858 réponses à ce sujet

[Luzarius]

sp0ck 06 wrote...

 If you hated/disliked/didn't understand/were let down by the ending, read this editorial.

http://galacticpillo...ffect-3-ending/

It really might make you look differently at not just the ending but the whole of ME3.  If you want to love the conclusion to the series but just can't, please give this a read.  It's long but worth it.  

Damn, someone out there paid more attention to the dialogue than me. I'm impressed. 

I don't agree with 50% of the article but he did catch certain things that reinforce why the ending was so epic.

Luzarius

Modifié par Luzarius, 20 avril 2012 - 09:59 .

[Hendrik.III]

What I just read was a truckload of babble rife with scientific theories, only swiped together to make sense of a controversial ending to a videogame.

Truly, if one needs to go THAT far to validate a poor ending that feels like it has been haphazardly stapled to a great game... it only reinforces my current view: that the ending was tied up in a rush.

[permeus2nd]

OK personally you seam to desprat to get people to read that link and it kind of makes me think of a bad plot device to kill off a person in a bad game

""oh but you must try my tea""
""no thank" "

""But its good for you, please have some""
""I'm not a big fan of tea, I'll pass""

""But its good tea and your friends have already had there's""
""I said no I don't want the tea""

And then it starts again because the only way to move on is for you to drink the tea you know is a trap and be poisened,

Is the link poisoned?


CWR

[mbr.to]

thank you for the link

[The Protheans]

Luzarius wrote...

sp0ck 06 wrote...

 If you hated/disliked/didn't understand/were let down by the ending, read this editorial.

http://galacticpillo...ffect-3-ending/

It really might make you look differently at not just the ending but the whole of ME3.  If you want to love the conclusion to the series but just can't, please give this a read.  It's long but worth it.  

Damn, someone out there paid more attention to the dialogue than me. I'm impressed. 

I don't agree with 50% of the article but he did catch certain things that reinforce why the ending was so epic.

Luzarius

Hey! you're that noob who does weird things.

[Terumitsu]

I've started reading this article and I have to say it is a very poor argument that is made with opinion and ignorance rather than fact. First off, it has been mentioned earlier in this thread that the ending was, in fact, not foreshadowed for the entire series as the ending was not even pinned down until November of last year. While some themes may have been set down based upon past games, there was no concrete plan.

Another thing is that this article automatically assumes AI is bad due to the way it is framed and what with it talking about 'replacing humanity' in so many words. It even lumps it into the same catagory as 'Grey Goo' (Fun fact: Grey goo is actually pretty stupid an idea for a few reasons. The first is that nano-machines will always be super fragile. This is a fact based upon the level of complexity required while simultaneously remaining microscopic. They will basically not be able to survive outside the environment they were created for. At least not for very long. Also, the idea of a von Neumann machine gone wild, which is what grey goo is, displays a lack of knowledge of what such a machine is and requires. Grey goo scenarios depict nanites pulling apart atoms or molecules to build up new nanites. This is stupid because the ENERGY and TIME required for this are astronomical. Do you know how long it would take to create a mass of that of the human body though this process? A whole hell of a lot. The only way to jumpstart this would to have the material ready and pump it into a tank of nanite goo which can then create all the different parts of the human body in parallel to cut down on time. This would still take Months if not even longer. And we are talking TRILLIONS of atoms here. Or just BILLIONS of molecules. Really, grey goo would only be a threat if it were left alone for about a thousand years and it still wouldn't be anywhere near as dangerous as fiction depicts it. The threat it would pose would only really be measurable on a geological scale if left untouched by humans. And even then, a good thunderstorm could wipe out huge parts of it easily. In short, grey goo is just some stupid pesudo-science that Michael Crichton came up with one day when making a book.)

Right, before I got on that tangent there, the whole AI being evil bit is just stupid based upon similar grounds. That is to say, lack of computer knowledge. Really, AI in fiction is just the modern day Frankenstine story. And until we have paralell processing neural computer networks, AI is going to remain rather primitive.

