Given circumstances beyond my control it is literally impossible for me to get the best ME3 endings at this time.  Some of it, a lot of it, comes down to corporate fuck-wittery. Xbox Live is not an option at this time, which precludes any of the options to increase my readiness rating above default. Likewise, I also cannot add the DLC's from previous games which might (I believe) push me over the final edge for 'best endings'.

It, however, is irrelevant.  ME3 is, for the most part, an extremely good game. The storytelling is top notch, and given the relative sandbox nature of the game, that is saying something.  However, the irrelevancy is due to the singular, notable exception of the ending.  While I haven't experienced every possible ending, I have looked at the internets.

In a game series where you have the power to consign THREE entire races to genocidal oblivion (the Krogan via Genophage, the Geth (or Quarians), and the Rachni), it seems odd to me that the choice given to you at the end of the series is so very, very limited.  

Let me sum up this way: If you rush the ending you just fail, so all endings before a certain point are irrelevant.  I'm not sure how actually possible it is to fail that badly, having played the game I can only assume it would be the result of deliberate effort.

Beyond that:  Destroy Reapers (and all high technology in the galaxy) and die.  Subvert Reapers and Die or, if you've been a decently good gamer, synthesize with reapers... and die.

In theory, if you've gotten the very best option, you destroy the reapers (and all high technology) and live.  Of course, you are in space and just destroyed every possible means of getting out of space.

One problem is that dying, in most cases, seems to be sort of 'tacked on' to the ending. Shoot this doohicky over here to kill all the reapers. It explodes, you die. Controlling the reapers apparently is a mind war. Obviously, failure equals death, but I'm not sure how success equals death.  Really? Wind the mind war but die at the end? Sounds like you lost, buddy!

And in a monumentally bad design decision, the synthesis option requires you throw yourself into a big ass energy beam.  



Much as in Deus Ex: Invisible War, the worst aspect is that the entire ending 'choice' seems to completely obviate any earlier, meaningful choices you've made.  When I finally beat Dx:IW, I got all four end choices, despite being offered by factions I had been enemies with.  

In ME3, I worked VERY FUCKING HARD to make sure the Quarians and the Geth were buds despite a century-plus of mutual genocide. I worked only slightly less hard to make sure EDI (the AI with Tricia Helfer's body) was a decent, human, sort of being.

Well, despite not actually being 'reaper tech', if I destroy the Reapers (the stated goal of the campaign), I wipe out the geth, send humanity back to the stone ages (or at least the steam age), and I kill EDI... you know, one of my friends (in the story). If I control the Reapers (which was the goal of the series bad guys, Cerberus), I rob them of their autonomy... which doesn't seem as bad, actually... and humanity still has technology, I assume.

Synthesis means... throwing myself into a gigantic energy beam to be burned alive.  Oh, and somehow turnign all of humanity into psuedo-synthetic life forms (and synthetic lifeforms into psuedoliving beings???)...

Though I didn't actually watch LOST I can only draw a parallel here: It seems like the ME writers didn't actually know what they were working towards and sort of tossed these endings on at the last minute.  I mean, it wasn't as bad as Invisible War (where I actively hated all four choices and, had I been the main character, would have probably just destroyed the plot mcguffin machine at the end... yes, keeping the status quo for all of humanity should be a valid choice).  I didn't truly have a problem with Synthesis (but again: Why the giant energy beam? Seriously?), but it would have been nice to just be able to kill the reapers as planned without destroying technology in the process.

Now, as a writerly type, I can see that all of ME3 was working towards this idea of the inevitability of Shepard's Death (and having the whole series turn out to be a bed-time story of history told to some far future child was actually pretty sweet), but it was handled in the worst rail-roady fashion.  

The last minute introduction of some sort of 'god-child' guide who apparently set up (or represents those that set up, for the pedantic) this hobbsian choice is just incredibly indicative of how sloppy it was done.

As an amusement (since this post was done) I'm gonna add on a breakdown of the storyline of hte series:

ME1: Humanity (plus other races) are squatting in the really awesome ruins of a cool precursor race known as the Protheans. Turns out the Protheans were squatters too, and all that sweet tech was placed there by ancient Machines known as Reapers, 50million years ago (at least), so that they could easily wipe out sentient life when they returned to the galaxy every 50k years or so.  Its a TRAP!

ME2: The Reapers are revealed to take the survivors of their genocidal campaign and turn them variably into slaves (Collectors were Protheans, Husks are made of Humans) or, by melting them down into DNA (?) use them to build new Reapers... a process requiring (for no apparent reason) the near totality of a given species to make 1 reaper.

ME3: The Reapers are meant to be the salvation!!!! of biological species from the inevitable self-destruction created by inventing synthetic life (The Geth, AI).  The Reapers, thus, are supposed to arrive just before living species attain synthetic technology (Geth, AI) to destroy the living species (preserving them as New Reapers), to prevent that sort of genocidal war. Presumably the Reapers were the first rebellious synthetic species, and feel some sort of guilt over their actions?  Anyway: Since you can make friend with EDI, and can destroy the Geth (or alternatively, make them friends with the Quarians... to the point where 'Synthesis' is already happening (Geth manning Quarian exo-suits to assist the quarians with returning to 'normal' life in an ecology), this means the entire Reaper Cycle is predicated on a lie!



