Everything Wrong With Mass Effect 3 Redux by GCN

Actually I would argue that not only do I have an angle to argue about purely objective writing in regards to the ending, but I could argue about purely objective writing in regards to all of Mass Effect 3, but we'll get to that.

The theme of conflict between Organic and Synthetic life is present from ME1 but to argue that it is a major plot point is utter nonsense. The only AI that was like Skynet in ME1 was Sovereign and it's minions itself. All other synth v org plot points in ME1 were explored via the rogue AI on the moon you had to shut down and the rogue AI on the Citadel. Both meaningless side-quests anyone could skip over and not have any exposure to at all. Meanwhile all the foreshadowing of synthetic vs organic themes in relation to the Geth v Quarians changed drastically in ME2, but we'll get to that later too.


Except 6 months of time during a united fight against the Reapers is not the only thing that validates a peaceful existence between synthetics and organics. It's the smaller things that were included in the main story arc from ME2. Everything from the existence of EDI, to the moment you meet Legion in ME2 to the moment before he dies in ME3 when he asks Tali "does this unit have a soul?" These plot points are hugely important as the game explores themes that synthetics are more than just robots and indeed in that sense, may not even be that different from organics at all. While ultimately despite all these extra points, I do agree with the sentiment that it still doesn't mean "everyone gets along forever". However, especially speaking about ignoring reality. The entire writer's solution to this problem equally defies reality by stating that they can absolutely never get along. Stating that synthetic life will always eliminate organic life is as flawed a concept as blanketly stating that they can live in harmony forever. It's fallacious logic.


Nevermind the patronizing and laughable comparison between explaining the motivations of the Reapers to telling a child to clean their room, despite that's what the writers were clearly going for. The real issue here is what else they wrote to explain their art. The Leviathans themselves were a dominating and cruel race, they enslaved other organic species to do their bidding and it was these lesser species who created the first synthetics. This is where the issues arose and it is what caused the Leviathans to create an AI to deal with the problem. Which the AI then (and completely understandably) decided the Leviathan's iron grip over the galaxy was the real problem and wiped them out. And this is what no one is ever capable of understanding? What baffles me is that all this information came AFTER the ending had already been released. While literally trying to add retroactive foreshadowing of a terribly written ending as paid DLC, they indeed just made the ending even worse. The only thing beyond our understanding is how complex and random the universe can be. Except this one AI created one billion years ago assesses the galaxy in only the current format it can and decides harvesting organic life every 50,000 years is the only way to preserve organic life?

It's also worth mentioning that for an AI presumably so advanced, it never had the capacity to reassess its determination for a new answer. It was up to us to prove the reassessment. And that reassessment came in the form of the terrible crucible MacGuffin. A last minute plot device that (again) had absolutely zero foreshadowing in the previous two games. Ultimately this results in the reapers going from Soveriegn's "our existence is beyond your comprehension" to "our existence is coz of a broken toy that needs to be fixed."


You cannot try to tell me that the AI v Organic plot point was well foreshadowed in the previous games, only to then tell me that other people are cherry picking information for their agenda. The only way you can even know about the plot thread, is as you said yourself "to pay attention", because it was never a major theme.

Second of all, the Reapers building the Mass Relays in and of itself makes the ending even more stupid. If your job is to exterminate a race every 50k years because that's when you predicted civilizations will reach their peak of developing advanced AI. Then why give them the tools to reach that peak even quicker? How about instead of giving them a metal pick axe and metal armor and culling them every 50k years, you give them a wooden stick and stone club and then you only have to cull them every 100k years? It's just dumb. But what is even dumber is that you spoke about the Quarians escaping through the Mass Relays designed by the Reapers to get away from the Geth. Like the Reapers are helping prevent the synthetic culling of organics, but then the Reapers just arrive and kill all the Quarians anyway... lol? Although if I'm being 100% honest, while I obviously don't agree with you I do like the way you saw it, from all the countless hours I've spent analysing the series, that is a fresh view point I haven't come across before.

Also, the fact that peace between them is possible is not lessened by how hard that peace may be to create. It takes a bit of know-how to get everyone to survive through Mass Effect 2 if you don't know what you're doing. But a playthrough where everyone survives is no less valid because of it.


