txgoldrush wrote...
JigOS wrote...
BrookerT wrote...
JigOS wrote...
BrookerT wrote...
JigOS wrote...
I've never seen a greater example of Deus Ex Machina, both as a plot device, and as bad writing form than the Catalyst in ME3. I mean, not even in Deus Ex, because what they did was intentional and woven into every bit of the plot.
Leviathan doesn't really change this very much. It lessens it sure, but doesn't do away with it completely.
And then there's the Crucible: mystical machine out of freaking nowhere. Never mentioned previously, and suddenly it holds all our hopes for salvation.
I mean, really, the DEM-nature of those two plot entities simply boggles the mind.
Ok, how is the Catalyst a Deus Ex Machina, just explain it, please
First, you must consider the origin of the term Deus Ex Machina, or "God out of the machine". It comes from ancient Greek plays, where an often used plot device would be, near the end of the play, to lower a figure representing a god down to the stage with a crane. This god would provide a means to quickly tie up plot lines through the use of it's deitic power. Often this plot device would be unexpected.
The Catalyst in Mass Effect 3 is an example of Deus Ex Machina because of three things:
1. He is never chronologically reffered to previously in the plot. His appearance in the last minutes of the plot is unexpected, and abrupt.
2. He is deitic in nature, and holds the power to instantly solve the protagonist's problem, though the means of this is never explained. The plot is only able to be ended with his involvement.
3. He literally comes out of a machine, or in a sense, is a machine. A machine-god.
Leviathan is a post script edit. In lessens the DEM nature of the Catalyst by alluding to him before his appearance. He still retains DEM quality, however, as his introduction and involvement is entirely contained in the last act of the series, with no allusion previously. This is due to Bioware's chosing to create each game's plot relatively spontaneously.
He is reffered to, the Catalyst is almost a McGuffin in the sense that shepard is pursuing it. It is constantly refferenced.
The plot is only ended with Shepard involvement. Shepard is one who "alters the variable", without Shepard, Destory and Synthesis (as we know it) are not possible, And without The Catyst, the refuse ending will happen, with the reapers dying anyway.
However, I agree that his presented as dietic in nature, I personally hjate this.
Fair enough.
If we refer to the game without the EC, then I can easily see how he is a deus ex machina, but with it, I just can't see it
You must step out of an in-lore context. The Catalyst has an unsolvable problem. In an in-lore context, this has existed millions of years before the Mass Effect story. In a real-world conext, the Catalyst's problem exists in the audience's mind only in the last minutes of the game (or in the case of Leviathan, the last act of the game). It's a method for the entity of the Catalyst to solve the main story's problem. In the Greek dramas, it can be thought of as the god's motivations for intervening in the affairs of mortals.
Wrong
His problem exists throughout the series.
There are many times where AI's and VI's turned against organics and Overlord almost had catastrophic results.
True, but you along with everyone the main theme is defeat the reapers. the organic v synthetic stuff is only used because its an example of different groups working together even with there differences, like krogan v turian salarian.
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