The rest of the article is just overreaching extrapolation or rehashing of previous theories. While this is a generalization of the remainder, the gist I am getting is that there is a frighteningly tenuous between what actually happened and this person's headcannon.

I will give them some credit at the end though. They are dead on about the part of us uniting the galaxy being a victory in and of itself.

Modifié par Terumitsu, 20 avril 2012 - 10:24 .

[Fail_Inc]

Another one of those posts that think people demand "rainbows & ponies" endings with everyone waving at the screen, all happy... how cute... Oh and don't forget how deep the ending is, it always works! Wish our simple minds could understand the super deep philosophical undertones...

In the end my Shepard didn't do anything that fit his character, the character I played last 2 games and the 95% of the 3rd game is replaced by a mindless drone who just follows instructions...

When you set the bar high with missions like Tuchanka the ending just feels extremely lazy and terrible. Anyone have problems with Mordin dying? Or Thane? (apart from that guy was awesome why did he have to die type of thing?) No because the characters, cutscenes and missions are done right.

Shepard doesn't go down like a hero that is the problem.
Ending "demands" pages of explanation to make sense that is the problem.
Ending is not deep nor philosophical but people treat it like it's Plato or Hegel that is the problem.

Hide behind "It's art" defense or "You're just too retarded to understand it" defense all you want but it doesn't matter. Ending is lazy/weak/lame one way or another and ME as series deserves better, I know it, you know it but BW somehow forgot that part...

[Hexxys]

Read it. LOL, what a waste of my time.

[shodiswe]

/ Quote
•In the paragon ending, the control “beam” and “shockwave” are made very clearly visible, and even causes some ships to drift. The Catalyst had always been controlled the by the Reapers; Shepard’s involvement shouldn’t be so dramatic.

/ Quote

I thought the catalyst said "it" controlled the reapers, the were it's solution.

As for the rest of those theories; Which is what they are...
I also have issues with the implications of several of those theories, I don't care how respected the people who created them are...

Organic life and life spans, one reason most organic life has a short life span is because shorterlifespans made it easier for said lifeform to adjust to environmental changes and requierments.

Lifeforms with short lifespans and fast maturement cycles were more likely to survive because they would breed a lot of ofspring and some of those would be more adapted to the chagnes that hapend, those individuals would then give birth to more adapted organic lifeforms that could trive until the need for change would hapen again, upon which the pattern repeats. Need for change is both an evolutionalry aswell as cultural and technological driving force.

I would argue that a synthetic lifeform would stop evolvign after a while due to the lacking of challenges that needs to be overcome. In a way this could also explain the reapers, they got frustrated and afraid that others would surpass them, eventualy they tried to incorporate organic components into their superstructure.
However even such ideas would fail since the organic components serves no purpose due to the lack of independence and need for development.
Synthetic life woudl solely live inside their servers and technology in which the rest of the galaxy serves little purpose, they wouldn't need to invent things like the wheel or new powersources or drivecores to propell them long distances.
The geth concensus is a prime example of the stagnation of synthetics. All of their future evolution would be based on introspection.

While organic life could theoreticaly design and change according to their percived needs and no longer be restricted to random evolutionalry development. The need for expansion and seekign further answers and resources in the physical world would not dissapear.

In a way you could see it in the way that the Reapers embraces the concept of synthesis, as a way of moving past their synthetic limitations.

However much I enjoy debating philosophy the main problem Igot with the ending is the lack of story elements when you get to the catalyst.
I want to take part of the storywriters vision and story, and Iwant conversation options with the catalyst that are entertaining and follows the concept of player controlled storytellign that was introduced back in ME1-3.

My biggest issue is that you get railroaded into a storytellign that does very little to explain the vision of the writers and one of the main storytelling features is lost along the way. Not to mention that a lot of the ending did seem rushed and nowhere close to the quality of the rest of ME3.

