Mass Effect 3

I will probably be called a major Biodrone for what I say here, but this is why I thought the endings (save for green) made SO much sense in the context of the game, or at the very least, in my head-canon. Major spoilers for anyone who hasn't finished it, duh.



IDK, I guess this is where the "every Shepard is different" thing comes in because my renegade "victory at any cost" Shep would TOTALLY choose the red ending. It was what everyone was expecting, after all--a way to destroy the Reapers, damn the consequences. My paragon "omg we have to save EVERYONE!" Shep probably wouldn't like any of the choices, so I understand how it can be out of character for her.



Yes, the Godkid's logic was totally wrong, but to me, it was a programming constraint. I mean, it had to be some sort of VI or AI itself, no? It cannot and will not think of truly novel ideas until it is fed to it, possibly even hard-wired, as the choices were via the Crucible. It tells you to choose between 3 sucky choices because it is not programmed to know anything else. Yes, my paragon Shep would probably have wanted to talk Godkid's ear off and convince it to call off the Reapers without color-coded explosions instead. And maybe my renegade Shep would want to tell the Godkid to fuck it and just take a chance with the combined fleets. But that's not what Godkid was programmed to do--it was probably only there to keep watch over the Citadel species and bring in the Reaper armada once the species got to dicking around with AI. The Crucible changed things a little, but the Catalyst is still constrained by its programming.

Now, before you say it doesn't make sense, even EDI and the Geth are bound by their programming constraints. You can change EDI's personality based on how Shep answers her questions, but even so, she mentions many times that she is still bound by her programming. An advanced VI/AI who has been stuck in the same mindset, and who has seen the same thing happen over and over, for millions of years would be even more bound by said programming, and therefore harder to convince.



Yes, we love Shep's indomitable will no matter what. But to me the whole of Mass Effect was less about that and more about about Shepard's willingness to make the difficult choices out of what was available and taking chances. It is still self-determination, but throughout each game your choices are limited by history--both yours and the galaxy's. I mean, the whole series itself tended towards just 2 or 3 choices for each event (paragon, renegade, and neutral IF there was one), right? And sometimes, even if you think that isn't what YOUR Shep would do you have to make a choice anyway. So to me, the ending was just another extension of that. Shepard has been making sucky choices all they way through each game. In ME1, isn't it illogical that you can go back to save Kirrahe's group, but you still have to let Ashley/Kaidan die? Can't you at least choose to sacrifice Kirrahe for Ash/Kaidan instead of sacrificing them WITH your teammate? In ME2, why are the only choices destroy or send to Cerberus? Where is the "send to Alliance/Council" option? In ME3 you have to screw over a lot of people--the Salarians to get the Krogan, the Geth to get the Quarians (if you don't have enough points) or vice versa. Sometimes you win and get them both. A lot of the times, you don't and somebody dies. But even if it sucks, Shepard makes the best out of the limited choices given anyway.

Yes the whole series gives you a lot of choices, and we can see how it affects everything on a personal level throughout the entire game. However, those choices ARE tiny details compared to the history of the whole galaxy and the cycle that has lasted for millions of years, and yes, that is the whole--albeit disappointing to many--point. Shepard is, after all, only one person. There's just something very poetic about that and I was glad that it wasn't all "rah rah the day is saved." I was disappointed at the implementation, but goddamit, I like my space operas tragic.

I do agree that the "green" ending made no sense though, although like I mentioned, I was expecting space magic to a point. Maybe it would be better if that was the "fuck it, let's take a chance with the fleets; everyone gets destroyed, and the cycle continues" ending instead.



Aaaand, the ending animations was why I said I didn't like the lazy implementation/animation. I can understand why Joker would try to leave. The Citadel blew up, with Shep presumably on it and dead, and between checking if Shepard is alive or trying to outrun the explosion to save the ENTIRE REST OF THE CREW, Joker would probably pick the rest of 'em, you know? I can't understand how your teammates suddenly got on the ship either--I think I would have been better if Bioware put the dying scene instead for more bawling my eyes out factor... as if I didn't do that enough already. The Geth/EDI dying doesn't bother me--both of them are a full-fledged AI with Reaper code (EDI incorporates the Reaper IFF, remember?), so it is understandable that if the red explosion destroys anything Reaper-y, then they'd get caught in it too. It's just the, to use HokutoCorpse's term, Skittles part that bothers me. It's lazy that they just reused almost everything instead of creating whole new animations for each end, but not necessarily bad in the way that most people are complaining about.

