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[delta_vee]

Hawk227 wrote...

I'm not sure what you mean.

In so much as some of its advocates are absolutely certain that it is correct, to the point of being rather obnoxious? Or in the sense that people still think that the EC can play out as a continuation?

The former, mostly. There are still those dead certain that we will still receive the required continuation (the promised land is just around the corner, guys!) despite the multiple layers of conspiracy that entails at present. The latter is, I think, merely misguided - as CGG said earlier, using IT for the EC if it wasn't originally intended results in nothing but gloating, without the conscious construction which would make it at all useful.

Obviously IT requires a continuation, as there is no end in the game if so. If/when it is ultimately refuted, it may satisfy simply as "headcannon", but until then the appeal of IT is that it was intended. Consequently fans of it think/hope that there will be a continuation.

Which is why I'm so fiercely skeptical of IT, frankly. That the time has passed for IT's epilogue to have the desired effect is obvious to me at least, so further insistence on its upcoming validation becomes religious. And since ITs validity is so directly tied to future considerations, it's hard for it to remain as merely one interpretation among many.

EDIT: Off to bed. Rest-of-thread will be read in the morning.

Modifié par delta_vee, 15 mai 2012 - 07:28 .

[KitaSaturnyne]

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...

What will you do if IT is never refuted, but there is never a continuation?

I think that this is the most likely result: the writers will structure the EC in such a way that IT adherents can still believe in IT if they wish, but there will never be a continuation that explicitly establishes it and has gameplay after the decision if (and only if) you pick destroy.

Even if IT is not addressed in the EC, IT fans will no doubt try to use aspects of the EC to "prove" that IT was the truth all along.

[iamthedave3]

Yeah. IT is ME 3's version of 'I refute your reality and substitute my own'.

Or to paraphrase someone else: The ending is so bad that many people would rather it were all a dream.

[CulturalGeekGirl]

KitaSaturnyne wrote...

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...

What will you do if IT is never refuted, but there is never a continuation?

I think that this is the most likely result: the writers will structure the EC in such a way that IT adherents can still believe in IT if they wish, but there will never be a continuation that explicitly establishes it and has gameplay after the decision if (and only if) you pick destroy.

Even if IT is not addressed in the EC, IT fans will no doubt try to use aspects of the EC to "prove" that IT was the truth all along.

I'm fine with that. In my mind, if you truly believed in IT with all your heart, you'd support it even without continuation DLC.

I just think that without continuation DLC, many of IT's adherents will abandon it.

For me, a lot of Bioware's stories benefit greatly from... damnit, I don't know if there's a term for it. Let's call it "non-contradictory headcanon," or NCHC for short.

NCHC is an idea about your character or the story that doesn't contradict anything shown on screen. I'll give you an example from my NCHC: I believe Shepard destroyed the collector base not just because it was an abomination, but also because she thought keeping it would do more harm than good. While she never says this in game, it's a perfectly plausible explanation, and doesn't contradict anything she does say. Perfect NCHC, and for all I know it might be right... but that doesn't mean other Shepards who blew up the base simply because it was right while believing they were sacrificing a strategic advantage aren't equally valid.

Right now, I consider IC to be in the NCHC category: a cool personal interpretation that is just as plausible as dozens of other interpretations I've seen.

The problem is, I don't think most of its adherents feel the same way. I think the vast majority of them expect it to be officially canonized, rewarding them with continuation DLC that proves them right without a shadow of a doubt.

Modifié par CulturalGeekGirl, 15 mai 2012 - 08:04 .

[MrFob]

KitaSaturnyne wrote...

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...

What will you do if IT is never refuted, but there is never a continuation?

I think that this is the most likely result: the writers will structure the EC in such a way that IT adherents can still believe in IT if they wish, but there will never be a continuation that explicitly establishes it and has gameplay after the decision if (and only if) you pick destroy.

Even if IT is not addressed in the EC, IT fans will no doubt try to use aspects of the EC to "prove" that IT was the truth all along.

I am pretty sure this what is going to happen.
Also, as someone who really likes the IT as a concept, I always was quite irritated that everyone talks about proving or disproving the IT. Almost every thread and video does it. It's simply wrong. There is no proof that I can see and there is no proof to the contrary either. There are indications and counter-indications and that's it.
I don't know if I'd actually ;like BW to prove the IT with the EC, I guess that would depend on how they deal with all it's problems and how they'd actually conclude the story. However, I do know that I wouldn't like them to disprove it because even just as a fan construct, it's a neat little interpretation that has offered lot's of room for discussion and - you will forgive me the use of the word - speculation.

