(Spoilers) Mass Effect 3 Ending is Evil

[Blachman201_v1legacy]

It does not collapse the narrative for me, it seems to follow just fine.

And there is were I always will vehemently disagree. The ending comes across as the Dog Ending to Silent Hill 2, except it we are supposed to take it seriously.

It does not rob me of Shepard's agenda. I fail to see how it does that. I always felt that, in the face of the Reapers, Shepard was just going to be a form of deliveryman, rather than the anti-Reaper Rambo. His agenda seems clear in all 3 games: find a way to stop the Reapers, do his best to see that that way succeeds. That's an agenda and it follows in all 3 games.

As much as Shepard is a stand-in for the player it is still completely out of character for him to meekly submit to his enemy, yet the ending offers you no other option than that.

 

[CloudAtlas]

Let me retry. Throughout the game, both Shepard and the player are shown over and over that rational and friendly discourse can build a bridge over every gap presented to them. They can refuse to do that, of course, but that choice is almost always shown to be the bad one. The message is clear; as varied as life is, we?re not so different that we can?t get along. We?re only enemies if we choose to be.

Then the catalyst pops in and say "yeah, all that? Not true. You are enemies whether you like it or not.?

You already agreed that the theme of unity, as something that is both desirable and feasible, is omnipresent. So, yes or no...do you agree that the catalyst?s stance is utterly antithetical to that of the story at large? Because it is.

Yes, I agree the theme of unity, diversity, cooperation is central, and it does not exclude synthetic life. And, yes, the Catalyst's position is in opposition to that. But isn't he your main adversary? Isn't it good that you don't agree with him on a fundamental issue? Well, other than that he wants to wipe out humanity and so on...

And yet all four of the endings have Shepard, and thus the player, spinning on their heel and implicitly agreeing with the Catalyst, throwing out all of their struggles and experiences and acting on the grounds of a few lines of exposition. No ending has the player embracing the differences between life forms. You can only destroy or erase these variations, or let the catalyst destroy them for you.

I do not feel that this is true. If you choose Destroy, you do not have to agree with him on anything. Synthetics are bound to wipe out organics eventually? Thanks for the warning, but we'll take our chances. By choosing Destroy, you do not make a statement about the worth of synthetic life either. All you're saying is that the destruction of one species of synthetic life - if it still exists at this time at all - is preferable to the consequences the other alternatives entail. The Geth are simply collateral damage.
Yes, Control and Synthesis have stronger connections to the Catalyst's reasoning - but that's exactly why I consider them, thematically, as the "bad" endings - the endings where one or both of your main adversaries win, to some degree, if only spirit. But I think it is good that the player has the freedom to choose them.

As for my point about the problem disappearing, I was just pointing out that there are other issues. In fact, the Krogans are shown to be even more threatening to the galaxy than the geth, and the implication that your resolution of that issue is a temporary one is far stronger there then it is with the Geth, or any non-reaper synthetic. So if non reaper synthetics are the greatest threat to galactic peace, then why does the story present, at length and in depth, greater threats to galactic peace then non-reaper synthetics? This is what I mean when I say that the ending feels like it belongs in a different story.

I don't know what to say. I just don't feel this way. In Mass Effect 3, from minute one onward, your goal is to defeat the Reapers. Everything you do on your journey is nothing but removing obstacles and garnering support for this mission. Yet, their motivations remain mysterious. How, then, could the climax have been anything else but a reveal of these motivations? And again, I think the endings tie well into the themes of the story so far, and I gave reasons for that, but there's not much use in repeating them.

Well, throughout the trilogy you discover evidence of the Prothean race everywhere you look. Their existence factors in the plot, the characters (Liara is a Prothean scholar, for instance) and the lore (prothean relics are very valuable). They take great pains to let you know these guys existed even if they?re long dead (and that?s before you meet Javik). Yet these synthetic wars, which the ending revolves around and which motivates our villain, get only a few lines of exposition. You see the discrepancy here?

Yes, I do. I felt that the mystery around my adversary was beneficial to the experience, but if someone has different preferences, who am I to argue? Well, as long as he/she isn't telling me it's objectively bad.

I started to write down some more reponses on what you said, but at the end, most of it just boilt down to "I just didn't feel this way", but that's not really a position you can discuss about, so I deleted it again.
I'm generally wary, and tired, of stories that aim for the greatest possible scale, like Mass Effect does. That's probably the reason why I didn't play any part of the series until this winter. But somehow, Mass Effect (3) just works for me, and that's all I can say about it really.
And lest I be accused of being a BioWare fanboy: In Dragon Age, it didn't. At all.

 

[xamufam]

Mass effect 3 suffers from too rewrites
In the leaked script & the final hour of me3 app & the codex
Shepard is going trough an indoctrination you hear whispers & see oily shadows you see & hear things that are not there.
from the app there were 3 catalyst missions that would have began with eden prime, then thessia last, the citadel, illusiveman would have turned to a reaper boss & Shepard would be under full reaper control. fighting it. In the app they also said they changed the ending after the leak in november

In the comics Jack Harper/illusiveman was exposed to the same reaper artifact that saren was exposed to at the same time as saren his eyes mutated. (this was during the first contact war)



i believe this was the original ending before they began to change it & cut content mars/april 2011
http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/995452-mass-effect-3/62230265
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyScZCu7E6g&context=C4562354ADvjVQa1PpcFOSt2YwlU7FG4bMaZgezVcXrA9se_aA6U8=
http://social.bioware.com/forums/forum/1/topic/355/index/16621390/3#16624681

From leaked script http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/995487-/62226083
one of the endings Shepard would become one with the reapers

Indoctrination
http://social.bioware.com/1376675/blog/212630

 

[Alarien]

It does not collapse the narrative for me, it seems to follow just fine.

