419 réponses à ce sujet

[Bfler]

With peace on Rannoch and if you have done all dialog options with EDI, Refuse could lead to the situation, that Shepard, or better EDI herself, convinces the child to end the cycle and give the different races a chance to make their own destiny. 

Modifié par Bfler, 01 octobre 2013 - 09:49 .

[teh DRUMPf!!]

Xplode441 wrote...

While I agree with happy endings being a cliche and annoying most of the times, having the series be basically a game of chess where you're building up to the other player attacking you by studying him and learning his strategy just for the other player to take all of his pieces off the board, flip the board over, throwing your pieces everywhere and declare his victory would be pretty ****ty.

lol... when did that ever happen in ME?

[teh DRUMPf!!]

Mdoggy1214 wrote...

There's codex entries about the Reaper War that talks about different battles taking place, where some of the other militaries in the galaxy deploy clever tactics and end up doing some damage to the Reaper fleets, including their Capital ships.

I know. I read them.

It ends with the Reapers foiling those "clever" tactics by doing what they do best -- going on the offensive.

You are presumably refering to this entry...

The Codex wrote...

The assault on Thessia did not go as smoothly as the Reapers' strikes against other races. While other species met the Reapers head-on, the asari resorted to dangerous hit-and-run tactics to harass their attackers. By engaging in guerilla strategies--blast a Reaper ship, then jumping to FTL where they could not be tracked--the asari forced the Reapers to remain on the defensive.

Unfortunately, the Reapers' greater numbers allowed them to accept certain losses, so they soon ignored the attacks against them and began orbital bombardment of Thessia. This in turn forced the asari to defend their homeworld with a more traditional stance, facing the Reaper forces directly. As soon as the Reapers landed on Thessia, the harvesting began.

That's the folly with all these CV-endings people come up with. People say "just hit-and-run them to death" and "keep hitting 'em with Thanix" ... as if the Reapers will just sit back and let you widdle them down to the last ship. They're Reapers. They can brute-force their way past any combat strategy because they have the strength and numbers to do so.


-------------------

Also, the notion that there was some kind of schism between the writers over whether or not it's possible to stop the Reapers through conventional means is laughable. You cannot agree or disagree with lore. It's predetermined. If the Reapers were not beatable through conventional means then, they are not now.

And think about it... if a means to stopping the Reapers already existed before ME3 was written, why didn't the writers take it and run? Especially if that means was simply to band the galaxy together and face them in battle, it would have pretty much utilized the same design ME3 used (EMS). That's a rhetorical question, ofc. Answer: because no solution existed.

Let me pre-emptively respond to the "because the writers are incompetant and/or forgot their own lore"-response by reminding people that Drew Karpyshyn (ME1 lead writer and anti-ender folk hero) wrote a draft for ME3's ending: it did not entail stopping the Reapers through space-battle, it had "the Guardian" (read: Catalyst), and a D.E.M. solution.

Modifié par HYR 2.0, 01 octobre 2013 - 10:24 .

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

HYR 2.0 wrote...

Let me pre-emptively respond to the "because the writers are incompetant and/or forgot their own lore"-response by reminding people that Drew Karpyshyn (ME1 lead writer and anti-ender folk hero) wrote a draft for ME3's ending: it did not entail stopping the Reapers through space-battle, it had "the Guardian" (read: Catalyst), and a D.E.M. solution.

This. The story was headed toward a train wreck due to the way it was set up from the beginning. One cannot simply make a mysterious Cthulhu Space Monster machine race that can take out entire fleets with a single ship and have thousands of them, give them mystical powers of indoctrination and give their technology that power, and not have a train wreck of an ending unless you give them a weakness that no cycle had discovered which if they did everyone would whine about because it would take away the "mystery". And as such one gets to suffer the ending where a higher power tells you that you are being reaped because of a problem you didn't know about until you were just told about it, which would have also been the case with the folk hero DK's dark energy ending. 

