In the past, I'd have just shot you with one of my reaper-beams...but considering as, in those ending I survive, I, along with my own kind, am reformed, I'll just have to settle for...you need a bigger gun.Zaeed Massani said:
Poll: Discussion on the Extended Cut Content of Mass Effect 3: Featuring Harbinger!
- Thread starter I am Harbinger
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Sorry, but I don't know how to spoiler-tag, so I have to snip.destiny_1989 said:
Anyway, upon reflection, and reading your post, it occured to me I'd gone through the same mental gymnastics back before the extensions, weighing pros and cons on both. I didn't think about our, the Reapers, knowledge, but more that of the Geth, and to a lesser extent, Edi. Also, I like Joker, and I didn't wanna kill his girlfriend.
Destroy and Refusal are the only ones I would even consider. Everything else is just ... I ...... wel..... hmmm.....yeah......What?!? You can try and explain it anyway you want, it doesn't make any sense.
Synthesis. It was most in line with what I interpreted the themes of the series as, and how my Shepard acted. Honestly, whichever one was the "best" comes down to personnel interpretation of the themes and how one's Shepard was characterized.
And, I gotta say, I love all the possible endings. That last choice was very thought-provoking and morally gray. I love it.
And, I gotta say, I love all the possible endings. That last choice was very thought-provoking and morally gray. I love it.
WHY DID NOBODY PICK CONTROL!? CONTROL WAS COOL! Seriously, Shepard becomes the god of the reapers and gets them to rebuild the mass relays and stuff. Awesome.
Speaking for Synthesis, consider this, if you needed glasses, and were offered free pairs for life, would you really turn them down?Barda236 said:
If you had the choice of curing every disease ever, would you really say no, because it would mean everyone, everywhere in the world would have to get a shot, whether they like it or not?
Just saying, people don't always do what's best for themselves.
Eh, it's not ideal, but I don't really consider it much of a problem. The synthesis is shown to be pretty much universally a good thing, so surely it is just as immoral to deny letting people become synthesised, whether they would like the change or not? It seems to be the most moral choice to me, especially when your other options involve either genocide or making yourself into a god.Barda236 said:
control
because what people don't seem to notice: it's not actually shepard who is in control of the reapers, it's more like his mind and ideals are fused with the reapers understanding of scale.
oh and destroy sucks major ass, especially since the voiceover did not give me reason to believe that this solution results in lasting peace because the organic races have learned nothing since they don't know what happened with the star brat and without an external threat(or a something else to keep them inline) the same assholes will stay in power and people will start to fight again.
i am ok with the ending, it still sucks that they just dropped a deus ex machina into the last game. the ending to dragon age was more grounded in reality and that game had an invasion of zombie-orc-demons.
because what people don't seem to notice: it's not actually shepard who is in control of the reapers, it's more like his mind and ideals are fused with the reapers understanding of scale.
oh and destroy sucks major ass, especially since the voiceover did not give me reason to believe that this solution results in lasting peace because the organic races have learned nothing since they don't know what happened with the star brat and without an external threat(or a something else to keep them inline) the same assholes will stay in power and people will start to fight again.
i am ok with the ending, it still sucks that they just dropped a deus ex machina into the last game. the ending to dragon age was more grounded in reality and that game had an invasion of zombie-orc-demons.
I originally chose synthesis before the extended cut came out because I thought that it just meant that my consciousness would become one with the reapers and thus allow them to understand and make peace with organics. Then I saw the ending and apparently it was space magic so that ending was dead to me. After that I went with control reasoning that I the epilogue was "then all of the reapers fly into a nearby star and are destroyed, but the Geth live. Yay us."
Once the extended cut came out my version of the control ending became impossible. So I have to side with destroy because while it destroys the Geth and that's terrible refusing to choose means we automatically lose, and I don't trust myself to control the reapers forever. So it's best if they are destroyed and the galaxy rebuilds itself.
That said I never played the extended cut. I just watched it on YouTube because I didn't feel like reinstalling the game, which I uninstalled after going through the original ending... sadly the series is still dead to me. The extended cut was better written, but the damage is already done in my mind.
Once the extended cut came out my version of the control ending became impossible. So I have to side with destroy because while it destroys the Geth and that's terrible refusing to choose means we automatically lose, and I don't trust myself to control the reapers forever. So it's best if they are destroyed and the galaxy rebuilds itself.
That said I never played the extended cut. I just watched it on YouTube because I didn't feel like reinstalling the game, which I uninstalled after going through the original ending... sadly the series is still dead to me. The extended cut was better written, but the damage is already done in my mind.
And that's what still fuels the indocrination theory. It's your objective from the start, it's what can really save the galaxy, but the Reapers are trying to convince you otherwise by A: Fully Indocrinate you (Control) or using you as a Primal Avatar for a Human Reaper (Synthesyze). Man, Bioware really, really missed a great oppurtunity in here, haven't they?Lunncal said:
OT: None. I make my own endings, and I won't let a fucking Space brat and their pet Organical Machine Whatever Jellyfishes tell me my only options.
