2012-06-29, 07:38 | Link #3263 | ||
Logician and Romantic
Join Date: Nov 2004
Location: Within my mind
Age: 43
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There is no reason why the star child can't "assume direct control" again when he feels like it. It just isn't the right time.
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2012-06-29, 14:51 | Link #3265 |
Knight Errant
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Dublin, Ireland
Age: 35
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I'll echo what other people say, in that the ending upgraded from a 1/10 to a 4/10. It's still unsatisfying.
I think Bioware kind of wrote themselves into a corner, due to the plot changes that were made in the transition from ME1 to ME2 (IE adding most of the cerberus stuff) and ME2 to ME3 (ditching "dark energy") it meant they had a plot that was very tricky to resolve. Once they ditched dark energy, there wasn't anything left they had dropped extensive hints about. That said, I'm not sure if Dark Energy would have been satisfactory either. Also, the presence of Cerberus somewhat divided the focus of the game. A lot of time had to be spent on cerberus related things, which divided the attention of the game. If I was to rewrite the ending of the game, I would have made the crucible a gigantic black hole bomb, and for "mysterious reasons" (IE unexplained) had the vast majority of the reapers congregate around Earth. The fact the crucible is a black hole bomb would have been known from the start (it's a bit silly that they don't exactly know what they're building). In order to justify the (rather cool) endgame of fighting on earth, the reapers could have set up some mass effect device either on earth or in orbit that "dampens mass effect fields" would prevent the crucible from detonating. When Shephard reaches the installation, s/he has a climactic confrontation with the Illusive Man, followed by Harbinger (and maybe Harbinger possessing the Illusive Man, in a nod to ME1). Shephard is wounded sends the signal telling the fleet to detonate the Crucible and the Crucible destroys the Solar system and the vast majority of the Reapers with it. In his/her last moments s/he might trade words with Harbinger. Maybe in Shep's climactic confrontation with harbinger there might even be a point where s/he gets indoctrinated and has to fight it off (we might see the "starchild" there before Shep punches him out of existence). Depending on your war readiness/other factors there would be a variety of changes to the epilogue. For all but the worst ending you'd see the Allied forces building more Crucibles to send against the remnants of the Reapers. and fighting words from Admiral Hackett. Your war readiness would affect how much of Earth was evacuated (as the fleet was able to buy more time to evacuate more people).The specifics of the epilogue would change depending on what choices you made over the course of the series. I think this would be a 7 or 8/10 ending. To get a "perfect" ending you'd have needed to change a lot of the details present in the series, and planted the seeds of the ending as far back as ME1. The big issue with the writing is that while individual elements are extremely good (the best in gaming I'd say), the whole is less then the sum of it's parts. It doesn't come together in a cohesive factor, and there's too many plot threads to resolve all at once. Still, I think this ending works better mainly because: a) it preserves the "mystery" of the Reapers. The Reapers were cool and scary because you didn't really know what their goals were. Any explanation would have been dissapointing. These kind of vital plot points should not be revealed at the very end. b) It preserves the "majesty" of the reapers, because the Reapers are still only destroyed by the greatest force in the Galaxy, a black hole, and a big sacrifice is required. Losing Earth in order to be able to defeat the Reapers is a fitting end. c) It's not all over at once, the idea that the entire war is over in one swoop doesn't sit well with me, in this way there's still cleanup to do. There's still the remnants of the Reapers out there. d) There's hope, You can imagine it will be hard, but ultimately the Alliance will finish off the rest of the Reapers. e) You can see the fate of the rest of galaxy, your choices up to that point have more meaning, as while the actual ending itself is the same regardless, the atmosphere around it will be very different. f) There's sequel opportunities, while the main plot threads have been brought to a close, there's still some reapers out there, and more mysteries to unravel. The world of ME is still fundamentally the same. What y'all think? My inspiration for Earth getting destroyed is Freespace, after all, the Reapers are already similiar to the Shivans anyway. Volition handled the ending of that game much better. |
2012-06-29, 16:32 | Link #3266 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Apr 2004
Location: Edinburgh
Age: 42
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I actually like the new ending. I reckon if I was Shepard, being half-dead and then some child like figure, who tried to kill me for the last few years, ask me to make a decision on his terms, I would say "f*ck off, I am not playing your stupid game". This ending isn't too bad, and leaves room for more stories, with a new generation of lifeforms. And maybe their cycle would have more success.
