[quote]3DandBeyond wrote...
I have never personally read any comment that could explain in some way how the endings relate to the rest of the story in any cohesive, coherent way.
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This can not be true. Even in this thread, people (including me) have argued the contrary, and there are many others with much more conclusive analysis in them, though mostly drowned out by all the hate. The problem is that you mix up your subjectivity ("They do not fit for me") with objectivity ("They do not fit the story").
[quote]3DandBeyond wrote...
there always was a synthetic organic conflict" and that's true, but in each instance the conflicts, mostly extremely minor, were handled by those involved, one way or another.
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Extremely minor? ME1 started with you saving a beacon built specifically to be only accessible by organics from a planet overrun by a synthetic mastermind orchestrating other synthetics and a twisted, dominated organic to do its bidding. The Reapers themselves are overpowering synthetics, the very epitome of the occurrence they were meant to prevent. You might call that stupid, I call it irony.
[quote]3DandBeyond wrote...
Leviathan created the kid to stop the killer synthetics and to achieve peace and balance.
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It was not built to "stop the killer synthetics". It was meant to broker lasting peace between organics and synthetics. The Leviathans say nothing that implies that any sort of solution involving violence was ever intended for the catalyst, and that was their fallacy, the belief that they were creating a synthetic that left them in control, when the catalyst drew its own conclusions entirely free of the morals and respect for life that an organic would have. It "betrayed" them, as they claim.
[quote]3DandBeyond wrote...
He has the reapers seed the galaxy with tech so that organics will develop along a certain path and that means they will learn to create tech and synthetics. When they get to that level of advancement, the reapers return, having set this up to occur every 50k years. Ok, that makes sense. The kid and reapers create the environment for people to be led to their own destruction. And he is supposedly an AI, supposedly logical.
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What is so illogical about wanting to have your opponent develop along the path you desire, rather than the chaotic, unpredictable results uninfluenced science and advancement might deliver? Mass Effect technology only invites organics to rely on what they found, rather than what they researched, making the very core of galactic society extremely vulnerable to an enemy that anticipates exactly this type of technology. Remember how the Reapers used to turn off the relay network during earlier cycles? Remember how Aethyta wanted the Asari to build their own Mass Relays, but everyone laughed the blue off her ass?
Have you ever played a real-time strategy game (like StarCraft)? If so, you'd know very well that you could win every single game easily if you could dictate your opponent's build order. The Reapers are doing just that by seeding their technology.
Oh, and one more thing: There is not a single instance where the game implies that the Reapers seed any tech directly related to advancing AI research. The reason why Reaper tech is used so widely in a lot of places in our cycle is due to the destruction and salvage of Sovereign, which is obviously not what the Reapers intended. What they seed are the Mass Relays and the Citadel (even the Mass Effect itself seems just to be a physics phenomenon that's well understood in the ME universe, as it seems to be reproducible trivially if you have eezo and electricity). Both seeded technologies are directly related to the Reapers' extinction plan.
[quote]3DandBeyond wrote...
Furthermore, within the game the reapers use the geth to achieve their goal-they create killer synthetics in order to stop killer synthetics-this is what ME3 says about ME1 and Sovereign at the end, but then the kid says he's not killing people, conflict is not really being perpetrated by the reapers since they're just doing what they must like a cleansing fire. Well, he's the arsonist with a blow torch. All of this smashes what Sovereign and even what Harbinger said about what they were doing. Sovereign basically says the reapers are there to kill them. The kid says they aren't.
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The Reapers use the Geth, much like they use indoctrinated organics. They have no morals in this regard. Should they have stayed away from the easy process of using the Geth, just because you find it too ironic? Also, I know the Sovereign conversation on Virmire very well. There is nothing in this conversation that directly contradicts anything we learn later. If anything, remember the line "you exist, because we allow it, and you will end, because we demand it". In the end, that's exactly what the catalyst tells us, too, with the only difference that the ultimate goal is to preserve the harvested in Reaper form. I don't know any reason why Sovereign, the cornered vanguard very well aware of being on its own with the Protheans having disabled the Keepers, should have given us any more insights into the Reapers' ultimate plan, especially when "surprise" and "deception" have always been central themes to the Reapers tactics.
[quote]3DandBeyond wrote...
I can point out multiple occasions where Shepard said the exact opposite of what Shepard would have to believe in order to make one of these choices. I can also point out numerous instances of dialogue where the kid contradicts himself or what we were told in game before.
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I'm honestly looking forward to hearing those.
[quote]3DandBeyond wrote...
The kid in no way explains to Shepard sufficiently what will happen in either of the choices. Examine destroy and what he says-and then say who will live and who will die.
