506 réponses à ce sujet

[Xilizhra]

daaaav wrote...

Xilizhra wrote...

I didn't need to know the "mystery" behind the reapers. They were my enemy. They were the enemy of my friends. They were killing innocent people. They were destroying innocent life. I didn't need to understand them. I just needed to know how to destroy them totally. That was all. I'm just an old infiltrator who can only see things down the barrel of a gun.

You have a very dull Shepard.

And no, I'd choose the Catalyst ten thousand times over having the Reapers remain a bloody mystery. I believe the only major problem with the Catalyst is that it was insufficiently foreshadowed and introduced too suddenly; with those resolved, it'd go a long way toward fixing things.

This irks me.

Are you certain you have no issue with the rather jarring juxtaposition between the natures of Sovereign and the catalyst? 

Not at all. I have no reason to trust Sovereign, especially since one of the things it says is utterly nonsensical and only makes sense as a rhetorical flourish ("We have no beginning. We have no end."), and we prove it wrong about being invincible.

[David7204]

I'm certain. In fact, as I've said, I kind of like that the Catalyst is ambivalent instead of hostile. A true villain doesn't need red skin and horns. He speaks calmly and politely.

Modifié par David7204, 06 mai 2013 - 07:07 .

[SilJeff]

Yestare7 posted...

Agree with a lot of your post, and especially the above. Reaper's mystery was just chucked in the bin when they became the catalyst drones.

I am surprised that you do not mention MEHEM. MEHEM's creator has said on several occassions that his main goal was to cut the Catalyst out of the game, and he did that. And now it has come to the point where a fanmade ending is the second most favorite choice, clearly beating Control and Synthesis.

social.bioware.com/4323819/polls/44634/

(...aaand keep in mind that console owners CANNOT install MEHEM, otherwise I believe the number would be well above the 20% mark)

mehem is not canon, its a mod. No amount of advertising, and no matter how popular it may be, a mod is not canon.

it isn't surprising it isn't mentioned

Modifié par SilJeff, 06 mai 2013 - 07:13 .

[brandon3990]

So..... Did you play the leviathan dlc?

[daaaav]

All I can do is testify as to how meeting each entity made me feel. Sovereign filled me with dread whilst talking to the catalyst brought abject frustration and irritation.

Do the reapers have an unknowable profound purpose? Are we mere mortals really ants to their unfathomable vastness? No, not really... they are just misguided or malfunctioning machines... I would take the space Cthulu's myself.

[PsyrenY]

matchboxmatt wrote...

Every challenge has always afforded some leeway to be victorious.

So you saved both Ashley and Kaidan on Virmire? You saved the Bahak system in Arrival? You saved Nyreen?

Shepard isn't a god. No matter how skilled s/he is, some things are just not physically possible.

[David7204]

Months or years after the fact? I don't see why Shepard should start dreaming about them right then and there.

[SilJeff]

I'm sure they were (trying, I won't pick sides by saying if they succeeded or failed at it) using him as a symbol. An innocent kid who is killed by the reapers symbolizing all the innocent victims of the harvest.

Was he even real in the first place? I really doubt it (judging by how he 'disappeared' in the vent scene). I think he is a symbol. Nothing more, nothing less.

of course, why the Catalyst chose to reveal itself to Shepard in the form of that kid, I am not sure, I am making a hypothesis, but I won't say it until I am confident in it, and it will be a while before I am

Modifié par SilJeff, 06 mai 2013 - 07:28 .

[David7204]

daaaav wrote...

All I can do is testify as to how meeting each entity made me feel. Sovereign filled me with dread whilst talking to the catalyst brought abject frustration and irritation.

Do the reapers have an unknowable profound purpose? Are we mere mortals really ants to their unfathomable vastness? No, not really... they are just misguided or malfunctioning machines... I would take the space Cthulu's myself.

I'm been wondering off and on for months why exactly people feel that way. Haven't really reached any conclusions I feel solid about. Although I hated the endings, I never felt anything bad towards the Catalyst.

[PsyrenY]

The worst thing I can say about the Catalyst is the form it took. Extra Credits did an episode on children in games and they rightfully pointed out ME3's kid as a clear example of what not to do. I think the Catalyst would have worked much, much better as whichever squadmate died on Virmire. Even when Shepard has nightmares you have the option of saying you were thinking about the Virmire Casualty when asked - it would have fit so perfectly. Shepard's mind racked with guilt, an innately trustworthy voice to deliver the Crucible options, more voice work for Kaidan and Ashley, it's win/win/win.

