Please bear with me, for I am about to tell you a story ...
Thousands of other players, each witnesses to this epic story and a dear friend to their own Shepard, have voiced great outcry over this final choice. Many have demanded the ending be changed. Some ask only for more closure. Yet, what if instead of arguing over the worth of these possible outcomes, we debated which is the lesser evil, and which we would each take, were we truly in Shepard's shoes. What would we sacrifice of our ideals and morals in order or save the people we love, or to beat a deadly foe?
Act Three always ends in self-sacrifice. What the hero believes is his or her prize is often proved to be an illusion of the ego. This is why heroes must face literal or metaphorical death in the final moments. They must accept that their reward may only be the gratitude and awe of others, that the fruit of their decisions may never be one that they themselves will taste. Why the ending of the Matrix Trilogy caused similar disappointment was that Neo chose the continuation of the illusion over the minds of human kind (I think we all instinctively knew that the 'real world' was really just another aspect of the Matrix).
Had Neo or Shepard defied the options before them, would a difference have been made for the better? Some people would rather die than choose. Yet is dying instead of saving, even if the latter requires great sacrifice, justifiable if it condemns the future? These are the questions Mass Effect has asked over and over, across its three amazing episodes. It is the question it presents us with now -- a terrible truth that heroes are seldom allowed full indulgence of their ideals, and quite often, they die vilified or unsung. The nature of heroism is by definition, a selfless service to the greater good. Even for the most earnest of role-players, that can be a bitter pill to swallow.
Despite claims to the contrary, it is difficult to prove the Catalyst's logic at the end of Mass Effect as flawed. Consider that the only way to beget synthetic life is via manufacturing. Thus, destroying factories or self reproduction facilities would be enough to be reasonably sure no that more synthetics could be made. This is why the 'grey goo' scenario of nano-technology, ie a biosphere eating swarm which consumes the planet in minutes, will probably never occur -- because scientists have already made it their mission to prevent unconstrained self replication.
Yet, organic life is a symptom of the universe -- an emergent quality of the universal elements. If it is assumed as inevitable that organic life will eventually, in some place, evolve, grow and create 'golems' of itself which in turn shall evolve as its rivals for existence, then the only choice available is to stem or impede the rise of organic life! Think about it -- destroying all synthetic life, while seeming a reasonable solution, is to block the tap yet leave the well. What the Catalyst chose with the Reapers is to collapse that well. And it was only logical to engineer a synthetic life form to enact that purpose.
To the Catalyst, organic life is a stream that can never be stemmed. Synthetic life is an emergent result of that stream. Turning guns into landfill doesn't stop people making more guns and continuing to slaughter ourselves. As a fan of SF and SF literature and philosophy, I loved the seeming paradox of the Reaper Design. And honestly, when we live in a world in which nations wage war in the name of ending war, terrorise in the name of ending terror, oppress in the name of freedom or spill rivers of blood in the name of Divine love, how is the paradox of the Catalyst anything but par for the course?
The Reaper plan is not in place to stop organic life from enacting another Reaper plan. It's not the only solution or the best, but why does that matter to the Catalyst? Remember, that regardless whether organics have invented autonomous AI or not, the Reaper purge is locked in place. By that time, organic life may have already risen and fallen under its own golems. The Reapers aren't there to prevent synthetic apocalypse but to simply limit its chances by keeping all life in a period of juvenility.
The existence of the Catalyst itself is very intriguing, in that, who or what created it? Perhaps it's the end result of an ancient race now indistinguishable from synthetic, or was it their creation which ultimately destroyed them to save them. Already, the scenario of 'kill to save' has been used numerous times in the Mass Effect series, and at least once in the context of an AI run amok. And note that the rise and fall of the Protheans echoes the Reaper plan, ie an oppressive regime keeping other races from flourishing or advancing. In that case, the Protheans got a taste of their own medicine at the claws of the Reapers. If they had survived, who's to say they wouldn't have continued in their oppression to become just like the Catalyst and Reapers?
