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Post by arsjac on Aug 22, 2018 11:49:37 GMT
Yeah, this is again related to the ending. I will stop spamming this forum about it after this post. I've wrote about this already in a reply on this thread (http://bsn.boards.net/thread/15598/weird-behavior-child-indoctrination-theory) but I think this question deserves its own thread.
My question is, why is the catalyst appearing as that boy at all? I cannot fathom the reasoning here (or that of the writers who came up with it).
I've read some theories that appearing as the child actually calmed Shepard down. It's to lure Shepard in... but this is insane troll logic.
Actually, this should completely and absolutely infuriate Shepard: "You dare to appear before me as the child your abominations nuked before my eyes!? DIE!!!!!"
I know that in the actual game, it seems to be working (Shepard is docile towards the godchild), but this is just yet another reason the ending is hugely problematic. Funnily enough, pretty much exactly the same scenario was played out in sci-fi and horror films before (like the episode with the Viidians on Star Trek Voyager, where one of them kills a crew member and wears the face of the killed crewman to appear more likable - Torres is disgusted). And the respective heroes pretty much always react with utter revulsion towards this. This is like a standard deranged psychopath villian 101 which ALWAYS fails. That trope is being brought up not as a genius move, but shows how utterly crazy, repulsive and banged in the head the villian is.
That catalyst thing is actually like that deranged killer from Silence of the Lambs who wears the skin of his victims. What would you feel if some murderous robot kills a child before your eyes (along with dozens of other people) and the builder of that robot would appear in form of the murdered child in front of you and gloat about the fact that he built the killer robots and is actually still controlling them (he literally wears the face of someone he killed himself!) Would you feel... TRANQUILITY?!?!?!?!?!
Would something like this make you more sympathetic to it?!?!?!?!?!?!
If you witnessed a murder of someone, and it messed you so much up, that you have daily nightmares about it... how would you react if the murderer shows up, boasting about the murder and wearing the face of the victim?
According to the ending, you should like him more afterwards. Would you?
??????????????????????
Am I the only one who sees the GARGANTUAN leap of logic and emotional response here?
Have the writers ever commented on this? Has anyone asked them how they came up with such an insanity in the first place?
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Post by gothpunkboy89 on Aug 22, 2018 17:05:11 GMT
It is only spamming if you don't reply to people.
Physiological profiles. Reapers have the ability to liquefy people and alter their basic atomic structure into new materials while recording their memories. Pretty sure they would be able to build a physiological profile of humanity and appear in a non threatening form.
In game reasoning.
Realistic reasoning is it is easier to use existing character models and just apply effects then it is to make a whole new character. Skyrim does that as all the ghosts in the game are just generic randomly generated NPC's that have the glowing effect applied to them.
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Post by dmc1001 on Aug 23, 2018 1:13:57 GMT
I still see Shepard as having been totally worn down and defeated. He was grasping for anything to put an end to the threat. He was ready to agree with the first option until another was presented and then another. Honestly, if I'd been through even 1/4 of what Shepard had, I wouldn't even have the ability to work up to an argument. I don't think it's so hard to believe that Shepard was mentally, physically and emotionally worn down.
But, yeah, what was said above for dev reasons is true.
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Post by gervaise21 on Aug 23, 2018 7:34:36 GMT
First let me say that my reaction was just as you describe it when I was approached by the hologram. Do you honestly believe that appearing to me as an innocent child is going to make me more likely to listen? You are clearly trying to manipulate me emotionally so I don't believe a thing that you say.
However, if you want the reasoning of the writers. Throughout the game they had been inflicting dream sequences on us that involved the child. At the time I thought that perhaps this was meant to indicate the fact that the Reapers were trying to indoctrinate Shepard (particularly in view of the accompanying oily shadows have been linked to indoctrination). However, it would seem the writers were simply trying to show Shepard's survivor guilt or something. If the latter was the case, the fact is they were trying to force an emotional response on you whether you had one or not, so you were no longer role playing your Shepard but were being told their idea of how Shepard was responding to the situation.
Based off this, the ending is consistent with the theme that had been running throughout the game. We see the kid at the beginning, we see him killed, he haunts our dreams. At the end the AI chooses this form to confront us with because allegedly this kid has been uppermost in our sub-conscious throughout the conflict and that is the area of the mind where the Reapers are most pervasive and influential. So essentially, the AI not understanding human emotion or psychology, chooses that image as it believes it will have a positive influence on us because it has been praying on our mind without realising that it was likely to have entirely the opposite effect.
That is the best explanation I can come up with anyway. I don't know if the writers ever gave us a better one.
