472 réponses à ce sujet

[MrAtomica]

You have my sword.

[kyleshuey]

 all of us.

[a.m.p]

Our_Last_Scene wrote...

And anyway if we're not going to speculate on the Reapers numbers then we'll have to accept that the Reapers will win if the Crucible fails, as that is directly stated in the game by the leader of the Alliance and the Crucible project. We're not speculating so we'll have to accept that as fact.

So, back to our point, you think that it's better to give up when you reach the Catalyst and hope that the Reapers can be fooled the same way twice?

Well. My main point is that adding an option to beat reapers without picking a color, that isn't contradicted by any established lore, would fix up to half of the ending's problems.

You say, that would damage the story for you. Well. That means that it would reverse the situation for us because for me the story is damaged beyond repair as it is now.

Actually no. It would not reverse the situation. It would put us in similar situations. To enjoy the game and your current chosen ending you would have to ignore this new option, because its existance screws up the ME lore for you. To enjoy the game and my chosen new ending I would have to equally ignore the the synthesis ending, because its very existance screws up the ME lore for me.

That's why that link in my signature has the word 'compromise' in it.

As for my point that my Shepard would choose the fourth option even if it did not eventually lead to victory, I don't see how we can argue about that. It's my interpretation of the character, the story and the lore that had been established. It's my Shepard and her in-universe perspective. Given the information she had been given she can't choose anything else.

[The Night Mammoth]

MrAtomica wrote...

You have my sword.

And you have my bow. 

[Clayless]

a.m.p wrote...

Our_Last_Scene wrote...

And anyway if we're not going to speculate on the Reapers numbers then we'll have to accept that the Reapers will win if the Crucible fails, as that is directly stated in the game by the leader of the Alliance and the Crucible project. We're not speculating so we'll have to accept that as fact.

So, back to our point, you think that it's better to give up when you reach the Catalyst and hope that the Reapers can be fooled the same way twice?

Well. My main point is that adding an option to beat reapers without picking a color, that isn't contradicted by any established lore, would fix up to half of the ending's problems.

You say, that would damage the story for you. Well. That means that it would reverse the situation for us because for me the story is damaged beyond repair as it is now.

Actually no. It would not reverse the situation. It would put us in similar situations. To enjoy the game and your current chosen ending you would have to ignore this new option, because its existance screws up the ME lore for you. To enjoy the game and my chosen new ending I would have to equally ignore the the synthesis ending, because its very existance screws up the ME lore for me.

That's why that link in my signature has the word 'compromise' in it.

As for my point that my Shepard would choose the fourth option even if it did not eventually lead to victory, I don't see how we can argue about that. It's my interpretation of the character, the story and the lore that had been established. It's my Shepard and her in-universe perspective. Given the information she had been given she can't choose anything else.

Because it's your choice it doesn't stop it from coming under critisism. Such as all these assumptions that you're making (after you choose to do nothing) are incredibly unlikely. As you can see, unless a lot of massive assumptions that rely on the Reapers suddenly acting out of character and not learning from mistakes comes true, then when the Crucible falls the galaxy will be doomed forever.

[a.m.p]

Our_Last_Scene wrote...

Because it's your choice it doesn't stop it from coming under critisism. Such as all these assumptions that you're making (after you choose to do nothing) are incredibly unlikely. As you can see, unless a lot of massive assumptions that rely on the Reapers suddenly acting out of character and not learning from mistakes comes true, then when the Crucible falls the galaxy will be doomed forever.

The same way that the current endings can make sense only with lots and lots of massive assumptions.

Crucible falls = galaxy doomed forever is your big assumption.
Crucible falls = we can switch to plan B and finnally try doing something useful to fight the reapers is my big assumption.

Yours happened to be in line with the idea of whoever wrote the endings. I'm glad for you.
You can act upon your assumption and I can't act on mine, because the option is not there.

Modifié par a.m.p, 26 avril 2012 - 08:26 .