So for me, I saw Shepard at the end, thrust into a situation in which he truly had little choice. There was no chance that the Reapers would be beaten, and the Catalyst, through benefit of the Crucible, was able to offer compromise. It seems that the Protheans realised this and thus designed the Crucible for that purpose. Even if Shepard has defied the Catalyst, what chance would he and the other races of the galaxy had? Would they have waged a centuries long, losing, war like the Protheans did?
The ending of the series was true to the themes as I interpreted them. In fact when I got to the end, it all clicked. I had hoped for another way, but I realised the foreshadowing in the history and fate of the Protheans. The synthesis choice may well be foreshadowed in the very origin of the Catalyst itself. The concept of killing to save and all the hypocrisy involved within it, is a theme well used throughout the three games. EDI herself was once a deranged AI that Shepard had to vanquish.
If anything, I don't want a new ending, but closure. I want to know what became of my friends, allies and foes. I want to see if Shepard made the right choice and what others think of it. That's all I want. And I can't help but think, if Mass Effect had been a series of novels, the ending and the path to get there would have made more sense. Perhaps that exposes a weakness still apparent in the medium of interactive story telling.
What do you think? Am I alone? And no, I don't want to reflog any dead horses about Bioware 'lies' and 'betrayals'. The point here is to examine the story from a new angle, and accept it for what it is. Perhaps through that, we can better understand and appreciate it.
From late 2007 to early this year, I was living in another man's shoes. His name was John Shepard, the commander of the Alliance starship, Normandy. I wasn't with him throughout his childhood as a 'spacer' hopping from station to station and port to port with his career military parents. I wasn't there when he proved himself in the Skyllian Blitz against Batarian slavers on Elysium. Nor did I know him when he, now a war hero, was first posted to the Normandy under Admiral Anderson's command.
I met him when on a mission to Eden Prime, a human colony in the process of recovering an ancient 'beacon' left by the Protheans -- a race long extinct yet evident in ruins scattered across the galaxy. In fact, it was by their presumed technology that the many races of the galaxy found each other, via the faster than light, mass effect relay network. Additionally, it was was the discovery of a beacon on Mars which led to the First Contact War between Humans and Turians.
But I didn't know of this history at the time. Looking back, I realise that it was with great self-control that the human crew of the Normandy receive Nihlus, a Turian and Spectre agent for the Galactic Council. Upon landing on Eden Prime, a soldier, Ashely Williams intercepts, informing them that the colony is under attack by a robotic race known as the Geth. In the battle that ensues, the betrayal by another Spectre, Saren, becomes apparent, and he murders Nihlus in order to escape with the data recorded by the beacon. Shepard and his team successfully push back the Geth and discover a new enemy, human 'husks' -- the brainwashed and synthesised corpses of the colonists. As Shepard nears the relic, he is blasted with its information and witnesses an alien race overwhelmed by a vast invading force.
He sees the end of all life.
The Normandy and her crew travel back at the seat of galactic power, the Citadel, and report to the Council all that had happened. Unsurprisingly, they are sceptical and demand further evidence before taking action against Saren. They are even more disbelieving of the warning contained within the beacon. From that moment, Shepard is on a vital mission, to reveal the the truth of his vision, and the treachery and plans of the rogue Turian. On the way, he becomes the first human Spectre, reveals a cycle of destruction which has repeated for hundreds of millennia, and saves the Citadel and the Council from a hulking synthetic entity called, Sovereign -- a Reaper, a 'nation unto itself' and one of thousands more.
And that was when Shepard and I parted ways, at least until his death at the hands of the mysterious, Collectors and his subsequent resurrection by the Human Supremacist organisation, Cerebus, as headed by the Illusive Man. Shepard gathers a new crew to not only defend the human colonies from the Collectors, but also travel through the Omega 4 relay -- a journey from which no ship has ever returned. Yet in victory and the revelation of the Illusive Man's deceit, the Collectors are discovered to be the Protheans, synthesised and controlled like the husks which served Sovereign. Not only that, the thousands of humans abducted in their raids, are being harvested to create a colossal, humanoid-type of Reaper.
