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 Melissia wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
that only comes up in the last 5 minutes of a ~120+ hour trilogy between three games and multiple DLC.

I saw hints of it in the first game.

You can probably be safely assured they're not there, considering the head writer for the first (and co-writer of the second), Drew Karpyshyn, is on record as having stated that he intended for a different ending with a different fundamental reasoning behind the Reapers existence and motives, and that it never got fully fleshed out and hammered down by the time he left Bioware right about the time ME2 came out, with ME3 going in a different direction under a different manager.

 Vaktathi wrote:
I just cannot get excited about a new ME game.

ME3 was handled so poorly that the universe is just ruined for me.

That they just lamely cut and pasted the ending from the original Deus Ex, and then so stubbornly defended it, with massive gaping plotholes and narrative inconsistencies extending even into the EC (with extremely passive aggressive "buck the starchild" option), I just can't bring myself to really care anymore.

I loved the ME series up until the last ~10 minutes of 3, and just can't get back into it.

I loved it until the ending of 2. That boss was just so lame at the end. Mass effect 1 had the coolest ending fighting what appeared to be a normal guy who then awoken as a machine thingy (although I usually paragon out of the fight because words are cool). 2 wasn't as fun gameplay wise but it was awesome story and quest wise. Just that boss ruined it for me and now I can't get through the first 10 minutes of Mass effect 3 which was incredibly lame for me.

I have 100% clocked Mass Effect 1 too. Every inch of every planet and map was needed to do that. One of the very few games I actually did anything in 100% max out. But Mass effect 3 was the final nail in the coffin. Like it I do not.

 Swastakowey wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
I just cannot get excited about a new ME game.

ME3 was handled so poorly that the universe is just ruined for me.

That they just lamely cut and pasted the ending from the original Deus Ex, and then so stubbornly defended it, with massive gaping plotholes and narrative inconsistencies extending even into the EC (with extremely passive aggressive "buck the starchild" option), I just can't bring myself to really care anymore.

I loved the ME series up until the last ~10 minutes of 3, and just can't get back into it.

I loved it until the ending of 2. That boss was just so lame at the end. Mass effect 1 had the coolest ending fighting what appeared to be a normal guy who then awoken as a machine thingy (although I usually paragon out of the fight because words are cool). 2 wasn't as fun gameplay wise but it was awesome story and quest wise. Just that boss ruined it for me and now I can't get through the first 10 minutes of Mass effect 3 which was incredibly lame for me.

I have 100% clocked Mass Effect 1 too. Every inch of every planet and map was needed to do that. One of the very few games I actually did anything in 100% max out. But Mass effect 3 was the final nail in the coffin. Like it I do not.

The end boss of ME2 was pretty absurdly goofy, that's where I think you can start to see the shift in writing/design staff. I found myself able to dismiss it and move on, but yeah, it was certainly really goofy.

The end boss of 2 was goofy, but it also acted as a reveal - i.e. that humans were being used to build a new reaper. iirc, up until that point it wasn't entirely clear just what was being done to the captured humans. Still, they probably could have handled it a bit better.




From what I understand, Drew Karpashian's original idea for the Reapers' motivation has been known for a while now. Technologically advancing societies cause the dark matter problems that were mentioned in ME2 (Tali's recruitment mission, and the undercover investigator from ME1), so the Reapers come in and destroy the existing civilizations and allow the problem to heal itself. But the Reapers found something unique in humanity that promised a permanent solution to the problem so that no further purges would need to take place. The choice at the end of ME3 was supposed to come down to sacrifice humanity to solve the problem permanently, or destroy the Reapers and save humanity in hopes that a solution would present itself before the problem grew too big.


The ME3 writer completely ignored the dark matter plot hooks (afaik, it didn't even get a mention in ME3), and came up with the "orderly AIs will eventually go Skynet on the disorganized organics" idea instead.
.

The more I think about it, I really do like that idea (maybe not that specific choice though... Why sacrifice humanity? I mean, maybe sacrifice Earth because the means to stop it is on the citadel over Earth, but wiping out all humans, err...)

