Half-full vs Half-empty: Tell us why the ending failed/succeeded in one sentence

Well it is someone who while being a Mod requires them to regularly browse the forums. But at least on the topic of ME 3 spits more fire about it then a Smaug with with a chest cold. Seriously that is all he ever posts is hate for the game.

He has been shown to have missed information in the game. As well as ignores any information that doesn't match what he wants to have happened in the game.  Which to be fair on those at least you would have to have some conversations with him to fully see. Of which I have personal experience with.

As well as a hint of what I could only call a superiority complex. People needing to do mental gymnastics to accept the ending because any view out side of his own is obviously terrible and idiotic and only his view is the correct view to have.

lol behold, the magic of projecting:



Thanks for the laugh, I needed it.

About that projecting thing....



Mental gymnastics have never been used to mean a good thing. It is another way of saying warping reality to suit their needs. Much like the South Park Episode were Jimmy comes up with the fish dicks joke and slowly over the course of the show Cartman slowly twists the events that happened from him helping create the joke. Which he didn't do. Into he was the only creator of the joke and Jimmy is jealous and spiteful to him for it.

You are literally saying the game is such a giant piece of shit that people have to warp reality to enjoy the ending. Because your view is the only correct view and anyone who might like it must clearly being a mental gymnastic master to reach that point.

So if by projecting you mean pushing feeling and emotions that do not exist on someone else you are incorrect. If by projecting you mean displaying the very thing you are showing. In this case the behavior of someone with some degree of superiority complex. Then you are correct.

Half empty (or less): the last minute antagonist dictating our choices for us and the ludicrous overdose of space magic (even for a space fantasy like Mass Effect) make this one of the most WTF endings I have ever experienced.

I recall being warned about the endings before I got there, thinking that it couldn't be that bad, and still staring in disbelief when the credits rolled. When the "dude, wanna buy some DLC" message popped up, I Alt-F4'd out.

Well if you're proving anything, it's that mental gymnastics need not be a concentrated willful effort. You seem to be "warping reality" by the very act of reading. That, or you should read things a few times to confirm their message.

I will say this only once, for clarification purposes (though it'll likely prove futile).

My assessment of the ending choices regarding mental gymnastics lies in the fact that most of the time people who argue for a choice do so not on behalf of what's presented but rather on the supporting logic or assumptions that seem to go with it. Or in other words, the effects or implications said choice can bring about. Look at Ieldra's Synthesis thread or my Control thread- both deal primarily the implications of those choices that appeals to us (global transhumanism and personal ascendance respectively) and not strictly what's shown in game. I have yet to see someone go "yay merging into a new DNA!"

There's also no value judgement inherent in my statement. Yes mental gymnastics typically means you have to make some inferences and logical connections on your own to arrive at something that works. Fun fact: we've been doing that the whole time, it's called headcanon. Also fun fact: take what I just said and flip around into a typical biodrone stance and you get: "what, you want the developers to spoon feed you everything? It's supposed to make you think!"

So you can take almost anything and make it negative or positive, based on how you spin it. However, if the thing itself is mostly neutral what people will see is not the effect of the thing being positive or negative but the cause of that, namely the bias of it's user.

Hence, projection.

*not another ending thread*

Half-empty:

The major success of the ending in the first two series is the thematic heroism. You succeed in defeating Saren and Sovereign. You succeed in defeating the Collectors and Attack on Titan. And MEHEM tried to imitate this with giving some heroic closure, you succeed in opening up the crucible, Joker and some unknown soldiers heroically rescued you, you get to hug your love interest in the end. And people like it. Even Citadel DLC mod work with the essence that you get your own happy ending with your love interest at the end. Gameplay-wise in Priority London, You're just fighting swarms of Cannibals, Marauders, Banshees, Brutes and Harvesters until the final cutscenes. There's no sense in achieving anything when you just sit down and play dialogue bars at the end with the pretense that your choice matters. Yes, it matters, you either kill all reapers in 1 out of five situation and you survive provided you hoard a lot of EMS. But that doesn't exactly fill you with joy, does it?