Obviously there are some weird assumptions about technology in ME2 (given that cloning objectively lies within Reaper technology (the collectors continued existance is as mindless clone slaves), capturing an entire species for their genetic material to make a reaper is... ugh... bad science. Even without cloning it is bad science. Cloning just makes it more obviously bad (capture a handful of people, clone them, break down said clones for materials).  I mean, at some point you just go ahead and say Reapers want our Souls!!!! and be done with it.

ME3, despite being very well made (better graphics on the same platform, very good storytelling over all, an RPG engine that combines the best aspects of ME and ME2), just... ugh.  At some point Merlin tells the Balrog he shall not pass and breaks the bridge. I mean, you're already well into fantasy territory, just keep going, right? (didn't the Balrog have wings? or is that D&D talking to me?). ME3 requires an almost total aversion to scientific knowledge or logic to make it work, much like many fantasy stories (how do you get millions and millions of orcs out of a land incapable of supporting agriculture, when the occupants of rich and fertile lands can only produce a few thousand warriors to oppose them? Hmm....).

I mean: Why the reapers only concern themselves with advanced sentient life is something of a point of confusion (they persist in deep space, far from stars or planets, so obviously they have little need of resources), but sadistic horror machines can have insane motivations without too much skull sweat.  Its like a game, or a hobby, right? Something to keep them occupied over the millions of years they've been doing this.

And we can forgive them for sucking at it.  I mean, it took centuries to wipe out the Protheans, and while we don't exactly have a time line on the actual ME games (between games? Sure, in game? Not so much), there is plenty of time for you to scour the galaxy a handful of times before returning to Earth, where there is still an organized military opposition.  Reapers are both patient and incredibly powerful (with, you know, ONE entire reaper on Tuchanka, home of the Krogan. Yes, yes, hardly and organized attempt to wipe out said Krogan, but it is a measure of how powerful they are that its even worth the effort.  Then again, seeing that the Krogan missed the presence of a giant, skyscraper sized bomb on their own planet, for several hundred years,  one reaper might be a covert reaper ninja-scout to the Krogan...)

Yeah, my friend definitely had a "Case of the Mondays" when he was relating to me all 4 endings. It was like grieving for a wondrous world he was invested in, but watched it suddenly go belly up while holding the stupid ball. I've never seen a game have such anticipation behind it be so suddenly ignored a mere week and a half upon release. The community's general silence to each other so soon after -- I'm speaking about word of mouth recommendation, not fora nerd rage -- was deafening.

Currently he's walking me through ME3, as he walked me through ME1 & 2 (I haven't the skillz nor steely stomach to manage the camera or motion sickness while playing currently, I'm too old skool I guess). It looks pretty, but immediately it looks like it suffers from "OMG, we made our campaign scope too big! We painted ourself into a corner and now we have to destroy everything, all at once, and make it make sense!" So naturally they did what they could and threw making sense into the wind.

I think the biggest issue is trying to reach the biggest bang. When you promise you'll be providing the biggest campaign, with a galaxy affecting scope for a finale, you're setting up for some serious danger. First off, players are going to grieve that their fantasy world has been neatly wrapped up with a bow and is now no longer accessible. Second, you have to perpetually outdo your last big bang which eventually becomes untenable. Third, you have to make all these explosions trigger off of a small infantry/ship party. Something's gonna break. So yeah, you could smell the LOST or Heroes effect from just the ME3 advertisements.

[Mild Possible Spoilers, Maybe]

I wasn't as bothered by the endings as others, but after carefully reading the complaints of the unhappy I understand it.

Many players, I among them, made a great effort to choose the better way in the game. Whenever given the option to save lives and reconcile old hatreds, I seized them. As I played through all three games, what impressed me was that those options often involved painful sacrifices, because as Opaopa mentioned, you represent a small team. Like the choice at the end of ME1, to save the Council from the Reaper, at the expense of most of a fleet, some issues were too big for direct intercession, you had to make a choice and live with it.

So when ME3 rolled around and I found out that to save the galaxy from a horde of rampaging super machines hell-bent on wiping out that civilization  because of an unyielding (and IMO misplaced) belief in a organic/synthetic grudge match that would lead to far worse, I wasn't surprised that the choices given to me involved agonizing sacrifice.That the Reapers have succeeded in their chosen mission of apocalypse for eons, any device/weapon capable of stopping that would have to be nearly as destructive. I could see why the game wasn't going to give a choice that ensured a me a more traditional happy ending to the story. What I get to do is break the cycle and ensure a new future, not preserve the present. For me that was still a choice worth fighting for in the game.

If anything bothered me, it was the lack of an explanation of what my decision truly meant. Since the extended cut came out this week, I plan to use it as an excuse to play the whole shebang over, and see what comes of it.

