748 réponses à ce sujet

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

Well, they were going to harvest the planet and strip the natural resources. They've already trashed the ecosystem. It will never recover. Any humans that do survive will have to evacuate to a colony. There's only 80 million years left of habitability anyway. So yeah, blow up the f****** thing. When it comes to fighting the reapers without the crucible, I'm for a scorched planet policy. The end justifies the means. I'll be as ruthless as they are.

[AlanC9]

Scorched planets mostly hurts the side that lives on planets, doesn't it?

[silverexile17s]

AlanC9 wrote...

Scorched planets mostly hurts the side that lives on planets, doesn't it?

...Touche'.
Yes, I doubt blowing up the planet would do much to them, since, once they realize what your doing, they will act accordingly. The long game isn't possible now that the galaxy threw everything into the Crucible.

[AsheraII]

erezike wrote...

Mr. Gogeta34 wrote...

erezike wrote...

Destroy - shoot tube, destroy crucible. shepard dies or is in very bad health. reapers have easier time winning.
Control - shepard dies, reapers have an easier time to win.
synthesis- reapers have what they want, leave organics alone since they are no longer organics

Refuse - Shepard is alive and Fights to the last. Reapers as a slighter chance to win.

Destroy = Reaper 'off' tube

"You won't just find some long-lost Reaper “off” button."  -Casey Hudson

... I guess that's not totally inaccurate is it?

When ever i am reminded of these remark i cant help but sigh... Casey proved himself to be the worse dungeon master ever.

Just before I saw the shoot tube, I assumed the crucible would either shoot some super deathray lazorbeam, or simply upload some sort of virus into the reapers. I can still headcanon the latter I guess?

[Erez Kristal]

AsheraII wrote...

Just before I saw the shoot tube, I assumed the crucible would either shoot some super deathray lazorbeam, or simply upload some sort of virus into the reapers. I can still headcanon the latter I guess?

I tried hard to make sense of me3.
Its impossibile.
Which is why me and a few others are coming with a complete alternative.


You can headcanon whatever makes more sense to you.

[DarthLaxian]

agreed - of course (starbrat is just bad - hell i hated the dream-sequences already and then the child shows up as the end-game-character...i was thinking along the line of Indoctrination-Theory ("where is the real ending?") or ending DLC (at least in my head) and then they tell us that this is it...*pukes*)

well, let's see what the re-write (even if bioware will never accept it or make a game like it) gets us

greetings LAX

[The Twilight God]

erezike wrote...

The Twilight God wrote...



I despise all of Bioware's endings . Destroy just happens to be the only viable option to defeat the Reapers making it the least ****ty. But it's crap nonetheless.

The MEHEM is the official ending. Bioware has been fired.

So how long are you going to keep this joke thread running?

So you agree that the catalyst allowing shepard to destroy the reapers through the crucibe makes no sense?
by allowing i mean- no destroying the crucible earlier, not taking over the citadel earlier, not closing the relays after wards.
Keeping the beam open, harbinger leaving the beam(werent the reapers winnng) not ground forces on the citadel to prevent shepard from coming, catalyst elevating shepard.

Shooting a tub in order to intiate a machine function, and not agreeing to pull back his forces which is a known military stratgy

reapers crucible tactics/

a Threatening Presence: Deterrence Strategies.[/b][1] Make people think they will lose, bluff if needed. People want an easy victory and will not attack if they think they will lose- make the galaxy think they cant win in others means but only through the use of the crucible/
.
Lose The Battles But Win The War: Grand Strategy.[/b][1] Have a bigger plan- group the entire galaxy forces in one location of the reapers choosing, make them think they are winning at by succeededing with the crucible and then crush their hopes

Control the Dynamic: Forcing Strategies.[/b][1] Be in control. Be assertive. Control your opponent's mind. Move them into your territory.- luring the galaxy to earth and to the beam.
 
Envelop The Enemy: The Annihilation Strategy.[/b][1] Maintain constant pressure on your opponent to defeat their will power.-  the reapers use all their energy to make you think they have no weakness. they use most of their fuel at the beginning of the war. which is why they need to make the war short.

21) Negotiate While Advancing: The Diplomatic-War Strategy.[/b][1] When negotiating a settlement you should not let up on the pressure to advance. This provides you more to negotiate with and does not give your opponent time to regroup. - this is the catalyst forcing you to choose what it wants.

No, I don't believe the Kid allowed anything to happen. Its wasn't its call and it wasn't in its power to stop Shepard.  If you had read my thread as you claimed to you would know this.

