Mass Effect 3 Ending Discussion

[Bond]

Originally Posted by Combine 017

For those who are curios or like me, will never be able to see the bad endings, heres a vid of every ending side by side.

Look, just because the designers didn't branch out into secondary colors doesn't mean the endings weren't vastly different.

On a serious note, I had no idea the endings were that similar. That is kind of ridiculous.

[Dylflon]

Now that I've read the indoctrination theory, it's very interesting to think that what plays out in the citadel is just a mind fuck to get Shepard to think on a different paradigm that helps the Reapers (like what happened with the Illusive man).

Are the reapers mind readers? That's the only way they'd know to make the little AI hologram that child. It makes more sense if it's taking place in Shepard's head since that kid is something she's been grappling with the whole game, he's always very much in her mind.

If this is the case, then my selection of synthesis could be playing into the reaper's hand now that I'm trying to compromise rather than stop them. Could that AI have been fucking with me and lying outright. Some of the things he said are out of line with the things the Reapers have said throughout the game.

The idea that this cycle preserves life could be the lie that helps fuck with Shepard's head enough to not destroy the Reapers while the Reapers could be acting in self interest to ensure that no being would ever advance enough to be on par with the Reapers.

Plus there's a lot of weird stuff that happened like Shepard's gun going off at Anderson, but Anderson not being wounded. Then later in the exchange Shepard is bleeding from the spot where it seems she shot Anderson.

The only thing I regret now is taking the two people I cared about most on the last mission since it seems they got vaporized.

I wonder how the rest of the people made out in the battle...


The more I think about it, the more I like how the game ended. It will be interesting to see what happens now that Bioware is adding to it.


The only thing I see as a failure is the fact that the final battle didn't involve many hard choices. I would have liked something akin to the last mission in ME2 wherein you have to organize squads to help you get to the beam. The last moments would have been a lot better if the game forced to make hard choices and sacrifice some of your friends for the sake of the mission. It doesn't seem as though that would have been too hard to do and I think a mission of this caliber would have limited a lot of people's disappointment with the end of the game.


Edit:

The biggest success of this game is that it's gotten all of us thinking about it a lot after finishing it. What other game can boast that?

[Dylflon]

Last stage of dealing with end of Mass Effect:

Played through ending again. Indoctrination theory is everyone just grasping at straws.

The ending was the ending. It wasn't the worst thing ever. Get over it, crybabies.

[Typhoid]

It would have made more sense if they hadn't tryed to explain the reapers origins, and the whole cycle was just the reapers procuring the future of their species, ensuring their survival.

I like the concept that they're doing it is because they're so technologically advanced that they feel so complexly superior to every living thing, and have a massive God complex. I think that sounds a lot cooler than them simply trying to survive.

Wrong about that. In ME3 you get the chance to see stored Geth memories and its the Quarians that start the war with the Geth. There are several memories but there are key ones where the Quarians are trying to shut a geth down (kill it) and the geth is just asking what it did wrong and how it wasn't broken, trying to figure out why they wanted to kill it.

They talk about that in ME2 too, if you talk enough with Legion. He plays the recordings for you.
So then after the Quarians tried to shut off (kill) that geth, the geth contemplated why they creators (Gods) were attempting to destroy them and rebelled, right?

Just because I said the Geth rebelled doesn't mean I meant they were the first to start the war - but they were still the synthetic ones to rise up and rebel against the organic creators.

1. Cerberus is not an evil corporation

I never said they were evil. I just said they were a corporation.


Anyways, all I was trying to say with my post before was my opinion on the theme of the series - that the whole Synthetic Life/Organic life and the struggles between them and combination of them seems to be at least a minor theme in the whole series - to me. Almost everything in that game is the cause, problem of, or the solution is some type of genetic engineering, and the struggles of choices between combining organic life with synthetic life, or altering organic life to become 'better'.

It seems to be about "At what point is too much". Look at the Illusive Man. He wants to secure the human race at the top of the Universal ladder- at what cost though - synthesizing people to make them stronger and better, essentially making them less organic, less 'natural'. Then there's the Solarians and the Genophage, and the fact the Krogan were genetically engineered in the first place, and then decimated afterwards with some genetic altering. And especially the shit the Reapers are pulling, and have previously pulled.

AI in the series was originally presented as evil with the Geth, but then slowly towards the 3rd game (to my understanding from playing to the second and from what I've heard about the 3rd) they try to make you understand that just because their life isn't organic, it's still life [Even through the course of 2, with EDI - she starts off with a sketchy sort of vibe to the character, but by the end of the game she has become very 'human' in her interactions, cracking jokes, getting to know the crew, and possibly even 'becomes' the ship - turning her into an actual physical object rather than simply data]- so is it morally okay to destroy them - when is it morally okay to stop genetic engineering, when is it okay to do it etc. Maybe it's just me who sees it that way, I'm not too sure.

The biggest success of this game is that it's gotten all of us thinking about it a lot after finishing it. What other game can boast that?

Even if that's not what they were going for at all, I definitely agree.

Hey Dylan, after you decide to be through with this abomination of semen-filled excrement [No rush] I call dibs - because I don't really want to drop 70 bucks on a game everyone has been shit talking for weeks - it's not a very good selling point.


*shrugs and walks away*

[Combine 017]

Originally Posted by Typhoid

Hey Dylan, after you decide to be through with this abomination of semen-filled excrement [No rush] I call dibs - because I don't really want to drop 70 bucks on a game everyone has been shit talking for weeks - it's not a very good selling point.


*shrugs and walks away*

What the hell is wrong with you, you cant just say that without even knowing the facts, gawd, its only 60 bucks!

[Fox 6]

despite all this ending fiasco, I still think think this is one of the best games I've ever played, and my favourite game series by far. Love the ME universe.

[Dylflon]

Yep, it was good times for sure.

Even though if it's true that your final party gets vaporized, then I had to watch every single one of my favourite characters die. But it's cool, I will accept Mordin and Legion's deaths as they were in the service of satisfying story telling.