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[frypan]

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...


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.

As a way of shutting down the series these arguments sound compelling. However, surely the problem is that any ending involving a single button push to change the galaxy can be reversed as well. Geez, this series has circumvented death, so pretty much anything is up for grabs.

EDIT: Ah, didnt want this at the top of the page. Sorry folks that its not a worthy post.

Modifié par frypan, 16 mai 2012 - 06:28 .

[delta_vee]

frypan wrote...

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.  

I'd say it's a fundamental disconnect, nothing more, nothing less.

Since all we saw of the Reapers in ME1 was Sovereign, with his slave army of geth and indoctrinated henchmen, the threat was...fuzzy. For all the laughable nonsense about colonist jelly and the Human Reaper in ME2, it was an attempt to bring the Reapers down to something ever-so-slightly more comprehensible, to justify some other method of culling than mass orbital bombardment. The idea of Reaper reproduction we got at least provided some reason to have troops, to have slaves, to have the litany of nightmares we fought face-to-face. (The game was built around fighting on foot, after all.)

Moving from reproduction to "ascension", well, frankly made a hash of things.

[KitaSaturnyne]

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...

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 prevent an 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.

Indeed. I'm just saying that the ending comes off as the beginning to a completely different story because it's so disconnected from the rest of the game, it changes the conflict (Reapers - tech singularity), then introduces another new conflict (mass relay dark age) all in the space of about four minutes. I likened it before to taking the last fifty pages of Moby Dick and replacing them with the first fifty pages of 1984.

All that said, I want to apologize to you all for my emotional outbursts regarding IT. The whole matter itself doesn't sit well with me, or to be more frank, it just pisses me off. And I don't know why, which makes it frustrating. So, I'm sorry to you all.

Modifié par KitaSaturnyne, 16 mai 2012 - 06:30 .

[MrFob]

CulturalGeekGirl 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.

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.

I don't know, I can't really see that as an intent. There are too many strange things going on for that to be the case IMO.
1. Why the breath scene after the destroy ending? I have to admit I find that scene very weird and useless in any context but in this one it would be extremely counter productive.
2. Diverse consequences have been used in weird ways in sequels before. Remember Deus Ex 2? DX1 had almost the same endings as ME3, yet we got to go on with some mish-mash of all of the endings. I wouldn't put it past them to go down that road or just canonize the destroy ending altogether.
3. The comments by the dev in the past couple of weeks. I had the distinct impression they were trying like mad to undo in universe damage and consequences of your deeds. "Oh yes, of course there could be survivors fromo the citadel.", "uh the mass relays were not that important, remember, FTL is really fast", "Also, the relays can be rebuilt so don't worry too much about that".

All of this indicates to me closing up the franchise was not the intend and if it was, they failed miserably and already started to back-pedal on the idea.

Got to say, I don't like that at all (especially point 3) because in a way, that makes the ending pointless even in its negative consequences.

[edisnooM]

"Alright Ahab, you're under arrest for Thoughtcrime"

"But, the whale!"

[frypan]

delta_vee wrote...

I'd say it's a fundamental disconnect, nothing more, nothing less.

Since all we saw of the Reapers in ME1 was Sovereign, with his slave army of geth and indoctrinated henchmen, the threat was...fuzzy. For all the laughable nonsense about colonist jelly and the Human Reaper in ME2, it was an attempt to bring the Reapers down to something ever-so-slightly more comprehensible, to justify some other method of culling than mass orbital bombardment. The idea of Reaper reproduction we got at least provided some reason to have troops, to have slaves, to have the litany of nightmares we fought face-to-face. (The game was built around fighting on foot, after all.)

Moving from reproduction to "ascension", well, frankly made a hash of things.

I agree. While the reapers were motivated by self interest their actions seemed clear. Harbinger's final words at the end of ME2 was the first time I was puzzled, thinking how they could be doing something good for us considering everything they've done so far.  (must have been the aborted dark energy plotline, which has been discussed in this thread)

But all that fell apart in the third game. I can accept some compromises to keep the game on the ground, but still felt that if they wanted to foreshadow some sort of altruism, there had to be a reason for the cruelty of many of their actions - something the game failed to provide enough of.

Maybe the bit about politicians going over to them covered that - as an attempt to set up a less destructive assimilation process (I have to be careful here - am I getting that from Marauder Shields? I have been guilty of bring that into discussions by mistake).  

[CulturalGeekGirl]

frypan wrote...

Maybe the bit about politicians going over to them covered that - as an attempt to set up a less destructive assimilation process (I have to be careful here - am I getting that from Marauder Shields? I have been guilty of bring that into discussions by mistake).  

