-k-a-t-e- wrote...
3DandBeyond wrote...
ME1 set the stage, displayed the characters, provided the conflict, gave us the beginnings of a solution, and a goal. It was the prologue. It also provided a model for how the "world" worked and how the stories would play out. When you buy things that are within a series it is because of what the parts of that series brought to the table. As devs and writers this is your formula and it is inauthentic to then say fans have no right and no reason to expect this to be used in ME3. It is at the core of the matter and it is what is so wrong with ME3. It is also what is wrong with an unfinished head canon ending.
No other story or film or game is important here-the only thing that is important is being true to ME. And in ME you do not leave Shepard lying in a pile of rubble. You do not make people head canon an ending. It violates the tone and concept of ME.
Is it specifically Shepard dying or the general darker tone in ME3 that you're talking about. I'm not too sure what I think about the whole shepard dying thing just yet, but when it comes to overall tone, I think the first two games prepared and warned us. If you look at everything we knew about the reapers from those 2 games, I think it's quite clear that when we do finally face the full reaper force, that it will be a desperate fight for survival, and that if we do 'win' there will be massive casualties along the way. It took the full force of the citadel and help from the other races to destroy one reaper in ME1. And the situations in ME1 and ME2 were completely different, although survival was slim, i think it was still believable. Apart from Shepard, most people in my game survived
Yes the situation in ME3 is much darker, but it makes sense, it would be? I can see what you're saying about this kind of 'continuity' between a series, but I guess my doubt is why you have to follow this formula? To me at least, the way the series has evolved makes sense when you consider the setting and what is going on, I think the tone had to change. The second game was a lot darker than the first, you had whole colonies being wiped off the map, and when you finally get to see what the collectors are up to... it's pretty grim! And if you look at Jacks background and story, it's really brutal what happened to her.
In a previous reply you said "In ME stories, you conclude the conflict through the will and determination of the key players" and "Everyone thinks there is no return from it and even victory is feared to
be uncertain. But if you try hard, do well, do enough, you win and
save everyone." How did this not happen in the end of ME3 - not counting Shepard of course! The characters and different races showed 'will and determination', the krogan helping the turian, Mordin sacrificed himself to cure the genophage, when I was on thessia the asari were fighting tooth and nail for their homeworld. I thought me3 showed the races at their best (not to say there weren't some cretins along the way). And you managed to save the galaxy 
There were huge casualties, but it would be ridiculous if there weren't any in a galactic war for survival right?
Consider the total about face that ME3 did at the end. In 3 games you had a goal--that is ME's reason for being and in fact that is the reason for all that is done. Your goal is the destruction of the reapers through unity and strength through diversity. It is the bringing together of a galaxy of misfits. In ME3 at the end, the goal changes. The goal becomes the avoidance of inevitable conflict between synthetics and organics. Any choice you make that does not achieve the destruction (not the assimilation and not the control of) the reapers is a failure and does not complete the goal.
In making one of the choices, you only achieve the kid's goal and use his solution. At first he had one solution, the reapers, but he changed and now has 3. Whooopie. Control asserts control over the reapers who will take care of any future conflict, in whatever way is needed. Organics may again need to be saved from their own bad decisions and the reapers are there to take care of that. Not destroyed, goal not met. Synthesis asserts internal change against the will of many had they even been offered the chance to protest against it. Since they were not, it is an assault and an unnatural corruption of the processes of life. It achieves the kid's goal of avoiding conflict by smoothing out the differences between organics and synthetics. It is anti-evolution which is as much a journey as it is any kind of end goal Main goal of 3 stories not met.
Both control and synthesis are debated throughout 3 games and are decried by A Shepard all along the way. If they were clearly and unequivocally shown to destroy the reapers, then they might be a consideration but because they are not they only achieve the kids' goal. They have other issues within them as well that make them totally deny that people are capable of and should be able to self-determine. With the one, they need external forces to fix and create things and take care of conflict, and with the other they need internal change to make them better, because well they suck and are stupid and can never work out conflict on their own.
Destroy seemingly completes the main goal by wiping out the problems organics were so stupid to create. Since people have been dumb enough to create synthetic sentient life then they are too stupid to realize it's going to destroy them. Destroy it first. The fact that destroy if true kills the only synthetic life that has been designed specifically to create conflict (self-fulfilling prophecy) and also kills synthetic life that proves that it's possible to avoid conflict is the stupidest moment in gaming I've seen so far. Sure, I understand sacrifices that must be made, but Shepard is still not allowed to make a valid authentic attempt to dissuade the kid from his warped ideas.