EDIT: @CulturalGeekGirl: That is beautiful. NCHC, I like it. I'd say this is a more general phenomenon, not restricted to BW games but very essential in any video games. I personally am reminded of Gothic 1 here. While playing it, I came up with a huge back story for the guy I was playing. I think this is the case because of two factors:
1. Since you, the player are the acting element, you tend to identify much more with the character. If you read a book, lot's of the motivations of the protagonist are usually explained. The same does not necessarily go for a movie but here, you don't have this urge to justify every action of your character in detail because you are not impersonating him/her. It also helps that games usually don't flesh out their characters only on a rudimentary level to focus on gameplay or in some cases maybe because NCHC specifically is encouraged by the developer to help you identify with the character.
2. You usually have a lot of time on your hands while playing (maybe especially in Gothic ). During the time you walk around or even fight, there is plenty of time to come up with explanations and scenarios that expand and enrich the character and the experience.

In terms of Mass Effect, it certainly has a huge impact on your perception f the story.

Modifié par MrFob, 15 mai 2012 - 08:23 .

[Hawk227]

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...

What will you do if IT is never refuted, but there is never a continuation?

I think that this is the most likely result: the writers will structure the EC in such a way that IT adherents can still believe in IT if they wish, but there will never be a continuation that explicitly establishes it and has gameplay after the decision if (and only if) you pick destroy.

I'm inclined to agree. I really don't think they'll refute it, because it accomplishes nothing. They'll either stay ambiquous or confirm it with gameplay*. Consequently, I see the absence of confirmation as an implicit refutation.

Personally, if that happens, I'll adopt IT as my NCHC. Beyond that, I'll shake my fists at Bioware for screwing up such a brilliant franchise, and view any new BW titles with extreme skepticism.

*There's interpretations that allow for gameplay if you haven't picked destroy, though I don't abide by them.

CulturalGeekGirl wrote....

The problem is, I don't think most of its adherents feel the same way. I think the vast majority of them expect it to be officially canonized, rewarding them with continuation DLC that proves them right without a shadow of a doubt.

Well, for one thing, there is a lot of evidence to support it. Much of it is circumstantial, some of it is unexplainable in any other light. I remain cautiously optimistic that it will be officially canonized, but I see the temptation that drives people into over-confidence. I've noticed that there are a lot of people who like IT, or would be fine with IT, but don't believe absolutely. They're the silent majority of IT adherents. They don't spam the boards with "IT is right, duh!" threads, so it looks like the pro-IT crowd are all overconfident and prone to gloating.

I think it's important to realize that adherents don't see it as fanfiction, they see it as an intended player-trolling-meta-experience. That's much of the appeal. Not that it adequately explains mistakes, but that there weren't mistakes in the first place. A huge chunk of the theory is predicated on it being intended, and as such the implication is that we will get a continuation.

delta_vee wrote....

The latter is, I think, merely misguided - as CGG said earlier, using IT for the EC if it wasn't originally intended results in nothing but gloating, without the conscious construction which would make it at all useful.

[snip]

Which is why I'm so fiercely skeptical of IT, frankly. That the time hasassed for IT's epilogue to have the desired effect is obvious to me at least, so further insistence on its upcoming validation becomes religious.

I agree completely with the former. Again, its appeal relies on it being intentional. Being ambiguous and adopting the most popular* fan interpretation later is not an accomplishment.

I've always agreed with you that the ideal time for such an epilogue was in April (announced at PAX), and I think most adherents would agree too. I still think that messing up the reveal timeline is a smaller miscalculation than the endings as is, so if for some reason their timeline had always been mid-summer, I'll let it slide.

*I'm using this term liberally.

PS: Forgive my grammar, it's a mess tonight (Every Night!).

Modifié par Hawk227, 15 mai 2012 - 08:18 .

[CulturalGeekGirl]

I mostly don't agree with IT because, if IT were intentional, it'd still be sloppy. Horrifyingly sloppy. Incredibly badly executed, in many ways. And if you're going to construct an audience-trolling meta-joke, it's got to be tight as a gorram drum.