The master of these Prothean husks reveals itself to be, Harbinger, a Reaper like Sovereign and furious at Shepards repeated intervention in the Cycle. The Reaper fleet awakens in Dark Space and sets out across the Milky Way, soon descending upon the Batarians. Shepard detonates the mass effect relay there, effectively cutting them off from the rest of the galaxy, yet also ending millions of lives in the blast. Wanted by the Alliance for court martial, Shepard awaits the inevitable arrival of the End.
It was with this tumultuous cliff-hanger, that I began the third and final episode of the series, to find Shepard demoted, grounded and with billions of Batarians out for his blood. Yet, as if on cue, the Reapers attack Earth, and the hundreds of reported 'dark colonies' are immediately understood to be their doing. Humanity doesn't stand a chance. Shepard is reinstated as Commander and leaves for the Citadel once again, to rally support for a final confrontation. Predictably, the Council are reluctant to aid just one race. The Citadel, awash with fearful refugees, appears a final bastion of hope yet also stubbornness. It is up to Shepard to approach the other leaders and assist them in their own defenses so that they can then unify with the humans. At the same time, construction begins on a Prothean device, code-named 'the Crucible'. If a weapon, it promises an end to the Reaper Cycle.
As the war rages ever wider from Earth, as led by Harbinger, Shepard gathers allies, both old and new; heals ancient wounds and redeems lost honour; and combats the resurgence of Cerebus and the Illusive Man, who seems diametrically opposed to the destruction of the Reapers. Even the Geth are redeemed, freeing themselves from the control of 'group think' and Reaper indoctrination. They and their creators, the Quarian, end their centuries long war over their planet, and vow to fight side by side against the Cycle.
Yet the Illusive Man aims to control the Reapers to his own end, in effect, succumbing to their will. Fully indoctrinated, he invades the Citadel and transports it to Earth, where the Reaper armada have gathered. The combined fleets of the galaxy descend upon them, vanguard for the completed Crucible, which must be connected to Citadel, aka 'the Catalyst', in order to work. Shepard has even rescued a lone Prothean survivor, Javik, who went into hyper-sleep as his race was harvested and enslaved 50,000 years earlier.
However, the 'petals' of the Citadel are closed. It's like a flower. Yet a single transport beam in London will take a boarding party inside where they can open the station to receive the Crucible. Shepard battles his way there, confronting the towering Harbinger, against whom he stands no chance, and gravely wounded and alone, he staggers into the beam. What he finds inside the Citadel are countless bodies and the Illusive Man, who after realising the loss of his own free will, kills himself.
Admiral Anderson, Shepard's mentor and dearest friend is also there, though mortally wounded. They share a final view of the earth as the Citadel opens, and then he dies. However, the Crucible remains inactive. Shepard blacks out, the destruction of all life seemingly unaffected. When he wakes, he is in another room, face to face with a hologram of a human child. It reveals itself to be the real Catalyst, the 'mind' of the space station itself. The synthetic Reapers are its invention, as is the Cycle. Advanced civilisations inevitably destroy themselves, either through war with themselves, or with their own synthetic 'golems' -- robots, artificial intelligence, the Geth.
In order to break this destiny, the cycle represents the resetting of the universe. The advanced races are harvested to create the next Reapers, and the primitive races are spared so that they may flourish. The Catalyst appears immune to the paradox of its design, and presents Shepard with three choices -- attempt to control the Reapers, thus ending their attack yet never being sure how long the reprisal will last; destroy all synthetic life in the galaxy, including the newly independent and sentient Geth; or merge all organic and synthetic life into one, creating a new hybrid biology yet defying the core tenet of galactic unity -- that it is difference that creates beauty.
