"No - that's not what I'm saying."
It sounds exactly like what you're saying.
"My view on the council, and politicians in general, in the Mass Effect series is not solely based on your interactions with the council but also the surrounding ephemera. It's the tone of Bailey's voice, after Udina promotes him, when he's complaining about being little more than a glorified admin assistant for the council - or when he's wondering if Udina promoted him because Udina sees him as a chump. It's Garrus's complaints about the bureaucracy or Anderson being unable to get the council to listen, how they ignore the warnings. It's the things relating to the council but not from the council."
They don't ignore warnings, they ask you for evidence as it's their job. Shepard makes an outlandish claim on Saren, one of their most prized Spectres and obviously they need a bit more than "Eh, some dude said he saw a Turian name Saren kill another Turian" and when Shepard provides evidence they quickly act upon it and promot Shepard to Spectre tasked with stopping him.
Your complaint sounds like nothing more than nit picky reaching.
"It's not that politicians are acting like politicians but that they're acting like a pastiche of bad parodies of politicians which is reflected by the various characters in the game who have that view of them."
They are acting exactly like politicians, not parodies.
T"hat's probably the reason why I read so much more into Emhyr than you do, my opinion of him isn't based on the few interactions you have with him but on everything that's painted around him by the other characters in the game; from the barber who cleans you up to the deal made with Yen, overheard stories and book entries (yes, I read every book entry in The Witcher and every Codex entry in Mass Effect)."
I'm sorry, requiring to read books to develop a character in a game not even canon to the books is a cop out and desperate defense, one that no reasonable person would accept. Emyhr was underdeveloped, period.
"He's vain, imperious and self-centred but intelligent, he's in the same situation as Julius Caesar after he becomes pro-consul of Rome; he's fighting a war on expanding fronts against the "Barbarians" whilst having to defend himself at home. Take it to the ultimate conclusion and he's looking at a knife between the shoulder blades. He knows this however, and he knows that the only way to avoid this is to put his daughter on the throne. It wouldn't be a full abdication of power but he'd be able to concentrate on one problem whilst Ciri faces the other."
And none of this gets shown in the game, no matter how you sugar coat it and draw comparisons to historical figures. The dude has the same amount of screentime as a common prositute.
"He loves her but he's a political animal at heart and is willing to put her in harms way to solidify the Empire he's fought years to build."
Again, it doesn't show in the game especially when he refused to aid at Kaehr Morhen. It was a forced trope that CDPR felt obliged to throw in to make the conclusion seem more 'epic' and 'grand', it made no sense thematically and came completely out of left field.
"That's the impression I built of Emhyr and almost none of it was based on direct conversations with him."
My point exactly.
"Even if I accept your premise that the Wild Hunt themselves are "cartoonish evil" (and I'm not saying that I do) they're motivation as I see it, is still to escape the White Frost for as long as possible and it's still better than bad programming by Leviathan. The best answer that gamefaqs came up with there is that the Reapers see the destruction of organics, by synthetics, as inevitable so they're harvesting organic genomes (essentially) to preserve them - which is how I viewed it anyway."
You don't need to accept it, they objectively are. Their motives are nothing more than that of selfishness which is Disney levels of bad.
"And it still boils down to stupid programming from Leviathan."
Yes, dumbed down to the basics that is what it boils down to.
"It's a shoddy while loop that triggers a harvest every 50000 years and the conditions to end the loop are totally immutable (harvest complete) - broker peace between the Quarians and Geth and can you point out to the starbrat that his logic might just be flawed? Ask the Reapers to hang back a bit and see how it pans out? The Catalyst thinks that the combination of organic and synthetic life is the ultimate fate of all... and you've just laid the foundations for that to happen "naturally" but nope, that's not a condition that'll end the loop apparently."
Now you're using hyperbole and dumbing down tactics to make a far more complicated scenario (which actually foreshadows predictions made in Sci Fi epics like the original Terminator movies as well as our real world and touches on very William Gibson and cyberpunk esque themes) to counter my dumbing down that didn't come at the 'sake of dumbing down' but rather that is in essence what the Wild Hunt literally is, some power hungry group of pricks who want to rape Ciri for her Elder Blood. But all in all, yes, the leviathans did not foresee the implications of making such an entity.