There's not really anything I can say that I (and others) haven't said a dozen times already.
Overall, I feel that the extended cut brings the endings from a D to a C, maybe C+ if I'm feeling generous.
They still have severe issues, but they solve some problems and give a sufficient sense of closure and finality to allow be to ignore or dismiss those issues.
As for my choices, my primary Shepard chose Control. She wouldn't sentence the Geth and EDI to death and she wouldn't force synthesis on the entire galaxy. My secondary Shepard chose destroy. He just wants the Reapers gone, regardless of the price.
I don't much care for the synthesis ending. It isn't well explained and it involves the highest degree of space magic. I mean, come on, a device that fuses two very different kinds of life? How the fuck is that supposed to work? Also, it feels a bit too happy.
Refusal is cool and all, but a bit too bleak for my tastes. Sacrificing everything and everyone just so I can tell the glowing space kid to shove it just seems dickish.
Overall, I feel that the extended cut brings the endings from a D to a C, maybe C+ if I'm feeling generous.
They still have severe issues, but they solve some problems and give a sufficient sense of closure and finality to allow be to ignore or dismiss those issues.
As for my choices, my primary Shepard chose Control. She wouldn't sentence the Geth and EDI to death and she wouldn't force synthesis on the entire galaxy. My secondary Shepard chose destroy. He just wants the Reapers gone, regardless of the price.
I don't much care for the synthesis ending. It isn't well explained and it involves the highest degree of space magic. I mean, come on, a device that fuses two very different kinds of life? How the fuck is that supposed to work? Also, it feels a bit too happy.
Refusal is cool and all, but a bit too bleak for my tastes. Sacrificing everything and everyone just so I can tell the glowing space kid to shove it just seems dickish.
Destroy was the only option I ever considered. I picked Synthesis once, at the end of my Insanity run, just to see the full cut scene on tv, rather than YouTube. And I loved how shooting that smug little shit Catalyst in the face will automatically trigger the Refusal Ending
Having listened to whatever the Catalyst is, both in the standard and Extended Cut scenes, explain the cold, flawed, overly analytical logic the Reapers used as their motivation for culling the galaxy, they had to burn. Every last single one of them. It was justice, and the only logical thing a emotional human could do. In both Control and Synthesis, they all survived, inspite of the trillions of lives they destroyed over the millenia. I simply felt there was no possible way my Shepard could face his friends, loved ones, comrades, or the rest of the galaxy if the war ended in a draw that left the Reapers alive. How could any of us look into the eyes of a survivor of Thessia, Palavin, Earth or any other world decimated if we didn't destroy them? Extended Cut outcomes aside, whatever the Reapers provide the survivors won't include the people they lost. Simple as that. While the Destroy option may be simpled minded in its Eye for an Eye stance, I couldn't have my Shep pick anything else. And yes, Destroy does give you the Shepard Lives scene at the end, so I'm hoping for a big happy reunion on Earth when the Normandy gets home... Besides, if Shepard lives through Destroy, whose to say he doesnt warn the galaxy about the perpetual war between organics and synthetics? Dead men tell no tales, and Shep ain't dead. Destroy could theoretically be a viable ending in that Shepard's warning prevents another war with sythetics that Synthesis is designed to prevent.
If possible I would like to ask a general question. Knowing what the endings were going to be prior to the Extended Cut, did anyone select a different ending when the choice arose? I ask because I had a weird moment during my fourth playthrough. By that point, the facial recognition issue was finally repaired, so my true Rowan Shepard was finally in ME3, rather than his three previous dopplegangers. Knowing what was in store at the end, I had to properly consider what Rowan would've done in the end had I not known what the choices were going to be. While I did select Destroy again, a lot of thought went into that choice. Did anyone else have an experience like that?
Having listened to whatever the Catalyst is, both in the standard and Extended Cut scenes, explain the cold, flawed, overly analytical logic the Reapers used as their motivation for culling the galaxy, they had to burn. Every last single one of them. It was justice, and the only logical thing a emotional human could do. In both Control and Synthesis, they all survived, inspite of the trillions of lives they destroyed over the millenia. I simply felt there was no possible way my Shepard could face his friends, loved ones, comrades, or the rest of the galaxy if the war ended in a draw that left the Reapers alive. How could any of us look into the eyes of a survivor of Thessia, Palavin, Earth or any other world decimated if we didn't destroy them? Extended Cut outcomes aside, whatever the Reapers provide the survivors won't include the people they lost. Simple as that. While the Destroy option may be simpled minded in its Eye for an Eye stance, I couldn't have my Shep pick anything else. And yes, Destroy does give you the Shepard Lives scene at the end, so I'm hoping for a big happy reunion on Earth when the Normandy gets home... Besides, if Shepard lives through Destroy, whose to say he doesnt warn the galaxy about the perpetual war between organics and synthetics? Dead men tell no tales, and Shep ain't dead. Destroy could theoretically be a viable ending in that Shepard's warning prevents another war with sythetics that Synthesis is designed to prevent.