What stops synthetic life from being superior is the lack of a need for change.

If you don't need a hammer or a wheel then you arn't likely to invent it, the invention of those things will eventualy lead to new needs that you didnt know existed before that point.

I would also think that several of the weapon upgrades the geth had came from the reapers with particle weapons being one example, it's very similar to the reaper particle beams.

However if synthetic life evolves around individual entities then future development would be more likely, especialy if they don't all agree on everything, then they create different paths of development. But woudl that include the physical world? or meta theoretical ideas?

While I love philosophical and scientific speculation it doesn't fix the main issues with the ending.
Also how does it make sense for the catalyst to explain how to destroy the reapers and all synthetic life?
If the catalyst is the reaper leader.... From their point of view they wouldn't want to be destroyed, they would want to reach the next apex, because there is no apex of development...

Also there is no reason to belive there can't be a class 4 or 5 civilization eventualy.

Maybe a civilization whose existance has merged the quantumfluctuations of the universe and they become part of the universe... It sounds crazy, but that would be the ultimate state of existance, there would be no end to that existance, it would be eternal no matter what hapend. (I might consider that a nightmare though)

[CrazyRah]

Fail_Inc wrote...

Another one of those posts that think people demand "rainbows & ponies" endings with everyone waving at the screen, all happy... how cute... Oh and don't forget how deep the ending is, it always works! Wish our simple minds could understand the super deep philosophical undertones...

In the end my Shepard didn't do anything that fit his character, the character I played last 2 games and the 95% of the 3rd game is replaced by a mindless drone who just follows instructions...

When you set the bar high with missions like Tuchanka the ending just feels extremely lazy and terrible. Anyone have problems with Mordin dying? Or Thane? (apart from that guy was awesome why did he have to die type of thing?) No because the characters, cutscenes and missions are done right.

Shepard doesn't go down like a hero that is the problem.
Ending "demands" pages of explanation to make sense that is the problem.
Ending is not deep nor philosophical but people treat it like it's Plato or Hegel that is the problem.

Hide behind "It's art" defense or "You're just too retarded to understand it" defense all you want but it doesn't matter. Ending is lazy/weak/lame one way or another and ME as series deserves better, I know it, you know it but BW somehow forgot that part...

Very well said.

[Dezerte]

He makes a few points, but also dances around the problems with the ending, discarding them as "minor".

[ticklefist]

Just trying to get something right. The ending was scribbled down on one page by some guy. Some other guy just spent 18 pages trying to explain the depth of it?

[Sable Phoenix]

When someone who is an apologist for the ending has to ignore even more plot holes than someone who dislikes it, it does not give me confidence in his arguments. As soon as he starts saying that all you have to do is just ignore part of what we see on screen and everything works great, all his credibility goes out the window.

Modifié par Sable Phoenix, 20 avril 2012 - 10:33 .

[Terumitsu]

shodiswe wrote...

(Lots of text here. Edited for size)

Sir/Ma'm, you deserve my enitre cookie jar and everything in it.

Modifié par Terumitsu, 20 avril 2012 - 10:36 .

[guacamayus]

shodiswe wrote...

/ Quote
•In the paragon ending,
the control “beam” and “shockwave” are made very clearly visible, and
even causes some ships to drift. The Catalyst had always been controlled
the by the Reapers; Shepard’s involvement shouldn’t be so dramatic.

/ Quote

I thought the catalyst said "it" controlled the reapers, the were it's solution.

As for the rest of those theories; Which is what they are...
I
also have issues with the implications of several of those theories, I
don't care how respected the people who created them are...

Organic
life and life spans, one reason most organic life has a short life span
is because shorterlifespans made it easier for said lifeform to adjust
to environmental changes and requierments.