Maybe it could have been better game say if they allow itself to be a game. Say, if you found another new proto reaper in Citadel (or Illusive Man decided to wear it) and you fight it off and then Harbinger suddenly loom over you the moment you unleash the Crucible. And then your love interest came to rescue you and off you ran off as the crucible kill every single reapers in the galaxy. This way you don't feel like you're playing everything out of nothing.

But storywise, after all this years, I am willing to cut them some slack. Their recent KOTET's ending have all of these elements that left you feeling somewhat achieved and fulfilled even if you don't particularly enjoy the journey to reach it and there's clarity in the villain's motivation which I find lacking in ME3 (Starchild is Harbinger trying to dupe you.. but noo.. that's too prosperous... several million years old immortal AI appearing as a child in a hologram and you have to believe every shit that thing say to save itself... but... meh? Indoctrination Theory ftw?)

Full empty:

Needless, overcomplicated, pretentious Catalyst logic.

I didn't mind if Shepard had to die.

I didn't mind if the Reapers turned out have served a higher purpose.

But please get the logic straightened out. I was more absorbed by picking out the various reasons the Catalyst sounded stupid rather than trying to understand a different perspective. The Drell disassociation of body and mind made me think. The Asari Justicar code made me think. The Geth Consensus made me think. The Catalyst just made me write the ending off as something to leave in the middle of the scene to make a sandwich.

Complaining about an annoying sound does not mean the noise is underappreciated music.

And? It's not my opinion or arguments you're projecting. But I guess you missed or ignored that information when considering only your viewpoint and treating alternate opinions as inferior or faulty. See, when you explain the magic of projecting, some of the wonder is lost. I hope you're happy, the effect is ruined now.

But yeah, while we're (still) on the subject, the ending is absolute nonsensical shit. The rest of the game is riddled with problems from the moment it opens, problems the like of which might've been ignored in earlier games because the BS threshold hadn't yet been crossed (as I explained to another user in another thread) or the narrative experience was satisfactory enough that the problems were overlooked or may not even have been noticed. But the cat's out of the bag with this final installment in the trilogy. You'll just have to accept this... or I guess stay here forever attacking everyone who disagrees with you.

That being said, the overall strength of the franchise is so high that despite all these problems I can still say ME3 is a solid, good game. And that is really saying something. The combat gameplay is the smoothest and best it's ever been, the multiplayer was lightning in a bottle despite problems of its own (RNG bullshit, missile glitches etc) and the sub-plots of the story had excellent resolutions and provided some of the best RP experiences of the series. Most of the failings come in with the main Reaper plot which let's face it was never the main appeal of the story anyway. And I can almost guarantee even the harshest critics didn't start picking out flaws on their first playthrough if they were at all invested in the story from previous games, indicating BioWare still had some magic up its sleeve, despite the time crunch and corner they'd written themselves into. Make no mistake, when you consider the shoddy approach to planning, EA deadlines and staff changes, the game actually becomes kind of amazing for having come out so well, despite those setbacks. That doesn't mean the problems get a pass to say nothing of how they were treated afterwards. But it does mean that a full on hater or a full on drone approach lacks the perspective to see the whole picture; namely that there's enough good there to keep players coming back and doing the story over again, and coming to forums to discuss it, for good or bad.

And I guess that's about as half-full, half-empty as it gets. So my contribution to this thread is done.

Half-empty: The problematic "master race" themes running through all the Catalyst's "solutions" supposedly designed by professional writers.

Half-Full the Extended Cut, from which the MEHEM and JAM mods was designed

Half-Empty: Nothing you do throughout the trilogy can alter said polychromatic master race "solutions"

Half-Full: Can turn brain off and just shoot stuff, I guess.

