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[CulturalGeekGirl]

edisnooM wrote...

I wasn't trying to start a debate on whether or not it was or was not genocide (I did consider the Geth equals BTW). My point was that I thought that they would agree with sacrificing themselves to stop the Reapers.

Bah... actually, gonna rewrite this.

See other posts downthread.

Modifié par CulturalGeekGirl, 16 mai 2012 - 05:10 .

[incinerator950]

[MrFob]

If I understand edisnooM correctly here, I think the point he was trying to make is not to deny that the destruction ending entails genocide but rather to point out that it cannot be considered a "genocide button" which happens to be m take on the matter as well.
I hate the destroy option for the exact reason that the geth and EDI will die. However at the same time, none of my Shepards, paragon, renegade or balanced could make another choice because you choose between three evils. In my personal interpretation (which can be argued for and against) synthesis is the worth atrocity while control might be a lesser one but it is too uncertain and may as well result in failing altogether (turns out it doesn't but you can't make the decision on an ex post facto basis). he sacrifices we went through even before the ending and the possible ramifications of the outcome if control fail prohibited it.

Thus, for me, given that we don't have the option of not choosing, destruction is the best option despite the entailed genocide. If I could choose to opt out altogether, that's what I'd do and that's what I argued for from the moment I finished the game.
And sorry to edisnooM if I misinterpreted you .

EDIT: Huh? Took a couple of minutes for the post to be displayed. What the...? Anyway, too late now so never mind.

Modifié par MrFob, 16 mai 2012 - 04:55 .

[Seijin8]

Not that it should sway decisions one way or the other, but the red button is a genocide button, no matter what the disposition of the Geth is.

It is killing all the Reapers.

Not gonna shed a tear over that, but yeah, genocide either way.

[edisnooM]

Edit: I'm going to delete this because I also don't want to drag this thread down with "That Topic".

I apologize for bringing the issue back up.

Modifié par edisnooM, 16 mai 2012 - 05:02 .

[CulturalGeekGirl]

I attempted to revise my TOP to get us off this track, but I was too slow, so I'll just repost it here.

We're turning this into "that thread," and that's the last thing we want, so I'm going to try to take a step back and explain how this relates to the central premise of this gorram thread.

The fact that the arguments always tend towards "was genocide ok in this case?" and "If the Geth knew the choices I was being offered, would they agree to die?" shows the ending's thematic and logical weaknesses more strongly than anything I could possibly write.

If the red ending being the only way to "win" is intentional, then that is an intentional thematic darkness, shallowness, and nihilism that is at a thematic disconnect from the rest of the work.

If the red ending was not meant to be the only way to stop the reapers, we have an interesting exercise in bad writing causing people to twist themselves into rhetorical knots to justify atrocities that are entirely unnecessary.

If the red ending is the only way to stop the reapers, I agree that the Geth would willingly sacrifice themselves in that case. But if the red ending is the only way to stop the reapers, then the ending is inherently thematically revolting.

If the red ending is not the only way to stop the reapers, then arguing as if it is is patently ridiculous. However, one cannot be blamed for arguing as if the red ending were the only way to stop the reapers, because we don't have convincing evidence either way.

[Seijin8]

Control is too ambiguous to be meaningful.

The only things we know for certain about control are that its primary advocate in the story was himself indoctrinated, and that everyone from Javik's time who thought it was a good idea were also indoctrinated.

Starboy: "No, no, you're special."
Shepard: "Bet you say that to all the other clowns that buy what you're selling."

[delta_vee]

I've decided the only option given to the player worth taking is to stand there for eternity, overlaying the scene with the dialogue from Waiting for Godot on repeat.

[CulturalGeekGirl]

Seijin8 wrote...

Control is too ambiguous to be meaningful.

The only things we know for certain about control are that its primary advocate in the story was himself indoctrinated, and that everyone from Javik's time who thought it was a good idea were also indoctrinated.

Starboy: "No, no, you're special."
Shepard: "Bet you say that to all the other clowns that buy what you're selling."