[Noelemahc]

Because it's your choice it doesn't stop it from coming under critisism. Such as all these assumptions that you're making (after you choose to do nothing) are incredibly unlikely. As you can see, unless a lot of massive assumptions that rely on the Reapers suddenly acting out of character and not learning from mistakes comes true, then when the Crucible falls the galaxy will be doomed forever.

Unfortunately, there is no strict basis for what IS in character for the reapers - each of the three games offers its own version, unique and mutually exclusive with the others. Sovereign shows deviousness comparable to organics, Harbinger uses organics as tools to be discarded at earliest convenience and the Catalyst views REAPERS as tools and organics as lice. At this point, you either start believing that Matriarch Benezia rubbed off both on Saren AND Sovereign, or that someone, somewhere, forgot to keep track of continuity.

At this point, accepting that the Reapers are not infallible is not a large leap of logic.

[Atherus]

I took this option : koobismo.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d4tevtd  and now I´m just waiting how my EPIC ending will be told 

[zarnk567]

The Night Mammoth wrote...

MrAtomica wrote...

You have my sword.

And you have my bow. 

And my Axe.

[Clayless]

Noelemahc wrote...

Because it's your choice it doesn't stop it from coming under critisism. Such as all these assumptions that you're making (after you choose to do nothing) are incredibly unlikely. As you can see, unless a lot of massive assumptions that rely on the Reapers suddenly acting out of character and not learning from mistakes comes true, then when the Crucible falls the galaxy will be doomed forever.

Unfortunately, there is no strict basis for what IS in character for the reapers - each of the three games offers its own version, unique and mutually exclusive with the others. Sovereign shows deviousness comparable to organics, Harbinger uses organics as tools to be discarded at earliest convenience and the Catalyst views REAPERS as tools and organics as lice. At this point, you either start believing that Matriarch Benezia rubbed off both on Saren AND Sovereign, or that someone, somewhere, forgot to keep track of continuity.

At this point, accepting that the Reapers are not infallible is not a large leap of logic.

Well cunning would be a good character trait for the Reapers for one thing.

Accepting the Reapers are not infallible? That's fine. Assuming they'll fall for the same thing twice? That is an unrealistic assumption.

[The Night Mammoth]

zarnk567 wrote...

The Night Mammoth wrote...

MrAtomica wrote...

You have my sword.

And you have my bow. 

And my Axe.

Keelah, that was beautiful 

[The Night Mammoth]

a.m.p wrote...

Our_Last_Scene wrote...

Because it's your choice it doesn't stop it from coming under critisism. Such as all these assumptions that you're making (after you choose to do nothing) are incredibly unlikely. As you can see, unless a lot of massive assumptions that rely on the Reapers suddenly acting out of character and not learning from mistakes comes true, then when the Crucible falls the galaxy will be doomed forever.

The same way that the current endings can make sense only with lots and lots of massive assumptions.

Crucible falls = galaxy doomed forever is your big assumption.
Crucible falls = we can switch to plan B and finnally try doing something useful to fight the reapers is my big assumption.

Yours happened to be in line with the idea of whoever wrote the endings. I'm glad for you.
You can act upon your assumption and I can't act on mine, because the option is not there.

I choose Plan B. 

Fly the Destiny's Acsencion into the middle of the Reaper fleet and start kicking ass and taking names. What's the point in this massive fleet if it's just a glorified bodyguard for a giant space ******?

[frozngecko]

I didn't want to pick any of em...in the end though, I picked Destroy...sorry geth...

and then I lived....even though I was told I was going to die by ghost-boy....

that kid can kiss my butt.

[shnellegaming]

I don't.  After I viewed all three endings my first time through by reloading from the autosave I haven't finished the game since.  One ending that was depressing and hopeless was enough.  Im not a machocist to keep trying and hoping they will feel better again.

[frostajulie]

I WOULD RATHER LET THE REAPERS WIN THAN DO ANY OF THE CHOICES. I WOULD RATHER BE INDOCTRINATED AND HELP THE REAPERS WIN THAN DO ANY OF THE CHOICES. I HATE WHAT BIOWARE DID TO MY SHEPARDS AND THIS GAME.

