171 respuestas en este tema

[KingZayd]

it's foreshadowing in the sense that the character is wrong, and others might be too.

The claim mirrors what the Starchild said pre-EC. Both statements are untrue.

One suggesting that Synthetics are doomed, the other suggesting Organics.

Editado por KingZayd, 16 diciembre 2012 - 03:05 .

[Mathias]

I always had felt that the conflict between Organics vs. Synthetics was more of a side plot and never the main theme. If that's what they were going for then they did a horrible job of it. But they also admitted that they were making up the story as they went along, and that finally started to show in ME3.

Although honestly, even if they did a fairly good job at foreshadowing everything in ME1&2, the ending still would've sucked imo. For everything that happened to lead up to that one depressing moment.

[Ieldra]

Mdoggy1214 wrote...
I always had felt that the conflict between Organics vs. Synthetics was more of a side plot and never the main theme. If that's what they were going for then they did a horrible job of it. But they also admitted that they were making up the story as they went along, and that finally started to show in ME3.

Indeed. It felt like a recurring theme, an important one but not what it's all about. Synthethics were just another life form to contend with. As for making up the story as the went along, that's very obvious in many details, but how much that applies to the supposed main theme is arguable. It appears to me that the general philosophies behind Destroy and Control may have been rather old. "Original", so to say. I Destroy the Space Cthulhus or harness their power. I can see even the "Reaper connection" part of the Synthesis ending as fitting, as integrating the "other" into your civilization. 
The "organic/synthetic are doomed to conflict" scenario, however, feels alien to the story, especially that we solve one of the those conflicts and have a friendly AI on our side. 

My conclusion: the lead writers knew early what they wanted the player to be able to do with the Reapers in the end, but they were hard-pressed to find a rationale for the cycle that would make the wanted options appear reasonable to the player. Everything that we see - the rationale for the cycle, the Catalyst and its weird exposition, the contradictions and the thematic inconsistency - all that exists because the lead writers wanted the three options we have in some form, and wanted them all to be reasonable. They wanted all that at any cost, but in the end, they sacrificed too much.

Editado por Ieldra2, 16 diciembre 2012 - 10:37 .

[Dr_Extrem]

@ ieldra2 & mdoggy1224
thats the reason, i feel disconnected from the endings. to me, they feel out of place.

i could have lived with something else .. like .. "we harvest all civilisations, before they decay and vanish." something that occured very often during our own history. this would at least feel like a logical reason.

to the player, the organic vs. synthetic plot is concluded on rannoch.

but in the ending chamber, the catalyst pulls this old fart out of the hat and tells me:

"this sideplot is not concluded yet. it is in fact, the reason we pull this off every 50k years. "


i am not a big fan of smudboy - he is right in a lot of ways but too nitpicky and offensive. i can look over plotholes - like everybody else, if the game feels good, is fun and delivers a sense of accomplishment. but he pointed out one thing in his "dos&donts of endings" part of a video.

"don’t leave your reader feeling tricked or cheated"

i feel cheated, if i get the impression i missed important and solid foreshadowing (despite being very alert) or relevant parts of the plot. especially, if you are a "completionist". i am left with the feeling, i misssed something important .. that is not good for a "bloodhound" like me.

and i think this is one of the main reasons, the people do not like the endings as a whole.

[dreman9999]

@Dr_Extrem wrote...
@ ieldra2 & mdoggy1224
You guys do know the reapers are part of the organic /synthetic plot.
Also, a week long peace doesnot mean the end of it.

[Wayning_Star]

Now we 'trust' an Ai to answer the question as to what it is to create any trusted Ai?

okay..


forshadowing the question is not the answer to the ending(s). (this could be a/the 'disconnect'...maybe

Editado por Wayning_Star, 16 diciembre 2012 - 01:45 .

[Shermos]

Yes, there is a disconnect between writers and players. The writers gave the players (some of them anyway) too much credit for their creativity and education level. Sometimes I want to add intelligence to that list, but I'm trying to be nice.