Lifeforms with short
lifespans and fast maturement cycles were more likely to survive because
they would breed a lot of ofspring and some of those would be more
adapted to the chagnes that hapend, those individuals would then give
birth to more adapted organic lifeforms that could trive until the need
for change would hapen again, upon which the pattern repeats. Need for
change is both an evolutionalry aswell as cultural and technological
driving force.

I would argue that a synthetic lifeform would stop
evolvign after a while due to the lacking of challenges that needs to
be overcome. In a way this could also explain the reapers, they got
frustrated and afraid that others would surpass them, eventualy they
tried to incorporate organic components into their superstructure.
However
even such ideas would fail since the organic components serves no
purpose due to the lack of independence and need for development.
Synthetic
life woudl solely live inside their servers and technology in which the
rest of the galaxy serves little purpose, they wouldn't need to invent
things like the wheel or new powersources or drivecores to propell them
long distances.
The geth concensus is a prime example of the
stagnation of synthetics. All of their future evolution would be based
on introspection.

While organic life could theoreticaly design
and change according to their percived needs and no longer be restricted
to random evolutionalry development. The need for expansion and seekign
further answers and resources in the physical world would not
dissapear.

In a way you could see it in the way that the Reapers
embraces the concept of synthesis, as a way of moving past their
synthetic limitations.

However much I enjoy debating philosophy
the main problem Igot with the ending is the lack of story elements
when you get to the catalyst.
I want to take part of the storywriters
vision and story, and Iwant conversation options with the catalyst
that are entertaining and follows the concept of player controlled
storytellign that was introduced back in ME1-3.

My biggest issue
is that you get railroaded into a storytellign that does very little to
explain the vision of the writers and one of the main storytelling
features is lost along the way. Not to mention that a lot of the ending
did seem rushed and nowhere close to the quality of the rest of ME3.

What stops synthetic life from being superior is the lack of a need for change.

If
you don't need a hammer or a wheel then you arn't likely to invent it,
the invention of those things will eventualy lead to new needs that you
didnt know existed before that point.

I would also think that
several of the weapon upgrades the geth had came from the reapers with
particle weapons being one example, it's very similar to the reaper
particle beams.

However if synthetic life evolves around
individual entities then future development would be more likely,
especialy if they don't all agree on everything, then they create
different paths of development. But woudl that include the physical
world? or meta theoretical ideas?

While I love philosophical and scientific speculation it doesn't fix the main issues with the ending.
Also how does it make sense for the catalyst to explain how to destroy the reapers and all synthetic life?
If
the catalyst is the reaper leader.... From their point of view they
wouldn't want to be destroyed, they would want to reach the next apex,
because there is no apex of development...

Also there is no reason to belive there can't be a class 4 or 5 civilization eventualy.

Maybe
a civilization whose existance has merged the quantumfluctuations of
the universe and they become part of the universe... It sounds crazy,
but that would be the ultimate state of existance, there would be no end
to that existance, it would be eternal no matter what hapend. (I might
consider that a nightmare though)

Well I can't go into too much detail because I'll be late for work but real quick, in my opinion as species evolve new challenges arise; for example, let's say the Geth build their Dyson Sphere, now they are one mind powered by the full energy of a star. Once they managed this, their next step would probably be to master the energy not only of the star within their system but several at the same time, and so on.

As technology and understanding increases so does the challenges available, both always push that horizon a little further.

Modifié par guacamayus, 20 avril 2012 - 10:37 .

[Fraevar]

Sable Phoenix wrote...

When someone who is an apologist for the ending has to ignore even more plot holes than someone who dislikes it, it does not give me confidence in his arguments. As soon as he starts saying that all you have to do is just ignore part of what we see on screen and everything works great, all his credibility goes out the window.

Exactly this. We make our decisions based on the material available in the game - not what the devs suddenly write on twitter or state at PAX East. That is why the ending is at the very least incomplete - the material a lot of people use to try to defend it simply does not exist within the game.

[Aslanasadi]

Delerius_Jedi wrote...

