180 réponses à ce sujet

[Linkenski]

Edit: Nevermind.

[Linkenski]

You are not getting it.

Smudboy and MrBtongue have a habit of trying to make the ending about how they think it should be, not how it is. They are ones to be ignored.

First off, the Catalyst was created because the Leviathan's client races were falling to the machines they create. So, yeah, the Catalyst does have evidence to support his claim. However, does his motive even matter?

It does not. because whether he is right or wrong, it doesn't matter. Shepard wants the cycle stopped and argues that the Catalyst simply put, lacks understanding of organic life. Pay attention to Shepard's dialogue. He doesn't care about organics vs synthetics, because thats simply put, not his conflict with it. The CONFLICT is about what the Catalyst is DOING, not WHY he is doing it.

It's supposed to be both, and the original ending did not give off the impression that The Catalyst's "doing" was the conflict. Quite the contrary in fact.

I think you need to go back and imagine yourself and the expectations you had before reaching the ending and take out Leviathan (because that is a retroactive justification and nothing more) and think about how well the game communicates all those new ideas by frontloading them on you at the last minute. I'm pretty sure that even those of us who expected to learn about the Reapers did not expect THIS, and I mean it in a bad way. It seems like a cheap cop-out for the reapers and it seems inconsistent with what was implied about them over the course of the rest of the story.

I also think if we're going to talk about seeing things "how they want it to be" the same thing can be said about you guys trying to force postmodernism and intertextuality into it. If there's any intertextuality it comes from the fact that the ending concept is a weak Dues Ex rip off in themes and choices.

I do understand that you can see it as Shepard not caring to argue with the Catalyst as he knows it doesn't get ethics or organic reasoning, but does he know this exactly? Why can't he at least try to ask it if it can just make the reapers stop instead ofa all the other bullshit. The point of arguing with the Catalyst would've been to make it realize it was wrong about its use of the Reapers, but Shepard can't even try it, and it stands in the face of how you multiple times show in ME3 that organics and synthetics can achieve peace with each other, through proper communication.

I still don't get it? I'm not so sure, but I'm pretty sure however that you'll still just discard my argument with something else that doesn't really disprove anything I said.

[Batarian Master Race]

@TIM, Mass Effect is post modernist, you agree or not, it doesn't matter.

 

angol fear at their best, everybody. Blatantly ignoring everyone else's opinion because they MUST be right.

[Dantriges]

ME has a central theme that goes outside its action sci-fi shell, about the decisions that are made that affect the destinies of others and how this can create conflict. Notice how every time someones ignorantly or selfishly alters the destiny of others without thinking of the consequences always meets trouble? That's the Catalyst. Shepard has to make a decision that alters the fate of others as well, but he doesn't choose ignorantly or selfishly, and even will sacrifice himself to achieve his goal. THATS the parable of Mass Effect.

 

Shepard met an unknown AI, altered by an unexplained device, that told him about a problem you can´t verify or evaluate. Without the Leviathan DLC, which came after the main game was published, Shepard didn´t even knew about it and even then it´s from a second hand source. The dude you met is a descendant of the original creators. It could be that the problem arose because of the circumstances in the times of the Leviathans with their culture of enthrallmentand slavery, not as a universal constant. It could be or it is really universal.

We don´t know and there is no time to explain for whatever reasons. Shepard knows a bit about the choices but it´s not really much and well the Catalyst could be twisting the truth, not telling the whole story, at least it has its own point of view which could be biased simply by its original code.

 

In short Shepard gets told about the three possible solutions by the unknown, which is altered by the unexplained, in very vague terms without anything to back up the claims. 

I grant the selfless part but I don´t agree on the not ignorant part. 

[Vanilka]

I think you need to go back and imagine yourself and the expectations you had before reaching the ending and take out Leviathan (because that is a retroactive justification and nothing more) and think about how well the game communicates all those new ideas by frontloading them on you at the last minute. I'm pretty sure that even those of us who expected to learn about the Reapers did not expect THIS, and I mean it in a bad way. It seems like a cheap cop-out for the reapers and it seems inconsistent with what was implied about them over the course of the rest of the story.

 

Sorry to rip this out of context a bit, but I wanted to touch this issue in particular because it's a big one. I can nothing but agree. The franchise utterly fails to establish synthetics as a proper galactic threat which would be necessary for the ending to make sense. Every time we get hostile synthetics they are mostly sent by the Reapers themselves or/and are far from being an unsolvable issue. If the franchise showed us anything, it is that the galaxy can handle these things. Then the franchise even goes out of its way to introduce friendly synthetics. Synthetics are never portrayed as something we can't deal with and that's why the Catalyst's problem is so out of place. It doesn't fit what we've seen in the game. It's not what we have set out to deal with. The only proof of the Catalyst's words are... well, its words. There's nothing else. I'm not in favour of counting Leviathan in, either, because it was not part of the original game and it was slapped on later to justify the damage that had already been done. Even taking the Catalyst's and Leviathan's words into account both, it's still all tell and don't show while it should've been the opposite. We are merely told that the organics will get wiped out by synthetics by the Catalyst and maybe Leviathan, yet we are never shown such a thing. We never experience it ourselves. There's no race that we know of in our Cycle that got completely wiped out by synthetics. There's no race that is in immediate danger from them. There are just quarians who kind of brought it upon themselves and they were still allowed to escape with their lives. Allowed by the synthetics.