While I already discussed the nihilism of the Relays saving them from synthetics killing them, only to be killed by synthetics (In the Reapers) anyway, I think it's worth going one step further.

If the catalyst's determination was based on the current state of the galaxy at the time with the Leviathan's iron grip rule of the galaxy. Then building Mass Relays and allowing another empire to escape it's synthetic life and continue to expand it's reign across the galaxy actually just feeds right back into it's flawed logic loop. As I said, if the ultimate goal is to cull synthetic life so it never reaches it's peak and creates a technology singularity. Then why give civilizations the tools to help them progress to this point at a faster rate?



No, the original endings operated on a "shit we don't have enough time, quick stick this here" system which was inherently bad. If what they were truly going for was a "fill in the blanks yourself" ending, it would have been a bit more polished from the start and we never would of had the Extended Cut. If you have to explain your art, you've failed.

Ah yes, the old "you're just too emotional to understand the endings" or "you would never have liked them, no matter what they did" or "you just wanted it to have a happy ending or it just didn't match what you wanted it to be." These are the most common brush off comments from people who strive to defend tripe writing. And while I actually don't have any anger towards anything to do with ME3 at all after 7 years (but thanks for presuming my emotional state), if I did it wouldn't be at the sub-par writing, or even at the writers themselves. It would be at EA, and not just for rushing Mass Effect 3's development like everyone screams about. But for the host of other shit they did to the series, like taking Drew Karpyshyn off Mass Effect after ME2 and sending him to SWTOR. (He wanted to have a Dark Energy themed ending, which albeit didn't differ much more from the endings we got, it still would have made at least a bit more thematic sense) It would also have been for butchering Mass Effect slowly but surely over the course of the three games. Where Mass Effect 1 started out with a different tone and aesthetic entirely. Being more of a throwback to classic 1970-1990 sci-fi. Everything about it firmly had its feet dipped into stuff like Blade Runner, Babylon 5 and Empire Strikes Back. The real talky/techy type of sci-fi.

Then by the time we got Mass Effect 3, it had just become a mindless modern action movie. It was 95% Michael Bay Transformers with 5% 2000: A Space Odyssey at the end (and even that failed). Basically it was all style over substance, rule of cool, explosions and dumb action. It didn't care about throwing established lore and even basic realism under the bus so long as it was cool. You had an antagonist that was a sword-wielding assassin space ninja that suited something like Metal Gear Rising more than Mass Effect, characters like Ashley had to be prettied-up and given sexy outfits and a boob job suddenly whether it suited their personality or not, and while the original established full suits and helmets in dangerous environments in space, now exposed skin, skin-tight clothing and just a breather mask were fine (granted, ME2 was also guilty of this last one). Overall the series had taken a less mature and less intelligent approach, aiming squarely at Average Joe Call of Duty player and Michael Bay Transformers fan. This showed in the gameplay itself with its more shooter-oriented approach and lack of complex RPG systems. There was even an option to turn off dialogue choices entirely, and the fact that that was there at all really illustrated where BioWare's mindset was at for the project as a whole. And this is why they thought that a cheaply written ending would pass. They even had Dev's admitting at conventions that, "we wanted to make ME3 in a way that anyone who hadn't played the previous Mass Effect's could jump right in and understand it. And it shows! The amount of exposition in the game that players of the series already knew and just had to roll their eyes over was astounding!

There's plenty of other issues with the game too, such as the massive tonal shifts (especially with the Citadel DLC), the fact that interactions with crewmembers were often reduced to running around and treating the Normandy occupants like pull-string toys rather than engaging in cinematic conversations like before, removing the neutral dialogue option and dumbing down of dialogue in general and to the point of being jarring (a series played 'racist Shepard' would say things like "This is for Thane!" Before killing his assassin), the forced multiplayer and Kinect support nobody asked for, and the fact that the side quests were mostly annoying and shallow fetch-quests and/or a bunch of forced combat scenarios (that thanks to the forced MP mode consisted mostly of repurposed MP maps with a threadbare excuse to fight in them, because there ended up being not enough time to make new areas for the main SP campaign itself), but most of these aren't related to the failings of Mass Effect 3 as far as it being the final part of a supposed trilogy or to its ending and jarring narrative as a whole. I'm sure a novel could be written on the problems with BioWare during this era and what became of the Mass Effect trilogy. But if you ask me, I just put it down to EA's greed chewing up and spitting out another innocent developer.