All choices result in the destruction of the mass effect relay network, thus stranding all spacebound craft where they stand, including the armada in Earth's orbit. All communication and travel across the galaxy would be impossible. Whatever choice is made, the price is high. The longer he waits, the more lives are lost. The Reapers' goal gets ever closer.
I met him when on a mission to Eden Prime, a human colony in the process of recovering an ancient 'beacon' left by the Protheans -- a race long extinct yet evident in ruins scattered across the galaxy. In fact, it was by their presumed technology that the many races of the galaxy found each other, via the faster than light, mass effect relay network. Additionally, it was was the discovery of a beacon on Mars which led to the First Contact War between Humans and Turians.
But I didn't know of this history at the time. Looking back, I realise that it was with great self-control that the human crew of the Normandy receive Nihlus, a Turian and Spectre agent for the Galactic Council. Upon landing on Eden Prime, a soldier, Ashely Williams intercepts, informing them that the colony is under attack by a robotic race known as the Geth. In the battle that ensues, the betrayal by another Spectre, Saren, becomes apparent, and he murders Nihlus in order to escape with the data recorded by the beacon. Shepard and his team successfully push back the Geth and discover a new enemy, human 'husks' -- the brainwashed and synthesised corpses of the colonists. As Shepard nears the relic, he is blasted with its information and witnesses an alien race overwhelmed by a vast invading force.
He sees the end of all life.
The Normandy and her crew travel back at the seat of galactic power, the Citadel, and report to the Council all that had happened. Unsurprisingly, they are sceptical and demand further evidence before taking action against Saren. They are even more disbelieving of the warning contained within the beacon. From that moment, Shepard is on a vital mission, to reveal the the truth of his vision, and the treachery and plans of the rogue Turian. On the way, he becomes the first human Spectre, reveals a cycle of destruction which has repeated for hundreds of millennia, and saves the Citadel and the Council from a hulking synthetic entity called, Sovereign -- a Reaper, a 'nation unto itself' and one of thousands more.
And that was when Shepard and I parted ways, at least until his death at the hands of the mysterious, Collectors and his subsequent resurrection by the Human Supremacist organisation, Cerebus, as headed by the Illusive Man. Shepard gathers a new crew to not only defend the human colonies from the Collectors, but also travel through the Omega 4 relay -- a journey from which no ship has ever returned. Yet in victory and the revelation of the Illusive Man's deceit, the Collectors are discovered to be the Protheans, synthesised and controlled like the husks which served Sovereign. Not only that, the thousands of humans abducted in their raids, are being harvested to create a colossal, humanoid-type of Reaper.
The master of these Prothean husks reveals itself to be, Harbinger, a Reaper like Sovereign and furious at Shepards repeated intervention in the Cycle. The Reaper fleet awakens in Dark Space and sets out across the Milky Way, soon descending upon the Batarians. Shepard detonates the mass effect relay there, effectively cutting them off from the rest of the galaxy, yet also ending millions of lives in the blast. Wanted by the Alliance for court martial, Shepard awaits the inevitable arrival of the End.
It was with this tumultuous cliff-hanger, that I began the third and final episode of the series, to find Shepard demoted, grounded and with billions of Batarians out for his blood. Yet, as if on cue, the Reapers attack Earth, and the hundreds of reported 'dark colonies' are immediately understood to be their doing. Humanity doesn't stand a chance. Shepard is reinstated as Commander and leaves for the Citadel once again, to rally support for a final confrontation. Predictably, the Council are reluctant to aid just one race. The Citadel, awash with fearful refugees, appears a final bastion of hope yet also stubbornness. It is up to Shepard to approach the other leaders and assist them in their own defenses so that they can then unify with the humans. At the same time, construction begins on a Prothean device, code-named 'the Crucible'. If a weapon, it promises an end to the Reaper Cycle.