Try writing an ending where you stop the reapers through a space battle. How do you know when they are dead? Do you see the problem? They were overpowered. Even when "dead".

[KaiserShep]

StreetMagic wrote...

Bfler wrote...

With peace on Rannoch and if you have done all dialog options with EDI, Refuse could lead to the situation, that Shepard, or better EDI herself, convinces the child to end the cycle and give the different races a chance to make their own destiny. 

Not sure how that meeting could happen, but I would have loved to seen EDI debate the Catalyst.

EDI then shows up in a shuttle, and both she and Joker walk out holding hands, at which point Joker says "Yeah I've been synthesizing for a while now." 

[Mathias]

HYR 2.0 wrote...

Mdoggy1214 wrote...

There's codex entries about the Reaper War that talks about different battles taking place, where some of the other militaries in the galaxy deploy clever tactics and end up doing some damage to the Reaper fleets, including their Capital ships.

I know. I read them.

It ends with the Reapers foiling those "clever" tactics by doing what they do best -- going on the offensive.

You are presumably refering to this entry...

The Codex wrote...

The assault on Thessia did not go as smoothly as the Reapers' strikes against other races. While other species met the Reapers head-on, the asari resorted to dangerous hit-and-run tactics to harass their attackers. By engaging in guerilla strategies--blast a Reaper ship, then jumping to FTL where they could not be tracked--the asari forced the Reapers to remain on the defensive.

Unfortunately, the Reapers' greater numbers allowed them to accept certain losses, so they soon ignored the attacks against them and began orbital bombardment of Thessia. This in turn forced the asari to defend their homeworld with a more traditional stance, facing the Reaper forces directly. As soon as the Reapers landed on Thessia, the harvesting began.

That's the folly with all these CV-endings people come up with. People say "just hit-and-run them to death" and "keep hitting 'em with Thanix" ... as if the Reapers will just sit back and let you widdle them down to the last ship. They're Reapers. They can brute-force their way past any combat strategy because they have the strength and numbers to do so.


-------------------

Also, the notion that there was some kind of schism between the writers over whether or not it's possible to stop the Reapers through conventional means is laughable. You cannot agree or disagree with lore. It's predetermined. If the Reapers were not beatable through conventional means then, they are not now.

And think about it... if a means to stopping the Reapers already existed before ME3 was written, why didn't the writers take it and run? Especially if that means was simply to band the galaxy together and face them in battle, it would have pretty much utilized the same design ME3 used (EMS). That's a rhetorical question, ofc. Answer: because no solution existed.

Let me pre-emptively respond to the "because the writers are incompetant and/or forgot their own lore"-response by reminding people that Drew Karpyshyn (ME1 lead writer and anti-ender folk hero) wrote a draft for ME3's ending: it did not entail stopping the Reapers through space-battle, it had "the Guardian" (read: Catalyst), and a D.E.M. solution.

This doesn't discourage my point at all. What that Codex entries proves is that Reapers can be destroyed with conventional weaponry and clever tactics. Obviously what stopped the Asari from continuing to do this is the Reapers just said "F it" and just took the beating to get to Thessia and start bombarding it, forcing the Asari to go on the defensive where they were weak. I imagine though things would've been a lot different, if they had allies to touch down on Thessia while the Asari continue to pick off the Reapers one by one. And yes they would've eventually be overwhelmed by the sheer number of Reapers and would have to retreat. By the sheer fact that the Asari managed to do some damage to Reaper numbers, shows that if the writers took a different direction from the beginning and left CV an open possibility, it would've worked.

Modifié par Mdoggy1214, 01 octobre 2013 - 12:05 .

[Mathias]

sH0tgUn jUliA wrote...

HYR 2.0 wrote...

Let me pre-emptively respond to the "because the writers are incompetant and/or forgot their own lore"-response by reminding people that Drew Karpyshyn (ME1 lead writer and anti-ender folk hero) wrote a draft for ME3's ending: it did not entail stopping the Reapers through space-battle, it had "the Guardian" (read: Catalyst), and a D.E.M. solution.

