180 réponses à ce sujet

[Linkenski]

Since the ending is always a hot topic on this board, I felt in the mood to make this. Basically the idea is that you take the premise "Mass Effect 3's ending is the same as if..." and then you add a comparison to show what ME3's ending equals to.

 

My take:

Mass Effect 3's ending is the same as if... you're watching the end of American Beauty, a movie about the suburban culture's facade-life and pointlessness in the late 90's America, and at the end a random guy enters the plot to say

 

"It's because of the presidential election of Hoover, and the depression that we are so alone in others' company, but the upcoming presidential election will fix everything!"

 

It completely discards whatever the plot was before and shoehorns in something that just doesn't make any sense to the themes and directions of the plot. THAT is why ME3's endings were and always will be unfixable. Not the fact that it's a DEM, not the fact that choices don't matter, but because from a literary perspective they are broken and completely incoherent.

 

What's your perspective?

[Batarian Master Race]

[teh DRUMPf!!]

 ... the same as if this post is hidden because you are on Ignore; view it anyway? That does not make any sense.

[AlanC9]

.. you were fighting robots who were following an insane program, and at the end you find that's exactly what was going on the whole time.

[Linkenski]

.. you were fighting robots who were following an insane program, and at the end you find that's exactly what was going on the whole time.

You can do better than that

[dorktainian]

that's an epic post batarian Master Race.  

 

[AlanC9]

You can do better than that

Sure, if I try. I was just being honest with that one. I had to come here to find out that oeople were surprised by what happened.

[Iakus]

 

.. you were fighting robots who were following an insane program, and at the end you find that's exactly what was going on the whole time.

 

You can do better than that

 

...you were fighting robots who were following an insane program, and in the end you fin that the only way to "win" is to go along with their insane program    

[Iakus]

On a more serious not

 

The ending of Mass Effect 3 is the same as if in Return of the Jedi, Luke could

 

1) Throw himself into the Death Star's reactor, spreading his midichlorians throughout the galaxy (somehow) making every living being in the galaxy from Han Solo down to the lowliest womp rat Force Sensitive

2) Let the Emperor kill him, but afterwards, haunt him as a Force Ghost hoping it will turn him back to the Light Side

3) Kill the Emperor, but doing so would also destroy Kashyyk and kill every wookie in the galaxy.  Because reasons. 

 

Also, in every case, the Millennium Falcon crashes on some world (not Endor) but not before it manages to swing by and pick everyone up.  For some reason.

[Batarian Master Race]

that's an epic post batarian Master Race.  

 

 

Did you expect anything different?

[Kabraxal]

I actually can't believe there is still debate about this... the endings did not fit the story to that point and committed one of the cardinal sins of writing: introducing a character at the very end to "fix" the problem.  

 

Now, if ME1 had shown shadows, hints, or echoes of this insane AI and there were little bits of history and lore scattered around (like you find data in one of the reaper parts or the corpse in 2) that hints that their programming is ******, and then have a slow burn in 3 where there is always a nagging and growing presence of this AI til it reveals itself and actually gives a much longer accounting than a mere 10 minutes of "this why I am stupid", then maybe the defenders of this horrid ending would actually have a foundation to stand on.  

 

As it is, the AI came out of nowhere in the final minutes of the game and offered choices lifted straight out of Deus Ex and the entire build up of the trilogy was thrown away for some psuedo intellectual garbage that was pretending at being "deep" and "meaningful".  Even if I don't like the Bioshock stories, at least their pseudo intellectual and amateur philosophical stories were built throughout each game.  They made "sense" in so much as there was a "logical" flow from point a to point b.  It might have been poor in the end, but least the end point was 5 built from the starting point of 1.