As the war rages ever wider from Earth, as led by Harbinger, Shepard gathers allies, both old and new; heals ancient wounds and redeems lost honour; and combats the resurgence of Cerebus and the Illusive Man, who seems diametrically opposed to the destruction of the Reapers. Even the Geth are redeemed, freeing themselves from the control of 'group think' and Reaper indoctrination. They and their creators, the Quarian, end their centuries long war over their planet, and vow to fight side by side against the Cycle.
Yet the Illusive Man aims to control the Reapers to his own end, in effect, succumbing to their will. Fully indoctrinated, he invades the Citadel and transports it to Earth, where the Reaper armada have gathered. The combined fleets of the galaxy descend upon them, vanguard for the completed Crucible, which must be connected to Citadel, aka 'the Catalyst', in order to work. Shepard has even rescued a lone Prothean survivor, Javik, who went into hyper-sleep as his race was harvested and enslaved 50,000 years earlier.
However, the 'petals' of the Citadel are closed. It's like a flower. Yet a single transport beam in London will take a boarding party inside where they can open the station to receive the Crucible. Shepard battles his way there, confronting the towering Harbinger, against whom he stands no chance, and gravely wounded and alone, he staggers into the beam. What he finds inside the Citadel are countless bodies and the Illusive Man, who after realising the loss of his own free will, kills himself.
Admiral Anderson, Shepard's mentor and dearest friend is also there, though mortally wounded. They share a final view of the earth as the Citadel opens, and then he dies. However, the Crucible remains inactive. Shepard blacks out, the destruction of all life seemingly unaffected. When he wakes, he is in another room, face to face with a hologram of a human child. It reveals itself to be the real Catalyst, the 'mind' of the space station itself. The synthetic Reapers are its invention, as is the Cycle. Advanced civilisations inevitably destroy themselves, either through war with themselves, or with their own synthetic 'golems' -- robots, artificial intelligence, the Geth.
In order to break this destiny, the cycle represents the resetting of the universe. The advanced races are harvested to create the next Reapers, and the primitive races are spared so that they may flourish. The Catalyst appears immune to the paradox of its design, and presents Shepard with three choices -- attempt to control the Reapers, thus ending their attack yet never being sure how long the reprisal will last; destroy all synthetic life in the galaxy, including the newly independent and sentient Geth; or merge all organic and synthetic life into one, creating a new hybrid biology yet defying the core tenet of galactic unity -- that it is difference that creates beauty.
All choices result in the destruction of the mass effect relay network, thus stranding all spacebound craft where they stand, including the armada in Earth's orbit. All communication and travel across the galaxy would be impossible. Whatever choice is made, the price is high. The longer he waits, the more lives are lost. The Reapers' goal gets ever closer.
Thousands of other players, each witnesses to this epic story and a dear friend to their own Shepard, have voiced great outcry over this final choice. Many have demanded the ending be changed. Some ask only for more closure. Yet, what if instead of arguing over the worth of these possible outcomes, we debated which is the lesser evil, and which we would each take, were we truly in Shepard's shoes. What would we sacrifice of our ideals and morals in order or save the people we love, or to beat a deadly foe?
Act Three always ends in self-sacrifice. What the hero believes is his or her prize is often proved to be an illusion of the ego. This is why heroes must face literal or metaphorical death in the final moments. They must accept that their reward may only be the gratitude and awe of others, that the fruit of their decisions may never be one that they themselves will taste. Why the ending of the Matrix Trilogy caused similar disappointment was that Neo chose the continuation of the illusion over the minds of human kind (I think we all instinctively knew that the 'real world' was really just another aspect of the Matrix).
Had Neo or Shepard defied the options before them, would a difference have been made for the better? Some people would rather die than choose. Yet is dying instead of saving, even if the latter requires great sacrifice, justifiable if it condemns the future? These are the questions Mass Effect has asked over and over, across its three amazing episodes. It is the question it presents us with now -- a terrible truth that heroes are seldom allowed full indulgence of their ideals, and quite often, they die vilified or unsung. The nature of heroism is by definition, a selfless service to the greater good. Even for the most earnest of role-players, that can be a bitter pill to swallow.
