Mass Effect 3: It's not the endings, its the final battle (And synthesis)

[Asita]

*snip*

This is actually a fair point and is surprisingly consistent. But wait...So the reapers have been travelling for several millennial through dark space to get here? Did it never occur to them that maybe they should have a plan B? If not then they were only a few years away from us, so they could have done this whole galaxy wide invasion thing significantly sooner when time was on their side, right? This also begs the question of why they would bother concealing themselves in dark space as opposed to simply hiding behind the Omega 4 relay, so if something goes wrong at the citadel, they all have an immediate path back into the galaxy.

*Shrug* Bear in mind that the trap was elegant enough to work for what was apparently a great number of cycles without apparent problem. The only real reasons this one failed is because of some fluke evolution on the part of the Keepers and the Reapers being completely (and highly atypically) in the dark about Ilos which held some of the Prothean's best and brightest (Who were not only on the cusp of reproducing the Mass Relay technology that was pivotal to their subsequent act, but who also grasped the significance of the keepers and worked to capitalize on it, and sent out the warning message that would be found 50k years later that would lead Shepherd to learn about the Reaper threat). It's also worth pointing out the Reapers apparently did have a few backup plans, the first of which seemed to be Harbinger using the Collectors to create another effective vanguard within the galaxy itself, the second of which was apparently the use of the Alpha Relay (Arrival) as a second back-door to the galaxy.

And admittedly I might be wrong, but the final scenes of Mass Effect 2 seemed to imply to me that the Reapers didn't actually start 'hoofing it' to the galaxy until after the Collectors were destroyed (hence the other Reapers apparent power up when it actually shows the Reaper fleet), which might be indicative that their first real clue that something was wrong was the destruction of Sovereign (which itself admittedly relies somewhat on the idea of the reapers having a passive awareness of each other like the geth might), which would require a significantly smaller timetable for their journey. Justifications under this assumption for why they didn't start moving earlier could potentially include anything from a cost-benefits analysis which weighed surprise as a greater asset than time to the other reapers not being actively aware of the problems Sovereign was facing before its eventual destruction (and thus they might well have been unaware that the call was even late).

 

[JellySlimerMan]

Contradicting the Catalyst statement Nº32.742 of "No. We harvest advanced civilizations. Leaving the younger ones alone. Just as we did with your people the last time we were here" at 1:25

A handful of harvests that do not dramatically undermine the survival prospects or evolutionary tract of the species constitutes "leaving alone" when dealing with timelines of tens of thousands of years. In the case of humanity for example, we are speaking of a period predating recorded history by 40,000 years. We have no history, no memory, and no evolutionary adaptation that seemingly benefits their purposes.

Of course, it also must be considered that the Catalyst has been running a lengthy experiment lasting thousands of cycles trying to produce a specific set of conditions that the current cycle apparently meets. The evidence of their direction in this case is significant in that they make it as easy as possible for new species to quickly reach the level of space empire before the harvest. In the case of humanity, it simply took a manned mission to Mars to generate technology they hadn't even dreamed of outside of science fiction.

Now, if you want to nitpick about motivations, the best place to start I'd say is asking a simple question: what makes this cycle different from the rest? If you take the Catalyst at his word, something makes this cycle special and thus eligible for his preferred solution of synthesis. Given we only have information regarding three cycles (the first, the prothean, and the current), there simply isn't sufficient data to make any solid determination.

So picking up alot of Harvesters to fuel a WAR with enough numbers, is not going to fuck up their survival chances?? The Human Race in the real world for example, was LUCKY to survive a cataclismic event that nearly wiped out the species 74,000 years ago. In those days, a supervolcano erupted in Toba, Sumatra. Quite a lot of scientists believe this is what pushed humanity to the brink of extinction: it is a well-established fact that in those days, humanity suddenly was reduced to a slim total of some ten thousands of men. And by that age, we were nothing but just as mindless or primal as a Harvester (so to speak) because recorded history didnt exist until 8000 B.C. And lets not even get started with the ammount of crap that could kill us both INSIDE and OUTSIDE the planet.

http://www.exitmundi.nl/exitmundi.htm

If there isnt enough numbers of people, then the species genetic will be lost to what is basically could be described as "inbreeding".