Mass Effect's ending was bloody cuneiform chicken scratch after starting at the number 1.  Which is said, because points 1- 212c were spectacular.... damn that sudden jump to &.  After point 212c should have been 212d or 213!  This isn't Monty Python or Heilein where absurdity is an acceptable device for satirical use

[Kabraxal]

It wasn't introduced at the very end. It was alluded to on Thessia that the Reapers are servants of the cycle, not its master. That's a good 4 hours or so before the end. That's more than enough warning/foreshadowing.

No it isn't.  That is out of 100 hours through ALL 3 games and you are saying that a character only being mentioned, alluded to, or showing up in the final 5 percent of the entire story is okay.... 4 hours before the end of a 100 hour journey is not adequate foreshadowing.  In fact, it isn't foreshadowing at all really in that relatively short amount of time.

[SpaceLobster]

It wasn't introduced at the very end. It was alluded to on Thessia that the Reapers are servants of the cycle, not its master. That's a good 4 hours or so before the end. That's more than enough warning/foreshadowing.

Didn't Vigil say that (as well) If he did, that's before 67% of the trilogy is completed. It is very vague though.

[AlanC9]

Now, if ME1 had shown shadows, hints, or echoes of this insane AI

It did. What, you thought that the cycles made sense?

Put another way, what did you think was going on?

[angol fear]

No it isn't.  That is out of 100 hours through ALL 3 games and you are saying that a character only being mentioned, alluded to, or showing up in the final 5 percent of the entire story is okay.... 4 hours before the end of a 100 hour journey is not adequate foreshadowing.  In fact, it isn't foreshadowing at all really in that relatively short amount of time.

 

So you want to have foreshadowing in Mass Effect 1 of a character who do not act directly, when we don't know enough about the reapers themselves...

If you want foreshadowing in the first game, the Klencory planet is a foreshadowing that you will not accept, but it is a foreshadowing that you can understand when you have finished the game. Accept it or not, it is foreshadowing.

Just like people who want foreshadowing, you don't really want foreshadowing, you actually want the player to understand things before reaching the ending. You want Hollywood writing which please everyone because even the most stupid guy can anticipate. You want a story where the player knows everything (I'm talking about events) before it happens. That's not foreshadowing.

[fraggle]

That whole thing about revealing the Catalyst earlier makes no sense for the story we got. It's based around the idea that it stays hidden, fills its role as an observer rather than an active participant. The whole story of ME3 revolves around the fact that no one, not even Shepard knows what the Catalyst is, and their search for it.

And the Catalyst was indeed mentioned very early on, like some here already said and Vendetta stirs the player in this direction early enough. Writing doesn't always have to follow "rules" imo.

[Linkenski]

That whole thing about revealing the Catalyst earlier makes no sense for the story we got. It's based around the idea that it stays hidden, fills its role as an observer rather than an active participant. The whole story of ME3 revolves around the fact that no one, not even Shepard knows what the Catalyst is, and their search for it.

And the Catalyst was indeed mentioned very early on, like some here already said and Vendetta stirs the player in this direction early enough. Writing doesn't always have to follow "rules" imo.

I think it's important to embrace your gut feelings and irrational ideas as a writer, but you need to step back at the end of the day and ask yourself "Is this [insert plot-point] part, REALLY, a part of the same story I'm trying to tell?"

 

I think of all stories as arguments and it's logic that drives them. The point of a story is not whether the characters can survive the odds (depends though) but more about the writer trying to make some sort of point and the characters, setting etc. involved are all part of the "logic" that makes or breaks the writer's argument.

 

That's the power of narrative to me. You have ideas or opinions you want to express, but you do so in the most captivating/entertaining way you can, through fictional worlds, characters etc.

 

In that sense, I think writing has to follow "rules", and ME3's ending (intro too) certainly break these rules. I also don't believe for a second that Casey came up with the "idea" of "Synthetics and organics" by himself, considering how dangerously close the endings are to the Deus Ex games, and the themes of transhumanism and synthetic singularity always seemed to me like they were ideas Casey just copied from the other media he'd seen, like The Matrix or Deus Ex. I don't even believe that he believes he was original about it. He even admitted they'd often try to "recreate movies" in their games, and we came to the same conclusion in another thread where we compared the ending of ME1 to "The Right Stuff" and realized how much it was a homage to it.