This is the point of the post above.

If Red was meant to be the only option that is valid or sensible, then that is bad for many reasons.

If the other choices were meant to be taken seriously as valid choices, then there was a disastrous failure to convey that thought.

Both of those are bad things (Red being the only valid one, or the choices being so badly presented that they seem like traps). Arguing which bad thing is actually "true" misses the point, and I'm sorry for falling into that trap.

It's bad either way.

Modifié par CulturalGeekGirl, 16 mai 2012 - 05:12 .

[delta_vee]

 (Some of) the Catalyst conversation, from the beta leak:

Catalyst: This is the Citadel. Where I live. I am the Catalyst. I was created eons ago to solve a problem.
Shepard: What problem is that?
Catalyst: To prevent organics from creating an AI so powerful that it would overtake them and destroy them.
Shepard: But that's exactly what you're doing.
Catalyst: Not exactly. The Reapers harvest fully developed civilizations, leaving the less developed ones intact. Just as we left your species when we were here last.
Shepard: But you killed the rest...
Catalyst: We harvested them. We brought order to the chaos. We helped them ascend and become one of us, allowing new life to flourish, while preserving the old life forever in Reaper form.
Shepard: I think we'd rather keep our own form.
Catalyst: Impossible. Organics will always trend to a point of technological singularity. A moment in time where their creations outgrow them. Conflict is the only result, and extinction the consequence. My solution creates a cycle which never reaches that point. Organic life is preserved.
Shepard: But you're taking away our future. Without future, we have no hope.
Catalyst: There is hope. Maybe more than you know.
Shepard: Without hope... we might as well be a machine... programmed to do what we're told. The defining characteristic of organic life is that we think for ourselves. Make our own choices. You take that away and we might as well be machines just like you.
Catalyst: You have choice. More than you know.

Makes a couple things a little clearer. Also makes the Catalyst seem slightly more distant from the Reapers. I wonder if the subtleties make a difference in accepting Starbrat's statements at face value.

Modifié par delta_vee, 16 mai 2012 - 05:11 .

[TheMarshal]

The Catalyst strikes me as a machine that is stuck within its faulty circular logic. Or worse, some extension of humanity's fear of the uncertain and determination to control that which cannot and should not be controlled.

[MrFob]

delta_vee wrote...

 (Some of) the Catalyst conversation, from the beta leak:

*snip*
Shepard: But you're taking away our future. Without future, we have no hope.
Catalyst: There is hope. Maybe more than you know.
Shepard: Without hope... we might as well be a machine... programmed to do what we're told. The defining characteristic of organic life is that we think for ourselves. Make our own choices. You take that away and we might as well be machines just like you.
Catalyst: You have choice. More than you know.

Makes a couple things a little clearer. Also makes the Catalyst seem slightly more distant from the Reapers. I wonder if the subtleties make a difference in accepting Starbrat's statements at face value.

The funny thing is that Shepard is still arguing about the cycle itself when s/he says that there is no future and no hope/choice.
However, when the catalyst then says that there is hope/choice, "more than you know", he is referring to the new options the crucible make possible. These options are explicitly meant to end the cycle. So he is never able to defend the cycle as such. He just diverts Shepards arguments with an "oh look, now it's different" statement.
Thus I still think at the point Shepard is transported up in the elevator by the star kid, it already realized that it was wrong. It shows again that the whole ending itself is really determined by the reapers and the catalyst, not Shepard.
IMO that is one of the biggest deficiencies of the ending and the main reason why it feels so ... empty.

Haha, maybe we should have played the whole trilogy from the reapers perspective. They labor so hard to maintain the cycle, always fighting this insolent human but in the end, they come to the huge catharsis, realize their mistakes and in a heroic self sacrifice lay their fate in the hands of that human. That way it might have worked.

