Mcfly616 wrote...
The point of the scene is to signify the characters survival. That's the point I was making. So since you acknowledge the scene has been done before (whether it was the monster, bad guy, good guy is irrelevant), you also acknowledge your awareness of the significance of the scene. You know it means he's alive.
Mcfly616 wrote...
Whoever Cerberus hired to do it. Not to mention I believe they own quite a few corporations that can provide the services they need. Presumably they could've done it in-house. After all, is every Cerberus employee considered an "Agent"? Doubt it. So, the number of Agents doesn't necessarily represent the entire Cerberus workforce.
Yes, I did. You're stating your own opinions, while I just stated a fact of everyday life as an officer of the law or a soldier. Crazy people pull guns out and kill people, do you expect the officer or soldier to ask him what his motive is and get a detailed explaination before shooting him? OR, does the officer shoot first in order to save those in danger, and then proceed to piece together the evidence in order to find a plausible motive? I'm guessing the latter happens nearly everytime.
The point of the scene is to signify the characters survival. That's the point I was making. So since you acknowledge the scene has been done before (whether it was the monster, bad guy, good guy is irrelevant), you also acknowledge your awareness of the significance of the scene. You know it means he's alive.
Now that we got that out of the way:
"The Grey" and "Drive"
(No rubble or anything.....but the Protagonist is believed dead....at first)
Anyways, I'll be back in a few hours to carry on this discussion and/or comment on any replies. I have some business to attend to.
AlanC9 wrote...
I thought his argument was that it didn't feel like Shepard was alive, or something like that.
iakus wrote...
Mcfly616 wrote...
Whoever Cerberus hired to do it. Not to mention I believe they own quite a few corporations that can provide the services they need. Presumably they could've done it in-house. After all, is every Cerberus employee considered an "Agent"? Doubt it. So, the number of Agents doesn't necessarily represent the entire Cerberus workforce.
You think maybe the Alliance would start getting a little suspicious when these corporations stop building crusiers for them? And yet they keep busily buildingfleets of ships?
iakus wrote...
Players get more invested in their characters, especially when a game goes out of its way to make their choices matter. Games require far more time and investment than any movie. Or even a movie triogy. As such, in a game, they must be much more careful in determining
a) the ultimate fate of the character as a result of said choices (no, faceless torsos are not acceptable, I don't care how "obvious" it was to you)
Letting the player see a return on their investment. The player needs to know what kind of game they are getting. I'm pretty sure you'd be p*ssed if you found out hours later that a game you've been playing was stacked against you. If the DM was fudging dice simply to steer the story the way he wanted it to go.
You might call it the Illusion of Choice. players don't expect what they want to matter in film or tv or books. They have no say in Frodo's fate. But if they play a game where they invest dozens of hours of time in a reactive game where they play the Ringbearer, they will feel a sense of ownership of that character. And even in the story itself.
Modifié par AlanC9, 04 novembre 2013 - 09:29 .
iakus wrote...
And in addition, you never see how that turned out. It simply goes to credits.
iakus wrote...
AlanC9 wrote...
I thought his argument was that it didn't feel like Shepard was alive, or something like that.
It's nothing but 'hope" Like I said, it's a hook for a sequel that will never happen. Therefore the scene is meaningless. It's a book with the last chapter torn out.
Modifié par AlanC9, 04 novembre 2013 - 09:30 .
dreamgazer wrote...
iakus wrote...
And in addition, you never see how that turned out. It simply goes to credits.
Inaccurate.
AlanC9 wrote...
Huh? How does a sequel not happening change what did happen?
Obadiah wrote...
The source of those Cerberus ships does deserve some speculation. Were they built, stolen, or did Alliance defectors bring them?
Were they perhaps built a trade starships and then refitted and upgraded to warships?
I think the logo is just from a front company.
iakus wrote...
dreamgazer wrote...
iakus wrote...
And in addition, you never see how that turned out. It simply goes to credits.
Inaccurate.
Huh. I generally don't stay for stuff post-credits.
Are you at all suprised that I find such a scene totally lame to the point of trolling the audience?
AlanC9 wrote...
I could reply that I don't care if it was unacceptable to you or not, but I'll just pull a Bill Clinton here and agree to feel your pain. I don't think this particular issue is worth spending too much time thinking about anyway, since I doubt Bio's going to try that strategy again. They'll probably go back to pounding the PC's fate into every single player's head. No issue for me here; I don't play Bio games for the subtlety.