Modifié par Optimystic_X, 06 mai 2013 - 07:32 .

[David7204]

I don't know. People seem to hate the Catalyst, seem to gleefully delight in pointing out 'stupid' he is, how bad his 'logic' is, how they should be able to convince to stand down or whatever.

But at the same time, they seem to desperately want him to be right. They want him to be replaced with a dead squadmate or something. They complain about being manipulated, but don't seem to grasp that a squadmate would just be further manipulation.

There's something very dishonest, and I've yet to discover the core of it.

Modifié par David7204, 06 mai 2013 - 07:35 .

[daaaav]

David7204 wrote...

daaaav wrote...

All I can do is testify as to how meeting each entity made me feel. Sovereign filled me with dread whilst talking to the catalyst brought abject frustration and irritation.

Do the reapers have an unknowable profound purpose? Are we mere mortals really ants to their unfathomable vastness? No, not really... they are just misguided or malfunctioning machines... I would take the space Cthulu's myself.

I'm been wondering off and on for months why exactly people feel that way. Haven't really reached any conclusions I feel solid about. Although I hated the endings, I never felt anything bad towards the Catalyst.

Because after meeting the catalyst, the narrative is no longer about Shepard stopping the Reapers from killing his friends. It is now all about the catalyst preserving organic life. This change is jarring and ignores most of the preceeding material as the entities whom Shepard (and the player) care about are completely absent and have no agency in the stories conclusion whatsoever.

Or, to see someone else put it far more eloquently:  

Oh, and the catalyst changes the Reapers from what Sovereign was into its own mindless playthings.

Modifié par daaaav, 06 mai 2013 - 07:38 .

[Morlath]

matchboxmatt wrote...

.....

Even with the Extended Cut, not everyone was satisfied. That's because it never fixed the biggest problem with the ending, and perhaps all of the Mass Effect series:

That the star child existed at all.


I know I'm totally preaching to the choir here. No one is ever going to say / has ever said that the star child was a good idea. What I think is interesting, though, is figuring out why he doesn't fit in the Mass Effect universe in the first place, because if you give it enough thought, he is the sole reason why the ending didn't work.

Beyond the fact that he's a deus ex machina, what he represents is thematically inconsistent with the entire series. For one, none of the options he presents are like anything you've faced before.

.....

The biggest reason that the star child doesn't work, though, is that he downplays the main antagonists of the series - the reapers.

I'm going to disappoint you.

I think the only reason the Catalyst doesn't work is a left-turn introduction. That's it.

The Catalyst, its beliefs, its place in the universe and its connection to the Reapers all make sense when you connect the dots of ME1, 2 and 3.

[David7204]

So do players want the Reapers to have a legitimate motive or not?

[AlanC9]

daaaav wrote...

Because after meeting the catalyst, the narrative is no longer about Shepard stopping the Reapers from killing his friends. It is now all about the catalyst preserving organic life. This change is jarring and ignores most of the preceeding material as the entities whom Shepard (and the player) care about are completely absent and have no agency in the stories conclusion whatsoever.

Assuming the Catalyst and the Leviathans were actually right, that is. Even if that's true, we also need the post-Destroy or Control galaxy to be unable to find a better solution that shows the Reaper "solution " to be an idiotic waste of lives and time.

Because if the Reapers are just a mistake, then the narrative's exactly what it always was; Shepard stopping the Reapers from killing everything.

[daaaav]

AlanC9 wrote...

daaaav wrote...

Because after meeting the catalyst, the narrative is no longer about Shepard stopping the Reapers from killing his friends. It is now all about the catalyst preserving organic life. This change is jarring and ignores most of the preceeding material as the entities whom Shepard (and the player) care about are completely absent and have no agency in the stories conclusion whatsoever.

Assuming the Catalyst and the Leviathans were actually right, that is. Even if that's true, we also need the post-Destroy or Control galaxy to be unable to find a better solution that shows the Reaper "solution " to be an idiotic waste of lives and time.

Because if the Reapers are just a mistake, then the narrative's exactly what it always was; Shepard stopping the Reapers from killing everything.

Yes, but then there are all the myriad other issues which fog the coherence of the narrative...

Who designed the crucible? (you would not know them and there isn't time to explain).

Why are organics and synthetics doomed to eternal conflict?

How does the crucible change the catalyst?