And there is were I always will vehemently disagree. The ending comes across as the Dog Ending to Silent Hill 2, except it we are supposed to take it seriously.

It does not rob me of Shepard's agenda. I fail to see how it does that. I always felt that, in the face of the Reapers, Shepard was just going to be a form of deliveryman, rather than the anti-Reaper Rambo. His agenda seems clear in all 3 games: find a way to stop the Reapers, do his best to see that that way succeeds. That's an agenda and it follows in all 3 games.

As much as Shepard is a stand-in for the player it is still completely out of character for him to meekly submit to his enemy, yet the ending offers you no other option than that.

Interesting, I completely disagree with this evaluation of Shepard. I believe that this suggests that Shepard is a fairly colossal moron. Shepard can't be remotely oblivious to the fact that a direct war on the Reapers, even by the whole galaxy, at this point, is going to fail miserably. That's been clearly implied to the player and, hopefully, to Shepard since Mass Effect 1. I don't see his behavior as meek submission. In fact, considering that activating the Crucible has been his mission in Mass Effect 3 since it was discovered (yes, in Mass Effect 3, we've established that craw sticking point for some people), I don't see how that suddenly goes from "point of his narrative" to "meek submission." It doesn't really follow. The only thing that happens in between him actively trying to get to the Crucible controls to activate them and him actually activating them, is he meets a child-AI-thing that basically explains the plot. Why does it then stop being the mission to activate the Crucible and suddenly become a surrender, especially when destroying the Reapers is still on the table?

In the end, I still come back to the evaluation that a large proportion of the vitriol that comes out of the angry-vocal portion of the ME fan community (and let's be realistic here, it's still not the majority of the community), are angry that Shepard cannot choose to fight a conventional campaign and win (the very standard happy ending option). Originally, that option was not presented to them. In the Extended Cut it was, in the form of refusal and, of course, Shepard/Organics lose. But this brings me back to my first post. Shepard was always going to lose conventionally. That's something that has never had a plot hole, retcon, or other complaint validly leveled against it. That kind of war cannot win against the Reapers, and, indeed, the original scripts and focus of ME1 and ME2 agree with this. The Reapers are superior in technology in a way that current organics can't even fathom and they even have numbers on their side. Shepard was never meant to fight a conventional war and win because it wasn't ever set up as a plausible option. Further, I still assert that to do so would utterly cheapen the entire mythos of the Reapers and the history the game sets up around them. If Shepard and humanity can bring a galaxy together and defeat the Reapers, why could none of the countless prior civilizations do the same thing?

That would be a much greater plot hole than any that actually do exist in the game and the rewritten post-Mass Effect 2 script.

 

[CloudAtlas]

You can try all you want to justify the Catalyst in a vacuum, but that doesn't stop from not fitting in with the narrative. Its introduction is literally the point where the narrative collapses in on itself. It conflicts in every way the previous portrayal of the Reapers, it creates plot holes in its relation to ME1, and it robs Shepard and by extension the player of any agenda, reducing both to simple battery deliverymen, that are only allowed to "win" as an act of charity.

I never intended to say that it fitted perfectly. But it fitted well enough, at least for me, and I gave some reasons for it.
And how the hell does it rob the player of any agenda? You can do what you intended to do from the start, fire up the Crucible and blow the Reapers to kingdom come. I didn't expect anything else, and there's nothing "submissive" about that. But you're offered even more options. And, mechanically, the final decision was exactly like any other decision before: You're offered two or more options, and you have to pick one of them. Your agency was always just as limited. And a boss battle would have been the last I wanted.

And one more word about Shepard being "submissive" in her conversation with the Catalyst. At first, I found it a bit odd that she seemed rather calm, I wanted her to be angry. But then again, she's at the very end of her journey, she's so exhausted she passed out. Maybe she has no power left anymore to be angry. And the whole sequence had an almost dream-like, ethereal, near-death vibe to me, and, in a way, I found that fitting. And not a hard break with the previous Anderson scene either. And at the end, she does pull out her gun, and she fires...

Animyr, I don't follow your unity argument. First off, the argument you present is really only valid insofar as it addresses organic races, however, I think you missed a major point that all that unity stuff and using discourse to bridge gaps is really only valid in the context that the game presents it and the game presents it in the context of universally perceived assured total annihilation. So, given the context of "we're all going to die," then it is possible for species to overcome their differences and achieve some form of general united purpose. Organic life needs an Catalyst (pun, sorry) for your the unity theme of Mass Effect to be valid.

(...)

Maybe I'm just seeing your argument wrong, but I don't think Mass Effect was ever leading us to the conclusion that unity was even a realistic goal. It happened in this cycle only by huge effort and strength of character and in the context of impending doom, but even then it wasn't fully achieved. Not everyone agrees to help, no matter what you do (much of the Salarians, in my game). Not everyone can be cajoled or coerced into helping (Geth Heretics). Even internally, humanity couldn't get it together (Cerberus). I don't think unity as a final solution was ever going to be some form of goal for the game or series, so the fact that it is not part of the finale choices, other than the outcome of Shepard's journey and who joined him in the final battle, doesn't really impact the story to me.

I agree 100%. While I'd say that, yes, the value of cooperation is a central message of the game, getting all races work together was incredibly hard even in the face of total annihilation. Nobody worked together without wanting something in return. Everyone keeps secrets from each other. Some even actively sabotage each other. In fact, it's entirely possible to think the central theme of the game is that people are just stupid (one user of this forum felt this way and described in detail why some time ago), and you need to do their various biddings just in order to get them to stop fighting each other instead of their real enemy. Seen from this perspective, as much of a saint as Shepard might have been at the start of her journey, is it really that hard to imagine that she would sacrifice any of those suicidal dimwits in an instant in order to end the war?
That said, I still think that only the Synthetic ending violates that message that variety is good, cooperation's the key, and so on, in any significant way - and that this is exactly the point.

