858 réponses à ce sujet

[Zulmoka531]

Ya know, if the Reapers are concerned about Synthetics..why not destroy the Geth when ya know, they were allied with them, instead of turning people into paste or organic/synthetic abominations...

[Dendio1]

This theory makes more sense than indoctrination.

[2484Stryker]

Read the article. Didn't address the parts that I thought made the ending broken. But it does raise some good points; it just so happens that I don't have a problem with those points.

[Geneaux486]

Zulmoka531 wrote...

Ya know, if the Reapers are concerned about Synthetics..why not destroy the Geth when ya know, they were allied with them, instead of turning people into paste or organic/synthetic abominations...

The Reapers also view themselves as the pinnacle of evolution, believing it an honor for a species to join their ranks.  They think that after a certain point, each civilization peaks out and has nothing left to do but ascend to Reaper form so the next batch of life can come in.  That goes all the way back to your conversation with Sovereign in the first game.

[Veloric Wu]

Read the whole article. It's a good read, thanks for sharing by the way. Here're my thoughts:
To sum up, I sympathize with those who defend the endings. I agree that the ending is a ending to just the Reaper story, and it's foreshadowed throughout the entire series.

BUT!


(1) Mass Effect is a game. None of us can deny that. It's here to be awesome, it's here to tell the good stories like no other sci-fi games has ever done. It's not here to teach us an astrobiology. Any video game with an ending that needs to be explained by a more constructive article like this, is a failure in itself.

(2) BioWare is trying to show us their logic at a very macro level, but they sacrificed almost every micro level logic to do that. The whole Mass Effect 3 story, despite the ending, is very well-designed and engaging. The problej with the ending is not that it's illogical. However logical it is, the game has led us to believe the endings of every other directions but this.

(3) The ending failed because it was not what the 99% part of the game has led the audience to expect.

(4) With the logic in your article, the Reapers are the Hitler here. NO ONE, I mean no one, not even a Type II life, has the right to claim control other lives and decide their future. Patriarchy, involved with violence & slavery, is what the Reapers are. They should not be justified.

Modifié par FeriktheCerberus, 20 avril 2012 - 04:42 .

[Wolven_Soul]

LucasShark wrote...

Mylia Stenetch wrote...

LucasShark wrote...
Way to miss the point: I do dislike a lot of "AAA" games because they are often mediocre to poor quality, sold as high quality.  That is unacceptable to me.

I did not miss the point you are telling *people* to hate something they might enjoy. I do not like Transformers movies I think they are utter gutter trash, but I know people who love them. That is their choice. It is the same as you liking Starship Troopers although it should be classified as garbage since it is B movie at best.

People enjoy what they want and get what they deserve most of the time. As always it is up to them to make a desicions if they like it or hate it.

That was sort of the point of the example: there's nothing wrong with people "liking" poor quality products, but they have to simaltainously admit that it is their opinion and the product is still of poor quality.  People can like the aste of McDonalds, but it is still objectively bad for you.

What I was taking issue with in the OP's posts, and in AAA gaming in general is this: claiming "I like it, therefore it is objectively good", which is a logical falicy.

I agree.  There are plenty of things that I like that I openly admit are just bad.  I like the Transformers movies, which as Mylia said are not good movies.  But I still like them because...well...giant transforming robots having huge epic battles are cool. 

There are also things that I really do not like that I will admit are good.  Stephen King is a fantastic writer who writes really good books.  I just don't like them most of the time because I don't much care for his writing style.  To many flashbacks.

[Aren19]

I read the article, it made me want to hate the ending even more, and I already moved my anger away from the ending, until I read this article. It just fails at explaining the ending and is even worse than the ending itself.

[Zulmoka531]

Geneaux486 wrote...

Zulmoka531 wrote...

Ya know, if the Reapers are concerned about Synthetics..why not destroy the Geth when ya know, they were allied with them, instead of turning people into paste or organic/synthetic abominations...

The Reapers also view themselves as the pinnacle of evolution, believing it an honor for a species to join their ranks.  They think that after a certain point, each civilization peaks out and has nothing left to do but ascend to Reaper form so the next batch of life can come in.  That goes all the way back to your conversation with Sovereign in the first game.

Oh I remember that conversation. But it just goes back to the whole synthetics killing organics so synthetics don't kill organics.

I don't want to derail the topic, but I seriously shouldn't need to delve deep into scientific theory in order to understand a game such as Mass Effect. I love hard core sci-fi, but all of this is just...like someone has delusions of granduer and forgot to stop and take a look at how people would react to it all.

[Geneaux486]

AwesomeName wrote...

FeriktheCerberus wrote...

(3) The ending failed because it was not what the 99% part of the game has led the audience to expect.

I guess I'm wierd, because I was expecting to save the galaxy as much as I could possibily do as a human being, and give galactic civilisation their own future and choices.  I'm completely convinced I succeeded in that.

But it's invalid because we don't know that it's not an illusion, just like we don't know that there weren't ghosts at the first Thanksgiving. 

Seriously dude, you're missing out on a prime opportunity to overcomplicate simple and straightforward concepts.

Modifié par Geneaux486, 20 avril 2012 - 04:47 .

[Geneaux486]

AwesomeName wrote...
An illusion??  Why would it be?

It wouldn't.  I was being facetious.

[Geneaux486]

AwesomeName wrote...

