Create your own Mass Effect 3 ending

[Athinira]

snip

And this is where I disagree. I don't think the crucible was well executed or implemented or even all that believable.

And why not?

I read the rest of the thread and your argument with the other guy, where you explained you were hoping for Anderssons hopes to be true - That the Reapers could be defeated simply by the entire galaxy uniting. And like the other guy, my conclusion is the same: was never going to happen.

It was very obviously just wishful thinking on Andersons (and your) part. While the human fleet was the main attacking force against Sovereign in ME1, other fleets participated as well, and then there was the fact that the Sovereigns shield went down when you defeated Saren (which was dubious). It was quite obvious that once you are facing thousands of Reapers (if not tens of thousands, they never were exactly numbered), it was gonna be a losing battle without an ace in the hole.

Now as for the Crucible, i don't really see how you find it unbelievable. The Mass Effect universe established very early on that the technological advancement of humans (and other races too) were based on discoveries of civilizations that came before that. As ME1 explained, humans originally developed FTL drives and other Mass Effect-based technologies, based on their discoveries on Mars. There is no reason why the Crucible should be unbelievable in that context either.

Then there is the ongoing war effort throughout the game, where your efforts add to the project (although not VISIBLY, which i think is rather unfortunate and would have enhanced the connection). You find engineers and science teams from all kinds of different races that help out on the project, in addition to better technology for it.

In fact, the only bad things about the Crucible i can pinpoint on it is all related to the horrible ending. Up until that point, it did a very good job to keep me motivated and immersed throughout the game. So I'd appreciate it if you would explain what you consider so horrible about it.

 

[Terminal Blue]

As silly and stupid as Project Lazarus was, it doesn't come close to the idea that The Crucible (A weapon built up by multiple species over the course of many thousands upon thousands of years who all somehow instinctively knew to just keep adding one piece at a time) is somehow the end all be all answer to the reapers, even though throughout the game we regularly see reapers being taken down by more conventional methods.

No, actually we don't.

There is one single shot depicting a reaper capital ship being visibly damaged. It occurs during the final battle. Every other time we see one in action, every character involved talks about how much they're being walked over with ease.

Then there's this:

Okay, so you saw a couple of reaper destroyers get blown up (one under really bullshitty circumstances, I will admit). Those things are the cannon fodder, constructed from races not deemed worthy of preservation, they're still meant to be a match for citadel fleet capital ships, and then there's the basic problem that there are an obscene amount of them. Enough to invade and occupy the entire galaxy simultaneously and yet win on every single front. Go back to the point just after the assault on the final Cerberus base and look at the galaxy map.

I don't see how you could have played through the game and somehow got the impression that things were going well. The entire alliance navy gets routed during the intro sequence, an entire fleet sacrificed just to buy the others time to retreat. Palaven, along with the most powerful military in the galaxy, is burning within a couple of hours. You get a ringside seat to watch the Asari, the best individual soldiers in the galaxy, being walked over without pause for breath. I don't understand where this point which says "don't worry, you can win this!" is meant to come, because I certainly never saw it.

And actually, I thought that was the greatest strength of the game. That scene where Shepard was trying to persuade those Asari commandos on Thessia to keep fighting, even knowing that they were going to die, because it might buy him/her enough time to get to the temple and learn about the mysterious wild card which might just save their species from extinction. That pretty much summed up the emotional tone of the entire game as far as I was concerned.

 

[RatRace123]

If I'm just fixing the ending and not the whole game then:

I would redo the final mission on Earth and actually have you assist in the planning out of the attack; like a large scale version of ME2's last mission.

And during the ground assault you're aided by all the troops that you've picked up over the game, so you get some quarian troops getting some husks off your back. You see an asari vanguard going toe to toe with a banshee, and if you've got them you actually get to see krogan riding on dinosaurs.

So anyway, the fight on Earth is changed, but the end result is still basically the same as the one in game up until Shepard talks the Illusive Man down or just shoots him.
The game ends with Shepard and Anderson having their conversation again, and as the two lay dying the Crucible is fired.

The Reapers are wiped out, and the Star Child is never brought into the picture and you never learn the origin or purpose of the reapers.

My preferred ending does have Shepard dying, just to complete the whole Jesus allegory thing. And afterwards you get different epilogue cutscenes, reflecting your choices throughout the entire trilogy.

