Auld Wulf wrote...
There are smarter races than humanity out there. This is the first point of acceptance that you have to make, you have to acknowledge that we are not some ultimate state of evolution.
Of course. That's not the problem. The problem is that if your story uses imagery reminiscent of the divine, then religion is invoked by association, and religion usually states that humans shouldn't aspire to the understanding and the power of "gods". The state of ignorance and powerlessness is implied to be the natural order of things. That's why Synthesis works around this problem.
After you've achieved that state of mind, you need to contemplate two things:
1.) The Catalyst said that the Crucible changed him.
2.) Lore says that the Crucible was redesigned to include the Catalyst.
A race of beings more intelligent than humans essentially chose to use the Catalyst for their agenda. The Catalyst is just a tool in getting that done. Just as the Catalyst was a tool for the leviathans (who're also smarter than us, despite their hubris). The Catalyst is not a god, it's a tool for people who are like gods, or think themselves to be. It's a tool for people who had giant ideas as to how the Universe should work.
Yes, we can infer that if we think about things. Yet, the imagery of the divine works on a subconscious level on those accustomed to its presence. For that to work, it doesn't really matter what the Catalyst actually is, it matters how it is presented. And it is presented with the trappings of divinity.
You see, I look beyond things, and so do you. What I resent is that the story is created in a way that suggests the writers didn't want us to look behind things. The rampant mysticism which replaced exposition which made perfect sense within the lore is yet another example of that. The writers of the ending didn't want science fictional rationalization. They wanted the beyond-our-understanding pseudo-mysticism. They wanted "feel, don't think" (and *that* message is all over the game).
Control and Synthesis were options introduced by the Crucible redesigners. That was something I had to learn for myself. In that case, then they are not the choice of the Catalyst, the Catalyst is just being used to initiate those choices, to make them real. The Catalyst is a conduit for the wills of others, essentially. Originally the Catalyst was a conduit for the desires of the leviathans (at the time it was built), but once connected to the Crucible, the Catalyst also became a conduit for the will of the Crucible redesigners.
All the Catalyst knows about the Crucible redesign is from what the Reapers harvested. But we don't even know if the redeisgners were harvested, they might have chosen to kill themselves before that could happen. Essentially: The Catalyst might not even understand what's happened to him, and we're expecting him to explain.
Just something to think about.
I mostly agree with this, yet my reasoning of above still applies. It's the presentation that matters.
@Wayning_Star:
Vendetta says it on Thessia. "At some point, the design of the Crucible was changed to include the Citadel" or something similar.
Modifié par Ieldra2, 11 avril 2013 - 07:33 .