Oh, don't get me wrong: Having the reapers come in and tear up everyone's shit isn't the problem. In fact, I, and I suspect most ME fans, would have been grossly disappointed if they'd pulled their punches at the end and NOT had the Reapers show up en masse to fuck up everyone's day.*

But.

Having the three possible choices (and three unrelated outcomes (Failure, success with death, success without death) out of 16 'possible' endings) that all completely obviate all the choices made earlier in the series... even within the game itself, is just bad.  Killing Shepard? Not actually bad. Heroic deaths may not be everyone's cup of tea, but they can have weight. How it is done, though? Shit.  THis isn't a heroic death, this is a pointless death.


* That said, I think ME3 handled the Primary Story (the Reaper Invasion) in the worst possible way. Seriously: THe story starts with the reapers having, essentially, won. THey've broken every fleet, kicked every ass... now its down to the clean-up, John Conner vs. Skynet style. Which is fine, though not how I'd have preferred to run it.  THe problem is: you still have plenty of room to run around the galaxy having adventures. The citadel is calm and quiet the entire game except for the odd assassination attempt. Suer-Kesh (the Salarian Homeworld) is untouched, the Quarians can fight the Geth as if nothing else is going on....

So: Are the Reapers fucking up everyone's shit or not? Its like there are two seperate galaxies going on, where where Earth (and Palaven) are under attack by Reapers, and one where the Reapers are still in the business of arriving.

Seeing how ME2 and ME3 both like the Chapter Format for an otherwise Sandbox setting (ME2 being not at all sandbox btw), the Reaper invasion could have occured in stages, where you 'race' ahead of the invasion trying to get shit done before they arrive. Instead, you can actually travel MORE of the galaxy as the invasion goes on... and Reapers are almost everywhere, except a few vital storytelling systems (Citadel, Suer-Kesh...) that you can just hang out in.

That's just sloppy shit, mang.

Fun to play, regardless... but worth mentioning in context with the bad end-game.

Quote from: Spike;554058Having the three possible choices (and three unrelated outcomes (Failure, success with death, success without death) out of 16 'possible' endings) that all completely obviate all the choices made earlier in the series... even within the game itself, is just bad.  Killing Shepard? Not actually bad. Heroic deaths may not be everyone's cup of tea, but they can have weight. How it is done, though? Shit.  THis isn't a heroic death, this is a pointless death.

I guess that's where I differ with the critics, I don't find the choices as doing that. Here's how I see the choices:

Control: It's a positive ending. Shepard dies, but the Reapers leave. Synthetic life is spared.

Destroy: It's pretty obviously the Renegade choice. The Reapers are gone, but so are the Geth and EDI.

Synthesis:It's a positive ending. The Reapers give up the fight, and again synthetic life is saved. I do however get where the critics point out that this theme never really showed up in the game. If a third way was supposed to be available, Reconciliation would have made more sense. Just because synthetic and organic life is distinct and different, doesn't mean they cannot find peace with each other.

Again, I think the real problem is that the outcomes from these choices are so damn vague. Maybe I missed something, but if you Control the Reapers, can't they just come back later? Learning that the price of the choice is the apparent destruction of the relays is also pretty harsh. And what the hell is the real outcome of synthesis? Lastly, as I heard in a complaint or two, couldn't Refusal be a choice too*? I'm really hoping the new content will go a long way in clarifying this.

Quote from: Spike;554058* That said, I think ME3 handled the Primary Story (the Reaper Invasion) in the worst possible way...

I noticed that too. Considering the game kicks off with the full court Reaper press, there should have been more pressure in all directions, especially the Citadel, which is well known to the Reapers. I would have appreciated a more carefully created sense of Reaper encroachment, where less and less space became safe and available.

*Now I did say that I would have been cool to have Refusal to use the Crucible as a choice, but considering the game never lets you forget that the Crucible is the only chance to win and survive, I would expect that Refusal would essentially let the Reapers win. I would bet that people would see that as bogus, but it makes the most sense in the face of the story presented.

Quote from: JamesV;554096I guess that's where I differ with the critics, I don't find the choices as doing that. Here's how I see the choices:

Control: It's a positive ending. Shepard dies, but the Reapers leave. Synthetic life is spared.

Destroy: It's pretty obviously the Renegade choice. The Reapers are gone, but so are the Geth and EDI.

Synthesis:It's a positive ending. The Reapers give up the fight, and again synthetic life is saved. I do however get where the critics point out that this theme never really showed up in the game. If a third way was supposed to be available, Reconciliation would have made more sense. Just because synthetic and organic life is distinct and different, doesn't mean they cannot find peace with each other.

I don't see Destroy as a Renegade option. Its the culmination of three years of Shepard's life (based on game dialog), and the reapers are murdering and inslaving trillions (for the thousandth time). Regardless of what the Star-Child says about them, the reapers actions are vile. Destroying them is the safe option (as explained in the conversation with the Illusive Man).

I can't get the expanded ending download atm, but I gather that the expansion explains that in Control you aren't just dying but actually being uploaded as the Controller of the Reapers. So Shepard gives the final narration, because you are alive...as the Reaper God or something. This is not a bad ending, once you've done it, but remember the culmination of two games is the conflict between Shepard and the Illusive Man, between destroying the 'bad guys' and enslaving them for power.  Its sloppy as hell to make this a good ending at the last moment.