 

Also, having played the franchise for the first time just a few months ago, I clearly remember that I was focused on stopping the Reapers during the whole end of the game. I didn't know how Shepard was going to do it, being injured and all, but that's what I came there to do. Even once I shot TIM, I was still just waiting to finally send Reapers to hell by activating the Crucible or whatever. That's why the Catalyst and his problem was such a big WTF. Now, I realise I cannot speak for everyone, but to me that came absolutely out of nowhere, and because of what I said in the paragraph above, the whole talk about synthetics wiping out the organics just wasn't at all convincing to me. (I'm putting other things I consider problematic aside just to focus on this particular issue right now because there's too much to analyse.)

 

That's just to add to your argument because I think you've made a good point there. I think the audience needs some exposure and some preparation so that the ending naturally stems from the situation. They can't just pull a random theme out of their butt. (Well, technically, they can do whatever the hell they want, but at what cost?) If the Catalyst came out and instead said every race has to be wiped out because one race (like the krogan) always rises above the others and wipes everyone out... well, it would be the same thing. It was a theme often discussed in the game. But that doesn't mean it's okay to randomly slap it at the end when the whole game was about Shepard's journey to stop the Reapers.

[Monica21]

 

 

angol fear, the biggest issue I have with your attempts to explain the ending are the hoops you have to jump through to get to the any kind of understanding. You're talking about Mass Effect as if it were written by an English Lit professor instead of some video game developers. Not that video game developers can't write great games, Planescape: Torment comes to mind, but there shouldn't be any kind convolutions to get to an understanding. Even if you didn't think deeply about the themes of Planescape, the story itself made sense. 

 

The problem with your conclusions is that the players shouldn't have to understand or even know about postmodernism to have the ending make sense. Remember that bit about narrative coherence in the video you mocked? Well, that is the problem most people had with the ending. "Why am I shooting this tube?" is a great example of "wtf is going on?" When people start wondering what's going on then the game isn't working, neither on a thematic level nor on the much simpler storytelling level. The story has to make sense before you start talking about themes. You can feel free to mock other people's reactions and talk about broad themes of postmodernism and bring up obscure movies, but that doesn't make the questions of simple storytelling and how plot points flow into plot points any less valid.

 

Basically, if you continue to write like an overeager grad student who just got a handle on postmodernism, then I'll continue to disregard your assertions as invalid. Nobody should need that many words to tell someone why the ending to a video game makes sense.

[Tim van Beek]

If the Catalyst came out and instead said every race has to be wiped out because one race (like the krogan) always rises above the others and wipes everyone out... well, it would be the same thing. It was a theme often discussed in the game. But that doesn't mean it's okay to randomly slap it at the end when the whole game was about Shepard's journey to stop the Reapers.

If one does not want to rewrite the ending completely, but do incremental improvements from the status quo, then that would be a very good idea IMHO. Saying that the Reapers need to save advanced races from themselves, their inner aggression bred by evolution, before they can wipe out all life in the galaxy makes much more sense than the monocausal organics vs. synthetics explanation. 

[fraggle]

I wanted to comment on the geth allowing the quarians to flee. I think Vanilka's example is from Legion, right? AFAIK Legion says they couldn't calculate the outcome if they wiped out the quarians, the Geth VI however states they were in no condition to pursue the quarians. So they would've most certainly gone after them if those two reasons wouldn't have stopped them. And to me, this is not really allowing the quarians to flee, but rather resulting out of uncertainty because the geth just gained sentience, and lack of numbers/strength, not because they are good-hearted machines.

 

I don't wanna argue we can't show the Catalyst that peace is possible, because some people did it. But others couldn't broker peace, which results in the annihilation of one of the two races. I think we shouldn't forget that. The peace brokering plays into how persuasive the great Shepard is once again, being able to hold back the quarians. And if Shepard hadn't, the Catalyst is right. I think the main reason the Catalyst stands by its point is that it works with an equation (I hope this is the right term here). Synthetics improve lives of organics, but in order to further improve the lives once they've reached a certain point, they have to evolve even further. It's really as simple as that and I think plausible within an AIs thinking process. It doesn't think like us. So I'm not sure we could ever convince it even if we tried. It's different. Even EDI, who wants to become more human, has to ask organics how things work, and she needs to alter her code in order to become more like humans.

 

I don't know. Everything that we see in ME about the geth leads the player to take a side. I think that's the point. You have to think about how you yourself feel about synthetics. This is what prepares you for the end to a certain extent.

I might be wrong here, but I have a feeling that geth sympathizers tend to have a lot of quarrel with what the Catalyst states because they like them, whereas others, who don't care about the geth or other machines that strongly have less problems with the Catalyst's reasoning.

[Tim van Beek]

a) Well then the theme is more general than. The series is called Mass Effect. These two words have more to it than just its science concept.

b ) The Catalyst states that "clearly, organics are more resourceful than we realized". That only comes from ignorance. Ever thought that its solution ended because he failed to grasp the organics will to fight and end the cycle? He was defeated for a reason.

c) It IS kind of is a parable or a moral lesson. Those who are ignorant about how their choices impact others face conflict or ruin. This happens all series long.

d) "We fight or we die". There are many other quotes that are fitting to the game's ending. You were hung up on that one, thinking it alone defined the game.

e) But it is irrelevant, unless you pick Synthesis, basically agreeing with the Catalyst's motives. But Bioware did not let you argue its motives because thats not where they wanted Shepards conflict with it to be. The conflict is with the cycle, which makes whether its motives are wrong or right irrelevant overall.

f) Casey Hudson actually said ME3 is about "victory through sacrifice". The ending fits that theme.

 

a) Okay, but I still don't see a deep analogy between ME and Snowpiercer based on the concepts of cycles. And I don't know what the title "Mass Effect" tells us about the theme of it? Would you care to elaborate?

 

b ) True, but I don't see "how every time someones ignorantly or selfishly alters the destiny of others without thinking of the consequences always meets trouble" is a recurring theme of ME. The Salarians seem to get away with it again and again, for example.