[GreyLycanTrope]

Shermos wrote...

Yes, there is a disconnect between writers and players. The writers gave the players (some of them anyway) too much credit for their creativity and education level. Sometimes I want to add intelligence to that list, but I'm trying to be nice.

Still pretentious.

[paul165]

Shermos wrote...

Yes, there is a disconnect between writers and players. The writers gave the players (some of them anyway) too much credit for their creativity and education level. Sometimes I want to add intelligence to that list, but I'm trying to be nice.

You failed....

[Dr_Extrem]

Shermos wrote...

Yes, there is a disconnect between writers and players. The writers gave the players (some of them anyway) too much credit for their creativity and education level. Sometimes I want to add intelligence to that list, but I'm trying to be nice.

sure ..

creativity and education ... to connect a sideplot - who is obviously concluded o rannoch - with an ending, that was creative but copied from an old sci-fi story.

you dont need to be educated, smart or intelligent .. you need a crystal ball to make this connection. the reapers and their lust for destruction and genetic material are "a little bit" too obvious to see other connections - even if they were there.

i give them credit for trying .. but the execution is lousy.


try harder to be nice.

[Uncle Jo]

Ieldra2 wrote...

I just stumbled over this line:

"All organics must destroy or control synthetic life forms"

It is from ME1, said by the AI in the Signal Tracking assignment on the Citadel, and I found it interesting how exactly it foreshadows ME3's ending, where Shepard will get to do exactly that with the Reapers. I then considered the many dealings we had with synthetics over the course of three games and asked myself: this *is* a major defining theme of the story and the MEU. Why didn't it work in the ending?

Couldn't recall this line. It was very well hidden. But just one dialogue line is easy to forget and ain't enough to turn one of the main themes of the game into the galaxy's central problem or foreshadow what was about to happen in the ending. Not after Legion's revelations in ME2 and the Rannoch arc in ME3.

Here's the hypothesis I propose as an answer: there was a fundamental disconnect between the writers and the players about how we would react to synthetic life forms in general and how we would consider them as life forms. In detail:

(1) I think the writers expected us to see synthetic life forms as fundamentally different, they expected we had to learn to consider them as valid life forms. Recall how hard the geth plot in ME3 stresses the fact that the geth were defending themselves? As if we didn't know that already - it's been in the Codex since ME1 and was a topic in several conversations. We even get to say "they just defended themselvs" to Tali in ME1!

Yes, the fundamental disconnect happened when the writers, using a seen and seen again "Hey! the big bad guy is actually the good one" plot twist, suddenly decided that the synthetics and organics are too different to coexist peacefully. Despite of Legion, Rannoch, EDI.
And who said it? A character which pops out of nowhere, in the eleventh hour, is the Reaper boss, provides no direct evidence other than conjectures and wants the player to take his word for it. Contradicting everything we saw in the three games. Cuz he has a lot of experience, saw what we didn't and knows better. They simply made it too hard for the majority of the players to follow or to accept.

I don't know about others, but I never saw synthetics as fundamentally "other", and I always considered the geth as "just enemies". That they were synthetics was strictly accidental and had no bearing on the interaction. If that's the same for most of us - and from what I've been reading on the forums I think it is - then the writers have drastically underestimated our willingness to consider synthetic life forms as valid right from the start. So, when the topic was brought up in the ending, most of us would go "WTF? That's been dealt with. The geth were enemies, and now they're not any more. Or did you [the writers] think we would think synthetics unable to keep peace? After all you've been writing about the geth's desire for peaceful coexistence?"

I always considered the Geth as another form of life which simply doesn't rely on the same living mechanisms as the organics (breathing, eating and so on...). IMO if there is a difference, then it lies in the fact that their motives are guided by the will to understand the universe they live in, in order to integrate themselves and interact harmoniously with it. Not to destroy or dominate it. A very small number, the heretics, chose willingly to follow Sovereign and Saren and was at war with organics.