[Noelemahc]

Well cunning would be a good character trait for the Reapers for one thing.

Accepting the Reapers are not infallible? That's fine. Assuming they'll fall for the same thing twice? That is an unrealistic assumption.

We don't actually know whether they know what the Protheans did. Or, rather, that the Protheans did it, or how they did it. AFAIK, Saren and Sovereign never touch the subject, and no other Reaper we talk to goes into detail about it. It could work. It's doesn't count as twice if they didn't notice the first time. And we don't genuinely know whether they did.

I'm honestly appaled at the fact that you view any option of alternative approaches - even though we admit they could lead to non-standard game-overs - as impossible. An illusion of choice is better than railroading. An illusion of choice that ends in an epic, lengthy section that ends in a Bolivian Army Ending? I would take that over the unfinished cliffhanger we have now any day of the week. If it was good enough for Blake's Seven, it's good enough for Mass Effect. And Blake's plots were far more devious and multi-layered than most stuff we see in ME3.

[Kelwing]

It's why I always take destroy. It's not what starbrat wants and it's as close as I can get to giving him the middle finger. I get to break all his toys. Course I don't consider any of my runs official until we get the dlc for ending(s)

So I will make new ones play them to end and any NG+ will be my official runs

[Oldbones2]

OP, I think you are surrounded by like minded people.

[Raynulf]

Shaigunjoe wrote...

The Angry One wrote...

Yeah, whatever. "New DNA" with beings that have no DNA. Yeah, no. That doesn't work. That's crap.
In any case, it doesn't matter how they are hybrids, they are still hybrids - the same as the Zha'till. The same as Saren.

Thats kinda the only way it could work, you keep thinking in terms of current DNA framework, in which it wouldn't work, which is why they needed something else.  It is like the affinity gene in NDT, this kind of thing has been done before.

@The Angry One: My respect and sympathies for continueing to argue sanity.

Synthesis has no place in Mass Effect. The fictional science does not justify it, thus it shifts out of the Sci-Fi genre and into Fantasy.

Synthesis could fit in a different Sci-Fi setting and story, whose fictional science not only justifies that kind of technology, but also its application on such a scale.


The Mass Effect universe does not have transporters, replicators and other Star Trek technology. Objects may be moved very quickly by reducing their mass to zero, but they must still move through space in doing so. So even remotely implanting cybernetic LEDs into one living creature without the use of surgery or physically inserted nanites is beyond the highest technology level in the universe.

To say nothing of simultaneously remotely implanting every cell of every organic creature in the entire galaxy with LEDs and sufficient 'synthetic' material to expertly, and without significant change or damage to the overall organism, rewrite their entire genetic structure and cell function to incorporate synthetic components, while implanting every microchip and circuit board of any hardware deemed 'synthetic life' (but not others) with sufficient organic matter in which to reconstruct the hardware to resemble the modified former-organic organsims, while also recoding the software to work in tandem with the modified hardware.


Again: Other works of Sci-Fi implementing events such as Synthesis does not make it any more credible in Mass Effect than Jean-Luc Picard warping in and shooting the reapers with photon torpedoes.


Even putting aside the fact that it is unjustifiable in Mass Effect as Science Fiction, it still falls over itself due to it either:

• Not fundamentally changing the nature and behavior of all affected organisms, thus every affected individual remains 'who they were' (rather than being 'brainwashed' into getting along) - which in actually means it has not changed the behavioral patterns the Starkid claimed were the problem.
• Or it does change the inherent nature and behavior of those it affects, eliminating the behavioral problem the Starkid claimed to exist, but at the cost of everyone's personality. Remember the Destroy/Rewrite decision for Legion's quest? This is the latter, except for everyone.

As a separate but related rant:

The Crucible itself is extremely poorly implemented, and its abilities quite arbitrary: 
- Destroying it + Citadel = all reapers and relays explode (in red)
- Holding on to some electrical terminals = die and take control of the reapers with exploding relays (blue)
or
- Jump into a beam of light to perform genetic and cybernetic surgery beyond the realms of possibility in that universe... with exploding relays (green).

