Mass Effect 3

[werewillf]

[QUOTE=lilyWhite;8160946]One of the things I liked about ME3 was that it didn't need a slideshow at the end—you didn't need a slideshow to know that Wrex has more peaceful plans for the krogan and Wreav's plans are more militaristic, and Eve will oppose Wreav's plans if she is alive...
Having a slideshow to show everyone's fates would have taken forever.QUOTE]

Yes! This. Show don't tell. Reverting to teacher mode: What can we learn from this writers? lol

[Zoombie]

After sinking forever into a game, I want the ending to be forever.

[lilyWhite]

Originally Posted by Zoombie

I know that fans would have bitched about this, but I'd have actually liked 4x TBS grand strategy game stuff thrown in, with your start condition based off your actions in previous games. Then, while you do the individualistic, small unit tactic stuff to fight the Reapers, you ALSO help do the major fights and such. The better you do in the 4x game (which should be impossible in the long run), the better the RPG action bits would be.

And culminate it with a GIGANTIC huge, interactive battle, which could even involve the Crucible, which could be the focus of the RPG elements and the 4x elements.

Or something like that...something that makes it feel like you are more connected with the war effort...and isn't multiplayer. Cause I don't like multiplayer >.>

Now that'd be a perfect way to keep me away from anything but the worst possible outcome.

Originally Posted by Zoombie

After sinking forever into a game, I want the ending to be forever.

Just about the entirety of ME3 is the ending to the series, wrapping up all of the plot threads and bringing the paths you've walked to their conclusions.

[werewillf]

Fair enough, fair enough. Where is your favourite spot on the Citadel lilyWhite? Mine is the parks outside where you can look across and see the other sides of the Citadel all around.

[Zoombie]

*shrugs*

It's how I'd prefer things. Which, as you might remember, is what Werewilf asked. You know, I sometimes wonder what...exactly you want from this discussion, Lilly?

I mean, do you...want me to just say that ME3 is super squeaky awesome and perfect with an awesome ending that blew my mind? I've laid out my thoughts on the game: It's a below average Mass Effect game, which means that it is a good step above most games, and I felt that the ending wasn't what it could be.

Feel free to disagree with that, but could you please respect my ability to form a thought long enough to accept that just maybe I have a different opinion, not a stupid one?

[lilyWhite]

Originally Posted by werewillf

Where is your favourite spot on the Citadel lilyWhite?

Simple.

All of them.

Though the Armax Arsenal Arena holds a special spot in my heart. And maybe a chair in front of an asari dancer in Chora's Den. XD

[Katie Shepard]

A little late to the conversation, but I am in an awkward position of having hated the endings and later grew more accepting (although I think I will never quite be able to stomach their quite literal Deus ex Machina ...).

I finally was able to see the choice at the end as (SPOILERS, btw, in case it's not obvious): sacrifice all the geth and EDI (destroy), sacrifice everyone's autonomy (synthesis), or sacrifice just herself (control). If the Reapers still need to be dead, she can always take care of that from her new position as Reapermind. It was a pretty clear choice when I got there the second time.

[lilyWhite]

Originally Posted by Katie Shepard

A little late to the conversation, but I am in an awkward position of having hated the endings and later grew more accepting (although I think I will never quite be able to stomach their quite literal Deus ex Machina ...).

Well, that's what acknowledging foreshadowing is for.

I finally was able to see the choice at the end as (SPOILERS, btw, in case it's not obvious): sacrifice all the geth and EDI (destroy), sacrifice everyone's autonomy (synthesis), or sacrifice just herself (control). If the Reapers still need to be dead, she can always take care of that from her new position as Reapermind. It was a pretty clear choice when I got there the second time.

Oh, I remember the whole "Synthesis takes away your autonomy" thing in the ending, it's brought up exactly not at all times.

[Katie Shepard]

May I ask what foreshadowing you saw for the spacemagic? I confess, I did not see anything indicating that the machine would be able to do things that the people building it had no idea it could do.

[lilyWhite]

Liara theorizing that the Crucible could generate enough energy to wipe out the Reapers? The Illusive Man telling you his plans to control the Reapers via the Crucible? Those only come up around the second mission after all, and are further reinforced through dialogue throughout the game.

The only twist in the end is Synthesis, which, when you acknowledge that the Catalyst might have possibly combined organic and synthetic life in some way previously in its existence, ceases to be "space magic".

[Katie Shepard]

Right, so people knowing it could destroy or control Reapers takes those out of the category of things people didn't know.