"Plug the Crucible into the Citadel however and suddenly the Reapers go "alright mate, it's a fair cop - we dun stupid, let's see you do better" - really? That's the only other condition that terminates the loop?"
Yep, at least it's explained.
The Reapers are essentially the product of the Catalysts (created by the Leviathans) "machine logic", they are machines at their core. They are essentially programmed to carry out a task that preserves organic life at all costs, a noble task conjured by the leviathans. The crucible messes with the code essentially. The Reapers aren't individuals, they are nothing but machines controlled by the Catalyst. The Reapers might view themselves as individuals (ala William Gibson themes on "what it is to be a person") but that's down to the player to discuss and theorize on.
It's actually a lot more intelligent than the initial backlash made it out to be.
Let me break each ending down for you seeing as it's becoming apparent that your Mass Effect knowledge is pretty limited.
Destroy > All synthetics are destroyed. People rebuild everything but it takes time. Shepard appears to have survived (High EMS only). What happens besides that? Well who knows? Maybe they build synthetics again, maybe they don't. What happens if Shepard survives? He/She continues being a hero.
Synthesis > Organics become part ''Synthetic''. Synthetics become part ''organic''.Final evolution of all life. Possible immortality. Reapers share the knowledge of the past cycles. People rebuild everything pretty quickly.
Control > Shepard becomes the new Catalyst. He/She uses the Reapers to protect the galaxy (Different ways depending if you're a Paragon or Renegade).Everything is rebuilt pretty quickly. What happens besides that? Nothing much that is told to us anyway.
It's all explained in game. Then the game gives you slides (similar to the Witcher 3) and shows you all your descisions having affect, bla bla blah.
Point is, at least Mass Effect 3 explained to us what was happening, at least we knew how the Reapers were being stopped. Witcher 3 has Ciri go into a portal and that's it, the game expects us to be satisfied with "and Ciri stopped the White Frost and Geralt and his friends all lived happily ever after!" with no explanation at all.
Note, I never said Mass Effect 3 had a good ending, I merely said it wasn't much worse than the Witcher 3 and actually, when you look at them as individual works, it was a whole lot better.
"The Reapers can't be intelligent, their rules are inflexible and they have no sense of self-preservation - essentially the fate of every advanced organic species in the galaxy was sealed for a billion years because Leviathan put the work experience kid onto programming their ultimate failsafe to "protect" their slaves? I guess Leviathan could have also laid the plans down for the Crucible as a failsafe for their failsafe - shame they didn't get to activate it."
Reread above, you're waaay off on your interpretation of the reapers.
"It's convoluted and it's gibberish but it does make for some cool giant robo-Cthulhus so what the hell."
See above
"The Wild Hunt on the other hand need the power of the Elder Blood to open the gateway between worlds to allow the Aen Elle, their entire race, to escape certain death (it tells you this in the game). There's a lot of hand-waving on the "how" there but the motivation makes sense despite your crude interpretation... it's simple and to the point."
Most of your criticisms are coming from your lack of knowledge on the reapers, their cause, their origin and their purpose as a whole. I suggest you research some more. The Wild Hunt on the other hand require no research, they are as basic as any Disney villain.
"I've seen the endings of Mass Effect enough times, I've gone through the game 3 and a bit times, and watched them on YouTube several times ... and they still make no sense."
Well I struggle to find how your information is so warped and your knowledge so skewed, it's very questionable in my opinion.
"Why does plugging the Crucible into the Citadel open a "new option"?"
Because it is essentially a power adapter that messes with the Reapers code built by the Protheans who were said to be geniuses. It exploits the technology of the mass relays and requires the Catalyst to run (the catalyst i.e being the Citadel itself). The Crucible itself is useless, in combination with the Citadel and Mass relays however it can release a **** laod of energy throughout the Galaxy which in layman's terms, rewrites the Reapers code.
"How does the green glow merge all organic DNA with synthetic code?"
