Stop calling it Deus Ex Machina

[aguspal]

OMG


DEM: FAIL ENDING.


/thread.


I mean, everyone knows they suck, everyone agrees than they are a MASSIVE fail, just leave it there. ...(well so long as the story is an important element of any give game. If it is not or if it dosnt take itself seriously, I suppused a deus ex machina wouldt matter in that case).

...

A machine that is introduced at the very end that magically kills all the Locust and solves all of humanities problems, introduced by a character we haven't met till now. I mean sure Adam Fenix was mentioned before, but barely.

Anyways, DEM doesn't necessarily mean it has to be some completely unexpected event or twist, it's when God or magic solves all of the stories problems instead of the people involved.

Marcus doesn't solve anything, he just grunts a lot of has an affinity for chest high walls. Anya doesn't solve anything either, she's just there to make babies (literally) and create perverted fan work on deviantart.com.

That machine solved all their problems, and it did it in half a second. That's DEM if I ever saw one. :/

Oh wow, I loved this was pretty funny and awesome, good job.

 

[bobhome2]

I always thought the Crucible itself was a MacGuffin, while the God Child was Deus Ex Machina. See, I chased people around the galaxy for... some kind of progress on this device which would do "something." And it turns out that that something-device is ruled by a literal God who solves all the problems.

So, to me, a MacGuffin with a resident Deus Ex Machina.

 

[AgentLampshade]

Better than "day of sex macarena" which is how so many do pronounce it.

That is absolutely what I'm pronouncing it as from now on.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

But the God Child is pretty much a literal interpretation of what a Deus Ex Machina is. The ending of ME3 being the use of a MacGuffin and a Desu Ex Machina isn't really something you can debate against.

 

[Nomanslander]

OMG


DEM: FAIL ENDING.


/thread.



Oh wow, I loved this was pretty funny and awesome, good job.

Yeah, but then again, I take back saying that Gears couldn't be arguable, because based on a theory of mine, I guess also anything can be if you look at the technicalities.

For instance, I didn't know Raiders of the Lost Ark was considered a DEM since the ark of the covenant was foreshadowed on many occasions to be dangerous and "not of this earth." Based on some technicality that would exclude it as a DEM. But it's also still a glorious example of DEM if anything has to be said about it. God kills the Nazi's at the end while Indy is tied up and left helpless to do anything about it.

Of course, the idea is that DEMs are a thing to be frowned upon in lit/movies/games. In Raiders, the DEM was one of the best parts of the movie and worked marvelously. UNLIKE the Gears example I made earlier.

 

[kenadian]

As others have said, the Catalyst is the Deus Ex Machina (almost literally). The Crucible is just a giant fucking MacGuffin.

 

[Ryan Hughes]

People tend to use Latin and Greek words to make themselves sound smarter than they relly are, and this is nothing new. George Orwell mentioned this in his essay "Politics and the English Language," back in the 1940s. Deus Ex Machina just means: "The workings of God" or "An act of God." Though often you can just say that something is "contrived" or even "came out of nowhere" and actually have a clearer meaning to what you are saying.

Of course, if Orwell could not stem the tide of English Language abuse, I doubt that I can either, but I'll give it a shot:

"Canon" cannot refer to fictional occurences. Please stop using it to make yourself sound like someone who cannot tell the difference between fiction and reality.

It is "Toe the Line," as in, to push against a boundry, not "Tow the Line", as in to repeat a line or saying.

"Locality" is not synonymous with "Location." "Locality" refers to both time and place, and is most often correctly used in physics in reference to space-time.

I could go on, but I will stop my rant there.

 

[ign0rantc0nsumer]

I think people start calling "Deus Ex Machina" when it looks like the writer has "painted themselves into a corner" and no resolution seems realisitic, so the writer throws out an unexpected object, character or event, which helps wrap things up nicely. The Crucible was not necessarily Deus Ex Machina but the Star Child seemed like it to me.

If the Crucible turned out to be a gigantic weapon that cruised around taking down fleets of reapers (after millennium of extinct alien species working on it), wouldn't have seemed at all like Deus Ex Machina. It wouldn't have suddenly sprung into existence to resolve the plot, it would have a massive undertaking that countless unseen minds and hands had worked on.

But the fact the Star Child pops up at the end and says I'm the Catalyst, and we are going to wrap up this galaxy wide threat with a few cut scenes ... that seemed the writer ran out of space and/or couldn't think of a realistic solution. And the fact that Repears were quasi- involved in creating the instruments of their own destruction (the Citadel and the Relays) seemed kinda stupid to me. (At least I think the Reapers built them, the plot got kinda Matrix 2 at the end).