On Synthesis, I agree that the potential is just shoved at you, but there is a VERY strong thematic thread in ME3 leading to it with the geth and EDI story arcs. My trouble, insamuch as I have one here is that Synthesis winds up being 'Bad Science' all the way down, which is admittedly a weak protest.

The worst part remains just how little impact your choices actually have on the ending.  The Fallout series did better than this with a hell of a lot less effort fer christs sake!  If you bring Garrus with you on the final mission he can still be on the Normandy half-way across the galaxy... stuff like that.

QuoteAgain, I think the real problem is that the outcomes from these choices are so damn vague. Maybe I missed something, but if you Control the Reapers, can't they just come back later? Learning that the price of the choice is the apparent destruction of the relays is also pretty harsh. And what the hell is the real outcome of synthesis? Lastly, as I heard in a complaint or two, couldn't Refusal be a choice too*? I'm really hoping the new content will go a long way in clarifying this.

I did read the Wikia on the new content, and they really do expand on the outcomes more than they alter the choice.  It still doesn't really change the fact that there are offically 16 endings that really aren't (and last night I went through Control and Destroy on my save...the only real difference is how you die and the colors of the lights (and if the reapers fall down or take off...while the soldiers cheer the exact same way in the foreground).  At least the Expansion seems to help a little with that.

Quote from: JamesV;553655So when ME3 rolled around and I found out that to save the galaxy from a horde of rampaging super machines hell-bent on wiping out that civilization  because of an unyielding (and IMO misplaced) belief in a organic/synthetic grudge match that would lead to far worse, I wasn't surprised that the choices given to me involved agonizing sacrifice.That the Reapers have succeeded in their chosen mission of apocalypse for eons, any device/weapon capable of stopping that would have to be nearly as destructive. I could see why the game wasn't going to give a choice that ensured a me a more traditional happy ending to the story. What I get to do is break the cycle and ensure a new future, not preserve the present. For me that was still a choice worth fighting for in the game.

The problem, ultimately, wasn't the consequences. It was that the player is forced to make a decision based entirely on a set of premises which were directly contradicted by our actual experiences during the game.

It's as if you were playing a game set in World War II where your goal was to "defeat the Germans". At the end of the game, Adolf Hitler pops out and says, "Oh. Hey. Yeah. So the reason we're fighting this war is because the Jews are inherently evil and if we don't kill them all they'll perfect their Mind Control Rays and take over the world. Since you happened to drop by, though, lemme give you a choice: Do you want to control the concentration camps? Do you want to destroy all the Aryan Nazis (which will also destroy all of the other Europeans)? Or do you want to synthesize the human race so that we'll all be part of the Jewish race (it's the only way to make sure they can't use their Mind Control Rays)?"

The problem here is not that Hitler gave us a really tough choice. It's that the game forced us to buy into Hitler's ideology. (The new EC ending in which you can reject Hitler's ideology but that means that Hitler automatically wins World War II doesn't really fix the problem, either.)

Quote from: Spike;554058Having the three possible choices (and three unrelated outcomes (Failure, success with death, success without death) out of 16 'possible' endings) that all completely obviate all the choices made earlier in the series... even within the game itself, is just bad.

This is the other major problem. And it's made even more tragic by the fact that, up until that point, ME3 had been absolutely brilliant: Consequences from choices in previous games and the choices I was making in this game were literally reshaping the entire galaxy. I have never played a game where I felt like my choices were so incredibly meaningful.

... and then the ending just pissed it all away. It's not that those previous choices had no impact on the endings you could select (that would have been relatively OK); it's that everything you achieved was completely wiped out. No matter which choice you make, everything you worked and fought and sacrificed for is suddenly irrelevant.

To sum up: The ending of ME3 was deeply flawed on a structural level. It was thematically incoherent. It negated choice. It was riddled with continuity errors.

For a more detailed breakdown of the structural failures, click here. As I write there:

There are a lot of ways in which the ending of Mass Effect 3 could be "fixed". Most of them have already been bandied about.

From a structural standpoint, however, it's interesting to note that the game would have been more successful just having a single ending with no choice at all: Shepard reaches the Citadel, activates the Crucible, and wipes out the Reapers (while either living or dying in the process).

This ending would have worked because it would have actually provided a functional tabula rasa at that point: The entirety of the game had reshaped the galaxy (in many different ways) towards the singular goal of wiping out the Reapers. Achieving that goal would provide clear satisfaction regardless of the path that had been previously charted, and the player would have been free to read the future fate of the galaxy based on their experiences up to that point.

Effectively, this lack of choice in the final two minutes of the game would actually turn the entirety of Mass Effect 3 into the ending of the game.

(If you wanted to further improve this ending, you could simply add explicit detail about the future fate of characters and civilizations based on the play-thru. If you wanted to be really awesome about it, more of your choices would have also been reflected in the final battle for Earth. But these wouldn't be strictly necessary to improve upon the fundamentally unsound ending provided in the game as it was published.)

