50 réponses à ce sujet

[Fawna]

I am not here to debate anything. I haven't read anything past the OP and won't engage anybody in debate. I'll just post link to Deception theory in hopes that it well help OP deal with the ending as much as it did me.
 
And with that, I bid you farewell again.

Thanks for this all I can say it's a good ride no matter what you end up believing in the end. The feels you get it has become one of my favorites. But I only really ever play Bioware games because of all the wonderful companions you meet along the way. They come along with you and you care about them. Maybe knowing that's over is the issue but one thing about games it like a book you can just play it again and enjoy it all over.

[AlanC9]

The one major thing I would disagree with is the stating that the geth might not have been destroyed in the destroy ending - I think it's made fairly obvious they no longer exist as every other ending you see the geth in the slides.

Ah, but the premise of DT is that the other slides are lies anyway, so it doesn't matter what's in them.

[Kjata1013]

I am not here to debate anything. I haven't read anything past the OP and won't engage anybody in debate. I'll just post link to Deception theory in hopes that it well help OP deal with the ending as much as it did me.

 

And with that, I bid you farewell again.

 

Thank you! I'll read this tonight!

[Kjata1013]

You're on to something there. I'm not sure that "right" is all that useful a concept for this topic. IT is nothing that Bio ever intended, but if IT works for you as a personal interpretation, then go ahead and use it.

 

You hit the nail on the head. I think it's an ending that is open to interpretation. Instead of being told a story in black and white, we're "shown and not told" a story that let's us be a part of it. And unless you're the writer of ME, we don't really know the full motivation or intent of how it was meant to end. We're left with theories and wanting more which is the hallmark of really good fiction.

[Kjata1013]

I just want to take a moment to thank everyone for their response. There's so much here to dig into, I really appreciate it. I'm very happy that people jumped in so quick and shows that ME has a solid fan base that really doesn't seem toxic. 

 

On that note, there have been some things that are stuck in my mind that I'd like to explore. One, is the codex entry that explains that some indoctrinated can be used as, I'm paraphrasing, as signal amplifiers. I'm a computer/electronics geek so my thought is that it's like a repeater. The indoctrinated boosts the signal so it can go farther. Shepard was already a stand out in military circles, a polarizing force. Nihlus was there to scope her out as she was already a candidate for Spectre status. Her interactions with Sovereign, Saren, and the battle for the Citadel proved that she had unspeakable amounts of  strength, vision, leadership, and influence. What if the Reapers saw this as an opportunity and a threat? Humans as an uplifted race were already considered a wild card and Shepard has proven to embody that and more. What if the Reapers saw Shepard as a fulcrum, have her unite the galaxy, deliver the best and strongest to Earth while slowly breaking her overtime. Once she becomes fully indoctrinated and breaks, the rest will follow. They'll follow her to the depths of hell. Liara kept saying in ME3 that she doesn't know how she does it, how she keeps fighting, how she keeps everything together. Shepard even *SPOILER* influences Aria T'Lok to have a change of heart.  If you overlay a veil of indoctrination over all of the impossible things Shepard accomplished, it makes more sense than a Disney-esque we all gotta work together friendship is the best explanation. That leads to ME3 and the hallucinations, dreams, and finally the events on the Citadel. Finally have her broken. The Crucible didn't fire, Anderson is dead in a very emotional scene ( I loved it when he called her "child". It was so sweet. And if it was in her head, it's all the more sad as he really was a father figure to her), there is no hope. There something else that was pointed out in an AngryJoe video ( I've only watched his ME vids): Shepard's eyes. In the Synthesis and Control endings, right before Shepard falls away, her eyes look like TIM's. Destroy does not. So, let's say that Shepard WAS on the Citadel, hallucinating, found the control panel that ignites the Crucible or whatever, Reapers make one last push to indoctrinate, Shepard breaks free and by that the strongest psychic link is severed and Shepard either falls back to Earth or wakes up on Earth. And what about re-entry if she was in space? She got spaced before. Her body was recoverable when she died in ME2, it wasn't just a pile of ash and goo. The deus ex machina here could be the armor/ biotic technology. That's a good suit. I don't know. I'm still new to this relatively speaking

 

Anyway, enough of my ramblings. Thank you again. I can't bloody wait for ME: Andromeda. 

[Tim van Beek]

True. Though there was no friendly fire when running to the beam so I'm not sure what your comment has to do with that. 