Further, trying to bring this to the main theme of Mass Effect 3, that of organic-synthetic conflict, we have only the direct observation of the Geth. However, keep in mind that no matter how paragon you were and how well you ended the Geth-Quarian crisis, you had to either commit a form of genocide OR a form of mass brain-washing to see it through to that "happy" conclusion. We cannot forget the events of Mass Effect 2 and the Geth - Heretic internal conflict. This suggests that an entire mindset that was counter to that of the main Geth as well as organic life could not be simply fixed via discourse. It had to be eliminated entirely, via one means or the other.

Those were indeed beautiful moments, philosophically. The meaning of free will to life and the ethics of rewriting the Geth. But, no, of course Mass Effect has no meaning at all.

 

[Blachman201_v1legacy]

Shepard was always going to lose conventionally. That's something that has never had a plot hole, retcon, or other complaint validly leveled against it. That kind of war cannot win against the Reapers, and, indeed, the original scripts and focus of ME1 and ME2 agree with this. The Reapers are superior in technology in a way that current organics can't even fathom and they even have numbers on their side. Shepard was never meant to fight a conventional war and win because it wasn't ever set up as a plausible option. Further, I still assert that to do so would utterly cheapen the entire mythos of the Reapers and the history the game sets up around them. If Shepard and humanity can bring a galaxy together and defeat the Reapers, why could none of the countless prior civilizations do the same thing?

There were plot threads that pointed in different directions on that:

Virgil mentions that the Reapers relies on surprise and subterfuge, and have a established strategy of first decapitating the galactic government by a surprise attack on the Citadel, and then shutting down the Relay system before running a divide and conquer campaign on the isolated pockets of resistance. This strongly implies they want to avoid facing a united galaxy: Ignored in ME3.

The Reapers goes to great lengths to avoid taking the long way into the galaxy, and are even willing to wait thousands of years for Sovereign to complete his mission and then some more for the Human Reaper project to be completed and open the backdoor, and first when that fails they decided to take the long way because they have no other option. Obviously there most be some significant drawback to this route: Ignored in ME3.

It all serves to contrive this very specific level of hopelessness [http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=615], where the Reapers can't be defeated but apparently can't just steamroll the galaxy, which means only this specific transparent plot-device can stop the Reapers, something that becomes rather contradictory when you read about this quote:

In Mass Effect 3, you know you need to take back Earth, but the path to victory is less clear at the outset. You won?t just find some long-lost Reaper "off" button.

EDIT:

We cannot forget the events of Mass Effect 2 and the Geth - Heretic internal conflict. This suggests that an entire mindset that was counter to that of the main Geth as well as organic life could not be simply fixed via discourse. It had to be eliminated entirely, via one means or the other.

Now, hold on a minute! You never genocide the heretics. You have the option of blowing up their virus or turning it against them.

 

[Animyr]

But isn't he your main adversary? Isn't it good that you don't agree with him on a fundamental issue?

So why are we forced to help him then? Especially since we have no reason to think that his position is a sensible or sympathetic one.

If you choose Destroy, you do not have to agree with him on anything.

Yes, you do. You agree that synthetics cannot be allowed to exist and live on their on free will. You either take their free will, take their lives, or use space magic. Whatever you choose, you roll over and fulfill his will in some way.

Everything you do on your journey is nothing but removing obstacles and garnering support for this mission. Yet, their motivations remain mysterious. How, then, could the climax have been anything else but a reveal of these motivations?

Comments like these betray what I think is a vital misunderstanding of the story on your part.

The motivations of the reapers are unimportant. They're evil robots; that's all they needed to be. While there were hints at some hidden method behind the madness, and that's fine, Mass Effect was ultimately about shepard and his/her friends, not the Reapers. But the ending is almost entirely about the reapers and about resolving their problem, while Shepard and his companions are shunted to the wayside. It lost sight of what was important.

I felt that the mystery around my adversary was beneficial to the experience, but if someone has different preferences, who am I to argue? Well, as long as he/she isn't telling me it's objectively bad.

An odd sentiment coming from someone who likes an ending where the antagonists convoluted motivations are revealed via exposition dump. And there's a difference between a mystery and having nothing to go on.

As for the ending, sorry, but I do think it is objectively bad. Regardless of my personal issues with it, it breaks many of the basic rules of good storytelling--show-don't-tell, for a start. Abandoning the focus on character, for another. If you personally liked it, that's fine. But I want you to be clear on what it is, exactly, that you've accepted. I don't think it's an accident that your responses to my points have essentially and increasingly boiled down to "well, I just don't care about that."

given a different context, conflict is going to be part of the norm.

Remember, the catalyst isn't just trying to prevent conflict. He thinks that two different types of life forms will always, always conflict due to their intrinsically different natures, and that this conflict will be consistently more devastating then any other type of war (ie that all organic life will die). And yet, most of the conflicts you listed are organic vs organic. The most powerful known non-reaper armies were the rachni, the Krogan, and the Protheans, all organics who fought organics. The geth don't even come close, in power or maliciousness. In the main story, synthetic conflict is not shown to be any more dangerous or inevitable then any other type of war. Which is why the Catalyst's motivations feel very forced.

And remember, even the synthetics that inspired the catalyst in the first place were always defeated even before the reapers were created. So not only are we not sure the problem even exists, but if it does, how are any of the solutions put forward necessary?

