're hoping for. Like building the Crucible, for example...

I agree the mako tires are pretty iffy. However, the low-res body piles are Ashley and Kaidan ME1 era armor and what appears to be Jenkins's (remember him?) face.

Also, Indoctrination does cause hallucinations. I think that you have to consider how Indoctrination would play out as a game mechanic, and still allow for the indoctrination of the player. One way is to create a virtual reality, a hallucination, and try and convince the player that something they should already believe is false, is actually true. This is exactly what we get. The result is the player thinking that something that is tacitly a Reaper preferance, rather Shepard's plan all along, is in the best interest of everyone.

[TheMarshal]

CARL_DF90 wrote...

Remember, hallucinations from indoctrination can be constructed by the Reapers itself, seeing what it wants you to see, or a hallucination constructed from your own memories and experiences, and ol' Shep has seen and been through a LOT.   

You're basing this information on what?  We've spoken with only a handful of people who are indoctrinated (Saren, Benezia, Kenson), and heard testimony from a handful of others (Cerberus crew on the derelict Reaper), and nowhere was any evidence given about hallucinations being pulled from your own memories or experiences.

[delta_vee]

Hawk227 wrote...

I know. I know. Don't contribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence. But from my perspective, the degree of incompetence is unbelievable. I feel dirty ascribing it to the same people that built this franchise that is otherwise (mostly) fantastic.This disconnect is one factor that makes me partial to IT. It seems more plausible that things are not as they seem than that these mistakes were made, by these people, at this time in the game.

Indoc seems to follow the "sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice" counterpoint. The ending really does come off to me as a failed attempt at the "big idea" finish, though. 

If you play through the game with IT in mind, it fixes a lot of otherwise incongruous moments, and gives meaning to otherwise inconsequential conversations and moments.

If you play through the game with the Incompetent Author theory (IA for short), you get much the same result. You get an anvilicious dead kid, ham-fisted dreams, a conveniently-overlooked superweapon, autodialogue, fedex quests, a moment of glory (Tuchanka), a decent sequence (Rannoch), braindead Reaper war strategy, singleplayer horde mode, and the thrice-damned Kai Leng. And most importantly, you get an ending that attempts to be 2001 instead of Return of the Jedi, and fails hard, because it's predicated on a synthetic-organic conflict which was the genesis of the franchise* but long since overruled by other, better writers.

* According to Final Hours, Mass Effect was conceived as a synthetic-organic war. Saren was brought in to humanize (turianize?) the enemy, and the Reapers were brought in after that.

Modifié par delta_vee, 15 mai 2012 - 05:21 .

[edisnooM]

TheMarshal wrote...

CARL_DF90 wrote...

Remember, hallucinations from indoctrination can be constructed by the Reapers itself, seeing what it wants you to see, or a hallucination constructed from your own memories and experiences, and ol' Shep has seen and been through a LOT.   

You're basing this information on what?  We've spoken with only a handful of people who are indoctrinated (Saren, Benezia, Kenson), and heard testimony from a handful of others (Cerberus crew on the derelict Reaper), and nowhere was any evidence given about hallucinations being pulled from your own memories or experiences.

Actually there were the two crew members on the Reaper who both had the same memories about their wedding and their wife. That's sort of along those lines.

[TheMarshal]

edisnooM wrote...

Actually there were the two crew members on the Reaper who both had the same memories about their wedding and their wife. That's sort of along those lines.

Yes, but shared memories don't equate to hallucinations.  Besides that, that sort of hive mind is more along the lines of how the thorian worked than anything else we've seen on Reaper indoctrination.  I'm more inclined to blame IA for that one.  I'm not even sure the writers had a solid idea of how indoctrination worked and how it didn't.

[CulturalGeekGirl]

TheMarshal wrote...

Well, whatever phrasing we're using, I think we both agree that it is far more likely that IT is something that's created by the fans than something created by the developers.

Yes but, and I'm not trying to browbeat you for your earlier word choice, there's a significant difference between "grasping at straws" and "searching for a deeper meaning that may or may not be present." If it weren't for years of insight into the process by which games are written, I might be an IT supporter myself. If it weren't for the fact that, assuming IT, I'd still consider the current ending of the game terribly written, I might be a supporter of IT... again, my opinion.

I respect IT theorists, as long as they aren't "I'm right, you're an idiot" jerks about it. The problem is, I have had the misfortune of encountering a few very loud, very persistent supporters of that theory who are single-minded, dogmatic, and smug. Affirming IT at this point would feel just like that to millions of fans: a Nelsonesque "Ha-ha!" from on high.

This ties in to my response to CARL:

CARL_DF90 wrote...

@ CulturalGeekGirl

I don't see
how it would. There is more than enough lore wise to make the I.T. a
plausible explaination so the few lingering issues that might come up
would be taken care of with some good writing, assuming of course the
Bioware devs still remember HOW to write something good.

I've written about problems with IT before, but I'm too lazy to track it down now, so consider this sort of a Cliff's Notes. This is also not The Post I Meant To Write Tonight, so again, it hasn't been through a drafts process. (Yes, my posts have a drafts process. Shut up.)