Friendly fire is just an example of how chaotic battles are. In the beam run, we have

 

- Harbinger flying away (clearly prematurely, a huge mistake),

- Coats saying that no one made it to the beam and that hammer should regroup (clearly wrong assessment, especially as Harbinger just left the battlefield).

 

The latter is sometimes deemed to prove that Anderson cannot be on the citadel, but obviously Coats can simply be wrong, so I don't think that that's a good point. In a battle, we should expect all kinds of (huge) errors, wrong assessements and decisions and panic reactions, at least much more than is usually presented in fiction. Which, ironically, includes ME:3, where (huge) errors on both sides make their first appearance in the very last battle scene of the whole series  .

 

(Well, obviously the Coats communication is in the game to tell the players that no reinforcements will come to Shep's aid.)

[Tim van Beek]

There something else that was pointed out in an AngryJoe video ( I've only watched his ME vids): Shepard's eyes. In the Synthesis and Control endings, right before Shepard falls away, her eyes look like TIM's. Destroy does not. 

This is one of the roughly 50 or so observations that one can make in the last 10 minutes that supports IT, but my educated guess is that BioWare simply recycled a visual effect. Still, IT makes the most sense and is of course flexible enough to accommodate whatever the game presents. Karl Popper would say that IT - or any of its variants -  is not fasifiable .

 

Shepard even *SPOILER* influences Aria T'Lok to have a change of heart.  

You probably refer to a Paragon Shep? You should try a replay of ME:3 with a Renegade Shep - in fact, you should do two playthroughs of every ME game, with a different gender, different class, Paragon/Renegade switch and different romance. It is worthwhile. 

And find out what happens if a Renegade Shep lets Aria kill Oleg in the end of the Omega DLC (which isn't the strongest one in the field of storytelling, but it does have a little switch there).

[Kjata1013]

This is one of the roughly 50 or so observations that one can make in the last 10 minutes that supports IT, but my educated guess is that BioWare simply recycled a visual effect. Still, IT makes the most sense and is of course flexible enough to accommodate whatever the game presents. Karl Popper would say that IT - or any of its variants -  is not fasifiable .

 

You probably refer to a Paragon Shep? You should try a replay of ME:3 with a Renegade Shep - in fact, you should do two playthroughs of every ME game, with a different gender, different class, Paragon/Renegade switch and different romance. It is worthwhile. 

And find out what happens if a Renegade Shep lets Aria kill Oleg in the end of the Omega DLC (which isn't the strongest one in the field of storytelling, but it does have a little switch there).

Good points. I stopped playing renegade after ME1 because I just loathed it. I thought it would be fun because I actually always go for villans over heros (Joker, Zod are some of my favorites) but it stopped being fun on Feros when evil Shepard killed the Asari that was in the Thorian's thrall. And since there are no achievements after that for playing renegade, I stopped. But you raise a really good point.

 

 

As for being one of 50 coming up with theories, I explained in my initial post that I'm new to the series. I should've been more clear on that. I know NOTHING I say or have said is new. I know it's rehashing. I just needed a place to vent it out. My SO doesn't play this game and I don't really know anyone else to talk to. My cat has had it with me asking him what he thinks so I turned to forums. I usually don't post on forums.

[fraggle]

Good points. I stopped playing renegade after ME1 because I just loathed it. I thought it would be fun because I actually always go for villans over heros (Joker, Zod are some of my favorites) but it stopped being fun on Feros when evil Shepard killed the Asari that was in the Thorian's thrall. And since there are no achievements after that for playing renegade, I stopped. But you raise a really good point.

 

 

As for being one of 50 coming up with theories, I explained in my initial post that I'm new to the series. I should've been more clear on that. I know NOTHING I say or have said is new. I know it's rehashing. I just needed a place to vent it out. My SO doesn't play this game and I don't really know anyone else to talk to. My cat has had it with me asking him what he thinks so I turned to forums. I usually don't post on forums and I'll probably disappear soon on this one.

 

If you dislike a pure Renegade approach, you could mix it up Create a character with a backstory so you have a certain mindset on why the character reacts how he/she reacts. Maybe your character is the mission first type, this will lead to plenty opportunities to be Renegade to get the job done or yell at some people, but also be Paragon with other things.

