Why the ending did not work (repost)

It is indeed a possible conversation.  There were a lot of good ideas in ME1 that really worked for me.  I enjoyed how we were on the cusp of joining the Galactic Community in a big way.  We have our weaknesses and our strengths, and becoming part of the community would (could) make us all stronger.



Of course, you could also let the Council perish - yet another reason why ME1 was so amazing.  That wasn't my thing to do, but it was an option and it was very well done.

double post. Sorry

I agree with all of that, but the faceless torso is fine. It's like you want one of those cheesy endings with Frodo hugging everyone in bed. lol

Read up on Hemingway and Iceberg theory. Most writers follow it, even unconsciously. The gist is this:

It might be a movie file, rather than a render. So maybe it was easier this way.. you kill two birds with one stone. The symbol, the N7, is all that's really needed.

But I'm not sure.

None of this contradicts what I said.  Depending on the Shepard played, the choices made, etc, it's a perfectly valid way to end a story.  I never contested that.  What I do contest is that it's the only way to do so.  Different choices should end in different fates for Shepard.


And yes, we were grossly misled by marketing.   

Which is entirely possible.  When Shepard points out that the galaxy is paying for the Leviathans' mistake, the Leviathan insists "There was no mistake, it still serves its purpose"

Seriously, I wanted Shepard to do a Londo impression and go "Ah, arrogance and stupidity all in the same package.  How efficient of you." 

Why would that suggest that they're lying, though? I thought the Leviathan just meant that the Catalyst is in fact doing what they told it to do, just not in the way that they expected. There's always room to argue that what we're seeing is actually some sort of deception or coincidence, but I just don't see how or why this chain of events would hold together or make much sense if that's what it is.

The Leviathans are clearly hiding from *something* or they wouldn't have attempted to conceal their existence at the mining facility and set up that signal that causes ships to crash and become stranded if they approach Despoina. If, in fact, all the genocides and harvests were what the Leviathans actually *wanted*, and if they are on the same page with the Catalyst and the Reapers, then why are they hiding? Evidently they don't share the Catalyst/Reaper agenda or they wouldn't need to fear the Reapers. (Nor would the wind, the sun, and the rain...yeah, okay, corny joke.) So that part of their story, at least, fits with the evidence. And if they were going to make up a reason for hiding from the Reapers, the story they tell Shepard - that they were the ones who set all this slaughter in motion due to their own hubris - is one of the worst lies that they could possibly tell if they're hoping to gain the trust or assistance of others. So I'm going to assume their story is true. It fits with the facts, and they have little to gain from making these claims otherwise.

The Catalyst *might* have something to gain from putting on a display of being a somewhat detached, amoral-but-not-malevolent, AI if in fact it just wants to keep on killing and harvesting other species. But I still think it would just avoid speaking to Shepard altogether if that was its goal. At the time, Shepard holds no "cards" - the Reapers seem to be winning both the ground and air wars at Earth, the other species seem to have sent substantial forces to the Sol system, and nobody knows how to activate the Crucible even though they docked it to the Citadel. If what the Catalyst wants is a quick and thorough military victory, it has a clear alternative: shut down the beam, pull enough Reapers back to surround the Citadel (thus blocking any approach via spacecraft), keep up the attacks against Hammer, Sword, and Shield, and let Shepard bleed to death on the floor. When it does finally speak to Shepard, it would be a remarkable coincidence if it contrived a story that just happened to match another fake story that the Leviathans told a little while ago for their own reasons.

The only way I could make sense of such a deception is this: the Catalyst *isn't* the AI created by the Leviathans, but it was aware of the Leviathans' plans and decided to pose as the Leviathan-AI-gone-rogue as a sort of cover for its real plans, fooling the Leviathans themselves in the process (thus the story they tell Shepard). But while this is technically possible, so are plenty of other hypotheticals that Shepard can neither prove nor disprove at the time.

That is correct. Leviathan actually makes the scenario somewhat plausible. Delusional or not, at least we can assume the absence of deliberate deception on the Catalyst's part.

The main problem with this: Leviathan came too late. The ending reception was pretty much done when it came out, and the Catalyst pretty much fixed as the antagonist in people's minds, so Leviathan had negligible impact in that regard. As I see it, Leviathan is an absolutely critical part of the story, just as Javik is a critical NPC. Putting such things into DLC is not a good idea, though Bioware may have had little choice in this. 


That's exactly how I prefer to think of it.

I definitely agree with that, and I  hope I didn't sound too critical.

Leviathan was oddly underplayed, really. I think it was Garrus who says, after the final mission, that it "doesn't change much," and I remember thinking, "Are you serious? We just found out where the Reapers came from, who created them, why they did it, and what the entity in charge of them is trying to accomplish. This could change *everything*!" In fact, I view the original Leviathans as the ones most "responsible" for this whole mess in the first place, in that they could and should have known better, and they only created the Catalyst because the organic-synthetic conflicts were disrupting their ability to exploit other species. 

The Catalyst is simply a worst-case scenario of the kind of warnings I've heard voiced about AIs from time to time - they wouldn't have to be "evil" in the sense of being sadistic or power-hungry to pose a threat, just lacking the same inherent sense of priorities and ethics that most humans have. (The Catalyst doesn't seem to understand the value of an individual life, for one thing.) The Reapers might possess some capacity for independent thought - if nothing else, Sovereign, Harbinger, and the Rannoch Reaper all have distinct "personalities" - but they're probably sufficiently controlled that they can't or won't ever conclude on their own that the Catalyst is wrong.

Top Ten Reasons Mass Effect 3's Ending Did Not Work.

10. Really? Are we still seriously talking about the ending of Mass Effect 3?
9. You didn't have to play MP to get the best SP ending and since the best SP ending was up to you then you totally had to play MP to get the best SP ending until they "fixed" it.
8. What happened to the purple ending, y'know, the one where you win the game?
7. Consoles
6. It didn't set up Mass Effect 4: Revolt of the Bottles!
5. "Speculation for Everyone!"
4. It didn't suck. You're just entitled!
3. No "insert companion/NPC name here" romance. (Jack/femshep)
2. No Biotic God
1. WTF were they thinking?

It shows Shepard waking up after the visions received by the beacon on Eden Prime. ME4 starts from that point. excellent. hahahaha