 

c) Accepting your point b ) for the sake of argument, what is the moral lesson? Always think things through? Never meddle?

 

d) Oh, that was just an example of how Snowpiercer has a symbolic semantic layer while ME has not. Another example: In Snowpiercer, when Wildorf writes "train" the symbolic meaning is "world". In ME, when Hackett says "Without the crucible, we cannot defeat the Reapers" does he mean "find the crucible of your life in order to transcend death, the grim reaper?" No, he just means what he said, kill robot space squids with a piece of gear. There is no hidden (or, as in Snowpiercer, obvious) symbolic second semantic layer in ME.

 

e) Ugh, not sure what to say about that. ME is a RPG. Both Shepard as character and most players would question the motives of the catalyst in the given situation, for obvious reasons. Players because the story put this up as a secret that seems to be revealed in that scene (what could it be?). Shepard because a good soldier needs to understand the enemy in order to understand what action to take. There is no good reason to not include that in the dialogue tree IMHO.

 

f) True, agreed. He also said something about synthetics vs. organics being one of the themes of ME, and that is simply wrong given the final product, but it is the reason why they made the catalyst talk about it, which is what I was referring to. 

 

Main point: You seem to move the IT from Shepard to the writers, in order to make them (or their creations) think things retroactively that weren't there when the game was released. 

[Batarian Master Race]

I might be wrong here, but I have a feeling that geth sympathizers tend to have a lot of quarrel with what the Catalyst states because they like them, whereas others, who don't care about the geth or other machines that strongly have less problems with the Catalyst's reasoning.

 

I dislike the Geth for a variety of reasons, and yet hate the Catalyst for many other reasons.

[fraggle]

I dislike the Geth for a variety of reasons, and yet hate the Catalyst for many other reasons.

 

That's fine, I'm well aware that is not the case with every person. Just maybe a tendency.

Personally I'm neutral to both. I just like to get behind both sides and see/understand their reasoning.

[Tim van Beek]

...

Very good points, agree with you completely. Just to clarify:

 

- Yes, we can make sense of the AI by assuming that it operates within certain contraints put down in its programming which it, unlike EDI, cannot alter. 

- Yes, obviously a lot of discussion has taken place because people seem to "act in character", that is as one of the possible shades of Shepard. For some Shepards, the Geth will never be worthy of trust so that Shepard wouldn't have any problem with the AI's logic etc.

 

The postmodern "dissolution of narrative coherence as postmodern pillars of the ME story edifice" discussion that has developed into an off-topic sub-thread over here does not question either, I'd say.

[Vanilka]

I wanted to comment on the geth allowing the quarians to flee. I think Vanilka's example is from Legion, right? AFAIK Legion says they couldn't calculate the outcome if they wiped out the quarians, the Geth VI however states they were in no condition to pursue the quarians. So they would've most certainly gone after them if those two reasons wouldn't have stopped them. And to me, this is not really allowing the quarians to flee, but rather resulting out of uncertainty because the geth just gained sentience, and lack of numbers/strength, not because they are good-hearted machines.

 

I don't wanna argue we can't show the Catalyst that peace is possible, because some people did it. But others couldn't broker peace, which results in the annihilation of one of the two races. I think we shouldn't forget that. The peace brokering plays into how persuasive the great Shepard is once again, being able to hold back the quarians. And if Shepard hadn't, the Catalyst is right. I think the main reason the Catalyst stands by its point is that it works with an equation (I hope this is the right term here). Synthetics improve lives of organics, but in order to further improve the lives once they've reached a certain point, they have to evolve even further. It's really as simple as that and I think plausible within an AIs thinking process. It doesn't think like us. So I'm not sure we could ever convince it even if we tried. It's different. Even EDI, who wants to become more human, has to ask organics how things work, and she needs to alter her code in order to become more like humans.

 

I don't know. Everything that we see in ME about the geth leads the player to take a side. I think that's the point. You have to think about how you yourself feel about synthetics. This is what prepares you for the end to a certain extent.

I might be wrong here, but I have a feeling that geth sympathizers tend to have a lot of quarrel with what the Catalyst states because they like them, whereas others, who don't care about the geth or other machines that strongly have less problems with the Catalyst's reasoning.

 

I think you make some really good points. Like, that we shouldn't forget that the synthetics let the quarians escape not because they're nice, but because they had various reasons. I never really said that, but it's a good point regardless and I do think it needs to be said. The fact is that the quarians didn't get wiped out either way. We don't really know whether they would have even if the geth had decided to pursue them or had been able to.

 

Another problem is that whether the geth-quarian conflict ends in peace or annihilation of one of the races, it all hangs on the words of an organic. While I agree that would be a proof of an organic race getting destroyed by synthetics, it's ultimately Shepard's, organic's, decision and afterwards the geth cooperate with the rest of the galaxy who is all organic. If you allow the geth to destroy the quarians, that's on you, so to speak, because you could've handled that, you could've chosen the quarians over the geth but didn't and so you killed them in a way. And if you allow that, then you (or your Shepard, if we're talking roleplay) can't really believe in the organic-synthetic conflict because that would mean you're allowing somebody that you believe is most likely going to kill you to join your forces. If you do believe the organic-synthetic conflict, then you're not likely to let the geth live, which means there's no proof of an organic race being completely wiped out again. (Same when you broker peace. We're without a proof again.) Whatever the case, though, the organics prevail. We cannot forget the reason the geth and quarians were fighting in the first place was because the quarians actively picked that fight, not the geth, so the talk about synthetics rebelling doesn't seem to apply in this particular case.

 

Now I understand we may see it differently, but I felt like I should explain myself further because I did forget to mention these things completely.