You can't look for deeper understanding in bad writing. You can take what they give you and spell things out, but to make up material out of thin air? To say the Reapers aren't dead is to say Hackett lied and that there is no way to win. They completely ignored the lore. The protheans managed to war for centuries despite ME1 clearly stating the Reapers used the Citadel to close relays off to everyone else. Complete BS. Inconsistent world dynamics.

Is the final part s of the game badly written? Yes. Was it an obvious rush job? Yes. Did they ignore the previously established lore and rules? Yes. Is Mac Walters a horrible story writer? Yes.

Out of curiosity, what exactly do you think happened to the Reapers in Destroy? They took a nap and the fleets let them nooze?

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

silverexile17s wrote...

AlanC9 wrote...

Scorched planets mostly hurts the side that lives on planets, doesn't it?

...Touche'.
Yes, I doubt blowing up the planet would do much to them, since, once they realize what your doing, they will act accordingly. The long game isn't possible now that the galaxy threw everything into the Crucible.

True since the galaxy threw everything into the crucible, but if they hadn't.

And the Crucible plot has a HUGE hole in it. How did the other cycles even build the crucible if the reapers were pouring through the Citadel, locking out the relays, going one system at a time? Ooops. Big ooops, Mac. Very big oops. Oh, it's a major retcon. Or did we forget about this? Vigil never happened. You could do that because the PS3 version of Mass Effect 1 didn't come out until November of 2012, right? Humongous plot hole. Basically our cycle was the first and only one to be able to build it, and it just happened to appear and drop out of the ass of the Mars Archives.

Face the facts, he didn't know how to write a conventional victory with a united galaxy without a glorious victory, and kill off Shepard at the end, which is what he wanted to do in the first place because Shepard was Drew Karpyshyn's character, not Mac's. Hence the crucible, starbrat, and the three colors from your monitor adjustments.

[Robtachi]

I agree that refuse is, logically speaking, a viable ending given that its the only way you are allowed to question and reject the Catalyst's obvious logical fallacies, but it was absolutely baffling that the only branch of that choice, regardless of all the work making choices and building EMS for the war effort, was utter failure in stopping the Reaper cycle, thereby negating everything you just spent 100+ hours over 3 games accomplishing. How about an option to tell the Catalyst to take his machine overlord space MacGuffin logic passed down from his Leviathan master race progenitors and go cram it with walnuts? Let the EMS, all the choices you made, fleets you've gathered, and impossible alliances you've brokered, decide the fate of the galaxy rather than some scripted trash that was clearly meant to discourage you from deviating from the intended narrative.

As for Synthesis, well, that was just a pile of hot garbage fermenting in the desert sun. Aside from the fact that even with the Extended Cut it was a feebly fleshed out idea with absolutely no basis in the future-science/pseudoscience Mass Effect universe in which everything else plays by the rules, how can Shepard be given sole responsibility for altering all current and future life in the galaxy in an all-or-nothing manner, when you've been fighting so hard and for so long to allow (or disallow, depending on your playthrough) all of that galactic life the ability and right to self-determinate. Suddenly some dude who loves being a fleshy meat-sack for all its physical disadvantages because it gives him some existential connection to ancestral humanism is forced to accept that he is now part synthetic, and not in any way of his own choosing. Thanks, magical space wizard who makes unilateral choices for all sentient beings, that's just dandy.

[silverexile17s]

sH0tgUn jUliA wrote...

silverexile17s wrote...

AlanC9 wrote...

Scorched planets mostly hurts the side that lives on planets, doesn't it?

...Touche'.
Yes, I doubt blowing up the planet would do much to them, since, once they realize what your doing, they will act accordingly. The long game isn't possible now that the galaxy threw everything into the Crucible.

True since the galaxy threw everything into the crucible, but if they hadn't.

And the Crucible plot has a HUGE hole in it. How did the other cycles even build the crucible if the reapers were pouring through the Citadel, locking out the relays, going one system at a time? Ooops. Big ooops, Mac. Very big oops. Oh, it's a major retcon. Or did we forget about this? Vigil never happened. You could do that because the PS3 version of Mass Effect 1 didn't come out until November of 2012, right? Humongous plot hole. Basically our cycle was the first and only one to be able to build it, and it just happened to appear and drop out of the ass of the Mars Archives.