Like I said, I can understand why people are majorly upset/disappointed and think it sucked, and even I understand the outcry, even if I don't agree that it was THAT bad. But the levels of nerd rage it's getting--people bombing review scores, even complaining to the BBB and FTC!--is, IMO, wholly unwarranted. I guess it all boils down to whether you can make sense of it with your head-canon or not, and whether you like tragic open ended things or not. I can, and I do, but I can understand why others hate it.

Actually, in ME1, you having to choose between saving Kaiden/Ashley is due in part to the fact that everyone else is busy fighting hordes of geth troopers. Between Ash and Kaiden, one of them had their squad seperated and killed and was left pinned down by enemy fire, and the other was stuck protecting a bomb from the geth. If Kirrahe left his men behind, they'd likely be slaughtered as he was probably the only real thing keeping their morale up and pushing them to fight back. Since Shepard and his squad were effectively the only one's available to take action, the choice was left solely on him/her.

In ME2 the choice is to either blow up the Collector base (just as renegade as it is paragon, if you ask me) or kill all lifeforms on it. You're not simply giving it to Cerberus, rather that Cerberus would be the only party that'd be able to recover it. The Alliance doesn't have the reaper IFF, so going through the Omega 4 relay would be suicidal to them. Also, the Alliance fleet being in the Terminus systems could start a WAR. This was explained as the reason why Shepard was fighting without Alliance/Council support for most of ME1. Since Cerberus is technically a civilian group, they don't have such political restrictions.



It's not possible for Joker to make it to a mass relay that fast as there is no relay in the Sol System. For that, he'd had to have left BEFORE the Citadel blew up. Which is why people think that he turned coward. It's possible that he picked up your squad after Harby laser-faced Shep and got the hell out of there, depending on how long Shep was knocked out for. But the thing is, leaving Shepard behind like that goes COMPLETELY against everyone's character. Even moreso for Joker, Garrus, and Shep's LI.



I'm sorry, but feel that I have to correct you on this. That one guy, El_Spiko, is pretty much acting alone on that FTC complaint as just about everyone from Retake ME3 wants nothing to do with him and bringing in the FTC. I visit (i.e. lurk) the BioWare Social forums a lot. The people who want the ending changed are generally quite level-headed about all this. Most of them still like BioWare, so they don't want them to go out of business over this whole ordeal.

@Hime - Some of the stuff you wrote we'll just have to agree to disagree about, although let me emphasize I don't necessarily disagree with everything you said. However, I understand the choices are limited in Mass Effect and the game isn't just an open story, BUT the major point of excitement for ME3 was that this was going to be THE END.

There was no reason to limit my choices (unless they needed similar choices to give common canon for DLC that takes place AFTER the end). They could of went so many different ways, yet all the endings use the same ending animation (like you said), but worst is the way they all basically say "Yeah, you can't save the galaxy as you know it - no matter what you are willing to do/sacrifice. You can only change the mood/details." It is like going to Baskin Robins and the only flavor they have is vanilla, but you can choose 31 different toppings.

Perhaps what made it so disappointing is that most of us EXPECTED there to be enough endings that you would want to pop in Mass Effect 1 just to see what would happen in Mass Effect 3's ending. They said they were tracking all we were doing and that they wouldn't shoehorn us into similar endings.



If it was mot A,B, C then it was at least RGB :D. So, I am going to totally nerd rage until I start popping veins. We don't hate Bioware, it is just stupid press people labeling us "entitled" and saying we are just a "vocal minority" that try to make us seem anti-bioware. The one guy with the FTC did something dumb and admitted it was dumb on the forums.

But 99% of the Retake Mass Effect movement still believes in Bioware and believes that they will make it right, so until they do we will make noise to let them know we still care.

So excuse me as I leave these here.

Sure, those are reasonable explanations for it, but it doesn't make the choices any less sucky. And in ME3, there are also ways to explain away why there were only three sucky choices. I mean, I guess it would be nice if Bioware actually went through with the whole conversation with the Catalyst so that we understand exactly WHY, but the reasons I can think of make sense in my head-canon.



Eh, there IS a relay in the Sol system--Charon relay, as in right next to Pluto. So IDK why people are saying it isn't possible for Joker to have escaped through a relay with the rest of the crew as he saw the Citadel exploding. Did people just forget about that relay or something?



I didn't say everyone was going to the FTC--I do hang around Kotaku and BSN as well, so I know it was just that one guy. But that did happen, and there have been a lot of people review-bombing on Amazon, Metacritic, etc., and that has been going on since Day 1 when nobody had even finished the game yet! I just threw those examples out as the kind of nerd rage that is unwarranted. I do disagree with the media outlets calling unsatisfied gamers "whiners" and whatnot, and the only time I used "entitled" was to say that yes, other people are entitled to their opinions that the ending sucked.