Despite claims to the contrary, it is difficult to prove the Catalyst's logic at the end of Mass Effect as flawed. Consider that the only way to beget synthetic life is via manufacturing. Thus, destroying factories or self reproduction facilities would be enough to be reasonably sure no that more synthetics could be made. This is why the 'grey goo' scenario of nano-technology, ie a biosphere eating swarm which consumes the planet in minutes, will probably never occur -- because scientists have already made it their mission to prevent unconstrained self replication.
Yet, organic life is a symptom of the universe -- an emergent quality of the universal elements. If it is assumed as inevitable that organic life will eventually, in some place, evolve, grow and create 'golems' of itself which in turn shall evolve as its rivals for existence, then the only choice available is to stem or impede the rise of organic life! Think about it -- destroying all synthetic life, while seeming a reasonable solution, is to block the tap yet leave the well. What the Catalyst chose with the Reapers is to collapse that well. And it was only logical to engineer a synthetic life form to enact that purpose.
To the Catalyst, organic life is a stream that can never be stemmed. Synthetic life is an emergent result of that stream. Turning guns into landfill doesn't stop people making more guns and continuing to slaughter ourselves. As a fan of SF and SF literature and philosophy, I loved the seeming paradox of the Reaper Design. And honestly, when we live in a world in which nations wage war in the name of ending war, terrorise in the name of ending terror, oppress in the name of freedom or spill rivers of blood in the name of Divine love, how is the paradox of the Catalyst anything but par for the course?
The Reaper plan is not in place to stop organic life from enacting another Reaper plan. It's not the only solution or the best, but why does that matter to the Catalyst? Remember, that regardless whether organics have invented autonomous AI or not, the Reaper purge is locked in place. By that time, organic life may have already risen and fallen under its own golems. The Reapers aren't there to prevent synthetic apocalypse but to simply limit its chances by keeping all life in a period of juvenility.
The existence of the Catalyst itself is very intriguing, in that, who or what created it? Perhaps it's the end result of an ancient race now indistinguishable from synthetic, or was it their creation which ultimately destroyed them to save them. Already, the scenario of 'kill to save' has been used numerous times in the Mass Effect series, and at least once in the context of an AI run amok. And note that the rise and fall of the Protheans echoes the Reaper plan, ie an oppressive regime keeping other races from flourishing or advancing. In that case, the Protheans got a taste of their own medicine at the claws of the Reapers. If they had survived, who's to say they wouldn't have continued in their oppression to become just like the Catalyst and Reapers?
So for me, I saw Shepard at the end, thrust into a situation in which he truly had little choice. There was no chance that the Reapers would be beaten, and the Catalyst, through benefit of the Crucible, was able to offer compromise. It seems that the Protheans realised this and thus designed the Crucible for that purpose. Even if Shepard has defied the Catalyst, what chance would he and the other races of the galaxy had? Would they have waged a centuries long, losing, war like the Protheans did?
The ending of the series was true to the themes as I interpreted them. In fact when I got to the end, it all clicked. I had hoped for another way, but I realised the foreshadowing in the history and fate of the Protheans. The synthesis choice may well be foreshadowed in the very origin of the Catalyst itself. The concept of killing to save and all the hypocrisy involved within it, is a theme well used throughout the three games. EDI herself was once a deranged AI that Shepard had to vanquish.
If anything, I don't want a new ending, but closure. I want to know what became of my friends, allies and foes. I want to see if Shepard made the right choice and what others think of it. That's all I want. And I can't help but think, if Mass Effect had been a series of novels, the ending and the path to get there would have made more sense. Perhaps that exposes a weakness still apparent in the medium of interactive story telling.
What do you think? Am I alone? And no, I don't want to reflog any dead horses about Bioware 'lies' and 'betrayals'. The point here is to examine the story from a new angle, and accept it for what it is. Perhaps through that, we can better understand and appreciate it.