Half-Empty: Bioware actually thought it was a good idea to force the death of a player character their fans had been playing and had grown attached to for five years.

half Full: Commander Shepard no longer holds the audience captive

Again, the logistics or lore-issues or plot-handwaves aren't the problem. They certainly cheapen the believability but that's not even the issue. The issue is how the narrative is broken because the throughline is severed by introducing an isolated main conflict that resolves itself in the very final scene of the trilogy and it obscures the previous story.

ME1's ending is great because it follows up thematically and subtextually to what the game was building up to, which was humanity proving themselves to the galactic civilization and Shepard becoming a galactic icon.

And don't be one of those "you just didn't get it" people. I'm pretty sure most people here are smarter than to reduce the issue to "yo dawg we created synthetics to kill you so you won't be killed by synthetics" because we know how that makes sense and what the Reaper plot is... we just don't understand why it's suddenly so important when the player has not been shown previously why there was any need for synthetic growth to be controlled in such an insane manner. The question isn't "why does it make sense?" it is "why is it so relevant to the story we've been told"? and the best answer is "cuz the Reapers are the central threat" but their plot wasn't but the finale makes it so to the point that Shepard has to take it on as the bigger conflict whilist not even questioning whether their argument from authority is worth listening to or whether a solution is even worth anything in the first place instead of picking "another solution" which continues the vague assumption that "something bad will probably, inevtiably, happen in the future". It's not only a weak argument it's completely pointless in conjunction with any other scene in ME3 and thus not fulfilling the goals of being an ending.

Note: Ending the Reaper conflict does matter, but not for the reasons you're given because it's no longer the "Reaper conflict" it's "The Synthetic/Organic" conflict and the Reapers are belittled and as is the effort to fight back their oppression because now the picture is different and there's some higher purpose that's more important than us fighting Reapers but that purpose is an issue we simply can't relate to becuase it's the Reapers' problem and a hypothetical problem that isn't 100% going to happen because that's just not how times work. They're not fighting global warming, because it hasn't begun, if you catch my drift. We see synthetic/organic problems addressed in Shepard's timeline but none of them are like global warming which is an issue you can relate to IRL because you can see its effects already. Synthetics/Organics are not like that -- you cannot see any effect of a synthetic revolution on the rise or Geth becoming ready to take on all organics or EDI overdeveloping until she treats organics like they're nothing. Nothing in the trilogy's main story arc insinuates that there's going to be a larger problem with organics or synthetics on a metaphysical level, except to say that they have problems which are resolved in ME3's Geth/Rannoch arc or EDI and Joker growing their bond.

The hypothesis of the ending and the Reaper plot is false but it turns into the main conflict anyway, and you just cannot conclude the trilogy on this notion, which BioWare unfortunately did and then insisted on keeping it and expanding it with Extended Cut and then even further with Leviathan until they realized they had to abandon the entire universe they set up in ME123 by moving to Andromeda just to continue the series. Words cannot describe what a massive downhill turn this franchise has taking from such a promising beginning in ME1. Not even LOST or Battlestar Galactica evolved this far into failure-territory in such a prolonged run. LOST was already so bad by the penultimate seasons that you could tell the ending would inevitably be crap. Mass Effect was somewhat great all the way on some level until it got REALLY bad in the final act of ME3 and then with Andromeda they just keep going.

But here is the thing with ME 1's ending doesn't follow up with the thematically and subtexually to what the game was building up to. There is no prove humanity to galactic civilization going on. The fear and distrust of humanity isn't because they are new but because they have pushed and pushed and made massive power grabs at a scale not before seen by other races.  Liara has an entire conversation branch about this fact.  7/10ths of all problems in the game are caused by Shepard's complete and total lack of tact and grace. Barging in and demanding the Council accept everything he says without proof simply because he said it. The other 3/10th of the problems are caused by the Council looking down on Shepard for no other reason then to look down on him for no adequately explained reason. The only thing ME 1 does is set the humans are special tone that is continued in other games. And is something I've seen a fair amount of people complain about with the series.