Legion: "We try to understand not to incite".

I think the fundamental problem is that there is no real counter-example(s) in the three games, where we really witnessed and interacted with (or against) a synthetic race, which is fundamentally hostile to the organics (I don't count the Reapers, they're hybrids, synthetic body/organics minds), for whatever reason, with whom peace is simply impossible, that could have incited the player to ponder his way to apprehend the synthetic "problem".

A rogue VI on Luna (the future EDI) and the heretic Geth (a minority) just don't cut it. The Zha'til were manipulated by the Reapers, their motives not well known and their story was told by Javik, someone who was desperatly fighting against them and the Reapers, seeing his family, friends killed or indoctrinated and his world utterly destroyed. Due to his tragic experience, his judgement could only be considered as biased. And the story happened thousands years ago, in another cycle. "Things were different, it doesn't really count" is a normal thought which could grow in the player's mind.

(2) I think the writers expected us to lump the Reapers together with the geth into the "synthetic" and thus "other" category of life. So that while we were learning to accept synthetics as people, we would also consider the possibility that the Reapers were "just enemies" and otherwise valid forms of life.

How they could expect such a simplistic reasoning, after the hard work they did with the Geth, is beyond me.The Reapers are hybrids, this is for me a fundamental difference. I can't simply put the Geth, EDI or any other synthetic race in the same category as the Reapers.

What brought that to ruin so completely that there was no recovery was that they pushed the horror up to eleven in ME2 and again in ME3. To estimate the role of the "abomination aesthetic", consider how you would've reacted if the Reapers had harvested organics, but in a somewhat "cleaner", more clinical way, without all the unnecessary pain and the re-use of organic body parts for their minions. What if the Reaper minions had been machines instead of travesties of existing species? I venture to guess that many of us would have been rather more ready to see the Reapers as "just enemies" instead of "eldritch abominations", enemies with which to make peace was generally considered possible.

Interesting question. Imo, they simply went too far with the Reapers. Their methods were strangely similar to the n*zis in WWII (the dialogue with EDI about the concentration camps on Earth is edifying), no, made the latters look like choirboys in comparison. The Allies didn't negociate with them, it ended with an unconditional capitulation and the Nuremberg trial.
The player should have chosen to spare them, or merge with them or whatever, on his own terms. Not because, let's say, the fate of an ally was at stake. Not with a gun on his head (see Refuse).

I think this hypothesis of a fundamental disconnect explains two things rather neatly: that the writers considered the organic/synthetic conflict to be such a big thing where for most of us, it was nothing more than dealing with yet another species who could be hostile or friendly like any other, and that they expected us to accept more easily an ending where the Reapers were integrated into galactic civilization.

Agreed. In 99,5% of the saga and until we made the Starbrat, the problem was the Reapers, not the synthetics. The conflictual relations between synthetics and organics were a main theme, but not a unsolvable problem (see Geth, Legion, Rannoch). Not "The created will always rebell against their creators and wipe them eventually out. Deal with it. Trololololol".

Here is the divorce between writers and players. The writers tried (successfully) everything to incite the player to hate
the Reapers and just want them dead. Never ever, they did show the Reapers under any other angle, where we could even say or think  "Hey, maybe it's not like it seems". They also completely underestimated the player's emotional factor which built up through the saga.

The Reapers weren't just another enemy, they were the doom of the galaxy, in an atrocious way. They never respected any life. Just used organics and synthetics for their selfish purposes (See Casey Hudson : "We're merely food for [the Reapers]" ). That's what the three games (excepting the ending) say and show. Making them the "saviors" of the organics in the last moment was the worst move, they could have ever made.

