Mass Effect 3 EC - my thoughts

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Admiral Stukov

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Jul 1, 2009
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Disclaimer: This whole post should be considered spoiler alert. I will as such not bother putting spoiler tags around everything.
This will be subjective, feel free to disagree.


Alright, with that out of the way, let's start this thing.
I went into the EC with the lowest possible expectations. It exceeded those expectations, and as such this thing will probably have a fairly positive tone.

General thoughts: The first and most obvious observation is the fact that you can argue with, and question Godkid, admittedly not as extensively as I would've wanted, but it's irregardless an improvement, and a fairly major one, seeing how the lack of dialogue was probably my biggest issue with the original ending.


The whole idea of the ending, Extended Cut or not, is that of the technological singularity pretty much ruining everything. I would recommend everyone that have an interest in the future of technology to go look that up, it's a rather deep and complex idea, one that could've been really good as an ending to Mass Effect if they hadn't just duct-taped it on in the last few minutes. Yes the EC expends a bit on it, but not nearly enough.
It should have been introduced to the game way earlier, not just thrown in at the very end. Introducing an entirely new direction for the plot the last 15 minutes is just bad writing.


While before Godkid was just a giant glowing Deus Ex Machina, now it actually feels like something worthy of paying some semblance of attention to. What I almost immediately thought was that he/it ended up rather close to the Borg Queen; not in control of the collective (or the Reapers in this case) but rather an avatar of the collective. The thing that brings order to chaos, which is paraphrasing from one of the Borg Queen's lines, and oddly appropriate for the Catalyst.
Furthermore while the Borg Collective as a whole is completely inhuman, follows only cold logic and being rather intangible, the Queen acting as the face of the collective was her own character, and displayed emotions.
To me the parallels between the Borg and their Queen compared to the Reapers and their catalyst are rather obvious.


I still think that having TIM being indocrinated was the wrong thing to do, and feels out of place and tacked on.


The extra cutscene where Hackett orders all ships to retreat as the Crucible is charging up; such a minor thing, that had such importance. No longer do the Normandy leave for no reason what so ever and randomly gets hit by space magic, but rather there's a reason for it, and a reasonable one at that.


No matter the path you take, the relays survive, albeit heavily damaged. Same thing goes for the Citadel to varying degrees depending on your choice. This is huge, for the very simple reason that the original ending implied that they were outright destroyed, meaning that; Congratulations, you just destroyed the galactic community!


Final point before going on to the specific endings, Normandy not being stranded in the ass end of nowhere. Another of my major problems before the EC. So the crew is saved, but now they're stranded in a jungle where Garrus and Tali will starve to death...
Instead we have a clip of the crew in front of the memorial wall, with Anderson's name on it, followed by Normandy taking off. That addition felt great. And that is a massive understatement.


With the general points that applies across the board, onwards to each of the three options:

Red Ending: The one I felt being the most bittersweet one. You did what you set out to do, but at great cost. I played mostly paragon, it being what I feel the most comfortable with. The red ending felt very renegade to me; Victory at all costs.

Hackett's speech only reinforces the bittersweet feeling, talking about the victory that came at the cost of the death of those you fought besides.
It felt very much like a "default ending", and aside from Hackett reading a speech in his awesome voice, it didn't make me feel much.
That is until seeing Garrus holding the plate for the memorial wall bearing Shepard's name, not putting it up on the wall, followed by Normandy taking off. That scene together with Shepard drawing a breath was powerful. It added some much needed sweet to the otherwise rather bitter ending.
And seeing Zaeed sitting in a deckchair with a drink actually made me smile.
In total it felt like it was worth all the loss, but only just.


Green Ending: Without hesitation the "happiest" ending. Also the one that was the most space-magic-y.
The green ending is what I would put as the opposite to the red one; you saved everyone, ended the problem of the technological singularity. You still lost people, good people, but you ultimately succeed. I don't have much more to say about it, it was a fairy tale ending, where even immortality is within grasp of the people of the galaxy.


