The Mass Effect trilogy, more precisely its main plot and critical events surrounding the protagonist, over the course of three games, veered off from believable fictional science into mysticism, until, in the end, any pretense of rationalizing events in terms of in-world logic was given up.
The setup: Mass Effect 1
Recall ME1. We have quite a few elements of "space magic" in it. FTL, biotics, inter-species sex, to name the most noticeable. The rationalization in terms of in-world science was shoddy, sometimes nonsensical, but then, ME was never supposed to be hard SF, and to give the writers some credit, I've seen much worse on TV. In the end, these elements were introduced as part of the setting, built into the structure of this fictional universe in a way I could suspend my disbelief for. More importantly, they were described in a way that suggested they were intrinsically comprehensible to the people of the ME universe, no matter that I couldn't make sense of them in terms of the extended real-world science I would apply to a hard-SF universe.
The first tear in reality: The Lazarus Project
The first hint that this principle of rationalization in in-world terms was about to break came with ME2's Lazarus project. Shepard was dead, and if he hadn't been "clinically brain dead" as was later explained in ME3, the word "dead" wouldn't have been used. It was always clear that Shepard was dead, not "almost dead". Also, anyone who knows the least bit about medicine knows that the brain deteriorates after a few minutes without oxygen. So where did the information come from used to reconstruct Shepard's memory and identity? There have been a few rationalizations by players like "Shepard's brain was frozen" or "He carried a greybox which stored his identity", but anyone who noticed the symbolic significance of Shepard's resurrection would also notice the suggestion of a more mystical explanation: that the information was stored "somewhere else".
So far, so good. The solution was unknown to the player at that point, and even if it was suggestive of mysticism and that was personally annoying to me, I would've gone with it this far. However, I don't know about other players, but the very first thing my Shepard would've asked Miranda after awakening was "How the hell did you do that?" We were not allowed to ask. We were supposed to accept this unsolved mystery in a matter-of-fact way, as if this was a miracle that shouldn't be explained. The mystical vibe was deliberately kept. The only way this was prevented from a total descent into mysticism is that we could reasonably assume that Miranda understood what she had been doing - but note what ME3 did to that assumption.
The Suicide Mission and the deliberate mystification of the Reapers' creation
There exist alternative dialogue lines for EDI at the human Reaper which were never used. There, she explained the processing of humans as "destructive analysis", with the information gained in that analysis to become part of the Reaper mind. This was very plausible, reminiscent of the destructive uploading process used in harder SF universes where mind uploading is possible. This, however, was not used, replaced by the infamous "essence of a species" line which was suggestive of vitalism. This way, a mystical concept was re-introduced into the ME universe through a backdoor, at the expense of a believable explanation in terms that make some scientific sense. What made it worse is that the content of the older, cut version could actually be inferred from other parts of the game which were well-hidden from the player, most notably, Legion's rare post-SM dialogue, AND that the existing EDI/Shepard conversation made no sense at all, since it implied that the DNA was harvested as building material for the Reaper. It made so little sense that (a) I could infer the content of the cut lines without even knowing Legion's dialogue at the time, and (
that it was completely unbelievable that EDI would actually say something like that. The mystical vibe was deliberately inserted to replace an explanation that made more sense, by a character who's supposed to be intelligent enough to understand the implications. This comes across to me as a suggestion that we should take the mystical explanation literally and take nonsense for reality.The final descent: Legion's sacrifice
Geth are software. Even after they've gained identity, they remain software, as evidenced by Tali's explanation of how the geth are helping the quarians to adapt. So here's the question: why did Legion need to die? In which way, please, is a copy of some software not identical to its original? There is no such thing unless you assume some extradimensional element to anyone's identity which has the intrinsic property that it cannot be copied. I call BS on that one.