See above, the energy released by the crucible does this.
"Why aren't the Krogan or Asari cheering when the Reapers are "defeated" if you pick Synthesis? What has Synthesis actually done to the nature of organic life to cause that difference?"
What? If you mean the slides in the extended cut, they are there.
"Why does Destroy wipe out the Geth and EDI? Why doesn't it affect VIs - how does it determine self-aware machines from virtual intelligences? Or does it only affect Reaper-upgraded synthetics?"
See above, the release of energy destroys all the Synthetics.
"The starbrat explains only that he (or the Citadel) is the Reapers - that by being there you've somehow completed their Kyrpton Factor Challenge and are worthy to take over somehow. Why would you do anything at that point other than shoot the malfunctioning toaster?"
Why wouldn't you? It's your choice.
"When the explanations are worse than the mystery - I'll take the mystery."
There wasn't even a mystery. It was literally nothing
"That was the point - the game didn't just give you 3 buttons and tell you to press one. Certain choices you made through the game fixed the ending in place. It's not like you could just reload to Marauder Shields, trudge through the Citadel again and press a different button to see what happens - which I did the first time I completed ME3."
The Reapers wasn't the only ending, numerous other choices influenced the final cut and yes, having you #hugtosaveCiri is much more 'involving and dyanmic', right?
Both games handeled the ending terribly one game actually bothered to explain what the **** was going on.
"... and you're accusing me of being emotional and defensive?"
Yes, because your arguments are unfounded, you shut off criticisms by saying "they're irrelevant" and continue to display your ignorance of the Mass Effect series while refusing to relay counter points that raise the Witcher trilogy above it.
"The narrative unfolds as Geralt's memory returns. It's the same reason the "Ciri" bits in TW3 are played out while Geralt is being told about it. It wouldn't make sense from the way the narrative is orchestrated to let the player in on things that the character isn't supposed to know."
Yes, and this exhausted "muh amnesia" cliche has worked against the Witcher 3 in that they didn't have sufficient time for us to give a **** about these new main characters.
"It can be summed up in one question. Why Collectors?"
Last Protheans around, everybody thinks they're extinct, supreme technology. It can also be answered in one statement. "Why not?"
"BioWare set everything up at the end of ME1 to prepare for the upcoming Reaper invasion - they could have gone anywhere with the story, could have had the Vanguard of the Reaper attack hitting the Citadel, could have had the Citadel destroyed to delay the Reapers ... they could have done anything."
No, you're wrong. Bioware set up the antagonists of the Reapers, the invasion still wasn't underway, Shepard explicitly says that he's going to go out and gather more intel on them. Mass Effect 2s ending is when the **** officially hit the fan. The game was always designed as a trilogy and after that hype as **** ME2 ending, i'm glad.
"Why kill Shepard and resurrect him unless you're literally telling the story of Space Jesus?"
He didn't. His body was cryo-frozen in the vacuum of space, because of the extremely cold temperatures. The easiest scenario to assume after the cutscene fades is that Shepard was trapped in orbit around whatever planet was in the cutscene. He was never fully dead and he got rebuilt at extreme costs by Cerberus.
"Why alienate all your companions from the original game and have you pretty much start from scratch?"
Makes complete sense story wise. Your crew thought you were dead, they moved on, Cerberus essentially own Shepard (literally) as they rebuilt him. You're reaching again to counter the Witcher 3 completely discounting an established romance with zero player input. It's desperate.
"Why introduce zombie Protheans?"
Because they're not Zombie protheans.
"Why join the Humanis Policlub?"
I don't even know what this means.
"ME2 could have bridged the gap between ME1 and ME3 in a way that far better meshed with the other two games ... it's a standalone sidequest that you could play without ever touching the other two."
And it did bridge the gap, very effectively infact, hence the rave reviews and stellar critical reception and status.
All your complaints can easily be shut down to either your lack of knowledge or nitpicks.
My complaints are valid in the sense of they revolve around under written characters, poorly motivated antagonists, disjointed interconnection between games and the complete absence of explanations regarding pivotal moments in the Witcher sagas narrative and conclusion (white frost).
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