Is there infact a discrete partition on what is organic and synthetic life and how does the crucible dinstinguish which from which? (implications of project overlord etc)



On and on and on.

[David7204]

Half of those would still be in place without the Catalyst, and if the Crucible was just a big Reaper buster. We still wouldn't know who designed the Crucible. We still wouldn't know how it discriminates between Reapers and other AIs and technology.

As for how the Crucible changes the Catalyst...it doesn't.

Modifié par David7204, 06 mai 2013 - 08:18 .

[daaaav]

David7204 wrote...

Half of those would still be in place without the Catalyst, and if the Crucible was just a big Reaper buster. We still wouldn't know who designed the Crucible. We still wouldn't know how it discriminates between Reapers and other AIs and technology.

As for how the Crucible changes the Catalyst...it doesn't.

Yes it does. The catalyst states that it does and that new options are available to solve the problem. Without the catalyst and the crucible, all those problems vanish... 

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

Xilizhra wrote...

I didn't need to know the "mystery" behind the reapers. They were my enemy. They were the enemy of my friends. They were killing innocent people. They were destroying innocent life. I didn't need to understand them. I just needed to know how to destroy them totally. That was all. I'm just an old infiltrator who can only see things down the barrel of a gun.

You have a very dull Shepard.

And no, I'd choose the Catalyst ten thousand times over having the Reapers remain a bloody mystery. I believe the only major problem with the Catalyst is that it was insufficiently foreshadowed and introduced too suddenly; with those resolved, it'd go a long way toward fixing things.

Dull Shepard, eh? Shepard has a job to do, and a very complicated one: play politics and unite the galactic powers to fight the reapers; provide leadership; and find a weakness in the enemy and exploit that weakness. That's a hell of a lot on a person's plate. She really doesn't give a damn why the reapers are doing what they're doing, especially when she finds out: http://youtu.be/-2oK0LSacIw?t=3m. She doesn't have time to sit around contemplating the "innocence" of genocidal monsters.

They could have ended it with the crucible and without Starbrat.

Modifié par sH0tgUn jUliA, 06 mai 2013 - 08:45 .

[David7204]

She doesn't have a choice. You don't get to stick your fingers in your ears so you can pretend your enemy has no merit.

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

David7204 wrote...

She doesn't have a choice. You don't get to stick your fingers in your ears so you can pretend your enemy has no merit.

But they don't.

[Mangalores]

David7204 wrote...

No. He doesn't. A Reaper AI existing on the Citadel is very well within the established methods of the Reapers built up through the series. It's made very clear the Citadel has secrets hidden, and it's made clear the Reapers like to use, 'booby traps,' so to speak.

That doesn't discredit something as DEM. I don't know where you got that idea. Shepard literally does not believe the Catalyst is the Catalyst right there when talking to it. She thinks like everybody else that it's the Citadel and it's just a machine part you need for the Crucible to work.

What makes it a DEM is how it completely sucks any tension out of the end game and then offers to resolve everything for you. The protagonist ceases to be the one solving the problem. Something he didn't and couldn't anticipate does all the problemsolving for him, including problems we never heard of before.

[David7204]

sH0tgUn jUliA wrote...

David7204 wrote...

She doesn't have a choice. You don't get to stick your fingers in your ears so you can pretend your enemy has no merit.

But they don't.

You didn't know that at the time. Like I said, hindsight bias. I think I have a pretty compelling motive that would have worked for them.

[David7204]

Mangalores wrote...

David7204 wrote...

No. He doesn't. A Reaper AI existing on the Citadel is very well within the established methods of the Reapers built up through the series. It's made very clear the Citadel has secrets hidden, and it's made clear the Reapers like to use, 'booby traps,' so to speak.

That doesn't discredit something as DEM. I don't know where you got that idea. Shepard literally does not believe the Catalyst is the Catalyst right there when talking to it. She thinks like everybody else that it's the Citadel and it's just a machine part you need for the Crucible to work.

What makes it a DEM is how it completely sucks any tension out of the end game and then offers to resolve everything for you. The protagonist ceases to be the one solving the problem. Something he didn't and couldn't anticipate does all the problemsolving for him, including problems we never heard of before.

And the Crucible firing and being nothing but a Reaper-buster with no catches or consequences wouldn't have been exactly that? Let's pretend for a moment the Crucible had been introduced better. Back in ME 2, if that floats your boat. Would it be a DEM in that case?

Modifié par David7204, 06 mai 2013 - 08:49 .