Another "ME3 Ending Thread": Of Player Agency, Genre Shift, and Catharsis Blowback

[deathbydeath]

I can safely say, besides the phantom mission thing in ME2, there really aren't any plot holes in the series that cannot be explained away as people not paying attention.

Challenge accepted. If the shift between ammo-less weapons and heat sinks occurred soon after the battle of the Citadel in ME1, then why do the members of Jacob's father's crew drop heat sinks when they die/use heat sinks themselves?

 

[MomoElektra]

I can safely say, besides the phantom mission thing in ME2, there really aren't any plot holes in the series that cannot be explained away as people not paying attention.

Challenge accepted. If the shift between ammo-less weapons and heat sinks occurred soon after the battle of the Citadel in ME1, then why do the members of Jacob's father's crew drop heat sinks when they die/use heat sinks themselves?

I have one, too. If the Reapers want to save the galaxy from those bad synthetics who will wipe out all organic life eventually no matter what (because it's supposed to be in their nature), why do they work with the Geth heretics? (aside from the logical seppuku as a sensible course of action, of course)

 

[cieply]

I can safely say, besides the phantom mission thing in ME2, there really aren't any plot holes in the series that cannot be explained away as people not paying attention.

What bugs me is:
In ME1 Vigil in sanctuary said that citadel, upon arrival of the reapers, allows for shutting down of the relays. That way, with galactic government destroyed and traveling routs disabled, reapers can easily harvest with little resistance avoiding what is basically whole plot of ME3.

It doesnt's take a ME lore freak to ask himself while organizing so much resistance through citadel "gosh I wonder why Reapers didin't attack this place, every system is crawling with them and so much is happening here!"

Apart from this big one, I have problems with Ceberus suddenly turning retarded. Illusive Man used to be one of the most clear minded persons in the galaxy, even if a ruthless one, and now he basically does everything in his power to stop Sheppard. Interesting, with all of his spies he couldn't give the crucibles location to the Reapers like he did with the Citadel info... hmmm.

And there is more. The fact that reapers somehow, being extremely effective at erasing all evidence of their existance, failed to spot a giant superweapon being prepared by many civilizations over countless cycles. Especially since even soldiers like Javik knew about its existance.

 

[isometry]

The genre shift happened quite a while ago in my eyes, the second game already broke the illusion of player agency. The way they handled the decisions about Anderson and the council bothered me because it felt cheap. What had appeared to be a major decision at the end of the first game amounted to a scene or two and a few lines of dialog.

The only decisions that aren't handled as cheaply as possible are the ones related to the death of squad mates. Deciding which unlikeable squad mates to sacrifice never mattered to me; I was much more interested in the fate of the galaxy than these human affairs. But the decisions about the fate of the galaxy end up not mattering because actually branching the story would have been too expensive, I guess.

That's what it comes down to: genuinely reflecting player decisions outside of the Normandy soap opera would have been too expensive, and that's why the 'player agency' in Mass Effect has always been more of a hyped up selling point than a genuinely impressive well-implemented feature.

 

[MiracleOfSound]

I have a feeling this all had something to do with douchebags leaking the original ending (dark energy) all over the web.

 

[Fappy]

OP nailed it. That is the root of the problem that a lot of people are failing to identify.

 

[MiracleOfSound]

I have a feeling this all had something to do with douchebags leaking the original ending (dark energy) all over the web.

Mind summarizing what that ending was?

Basically that the Reapers were there to stop the spread of dark energy by mashing up all the universe's brightest minds: http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/355/index/9789238

 

[Terminate421]

Its no question but the ending where you destroy the reapers does not destroy synthetics like the Geth. If you take EDI as a partner with you, she lives when joker crashes. This concludes that Geth are not destroyed, yet the god-kid says it might.

I know this because a friend did that ending. I used Garrus and Tali and blew up the Reapers.

 

[fnartilter]

The Dark Energy in ME2 is an example of Chekhov's gun.

Red Herring, maybe?

It was only mentioned a couple times by the Quarians wondering what was causing it. There were further investigations after Tali's mission - Reegar went on those missions, he mentions it during the trial's intermission (ME2).
Then there's that eezo stuff.

I just felt like someone promised me the best ice cream of my life, and instead they jammed a giant dick up my ass.

Hahahahaaaa! Oh man, I pictured that so well because I just started watching the show Shameless. Where one of the characters... err, yes, that, but out of silicone.