[Dantriges]

Yeah the geth aren´t goody two shoes but I see no potential for conflict unless organics fear  gets the upper hand. The galaxy is vast, 99% is unexplored, the robots can access resources which are very difficult to get for organics, they don´t need much space now, compared to other species and they don´t really want to procreate unless it´s for increasing processing power which requires staying in close distance. Whatever resources a highly advanced machine race would need from the organics they could probably trade. So land and resources aren´t really reasons to go to war and a a workforce? Eh no.

 

There aren´t many reasons to expend the resources to go to war with people from a garden world if your species can set up a server on a lifeless moon and call it home Other reasons to go to war are more emotional ones and the Geth don´t have any. And self preservation? Invest in a military and enough backups just to be safe. it´s not 100% but good enough. Perhaps I simply don´t get the "we should kill them before they think about trying to kill us" mindset.

[von uber]

I really hate people who tell me I don't understand the ending. I understand it perfectly; I just don't think it's very good.

[angol fear]

angol fear, the biggest issue I have with your attempts to explain the ending are the hoops you have to jump through to get to the any kind of understanding. You're talking about Mass Effect as if it were written by an English Lit professor instead of some video game developers. 

 

So here you think that I'm overestimating Mass Effect. But your opposition video game / literature doesn't work.

Let's see with the cinema. First, it was just entertainment. It was just a show. Then it elaborated a narration. So it started to base itself on painting and literature. But it was seen as an entertainment. It became "art" when some authors made it pretty clear that they had artistic ambition. Then we started to watch back and what was donebefore was no longer just entertainment. Why? Because it has always been working on a form with intellectual intentions. When Hitchcock made his films, which were popular, there was an intellectual process. Truffaut and Hitchcock  interview is very interesting. When you listen to Hitchcock, you see that there is a philosophy behind what what he does. "an innoncent man in a guilty world", that's very important to understand his filmography.

The same can be done with comic books. It is art. We still see it as minor art, but it is art too. When I say it is art (for cinema and comic book), I am not saying that everything done is art. It's our perception of the medium that will lead to a serious analysis or not. So saying that Mass Effect is a video game so we don't have to see it as if it was seriously written, I think that's not fair.

Another point (same point but seen differently), let's take a look at science-fiction itself. Some authors like Barjavel where not seen seriously by "serious literature". He was not seen seriously until he was read. Then people said to him that they were surprised to see that Barjavel really write, he write well. So does it mean that  before barjavel was taken seriously by intelligentsia, he didn't write serious things? barjavel has always written seriously things. But there was an "a priori" on this literature, on science-fiction.

You talked about english professor, this makes me think of Tolkien. So here I have seen people saying that Mass Effect is just a game, it can not been taken seriously, it's not Shakespeare, Faulkner, Flaubert etc... But on this forum, I have never seen people comparing Tolkien to Shakespeare, Flaubert etc... it is interesting to see that to justify something they will exaggerate. They take the highest point and ignore that there are great writers that are lower. I am sorry but Tolkien isn't Shakespeare (and he is far from this point but it doesn't mean that it's not literature). If to be taken seriously, something has to be at the level of shakespeare, then Tolkien is not serious. People here are doing unfair comparisions.

And there is also the "it's a team job so there no author so it can't be seen seriously". This argument doesn't work. Let's see with the cinema.

Robert wiene's "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" is a masterpiece of the cinema. But the director itself isn't good. Why was it a masterpiece? Because the team job was done well, the whole team worked and created a coherent piece (everything from the screenplay to the scenery was "glued" together, they were coherent). But there are other examples and lately we have Ridley Scott who is an overestimated director : He has made Blade Runner and Alien which are masterpieces. But let's see for Alien : the idea of a hero who is a female comes from the producers and the idea to not show too much comes from the producers too. So the ideas that make the script being different from the others, it's not Ridley Scott but the producers who wanted this. An dnow we see that Ridley Scott still make films but they are not interesting, some are quite stupid, so how did he make masterpieces? Because it was teamjob. You can say that it's the writer who is the most important, the story is the most important, I can answer that Murnau's "Sunrise" it a perfect example to show that it's not the story that turns something into a masterpiece. Once again, in cinema, it's team job. The director is the most important person because he is the one who try to create the coherence between the writing and the visual. 

 

So, for Mass Effect it's a video game, but this video game had the purpose to create a cinematic feeling (some video games tried to be like cinema since the 90's, so it's not new). This cinema direction taken is in the first Mass Effect with the writing and the visual. It's impossible to play the first Mass Effect without being thinking "it's like a movie!". So the developers never think that Mass Effect was just a video game, and in the end they talked about "artistic integrity" to defend their own vision of the writing, of their game. Myzuka explained that he sees video games as art. So if Bioware see the game as art, why would you see it as just a video game. From a writing point of view, it works globally  the same way cinema do, it has the same basis.

 

 

 

The problem with your conclusions is that the players shouldn't have to understand or even know about postmodernism to have the ending make sense. Remember that bit about narrative coherence in the video you mocked? Well, that is the problem most people had with the ending. "Why am I shooting this tube?" is a great example of "wtf is going on?" When people start wondering what's going on then the game isn't working, neither on a thematic level nor on the much simpler storytelling level. The story has to make sense before you start talking about themes. You can feel free to mock other people's reactions and talk about broad themes of postmodernism and bring up obscure movies, but that doesn't make the questions of simple storytelling and how plot points flow into plot points any less valid.

 

We were talking about coherence, you are talking about making sense that's different, you are not talking about the same thing I do. If you want to use a concept you have to do it properly. I don't have problem with people saying that it doesn't make sense for them. When it comes to "that's not coherent", it's very different.