Well, I can tell you I am not thrilled. Whether it is good or bad, I can't tell you. I am not well versed in the genre. I can assume it is good at what it does, but maybe it isn't. I am not an expert in its field. I would not be a good judge of it and, therefore, my opinion would not be impartial to personal bias. But, someone with knowledge can dissect it, see what works, what doesn't and from there, with an educated opinion. Personal taste, though, has no bearing on quality. The quality of something is irrelevant to my personal interests and when I don't understand something, like that genre of music, only means that I do not understand it and that is a problem with me, not the genre.



As for Ode to Spring, well, I don't know where to start. I know a little about music, I do play the piano myself. I also write and I code, among other things. Ode to spring seems to take inspiration for itself from the 3 months of spring, itself. It starts with a little crescendo, at the beginning, signifying the welcoming of spring, it then mellows out, as a allegro hits, through a polyphony of instrument in beautiful harmonics, as they gradually quiet down and allow for the soft realization of March to pass you over, then a usually harsher April hits, more foreboding and menacing at first, indicating the more unusual weather of the time, as opposed to the more carefree march, only to settle to a playful, blooming May, where all the instruments in the composition strike in harmony, together, only to slow down as May itself, inevitably lets itself pass to make way for the inevitable summer. It's smart. It's cleverly smart. It reflects the months of the season through its music by hitting the notes that more closely evoke the feelings of each month, it toys with sentiment and evokes imagery. It alleviates you with March, the start of the end of winter, scares you with rain and thunder of a harsh April and basks in the sun and blossomed fields of a carefree and playful May, which seems to want to last forever. It's a brilliant piece. If you want to get more technical, we could. I doubt this is the place, for it, though. The question is, do you see it? Do you see it?

Nice try but we are not talking about the majority. In fact the amount of people included in these groups would actually be a minority.

or perhaps I should structure this sentence...

Majority not nice try. People amount less in group.

If you believe one of those sentences is objectively better than I've made my point again.

You cannot use the Reapers as a foreshadowing of the Synth v AI theme when it is the Reapers in and of themselves that believe that is true lol. I'll give you an example of what you just did. A guy named John goes into a bar and kills everyone, then this same guy named John then goes to his friends and says "Why is it that every time a guy named John goes into a bar, he just kills everyone?" The irony of you linking me fallacious logic in our other post and then bringing up an argument as flawed as this!

Also, the Geth in ME1 WERE the Reapers, Legion in ME2 states this when he tells us that those Geth had become heretics. So the Reapers and Geth in ME1 are one and the same, again not foreshadowing of anything. The only ground you have here in your argument at all is that the actual Geth were killing any ships that entered their space after the mourning war. But that was a skip-over line in the first game and not even a line in the main plot let alone a major theme.

It also doesn't matter about what we did or didn't know in the first Mass Effect at the time as Mass Effect 2 came before Mass Effect 3, and Mass Effect 2 works against your argument.



I can't be bothered arguing against this so I'm just going to copy straight from the wiki to counter your argument here about the Geth killing all the quarians.

"Quarians turned on their own in their bid to destroy all geth before they became a threat. At first, the geth did not respond to the termination order with violence; it was only after panicked quarians fired upon them that the geth thought to pick up weapons and defend themselves. Even after this, some geth remained loyal to their creators and put themselves in harm's way to protect geth sympathizers from persecution; likewise, there were quarians who did not feel the geth deserved to die. However, as time went on, the geth sympathizers were outnumbered, and the war continued, eventually seeing the geth gain the upper hand. The war ended when the surviving quarians evacuated their home world and colonies in the Perseus Veil.

