See, the fact that you are talking about 'hope' and the possibility for change as if it were some fantastical, stunting fairytale that only a naive child could cling to is precisely my point.Xilizhra wrote...
You speak as if this unity would last beyond the Reapers, and I honestly find this doubtful. War may bring people together, but without that, things would fall apart again to something similar to the status quo, if nothing else would change. The krogan uniting with the rest of the galaxy against the rachni, after all, didn't last. The war against the Reapers isn't a war of ideas; there's no way to gain converts, just talk to the Reapers and show them that the cycle is unnecessary. It's a war of mass accelerators, and Thanix cannons, and suicidal warp bombs, and ultimately the Crucible. To hold to ideas is a wonderful thing, certainly, but it's not the sort of thing you can allow to paralyze you. It's best to avoid ruthlessness when possible, but sometimes, it's not. Like, again, in Arrival.
Up until those final ten minutes hope was cherished in this game. Belief that people could change, that together, unified, people could do great things, that old wounds could be learned from - those were the driving themes of the narrative. Shepard's little rag-tag team was a symbol of diversity and fellowship, heading out into the stars to do something greater than any of them could do alone. Go back and listen to their dialogues, to the stories they tell of their pasts, to the resolutions you can help them achieve: it's all about hope - about being able to embrace the capacity to change, to resolve one's past, and build toward a more inclusive, optimistic future.
...But you're right. The ending wants us to forget all that childish nonsense, because this story was never about faith - no matter how many characters bleated the word 'hope' at you.
Apparently - as you say - it was about weapons. Who could build the biggest nightmare device, and who would be willing to use it.
Because that's the only way that people can win wars, right? You have to be willing to be as bad as your enemy, and to use their methods and embrace their tools. You have to be williing to throw your allies under the bus to save yourself.
Yeah, being a 'realist' is fun.
As I said, for me, the saddest legacy of this narrative is that it has engineered opinions such as that - that there is no point in believing that your morality has any significance, and that in the end the only way to defeat horror is to use and become horror yourself.
Modifié par drayfish, 05 octobre 2012 - 08:32 .
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