It's obvious that there was a different ending in mind which is the worst thing in my opinion, otherwise I kind of liked it.
I have a somewhat different take on these things, which probably explains why I liked the ending more than you did. I think that the theme problem was more that the ending is where the bill finally came due for the overall incoherence of the project. While Bio dressed the Reapers up in Eldritch Abomination drag, they never really thought of them that way, for instance. (This is related to them thinking of ME as SF when it's really fantasy in SF drag.) And the way the choices are structured makes me think that Bio had started to believe their own propaganda about how consequences work in their games.
Sylvius, you really ought to give this a shot sometime, if only to see what all the fuss was about.
ME3 is tonally inconsistent with ME1 and ME2, in the sense that they play straight the fact that the reapers would steamroll the galaxy (though to get to that point they have to comically underpower the Ciatdel races). ME1-ME2 were more conventional fare in that regard. The beam run is a good example of this, in that it's a pretty realistic take on what would really happen in a situation like that, but it's tonally inconsistent.
My issue is more with "creating synthetics to exterminate you to save you from being exterminated by synthetics" logic, and all that it entails. Pre-EC, that wasn't a "AI run amok" (that was Bioware's author saving throw, which I don't find persuasive). More generally, I find the organic v. synthetic thing just nonsense. Unlike most, I think the Dark Energy plot is also really stupid; I just think it's less stupid by comparison, because it's only a really bad plot.
That ME3 was a darker game, which played the reaper genocide straight, wasn't something that bothered me.
ME3 is tonally inconsistent with ME1 and ME2, in the sense that they play straight the fact that the reapers would steamroll the galaxy (though to get to that point they have to comically underpower the Ciatdel races). ME1-ME2 were more conventional fare in that regard. The beam run is a good example of this, in that it's a pretty realistic take on what would really happen in a situation like that, but it's tonally inconsistent.
My issue is more with "creating synthetics to exterminate you to save you from being exterminated by synthetics" logic, and all that it entails. Pre-EC, that wasn't a "AI run amok" (that was Bioware's author saving throw, which I don't find persuasive). More generally, I find the organic v. synthetic thing just nonsense.
That ME3 was a darker game, which played the reaper genocide straight, wasn't something that bothered me.
It's even more nonsense once you consider ME2's reveal of Reaper cores being made out of organic sludge. ^^
ME3 is tonally inconsistent with ME1 and ME2,
Lulz. I didn't know ME2 was consistent with anything, let alone ME, besides the fact that they both star Space Jesus. Also, that lolstomp Sovereign was doing, on his own, totally showed a fair match and that we had a chance without plot reasons.
ME3 is tonally inconsistent with ME1 and ME2, in the sense that they play straight the fact that the reapers would steamroll the galaxy (though to get to that point they have to comically underpower the Ciatdel races). ME1-ME2 were more conventional fare in that regard. The beam run is a good example of this, in that it's a pretty realistic take on what would really happen in a situation like that, but it's tonally inconsistent.
My issue is more with "creating synthetics to exterminate you to save you from being exterminated by synthetics" logic, and all that it entails.
More generally, I find the organic v. synthetic thing just nonsense. Unlike most, I think the Dark Energy plot is also really stupid; I just think it's less stupid by comparison, because it's only a really bad plot.
We need a BSN-specific version of Godwin's law, that says: The longer any BSN debate goes on, the greater the likelihood that it will become a debate about Mass Effect 3's ending.
I'm willing to call it Angry_Elcor's Law.
I fear this would permanently associate me with Mass Effect 3's ending.
Why would I want that? I love to pause during combat to take stock and make decisions. That's when combat is most fun - when I'm calmly making decisions in a low-stess environment.That's what I did. It weens you off of the power wheel pause
I fear this would permanently associate me with Mass Effect 3's ending.
yes you should.
I guess that expecting you baddies to even know about an illustrious MP based game series that has sold literally 6x as well as this one is too much to ask of your SP Australopithithecine microbrains.
You know, its kinda funny how their always referring to games like battlefield and CoD in what the MP crowd should go for instead, but then they don't even recognize that.
Kinda shows how much they actually know about the games their claiming MP people should go to instead of wanting MP in the Mass Effect series.
