3241

Let me enlighten you then. Tom, that’s so obviously wrong that I’m not sure why you think it’s so and it makes me wonder if you actually read what I wrote. I guess I’ll have to go point by point because you just missed most of them. Your suggestion is that people were disappointed in the ME3 ending because Bioware gave them the illusion of making their own story but “the final fifteen minutes had no interest in that approach”. The view is simplistic and simply inaccurate:

I said previously:

  1. People spent all this time amassing these war assets - much of the game centered around this effort. They thought they would be more than a number, they thought they’d see them in action at the end.

Ok, you get partial credit here. But it was more than just telling your story - collecting war assets was a major theme of the game, and the idea that you don’t see them in action at the end is a bad choice on Bioware’s part. They omitted from the ending what you spent much of the game doing - collecting war asset.

I said previously:

  1. The star child come from nowhere, a total deus ex machina. It and the conversation with it was a weak attempt having some sort pseudo intellectual cool ending, rather than the climactic battle that everyone was expected and had been led to expect up that point.

This has nothing to do with the inability to “choose your own story”. Indeed this was Bioware’s attempt to let you do that at the end. The problem is that it didn’t fit very well with things up to that point, it came out of nowhere. It was a tonal shift from a something more like going from Star Wars to something more like 2001: A Space Odyssey at the end. It just didn’t fit and has nothing to with “write my own story”.

I said previously:

  1. The “select one of three choices” is an old PC game trope and people expected much more for an epic game arch such as this. The three choices almost came down to pick the color of your ending. The war assets did subtly affect more than the color of the ending video but unless you paid very close attention, that was very easy to miss. People expected more than choose your own color.

This contradicts what you said, as this was Bioware’s attempt to allow you to write your own story at the end. The problem is that for such a great game/series, it relied on an overused and cliche PC gaming mechanic/trope. And the execution was so bad that it was hard to see that there were differences in your choices (even though that was Bioware’s intent). So the problem here isn’t that Bioware didn’t let you write your own story but it was done so clumsily.

I said previously:

  1. Much of what we saw in the ending made no sense. Crew members on earth (and possibley dead) magically appearing on the Normandy, the crew apparently abandoning Shepard, the Normandy racing to somewhere for no apparent reason, the fact that though Shepard had forged a peace, even an alliance with the Geth, and had made an AI an integral member of his crew, that he could not reason with the star child that synthetic and organic life could live together in peace as proof the Reaper plan was flawed and no longer needed. How did Bioware ignore this from their own story?!

This has absolutely nothing to do with the ability or lack thereof of the ability to tell your won story. It was just a series of plot unexplained plot holes. What the heck does this have to do with writing your own story? I have no idea, and I doubt you do either!

I previously said:

  1. The fact that it had been established that exploding mass relays destroyed the systems they were in, resulting in Shepard in winning, still ended up doing the Reapers work for them.

Another plot hole that has nothing to do with “writing your own story”. Need I say more?

I previously said:

  1. Lastly, there was a group, a minority, it appeared to me, that wanted a “happily ever after ending” where Shepard and Liara go off and make blue babies. I won’t deny that group existed. But I do believe a lot people would not have been surprised or upset with Shepard making the ultimate sacrifice.

You get credit here. But overall, you failed in your assessment.

3242

Did you see the same Dark Knight I did? Because Bruce Wayne seems pretty happy the last time we see him :)

3243

He’s referring to The Dark Knight, not The Dark Knight Rises.

3244

It wasn’t about self-sacrifice, though. It was about genocide of friend (EDI and the geth) and foe (the Reapers) alike. That’s considerably different. It is even worse when a major theme of both ME2 and ME3 is the self-determination of EDI and the geth. It’s different if Shepard, or by extension humanity is sacrificing itself for everyone else – instead, the Destroy ending comes off as rather selfish to me.