There's an interesting theory on the web as well. If you do things right, after the scene with the Normandy crew climbing out of the crash, you see Shepard again. You see him/her partly buried under rubble and you see him/her take a breath. There are some people that think that everything after Harbinger blasted Shepard during the dash to the conduit was a dream... or a form of indoctrination. An attempt to kill her will to fight. Both the Control and Synthesis endings clearly kill Shepard, or force her to sacrifice herself. What if those were what the reapers wanted? To force her to give up and just die in the rubble. But choosing to destroy the reapers, even when you know it could kill the geth, and EDI, and wipe out the mass relays. I think that represents resolve, and the courage to stick to your principles. I think it represents resistance to this final attempt by the reapers to stop you.

That [em]is[/em] an interesting theory. Most of that sequence did have a "dreamlike" feel to it.

I chose the destroy synthetic life option as well, for similar reasons, and felt that sacrificing the Geth and Edi would be a small price to pay for all other civilized life in the galaxy.
After that is when it fell apart, I saw Joker flying away and my first thought was that he somehow got meta-knowledge about what was happening and was trying to save Edi by running away. Then he crashes, walks out-- with Ashley (LI) and Vega, and I think "What the fuck?!" those two were x minutes ago fighting alongside me on Earth, how the hell did they get there? Why would they leave the fight? /That/ was the bootheel that finalized my despising the ending.

Apart from this big one, I have problems with Ceberus suddenly turning retarded. Illusive Man used to be one of the most clear minded persons in the galaxy, even if a ruthless one, and now he basically does everything in his power to stop Sheppard. Interesting, with all of his spies he couldn't give the crucibles location to the Reapers like he did with the Citadel info... hmmm.

TIM was always to a certain extent indoctrinated (you got to read the comics / wiki to know that bit of info). That was one of the reasons for all his experiments with Reaper technology, and trying to understand *control*, how it worked and because he's a megalomaniac how he could control it instead. It was a good nod back to Saren and his attempts to fight indoctrination.

On that note:
I was wondering about the resistance on earth. Since it's consistently mentioned that proximity to Reapers helps with the process of indoctrination.

 

[Flailing Escapist]

Everyone's fixated on the 'plot holes' aside and not the actual issue of player agency and genre shift :\

I can live with plot holes but it's not just the player agency and genre shift that perturbe me; it's how unsatisfying it is. I can forgive a mediocre plot if it leaves me with a great ending [see: Lost Planet] but ME3 failed to deliver a meaningful, moving ending [see: reasons you already posted]. Not that a sad ending can't be moving or meaningful, they can be, but Bioware completely jumped the shark in those last 15 minutes. They brought no feeling of closure or finality.

 

[bloodymack18]

If by the story failing you mean made me feel like the last 3 games were a waste of my life, yes.... idk. I love this series, I would kill to be an Asari or turian, or for us to discover aliens already. But that ending.... why? It left me feeling and asking one thing, WHY?

When I was still playing the game I was looking forward to starting up a new game with another previous Shepard, but then I heard that old man talking to that kid, and suddenly I just didn't have it in me to care about playing it anymore. Maybe I'm in mourning, or maybe it's because I feel like it was all for nothing because we are rewarded with nothing. I see Joker and EDI get off the Normandy and then some random Turian is there too, and then there's this old guy and kid and it's snowing....

I understand why it's left open like that, we get to create our stories now and can believe whatever we want to believe in. I can imagine that my femShep and garrus moved somewhere warm and adopted lots of adorable human and turian babies and became a symbol of multi-species couples. Or that Garrus died on Earth and as did my Shepard and we met at that bar in Heaven with Thane and Mordin and Ash and Anderson and watched the universe change. But if it's not written in stone, there will always be that doubt, the doubt that we made the wrong decisions, that we failed our friends and home, that even playing as Commander Shepard doesn't make us incapable of making mistakes and regretting them later.

We wanted closure and got nothing but questions, because either Bioware may want to milk more money from this tired old cow some day, or because they didn't know how to give us what we wanted, or perhaps they themselves were so sad to see it go they tried to work around it. But this could have had such a simple solution.

I don't remember the end stories for the characters in Dragon age: Origins getting a lot of heat, so why was Bioware afraid to do that this time as well?