Let me ask you a question.yes you should.
I guess that expecting you baddies to even know about an illustrious MP based game series that has sold literally 6x as well as this one is too much to ask of your SP Australopithithecine microbrains.
Let me ask you a question.
What is the objective in playing an MP game? What do you get out of it. What do you as a player accomplish? What do you learn?
Human beings have been playing together for tens of thousands of years. If you don't understand why, I'm not sure it's possible for you to get the answer you're looking for.
Let me ask you a question.
What is the objective in playing an MP game? What do you get out of it. What do you as a player accomplish? What do you learn?
WE LEARN TO BURN THINGS IN A THOUSAND DIFFERENT WAYS!! GOOD FOR SPORT!! VORCHA PLAYING WITH OTHER VORCHA ONLINE IS A GREAT WAY TO CONNECT!!! AS PLAYERS, WE GET SENSE OF GOOD FEELING WHEN PLAYING! GRRRAAAAAAAGH!!!! MOST IMPORTANTLY: WE PLAY TO HAVE FUN! THAT'S WHAT IT'S ALL ABOUT!! FUN FUN FUN!!! WHY ELSE WOULD MP COMMUNITY PLAY?!?!?! GRRAAAAAAAGH!! STUPID QUESTION! ALMOST AS STUPID AS VORCHA!! NOW WE BURN YOUR PUBES OFF!!!!
I didn't see the earlier games' tone this way. ME1 ends up with a massed fleet pounding against a single Reaper, which isn't even fighting back but has already proven itself able to blow up our warships with ease. We do better in ME2, but we're fighting Reaper pawns rather than actual Reapers.
It's the genre convention. ME1 isn't a dark and gritty game that shows the real consequences of war and the reality of fighting an overwhelming foe. It's a B-movie plot about the ubermensch hero kicking ass and taking names. Like with any plot of that nature - see e.g. something like DA:O - the eldrich abomination is terrifying until it comes time to kill it, in which case you find the Macguffin of Villain-Slaying+1 and win out.
It's a bit like if Garraus, in one mission, just had his brains blown out all over a windshield with no warning and no follow up. That's realistic - that's how people die in war. But it's also ridiculous and inconsisent with the genre convention.
This actually makes a bit more sense when you realize that those are two different "you"s there-- the first is the organics of this cycle, the second is organic sentients in general; it's the semantic equivalent of saying that you cull deer to keep deer from starving to death. Not great, no, but after the hole Bio dug for themselves with the Reaper motives, it's hard to come up with something better. This board's never managed it.
The problem isn't coming up with a motive for the reapers. It's coming up with a motive for the reapers that isn't pure, absolute and ireedemable evil. When your plot is Space Nazis who repeat their Final Solution to the Organic problem every 50,000 years, you're not writing about a morally complex problem with no easy solution and no obvious villains. When you ask the question "When is genocide, perpetrated by the means and technology more awful than what the Nazis used, OK?" you're not going to get a sane answer.
As to your point, well, not exactly. "Organic" life, as I like to say, includes the intestinal fauna responsible for farts. But no one cares about saving the fart bacteria. What people really care about in these types of things is sapient life, and then you run into the problem of having to draw up a reason as to why this kind of sapient life is somehow more intrisically deserving of life than this other kind of sapient life, which ME3 doesn't do. ME3 wants to say that being made out of meat is special, without ever providing a reason as to why meat is special.
The analogy to culling deer is just semantic; it's not an analytical parallel. (Edit: On second thought, it's not a semantic parallel either. Because the threat is hypothetical in the case of the reapers; it's "we'll exterminate organic life so that possible future synthetics don't end up exterminating organic life", but in the culling situation, inaction will lead to guaranteed extinction).
First, the reapers actually leave the continued existence of "deer" up to complete random chance: the next crop of "deer" could just wipe themselves out before ever becoming spacefaring. And it may be that no more new "deer" will spontaneously evolve - the reapers might just run out of them. The only way the logic works is if - until the end of the universe - there'll be an unlimited stream of incoming organic life. Essentially, organic life has to be self-generating.