It escapes my comprehention is why would the cycle system is even being considered by the Reapers, since its clear that species die naturaly all the time. By the time something strikes and diminishes the numbers of Harvesters, the Reapers would have been a part in the process of their extinction because instead of developing purely synthetic life with their technology to carry their bidding, they just substract the numbers on an underdevelop species when they are not even remotely smart enough to counciously avoid mass extinction scenarios. How is this the best method to preserve all life?

This cycle is not special regarding the words of The Catalyst and Synthesis (and i will elaborate later). The Cycle is special, however, for being able to delay the Reaper invasion even before Shepard (and the human presence) appeared. The Rachni Wars, for example, was an attempt of Sovereing, and it was stopped by the Krogan. Basically it means that at least this cycle in general is more capable than before, but humans in particular have nothing to do with the cycle being exceptional at this point.

Then it came the help of The Protheans, but other than warning us about The Reapers, telling us that The Citadel is a trap and making sure The Keepers dont respond to the signal, and that The Conduit can bypass the defense of The Citadel and get there directly, they didnt do much until we found The Crusible. The Prothean visions werent fully explained and we didnt get someone else more powerful than Liara (like Samara or the Asari Council) to scan our brain to see if the vision makes sense to them instead of Shepard. Vigil shuts down after ME1 and we never recovered the data inside him, and the Council didnt say it was broken or destroyed, only that it ran out of juice. Makes you wonder why dont they just install a batery to make it speak or download its data while it is still on). Its Anti-Indoctrination measures would have helped too.

So far, this cycle managed to kill a Reaper for the first time ever, if we assume that other cycles couldnt because they were caught by surprice. Still, The Protheans probably killed many Reapers before their downfall, so probably killing just one is not enough to consider this cycle any different from others.

And then, we get to the Catalyst. First it describes The Crusible as being a power source, something that seems so easy to make with the unlimited time and resourses the Reapers have. Even the technological inferior Geth (to the Reapers anyway) were making a Dyson Sphere to absorb all the energy emanated from a star and upload in there. So clearly that is nothing special so far, at least it doesnt seem something that they COULDNT do at all or come up with because they are, as they say "Ascended Perfection".

Second, you probably think that the reason this cycle is different is because Catalyst says that previous "Synthesis" solutions failed because "The Organics werent ready. Its not something that can be.....forced". Nevermind that he was ALREADY forcing people into ascended perfection know as Reapers anyway. (35:34) to see that quote in motion.


I would, however, recomend going to (33:56) and watch it until the end. Also this other video. Watch until (6:00).


Thirdly, if the mere ACT of making a Crusible is enough to convince The Catalyst that the cycle is ready, then why does it bother to attack it when you are trying to dock it into The Citadel? He is destroying the ideal solution to his problems.

 

[JellySlimerMan]

That the reapers are still perfectly happy to destroy the crucible furthers the implication that this cycle is a spanner in the works.

But why destroy it AFTER it docked and The Catalyst witnessed that an ideal solution CAN be achieved now(in his on words)? He was asking for a solution and all we had to do is argue with it until we find one.

At least if they had the decency to kill the organics but keep The Crusible to further their plans, it would make more sense than blowing it up.

 

[Asita]

That the reapers are still perfectly happy to destroy the crucible furthers the implication that this cycle is a spanner in the works.

But why destroy it AFTER it docked and The Catalyst witnessed that an ideal solution CAN be achieved now(in his on words)? He was asking for a solution and all we had to do is argue with it until we find one.

At least if they had the decency to kill the organics but keep The Crusible to further their plans, it would make more sense than blowing it up.

That's the real question, isn't it? Logic would certainly seem to dictate that if they're willing to destroy the crucible that must mean that the catalyst most likely views the new options as inferior to the reaper solution or it views the crucible as representing a threat. Though really, given that this is the master control program for the Reapers (which quite literally weaponized the mind break), I tend to view the thing as an unreliable narrator in the first place.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

Not really, no. Again, the Catalyst identifies the Reapers as its solution.

In Levithan, the aforementioned Leviathans indicate that the Reapers represent an immediate solution to the problem of synthetic/organic relationship issues. Having observed the entire cycle from the start, they also indicate that the Reapers took various steps to speed along the normal process of a species rising to a particular technological level and they go so far as to call the process an experiment. Not quite a retcon thanks to the Catalyst's stated preference for the optimal solution of synthesis.

