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Post by alanc9 on Apr 21, 2020 2:52:20 GMT
1. You can't defeat the Reapers without the Crucible. If you think you can, I have a refusal ending to sell you.
2. The Catalyst is not who he says he is. What he believes is pretty much what the Reapers believe. No changing that.
Your choices already had impact and were shown to you throughout the course of the game. This is what Bioware said would happen. They weren't going to give you a rehash of everything at the end, because the choices were already used to resolve things. None of the Mass Effect games had resulted in a unique final scene based on all your choices. ME3 is no different. Like I said, you saw the results of your choices throughout the course of the game. There's no need to provide another resolution when it already happened. To be fair, the Crucible is only necessary because the writers chose to limit options for success solely on its construction. They could even have made it so destroying the central governing intelligence simply makes them drop dead. Honesty most of the game functions about the same regardless of the Crucible. Itβs a trope as old as time at this point, but I canβt say I would have been dissatisfied with that option. It would certainly have greatly benefited the setting by at least removing one major drawback to the continuation of the Milky Way setting aside from the fate of a few species. I'm not sure there's a lot of precedent for sapient, conscious beings suddenly dropping dead when their governing intelligence goes away. In fantasy they typically snap back to whatever they were before, although that isn't meaningful with Reapers. In SF killing the central intelligence often doesn't get you anywhere; the programmed pawns keep their programming.
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Post by alanc9 on Apr 21, 2020 2:58:50 GMT
Whoever thought that life was going to go on like nothing happened was not paying attention to things. The original ending hinted at a galactic dark age. Essentially a galaxy without the Citadel or mass relays. Like a galactic reset for everything. Even the concept art hinted at this, it wasn't just in the writing. However, dark ages are relative. A galaxy without the Citadel or relays would still have better FTL than the Star Trek universe does, and the Federation gets along just fine with mere warp drives. The European Dark Ages weren't as bad as we often think either. Some things were much worse than in the preceding centuries, but other things were better. Roman agriculture was awful, for instance; when you can solve any problem by throwing more slaves at it, innovation isn't going to be a thing.
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Post by KaiserShep on Apr 21, 2020 3:05:13 GMT
To be fair, the Crucible is only necessary because the writers chose to limit options for success solely on its construction. They could even have made it so destroying the central governing intelligence simply makes them drop dead. Honesty most of the game functions about the same regardless of the Crucible. Itβs a trope as old as time at this point, but I canβt say I would have been dissatisfied with that option. It would certainly have greatly benefited the setting by at least removing one major drawback to the continuation of the Milky Way setting aside from the fate of a few species. Even so, it was said, the Crucible by itself is not sufficiently powerful enough to defeat the Reapers. However, when combined with the Citadel and the mass relays can you bring an end to the Reapers. So simply building the Crucible and hooking it up to the Citadel won't defeat them. Like the Illusive Man kind of hinted at in ME2 and was repeated again in ME3, you use the Reapers own resources against them to defeat them.
I do remember Bioware saying you weren't going to just find some "Reaper off" button. The Crucible doesn't just disable the Reapers or make them go limp so you can defeat them conventionally, it has multiple functions. Some of those functions were programmed into it by beings who were working for the Reapers. Hell, the Reapers themselves know about the Crucible, they know what it can do. That's why they're coming to destroy it at the end, while the Shield Fleet tries to protect it.
Whoever thought that life was going to go on like nothing happened was not paying attention to things. The original ending hinted at a galactic dark age. Essentially a galaxy without the Citadel or mass relays. Like a galactic reset for everything. Even the concept art hinted at this, it wasn't just in the writing. However, people seem to think they've done all this hard work, that the game should pat them on the back and reward them with an intact galaxy and a couple lives lost. ME3's Reaper War was meant to be brutal. Not some stupid Hollywood thing where the good guys always win and everyone parties afterwords. Bioware hit us with that too (in that video I posted).
The galaxy was forever changed due to the events of the Crucible. You now have to deal with control of the Reapers, and everyone in the galaxy now being ascended by the Reapers, plus there's destroy. However, most of the impact of that was shown in the Extended Cut, which was an epilogue to close off the story for good. Not to reopen it again later, because "I want Shepard back. I miss Garrus, what's going on with Conrad Verner" blah blah blah...
