humes spork wrote...
It makes sense considering the themes of sacrifice throughout the game, and trilogy at large. The very first game, and trilogy, was billed in no small way on hard decisions and having to make sacrifices -- "many choices lie ahead, none of them easy", if anyone remembers that from the ME1 trailer (as well you ought, it's the trailer that plays in ME1's main screen).
In ME1's sadistic choice, both Kaiden and Ashley are willing to sacrifice themselves for the mission. You have to choose one or the other. In the end, you have to sacrifice either a large portion of the Fifth fleet, or the Destiny Ascension and the Council.
In ME2's suicide mission, your team is willing to lay down their lives for the mission. You have to choose who is in the hot seat, and depending on those choices characters die, all the way down to the Normandy crew if you choose to shore up loose ends before launching the mission. Hell, Kal'Reegar is willing to make the self-sacrifice as well unless Shepard interrupts and forces him to stay in cover.
ME3 is all about self-sacrifice. Mordin (or "not Mordin") sacrifices themselves to cure the genophage, or Shepard either sacrifices the salarian in the hot seat or sacrifices the Krogan race. Legion (or "not Legion") sacrifices themselves to give true sentience to the Geth, and/or Shepard either sacrifices the Geth or the Quarians. Thane, or Kirrahe, sacrifices himself to save the Salarian councilor, and Shepard has the option of sacrificing the VS to take down Udina. Shepard rallies the Turians on Tuchanka to be ready to sacrifice themselves for the mission, and Lt. Victus sacrifices himself to stop the bomb.
Through the entire trilogy Shepard orders people to make the sacrifices, or sacrifices others to achieve the final end (stopping the Reapers). ME3's final choice is Shepard's turn to make the sacrifice, mediated by Shepard's (and by extension, the player's) views organic/synthetic conflict that's existed since ME1 -- and yes, it absolutely has, no matter how much you want to deny it the theme of organic/synthetic conflict extends well beyond the geth.
That's what it is. ME3's final choice is Shepard's turn to follow in the footsteps of Ashley/Kaiden, Kirrahe (potentially), the Council or Fifth fleet casualties, suicide mission casualties, Mordin and Legion (regardless of choice), Thane, Victus, and everyone else.
To hammer the point home, I'll draw a parallel to Star Trek II: the Wrath of Khan. The theme of that film as regards Kirk, is that Kirk has never truly faced death and cheated his way through life to avoid it. Kirk's career is paved with the corpses of red shirts, but he's never had to face death personally, or lost anyone who was truly close to him. Kirk denies the reality of the "no-win" situation, down to cheating on the Kobayahi Maru test (and having colossally missed the point of it in the process).
And in the end, due to Kirk's own impetuousness and hubris (it was Kirk's decision to not follow regulations and raise the Enterprise's shields, which allowed Khan to launch a surprise attack), he's put in that no-win situation he fought his entire career to deny and avoid, and it costs him the life of his closest friend. Despite the fact Khan was already beaten, the Reliant adrift and the Genesis device about to detonate (keeping it out of the wrong hands), the Enterprise was going to be destroyed in the detonation, and Spock sacrifices himself to fix the Enterprise's warp drive ("the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one").
In the end, it was Kirk's turn to face a genuine no-win situation, and through it he finally gained a visceral, first-person perspective of that, the meaning of sacrifice, and the personal stakes involved in major command decisions. And, that relates back to ME3 in the sense that throughout the trilogy, Shepard (and by extension, the player) was complacent giving orders and demanding sacrifices of others without ever truly making a real self-sacrifice, and the trilogy's climax was Shepard's turn.
I like you're point, but I disagree that the premise of all 3 games was sacrifice. I think the real theme was
Choice. You got to choose, and your choices had deep impacts on the universe. Although many choices did involve sacrifice, the fact that you were given the choice is what mattered. That is why I fell in love with Mass Effect in the first place. It was immersive and rewarding with the sheer ammount of control you were given. I was not a player in a game, I was Commander Shepard; Alliance Navy, Council Spectre, and I would succeed where all others had failed.