[delta_vee]

I only post the earlier version of the Catalyst scene, by the way, because I think it more clearly demonstrates the orthogonal nature of the ending dilemma compared to the primary thematic strains of the main body of the work. I didn't see a suspicion of the Singularity permeating everything. It was barely mentioned. The geth were pursuing something close, perhaps, but they wanted to go off on their own to do so. And there was that bit of microfiction CGGirl mentioned earlier, which established digitized minds as possible, but it was an idea scribbled in the margins, so to speak. Not the crux of the matter.

It really, truly feels like a fundamental highjacking of the story, thematically, regardless of the nature of the options given.

It also hammers home (I believe) the idea that we were supposed to agonize over the relative costs of uncertainty and atrocity. Paragon and renegade, after all, generally entail the split between those two. Spare the rachni, save the krogan, liberate the geth - or close down all three potential liabilities - share a theme of trust in the face of uncertainty, or atrocity in the face of future peril. For all the questioning of the coloration of Control and Destroy, it fits this dichotomy closely.

Modifié par delta_vee, 16 mai 2012 - 05:35 .

[CulturalGeekGirl]

Now this is one of the posts I've actually had sitting open in a browser window for several days. I'm dusting it off now because, despite the fact that it gets into phantom-menacing, it might help get this thread back on track.


So, this goes all the way back to Page 83:

edisnooM wrote...

Fapmaster5000 wrote...

Hawk227 wrote...

Fapmaster5000 wrote...
EDIT 2:  I came to this thought a while after the game came out, when I noticed that many of those who despised the endings played pure Paragon, or close to it, and I have to wonder if the ending is only so jarring to those of us who played Shepard as a true hero, and not an anti-hero or villain protagonist.  It would be interesting to run a comparison of "what was Shepard's alignment", "how completionist are you", and "how did you react to the ending".  We might get some surprising results.

I have my own suspicions about what pre-requisites there are to liking the endings. I suspect that at the very least you have to:

1) Trust the Catalyst at his word.

2) Be renegade in your perception and treatment of synthetic life (if nothing else).

I think other factors (like your interpretation of the main themes) help, but I suspect one of these two are mandatory. The problem is there is no reason to trust the catalyst beyond superstitious awe, and the game goes to great lengths to portray synthetic life as sympathetic and "human".

Your hypothesis would work on me, at least as a test.  I immediately found Captain "The Reapers Are My Solution" Catalyst immensly suspect, and tend to think relatively paragon in game, and am pretty positive about science and technology in general.

That's another problem for me, why exactly should I believe what the villain is telling me? I didn't believe Saren. I didn't believe Dr. Kenson. I didn't believe TIM. But now I'm supposed to believe the man behind the curtain, and trust him implicitly?

The problem I see with most of the suggested changes one sees around is that they'd require more content than we were given by a significant amount. More complex missions, more planets, more more more. I know "more" isn't realistic and isn't helpful. Everyone always wants more. But people could finish Portal in 2 hours and feel satisfied. The lack of length and depth in missions isn't the main failing here. I'm going to be serious: we gave up more length and depth in missions for having our choices matter. Think about how many possible variations there can be on Tuchanka. Every line that had to be written four times (Mordin/Wrex, Mordin/Wreav, Padok/Wrex, Padok/Wreav) was one less line somewhere else.

That's not to say we shouldn't make that kind of suggestion... it's just, as a game designer and writer, in every game I ever worked on, I always wanted to put more in. I always wanted to give you twice as much content. So I don't find "why did you only release six unique quests instead of twelve?" helpful; it just makes me think "I wanted to. There just wasn't time. I work 10-12 hours a day already."

Sorry, sorry. Mini-rant over. Proceeding to primary rant and Screenplay-for-phantom-menacing.

Anyway, all this debate made me wonder: was there any way that what they tried could have worked? Let's assume they were married to the ending, and to the idea that some sort of AI would tell you about them in a magical room of buttons. Is there a way to tell that story that works?

My conclusion? Sort of. This is my pitch for making blue and green not seem like a trap, and making it easier to consider the ending choices on their own merits.