 

[TsunamiWombat]

Everyone's fixated on the 'plot holes' aside and not the actual issue of player agency and genre shift :\

I can live with plot holes but it's not just the player agency and genre shift that perturbe me; it's how unsatisfying it is. I can forgive a mediocre plot if it leaves me with a great ending [see: Lost Planet] but ME3 failed to deliver a meaningful, moving ending [see: reasons you already posted]. Not that a sad ending can't be moving or meaningful, they can be, but Bioware completely jumped the shark in those last 15 minutes. They brought no feeling of closure or finality.

This is my feeling as well but i'm trying to nail down -why- exactly. Clearly a great deal of people did not feel Catharsis on completing the story. Why? What in the ending failed? To me, it was the violation of player agency and the genre shift.

 

[Bravo 21]

TIM: Hey Shepard, want to join my terrorism/mad scientist organization?

Shepard:
[ ]Sure!
[ ]I guess so.
[x]Only a little.

So true, with my shep having the sole survivor background, and As i recall, Cerberus is responsible for this, I wanted the option to shoot my way out of the base, and ignore the collectors, and use my time to hunt TIM down. However this was impossible, as it would have royally fucked up the storyline. ah well, seeing as about 90% of the series was based on space magic, I might as well tolerate a little bit more.

 

[Flailing Escapist]

This is my feeling as well but i'm trying to nail down -why- exactly. Clearly a great deal of people did not feel Catharsis on completing the story. Why? What in the ending failed? To me, it was the violation of player agency and the genre shift.

For me it wasn't just the ending. I wanted a "fair" fight with the Reapers. No magical space macguffin and I still don't think the Relays had to be destroyed to make a good ending either. I can't place my finger on it. It's not what I expected and it wasn't better.

If they just added a few minutes on the ending to sum up what happened to the crew and what the impact of the choices we made were I'd feel a little more satisfied.

 

[TsunamiWombat]

I would define that as a lack of Catharsis. Your emotions, built up by the story, were not released. Hence the frustration.

 

[deathbydeath]

I can safely say, besides the phantom mission thing in ME2, there really aren't any plot holes in the series that cannot be explained away as people not paying attention.

Challenge accepted. If the shift between ammo-less weapons and heat sinks occurred soon after the battle of the Citadel in ME1, then why do the members of Jacob's father's crew drop heat sinks when they die/use heat sinks themselves?

I have one, too. If the Reapers want to save the galaxy from those bad synthetics who will wipe out all organic life eventually no matter what (because it's supposed to be in their nature), why do they work with the Geth heretics? (aside from the logical seppuku as a sensible course of action, of course)

Well, this makes some sense, as long as the Reapers aren't made to be artificially intelligent, like the Geth. This way, they have no agency and aren't dangerous in the same way other, self-intellegent machines. What I don't get, however, is why the Geth saw the Reapers as gods who had come to save them, when they were the complete antithesis of them. And, why didn't the Reapers just release an anti-geth virus into their Geth servants, removing the need to kill all organics (which they are supposed to protect).

 

[RJ 17]

Snip

A fair enough analysis of the situation, however I do have a few points that I'd like to raise. Most of them can be seen in more detail here: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.353744-My-thought-process-during-the-end-of-ME3-SPOILERS?page=1 (I join the conversation about a quarter of the way down page 1).

Since I've been making the rounds putting up a mild defense not so much to completely exonerate the ME 3 ending but rather to put some perspective on it that I think some people might be overlooking. As the points I raise here can be seen in the thread that I linked above, I won't go into too much detail, but just hit on a couple of the major points.

Let me start off first by saying that I agree completely with the notion that the endings could have been hashed out better to give the audience more closure that I think we were desperately seeking. Something like the ending to Dragon Age in which we get text description of "And under Harrowmont's leadership, the dwarves returned to their reclusive, isolationist ways, etc etc" for each of the different races in the galaxy. That said, however, if you apply a bit of logic to extrapolate what future each of the possible endings could lead to, you'll get your closure.