Sable Phoenix wrote...

When someone who is an apologist for the ending has to ignore even more plot holes than someone who dislikes it, it does not give me confidence in his arguments. As soon as he starts saying that all you have to do is just ignore part of what we see on screen and everything works great, all his credibility goes out the window.

Exactly this. We make our decisions based on the material available in the game - not what the devs suddenly write on twitter or state at PAX East. That is why the ending is at the very least incomplete - the material a lot of people use to try to defend it simply does not exist within the game.

I agree with all of this.

[shodiswe]

Delerius_Jedi wrote...

Sable Phoenix wrote...

When someone who is an apologist for the ending has to ignore even more plot holes than someone who dislikes it, it does not give me confidence in his arguments. As soon as he starts saying that all you have to do is just ignore part of what we see on screen and everything works great, all his credibility goes out the window.

Exactly this. We make our decisions based on the material available in the game - not what the devs suddenly write on twitter or state at PAX East. That is why the ending is at the very least incomplete - the material a lot of people use to try to defend it simply does not exist within the game.

This probably the most common view, the ending does not conform to the overall story given throughout the "3" games. That's enough of a problem from a storytelling viewpoint.

[The Lightspeaker]

Reading that article was genuinely painful and frankly made me angry. My father is a physicist, as a child I was fascinated by space and I'm now a biologist. I have a passing interest in astrobiology; am familiar with the Kardashev Scale, the Drake equation and concepts such as "Grey goo" which were all brought up in that article.

The article is total junk. A lot of stuff in it is literally irrelevant. It is interesting how long the author spends on debunking everyone else's ideas at to expense of supporting, or even properly explaining, their own. He wastes time introducing concepts that he doesn't even need to address to make his point.

Admittedly I was getting so annoyed by the tone of the article I didn't read every word but I don't think the author ever actually spells out what he thinks that Bioware is trying to say with this ending. Is it that point about the all the aliens being similar to us? Ok, I guess thats a legitimate question to answer but its largely inconsequential; did anyone REALLY care about the fact that Turians, Salarians, Asari, etc are all humanoid? Its an irrelevance compared to the main themes of the story. If thats the point that he thinks they were trying to make then not only did they manage to screw up making their ending make sense but they also managed to pick a topic to address in it that people aren't going to really care about.

If you want to be philosophical with your ending and need a theme then pick love, pick the inevitability of war, pick the horrors of the universe, hell even if you think BioWare were genuinely going for nihilistic existentialism it works better than what this guy is arguing (even though I think it sucks). Pick something that will engage people emotionally. Don't pick an obscure little pseudo-scientific curiosity that people instinctively hand-wave anyway.

The bit about "on the lack of closure" particularly annoyed me given how he's actually right in that it gets resolved during the game but entirely misses the point. You do resolve the genophage question and the quarian/geth war and all of that other fun stuff. The point is it doesn't matter whether you resolve that in light of what happens at the end.

And just when it felt it couldn't get any worse he finishes up with the snooty "you're ruining artistic integrity" thing that some people have got going. And which has been debunked time after time after time. And in the last paragraph he goes all intellectual and finishes it with what amounts to "its a shame the ending was too high-brow for the likes of you peasants" whilst giving an excuse for the sloppiness on the basis of "they couldn't have put closure in anyway".


So there, I read it. And it pissed me off because its utter nonesense. Well done, happy now?

[Fadingshdw]

I read it. I didn't want to so I feel some what violated, but there it is.

I don't think I should need advanced knowledge of physics or anything else to understand an ending of a game. Especially not when I understood the first two just fine.

There are some good points. Maybe some of us did focus too much on our EMS number, but is that really our fault? We knew that it would impact the ending if Bioware didn't want us focusing on a number they could have found a better way to implement it. And I still don't feel like my choices matter. As the author of the article says, sure I cured the Genophage and helped the Geth, but in the destruction ending I kill all those brand new aware Geth. And in all the ending there are no more relays and we already know the Krogan breed at an outstanding rate so Tuchanka will be crowded in a few short years with no way to quickly travel away from the planet.