Further, trying to bring this to the main theme of Mass Effect 3, that of organic-synthetic conflict, we have only the direct observation of the Geth. However, keep in mind that no matter how paragon you were and how well you ended the Geth-Quarian crisis, you had to either commit a form of genocide OR a form of mass brain-washing to see it through to that "happy" conclusion.

I don't recall the happy ending involving brainwashing, unless you brainwashed the heretics. Even if it is how you say, we hardly needed the catalyst or the crucible to do the genocide/brainwashing for us, so why were they needed? And the Geth crisis wasn't the focus of the story either, sharing equal billing with the Genophage plotline, which had nothing to do with organic/synthetic conflict. So, for the third time, I fail to see how it alone provides a proper basis for the ending. And it is alone, as you yourself admit.

but I don't think Mass Effect was ever leading us to the conclusion that unity was even a realistic goal. It happened in this cycle only by huge effort and strength of character and in the context of impending doom, but even then it wasn't fully achieved. I don't think unity as a final solution was ever going to be some form of goal for the game or series

I think you must have played a different game then. You keep portraying the alliance as some sort of marriage of convenience and while there are some elements of that, by and large it's really more along the lines of the reaper threat forcing the races of the galaxy to depend on each other, and making them realize that their differences don't mean they need to be enemies. This message is especially strong with the Geth (does this unit have a soul?) more than any other; despite being the most exotic of alien races, the geth turn out to have very human desires. No intrinsic biological deviation of nature motivates these conflicts; if anything, human nature does. And yet, it's the former that the Catalyst claims is the *real* problem, and it's that issue that shepard tackles at the end, one way or another.

 

[votemarvel]

SNIP

Sure its logic makes sense, right up until you add the Catalyst to it. Then it falls apart.

I would really have liked an ending where I could have pointed out the flaws in the Catalyst's logic, I wanted to be able to argue with it and show it that it is wrong.

Yet I couldn't. Even in the Extended Cut I had to accept what it said as true or do nothing.

Why couldn't there be an ending where dialogue wins the day.

 

[Blachman201_v1legacy]

The motivations of the reapers are unimportant. They're evil robots; that's all they needed to be.

This, exactly this.

The problem with ME3's ending, more than anything, was that it was decided to answer the story's arguably most uninteresting question in the worst way possible.

Kind of like Other M regarding Samus' emotional state.

 

[CloudAtlas]

But isn't he your main adversary? Isn't it good that you don't agree with him on a fundamental issue?

So why are we forced to help him then? Especially since we have no reason to think that his position is a sensible or sympathetic one.

How are you helping him? Or maybe I should ask: What exactly are you helping him with? Isn't his endeavour to harvest all advanced life? That's not happening in any of the three main endings. And in two of the endings, synthetics can do whatever they want afterwards, in principle.
And even if we were helping him, how are we helping him more than we're helping ourselves? What would I care about helping him if doing so means achieving exactly what I set out to do?

If you choose Destroy, you do not have to agree with him on anything.

Yes, you do. You agree that synthetics cannot be allowed to exist and live on their on free will. You either take their free will, take their lives, or use space magic. Whatever you choose, you roll over and fulfill his will in some way.

No, you don't have to agree with any of that. If you choose Destroy, you only destroy the synthetics that currently exists. Which are, as far as we know, only the Geth, EDI, and, possibly, Shepard herself. But organic species can create new synthetic species afterwards. And there won't be any Reapers around anymore stopping them from whatever they set out to do. In fact, synthetic species will have more freedom to determine their fate as in the other endings.

If you hate the Geth anyway, it's a nice opportunity to get rid of them, but the above is still true. And if you're sympathetic towards them, they're simply collateral damage. It's brutal, it's heartless, but that's all there is to it.

The motivations of the reapers are unimportant. They're evil robots; that's all they needed to be. While there were hints at some hidden method behind the madness, and that's fine, Mass Effect was ultimately about shepard and his/her friends, not the Reapers. But the ending is almost entirely about the reapers and about resolving their problem, while Shepard and his companions are shunted to the wayside. It lost sight of what was important.

If the Reapers remained more of a mystery, would the story still have worked? Could be.

But, as a general principle, I find opponents whose motivations I know much more interesting. Better yet, whose motivations are actually not that evil if you think about it, opponents who make me wonder if they're not actually right, somehow.

As far Mass Effect, I can only imagine that many players would have been quite disappointed if they never learned why the Reapers were actually trying to destroy the universe.

I felt that the mystery around my adversary was beneficial to the experience, but if someone has different preferences, who am I to argue? Well, as long as he/she isn't telling me it's objectively bad.

An odd sentiment coming from someone who likes an ending where the antagonists convoluted motivations are revealed via exposition dump. And there's a difference between a mystery and having nothing to go on.

How is that odd? I might not want to know who the murderer is at the outset, but I do want to learn who he is eventually.

As for the ending, sorry, but I do think it is objectively bad. Regardless of my personal issues with it, it breaks many of the basic rules of good storytelling--show-don't-tell, for a start. Abandoning the focus on character, for another. If you personally liked it, that's fine. But I want you to be clear on what it is, exactly, that you've accepted. I don't think it's an accident that your responses to my points have essentially and increasingly boiled down to "well, I just don't care about that."

I'm not going to comment further on that passage, but I hope you realize that, if you adopted the opposite perspective, you could make a very similar argument about the depth of the ending and the ignorance of those people who hated it.

 

[CloudAtlas]

SNIP

Sure its logic makes sense, right up until you add the Catalyst to it. Then it falls apart.