 

The ending of ME3 was probably a homage, but one without any sort of contextual awareness, and one pretty much nobody appreciated, except for those who didn't pay attention to the rest of the story anyway.

[fraggle]

I think it's important to embrace your gut feelings and irrational ideas as a writer, but you need to step back at the end of the day and ask yourself "Is this [insert plot-point] part, REALLY, a part of the same story I'm trying to tell?"

 

I think of all stories as arguments and it's logic that drives them. The point of a story is not whether the characters can survive the odds (depends though) but more about the writer trying to make some sort of point and the characters, setting etc. involved are all part of the "logic" that makes or breaks the writer's argument.

 

That's the power of narrative to me. You have ideas or opinions you want to express, but you do so in the most captivating/entertaining way you can, through fictional worlds, characters etc.

 

In that sense, I think writing has to follow "rules", and ME3's ending (intro too) certainly break these rules. I also don't believe for a second that Casey came up with the "idea" of "Synthetics and organics" by himself, considering how dangerously close the endings are to the Deus Ex games, and the themes of transhumanism and synthetic singularity always seemed to me like they were ideas Casey just copied from the other media he'd seen, like The Matrix or Deus Ex. I don't even believe that he believes he was original about it. He even admitted they'd often try to "recreate movies" in their games, and we came to the same conclusion in another thread where we compared the ending of ME1 to "The Right Stuff" and realized how much it was a homage to it.

 

The ending of ME3 was probably a homage, but one without any sort of contextual awareness, and one pretty much nobody appreciated, except for those who didn't pay attention to the rest of the story anyway.

 

I only said this about the rules because there was talk about the Catalyst needing to be revealed earlier, and I don't think it has to be. I explained why I think it's not a good idea to have it revealed much earlier.

 

Synthetics and organics and combining them was a theme throughout the games though, a lot revolved around it (like in the conversations with Saren, and Overlord hooks an organic to machines, then there's TIM combining humans and reaper tech...).

I don't really care how they came up with it, and maybe it's similar to other stuff, but I don't mind if the themes previously supported it.

You spend a lot of time in ME3 to get to know EDIs "human" side if you talk to her, that whole "are AIs truly alive" theme played a huge role there as well with the geth. It's all there imo. In fact I think that all of this builds up perfectly to Synthesis. I wonder how many picked Synthesis because they felt pity for EDI or the geth, because they wanted to let them live? Because the idea of peace between everyone sounded better than the alternatives?

I don't like the way Synthesis was presented in the end, but I liked its concept and I did pick it the first time.

 

And I'm sorry that some of us try to make sense of the ending and you dislike it That's completely fine. But it's rather condescending of you to say those who liked the end didn't pay attention to the rest. ME has flaws in general, but we can still try to find a way to support certain ideas and themes.

[angol fear]

The ending of ME3 was probably a homage, but one without any sort of contextual awareness, and one pretty much nobody appreciated, except for those who didn't pay attention to the rest of the story anyway.

Players know better than the writers what Mass Effect is about ? The ending is just a homage ?
So why there are people who can explain the logic of the writing based on the writing of the trilogy ? They didn't pay attention to the rest of the game but can make relation between what was written before and the ending. That's strange, isn't it ?
It's easier to say that it doesn't make sense than admiting that we were trapped, that we were wrong. It's funny to see that people who "understood" the ending say that it doesn't make sense, and people who "don't pay attention" can justify why it was written this way, isn't it? Don't you see that it's ridiculous?

Understanding = the ending doesn't make sense ; not understanding = the ending make sense.

Understanding = no relation with what was done before ; not understanding = relation with what was done before

Understanding = no foreshadowing ; not understanding = foreshadowing

Seriously...