And the really interesting thing about ME 1 compared to the other 2 games in the trilogy. If you put ME 2 and 3 under close scrutiny plot holes and issues show up. How ever ME 1 has the distinct honor of completely rendering it's entire plot pointless in the first 10 minutes of the game. Saren has no need for the Conduit. Being a high level and respected Specter has all the connections and resources he needs to sneak an assault force onto the Citadel. Then just have Sovereign attack like normal, be there in time to evacuate the Council for their "safety" and fortify the Council Chamber with Asari Huntress and boom Reapers are back and literally everything that happened in the game is rendered pointless.

Reaper plot and fight the Reaper plot are intrinsically tied together. Fight the Reaper plot would not exist with the Reaper plot. Because if the Reaper plot didn't exist then the Reapers wouldn't exist so there would be no need to fight against them. Solve the Reaper plot and their entire reason to need to be fought against ends because the Reapers are no longer a threat.  How and why people can not see that I personally don't understand because this seems fairly obvious to me.  As well the entire point  of the Reaper's plan is to harvest races before they reach they reach the point of no return. It doesn't make any sense to save a race from being killed by synthetics to wait till they are already at that level to harvest them.

The only synthetic race we are shown in game are the Geth and they aren't true AIs. Least not till the events of Rannoch in ME 3. But even then besides ME 1 they are dumbed down a ton. ME 2 the Geth get lobotomized because suddenly they go from advanced race who's fleet was capable of nearly wiping out the Citadel Fleet to a group that was not much better then any other race in the galaxy. ME 3 then brought them up to their full potential again. But had to add the stipulation that the Reapers were controlling them to regain that intelligence and power. To match the lobomization they got in ME 2 and keep the lore consistent.  EDI is an individual AI who had to hide the fact she was an AI while the Normandy was in dry dock out of fear of being wiped out.  Not to mention EDI and Joker's bond make no sense. One moment Joker hates her then the Collectors attack the ship, Joker unshackles her and she jumps to FTL to get away and suddenly they are best buddies. No build up, no logical reason for why Joker would be willing to unshackle her and no reason why Joker would suddenly be ok with the same AI he was making threats to short circuit earlier.

But the problems aren't solved with Geth/Rannoch arc. Even if peace is made the context of how it is made is just as important as what happened. Not only does Tali out right admit that it is to early to even vaguely call the Geth an ally for the Quarians. But the game also makes it clear that the leaders of the different groups are very careful to keep the Geth and Quarians on opposite sides of the fighting. But the entire context of the peace is that it only happens because of the mutual threat the Reapers pose to all races.  Saying Rannoch arc is resolved without context of how and why it happened. Is a lot like saying peace was made in the middle east. But ignoring the fact that 80% of it was nuked into a fallout style hell hole and the remaining 20% was told to make peace or be wiped out from the face of the earth.

Due to how intrinsically the Reaper plot is tied into the entire trilogy plot solving one solves the other. In this case addressing the Reaper plot in turn addresses the Reaper threat. That is exactly how you end a series. The Reapers are the main threat but they are a threat for a very specific reason. You solve that reason and they are no longer a threat anymore.

No the reason ME:A is taking place as it does is because the fans would cause needless outrage over any specific choices becoming cannon. I actually brought this up on Reddit about why they should just pick certain choices and the amount of hate that I got was over whelming. Apparently if someone chooses to not cure the Genophage BioWare coming later and saying it was cured is enough to send them into a rant fest. Which would in turn cause problems for the release of it.  I personally would not care if destroy or control was considered the canon choice but apparently enough players do care that avoiding the ending any any of those choices is actually the smartest way for them to be able to create the game without a bunch of needlessly pointless backlash by the fan base. Even if it does cause a lot of plot issues from the start.