All the other ending, extended or not, just doesn't make any sense and have holes in it, so yeah I wished they would have included this ending with the game in the beginning. It just got a more epic feeling to it, you play the last part of a cycle that fails, but now you know at least why. |
2012-06-29, 17:06 | Link #3267 | |
Knight Errant
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Dublin, Ireland
Age: 35
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If only what came afterwards didn't feel so much like "lawl you LOSE lololololol". |
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2012-06-29, 17:13 | Link #3268 | |
blinded by blood
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You could replace the end cutscene with a video of Casey Hudson flipping you off and telling you to fuck off and pick a colored ending; it'd have the same effect.
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2012-06-29, 18:10 | Link #3269 |
Adeptus Animus
Author
Join Date: Jan 2007
Age: 36
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It's just.... we see one ship explode and then we cut to the timeskip. That's it. Had we seen more, like, oh, all your war assets in action (personalized ending, wink wink, nudge nude) in one last battle before all intelligent life is doomed it would have been far more interesting.
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2012-06-29, 19:23 | Link #3270 |
dn ʎɐʍ sıɥʇ
Graphic Designer
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: Northern Ireland
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Its much worse if you don't trigger it through the dialog and instead accidentally choose it by shooting the godchild in the face (which is what I did not knowing it actually triggered anything) only to hear the godchild's voice growling "so be it" followed by the the universe ending...
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2012-06-30, 00:22 | Link #3273 |
Labda Prakarsa Nirwikara
Join Date: May 2010
Location: Pekanbaru (UTC+07:00)
Age: 37
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I miss the time when the Reapers were incomprehensible horrors from beyond the stars, their motives beyond the understanding of us puny mortals, uncaring of the labels "Good" or "Evil". Giving them motives took away that charm, giving them a stupid one even moreso.
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2012-06-30, 03:44 | Link #3275 | |
Logician and Romantic
Join Date: Nov 2004
Location: Within my mind
Age: 43
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In the story, the cast was making a Play about how a girl picked the poor writer as her lover over the rich man because of love. The sponsor of the play decided that he hates the ending, and demanded that the girl marry the rich man in a re-written ending because he projects himself into that character. That's what I suspect has happened in ME3. EA decided that the Reapers resemble EA too much, and as such to allow the Reapers to lose is too much. So Shepard is doomed because the god of his universe, Bioware, got indoctrinated. The big and powerful, i.e. EA, has the right to pillage, rape and kill. And all who oppose will die.
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2012-06-30, 10:32 | Link #3276 | |
Knight Errant
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Dublin, Ireland
Age: 35
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Not only that, but the way the motives of the Reapers was revealed is simply dissapointing. We're talking about the primary antagonist of 3 games, and we're only told about them in the last 5 minutes? Either you leave them as "mysterious" and "unknowable" or you go the whole hog and devote several missions to finding out about them, similiar to what they did with the Geth (which was very very well done, might I add). In an anime, where they go to the effort of humanising their villains, they start it very early, from the point they introduce them. They don't wait and spring at the very end. Furthermore, "humanising" the Reapers, who in the game more play the role of an eldritch abomination, isn't neccessarily a good idea anyway. I mean, are they asking us to sympathise with a race of "beings" that routinely commit mass genocide (remember, not all races can be turned into reapers), and turn people into zombies? The Reapers work because they're scary. Unlike the Geth, who work because they go to the trouble of fleshing them out. That they turn people into Reapers to somehow "protect" them is fine with me, if starchild had left it at that I would have found it an easier pill to swallow, because the whole "inevitability of conflict between Synthetics and Organics" just didn't feel right, that hadn't been a major theme since ME1, and in fact a significant portion of ME3 was about showing "Hey, Synthetics and Organics can get along!" The only way that explanation could have worked is if they had kept synthetics as entirely villainous throughout the series, which would have been fine, they can't have it both ways. Those two themes clash way too much. The major theme of ME3 was "Strength through Diversity", and the ending just completely clashes with that, the ending should have been the forces of the galaxy working together to thwack the reapers, at great cost. None of this starchild bullcrap. I also found it dissapointing they didn't bring in Harbinger