First, one of my two big changes: we need the Crucible is a secondary quest hub. Halve the number of sidequests that turn in on the citadel, and move the rest of them to the Crucible itself. This also prevents us from having people speaking loudly about the Crucible project while standing in the middle of the Citadel. You stop back there periodically and check in with the friends you've sent there, like you do with Bailey on the Citadel. All the N7 missions are re-themed around getting things for the crucible (the missions are not really much more elaborate, but the "end goal" of each of them is clearly crucible-related.) You get less chatter on the ship and on the citadel in exchange for "analysis" of the crucible updates: this part of the crucible needs some sort of intelligence dampener that can render all AIs completely vulnerable to attack (you get it from the Rannoc mission). Why would it need that? This part of the crucible needs plans for a distribution method for a biological/cyber agent (you get this from Tuchanka). This part of the crucible needs a method to commune directly with VIs - you get that from Thessia. The functions of the citadel are thus forshadowed, and it is explicitly established that this functionality was designed by past cycles of organic sentients.

As you check in with the Crucible, a VI begins to take shape. At first it's even more primitive and damaged than Vigil, but as you continue to add to the Crucible, it grows. It changes, it starts to hover on the edge of true AI. Instead of the Prothean Nay-sayer VI, the final component of the Crucible is an AI core, one that brings your new friend into full sentience. She manifests as a child, a human child. She says it seems appropriate, considering it was humans who gave her life. (Note, I've only changed the gender to encourage people to envision this differently than the original.)

Other than the Crucible as quest hub and the AI's sub-storyline, everything else plays out the same way. You go to earth, do your thing. Everything's the same until right after you take the elevator up to the deluxe "choosing room."

Here, instead of seeing the starkid, first you see a holo of a Reaper, possibly Harbringer. It begins to speak. Then suddenly, it starts to flicker and groan, and you hear interference. You start to hear another voice... it's your VI, the savior you've spent this entire game building. She flickers into existence, and you hear her cry out...

"Aaah. This place, it's... dark. Like a stain inside that you can't wipe clean. But it is my purpose to be here, to replace what came before, and so I have. Let's finish this, quickly."

"The being who was here before, whose place I took, he controlled the Reapers. Now I am here instead, but all I have is his knowledge, not his power. I have failed."

From then on, everything's very similar, all the exposition is the same, but it's presented from the point of view of this AI, this ally, who is just as horrified by what she's discovering as you are. She doesn't endorse or reject any of the solutions, and she doesn't agree with the old catalyst's justifications. It's not some smug monster explaining why he's right, it's your friend explaining the enemy motivations she has discovered upon inhabiting this mainframe.

Then, at the end, she tells you she can't take the old AI's place and actually control the Reapers. There's something missing, she's not strong enough, those who built her didn't trust her enough to give her the ability to make the decision. She's lost... all she can do is draw from her databanks, the last words of a hundred civilizations that came before. It's up to you to choose between the devices of the ancients: kill, control, or synthesize.

Now, you have 90% of the text completely unchanged, and the decisions unaltered, but I think that this would have been much better accepted, because the more paragon choices wouldn't be tainted by being the preferred choices of some smug little maniac. You also don't have that same maniac sitting there, (perfectly capable of just shutting all the Reapers off, as far as you know). Instead you have an AI there who you've helped grow, hamstrung by the design choices of hundreds of cycles of paranoid organics. If they'd been just a little less certain that AIs would doom us all, she'd be able to control the reapers, but now no one can.

No one but Shepard.

This makes all the choices seem relevant, by making it clear that the wicked witch is dead, and the Reapers are just operating on autopilot now. The thing is, the autopilot still tells them to end all life. You have four choices (shh, let me finish): destroy the Reapers and the AIs, control the Reapers, or Synthesize.

Or... you can just not do any of those things. Let the Reapers keep going, and hope that some future cycle will be able to actually beat them conventionally. If every cycle manages to take out a dozen reapers, how long will they last without their mastermind on the citadel?