I'm not a fan of the IT, but it at least does clear up some of the ending issues, which this author glosses right over.

As to the conference about the game or whatever it was I have to disagree. We have every right to express our displeasure in a product, because we are consumers as the author points out. We have a right to get what we paid for. Promises about a product were made. Promises were broken. Do I think that bringing the FTC and BBB into it was a good idea? No, but then I think bringing the government into anything is a bad idea. As for the charity it helped children. Selfishly done to be sure, but it helped. And the people who asked for their money back don't deserve sympathy from anyone. If you can't read a statement saying where your money is going then you have bigger problems.

I'll briefly touch on "art" because I'm somewhat torn on the issue. If you're going to consider yourself an artist in any matter you have to be ready for criticism, both good and bad. My sister is an Art Major and she has entire days of class devoted to criticizing other people's art work while they do the same to hers. On the other hand she doesn't sell her work on a mass scale to millions of people all with expectations of her work. Authors do though which is where I get into a grey area. I guess if Bioware wants to call it art that's their call. However, just as an author or artist can fall by the wayside Bioware is quickly falling off my radar.

All in all it's somewhat insulting for others to constantly tell me I don't like the ending simply because I don't understand it. I don't like it, because personally I was disappointed in what I saw. My choices were all suicidal. One had me do what TIM was going to do, and I just shot him for having that very idea. One had me to do what Saeren wanted and if that's the case why did I kill him way back in ME1? The last one has me commit Genocide. None of those are great choices. Also, I felt no attachment to the child. Wasn't concerned by his death or the dreams. I mean how many people, that is men, women, and children, died in that city? And I'm supposed to be worried about one? No. I understood the endings. Choices and sacrifices and all that. I just don't like them. Don't insult me by saying I don't understand.

[guacamayus]

The Lightspeaker wrote...

Reading that article was
genuinely painful and frankly made me angry. My father is a physicist,
as a child I was fascinated by space and I'm now a biologist. I have a
passing interest in astrobiology; am familiar with the Kardashev Scale,
the Drake equation and concepts such as "Grey goo" which were all
brought up in that article.

The article is total junk. A lot of
stuff in it is literally irrelevant. It is interesting how long the
author spends on debunking everyone else's ideas at to expense of
supporting, or even properly explaining, their own. He wastes
time introducing concepts that he doesn't even need to address to make
his point.

Admittedly I was getting so annoyed by the tone of the
article I didn't read every word but I don't think the author
ever actually spells out what he thinks that Bioware is trying to say
with this ending. Is it that point about the all the aliens being
similar to us? Ok, I guess thats a legitimate question to answer but its
largely inconsequential; did anyone REALLY care about the fact that
Turians, Salarians, Asari, etc are all humanoid? Its an irrelevance
compared to the main themes of the story. If thats the point that he
thinks they were trying to make then not only did they manage to screw
up making their ending make sense but they also managed to pick a topic
to address in it that people aren't going to really care about.

If
you want to be philosophical with your ending and need a theme then
pick love, pick the inevitability of war, pick the horrors of the
universe, hell even if you think BioWare were genuinely going for
nihilistic existentialism it works better than what this guy is arguing
(even though I think it sucks). Pick something that will engage people
emotionally. Don't pick an obscure little pseudo-scientific curiosity
that people instinctively hand-wave anyway.

The bit about "on the
lack of closure" particularly annoyed me given how he's actually right
in that it gets resolved during the game but entirely misses the point.
You do resolve the genophage question and the quarian/geth war and all
of that other fun stuff. The point is it doesn't matter whether you
resolve that in light of what happens at the end.