Second - and this ties in with the first problem - if organic life is self-generating, then there's how would it be "wiped out" even if an AI species killed of all the sapient organics it found? More organic life would just sprout somewhere else. The AI would have to be self-sustaining for eternity, and it would have to effectively go around exterminating all other forms of organic life until the end of time. But that wouldn't "exterminate" organic life - it would just be the reaper cycle, but with more interruption and (ironically) genocides on a smaller scale.
Third, "AI" doesn't have to be made out of so-called "synthetic" material (which really is just material that's designed rather than material that sprounted into existence by random chance). You could just have an "organic" race genetically engineer a new form of life. It would be "artificial" intelligence that happened to be made out of meat instead of metal. On the necessary assumption that it has to (1) be self-sustaining for all eternity and (2) wipe out any and all other form of organic life, what you end up with is an enternally existing form of organic life that will never die out.
For reaper logic to work, the problem can't exist.
But this was a thing in ME1. The writers don't seem to have appreciated how thoroughly ME2 trashed the idea. Or ME3, which I think is why Gaider said that the best Rannoch resolution was a mistake.
Not really. The idea is incomprehensible nonsense because, as I said above, it starts from the assumption that being made out of meat is special. Even if peace between the Geth and Quarians wouldn't have been possible, the point wouldn't be any less stupid.
Whoever thought Hegelian giant Lovecraftian space-squid robots was a good idea needed to be thrown out the airlock.
Whoever thought Hegelian giant Lovecraftian space-squid robots was a good idea needed to be thrown out the airlock.
I actually didn't mind the reaper-dreadnought thing. It makes sense, in a way. If you're an evil genocide-bent AI, why would you design a useless bipedal combat form?
Let me ask you a question.
What is the objective in playing an MP game? What do you get out of it. What do you as a player accomplish? What do you learn?
I could ask you the same of SP, and I suspect most of your answer could either also be applied to MP games or are entirely useless to you once you stop playing the game in the case of what you learn.
Ultimately it's going to come down to people just find it fun to play with or against other people. We find it fun to work together to achieve a common goal in a video game, or in the case of PvP games we enjoy having our skills tested against proper challenging opponents that can think for themselves. AI in video games is generally highly exploitable once you find the pattern, unless they're given unfair advantages.
I would say that no Mass Effect game is challenging, not even on insanity. I love a good story and good characters and a good game universe with plenty of choice, but I also like to have my skills challenged. Games like Battlefield or Counter-Strike are infinitely better at testing your skills than any SP game could ever hope to be and in return, they can't tell a story anywhere near as well as a SP game can.
Let me ask you a question.
What is the objective in playing an MP game? What do you get out of it. What do you as a player accomplish? What do you learn?
I actually didn't mind the reaper-dreadnought thing. It makes sense, in a way. If you're an evil genocide-bent AI, why would you design a useless bipedal combat form?
True. It was more the combination of all those things. Space squid robots with Lovecrafrian overtones, I could handle, in fact aspects of that I quite liked. Throwing in some half-baked German philosophy on top was just a step too far, though.
True. It was more the combination of all those things. Space squid robots with Lovecrafrian overtones, I could handle, in fact aspects of that I quite liked. Throwing in some half-baked German philosophy on top was just a step too far, though.
What was the half-baked German philosophy?
I should add I'm not a fan of the "reapers". I just thought the idea that the evil AI is spaceship size'd this time around was a cool twist on the Terminator bi-pedal killing machine theme.
I guess that expecting you baddies to even know about an illustrious MP based game series that has sold literally 6x as well as this one is too much to ask of your SP Australopithithecine microbrains.
Reported for personal attacks on Australians.
In that case, QMR's comment fits you perfectly.
What was the half-baked German philosophy?
I should add I'm not a fan of the "reapers". I just thought the idea that the evil AI is spaceship size'd this time around was a cool twist on the Terminator bi-pedal killing machine theme.
Hegelian dialectic. Thesis-antithesis-synthesis.
Basically the Hegelian dialectic suggests a thesis (Organic life) that gives rise to a negative reaction or rebuttal (synthetic life) which is resolved via a process of reconciliation as a synthesis of the thesis and antithesis (green glowing eyes and happy endings for everyone).
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