For some of us, that worked. I am one of them. But I had to work hard to see that angle, and I was only willing to invest that work because I saw the possibility for a future I like lurking behind all the thematic confusion. For most players, the ending simply failed, and even if the EC saved it, most people still can't see any fundamental quality in the organic/synthetic conflict that makes it different from any other war between two species. 

It didn't work for me and never will. The Reapers new motives (synthetics and organics can never be friends, we preserve organic life, blahblahblah) and the Brat's existence are, imo, something that was thought in the development of the third installment and has nothing to do with with the previous games. It simply doesn't add up.

Editado por Uncle Jo, 16 diciembre 2012 - 04:55 .

[xelander]

First of all, the main theme hadn't been decided on until midway through the ME2 development process, so a throwaway line in an obscure side quest in ME1 cannot be a foreshadowing.

Second of all, the ME team (and I mean here mostly writers and project leader) approached the final installment in the trilogy with the same mindset with which Michael Bay would have made Blade Runner 2, perish the thought.

The problem is that it was established very early that the Reapers cannot be defeated by conventional means. So a shoot'em up approach, while having the potential to be very appealing to the masses, had to end somewhere and the story needed to delve deeper into Reaper's motivations and origins. If you can't simply beat an enemy down by brute force, you need to outsmart him. and in order to do that you need to know how he thinks, what his motivations are, etc. To quote Bernard Cornwell's  ultimate warrior character: "You think like your enemy. Then you think harder".  Instead, we got saddled with the biggest deus ex machina of all times, the Crucible.

The AI/geth storyline was always a subplot, clearly separated from the main issue of surviving and beating the Reapers. The Reapers were always in a different category, a feeling made stronger by the reveal in ME2 that they are AI/organic hybrids and with the Rannoch mission, where the geth plotline got sufficient closure.

I remember playing through Priority Earth and thinking:"This is wrong, I'm about to finsh the game and we still know next to nothing about the Reapers. This feels like the final mission, but it can't be, can it?".

In short, not enough exposure to the Reaper's motivation and nature over the length of the game (as opposed to in the last 5 minutes) is what made the AI versus organics a surprise for me. But that is only one of the reasons why the endings didn't work (and a minor one at that), and I'd rather not start that discussion, cause it will hijack the thread.

[Dr_Extrem]

thats exactly, what the op wanted to show.

[Reorte]

Shermos wrote...

Yes, there is a disconnect between writers and players. The writers gave the players (some of them anyway) too much credit for their creativity and education level. Sometimes I want to add intelligence to that list, but I'm trying to be nice.

Almost right, you've just got writers and players the wrong way round there.

[Ieldra]

Shermos wrote...
Yes, there is a disconnect between writers and players. The writers gave the players (some of them anyway) too much credit for their creativity and education level. Sometimes I want to add intelligence to that list, but I'm trying to be nice.

That works both ways. While there are players of that kind, some of the writing in the ending is of a kind that I feel justified in doubting the writers' intelligence and education. I'm ready to change any negative assessment, but that would require an opportunity to speak with them in a non-PR sort of way.

In fact, at this point there is nothing I want more than to ask the writers a few questions. Specifically, about their vision, what they expected the players to do with the endings etc.. For instance: was the dark age interpretation of the original ending (the non-supernova version) intended or not? Why didn't they mention the technological singularity explicitly, that would've made the intention at least clearer, if not necessarily more acceptable to some players. Why couldn't we bring up "peace on Rannoch" with the Catalyst?

I'm reasonably content with what we have now. In fact, I love the Synthesis and Control endings in the EC version in spite of the flaws in the exposition. But I would really like to know at which point the writers' vision and my experience of the story diverged. 

[George Costanza]

This is probably true, to an extent.

When you're writing anything, you've got to question yourself. "Why did this happen?" or "How would they know that?" etc. You've got to see it from the perspective of somebody who is seeing it for the first time. You know the story you're telling. You know the symbolism, the emotions you're trying to conjure, the messages you're trying to get across. The audience is coming into this blind, and so you have to make sure they're on the same wavelength as you or your art is destined to fail.