When I first came here I never wanted to do a Renegade playthrough and never thought I actually could. I still will probably never go for pure Renegade because it's... being Renegade for the sake of being Renegade for me personally, but a mix of Paragon and Renegade was very exciting to me. I hadn't expected that. You can be Renegade for your character's justifiable reasons and this makes it a lot better, even though some of the things I did in one of my playthroughs also twisted my stomach a bit, ahaha. But then I told myself it's my character's doing, not mine

As Tim says, ME has loads of replay value. After finishing ME3 in February this year I have played almost no other games, and now I started my 4th Trilogy run

 

Haha, I was never a forum fan, too, but I really like it here, there are more than enough great people around and I really enjoy the stay.

[Kjata1013]

() ~ Thank you, fraggle! 

[Dantriges]

Her interactions with Sovereign, Saren, and the battle for the Citadel proved that she had unspeakable amounts of  strength, vision, leadership, and influence. What if the Reapers saw this as an opportunity and a threat? Humans as an uplifted race were already considered a wild card and Shepard has proven to embody that and more. What if the Reapers saw Shepard as a fulcrum, have her unite the galaxy, deliver the best and strongest to Earth while slowly breaking her overtime. Once she becomes fully indoctrinated and breaks, the rest will follow. They'll follow her to the depths of hell.

The Reapers had such an overwhelming advantage in firepower and the galaxy forces were such a joke in comparison that they had no need to bother with stuff like that. Also they are patient and they harvest everyone. No need to pull off a plan that has one point of failure, so the probability that it would falls apart was pretty high.

 

Humanity isn´t an uplifted race, we looted the ruins of the previous cycle like everyone else did. The protheans didn´t come and taught us mathematics.

[Tim van Beek]

I stopped playing renegade after ME1 because I just loathed it. I thought it would be fun because I actually always go for villans over heros (Joker, Zod are some of my favorites) but it stopped being fun on Feros when evil Shepard killed the Asari that was in the Thorian's thrall. 

What fraggle said. At least in ME:3 people will sometimes react differently to Renegade Shep, for which you only need more Renegade than Paragon points.

 

Also, Renegade Shep is not "evil". Renegade Shep believes that authority based on respect is a leader's most efficient weapon, and that respect sometimes needs to come from fear. Renegade Shep does not naively give away trust that is not earned and knows that - if facing extinction by an overwhelming enemy - all kinds of means have to be considered. Still, she is not as relentless in her pursuit of her mission as, say, James Bond.

 

 

 

My cat has had it with me asking him what he thinks so I turned to forums. 

Then your cat does not do his job! He knew very well the risks and what he signed up for, as all good pets do! Now kick his ass (metaphorically) just as Renegade Shep would!

[Fawna]

Okay guys been reading stuff all night keep my hubby up an he had to b to work by 5:00 this morning. So he told me to ask on here they said that shepherd wakes up on the citidal at the end of ME3 but when is it? I'm playing one here again and the fight with Saren there's like concrete and a fire going on after the battle in there? Have they every said when shep wakes up or is it like AJ says all space magic. Just feel I'm missing something?

[Flaine1996]

Okay guys been reading stuff all night keep my hubby up an he had to b to work by 5:00 this morning. So he told me to ask on here they said that shepherd wakes up on the citidal at the end of ME3 but when is it? I'm playing one here again and the fight with Saren there's like concrete and a fire going on after the battle in there? Have they every said when shep wakes up or is it like AJ says all space magic. Just feel I'm missing something?

I dont think you're playing ME3 if your fighting saren? i think youre still in ME1... though shepard wakes up in the citadel in ME3 if you choose destroy and you have high EMS....

[fraggle]

Okay guys been reading stuff all night keep my hubby up an he had to b to work by 5:00 this morning. So he told me to ask on here they said that shepherd wakes up on the citidal at the end of ME3 but when is it? I'm playing one here again and the fight with Saren there's like concrete and a fire going on after the battle in there? Have they every said when shep wakes up or is it like AJ says all space magic. Just feel I'm missing something?

 

It is never stated in-game that Shepard wakes up on the Citadel, it was only confirmed by a dev via Twitter.

But if you don't take IT into account it is the logical consequence anyway since Shepard really is on the Citadel after the beam takes her/him up there.

With sufficient enough EMS (I believe it was 3100+) and if you pick Destroy, you will get a short scene where Shepard takes a breath.

[dorktainian]

It is never stated in-game that Shepard wakes up on the Citadel, it was only confirmed by a dev via Twitter.