@Neko-chan, I don't know why people are saying it's a vocal minority against the ending, where people like me who actually LIKE the way it ended and defend it are the minority. A rather quiet minority, even. And when we speak up, we get called Biodrones, sheesh. There IS a vocal minority of people who just hate Bioware (mostly on Reddit, I think), so maybe the media outlets are conflating the two. And idk, even if what I did won't affect the ending per se, I still am replaying ME3 right now with my paragon Shep that I've played from ME1, just to see how the rest of the game plays out. I mean, just the Tuchanka mission can play out at least 8 different ways depending on what you did in the previous games, so it's not like the previous choices were totally invalidated. To use your Baskin Robins metaphor, I guess it's just how you look at it--whether the plot arcs are the ice cream or the topping.

Addendum: to me the whole self-determination and choice themes have been building up to the overthrow of Reaper tech and the Reapers themselves. If the Mass Relays, Citadel, and Reapers didn't blow up, I would have been disappointed. It's been said in the past games that the mass relays and Citadel are there precisely so that we develop along preordained paths, so throwing those shackles off would be the whole point of making sure that future species could be self-determining. Yes, the galaxy will never be the same again, but that's kind of the point.

TL;DR: agree to disagree. Yes, I would have liked more explanation of the story/outcome (even just something like this but, you know, more serious), as the Retake ME people say, but I liked the endings as is, and it's my opinion that providing a different ending would be detrimental.

"Ohai, Shepard. By existing in front of me, you gave me the totally cool and new idea that my solution will no longer work. I heard there was peace between organics and synthetics. Is that true? You won't tell? That could give me another new idea, you know. Oh well, have fun killing yourself."

Shepard is clearly an AI whose programming constraints kept him from calling bullshit. We'll call it the Shepbot theory. (Bitches don't know 'bout his dick's vibration function.)



It wasn't bad writing, it was "programming constraints." Funny.

How do you know that? Did Mac "The Hack" Walters tell you something about his deus ex machina that no one else knows?



Being an AI (assuming he is one) doesn't mean he's on an equal level to EDI or the Geth.

Reapers: advanced as fuck and responsible for the Mass Relays; puny organic minds get indoctrinated trying to contemplate how they work. (Some have only just figured out magnets.)
EDI & Geth: AI made by primitive organics.

Hardly equivalent.

The answer is right in front of you: Mac "The Hack" Walters fucked up when he was writing this bullshit.

---

The Virtual Shackles peeps understand:

Whatever, like I said, that is how I made sense of it in my head-canon. You don't have to agree, and I'm not saying that is THE definitive explanation. You can think it's bullshit, but I think it makes sense but was poorly explained in-game. Art is subjective, yada yada.

I can completely understand how someone can overlook that relay in the ME lore. Hell, I never knew that Pluto's moon was actually a mass relay until reading that link. I've always assumed a relay was found just outside the system where it'd go unnoticed until space travel had evolved to the point that humanity was able to discover it. Also, It's not like they give you the names of each relay you come accross in the galaxy map. With the exception of the Omega 4 relay, anyway.

That said, there's still accounting Joker's travel time to the relay. While I'm still not sure exactly how long it'd take for the Normandy to travel from the Earth to Pluto's general location, I imagine it'd still take longer than the few seconds given after the Citadel exploded.

In the Citadel now with the heightened security and people smuggling guns since I'm a specter shouldn't I be aloud to carry a gun.

I think it is less about if you are able to and more about why would you. In the first and second game(?) you had missions on the citadel but for most of the time you spent on the citadel, you never had to draw your gun. You sort of clunked around in your armor in a place that should of been safe. So this game, I think the made it so when you needed your gun, you were given your stuff, and the rest of the time shep would just be casual.

Otherwise, the only time you'd see a casual shepard is on the Normandy and maybe a few cut scenes.


In other news, looks like they are finally doing something about the ending. The only question now is what exactly are they going to do...

Yeah, they don't name all the relays, and it's not so obvious in ME1, but in ME2 you can visit the Local Cluster (Sol System) and see that there is a mass relay right in the system.

My nigga Erik Kain takes a look at Muzyka's statements. He became mah nigga after writing on the recent entitlement accusations.

"Crappy" ending or not, ME3 probably has the best weapon designs ever.



I mean, just look at that thing. That Asari Disciple shotgun. It's just so damn fucking SEXY it gives me a boner.