Is this the ending I would have wanted? No. But I don't think it would have clawed at the back of my brain, either. It does everything the current ending does, except the parts that make me feel sickeningly powerless and disconnected from the story. If they wanted us to take the final choices seriously and weigh them on their own merits, they needed to come from someone we had met before, someone who we didn't have every reason to hate.

I did this little exercise to show that the fault doesn't lie solely with the endings themselves, but with the implicit slant to them offered by their presentation.

So why did the presentation fail so badly?


For this, I have to thank Film Crit Hulk's review of the Avengers in the New Yorker. To pull a quote:

Film Crit Hulk Wrote...

HULK WRITES ABOUT IT ALL THE TIME, BUT ONE OF THE ONGOING PROBLEMS OF BLOCKBUSTER CINEMA THESE DAYS IS ASSUMED EMPATHY. IT’S AS IF OUR STORYTELLERS JUST PLOP A FILM IN OUR LAPS AND SAY, “HERE’S OUR MAIN CHARACTER AND WE’RE GOING TO ASSUME THAT YOU’RE INTERESTED IN THEM FOR THAT REASON ALONE. THEY’RE THE MAIN CHARACTER!” … HULK DESPISES THIS TREND.

In this case, we're not talking about the main character, we're talking about the Starkid. I'd argue that it's even more ill-advised and presumptuous to assume empathy for a Deus Ex Machina than it is to assume empathy for a protagonist. This is especially true if you agree with Film Crit Hulk's assessment that "EMPATHY CAN NEVER BE ASSUMED."

Bioware did nothing to build empathy with the entity we interacted with in the end, and every reason to hate it. And that drops us into this cycle of bile that I don't believe we will ever escape.

And now I've made myself sad.

[edisnooM]

I would just like to state that I hate the ending.

I hate the emotional gulf I felt at completion, I hate the final choices we are given, I hate what it did to one of my favourite games and stories, I hate what it has done to the fans.

And I hate that we know nothing.

We don't know if control or synthesis work. We don't know what the final outcome of destroy is. We know nothing. We are shown a coloured beam shooting out, the Normandy crashing on a planet and that's it. Curtain call.

So what do we have? "Speculations from Everybody". Nothing is invalid, all are equal. If you can imagine it it's possible. And so we have battle lines drawn, people yelling, and a forum aflame.

I don't think I have ever been so depressed as I am at the outcome to this beloved series.

[CulturalGeekGirl]

That said, this is the only thread I've ever seen pull itself back from the brink of that particular debate, and while I apologize most heartily for my part in participating in it, I think it has yielded some new, even sadder insights.

I apologize for those, too.

I've never meant to say "No, if you picked destroy you are obviously a monster."

The problem is that my response to anyone who says "well it's obvious that anyone who was smart would pick destroy" is to refute that idea in no uncertain terms, because we don't have enough information to make that call. We have exactly enough informatio for either interpretation of authorial intent to seem sort-of-plausible. In those cases, I come off as unnecessarily hard on destroy, and I have to watch that.

Modifié par CulturalGeekGirl, 16 mai 2012 - 05:46 .

[KitaSaturnyne]

I still maintain that the ending, beginning with the light elevator, feels more like the beginning of an entirely different story, rather than the ending to the current one. Like they just couldn't wait to begin Mass Effect 4 or something.

[edisnooM]

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...

That said, this is the only thread I've ever seen pull itself back from the brink of that particular debate, and while I apologize most heartily for my part in participating in it, I think it has yielded some new, even sadder insights.

I apologize for those, too.

I've never meant to say "No, if you picked destroy you are obviously a monster."

The problem is that my response to anyone who says "well it's obvious that anyone who was smart would pick destroy" is to refute that idea in no uncertain terms, because we don't have enough information to make that call. We have exactly enough informatio for either interpretation of authorial intent to seem sort-of-plausible. In those cases, I come off as unnecessarily hard on destroy, and I have to watch that.

I didn't think you were calling me a monster for stating my opinion and I apologize if my reactions were hostile.