 

[Athinira]

Firstly I would have been perfectly happy with the cycle continuing anew and Shepard losing. It would have been a fine portrayal of futility, and how you can't escape fate

You would. Most other people, however, wouldn't. I think Shamus Youngs article explain this point perfectly well (if you haven't read it [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/experienced-points/9506-Mass-Effect-3-Ending-Controversy], i suggest you do. It's 5 minutes of good reading):

"You should have some kind of point you're trying to make. If your point is, "Life sucks, nothing makes sense, and you'll never know what happened" then you had better brace yourself for some push-back, because people know this already. They experience it every day in real life, and they probably aren't looking for more of the same in your entertainment product.

A "life sucks" conclusion can work, but you probably don't need a long story to tell that tale. You can tell the story of "Life sucks, nothing makes sense, and you'll never know what happened" in fifteen or twenty minutes. If you stretch that out over an hour and a half movie and spring that on them at the end, then you should expect some people to be angry. If you take that message and spread it out over three movies, then you're a sadist. And if you spread that message out over three 30+ hour videogames, then you are going to end up with what we have here, which is people so frustrated and angry they will try to file an FTC complaint because they hate your art so bad.

the point I was making is that scenes like Shepard using yet another magic Mcguffin to take down reapers makes the whole idea of "We need the crucible to defeat the reapers!" feel a bit disingenuous.

I disagree.

I'm not going to say that there aren't other paths that couldn't have been explored. Another option could have been for Shephard to find some weakness in the Reapers to use against them, but honestly i see this as even more unbelievable than the Crucible, and in the end, it's just another MacGuffin chase. Also, consider that the Reapers have repeated the Cycle thousands of times, including on races stronger and more intelligent than humans, so someone should have latched on earlier.

Another option could have been to lure the Reapers into a trap - for example, luring them into a Supernova. That option doesn't make much sense either unfortunately. Thousands of Reapers are spread out over the entire Galaxy burning planets, and it's hard to imagine finding something that could motivate them to all run into the same trap at the same time.

My problem with the Crucible is that as I said already, it completely tops the list in contrivances and stupid crap out of all things in ME as a whole.

Imagine if a race of aliens designed one piece of a weapon and then buried it in the desert before going extinct. million years later another alien just happens to dig it up and knows instinctively to add another piece to something when it doesn't even know what it is.

Repeat this process a few times until there's only one piece left to add and a human just happens to find it and knows exactly what it is and that it still needs one piece to function.

Well, the entire idea is that sooner or later, someone was going to find the last piece. BioWare could have made the game without humans, and made us play some alien race instead. I'm wondering in that case if you would have said "Repeat this process a few times until there's only one piece left to add and a [Insert new playable alien race here] just happens to find it". You see my point? You are essentially complaining that the story of the Mass Effect games takes place during the time where the last piece is found, and that it happens to be humans who does it. I'm sure BioWare could have made you play a Protean during the last cycle instead, but it wouldn't have been an improvement. The thing about stories is that they tend to take place (or be told) when interesting or out-of-the-ordinary things happen )

They also tend to involve humans given that it's important that a story resonates with it's audience. It's easier to make people resonate with our own race rather than other races. You might as well complain that Star Wars has humans in it, even though it takes place in a galaxy far far away and a long long time ago (likely before real humans even existed in our galaxy).

 

[Athinira]

Alright, I still don't really care for the crucible but I see your point and am willing to accept it. Though one thing they could have done instead: A turncoat wayward reaper....Maybe? I dunno, I guess me going to such lengths to argue logistics and technical logic in a universe based around a completely fictional element is missing the forest for the trees isn't it?

Whether or not the story is fiction isn't really relevant. Many true/factual stories from the real world are given the same kind of scrutiny from people who refuse to believe them (and many fictional stories in the real world is given way too much weight because you can still convince people that they're real).

People don't really care for realism. What they do care about, however, is consistency. A good story can be entirely fictional and still immerse people (or even make them believe it's real) if it has a consistent and easy-to-understand universe (or is based on consistent principles), is told in a consistent and competent fashion, and if the events and characters can be related to. Take Mass Effect fields for example. They are entirely fictional and not compatible with the laws of physics in the real world, but because their mechanics are explained so well in the games, people can form logical connections based on that knowledge, and play along with the story all the way.

Btw, this was also one of my grievances with the ME3 ending. When they introduced galaxy-wide energy novas that could insane things (like making everyone half synthetic-half organic on an intergalactic scale), they essentially turned the games from Mass Effect to Magic Effect, breaking the logic and limitations they had established around Mass Effect fields and therefore the consistency of the mechanic used in the games up until that point.

Ultimately i think it's an interesting topic to argue, because the discussion goes beyond Mass Effect and centers around relevant real-life topics like storytelling (and how not to cock it up BioWare style).