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None of the EC slides show you anything that could lead you to believe that the catalyst wanted to deceive you. The Control and Destroy options are made very clear to you ("but the Reapers will obey me?" – "Yes"; "but the Reapers will be destroyed?" – "Yes"), and Synthesis is actually supposed to be the big unknown, the fundamental change of the roles of organic and synthetic life in the galaxy. You are in no way required to make this decision, if you would rather consider it only if you knew exactly, on a scientific level, what is going to happen. Uncertainty is what makes this option interesting, rather than the obvious "best" ending.
[quote]3DandBeyond wrote...
Shepard is not allowed to even ask the kid, when he says that the created will always rebel against their creators, what makes him think that.
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This is actually a smart move, if you allow me to be so provocative, because the statement is not falsifiable, nor provable. What could the catalyst answer realistically? It could have told us that even on our own Earth, the most advanced, dominant species has shown little respect to the less advanced species (you are aware how many animal species we have already wiped out, not even necessarily intentionally, but because they were in our way?), and what if the dominant species in the galaxy is synthetic? It could have presented us a long list of incidents where this has nearly happened billions of years ago (it is old, you know), but how should that persuade you?
In fact, you have two options to pick that do not depart from this postulation at all, or even refute it entirely: Pick destroy if you don't share the catalyst's view, and you have nothing to fear for the future. Or pick Control and use the Reapers for something entirely different, it is up to you to decide.
[quote]3DandBeyond wrote...
Shepard can't use the geth as an example of the creators rebelling against the created, nor can s/he use the example of the geth to dismiss the kid's whole purpose.
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This is irrelevant. You cannot truly believe that you could talk this AI out of its own views, it being billions of years old and very likely having anticipated anything you could bring up to persuade it. Your "Renegade" or "Paragon" bars would need to go through the roof to do that.
[quote]3DandBeyond wrote...
Shepard can't use the genophage and krogan example as a reason for why advancing civilizations beyond their readiness or inserting artificial things into people against their will or without their knowledge is wrong or ill-advised.
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This is entirely unrelated to synthesis: The genophage was obviously an act of war, of malice, and this is not what synthesis is supposed to represent. If you think it's a trap, don't pick it.
If the catalyst answered you that you and half your crew are full of (biotic) implants, would you then have said "ah, yes, good point, let's jump into the beam now." – It is just as unrelated.
[quote]3DandBeyond wrote...
Well, then the real answer is to do nothing, but nope that doesn't work. Once the kid reached a point where a solution does not work, as a logical device he would not keep performing that solution, but well, he does.
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Now this is totally illogical: The solution is imperfect, because it could lead to a scenario that the catalyst did not anticipate (e.g. you standing there, with the Crucible docked). Either you help it find another solution (it surrenders to you, on the condition that you take over its responsibilities in whichever way you choose), or you condemn the galaxy to live (or die, actually) with the old, imperfect solution, though your cycle manages to leave enough information behind for the next cycle to come to the same point.
Just because the catalyst realizes its solution is imperfect doesn't mean it has to second-guess its intentions.
By your logic, we should all stop using cars right now, because with all the (finite) fuel they need and all the CO2 they blow into the atmosphere, they are obviously an imperfect solution. Or is it more likely that we will keep using such cars until we find a better solution?
[quote]3DandBeyond wrote...
I can also and have given reasons all over the place as to why each choice is a mess. Take synthesis for example. What tech is inserted into everyone, where does it come from? Similarly where does the full understanding of organics that synthetics get, come from? Never mind that this is totally contrary to what the geth ever wanted-to have someone externally give them full understanding and knowledge. They wanted to decide for themselves. As to tech being inserted into everyone, consider that all tech is flawed. The codex says that an AI outside of its blue box would be just data files and that inserting those files into a new blue box would create a new personality. This is because of random, minute differences within that blue box's tech. As yet, no tech has been created that is perfect and yet we are led to believe that Shepard, who was told just how horrid synthesis would be, and observed many different instances of abhorrent attempts at synthesis, and understood that in the galaxy there were people that never even wanted any kind of implants, would think fully integrating tech into all organic life at a DNA level would be something worth dying for? No way. Basically what Shepard is being asked to accept is the idea that tech is perfect, but since somewhere along the way some organic had a hand in creating the tech and no one is or ever will be perfect, there will always be random flaws. And if the tech replicates, it will replicate the flaws at a say molecular level within trillions of people and countless other organic lifeforms. Good idea.
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Yes, good points, especially that no technology is ever perfect. But it doesn't invalidate anything that's in the game, they are just damn good reasons for you not to pick synthesis.
All three endings have grey areas to the point where there is no ending that is perfect under each and every circumstance. If the presence of a clearly outlined, perfect ending is what you demand from a story, then ME3 fails you.
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