Questa discussione ha avuto 37 risposte

[Lennard Testarossa]

How? Citadel kid was right synthesis is the ultimate stage of evolution...even in real life technology is leading us to that point. in my opinion at least.

 

It has nothing to do with 'evolution'. Evolution is a very specific term describing a very specific thing which has no connection whatsoever with transhumanism. And my hatred of the synthesis nonsense doesn't stem from the idea itself (though it's idiotic to introduce it as an entirely new theme in the third installment of a franchise. Someone sure played too much Deus Ex on the writing team.). It stems from its mechanics.

 

Have you ever thought about what that mystical wave of green energy actually entails in terms of its mechanics? Have you considered which alternate uses such technology has? That it basically allows you to do pretty much anything? That it renders everything the reapers do pointless?

[Vazgen]

It has nothing to do with 'evolution'. Evolution is a very specific term describing a very specific thing which has no connection whatsoever with transhumanism. And my hatred of the synthesis nonsense doesn't stem from the idea itself (though it's idiotic to introduce it as an entirely new theme in the third installment of a franchise. Someone sure played too much Deus Ex on the writing team.). It stems from its mechanics.

 

Have you ever thought about what that mystical wave of green energy actually entails in terms of its mechanics? Have you considered which alternate uses such technology has? That it basically allows you to do pretty much anything? That it renders everything the reapers do pointless?

Crucible is not built by the Reapers. Only by attaching it to the Citadel does the synthesis option appear

I have thought of that green wave of energy. On Sanctuary we learn that Reapers use very small particles called nanites, which spread through the organism and replace living tissue with cybernetics. The attach themselves to the adrenaline cells and rapidly spread through the organism using the rush from being penetrated by a spike. That's how husks are created.

Now, what if Shepard's essence creates modified nanites (with both synthetic and organic parts) who are later dispersed using the beam?

[MegaIllusiveMan]

Not to derail topic but I'm getting kinda tired of reading about crap like this.

 

ME1: 2 endings Red and Blue, Save or dont Save

ME2: 2 endings Red and Blue, Save or Dont Save

ME3: 3 endings Red, Blue and Green, Save, Don't Save and Merge.

 

KoToR: 2 endings Red and Blue

 

 

Point is every damn bioware game has had color coded endings that either involved saving or destroying something or other.

 

 

But back on topic.

 

I don't want anything to do with Shepard anymore His/Her story is done. Reapers are dead, forced away or merged so no point in making them the big bad enemy.

 

I bet the next ME's big enemy going to be the Leviathan's and their thrall races.

 

Uh... Yeah, but KotOR 2 wasn't made by Bioware, but by Obsidian Entertainment.

[Lennard Testarossa]

Deus Ex wasn't the first story to ever use that premise, and it won't be the last. The "Mystical wave of color" can be explained as a giant mass effect field. I mean seriously everyone is okay with a person being able to envelope another person in a blue mass effect field and lift them, but not okay with a machine based on mass effect technology that can do the same thing?

 

Also the last part of your post on the tech. Don't the Reapers have the same process when creating another Reaper? Breaking down organic matter and merging it with synthetic?

 

Oh, if all it did was to move things on a macro scale, I'd be fine with it. But that's not what it does.

 

What it does is to create structures across all life forms it passes to nanometer accuracy made out of materials it creates in passing. What does that kind of technology allow you to do? Pretty much everything. Using the same physical principles used to achieve this wonder (And we have no idea what those principles might be. It's certainly not the mass effect or nanites as neither of these come even close to explaining how to create circuitry across the entirety of a living being in a one second time frame.), the reapers could create a magical wave of energy that passes over a planet, turns all members of a certain species into goo, materializes a cooling container out of nothing to store that goo and outfits that container with a device to signal its location. So when the reapers want to harvest planet earth, all they have to do is press a button once and then send ships down to earth the pick up the containers with the human goo. So why do they never use this kind of technology, even on a small scale?

 

Frankly, my primary problem with the ending is that the green ending requires the single most unbelievable technology I have ever seen to work. There is no other technology in Mass Effect that does anything even remotely comparable. Simply removing the green ending would improve the ending overall by a factor of about 10.

[Spacepunk01]

The synthesis ending certainly is fantastical, it's more fantasy than science fiction in my opinion. This is pure idealism, the realization of a vision, a perfect way of coexisting in a galactic community. How could something like that happen? It's beyond the limits of what technology can actually accomplish. I would assume that for most people familiar with the ME Universe the synthesis ending reminds us of magic, not advanced technology. This is a problem because Mass Effect is an amazing concept, but they wanted the end to be extra special, so they abandoned the relatively grounded/logical science-based approach, which made Mass Effect such a great - and unique experience in the first place.