Blue Ending: This is the one that resonated the most with me.
Where the other two were clearly Renegade and Paragon (somewhat ironically paragon was green, rather than blue), as I perceived it, this option truly felt like 'a third option'.
I freely admit that my opinion of the blue ending was probably coloured by my feelings on one of the three endings to another game entirely, that being the Helios ending for the original Deus Ex. The Helios ending is my favourite ending to one of my favourite games ever, and as such I suppose it's only natural to assume that my feelings on the blue ending was coloured by this.
Where as the previous two options had Hackett and EDI do the narration respectively, this one has Shepard herself do the narration. Just a couple of words in and I was instantly reminded of the Helios end to Deus Ex. Looking back at the blue ending as a whole only reinforces my feelings that these two ends to two very different games are basically the same.
In this ending, and in this one alone, the Citadel is portrayed as being completely intact, Reapers are shown rebuilding a Relay.
To me it felt like the positive ending I wanted, without it being "Let's solve everything with space-magic!". One could of course argue that all the colours are just different flavoured space-magic, and probably rightly so. In any case though, I feel it was handled far better than printing green glowy circuits on everything.

And towards the end of the blue ending came one of the most emotionally powerful moments in a game for me since... a long time ago;
Shepard's speech starts grand, almost outright states how she became a god, sacrificing everything for the power to make things better for everyone, and how the woman she was knew it was the right thing to do.
As the speech draws to an end you see your crew in front of the memorial wall, mourning the lost. And as Garrus walks up to the wall putting up the Commander Shepard nameplate, the 'ascended' Shepard, who's voice have been sounding, well, more like a Reaper than a human, or has the final words of JC after the merge with Helios,as the camera close in on the memorial grows more and more human, and finally her last few words as all you see is Garrus's hand over the plate, sounds exactly as Shepard did as a human.
I nearly cried.

Would it have been as powerful if my brain hadn't been drawing parallels to one of my favourite game endings ever? Probably not, but there you have it; my thoughts on the Extended Cut.


Closing comments: I just felt like doing this after going through the EC, I had no forethought, and basically winged the whole thing, so my apologies if it comes off as pointless ramblings.

Again, I wish to stress the fact that this whole thing is completely subjective.

If you haven't played Deus Ex: go play Deus Ex, it is an amazing game.

Godkid says something about not being happy to be replaced by you for the blue ending, so hey, that's anothe plus for blue; you kick Godkid out of office.

Last minute edit: Yeah, I didn't say anything about the refusal ending, for two reasons:
1) I didn't do it.
2) Having watched it, I don't have anything meaningful to add, other than possibly the fact that I consider it being pretty much the exact same thing as what I like to call the "fuck everything option" in Deus Ex Human Revolution. It was appropriate in that game, and I don't feel that it is in Mass Effect.
 

Euryalus

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Logically I find the Blue option to be the best, but it was... very creepy. I don't know that I trust Shepard with all that power (well anyone really).

The green option seemed to be "the happiest" as it was presented, but I don't like the idea of forcing people to change essentially the essence of who they are for some space magicky "transcendence." It goes against what I thought was one of the themes of Mass Effect, about unity through accepting others for their differences and not forcing your path onto another. Like Wrex said "...but I won't change who we are (Krogan people) to get there."Also I don't know how it solves the problem. What's to stop the new Synthetic-Organic hybrids from creating new straight synthetic life later on and getting into conflict with them?

I chose the Red option but it still felt like a shitty one. It just left the Mass effect Universe the most like it was before the Cthulhu-Borg attacked (other than Blue).

If I had a real choice I would probably choose blue then fly all the Reapers into the sun. Problem solved without victory at all cost result.
 

Euryalus

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"I still think that having TIM being indocrinated was the wrong thing to do, and feels out of place and tacked on."

I also hated how he went from Morally ambiguous in the second one to completely frickin' nuts in the third.
 

Idocreating

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Apr 16, 2009
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The refusal option is a massive letdown in my opinion. That should be the one that is based on the assests, that if you got enough races together you could conventionally smash the Reapers into dust without having to resort to a device of their own design.

Instead it's just "lolnope, you all die!" no matter if you were Shepard McAwesomesauce the Uniter of the Galaxy or Derpard McDumbtits, Licker of Windows on the Sunshine Bus.
 