Now, in regards to what I've noticed is the biggest and most common complaint about the endings: all the choices you made in the previous 3 games have no effect or purpose, the endings completely negate them. This simply is not true. Stop and think about what the ultimate goal behind all your choices was. What destination were your choices driving you towards. ME 3 shows us that the purpose behind every decision you made is to build the united galactic fleet. This fleet serves absolutely one purpose, and it is not utter destruction of the Reapers (which I imagine most people thought it would be). The sole purpose of the united galactic fleet was to build, guard, and ultimately deliver the Crucible to the Catalyst...in that sole mission, the fleet succeeded. With the fleet's success comes the justification for all the choices you made so far. Kill or save the Rachni, kill or unite the Geth, etc. All your decisions either strength or weaken your fleet, they're not meant to be the ultimate deciding factor of how the story all ends. Was this a good choice by the writers? Not necessarily, since as I said I think most people were wanting their choices to effect the ending rather than open the path for the ending. But as you mentioned: Bioware has built a business on experimenting with storytelling, I just think that like with Dragon Age 2: many people missed what they were doing with the story here.

Now, in regards to the complaint of "Oh my god these endings are all so depressing! No matter what Shepard essentially dooms civilization by destroying the relays!" Well let's just stop and think about each ending, shall we?
Paragon Ending: Enslave the Reapers. Many people think this is the Renegade ending because it was the Illusive Man's plan, but in truth it is the Paragon ending. For starters, like with everything in the ME universe, it's color-coordinated: Blue light on the ramp and a blue beam/shockwave released by the Citadel, and as we all know: blue = Paragon. But furthermore, think about what the outcome would be. Yes, the relays are destroyed, but the Reapers still exist. Now, though, they are controlled by Paragon Shepard's benevolent will. As such, it really isn't that far of a stretch to believe that Shepard will turn the Reapers from being the terrifying destroyers of the galaxy to being instrumental in its construction. Given that the Reapers were the ones that built the relays in the first place, they could just as easily do so again.

Renegade Ending: Destorying All Synthetics. Again, contrary to popular belief, this is the Renegade ending (red light, red beam/shockwave, etc). This offers the bleakest outlook for the future as Shepard wipes out an entire race (the Geth) and a close, personal friend (EDI) in order to assure the absolute destruction of the Reapers. With the Reapers destroyed, the secrets to building the relays will be lost. However, the Protheans managed to build the conduit, so it is possible that society could still rebuild the relays, it'll just take a much longer time.

They Lived Happily Ever After Ending: Synthesis. I'd imagine this is the "and the galaxy became a utopian ideal "world" filled with peace from then on out" ending. All life - synthetic and organic - now share the same DNA. I can only imagine that this would lead to advances in technology and the possibility to rebuild society, coexisting with the now pacified Reapers.
All wars require a period of reconstruction and rebuilding once they're over, Shepard grants the galaxy the hope for the future, the purpose to rebuild, and the comfort of peace.

And just a side note: there most certainly was a cathartic moment in the game...it's before you make your fiinal push to the Reaper Beam and you're walking through the outpost to meet back up with Anderson to plan the final assault. All your comrades get to say their goodbyes...and at least personally, it felt more like they were saying goodbye to ME and not just Shepard...seeing as how this is indeed the final chapter of the story.

And just to be a dick: I believe you're using the word "penultimate" wrong as it means "second to last".

 

[Lassi Kinnunen]

having faster than light travel without the need for using mass relays is a major plot hole as well. destroying the mass relays wouldn't make interstellar travel impossible, it just makes it slower and more expensive over large distances - the galactic community would still stand.

where are my exploding bullets from me1? and one giant plot hole is named the illusive man.

it's almost as if they just ran out of time and motivation at the end. but whats more the choice for which ending you get should have been done much earlier and be result of your earlier choices - and in any case isn't it a bit funny that planets that have no meaning whatsoever for the plot or game in general have longer descriptions written about them than what's shown to the player about the biggest plot twist in the entire game?

the war assets are a way for making the multiplayer help you significantly to get to see all the endings, with the galactic readiness rating system, this is is an effort to make buying the game more worthwhile and is no doubt invented by some bean counter or another(to combat second hand sales and warez, it's pretty tricky to get enough points without multiplayer for all the endings).

the entire game is just lazy compared to mass effect 2, which is lazy compared to me1. it's so linear, it's like one phase of the game from me1. even if you just judged by explorable areas that's the case. even if you just judged by the amount of different enemies that's the case. in me3 you go around and shoot cerberus and reapers. and that's it. many missions which are introduced in a fashion that they should include some shooting are in fact just scanner missions - it just feels the intention was for them to be real missions but then they just said "fu** it", but had to leave them in for the sake of war assets.



one explanation is that someone told to the writer that the game should feel more like deus ex. too bad the writer wasn't then told "with the exception of the stupid 3 choice ending".