Face the facts, he didn't know how to write a conventional victory with a united galaxy without a glorious victory, and kill off Shepard at the end, which is what he wanted to do in the first place because Shepard was Drew Karpyshyn's character, not Mac's. Hence the crucible, starbrat, and the three colors from your monitor adjustments.

Not to rain on that parade, but, looking back at ME1, where it took the entirety of the Alliance Fleet and Citadel Fleet to take down a single Reaper, I don't think "unable to write conventonal victory" was the problem at all. Rather, that was a problem that was created right from the get-go, and was created way back when Drew was writing. After all, Drew Karpyshyn himself couldn't think of a way to create a "glorious victory" agaisnt Sovergien and Saren. He had to create a Deus Ex Machina of his own in the form of Vigil's data file, and the "Psychic link" between Sovergien and the Saren-Husk. And Drew's original "Dark Energy" plan involved the Crucible too -- and that it was to be used alongside the "Reapers are the big-picture good guys" idea.

Also, it's been revealed that the Crucbile was actually Drew's plot-point, not Mac's Drew Karpyshyn was the one that created the Crucible as a plot-point, way back in the midway stage of ME2 for the third game, before he left to work on "Star Wars: The Old Republic." He even left small mention to the protheans having "Other plans" in the Shadow Broker DLC to tease at it. Mac just inherited the remnants of Drew's original "Dark Energy Plot," so I don't think it's fair to place all the blame on him -- this was an oops that Drew himself created, and the green and untested Mac had to work with. Now, why someone that was still so new to lead writing was chosen to fix this, IDK. But the creation of this plot actually streatches back to way before he was even the lead writer to begin with.

Drew's original plot was also to have Shepard die no matter what. The plot was that the Reapers creators (Levithans) were masters of dark energy, and the Mass Relays were the pinnicle of this tech -- usible as transport and as weapons to propell projectiles of mass devestation with pinpoint accuracy. A feat only they could do. However, their dark energy experiments began to snowball -- the dark energy began building up in the galaxy, self-replicating to the point that it was reducing the mass of stars and causing them to go supernova (Haestrom was part of this plot, as a "warning sign" that it was happening again).
The Reapers, created to be the caretakers of this event and to stop it from destroying the galaxy, began looking for a way to contain it, and created the cycle -- they would take the races that were genetically diverse, and create Reapers that could absorb and contain the excess dark energy built-up by the galaxy. 
That was what the Human-Reaper was for -- The Reapers believed that in the extremely malible and diverse genetic structure of humans lay the key to repressing and containing the Dark Energy spread once and for all. The "Missing Link" that could insulate the other Reapers, and save the galaxy from self-destruction.
You would be then given two choices.
(A) Surrender, and allow this cycle to be sacrificed, in the hope that Harbinger and the Reapers' hunch is correct, and that humanity's DNA can help them complete their goal.
( Refuse, and destroy the Reapers with the Crucible harnesing the dark energy of the entire Mass Relay Network focused through the Citadel, using it as a literal biotic death ray, in the hope that this cycle can somehow do what the Reapers could not in a billion years, likely dooming all life to destruction in a potentally vain hope.

“Dark Energy was something that only organics could access because of various techno-science magic reasons we hadn’t decided on yet.” 

“Maybe using this Dark Energy was having a ripple effect on the space-time continuum.“Maybe the Reapers kept wiping out organic life because organics keep evolving to the state where they would use biotics and dark energy and that caused an entropic effect that would hasten the end of the universe. Being immortal beings, that’s something they wouldn’t want to see.
“Then we thought, let’s take it to the next level. Maybe the Reapers are looking at a way to stop this. Maybe there’s an inevitable descent into the opposite of the Big Bang (the Big Crunch) and the Reapers realise that the only way they can stop it is by using biotics, but since they can’t use biotics they have to keep rebuilding society – as they try and find the perfect group to use biotics for this purpose. The  Asari were close but they weren’t quite right, the Protheans were closeas well. "

"The Reapers as a whole were 'nations' of people who had fused together in the most horrific way possible to help find a way to stop the spread of the Dark Energy," Karpyshyn said. "The real reason for the Human Reaper was supposed to be the Reapers saving throw because they had run out of time. Humanity in Mass Effect is supposedly unique because of its genetic diversity and represented the universe's best chance at stopping Dark Energy's spread."
“Again it’s very vague and not fleshed out, it was something we considered but we ended up going in a different direction.”