In any case, it does fit more. - It had already been well established in the series that AI had just as much tendency for life and, dare I say it, a soul , as organics. Sure there may be 'bad' AI, but the Geth, and EDI, showed that AI in the universe was much closer to Data, than Skynet...


As I said, I never felt Mass Effect was 'grimdark' - The idea that there is a good chance that certain technological research could destroy the entire galaxy/universe if it wasn't reined in is a good one (There was a BBC newsarticle about that recently that I can't find...).

And if you did have a plotline that, say, the Citadel species were already actively doing Dark Matter research, it fits better.


It also fits in with the concept of Humans are Special a lot more, in my view. Again, a kind of Star Trekky concept.

 Vaktathi wrote:
You can probably be safely assured they're not there

Or maybe you're just not paying attention enough, and have all these weird preconceptions that blind you to paying attention to the little details.

I've always disliked that whole Dark matter thing. If anything it is more deus ex machina than the current ending.

Sacrificing humanity can suddenly fix a galaxy-wide problem that has persisted over millions of years? And apparently humanity is the first species in how many iterations of evolution to have this specific genetic trait that makes them capable of this?

It's pretty bad writing.

Eh, it's more like humanity was capable of using what the previous races built upon in order to overcome it.

 Melissia wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
You can probably be safely assured they're not there

Or maybe you're just not paying attention enough, and have all these weird preconceptions that blind you to paying attention to the little details.

It's not there because at the point in time that you're discussing the lead writer didn't intend for it to be there. Remember that the lead writer during ME1 and ME2 wasn't writing toward Ghost Boy and "Inevitability of the Skynet scenario". So he couldn't have been dropping vague hints about it.

And yet I saw the hints of something more.

 Melissia wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
You can probably be safely assured they're not there

Or maybe you're just not paying attention enough, and have all these weird preconceptions that blind you to paying attention to the little details.

Or maybe you're just fishing at this point to back up an assertion based on your own projections of something that isn't there by the admission of the game's writing staff because they hadn't come up with any of the concepts used in ME3's ending, and were working with an entirely different concept (built around "Dark Energy") when they made ME1....

If you're seeing hints of the Starchild and ME3's reasoning for the Reapers existence in ME1, it's entirely of your own making, for two reasons. They were working with a different concept at the time, and hadn't gotten so far as to flesh out the endgame yet.

Any hints you should see should be stuff like the Quarrian/Geth mission in ME2 talking about Dark Energy, that's where they were originally going.

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Melissia wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
You can probably be safely assured they're not there

Or maybe you're just not paying attention enough, and have all these weird preconceptions that blind you to paying attention to the little details.

Or maybe you're just fishing at this point

Nope. I played through all three and did not feel a disconnect. It's strange that the fact that I had no problem wiht it offends you so much.

If these hints in ME 1 and 2 truly exist, name them.

Uploaded my own little version by changing the music to something more suitable:

Rewatched the first trailer and, listening to the music track (Ghost Rider - Johnny Cash), it struck me.

The song belongs in Fallout New Vegas, not Mass Effect .

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
If these hints in ME 1 and 2 truly exist, name them.

The "prothean relic" that was Sovereign had tech that looked nothing like any of the prothean ruins in the rest of the game. Its technology was quite different in both appearance and function, making it obvious that it wasn't prothean at all, and that it was something else. The fact that it was able to mind control Saren and Benezia meant that it was either sentient itself or at the very least a very advanced AI, as it was influencing and directing their actions and reacting to the galaxy at large-- following directives told to us by Sovereign in ME1. In ME2, the existence of more of these things of the same general design made it obvious that it was an entire fleet or race of them with a hidden agenda, and that they wiped out the Protheans brings hints of cyclical purgings or harvestings that confirms what Sovereign said in ME1 and that Sovereign was not alone, to say nothing of the possession of individual "Collectors" (IE Protheans) which was similar to Sovereign's control of Saren evolved to fit a species that had been bred for countless generations to be controlled in this way. This pointed towards a highly advanced AI that harvested biological life forms to form more of itself and preserve what they thought would have been lost when artificial life became a danger. Either each machine was its own god-machine, or there was something directing them, a living being or an AI which made decisions on how they acted as a whole.