A few quick examples:

I can't see any reason why, if IT was planned, the whole "you didn't act fast enough, the crucible was destroyed" ending resulted in a game over with no actual end cutscene or save state. There is absolutely no excuse for allowing an easter-egg opportunity of that caliber to go unused. They could have done a Chrono Trigger style "this is what will happen if you don't act" scene (similar to what played if you let the timer run out on Arrival). This wouldn't expose the seams of the trick at all, but would provide a more convincing experience. Having the "destruction of the crucible" result in a game-over, "you just got traditionally blowed-up" resume screen is a ridiculously obvious missed opportunity, especially considering they went out of their way to give you a "time ran out" consequence in a past DLC.

Secondly, if the Crucible is lying about the effects of the destroy pipe, why does he lie in such a patently moronic way, a way guaranteed to not sway a huge, huge proportion of Shepards (something like 60-80% based on polls I've seen.) Of people who didn't even remotely suspect IT, more than 50% seem to have chosen destroy. Do you think the same proportion would have chosen Destroy if, say, the Earth was on the chopping block rather than the Geth and Edi? I don't think so. That hitting destroy would destroy the earth is as plausible, or more plausible than destroying the Geth and Edi, and it would actually work on some significant portion of Renegades.

And now I'm not just rewriting the phantom menace, I'm rewriting the conspiracy theory surrounding the phantom menace. There is something wrong with my brain.

The reason these things would have to be tighter for IT to really work is this: IT is asking you to hit a "commit genocide" button.

I've brought up the "Cobb's wife" allegory a half-dozen times, and no IT adherent has ever addressed it. Are you sure enough that you're dreaming to commit suicide? Are you sure enough that you're dreaming to commit genocide?

In a game where the player inhabits the role of the person committing suicide or genocide, presenting this question sloppily is both unfair and artistically lazy.

[Seijin8]

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...

There is something wrong with my brain.

I think I speak for the thread's community when I say:  If that is wrong, we don't wanna be right.

... Okay, that sounded cooler and less creepystalker in my head.

[Grotaiche]

KitaSaturnyne wrote...

The only things about the Citadel being moved, and subsequently exploded, that bother me are a couple of questions.

-
Is the Citadel capable of locomotion? If not, did the Reapers just push
it through Mass Relays until it reached Earth? How did they do it in
the space of time it took for Shepard's team to board and destroy Cronos
station?
- What happened to the 13 million living on the Citadel?
Did they evacuate? Did some escape while others had to stay behind? Is
that what we're seeing when Shepard boards the Citadel for the final
time? Or is Shepard just dragging them down with him/ her/ it/ whatever
when the Citadel explodes?

But prior to that, when debriefing with Anderson after the Cerberus HQ mission, I remember him saying that TIM (and, subsequently, Cerberus) had moved to the Citadel and moved it to Earth. What I don't get is how Cerberus was able to do that at all ? I mean, the Citadel was attacked before and everyone was preparing (e.g. people want to create a militia, you provide resources to repair/enhance some turrets in some sidequest, etc...) and there are Bailey/C-Sec and Aria T'Loak in there and they just let Cerberus take the Citadel and move it to Earth ? I really don't get how this is happening and little to nothing is said about it in the game.

edisnooM wrote...

I haven't read any of the Mass Effect
books so I can't say for certain, but I have heard it mentioned that
they go into more detail on the topic of Reaper Indoctrination. Whether
the info would be helpful or not I don't know.

Yes and no. The third book is about Cerberus toying around with Reaper indoctrination tech so it gives background for the Cerberus HQ mission but I didn't find it necessary (contrary to the Grissom Academy mission, whose story was really intertwined with book #2's).

I do think that
requiring players to read the books to comprehend plot points would be a
bad choice though. For example: Grayson, Kahlee Sanders, Kai Leng,
non-councillor Anderson, and the Quarian's dislike of Cerberus in ME2.
All of these felt like I was missing something because I hadn't bought
more BioWare products, and I for one found it annoying.

Yes, I agree with that. I had read all 3 books before playing ME3 and was really delighted with the Academy mission but thought it might be a bit difficult to follow for those who hadn't read them.

[CulturalGeekGirl]

Seijin8 wrote...

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...

There is something wrong with my brain.

I think I speak for the thread's community when I say: If that is wrong, we don't wanna be right.

... Okay, that sounded cooler and less creepystalker in my head.

I am not the kind of person who interprets compliments as "creepy stalkerism", unless those compliments are something like "you look really good through these high-powered binoculars."

Also, would you believe that none of these posts are the ones I talked about earlier? Also, it is 2am here and I still have not cleaned up my mess in the kitchen and if I don't do it soon my roommate is going to be angry at me when she wakes up.

