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Back in March 2012, before the Extended Cut, I was angry at BioWare as much as some if not all of you were too, but I'm a reasonable person, but before the game's release, I vividly followed every interview I could about the game, and from what I heard from interviews before ME3 was released, BioWare didn't live up to some, if not most of their promises, like the rachni having a major role in the war if you saved the queen in ME1, there being 16 endings and stuff like that, and that made me skeptical, especially with the lackluster novel Mass Effect Deception, with the heavy lore errors and all that, it made me believe that since BioWare is reaching the end of the trilogy, they are losing their touch, getting tired and lazy, wanting to end the series in the quickest way possible. But when Extended Cut came out, I forgiven BioWare for the most part, but there were still some wounds that haven't fully healed. Now let me talk about the next DLCs and how they bolstered my resolve to hold the line.
In the Leviathan DLC, some details in that add on shed new light on my perspective about the purpose of the Catalyst's existence and his goals. In the part before Ann Bryson volunteered to let Leviathan use its mind control abilities on her so that Shepard, EDI and Vega can trace the signals back to the planet its hiding on, she said that the mind control abilites of the Rachni and Leviathan are similar, stimulating neural activity. I remember in ME1, if you have Shepard ask the queen how is she speaking through the dead asari, the queen replies she "plucks the strings" in the brain. Neurons look like strings when you look at a picture of it. She also said that Leviathan uses the artifact ball to "establish a connection" and control the mind of anyone near the ball. That got the wheels in my head turning. I remembered the Catalyst telling Shepard that he was "first created to oversee the relations between synthetic and organic life, to establish a connection" between them. At first we believe "establish a connection" to be a metaphor meaning to "teach organics and synthetics mutual cooperation and friendship", but there's a hidden definition there. The Catalyst is not just looking for a solution that'll bring peace between organics and synthetics, he's doing it so that his creators, the Leviathans will be free to dominate the galaxy with an iron fist (or tentacle) like they used to eons before the Reapers existed. A very good reason for Catalyst haters not to to trust him and the choices he offers to you, especially Synthesis. I hypothesize that the Synthesis DNA connects all living beings in the galaxy in a way that give the Leviathans an eaier time re-establishing their dominance in the galaxy. Everyone becomes wireless cell phones, but only the Leviathans can make calls. They probably instigated the Rachni Wars so that the Rachni won't live to use their mind control abilities to oppose the Leviathans.
These details in the Leviathan DLC got me beliving that BioWare may have been up to something we aren't anticipating. I started believing that despite them saying they are finished with the endings, they may be up to something top secret, that maybe through ME3's DLCs, we could get the chance to obtain an ending where Shepard defeats the Reapers without using the Crucible. For example, in case some of you don't get what I'm saying, it would be like the quarian and geth war all over again. If you want to make peace between the two factions, you have to make the right choices in ME2. If you play through ME3 before playing ME2, the charm and intimidate dialogue to bring peace won't be there. I believed the same would apply for the end. If you try to refuse after the Catalyst says "Then you will die knowing you failed to save everything you've been fighting for", without playing through the Leviathan, Omega and Citadel DLCs, the charm and intimidate dialogue won't be there with "I'll do it." and "You're wrong.", there'll no way you'll be able to beat the Reapers on Shepard's terms, you'll doom everyone you've been fighting for and the cycle will continue because Shepard didn't obtain the information and assets he/she needs to win conventionally which I believed back then, could only be obtained in the DLCs. It made sense to me. It was what kept me buying DLCs, it was what gave me hope.
Now, I got nothing left to keep me going, which is why I have decided to quit being a Mass Effect fan. My game ended with Alexander Shepard choosing Destroy, because as long as the Reapers and Catalyst are alive, they won't allow life to thrive on their own. In other words, the Reapers are just like the salarians. The salarians reasoned that the genophage does not kill krogans, that curing the genophage would bring chaos, allowing the krogan, a brutish race to grow, but the truth is it euthanizes stillborn krogans, it gives the krogan race a feeling of helplessness and despair, the feeling that their future is very bleak and the krogans are bloodthirsty and ruthless because they feel they have nothing to lose. The Catalyst has the same idea. he claims that the actions of the Reapers maintains balance in the galaxy, but how can he say that when he is euthanizing races based on what might happen? The genophage and harvest exist because the salarians and Reapers are scared of an unpredictable future. A future they can't control.
