Final Thoughts on Mass Effect 3's Ending

Wow and I thought I hated the end of ME3.

The single greatest success of ME1 was to get the player to care for and empathise with fictional aliens. ME3 managed to do that and then some with machines. It’s quite remarkable actually. The distinction between organic and synthetic life really does feel blurred and arbitrary at times throughout ME3. I can’t think of another piece of sci-fi in the last 2 decades which has managed to pull this off quite as well.

Are EDI and the Geth truly alive, a true burgeoning consciousness with emotional intelligence and agency rather than a facsimile of one? I take a somewhat different view. They are life but not like us. They are capable of many things, even personal sacrifice, sure. EDI in ME3 is an intelligence not unlike our own but in 50,000 years EDI will be more powerful than the reapers and were we not long dead we may be slightly taller, we might have better posture and longer lifespans, we might have cured cancer by then, do you see what I am getting at?

This is about OUR survival, whether or not a machine can feel empathy and compassion beyond it's base instincts is kind of beside the point which is why I am so mixed about Mass Effect 3 in general. To paraphrase the catalyst, does it matter whether or not the fire feels sorry that it burned your house down?

It really will be interesting to see how they attempt to reconcile the ending of ME3 going forwards. (refuse-ending aside) My hope is that it is left completely ambiguous and open to interpretation first and for-mostly so as to a) not to get the series stuck in the mire of dealing with the fallout of ME3 again beyond the odd perfunctory easter-egg here and there, and so that the new game can hopefully find have the chance to establish it's own voice, it's own lore, locations, characters, factions, even new species etc. Shepard time has come and gone. While the far distant future consciences of Shepards final Hobson's choice can largely be inferred, the immediate future could be familiar yet different enough to feel like Mass Effect to appeal to veterans and draw in the new audience that didn't come along for the ride on the Ark.

Final thoughts? As long as there's ME, there will be no final thought for ME3's ending. There will always be something to say about the endings no matter how many times it's been said.

The only thing I recall from my first ME3 playthrough was throwing my arms up in the air when the credits started.

Then the cut was released. Instead of it fixing or whatever word someone wants to use, it turned into a comedy. The best thing the cut fixed was the flashbacks as Shepard is shooting the tube.

I have been saying for years the ending would be better if Bioware used the ending they told the player after the coup. I call it Hackett's ending. There was no reason to have all the hocus pocus crap after Shepard passed out. Hackett's ending is simple.  It's likely there would have been a lot less negative feedback

Back in late spring/early summer 2016, Mac Walters said the ending could have been better. Ony he can answer what he would have done to make it better. 

What the ending did was leave questions unanswered even with the cut. If I had to say the worst thing about the ending is thing, the one controlling the reapers, is the one explaining what the crucible will do. 

Some interesting ideas there, with regard to involving more of the wider squad and having A, and B stories, possibly even more, and making better use of Liara and Javik, the Prothean VI and the Illusive Man as literary plot devices who could have discovered and delivered more of the catalysts exposition which should have been baked into and arisen naturally from the narrative so that by the time you reach the final galaxy shaping decision you are equipped to make that choice, it’s not dumped on you out of the blue in the final 5 minutes. I think the real problem with ME3 is not so much Priority Earth in isolation but just about everything between Rannoch and Priority Earth felt like filler that didn’t advance or contribute to the reaper cycle plot with the exception of small tidbits from Thessia which left them with far too much narrative work to do in the final mission.

They should have either cut Cerberus HQ and Sanctuary or have Miranda and Jacob as the point of view characters for those side-stories and this could have been much earlier. Probably would have worked out much better as DLC.

IMO, the only solution to the ending is mods which unfortunately are unavailable on the console version.

At this point, the fact that Bioware couldn't be bothered fixing the ME2 Conrad Verner Bug in the ME2 Console Legendary Edition while doing their remaster tells me a lot. So in ME1, Make the renegade choice and shove a gun in his face because he thinks you did anyway.

The gravity of each of the endings is a steaming pile. It was such a steaming pile that they had to rewrite the destroy ending to soften what it did in the EC because originally some people thought it sent technology back to the 20th Century. That would have resulted in some pretty horrendous events given how reliant galactic civilizations were on "advanced" tech - more on this in a different post.

The other two? Your choice: fascism or communism. Just my opinion, though. None of them solve anything.

If anything the lesson of the game is don't create sentient AI, and if you do kill it.

So your answer to ending the cyclical genocides...is to continue the cyclical genocides? 

Except it is. You start your solution with yet another genocide, then guarantee a never-ending cycle of genocides between organics and future synthetics. After all, why should new synthetics trust organics? They just see a history of organics wiping them out. Even if you get peace with the Geth and Quarians, that'll just be seen as deceiving the Geth to use them and once they served their purpose organics killed them. So their philosophy will become that of Anderson's "We destroy them, or they destroy us." And the organics will respond by trying to wipe out all synthetics since they'll get that same mindset that they already have, leading to an eternal conflict. 

I don't believe in the synthesis pipe dream, because it is inhumane to subject all species in the galaxy to transcendent into a new species without their individual approval. Also, I don't believe in control. If the brat lied then the reapers will do so in the future. Besides, I don't think that the families of the victims love to have their murderers around unpunished.

Only the Intelligence went rogue and it harvested the leviathans, without warning, and used them to create the first reaper. The geth were not entirely convinced by Nazara and not all followed the reapers. The geth were driven in the arms of the reapers at the end of ME3, in a desperate attempt to survive. However, they could be persuaded by logic and help the quarians to rebuild their home planet, which (BTW), they already cleaned up in anticipation of a possible peace between them and the quarians.

You can believe in your rationalizations as much as you want, but their is no law that states that an AI must dominate an organic. It is an in idea that at best could be described as the Frankenstein complex, for which their is no proof. It is nice in a science fiction story, and in this case only the reapers fit that idea. Another example of the reaper's evilness are the zha'til, who lived in symbioses with the zha, until the reapers, according to Javik, corrupted and transformed them into monsters and enslaved the zha.

That AI trust issue with organics is nonsense. Even the geth saw that heretics were a threat and were willing to take them out or reprogram the logic bug. Shepard could select which of those two options, because the geth thought that those were the only viable solutions. It seems that the geth trusted an organic in case they could not reach consensus.

Tsss. Each time I counteract your point, you claim that it has nothing to do with your point. You defy all logic.

Your point is simple: You believe that synthetics want to dominate organics, like it is some universal law. Time after time the reapers have proven to be evil and corrupt other synthetics in their quest to exterminate organics. If there is one law then it is that the reapers are evil. There are no known examples of synthetics, who want to dominate organics, unless they were driven to do so by the reapers.

In that light the dominance issue is very important. The leviathans thought that they were the apex race and thus believed they were entitled to dominate all other races. Obviously organics fight among themselves, but the leviathans believed that taking out synthetics would be easier in their quest to enslave the galaxy. So in that mindset, which has no empathy, they created an intelligence to make sure that tribute does not flow from a dead race. Obviously that evil mindset was inherited by the Intelligence and the reapers. Both the geth and the zha'til never had such a mindset. It is a myth driven by robophobia.

About the trust: You believe that maybe somewhere in the future, when new synthetics are created, the destroy option would cause the synthetics to distrust organics. I cannot look into the future, but I am sure that synthetics are not stupid and they would also see that only the reapers were responsibe for the destruction of other synthetics species. The geth and the zha'til are good examples of that, which is why I brought them up.

While you're making good points, AngryFrozenWater, it's pointless to try and engage in an actual debate. You've made very good arguments, but you're just talking to a brick wall. Consider your argument made and just move on.

Thanks. I will do that.