Now that I can agree with the armor looks sick as well.

And fucked up he did, this is why I like the Indoctrinated sheperd theory because at least it makes sense.

Also never forget Marauder Shields

How does an "indoctrinated Shepard" theory make sense?

Indoctrination: the act of indoctrinating, or teaching or inculcating a doctrine, principle, or ideology, especially one with a specific point of view: religious indoctrination.

So far indoctrination has been...well...forced indoctrination (Saren). It's a form of brainwashing, one that works best sutbly but can also work with severe measures. ME1 knew this.

ME3 got retarded. The Illusive Man wasn't indoctrinated. If he was, he'd believe in the Reapers the same Saren did. He didn't. He wanted something different. In fact, aside from stopping Shepard from stopping his plan, there's nothing indicating he was being brainwashed by the Reapers.

"I can use them" is vastly different than "We should worship them".

So, since ME3 forgot what the fuck indoctrination was, I suppose we can bloat it out and stretch it beyond what it is to mean "hallucination mindfuck".

...Though, if we were to go by it's real definition, saying that the ending was due to Shepard being indoctrinated is stupid. No where near as stupid as Bioware's writers, but still stupid.

If Shepard was indoctrinated he wouldn't be helping connecting every one helping the war effort because that would just cause trouble for the reapers even if the reapers where still going to win.

If it was all a hallucination it would mean our choices meant nothing in ME3.

The indoctrination theory just gives too much credit to the writers.

Disciple is probably the best shotgun, 4 shots, staggers everything and it makes funny shotgun noises to boot. On my Vanguard I use it and a paladin and have 200 percent CDR. Nothing lives for long.

Absolutely agreed, Kaimax. But this vid is hilarious. At first you go, "Well, it's true that the kid was pretty supernatural in those cases, and everyone thought it was a ghost or an mental embodiment of a young Shepard when they played the demo for those reasons.

Then the reasons go on, and you go, "Naw, fuck it. This all just proves shit writing."

The real reason everyone is clinging to the Indoctrination theory is because they are trying to give Bioware a good starting point for the eventual DLC they hope Bioware will make, and in doing so hope that Bioware won't fuck it up horribly again.

Real theories:
1. The kid was shoved in there at the last minute to give a linking image throughout the game that would make the emergence of the "Catalyst" character seem more "Oh, what does it MEAN?!" and less "This is fucking STUPID!". Also it was a means to give gamers some reason to give a shit about Earth's populace because...well... No one did, really. We cared about Anderson and maybe Hackett, but the general human masses? PFFT! They're boring and faceless! Let the reapers kill them or eat them...or fuse them... Whatever the hell the they wanted. Who cares? Well, now there's a little boy.
He dies in front of your eyes.
Feel sad.
HAVE NIGHTMARES AND FEEL SAD, DAMN IT!!

2. The writers did have something big planned for the kid. Maybe some real hardcore David Lynch shit. However, due to the company wanting to perfect the multiplayer, most of the man hours were wasted there and the story became second priority, thus the extremely steep decline into shit about halfway through what was otherwise a mediocre game.

Considering what RBZ posted in regards to the script writing process, I go with the former.

Also, this Angry Joe guy seems to really suck off the social dick. He's been swaying left and right with every video over this game.

Oh, and as I already posted, "indoctrination" is NOT "hallucination mind-fuck brain control".

I'm actually grateful he made a video about it, because I probably wouldn't have heard about this magnificent piece of work otherwise. "A Logical Breakdown of Why the Mass Effect 3 Ending Makes No Sense"; if this document was represented by an in-game character, I'd romance the shit out of it. It's just too tedious trying to remember all the reasons the ending was shit when trying to argue that it's shit.

I have a minor criticism, though:


I don't think there needs to be a precedent. It seems like in that moment we were supposed to be shocked and/or in awe of the extent of the power of the Reapers.



Or it could be Reaper space magic. TIM makes a gesture with his hand to show that he's doing something that involves Reaper indoctrination, as evidenced by the black tentacle shit on the screen.

We accept that a big spike can turn an organic into a husk (with tubes going through its orifices and all that); that's fucking space magic. Within limits, space magic is acceptable in sci-fi, where shit can be too advanced for us to comprehend or defy our current understanding of the universe (e.g., FTL travel or quantum entanglement holographic communication).



It reminds me of the conspiracy theorist mentality: find pattern -> make conclusion -> desperately look for any evidence to support conclusion (with lots of retrofitting).

I agree with the idea that this all just boils down to either epic storytelling or an epic fail. Personally, I'm leaning toward the latter, because Dragon Age 2.