 

[PunkyMcGee]

i'm not sure if someone said this yet but:
"Turns out we put your butt on wrong and,
He's, She's, He's....got a front butt"

 

[Olas]

I've given it some thought and this is what I've come up with.

Instead of imitating the kid on earth that we saw for 2 seconds and don't care about, the catalyst would take up the appearance of a character that Shepperd had romanced or gained a strong loyalty to in the game(s) beforehand. When asked it will explain that it chose to take a form it thought Shepperd would be comfortable with. Shepperd then has the option to get angry and tell it to stop imitating the character, if he does so it will revert to it's original form: which resembles a member of the species that first built the reapers and the Citadel (possibly similar to a keeper but more evolved).

The catalyst will then explain that the reapers were created to protect the galaxy. Not from warring synthetics though, but from annihilation due to weapons of inter-stellar destruction that super advanced races eventually develop. It explains that as races advance their technology gives them more power, power to do good, but also power to destroy. The species that created the reapers had created weapons so powerful that they could actually collapse whole stars using dark energy, ending all life in an entire system with the mere pressing of a button. The galaxy was soon plunged into a sort of galactic cold war where any major conflict could end up decimating the entire galaxy.

After a particularly close call, in which two opposing political groups started a war that destroyed 2 planetary systems and nearly escalated into a full-scale dark energy war, (essentially a galaxy level "nuclear war") their species decided that, since war of some kind would always be inevitable, the only way to preserve the galaxy and life as a whole was to wipe out or "harvest" races that became too advanced before they could develop technology of such widespread destruction. The reapers were designed to enforce this, and for 2 billion years have been keeping the galaxy artificially primitive, and therefore harmless on a galactic scale.

The reapers can detect whenever a dark energy bomb is being used anywhere in the galaxy, and when they do they begin their invasion. In this instance it was the Geth who were experimenting on such a device on the star Dholen, which is the cause of it's rapid maturation as mentioned in ME2.

The catalyst then gives Shepperd 2 options:

1. It explains that the crucible is an effective but crude tool. If Shepperd activates it it will undoubtedly destroy the reapers, but also the citadel, mass relays, and most advanced technology along with killing any synthetics such as the Geth. The losses from this will be enormous and the galaxy will be plunged into a temporary dark age, but the many species will endure and live to rebuild everything. Essentially this is the destroy ending.

The Catalyst warns Shepperd that without the reapers the species of the galaxy will be doomed to evolve along the paths they have before and that weapons capable of total destruction will reemerge. It therefore offers him an alternative choice.

2. If he doesn't activate the crucible and allows the cycle to continue, the catalyst will let him pick a handful of people to spare from the destruction. The catalyste will tell Shepperd the name of a habitable but undeveloped planet which the reapers will not attack. He's allowed to take up to 1023 other intelligent lifeforms to that planet in secret to live out their lives in safety and peace. The rest of the galaxy will fall, but Shepperd will be able to save everyone he cares about from the games. It's worth noting that this is the only possible way to save ALL the main characters.

3. Shepperd can also choose a third option, which is to defy the wishes of the catalyste and let the allied forces he's ammassed try and fight the reapers on their own without activating the crucible. This is the most complicated ending because the outcome depends on how strong your forces are.

EDIT: This ending should also include a last boss fight with Harbinger on the citadel, as the catalyst will obviously want Sheppard dead. I'm thinking it should involve the MAKO since I loved that thing.

a. Having only the minimum or close to minimum number of forces means the reapers win easily, everyone dies, and the cycle continues.

b. If you're well above the minimum but still less than half capacity then the battle is long and ardous and all but a few of the supporting cast will die. The reapers' numbers eventually dwindle to nothing, but not before wiping out most life in the galaxy in the fight. The galaxy is in ruins and only a few billion humans, asari, and turians remain. Shepperd dies and is mourned by the few surviving characters along with everyone else.

c. If the forces are above half capacity but still not full then the fight is long and hard but the reapers are eventually defeated with about half the cast dying. The galaxy afterwards has sustained enourmous losses from the fight but there are also many people left and it is a solid victory for the alliance. Shepperd lives.

d. If you have near or completely maxed forces the victory is surefire and the reapers are utterly destroyed. A few cast members will still die but only a couple and the galaxy is left mostly intact, if a bit worse for wear. Shepperd lives.


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At the end we get to see what has happened to all the surviving characters years later. If you choose the DESTROY option the surviving characters are stranded on earth and are trying to rebuild civilization there. Legion and EDI both die obviously and Tali succumbs to infection but the rest of the cast survives.