I'm a little confused here. Is the problem that the narrative goes to a place the player doesn't expect until he plays it? Or is it that games shoudn't go to certain places at all?
Was there any info on how big the Cerberus fleet was?Mesina2 wrote...
Obadiah wrote...
The source of those Cerberus ships does deserve some speculation. Were they built, stolen, or did Alliance defectors bring them?
Were they perhaps built a trade starships and then refitted and upgraded to warships?
I think the logo is just from a front company.
We were pretty much shown every System's Alliance fleet through War Assets.
No mentions of defectors or stolen ships.
So unless System's Alliance had the largest fleet in the Citadel Council space( spoiler alert, it doesn't), Cerberus couldn't manage to get large fleet from stealing ships from them.
dreamgazer wrote...
Not one bit.
But one man's "trolling the audience" is another man's "freedom to interpret".
Obadiah wrote...
Was there any info on how big the Cerberus fleet was?
Obadiah wrote...
Was there any info on how big the Cerberus fleet was?Mesina2 wrote...
Obadiah wrote...
The source of those Cerberus ships does deserve some speculation. Were they built, stolen, or did Alliance defectors bring them?
Were they perhaps built a trade starships and then refitted and upgraded to warships?
I think the logo is just from a front company.
We were pretty much shown every System's Alliance fleet through War Assets.
No mentions of defectors or stolen ships.
So unless System's Alliance had the largest fleet in the Citadel Council space( spoiler alert, it doesn't), Cerberus couldn't manage to get large fleet from stealing ships from them.
iakus wrote...
AlanC9 wrote...
Huh? How does a sequel not happening change what did happen?
Because we don't know what did happen. We only get a hint. A hint that will never be confirmed (or denied).
For all the stupidity of killing off Shepard in virtually every ending, at least those Shepard's got an ending.
Troxa wrote...
Thematically Revolting
While the creators have said that Mass Effect is about “synthetics vs. organics”, they have been light on details as to What That Even Means.
With no real-world synthetic life to hang this story on, the concept of technological singularity is the best guess; however, that just muddles the possible meanings of the Mass Effect series even more.
The idea that “technological singularity” = “The Robots Are Going To Kill Us All” is a gross misreading of what technological singularity means. It’s not the point at which humanity creates an AI which will eventually kill us all because of its crazy machine-logic – which is the backstory to the Reapers revealed by the Catalyst - but rather the event horizon where technology makes currently unknown-levels of intelligence possible, beyond which we cannot predict what will happen. The only bit of inevitability inherent in the idea of technological singularity is that there will be one: what that means, and what form this event horizon will take, is unknown.
The thing the game gets right about technological singularity is that each of the endings does represent a possible solution to the problem of robots killing us all, in the case that a hyper-intelligent AI that wants to destroy us is the event horizon and its result. Control: don’t let the AIs have complete control of themselves. Synthesis: make sure the event horizon in question is an expansion of human intelligence through technology (transhumanism) rather than a solely synthetic AI. Destroy: don’t create AIs in the first place and avoid the question altogether.
That said, what the game completely misses about the scenario in which a purely synthetic AI is the event horizon and the AI decides to kill us all, is that the reason the AI tries to kill us all is either a) crazy machine-logic or
While the specific reasons an AI would have for exterminating people may be unfathomable, the idea of one group of people deciding to wipe out a different group of people entirely isn’t alien or weird at all because it’s the Real World we live in, right here and right now. The creators of Mass Effect may have meant the Reapers and the Catalyst to be a literal example of “synthetics vs. organics” beyond a tech singularity event horizon, but their methods, their values, and their observable goals – as opposed to the stated goals of the Catalyst which aren’t in the story at all until the last ten minutes of the 100+ hour game series – are, horribly, tragically real in the world we live in today.
I thought Mass Effect was allegorical and relevant the entire time I was playing it. I’ve gone back to Sovereign’s first speech on Virmire – the first time we speak to a Reaper – and reviewed it. Here are some excerpts:
"Rudimentary creatures of blood and flesh. You touch my mind, fumbling in ignorance, incapable of understanding. There is a realm of existence so far beyond your own you cannot even imagine it. I am beyond your comprehension. I am Sovereign."
"Organic life is nothing but a genetic mutation – an accident. Your lives are measured in years and decades. You wither and die. We are eternal. The pinnacle of evolution and existence. Your extinction is inevitable. We are the end of everything."