Of course, there are also a number of other "three choice endings" that could have been applied without implementing something structurally unsound. Maybe you force a choice between different ways of destroying the Reapers with different consequences for each (destroy all synthetic life; destroy the mass relays; destroy Earth). Maybe you give the same three basic choices (control, destroy, synthesize) but in a way which is thematically consistent with the rest of the game and built on the choices you made instead of negating them. Each of these would be a tough choice with meaningful consequences, but they would not have negated your previous choices or been thematically incoherent.

So, yeah. Lots of ways it could be fixed. But the same could be said of the Star Wars prequels.

Screw it. My game ended with a beautiful sequence in which Shepard destroys the Reapers while in no way murdering EDI and mass-murdering a race that I had just spent the last 20 hours trying to save while reconciling them with their creators.

Also, there was no Highlander 2.

I think that's the crux of it: the game let the players choose their poison, not their wallpaper. Chrono Trigger did well by not giving you a choice whether you saved the world's future from Lavos, it did well by letting you change the scenery of how things were saved. Chrono Trigger sounds like, "you win! who's here ready to party?" Instead ME3 sounds like, "you win. now which one of your puppies do you want to kill..."

There's ways to end on a tragic note, but having seemingly meaningful choices lead to a dead end regardless is not that way. Tragedies tend to work best when the doom feels implicit and immutable, like the sandbox world is smothering in its vastness. In some ways that's antithetical to the practice of a small cadre making galaxy-shaping decisions over a series of games. So trying to turn such a game's ending into a tragedy, after a hopeful and invested atmosphere, feels rather forced and rings hollow. (Because there's already a "you lose, galaxy destroyed" ending; it's called losing.)

Ahem.
 
I don't understand! Our love started like Romeo and Juliet. But it ended in tragedy! -Millhouse
 
I don't understand! Everyone in ME1 is either antagonistic towards religion or is a religious crackpot. But the religion dialogue choices with Ashley Williams presuppose that religion is naught but an amalgum of genocidal urges and magical thinking! -Malleus Arianorum
 
I don't understand! Mass Effect started with the revelation that causality and civilization are futile in a universe where there are only three choices: suffering, death, and rebirth. But the ending has only three choices and all of negate my ability to change the universe and choose my own destiny!  -This thread

Quote from: Malleus Arianorum;557405Ahem.
 
I don't understand! Our love started like Romeo and Juliet. But it ended in tragedy! -Millhouse
 
I don't understand! Everyone in ME1 is either antagonistic towards religion or is a religious crackpot. But the religion dialogue choices with Ashley Williams presuppose that religion is naught but an amalgum of genocidal urges and magical thinking! -Malleus Arianorum
 
I don't understand! Mass Effect started with the revelation that causality and civilization are futile in a universe where there are only three choices: suffering, death, and rebirth. But the ending has only three choices and all of negate my ability to change the universe and choose my own destiny!  -This thread

That is a weak-tea troll. You're better than that (which is probably why you suck so hard at the trolling...).

ME1 may have had a few bits of dialog that speak to militant atheism among the writing staff, but ME2 backed away from that pretty hard with the Krogan.

At no point do I recall any of the ME games suggesting the causality and civilization were futile and that the universe only offers suffering, death and rebirth.  If that is the best and 'only' interpretation for the Reapers (a purely physical, thus causal threat) in your world view, rather than something that can be beaten then I feel terribly sorry for you.


In fact, the third part of your quote is simply, utterly off track. ME was built under the assumption that your choices always mattered. You, the player, decide if the Geth live or die. You, the player, decide if the council lives or dies (and who is councillor for the Humans either way). Your choices, your calls, and these are permanent choices that carry over into the future games of the series.

Nobody complains that Udina is a traitorous prick who later wipes out (or tries to) the new (or old) council, even though that's not your choice.  Hell, I for one am not even protesting that Shepard dies at the end.  Mostly we're protesting the sloppy, ham fisted crackerjack job the writers did at the ending in general... with a focus on how little difference there is between the supposedly good and supposedly bad endings, and, of course, how most of the choices don't, actually, make any sense in context.   'Control' is, from a human standpoint, a good fucking choice*, but its written like sending a problem gambler to Vegas to make money to pay off his bills.



*you don't commit genocide, you break the reaper cycle, and you don't wipe out all the technology that makes galactic civilization possible. Yes, the Geth may be 'slaves' to Reaper-Shepard (expanded ending makes Reaper-Shepard clear, I guess...), but its better than being wiped out in an instant by Destroy. .. and since destroy pretty much wipes out space technology, the Quarians will be wiped out by Destroy as well...minus a tiny few who may have landed on Rannoch before the final battle.

Spike you are a tough crowd. Just give me a sec here. Ok, try this one on for size:
 
I don't understand! Mass Effect was supposed to be about choosing one of three differently colored expositions-- but it ended in choosing one of three differently colored explosions!
 
I conceed that ME2 didn't have the oddly ferverent anti-religion theme or plethora of elevator riding but ME1 did and is still funny for it.
 