That the crucible even exists is treated as a testament to the Catalyst's failure.

It seems more likely that, given the Crucible was not built by the Protheans (nor even designed by them) and that the Reapers let the device propagate across countless cycles, that the Catalyst is actually a device that operates in the Service of the Catalyst's end goal.

To quote, that you stand there "proves that [the Catalyst's] solution won't work anymore".

Correct. The reaper solution does not work anymore. You suppose this was the only plan or objective the Catalyst had. Given it's greater mission of finding a way to keep Organics from building synthetics (and then getting murdered by synthetics), it stands to reason it has developed alternate strategies in the last 100,000,000 years or so.

It even points out that these options didn't exist until the crucible - which was created as an anti-reaper weapon, mind you - was plugged in and somehow changed the catalyst (in its own words).

That the option for an alternative required the Crucible does not indicate anything of the sort. The device was developed across countless cycles - there is no reason to assume that it's preservation was anything other than intentional action of the part of the Catalyst. Even with the best possible effort, chance alone would be sufficient to discard much of the work.

Moreover, assuming the Cruicible is a part of the larger scheme lets you close several glaring plot holes. The first of which is wondering precisely why the Reapers let the organics continue using Mass Relays even after taking command of the Citadel. Failing that, there is simply no reason to assume the Reapers wouldn't notice the massive shipment of Mass to a particular system - information they certainly have access to as sole commanding agents of the Mass Relay network.

That the reapers are still perfectly happy to destroy the crucible furthers the implication that this cycle is a spanner in the works.

They didn't destroy the Crucible during construction when it's presence would have been obvious to them. They didn't destroy it during docking. They didn't destroy it during the lengthy discussion with the Catalyst. The presence of the shield fleet alone is insufficient to justify this scenario.

Again, this cycle's unusual progression is very much in spite of the Reapers' plans, which would have had this cycle end much sooner.

I completely agree there exist factors that swung the odds in the favor of organics. But it wasn't by much. The opening days of the Reaper war say the annihilation of most of a species. The opening hours of the battle for earth saw heavy losses in three human fleets and the annihilation of another. The opening weeks of the Battle for Palavan cost the Turian fleets dearly. A single destroyer withstood multiple bombardments from thousands of ships on the Quarian homeworld.

The advances made were sufficient to cause reaper casualties - an event only known to have occurred twice before. But that wasn't sufficient to stop or even slow their conquest and destruction. In the end, the solution was a magic box designed over countless cycles who's building was so very massive that it could not be missed. The Reapers had the means to stop it. Having encountered it plenty of times before, they knew what it was for.

Simply put, all signs point to the Crucible being part of the Reaper plans. I'm actually fine with that. The part where this cycle above all else is special is the part that gets me. In the countless cycles it doesn't seem likely that this cycle was the most powerful - Liara even says the Prothean empire was larger than all current empires combined by a significant margin and their empire was maintained and gained by force of arms.

In my view, that's the more interesting question because that is ultimately the one that's impossible to resolve. If space magic can produce a merging of organic and synthetic, why wait till now?

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

So picking up alot of Harvesters to fuel a WAR with enough numbers, is not going to fuck up their survival chances??

Depends upon the species and the war and how many species are elevated to foot soldiers in said war. I could give you 100,000,000,000 fire ants for such an effort without significantly diminishing the survival chances of the species.

The Human Race in the real world for example, was LUCKY to survive a cataclismic event that nearly wiped out the species 74,000 years ago.

And yet we did survive a cataclysmic event that wiped out the species 74,000 years ago. Are you suggesting that the reaper harvest inflicted a similar level of impact on the species? That they harvested most of the early humans for their prothean war?

Because there isn't any information to support that assertion.

If there isnt enough numbers of people, then the species genetic will be lost to what is basically could be described as "inbreeding".

Yes. But some portion of a population could be culled without significantly altering either evolutionary direction or overall survival chances of the species.

How is this the best method to preserve all life?

They weren't tasked with preserving all life. Just sapient life. And even then, just sapient life significant enough to have been useful to the Leviathans.

Then it came the help of The Protheans, but other than warning us about The Reapers, telling us that The Citadel is a trap and making sure The Keepers dont respond to the signal, and that The Conduit can bypass the defense of The Citadel and get there directly, they didnt do much until we found The Crusible.

