KaiserShep wrote...
Bourne Endeavor wrote...
I have no idea what they were thinking with the Quarian/Geth conflict that runs completely contradictory to everything the Catalyst says. If anything, peace should never have been an option to emphasis this supposed inevitable conflict.
This is one of the things that bugs me the most. I have this new character spouting off its assertions, being used as a device to present this premise, but the story, up until this point, completely negates it. Of course, I can simply reject this and conclude that the Catalyst is full of sh*t and destroy both it and its reapers for good. I can accept the sacrifice of EDI and the geth, as much as I would prefer them to live, but the fact that you never actually see their demise is another failing, because now it's meaningless and arbitrary. This is supposed to be a huge galaxy changing moment, and it's horribly incomplete in its presentation. There's no good reason why this isn't shown, and only leads to people creating their own head-canon that the geth survive and EDI can be rebuilt.
This is what led me to believe they altered "Reapers die" to "All synthetics" as an arbitrary afterthought to correct a perceived imbalance; everyone would choose Destroy. My argument to that is if Control and Synthesis required Destroy to be sabotaged to convince people to consider an alternative. They need to rethink the writing because they're doing it wrong. Likewise, the lack of any presentation suggests a fear of commitment. Leaving it ambiguous ventures back to their speculation obsession and they can simply avoid the question entirely.
Based on the Geth's portrayal - staunchly sympathetic. I cannot see anyway BioWare could have sold their inevitable conflict theme. Hell, the narrative is particularly anvilicious in beating you over the head with the opposite message: organics are jerks and can't have nice things!
Ironically, that could be a motivation for the Reapers.
But the biggest problem with the ending is the serious lack of involvement with the final battle. The fleets arrive to Earth, and no matter who you gathered, the battle has very little variance. It would've been very satisfying to see the Batarians at the controls of a ship joining the fight, and the Hanar/Drell, and Aria's mercenary force. I wanted to see Rachni soldiers fighting the monsters on the ground, and the Blue Suns and Eclipse mechs marching against the reapers. You get this idea that there's a united galaxy, but once the Normandy descends to earth, that idea starts to dissolve. It doesn't help that there's some serious cutscene incompetence with the other forces, using puny weapons to fire at the destroyers. What happened to heavy weapons and missiles? Why doesn't your high EMS determine whether or not you get to see another destroyer bite the dust?
This became a recurring theme. We have these huge space battles, yet have to run about in cover shoot-y bits while the big battle is background noise. War Assets became far too much a clutch for the writers and I suspect laziness crept in more often than not. That one scene was hilarious, especially as I kept asking "why have we not mass produced Cains?!" Frankly, it felt like yet another message conventional victory was impossible, even if immediately after we shoot two rockets into the Destroyer's eye and voila.
The other day I envisioned a scene where Shepard could have some rallying dialogue with the races, in this instance, Batarians. Both species putting aside their differences could have been a wonderfully symbolic representation of the larger conflict. We saw it with the Turians and Krogans, which not coincidentally happened to be the best portion of the game.
The game needed to focus more on unity, but BioWare seemed more interested in shoehorning in combat everywhere.
Minor annoyance is being ground support for a Mako. Shepard is so close, and yet so far from its controls. Having the abilty to drive it one last time to fight your way through no man's land would have satisfied me a great deal.
Had never thought of that. It would have been a nice callback to Mass Effect, plus you could toss some James/Steve banter in for good measure.
Another issue I found with London especially, but was a problem all around. Too. Much. Brown. I appreciate London was unsiege and they went with a desolate wasteland feel, however you could depict that with color. Hell, Last of Us and FallOut are marveled by fans because of how immersive their ruined cities are. I would have loved to see background architect of London not just a very conspicuous red phone booth. It's 2186. Call me crazy, but I see those dying out by then.
Lack of closure for the destroy ending is also problematic, as the memorial scene doesn't actually make a whole lot of sense. I think this is due to the fact that the Normandy crash landing scene can't be removed entirely from the game, so the writers/devs had to work around a lot of this for the extended cut, along with the fact that the "Shepard Lives" reveal comes at the very end before the credit sequence. Leaving things to the imagination is fine, but leaving too much can be a pretty bad decision.
One suggestion I heard was that scene should have been the Normandy crashing on Earth, the squad fighting to find Shepard or having one last individual hoorah as a wave of Reaper forces descended on them. Your EMS then affects the outcome. Why they went the random planet route I have no idea - another failed attempt at symbolism I suppose. BioWare got carried away with speculation and it came across as lazy more or less.
MassivelyEffective0730 wrote...
Random Jerkface wrote...
MassivelyEffective0730 wrote...
This one is a bit more descriptive of the Reaper's motive that thought worked best and actually fits the game we have.
If the reapers had to have a motive, I honestly would prefer that it were something simple and brutal, like The Killing Star, or that Harbinger were essentially Multivac.
I prefer the Cthulu method of having it be for a reason that organics don't understand, or can't understand. Those that try end up insane (i.e. indoctrinated)
It's better than the organic vs. synthetic plot theme that was already narratively resolved on Rannoch.
Aye. Sovereign's speech worked because of the ominous nature of the Reapers. We were presented with this... thing that harbored absolute contempt for all organic life. Everything we said was meant with indifference: "Confidence born of ignorance." Once they attempted to explain the Reapers, they lost their intimidating presence and gradually became a joke, what with the Human-Reaper, their sudden need for organics and etc.
Retour en haut