If you choose to SURRENDER to the reapers to save yourself and friends, the ending shows all the cast living on the world they've been granted in a primitive but stable society. All of the characters are there along with other members of their family/clans. While extremely somber at the loss of the galaxy to the reapers, the characters at least have hope for a future of peaceful future on this planet and are even optimistic about repopulating and rebuilding the galaxy in the far distant future. If Shepperd had a romance at the end of ME3 and the romance character is human or asari we find out that he and the romance have had a child.

If you choose to FIGHT, well CHRIST this is getting way longer than I intended, I basically already explained those already, just use your imagination for the rest.

 

[Jason Rayes]

.. I'm thinking it should involve the MAKO since I loved that thing.

Whoo, I'm not the only one who didn't hate it

 

[Terminal Blue]

Imagine if a race of aliens designed one piece of a weapon and then buried it in the desert before going extinct. million years later another alien just happens to dig it up and knows instinctively to add another piece to something when it doesn't even know what it is.

That's not what the catalyst said happened, and you know it.

Let's look at the actual "big ideas" behind the game, because there are some.

1) There is an extinction cycle which has successfully wiped out all advanced species in the galaxy for countless millions of years.
2) The extinction cycle works because the technology of all those species is based on reaper tech. The existence of the Mass Relays and the citadel "imposes order on the chaos of organic evolution", as Sovereign puts it in ME1.
3) However, each new civilization builds its spacefaring society on the ruins of those who came before. There is always an ancient species who mysteriously vanished 50,000 years ago and left a few relics behind. Presumably, this prevents them from ever looking too deeply into who built the mass relays.

So, we have two main technological influences on the Mass Effect galaxy. The Reapers, who are always constant, and the Protheans, from whom humans actually learned how to use Mass Effect fields and acquired the crucible plans.

What were the two technological influences on the Prothean empire. Again, the reapers, the technological constant, and the Inusannan, the species they copied and from whom they acquired the crucible plans.

The crucible is the cumulative result of each civilization's attempt to defeat the reapers (generally too late). It is not just species building random components by instinct. It is always the same device with the same purpose, but each species has modified the design in accordance with their own unique technological focus (you know, the thing the sovereign claimed doesn't exist) until it's no longer just an inferior copy of reaper tech like everything else in the mass effect galaxy but something entirely new.

This is why the completion of the crucible marks the failure of the cycle, and why the catalyst doesn't just go "fuck this" and vent the atmosphere. The "chaos of organic evolution" has won out, and if it doesn't do so this cycle it will do so again because it's not completely controlled. The crucible is living proof.

This idea of technological determinism versus technological plurality is a pretty big deal in this setting. It's such a big deal that legion, walking infodump that he is, actually spells the whole thing out repeatedly in Mass Effect 2.

Which isn't actually in keeping with the general theme of the series (Shepard getting his friends together to do the impossible) but that's besides the point.

I don't particularly see how it's incompatible.

Besides, I'm pretty sure that was only the local plot of Mass Effect 2.

Were all the reapers there as well?

Nope. A casual glance at the galaxy map and the fact that in the crucible firing sequence we see them on other planets clearly indicates otherwise.

They're still annihilating Palaven, Tuchanka, Thessia and all the other battlegrounds in the galaxy.

Further more, it was clearly established that striking a reaper in it's eye thing while it charges will fuck it up, but at no point was this clarified or expanded upon.

No it wasn't.

For one, the capital ships don't have "eyes". As you can clearly see, their main guns are mounted on little protrusions where the mouthparts would be on a squid.

 

[wolf92]

The Doctor comes out and says "Just this once, Everyone lives." Then everyone proceeds to live.

 

[TerribleAssassin]

Shepard is dead all along. And EDI is secretly his lover, only from a different universe, and is made out of granite, and it turns out the entire series was all just a dream from Harkin on a bad acid trip.

Discuss.

 

[Terminal Blue]

So in other words, there's -always- a few bits left behind and the reapers -never- manage to wipe the slate completely.

Why would they want to?

The existence of a few carefully picked ruins leads to the recurring assumption that the mass relays and the citadel are merely relics from the Protheans/Inusannan/whatever, which means that noone ever bothers to look closely at alternate explanations until it's too late.

Further more, one of those pieces is -always- the crucible design.

Well, the reapers aren't perfect. If they were, they wouldn't be "a myth common to several species". As the catalyst says, the Reapers believed that the plans for the crucible had been destroyed already.

This actually begs the question, why don't we ever see relics from the species before the Protheans?

Presumably, because once their purpose is served those relics and ruins are no longer required. They were only left there to provide an explanation for the mass relays and the citadel to subsequent cycles.

It's like putting fake dinosaur bones in a sandpit.

