Animyr said:
CloudAtlas said:
And, as I've been arguing, I think the endings are thematically consistent with the rest of the story.
This conversation is pretty spread out by now and it?s hard to keep track of it, so start from step one and quickly summarize all of your main points as to why you think it is thematically consistent, thus putting them in one place. Bullet points, whatever you want. Only if you care to, of course, but I?d appreciate it.
Alright, I'll try, at least the gist of it. It's been a while for me as well, so I hope I won't get any facts wrong. I also won't explicitly address most of the critiques, because it would bloat what is to come even more, but please don't take it as me being unaware of them or even necessarily disagreeing with them.
## Anderson and TIM. After you enter the Citadel, you meet Anderson and TIM again. TIM argues that the Reapers can be controlled, and that they should be controlled, that this is the way to go. Anderson argues that they can't be controlled, and that they have to be destroyed - at any cost. And Shepard herself, I think, has never been a fan of TIM's notion that humanity should control the Reapers so as to dominate all species in the galaxy. This whole debate has been central over the course of all three games: Shepard fighting the Reapers, Cerberus, indoctrination of Saren, the Geth, and of TIM, and so on. So, TIM and Anderson represent the two sides of this argument, they represent Control and Destroy.
## The mood. After you opened the arms of the Citadel, you sit down with Anderson. You did it. Against all odds, and at the very end of your rope, you did it. (Or you think you did, but in a way, you really did.) You're at peace. The mood is almost... I can't find the right word for it. Anderson's saying something like "Earth. Look how beautiful it is"... that's the mood. You're not that at peace anymore when you realize nothing's happening, but then you pass out, and you are basically elevated into the light, into heaven. At least that's the symbolism, and should prepare you for what's to come in the next scene. Something that feels somewhat unreal, somewhat dream-like or ethereal maybe - and this is exactly what you get. Shepard is not behaving like herself there, yes, not as assertive or combative if you want, but I think it is fitting to the mood of this scene, and after all she has (almost) no power left in her anymore.
## The Catalyst VI. He is appearing a bit out of the blue, yes. This criticism is totally valid, as you don't want to introduce your villain "for real" in the last minute, as a general rule of storytelling. However, to claim that he is
appearing totally out of the blue is not correct, either. The Leviathan DLC, if you have it, is foreshadowing much its nature rather explicitly (if I recall correctly): its purpose, that its a VI, that it created the Reapers. And the Reapers themselves make some suggestive remarks too (on Rannoch for example, if I recall correctly). So I think there is reason to expect that, at some point, it will be revealed with some explicitness why all of this is happening. And since you already are at the end of the game, and it wasn't revealed so far, it had to happen then, if it was to happen at all.
Also, the physical (optical?) appearance of the Catalyst is heavily foreshadowed. While playing for the first time, everyone was probably wondering, perhaps annoyed even, by this one child who died on earth, and who's haunting you in your nightmares? Is it just meant to show something about Shepard's mental state? No, not only that.
And the Catalyst not as VI itself, but as "machine", is first suggested really early in the game, when you're told that something seems to be missing for the Crucible to work, and gradually build up until the point where it is revealed to you that this piece that you call Catalyst is the Citadel.
## The mechanics of choosing one of the endings. Over the course of the game, most important decisions are made in dialogue only, not in action. Whether you should save the Geth or the Quarians is just a dialogue option. Contrary to some complaints, you have, at least in terms of gameplay mechanics, more agency now, not less. You decide your course of action by actually actually doing different actions.
Yes, you do have to accept that the 4 options offered to you are all the options there are. Would it have been nice to argue with the Catalyst some more? Maybe it would, but, as mentioned above, I felt it was appropriate to the scene that Shepard didn't.
## The endings themselves - thematically. As I said, Anderson and TIM represent, they symbolize Destroy and Control. You even see them when the Catalyst explains your options. Control is exactly what TIM wanted. Destroy is exactly what Anderson wanted. But, as I also said, Anderson and TIM, in turn, just represent the whole argument, the whole struggle, which you're having over and over again over the course of all three games.