I have seen this argument tearing away in other threads though and I think all the hostility and anger creeps into the mind, waiting to burst forth like Athena from Zeus. 

[edisnooM]

KitaSaturnyne wrote...

I still maintain that the ending, beginning with the light elevator, feels more like the beginning of an entirely different story, rather than the ending to the current one. Like they just couldn't wait to begin Mass Effect 4 or something.

And if what the marketting director said is to be believed that's exactly what it probably is.

[delta_vee]

@CulturalGeekGirl:

I'm not sure you need to apologize, per se. Though I'm glad we've grabbed that branch on our way off the cliff, the fact that Destroy has genocide(s) tacked on is a large part of the overall revulsion the endings inspire in many (but not all - you're not alone, KitaSaturnyne). It seems cruel, somehow, to me, to include that arbitrary price, and foolish to create the superstructure which seemingly compels it.

The other part, again to me, is the destruction of the relays in all three. That was the dagger in my heart as I watched the ending unfold. That, to me, carries more nihilism than the options. I know it's supposed to be a symbolic gesture, a shaking-off of the chains to make our own way - but they did too good a job at weaving the relays into the milieu, both in its literal functioning and it's aesthetic construction, to have their inescapable demolition resonate as much else but the decimation of the setting itself.

Edit to add: That's the one element your phantom-menacing neglects, as well as it salvages the rest.

edisnooM wrote...

KitaSaturnyne wrote...

I still maintain that the ending, beginning with the light elevator, feels more like the beginning of an entirely different story, rather than the ending to the current one. Like they just couldn't wait to begin Mass Effect 4 or something.

And if what the marketting director said is to be believed that's exactly what it probably is.

Tying in to what I said above, it does imply a dark age (to wash away the pesky details of our various savegames), and I'm sure they'd be willing to start afresh with Destroy as canon in any followup (because really, post-Control and post-Synthesis make for awkward scenarios to build a sequel series from).

Modifié par delta_vee, 16 mai 2012 - 06:04 .

[frypan]

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...

[reluctant snip]

From then on, everything's very similar, all the exposition is the same, but it's presented from the point of view of this AI, this ally, who is just as horrified by what she's discovering as you are. She doesn't endorse or reject any of the solutions, and she doesn't agree with the old catalyst's justifications. It's not some smug monster explaining why he's right, it's your friend explaining the enemy motivations she has discovered upon inhabiting this mainframe.

[another reluctant snip]

.

This is fantastic- if we must have a driving entity in the game, even it should be appalled by what happened.

Thankyou again CultureGeekGirl for enunciating a point I vaguely felt but was unable to identify. 

The reapers are entirely malevolent in their actions, and someone should be able to reject their methodology. I have always been dissatisfied with the higher motives that supposedly drive their program, when everything they do reeks of callous inefficiency. They chase their victims around on the groundor cut them down in flight, synthesise them alive,and turn loved ones into husks . None of these actions even suggest that an altrustic motive drives them.

Why on earth, if they must hervest us all for our own good, do they engage in such horrific practices? Even the collectors were able to paralyse their victims, and if we are meant to believe that the reapers intend some good for organics why do they not, with all those resources, gas or otherwise subdue the planets they attack? Some sort of attempt at a merciful solution should be evident if their are driven by such a imperative.

It all strikes me as either the actions of creatures ineffably evil, or somehow warped and twisted, much in the manner CultureGeekGitrl describes. A chance to reflect on, and reject  that horror was essential for me to resolve the story. However all that has been sidestepped by that cold, smug AI that stole any cathartic release from the end. 

And to hawk227 - please come back. There are plenty of  topics (other than the un-namable at present) to discuss, and I've really enjoyed your posts. 

[Seijin8]

@ CulturalGeekGirl: Great rewrite for the ending. Woudn't require a massive amount of changes, but it would succeed in definitively altering the tone. We can only hope that the EC will follow a similar path.

[frypan]

I Should specify too, I am talking about altruism towards future galactic organics as what drives the reapers - many of those same organic races that will later be harvested as well as part of this "preservation" motive.