It's been implied before that they used indoctrination of important figures to indoctrinate more people to make invasions smoother, though the definition of "smoother" was never fleshed out.

Also, from the pieces I've pulled together from ye olde darke energye plot, they were acting altruistically in a way. They were forming a giant galactic brain trust to try to figure out how to solve this dark energy problem, and they needed Humans, who were especially adaptive and creative, to contribute that final creative foce that would, hopefully, allow them to stop the dark energy thingummy once and for all. 

So it seems the original choice was more "Do we volunteer to be a goo reaper to save the rest of the galaxy, or say 'no thanks, guys' and let everyone die a thousand years from now when all the suns explode at once?" 

I think that's interesting, if a bit daft.

(an aside: my whole "well, I guess they're not making any more of that theory isn't something I'm certain of. It's just an idea that came to me out of nowhere, and that makes a weird sort of sense to me some of the time.)

[edisnooM]

@delta_vee

You missed the opportunity to use the term "Reaperduction". :-)

@frypan

Harbingers conversation at the end of Arrival seemed to capture some of the old Reaper charm though.

Granted it didn't amount to anything but for a moment he seemed to be channelling a bit of Sovereign

Modifié par edisnooM, 16 mai 2012 - 06:49 .

[delta_vee]

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...

'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.

[...]

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...

I tend to believe them when they say this is the end of Shepard's story - usually. That damn breath scene keeps getting in the way.

Did anyone see that "Terminator DLC" leak? Yes, yes, it was denied, it came from 4chan, I know. I'm not saying it was legit. What the (dedicated) troll did, though, is outline a plausible way they could start anew within the same basic setting. Canonize Destroy (the others are too awkward), let a thousand years pass to let the details of each individual Shepard fade, and continue from there. Dark ages are good for cleansing continuity.

Not ME4, but something else.

MrFob wrote...

1. Why the breath scene after the destroy ending? I have to admit I find that scene very weird and useless in any context but in this one it would be extremely counter productive.
2. Diverse consequences have been used in weird ways in sequels before. Remember Deus Ex 2? DX1 had almost the same endings as ME3, yet we got to go on with some mish-mash of all of the endings. I wouldn't put it past them to go down that road or just canonize the destroy ending altogether.
3. The comments by the dev in the past couple of weeks. I had the distinct impression they were trying like mad to undo in universe damage and consequences of your deeds. "Oh yes, of course there could be survivors fromo the citadel.", "uh the mass relays were not that important, remember, FTL is really fast", "Also, the relays can be rebuilt so don't worry too much about that".

All of this indicates to me closing up the franchise was not the intend and if it was, they failed miserably and already started to back-pedal on the idea.

Got to say, I don't like that at all (especially point 3) because in a way, that makes the ending pointless even in its negative consequences.

I chalk 1 up to an easter egg, but that's probably more dismissive than I should be. It gives them an out for post-ending DLC (thinking of course we wouldn't be such a general antipathy to the ending) or to a sequel-ish-thing.

2 is...unlikely, except for the canonization of Destroy. See above.

3, however, suggests to me that Walters and Hudson may have wanted to torch the setting and run, but the writers under them might not have been so willing. If the process were as compartmentalized as has been rumored, I can see that split forming.

[delta_vee]

@ edisnooM:

Some portmanteaus are just...wrong.

[frypan]

edisnooM wrote...

Harbingers conversation at the end of Arrival seemed to capture some of the old Reaper charm though.

Granted it didn't amount to anything but for a moment he seemed to be channelling a bit of Sovereign

Hah, I love a good monologue- all the best bad guys have them.

Which raises another point - what about if the reapers themselves came to realise their mistake a la Darth Vader? What he did was awful, but could be turned around by a redemptive act of self sacrifice at the end.

Rather than have the reapers acting for some bizarre good right up to the end of the game, why not have their logic challenged and overcome, either by the very arguments that have been presented in this thread and elsewhere,  by holding up a mirror to their actions and forcing them to confront their own logic. This is something I think CultureGeekGIrl has raised before.

The mess that is their ultimate goal and methodology is ripe for an in-game refutation. Shepherd could even then guide the manner of their resolution - again bringing it back to control or self destruction (a la various other opponents faced) A little trite, but at least consistent with how Shepherd has dealt with antagonists like Saren and the Illusive Man.

I can just see Harbinger planting seeds on Rannoch after a few stern words regarding how naughty he has been... 

[MrFob]

delta_vee wrote...

MrFob wrote...