I would really have liked an ending where I could have pointed out the flaws in the Catalyst's logic, I wanted to be able to argue with it and show it that it is wrong.

Yet I couldn't. Even in the Extended Cut I had to accept what it said as true or do nothing.

Why couldn't there be an ending where dialogue wins the day.

I don't know, wouldn't it feel kinda cheap if you could simply talk your way out of it? Isn't it kinda hubris to assume that just your charm and the stringency of your argument will convince a many million year old 'being' of the err of its ways?

 

[votemarvel]

I really would have liked the Reapers to remain unexplained. To me they were a powerful and interesting enough enemy that we didn't need to know their origins.

Sometimes a badguy just being bad is reason enough.

I don't know, wouldn't it feel kinda cheap if you could simply talk your way out of it? Isn't it kinda hubris to assume that just your charm and the stringency of your argument will convince a many million year old 'being' of the err of its ways?

Not really.

You solve many situations throughout the trilogy by talking to people, heck you can talk Saren and the Illusive Man into shooting themselves in the head if you want.

I'm not saying have that as the only option, just have it be one. Just as you could talk Saren down or fight him in the first game.

Plus if we are to talk the Catalyst at its word, Shepard is the first to talk to it since the Harvests began. It would be the first time then that it had a chance to hear the opposing argument.

 

[Animyr]

How are you helping him? Or maybe I should ask: What exactly are you helping him with? Isn't his endeavour to harvest all advanced life? That's not happening in any of the three main endings. And even if we were helping him, how are we helping him more than we're helping ourselves? What would I care about helping him if doing so means achieving exactly what I set out to do?

Again, you misunderstand. The catalyst is only harvesting as a means to an end; that end is the prevention of synthetic life (excluding itself and all of its servants, of course). The other three endings all do this as well; control and synthesis are the new solutions, while destroy is at least a genocidal stopgap.

As for achieving what you set out to do, you are allowed to achieve this only if you agree achieve the Catalyst's goals as well. If you refuse, well, the Catalyst kills you. So yeah, the catalyst's objective does overshadow Shepards objective, in Shepards own story no less.

I find opponents whose motivations I know much more interesting. Better yet, whose motivations are actually not that evil if you think about it, opponents who make me wonder if they're not actually right, somehow.

This works for human antagonists, but the reapers are an inhuman force, inspired in part by the Lovecraftian gods. Monsters don't need relatable or sympathetic motivations. We fear what we don't understand, and the reapers are meant to be feared. Giving them humanity actually hurts that type of villain.

Now they can still be given understandable motivations, sure, and they might even fit. But they're not necessary and they certainty weren't worth derailing the entire story and pissing off much of the fanbase in order to explain.

How is that odd? I might not want to know who the murderer is at the outset, but I do want to learn who he is eventually.

It's just that it seems to me that when the game gives you no foreshadowing whatsoever, you call the dearth of proper setup a "mystery" and when they resolve it with an exposition dump, you claim to feel satisfied. Sorry, but that sort of pacing does not seem like the recipe for good intellectual catharsis to me.

And also, you keep implying that they just HAD to explain the reapers. To reiterate on the point one last time, they didn't. Why? Because the story never about figuring out what they're doing and why (as it is in, say, a real mystery story). It's about defeating them (we explore their motivations only as a means to victory). They're a faceless foil for the real focus of the story, the characters. The finale should have been about the struggle of Shepard and his allies and friends as they overcome the reapers (or at least die trying), just as the preceding three games were. Not the backstory of villains who didn't even need one to begin with.

 

[Monster_user]

The ending was not about choosing the fate of the Reapers. You were choosing Shepard's fate, just as everyone else in the galaxy was choosing their own fates.

We got to witness just how the Reapers have conquered the galaxy with every single cycle. That was the ending of ME3. Why was the ending so needlessly and heavily obfuscated? Because Harbinger wanted it so. Harbinger is evil, Harbinger wants us to choose our own fates for some reason, but those fates are evil. Those choices must be disguised in some fashion. Enter the Quantum Entanglement communication Starchild illusion.

Look up the Prothean's, and their fates. One side chose "Control", and they became Collectors. The other side chose "Destroy", and they were eradicated. The single surviving Prothean, what did he choose exactly? We were offered "Control" and "Destroy", just like the Protheans. I don't know what the fate is for those who choose Synthesis.

Keep in mind, we never found out why the Reapers feared Shepard.

Make note of the Indoc Theory's focus on the Optimal Destroy ending. Shepard wakes up, on Earth. Re-entry kills Shepard, this is canon, so Shepard could never have left Earth.

 

[Alarien]

Virgil mentions that the Reapers relies on surprise and subterfuge, and have a established strategy of first decapitating the galactic government by a surprise attack on the Citadel, and then shutting down the Relay system before running a divide and conquer campaign on the isolated pockets of resistance. This strongly implies they want to avoid facing a united galaxy: Ignored in ME3.

You're making a leap from something that is clearly stated, to something that is not clearly stated. Vigil does mention the Reapers using the Citadel to cut off the head of the resistance early. The citadel is also used as an immediate mass relay for ALL of the Reapers to jump into main portion of the galaxy. This is clearly stated. Nowhere, however, is it stated or even suggested that the Reapers are afraid of a united galaxy, only that it is more expedient to fight their war intelligently. Listen to all the discussions with Sovereign, Harbinger, Vigil and Javik again. In fact, the Protheans represented what is probably a fantastic example of a previously united galaxy and they failed. It is not necessarily suggested that the Reapers actually care, so much as that they are actually not stupid.