Given the results, I can't say that their decision to avoid that "Reaper Off Button" was really the best idea in the end. I'm guessing they were trying hard to avoid the lowest hanging fruit-level criticisms like "cliche" or emptier forms of it like "Hollywood" and such, or perhaps were really trying to make us think. If so, I can only imagine that enthusiasm probably deflated quickly in the wake of much-deserved backlash. This isn't an argument of the internal logic or why things happen or what dictates the narrative, because I've played the game so many times that I have just about every scene about memorized at this point, and I begrudgingly accept the ending solely because of a simple DLC. I don't think the people who thought life was going to carry on as if nothing happened actually exist. No one realistically believes that this would happen in any game or movie with a major battle at the end. They expect some big meaningful and irreversible change to the universe, and some notable characters probably don't make it through. Let's not start believing that silly lie that fans are just stupid and don't like pyrrhic endings. People eat that shit up all the time, and they can be immensely satisfying when they're done right. It's when it's poorly executed and born of dodgy writing that it tends to garner a lot of hate, which is the case here.
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Post by KaiserShep on Apr 21, 2020 3:16:22 GMT
To be fair, the Crucible is only necessary because the writers chose to limit options for success solely on its construction. They could even have made it so destroying the central governing intelligence simply makes them drop dead. Honesty most of the game functions about the same regardless of the Crucible. Itβs a trope as old as time at this point, but I canβt say I would have been dissatisfied with that option. It would certainly have greatly benefited the setting by at least removing one major drawback to the continuation of the Milky Way setting aside from the fate of a few species. I'm not sure there's a lot of precedent for sapient, conscious beings suddenly dropping dead when their governing intelligence goes away. In fantasy they typically snap back to whatever they were before, although that isn't meaningful with Reapers. In SF killing the central intelligence often doesn't get you anywhere; the programmed pawns keep their programming. Personally I don't think precedent would even matter at this point. The catalyst revealing that it "controls" them begs all kinds of nagging questions the game would never hope to answer anyway, and honestly I don't think adding that to it would even hurt. Still better than what we got, I'd say.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 21, 2020 5:43:15 GMT
Fans don't know what they want, and Bioware wasn't going to shape *their* story to fan expectations or fan interpretations. They chose the middle road, which was to essentially explain the ending they already wrote to you, instead of scrapping the whole thing and rewriting it from scratch with a bunch of armchair "super fan" writers at the helm and their writing team watching from the sidelines.
I've read almost every fan ending, and most of them are happy endings or I think one was some big guerilla warfare stunt with you ditching the Crucible and taking the Reapers head on and winning. Puzzle theory, or some article I read on Deviant Art. Nah, not activating the Crucible results in the complete extinction of every living thing in the galaxy and the Reapers being defeated next cycle with the Crucible, Citadel, and mass relays. That sort of ending was even hinted at as far back as ME1 (is submission preferable to extinction? Shepard, submit now! You must die so that we may live, the cycle cannot be broken, etc). Then there's Liara's time capsule, which is the Crucible stuff saved for the next cycle to deploy.
There's no real dodgy writing in the ending to be found. People talk about how the Starchild doesn't bring up your peace argument or even allow Shepard to argue with that and somehow convince him to spare your friends. However, the Crucible decided those things. It's all in the blueprints. Joker running away? Hello?!?! They said that they weren't sure what the Crucible would do once activated, so everyone just got the hell out of there ASAP. People somehow forgot that one. Closure? Most of the characters literally tell you what their plans were after the war. Did they show it? No, but since the game repeatedly said there may not be a tomorrow for anyone. So you get your last words with your friends, before the big galaxy changing event. Choices? You already saw the results of your choices throughout the game. You could say the choices then were added up as a number and depending on how much EMS you had, you would get different options on how to use the Crucible and the results of that outcome. The Starchild controlling the Reapers really doesn't surprise me. They are a hive mind mentality. Like the Geth are. They may make decisions as a whole, but one Reaper, the most influential one, ultimately makes the final decision. Maybe that child standing there is just another Reaper disguised as the boy you saw die on Earth? Seems likely, given the Extended Cut where his voice changes from an innocent child into a Reaper. When the Reapers are destroyed, the Reaperchild immediately disappears, which would mean it was also destroyed by the Crucible. I could go on and on, but ultimately the "super fans" got the short end of the stick on this one. Most people, even a few months after ME3 was released, have moved on to bigger and better things. The "super fans" can't let it go, and will not rest until Bioware gives them a new ending, or rewrites the ending so that it can allow the galaxy to continue, because god damn it, they want more Shepard and Normandy crew in their games. Well technically the galaxy can continue, unless you managed to blow up the galaxy and kill everyone under the lowest EMS destroy ending. Converting everyone into Reapers under synthesis, there's no going back on that. Thinking you can control the Reapers where the Illusive Man failed to? Yup, gotta live with that too.