Unknown to the quarians themselves, the geth actually allowed them to leave; unsure of the repercussions of eradicating an entire species-namely their own creators- and having decided that the quarians were now too weak to be a threat, the geth decided to draw back their forces so that the surviving quarians could flee. The fleet of quarian ships that escaped the Veil became known as the Migrant Fleet, and has been roaming the galaxy ever since.

So hardly like dropping a nuke on the entirety of Japan as that is an instant attack. This was a war that went for decades and once they no longer deemed them a direct threat to their species, allowed them to leave.



"Nuke all the heretics that threaten the geth like a genocidal dictator"? lol. These aren't heretics that threaten just the Geth, they threatened each and every species in the Milky Way galaxy both synthetic and organic because they worshipped the Reapers. Also, you are not "brain-washing" them. It's just an overwriting of code. and while granted the decision to overwrite their code so they turn back to the fold is a completely foreign concept to us as organics. It wouldn't be so shocking to them. I really hope you never chose Synthesis as an ending if something like that shocks you.



I'm not sure the point you are trying to make here? The Quarians aren't researching ways to "counter" the Geth, the war was over by that point. They were researching ways to attack them again. And that is the complete opposite of synthetics rising up against organics lol. So thanks for helping make my argument for me I guess?


Except all of that is deep lore you have to read about in codex's and investigate through dialogue options that can be skimmed over. Save for a bit on Tali's loyalty mission. However, while on the surface in the main plot by Mass Effect 3 they are friends. Even Mass Effect 2 if you count Tali's and Legion's interactions with each other if you play a paragon Shepard.






So your counter-argument to the fallacious logic involved in the flawed concept of the synth v organic theme is that EDI can't walk around on the Citadel as an AI? There are so many reasons why she cannot be a publicly known AI walking around the Citadel that don't involve "Cause she'll kill us all." Namely the security aspect of it, she could hack into anything she wanted and there'd be so much bureaucracy surrounding that one thing alone. While a shocking and deplorable comparison you've made to black women, last time I checked black women still exist publicly in our society without killing every single white woman they see.



I've been able to counter you so far pretty easily, but I'm not sure I can counter quick maths like that. All jokes aside it is easily the best point you've made so far about the unknown future of AI progress in the Mass Effect Universe. However, it is just that, completely unknown. Even when the Leviathan's created the catalyst to solve their synthetics constantly uprising, it is because they were constantly being suppressed and only used as tools. They were never even given a chance to evolve to a point where they could live their own lives. This is why what happened with the Geth letting the Quarians escape instead of completely annihilating them is really a poignant moment in the Mass Effect timeline.



Except in the Catalyst's calculations, synthetics are never allowed to evolve to the point of creating their own society. Or at the very least, we haven't been told this information. All we have been told is that the leviathans enslaved all species and dominated the galaxy and that these lesser species then created and enslaved synthetic life to use as tools. This is the only known situation for the Catalyst's determination. Doesn't sound like a very good basis for an experiment on the hostility of synthetic life hey? And while 10,000 years might seem like a long time to establish trends, but when the Catalyst is potentially billions of years old, 10,000 years is a snap decision.




Nope, correlation does not equal causation, that is a horrible analogy. I'm going to use John again here, It would be like saying "John just won't stop killing people and we think it's a result of him being subjugated and enslaved, we just can't keep him on a leash". But then John actually stops killing people once he knows that he's free from servitude and lets the people escape instead of wiping them out completely, only to then stay in his area and become completely isolated from the rest of these people. To learn and discover more things about himself before coming out again and eventually even having the potential to make friends with the very people that tried to enslave and then kill him to begin with.




On top of that the thrall races that were being mentally dominated by Leviathan would be wiped out over and over again by their Synthetic creations. Which is what lead to Leviathan creating the Catalyst to solve the problem. Which for untold number of years the Catalyst did and failed to maintain the peace over and over and over again which eventually lead to the Reaper solution.  This is backed up by the Prothean VI on Thessia were they talk about how the Protheans noticed a similar pattern to organic life over and over again.  The Catalyst has since for untold billions of years been gathering information and examining it and still found the Reaper solution to be best.  And the Quarians and Geth proved them correct as war, genocide and more war and genocide attempts followed.  Only the indirect interference by the Reapers in the form of Mass Effect technology allowed the Quarians to survive.  And as soon as it's solution shows that it is starting to and will eventually fail it offers a choice on what to do because it's solution is finished.

