OP, great post and great points that are often ignored. Refuse is said by many to be about giving up, but it's the exact opposite. It is so easy to pick some choice that will just end the conflict and get it over-that is the choice of a weary mind and body-give up, get it over. There's nothing easy in deciding to try and continue fighting. If only people who continually have told me to understand how real life works, would themselves take a look at real life and what has and even now is happening. What could be easier than deciding to stop fighting and just live with things as they now are? What is easy about deciding to give up the comforts of home and life to fight for freedom and the chance to determine your own future? There is nothing lazy in turning your back on some easy, yet less than good choice that is handed to you by some unknown person (the creator of the choices). There is nothing lazy about questioning the validity of these choices of unknown origin that merely act as some way to solve the problem your enemy was created to solve-choices that were not created to solve your (and the galaxy's) problem and that could potentially make things much worse in a more permanent way.
As well, there's nothing lazy about saying that this thing you created may not work as you hoped, so all bets are off and you can't use it. In fact, one must really reach deep into one's soul to say that the very thing everyone poured all their energy into, all their faith as well into, is something you cannot use and that the fight, no matter how futile must go on. It says that even though there's this big risk in doing so, you will put the faith back where you've always placed it, into your own two hands and into the real "human" (organic) bonds you have created.
Looking at ME3 at the beginning and then looking at what refuse could mean at the end, there's a big difference in what someone might think could happen. At the beginning, no one was working together-no one wanted to. At the end, even though their numbers have weakened, their resolve, strengthened by in part desperation, but also by unity could have a chance. They know more about what they are facing and there have been ways to push back at the enemy. There also (for the player apparently) are signs that what you are doing is working, judging by your war asset console on the Normandy.
People in the face of adversity, do one of a few different things. They can shut down, hope for some outside intervention (a deity, or the crucible), ignore the situation and act immune to what is happening, or decide to do the most difficult thing of all-act and rely on themselves.
I too keep coming back to refuse. Refuse is actually more what I've done without shooting or choosing to refuse. I stop playing the game after Anderson dies. Often, I just stop playing even before that because I refuse to enter into that whole house of horrors strewn with human bodies and then have Bioware tell me that Shepard would ignore all that when talking to the kid.
People will say that in choosing refuse you're just committing suicide and genocide by allowing people to be harvested. Hmmm. Well, in order to make a choice you'd actually have to believe something about what the kid says-even if only that he's accurately stating what the choices do. So, you'd have to have some faith in the kid and a huge device of unknown origin. This reminds me of an old tv show episode-can't remember if it was the Outer Limits or the Twilight Zone. Aliens came to Earth with a book entitled, "To Serve Man". People were ecstatic that aliens wanted to help and got on board the alien ship to be helped by them. However, the earthlings didn't realize the book, "To Serve Man" was a cookbook. The kid says he might know how to help Shepard-he doesn't ever say that he will help, he doesn't ever say that the crucible and choices will help. The kid indicates he's not killing anyone, so if that were true then refuse would lead to exactly zero deaths. So how can anyone that would make a choice based upon what the kid says argue that refuse means the deaths of everyone in the galaxy? I for one, don't believe the kid is being accurate and he is certainly not complete in his explanations for anything.
He is not to be trusted, so even if he never created the choices, even if he never had a thing to do with creating the crucible, he is the one telling you what these things supposedly will do. And he avoids certain questions, refusing really to answer them, and provides ambiguous unclear answers when asked or explaining anything. It's fool's gambit to go along with this. The kid goes further to say that his solution no longer works and that he needs to have a new solution. This too leads me to believe the only real choice would be to not choose-again, that's refuse. If someone tells you that the surgery you are scheduled for is not the solution for what ails you, is it logical they would still insist you have that surgery or that you would say, "cut me open, anyway"? Of course not, but BW insists that it makes sense for a logic device to say, "the reapers aren't fixing the problem" and yet still use the reapers. You don't use a tool that does not work-you don't solve a problem with something that will not solve the problem. Again, the real choice is not to choose. Now, yes this is based upon what the kid says, but it proves that those that would make a choice base it in whole upon what the kid says-if he just stood there and said nothing, you would just walk up to something randomly and not pick something based upon what you think is the best of the worst. You rely on what he says. I try and imagine the whole thing as a blind choice and anyone that thinks they don't in part believe the kid should do the same thing-try and see just how important the kid is in your understanding of what the choices will do. And then realize that he is not the most trustworthy being to offer you the choices. He's like a car salesman or any sales person working on commission. He wants to sell you one of these things, but there is one that will yield the most gain for him. That is in his programming.
Personally, I don't believe or care for anything the kid says so nothing he says matters to me. In fact, the thing he seems to want most is the thing I'd be least likely to do, but this creates a real circular debate for me-would he not realize that people don't just give the enemy what he wants, so isn't it possible that the choice he seems to think is his favorite, is not his favorite. This reminds me of another thing, a movie-the Princess Bride and the poisoned wine scene where the one guy is trying to ascertain which wine he will drink because one is poisoned.
It seems to me that the choices are things that superficially feel somewhat right because they can stop what is happening in the immediate future, but there's no way to know anything about them for sure. There's also no way to know if they are like time bombs that will go off once complacency sets in.
The other really big point for me is that Shepard is merely refusing to make one of these choices. Everyone thinks the crucible is a huge weapon. Why is it necessarily so that in refusing to make a choice the kid is offering (choices that exist within the citadel and are not a part of the crucible), Shepard would automatically know the crucible would no longer function? We are expected to make a leap that makes no sense to me. The kid says to Shepard, come into my home, and put your pie in my oven to bake it up and eat it. Shepard doesn't like the kid's oven because it only burns food. That does not mean the pie can never be eaten. Silly metaphor but I think it's applicable. Shepard could conclude (even if wrong) that in deciding to refuse the choices, the crucible can then be set off as merely a weapon. Even if not, people will often rely on their own two hands to do things when the tools someone else offers don't work right. And in this game, this story, Shepard has most often done this too. The galaxy has been one huge broken entity-the council and Alliance as well, but Shepard relied on him/herself to get things done. Refuse is in keeping with this. It's just like with the kid-if something is not or will not work as intended or if you don't know that it will, you find a new solution. In refuse, Shepard takes the hard road and decides to use the tool s/he created, a new solution, a united galaxy.
Modifié par 3DandBeyond, 18 décembre 2012 - 02:59 .
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