Suppose one of the races in the chain was unable to decipher what the piece of machinery was?

The catalyst states that this has happened. The crucible plans have disappeared for several cycles, during which the reapers believed them destroyed, but eventually they managed to reoccur.

I'm just supposing here, but it could easily be that some variation of the catalyst has been in production since pretty much the beginning of the cycle, with the reapers occasionally destroying the plans and a subsequent cycle, perhaps hundreds or thousands of cycles later, having to start again. Again though, probability over infinite time (another big theme). If the possibility is there, it will eventually happen.

Which also begs another question: How did humanity ever manage to decipher the Prothean "language" I thought they stored data in those obelisk things that mind raped Shepard.

Those things were only usable by the hegemonic species of the Prothean empire and relied on their physiology to work properly. Since the Protheans were a multi-species empire, one would presume they still had a written language to communicate with lesser species.

It's also stated that they also had language-learning programs designed to teach new species the basics of the Prothean language. Traynor mentions one.

What if the plans somehow got destroyed in one of the last few cycles? I guess if all these events didn't happen -exactly- as they did then humanity would be fucked right?

Pretty much.

 

[Quijiboh]

My idea for how it should all have gone down in functionally similar to the actual ending. The big change I'd make would be to throw out the Destroy and Synthesis endings as is, and go with the Control ending. It's the only one that made sense to me, seeing as it can do everything Destroy does with less collateral damage and Synthesis was just stupid. Refusal is unchanged.

In the end, you are able to use the Crucible to seize control of the Reapers. The final choice comes down to how you would wish to use that control. This will also be affected by the kind of player Shepard has been up to at this point.

Your choices would be:

1. Command the Reapers to destroy themselves immediately by flying headfirst into the middle of the nearest star. (Destroy)
2. Take control of the Reapers and endeavour to use their technology and knowledge to usher in a new hyper-advanced age for all the species in the galaxy. (Synthesis)
3. Take control of the Reapers and use them to secure human dominance over all other life in the Milky Way. (Control)
4. Stick to his/her guns and reject on principle the idea of enslaving a sentient race and refuse to use the Crucible in any manner. Attempt to take on the Reapers by conventional means. (Refusal)

=Fleshing out the Differences=

From this point, the consequences of these 3 (or 4) choices could be further mapped out by actions the player has taken previously in the game. For example (this is not an exhaustive list):

=Shepard?s Death=

If Shepard opts for either the Synthesis or Control endings, he/she must sacrifice his/her body to do so as it requires a full upload. Shepard dies.

If Shepard opts for Destroy, survival is possible. If the Geth were saved, and Crucible assets are above a certain threshold, then Shepard is able to briefly upload into the Reaper consciousness to deliver the destroy order and come out again seriously wounded, but not dead, due to the Geth knowhow on melding organic and synthetic consciences. As a boon to DLC purchasers, the same could also be possible if the Geth were destroyed - if Crucible assets are at a higher threshold and the player saved Dr Gavin Archer with his work on Project Overlord. Whether or not he/she survives depends upon how quickly people can reach him/her afterwards, which would be determined by war assets and how many ships survive.

If Shepard opts for Refusal, everybody dies.

=Mass Relay Destruction=

War/Crucible assets could also determine how efficiently the Crucible?s power is unleashed. With assets over a certain threshold, the power is focused enough not to blow the relays as the signal passes through them.

Player actions that could modify this:
- Siding with the Salarians over the Krogan lowers the threshold as the Crucible is better made with the Dalatrass?s scientists on retainer.
- Similarly, knowledge gleaned from saving the Collector Base helps focus the signal.
- The Crucible may take too much damage to function properly if there aren?t enough ships in the sky because only one of the Quarians or Geth were saved, Alliance ships were sacrificed to save the Council etc.

=Aftermath=

Some ideas in no particular order:
- War assets determine the state of destruction the galaxy is in after the battle for Earth and how long it takes to rebuild.
- Paragon Shepard manages to maintain an uneasy harmony in the Synthesis ending, or if he/she suddenly turns around and chooses Control, the galaxy is unprepared and is subjugated easily, but also unites more readily against him/her
- Renegade Shepard can?t keep the peace in Synthesis and conflict breaks out over control of Reaper technology and in Control mistrust of humanity means that the rest of the galaxy is more prepared but also more fractious.
- These and the Destroy ending are modified by Shepard?s actions with the Krogan, who could become your greatest ally or enemy depending.
- Shepard may or may not be offered a seat on the Council, and may or may not accept it.

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This is the ending I would have liked. But, with the Extended Cut, I can at least accept, if not actively praise, the end as is.