I did my own little fanficto suggest a more coherent (it could hardly be less) motivation/origin for the Reapers. Kind of spoilery discussion of Bioware’s explanation is included, so beware. My goal was to explain [ul]
[li]where the Reapers came from[/li][li]why they might go into hiding and come out only cyclically to reap[/li][li]why they look like big scary bugs, other than “hey, we should make our bad guys scary looking!”[/li][li]why they’re simultaneously so contemptuous and sure of their superiority, while also being pretty incoherent about why[/li][/ul]
I also get a kick out of the idea that the superior twats are really just tractors with delusions of grandeur, and I think it paralells the Geth story nicely.
I liked the endings. I think they desperately needed some sort of Fallout-style epilogue to follow up with and the Normandy crash scene is clearly a ham-fisted way of getting a cheesy Adam and Eve ending for the Synthesis path and is completely pointless for the other two but overall, it was the sort of epic finale that I was expecting for the series.
I don’t agree with the idea that the Geth themes in the three games [spoiler]invalidate the Citadel’s presentation of a synthetic/organic split as being inevitable. Sure, the Geth are, for the time being, willing to be friendly, but who’s to say someone else won’t make a less sympathetic AI, or that the Geth won’t change their view on the optimal solution. If nothing else, sheer logistics dictates it. Synthetics are immortal. At some point, resources will become a conflict, and there is no other result but the dominance of synthetics.
If nothing else, the Citadel itself proves this. It exists, and its creators are long gone, probably the first victims of its “Solution”. [/spoiler]While they were clearly intending the “best” choice to be Synthesis, I don’t agree. Irrevocably altering all life in the galaxy is playing God on a scale even greater than the Citadel was. I find myself leaning towards Control as the ideal outcome. With the Reapers integrated into galactic society, rebuilding the relay network would be trivial, and all races would be free to choose their own path - perhaps eventually culminating in their own Synthesis, when they’ve reached the level the Citadel…but it would be their choice. Sure, the danger still exists of a civilization initiating a technological singularity, and possibly going unchecked long enough to surpass the combined galactic strength of the organics and the Reapers together, but it seems to me to be worth the risk.
I did some thinking, and realize the weakest point of the plot is
[spoiler]
The Crucible. Its purpose is entirely mysterious, and throughout the entire game you find no clues and no lead up to its purpose. The story plays along the line of it being a WMD of some sort, but it actually serves as an ‘upgrade’ to the Catalyst. How did the races of the few previous cycles figured this out that they need the Catalyst somehow is also a glaring “hand-wave”, because the nature of the Crucible is to change the Catalyst - but how would the originator species even come up with the Crucible if they don’t know that there is a Catalyst, and that the Catalyst is a all powerful AI?
Or, if the originator of the Crucible has no idea about the Catalyst, how they did end up building something that will change the Catalyst?
I guess this problem only rears its head when the god-child gives you the three choices. You never see those choices coming, because the story in no way touch on the nature or purpose of the Crucible. If Bioware has spent more time on that (just one darn mission) instead of having so many side quests, the ending would be better.
Sure, there are elements hinted about the three final choices throughout - Shephard wants to destroy the Reaper, Saren wants to integrate and the Illusive Man wants to control. But the way the Crucible is presented, it’s like a magic wand which Shephard waved and shit happens. It likes making a wish!
I rather that before the final mission, Shephard has to make a choice about the final configuration of the Crucible - to destroy, or to control. During the last moments, the god-child appears and presents the option to synthesize. Meanwhile, all the way leading up to the final battle, the whole fleet knows that the Crucible will sync with the Mass Relays to achieve its goal, and whether the Relays are destroyed or not depends on how much War Assets score the Crucible has.
In fact, the choices may have to be made during the entire course of the game, as Shephard has to influence various stakeholders on the Crucible project about the final course of action. Now this is more in keeping with the tradition of Mass Effect, I think.
[/spoiler].