“I find it funny that fans end up hearing a couple things they like about it and in their minds they add in all the details they specifically want. It’s like vapourware – vapourware is always perfect, anytime someone talks about the new greatest game. It’s perfect until it comes out. I’m a little weary about going into too much detail because, whatever we came up with, it probably wouldn’t be what people want it to be.”

“Some of the ideas were a little bit wacky and a little bit crazy. At one point we thought that maybe Shepard could be an alien but didn’t know it. But we then thought that might be a little too close to [Knights of the Old Republic character] Revan.”

The above itelicised Text is Drew Karpyshyn's quote on what his original intent for ME's ending was, in his interview with Eurogamer. If anything, the above choices are just as depressing as the ones we have now. Especally since Shep Still dies or sufferes an unconfirmed fate in them. The only major difference was no Catalyst -- Harbinger himself is the one you'd assumedly talk to.

Also, as far as I can tell, they justify Vigil not knowing, because he severed connection with the Prothean information network the day the Citadel went off-line. And since Ilos was an isolated research facility, it wouldn't have had much contact with the outside world to begin with. Take all that, and add the immense degredation to Vigil's data core over 50,000 years of decay and power shortage, and you might be able to pass it off that Vigil simply didn't know about the Crucible due to isolation, or that it's databanks were too crroded to remember it.

Looking at what we saw in ME1 alone, I don't think conventional victory was ever going to be all that realistic. At least in the eyes of the writers. Phyrric victory, maybe, but never a conventional victory. Either way, the penultimate result would have been close to either the mid-low EMS Destroy, or the Low EMS "Anihliation" Ending. It's obvious from the Dark Energy plot that Drew himself never intended it to be possible to begin with. And Mac apperantly was the one that did argue for a brighter ending, but Casey Hudson supersceded him, saying he wanted Mac to keep it "high-level and realistic."

Modifié par silverexile17s, 23 juillet 2013 - 06:21 .

[AlexMBrennan]

Looking at what we saw in ME1 alone, I don't think conventional victory was ever going to be all that realistic

At the end of ME1 they had all the options open to them - we didn't know how many Reapers there are out there, we didn't know how long it would take them to get here without the relay, and so on.

[KaiserShep]

Yeah, I'm glad we didn't get Drew's ending. For all the faults of what we got, it's a heck of a lot better than the dark energy plot.

[AlanC9]

sH0tgUn jUliA wrote...


Face the facts, he didn't know how to write a conventional victory with a united galaxy without a glorious victory, and kill off Shepard at the end, which is what he wanted to do in the first place because Shepard was Drew Karpyshyn's character, not Mac's. Hence the crucible, starbrat, and the three colors from your monitor adjustments.

Do you really think that Mac or anyone else at Bio ever had any interest whatsoever in implementing a conventional victory?

[Erez Kristal]

The Twilight God wrote...

erezike wrote...

]] So you agree that the catalyst allowing shepard to destroy the reapers through the crucibe makes no sense?
by allowing i mean- no destroying the crucible earlier, not taking over the citadel earlier, not closing the relays after wards.
Keeping the beam open, harbinger leaving the beam(werent the reapers winnng) not ground forces on the citadel to prevent shepard from coming, catalyst elevating shepard.

Shooting a tub in order to intiate a machine function, and not agreeing to pull back his forces which is a known military stratgy

reapers crucible tactics/

No, I don't believe the Kid allowed anything to happen. Its wasn't its call and it wasn't in its power to stop Shepard.  If you had read my thread as you claimed to you would know this.

You can't look for deeper understanding in bad writing. You can take what they give you and spell things out, but to make up material out of thin air? To say the Reapers aren't dead is to say Hackett lied and that there is no way to win. They completely ignored the lore. The protheans managed to war for centuries despite ME1 clearly stating the Reapers used the Citadel to close relays off to everyone else. Complete BS. Inconsistent world dynamics.

Is the final part s of the game badly written? Yes. Was it an obvious rush job? Yes. Did they ignore the previously established lore and rules? Yes. Is Mac Walters a horrible story writer? Yes.

Out of curiosity, what exactly do you think happened to the Reapers in Destroy? They took a nap and the fleets let them nooze?

There are two options to look at it.
1)accept it as bad writing with no sense where destroy and control are viable options.  accept it as bad writing which make sense where destroy, control are reapers presented options which are suppose to lead you to your doom. 

n destroy option 1) Reapers are all dead, galaxy lives happily ever after. in destroy option 2) SHepard shoots the tube, crucible is destroyed, shepard is dead. reapers have an easier time winning since they dont have to fight shepard. and the alliance lose an option to destroy the citadel.