This. The story was headed toward a train wreck due to the way it was set up from the beginning. One cannot simply make a mysterious Cthulhu Space Monster machine race that can take out entire fleets with a single ship and have thousands of them, give them mystical powers of indoctrination and give their technology that power, and not have a train wreck of an ending unless you give them a weakness that no cycle had discovered which if they did everyone would whine about because it would take away the "mystery". And as such one gets to suffer the ending where a higher power tells you that you are being reaped because of a problem you didn't know about until you were just told about it, which would have also been the case with the folk hero DK's dark energy ending. 

Try writing an ending where you stop the reapers through a space battle. How do you know when they are dead? Do you see the problem? They were overpowered. Even when "dead".

They definitely were overpowered, and I should've realized that would be a huge crutch in future game when I first played Mass Effect 1. But I believed the writers already laid out a brilliant masterplan for all of this that would've been awesome in the 3rd game. Yeah I was pretty naive.

[Iakus]

sH0tgUn jUliA wrote...

HYR 2.0 wrote...

Let me pre-emptively respond to the "because the writers are incompetant and/or forgot their own lore"-response by reminding people that Drew Karpyshyn (ME1 lead writer and anti-ender folk hero) wrote a draft for ME3's ending: it did not entail stopping the Reapers through space-battle, it had "the Guardian" (read: Catalyst), and a D.E.M. solution.

This. The story was headed toward a train wreck due to the way it was set up from the beginning. One cannot simply make a mysterious Cthulhu Space Monster machine race that can take out entire fleets with a single ship and have thousands of them, give them mystical powers of indoctrination and give their technology that power, and not have a train wreck of an ending unless you give them a weakness that no cycle had discovered which if they did everyone would whine about because it would take away the "mystery". And as such one gets to suffer the ending where a higher power tells you that you are being reaped because of a problem you didn't know about until you were just told about it, which would have also been the case with the folk hero DK's dark energy ending. 

Try writing an ending where you stop the reapers through a space battle. How do you know when they are dead? Do you see the problem? They were overpowered. Even when "dead".

This is why I had hoped the Crucible would be a device that would somehow "level the playing field"  Something that would disable the Reapers' nastier weapons and give the galaxy a fighting chance without ensuring victory.

Instead what we got was a galactic blood magic ritual for a Reaper "off button."

[Obadiah]

I like the Refuse ending.

For three games we thought we were playing a story about how Shepard and the current cycle accomplished what no other cycle could. In the end, it turns out we were right, but at a terrible terrible price. Mass Effect's Refuse choice is the story of the end of the current cycle, and how its sacrifice stopped the Reaper Cycle from ever happening again.

I wish there was more to the cutscene - maybe one of the survivors on a flotilla drifting off into space vowing to fight until the end, hiding on unknown planets, with maybe a small group of descendents surviving into the next cycle and helping them. Maybe even EDI and the Geth AI surviving themselves in between stars.

*Shrug* but we got what we got

Modifié par Obadiah, 01 octobre 2013 - 02:02 .

[AlanC9]

iakus wrote...

This is why I had hoped the Crucible would be a device that would somehow "level the playing field"  Something that would disable the Reapers' nastier weapons and give the galaxy a fighting chance without ensuring victory.

That would have been awfully contrived, wouldn't it? 

[Vortex13]

sH0tgUn jUliA wrote...

HYR 2.0 wrote...

Let me pre-emptively respond to the "because the writers are incompetant and/or forgot their own lore"-response by reminding people that Drew Karpyshyn (ME1 lead writer and anti-ender folk hero) wrote a draft for ME3's ending: it did not entail stopping the Reapers through space-battle, it had "the Guardian" (read: Catalyst), and a D.E.M. solution.