The existance of the crucible design is as poorly explained as how Synthesis works ("A new DNA" - that's a big can of sci-fi worms to open, Bioware): A pet project, picked up, worked on and hidden away along with all supporting documentation (except for minor details like "please attach to Citadel here") by each civilsation in the process of being systematically annihilated, without the Reapers ever becoming aware of its existance, and resulting in a piece of technology more advanced than anything else in the galaxy?

Bollocks.

I'm an engineer. I build processing plants for a living, along with a team of typically 50-100 engineers, drafters and non-technical people (those who buy things and yell at us to go faster). Stopping a project and restarting with the same team is hell, and results in a 'loss' of progress. Handing a project over to a different team is hell, and results in a loss of progress. Stopping a project and restarting it much later with a new team and no access to the old one? Halve whatever progress they claimed (they say 90%? You're at around 45% at best on restart).

Stopping and restarting a project several thousand times by completely different people, speaking different languages, with no access to former project members? Complete garbage is all that will result.

And that's without the entire scenario requiring the Reapers to be bumbling idiots.

[Allan Schumacher]

Eain wrote...

Does anyone else have the same problem I'm having? Even beyond the other problems with the ending, I just do not want to do anything the Catalyst offers me. As a result, I never choose and just turn the game off.

I prefer to let the choice remain unmade, because no matter what I do I end up having to betray something about my Shepard or the people in the galaxy. I don't want to do that, at all.

My impression was that this was probably the idea, so in that sense the goal was probably achieved.  And in JMO, this is probably what was meant when it was stated at PAX that "we weren't expecting [the response]."

What I personally enjoyed about the endings was that every choice had a difficult cost associated with it.  It reminded me of Legion's loyalty mission in ME2, which is one of my favourite missions in the entire trilogy.

I never choose an ending because no matter what I choose it's horrible. None of the endings have any redeeming factors. I always play up to the end of Rannoch because up until that point the game still makes sense. Sort of. Beyond that I prefer to just leave it up to the imagination.

Shepard gathered the fleets and kicked Reaper ass.

The end. 

I don't know if we can say that there is nothing redeeming about them.  You've made it clear that you feel the cost with each choice outweighs any potential benefits though, which is maybe what was unexpected as well.

Whether or not the choices have any redeeming value is inconclusive given the current state of the ending, and it is something that I feel can be remedied with the ending DLC since it'll provide an aftermath of the choices made during the final scene.  Or at least it sounds like it will.


Cheers.

Allan


EDIT:  Posts like yours make me think that had the ending offered a 4th solution of rejecting the Catalyst's different solutions, might have helped mitigate some of the outrage.  Though I should reiterate from past posts that I personally would have had this result in the cycle being fulfilled and the Reapers winning.  JMO and probably why people want me as far away from the design pit as possible 

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 27 avril 2012 - 07:38 .

[incinerator950]

I like Control for this reason, even though I know Shepard doesn't become a Reaper:

[Eain]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

Eain wrote...

Does anyone else have the same problem I'm having? Even beyond the other problems with the ending, I just do not want to do anything the Catalyst offers me. As a result, I never choose and just turn the game off.

I prefer to let the choice remain unmade, because no matter what I do I end up having to betray something about my Shepard or the people in the galaxy. I don't want to do that, at all.

My impression was that this was probably the idea, so in that sense the goal was probably achieved.  And in JMO, this is probably what was meant when it was stated at PAX that "we weren't expecting [the response]."

What I personally enjoyed about the endings was that every choice had a difficult cost associated with it.  It reminded me of Legion's loyalty mission in ME2, which is one of my favourite missions in the entire trilogy.

I never choose an ending because no matter what I choose it's horrible. None of the endings have any redeeming factors. I always play up to the end of Rannoch because up until that point the game still makes sense. Sort of. Beyond that I prefer to just leave it up to the imagination.