 

I know there is a quote saying something like this:

 

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

 

Which means that we just can't comprehend it, not yet. But where did this technology come from? It's beyond anything the Reaper technology could accomplish and they had the most advanced technology in the galaxy.

[Farangbaa]

It has nothing to do with 'evolution'. Evolution is a very specific term describing a very specific thing which has no connection whatsoever with transhumanism. And my hatred of the synthesis nonsense doesn't stem from the idea itself (though it's idiotic to introduce it as an entirely new theme in the third installment of a franchise. Someone sure played too much Deus Ex on the writing team.). It stems from its mechanics.

 

Have you ever thought about what that mystical wave of green energy actually entails in terms of its mechanics? Have you considered which alternate uses such technology has? That it basically allows you to do pretty much anything? That it renders everything the reapers do pointless?

 

Please write a paper about technology not being a part of evolution, I'm sure the biology community would love to hear about how differences in acuired and used technologies had no impact whatsoever on nature deciding which particular group of humans was the strongest. The days that evolution was 'just' about genes is long gone. Even Lamarck has been proven to right, in a way. (though that still has to do with genes ). 

 

And have you ever though what the destroy wave does? A beam of destructive energy only targeting synthetics? Right.

Or the control beam, shot across the entire galaxy for you to replace the Catalyst? Right.

[Lennard Testarossa]

Please write a paper about technology not being a part of evolution, I'm sure the biology community would love to hear about how differences in acuired and used technologies had no impact whatsoever on nature deciding which particular group of humans was the strongest. The days that evolution was 'just' about genes is long gone. Even Lamarck has been proven to right, in a way. (though that still has to do with genes ). 

 

And have you ever though what the destroy wave does? A beam of destructive energy only targeting synthetics? Right.

Or the control beam, shot across the entire galaxy for you to replace the Catalyst? Right.

 

The active and targeted modification of living beings via technology (which is what synthesis is) has nothing to do with evolution. You can of course argue that an environment which contains technology is in and out of itself no different from a 'natural' environment with regards to evolution, and you'd have a point, but that's wholly different from active redesign.

 

The mechanics of 'destroy' and 'control' are somewhat unbelievable, to be sure, but they don't even come close to being as unbelievable as the synthesis ending.

[Iakus]

The synthesis ending certainly is fantastical, it's more fantasy than science fiction in my opinion. This is pure idealism, the realization of a vision, a perfect way of coexisting in a galacitc community. How could something like that happen? It's beyond the limits of what technology can actually accomplish. I would assume that for most people familiar with the ME Universe the synthesis ending reminds us of magic, not advanced technology. This is a problem because Mass Effect is an amazing concept, but they wanted the end to be extra special, so they abandoned the relatively grounded/logical science-based approach, which made Mass Effect such a great - and unique experience in the first place.

 

I know there is a quote saying something like this:

 

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

 

Which means that we just can't comprehend it, not yet. But where did this technology come from? It's beyond anything the Reaper technology could accomplish and they had the most advanced technology in the galaxy.

Yup.

 

I've read fantasy with less magic than Synthesis.

 

Also, to thos eof us familiar with the ME universe.  Playing around with space magic without properly understanding it is a recipe for disaster.

[Spacepunk01]

I agree that we can't argue about the impossibility or possibility of technology that exist in a Universe different from ours. We can however, based on everything we learn about the Mass Effect Universe, say if something is plausible or implausible within the framework of that Universe. Whenever you open the codex you get the sense that everything is explained in a very scientific and logical way and even if it's fictional many of the concepts used in the game are derived from actual scientific principles and ideas. Science and logic is actually the groundwork that Mass Effect is built upon, hence science. Then the BioWare team started developing interesting concepts based on actual science, hence fiction.

 

Based on everything we as players learn about the ME Universe there is no doubt that Mass Effect definitely can be considered Science Fiction; with an emphasis on science, not fantasy. Consider all of this and you will see that the Synthesis ending breaks with the rules of the ME Universe, it becomes a weak link in a otherwise consistent and coherent Universe.

 

It seems very implausible to me that such technology could exist when we consider what kind of Universe we're dealing with. I guess this is one of the reasons why there was so much noise about the ending. Mass Effect suffered from an identity crisis in the very end, it suddenly wanted to be something it was not, a fantasy story.

 

The three other endings work, but IMO destroy makes most sense.

[Farangbaa]

Essence

Cipher

Shielding a part of your mind from indoctrination.

 

Yep, 'science' fiction.

[Moonshadow_Dark]

And the trend of this thread producing consistently stupid ideas continues.

 

Agreed.

 

Jesus, people, what happened to the old days when these sort of half baked "What if" scenario's remained on Fanfiction.net where they belong?

 

Damn, and people say that Casey Hudson is a terrible writer.