The plot of the game itself all but forces a thinking player to assume Hackett is wrong in his assessment of a conventional victory being impossible. Otherwise, there's no point to assembling a coalition of the Galaxy's races to take back Earth or anywhere else.
Logically, the galaxy would never have invested in the Crucible at all given how it is presented. If they really thought conventional victory was impossible, they'd have been putting those resources into survival and information preservation scenarios like the self-contained Ilos installations and beacons, building off the lessons learned from the Protheans.
I mean, seriously, there's absolutely no way anyone in their right mind would ever approve the Crucible project as shown to us.
Hackett: "What is it?"
Liara: "We think it's a weapon."
H: "What does it do?"
L: "We don't know."
H: "Ok, assuming it's a weapon that won't kill us all, how do we use it?"
L: "We can't. Even if you pool the galaxy's resources together and build it, it still needs the Catalyst to make it work."
H: "What is the Catalyst?"
L: "We don't know."
H: "Where is the Catalyst?"
L: "We don't know."
H: "Does the Catalyst even still exist?"
L: "We don't know."
H: "How are we going to find out if the Catalyst still exists, where it is, and how to use it with the Crucible?"
L: "We don't know."
H: "So, we have a theoretical device that might be a weapon, but we don't actually know what it does. It requires a key that we currently also have no way of knowing what it is, what it does, where it is, or even if it exists. And we are supposed to pull immeasurable resources and manpower away from critical wartime and survival operations on the infinitessimal chance that someone will discover what and where the key is, recover it in time, and hope that this whole thing does what we want it to? Thank you for your time, Dr. T'Soni. I'm late for a briefing on how many more Thanix cannons we can fit on a dreadnought. There's a meeting in half an hour discussing reverse engineering the Prothean statis pods and I'd appreciate it if you could attend. If you come up with any useful techologies from the Mars archive plans, let us know."
If conventional victory is impossible, there's really no point to the entire main plot of the game. Even if they decide the insanely long-shot Crucible is worth persuing, Shep still wouldn't need to convince the other races to send troops to liberate anywhere. They could keep their troops and warships right where they are, dying in droves and tying up Reaper forces. All Shep would have to do would be convince the other races to send scientists, civilians and non-combat resources to the Crucible construction site. The entire genophage section of the game is particularly meaningless if a conventional victory is impossible. Heck, the Impossible Conventional Victory scenario makes Shep's job easy by comparison.
Shepard: "We're not asking you do pull troops away from the defense of their homes. We want them to keep on doing what they're doing, and getting as many civilians and resources out as possible. All we want to do is give those evacuees a secure place to go and a purpose, so they can do their part to maybe win this war. And if they can't win, being off a planet and in a secret interstellar location will give them the best chance to evade the Reapers and find a way to survive."
At that point, recruiting the Quarians goes from a touching little "Oh yeah, the Quarians, I guess we could use those guys, and maybe the Geth" side mission to "Forget the Turians and the Krogan. Priority one is to recruit the mechanics and engineers who have been jury rigging spaceships and living completely in space for the last 300 years, and the super hive-mind hazardous duty robots they created, right now".
Even once the Catalyst is discovered and the need to retake the Citadel is identified, a combined fleet/army assault on the Citadel/beam is pretty much the single worst thing they could have done. "Hi, guys. We're throwing a huge fleet into the space you've coincidentally stashed the Citadel, and the entire ground force we've managed to scrounge up is headed directly at the only method of entering said Citadel. Don't mind us. And certainly don't send overwhelming force to protect that beam." The Normandy with Shep's squad and a couple of independent backup squads could have covertly landed on planet and infiltrated their way to the beam without drawing the attention of anyone except Marauder Shields and his husks, who happened to be on "Death by Shepard" duty that day. At that point Shep and his team either figure out how to move the Citadel to the Crucible, or signal the Alliance fleets to bring the Crucible in and protect it for the 10 minutes it takes to dock, since apparently the Reapers won't shoot at it is long as there is a single Alliance ship still in space for them to engage in hand to hand combat with.
Oh well. It's safe to say my suspension of disbelief is now stretched to the breaking point relatively early in the narrative.
Modifié par TK514, 03 juillet 2012 - 07:49 .
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