I can understand that part, and that’s fine – I don’t have a problem with reflection, but I think that could have been done in a better way with a confrontation with an already-established antagonist (Harbinger) instead of a bunch of babble from a deus ex machina and then a literal “ignore anything that’s happened up till now, just pick the ending you want.” I also don’t think the confrontation with TIM is close to the same as with Saren – you literally can’t do a damn thing against TIM, whereas you can literally get Saren to kill himself. If it had the same overtones it surely doesn’t have the same kind of agency.

There is a difference between “happiness and sunshine” and “triumphant.” In ME1, along the way, you lost either Kaidan or Ashley, you might have killed Wrex, you might have had to listen to the Salarian commandos on Virmire fighting an unwinnable battle and dying while you desperately tried to take down Saren. You had to listen to Vigil telling you how he had been waiting for 50,000 years in the hopes that one day, he would be able to give hope to a new crop of sentient life after his contemporaries had all died to a one (well, almost, evidently). You might have lost the Council. Yes, Shepard emerges from the wreckage at the end and the galaxy is saved, but there is a cost that is paid for it. But it is really up to you and your choices how celebratory it really is.

In ME2, almost every character’s loyalty mission deals with a bittersweet part of their past. Miranda loses the only friend she ever really had. Jack finds out she was probably the luckiest of the children interned at Pragia. Mordin has to face a friend who can’t live with what they did. Jacob finds out his father is essentially a serial rapist and madman. Thane has to deal with his son following his same dark path. Even Kasumi and Zaeed have to deal with some pretty tough choices. Only Grunt really never has to confront his past…because he barely has one (and that is his burden). The lesson of every since loyalty mission, though, if you’re successful anyway, is that dealing with this kind of emotional issue makes you stronger – especially when you have friends (like Shepard) to depend on. The whole idea of the game is that Shepard is someone who can make great people even better. And all that stuff you did throughout the game gives you a better chance of getting through the end of the game triumphantly.

In ME3, the problem is that the themes of the rest of the game, which are similar (the krogan patching up things with the turians, the quarians with the geth, Shepard’s horror at what Cerberus is sacrificing for power) are completely contradictory to the themes of the three endings. It’s hard to feel triumphant about any of them, because in one you are literally killing the people who are evidence that the deus ex machina is wrong about organics and synthetics not getting along, one you are stomping on the whole idea of free will, and the other you are destroying the diversity that is supposedly what makes this whole cycle the strongest (also, it doesn’t make any goddamn sense, but that’s beside the point). That’s why I don’t feel good about any of them and they feel out of place with the previous three games (including ME3 up until that point).

3245

I keep seeing people mention the peace forged between the geth and the quarians as though this refutes the reapers claims. Not to say it isn’t an accomplishment, but it’s basically a days-old ceasefire at the time Shepard meets with the weird AI kid. The reapers are thinking from the perspective of countless civilizations that had faced similar situations and, according to them, it always ends badly for organics. Maybe this time would be the first that peace could last, but it’s not unreasonable to think the reapers would not be swayed by Shepard’s argument.

3246

Perhaps, but Shepard doesn’t even get the chance to make that argument. Or the obvious response (“of course they don’t – you kill them all every 50,000 years!”). It is bothersome specifically because it directly contradicts the what the deus ex machina is saying and you don’t even get a chance to mention it, assuming you accomplished it.

3247

You have a point, I just don’t think it necessarily follows that all of the synthetic/organic conflicts were resolved for ever after. It would have made more sense had they at least discussed that, I agree.

3248

Neither of us is necessarily wrong. You’re listing fairly superficial points and I’m trying to look a little deeper. In the end, who knows what’s going on in the head of angry fanboys eager to make the narrative of Mass Effect 3 that it’s a game with a bad ending?

But mostly, I find it telling that we went from talking about “the general sentiment on the Bioware forums” to you detailing a list of personal issues you have with the game. Do you even know that you’re doing that? Read this post again. Now read your own follow-up when I didn’t try to refute what you’d written point-by-point. Are these the “general sentiments on the Bioware forum” or are they The Things Grifman Doesn’t Like About The Last 15 Minutes of Mass Effect 3? It reads suspiciously like the latter.