1. Why the breath scene after the destroy ending? I have to admit I find that scene very weird and useless in any context but in this one it would be extremely counter productive.
2. Diverse consequences have been used in weird ways in sequels before. Remember Deus Ex 2? DX1 had almost the same endings as ME3, yet we got to go on with some mish-mash of all of the endings. I wouldn't put it past them to go down that road or just canonize the destroy ending altogether.
3. The comments by the dev in the past couple of weeks. I had the distinct impression they were trying like mad to undo in universe damage and consequences of your deeds. "Oh yes, of course there could be survivors fromo the citadel.", "uh the mass relays were not that important, remember, FTL is really fast", "Also, the relays can be rebuilt so don't worry too much about that".

All of this indicates to me closing up the franchise was not the intend and if it was, they failed miserably and already started to back-pedal on the idea.

Got to say, I don't like that at all (especially point 3) because in a way, that makes the ending pointless even in its negative consequences.

I chalk 1 up to an easter egg, but that's probably more dismissive than I should be. It gives them an out for post-ending DLC (thinking of course we wouldn't be such a general antipathy to the ending) or to a sequel-ish-thing.

Yes, It kind of feels like an easter egg, doesn't it? It's just ... It's too profound. I am really unsure about the intent behind that scene.

2 is...unlikely, except for the canonization of Destroy. See above.

Agreed. I was just using DX2 as an example that it has been done. Probably not the best one.

3, however, suggests to me that Walters and Hudson may have wanted to torch the setting and run, but the writers under them might not have been so willing. If the process were as compartmentalized as has been rumored, I can see that split forming.

And this what worries me a great deal. That kind of split, if it happened already messed up the franchise but it has the potential to do so even more. If ou have one set of authors going in one direction and the others going into the opposite, you will never get a coherent universe. One can only hope that they can pull themselves together after this shock and get back on track.

[Dont Kaidan Me]

MrFob wrote...

CulturalGeekGirl 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.

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.

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

I don't know, I can't really see that as an intent. There are too many strange things going on for that to be the case IMO.

All of this indicates to me closing up the franchise was not the intend and if it was, they failed miserably and already started to back-pedal on the idea.

Got to say, I don't like that at all (especially point 3) because in a way, that makes the ending pointless even in its negative consequences.

I believe Bioware's marketing director says... wait... I'll find the quote:

"This series definitely doesn't end with Mass Effect 3," says publisher.

Mass Effect 3 is obviously the concluding chapter in Shepard's battle
against the Reapers, but BioWare says the game was designed "to be a new
beginning" for the franchise. "We designed Mass Effect 3 to be a new beginning," said BioWare marketing director David Silverman in an interview with CVG. "This series definitely doesn't end with Mass Effect 3." Last month BioWare co-founders Greg Zeschuk and Ray Muzyka confirmed that BioWare is looking for the "right way" to continue the Mass Effect series..

http://www.videogame..._beginning.html

Modifié par Dont Kaidan Me, 16 mai 2012 - 07:26 .

[CulturalGeekGirl]

That's a July article. July is so long ago that nothing from that era bears any resemblance to reality... remember, that's back when they were saying that the endings would be so varied you'd never be able to say "Oh, I got ending A, B, or C."

I believe that since then they've made statements to the effect that any future content will take place prior to the ending of ME3, but I can't track those down at the moment, so I could just be misremembering.

[delta_vee]

That was a Walters quote. Which, given the backpedaling the rest of the writers seem to be doing, may not be as absolute as we surmise.

[edisnooM]

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...

That's a July article. July is so long ago that nothing from that era bears any resemblance to reality... remember, that's back when they were saying that the endings would be so varied you'd never be able to say "Oh, I got ending A, B, or C."

I believe that since then they've made statements to the effect that any future content will take place prior to the ending of ME3, but I can't track those down at the moment, so I could just be misremembering.

That is what Casey Hudson said in the Final Hours app. However all decisions on Mass Effect are subject to the whims of EA.

[MrFob]

Forgive the obvious but:I think an "Ah yes, BioWare, we have dismissed their claims." is in order.

[M0keys]

Considering we spent 5 years trying to save it, I think that's a big 10-4.

[Seijin8]

Honestly, an ME game set a couple generations into this dark age would make for an interesting setting. Maybe a little like Fallout meets ME. And nobody but Shepard (and possibly the Reapers) ultimately knows what happened with the Catalyst. They just saw an RGB explosion, and quickly had to fend for themselves in a resource-driven survival reflex.

To that end, the ambiguity of the endings may be designed to provide wiggle-room with the specifics of this plot. Arising from an era where the major players don't know wtf happened.