[Erez Kristal]

Robtachi wrote...

I agree that refuse is, logically speaking, a viable ending given that its the only way you are allowed to question and reject the Catalyst's obvious logical fallacies, but it was absolutely baffling that the only branch of that choice, regardless of all the work making choices and building EMS for the war effort, was utter failure in stopping the Reaper cycle, thereby negating everything you just spent 100+ hours over 3 games accomplishing. How about an option to tell the Catalyst to take his machine overlord space MacGuffin logic passed down from his Leviathan master race progenitors and go cram it with walnuts? Let the EMS, all the choices you made, fleets you've gathered, and impossible alliances you've brokered, decide the fate of the galaxy rather than some scripted trash that was clearly meant to discourage you from deviating from the intended narrative.

As for Synthesis, well, that was just a pile of hot garbage fermenting in the desert sun. Aside from the fact that even with the Extended Cut it was a feebly fleshed out idea with absolutely no basis in the future-science/pseudoscience Mass Effect universe in which everything else plays by the rules, how can Shepard be given sole responsibility for altering all current and future life in the galaxy in an all-or-nothing manner, when you've been fighting so hard and for so long to allow (or disallow, depending on your playthrough) all of that galactic life the ability and right to self-determinate. Suddenly some dude who loves being a fleshy meat-sack for all its physical disadvantages because it gives him some existential connection to ancestral humanism is forced to accept that he is now part synthetic, and not in any way of his own choosing. Thanks, magical space wizard who makes unilateral choices for all sentient beings, that's just dandy.

Refuse failure is open to interpertation, since you dont see clear cutscenes which tells you what happens after.
After shepard refuses you are left to complete the story by yourself.

[KaiserShep]

None of this matters. They and their monsters clearly drop dead if you choose to destroy them. If its execution is perceived to be badly written, there's not much to dig for in terms of logic. How could there be?

I'm pretty sure the scene with Liara's beacon pretty much tells us explicitly that they failed to stop the reapers in that cycle if you decide to refuse, so we can pretty much put the pieces together beyond that.

Modifié par KaiserShep, 23 juillet 2013 - 08:34 .

[Erez Kristal]

KaiserShep wrote...


I'm pretty sure the scene with Liara's beacon pretty much tells us explicitly that they failed to stop the reapers in that cycle if you decide to refuse, so we can pretty much put the pieces together beyond that.

Thats one way of looking at it.

Just like if some aliens get a glimse of the terminator they would think everyone on earth got killed on judgement day.

[KaiserShep]

erezike wrote...
Thats one way of looking at it.

Just like if some aliens get a glimse of the terminator they would think everyone on earth got killed on judgement day.

There's plenty of ways to look at a lot of things. Not all ways would be correct.

Your comparison is a bit off, since I'm talking about the perspective of the player, not of characters within the fiction. In Galaxy Quest, the Thermians think that the television show is actually an archive of historical documents, but we as the audience are aware that this is false. Their interpretation is not our interpretation. Liara's beacon is the message to us as the audience just as much as it is to future generations in the galaxy that the reapers succeeded in harvesting that cycle. We are made aware of Liara's intentions long before we get this scene, so there's not a whole lot of wiggle room for different viewpoints, unless you outright ignore everything leading up to the ending of refuse. Any interpretation that suggests that the reapers DIDN'T succeed is basically a reach with no real basis other than that they don't get to watch the slow process of the reapers' harvest. 

Modifié par KaiserShep, 23 juillet 2013 - 08:53 .

[AlanC9]

I suppose erezike's technically correct. Interpretations aren't necessarily invalid even if they are preposterous. For instance, I never did find a way to disprove DukeOfNukes' argument that everything past the prologue of ME2 and all of ME3 are just hallucinations in Shepard's dying brain. I'm pretty sure DoN wasn't offering that argument in good faith, but he doesn't have to.

Bio's already said that erezike is wrong about Refuse, but if it isn't in the game he's within his rights as a consumer to ignore Bio and force an interpretation on the game, as long as he doesn't expect us to swallow it. (It's kind of odd to see The Twilight God taking issue with this method since he used to push Deception Theory in the same manner)

What was the line from Plan 9 From Outer Space... "Can you prove that it didn't happen?"

Modifié par AlanC9, 23 juillet 2013 - 08:57 .

[KaiserShep]

I should've used that on my older sister when she told me there was no Santa Claus.

