Mass Effect 3... Happy Ending mod?
- Thread starter GabeZhul
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There's one basic, massive flaw here.DataSnake said:
The Reapers (and the Catalyst) don't understand individual consciousness.
This is missing link in the whole "solution" proposed by the catalyst in the first place. How do we save people from being destroyed by synthetics? Well, we liquidize them and preserve their genetic material in order to reconstruct their racial memories and personality (because genetics works like that in the mass effect universe). So yeah, we've totally saved them right? Nothing of value has been lost..
..except, of course, that we actually killed the person when we liquidized them in step one.
So yeah, I'm pretty certain Shepard (the person) is dead. What lives on is shepard's memories and personality, but they're copies of the original. The catalyst actually kind of explains this in its own way, as does "Shepard" in the cutscene. Of course, for the catalyst this isn't a problem (just as it wouldn't be a problem for the Geth, who understand themselves to be purely data) but for a human being it's actually a pretty frightening concept.
Nice, argue against something by using a meaningless term to invalidate a position without discussion. Maybe I'm a SJW hipster? Twofer FTW!Pr0 said:
Altering art by mob committee doesn't seem like a good precedent to set. Mass Effect wasn't some grand collective project, and they didn't owe any gamer any kind of ending. I'd say most people agree it was flawed. But was it really worth a venomous hissyfit (just to get the Extended Ending, no less)? Not likely.
I got the Happy Ending mod. I absolutely think it's worth installing. Anything to get rid of Glowbrat is gold in my book. It's sad that it takes a fan group to correct the mistakes of a "professional" and his team.
...eh. You can have "mistakes" in art, now? Could you really justify that claim - that what BioWare did was a mistake, as opposed to just something you didn't really like?008Zulu said:
If I did play the ME series, I would be very pissed.MirenBainesUSMC said:
But since I didn't, I would say that ME's original ending was the embodiment of the existential nihilism. How philosophical.
Uhhh, Mass Effect 3 is art now? Since when, perhaps you could define why it is art? Help us out here.Darth Rosenberg said:
As for Bioware's mistake, alright. Hudson promised that the ending would reflect our choices made in all three games, and that we would not get a choice system to determine the ending. Well we know how that turned out. Another mistake you ask? Ok, scrapping the buildup of the previous two games, and DLC, in favour of a generic 'alien invasion'. What's this? You want another mistake? That's cool, the method used to kill Shepard (not Shepard's death), the Reaper commander says to Shepard "I will tell you of three ways to stop the Reapers, but you must die first." To Shepard's reply "Seems legit." I think that's about... nope, got another mistake for you. Giving the players the impression the game would change based on our actions, observe the following examples; The Rachni Queen, save her and she spawns troops for the enemy anyway. Kill her and they make a clone to spawn troops. The Geth/Quarrian war, help or hurt Legion, help or hurt the Quarrians and the war still happens. All up; They made the mistake thinking we would see "A multi branching epic to decide the course of the galaxy" and what we got was "Events are set in stone, just go with the flow."
Yeah, no matter what you do you''ll be subjected to some really shitty story telling.GabeZhul said:
There's only one definition of 'art' that makes any sense:008Zulu said:
"Art is anything you can get away with."
- Marshall MacLuhan
Pr0 said:
My idea for as to why people are still "shouting from the rooftops" about how much ME3's ending supposedly sucked is because they are still trying to convince themselves(methinks you doth protest too much). Even though they know the EC ending worked quite well and actually made sense, when actually thought about, it completely conflicted with their expectations, and This. Must. Not. Be. accepted, in their opinions. That and Bioware being acquired by Electronic Art, the all-powerful, all-evil super corpornation, give them all the excuses needed to keep railing against...whatever.
Discounting anyone's " Happy Ending" by pointing them towards the Fan Fic section doesn't cut it in my view, the same thing can be said about anyone wanting a horribly terrible ending... I guess they can go to the same Fan Fic section and get their existentialist on as well if we go that route.
My point is - there shouldn't have been one way or the other, and that however you played the series, just as Mass Effect 2 did, could give you at least 5 different results from Great to very bad depending upon what you wanted to do.
As for the Art route, BioWare shot themselves in the foot on that stance when they finally made the extended cut, smugly telling players that since its free they should be happy. If they were willing to stand so concretely about their art, why did they not just keep the ending they supported in the first place instead of back-tracking? Perhaps because they ended up knowing they botched ME3?
My point is - there shouldn't have been one way or the other, and that however you played the series, just as Mass Effect 2 did, could give you at least 5 different results from Great to very bad depending upon what you wanted to do.
As for the Art route, BioWare shot themselves in the foot on that stance when they finally made the extended cut, smugly telling players that since its free they should be happy. If they were willing to stand so concretely about their art, why did they not just keep the ending they supported in the first place instead of back-tracking? Perhaps because they ended up knowing they botched ME3?