The fact I am able to pull so much up shows it was a core theme.  It was a core theme with characters and story arcs. The fact people will ignore it is simply because people are like that. I have literally linked videos of Trump saying stuff only to be told that it is fake and he didn't really say it. If someone has an agenda to push they will ignore everything and anything that goes against their wishes. This is just a fact of life.[/quote]

Talking about vibrant garden worlds 'and such', different life forms (whatever this all means?), and the unawareness of what the Reapers had been doing, and just generally talking about the history of Mass Effect with barely ever making a solid point to the discussion without a bunch of fluff. This is your idea of pulling up so much information?

You have to stop using the Quarian v Geth war as support too because there is so much information within this narrative itself that contradicts your argument.

So please on your inevitable next post, try to make actual points without talking about black women or Donald Trump so I can see how much actual information you can pull up.



AI already uprose and didn't wipe the race out, in fact, you can make peace with them. Secondly, you can't keep using the Mass Relays as support for your case when you keep forgetting one important fact. In every single instance, these situations are made obsolete when the Reapers themselves arrive and kill everyone anyway. It's like saying "Let's make an escape route for all these people John keeps trying to kill, but then after they use it. We'll come around and kill them anyway so John can't kill them."

Oh and sorry to burst your bubble but they are fundamentally different, one is traveling at 60pm and the other at 45mph lol....



And this is where it comes down to objectively poor writing. For 90% of the time we are told, shown and even directed the narrative to a point where synthetic life and organic life weren't even seen as that much different from each other. Only to be told at the finish line that they'll always murder each other.



It's based on direct dev quotes that they didn't have enough time to complete the game.



Except I haven't once, in all of this writing, stated what should have happened. This isn't about opinion, it's about a narrative they established and then tried to change at the finish line. It's about thematic coherence, which was all but abandoned for trying to do something "bigger than life" and failing.


I literally said in my last post that I liked one of your points of view, so you can quit playing the victim card like I'm the one who can't see it from the other side *facepalm*.


You are completely missing the point. It's not about liking country music, it's about what constitutes music a country genre. It's about the things that make up the whole, that is what is being critiqued and analysed.

But I forgot to mention this before, I have one question for you as to whether this continues. In your last reply, you said that the Catalyst ending was not an M. Night Shyamalan twist. So this is the question, based on what you have said that the synthetic v organic theme was fore shadowed. Did you expect that type of ending? Or better yet, did you understand the Reaper's motivations before even meeting the Catalyst?

FUN FACT.

The players who desperately love the geths and blindly trust them (even if every single geth except from legion has always tried to kill Shep for 3 consecutive games, and every single one of them, legion included, has always lied and acted to the exclusive advantage of the geth, not caring at all about the organics), this players who cry and despair at the mere thought of choosing destroy and realising the red wave of death upon the poor innocent peaceful geths... very often are the same who don't trust the catalyst, fear that they have been indoctrinated or that the starbrat is bluffing or lying and they question his every single sentence by looking for inconsistency and dishonesty

There is a big separation between blindly trusting the Geth and not believing the Catalyst that Synthetics will always commit genocide on Organics. Also if you knew anything about Mass Effect you'd know that every single Geth you fought in Mass Effect 1 was under Reaper influence, thus saving them from your argument that they're always trying to kill organics. In fact, 90% of the geth you fight in the trilogy are the heretic Geth aligned with the Reapers.

The data and presentations of the Reapers in Mass Effect 1 do not count as foreshadowing when they are the very tools being used as the solution to the problem. If you're going down that route, then the Reapers trying to kill people can be foreshadowing of anything because their motivations were not yet known, and in that context, and only in that context, it is foreshadowing of the synth v ai theme because it could be an equal foreshadowing of anything at that point. However, the actual specific theme, synthetics will always rise up against organics, is not explored save for a couple of side quests you can easily skip. Ergo, not a major theme.