I personally would have loved the cruising around in a giant Crucible fighting Reapers in a space battle but the game engine wasn't set up for that.

 

[ResonanceSD]

but back on topic, let's just go ahead and call it by it's proper name.

"A SHIT ENDING".

I thought it was a great ending, if you look at it from the Indoctrination Theory (I will consider that canon even if the developers won't!)

"it was all a dream and then I woke up, thank you for listening to my short story".


Was a terrible idea in grade 3, is still terrible now.

 

[Joseph Harrison]

Ooh, so many messages in my inbox I feel so popular.

Anyway to defend my points, I do agree that the Crucible is a Macguffin and it is poor writing but I'm still not convinced that the Crucible, or the Catalyst for that matter is a DEM. The way I see it The options that the Star-Child offer you aren't easy, in fact they are stupidly bad like one of the whole reasons there was an outcry was because of how dark people thought that the original ending was. Either you homogenize all of life, mind control an entire population or wipe them all out. Plus no matter what the Mass Relays are destroyed. It doesn't really fit in with the too easy thing. Plus DEM sucks because the characters aren't solving the problem some other wordly force is but Shepard and the crew make the Catalyst and Crucible possible and it is super difficult for them so no I still don't think that it is Deus Ex Machina.

Also for all you people who are calmly discussing this, thank you I was afraid I would have to put up my flame-shield.

PS: I know that my definition isn't the official one or anything its just the one my English teacher told me.

 

[Eddie the head]

PS: I know that my definition isn't the official one or anything its just the one my English teacher told me.

So an appeal to a false authority? That's a grate argument.

 

[Kilo24]

I can't really agree with the Star Child quite being a Deus Ex Machina. The Crucible was pretty much the whole focus of the third game, and - while it was never explained in any way how it worked beyond it being Reaper-B-Gone - the Star Child did waggle his fingers and get rid of the reapers as its primary effect. It's still really crappy writing, but it's a case of the writers saying "It's magic! That needs a Star Child!" when asked how the Crucible works. It's neither a Prothean supercruiser of mass destruction time-traveling in to kill all the Reapers in the 11th hour, nor is it all the Reapers suddenly shutting down to a bug in their networking code - I'd consider those a Deus Ex Machina.

In other words, even though humanity and everyone else in the universe have no idea how the Crucible works, they do assume that it will eliminate the threat of the Reapers. And it did, with ample foreshadowing. The way in which it did made absolutely no sense: summoning a Star Child with 3 magic buttons that solved everything. But it wasn't a genie dropping in out of nowhere to grant a wish, it was everybody working together on a wish-making machine that worked by summoning a genie.

I'm probably splitting hairs here in the terminology. It's still terrible writing by any measure for many of the same reasons that Deus Ex Machina suck. I'd have personally been happier to have the Crucible end up not working at all once finished; as bad a writing move as that is, it can be used to pose an interesting statement about desperate last-resort plans being desperate and last resort for a reason. It'd be better than ending an unbeatable threat with a magic wand of unbeatable-threat-ending in true poorly written heroic fantasy style; it's a rather ignoble end for the threat so carefully built up in the first game and maintained in the second.

On a side note, if the third game wasn't mostly throwing resources and time at the Crucible until the writers decided it was finished, I'd consider the Crucible to be a Deus Ex Machina.

EDIT:

but back on topic, let's just go ahead and call it by it's proper name.

"A SHIT ENDING".

I thought it was a great ending, if you look at it from the Indoctrination Theory (I will consider that canon even if the developers won't!)

No. No, it wouldn't.

It would need a hell of a lot more foreshadowing, subtlety, and details about indoctrination before it'd be anything more than "It was just a (sci-fi) dream." The first game had enough of a basis to have indoctrination be a major story element, but the later games needed to expand more on it (especially 3.)

 

[Treblaine]

People tend to use Latin and Greek words to make themselves sound smarter than they relly are, and this is nothing new. George Orwell mentioned this in his essay "Politics and the English Language," back in the 1940s. Deus Ex Machina just means: "The workings of God" or "An act of God." Though often you can just say that something is "contrived" or even "came out of nowhere" and actually have a clearer meaning to what you are saying.

It's still useful because even saying "contrived" isn't enough as most stories by their vary nature are contrived, Deus Ex Machina is an exceptional level of contrivance at a critical point.