I call it arguing in bad faith when you’re claiming your own opinions are a “general sentiment”. I think there’s even a phrase for it. Appeal to authority. But that’s assuming you consider the Bioware forums any sort of authority.

If you want to tell me why you didn’t like the ending, that’s cool. There’s no need to misrepresent it. But the reaction to Mass Effect 3 is about a lot more than your Six Things I Don’t Like About the Ending list. That would make a fine blog post. But it doesn’t fully address the fundamental question of why this happened the way it happened.

-Tom
3249

No, I agree it doesn’t mean everything is going to be great forever, but for me the point is that dealing with that trauma should be something that is left to the parties going through it, not solved by killing both of them forever. One of Mass Effect’s themes for me is about the ideal of self-determination, for good or ill.

3250

I actually don’t have a problem with the destruction of the reapers also bringing about the end of your synthetic allies as well. I’m not going to claim that makes a lot of sense, but I at least respect that it gives the action a cost, keeps that from becoming a no-brainer solution.

3251

I don’t mind a cost, but it changes it from self-sacrifice to “well, fuck those guys I guess”, which is pretty shitty to me. It definitely changes the tone a lot.

3252

I don’t see it that way, any more than I thought " Fuck Ashley/Kaiden" in the first game, or “Fuck <whoever>” in the suicide mission in the second game, or “Fuck Mordin/Creature from the Black Lagoon/Legion” in the third game. Like I said, it’s a cost of the war. This one is just higher since the stakes are much higher.

3253

And they would be wrong. Vadar being the father wasn’t thought of until several drafts into The Empire Strikes back. The redemption angle was completely tacked on. It certainly was built into the first movie, despite the revisionist history that Lucas is trying to sell. So yeah, I think being able to make any decision I like at the end fits okay with me. If I want to be a jerk throughout the game, and than turn out to be a scoundrel with a heart of gold, than I have no problem with being Hans Solo. If I want to the the worlds greatest con artist, doing everything right, just so that I can rule over the reapers at the end, I guess that is my right as well.

Oh, and don’t forget, Solo shot first.

3254

Probably it might help if you thought about this in thematic terms, rather than in plot terms. Yes, the peace is days old. Nonetheless, thematically the peace (and I’d argue, just as importantly, the stuff Shephard witnesses inside that Geth AI or whatever) pretty much contradict the entire Starchild speech.

Riffing more generally on the way in which the ending discarded the game’s thematic content: Mass Effect throws a few themes into the pot, but a big one is the importance on relying on those around you. I just completed the first game and the choice between doing it together vs. go it alone is very much offered again and again, at least insofar as you get meaningful thematic choices. Furthermore, “do it together” is almost always the “correct” choice.

Mass Effect 2 links this theme directly into the gameplay. The only way to be really successful in the final mission is to bond with your friends, and to show them that they’re not alone in the world. You help the crew overcome their issues, and they help you. It’s the galaxy-spanning theme of ME3 (which I’ll get to in a moment) condensed into a series of personal stories.

Finally, ME3. The big war assets, in many cases, boil down to helping people come together. The Geth and Quarians, the Krogan and Turians, etc. Again, the theme is clear: we’re stronger together than we are alone. Only instead of just a ragtag crew of lovable humans with funny prostheses, it’s the entire galaxy.

This is why I say that the ME3 ending is incoherent (frankly I think incoherent is the best word for the ending). It discards almost everything about the game up to that point: gameplay tropes, mechanics, characterization, a bunch of the plot, and - perhaps most importantly - the games’ thematic content. It’s not that it’s bad, it’s just that it has almost nothing to do with the previous 100+ hours. It’s “Thank you Mario…”

3255

Javik comes out and says this at one point, saying that the Protheans were doomed partly because of their lack of diversity. Yet each of the three endings goes almost directly against that.