[dorktainian]

sH0tgUn jUliA wrote...

Well, they were going to harvest the planet and strip the natural resources. They've already trashed the ecosystem. It will never recover. Any humans that do survive will have to evacuate to a colony. There's only 80 million years left of habitability anyway. So yeah, blow up the f****** thing. When it comes to fighting the reapers without the crucible, I'm for a scorched planet policy. The end justifies the means. I'll be as ruthless as they are.

Fight Fire with Fire.  I Like it.


As far as the choices are concerned I still believe that there is more to the choice than meets the eye.  Quite literally.  Each of the choices is a primary colour of light.   This cannot be coincidence surely?

www.fifex.co.uk/pdf/fcm_intro.pdf       

Forcing a decision right at the end, based on Paragon/Renegade/Neutral and their colours?  before that, shepard being presented with 'White Light' (a mixture of the colours) at the end of every 'dream'? and then the choices being mixed up so renegade is coloured paragon and vice versa?     

There is no logical choice.  I think that was the point.

Does choosing 'end' the dream?  In Destroy Shepard clearly takes a breath.  (dont forget in the other 2 choices he commits suicide so cannot take a  breath)

Simple answer is that there is no answer.  Speculation for everyone.  Until ME4 that is.

[Erez Kristal]

KaiserShep wrote...

I should've used that on my older sister when she told me there was no Santa Claus.

Santa claus is also realted to the debate between people of faith and atheists none of them really know what is the truth. its all falls down to what you choose to believe in the end.

While i may be the minority when it comes to how i view refuse, there are still no evidence to debunk my theory.
All we have is a cutscene which shows a video of liara.
We dont know who is watching it, where he is watching it or when. maybe even no one is watching it and the video is on repeat mode.
Everything is open to interpertation after shepard refuse.

Only in synthesis and control do you know that shepard is truly dead. 
In destroy you know that shepard shoots the tube and loses consciousness.

Everything else is open to speculation.
Walters and casey have given their own speculation and you are welcome to accept it or come up with your own.

I for starters think they had no idea what they were writing in the first place and sort of tried to make things randomly stick with out checking for consistency, they attempted to have increased drama and tesion and it fell short on many places. 

Some fans loved it others, not so much.
How you intrepret it depends if you liked it or not.

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

silverexile17s wrote...

sH0tgUn jUliA wrote...

silverexile17s wrote...

AlanC9 wrote...

Scorched planets mostly hurts the side that lives on planets, doesn't it?

...Touche'.
Yes, I doubt blowing up the planet would do much to them, since, once they realize what your doing, they will act accordingly. The long game isn't possible now that the galaxy threw everything into the Crucible.

True since the galaxy threw everything into the crucible, but if they hadn't.

And the Crucible plot has a HUGE hole in it. How did the other cycles even build the crucible if the reapers were pouring through the Citadel, locking out the relays, going one system at a time? Ooops. Big ooops, Mac. Very big oops. Oh, it's a major retcon. Or did we forget about this? Vigil never happened. You could do that because the PS3 version of Mass Effect 1 didn't come out until November of 2012, right? Humongous plot hole. Basically our cycle was the first and only one to be able to build it, and it just happened to appear and drop out of the ass of the Mars Archives.

Face the facts, he didn't know how to write a conventional victory with a united galaxy without a glorious victory, and kill off Shepard at the end, which is what he wanted to do in the first place because Shepard was Drew Karpyshyn's character, not Mac's. Hence the crucible, starbrat, and the three colors from your monitor adjustments.

Not to rain on that parade, but, looking back at ME1, where it took the entirety of the Alliance Fleet and Citadel Fleet to take down a single Reaper, I don't think "unable to write conventonal victory" was the problem at all. Rather, that was a problem that was created right from the get-go, and was created way back when Drew was writing. After all, Drew Karpyshyn himself couldn't think of a way to create a "glorious victory" agaisnt Sovergien and Saren. He had to create a Deus Ex Machina of his own in the form of Vigil's data file, and the "Psychic link" between Sovergien and the Saren-Husk. And Drew's original "Dark Energy" plan involved the Crucible too -- and that it was to be used alongside the "Reapers are the big-picture good guys" idea.