There is an utterly pernicious aspect to this: before, certain elements were suggestive of mysticism but we could interpret our way around it using existing elements of the lore. Those elements had symbolic meaning but there could, as yet, be an interpretation in terms established by the lore or the fictional science of the ME universe. Now, Legion's sacrifice is the first time where this does not work anymore, where we are expected to take mysticism for reality. With Legion's sacrifice, the allegorical becomes real, and the ME universe ceases to be a science fiction universe.
From the "only" mystical to the nonsensical: Synthesis
At this point, we know what the Reapers are and that the harvested civilizations are used to make them. Of those who looked past EDI's nonsensical speculation in the SM, most will arrive at some variant of the cut "destructive analysis" scenario. When thinking about how a sacrifice of Shepard's kind could be significant, then, we can reasonably suspect that information gained from....some aspect of him or her would be used to shape the Synthesis, information that the Crucible could've gained no other way than by a variant of that selfsame destructive analysis, because after all, that's how things worked with the Reapers. Even the "willing sacrifice" could be rationalized: the mental state of the Reaper victims couldn't have been conducive to a healthy transformation, and the dead, well, if it was the information gained from the sacrifice's mind that was necessary, a corpse wouldn't have worked.
What do we get instead? "Organic energy". So, does Legion have "synthetic energy"? And if so, what's the difference? I must admit that I was totally speechless when I heard this attempt at a "clarification" of the original Synthesis. How can I not interpret this as an attempt to take the allegorical meaning of the sacrifice and transfer it unchanged into reality? To transform the ME universe, in the last minutes of the game, from an SF universe into one ruled by miracles and the classical magical concept that a symbolic event directly affects reality?
Is this the end? No. The final insult comes with the suggestion of a hybrid synthetic/organic DNA analogue, as if the concept of a "synthetic DNA" made any logical sense in the first place, as if the difference between synthetics and organics existed on the molecular level. Well, this isn't mysticism any more, this is outright nonsense. Even if it's a metaphor, it's an excessively bad one, and that the line was not removed with the EC is something I count as insulting, as if the writers expect me to take something seriously just because it's written in a context that implies it should be taken seriously, regardless of what it actually says. I'm sorry, but that's not how things work.
The bottom line:
If you're a good worldbuilder, it's possible to introduce elements reminiscent of mystical concepts into your SF universe without destroying its identity as an SF universe. Peter F Hamilton did that in his "Night's Dawn" trilogy, and it's no mean feat. The main requirement is that these elements need to be presented as intrinsically understandable, a part of the natural universe and not some mystical extension thereof. The main thing to avoid is to transform allegory into reality without making it intrinsically understandable in terms of in-world logic. Deliberate obfuscation, such as used in the ME trilogy, used by characters who should know better, only suggests to the player that they should take the allegorical as literal, because it suggests that the allegorical terms give you a more appropriate description.
What the writers of the main plot of the ME trilogy did after the end of ME1 was either an example of epic incompetence as worldbuilders and writers, epic disrespect of the genre identity of the universe they had built or epic disrespect of the players' intelligence and their willingness to accept nonsense for reality.
How I deal with this:
People who know me and my other posts may have an idea of what it costs me to write things like this about what is my favorite ending in terms of outcome. How, then, can I save the story for me? Here's my explanation: the Catalyst says crap to Shepard because it underestimates their intelligence. From its godlike perspective, talking to Shepard must be like a human trying to explain Einstein's theories to a rat. That it sees fit to wax poetic about the way the cycle makes way for new life is evidence enough, as far as I'm concerned. Basically, the same way the writers apparently viewed the players. Players are morons after all. So, if I find any element that makes no sense in in-world terms, I either reframe it or take it as a bad metaphor. And in the case the writers expected me to take things like "organic energy" literally, then I can only say: I am not willing to suspend my disbelief that far.
Note: The Extended Cut
I generally like what the EC did to the ending and the explanations it added. In the context of this topic, I hold against it what it did not remove from the Synthesis exposition and what it did not rephrase in terms of in-world logic.
Modifié par Ieldra2, 18 février 2013 - 03:09 .
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problematic.