And Pick Kaiden or Pick Ashley didn’t feel like a fuck you because Kaidan and Ashley were active agents in their own sacrifice – that’s why it’s self-sacrifice, and not human sacrifice. :P

3256

And yet, you can get pretty much your entire team killed in ME2 and still succeed. You can let the council die, you can kill Wrex, wipe out the Geth heretics… make every “wrong” choice from that perspective, and still reach the end. Which suggests to me that the most meaningful theme is simply that “it all depends on Shepard”. Whichever way events turn, your presence was always crucial. In the end, it was up to you.

The Crucible didn’t do what the builders had hoped. Not too surprising, since nobody had any idea how it worked. But successfully building and deploying it demonstrates to the Reapers that the cycle is broken, and things can’t continue as they were. It earns Shepard the right to make one last decision.

If any of the options feels like it conflicts with the way you played the game (remember, not everyone was the unifying galactic saviour) then you don’t have to choose it. I don’t understand how this is an argument against the ending as a whole.

3257

Fair enough, that makes sense to a point. I maintain that the theme I identified is certainly there, and it’s absolutely ignored by the ending. Just like almost every other meaningful aspect of the game is ignored. Hence: incoherent.

3258

You can, but you don’t have to. As I said, if the bare minimum ending was Shepard giving the Reapers the finger and blowing everything up with a big fuck you, that’d be fine. But the problem is, ALL of the endings are essentially stomping on the themes of the last three games…which makes the ending seem extremely out of place.

3259

It’s a hard call, that’s the point. Kaiden or Ashley was smaller scale at the time, moving up as we progress to more galaxy scale decisions. By the end, you are making decisions on the reapers’ terms, which many didn’t care for, but that’s the ending we got (even in the extended cut) and each of those decisions saved something at the cost of something else. This theme has actually been present from the earliest trailers of the first game - I still have a downloaded copy of a trailer called ‘Distress Call’ where Shepard takes a distress call but opts not to answer it, choosing to deal with another threat. I kind of liked that they didn’t go with the ME2 option of allowing everyone to survive if you play your cards right - what kind of a suicide mission is it if everyone walks away when it’s over?

3260

Great points, but I will put in the caveat that these themes can be changed depending on your choices.

It’s hard to feel triumphant about any of them, because in one you are literally killing the people who are evidence that the deus ex machina is wrong about organics and synthetics not getting along

Very true, which is why I’d never do the Destroy ending. I didn’t go through all that I did to re-unite the Quarians and the Geth just to wipe out the Geth (and EDI) at the end. However, think about this: what if you’d made different choices? What if the theme from that earlier part of the game hadn’t been that Organics and Synthetics can indeed get along? This was mentioned a few times in the other Mass Effect 3 thread (the Spoiler one), but a lot of people here got the result that they were not able to unite them. So the lesson in their playthrough of Mass Effect 3 was that Organics and Synthetics are always destined to destroy each other. And in that way, this ending fit that theme well. It just didn’t fit the narrative created by the choices you and I made.

one you are stomping on the whole idea of free will

I hated that too, but in the end, this was the only one of the three choices that I could actually live with. Even though I’d been so against the idea as presented by the Illusive Man, in the end, this was the only choice in which we preserved diversity of species, the Geth, and the Reapers too. But you basically kick the can down the road, at least according to the entity that’s talking to you.

and the other you are destroying the diversity that is supposedly what makes this whole cycle the strongest

Yeah, I loved that particular theme in Mass Effect 3. It was especially strong a theme in the game if you played through from the beginning with the Ashes launch DLC, which I did. It’s just a shame that it didn’t matter at all in the end with any of the three choices. But this was my favorite theme in Mass Effect 3, and brought together the whole trilogy nicely: you had a better chance to succeed this cycle because you, as Shepard, were able to unite the races and get such a variety of species to work together toward a common goal, something that hadn’t been done before in any of the cycles. What a lovely sentiment. In the end, I was hoping that the game would end in tragedy, because it would fit well with the mood set by the whole game and it’s fatalism from beginning to end, but that this tragedy had the biggest tendrils of hope because of the unique nature of this cycle: the diversity of species and how you got them all to work together.

The only ending that kind of came close to this (but wasn’t really fleshed out much) was the fourth option added by the DLC Extended ending: saying no to all 3 choices.