But if you don't take IT into account it is the logical consequence anyway since Shepard really is on the Citadel after the beam takes her/him up there.

With sufficient enough EMS (I believe it was 3100+) and if you pick Destroy, you will get a short scene where Shepard takes a breath.

 

if shepard is on the citadel, think back to the ending of mass effect 1.  Shepard was knocked out by sovvie chunks.  If he is on the citadel, then thats my guess as to where (and when) he is.  IT would still work - just be extended..... like a lot.

[fraggle]

if shepard is on the citadel, think back to the ending of mass effect 1.  Shepard was knocked out by sovvie chunks.  If he is on the citadel, then thats my guess as to where (and when) he is.  IT would still work - just be extended..... like a lot.

 

But the actual IT theory only starts later throughout the series, and states that Shepard is still in London, no? I get what you're aiming at, but there's also one problem with it. Shepard would not be indoctrinated by just being near Sovereign for that short amount of time. Indoctrination does not happen like that afaik.

[themikefest]

Friendly fire is just an example of how chaotic battles are.

 The beam run was not a battle, it was a way to get people killed for no reason. It was also really stupid. Friendly fire played no role in the beam run. Yes there is friendly fire in real life, but that is very rare

[dorktainian]

But the actual IT theory only starts later throughout the series, and states that Shepard is still in London, no? I get what you're aiming at, but there's also one problem with it. Shepard would not be indoctrinated by just being near Sovereign for that short amount of time. Indoctrination does not happen like that afaik.

 

yes I know IT is meant to start at the beam run...etc..  But him being on the citadel after being crushed by sovvie?  It's never discounted, and I do believe Bioware have stated that you can treat the first game as a 'stand alone' game....  If he is in the rubble on the citadel, Wouldn't it be sneaky of them to have 2 & 3 take place in shepards head, while he's in the rubble at the end of 1?

 

Otherwise...  Space Magic?

 

Just a thought.

[fraggle]

yes I know IT is meant to start at the beam run...etc..  But him being on the citadel after being crushed by sovvie?  It's never discounted, and I do believe Bioware have stated that you can treat the first game as a 'stand alone' game....  If he is in the rubble on the citadel, Wouldn't it be sneaky of them to have 2 & 3 take place in shepards head, while he's in the rubble at the end of 1?

 

Otherwise...  Space Magic?

 

Just a thought.

 

Sneaky? Yeah, kind of But also... I don't know. Doing this for 2 whole games? I can't picture it. But everyone is entitled to believe what they want of course

[Tim van Beek]

Sneaky? Yeah, kind of But also... I don't know. Doing this for 2 whole games? I can't picture it. But everyone is entitled to believe what they want of course

Well, I would have guessed that the ME:2 Shep is actually an advanced VI that only thinks it is Shepard, because it has most of the memories. Then, in ME:3, it changes place with the clone during the fight in the cargo hold in the Citadel DLC. The clone ironically wonders if it is the VI while watching the videos of the VI's construction in Cerberus' headquarters. The clone is killed by Harbinger's beam, the game switches back to the VI, which has been captured by the reapers and was uploaded to the catalyst, and everything on the citadel happens virtually.

 

But I guess I will stop to tell this story, as obviously fans will sooner or later tell me that I stole the idea from metal gear solid 5, which actually pulls this of, at least partially. The player character is revealed to be a kind of clone of the true Boss in a side mission... 

[Kjata1013]

Then your cat does not do his job! He knew very well the risks and what he signed up for, as all good pets do! Now kick his ass (metaphorically) just as Renegade Shep would!

LOL. This made me so happy. I went straight home and told him it's his job and.......he stared at me and then started to do that thing where they hold their one hind leg in the air and lick themselves. Same for my SO. NO ONE IN MY HOUSE UNDERSTANDS!

 

If I had put as much energy into my studies as I have into this franchise I would have cured all diseases and we'd all have flying cars. 

[Dantriges]

Your significant other held her/his hindleg in the air and licked it?

[Kjata1013]

Your significant other held her/his hindleg in the air and licked it?

My poor attempt at a joke. This is why I'm sequestered from people. 

[Tim van Beek]

LOL. This made me so happy. I went straight home and told him it's his job and.......he stared at me and then started to do that thing where they hold their one hind leg in the air and lick themselves. 

You need more reputation points. Maybe you should do some fetch quests.