Although Sacrifice did exist in all three titles the prevailing
emotion through the series was hope. Hope that somehow you could bring Saren to justice, hope that you could head off the reaper invasion, and hope that you could somehow find a way to defeat the reapers. While it was understood that sacrifice would be necessary to achieve these goals, the sacrifice always felt like it had meaning and the reasons the sacrifice was necessary was always well explained.
When you create a trilogy like this, the emotion that the game instills in it's player and the theme that was presented at the beggining are vital to continuing the narrative. The last entry in the series felt to me like a jarring departure from what ME had come to mean to me. I liked the game, but it was obvious from even the demo that Bioware was changing direction. In order to support the "Action" template they were gunning for, they stripped away alot of the dialogue and decision making I had come to love. The dialogue wheel seemed bare and empty, most of the time I only had two choices and the exposition dialogue was largely reduced. People still talked alot, but they were conversations in which I had limited input. Instead of being in control, I was being taken along for the ride. This would not have bothered me in any other game series, but in ME I had come to expect a certain degree of player-generated input.
As far as the emotion of Hope goes, ME3 was so dark and depressing that hope was the
only emotion I could draw from to stay invested. I played the whole game with a sense of desperation, wanting to see how it would be possible for me to succeed against such impossible power. I was totally immersed by ME1 and 2, but the dream sequences and the haunted Shepard in ME3 felt alien to me. My reactions in the first two games were similar to the ones Shepard exhibited and when Shepard did not show a reaction, I subconsciously ascribed my personnal reaction to my character. I was Shepard, but ME3 changed Shepard into someone I did not recognize and had difficulty empathizing with.
Then the ending. I was expecting multiple etremely different endings. Ones where my choices from the previous titles had profound effects on the galaxy and I owuld get to see these play out. When the star child presented me with my 3 options I was a little taken aback. Especially since (Pre-EC and Post-EC) the logic it used felt flawed and the explanations for why the machine would work the way it did were not up to the level I had come to expect from the series. I was expecting an epic finale, not "would you rather die from Blue electricution, Green disinegration, or maybe die from a Red explosion." The effects on the galaxy at large were not lost on me, but what I found myself asking was "Why? What did I do wrong?" I expected Shepards sacrifice would be a
choice, not that the only choice would be the method by which I died.
In the end, I had to take destroy since it was the only ending that didn't look like a huge mistake to me. Creating a Super-AI, even one imprinted with Shepard's conscious, felt incredibly dangerous as we had just been presented with the "absolute truth" that AI's will always turn on their masters. I remember thinking how ridiculous this self-defeating arguemnt seemed. Then synthesis which I immediately rejected as a form of Eugenics. Poorly explained, it seemed to me that I was being told that the only way for peace was for everyone to be the same. I could go on, but I'm being too long-winded.
It seems to me that your Star-trek analogy is flawed. If Wrath of Kahn had been the last movie in the series then maybe I would agree with you. However, The producers actually approached Leonard Nimoy as they were filming the final scenes in the engine room and asked him point blank to put his hand on McCoy and say "something" I can't find the exact quote right now but you can find in Nimoy's "I am Spock." They told him they wanted him to give them an out, something they could work with to re-nig on the sacrifice. Nimoy hmself came up with the "remember" line without fully understanding what they were asking for.
This was not truly a "No-Win Scenario" Spock sacrificed himself, but the Enterprise "won" and although Kirk lost his closest friend, he cheated death again, coming out on top. I think your analogy would be stronger if you compared Spock to Shepard instead of Kirk. To call Shepards decisions complacent seems wrong, as it is obvious he keenly feels the sacrifices of each and every soldier he was forced to send to their deaths. Forcing the player to deal with the sacrifice of Shpeard was handled poorly in my mind since I didn't really see the need for him to die in any of the endings as they were presented. Heck if you had high enough war assets, the game almost made it look like you could have won convenitonally in the atack on earth Star Wars-esque cutscene.
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