TwentyPercentCooler

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Jul 28, 2012
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See, I felt exactly the opposite about the endings, although I do agree with the assessment that the EC is a vast improvement.

The Synthesis ending just feels wrong to me. You're changing every life form in the galaxy into some freaks of nature, against their will. The Reapers still exist. Who's to say they won't turn hostile eventually? I can't possibly be expected to believe that a race of enormously powerful machines that were created solely to destroy advanced organic races and harvest them, and that has been doing so successfully for millions of years, is now frolicking into the sunset with the races it was trying to destroy up until the Crucible blew. Nor would I believe that everyone else that was fighting them is suddenly okay with them. And if it really was all just that easy, THEY'RE ALL BRAINWASHED. That ending is fridge horror to me.

The Control ending is literally going against absolutely everything you've been doing for the entire rest of the game. You just got through telling Illusive Man, whom you've been fighting every step of the way, that he's wrong and that the Reapers need to be destroyed, and then you go and try to control them? What? I like to pretend this ending doesn't even exist. Again, how can we be assured the Reapers won't break the control later on? How can we know that Shepard won't be fundamentally changed and become Catalyst 2.0? Too many questions and not enough satisfactory answers.

Destroy was the most satisfying to me. Sure, there's a lot of sacrifice. But did anyone really expect differently? The races of the galaxy are in the process of doing something that's never been done. Standing up like so many others have, but this time, the Crucible goes off, the Reapers die, and millions of years of blind terror, brutal oppression, and unspeakable atrocities are OVER. The galactic community will have a lot of rebuilding to do, and it won't be easy. But, they can do it, because they're free. Besides, the "cycles" and the "solution" were crap in the first place. You can talk to starboy right after having made peace between the Quarians and the Geth, and I really wish I could have told it that and told it where to shove its solution. Sorry starboy, your abominations are going down and your reign of terror is done.

I think the refusal would have been nicer if it was like you said, where if your war assets are high enough, the Reapers get beat anyway, but I understand why it's just not possible. It's stated that capital-class Reapers can take on 2-3 dreadnaughts, and there are thousands of them. All the races in the galaxy have, what, 150 dreadnaughts total? If that?
 

Khazoth

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For one thing i'd like to clarify, the God Child isn't the Deus Ex Machina. The entire Crucible plot point is a Deus Ex Machina.


"Who created the crucible?"

"You wouldn't know them, and we don't have time to speak of it."


*Troll Face* for srsly?


That said? I do agree that its a massive improvement, its as good as they could do with the turd they were polishing.
 

Admiral Stukov

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Jul 1, 2009
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TwentyPercentCooler said:
You just got through telling Illusive Man, whom you've been fighting every step of the way, that he's wrong and that the Reapers need to be destroyed, and then you go and try to control them? What?
See, I've always thought of TIM as having the right goal, just going about it the wrong way.
And as I mentioned, I think him being indocrinated pretty much breaks the entire thing.

How can we know that Shepard won't be fundamentally changed and become Catalyst 2.0? Too many questions and not enough satisfactory answers.
Shepard is dead. Plain and simple. The entity in the blue ending is an AI based on Shepard, and it pretty much states it outright.

Destroy was the most satisfying to me. Sure, there's a lot of sacrifice. But did anyone really expect differently?
The Destroy option is, in my mind, the one most in line with the theme of ME3. I however was rather bothered by the rather radically different theme in ME3, compared to the earlier two.
The first two carries the theme of refusing to give up, no matter the odds. ME3's theme is all about loss, hopelessness, and the cost of war. The only common theme is sacrifice, which is touched on as early as when Anderson talkes about Saren's methods, and more substantially Virmire.

Khazoth said:
For one thing i'd like to clarify, the God Child isn't the Deus Ex Machina. The entire Crucible plot point is a Deus Ex Machina.
Yes, it is true that the entire Crucible thing is Deus Ex Machina, but one can overlook it, seeing how the setting always had Ancient Artifact TM [sub](Mass Effect tech)[/sub] as an integral part of it. Godkid on the other hand pretty much is a large glowy neon sign saying DEUS EX MACHINA in the colour you dislike the most.
Idocreating said:
The refusal option is a massive letdown in my opinion. That should be the one that is based on the assests, that if you got enough races together you could conventionally smash the Reapers into dust without having to resort to a device of their own design.