... which is what we got, in ME3. What we learned in ME3 was whether or not it was intended to have been that way by its creators (it wasn't), and the details of how it took the people of each cycle and turned them in to monsters, amongst other things. But this "god-machine" itself? Definitely not a new idea in the Mass Effect universe.


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 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
Rewatched the first trailer and, listening to the music track (Ghost Rider - Johnny Cash), it struck me.

The song belongs in Fallout New Vegas, not Mass Effect .

Yeah, I'd agree to that.

 Melissia wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Melissia wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
You can probably be safely assured they're not there

Or maybe you're just not paying attention enough, and have all these weird preconceptions that blind you to paying attention to the little details.

Or maybe you're just fishing at this point

Nope. I played through all three and did not feel a disconnect. It's strange that the fact that I had no problem wiht it offends you so much.

It doesn't.

The fact that you're insisting you're seeing hints of stuff that wasn't there, by the writers own admission, is somewhat amusing though, as is responding only with one-sentence replies without backing anything up.

You're not providing any examples of these "hints" (not even vague ones that could be ascribed to just about anything) though I've given you an explicit example from ME2 that was hinting at a different ending by the writers own admission, you're not backing up any of your points or addressing the fact that the writers of ME1 had absolutely nothing of this in mind.

If you didn't see a great disconnect, fine. Many people did, and the head writer for ME1 and ME2 has said it didn't end the way he was intending it to end. There's a reason that Bioware had to release multiple DLC's to try and fix their ending. You think you saw hints of the ME3 ending in ME1, well, fine, but the head writer would tell you otherwise because they had an entirely different concept in mind and hadn't hammered anything solidly out by the time he left at the end of ME2's production.

If you liked ME3 fine, I'm not hating on that. I liked most of the game. I loved ME1 and ME2. But the ending had major narrative issues and was widely controversial for a reason, and Bioware ultimately had to respond in unprecedented ways to try and fix it, which wouldn't have been necessary had the ending really been all that neatly wrapped up.

 Sir Arun wrote:
Uploaded my own little version by changing the music to something more suitable:

Well done sir

 Vaktathi wrote:
The fact that you're insisting you're seeing hints of stuff that wasn't there

I fething DARE you to point out anything I said in the above post that wasn't actually in the game.

Nope, motyak

If people can't post politely, on either side of the argument, then they will be dealt with. Posts have been edited to reduce the level of rudeness in them, and from this point on you're all being watched.

I don't think people are disagreeing with the concepts of:

1) Reapers were not created by the protheans
2) The destruction of races was cyclical. Hello they're called Reapers, as in reaping, as in farming.

The issue are with the motivation being: "AI needs to kill (almost) everyone to stop AI killing everyone."

Plus the star child also diminishes the Reapers themselves. Both harbinger and sovereign had their own personalities, potentially their own goals. For that to be subsumed under the Star Child is kinda pants.

But if you add in the concept of it being another disaster that isn't 'AI are bad' (which part of the theme of the game were, actually it isn't, the Quarians brought it upon themselves and very well could have just trusted the geth more. - AI is less Skynet, closer to cylons from New BSG), you keep all the themes of "it is the nature of intelligent life to destroy itself (and the galaxy), which was present in the games, but it adds actual nobility to even the Reapers cause when they can turn to people and say.

" no, seriously, eventually someone somewhere will do a Dark Matter experiment, it might not even be government sanctioned but it will happen eventually and it will have a 90% chance of going horribly wrong and taking out the galaxy in a huge ever growing black hole."

Now I don't know how sacrificing humanity to stop that would help, but anyhow ending the game saying "well take that risk and now that we know about it we can start working to prevent it, nobody needs to die anymore" would have worked as an ending in my view.

