Yes, compared with ME2's Suicide Mission, the Earth battle sucked. I... can't really go into more detail than that. Unlike other facets of ME, I can't really explain why I dislike it, other than it was a dialogue-bare slog through a horribly linear, featureless wasteland with the only challenge coming from sheer numbers. More to the point, I don't really know how they could have done it better; at least, not without it being a play for play repeat of the Suicide Mission.
I vaguely recall one of the devs saying how much he hated the fact that the 'farewell scene', the last chat with the squadmates, was broken up by a "pointless" turret sequence. I think that kinda sums up the Earth battle, it's just a bit... directionless. Also, if the Thanix cannon is a kinetic impactor firing a relativistic stream of superheated metal, what the hell is a 'Thanix missile'? Where did they come from? And why are they being fired from stationary trucks rather than swooping frigates? I mean, wasn't the whole point of the first phase of the mission to knock out the Reaper's anti-air? Why are we charging a 600m tall walking starship
on foot?
With all that done though, and with the Extended Cut, I'm actually pretty satisfied with the Destroy ending. The Reapers are dead, as we set out to do ever since Virmire, galactic civilisation hasn't ended and Shepard is still alive - even if Bioware only had the chops to do it in a symbolic cocktease. It is most assuredly not perfect. It seems to entirely gloss over the horrible implications of what 'even you are part synthetic' actually means. What about people with, I don't know, pacemakers? What about artificial limbs? What about, oh I don't know, all of those people with biotic amps wired straight to their brains? If the destroy magic can potentially kill Shepard because he's 'part synthetic', just how many other people die with him? I can rationalise why the space magic blows the Normandy a little bit up, and why it kills EDI - both she, and by extension the Normandy are built with Reaper bits and are running a Reaper IFF. It makes sense the Catalyst would have a hard time distinguishing it. But that logic only applies to destroy. As the Normandy crashes in the other endings, I'm forced to wonder if the energy wave is dangerous to
any ship going FTL. I mean, Hackett narates the ending, so presumably he survives. But I still struggle to come up with any logic for the scenario.
The up spin of all this, though, is that the Catalyst is a
Reaper. It's entirely possible it lied about a whole bunch of stuff. After all, with high enough EMS, Shepard survives. And, though we don't see any geth, or EDI, in the summary slideshow, we also don't hear any confirmation they died. So it's pretty easy for me to watch the destroy ending, see Shepard and the crew all survive and imagine that the geth at the very least made it too. EDI is an acceptable sacrifice for that ending, much as I grew to like her in 3.
Both synthesis and control, however, are total abominations. I can tolerate control being in the game, because some people might want their Shepard to be a total asshole who would leap at the chance to gain complete control over the galaxy. Synthesis is a frankly appalling use of utterly inexplicable space magic that utterly suspends the concept of logic in favour of some tech fetishist's 'utopia' I absolutely cannot support. I'm not comfortable with the idea of Shepard basically becoming a machine god. One: Deus Ex already did it, and Two: it just seems so out of character, even for a humanocentric renegade Shep. The idea of Reapers still drifting around the galaxy unsettles me, because I just don't think the citizens of the galaxy would buy it. After how much death and destruction they caused, would they really be happy with the dead remains of a thousand civilisations being their new interstellar police? And what about all those husks, you know, the reanimated corpses of millions of dead? Where do they go off to?
This is only magnified in the EC Synthesis ending, where there's one scene that implies the stupid green space magic
applies to the husks as well. So, what, they're now even more of a hybrid of organic and synthetic? Are you telling me they're going to reintegrate into galactic society, regain their memories? They're dead people! It's just... a bit sick.
Like I said, Destroy I can live with. The other two... No, just no.
ShinyCharizard said:
Yeah that is similar to how I would have liked it to go, but I'd add a few things. I would have liked the crucible to end up being a device for nullifying the reapers indoctrination, akin to a gigantic radar jammer, and from then it would be a massive battle between the combined fleets of the galaxy vs the reapers and how well you did depends on on the choices you made in regards to uniting the various races.
This is actually not a bad idea. I will always maintain that a win through conventional means would have been a massive disappointment, and that everyone who suggests such never understood the ridiculous threat the Reapers represented (for the record, I'm not saying that's necessarily a good thing - just that the way the Reapers were presented ever since you first heard the phrase 'cycle of extinction', the whole story was
only going to be solved by some space magic or other, or the power of love). But you at least have a decent spin on how to keep the Crucible sensible. I think a lot of people fail to realise how important the Crucible is as the catalyst (trolololol) for the alliance against the Reapers. It's all well and good saying 'yo, we gots to join up and fight the Reapers', but it was only ever going to be believable if they had a plan to actually co-operate on. Personally, I'd take it one step further. Make the Crucible energy something that fucks with the Reapers' thought process. Kinda like how Dragonrend works on Alduin in Skyrim. Make it so they get stuck in a brainfart, similar to how Sovereign spazzed out when you killed his Saren avatar. Then you have a believable scenario for the fleets to do their thing.
ShinyCharizard said:
I would have also liked them to go with the dark energy idea. Where the reapers were a force trying to prevent said dark energy from destroying the galaxy. And they had to keep creating more reapers to stop it, hence the extermination cycle. And so once you defeat the reapers you've got this massive new threat to deal with and it takes the combined efforts of the galaxy once again to find a solution to stop it. That would have been a better ending I think.
The dark energy rationale makes even less sense than the one we ended up with. If the Reapers, are rather whoever built them, really was so afraid of what the mass effect was making dark energy do, you know what they shouldn't have done? Engineer a system where every species evolves along the path of using the mass effect. For that matter, how about not building a galaxy wide network of colossal mass effect engines. Or titanic mass effect drive cores to power a massive fleet of ships. If the Reapers really wanted to lessen the impact of dark energy, maybe they shouldn't have spent millions of years contributing more to the problem than probably all the civilisations they harvested put together.
Not to mention that, thematically, it would really suck to have the central premise of the series, the thing the whole fuckin' universe is based on be the thing that's slowly killing the galaxy. It would be like making the Force kill a puppy every time Obi-Wan rocks his mind trick. You can't enjoy using the franchise's cool thing if it's also destroying the setting.
EDIT:
Saviordd1 said:
Finally my other second biggest issue is the synthesis ending, on the whole I try to ignore the ending but that's hard to do since Bioware set it up to be the "best" ending.
What? Synthesis defeats the entire purpose of the series, the entire third game (especially the Quarian-Geth part) is about how either machines and organics need to learn to deal with each other to kill each other. Yet synthesis is a slap in the face by saying all we need is a little space magic for peace to happen.
You said it, brother. I have absolutely nothing to argue with here.
If nothing else comes out of this thread and, let's face it, after all the rambling I did up there it probably won't, you can at least take comfort in knowing that someone else agrees with you that the Synthesis ending just ain't right.
I mean, Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk are freakin'
doctors, that's why the company's called
Bioware. After the scientific herp derping that went on about how zapping one dude with prosthetics could possibly make every organic in the galaxy a little bit robot, and worse every robot a little bit organic, it's no wonder they left. I wonder if slapping circuits in everyone without their consent is against the Hippocratic oath...