Also, it's been revealed that the Crucbile was actually Drew's plot-point, not Mac's Drew Karpyshyn was the one that created the Crucible as a plot-point, way back in the midway stage of ME2 for the third game, before he left to work on "Star Wars: The Old Republic." He even left small mention to the protheans having "Other plans" in the Shadow Broker DLC to tease at it. Mac just inherited the remnants of Drew's original "Dark Energy Plot," so I don't think it's fair to place all the blame on him -- this was an oops that Drew himself created, and the green and untested Mac had to work with. Now, why someone that was still so new to lead writing was chosen to fix this, IDK. But the creation of this plot actually streatches back to way before he was even the lead writer to begin with.

Drew's original plot was also to have Shepard die no matter what. The plot was that the Reapers creators (Levithans) were masters of dark energy, and the Mass Relays were the pinnicle of this tech -- usible as transport and as weapons to propell projectiles of mass devestation with pinpoint accuracy. A feat only they could do. However, their dark energy experiments began to snowball -- the dark energy began building up in the galaxy, self-replicating to the point that it was reducing the mass of stars and causing them to go supernova (Haestrom was part of this plot, as a "warning sign" that it was happening again).
The Reapers, created to be the caretakers of this event and to stop it from destroying the galaxy, began looking for a way to contain it, and created the cycle -- they would take the races that were genetically diverse, and create Reapers that could absorb and contain the excess dark energy built-up by the galaxy. 
That was what the Human-Reaper was for -- The Reapers believed that in the extremely malible and diverse genetic structure of humans lay the key to repressing and containing the Dark Energy spread once and for all. The "Missing Link" that could insulate the other Reapers, and save the galaxy from self-destruction.
You would be then given two choices.
(A) Surrender, and allow this cycle to be sacrificed, in the hope that Harbinger and the Reapers' hunch is correct, and that humanity's DNA can help them complete their goal.
( Refuse, and destroy the Reapers with the Crucible harnesing the dark energy of the entire Mass Relay Network focused through the Citadel, using it as a literal biotic death ray, in the hope that this cycle can somehow do what the Reapers could not in a billion years, likely dooming all life to destruction in a potentally vain hope.

“Dark Energy was something that only organics could access because of various techno-science magic reasons we hadn’t decided on yet.” 

“Maybe using this Dark Energy was having a ripple effect on the space-time continuum.“Maybe the Reapers kept wiping out organic life because organics keep evolving to the state where they would use biotics and dark energy and that caused an entropic effect that would hasten the end of the universe. Being immortal beings, that’s something they wouldn’t want to see.
“Then we thought, let’s take it to the next level. Maybe the Reapers are looking at a way to stop this. Maybe there’s an inevitable descent into the opposite of the Big Bang (the Big Crunch) and the Reapers realise that the only way they can stop it is by using biotics, but since they can’t use biotics they have to keep rebuilding society – as they try and find the perfect group to use biotics for this purpose. The  Asari were close but they weren’t quite right, the Protheans were closeas well. "

"The Reapers as a whole were 'nations' of people who had fused together in the most horrific way possible to help find a way to stop the spread of the Dark Energy," Karpyshyn said. "The real reason for the Human Reaper was supposed to be the Reapers saving throw because they had run out of time. Humanity in Mass Effect is supposedly unique because of its genetic diversity and represented the universe's best chance at stopping Dark Energy's spread."
“Again it’s very vague and not fleshed out, it was something we considered but we ended up going in a different direction.”

“I find it funny that fans end up hearing a couple things they like about it and in their minds they add in all the details they specifically want. It’s like vapourware – vapourware is always perfect, anytime someone talks about the new greatest game. It’s perfect until it comes out. I’m a little weary about going into too much detail because, whatever we came up with, it probably wouldn’t be what people want it to be.”

“Some of the ideas were a little bit wacky and a little bit crazy. At one point we thought that maybe Shepard could be an alien but didn’t know it. But we then thought that might be a little too close to [Knights of the Old Republic character] Revan.”

The above itelicised Text is Drew Karpyshyn's quote on what his original intent for ME's ending was, in his interview with Eurogamer. If anything, the above choices are just as depressing as the ones we have now. Especally since Shep Still dies or sufferes an unconfirmed fate in them. The only major difference was no Catalyst -- Harbinger himself is the one you'd assumedly talk to.

Also, as far as I can tell, they justify Vigil not knowing, because he severed connection with the Prothean information network the day the Citadel went off-line. And since Ilos was an isolated research facility, it wouldn't have had much contact with the outside world to begin with. Take all that, and add the immense degredation to Vigil's data core over 50,000 years of decay and power shortage, and you might be able to pass it off that Vigil simply didn't know about the Crucible due to isolation, or that it's databanks were too crroded to remember it.