 Compel wrote:
The issue are with the motivation being: "AI needs to kill (almost) everyone to stop AI killing everyone."

It was, in its mind, preserving them instead of killing.

 Compel wrote:
Plus the star child also diminishes the Reapers themselves.

"The starchild", aka The Catalyst, didn't subsume everything. I mean FFS you talked to a different reaper in all three games, it's obvious that they have personalities.

 Compel wrote:
" no, seriously, eventually someone somewhere will do a Dark Matter experiment, it might not even be government sanctioned but it will happen eventually and it will have a 90% chance of going horribly wrong and taking out the galaxy in a huge ever growing black hole."

Boring. "Science is evil!" isn't my idea of a fun game concept.

This conversation is far too deep and meaningful for me, my issue with ME:3 was a very very simple one.

What was the point in the hundreds of decisions I made, when everybody dies in the end anyway?

Save the geth, they all die anyway. Save the Quarians, they all die anyway. Save the earth, its fethed anyway. Cure the genophage, feth it everyone dies anyway.

It seemed to me to ride roughshod over the illusion of choice I had throughout the series!

The real world is miserable enough as it is, I like my fiction to at least have a solid happy ending. I wanted to feth off and retire with my space spouse in a nice cottage somewhere exotic, not choose between turning the galaxy into mutants or kill absolutely everyone.

 mattyrm wrote:
This conversation is far too deep and meaningful for me, my issue with ME:3 was a very very simple one.

What was the point in the hundreds of decisions I made, when everybody dies in the end anyway?

Save the geth, they all die anyway. Save the Quarians, they all die anyway. Save the earth, its fethed anyway. Cure the genophage, feth it everyone dies anyway.

It seemed to me to ride roughshod over the illusion of choice I had throughout the series!

The real world is miserable enough as it is, I like my fiction to at least have a solid happy ending. I wanted to feth off and retire with my space spouse in a nice cottage somewhere exotic, not choose between turning the galaxy into mutants or kill absolutely everyone.

Umm, the destroy ending, with enough galactic readiness, only kills the reapers and the geth (and EDI, though she can come out of the Normandy at the end so possibly something protected her).

As for the Citadel, it's unclear how many died or survived on that, but I heard hints that it was evacuated or that some people did survive impact, so IDK. That was my big complaint-- that there wasn't enough in-game information about what happened to the people on the Citadel. On that, I fully agree.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 mattyrm wrote:
This conversation is far too deep and meaningful for me, my issue with ME:3 was a very very simple one.

What was the point in the hundreds of decisions I made, when everybody dies in the end anyway?

Save the geth, they all die anyway. Save the Quarians, they all die anyway. Save the earth, its fethed anyway. Cure the genophage, feth it everyone dies anyway.

It seemed to me to ride roughshod over the illusion of choice I had throughout the series!

The real world is miserable enough as it is, I like my fiction to at least have a solid happy ending. I wanted to feth off and retire with my space spouse in a nice cottage somewhere exotic, not choose between turning the galaxy into mutants or kill absolutely everyone.

Umm, the destroy ending, with enough galactic readiness, only kills the reapers and the geth (and EDI, though she can come out of the Normandy at the end so possibly something protected her).

I thought any form of space travel was completely ended, anything computerized exploded, and all of the gateways exploded and fethed up all the planets anyway?

Oh yeah and EDI would clearly have been fried as well, I thought that was pretty dumb she was wandering around.


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 Melissia wrote:
As for the Citadel, it's unclear how many died or survived on that, but I heard hints that it was evacuated or that some people did survive impact, so IDK. That was my big complaint-- that there wasn't enough in-game information about what happened to the people on the Citadel. On that, I fully agree.

Yeah surely that thing would have been blown to smithereens as well?!

It was one of many thoughts I had as I shook my fist with rage at the PC screen.