Most languages - English no less - are influenced significantly by other languages. And Latin was the language of the catholic church for

Greeks were studied as they were the seat of democracy which was the major political force in England and later Britain after the English Civil War. And it's eminently suitable to use a Greek term to describe what was most noted as happening in Greek plays.

It's like Coup D'Etat, that is just the term that is used in english, even if it does come from French.

 

[Joseph Harrison]

PS: I know that my definition isn't the official one or anything its just the one my English teacher told me.

So an appeal to a false authority? That's a grate argument.

So, ad hominem? That's a great argument

Since when was an English teacher with you know a degree in English a "false" authority?
And here I was, so glad at how polite people were being.

 

[direkiller]

PS: I know that my definition isn't the official one or anything its just the one my English teacher told me.

So an appeal to a false authority? That's a grate argument.

So, ad hominem? That's a great argument

Since when was an English teacher with you know a degree in English a "false" authority?
And here I was, so glad at how polite people were being.

it's not an ad homnem
he did not make a personal attack instead of an augment
He make an attack as part of the augment

Your English teacher is not right just because they are a teacher (his argument)
and he is saying they are a bad authority figure because they are wrong(the attack)

so yes he insulted your teacher but it's still an argument(ergo no ad hominem)

 

[Sutter Cane]

A deus ex machina is tool used by playwrights to summarise plots to the audience and make connections that they might not have seen, in short to 'cheat' a way out of a complex plot. Gandalf plays a deus ex machina when he comes back to Gimli, Aragorn and Legolas in The Two Towers and fills them in on just about everything.

An example of a deus ex machina in gaming? Uh, I can't think of one right now, it'd be someone who comes along and suddenly explains everything that is happening in one go. I suppose it might be possible in a game being told as a long flashback with narration from someone in the future, because that someone would be able to tell you what was going on, but I don't think anyone ever gives up everything and glues it all together...

Weird.

That's certainly not what a deus ex machina is. Gandalf returning from the dead may be, but I don't actually think it is. Deus ex machina has nothing to do with exposition.

An example from gaming is the last 5 min of Mass Effect 3. Bioware wrote themselves into a corner and could not resolve the plot. Thus they pull the star kid out from absolutely nowhere, he has no connection to the rest of the plot and he hand waves it all away with magic. It's one of the most literal uses of deus ex machina (it's an actual god from the machine) and a very clumsy one to boot.

Euripides was very fond of using this technique and was even poked fun of by Aristophanes for doing so in a great number of his plays. There's nothing inherently wrong with doing it, but you have to be a good playwright to do it.

You do realize that the star child was foreshadowed several times throughout the game right?

 

[Ryan Hughes]

It's still useful because even saying "contrived" isn't enough as most stories by their vary nature are contrived, Deus Ex Machina is an exceptional level of contrivance at a critical point.

Most languages - English no less - are influenced significantly by other languages. And Latin was the language of the catholic church for

Greeks were studied as they were the seat of democracy which was the major political force in England and later Britain after the English Civil War. And it's eminently suitable to use a Greek term to describe what was most noted as happening in Greek plays.

It's like Coup D'Etat, that is just the term that is used in english, even if it does come from French.

It is a matter of preference to be sure, but there is a reason that we do not use the Gaelic or Norse terms for many things, languages that have had as much influence on english as Greek and Latin. Or, for that matter, English terms. The reality is that Greece and Rome were seen as the seat of learning for so long by the British, that they adadpted terms from the language arbitrarity. The point that Orwell makes is that this has had residual influence on the culture, causing it to value Latin and Greek terms more highly, and that this is often used as camouflage (a French word, I know) to cover over flaws in reasoning and argument.

It is true that most of the lingo conscerning writing and poetry is greek: deus ex machina, in medias res, even words like Iam and Dipthong. Similarly, most of the lingo conscerning music is German or French, but there is really no reason I see to use most of these terms outside of an acedemic discussion. And I think you will agree that the vast majority of the uses of the phrase are far from acedemic.

 

[Doom972]

You misunderstood, people refer to the Ghost Child, which is almost a literal god from the machine, not the crucible.
It's a new character that appears at the end of the story to bring resolution to the plot. Fits the definition of Deus Ex Machina perfectly.

Agreed.

Also, while the Crucible is not deus ex machina, it is a McGuffin - a magical device that, while never explaining how it works or why its necessary, is apparently completely necessary to drive the plot.

Why it's not explained how it works, it's explained that no one knows exactly what it does. Also, they explain why it's necessary - there is no way to defeat the Reapers conventionally, and the Curcible is the only solution they managed to find. Liara discovered its blueprints in her research.

I'm not sure if it's technically a McGuffin.