I have no problem with such a setting. My issue is the manner in which they chose to create it.

[CulturalGeekGirl]

Sure, but if he said it during the Final Hours app, then it might give some insight as to what he was thinking at the time he was working on the ending.

If that's different now... well.

Here's the crazy thing: they could completely fix all of this really, really easily by making Synthesis what it should have been: if you pick Synthesis, you release optional, voluntary technology into the universe that allows hybridization. I think a large number of people would choose to take it, especially considering implied immortality and improved survivability in this new, radically changed galaxy.

Hell, want to make Synthesis the "Best" ending, like you claimed before? Hold onto your hats, I have some phantom menace for you right here. (I had a draft of this sitting somewhere for a while, but I think I lost it because I looked at it and said "people will say this is dumb," so I never bothered to save it. But screw that, tonight I'm rolling out all my most embarrassing solutions to the Jar-jar problem, for your reading pleasure.)

Bear in mind this is a ridiculous version that I wrote in two minutes, but I think it captures the idea.

"Ok, I'll do it."

"Right, just go jump into that beam there."

"No."

"What?"

"I said I'll do it, but I'm not going to jump into some beam and force it on everybody. Here's the deal: you can synergize me, and send me back out there. I'll find my crew, and you can be damn sure that if I'm not me anymore, {love interest} will shoot me in the head then and there, and they'll get rid of every one of you SOBs out of pure spite."

"Synthesis does not destroy anyone's identity, it merely provides... enhancements. Understanding."

"So you say. Well, If I am me after you 'evolve' me, I'll go around and ask other people if they want to sign up. Maybe they will... I'm kind of a big deal. If they don't, you can come back here with your Reapers another fifty thousand years from now, and we'll fight it out for real, toe to toe."

"It will all lead to the same thing. Organics and synthetics will merge, or they will die."

"Yeah, yeah, but you see... this way, they have a choice. And that's all any of us were ever really asking for."

Cut to shepard getting green-glowed in a way that is slightly less ridiculous looking, and the Reapers leaving.

There. Now Synthesis is possibly awesome and implies the possibility of Shepard wandering the galaxy like Kwai Chang Caine, trying to convince people to voluntarily embrace the singularity if they want, while also getting galactic cooperation up to a level where it might be possible to defeat the reapers conventionally if they come back in a few millenia, if'n we don't actually end up embracing transhumanoidism after all.

(the original version was longer and involved a discussion about how people might reject Shepard if she came to them changed considering that people often hate what they do not understand, blah blah blah.)

Modifié par CulturalGeekGirl, 16 mai 2012 - 07:55 .

[edisnooM]

@CulturalGeekGirl

That does sound like a better version of synthesis, but it feels like it's going into the Matrix ending a bit.

[frypan]

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...


Cut to shepard getting green-glowed in a way that is slightly less ridiculous looking, and the Reapers leaving.

There. Now Synthesis is possibly awesome and implies the possibility of Shepard wandering the galaxy like Kwai Chang Caine, trying to convince people to voluntarily embrace the singularity if they want, while also getting galactic cooperation up to a level where it might be possible to defeat the reapers conventionally if they come back in a few millenia, if'n we don't actually end up embracing transhumanoidism after all.

(the original version was longer and involved a discussion about how people might reject Shepard if she came to them changed considering that people often hate what they do not understand, blah blah blah.)

Wonderful - wish I could put things so eloquently and so fast. What might also work is to ditch the green low altogether. It feels arbitrary and tacked on to show it is not a red or blue choice.

We really need something that reflects Shepherds character. What about something like the scarring from Me2, but blue or red again to reflect the path Shepherd has chosen throuhout the game? Synthesis could mean something wondrous then as shown by some sort of blue circuitry or haze, or have dark overtones reflecting Shepherds renegade, domineering nature.

[CulturalGeekGirl]

edisnooM wrote...

@CulturalGeekGirl

That does sound like a better version of synthesis, but it feels like it's going into the Matrix ending a bit.

THERE IS NO WAY TO FIX SYNTHESIS WITHOUT IT GOING INTO THE MATRIX ENDING A LITTLE BIT.

>_>



I... should not still be awake.

Modifié par CulturalGeekGirl, 16 mai 2012 - 08:04 .

[edisnooM]

I made these suggestions to KitaSaturnyne I think a while back in the thread, but supposedly exercise (about 30 mins) and not thinking about trying to sleep is supposed to help.

Edit: You may be taking too much on yourself trying fix the ending. Unless it's helping you cope in which case go for it. 

Modifié par edisnooM, 16 mai 2012 - 08:10 .