Anyway. Stupid insomnia.

I'm weird when it comes to tie-in fiction. If I read your tie-in novel and it isn't as good as something by John Scalzi or Cory Doctorow, I'm not going to want to finish it. I still have a bunch of David Brin and Vernor Vinge and Ursula K LeGuin to read. If your tie-in novel isn't at least as well-written as your game, I'm not interested... and I honestly don't think the novels were as good as the games (based on trying to read them at one point and rapidly losing interest.)

I have a friend who plays video games, but pretty much focuses on classic sidescrollers like Megaman and Castlevania. He's also a librarian. When I tell him a game has a great story, he says "If I want a great story, I'll read a book." I remember a comedian I like (though I can't recall who) saying something related on a podcast at some point: "The Uncharted games have a really good story. And by that I mean, they have a story that would seem kind of dumb on TV or in a movie, but that's really excellent for a video game." 

What makes games special is the fact that you can "inhabit" them on some level. I love Mass Effect because Jane Shepard is free to be what I need her to be. Her inner life is connected to my own inner life. If I could only experience the story of Mass Effect through the lense of another disposable grim space marine dude with a set personality, it would lose a lot of its richness. I guess that's part of why I don't care about the novels: without Shepard or Garrus or Mordin there, who cares? 

Then again I had little-to-no trouble understanding what was going on with Grissom Academy, other than the fact that I didn't pick up on the fact that it was super time-sensitive.

On the other hand, I do consider the planets andcodex and Cerberus News Network to be "required reading." Those microfictional jaunts provide some really important worldbuilding that you get nowhere else.

So yeah. I'm not sure why I draw the line there, but I do.

Modifié par CulturalGeekGirl, 15 mai 2012 - 09:41 .

[Seijin8]

Well, if you are setting the bar at Scalzi and (some) Vinge... I cannot think of many authors able to hurdle that, regardless of setting.

Not familiar with Doctorow. Will look into it, thanks.

[edisnooM]

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...

Seijin8 wrote...

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...

There is something wrong with my brain.

I think I speak for the thread's community when I say: If that is wrong, we don't wanna be right.

... Okay, that sounded cooler and less creepystalker in my head.

I am not the kind of person who interprets compliments as "creepy stalkerism", unless those compliments are something like "you look really good through these high-powered binoculars."

Also, would you believe that none of these posts are the ones I talked about earlier? Also, it is 2am here and I still have not cleaned up my mess in the kitchen and if I don't do it soon my roommate is going to be angry at me when she wakes up.

Anyway. Stupid insomnia.

I'm weird when it comes to tie-in fiction. If I read your tie-in novel and it isn't as good as something by John Scalzi or Cory Doctorow, I'm not going to want to finish it. I still have a bunch of David Brin and Vernor Vinge and Ursula K LeGuin to read. If your tie-in novel isn't at least as well-written as your game, I'm not interested... and I honestly don't think the novels were as good as the games (based on trying to read them at one point and rapidly losing interest.)

Then again I had little-to-no trouble understanding what was going on with Grissom Academy, other than the fact that I didn't pick up on the fact that it was super time-sensitive.

On the other hand, I do consider the planets andcodex and Cerberus News Network to be "required reading." Those microfictional jaunts provide some really important worldbuilding that you get nowhere else.

So yeah. I'm not sure why I draw the line there, but I do.

I didn't hate the Grissom mission and it wasn't like any of the book tie-ins broke the Game for me, I just found it a bit irksome when they start talking about things as though it should mean something, like when they just casually threw out the name Grayson and I was thinking "Who?". I should add that the David Archer moment at Grissom was pretty awesome.

I think my view comes from the comic book story style, where you're reading Superman and it ends with a cliffhanger and they say "What's this? Read Batman #whatever to find out." and I'm thinking "No I bought Superman, don't tell I have to buy something else to figure out what's going on". This is the main reason I can never get into buying and reading comic books on a regular basis.

I just feel like if it's relevent to the game I'm playing it should be in that game or at least in that series of games, i.e. Codex, Planet info, Cerberus News Network, not something different that I have to buy seperately.

Modifié par edisnooM, 15 mai 2012 - 09:50 .

[CulturalGeekGirl]

Seijin8 wrote...

Well, if you are setting the bar at Scalzi and (some) Vinge... I cannot think of many authors able to hurdle that, regardless of setting.

Not familiar with Doctorow. Will look into it, thanks.