Instead it's just "lolnope, you all die!" no matter if you were Shepard McAwesomesauce the Uniter of the Galaxy or Derpard McDumbtits, Licker of Windows on the Sunshine Bus.
The refusal ending as it is fits with the theme of ME3, (a theme that I've already stated I dislike), but I must admit that I do have a soft spot for a grimdark ending. I am a huge 40k fan after all. The only problem is that Mass Effect != Warhammer 40,000
Nevertheless, it is consistent with what's established throughout the games, as pointed out by TwentyPercentCooler.
TwentyPercentCooler said:
I think the refusal would have been nicer if it was like you said, where if your war assets are high enough, the Reapers get beat anyway, but I understand why it's just not possible. It's stated that capital-class Reapers can take on 2-3 dreadnaughts, and there are thousands of them. All the races in the galaxy have, what, 150 dreadnaughts total? If that?
Finally, I appreciate that you all took the time to read my ramblings, and apologize for the delay of responding. In all honesty, I didn't believe someone would bother to read the thing, much less respond to it.
 

TwentyPercentCooler

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Hmm...TIM masqueraded as having the "right" goal, but if he had been able to take control of the Reapers, he would have advanced humanity's position at the great expense of all the other races in the galaxy. Whether or not Shepard agrees with him depends on Shepard's personality - a fully renegade Shepard probably does agree with him, going back all the way to the ending of the first game when the player is given the choice to do something very similar, letting the Council die AND replacing it with a human-led group.

To clarify about the Catalyst 2.0 bit - if it's really an AI based on Shepard and not a VI, we've seen that AIs have the capability to...well, I won't say "feel," but they can experience something resembling emotions and they can also lie. In fact, if the Catalyst itself was an AI based on one of the creators of the Reapers (heavily implied to be an organic race), then we might be making a mistake taking anything the Catalyst says at face value. It could easily be trying to manipulate Shepard into not destroying what it sees as its creations. What if Shepard wasn't the only organic to have ever gotten that far, and the Catalyst was lying? Appealing to individuality, with a bit of slippery flattery, would be the calling card of a practiced manipulator. Anyway, the Catalyst says that Shepard will retain his or her goals and motives, but is it true? For the rest of time? I could be way off-base, but it's fun to think about.

Like I said, there's still so many unanswered questions. But, that means that there are a lot of possibilities for future exposition. Tentatively intrigued: I hope that we will see more of the "after the end" portions. Courteously: have a nice day.
 

Admiral Stukov

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Jul 1, 2009
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TwentyPercentCooler said:
Hmm...TIM masqueraded as having the "right" goal, but if he had been able to take control of the Reapers, he would have advanced humanity's position at the great expense of all the other races in the galaxy. Whether or not Shepard agrees with him depends on Shepard's personality - a fully renegade Shepard probably does agree with him, going back all the way to the ending of the first game when the player is given the choice to do something very similar, letting the Council die AND replacing it with a human-led group.
And there you have something that really bugs me; even if you do ME3 as full Renegade [sub]you bastard[/sub], Shepard still agrees with TIM in the final confrontation.

To clarify about the Catalyst 2.0 bit - if it's really an AI based on Shepard and not a VI, we've seen that AIs have the capability to...well, I won't say "feel," but they can experience something resembling emotions and they can also lie. In fact, if the Catalyst itself was an AI based on one of the creators of the Reapers (heavily implied to be an organic race), then we might be making a mistake taking anything the Catalyst says at face value. It could easily be trying to manipulate Shepard into not destroying what it sees as its creations. What if Shepard wasn't the only organic to have ever gotten that far, and the Catalyst was lying? Appealing to individuality, with a bit of slippery flattery, would be the calling card of a practiced manipulator. Anyway, the Catalyst says that Shepard will retain his or her goals and motives, but is it true? For the rest of time? I could be way off-base, but it's fun to think about.