The point I'm making here is I have a more mature, sensible reason why I am quitting as a Mass Effect fan. From what I've learned from the Extended Cut and Leviathan DLC, the galaxy is the Catalyst's experiment, since he directed the Reapers to build the mass relays and Citadel, according to what the Leviathan said. In other words, the Milky Way galaxy is the Catalyst's laboratory, the mass relays, Citadel and Reapers are his tools, and humanity, asari, turians, salarians, drell, elcor, quarians, geth, batarians, vorcha, every race that exists are his lab rats. That being said, the Reapers not only manipulated the evolution of humans and other races along the path they desired, they also manipulated everything about the war. The Crucible was not designed by a race the Reapers harvested several cycles ago, the Crucible is another tool of the Catalyst, one he wants organics and synthetics to build themselves. I'm pretty sure some of you have missed it, but have you noticed how neither the Catalyst and Leviathans don't want to fully reveal the origins about the Crucible? It's because its their design, the Crucible is part of the Catalyst's experiment to reach its solution.
Let me break it down from the beginning. Many many eons ago, the races the Leviathans controlled created machines to serve their needs, just like the Laviathans control "lesser" organics to serve their needs. When the machines became sentient and fought against their creators for their freedom as sentient beings, the Leviathans saw this as a problem and created The Catalyst. They requested it to learn everything it could about about organic civilizations and their relations with their machine creations and find a solution to the chaos that will establish a connection between organics and machines at all costs, meaning they don't care if the Catalyst employs eithical or unethical methids to reach its goal. As the Catalyst studied each civilization, it learned that all organics build synthetics to improve their existence. For example, without technology, without machines, we wouldn't have
PS3, computers, cell phones, none of that. We would be in the stone age. The improvements have limits, for machines who are by definition meant to be much more than tools. And because the creators refuse to view and treat synthetics as living beings, it causes conflict. Look at what the quarians did to the geth when they asked an innocent question, and how the council treated the sentient LOKI mechs in one of the video archives in the Citadel DLC! Adams is more open minded than Chakwas when it comes down to this. If you side with Adams in his debate with Chakwas over what makes organics like synthetics, this is what Shepard says:
"Genes don't make us alive. It's our awareness, curiosity, and capacity to evolve."
After finding a solution to the problem, a solution that relates to Synthesis, it tried to force the organics and synthetics to manifest the solution, but they refused every time, and each failure the Catalyst made had made the chaos worse. Some of you believe that the Catalyst has contradicted himself, forcing Shepard to use Synthesis. The truth is, he is not forcing Shepard to do anything, he gave Shepard a choice. The reason why his efforts failed in the past is because he only had one solution to offer, not three, and the organics and machines refused Synthesis every time because with one solution, they knew there is a catch. What if they knew of the Leviathans motives? What if they knew the Levis want to control them both? This forced the Catalyst to create two more solutions, based on the solutions organics would generally choose when dealing with hostile machines: Destroy them, or Control them. Like that AI said in ME1's Signal Tracking side mission: "I am not naive, human. All organics must destroy or control synthetic life forms." Peace between machines is not a solutions organics would generally choose. Then the Catalyst instructed its creators to design blueprints on the Crucible, a machine that offers the Destroy, Control and Synthesis solutions for the "lesser" organics and synthetics to build, then the Catalyst "betrayed" its creators, creating Harbinger and starting the harvest. Contrary to what the Catalyst told Shepard, the Reapers are NOT the solution he is looking for, they are a means to the solution.
When every race in each cycle discovers caches of the Catalyst's technology and the Citadel, they are allowed to thrive freely for a limited time until the Catalyst sends the Reapers to come and threaten their lives, in hopes that they may discover and build the Crucible, believing it to be the salvation to their survival against the Reapers, but unfortunately, no cycle has been able to complete the Crucible, every cycle before has failed the Catalyst's tests. Also, even though the Crucible has three solutions, the Catalyst still wants Synthesis, the ideal solution, so he used the Reapers's indoctrination powers to influence the minds of organics, convince them that destroying the Reapers is a bad idea, but controlling them or giving in to them is not. Saren promotes Synthesis, Illusive Man promotes Control. Giving organics the power of choice was risky, but necessary, otherwise the choice will be refused.
This is what makes me upset about there not being another ending, one where Shepard stops the Reapers his/her way. Remember what Legion said about there being many paths to the same end, how accepting the paths that someone offers to you blinds you to alternatives? Well, in case any of you haven't noticed, the fact that the Reapers, their indoctrinated organics and heretic geth oppose Legion's philosophy makes them appear more evil even though their goals are noble. Because the Reapers and Catalyst are afraid of what might happen to synthetic and organic life if they ceased to exist, they act like strict dictators who say: "You must evolve on either of the paths we paved for you, or die." They want us to be blind to alternatives. It shows how controlling they are, to the point where you want to resist them, you want to show them that there are other ways, you want to show them that there can be peace without Synthesis, whether they like it or not. That's why I have no reason to be a Mass Effect fan anymore, because everything I've done has been in vain. I've held the line this long, for good reasons, now it's time for me to throw in the towel. I hope I made my intentions clear to everyone before I'm gone for good, even the people who only understand plain English.
This is goodbye. I'm for real this time.
Modifié par N7Gold, 09 mars 2013 - 12:38 .
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