The Reapers goes to great lengths to avoid taking the long way into the galaxy, and are even willing to wait thousands of years for Sovereign to complete his mission and then some more for the Human Reaper project to be completed and open the backdoor, and first when that fails they decided to take the long way because they have no other option. Obviously there most be some significant drawback to this route: Ignored in ME3.

The "long way" is to go through the edge of space, hitting a location that is isolated and can be cut off inconveniently, slowing their progression into the galaxy and potentially causing delays and other complications in their conquest... which is exactly what happened in The Arrival. I think it's important for you to remember that the Reapers are functionally eternal. A few years or even a very large number of years are likely not perceived as a particular concern. Having organics slash and burn their way back away from isolated mass relays, slowing the Reaper advance is extremely inconvenient for an invading force. If it is possible, simply leaping to the center of the enemy's command and control points and hitting them instantly before they can react is simply good strategy, where possible.

What you've done is equate "being smart" with "fear," and no where is that line clearly drawn. Again, if you go back to every single conversation with Sovereign and Harbinger, there is no suggestion anywhere that they have any concern for organic resistance, only that they are annoyed with delays. However, they are never anything but utterly self assured that organic resistance will not amount to anything vs them.

It all serves to contrive this very specific level of hopelessness [http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=615], where the Reapers can't be defeated but apparently can't just steamroll the galaxy, which means only this specific transparent plot-device can stop the Reapers, something that becomes rather contradictory when you read about this quote:

Calling something contrived doesn't mean it is, in fact contrived. In fact, nowhere in any playthrough, did I get the suggestions that the Reapers simply can't steamroll the galaxy. However, I also never got the suggestion that that was their purpose. Instead the Reapers came off as a constant question mark. What is their goal was a question from the beginning, and that question is actually internally consistent between the multiple re-writes of the story. The Reapers were never meant to extinguish advanced organic life. Through their bizarre AI logic, they are there to preserve it. In their mind, they are ascending those turned into Reapers. Extended war with the given organic races actually runs counter to their ME3 stated mandate in that it needlessly destroys large numbers of those that they are trying to preserve. Yeah, that's bizarre, but it's machine logic.

In Mass Effect 3, you know you need to take back Earth, but the path to victory is less clear at the outset. You won?t just find some long-lost Reaper "off" button.

I do think we can agree that Casey Hudson is a bit of a buffoon. Also, he didn't write the story. Also, he was responsible for the original ending debacle. While I do agree that this statement runs counter to what occurs in Mass Effect 3, I also would not rely on it. It is essentially a lie and sort of a bait and switch. I think we can agree on that. I can understand why this statement and then the reality of Mass Effect 3 would piss people off. I am certainly not suggesting, per my first post here, that ME3 and Bioware are without fault. They most certainly are.

EDIT:

We cannot forget the events of Mass Effect 2 and the Geth - Heretic internal conflict. This suggests that an entire mindset that was counter to that of the main Geth as well as organic life could not be simply fixed via discourse. It had to be eliminated entirely, via one means or the other.

Now, hold on a minute! You never genocide the heretics. You have the option of blowing up their virus or turning it against them.

And now we come down to the crux of several problems having to do with the anti-Mass Effect 3 hysteria.

And let me make it very clear that I do not mean this comment is necessarily directed at you, but I am using your comment as an example. I am not using it to generalize towards you, as I think you are pretty well Mass Effect informed, but I would argue that this comment is indicative of a lot of arguments from the screaming angry mass who feel that Mass Effect is filled with overstated plot holes and contradictions (there are some, there are not as many as stated).

The statement above is simply wrong. It is not a matter of interpretation; it is just a factually incorrect statement.

The purpose of Legion's mission in ME2 is, in fact, to destroy the virus. However, it is clearly stated by Legion that the only way to destroy the virus is to destroy Heretic Station. It is also clearly stated that the Geth are not the machines you see walking around. They are the programs that run those machines and it is clearly stated in the course of the mission that the overwhelming majority of all Heretic geth programs are stored in the computer cores of Heretic station. The number of Heretic programs that exist outside of the station is effectively and functionally very small. Destroying the station is effectively committing genocide of the Heretics as a separate Geth sub-race.

The effect of destroying Heretic station is functionally equivalent to the destruction of the Batarian homeworld in ME3 and the presumed results of the destruction of Earth. The vast majority of resistance from that particular race is effectively removed. The overwhelming majority of its existing population is destroyed. That's the definition of genocide, the goal of removing an entire race from effectiveness or existence via one means or another. This is also reflected in Mass Effect 3 by the size of post-Heretic destruction Geth War Assets vs. Heretic re-write Geth War Assets.

If you blow up the station, you are committing nearly complete destruction of the Heretics as an effective galactic entity. If you missed that, you need to go play A House Divided again and pay close attention to the dialogue and choice discussions.

The motivations of the reapers are unimportant. They're evil robots; that's all they needed to be. While there were hints at some hidden method behind the madness, and that's fine, Mass Effect was ultimately about shepard and his/her friends, not the Reapers. But the ending is almost entirely about the reapers and about resolving their problem, while Shepard and his companions are shunted to the wayside. It lost sight of what was important.

Ah, see this is something that Blachman and Animyr agree on, but it is not a matter of fact, it is a matter of understandable opinion. The Reapers are evil robots and their motivations are not important. In a way, I agree with part of this. I agree that they are robots and their motivations are secondary to the character story. As I indicated earlier, Mass Effect, for me, WAS always about the characters and their interactions. That's how I got engaged in the story, through them. This is also why Mass Effect 1 was the weakest in the series for me, because the characters in ME1 were significantly less developed and less engaging. It wasn't until 2 and 3 that we really get a good look at who Garrus is. We don't see the breadth of Joker's wit and humor until Mass Effect 2 in his interactions with EDI and the crew. The missions devoted to the characters in Mass Effect 1 are, at best, stunted, compared to those in 2.