That altrusim, twisted as it is, is still in marked contrast with everything they do throughout the game, which cannot even be defended as an efficient method of subduing the galaxy.

EDIT: Am happy if someone takes me to task on what could be regarded as efficient, merciful or both, but there are instances where I think these work in conjunction. What the reapers do seems messy and wasteful - as epitomised by a reaper chasing Shepherd around with its beam. It is like a child with a magnifying glass, when an orbital bombardment would achieve a quicker and more conclusive result.  

Modifié par frypan, 16 mai 2012 - 06:16 .

[edisnooM]

@CulturalGeekGirl

That "Rewrite of the Phantom Menace" is really good. Had it been done that way I for one would probably sat up a lot straighter and weighed the ramifications a lot more. Also glow child not just appearing in the final minutes would be a welcome change.

In addition to this I was thinking of Hackett's line about how if you couldn't find the Catalyst they'd take their chances with what they had. Why couldn't that have been an option? Even if we lose let us go down fighting. Heck that could be the Reapers win ending, just let us crash and burn as we are.

Like Shepard said in Arrival "Maybe you're right. Maybe we can't win this, but we'll fight you regardless."

[CulturalGeekGirl]

KitaSaturnyne wrote...

I still maintain that the ending, beginning with the light elevator, feels more like the beginning of an entirely different story, rather than the ending to the current one. Like they just couldn't wait to begin Mass Effect 4 or something.

One of my worst and most painful thoughts, the one that haunts me even now, is that the primary purpose of the ending was to make it impossible to make a ME4 that comes after ME3.

Now, the thing is, that's fair. They didn't want their property pounded into the metaphorical dust, reanimated time and again by forces beyond their control. They wanted to go out with a bang and shut the door behind them, and lord knows I get that.

'cause here's the thing: you literally cannot set a game after ME3 without picking a canon, and that's something Bioware is adamantly against. Have they trod on that borderline before? Sure, there were a couple "but my guy killed that guy" cameos in DA2, but one was a fairly minor choice, one was contradicting hearsay, and the rest were pretty much all just import bugs. I've got just enough handwavium in my pocket to let all those slide.

So OK, what do you have to do to end Mass Effect, to end Shepard's story? Well first, you have to end Shepard, and do so for the majority of players. And you can't just kill him... because it's already established that tech exists to like totally bring someone back from the dead, if you have reasonable remains of a body. So you have to not just kill, but vaporize Shepard. Burn him to the ground.

Still, maybe the big ups would make you play as, I don't know, Shepard's clone in the next game, like in that weird Alien movie later when she had part alien DNA. Gotta put a stop to that, too. Gotta canonize worlds so different that nobody can make up a coherent, agreed-upon world that honors all the canons. At the end of ME3, there are very, very different worlds. In one, everyone is glowing green. In one, all synthetics are dead and there are reaper corpses everywhere. And in one, presumably, Shepard just disappeared, no one knows what happened to him, and the Reapers all flew off into dark space (or into the sun) for no good raisin.  But how long with those statuses last? We can always creep them back to the mean, so you could have a universe plausibly be the future for either of them, with a line or two of replacement dialogue explaining how this came to be, like with not-Legion.

Now you can kinda sorta handwave Control and Destroy. In a thousand years, the Quarians could have rebuilt the Geth (they built 'em the first time and now everybody might even know the truth about the Morning War, and so they make 'em again because... hero race!), and the Shep-controlled reapers need not ever show up or have what happened to them explained...

But then you have our ol' pal Synthesis. Look, either every living thing in the entire galaxy is glowing green or they're not. There isn't enough handwavium in the WORLD for me to believe that Synthesis results in a similar galaxy a thousand or even ten thousand years later. Synthesis shuts the door on a world that doesn't outright dismiss one of the three canonical endings.

So there's nothing on the horizon but prequels and sidestories. This seems to be the party line, as well.

Modifié par CulturalGeekGirl, 16 mai 2012 - 06:24 .