But Synthesis? Synthetic DNA? Instantly, across the galaxy? All organic lifeforms in the galaxy are now partly synthetic, and all synthetics are now partly organic .... Not sure how having possibly done it before makes it not spacemagic, though. If a wizard casts a fireball in book one, is it no longer magic in book three?

[lilyWhite]

I don't think you get the whole "space magic" argument. (Which is fine, because it is stupid.) Taking your example: if a wizard was shown to be able to cast a fireball in book one, would it make sense for people to complain about the wizard casting a fireball in book three? And if the wizard had obtained some sort of power-boosting artifact, would it be implausible that the wizard could now cast a wall-of-fire spell?

You see the Catalyst's technology creating organic/synthetic hybrids in the very first mission of game one, though you don't know much about it then. You even find out that the Reapers themselves are a different kind of organic/synthetic hybrid in game two. Then in game three, with a power-boosting artifact designed to transmit energy throughout the entire galaxy via the Mass Relays, the Catalyst's technology is capable of creating a different type of organic/synthetic hybrid with Shepard's assistance.

And yet no one called the technology of creating organic/synthetic hybrids "space magic" when it came to any of the games until the point where some people decided that they needed something to make their hatred of the ending sound justified.

[Katie Shepard]

If you're suggesting I have misunderstood someone else's objection to the game, then you are mistaken about my opinion's basis.

If you're suggesting I don't understand my own objection, then I'm not even sure what response would be possible.

At any rate, the debate is not going to be a productive one. It's a good thing we're all allowed our own opinions of our fiction, then.

[Zoombie]

Actually, I'd like to bitch.

ME1 and 2 and most of 3 are pretty damn hard in terms of their science fiction. The only unrealistic element, really, is Element Zero and to a lesser extent, the effect Eezo has on living organisms, see Biotics. But they take that ONE plotonium element and expand it to encompass everything in the game.

I mean, for example, the red-lazor of death fired by Sovereign and Harbinger are not actually lasers. They're massive amounts of ferrous metals accelerated using a mass effect field and a powerful electromagnet, shot at ALMOST the speed of light at an enemy ship. It looks like a beam because the material is somewhat diffuse, but it hits harder than fifty nuclear bombs because...you know, physics are a bitch that way.

The machine-organic hybrids are created through obvious instrumentation: The dragon's teeth or the Collector facility, which are presumably using some kind of nanobot, cybernetic synthesis to transform people like this.

I suppose you could say that the Crucible uses nanotechnology to do this...transmitted at faster than the speed of light by some mass effect field trickery, but it still strikes me as a bit of a stretch, considering how complex and complete your knowledge of the target lifeform has to be.

I mean, I always figured that's why it took so long for the Reapers to start using non-human husks: Because their initial contacts and collections in this current cycle were humans (I mean, it's not like Saren was going to be feeding them non-humans, considering how much the dude hated humanity), they could work on them efficiently, while the other races needed more extended contact: They hit the Batarians next, then the Turians, and finally, the Asari, and that's the order in which the husks of those races started to show up.

But there are literally thousands, if not tens of thousands, of races that the Reapers and the Crucible would not have had any contact with.

And this is all being extraordinarily generous and saying that the nanobot disperasal pattern would even work, and that the heat waste produced by bazillion little chemical factories working to completely alter a body at the molecular level wouldn't reduce everyone to bubbling slag.

It...just strikes me as a weeeee bit of a stretch.

EDIT: Here's how I'd have re-written synthesis.

Shepard's mind and the A.I of the Crucible fuse into a seed A.I, which guides the galaxy's synthetic and organic life-forms through a gradual uplift to a technological singularity. It takes longer, but it has the same "sacrifice to create a new world" thing.

Also, needs slightly less space magic.

[Opty]

I still think the "Destroy not only kills the Reapers but all artificial life" condition was a cheap, lame way to force some unnecessary sacrifice or "price" onto that choice in order to cop out of a good ending. The physics involved in an energy beam affecting only AI's are pretty non-existent and never really explained, other than space magic.

I'm sure I've mentioned it before, but thematically and plot-wise, it seemed that they were building up to a Star Trek 2 type moment where EDI would choose to sacrifice herself in order to save humanity if and only if you had encouraged her throughout the game to grow in a positive direction (as a "person"). She even says toward the end that she would die for Joker.

Had Shepard taken a Renegade approach with her, maybe she wouldn't have made that choice or been killed before she had the chance (much like your choices could've killed characters during the suicide mission of ME2).