And just when
it felt it couldn't get any worse he finishes up with the snooty "you're
ruining artistic integrity" thing that some people have got going. And
which has been debunked time after time after time. And in the last
paragraph he goes all intellectual and finishes it with what amounts to
"its a shame the ending was too high-brow for the likes of you peasants"
whilst giving an excuse for the sloppiness on the basis of "they
couldn't have put closure in anyway".


So there, I read it. And it pissed me off because its utter nonesense. Well done, happy now?

I agree with many things you said but are you suggesting they keep writing cliche stories about love, carnage of war and stuff like that? I'm sorry but authors of all types of media produce a billion stories like that every year, why use this genre in mass effect as a main plot?

In my opinion there's nothing wrong with the plot of the game except the fact that bioware failed miserably at introducing it, it's an interesting idea that leaves a lot of room for interpretation (even if it was explained correctly through the game) however it feels incredibly rushed and as a result every player ended up more confused than before.

As many have said before, the ending should not require an explanation that long with so many external sources, in my opinion that's the big failure of Mass Effect 3.

Modifié par guacamayus, 20 avril 2012 - 11:41 .

[The Lightspeaker]

guacamayus wrote...

I agree with many things you said but are you suggesting they keep writing cliche stories about love, carnage of war and stuff like that? I'm sorry but authors of all types of media produce a billion stories like that every year, why use this genre in mass effect as a main plot?

You're actually inadvertantly answering your own question here. It is cliche. And yes, there are billions of stories about the examples I gave. You know why? Because people actually give a damn about those kind of things.

It doesn't matter specifically what it IS. What matters is you choose something that people will connect with emotionally. Let's say ME3 had finished a different way. Let's say that they'd chosen the specific details of how a Thanix cannon works as a theme for the ending. Would it be interesting intellectually? Perhaps. Would that be a good ending? No, because it sucks as a theme.

Cliches are cliches for a reason. If they'd chosen a cliche theme then yeah, it wouldn't exactly have been a ground-breaking plot but it would have at least been emotionally stimulating and coherent. Or they could have chosen a different emotional theme. But for a story that absolutely THRIVES on emotion to go all scientific at the end makes absolutely no sense and is quite jarring.

Modifié par The Lightspeaker, 20 avril 2012 - 11:55 .

[Erield]

permeus2nd wrote...

OK personally you seam to desprat to get people to read that link and it kind of makes me think of a bad plot device to kill off a person in a bad game

""oh but you must try my tea""
""no thank" "

""But its good for you, please have some""
""I'm not a big fan of tea, I'll pass""

""But its good tea and your friends have already had there's""
""I said no I don't want the tea""

And then it starts again because the only way to move on is for you to drink the tea you know is a trap and be poisened,

Is the link poisoned?


CWR

Funny story, I had basically that exact conversation the first time I went to Georgia.  I was sitting down at a restaurant, and ordered water. 

The waitress said, "Would you also like some sweet tea?"  
And I was like, "No thank you."
And she was all, "You don't want any sweet tea?"  She seemed very incredulous.
I replied with, "No, water's fine."
Then she said, "Why don't you want no sweet tea, son?"
So I followed up with, "I...I'd just rather have water."
"You can have the sweet tea, too."
At this point, other people in the restaurant were starting to look at me weird, since she wasn't exactly quiet, and the people I was visiting were starting to look embarrassed, so I eventually ordered the sweet tea.  I didn't drink it; I would pour some of it into other people's glasses as they emptied theirs to make it look like I was.  I'd never before been scared of what I didn't order.

guacamayus wrote...
You are missing
the point, synthetics have the ability to upgrade themselves thus
mastering their own evolution. It is believed that their technology
would evolve so fast that organics wouldn't be able to keep up in a
matter of centuries, when that time comes it is impossible to predict
their reaction; maybe they'll see us as ants and don't even bother
crushing us, maybe they realize that peace is the only way to go, or
maybe their intentions revolve around gathering all resources of this
galaxy, or maybe they annalyze our history and decide that we are too
violent and unpredicatble to share a galaxy with.