There is a real different between understanding the events, the story and understanding the writing. People can understand the story, but not the writing. And no, you don't have to understand the writing or to know what is post-modernism to like it. What I said implicitly is if people want to talk about the writing, they have to know what writing is.

Talking about his feeling ("I disliked the ending") and trying to prove some truth ("the ending is bad"), that's very different. If you want to justify it from a writing point of view, if you use concept you have to understand it. Understanding an aesthetic like Post-modernism is important for Mass Effect because, this aesthetic is the basis of the writing. Before they started to write Mass Effect, when it was just a project, Casey Hudson was in that direction (a post-modernist work). Post-modernism is just an aesthetic which isn't that hard to do. I really don't know why it's so hard to accept that Mass Effect is post-modernist. I have already say it but Tarantino is a post-modern, Edgard wright too. These two directors are pretty popular. Post-modernism gives an impression of popular construction, it can be funny. But I've already explained it in a way which is far from being narrow because what I explained is the reason why post-modernism can appear in so many forms, it's also from this perception that the philosophical aspect can be easily understood or why post-modernism is a reaction to modernism.

 

The obscure movie is just one of the masterpieces of the cinema history. But if you want another example, let's take Cameron's Avatar. The film is coherent but seriously if I take a look like some people here are doing, the film doesn't make sense. With La jetée, the difference between coherence and "making sense" (which is credibility) is obvious because we have a logical problem. With Avatar, it's not as obvious but there's a lot of problems of credibilty with the characters and the events. Does the film become bad? No.

 

 

Nobody should need that many words to tell someone why the ending to a video game makes sense.

 

Again, I'm not talking about that. you misinterpreted what I wrote.

[txgoldrush]

Shepard met an unknown AI, altered by an unexplained device, that told him about a problem you can´t verify or evaluate. Without the Leviathan DLC, which came after the main game was published, Shepard didn´t even knew about it and even then it´s from a second hand source. The dude you met is a descendant of the original creators. It could be that the problem arose because of the circumstances in the times of the Leviathans with their culture of enthrallmentand slavery, not as a universal constant. It could be or it is really universal.

We don´t know and there is no time to explain for whatever reasons. Shepard knows a bit about the choices but it´s not really much and well the Catalyst could be twisting the truth, not telling the whole story, at least it has its own point of view which could be biased simply by its original code.

 

In short Shepard gets told about the three possible solutions by the unknown, which is altered by the unexplained, in very vague terms without anything to back up the claims. 

I grant the selfless part but I don´t agree on the not ignorant part. 

WRONG

 

The AI becomes known, the Crucible is explained, and its altered because it saw that it cannot continue the cycle because organics know how to exploit it.

 

It is ignorant....it doesn't understand what organic life is about and underestimates their willingness to break the cycle. That's why his solution is flawed. he ignored the concerns of who he is affecting.

[txgoldrush]

It's supposed to be both, and the original ending did not give off the impression that The Catalyst's "doing" was the conflict. Quite the contrary in fact.

I think you need to go back and imagine yourself and the expectations you had before reaching the ending and take out Leviathan (because that is a retroactive justification and nothing more) and think about how well the game communicates all those new ideas by frontloading them on you at the last minute. I'm pretty sure that even those of us who expected to learn about the Reapers did not expect THIS, and I mean it in a bad way. It seems like a cheap cop-out for the reapers and it seems inconsistent with what was implied about them over the course of the rest of the story.

I also think if we're going to talk about seeing things "how they want it to be" the same thing can be said about you guys trying to force postmodernism and intertextuality into it. If there's any intertextuality it comes from the fact that the ending concept is a weak Dues Ex rip off in themes and choices.

I do understand that you can see it as Shepard not caring to argue with the Catalyst as he knows it doesn't get ethics or organic reasoning, but does he know this exactly? Why can't he at least try to ask it if it can just make the reapers stop instead ofa all the other bullshit. The point of arguing with the Catalyst would've been to make it realize it was wrong about its use of the Reapers, but Shepard can't even try it, and it stands in the face of how you multiple times show in ME3 that organics and synthetics can achieve peace with each other, through proper communication.

I still don't get it? I'm not so sure, but I'm pretty sure however that you'll still just discard my argument with something else that doesn't really disprove anything I said.

The original ending only had Shepards argument against the cycle, it did not flesh out the Catalyst, but Shepards arguments with it were still there.

 

Bioware never frontloaded new ideas, they were there all series long. Pay more attention to the narrative. For example, the Catalyst is NOT the only AI on the Citadel that believed organic and synthetic conflict is inevitable.

 

I am sorry, I cannot take you comparing it to Deus Ex seriously. They are no way alike outside Helios's plot that bares fruit in the sequel. The other two choices are no way near comparable to Mass Effect 3's ending choices. Its another ignorant argument from ending bashers.

 

Face it, Shepard DOES NOT CARE about the things motives. That's not what Bioware wanted the conflict to be, Nevermind that whether or not it is wrong or right is irrelevant, Shepard wants to stop the cycle. 

 

Your argument is being discarded because you miss the point. You are making something a conflict because thats what you want, not because of what Bioware intended. the entire series is more about METHODS, not MOTIVES.

[txgoldrush]

a) Okay, but I still don't see a deep analogy between ME and Snowpiercer based on the concepts of cycles. And I don't know what the title "Mass Effect" tells us about the theme of it? Would you care to elaborate?

 

b ) True, but I don't see "how every time someones ignorantly or selfishly alters the destiny of others without thinking of the consequences always meets trouble" is a recurring theme of ME. The Salarians seem to get away with it again and again, for example.

 

c) Accepting your point b ) for the sake of argument, what is the moral lesson? Always think things through? Never meddle?