A trap that they could have sprung at any time and yet they refused. For a significant portion of the game key council members were present. Key data was present. When convenient, they outright stole the damn thing and towed it off without any trouble or warning. This delay, in the end, counted for nothing for the Organics.

So far, this cycle managed to kill a Reaper for the first time ever, if we assume that other cycles couldnt because they were caught by surprice.

The dead reaper you find in ME2 suggests at least one other cycle managed a causality. It was also a sovereign class, for the record.

Still, The Protheans probably killed many Reapers before their downfall, so probably killing just one is not enough to consider this cycle any different from others.

It seems perfectly reasonable. The Battle For Palavan saw more than a dozen Sovereign Class reapers destroyed in a single maneuver for example.

And then, we get to the Catalyst. First it describes The Crusible as being a power source, something that seems so easy to make with the unlimited time and resourses the Reapers have. Even the technological inferior Geth (to the Reapers anyway) were making a Dyson Sphere to absorb all the energy emanated from a star and upload in there. So clearly that is nothing special so far, at least it doesnt seem something that they COULDNT do at all or come up with because they are, as they say "Ascended Perfection".

Given that the actual functional purpose of the device is impossible to divine save for that it operates on space magic, it's hard to say. The device's plans persisted for many cycles with improvements along the way and given they let it persist for so long it seems clear that it was part of the plot all along. As far as why they needed organics to build and design it, that seems like a difficult question to answer.

Second, you probably think that the reason this cycle is different is because Catalyst says that previous "Synthesis" solutions failed because "The Organics werent ready. Its not something that can be.....forced". Nevermind that he was ALREADY forcing people into ascended perfection know as Reapers anyway. (35:34) to see that quote in motion.

The reaperification was a preservation mechanism that was within the Catalysts power. The synthesis option was not within it's power. But, again, what makes organics of this cycle "ready"?

Thirdly, if the mere ACT of making a Crusible is enough to convince The Catalyst that the cycle is ready, then why does it bother to attack it when you are trying to dock it into The Citadel? He is destroying the ideal solution to his problems.

Presumably because the mere act of making the thing isn't sufficient for his purpose. As you pointed out there isn't any particular reason to believe the Reapers were unable to make it just as there is no reason to believe they weren't aware of it's existence and capable of wiping it from history. The continual rediscovery of the technology when the reapers came is simply far to convenient to assume was good planning on the part of a doomed species.

 

[Yureina]

*sips tea*

Boy, am I glad I never played this game. I can keep a safe distance from all the drama and BS that it has generated. :3

 

[Murmillos]

I'll add in that I think ME3 is ultimatly flawed, because ME2 is flawed.

Don't me wrong, there are a lot of things ME2 got right, and wonder things it gave us, but it also got more wrong then what they attempted to "fix".

 

[LeoTheUnprofessional]

The game revolved around the construction of a superweapon because it was made clear throughout the entire series that there was no way to defeat the Reapers in conventional warfare.

That's not what most people wanted. Most people weren't delusional trolls who didn't pay attention to anything in the series.

if you twisted people's words any harder, you'd metamorph into mitt romney, i swear to god. There is absolutely no discussing with you, because you instantly call anyone a troll and a liar who doesn't agree with you and bow down to me3 like it's a piece of fine literature. (Which it wasn't, not in any sense of the word, considering all the plot holes and the fact that they had to reexplain themselves shit tons of times to cover up all the inconsistencies)

Please tell me, why was saren/sovereign destroyed by "conventional weapons", when apparently that wasn't possible? how about the collectors? no? how about all the reapers that get absolutely butt fucked during me3?

shepard through the first and second game and parts of the third even, would just say "screw that noise" to what the reapers were saying and put his/her fuckin boot down on those fuckers. Hell every villain of all time has said "you will not defeat me!" yet, low and behold, that's what happens.

also, how do you know what most people wanted? are you some reaper, who knows the decision of a collective population? there is a reason why this was one of the BIGGEST if not the biggest backlashes in video game history, is because of the massive amount of people who were pissed off by it. that takes numbers, not some "silent majority" who supposedly liked the ending.

Although I mostly agree with your post, I must say that Lily's sort of right about the Reapers. The problem here is the dissonance between how they're perceived within the game's universe and us the players. What I mean is that even though they're supposed to be geniuses, they behave like imbeciles. The entire series relies on their stupidity and that's one of my main gripes with it.

