Here's my defense:
Is the ending poorly written? Yes, in many areas.
However, conceptually, it's not as terrible as a lot of people make it out to be.
People say they disagree with the Catalyst, and that they feel like their choices didn't matter, and that the fact that they cured the Genophage or made Quarian/Geth peace should allow for their Shepard to disagree.
But I agree with the Catalyst. If you replace "Synthetics" with "technology", and "rebel" with "destroy" conceptually, then what the Catalyst is saying makes sense, and I think that's what they were going for logically. Hell, it's what they were going for logically in the scrapped Dark Energy ending. In that ending, technology created Dark Energy and would destroy everyone, so the Reapers harvest advanced civilizations to prevent that from happening. The current ending just has the Dark Energy impetus removed. They are harvesting advanced life so that new life can prosper.
Truth is, technology DOES destroy the world. Our cars pollute the atmosphere. Our weapons allow for us to slaughter innocents and over-hunt animals. Technology progression goes hand in hand with the end of civilizations. Those civilizations that didn't progress technologically were wiped out and assimilated.
Just because Shepard cures the Genophage and creates peace once doesn't mean that everything is saved forever. In the future, some Krogans could still hate the Salarians, even with Wrex and Eve to potentially stop them. Some Salarians don't like the curing of the Genophage, and could very easily try to stop the Krogans again. Future races may create more A.I.'s with the Geth out there, and future A.I.'s might not be able to be saved like the Geth were. Joker and EDI getting together doesn't make it so the entirety of human/android relations are perfect forever. These civilizations, with their technology, still have the potential to destroy each other and younger civilizations.
Look at the Salarians. We can see that they are trying to uplift/modify the Yahg. This is exactly what the Reapers are trying to stop.
At the end of the day, the Crucible is a bizarre piece of work (writing-wise), the Catalyst does not explain himself well enough, and the ending is very lazily recolored.
However, the idea of the Catalyst, the idea of his choices, are valid. I understood why the Reapers fought against us. I also agreed with the Catalyst when he said a very important line:
"But you're proof that my solution won't work anymore."
The Catalyst is saying that advancing civilizations may eventually destroy everything, and that just harvesting them clearly won't work, because Shepard has managed to bring them together to fight. He acknowledges that PERHAPS people can grow to work together, but he still needs to have an ultimate solution to the technology problem to be fully satisfied. He allows you to do as you wish, destroy or control the reapers. They have unintended consequences, sure, but those are the options you've been grappling with for the whole game. If you didn't think an Illusive Man-type choice was gonna be available, you're mistaken. It's the entire point for using him in that role, to foreshadow that possibility.
Synthesis is space-magic. But so is a naturally occurring element that when injected with energy, creates a field that modifies the mass of everything inside it. The foundations of the Mass Effect universe are built on space-magic.
That's why I don't hate the ending. I just can't.
Modifié par AxeloftheKey, 18 juin 2012 - 11:23 .
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