However, that does not mean that simply having "evil robots" with "evil unknowable" intentions is enough for everyone. I am sure I am not the only person who wanted to know "why is this happening?" The Reapers are not Cthulhu. They are not old gods. They are machines and they came from somewhere and the fact that they are harvesting only technologically advanced sentient species suggest that they have a potentially interesting purpose. I wanted to know what that purpose was.

I don't know, wouldn't it feel kinda cheap if you could simply talk your way out of it? Isn't it kinda hubris to assume that just your charm and the stringency of your argument will convince a many million year old 'being' of the err of its ways?

Yes, it would be. This is yet another problem with the vocal anti-ME minority. I felt it would be. You felt it would be. The writers apparently felt it would be. Does that mean it would have actually been cheap? It doesn't matter really. It didn't make sense to enough people and to the writers for it to be included as an option. Just as conventional war (winning) didn't make sense to enough people and to the writers for it to be included as an option. But the vocal minority complains because they didn't get the option for the game to resolve the way they wanted it to. One can argue this until doomsday, but this is the crumbling base propping up the entire house of cards that houses the belief that the game is flawed to the point of "destroying the series" or "violating the spirit of Mass Effect and gamer trust" and requiring complaints to the FTC. "I didn't get my way."

That all said, again, I understand your arguments, but I don't agree with them, and some of them, I feel, are based on mis-informed understandings of plot points. This is demonstrable in both the cases of Animyr and Blachman in the case of Legion's A House Divided, where the outcome of that mission, and the ultimate outcome of the Geth-Quarian War is always partially dependent on a very clearly stated Brainwashing vs. Genocide choice. Don't get me wrong. I think you are both smart guys with good arguments, and that this is a fun conversation, but the statements regarding that mission and how they impact the overall story are just plain incorrect.

Disagreeing with how we interpret the demonstrated facts of the story and what they do and don't suggest, such as why the Reapers approach the invasion as they do (top of this post, for example) doesn't make it a plot hole, contrived, or collapse the narrative if it isn't what you want the given facts to suggest. We both interpreted it different and neither are necessarily incorrect, but what you see as a plot hole, I clearly don't. You didn't like the way it played out, and I did. That's fine. Those are opinions. This hits to the heart of the controversy, again. It's not a broken game with bad endings. It is a working games with bad endings and plot points for you, the way you interpreted it. Fine. We don't have to agree on that, but we do have to agree that not necessarily getting what we expect from a game's story and ending is in fact a requirement for good story telling. Writers and devs can't be bound to what we expect, otherwise we'll get nothing but the same God of War, Gears of War, Halo, Call of Duty crap that current bloat our beloved medium.

I think Heavy Rain is one of the worst games I have ever played, with one of the worst stories and some of the worst characters ever. It has what I perceive as absurd plot holes leading to a contrived ending. Is that true? It's how I view it, but it's not necessarily how many people view it. Just because I hated it, doesn't mean I feel the need to decry it on boards and suggest it's the destruction of gaming. This is what the anti-ME3 vocal crew needs to realize. ME3 tried to do some things and for many people they succeeded and for many they did not. If they succeeded for everyone in a way that was "safe" for everyone, then it would be the depressingly simple conclusion that was the final Harry Potter book (wow, was that one predictably and depressingly uncomplicated, unlike books 4 and 5). It's better to say "well, I didn't care for it," rather than decry the developers and those who did and fail to see that they tried something and failed, for you. Heavy Rain is well beloved by a lot of people. I am glad they enjoy it. I laud the creator (though the guy is really a douche-nugget) for trying something in an new IP in an unconventional way. I hope he keeps doing it, though I didn't care for his last outing.

 

[Blachman201_v1legacy]

However, that does not mean that simply having "evil robots" with "evil unknowable" intentions is enough for everyone. I am sure I am not the only person who wanted to know "why is this happening?" The Reapers are not Cthulhu. They are not old gods. They are machines and they came from somewhere and the fact that they are harvesting only technologically advanced sentient species suggest that they have a potentially interesting purpose. I wanted to know what that purpose was.

The problem is that what we get from the Catalyst conflicts with basically everything we knew about the Reapers already. His claims reduces Sovereign to a childish lair, even though in ME1 it is clear that we aren't supposed see him in that light.

-"It's just, like, your opinion, man!" snip-

The notion that the ending isn't bad, that it is just simply is impossible to appeal to everyone, is quite frankly absurd in this case. Especially when you consider how much of a non-ending the original ending was: 3 choices, pulled out of nowhere, given to us by a terrible character that appears out of nowhere, and that all lead to the same scene in 3 colors.

Which one was your favorite original ending, I wonder?

The one where the Galaxy is bathed in green light, Shepard dies, the Mass Relays are destroyed, and the crew of the Normandy maroons on some unknown planet with no means of escape?
Or the one where the Galaxy is bathed in blue light, Shepard dies, the Mass Relays are destroyed, and the crew of the Normandy maroons on some unknown planet with no means of escape?
Or the one where the Galaxy is bathed in red light, Shepard most likely dies, the Mass Relays are destroyed, and the crew of the Normandy maroons on some unknown planet with no means of escape?

It has nothing to do with appealing to everyone, what it was bad and rushed, pain and simple.