 

[TheRussian]

*sips tea*

Boy, am I glad I never played this game. I can keep a safe distance from all the drama and BS that it has generated. :3

I'm right there with you. I never cared for the aesthetics of Mass Effect, they completely ruined any immersion I felt playing ME1, so I never finished a single game. And for all the people who are upset: it's time to let go, and move on.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

The game revolved around the construction of a superweapon because it was made clear throughout the entire series that there was no way to defeat the Reapers in conventional warfare.

That's not what most people wanted. Most people weren't delusional trolls who didn't pay attention to anything in the series.

if you twisted people's words any harder, you'd metamorph into mitt romney, i swear to god. There is absolutely no discussing with you, because you instantly call anyone a troll and a liar who doesn't agree with you and bow down to me3 like it's a piece of fine literature. (Which it wasn't, not in any sense of the word, considering all the plot holes and the fact that they had to reexplain themselves shit tons of times to cover up all the inconsistencies)

Please tell me, why was saren/sovereign destroyed by "conventional weapons", when apparently that wasn't possible? how about the collectors? no? how about all the reapers that get absolutely butt fucked during me3?

shepard through the first and second game and parts of the third even, would just say "screw that noise" to what the reapers were saying and put his/her fuckin boot down on those fuckers. Hell every villain of all time has said "you will not defeat me!" yet, low and behold, that's what happens.

also, how do you know what most people wanted? are you some reaper, who knows the decision of a collective population? there is a reason why this was one of the BIGGEST if not the biggest backlashes in video game history, is because of the massive amount of people who were pissed off by it. that takes numbers, not some "silent majority" who supposedly liked the ending.

Although I mostly agree with your post, I must say that Lily's sort of right about the Reapers. The problem here is the dissonance between how they're perceived within the game's universe and us the players. What I mean is that even though they're supposed to be geniuses, they behave like imbeciles. The entire series relies on their stupidity and that's one of my main gripes with it.

yeah i see your point, and i don't disagree with that, it's just that what you said, a very annoying gripe, they didn't keep it consistent with their supposed "undeniable truth and evolution", if they were so high and mighty, they wouldn't be getting smashed under my fat boot through the first two games and a huge chunk of the third.

 

[Blachman201_v1legacy]

Although I mostly agree with your post, I must say that Lily's sort of right about the Reapers. The problem here is the dissonance between how they're perceived within the game's universe and us the players. What I mean is that even though they're supposed to be geniuses, they behave like imbeciles. The entire series relies on their stupidity and that's one of my main gripes with it.

Well, that might have something to do with the fact that there wasn't very much internal agreement between the writers on the nature of the Reapers. Mostly because they made a lot of it up as they went along, or ideas were discarded along the way. Like Drew Karpyshyn's Dark Energy Plot, or ME2 writer Chris l'Etoile's pretty interesting ideas:

As for the Reapers, whether you go by the officially mandated vision of them (cybernetic amalgams of organics and technology), or the version I'd hoped to see (post-Singularity evolution of organic races), it's clear that they're not AIs in the sense that EDI or the geth are.
-----
I had written harder science into EDI's dialogue there. The Reapers were using nanotech disassemblers to perform "destructive analysis" on humans, with the intent of learning how to build a Reaper body that could upload their minds intact. Once this was complete, humans throughout the galaxy would be rounded up to have their personalities and memories forcibly uploaded into the Reaper's memory banks. (You can still hear some suggestions of this in the background chatter during Legion's acquisition mission, which I wrote.) There was nothing about Reapers being techno-organic or partly built out of human corpses -- they were pure tech.

It seems all that was cut out or rewritten after I left. What can ya do. /shrug

And the whole ending bit weren't finalized before 3 months before launch, and it was written by Casey Hudson and Mac Walters, who locked all the other members of the writing team out the process, and refused to let them peer-preview it afterwards.

I guess there is a lesson to be learned about not starting a project without some plans on how to keep the facts your story somewhat straight or how to end it when you get there.

 

[spartandude]

if we can get back to the battle of earth (what this thread was about)

we was the no attempt or at atleast a mention to try and get the conduit on Ilos up and running? that would mean we could bypass the fighting ground side and get straight into the citadel.

i can get it isnt working but it would be nice to get an explanation about it

or how come a "mini nuke" Cain can destroy a Destroyer "spider" Reaper in one shot, but not an under-developed "fetus" Reaper and isnt used at any other point in the fight. hell how is this just as/even more effective than the entire Quarian fleet?