Man I am too serious sometimes!  >.<

Well it was based on an actual complaint about the ending, just one I happen to think has little validity. 

Modifié par Geneaux486, 20 avril 2012 - 04:52 .

[InfiniteDemise]

Geneaux486 wrote...

AwesomeName wrote...
An illusion??  Why would it be?

It wouldn't.  I was being facetious.

Nah, you're both being idiots.

Really, this is crap, as is the ending. Thanks for playing (ME3 only) though.

[Geneaux486]

InfiniteDemise wrote...

Geneaux486 wrote...

AwesomeName wrote...
An illusion??  Why would it be?

It wouldn't.  I was being facetious.

Nah, you're both being idiots.

Really, this is crap, as is the ending. Thanks for playing (ME3 only) though.

You don't know what you're talking about.

[Joeybsmooth4]

AwesomeName wrote...

Rafe34 wrote...

In fact, the only reason I felt the ending was decent and not great is because there were no surprises the way there were in a game like Portal.

Guy's a moron. No surprises. Really.

And his entire argument is undermined by the fact that this was NOT the original ending for the trilogy. Karpshyn's dark energy ending was the original ending. It is a fact that this ending was changed from the original one.

Not to mention, the entirety of these types of "theories" put forward by Hawking and his ilk during the last twenty years are based on no evidence at all. 

It is pure speculation- wait a minute. 

I got it now! Steven Hawking wrote the ending!

I think the point REI makes is that what we get in the games is based on fairly well known speculative ideas, rather than coming out of nowhere.  In other words, the writers expected the audience to know about concepts such as the technilogical singularity, etc.  Personally I don't think that's unreasonable.

Anyway... I liked what I've read from the article so far - will have to read it all later.  I suspect most will shy away from it though since most people tend to reject anything that takes too much effort to understand.  From what I've read it's not really that technical though - you definitely don't need to be an astrobiologist to understand any of it, anymore than you would need to be able to enjoy a David Attenborough documentary.

You don't think that it is unreasonable for people to know about the works of a Hawkins ? When the video game up to that point has not been going that deep into stuff up until the end ?  What they offer up is far more than speaking about a technilogical singularity.  And has pointed out many of the views are not even agreed on by all people.

[tomcplotts]

I"m sure this been hammered a hundred times up the poor OPs keister, but as a general rule, the responsibility of storytelling lies with the storyteller, not their press agents.

next!

[someone else]

y'know, it occurs to me that the assumption that exponentially higher intelligences will bend all their efforts toward increasingly horrific forms of murder, destruction, and implacable hatred for any form of life other than themselves is very strange.

this says a lot more about OUR present state of development than that of any future race...

[Zine2]

Nothing said in that article about science is actually factual.

Seriously. Not a single damn thing in that article is actually supported by real science. Whoever wrote it was an incredible retard. Whoever believes anything the article says about science deserves the same label.

It only goes to demonstrate that only idiots like the ending.

[indyracing]

AwesomeName wrote...

FeriktheCerberus wrote...

(3) The ending failed because it was not what the 99% part of the game has led the audience to expect.

I guess I'm wierd, because I was expecting to save the galaxy as much as I could possibily do as a human being, and give galactic civilisation their own future and choices.  I'm completely convinced I succeeded in that.

Well I guess i'm weird, because as I finished playing Mass Effect 3, I thought I had just wiped out all life in all systems that had a mass relay, because the game had taught me that's what happens when a mass relay blows up, and that's sure what it looks like (even admitted by this article) happened after my choice was made.

Now I know that tweets have said this didn't happen, but not only do I not think I should understand relatively obscure astrobiology theories to understand the ending of my entertainment, but I should also not rely on tweets, either.

That's even assuming that one accepts the appearance of the God Childe, which happens to violate the basic rules of good storytelling (Deus Ex Machina and changing the rules of the game and all that), physics and astrobiology notwithstanding.

BTW, I've watched quite a few of Through the Wormholes and The Universe episodes, and while I love listening to Michio Kaku, he even describes at time when he himself dismisses the existence of black holes as a laughable idea.  Of course our science of today leads one to conclude that they exist - but we still can't see the black hole, just the effect of some source of gravity on an area that leads one to conclude it must be a black hole there in the middle, because it seems that something there is acting like what we think a black hole would act like. 

While I don't doubt the science, that's not actually proof black holes exist.

Who's to say that given another 40 years, Kaku and Hawking wouldn't do a 180 on their theories (again, just theories, and not at all proveable) of civilizations?

But since these theories weren't mentioned in the lead up to the Catalyst, and even if we presume they were what the writers had in mind when writing, aren't actually mentioned then, either, that just reinforces the whole failure of basic storytelling 101 idea.

[Cyne]

If the ending needs to be explained via lengthy articles on the internet, it has already failed.The explanation should be in the game itself, Period.

Modifié par Cyne, 20 avril 2012 - 05:05 .

[Zine2]

Joeybsmooth4 wrote...

You don't think that it is unreasonable for people to know about the works of a Hawkins ? When the video game up to that point has not been going that deep into stuff up until the end ?  What they offer up is far more than speaking about a technilogical singularity.  And has pointed out many of the views are not even agreed on by all people.

All real computer scientists have shown that the technological singularity isn't real. At all.

Which isn't surprising because it was invented by a bunch of morons who had paranoid delusions about the robot apocalypse.