But beyond the trolz and the lolz I am genuinely surprised that the thematic futility of progress in the ME universe iis viewed as an unintended feature. I mean how many times did the Galaxy get reaped? How many civlizations are there per galactic cycle?
 
Nor do I believe that the Reapers are a purely physical force. They are in several ways, gods. They shape galactic destiny by providing technology for civlilzation to evolve along. They bost of achieving sentience beyond sentimentality. They claim the power to judge and to hand down three judgements: eternal life, anhiliation, and eternal slavery. And I concur with the OP that the only possible motivation for the Reapers is that they must be out for our very souls.
 
Using your own analysis:
 

QuoteME1: Humanity (plus other races) are squatting in the really awesome ruins of a cool precursor race known as the Protheans. Turns out the Protheans were squatters too, and all that sweet tech was placed there by ancient Machines known as Reapers, 50million years ago (at least), so that they could easily wipe out sentient life when they returned to the galaxy every 50k years or so. Its a TRAP!

Yes, it's a TRAP! And how many times has the trap been sprung? Lets see 50 million years or more divided by 50k years times number of civilizations per galactic cycle = a bad track record for civliizations and progress.
 
Now multiply that times population per civlization = a bad track record for individuals affecting change.
 
ME1 did hold out the hope that if you could somehow preserve information (Prothean relics, great grandpa Thorian) you could outsmart the cycle. But that hope was not consistant with the content of the messages or the tragic outcome of the Prothean time-capsules.
 

QuoteME2: The Reapers are revealed to take the survivors of their genocidal campaign and turn them variably into slaves (Collectors were Protheans, Husks are made of Humans) or, by melting them down into DNA (?) use them to build new Reapers... a process requiring (for no apparent reason) the near totality of a given species to make 1 reaper.

It's apparent that Cerebus and the Reapers are both playing the same game, they want a perfect human so that humanity will survive forever. The slave-making is just a means to that end. Cerebus makes new-Shepard and screws Jack. The reapers make embreonic-human-reaper and screw the galaxy. Either way, the end goal of an eternal humanity are said to outweigh the means.
 

QuoteME3: The Reapers are meant to be the salvation!!!! of biological species from the inevitable self-destruction created by inventing synthetic life (The Geth, AI). The Reapers, thus, are supposed to arrive just before living species attain synthetic technology (Geth, AI) to destroy the living species (preserving them as New Reapers), to prevent that sort of genocidal war. Presumably the Reapers were the first rebellious synthetic species, and feel some sort of guilt over their actions? Anyway: Since you can make friend with EDI, and can destroy the Geth (or alternatively, make them friends with the Quarians... to the point where 'Synthesis' is already happening (Geth manning Quarian exo-suits to assist the quarians with returning to 'normal' life in an ecology), this means the entire Reaper Cycle is predicated on a lie!

Haven't played it yet. But from ME1/2 I'd expect that in addition to the bio v.s mech war, there's also plenty of interspecies conflicts. The Quarians for example since your summary focuses on them and their war with the Geth. Is it really true that the Quarians are ONLY in conflict with the Geth? Don't they have a teeny tiny bit of animosity towards all the other races in the galaxy for treating them so poorly, not helping them in a time of need etc etc? If ME3 didn't drop that ball it's an example of bio v.s bio conflict. And last I played, there were two Geth factions that were opposed to one another which means mech v.s. mech conflict.
 
But yes, clearly the Reapers are meant to be salvation from the endless cycle of galactic self-destruction. Sure there's the bio vs mech angle, but there's also the four testicles v.s two angle, and the senior races v.s. younger races. You can frame the conflict as almost anything, because the ME universe is a powder keg ready to explode.
 
Point is, predicated upon the in-gameworld evidence I think it is entirely accurate to say that galactic civilization is self destructive, the Reaper cycle is not a lie, and the Reaper solution offers a legitimate way to escape.
 
re: Crybabies complain about Udina's attitude and Shepard's death.
I'm simply not aware that people hate the ending because they can't stand Shepard's death. People hate it because their choices are meaningless on a galactic scale. But that is artisticaly my favorite aspect of Mass Effect, and the whole point of the central cut scenes where you enjoy one last night together before every achievement that your civilization* achieved is expunged forever.
 
Really the only thing that would make ME3's ending better (thematicaly, philosophicaly, artisticly) is if it also erased your saves and gamer achievements.
 
*civilizations, if you swing that way.

I may be tough as crowds go, but mostly that's because I don't buy into nihilism or predestination, I'm more the rage against the dying of the light kinda guy I guess.

One element that was odd in ME to me was that we only ever hear about the Protheans, as a singular race. This may be an element of accidental symbolism, the singular race who had defeated all challengers is in turn defeated by a greater power, while in a more diverse galaxy the threat is less the Reapers but factionalism that prevents them from uniting against the threat.

Which brings me back to ME3.  There are two main chapters to ME3, two ancient conflicts that need to be dealt with so you can unify the galaxy, even two injustices that have to be set right (or perpetuated) to grow your forces.