There are a bunch of things about the ending that do not fit with IT. For instance, why does delaying or wavering cause the "the Crucible has been destroyed by the Reapers" message and a "Game Over" screen? If wavering in that way meant you were successfully indoctrinated, wouldn't you get a similar "wheee, my friends flying away, happy thoughts as I die" scene? Isn't refusing to participate at all the ultimate form of rebellion?

Now, I realize there are competing theories as to when the indoctrination starts (beamzap, elevator) and competing theories as to how deep you are under (from "everything after you're hit with a laser is a dream" to "you're not actually ever in a dream, but choosing blue or green is what the kid wants so you're being symbolically indoctrinated"). Every flaw in the theory can be countermanded by arguing a different version of the theory for a while. The multiple IT threads have made goalpost-moving a team sport.

But hey, I'm sure that you have the best and most special version of the IT, dear Reader, the one that answers all my questions. There's got to be some flavor within that sea of possibilities that fits best logically, right?

The IT's problems aren't primarily logical. Indeed, IT is all about the triumph of logic over theme, character development, suspension of disbelief, trust, principle, and all that stuff.

The metaphor I use is Cobb's wife in Inception. There is a moment where she tells Cob it's all a dream, and all they need to do is kill themselves and they'll wake up. Then she jumps from a window, certain that she is right... and ends up dead on the sidewalk (as far as we know: a friend of mine has the theory that Inception works better as a movie if you assume that every moment we see on film is a dream, and the only example we have of someone truly waking up is Cobb's wife's suicide.)

IT is asking us to take a similar risk, only worse. Cobb's wife was only asking Cobb to risk his own life when she asked him to jump off that ledge with her, so they'd wake up together. IT is asking us to be certain enough that we're dreaming not to risk only our own lives, but to risk becoming a genocidal monster.

And I'd be cool with that if this had been a story about logic always triumphing over emotion. But it wasn't about that for a lot of people.

Modifié par CulturalGeekGirl, 15 mai 2012 - 05:35 .

[MrFob]

delta_vee wrote...

MrFob wrote...

I guess in the end I am proposing that it is possible to remove the villain from the story completely by giving every party a real reason beyond evilness for their actions.

Perhaps this is where our difference lies. Yes, I'd agree it's certainly possible, but is it desirable to do so within the context of this particular narrative?

To my eyes, the Reapers' value as villains lies in their existence just inside the boundary of incomprehensibility. They have tangible form and occasionally deign to speak to their victims, if only to inform them of their doom, but they descend, and they kill, and until Starbrat we never completely grasp why. The unknowable is a primal fear, and valuable only as long as they cannot be fully understood. Any less anthropomorphized and they would be the equivalent of supernovas - swift and catastrophic, but utterly dispassionate. That they straddle that line between force of nature and recognizable malice, in similar fashion to Lovecraft's cosmic horrors, is what makes them generally compelling in the context of a hero's story (wherein the hero can be quite the holy terror if the player so chooses).

And we do have a litany of relatable aggrieved parties - the krogan, the rachni, the geth, the Illusive Man, and even the pirates and warlords we come across along the way. We're given the chance, and the choice, to acknowledge their motivations as legitimate, if not their actions. But Mass Effect is not a game that allows us to become a galactic despot, gathering an army at our backs for our own power and glory. However close we can get to CGG's Crow in our methods, our goal is still something close to heroism. I'm not sure there's room in that to allow the overarching villains to have aims we can ever agree with.

I do generally not disagree with this, in fact, this was what I was expecting after ME1. When we got the first bunch of info on ME3 and Casey Hudson said we'd learn more about their motives and reasons throughout the game, I was extremely skeptical. And that was even before I knew it would be handled through the star kid.
I would be perfectly happy if the reapers motivation were never explained. Being stuck with the fact that the writers want to explain the reapers' motivations however, I just think the "Lovecraftian monsters of evil" scenario is not the only possibility to give the plot an unforgettable and coherent solution.
The problem is that whatever the author wants to do in the end, there has to be a decision: Make it all about heroism (or even tragic defeat if you want) in which case the mysterious enemy is fine or, after victory is achieved, call the players decisions into question.
What we got was a weird mix of both and that certainly didn't work.

[Seijin8]

TheMarshal wrote...

edisnooM wrote...

Actually there were the two crew members on the Reaper who both had the same memories about their wedding and their wife. That's sort of along those lines.

Yes, but shared memories don't equate to hallucinations.  Besides that, that sort of hive mind is more along the lines of how the thorian worked than anything else we've seen on Reaper indoctrination.  I'm more inclined to blame IA for that one.  I'm not even sure the writers had a solid idea of how indoctrination worked and how it didn't.

Before going into this discussion, decide first whether it is your goal to define indoctrination within the game world, or try to infer it through author intent.

Any time we have something like this, we can always exit the narrative, but just because it doesn't fit the common, current -- and necessarily incomplete -- understanding us players have of indoc, doesn't mean that it isn't indoc.

For me, the more interesting question about indoctrination is whether it is a primary effect or side-effect.  The fact that it is still working millions of years after the Reaper died says that it is a side-effect of some other force.  Is indoctrination a side-effect of the way a Reaper's billions of minds (independent nation) communicate?  If so, then shared memories seems wholly consistent.

There is way too much we don't know about the concept of Reaper indoctrination to say what is or isn't indoc.

Edit:  Reworded due to insufficient caffeine.

Modifié par Seijin8, 15 mai 2012 - 05:41 .