It's a fundamental aspect of writing anything, and I think it's in this criteria that the story of Mass Effect 3 really fails. Sure, there's plot holes, and some liberal interpretations of the established lore, but what I really take issue with is how disconnected certain parts of the plot felt from the rest of the series, and how disconnected I felt from the plot itself.

It's like I've been following a story that doesn't exist. I've been following a story about hope, and overcoming insurmountable odds, and the entire time I've supposed to have been taking in a story about the inevitable conflict between Organics and Synthetics.

Either the themes have changed at some point or they really just didn't know what they were going to do. But either way, the writers have failed in this regard because the themes that they think are the most important are seen as secondary to a lot of players. The issues they're trying to get across are seen as side-plots. They haven't asked themselves enough questions.

Editado por George Costanza, 17 diciembre 2012 - 10:15 .

[David7204]

I don't think they ever intended the 'Organics vs. Synthetics' to be a central theme. They just really didn't have much of a choice at that point. They needed to give the Reapers a motive.

[Vigilant111]

@Ieldra2: I see you are up to your tricks again , by agreeing with you that there are problems with theme execution, I am also involuntarily agreeing that the "organics vs synthetics" theme was planned from day one

You can see my dilemma

[AngryFrozenWater]

Foreshadowing assumes intention. As far as I know the plot as we know it was unknown during ME1 and we do know there was intent to use some kind of dark energy plot during ME2. The story is full of all kinds of statements and events that could be used to lots of different potential ME3 final plots. From those BW has chosen to use the hypothetical synthetics threat later on. IMO stating that BW always intended that is a bit too much.

[Ieldra]

Note that I'm not saying it is *enough* foreshadowing.

Apart from that call it "accidental foreshadowing". The plain fact is that ME1 can reasonably be said to have more of the big organic/synthetic theme than any other game in the trilogy. The Reaper rationale delivered to us after the end of ME1, or even after ME2 minus Legion, would have been believable.

After ME2 with EDI and the Rannoch plot, it would've taken quite a bit more explanation to make it convincing. It was left to a fan (JShepppp) to provide that explanation. This thread was more about speculative reasons why the writers didn't provide it and didn't construct the story of ME3 more around it.

[Chiffmonkey]

You're all missing a rather important logical leap here. What if the Signal Source IS Catalyst, just trying to get an audience with Shepard?

[Sah291]

I think for me it was because the Organics vs. Synthetics theme was overshadowed by the theme of Indoctrination. So I thought the conflict was not framed as Organics vs. Synthetics, so much as Free Will vs. Fatalism.

That invariably put EDI and the Geth on the same side with Shepard and Organics, who believed in self determination. And the Reapers and their indoctrinated AI and organic slaves on the other.

But by the ending, we find out the crucible was never built to account for that, and was simply designed to destroy all AI (or control them). Synthesis is presented as a new third option, which at first feels logical, from the perspective of Organics vs. Synthetics, if you made peace with the Geth. But the solution is presented as instantaneous, and is done by force in a way that strips away any free will... So it feels as though the Indoctrination theme is either forgotten, or is unresolved. Leaving people to wonder if Shepard was indoctrinated into it.

Which brings us to the second problem, as I see it. The crucible/catalyst solution was a mystical solution... Alchemy, basically. And it seemed to come out of nowhere, in an otherwise scifi themed war story about AI.

While the series does have some magical/mystical themes, they weren't front and center enough for this ending not to feel jarring to many people, I think. If the theme of Organics vs. Synthetics was overshadowed by Indoctrination, both overshadowed the themes about transhumanism, ascension, apotheosis... Which were the subtle themes the ending actually addressed. The Destroy ending was perhaps the least jarring, because it could be taken at face value... basically just using the crucible as a giant bomb/weapon of mass destruction, and did not require any mysticism to explain/accept.