I see that most of the complaints are about the ending, didn’t Bioware’s lead storywriter leave recently (as in, just a couple weeks ago)? Could internal turmoil near the end of development have led to the ending being rushed?
I remember seeing a BSN post about it somewhere; the lead writer left the game industry, and some others were reassigned to Dragon Age 2 or The Old Republic. Few hopped to Bethesda and Blizzard. In total, only 2 or 3 writers stayed throughout the entire trilogy.
There are some speculation that the ending is rushed due to Mass Effect 3 being leaked on the Internet.
Greetings good people,
I’m sorely tempted to buy this game having enjoyed the first two greatly.
On a slight aside,
I’ll be buying the physical disc/s? but would like to know do, I then have to download the whole game from Origin/Steam? Despite having the data on DVD.
This really hacked me off about Deus Ex 3 and the Orange Box as I’m reliant on a 3G USB dongle for my Internet and this becomes expensive and very slow!
I’ve just restarted ME 1 to ensure my Shepard enters ME2 and 3 with as much capability as poss.
Peter
I agree entirely. I think most of the dissatisfaction with the ending comes with how it’s a deus-ex-machina (heh, literally), but that’s not the fault of the ending, it’s the fault of the entire game. The Crucible is just dropped on the player out of nowhere at the start, despite not having a bit of foreshadowing in ME1 or 2. Through the entire course of 3, its origin and its function go unexplained, because many of the plot points hinge upon it being a miracle device of mystery. Because of all this, it’s assured that whatever miracle that it finally generates is, quite naturally, going to feel tacked on and undeserved, because the player had nothing to do with it at any point.I have a lot of praise for the character interaction, the settings, and the individual segments of ME3, but there’s no question that the story has serious faults. In my opinion, the ending is well-executed, given the foundation. The problem is that said foundation is weak.
I bought the disks and the only downloads I had were a patch and the DLC that came with the collector’s edition (a part of which was 500 megs FWIW).
I can remember having been annoyed at a game’s ending before. (Fallout 3, for instance.) But I can’t remember having felt both betrayed and insulted, though Fable 2 came close.
This is really reminding me of Stephen King’s Dark Tower series and how that ended. I think the feelings I had then and now are comparable.
At least Fallout 3 has Broken Steel. I hope Bioware take a page from Bethesda’s play book.
So I just started playing yesterday, sorry I’m late to the party! Finished the intro missions, and was just recently let loose on the galaxy.
I’m finding that locating quest targets is really difficult! In ME2 Every quest, except the really minor ones, were highlighted for you in the Galaxy map, so you always knew exactly where to go. And even the minor quests told you where to go in their journal entries almost always with a reference to the cluster system and or planet. Not so here. I have a quest to deliver some info to eden prime. I know I was just there, but I didn’t remember in what system it was located and the journal entry did not provide me with that information. A little trial and error later and I found it, but I get no option to land, or to deliver the info… There are a couple of other quests available on my journal, which mention planet names, but no cluster/system names! I have no idea where I’m supposed to go to complete the quests!
The only quests that appear to show up on the Galaxy map are the main story quests. Is there a setting in the game to change this? Does it get better?
Also, did anyone get lazy like me and used masseffectsaves2.com instead of replaying through ME1 and ME2 like you thought you would? Well, for me it was lazyness and unwilligness to wait to play ME3 until I finished ME2. I found a great save that had done everythign exactly as I had, except they never completed the Shadow Broker DLC so that part of the conversation with Liara was a bit weird.
Overall I’m Loving the game so far. The weapon mods bring back a bit of that ME1 RPG feel, the old characters are spot on, so far at least, and the enws ones seem interesting. The AI seems a lot better about flanking me as well. If I don’t pay attention in a firefight I quickly find myself fighitng guys from more than one direction (which kills you quick).
I haven’t read any of the spoilers above, but it seems I’m in for a dissapointment with the ending? ::sigh:: They changed it from what was leaked to the itnernet, right? How drastic was the change, and was the leaked endign better than what shipped on disc?