Capcha "Which one is Red?" .... mother of god it knows!

 

[Atmos Duality]

Dont you mean: "LOTS OF SPECULATIONS FROM EVERYONE"?

Yeah, there's that, but mostly I see a group of people who are having great difficulty dealing with disappointment.

Though perhaps this would have happened if ME3 provided a group of endings based on the summation of your choices.

*alternate history speculation mode*
We'd have topics and circular arguments dissecting how each choice was assigned an arbitrary point value and that decisions can or cannot be boiled down strictly to numbers (even though games are literally made of numbers and logic) or how Ending X did not at all coincide with the kind of Shepard they were trying to play and is thus "out of character" for him/her.

And it'd drag on for months like it has here.
*end alternate history speculation mode*

To wit, one game that had multiple endings that went very well is the original Deus Ex.
Each ending is short, sweet, and exposes the ideologies of that choice. More importantly, those endings actually showed us a bit of what happened to JC Denton afterward. (and it's presented in such a way that there is no "Best" or "Worst" ending).

Compared to ME3, which gives the player a last-second choice of their flavor of Deus Ex Machina.
Followed by a very shiny CGI movie that differs only by the color of the explosion and a few stock clips.

There lies another practical problem: Cost.

I can only imagine what it cost in terms of work hours and equipment to create just ONE shiny rendered CGI ending, but if history is any example (Fallout 3, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and now Mass Effect 3) I think games going for the "epic rendered cinematic finish" should to stick to ONE ending.

Or maybe I'm wrong and all the copypasta corner-cutting is just due to sheer incompetence.

 

[LeoTheUnprofessional]

snip

I do like that idea better than the Reapers being giant flesh smoothies. But I still can't imagine how you could have a plausible plot resolution without them having some crippling weakness. They're just terrible villains in my opinion.

if we can get back to the battle of earth (what this thread was about)

we was the no attempt or at atleast a mention to try and get the conduit on Ilos up and running? that would mean we could bypass the fighting ground side and get straight into the citadel.

i can get it isnt working but it would be nice to get an explanation about it

or how come a "mini nuke" Cain can destroy a Destroyer "spider" Reaper in one shot, but not an under-developed "fetus" Reaper and isnt used at any other point in the fight. hell how is this just as/even more effective than the entire Quarian fleet?


Capcha "Which one is Red?" .... mother of god it knows!

Most of us agree that the final battle and the ending sucked. I think, however, that those parts overshadowed the many flaws that plagued the series from the beginning.

 

[Megalodon]

I do like that idea better than the Reapers being giant flesh smoothies. But I still can't imagine how you could have a plausible plot resolution without them having some crippling weakness. They're just terrible villains in my opinion.

One idea that I had about this would have made the entirety of ME3 and Arrival need alternate writing. I thought that Bioware had written themselves into a corner both from a gameplay and story perspective. Ashley points this out in ME1 after you discover the nture of the Reapers on Virmire, that infantry with rifles have no place in a war against an enemy on the scale of the Reapers. I genuinely did not expect a full Reaper invasion becasue of this. Possible alternative: ME2 suggests that Reapers have unique IFF signals, so my alternate ME3 would be based around researching, deveopling and deplying some form of Mass Relay virus, that would essentially do the opposite of what the Omega 4 relay did with the Reaper IFF, any ship Identfying as reaper trying to use a relay would instead be shot straight into the nearest sun/black hole. Adversaries would be a Saren style indoctrinated agents trying to prevent this, with a big finale (possibly involving a small Reaper Vanguard) todeploy the virus and prevent the main Reaper fleet from being warned. Then, as soon as they arrive, their own technolgy betrays them as they try to jump to the Citadel. War is won withput dirct confrontation againsta massively superior force, and you don't have to find a way to work infantry combat into what is essentially a space war.