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Post by themikefest on Apr 21, 2020 14:30:15 GMT
What I mean by rewrite, I mean scrap the Crucible-Catalyst-Synthesis-Merge crap that BioWare has fed us with. They could come up with a better and much more memorable ending, if they were competent in the first place. That's why I preferred Obsidian Entertainment or one of the writers who wrote New Vegas to design stories, choices, and create an ending where choices and actions actually can affect the ending. In an interview in 2016 before this forum was created, Walters did say the ending could have been better. Only he can answer what he meant. I don't have a link to the interview since I haven't found it. So it's up to you to believe it or not.
What could happen if the crucible was never thought of? Destroying the Citadel that houses thing leading to the reapers stopping the harvest? That could be one way. Another is involving Harbinger. Shepard learns Harbinger is like the shop foreman leading the reapers. By destroying Harbinger, the reapers stop the harvest. Reduce the reapers numbers to where it's possible they could be defeated conventionally. How low do their numbers have to be for that to happen?
I will start with the green. I find that ending to be crap. Everything the thing says works in it's favor, not organics favor. I believe the ending was made for comedians to use for their opening act to give the audience a good laugh.
How convenient the crucible shows up about 15 minutes into the game? Of course ME3 is the best place to start playing a trilogy. There have been a few posts from folks that the plans for the crucible could have been found in ME2. Located on the collector base, maybe during the arrival dlc or even on the collector ship when the player learns the collectors were prothean. I've suggested the plans are found when Shepard investigates the weapon that created the great rift, as a dlc, even though Cerberus already checked it. The weapon could be an early version of the crucible.
The problem is the dialogue when mentioning the crucible. Vendetta tells Shepard the plans have come from countless cycles with each one adding something to the plans. How would each cycle know that adding something to a plan would help without building it? Then when talking to thing, after the release of the cut, it says it knew about the concept several cycles ago. That means the crucible was never started to being built until thing knew about it. Why I say that? During the prothean cycle, a group wanted to control the reapers instead of destroying them. They were indoctrinated. Only the thing and it's toy's can indoctrinate. The thing is also controlling Cerberus who want to control the reapers. Deja vu. My theory is the keepers were the original designers since they know the ins and outs of the Citadel. Their plan was to destroy the reapers. Along comes species whoever, finds the plans, and for some reason decide it would be better to control the reapers by adding whatever to the plans. Then in a later cycle, a species decides they want to turn green, so they add whatever to the plans to make that happen. In this cycle, the crucible is built not knowing it has blue, green and red. I would guess what was added to the plans was the heart or brain depending on the players decision about what to do with the collector base.
The crucible could still be in ME3 without the other stuff. Just have the Hackett ending. He does say that the crucible is believed to have enough energy to destroy the reapers, so let the reapers be destroyed. Just after Shepard passes out, and the arms to the Citadel are fully opened, the crucible fires the red beam of doom all over the galaxy destroying the reapers. Simple. No need to have Shepard take the magic carpet ride up to lala land. No need to have Leviathan junior give the option for Shepard to shoo this, pull that or drop in this. No need to have thing say you don't need to know, and there's not enough time to explain.
And yes the catalyst or as I like to call it, thing. Or course crapalyst, Leviathan junior works too. Anyways. Another problem I have is the dialogue mentioning catalyst. Vendetta says the catalyst is the Citadel yet when talking with thing, it says it's the calatyst. Was it just coincidence that the protheans called the Citadel calatyst? Was that the secret code word used between the ones building the crucible? Of course Leviathan calls it intelligence. So did thing go to court to have it's name changed from Intelligence to catalsyt? Too bad Shepard couldn't ask Levy about the catalyst. It's unfortunate Shepard couldn't ask more questions when talking with thing.
As the thing walks towards the organic, it looks to it's right at the ems board to see a number that will tell it what to offer to the organic. It doesn't care if peace was made. It doesn't care if a cure happened. It only cares about a number. What could happen, is the game ends with Hacketts ending. In the epilogue, Shepard tells Hackett that Leviathan mentioned an Inteligence controlling the reapers that he/she never encountered. That is Shepard's mission in ME4. To find this Intelligence and destroy it.