This. The story was headed toward a train wreck due to the way it was set up from the beginning. One cannot simply make a mysterious Cthulhu Space Monster machine race that can take out entire fleets with a single ship and have thousands of them, give them mystical powers of indoctrination and give their technology that power, and not have a train wreck of an ending unless you give them a weakness that no cycle had discovered which if they did everyone would whine about because it would take away the "mystery". And as such one gets to suffer the ending where a higher power tells you that you are being reaped because of a problem you didn't know about until you were just told about it, which would have also been the case with the folk hero DK's dark energy ending. 

Try writing an ending where you stop the reapers through a space battle. How do you know when they are dead? Do you see the problem? They were overpowered. Even when "dead".

I am of the group that believes conventional victory should have been possible, but I am also convinced that for what I had in mind for said victory would have required (at least) a complete rewrite of ME 2 & 3.

ME 1 left enough ambiguity (IMO) about the Reapers numbers, and strengths that it would have been believable for a united galaxy to defeat the Reapers. Heck the game even includes a lynch pin in the Reaper plan (the Citidel Relay) and how the Reapers were trapped in Dark Space.

I personally viewed the Reapers at the end of ME 1 and during their cloak and dagger exploits in ME 2 as being more bark then bite, they relied on the sudden and complete decimation of galatic government, the complete control over the Relay network because they actually couldn't take on the entire galaxy at once.

But that is all moot at this point anyway. 

[Chashan]

Obadiah wrote...

I like the Refuse ending.

For three games we thought we were playing a story about how Shepard and the current cycle accomplished what no other cycle could. In the end, it turns out we were right, but at a terrible terrible price. Mass Effect's Refuse choice is the story of the end of the current cycle, and how its sacrifice stopped the Reaper Cycle from ever happening again.

I wish there was more to the cutscene - maybe one of the survivors on a flotilla drifting off into space vowing to fight until the end, hiding on unknown planets, with maybe a small group of descendents surviving into the next cycle and helping them. Maybe even EDI and the Geth AI surviving themselves in between stars.

*Shrug* but we got what we got

What we got allows for all that and more to be left to interpretation.

Which, frankly, is a good thing. BW nailed ambiguity best with this finish out of the lot.

If only the adversary rejected was worthier than the 'Catalyst'...

[Iakus]

AlanC9 wrote...

iakus wrote...

This is why I had hoped the Crucible would be a device that would somehow "level the playing field"  Something that would disable the Reapers' nastier weapons and give the galaxy a fighting chance without ensuring victory.

That would have been awfully contrived, wouldn't it? 

No more contrived than what we already got (secret Prothean superweapon blueprints hidden in an archive humanity has spent the last three decades combing through?  Really?)

And it would have been far more satisfying to me and to others.  Uniting the galaxy would have meant something.  And Shepard wouldn't have to betray his/her values, and possibly allies to prove the Reapers' own point.

[Vortex13]

AlanC9 wrote...

iakus wrote...

This is why I had hoped the Crucible would be a device that would somehow "level the playing field"  Something that would disable the Reapers' nastier weapons and give the galaxy a fighting chance without ensuring victory.

That would have been awfully contrived, wouldn't it? 

Well if you think about it the entire series (especially ME 3) is full of contrivences. 

"Good thing we found those plans for that anti-Reaper Super Weapon right as the Reapers attacked."

"Good thing we just happen to stumble across a living Prothean."

* "Good thing we just now uncovered the aliens behind the cycles, who just so happen to know exactly what happened over a billion years ago." *

* Off topic but Leviathian's spelling out of the Reapers and the Catalyst always irked me. I know that fans wanted more clarity (I did too after the original endings) but the fact that ANY data or information can survive that long and be that intact is an even bigger contrivance then the Crucible.