I can certainly see how this represents an AI that exists beyond the technological singularity event horizon, but I always saw a deeper meaning there: when I first played the game, what struck me was the part where Sovereign said that the Reapers were the pinnacle of evolution and existence. I never found the fact that they were technologically superior to be terrifying: I found the fact that they used that technological superiority to wipe out all organic life in the galaxy as casually as some people step on ants to be terrifying. I found the fact that they believed they had every right to do so to be terrifying.
And I found the Reapers terrifying, because when Sovereign says they are the pinnacle of evolution and existence, I didn’t see synthetics, I saw the darker aspects of human nature. I didn’t find the Reapers terrifying because they were some unrecognizable alien other, but because I recognized them all too well. In Sovereign’s speech on Virmire, I saw Adolf Hitler’s Master Race.
I never saw the Reapers as a literal example of post-event-horizon AI run amuck, but of something far darker, far more real and insidious: the Reapers were the horrible things human beings actually did to each other. To me, the Reapers were always Fake Things that represented horrifying Real Things … not representative of other Fake Things we might have one day, if the technological singularity event horizon happens to be a purely synthetic AI, and they happen to see no value in the dignity of existence, self-determination, free will, and the right of individuals to exist. I saw them as the monster-analogy for awful things that already exist in people today – real people who see no value in the dignity of existence, self-determination, free will, and the right of individuals to exist - and the terrible results that occur when those people gain the power to see their hideous worldviews imposed.
In this context – the one that is relevant to the world we’re currently living in – the mass extinction of the galaxy is akin to the mass-murder of the Jews. In this context, Saren’s Indoctrination is a WWII-era German soldier handing a towel and a bar of soap to a child and ushering them into a gas chamber. Indoctrination in general is the totalitarian authority and ruthlessness of a tyrannical dictator. In this context, the abduction of human colonies to melt people into goo to build more Reapers, when the other races of the galaxy were rejected as viable subjects to turn into Reapers and killed instead, is **** eugenics.
In this context, by the end of Mass Effect 2, the Reapers are solidly and totally and completely an allegory for the Third Reich and the dark aspects of human nature that made the Third Reich possible.
In this context, I saw the cyclical nature of the Reaper’s extinction patterns to be the real-world problem of forgetfulness. It is humanity’s refusal to learn lessons from the historical mistakes of the past that allow those mistakes to be remade, and for the atrocities we unleash upon each other to repeat.
And then there are the ending options. Control = Indoctrination = Totalitarian Authority. Destroy = Extermination = Genocide. Synthesis = Reaperification = Eugenics. A story that I had always interpreted as rejecting these things suddenly turned around and embraced them.
In this context, to my horror, the end of Mass Effect 3 is a validation of Adolf Hitler’s world-view and casts Commander Shepard as Neville Chamberlain, appeasing the Catalyst and declaring “peace for our time”.
"Whether the creators of Mass Effect intended it as such or not does not change the fact that Mass Effect
works as a symbolic exploration of the underlying, deeper dark aspects of the human psyche that makes us do awful things to each other, and how these things can be overcome. The idea that this was unintentional,
that the first two games were to be read literally, and that the third would end with a clunky and trite combination of Christ metaphors and Eden imagery, is jarring, and something I wish I had known when the first game was released so that I had not wasted my time with the series and attributed to its creators far more artistic ability than they actually possess."
Troxa wrote...
It’s Structurally Wrong
The ending of Mass Effect is a complete and utter mess by all standards of narrative convention and storytelling structure. Broken down to the base mechanical elements of story, the ending of Mass Effect is simply wrong.
Not every story has to follow standard narrative conventions. Some break the mold, and succeed, where others break the mold and fail – but it should not be surprising that many people will find it objectionable when the last part of a trilogy breaks the narrative conventions and structures that the previous two parts adhered to.
The “climax/falling-action/denoument” pieces of introduction/rising-action/climax/falling-action/denoument dramatic structure are out of order, and the antagonist/protagonist relationship in the ending is mangled beyond recognition.
Conventionally, stories have an antagonist and a protagonist. They are in opposition to each other because of conflicting goals and/or values. The ending of Mass Effect chooses to use the last ten-minutes of the story to pull a “Big Reveal” moment with the Catalyst where Shepard learns that the cycle of extinction exists to preserve organic life. So, if the conflict is synthetics vs. organics – surprise! – the Reapers have been working to preserve organics this whole time.
But that means there is no more conflict of goals between the antagonist and protagonist. The conflicting goal that has existed throughout the entire series is brushed aside, and this mutual goal is put in its place, leaving only a conflict of values and methods.