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Post by dmc1001 on Aug 23, 2018 16:04:48 GMT
That is the best explanation I can come up with anyway. I don't know if the writers ever gave us a better one. We'll never know so we may as well make inferences that play into our own headcanon. That's what I do. |
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Post by arsjac on Aug 23, 2018 16:09:59 GMT
However, it would seem the writers were simply trying to show Shepard's survivor guilt or something. If the latter was the case, the fact is they were trying to force an emotional response on you whether you had one or not, so you were no longer role playing your Shepard but were being told their idea of how Shepard was responding to the situation. Yes, I get that. But I will be frank and say that was dumb. Here's why: Just a few hours before you meet starchild, you find out at the Cerberus base that TIM was manipulating you in Mass Effect 2. Cerberus is super bad, and TIM carefully handpicked some friendly faced individuals to obscure this and make Shepard comfortable. When Shepard sees that vid he is PISSED. Starchild pulls pretty much the same stunt (actually much worse: He killed the friendly face he is impersonating) and Shepard is... eh... Also, I am aware that Shepard is wounded and has PTSD and what now, yet all three games treat him like the biggest hero the galaxy has ever seen. That's one of the main themes throughout. Shepard is THE MAN (or WOMAN). He/she should have been able to stand up to starchild, show some righteous anger. This adds to the shizophrenic nature of the ending: Starbrat says synthetics will always attack organics and can't get along, all the while we learn that the quarians were the agressors and we just made peace between them. Shepard learns that TIM was manipulating him, Shepard is angry.. a bit later starchild OBVIOUSLY manipulates Shepard and he just takes it (and the game expects us to follow that ride). ARGGHHH! Absolutely maddening! The ending is *SO* wrong on so many levels. |
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Post by dmc1001 on Aug 23, 2018 16:36:45 GMT
Here's why: Just a few hours before you meet starchild, you find out at the Cereberus base that TIM was manipulating you in Mass Effect 2. Cereberus is super bad, and TIM carefully handpicked some friendly faced individuals to obscure this and make Shepard comfortable. Well, yes and no. Shepard knew what they were due to having come across them in ME1. There was no doubt they were evil. He just knew he needed the make use of the resources Cerberus provided because there was a threat far greater than a powerful terrorist organization. Shepard did not trust them, other than the crew he'd met on the SR2. They became loyal to him, rather than Cerberus, proven by them staying with him even after breaking away from Cerberus. By the time ME3 rolled around TIM was no longer manipulating Shepard (assuming he was ever successful(. That's pretty clear on Mars when 1) we see that Cerberus has murdered a bunch of scientists by opening the airlocks and letting them suffocate to death and 2) the confrontation with TIM where he begins to steal the data in the Prothean device. No, Shepard wasn't fooled by Cerberus. He knew exactly what they were by the end of ME2, if not sooner. When Shepard sees that vid he is PISSED. Sure, he didn't specifically know that the crew was designed to put him at ease but there was no doubting that Miranda was there to keep him in check and that Jacob was a traitor to the Alliance who willingly defected due to some "red tape" bullshit. Joker and Chakwas were obviously a hook to get Shepard in and Kelly was observing everything they did (she said as much). All the videos did was make things clearer, including the stuff about EDI (which even I thought was an AI in ME1, despite Hackett's claims that it was only a VI). As far as his recovery went, that was the only real new information because he can't imagine how his brain-dead "sack of meat" (Jacob's words, IIRC) could live again. There had to be more at work than normal, human tech though it's never touched on. No one really disagrees with Starchild manipulating Shepard, though I believe it was only at the end when trying to get Shepard to agree to what it wants. All in all, I can't credit IT as being viable. The inconsistencies aren't with the ending, but across the entire trilogy. We knew things from ME1 and ME2 but then got these sudden revelations that were at odds with what we already knew. I think the ending would have been fine if, as gervaise21 suggested, that the Catalyst was the creation of the Leviathan and the Reapers had gone rogue, leaving it trying to find a way to counter it. These three options were its solution. Maybe not all the best, but would either destroy or bring them back under control. |
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Post by arsjac on Aug 23, 2018 17:10:06 GMT
All in all, I can't credit IT as being viable. Me neither, simply because EA would have exploited it with DLCs if that was the intention. I guess they were tired by the end of the third game and EA's deadline didn't help. They wanted to get over with it fast by that point and did a quick and dirty job with the ending. |
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Post by gothpunkboy89 on Aug 23, 2018 23:42:20 GMT
First let me say that my reaction was just as you describe it when I was approached by the hologram. Do you honestly believe that appearing to me as an innocent child is going to make me more likely to listen? You are clearly trying to manipulate me emotionally so I don't believe a thing that you say. Would appearing as a giant multi armed, fang toothed monster with dozens of drone guns pointing at you make you more likely to listen? What is the correct form for a being without a physical body as we know it to talk to you? |
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