Raistlin Majare 1992 wrote...
...I personally like to place the choices in a sequence going from what i percieve as best choice to worst choice. My sequence on this is: Destroy, Reject, Control. Synthesis...
I have little doubt Destroy is the best option. It is hammered into your head repeatedly taht this war cannot be won without losses, without sacrifice, (just look at most of the conversations with garrus concerning Palavan and the "cold calculus of war" for an example) but that is what Control and Synthesis claim can be done. Everyone and their mother (almost) also tells you this in some form throughout the game...
Essentially going by my own belief that choosing Control or Synthesis might not be instant gameover Indoctrination of Shepard, but that certain events and choices in the past can save him, each choice would require progressively more drastic measures and/or greater losses to have Shepard break free.
But ultimately we just have to wait and see.
Prior to the EC, my hierarchy was {ctrl+alt+delete}, destroy, not worth considering.
The endings forced me into meta-analysis of the game. They forced me to ask questions about interpratation, authorial intent, and Player input and control. Part of the reason I love IT is that it provides a tool to players to look beyond the face value understanding of the ending choice.
I understand (I think) why one would order the choises into a hierarchy as you do. You're not picking 'the best' option, your picking the least bad one. This is a somewhat Utilitarian analysis and I understand why the Reject option would come up lacking in it.
But your right, the Game is stil being made...
BleedingUranium wrote...
But destroy plays to the themes throughout the series, "Victory through sacrifice" and "The right choice is usually not the easy one". Saving the council, Arrival, and most of ME3 come to mind. EDI and the Geth said they'd rather die than let the Reapers win, everyone who's not indoctrinated would. The only reason you're hesitating is because you're the one killing the Geth, which for me doesn't change the end result.
IT or literal, Refuse is giving up, and I think it's the last choice Shepard would pick. No matter how you play Shepard, Shepard is always the kind of person that does stuff, especially when it counts.
In a literal end, there's no reason to pick refuse whatsoever. There's also no reason to pick destroy, but even just between those two, either the Geth die, or the Geth and everyone else in the Galaxy dies.
In an IT end, the way I see it is Refuse is not being able to break out of the indoctrination attempt, but not falling for it either. It's pretty much exactly like getting stuck in Limbo in Inception. You're stuck in the dream, and never wake up. The mirror of the refuse end and a part from Leviathan reinforces this perspective.
I actually agree with you about EDI and the Geth. If you play paragon enough to uplift EDI, you get a statment of intent of sacrifice. You don't get quite that much with the Geth but if you save them you get an admission of sorts that freedom/autonomy is important. Even ignoring IT, these positions lead me to claim that Destroy is the true paragon option provided your Shepard is sufficiantly paragon.
I don't see Reject as giving up, rather I see it as refusing to play by the Brat's rules.
It's as if you hover up to him and he says, 'Suddenly I'm holding all the Aces!'; and you respond, 'Suddenly I'm not playing cards."
The Starchild has developed a very specific, rigid, and self-reenforcing understanding of how the universe works. Shepard isn't just a threat to the Child's existence, Shepard is a threat to its ideology and worldview (galaxyview?). For the first time in at least 37 million years, someone has the oppertunity to challenge it directly. To force it to confront any and all inconsistencies, circularisms, conciets or other erata in the very reason for its existence.
Imagine what could have been and could yet be if, through a series of conversation interupts backed by previous player choices, Shepard speechified the Brat into logical meltdown, forcing it to confront any and all inconsistencies, circularisms, conciets, and errata to the point where it couldn't hide from its own cognitive dissonence.
I don't know what would happen at that point. Maybe the Child's program would crash (apropriate given the crash issues I've had playing the game). Maybe it would come to the conclusion its purpose was complete or unfulfillable and shut down. Maybe all the Reaper ships would lose their (implied) AI shackles at once and detonate, or commit stellar suicide out of horror, or start fighting each other and everything else.
The closest we get to this is the Reject option. I like Reject for its meta-level implications, but I think Reject can work as a rational, though very dangerous, stratagy. It's a gamble of sorts that you can break the Catalyst through Force of Will, with the stakes raised to everything or nothing. No comprimise. No half-measures. Of course, it only works if you play the game 'in the moment' and ignore what you the Player already know abot the endings.
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