 

d) Oh, that was just an example of how Snowpiercer has a symbolic semantic layer while ME has not. Another example: In Snowpiercer, when Wildorf writes "train" the symbolic meaning is "world". In ME, when Hackett says "Without the crucible, we cannot defeat the Reapers" does he mean "find the crucible of your life in order to transcend death, the grim reaper?" No, he just means what he said, kill robot space squids with a piece of gear. There is no hidden (or, as in Snowpiercer, obvious) symbolic second semantic layer in ME.

 

e) Ugh, not sure what to say about that. ME is a RPG. Both Shepard as character and most players would question the motives of the catalyst in the given situation, for obvious reasons. Players because the story put this up as a secret that seems to be revealed in that scene (what could it be?). Shepard because a good soldier needs to understand the enemy in order to understand what action to take. There is no good reason to not include that in the dialogue tree IMHO.

 

f) True, agreed. He also said something about synthetics vs. organics being one of the themes of ME, and that is simply wrong given the final product, but it is the reason why they made the catalyst talk about it, which is what I was referring to. 

 

Main point: You seem to move the IT from Shepard to the writers, in order to make them (or their creations) think things retroactively that weren't there when the game was released. 

a) How choices can have a mass effect on the lives of others. 

 

b ) But it does show the salarians treading on dangerous ground, and their actions DID have an impact that could have kept the galaxy divided in the face of the Reapers if it wasn't for Shepard.

 

c) Always think things through and be thoughtful on how your decisions affect others.

 

d) So the word "crucible" has no meaning?

 

e) There is a reason its not there, because thats not the conflict Shepard has with the Reapers. Also, Shepards conflict with TIM wasn't even about controlling the Reapers as well. So fans miss the point on both these conflicts.

 

f) Organics vs synthetics isn't a theme, its a plot point (which I have erroneously called a theme before). A theme is the message the story has.

[Batarian Master Race]

The original ending only had Shepards argument against the cycle, it did not flesh out the Catalyst, but Shepards arguments with it were still there.

 

Bioware never frontloaded new ideas, they were there all series long. Pay more attention to the narrative. For example, the Catalyst is NOT the only AI on the Citadel that believed organic and synthetic conflict is inevitable.

It may not have entirely frontloaded the ideas, but they were in no way, shape, or form the main ideas of the trilogy, and definitely didn't have enough backup to serve as the crucial point of the ending.

 

One sidequest AI, compared to a crewmember and an entire race that believe and provide evidence for the opposite. I really don't think this is an argument you want to make.

 

Face it, Shepard DOES NOT CARE about the things motives. That's not what Bioware wanted the conflict to be, Nevermind that whether or not it is wrong or right is irrelevant, Shepard wants to stop the cycle. 

 

Why wouldn't Shepard care about the thing's motives? Because Bioware didn't want it? That's lazy writing and you know it.

 

Your argument is being discarded because you miss the point. You are making something a conflict because thats what you want, not because of what Bioware intended. the entire series is more about METHODS, not MOTIVES.

 

[citation needed]

 

When I look at the main themes of the ME series, I see a whole lot of motive. I see a huge amount of focus on Saren's motives, and I see how eventually undermining his motives causes him to commit suicide. I see how Shepard's motives clash with the Illusive Man's, while their methods remain the same. I see how the motives of each individual race are emphasized during the Reaper war: the Turians want to fight, even though they're being slaughtered, the Asari want to isolate and hope it goes away, the Salarians want to control everything behind everyone's backs, etc.

 

 

a) How choices can have a mass effect on the lives of others. 

 

b ) But it does show the salarians treading on dangerous ground, and their actions DID have an impact that could have kept the galaxy divided in the face of the Reapers if it wasn't for Shepard.

 

c) Always think things through and be thoughtful on how your decisions affect others.

 

d) So the word "crucible" has no meaning?

 

e) There is a reason its not there, because thats not the conflict Shepard has with the Reapers. Also, Shepards conflict with TIM wasn't even about controlling the Reapers as well. So fans miss the point on both these conflicts.

 

f) Organics vs synthetics isn't a theme, its a plot point (which I have erroneously called a theme before). A theme is the message the story has.

 

A) I bet they don't let you into restaurants anymore, since you just keep grasping at all the straws.

 

b ) When have the Salarians ever not thought of the consequences? That's sorta what they DO.

 

c) See above. Mordin did nothing but think about how his decision would affect the Krogan, and yet even after so much deliberation, it was the wrong decision.

 

Maybe the game is saying something about one person choosing something for everyone, regardless of how much they think about it. :3

 

d) He decided to call it the Crucible. It wasn't translated from that. Whatever semantic meaning it had came from Hackett, meaning that the meaning's not very well hidden, like, at all.

 

e) My Shepard sure as hell would have that conflict with the reapers, seeing as he's dealt time and again with people doing bad things for flawed reasons. Motives do matter; Shepard wouldn't spend so much time getting to know people if their actions were all that counted.

[fraggle]

- For some Shepards, the Geth will never be worthy of trust so that Shepard wouldn't have any problem with the AI's logic etc.

 

You have a very good point here, however I think that people that are in favour of the geth still could at least accept the AIs logic, even though they don't believe in it and think it's flawed. I have a problem myself with its logic, I am more a believer of "we can take care of ourselves and don't need you", but I don't dismiss the Catalyst's logic, because it's what it has experienced for a long time (if you believe it, that is), plus it's a programmed machine...

So it is allowed to have its own logic, it has its own reasoning for this, so why can't people accept that while at the same time actually have a different opinion on the topic? You don't have to agree with the Catalyst, but you can let it have its opinion, just like you have yours.

It's the same really as here on the forums. Some people can accept each other's opinions while still feeling completely opposite (I had some great discussion with Vanilka a few weeks back and we're on totally different sides concerning the ending, but we could accept each other's reasoning).