And while you like to talk about how its thematic that the Reapers always win, none of the possible ME3 endings really allow that. At worst you defeat them too late to save Earth, and at a horrible toll for the rest of the galaxy on top of wiping out the Mass Relays and, presumably, all Eezo related tech...

Which I think is the killer. If the game built to the nihilistic* ending, with some sort of thematic 'enjoy what you can in the face of obvilion' theme, then while it would be a hard sell to people, that might actually be fine, if unpopular. On the other hand we have instead a late addition McGuffin ( the Crucible) that you have to activate at the end, and it restricts you to three versions of I Win that happen to, almost as an afterthought, contradict the rest of the series.

Yes, I do focus on resolving the Quarian/Geth Conflict, mostly because two of the three colors of victory render the entire conflict resolution moot.  I mean, yes, if you side with the Quarians over the Geth, then you don't really care that you'll be extra-through in wiping them out, but if you side with the Geth you just fucked your allies, and if you resolved the conflict then... you just fucked your allies with an idiot cherry on top.

THe other conflict is the Krogan Genophage, and making peace between the Krogan and the Turians is central to that (and possibly betraying the Krogan to recruit the Salarians... as well).

To be honest, in contrast with your belief in the inevitability of Reaper victory, based on their win/loss ratio, I'd say that the games build up a pretty heavy dose of Self-Determination vs. Predestination, with the Reapers representing the later. At every turn the Reapers tell Shepard he/she can't win, to obey them to help them, and at every turn we see one hero is able to turn back the tide.

Even the Protheans, who failed, show this throughout their arc. They broke the Citadel so the Reapers couldn't use it the next cycle, they left clues and information for the next cycle.  In a DLC for ME3 I don't have, you can actually recruit a Prothean survivor.

And the Crucible plot point continues this, a weapon built every cycle, improved every cycle, the plans passed along by each failed generation to the next, saying 'We can do this'... of course, at the end its all fucked by the Star-Child and the Three Colors of Stupidity (seriously: You die if you chose Destruction because when you shoot the switch it blows up. Something you know it will do thanks to a flash-forward. You have a gun, but you have to walk up to it until you are six feet away? Seriously?  Who designed this again?)

And seriously: If you buy the Reapers as some sort of Divine agency, then the Crucible is a divine test, to see if sentient life is worthy of... something. Which, unless the Star-Child is lying (which would be a stupid plot point since the game ends at that point anyway), you pass just by being there and making a choice at all.  So, in your analogy, God says if you can use the crucible (you did) than sentient life has evolved enough to make its own way in the galaxy now. Too bad that all those choices you made earlier will be wiped out in the meantime, but.. uh... the next ones, yeah... those are totally free.



*Also, if you're planning to make some clever observation about Nihilism and the SPECTRE named Nihilous from ME1... remember he dies, killed by a Reaper's slave. At the very beginning of the series.

Hey, I hear you about the fatalism. I don't like it either and avoid those franchises whenever I have the foresight.
 
But fatalism isn't about the Reapers winning or losing, it's about being unable to change our destiny. (Which in Mass Effect is the self-destruction thing. So far the longest running attempt to avoid that fate is the Reapers gambit to make themselves like gods, but they're hardly presented sympatheticaly.)
 

QuoteAnd seriously: ...in your analogy, God says if you can use the crucible (you did) than sentient life has evolved enough to make its own way in the galaxy now. Too bad that all those choices you made earlier will be wiped out in the meantime, but.. uh... the next ones, yeah... those are totally free.

Don't personify the god of Mass Effect. He hates that.
 
But seriously, to further the analogy, I do not believe there is a god in Mass Effect who teaches lessons and awards privilages and so I'm genuinely surprised when people act as though he broke his promises or cheated them somehow. I mean hypotheticaly, suppose that there was a game that really was a soapbox for the endless wheel of suffering, the futility of self determination and the fleeting impact of indvidual and group effort, how would it differ from Mass Effect?
 
Serious question because when I turn up my ability to imagine a fatalistic soapbox game it doesn't go to eleven. My imagination only goes up to Mass Effect. Comeon Spike, rock my world.

I just thought Sega did better presentations on fatalism, predestination, and free will. Phantasy Star is remarkably poignant in its rage against the dying light of predestination. And Panzer Dragoon Saga, though funny in its parallelism to the situation's reality (the player playing as the embodiment of free will's divinity), was discreet in its discussion of free will's nature. They were, though limited by the resources of the time, generally profound executions.

I just think ME3 spoiled a lot of the overall triumphal atmosphere they've been working on for over two games already. You can still have a tragedy without having to nuke your setting. Especially since the nuking seems rather tacked on at the last minute. There's just better ways to present such an idea, I think. And considering the fandom indignation, seems like this isn't an isolated feeling.

Roughly comes down to that old maxim: no one likes a bait and switch.

Quote from: Malleus Arianorum;557709Hey, I hear you about the fatalism. I don't like it either and avoid those franchises whenever I have the foresight.
 
But fatalism isn't about the Reapers winning or losing, it's about being unable to change our destiny. (Which in Mass Effect is the self-destruction thing. So far the longest running attempt to avoid that fate is the Reapers gambit to make themselves like gods, but they're hardly presented sympatheticaly.)