 

[Alarien]

These are both "not strong" arguments. The first, being that the catalyst/starchild thing reduces Sovereign to a childish liar? I'm sorry, exactly how based on exactly what comments? I would suggest listening to the entire Virmire conversation again. Yes, there are some inconsistencies ("we have no beginning") but they mostly just come off as arrogant and dismissive, rather than actual statements of fact. Sovereign, of all the Reaper entities we speak with is the one that seems the most dismissive and the most irritated by organic life. This might have something to do with the fact that he doesn't get to leave with the rest of the Reapers, but has to stay and monitor organic life. Frankly, this gives him a personality. My take. Your read is different. Okay, but again, you've turned yours into a definitive fact. It isn't remotely so.

Second, you cannot use something I already stated was a problem as proof that I am incorrect. I clearly stated in my first post on this thread that the first ending was rushed, undeveloped, and left very bad questions, particularly in regards to the destruction of the relays and the presence of the Turian/Quarian fleets in a location where they could potentially die of eventual starvation. That's bad. Ugh.

Of course, I also stated that the Extended Ending cleaned this up quite a bit. I also admitted that it was bad that that was necessary.

So... what was your argument regarding that? That I didn't like something particularly that you also didn't like, but that I reformed my opinion based on further DLC, which I do blame Bioware for having to do. Am I not allowed to view the final product as a whole and judge it in its entirety?

You really keep coming back to this stance that "I am right, you are wrong" but you gloss over the fact that some of your argument was actually factually incorrect, and the rest boils down to difference of opinion. Further, you snip quote something into modern valley girl parlance, which, I think it's safe to say I have not once written in. So... opinion as fact and insults to boot?

I suggest you go watch MovieBob's discussions in the Big Picture. "Mutants and Masses" is a good one. It boils down to his quote "this is why we can't have nice things." For the most part, this discussion has been about 500% better than almost every Mass Effect discussion on these forums that I've seen, because it discusses the pros and cons of the story/development and ME3 based on the facts presented by the story and the interpretations of those, but now it's starting to devolve into the "if you disagree with me, you're either wrong or stupid," standard silliness that has dominated the vocal minority's preciously held belief that this game has, somehow, wronged them personally.

 

[Blachman201_v1legacy]

To be honest, I am quite willing to agree to disagree here, and just leave at that. But come on now, that "vocal minority" argument has been thoroughly disproved.

http://social.bioware.com/633606/polls/28989

EDIT:

And of course people feel wronged personally when a product they have invested considerable amounts of time and money in fails to not only live up to their baseline expectations, but it also turns out the seller lied through their teeth in their advertising. It is really not a big mystery.

 

[votemarvel]

I don't know, wouldn't it feel kinda cheap if you could simply talk your way out of it? Isn't it kinda hubris to assume that just your charm and the stringency of your argument will convince a many million year old 'being' of the err of its ways?

Yes, it would be. This is yet another problem with the vocal anti-ME minority. I felt it would be. You felt it would be. The writers apparently felt it would be. Does that mean it would have actually been cheap? It doesn't matter really. It didn't make sense to enough people and to the writers for it to be included as an option. Just as conventional war (winning) didn't make sense to enough people and to the writers for it to be included as an option. But the vocal minority complains because they didn't get the option for the game to resolve the way they wanted it to. One can argue this until doomsday, but this is the crumbling base propping up the entire house of cards that houses the belief that the game is flawed to the point of "destroying the series" or "violating the spirit of Mass Effect and gamer trust" and requiring complaints to the FTC. "I didn't get my way."

As I said before this wouldn't have been the only ending, just one of the options and I don't see why wanting that makes me anti-ME3.

Would having the option to 'talk down' the Catalyst really have been any worse, or indeed any better, than accepting its word on three different ways to kill yourself.

Now we have the option to play the shipped endings, the Extended Cut endings and if you have a PC there are ending mods should you want to use them.

Options are good because you don't have to use them, just as if there were a way to win by dialogue you wouldn't have had to take it.

 

[Alarien]

To be fair martel, I didn't mean to suggest that you personally were anti-ME3 for suggesting that a talk down option was viable and should have been included. I keep generalizing to the masses, and it's not my intention to bring that on you. I disagree with it as a viable or sensible option, personally. That doesn't mean you're wrong for suggesting it.

What I keep drawing to is the connection of "I wanted this" to "This game ruined my childhood." Nowhere have you done that. Unfortunately, many have.

Blachman, I think agreeing to disagree is the way to go. It always was, as it is ever in these situations.

However, I do have to take issue with your proof against the vocal minority comment. ME3 sold millions of copies. You're welcome to show evidence, but I would suggest that it is quite likely (not claiming fact) that the majority of owners of Mass Effect 3 have never taken part in the Bioware Social Network beyond making the now required account (thanks Origin, you still suck... though this silliness started with the SN and Dragon Age 1). It's demonstrable that the vast majority did not take part in that poll.

Yes, the overwhelming majority of people who took part in an online poll on the Bioware SN voted for the endings suck option. So, of the millions of copies, about 75,000 votes were cast on this poll. That's not 1/10 of the initial sales in North America alone.

Now, can you draw a conclusion that perhaps a majority of gamers were dissatisfied with the ending? Yes, it's an easily acceptable outcome from that poll, however limited it is. There are a couple interesting things to keep in mind though: That poll is particularly worded badly. There are 3 options: 1)omgtheworldisending; 2)finebutfixitinaspecific way and 3) fine. None of these address my opinion which is 4)meh, but the rest of the game was good enough that I don't care, if you fix it, that's just icing. I'm sure there are countless other valid votes too. It pretty much boils down to all or nothing. I, myself, would have certainly voted for A as well, as I did want an improved or more clarified ending.

Still, this does not prove that the vocally angry portion of the Mass Effect 3 playing community was no, in fact, the overall minority. Note, I said "vocally angry," not the "overall dissatisfied with the ending." The latter very well might have been the majority, and I would have been in it.