I'm not setting the bar at Vinge. I am kind of setting the bar at Scalzi. I picked Scalzi and Doctorow because they're guys whose stories I enjoy but who I don't consider "perfect." I could just as easily have set my bar at some YA authors, like Jonathan Maberry or Suzanne Collins or Scott Westerfield (don't take all of those as recommendations, they're literally the last YA authors I read,  most often because someone handed me a book and said "read this" and, since it was YA, I was done in a night.

(If you're going to read Doctorow, Read "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom" and 0wnz0red. All of his stuff is released creative commons, so you can find free versions on the web legally everywhere, if you're the kind of person who can read novels on a screen. (I'm not usually that kind of person, and 0wnz0red is a novelette or long short story, but you get the idea.) You can decide if you're interested in more after that.

The point I was making is that there are literally thousands of world-changing classics that I will never read.  Dear Mass Effect: Your video game story engaged me for hundreds of hours when I could have been reading these books. I made the choice to play  your game because it provided me an experience that I could not get from all the classics of science fiction that have ever been written. This is in large part because it is a game, and invites a kind of mental immersion that no other medium can or will ever match.

Modifié par CulturalGeekGirl, 15 mai 2012 - 10:01 .

[Seijin8]

Different tastes I guess. Regarding Scalzi, I've read all of the Old Man's War books. The story is good, though not super-original (pretty much Starship Troopers with a bit more of a political edge toward the end), but it ranks among the best sci-fi I've ever read simply because his characters are exceedingly life-like, everyday people. (Except when they *aren't*, and then they are great for who they are.)

But like I said. Different tastes.

And thanks for the link!  Will check it out tomorrow (when I have spare time).

Modifié par Seijin8, 15 mai 2012 - 09:57 .

[CulturalGeekGirl]

Seijin8 wrote...

Different tastes I guess. Regarding Scalzi, I've read all of the Old Man's War books. The story is good, though not super-original (pretty much Starship Troopers with a bit more of a political edge toward the end), but it ranks among the best sci-fi I've ever read simply because his characters are exceedingly life-like, everyday people. (Except when they *aren't*, and then they are great for who they are.)

But like I said. Different tastes.

And thanks for the link!  Will check it out tomorrow (when I have spare time).

I felt this way about Scalzi at first, too.I'm not going to go into why I became slightly less enamored with him later, when I had read a bunch of his non-OMW books. Thing is,  I have a habit of thinking "this is the best writer ever" for about a year and then overdosing on their books, reading everything I can get my hands on. This usually leaves me thinking "this is a very good writer, but after reading all his books I have started to see how the pieces fit together, and what tricks he employs most often." I have been told this is one of the perils of being an editor: you eventually can't shut off that part of your brain.

A similar thing happened with Bioware. I spent a year thinking "this is probably the greatest work of science fiction to be created so far in my lifetime," in regards to Mass Effect and well... you know the rest.

The only writer who has never yet made me revise my unrealistically high opinion of him to be more realistic is Terry Pratchett. Douglas Adams was close, but Mostly Harmless cast a bit of a shadow over my heart.

Modifié par CulturalGeekGirl, 15 mai 2012 - 10:13 .

[iamthedave3]

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...

Seijin8 wrote...

Different tastes I guess. Regarding Scalzi, I've read all of the Old Man's War books. The story is good, though not super-original (pretty much Starship Troopers with a bit more of a political edge toward the end), but it ranks among the best sci-fi I've ever read simply because his characters are exceedingly life-like, everyday people. (Except when they *aren't*, and then they are great for who they are.)

But like I said. Different tastes.

And thanks for the link!  Will check it out tomorrow (when I have spare time).

I felt this way about Scalzi at first, too.I'm not going to go into why I became slightly less enamored with him later, when I had read a bunch of his non-OMW books. Thing is,  I have a habit of thinking "this is the best writer ever" for about a year and then overdosing on their books, reading everything I can get my hands on. This usually leaves me thinking "this is a very good writer, but after reading all his books I have started to see how the pieces fit together, and what tricks he employs most often." I have been told this is one of the perils of being an editor: you eventually can't shut off that part of your brain.

I feel you. Exact same problem with me and George R. R. Martin, for the same reasons. Editing changes your perspective on writing forever.

It's the same as developing any sort of critical skills. Someone who indulges in movie studies can never quite watch a movie the same way again, because there's always that moment where they know what's going on behind the movie and a part of their brain goes 'you, director, are lame'.