I also figured that sacrifice would've involved her uploading into the Crucible to activate it (since she was made from parts of Sovereign) and...in another nod to Star Trek (namely, TNG episode "Best of Both Worlds")...given the Reapers some subroutine command to go back into their deep space hibernation mode that Sovereign mentioned in ME1. Then, with their defenses down, humanity couldve destroyed the Reapers conventionally (thus disproving their doubts throughout the series about winning in that way).*

I was thinking perhaps whatever the Catalyst was (before I knew it was literally a shitty deus ex), it was probably something that would get destroyed at the last minute (to give that last feeling of "oh no!" right at the epic conclusion) or there'd be some unforeseen complication, which is what would prompt EDI's sacrificial choice.

The Catalyst-as-ghost-AI still could've worked in my scenario, if they'd made the Catalyst be Avina** and EDI could've just uploaded herself into Avina and destroyed/overwritten her code like she did with Eva.

Anyway, I'm rambling, but that would've been much cooler and more logical, IMHO.


*They totally blew it with the Rachni queen payoff. Should've left the Rachni out of ME3 entirely until the final battle. If you'd saved the Queen in ME1, she and her army would've flown in during the fight and helped turn the tide (depending on your war asset total). If you'd killed her, the final battle would've been much tougher depending on your war assets. The subplot in ME3 with her being captured by the Reapers was stupid and rendered your decision to save/kill her meaningless, given the very small amount of difference in war assets relative to the total amount needed. It also killed the potential for a big emotional payoff from having her come in at the final battle.

**It could've been retroactively argued to make sense for the Catalyst to be Avina since in ME1 she is protective of the Keepers (chastising you to leave the one outside the Lower Wards entrance alone) and in ME2 she has no data concerning the Reaper attack (we assumed the Council had covered that up, but we would've then found out that she had done it herself). These would have been subtle clues which would have backed up the story logic of her being the catalyst AI all along, incognito, under everyone's noses the entire series.

[efkelley]

Those are all very fine improvements, Opty. I'd argue that we can't NOT see the Rachni Queen's hand until the final battle though. Her suddenly appearing would have a deus ex machina feel without some hint that she was around. I agree that we didn't necessarily need to go save her, but maybe a brood nest would have been appropriate. Actually, maybe a brood nest where they're building ships. Then those very ships appear in the final fight. Could've been neat. Also would've required more art assets, etc, but whatever.

Avina instead of the Star Child would have been WAY creepier. And WAY cooler. Especially if she kept up her hyper-pleasant tone as she talks about destroying millions of civilizations.

[Opty]

Yeah, it'd have been very creepy to hear her politely, cheerful talk about galactic genocide. And, I agree, the Rachni should have been hinted at, perhaps as you suggested, but they handled it poorly.

[lilyWhite]

Originally Posted by Opty

*They totally blew it with the Rachni queen payoff. Should've left the Rachni out of ME3 entirely until the final battle. If you'd saved the Queen in ME1, she and her army would've flown in during the fight and helped turn the tide (depending on your war asset total). If you'd killed her, the final battle would've been much tougher depending on your war assets. The subplot in ME3 with her being captured by the Reapers was stupid and rendered your decision to save/kill her meaningless, given the very small amount of difference in war assets relative to the total amount needed. It also killed the potential for a big emotional payoff from having her come in at the final battle.

Yeah, it's not like the decision to kill her or let her live (in either occasion) determines the fate of an entire race. There's very little point in it if the only thing you acknowledge is War Assets...so you can complain that the only difference is War Assets...

Also, I'm guessing you have no clue what happens if you killed the rachni queen in ME1. And don't care.

**It could've been retroactively argued to make sense for the Catalyst to be Avina since in ME1 she is protective of the Keepers (chastising you to leave the one outside the Lower Wards entrance alone) and in ME2 she has no data concerning the Reaper attack (we assumed the Council had covered that up, but we would've then found out that she had done it herself). These would have been subtle clues which would have backed up the story logic of her being the catalyst AI all along, incognito, under everyone's noses the entire series.

An AI that galactic civilization installed on the Citadel turns out to be an AI that is older than galactic civilization.

That is the most brilliant alternate-ending idea I've ever heard. Then again, I've come to expect everyone who thinks they could make a better ending to be chock-full of perfectly-sensible ideas that totally fit with established lore.

[Zoombie]

If I were doing the A.I thing, I'd use Avina too. Yes, she was installed by the Asari, but the Citadel's computer systems slowly co-opted the program over the centuries. Then at the end, when it needed to speak, it used Avina's face and voice.

I mean, it's not like the Reapers don't have a steady stream of examples of them co-opting lesser races' technology and biology.