more, consider the number of lines he had in ME2, it would have been easy to give him lots of lines in ME3, along with some Boss encounters with Shephard. Instead we're left without any major figure to "hate" on among the Reapers. Cerberus are actually more effectively used as a villainous group, at least with them we have the Illusive Man and Kai Leng. I think the root cause of all this is poor planning among ME3 writers. The game overall has quality writing. All the major plot archs in the game have satisfactory conclusions, not only that, but multiple satisfying conclusions. The ending on Tuchanka where Shepard shoots Mordin is just as well done and fitting as the ending where Mordin sacrifices himself. Likewise the Rannoch arch is also very high quality, whether you side with Quarians, Geth, or broker a peace between them. Hopefully Bioware will learn the right lesson from this, "if you plan on making a quality story based game, plan it better, and aim for a satisfying ending". They should have had a single ending in mind in ME2 (or better yet, ME1) and been working towards it. It's actually a similiar thing to what happens in American TV, they write it as they go along and don't have any idea how to draw things to a close. I think it's so frustrating because they came so close. If the writing in the rest of ME3 had been worse people wouldn't have been so dissapointed. |
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2012-06-30, 13:44 | Link #3277 |
Carbon
Join Date: Nov 2003
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the problem is that you can't defeat Reapers in a conventional warfare
look at Palaven look at Thessia look at operation Hammer This shows me that there just isn't enough military power to fight the Reapers If they were only a hundred or so Reaper, I guess it would be a manageable. But the numbers are clearly into the ten thousands. don't believe me? during the game you find out the Batarians managed to get their hand on something called the Leviathan of Dis.. which turns out to be another Reaper corpse. A BILLION year old Reaper corpse now divided that number with 50,000. There has been at least 20,000 cycles which translates to ten of thousands or Reapers. And that's probably just the capital ships. If Mass Effect was a tetralogy instead of trilogy that perhaps we could have discovered other plot device alternative plans to the defeat the Reapers, and we would get to choose on what plan to follow. But the bottom line is clear. You need a plot device to defeat the Reapers. Conventional strength just isn't cutting it. The Protheans tried to do that and they were more advanced than present races. They failed.
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2012-06-30, 14:12 | Link #3278 | |
User of the "Fast Draw"
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What the earlier games proved was that all you need is a big enough gun to beat the Reapers. If instead of wasting time on the Crucible they worked on building the most advanced weapons platform they possibly could who knows. All those planets proved was that if you fight the Reapers by yourself then you are screwed. In the end not like the writers themselves considered the implications of throwing around massive numbers like the age of that Reaper corpse. Also we can't possibly speculate on the Reaper numbers in the first place. What if one cycle was so damn good they managed to take out 3/4 of the Reapers before they fell? The amount of cycles doesn't matter since we don't have an accurate history of the universe to work with. The Reapers might have only started using the Citadel part way through their cycles and actually had to fight the old fashioned way before that. For all we know (and frankly it could have simply been written) that the Reapers didn't have enough left to win against the combined force of the galaxy. We got a silly plot device and god child because Bioware really loved Deus Ex and are full of it.
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2012-06-30, 14:28 | Link #3279 |
Carbon
Join Date: Nov 2003
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and yet despite having this united force this time, they are still losing ground to the Reapers
how many Reaper icons do you see on the Galaxy map before you launch the attack on Earth? Who is being pushed here? not the Reapers once again, I point you to operation Hammer after all that preparation and support from allies, they only managed to get what.. 2 people inside the catalyst? if that's not an indication on how weak the current forces are, I don't know what is
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2012-06-30, 14:53 | Link #3280 |
Adeptus Animus
Author
Join Date: Jan 2007
Age: 36
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I don't even care if we'd lose through strength of arms if we don't obediently follow the star child. I just want to be shown that failure in all it's tragic glory. That's really all I asked for.
If I can't fight the winning battle, at least show me the tragedy of the losing one. Which was, again, the opposite of what was promised. I do recall an interview promising us we wouldn't be "hunting for the magical space Mcguffin" Which the crucible turned out to be... quite literally. |
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effect, games, mass |
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