 

[Asita]

*convenience snip*

Truth be told the possibility of the reapers subtly sponsoring the crucible had crossed my mind. But ultimately there were a few details that I found very difficult to reconcile with it. You mention the Reapers not destroying the Crucible during construction and cite their lack of attack on it as evidence for your premise. That's certainly a reasonable hypothesis, but not necessarily a logically sound one (possibly, yes, certainly, no), especially given the sliding scale the EMS created with the endings, justified in-game as determined by the amount of damage the Crucible takes from the Reapers while moving into position, which in turn would seem to indicate that they aren't particularly invested in seeing it used (an implication further supported by the fact that if you wait too long to choose a solution, the game ends explicitly because the Reapers destroy the Crucible). And yes, the Catalyst does indicate (in the EC) that it was aware of the Crucible being planned several cycles ago, though when prodded it also claims to have believed that the concept had been destroyed (though again: Reaper collective consciousness. I can't dismiss the possibility that it's lying through its teeth).

To me though, much of this can be all too easily explained by sloppy execution. The base concept behind the Crucible is a tried and true method, and at the end of the day it just seems to me as if this particular train of thought is more us in the audience trying to justify plot holes than an honest attempt from the writers at subverting that convention...especially when things such as the Final Hours docs point to the bulk of the ending as contrived at the last minute and at least one of the authors supposedly blasted the ending as having been a pet project that - to its detriment - eschewed peer review and indicated a certain distaste for the catalyst in the form it was introduced in...It simply seems too much of a stretch in an ending which forces you to adopt the Big Bad's ideology in the eleventh hour, which in and of itself points to at least some writing problems. This isn't to say that the idea of the reapers banking on the Crucible's use couldn't have worked (Heck, one of my favorite fan variations made explicit use of the idea, and I similarly appreciated its use in the Marauder Shields comic), just that I don't think it works within the framework the writers apparently rolled with.

 

[JellySlimerMan]

Compared to ME3, which gives the player a last-second choice of their flavor of Deus Ex Machina.
Followed by a very shiny CGI movie that differs only by the color of the explosion and a few stock clips.

There lies another practical problem: Cost.

I can only imagine what it cost in terms of work hours and equipment to create just ONE shiny rendered CGI ending, but if history is any example (Fallout 3, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and now Mass Effect 3) I think games going for the "epic rendered cinematic finish" should to stick to ONE ending.

Or maybe I'm wrong and all the copypasta corner-cutting is just due to sheer incompetence.

It has been said in this thread that games are doomed by their own ambision of interactivity. And a proyect like Mass Effect that sells itself as "having choices with consequences" was bound to fail it not done properly.

However, if we take the word of Patrick Weekes, it seems that not only they made cuts to things like the Rachni appearing in the final battle, but also DIDNT want the Rachni mission on ME3 to be exclusive to the people who played ME1 and saved her. So they made available for all people. They also cut the "middle/neutral" responses because of budget and part of it is that Mass Effect 3 is a war story and it's really hard for Shep to feel middling about the Reapers.

It seemed that they didnt know what kind of content they will make. That is probably the reason of why Cerberus suddendly became a powerhouse capable of fucking shit up against EVERYONE in the galaxy, to the point that The Empire of Star Wars looks small in comparation, and that we have to stop instead of, you know, the Reapers.

Unlimited Resourses or not, there is just not enough time, logistic and labor to produce THAT many troops and ships. With or without indoctrination.

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Anyway, the only way that a game about choice would EVER have just one ending cinematic, is if the game revolves around Fatalysm and Predestination. You get a huge sandbox game where you get to make shit but in the end all actions end up either futhering the antagonist plans or become meaningless because Fate works around your pesky intrusions of murdering the prophesied antagonist or whoever. Thus, you get an ending where all your choices are explained and deconstructed on how utherly stupid it was for you to believe that doing X would change anything, and then comes the ending cinematic of the protagonist becoming insane and comiting suicide or something.

But in all honesty i have to ask: why not focus on gameplay and story FIRST, before graphics or realism?? wouldnt be cheaper if Mass Effect was made with sprites and in 2D??

 

[Blachman201_v1legacy]

I do like that idea better than the Reapers being giant flesh smoothies. But I still can't imagine how you could have a plausible plot resolution without them having some crippling weakness. They're just terrible villains in my opinion.

With Virgil's explanation that the Reapers had a standard strategy of decapitating the galactic government in a surprise and then running a long divide and conquer campaign followed an implication that they were afraid enough of an organized resistance to take steps to prevent it from happening.

But neither ME2 or 3 mentioned it again.