See, I don't understand where exactly you get that whole fatalistic, predestination thing from anyway. So far the best I can manage to grok your argument is that the Reapers have been successfully baiting sentient life for millions of years, thousands of cycles, and destroying them.

Which makes as much sense as telling Boston not to go to the world series, because they never won.
 
 

QuoteDon't personify the god of Mass Effect. He hates that.

Given that it is, in fact, a game constructed by men, I feel quite comfortable personifying the god of Mass Effect, regardless of his opinion on the matter.  

QuoteBut seriously, to further the analogy, I do not believe there is a god in Mass Effect who teaches lessons and awards privilages and so I'm genuinely surprised when people act as though he broke his promises or cheated them somehow. I mean hypotheticaly, suppose that there was a game that really was a soapbox for the endless wheel of suffering, the futility of self determination and the fleeting impact of indvidual and group effort, how would it differ from Mass Effect?

I would imagine if such a game existed, you would have no impact upon the game universe, big or small. I imagine that every course of action would be foreshadowed, and every choice revealed to be the result of some manipulator who had been stringing you along, as a metaphor for fate.

None of which occurs in Mass Effect.

One thing that could be undertaken here is to separate themes of the Mass Effect Universe for between the Player and the Character. The Cycle of the Reapers is clearly visible to both layers of the Game, and seems (?) key to your argument that the game is fatalistic, while the ability to make choices with consequences is more visible to Players, who can see the different outcomes impact carried through each iteration of the game.  Shepard more or less explicitly rejects Fatalism when she encounters Sovereign.  If you play correctly (not objectively speaking, but referencing this example) you can witness in ME1 alone a progressive rejection regarding Indoctrination, regarding slavery to the Reapers. Matriarch Benezia is fully indoctrinated, yet  still manages to self-determine her fate well enough to thwart Soveriegn's plans, and then later you can convince Saren to also reject Sovereigns's Indoctrination (now backed by cybernetic/Husk implants), forcing the Reaper to merely puppet his dead body, rather than having him use his skills.  

Now, as far as I can tell, your counter argument has been that the Reapers are not actually 'God', but simply living the same cycle as the rest, I must be wrong since you would then not have an argument at all.  Either the Reapers are sent by a (non-personified) God to destroy us at our appointed hour, in which case we are fatalistically doomed, which is rejected by the Game when you defeat them and avoid being Reaped, or they weren't, in which case there is no evidence at all for a fatalistic, predestination in the Game. You can't actually have it both ways.

If I've mischaractarized your position, I apologize.

 

QuoteComeon Spike, rock my world.

That's gonna be tough, man. I don't even understand where you're coming from.

But we aren't exactly arguing in a vacuum regarding Themes.  Mass Effect, particularly 3, was very good about setting out strong thematic elements and following through... all the way until the end where the writers copped out.

A big one in ME3 is Duty, doing things you'd rather not because you have to. Shepard leaves Earth while its under attack, against his/her wishes... under orders in fact.  WHen you rescue the Turian Primarch from Palaven, he leaves his men behind because he has to, he'd rather stay and fight to the bitter end.  His son gives his life to defuse a bomb to save the Krogan Alliance, the Quarian Admiral has to give you his quardinants to be rescued rather than his men, though he'd rather stay on the homeworld and die fighting.  Steve the Gay Pilot had to let his husband be captured by the collectors because all he could have done would be to die alongside him...

There are a half dozen more cases of characters choosing Duty over personal desire. Helping people get through this (talking steve through his grief) often nets you an advantage (Steve gets you a rogue fighter squadron for your fleet).

That is a theme, one that is built through example and interactive game play, rather than inferred from a background element.

Likewise, there is a theme of growing stronger by putting aside past grudges. Save the Rachni in ME1 and your fleet grows stronger. Save the Krogan and your fleet grows stronger (while betraying them nets you a lesser advantage), and burying the hatchet between the Krogan and the Turians is the entire first act, regardless of what you choose... but that's also a limit of game formats.  It may, in fact, be possible to screw over everyone in that act, you've got to be able to get the 'too late chump' score somehow.

Ditto the Geth/Quarians. Ending that distracting war, burying that 3 century old hatchet, even if it means destroying one side or the other, is something that you do to earn allies to help you.

And its probably no mistake that the Asari, who don't join your cause until later (and the Batarians, who always rejected the other races) suffer more for it. Their desire to "Go it alone" costs both races their homeworlds, the Batarians are the walking dead at the start of the game, a race doomed to extinction even if the Reapers are beaten, the Asari suffer less, being more integrated with the rest of the Galaxy.

Its no mistake that the main enemy you actually fight in ME3 is Cereberus, an organization predicated on not working with aliens... one that moves into out and out exploitation of everyone (even other humans) in the furtherance of their goals.

Because that goes back to the Theme.  The Reapers are 'too big' a threat to be beaten by a fractious and distrustful collection of individuals.

So while elements of the ending speak well of the Duty sub-theme, more or less unique to ME3, it makes utter hash of the larger theme that has been threading through the entire series.