If possible I would like to ask a general question. Knowing what the endings were going to be prior to the Extended Cut, did anyone select a different ending when the choice arose? I ask because I had a weird moment during my fourth playthrough. By that point, the facial recognition issue was finally repaired, so my true Rowan Shepard was finally in ME3, rather than his three previous dopplegangers. Knowing what was in store at the end, I had to properly consider what Rowan would've done in the end had I not known what the choices were going to be. While I did select Destroy again, a lot of thought went into that choice. Did anyone else have an experience like that?
Pre-extended cut, I picked control, mostly because it was the ending I had the least issue with morally.
It didn't sit right with me that the destroy ending meant sacrificing the geth and edi, as well as potentially any being sufficiently augmented, and the synthesis ending seemed like a violation of every species on a fundamental level. I reasoned that at least with the control ending everyone else got to keep on going, and maintain a sense of individuality (something I interpeted a organic/synthetic genetic fusion eradicating on some level).
I think with EC, I'm still comfortable with that choice, but only with the benefit of hindsight provided by the refusal ending. To me, the starchild didn't sit right with me because, cold logic aside, it presents it's goal as something borderline benevolent and beneficial for the universe, it's own warped way of achieving sysnthesis, (which it now elaborates as being something its own creators disagreed with) since it lacks the organic nature in order to achive it properly. But the child's temprament is at odds with the reapers themselves. Sovereign and Harbinger are so glib and self-superior, even the small reaper on rannoch treats you with contempt, which seems to imply that the reapers are at this stage self-perpetuating, and may not even be aware of the child at all.
If you refuse the control ending when explain to you, the child outright states that it doesn't really like the idea of sheperd replacing it either. Couple with with the sudden 'so be it' of the refusal ending makes it pretty easy to assume that everything about the child is a act, that in reality it is no more well meaning than any reaper. Frankly that made essentially usurping it and seemingly eradicating it all the more satisfying. If it wanted to present itself as kind and then passive-aggresivly threaten men with options that I get no part in, then damn right I'm gonna take the option to screw it over, and all this without having to sacrifice any more allies.
I actually think had the refusal ending been a little more fleshed out, it would've been the most in keeping with the tone of the series overall... until we get to the modified stargazer scene which describes how the next ccle overcame the reapers by not repeating the 'mistake' of rejecting the childs (casey hudsons) endings.
...at which point I realised we'd been given the finger.
Do I think god/reaper outdoor voice sheperd of the extended control ending is a perfect solution? No, but that why I liekd it, maybe the cycle will continue, but if it does, it would be because my sheperd was fallible, all good characters have flaws, everyone took a renegade option at least once, it's what makes good characters interesting.
My two cents, I don't see a whole lotta love for the control ending, thought I'd raise a few points.
It didn't sit right with me that the destroy ending meant sacrificing the geth and edi, as well as potentially any being sufficiently augmented, and the synthesis ending seemed like a violation of every species on a fundamental level. I reasoned that at least with the control ending everyone else got to keep on going, and maintain a sense of individuality (something I interpeted a organic/synthetic genetic fusion eradicating on some level).
I think with EC, I'm still comfortable with that choice, but only with the benefit of hindsight provided by the refusal ending. To me, the starchild didn't sit right with me because, cold logic aside, it presents it's goal as something borderline benevolent and beneficial for the universe, it's own warped way of achieving sysnthesis, (which it now elaborates as being something its own creators disagreed with) since it lacks the organic nature in order to achive it properly. But the child's temprament is at odds with the reapers themselves. Sovereign and Harbinger are so glib and self-superior, even the small reaper on rannoch treats you with contempt, which seems to imply that the reapers are at this stage self-perpetuating, and may not even be aware of the child at all.
If you refuse the control ending when explain to you, the child outright states that it doesn't really like the idea of sheperd replacing it either. Couple with with the sudden 'so be it' of the refusal ending makes it pretty easy to assume that everything about the child is a act, that in reality it is no more well meaning than any reaper. Frankly that made essentially usurping it and seemingly eradicating it all the more satisfying. If it wanted to present itself as kind and then passive-aggresivly threaten men with options that I get no part in, then damn right I'm gonna take the option to screw it over, and all this without having to sacrifice any more allies.
I actually think had the refusal ending been a little more fleshed out, it would've been the most in keeping with the tone of the series overall... until we get to the modified stargazer scene which describes how the next ccle overcame the reapers by not repeating the 'mistake' of rejecting the childs (casey hudsons) endings.
...at which point I realised we'd been given the finger.
Do I think god/reaper outdoor voice sheperd of the extended control ending is a perfect solution? No, but that why I liekd it, maybe the cycle will continue, but if it does, it would be because my sheperd was fallible, all good characters have flaws, everyone took a renegade option at least once, it's what makes good characters interesting.
My two cents, I don't see a whole lotta love for the control ending, thought I'd raise a few points.