With conflict of goals gone, the ending options must represent a resolution to the values/methods conflict, because that’s the only conflict left – so each of the ending options must represent a value and/or method.
And they do. The Reapers indoctrinate organics to be their slaves, in order to exert Control over them, wipe out any life that is not suitable to be preserved in Reaper form, so they Destroy entire races, and any organic life that is suitable to be preserved in Reaper form is Reaperified, the organic life turned to sludge and combined with technology in a process of Synthesis and forced organic/synthetic hybridization.
Control is Indoctrination. Destroy is Extinction. Synthesis is Reaperification. While those are dark interpretations of the ending choices, each does correlate to a Reaper method – a connection that is reinforced with the use of the Catalyst as the mouthpiece to articulate what these ending options are.
While different interpretations do exist, each ending accurately describes one of the morally repugnant methods the Reapers use in perpetuating their cycle of extinction.
So the conflict of goals has been removed because the Catalyst exists to preserve organic life, and Shepard must adopt the value structure of the Reapers by adopting one of their methods.
While Shepard does stop the Reapers from killing everyone, in the context of a story – because This Is Not a Pipe and it’s not a real war, either - the protagonist loses, because when the antagonist’s values are ascendant rather than the protagonist’s, then the protagonist just lost. That’s how stories work.
An excellent example of this is the eternal struggle of Batman and the Joker. My mother once said that she found the Joker to be a frustrating and ridiculous Batman villain, because it made no sense to her that Batman didn’t just kill the Joker instead of sending him back to Arkham to do the whole thing all over again the next time the Joker inevitably escapes. From a literal real-world perspective, she has a point. In the real world, the cost of Batman’s moral standards is paid for in the currency of the innocent lives the Joker takes the next time he escapes and goes on a killing spree.
But the true conflict between Batman and the Joker - in the context of a story - is one of morals and values. Batman can’t compromise his values on this point, because getting Batman to compromise his values on this point is the Joker’s goal. The day Batman snaps and kills the Joker, the Joker has finally won.
Because of the mangling of the antagonist/protagonist relationship and the gutting of conflict from the story, Shepard’s acceptance of any of the ending options – each of which correlate to a value victory for the Reapers – doesn’t make sense.
AlanC9 wrote...
3DandBeyond wrote...
For a renegade maybe but even replaced does not mean he's gone. Nothing says he's destroyed, kaput, dead, or gone. I'm merely answering what was stated-that he has lost. Clearly, if these choices achieve even part of his goal (which the reapers maybe did but he never saw as achieving his goal fully), then it's not a loss for him.
Wait a second. You're not saying that being a Renegade changes what actually happens, right? Just that a player who made the Paragon choice might come up with a bad interpretation of the ending because he didn't get that line? "Bad" because he doesn't think the Catalyst is replaced when it is replaced.
I'm also entirely unclear why whether the Catalyst considers something to be a loss matters in the first place, which makes me think that I've lost track of the actual subject.
So, what are we talking about, again?Destroy fully emphasizes his truth-the conflict will return even though the reapers are destroyed. The inevitability is obvious.
Is it? We don't see the conflict come back. You don't get to play that silly "maybe the Catalyst isn't destroyed" card and still treat the conflict ss inevitable.
AlanC9 wrote...
We don't know?
iakus wrote...
AlanC9 wrote...
I thought his argument was that it didn't feel like Shepard was alive, or something like that.
It's nothing but 'hope" Like I said, it's a hook for a sequel that will never happen. Therefore the scene is meaningless. It's a book with the last chapter torn out.
iakus wrote...
I'm finding your use of the term "pounding the PC's fate" to be rather odd.
Do you find every game where the protagionist survives to be "pounding" that fact into your head? You must have quite the headache after completing a game.
Mostly the former. People may like twists, but they are less forgving of having the rug yanked out from under them. If 2.9 games encourages the player to go in prepared to receive the optimal outcome, they're not going to like wrapping up the game in a Kobyashi Maru situation.
One shouldn't drastically changing the tone of a game in the final act. If you play an action hero, the expectation is to stay an action hero, and stay away from teh quasi-mystical stuff. While a Game of Thrones-type setting shouldn't turn into a family sitcom.
Modifié par AlanC9, 04 novembre 2013 - 11:09 .
iakus wrote...
AlanC9 wrote...
We don't know?
No, we don't. We may suspect. We may headcanon. We may theorize or imply. But we don't know. Not like we know in all the endings where Shepard dies.
HYR 2.0 wrote...
Wow. Plagiarize much?
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