Looking at what we saw in ME1 alone, I don't think conventional victory was ever going to be all that realistic. At least in the eyes of the writers. Phyrric victory, maybe, but never a conventional victory. Either way, the penultimate result would have been close to either the mid-low EMS Destroy, or the Low EMS "Anihliation" Ending. It's obvious from the Dark Energy plot that Drew himself never intended it to be possible to begin with. And Mac apperantly was the one that did argue for a brighter ending, but Casey Hudson supersceded him, saying he wanted Mac to keep it "high-level and realistic."

The problem was that it was stupid. It took the fifth fleet. And the Citadel Fleet was getting pounded by the Geth fleet. It wasn't just Sovereign.

I said...

And the Crucible plot has a HUGE hole in it. How did the other cycles even build the crucible if the reapers were pouring through the Citadel, locking out the relays, going one system at a time? Humongous plot hole. Basically our cycle was the first and only one to be able to build it, and it just happened to appear and drop out of the ass of the Mars Archives.

And here's the rub.

It's the final game of the series. So big deal. I'd still destroy the reapers. Just for the lolz, because it would have been the last game of the series and who gives a damn at that point.

The bottom line is that no one knew what the f*** they were doing. Keep it real? Give me a break. I think I could write a better story, and I'm not a writer. The premise of the dark energy plot was just plain stupid space magic let's sacrifice humanity and hope that this works or kill the reapers and hope we can figure it out in time.

Well over a billion years it hadn't worked. So blow up the reapers let's hope we can figure it out in time. Shepard suffers an unconfirmed fate. i.e. a breath scene. In other words the ending was doomed to suck s*** right from the get go. Who cares? right? I choose to destroy the author's art. It becomes one of those "We waited 5 years for this?"

Remind me to stay with shooters. You don't get invested in characters.

This game really soured me on getting emotionally invested in characters. I'm in the I don't give a damn stage. I'm trying to get 4 more stinking achievements. I had to play the ending, so I skip all the dialog in the EC. 9999 in the Armax arena and the mirror match + I missed the three missions in Omega. I'm going to have to go through Omega with a walkthrough so I don't miss them. Reload the import of the character and see if I can fill up the bar all red this time. Get the peace option on Rannoch and shoot Legion for the lolz. I'll cure the genophage because of wrex. I think my morale failed in the battle of London the last time. Who was the crap for brains who drew up that battle plan?

[dorktainian]

“Dark Energy was something that only organics could access because of various techno-science magic reasons we hadn’t decided on yet.”

“Maybe using this Dark Energy was having a ripple effect on the space-time continuum.“Maybe the Reapers kept wiping out organic life because organics keep evolving to the state where they would use biotics and dark energy and that caused an entropic effect that would hasten the end of the universe. Being immortal beings, that’s something they wouldn’t want to see.
“Then we thought, let’s take it to the next level. Maybe the Reapers are looking at a way to stop this. Maybe there’s an inevitable descent into the opposite of the Big Bang (the Big Crunch) and the Reapers realise that the only way they can stop it is by using biotics, but since they can’t use biotics they have to keep rebuilding society – as they try and find the perfect group to use biotics for this purpose. The Asari were close but they weren’t quite right, the Protheans were closeas well. "

"The Reapers as a whole were 'nations' of people who had fused together in the most horrific way possible to help find a way to stop the spread of the Dark Energy," Karpyshyn said. "The real reason for the Human Reaper was supposed to be the Reapers saving throw because they had run out of time. Humanity in Mass Effect is supposedly unique because of its genetic diversity and represented the universe's best chance at stopping Dark Energy's spread."
“Again it’s very vague and not fleshed out, it was something we considered but we ended up going in a different direction.”

“I find it funny that fans end up hearing a couple things they like about it and in their minds they add in all the details they specifically want. It’s like vapourware – vapourware is always perfect, anytime someone talks about the new greatest game. It’s perfect until it comes out. I’m a little weary about going into too much detail because, whatever we came up with, it probably wouldn’t be what people want it to be.”

“Some of the ideas were a little bit wacky and a little bit crazy. At one point we thought that maybe Shepard could be an alien but didn’t know it. But we then thought that might be a little too close to [Knights of the Old Republic character] Revan.”





***


How the hell did we go from this to Starjar?

[KaiserShep]

Too bad they couldn't have the catalyst shapeshift its image projected to Shepard so that it cycled through various people Shepard knew that died to reflect the voices in the dreams.