I can’t totally agree with this–
[spoiler]The idea that Prothean technology was as close as anyone’s come to beating the Reapers is viable. Hell, even having Prothean tech that was intended to interface with the Citadel (and its apparent extragalactic-range mass relay and communications array to the Reapers) is perfectly sensible too.
The ending falls down when they decided that the Crucible ISN’T a superweapon, but a cosmic MacGuffin. For example, having it be some kind of ultra-advanced Prothean supercomputer VI that can, for just a moment if it can reach every Reaper at once, disrupt their operations just long enough for a prepared opponent to smash them–that would have been perfectly acceptable and properly foreshadowed.[/spoiler]
I pretty much agree.
[spoiler]There’s nothing inherently wrong about the use of the Crucible and it being introduced at the start of game 3. Hell, the Reapers were introduced at the start of game 1 and the Collectors were introduced at the start of game 2. That the squishy-races found a cycle-spanning superweapon is an acceptable plot development. That it used the relays and the Citadel against the Reapers is, also, acceptable. Hell, even if it had been handled with similar mechanics at the end, it would have been somewhat acceptable (use the Crucible to insert a hyper advanced virus into the Reapers, choose to destroy or subjugate them!).
I think, though, it’s the idea that no victory is actually possible and even destroying the Reapers means that most of the universe starves to death in the absence of relays. And, of course, that the crewmates you’ve spent so much time getting to know simply blink out of the story and we never find out what happened to them. Including, if you played a male Shepherd, a woman who may or may not be carrying your child.
Gah![/spoiler]
That is one of my gripes too. Strangely, they make it easier for you to find NPCs to talk to on the Citadel.
With regards to the ending, I think the recent backlash about it speaks volume about how bad it is…
I totally agree, and I really like your idea for how it would work. Especially because that would naturally integrate your war readiness rating, and how many civilizations you managed to preserve and/or bring into the alliance effort.
Kinthalis, I think the leaked plot, as far as the explanation of the Reapers, was pretty weaksauce too, but of course it wasn’t a fully fleshed out idea. I won’t say that the current ending is a good idea in any respect, but it also could have been executed much better, and the overall effect would have been much less offensive. The way it is done is as bad as what was done.
Yeah, it’s terrible. And you can get some of those quests long before you get access to the system where whatever they want can be found.
Anyway, what I did was just explore every system to 100% as soon as possible. You can pick up artifacts, etc. from scanning planets without having to get the related subquest first.
The Eden Prime quest is tied to the DLC. You had to have found 3 pieces of information during the DLC mission. If you didn’t… you’re screwed.
Fortunately, that’s only the case for the DLC side mission. For the main game, if you miss picking up something quest-related from a location you can’t revisit, you can purchase it from Spectre requisitions afterwards.
I have to admit I am not a big fan of the whole “Reapers will attack if you scan too much” thing. All it does is just make scanning systems take longer. If it was like a space battle mini game that would be one thing…
Or if they actually implemented the discussion of Reaper drive tech I remember from one of the codex entries (that they’re faster but can’t change direction as readily) so you could juke them.
The meter resets after each mission you do, so you can go scanning then do a mission and it will be all clear.
Though my usual approach to this type of scavenger hunt nowadays is to use a guide. Saves time
Uh oh… I think my game glitched.
I just:
Rescued the biotic kids, Dr Sanders, and Jack. Kahlee apparently left the Normandy right away to contribute to the construction of the super weapon, but I can’t find Jack anywhere! I found the prothean dude down in the engineering area where Jack used to bunk in ME2. Says he was “exploring” the ship. I really don’t trust this guy.
He mentions Jack, I guess he senses her previous presence there. So I turned the ship upside down looking for her, and I can’t find her anywhere, nor are there any messages from her, telling me that she went somewhere.
Did my game bug out? Is she supposed to be somewhere on ship?
Also, I really like the new jack. Makes me wish I had romanced her in Me2.