[Seijin8]

Well, Martin is pretty much a case of an author who loses the reigns on his narrative/characters and cannot seem to conceive a reasonable workaround book after book after...

But I get what you both are saying and have the same issues when fiction and my own profession butt heads. Its always ugly.

EDIT:  I look forward to the day I can post on some forum about how terrible Song of Ice and Fire ended, which should be... twenty-six books from now?

Modifié par Seijin8, 15 mai 2012 - 10:27 .

[Calibisto]

I had missed this post earlier as I stayed away from the spoiler section untill I finished it myself.
Now having finished the game, I think the dr. Dray sums it up perfectly.

[Seijin8]

@Calibisto

Welcome to the club. Misery loves company!

[MrFob]

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...
I've brought up the "Cobb's wife" allegory a half-dozen times, and no IT adherent has ever addressed it. Are you sure enough that you're dreaming to commit suicide? Are you sure enough that you're dreaming to commit genocide?

In a game where the player inhabits the role of the person committing suicide or genocide, presenting this question sloppily is both unfair and artistically lazy.

Not to go too much into IT (that's what the IT thread is for) but I just quickly want to chime in on the "Cobb's wife" allegory.
I can agree with most of your trouble with the IT but I think these two situations cannot really be compared.
In the case of Inception there was the clear question: Is this a dream or not? This question haunted the character to a point where she was willing to commit suicide because she was so sure she was still dreaming.

In the IT, this question is never posed. Shepard is never aware or doesn't even suspect that this is a hallucination or rather a representation of his/her subconscious mind, influenced by the reapers. It's not the "hit genocide to wake up" situation. It's real for Shepard at the time so s/he makes the choice in the context that the consequences are real as well. Only, because it is a representation, the actual consequence is supposed to be the rejection of indoctrination (btw, this would be the first time anyone would be able to withstand indoctrination)
The point of many IT-lers is that this choice most closely resembles an act of rebellion against the reapers.

And here where I see the problem: While it is true that the destroy choice does go mostly against the reapers plans, it still is one of the options provided to you by the reapers (unless this is supposed to be some highly abstract space where the borders of for or against the reapers are no longer clear cut which it is not as evident through the clear distinction between TIM and Anderson a few minutes earlier).
So it's not really an act of rebellion or refusal. It's just another form of taking what you are offered.

In any case, I think that for many reasons the nature of that final choice is a strong counter-indication against IT but not because our "way out" leads through the genocide option.

[CulturalGeekGirl]

Quickly, the Cobb's wife thing isn't meant to be a stand-alone idea. It's just one of a dozen dozen ways I can approach IT that point out possible ways that it is thematically inconsistent and deeply unsatisfying. I agree that Cobb's wife had more justification for believing she was dreaming than Shepard would under IT.

I actually consider the "why is there no thematic significance attached to outright refusing to participate in their nonsense" to be the more telling problem.

[MrFob]

Agreed, as I said, there are many problems. Just wanted to point this out since you asked rather specifically for a response to it.

[CulturalGeekGirl]

MrFob wrote...

Agreed, as I said, there are many problems. Just wanted to point this out since you asked rather specifically for a response to it.

Heh, what I really wanted was a response from someone who believes in IT; more specifically, from someone who believes that you should have enough information to make the "right" choice.

The point of the metaphor is that in both cases you have someone making an unbelievable gamble on the idea that they are in a dream. I think that most IT people would argue it's smart when Shep does it and dumb when Cobb's wife does it. Why is it smarter that Shepard does it in the ending than it is when Cobb's wife hits the pavement?

I should have been more specific.

Either the game is endorsing consciously committing genocide or it's endorsing willingly risking that you might commit genocide based on the fact that this is probably a dream.

Either way, it's thematically inconsistent with the rest of the story for a large proportion of Shepards.

[NorDee65]

re: NCHC

Before reading about IT, just after finishing the game for the first time I called a friend who is a MD and asked her about hallucinations caused by severe trauma, and she said it is quite possible, especially when organs like the spleen are involved. Considering Shepard's injuries (burned by Reaper beam, probably severe concussion, shot through right shoulder, and quite possible a ruptured spleen as seen in the scene when Shepard has that last conversation with Anderson), and I don't need IT , I am happy to go with just hallucinations.

And there you have it: to understand ME3 we have felt the need to seek clarification from specialists from diverse fields such as literature (modern as well as classical), the film industry, astrophysics, psychology, history and the medical profession. From all over the world. And that's what has made this bearable (just).