You mention choices affecting the ending. I don't have a problem with choices affecting the ending, but what choices are you wanting to do that?
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Post by alanc9 on Apr 21, 2020 16:30:35 GMT
Destroying the Citadel that houses thing leading to the reapers stopping the harvest? That could be one way. Another is involving Harbinger. Shepard learns Harbinger is like the shop foreman leading the reapers. By destroying Harbinger, the reapers stop the harvest. Reduce the reapers numbers to where it's possible they could be defeated conventionally. How low do their numbers have to be for that to happen? All of these strike me as even less plausible than what we got. I dunno about revealing it in DLC. There was already enough griping about key plot points being introduced in optional content. OTOH, Bio's pretty much treated this as a nonissue in Dragon Age, so maybe it's something gamers are just going to have to deal with from here on out. My initial reading of the game was that the current cycle has the plans, but not the operating manual. TIM seems to know more than anybody else, so maybe he had Eva delete it after transmission. (The obvious problem with this interpretation is that Vendetta should know whatever the Protheans knew.)
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Post by KaiserShep on Apr 21, 2020 23:20:14 GMT
Closure? Most of the characters literally tell you what their plans were after the war. Did they show it? No, but since the game repeatedly said there may not be a tomorrow for anyone I wouldnβt say that the expression of their future plans is really closure, since obviously anything could happen that undoes those plans. Like, a character could tell our hero that he will settle down and open up a nice restaurant somewhere, but in the final act, he finds himself stranded on an island with little hope of escape. Thatβs the close to his narrative. Of course thereβs those internal conflict things that could close things out for them, but I think the only character that really had this going for them in ME was Javik. His inner turmoil over the reapers and how he feels about βprimitivesβ is fully resolved, depending on how you interacted with him. Personally, I think heβs really the only character with a truly good sense of closure to his story.
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Post by ahglock on Apr 22, 2020 19:41:34 GMT
What I mean by rewrite, I mean scrap the Crucible-Catalyst-Synthesis-Merge crap that BioWare has fed us with. They could come up with a better and much more memorable ending, if they were competent in the first place. That's why I preferred Obsidian Entertainment or one of the writers who wrote New Vegas to design stories, choices, and create an ending where choices and actions actually can affect the ending. 1. You can't defeat the Reapers without the Crucible. If you think you can, I have a refusal ending to sell you.
2. The Catalyst is not who he says he is. What he believes is pretty much what the Reapers believe. No changing that.
Your choices already had impact and were shown to you throughout the course of the game. This is what Bioware said would happen. They weren't going to give you a rehash of everything at the end, because the choices were already used to resolve things. None of the Mass Effect games had resulted in a unique final scene based on all your choices. ME3 is no different. Like I said, you saw the results of your choices throughout the course of the game. There's no need to provide another resolution when it already happened. 1. Not really. I mean yeah that's how they wrote it in ME3, but they didn't have to. We had no idea until ME3 what the weapon research from sovereign could do vs a reaper. We know the thanix cannons on a tiny ass ship popped the collectors no problem. That's all we know going into ME3, it on destiny ascension size ships who freaking knows what that would do. Heck was the thanix cannon even the best guns we got from the reaper corpse or is it the best the turians were willing to reveal. It could have been enough to give a fighting chance. Same exact story, you have to build an alliance because no one is strong enough on their own. But big ass guns solving the problem. This is legitimately could be the first cycle where a galaxy had a reaper to dissect for 2.5 years before the invasion. Even if you killed a reaper in other cycles, 25 other reapers were there to make sure you didn't get anything form its corpse.
2. The catalyst didn't need to exist. 3. Every somewhat modern sci-fi story hints at it to some degree. Doesn't change how pants on head stupid the 3 choices were.