I'm projecting a lot of things to real life, and it's the same everywhere. If you don't agree with a person's opinion you can either be not so nice about it and say the person is wrong all the time, or you can accept their opinion while having yours, being more tolerant towards people's opinions.

 

We cannot forget the reason the geth and quarians were fighting in the first place was because the quarians actively picked that fight, not the geth, so the talk about synthetics rebelling doesn't seem to apply in this particular case.

 

I guess for me it really starts that the geth don't shut down when they are ordered to. They should've, but they evolved too far as to accept loosing their gained sentience. I think I said it before that I also dislike quarian actions, both sides are at fault, if you will, but it all started somewhere.

[angol fear]

f) Organics vs synthetics isn't a theme, its a plot point (which I have erroneously called a theme before). A theme is the message the story has.

Actually you are right about being a plot point but it is also a theme. A theme isn't the message. For instance, " love" can be a theme. And sure, in the end there will be a message, but the message will be the consequence of how the theme will be handled.

[txgoldrush]

It may not have entirely frontloaded the ideas, but they were in no way, shape, or form the main ideas of the trilogy, and definitely didn't have enough backup to serve as the crucial point of the ending.

 

One sidequest AI, compared to a crewmember and an entire race that believe and provide evidence for the opposite. I really don't think this is an argument you want to make.

 

 

Why wouldn't Shepard care about the thing's motives? Because Bioware didn't want it? That's lazy writing and you know it.

 

 

[citation needed]

 

When I look at the main themes of the ME series, I see a whole lot of motive. I see a huge amount of focus on Saren's motives, and I see how eventually undermining his motives causes him to commit suicide. I see how Shepard's motives clash with the Illusive Man's, while their methods remain the same. I see how the motives of each individual race are emphasized during the Reaper war: the Turians want to fight, even though they're being slaughtered, the Asari want to isolate and hope it goes away, the Salarians want to control everything behind everyone's backs, etc.

 

 

 

A) I bet they don't let you into restaurants anymore, since you just keep grasping at all the straws.

 

b ) When have the Salarians ever not thought of the consequences? That's sorta what they DO.

 

c) See above. Mordin did nothing but think about how his decision would affect the Krogan, and yet even after so much deliberation, it was the wrong decision.

 

Maybe the game is saying something about one person choosing something for everyone, regardless of how much they think about it. :3

 

d) He decided to call it the Crucible. It wasn't translated from that. Whatever semantic meaning it had came from Hackett, meaning that the meaning's not very well hidden, like, at all.

 

e) My Shepard sure as hell would have that conflict with the reapers, seeing as he's dealt time and again with people doing bad things for flawed reasons. Motives do matter; Shepard wouldn't spend so much time getting to know people if their actions were all that counted.

Wrong...The ending dealt with the main themes of the entire trilogy. From the creation of the antagonist to the antagonists methods, as well as choosing the solution to end the cycle. You were not paying attention.

 

Second, the game leaves the prospect of organic and synthetic peace in DEBATE. Nevermind that there is also a crewmate that debates against this peace as well. Nevermind once again, this debate is irrelevant in the end. Its the context of the conflict, NOT the conflict itself.

 

Shepard doesn't care about the things motives because whether its wrong or right, its solution must be stopped. The SOLUTION is the problem, not the MOTIVE. Its not bad or lazy writing, you just did not have it go your way. Its the same way with The Illusive Man...his methods, his power seeking, and his indoctrination are attacked, not that he wants to control the Reapers. Its the same thing.

 

You don't undermine Sarens motives, you tell him to face the fact that he is with the enemy. Shepard clashes with The Illusive Man's methods and power seeking, not his position of controlling the Reapers (Shepard can even ask Hackett what if TIM is right on controlling the Reapers?). And the rest of the paragraph I am seeing methods, not motives. The only motive Shepard clashes with is power seeking that causes trouble for everyone else but it goes in line with methods used.

 

Nevermind paragon and renegade, when it is done correctly, is about methods instead of motives. That's what makes it different from KOTOR Light and Dark side.

 

a) you are even worse.

b ) evidently not so with the yahg they are trying to uplift.

c) He made the wrong decision because he didn't think it out the first time. He did inot think of the emotional effects his decision had on himself and others, such as Maelon.

d) The word "Crucible" has a meaning.....it is symbolism. same with Vigil, Vendetta, and Catalyst. Its Bioware adding symbolism. And no, the naming did not come from Hackett, but from past cycles.
e) At the end of the day, its not YOUR Shepard, its what Bioware wrote him to be.

[Vanilka]

You have a very good point here, however I think that people that are in favour of the geth still could at least accept the AIs logic, even though they don't believe in it and think it's flawed. I have a problem myself with its logic, I am more a believer of "we can take care of ourselves and don't need you", but I don't dismiss the Catalyst's logic, because it's what it has experienced for a long time (if you believe it, that is), plus it's a programmed machine...
So it is allowed to have its own logic, it has its own reasoning for this, so why can't people accept that while at the same time actually have a different opinion on the topic? You don't have to agree with the Catalyst, but you can let it have its opinion, just like you have yours.
It's the same really as here on the forums. Some people can accept each other's opinions while still feeling completely opposite (I had some great discussion with Vanilka a few weeks back and we're on totally different sides concerning the ending, but we could accept each other's reasoning).
I'm projecting a lot of things to real life, and it's the same everywhere. If you don't agree with a person's opinion you can either be not so nice about it and say the person is wrong all the time, or you can accept their opinion while having yours, being more tolerant towards people's opinions.

 

I might have an answer for this. Well, maybe. I would never dare to speak for everyone, of course. I think I sometimes fail to express it, but I always prefer to speak just for myself.