Ps : and for the homage aspect that's true but it can be applied for the whole trilogy. It 's postmodernism ! We can't say you found out why the ending was written this way.

[Linkenski]

Pssh, any way I see it, if the ending makes sense to you, then you've played it with all DLC on your first go, and if it made sense to you in march 2012, there's headcanon going on.

 

ME3 has several dropped or confused subplots along the way so there's no reason to suddenly believe the ending is any more thought through, when fans including myself had literally been scouring the codex entries, websites and discussions through to find out what the hell just happened and come out with the conclusion that "I'm reading more into this than those who wrote it did".

 

I firmly believe the endings don't make sense, and I stand by that. It contradicts ME1 at large even with Leviathan and given how many other things that ME3 got wrong, the game already had done so little to convince me that I knew when I saw the ending that it was just bullshit.

 

You are of course entitled to your opinion and if you believe the ending is great, more power to you, and with all that said, the ending can be explained via retroactive addition, like Leviathan and Extended Cut. I personally think EC worked in the game's favor (while Leviathan seems way too convenient and cheap as someone who got slapped in the face with the unfinished mess from march 2012). NB: It can be explained, but that's not to say it suddenly makes it good.

 

I don't say I know the lore better than the writing staff. I can't know that, but as a reader you take what you're given and if **** doesn't add up and has a large consensus that it doesn't, it's the writers' fault. Look at Far Cry 3 for instance, where people started giving it **** because its plot was a jumbled mess and then the writer came out trying to explain what his intention was and the problem there was too, that, whatever he tried to do with his writing, it just didn't come across properly... the execution wasn't well done. Same story here, only, because of Extended Cut, the leaked script and several odd subplots that didn't feel properly fleshed out, I'm inclined to believe the writers' just didn't have the answers lying around in detailed scribbles on their office desk... they simply didn't have it until fans raged and they tried to come up with answers after the fact. NB: It can be explained but it doesn't make it good.

 

 

*snip*

And I'm sorry that some of us try to make sense of the ending and you dislike it   That's completely fine. But it's rather condescending of you to say those who liked the end didn't pay attention to the rest. ME has flaws in general, but we can still try to find a way to support certain ideas and themes.

Incidentally, have you played the MGS games? You know those moments in MGS4 when you beat one of the bosses and you get a long exposition dump about child-soldiers and their brutal past? Kind of the same problem... yeah, sure, war is a big theme in MGS4, but this feels like it doesn't have enough of a relation to the overall story of the game. I believe there are certain rules of narrative you have to follow as a writer, just as any musician has to follow rules of music to a certain extent, and by ME3's ending they broke too far out of the rules of narrative and the narrative coherence is lost because of it. It doesn't matter if there's a general theme about synthetics somewhere in the trilogy apart from the ending. It still has to be delivered in a coherent fashion, like I said earlier, in "sort of like an argument, where you make a point". Whatever point ME3's ending was trying to make didn't have the As, Bs or Cs of logical reasoning across the rest of the game to justify raising the issue of organics and synthetics being the central conflict at large. If you can't see that, then at the very least, promise me you'll never become a writer yourself.

[fraggle]

Incidentally, have you played the MGS games?

 

No, only the first some long time ago.

 

Whatever point ME3's ending was trying to make didn't have the As, Bs or Cs of logical reasoning across the rest of the game to justify raising the issue of organics and synthetics being the central conflict at large. If you can't see that, then at the very least, promise me you'll never become a writer yourself.

 

So your problem with the ending is that it didn't make a good enough point for you? That the central conflict of organics vs synthetics throughout the Trilogy was not supported enough?

And I don't see why I should promise you something just because I don't agree with you.

[dorktainian]

OK the ending if taken literally is like being in a cafe and ordering a cappacino, but being given a cup full of watered down dung.

 

It's like reading lord of the rings, with the final 5 chapters ripped out.  It's a mess.