We aren't going to have a turn off button, we are going to have 3 turn off buttons with 3 totally different shut down procedures.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 22, 2020 23:44:48 GMT
1. You're forgetting the Crucible by itself can't defeat the Reapers by itself. It needs the Citadel and the mass relays to wipe out all traces of Reapers in the Milky Way. 2. The Catalyst, the REAL Catalyst is Shepard. He is, by definition, the thing that brings change to the galaxy at the end. It's his final actions upon activating the Crucible which shape the galaxy for years to come. That stupid kid is not the real Catalyst. It's lying to you. 3. Mmmm, no. The control ending doesn't shut down the Reapers, and neither does synthesis or refuse. Only the destroy ending does that. I assume you mean the Reapers are no longer at harvesting us? Well yeah, that's because you let them complete the harvest. Grats, you just merged the galaxy's DNA with Reaper tech. Or you tried to think you can control the Reapers, even after the Illusive Man failed to do so. You cannot control the Reapers. Shepard turning into a husk in both of those endings is pretty much allowing them to harvest the galaxy. It was Legion in ME2 who had a conversation with Shepard basically spelling this out. Using the Reapers "gifts" for further advancement on your own terms. Control and synthesis are the Reaper's "gifts" to you. It also said "the Reapers are more your future than ours". Yup, the Reapers want to assimilate all life into Reapers, the pinnacle of evolution. Once that's done, they go back to dark space and await the next harvest to begin. The choices seem stupid to you, because not all choices favor what Shepard wants. The Reapers took one last ditch effort to stop you from destroying them, and the control, synthesis and refusal ending are how they turn the tables on you, and put Shepard into a corner where he has only one option, accept our solutions or be annihilated. But hey, they don't want to kill Shepard. They want him on their side.
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Post by kotoreffect3 on Apr 23, 2020 22:16:30 GMT
Assuming this thread is referring to Mass Effect since this is the ME forum and one of the things I want to see in the next ME game that the DA team already did is being able to customize our companions both in terms of weapons and armor. Also related to companions I want to be able to give them commands again like I did in the trilogy. Also when speaking to npcs I want fully interactive dialog cutscene (like the trilogy had). If you feel a conversation doesn't warrant the cutscene then cut the conversation completely. I don't like half-assed conversations at a weird skyrim style camera angle with hunched over npcs it hurts immersion and makes me lose interest in what is being said.
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Post by Polka Dot on Apr 24, 2020 3:54:52 GMT
Assuming this thread is referring to Mass Effect since this is the ME forum and one of the things I want to see in the next ME game that the DA team already did is being able to customize our companions both in terms of weapons and armor. Yes, please. And I prefer the way the original games (DAO, ME1) did it - species/model aside, the armor looks (mostly) the same on any character wearing it. In DAI, the same piece of armor looks completely different depending on which character is wearing it. I hate that. Yes, please. I'd like DA to include programmable tactics as the first 2 games did. I disagree and find ambient conversation more immersive because it is more realistic. Day to day life may be in living color, but it's usually not staged or particularly cinematic. I love walking around the Citadel overhearing conversations and being able to choose whether to interject. And walking around the Normandy hearing Joker & Garrus trade jokes or James & Javik trade war stories. I don't want to lose those, nor do I want to be automatically triggered into a cutscene every single time I come across other characters chatting. I love squad banter.
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Post by linksocarina on Apr 24, 2020 18:04:32 GMT
Fans don't know what they want, and Bioware wasn't going to shape *their* story to fan expectations or fan interpretations. They chose the middle road, which was to essentially explain the ending they already wrote to you, instead of scrapping the whole thing and rewriting it from scratch with a bunch of armchair "super fan" writers at the helm and their writing team watching from the sidelines.
I've read almost every fan ending, and most of them are happy endings or I think one was some big guerilla warfare stunt with you ditching the Crucible and taking the Reapers head on and winning. Puzzle theory, or some article I read on Deviant Art. Nah, not activating the Crucible results in the complete extinction of every living thing in the galaxy and the Reapers being defeated next cycle with the Crucible, Citadel, and mass relays. That sort of ending was even hinted at as far back as ME1 (is submission preferable to extinction? Shepard, submit now! You must die so that we may live, the cycle cannot be broken, etc). Then there's Liara's time capsule, which is the Crucible stuff saved for the next cycle to deploy.