Shepard gathered the fleets and kicked Reaper ass.

The end. 

I don't know if we can say that there is nothing redeeming about them.  You've made it clear that you feel the cost with each choice outweighs any potential benefits though, which is maybe what was unexpected as well.

Whether or not the choices have any redeeming value is inconclusive given the current state of the ending, and it is something that I feel can be remedied with the ending DLC since it'll provide an aftermath of the choices made during the final scene.  Or at least it sounds like it will.


Cheers.

Allan


EDIT:  Posts like yours make me think that had the ending offered a 4th solution of rejecting the Catalyst's different solutions, might have helped mitigate some of the outrage.  Though I should reiterate from past posts that I personally would have had this result in the cycle being fulfilled and the Reapers winning.  JMO and probably why people want me as far away from the design pit as possible 

Hi Allan. And well, rejecting the Catalyst would've gone a long way. But here's what I really feel: destroy is the only legitimate ending and they included an arbitrary drawback to it so that it wouldn't be as easy to pick. There's no doubt that if Destroy simply killed Reapers and nothing else, everybody would pick it.

Control and Synthesis really exist only as solutions for people who don't want to kill the Geth. It's as Shepard said: if you reduce war to math it becomes murder. Am I gonna kill off an entire sentient species simply because that stops cycles? From a utilitarian POV that may make sense, but utilitarianism is a deeply flawed moral system.

What I think is really bothersome about the whole thing is the fact that the lead writer seems to have a certain idea about the future of synthetic life that the fanbase simply does not agree with. When I hear the Catalyst talk, I feel like I'm listening to Mac Walters. I have strong suspicions that either he or Casey Hudson remain convinced that organic and synthetic life are inherently irreconcilable. And while they're free to believe that, I am someone staunchly convinced of the opposite and so the ending feels forced to me. When the Catalyst (wrote Geth here, edited) starts talking about how the conflict is inevitable, I really feel that he's just talking out of his ass, because the fact alone that I don't agree with what it's saying means that it is NOT inevitable at all.

It just bothers me that there's this vicious anti-synthetic streak underscoring the series at the last possible moment. It just seems like covert racism to me, and it really killed some of the glory of the Mass Effect series. Rejecting the Catalyst would at least help me say no to that vision, but if saying no to a philosophical premise equates to dooming trillions to extinction then again we're talking about a price that's too high to pay.

That's why I believe the ending is inherently flawed, and I can't see the EC fix that.

Modifié par Eain, 27 avril 2012 - 07:54 .

[BD Manchild]

Yeah, I hate having to make one of those choices too. Destroy means wiping out the Geth and EDI, which is especially insulting when I'd worked damn hard to secure peace between the Geth and Quarians (which is why I have such a big problem with the idea that the theme of the series suddenly changed to "organics vs synthetics" in the final few minutes, when it stopped being that around the same time Legion appeared). To have to undo all that work felt like I'd been spat in the eye (that's assuming of course that the Star-Brat is telling the truth).

Control seemed hypocritical; wasn't it the point of my stopping the Illusive Man that humanity isn't ready to wield that kind of power? It's too vague; what if something goes wrong and the Cycle ends up getting repeated anyway? Why should I trust the Catalyst?

As for Synthesis... Don't even get me started on what a morally repugnant idea that is.

I'm not against sad or bittersweet endings, but I find all the ending choices to be horribly forced and completely out-of-tune with the rest of the series up to that point. It's almost like they were written by one guy who was completely out-of-touch with the rest of the writing team...

I'm sorry if it sounds like I'm jumping to conclusions but I don't see what the EC can do to fix such a last few minutes which is fundamentally flawed on every possible level. Explaining why something stinks doesn't make it stink any less; the only option as far as I can see is to go back to the drawing board and re-write the ending completely.

Modifié par BD Manchild, 27 avril 2012 - 07:57 .

[Iron Star]

The best option is to just let the reapers destroy the crucible, it happens if you wait for ten minutes. CRITICAL MISSION FAILURE is still a better ending tbh...