Personally I  think it would have been better if there was no Leviathians, no Catalyst, just the Cycles. The Reapers are machines programed to do one specific thing right? I believe that if even the Reapers themselves didn't know why they harvested, they just do; treating the Cycles almost like a religion; that the Reaper motives would have been better recieved and still held true to the writers intentions of Organics vs. Synthetics, as well as appealing both to people who wanted to know what the Reapers were, and people that wanted their origins left unexplained.

[AlanC9]

@ iakus: I didn't say what we got wasn't contrived too. Every Bio game is contrived.

But I'm not the one running around complaining that the ending we got was contrived and then proposing my own contrived ending.

Modifié par AlanC9, 01 octobre 2013 - 02:56 .

[KaiserShep]

I wish I had a nickel for every time the word contrived came up on BSN.

[Iakus]

AlanC9 wrote...

@ iakus: I didn't say what we got wasn't contrived too. Every Bio game is contrived.

But I'm not the one running around complaining that the ending we got was contrived and then proposing my own contrived ending.

Actually I rarely, if ever use the term "contrived".  I prefer such terms as

Railroaded
Arbitrary
Pointless
Insane Troll Logic
Borderline Offensive

But contrived?  not really

[AlanC9]

True, you do tend to use punchier rhetoric.

Unless you're saying that I'm wrong on the substance and you really don't mind contrived endings. OK, but then I'll need your arbitrary/contrived distinction.

Modifié par AlanC9, 01 octobre 2013 - 03:23 .

[Iakus]

It may be colorful, but it's 100% genuinely felt.

Edit:  I think an arbitrary ending is something that comes from out of nowhere, little to no foreshadowing.  A contrived ending is when a writer tries to artificially force something to happen.  It's the difference between picking a shirt at random to wear without regard to color or size, and trying to squeeze into a particular shirt you want despite the fact that it's ten years out of fashion and two sizes too small.

Modifié par iakus, 01 octobre 2013 - 03:35 .

[Han Shot First]

My biggest complaint about the Crucible was that its function is mostly left a mystery. Its a bit silly to be building a device in which you don't understand how it functions or even what it will do. If the scientists and engineers are so befuddled by the device's design, could they even build it? This mystery is then expanded on by adding a hefty amount of space magic when the device activates, potentially altering the nature of all life for all time by doing a swan dive into an energy beam.

That all being said, some degree of space magic is acceptable in a Sci Fi universe. Biotics and mass effect physics for example, would qualify for space magic. The difference however between biotics and mass effect physics and the Crucible, is that the former gets a sufficient explanation in the lore to allow us to suspend disbelief.

The other problem with the Crucible is that in the end game we are introduced to the Catalyst, a character necessary for the function of the device who had no foreshadowing whatsoever. It was a bad attempt at adding some drama to the finale and a bizarre design decision to have Shepard's final choices be provided to him or her by the God-King of the Reapers.

If I were to change anything about the Crucible it would be giving it a known function from the start that is explained in the lore. I'd also cut the Catalyst and have Harbinger be the leader of the Reapers. For drama in the finale I'd have the Reapers throw a wrench in the works regarding the planned function of the Crucible, and Shepard's final action would be in solving it or finding an alternative.

[CronoDragoon]

iakus wrote...
And it would have been far more satisfying to me and to others.  Uniting the galaxy would have meant something.  And Shepard wouldn't have to betray his/her values, and possibly allies to prove the Reapers' own point.

Two separate issues that aren't related. Uniting the galaxy provides you the fleet and troops necessary to dock the Crucible. It undeniably allows you to win in Mass Effect 3, in concert with actually using the device.

The second issue is how the Crucible actually functions to achieve victory. Had the Crucible simply destroyed the Reapers there would be zero doubt about the game's theme of strength through unity.

[Erez Kristal]

Refuse is one of the only two logical choices to make. liara speech and time capsule were recorded before the battle for earth. that recording could have been heard by anyone. maybe even by shepard twenty years later from his bunker.


The proof is here.

Modifié par erezike, 01 octobre 2013 - 04:05 .