Though the heretic Geth were just following Sovereign's orders. So technically the damage those Geth did is more attributed to Sovereign's power and not the Geths themselves. But regardless we agree, if you noticed in your previous reply you stated that synthetics are far superior combat wise than organics. To which I didn't even bother replying because we agree on that. But all this proves is if they ever evolved to a point that they wanted to wipe us out, they could. However, most of what we see from AI in Mass Effect says the complete opposite. They are treated more like people than robots, heck you even said that yourself, and hinted at it even more when you kept on giving them organic attachments (EDI on citadel being like a Black woman and "how she must feel", Legion's loyalty mission "Brainwashing" them etc). These are all organic concepts and you attaching them to synthetics just proves even you must not think they are much different than organics.

While we both had gotten our information from the wiki so both links are still valid lore. The Quarian wiki page does paint the war in a darker light for sure. However, the war only happened because it was organics that attacked synthetics. Not the other way around. They defended themselves in the war until they no longer assessed a threat, and they defended their territory after the war too.

Except these are Geth that are aligned with the Reapers. You don't send in ships and tell someone to back down who is indoctrinated. The same is true for the Heretics, they worshipped Sovereign just like Saren did. And after helping Sovereign attack the Citadel of course the Galactic Federation was going to hunt down every last one. Just like America did to the Taliban after 911. You sound as if you have empathy for the heretics? A strange stance indeed when you are trying to support the theme that synthetics will always kill organics.

But the Batarians never sided with the Reapers lol. If the heretics were allowed to survive, it wouldn't result in small skirmishes. It would result in them trying to find a way to open a conduit for the Reapers to come back. This is a *way* bigger threat than terrorist Batarian groups. Regardless of the size of the group.

At the start, you said you were going to only stick to facts and then you go off on this weird tangent and with a boatload of Hyperbole to boot. We both know my entire counter argument is much bigger than that. However, when you consistently reiterate that the Synth v Organic plot was a "Major Theme". Then yes. You should be able to just skim through unnecessary content and pay attention to the *main plot* because that is where the "Major Themes" of any story should be. And that is not my opinion, that is just objectively solid storytelling. If you don't agree with the objectivity of that statement, then I have an even better rebuttal than this, but I posted it on a different forum somewhere so you'll just have to go searching for it if you want to understand it. See where I'm going with this?

But the only reason she would be in danger is that Synthetics had never been given the chance to show us they aren't so different from us, and while up until Rannoch in ME3 (depending on player choice) that is still unchallenged from the public eye. As commander Shepard playing through Mass Effect 2 & 3 we meet two AI's that show us exactly that. All you have done so far in trying to prove a precedent that a theme exists in synthetics always rising up against organics, is to list all the times organics had attacked (or had the potential to attack) synthetics.

It goes to the point that both of our links said it did, while one painted a much gloomier picture, they both stated that the Geth stopped attacking when they no longer perceived a direct threat to their existence. However you feel about genocide, you cannot argue that they stopped once they finally deemed themselves safe. And using your own argument against you, if synthetics are more advanced computationally than us, they would be able to make that determination a lot better than any of us ever could.

And that would be fine, but there is no precedent in the story to show us that synthetic life would ever do that, especially when all the conflict, as you yourself have stated, has been caused by organics. The only exposition we have for this to be true is the Catalyst's word itself.

You cannot compare synthetic life to a mindless virus incapable of feeling, while at the same time keep comparing synthetic life to organic life.

But this is where the story enters the realm of objective story-telling again and where thematic coherence is lost. Shepard is a problem-solver, whether the problems are fixed in a good way or bad is up to the player. Nonetheless, they get fixed. We can agree on that? And depending on the player's choice you are able to fix or destroy an entire host of things throughout the story. However, if you do choose to fix everything. This playthrough's thematic coherence is lost when, at the 11th hour, we are told that everything we had witnessed before is indeed not fixed. And that now this new thing is the real truth, without ever having seen a precedent for it to be true. It's like going your entire life being friends with John and then just before you die, someone tells you that you have to kill John because he'll outlive you and kill all your grandchildren. Well not sure about you, but I'd like to gather a bit more information about this rather than taking one person's word for it. And as an objective story, it needed to have a lot more exposition for it to work.