The Citadel was a massive, ancient, and extremely durable space station, some of it physically survived, half-embedded in the landscape, albeit heavily damaged.

 mattyrm wrote:


I thought any form of space travel was completely ended, anything computerized exploded, and all of the gateways exploded and fethed up all the planets anyway?

Oh yeah and EDI would clearly have been fried as well, I thought that was pretty dumb she was wandering around.

This is one of the main misunderstandings with the endings that I see a lot of people bring up.

We see the mass relays send out a shock wave after it received the signal from the crucible. This is them releasing their energy in the form of whatever it was you chose (destroy, control, synthesis) in a controlled fashion. Then, after they have released their energy, they self destruct.

Now, a lot of people saw them exploding and assumed that it would be the same as in the ME2 DLC where you crash an asteroid into a mass relay, where the resulting explosion destroys the entire system. In that case, however, it is an uncontrolled release of the immense energy contained within a mass relay.

So, to use a real world analogy, the release of energy from the ME2 relay was an atomic bomb whereas in ME3 it was more akin to a nuclear reactor.

In the game I thought the Crucible makes it clear that it will only kill synthetic "life", not everything synthetic. So, people with implants (such as Shepard) will be fine as they are still organic life, just with some synthetic parts. The Geth, however, became truly alive and so would die. However there's no reason the Quarians couldn't try to make them again.

As for space travel being ended, why assume that they couldn't repair the relays? Which is what is said to be happening in the Extended Cut, though I hate that DLC as it just drags the ending out with unnecessary dialogue and makes the run to the beam a lot less exciting and intense.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 mattyrm wrote:


Yeah surely that thing would have been blown to smithereens as well?!

It was one of many thoughts I had as I shook my fist with rage at the PC screen.

If you watch the video carefully, the relays aren't really blown to smithereens. They more just sort of fragment into several large parts.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 mattyrm wrote:


I thought any form of space travel was completely ended, anything computerized exploded, and all of the gateways exploded and fethed up all the planets anyway?

Oh yeah and EDI would clearly have been fried as well, I thought that was pretty dumb she was wandering around.

This is one of the main misunderstandings with the endings that I see a lot of people bring up.

We see the mass relays send out a shock wave after it received the signal from the crucible. This is them releasing their energy in the form of whatever it was you chose (destroy, control, synthesis) in a controlled fashion. Then, after they have released their energy, they self destruct.

Now, a lot of people saw them exploding and assumed that it would be the same as in the ME2 DLC where you crash an asteroid into a mass relay, where the resulting explosion destroys the entire system. In that case, however, it is an uncontrolled release of the immense energy contained within a mass relay.

So, to use a real world analogy, the release of energy from the ME2 relay was an atomic bomb whereas in ME3 it was more akin to a nuclear reactor.

This was one of the things they changed (after Bioware insisted they weren't going to change anything) with the EC. In the original ending, the mass relays are shown exploding just like the ME2 DLC. With the EC, they changed the animation of the explosions to just be the "rings" of the Mass Relays.

As for space travel being ended, why assume that they couldn't repair the relays?

The remaining galactic civilizations didn't build them, they couldn't build them on their own, they simply utilized an existing infrastructure, rebuilding that network was beyond the capabilities of the existing galactic civilizations, at least for the foreseeable future.

Which is what is said to be happening in the Extended Cut, though I hate that DLC as it just drags the ending out with unnecessary dialogue and makes the run to the beam a lot less exciting and intense.

That was how they had to hamfist answers to a number of plotholes that the original ending otherwise didn't explain, and that Bioware was adamant they didn't want to change

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 mattyrm wrote:


Yeah surely that thing would have been blown to smithereens as well?!

It was one of many thoughts I had as I shook my fist with rage at the PC screen.

If you watch the video carefully, the relays aren't really blown to smithereens. They more just sort of fragment into several large parts.

In the original cut, they were blown to smithereens, this was something they changed in the EC because they realized they goofed.

Y'all be like "I saw hints of the Star Child AI as far back as ME1 and 2"...

...And I be like "Well I see hints of the Indoctrination Theory. Shepard is clearly indoctrinated".