With Control, you are now in a position to dominate the galaxy, for better or for worse. Which, yes, such a concentration of power, this is an idea Shepard has been fighting against (or could have), an idea that is not consistent with the message of the game, I believe. But that's exactly the point of Control. And also, yes, it is closer to the Catalysts own solution - after all, his tools are still in place, even if used toward a different end. Still, there are other reasons for choosing Control than being wary of synthetics and thus believing the catalyst. You could simply say, well, the Reapers are powerful tools, I want to use them to rebuild the world, and the dangers of Control are still not as bad as the negative consequences of the other options.
Destroy means, yes, possibly sacrificing the Geth. Destroy does make a statement about the threat of synthetics, but in the precisely opposite direction of what you think, and what the Catalyst thought. Destroy is the Anderson ending. It means "Survival at any cost" - a quote from Anderson himself. If you choose Destroy, you agree with him. And the "at any cost" notion, that is one that is one that is not new to you: In ME2: Arrival, you sacrifice the Batarian home system to slow down the Reapers. The Geth-Quarian conflict can force you to pretty much sacrifice an entire species. Garrus tells you that his people basically gave up their homeworld. Jarvik tells you that the Protheans sacrificed whole systems just to slow down the Reapers. Anderson tells you that they're trying to survive, to fight the Reapers on Earth, well, "at any cost". Members of other species refuse to help you with the Crucible and the war on the account that it would mean abandoning their own worlds. This is simply how this horrible, this most total of all wars, is like. Doing horrible things, doing great sacrifices, accepting immense collateral damage, you did or at least experienced it before, and you're doing qualitatively nothing different at the end, in Destroy.
Destroy means you reject the Catalyst's reasoning (as it was up to now) in the strongest way: You don't believe that synthetic life will always wipe out organic life. This could mean that you don't believe that synthetic life will never try (again), or just that, should synthetics try it, organics will be strong enough so as not to be annihilated. And by destroying the Reapers, you make it in fact easier for future synthetics to attempt it.
Perhaps what's bothering you is "why does Destroy must wipe out present Synthetic life". Like, why does the Catalyst have to make this option artificially, needlessly worse for you, to make you implicitly agree with his belief "synthetics are dangerous". Why can't they just self-destroy or something.
Well, a speculative in-game justification would be that that's just the only way it works, technically. The Crucible+Citadel send out a powerful pulse of... whatever it is... that can be tweaked so as to be pretty much an EMP (Destroy), forcefully overwrite the Reapers' semi-autonomous brains (stop harvesting, and Shepard's calling the shots now), or to... whatever Synthesis exactly does. But at the end of the day, you either simply have to accept that that's just the way it is, or you don't.
Destroy also means you forego the Reaper help with rebuilding the galaxy, you damage the mass relays, and so on, and this will hurt, this will likely cost many more lives, and even more resources. But your wish for all species of the Galaxy to be free, to determine their own fate, to be not at the mercy of an entity like the Reapers, to maintain their diversity and not fuse them into some kind of greenish uniform blob, this wish is simply so strong as to be worth the sacrifice. It is a strong embrace of one of the core messages of the game - diversity & freedom. Which is precisely why I believe it is the "good" ending, while the other endings admit defeat, at least in spirit, to the Catalyst and/or TIM.
And since Shepard is, like Anderson, a military gal who shoots at things all the time, and Destroy means firing a few more shots, this choice feels all the more natural.
As for Synthesis, I think we both pretty much agree that this means accepting the Catalyst's logic wholesale. There can't be peace, synthetics will always make trouble, so we have to fuse both types of species, and who cares about diversity, autonomy, what those affected want, and all that.
## Everything around the Normandy during the ending. Would Shepard call the Normandy just to evac 1 injured squad mate (in the EC)? She wouldn't. Why is the Normandy running away from the pulse? Is it even possible? Probably not. Why are they crashing on this "New Eden" planet? I don't know. I get that it is meant to symbolize a new start and all that, and I guess that's a good idea, but this felt thematically off to me as well, besides from being plot-hole-ish. Of course, now the war is over, you can start anew, but to move from a desperate fight against almost certain annihilation, with immeasurable death, grief, and destruction, to "look, it's nice and green here" within minutes, that just felt really off, to me as well.
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To sum my main points up, Control represents TIM's reasoning, Synthesis the Catalyst's reasoning, and Destroy Anderson's - and, as I believe, Shepard's & the game itself's reasoning, are thus simply the culmination of many of the main themes and conflicts that were developed over the course of all three games, and that's why I feel like they're thematically consistent.
And it definitely took me too long to write all this up...