There's no real dodgy writing in the ending to be found. People talk about how the Starchild doesn't bring up your peace argument or even allow Shepard to argue with that and somehow convince him to spare your friends. However, the Crucible decided those things. It's all in the blueprints. Joker running away? Hello?!?! They said that they weren't sure what the Crucible would do once activated, so everyone just got the hell out of there ASAP. People somehow forgot that one. Closure? Most of the characters literally tell you what their plans were after the war. Did they show it? No, but since the game repeatedly said there may not be a tomorrow for anyone. So you get your last words with your friends, before the big galaxy changing event. Choices? You already saw the results of your choices throughout the game. You could say the choices then were added up as a number and depending on how much EMS you had, you would get different options on how to use the Crucible and the results of that outcome. The Starchild controlling the Reapers really doesn't surprise me. They are a hive mind mentality. Like the Geth are. They may make decisions as a whole, but one Reaper, the most influential one, ultimately makes the final decision. Maybe that child standing there is just another Reaper disguised as the boy you saw die on Earth? Seems likely, given the Extended Cut where his voice changes from an innocent child into a Reaper. When the Reapers are destroyed, the Reaperchild immediately disappears, which would mean it was also destroyed by the Crucible. I could go on and on, but ultimately the "super fans" got the short end of the stick on this one. Most people, even a few months after ME3 was released, have moved on to bigger and better things. The "super fans" can't let it go, and will not rest until Bioware gives them a new ending, or rewrites the ending so that it can allow the galaxy to continue, because god damn it, they want more Shepard and Normandy crew in their games. Well technically the galaxy can continue, unless you managed to blow up the galaxy and kill everyone under the lowest EMS destroy ending. Converting everyone into Reapers under synthesis, there's no going back on that. Thinking you can control the Reapers where the Illusive Man failed to? Yup, gotta live with that too. This is a poor argument, simply because it ignores actual issues with the games ending does have. You're right it's BioWare's ending, but even I can't say it's flawless, it does come off as a deus ex machina in terms of the presence of the Catalyst, even though they do a good job explaining its presence with Leviathan. Narratively it was set up though, but the problem is the set up is tangential and really only comes out when you give the game a good dose of critique. Hell, I did this a bit when I went into the obvious biblical themes of Mass Effect a while ago, and how from that context it kind of works thematically in the abstract. As a sci-fi though...I get why folks were mad. They wanted the fan endings you describe. BioWare wanted something introspective and in the process made something that was too logical in some respects, and too sudden in others. Think expecting the ending of Star Wars but getting 2001: A Space Odyssey instead. I may agree that the endings are fine in terms of what they are thematically trying to do, but this is a case where BioWare wanted something more artistic and the fans wanted something more popcorn. I can't fault people for wanting popcorn even if I disagree with them, but we shouldn't necessarily slag them for that part. Instead, slag them for poor arguments.
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Post by linksocarina on Apr 24, 2020 18:13:12 GMT
More solid use of companions.
I mean mechanically in combat. Every Mass Effect game had the squad kind of feel tangential, never really had much of an impact combat wise unless you use powers.
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Post by cloud9 on Apr 25, 2020 1:02:03 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Apr 26, 2020 17:03:07 GMT
This is a poor argument, simply because it ignores actual issues with the games ending does have. You're right it's BioWare's ending, but even I can't say it's flawless, it does come off as a deus ex machina in terms of the presence of the Catalyst, even though they do a good job explaining its presence with Leviathan. Narratively it was set up though, but the problem is the set up is tangential and really only comes out when you give the game a good dose of critique. Hell, I did this a bit when I went into the obvious biblical themes of Mass Effect a while ago, and how from that context it kind of works thematically in the abstract. As a sci-fi though...I get why folks were mad. They wanted the fan endings you describe. BioWare wanted something introspective and in the process made something that was too logical in some respects, and too sudden in others. Think expecting the ending of Star Wars but getting 2001: A Space Odyssey instead. I may agree that the endings are fine in terms of what they are thematically trying to do, but this is a case where BioWare wanted something more artistic and the fans wanted something more popcorn. I can't fault people for wanting popcorn even if I disagree with them, but we shouldn't necessarily slag them for that part. Instead, slag them for poor arguments. Yeah, except, he *isn't* a Deus Ex Machina. He doesn't provide the solutions to solve the problem, the Crucible does. Depending on your EMS state you will be given a choice on how to deal with the Reaper threat. There is no biblical references in the ending unless you take it *way* too literally.
Bioware wanted to make a thinker ending to incite discussion about the ending. Speculation for everyone!
See? I was right. It is about wanting those poorly written Hollywood-style endings. Where the good guy wins, gets the girl, and everything is more or less right with the world. Futurama nailed it.