Supposedly. We have never been shown enough to truly believe that.

Except it supports the complete opposite. Synthetics never rose up and killed anyone. Organics were afraid of their sentience and attacked them. Then when faced with the opportunity to commit complete genocide, like the Catalyst said they would, they didn't. Then you are even able to reunite them and create peace, again despite what the Catalyst says about long-term not lasting. All this leads up to poor story-telling when the Catalyst tries to tell you it's wrong.

lol deflect and ignore? I've directly countered this argument every single time because it's made completely redundant by the Reapers coming in and killing everyone anyway. Steve is about to be murdered by John, so you pick Steve up in your car and help him escape from John. Then you pull over into the Forest and tell Steve that unless he lets you kill him, John will eventually catch up with him and kill him as well as his entire family. So better to just kill Steve instead. Despite the fact you just picked him up and saved his life from John...

You are confusing the point, just because someone might not subjectively like something, doesn't make them invalid from analysing it objectively. Sure, they may have a bias. But so long as their points are actually objective. Which mine have been in regards to exposition (or lack thereof), thematic coherence (or lack thereof), precedent (or lack thereof), and foreshadowing (or lack thereof).

However, the fact that the only real question I've asked you this entire time, and easily the most important, you conveniently skipped over. Leads me to believe you're just trolling at this point. So I'm really not going to waste any more of my time when you are just picking and choosing which arguments to counter and doing a mediocre job of that too.

And you're still dodging the question and not giving a straight answer so I'm not going to bother with this pointless back and forth. I've made my point and you just keep reiterating the same points over and over. With poor spelling as well, and above all else, at least on that we can agree it's objectively bad spelling.

Except that I'm not wrong. The argument was going no where so I tried to ask a fresh question to push the argument going in a new direction. He avoided the question twice so there is no point going back to the previous arguments because as far as I'm concerned I've written enough to make my point perfectly clear to anyone reading it. In fact, I've already reiterated the same points countless times over now.

And say what you want about me, but I'm not the one throwing out opinionated and petty insults.

- So you don't think an objective analysis of a writing piece is possible?
- Don't objective analysis writing an possible piece you think so?

Would you say that one of those sentences is objectively written better? If so I've made my point.

If not, then if there is no objective component in writing. Why do people strive to become "better" writers? Or how do people "learn to write"?

The fact you cannot seem to differentiate the two concepts, despite the fact that a quick google search might educate you. Combined with that you refuse to concede to any limitation subjectivity might have means this discussion is never going anywhere.

As for the in-game lore. The objective analysis is not ignoring the in-game lore, it is predicated on the very fact that you are required to go through the lore and cherry pick themes from insignificant side quests that support it retroactively. Not ignore them altogether like you're saying. If it was objectively viable story-telling this would not be required. BioWare tried to push a major theme last minute for which there was an insufficient precedent. As a result, people go cherry-picking through the lore to find themes that support it to make sense of it. The very fact we can even argue this long about it, in and of itself, proves there was insufficient evidence given. Particularly if you yourself are even stating that not only have you found themes that support it but that it is just your personal opinion and interpretation of these events that lead you to believe they are themes supporting it. Again, objectively, this is not viable story-telling. If it was viable, while the game would still explore smaller themes and concepts we could interpret subjectively, the over-arching main plot and major themes should be objectively coherent.

To put it into Lord of The Rings terms for you, it would be like Frodo getting to Mt Doom to throw the ring in, and Sauron appearing and telling him that he has to rise up and rule everyone otherwise the rule of men would conquer middle earth and kill all of the elves, hobbits and all other races until only men were left. While an objective disaster to the written story Tolkien had crafted before, this ending has an even greater precedent than Mass Effect as there has been a time in LOTR lore when the rule of men existed. And most importantly, we knew about this time organically throughout the story and not just on Sauron's word himself.

Lastly, you are welcome to reply. However, I cannot make my points on any of these matters any more clear. If you wish to discuss something fresh, I'll read it and see if there's anything worth replying to. But I doubt it at this point.