EDI lives in the Normandy's core, which is hardened to resist EMP attacks and general electromagnetic shenanigans. While her fembot mobile platform might be damaged or disabled, her personality and such should be safe and sound in the Normandy's innards.
It isn't, though.
See, this is space magic. If you try to understand it, it will only make your brain hurt. It's stupid and nonsensical, and it has effects because it is written that it does.
What we experienced is a writer's cop-out. I'm pretty sure that, in a complete absence of inspiration, Mac started with two choices: kill the reapers; or join the reapers. A brief struggle with the nonsensical nature of a "join the reapers" plot led to the idea of the Catalyst and an opportunity to replace it as the AI reaper god. Still, that idea is pretty dumb and most people would, as a no-brainer, just go with "kill the reapers" instead. That raised the necessity of attaching a cost to what became the "destroy" option. Incorporating the Catalyst idea from "control" suggested casting everything in a quick and dirty AI versus organic theme, so the obvious cost for destroy would be all Shepard's AI friends. It was then decided to add a third "best" option for reaching a certain threshold of galactic readiness, and so--in the absence of any better ideas--it was decided that "synthesis" should make all AI and organic life equal thereby resolving the thrown-together AI/Organic conflict theme.
The "Last Days" iOS app gives some behind-the-scenes perspective of the development, and if you were paying attention to the Old Republic development time table you can pretty clearly see what probably happened. SWTOR needed a few more months of development, so the bean-counters switched the release windows because they needed a product to release in the Spring of 2012 when they had been planning to unleash SWTOR. That basically took 6 to 9 months of development time away from Mass Effect 3, and put Casey in the awkward position of scheduling studio time for the voice actors before there was even a draft of the script.
Mac was then (as is confirmed in the Last Days app) writing the ending with the actors already in the studio waiting for their pages to read from. Everyone had planned on having a few more months to iron everything out and generate a quality product, but the rug was pulled out from under them.
Then Dr. Ray Muzyka, who was trying to fit into the EA corporate structure, steps in to handle the PR disaster that began to built the moment players reached the end of the game. He had to make a call between throwing someone under the bus and having a do-over, or sticking by his people and put his own credibility through the meat grinder with the whole "artistic integrity" thing. We know which way it went.
It's sad. Often, when a movie is butchered by a studio in the editing room, the creative forces behind the film can arrange for a "Director's Cut" to restore some real artistic integrity to the work. In this case, I really do wish that it had somehow been possible to give Casey the freedom to produce a Director's Cut of ME3, with a free DLC that actually fixed the ending, perhaps using the "indoctrination theory" or perhaps with something totally different and unexpected. What makes the situation sad is that I know that, given the chance, the Mass Effect development team could have made something great.
That's the only reason I'm still hanging around here waiting for ME4 info. I'm hoping that, having been knocked down, Casey Hudson manages to produce a magnum opus and redeem himself, Mac, and the Mass Effect franchise.
'Cause if he doesn't, it's done.
No pressure.
Modifié par durasteel, 12 décembre 2013 - 07:31 .
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