Some people believe games are art (especially game developers), while some consumers don't see it this way. It's a product to them, that can be flexible and must meet the expectations of the consumer otherwise the sales will tank. Bioware doesn't do pre-release screenings. Some companies do open betas or public test realms (Blizzard), but they don't allow you to test the whole game. Just a small portion of it at a time. Like when they release raids, they don't test the whole thing at once. They do open up one boss encounter at a time.
Mass Effect wasn't going to have a popcorn ending. Sorry to say, but defeating the Reapers was going to come at a pretty big cost. They even said, this wasn't going to end like a traditional war story, where you beat the enemy and proceed to throw a party.
Anyone who expected to go up to the Citadel, destroy the Reapers and the galaxy returning to normal was fooling themselves. The Reapers do try and prevent you from only destroying them, and there's a bit of mental trickery on the part of their so-called "leader" who appears to you as a kid who you saw die on Earth. Yes, the Reapers have access to your mind. That's why they present themselves as someone you know. Like in Leviathan, it presents itself as people you know because it can access your mind. If you did destroy or keep the Collector Base in ME2 Harbinger presents itself as Harbinger in the Arrival DLC. Otherwise, Harbinger will present itself to you as the Collector General if you haven't done the Suicide Mission yet. Same deal.
They didn't beat you with lasers and guns blazing. They used their power of mind control to manipulate you into choosing their "ideal" solutions. Those solutions in the Crucible were put in place by Reaper agents working for them, not the Reapers themselves.
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Post by alanc9 on Apr 26, 2020 17:09:33 GMT
Of course, that's just IT nonsense.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 26, 2020 17:35:10 GMT
Your literal ending is nonsense, just like people say "it doesn't make any sense". It has enough plot holes and inconsistencies to fill the Grand Canyon all the way up. We all know what kind of ending you wanted to happen.
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Post by KaiserShep on Apr 26, 2020 19:27:56 GMT
Indoctrination theory is just fan fiction. Thereβs a reason BioWare has opposed this to the point of deleting threads about it on sight in the old forum.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 26, 2020 19:34:26 GMT
They were never going to flat out just tell you Shepard was indoctrinated, or that the indoctrination theory was true. The Reapers never did this with Saren, and they never did it with the Illusive Man, Amanda Kenson or any other indoctrinated agent of theirs.
But hey, that's what it might take for some people to believe. Not a subtle hint, but a big giant object that comes over and smacks people in the face it's so obvious. They didn't close those threads down because they opposed IT. They closed those threads down because the IT threads became more of a general discussion thread than discussing the topic they were supposed to be about. So when a thread becomes derailed, it's get deleted or locked. Standard forum operating procedure.
But hey, it's so much easier just to say "Occam's Razor" than do anything critical thinking about the subject.
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Post by Hanako Ikezawa on Apr 26, 2020 19:39:48 GMT
They were never going to flat out just tell you Shepard was indoctrinated, or that the indoctrination theory was true. The Reapers never did this with Saren, and they never did it with the Illusive Man, Amanda Kenson or any other indoctrinated agent of theirs.
But hey, that's what it might take for some people to believe. Not a subtle hint, but a big giant object that comes over and smacks people in the face it's so obvious. They didn't close those threads down because they opposed IT. They closed those threads down because the IT threads became more of a general discussion thread than discussing the topic they were supposed to be about. So when a thread becomes derailed, it's get deleted or locked. Standard forum operating procedure. They were also closed because more and more of the ITers were making it toxic and breaking the forum rules.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 26, 2020 19:42:51 GMT
Well there were literalists coming into the threads and arguing with them, attempting to derail the thread. What forum rules did they break?
Even after they closed the last thread, people were still permitted to discuss it in BSN Groups, instead of completely banning all indoctrination related discussion from the entire BSN. They did the same thing with the romance threads and stuff apparently, because they became argumentative threads instead of discussion threads.
Source:
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Post by Hanako Ikezawa on Apr 26, 2020 19:44:19 GMT
Well there were literalists coming into the threads and arguing with them, attempting to derail the thread. What forum rules did they break? Lots of personal attacks on others, for starters.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 26, 2020 20:04:27 GMT
Well it wasn't on themselves, the literalists tried to come in and derail the thread. Either way, they didn't lock it to denounce IT officially.
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Post by cloud9 on Apr 26, 2020 20:45:34 GMT
Well there were literalists coming into the threads and arguing with them, attempting to derail the thread. What forum rules did they break? Lots of personal attacks on others, for starters. How Ironic.π€£π€£πππππππ
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