Truth is, you can't know if the peace lasts because there is no way to predict the movements and logic of a superintelligence.

My point is that us not knowing if the peace lasts doesn't matter.  When you build a story, you start with a nice, solid foundation.  The people reading/watching/experiencing the story won't necessarily know what the foundation is entirely, or all of its parts or anything (I mean, how often do you really see the foundation in a house?  There's a lot that's hidden and covered up, and that's fine, as long as it does its job) but what isrevealed and showing is important. 

There is no point in saying, "Hey guys.  This plot is so important we're going to tell you about it in three different games.  In one of the games, it potentially plays a very pivotal role.  In the third game, we're going to make it a central part of the story.  After all that's said and done, at the very end, we're going to tell you we were just bull-****ting you the entire time. Because that's what the cool kids do.  ****."

Mass Effect isn't about cold logic and hard facts.  You can't expect to be given specific examples in-****ing-game that prove the lie of the Star Child's words and then to just accept it.  The only way to do that is with cold, hard, logic.  Also, the true logical extension of that line of thought is the elimination of all organic life, since they are the ones that create the problems.  And also also, there is zero explanation for how the space magic isn't, in fact, space magic (I get it, it's really advanced.  That's cool.  I understand how the Mass Effect works, sorta.  Well, the basic principles anyway.  You could at least do something to explain it away, like; "We think the Crucible uses the dark energy power source from the Relays to tap into an alternate dimension that, when channeled, will affect the galaxy in profound ways."  Complete bull****, yes, but that took me 3 seconds to think up, and is better than what we have.)  So I guess we can throw cold, hard logic out the window too.

All we're left with at the end is a ****ty ending.

[3DandBeyond]

The problem is this isn't a doctoral thesis, it's an intelligent video game.

Furthermore, the problem with some of the theories here is that they are not living in this video game. They exist in our known world's reality and they are theories. They are based upon some thoughts on what has happened when humans create technology. But, to oversimplify all that and only look at one possible outcome, humans/organics will screw it all up, is to ignore all of the great things that have been done. It's only seeing the negative possibilities.

In the ME3 universe, even if you only look at possible negative outcomes, there is no way to make sense of the idea that you must destroy that which creates so that its creations will not destroy it. Then, that's intelligence's reward-YOU ARE SCREWED. So, why learn why grow why create?

And, back to the real world. There is a lot of tech that gets created that can have military implications as well as uses for more "good" things. You punish the misuse of things and not the use of things. Anything that can be made, even a sandwich can be used for good or bad. I might choke on a piece of gristle in the meat. So, my sandwich might one day kill me, so I need to die to keep the sandwich from killing me.

I don't have a PHD in Astrobiology or Astrophysics and in order to play a game, I don't want to have to have one.

I don't agree that humans/organics will always screw it up and there's a lot of evidence to show that in these games, they actually eventually learned to work against screwing it all up. Mordin did, Legion did, the Quarians did, and so on. If the reapers had to be some ultimate killing machines then it would have made more sense to have them wipe out corrupt synthetics or things that went haywire and not what we are left with. I would have bought more into mindless killing machines that just come back every 50k years to feed, because they need organic sludge.

And, I think it's great that the reapers conveniently leave all this reaper tech lying around (kind of like the obelisk in 2001) to jumpstart technological advances. It's like what happened to the Krogans-they were advanced before they were ready to be advanced so they had to be stopped. If I leave a cookie sitting in front of a kid, I don't kill the kid because he ate the cookie (unless he's the starkid).

This all plays out as if all created tech and organics are doomed to become Hal and Dave. What a stupid simplistic view of things. Humans/organics are way more complex than that in this game. Legion is. Shepard is.

[Drake-Shepard]

That was the biggest pile of rubbish I have ever read...

I was going to write an essay about why its so rubbish...but looking at the majority of replies..i really don't need to