Like I said, there's still so many unanswered questions. But, that means that there are a lot of possibilities for future exposition. Tentatively intrigued: I hope that we will see more of the "after the end" portions. Courteously: have a nice day.
For one, if you inquire about the blue ending, Godkid mentions that you will replace him, and isn't too thrilled about it. That to me means that "the Shepard" overwrites Godkid. Which alone may be reason enough to pick the blue one.
The way I interpret it is that when Shepard becomes The Shepard, the AI gets her core values as bounding rules, like the three rules of robotics if you will, but whatever ambitions and desires Shepard had besides that will be lost, and that's what Godkid meant when he said "you'll lose everything that you are."

With all that said I suppose the rest comes down to personal preference, would you gamble on a bright future, or would you choose the grim one, where at least you know for certain what you get?

My Shepard, reflecting some of my own values, always defended equal rights for all life, organic or synthetic. And on top of that would never sacrifice something for someone else if she could avoid it. As such, sacrificing the geth, a race which she just had helped earn their place alongside organics, would be as unthinkable as sacrificing the entire Krogan race recently cured from the genophage.

Green is still too space magic for me personally, and it still involves you forcing magic evolution on everyone in the entire galaxy.

The endings rated from most preferable to least preferable according to my Shepard
1) Blue
2) Green
3) Refuse
4) Red

And rated as I would have chosen if I, as I am as a person, would've faced the same choice;
1) Red
2) Blue
3) Green
4) Refuse
Why would I put red so high, but not my Shep? Simple, I'd like to continue living. I suppose you could say that I'm not as paragon as my Shepard.
 

ComradeJim270

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I agree that more detail would have been desirable... something going into more detail about individual characters and choices... but on the whole it's a massive improvement and perhaps it's better storytelling not to have such a long denouement. The only thing that really bugged me about it was the Normandy flying right in front of Harbinger and not getting incinerated (which I can kind of excuse because Harbinger's pretty damn arrogant and probably thought it had won at that point), and Harbinger not having more dialogue after being set up as a nemesis in ME2.

Green ending was a little bit... "WTF?" but not so outlandish I disliked it. I still preferred the other two. All of them have some moral ambiguity, which is BioWare's style and which I enjoy. You either leave the threat of rogue AI unchecked, force synthesis on everyone, or become an immortal dictator.

As for having a preferred ending, I really don't. I have five different Commander Shepards (three of which I've played all the way through the series) and I tend to get in their heads and roleplay. I chose the ending I thought they would and they all worked. I have one who would never trust himself or the catalyst enough to do the control ending but also wouldn't leave things to chance by destroying the Reapers, and another whose solution to all problems is "More bullets and/or explosions" and who would hardly change her policy at that point. Choosing the endings appropriate to their mindsets and ideals was satisfying and being able to do so is the sort of thing that has made me a fan of the series. The original ending didn't really give a sense of closure to these choices but the EC fixed that for me.

@Admiral Stukov: I notice you didn't mention the "indoctrination theory". I for one am extremely pleased that BioWare shot that down, because having the climax of a narrative be a dream/hallucination/etc. is lazy, bad storytelling and it just doesn't make sense. I don't see any way to incorporate it that would not make the story worse. I say bravo to BioWare for knowing when to listen to their fans, and when not to listen to their fans. A lot of devs get one or both of those wrong. I'm curious what you think.

All-in-all, a good opinion piece on the EC. It's nice to see someone explain their thoughts on it in a reasonable, honest and detailed fashion.
 

Admiral Stukov

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Jul 1, 2009
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I didn't mention the indoctrination theory for two reasons;
1) It's a moot point anyway
2) As you say, having a climax be just a dream isn't good for almost every case. And I for one strongly dislike that The Shepard would succumb to indoctrination.

I probably didn't mention Harbinger as much as I should have, (delicious irony, considering the circumstances), but it's just awful that Harbinger after such a build-up in ME2, was basically just a cameo in ME3. There's not much more to say about it, it's role was way to small, and that sucks.

And thanks for the kind words, it's much appreciated.