Gender: Male Location: In Luna's mane, chasing STAAARS!
He's probably just joking. If not, well I had a good laugh either way.
Wow I am very disappointed. I thought for a second that was concept art for a new enemy we were gonna see in the DLC but it's just really good fan art and that thing looks so fitting to fight in the underwater part of Leviathan
I think in the future I'll remove the Extended Cut when doing future playthroughs, using the old ending with the Indoctrination Theory, which would be a perfect ending to the series (except for the fact that the final conclusion is never seen).
I think that a Paragon Shepard could choose destroy - I certainly did. I've always seen the endings of the game to coincide with major character's philosophical leanings - thus, I transfer my decision based on how I think my Shepard would react to those characters and what I personally think to be right. To me:
Illusive Man = Control
Saren = Synthesis
Anderson = Destroy
I played as a mostly Paragon Shepard but I chose destroy. I had seen what Synthesis caused when Saren tried to become one with the Reapers. I never thought that the Illusive Man's viewpoint was the right one. And Anderson, in my opinion, had always been trying to do the right thing.
Destroying the Reapers had always been the goal of the game. IMO, by choosing any of the other options you concede that either Saren or the Illusive Man were right along. That did not sit well with me. Doing the right thing, the thing that was the purpose of the entire game took guts - but knowing that the mentor I had most agreed with in the entire series would have been right behind me in that decision, no matter the sacrifices, let me know it was the right thing to do.
Just my take on why I think even a Paragon Shepard could choose destroy.
Various facts were not present until the ending though. Namely, the destruction of the Geth, EDI, etc. Basically, genocide of innocents. There's also the implication that you may be ultimately dooming the galaxy long-term if you destroy the Reapers. I think your estimation of Paragon-Shep makes sense until you get to that. But it gets flipped on its head.
The Illusive Man also would have controlled the Reapers for the betterment of humanity alone, not all sentient species. He's essentially a racist, or species-ist. Clearly the Control option was not equivalent to the Illusive Man's thinking. He was only right in one aspect, not in all.
Same with Saren. He lost his ability to think for himself. He was controlled. Synthesis still clearly allows everyone their free will.
I agree up until the conversation with the Catalyst, and as a Paragon character I was fully prepared to choose Destroy.
Yeah like you said, up until the end there was a lot you didn't know. And sometimes goals change once you have more information common in real life and fiction.
But as MrBTongue says, for them to switch the goal of all 3 games from 'Destroy the Reapers' to 'Solve the Metaphysical Tension Between Organics and Synthetics' in the last scene is incredibly poor from a storytelling perspective.
It's understandable to call Bullshit and choose to do the thing that you've been fighting to do for 3 games.
Sure, it's a valid choice. No question about that. It's also just as clearly not the Paragon choice once you're given all the facts.
You could also see the sudden turn as defying expectations. Some would consider it exciting to suddenly be thrown into a moral quandary after things seeming so clear the whole time. You might see it as poor storytelling, but any movie with a twist ending does the same thing (or game, book, etc.). Frankly, I thought one of the redeeming points of the ending is that they didn't make it easy for you, when until the Catalyst conversation it seemed very black & white.
I may get painted as the ending apologist for taking this stance, despite not being blown away by it, but meh. I see a lot of this as undue criticism.
Unless you follow the Indoctrination Theory. Trololololol!
It's really odd that they had Anderson portray the Renegade Ending then. In Mass Effect 1 Anderson was the guy who cautioned you to not be either Renegade or Paragon.
Defying expectations isn't always a good thing. The moral quandary comes out of nowhere and contradicts past events. The Catalyst tells you that Synthetics and Organics can't exist together and tells you to solve that problem. After you've probably already solved that damn problem earlier in the game between the Geth and the Quarians. And as a twist it fails because (good) twists are still usually connected to the plot, they don't subvert the plot into something else entirely.
Of course you're welcome to your opinions, but I'm also welcome to disagree with you and if you'll allow me, tell you why I do.
Anyway, one of the things that confused me about Film Crit Hulks article is that it calls the core theme of the series Cycles. I've never seen that as a theme in ME at all. The only thing that connects to Cycles is the Reaper Cycle, but thats not a theme.
I agree that they didn't handle the execution all that well, but my issue is more with the idea that destroy is the only choice to make and the others are just you losing blah blah blah because of the original purpose of the games. For better or worse the new info made it so that the purpose isn't as clear cut as it once was and new options were presented in working ways. Yes destroying was the original mission but at the time you weren't aware that the Reapers had a purpose as well or that there was a way to work with them without them controlling you.
I fully agree they didn't handle the Reaper reveal the best way but it happened and the way the endings work are with that in mind.
I personally think they should have kept the Dark energy thing, and just made it more plot relevant in 3. After the one mission in Mass effect 2 I expected to encounter Dark energy alot more in 3.
Gender: Male Location: Stuck In the future where Akus evil
Idk I didn't hate the end. Though I wasn't as invested in the series as many others. Some people I spoke with that are very invested said they enjoyed it also. I hope you enjoy it.
Personally I would have just kept their motivations as purely self-interest. They harvest species to reproduce as shown in ME 2. Thats horrific and evil enough to still have them be credible and alien villains while not making them seem stupid. As it is the Catalyst just seems to be a Rogue AI, propagating the very situation he wants to avoid.
The only problem I had with The Reapers becoming kind of de-villified is that throughout the entire series they did a really good job of really making you WANT to destroy them. They were very hateable and loathesome villains. I remember at the beginning of ME3 when that child is killed, my reaction was basically "ohhh daaamn I can't wait to kill these ****ers." And that feeling lasted the entire game. The series actually did too good a job of making you hate them. But, the option to destroy them is still there, there's just now a downside in doing so. As there should be. Otherwise the final choice would have been arbitrary because everyone would have simply chosen Destroy, it would have been too easy a choice. And the series' trademark is forcing difficult choices upon you.
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Last edited by BackFire on Aug 8th, 2012 at 04:14 AM
So I have a coworker that played it, who isn't as on the pulse of online criticism. His unapologetic reaction to the game was: It was awesome. And he's not an uncritical dude. I seriously think the internet ruins people sometimes. How many old-school classic wouldn't ring with nostalgia when we think about them if we weren't allowed to simply sit and enjoy them?
I even tried to bring up the ending controversy, and he was like "Sure. Anyway..." and he went to a different topic of the game.
Aspects of the game still haunt me. Losing a love (if you did any of the major romances, which actually became much more than fan-service fodder by ME3), the choices and battles, the type of person I'd be if I were in that role (because we sometimes superimpose our own morality onto the protagonist, but there's an element of detached roleplaying in any game), the interesting battle combinations with various squad members and tactics. Just superb stuff.
I'm sure the ending would still be disliked by a good chunk of the people who hate it, but I agree that the extreme reaction of the internet was partially bandwagon in the severity that people raged about it. Seen a handful first hand of people who completely jumped in level of hatred once the wave hit its peak.
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Aug 7th, 2012 08:59 AM