So, we have 3 choices. Shepard has no idea how they came to be where they are-on the citadel. The citadel is the home of a warped AI "kid". The kid knows all about the choices. The kid knows all about the crucible. He's the first being that has really known anything about the crucible. The kid is set up as innocent-looking and such a thing is done to deceive. He chose to look like a kid to deceive quite possibly. He does lie or mislead and he contradicts himself. He also indicates he has been duplicitous in the past, turning his creators into the first reaper against their will. In order to make a choice Shepard must believe the choices do what the kid says they will. He backs up the need to make a choice with his flawed logic-the need to avoid conflict and chaos as he sees it. This is not Shepard's goal. The kid's solution to fix things has been to send reapers to kill people or "ascend" them-yeah, he kills people. The kid has new solutions, 3 of them. He takes ownership of them. So they might not do what the kid says they do. They might all be geared toward making harvesting faster. So, even destroy might not achieve the goal.
Also, all of this is based on what the kid says is inevitable-conflict with synthetics. My Shepard has said repeatedly in different dialogue and in action that such a conflict is not inevitable. My Shepard said you do not condemn a whole race of people to extinction based upon what MIGHT happen. And My Shepard also said you do not kill some people over here to save some people over there. All 3 choices do kill something for no good fully known reason. Destroy obviously kills EDI and the Geth. Synthesis kills what people were and what they individually could be with the full right to self-determine. Control kills the spirit of people. Reapers have committed genocide. People would not want them as neighbors. In using them to fix the relays and to create new things, people will never be more than children, just as they are now.
I don't mind sacrifice at all, but it must be FOR the goal and not for the enemy's goal.
And I'd assert that ME2 is far darker in that kind of tone than ME3 but even being darker is not out of line with the "world" ME created. It would be a necessity considering the gathering storm. I wasn't talking about that kind of tone-more about the narrative tone. It's like a story being about reality and then in the last book in the series being about fantasy. That's a change in tone that's not acceptable. ME had some space magic but it was mostly explained and thus given a tone of reality-ME3 at then end enters into fantasy..
But in writing a story and especially a series of stories you do need to follow a formula for cohesiveness. That doesn't mean they are always exactly the same, but that you do set up certain rules that provide expectations. If you read Harry Potter and in the last book there was a change up where Harry was actually a clown from outer space and Voldemort was really Superman and Lois Lane's love child, the story went off track. Though this is exaggeration ME in a similar way changed the total focus of the game (3 games) at the end. There is no fight with the reapers-there's a fight with husks and brutes and banshees and then a discussion with the new antagonist.
And whereas ME1 was about saving the galaxy, ME3 starts to really narrow the focus. Take back Earth and Earth is London and then you really are not taking it back at all.
Survival and a win in ME3 could be believable too if written that way. But ME3 actually suffers from a lack of writing-fetch quests for war assets that are meaningless for the ending, artificial delays in play to drag the story out-auto dialogue that you must keep returning to in order to get the full story (like Aethyta's as wonderful as it was and the Asari commando's), doors that are slow to open, cutscenes that are not skippable, slow motion nightmares and the slow motion at the end. These all make the game artificially longer that it actually is.
There is no win in ME3 and that is another type of tone that I'm talking about-it's not a win to decide that people can never be rid of the reapers. For millions of years the galaxy has been using reaper tech seeded by the reapers so that all advancement fits the reaper timeline. People have never had the chance to advance on their own, learn their own things. All tech is based on reaper tech. Control and Synthesis continue that and up the ante. Destroy is genocide. This is a game, a video game. It is not some Doctoral Thesis, nor was it ever a story about the futility of existence. You choose destroy and Shepard abandons much of his/her soul. Mine would sooner kill herself by setting off a nuke on the citadel (that would be real sacrifice FOR something), than destroy people who just found life. EDI told my Shepard that Joker unshackled her, but only now (in London) did she feel alive, because of Shepard. So sadistically the writers have said the only way to maybe achieve ME's goal is to wipe EDI off the face of the Earth. What a wonderful game.
), but in the end I couldn't kill the Geth and I pretty much adored Edi and Joker so I went for another option. I had a pretty high EMS by the end of the game, so apart from characters like Anderson, Mordin and Thane etc, most of the characters survived. I became really attached 
Retour en haut
None of the other characters are important enough to warrant that little clip right at the end.