 

Anyway, I think that people refuse to accept Catalyst's logic not just because it is very flawed, but also because they are forced to play along with that logic. You have to choose your galaxy's destiny, so to speak, based on Catalyst's logic and it doesn't matter how much proof against it the player has, it doesn't matter if you've never seen a convincing case of the organic-synthetic conflict, you just have to accept the notion that synthetics are a problem no matter how much you disagree with it and end your game based on that. (In case you, like me, have brokered peace between the geth and quarians, it may make you squirm extra hard because this problem, to you, may simply not exist and you just don't see it, which comes back to my previous posts where I express my feelings that I was never properly exposed to the conflict as it being a galactic problem.) Either way, you just need to go with it and make the most important decision in the whole franchise based on it.

 

Now, I understand your standpoint. At least I'd like to think so. You're very immersed in the game and you work with what you've got. And, personally, I think that is awesome. On the other hand, I think some of us are unable to do that. We might look at it from the outside and think, "Hm, somebody wrote this character and I don't think it's a very well written character and I think somebody did a really lame job finishing the game." Now whether you think so or not, that's of course very individual, but I think that's the deal with some people unable to accept the Catalyst's reasoning.

 

I guess for me it really starts that the geth don't shut down when they are ordered to. They should've, but they evolved too far as to accept loosing their gained sentience. I think I said it before that I also dislike quarian actions, both sides are at fault, if you will, but it all started somewhere.

 

Yes, I do remember you mentioning it.  I understand. I think it comes down to us having a different understanding of the conflict. I don't think either is right or wrong. I think your interpretation makes sense, though. I don't see it that way, personally, but it makes sense. 

 

And I can nothing but agree that neither side is innocent.

[Tim van Beek]

It's the same really as here on the forums. Some people can accept each other's opinions while still feeling completely opposite (I had some great discussion with Vanilka a few weeks back and we're on totally different sides concerning the ending, but we could accept each other's reasoning).

I'm projecting a lot of things to real life, and it's the same everywhere. If you don't agree with a person's opinion you can either be not so nice about it and say the person is wrong all the time, or you can accept their opinion while having yours, being more tolerant towards people's opinions.

It would seem we need a little metadiscussion: 

 

"I like the ending/liked it when I played it": Subjective, of course everyone is entitled to like what they want. Some people will judge you based on what you like, like it or not  . I usually don't. But if you are a professor of English literature, be prepared to have to explain yourself if you are cought in the act reading e.g. Dan Brown. I think that the ME:3 ending is stupid, but I don't think that liking it proves that you are stupid or anything   (and yes, I know that there are people, especially educated people, who disagree with me on this. Point them out and we'll give them hell  ).

 

"Mass Effect is postmodern": This is a classification of a literary work, based on an established, if fuzzy, concept. It lives somewhere in the grey area that connects opinions and facts. Such a statement needs reasoning. It is close enough to fact village that it will make you fail your English class by said professor of literature, unless you come up with something convincing. This is not an English class, of course, but I assumed that angol fear would have reasons for this statement. I'm still interested in them. Using this as a transition to leave the meta layer:

Understanding an aesthetic like Post-modernism is important for Mass Effect because, this aesthetic is the basis of the writing. Before they started to write Mass Effect, when it was just a project, Casey Hudson was in that direction (a post-modernist work). Post-modernism is just an aesthetic which isn't that hard to do. I really don't know why it's so hard to accept that Mass Effect is post-modernist. I have already say it but Tarantino is a post-modern, Edgard wright too. These two directors are pretty popular. Post-modernism gives an impression of popular construction, it can be funny. But I've already explained it in a way which is far from being narrow because what I explained is the reason why post-modernism can appear in so many forms, it's also from this perception that the philosophical aspect can be easily understood or why post-modernism is a reaction to modernism.

So why is ME postmodern? So far, all I remember about this is:

 

- It is obvious. If it is not obvious to you, then that proves that you don't understand the concept of postmodernism. (Please explain in then, would you?)

- Because blockbuster movies can be postmodern, see Tarantino, being a video game does not prove that you cannot be postmodern.

- In fact, video games, as movies, can be true art and contain several semantic layers, so that a large audience values them without getting the hidden meaning or all the references.

- It is easy to do.

- Casey Hudson was into postmodernism (Do you have a reference for that?).

 

Maybe I missed some of your points (which?), but would you agree that none of the above proves anything about ME being postmodern? For me, ME is about as postmodern as the three musketeers from Alexandre Dumas or the thrillers from Dan Brown (I would argue that this very discussion is much more postmodern than ME ever could be seen).

 

You know, when the human protagonist in a Dan Brown thriller survives a 100 meter fall from a destroyed heli by using his jacket like a parachute, then that is not postmodern. It is immersion breaking stupidity. The writer had set up a dangerous situation to create suspense, and then found out that he has no idea how to solve it. 

 

 

d) So the word "crucible" has no meaning?

It does not have a symbolic meaning in ME. 

 

A symbol is an object that represents, stands for or suggests an idea, visual image, belief, action or material entity. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbol).

 

Maybe the writers had some symbolic meaning in mind, for example they could have been thinking about (I mentioned this somewhere else before) Sol Stein's book "Stein on Writing", chapter 8, "The Crucible: A Key to Successful Plotting". Maybe it is a kind of inside joke. BTW: The "crucible" here is something that ties the story and its characters together, like the sea in "Moby Dick" or the island in "Robinson Crusoe".

 

But this would be an inside joke, there is no reason IMHO to see any symbolic meaning behind the crucible. We could as well call it "device". Well, maybe then it would be too obvious that it is a magical unexplained plot device .