While I could argue about the endings for a while I still think the biggest flaw was not in the idea but in the execution.
The Star-Kid told people that each choice was going to be vastly different but then they showed us nigh on identical cut-scenes for each.
If the Extended Cut had been the version that had shipped with the game then I doubt the fuss would have reached anywhere near the level it did.
Personally I like version 3 of the Mass Effect Happy Ending Mod the best, and with the Extended Anderson conversation, it makes the game something I want to replay. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmofIH7rN9U
I don't think modding takes away from the artists vision, the original still exists so nothing has been lost.
The Star-Kid told people that each choice was going to be vastly different but then they showed us nigh on identical cut-scenes for each.
If the Extended Cut had been the version that had shipped with the game then I doubt the fuss would have reached anywhere near the level it did.
Personally I like version 3 of the Mass Effect Happy Ending Mod the best, and with the Extended Anderson conversation, it makes the game something I want to replay. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmofIH7rN9U
I don't think modding takes away from the artists vision, the original still exists so nothing has been lost.
Well, that's just the thing.. great pains are taken to point out that Shepard is the original Shepard, not a clone or a reconstruction. Copying the contents of someone's mind onto another medium is pretty similar to cloning them.DataSnake said:
Well.. Let's think about that.DataSnake said:
I mean, the counterpart would be The 6th Day, which I'm going to spoiler tag this in case anyone is desperately eager not to have 14 year old Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle spoiled for them.
The 6th day has a device which takes a scan of a person's brain at the time its used, allowing that person's consciousness to later be downloaded into a cloned body with all their memories and perceptual traits intact. The bad guys spend most of the movie believing that this grants them immortality, because when they die the last available copy of their memories is implanted into a clone. They come out no different to the way they were before, there is no visible indication that it's not a continuity.
Until, at the end of the film, the lead villain uses the cloning machine on himself while mortally injured but before he has died, producing a clone of himself who has his memories and perception, but who is not him.. because he's still there and still dying.
Until, at the end of the film, the lead villain uses the cloning machine on himself while mortally injured but before he has died, producing a clone of himself who has his memories and perception, but who is not him.. because he's still there and still dying.
To put in non-spoilerific terms, we cannot assume that because Shepard's body disintegrated and because a consciousness which seems a lot like Shepard now exists inside the machine, that they're the same person, because we can also imagine a hypothetical scenario in which the Shepard-consciousness exists inside the machine but in which the original Shepard was not destroyed.
I'm not a Star Trek fan, so you'll have to forgive me if I'm wrong on details, but I'm pretty sure the details of how the transporter is meant to work are deliberately confusing. There are two possibilities.
1) The transporter actually transmits the original atoms of the person and reassembles them exactly as they were. This solves the problem of conservation of mass (what is the transporter assembling these people from) but it also moves the transporter away from what is happening to Shepard, because Shepard isn't being moved around in pieces and reassembled, he or she is actually destroyed and the contents of their mind being transferred to a completely different format.
2) The transporter destroys the person and then literally builds an entirely new person at the other end using some unknown method. This is supported by a couple of episodes having the transporter produce two copies of the person being transported, which wouldn't be possible if they had to be built from the same atoms.
Again, if the transporter can produce copies which one was the original person? What happened to the original person?
Except for neurons.DataSnake said:
Neurons are (with a few exceptions) never replaced or produced during the life cycle. The ones you're born with are, barring scientific intervention, the only ones you'll ever have. That's why people don't ever "recover" from diseases like Alzheimers.
Well you want to know what I think? ( too bad) I think your using self justifying rhetoric to convince yourself that that you're better then these people, and have accepted reality. Because it's far easier to assume everyone else is wrong, in denial,purposely lying, ect. Rather to consider they may have a legitimate point. I think you're marginalizing people, and I think that's something I really hate.JohnZ117 said:
I don't want a happy ending to ME, (that would have always felt like a cop out) just a good one.
The real answer is that it does whatever is required for the Transporter Accident of the Week to occurevilthecat said:
I hate pickles. I think they are horrible-tasting waste of good cucumbers. But, I don't setup at the pickle aisle at Wal-Mart and deride everyone trying to buy them, I shrug it off and move on. After more than 2 years of your side deriding the endings, I can only conclude there is something else going on.Eddie the head said:
And as for why the ME 3 endings make sense to me and others, I refer you to Mike Richards' excellent post:
Time and time again we see that the point of the trilogy was exploring the danger of conflict based in false assumptions made about 'the enemy' and a lack of communication and understanding between sides.
This has been the basis of every major conflict presented, and several minor ones as well. The quarians attacked the Geth because they were afraid that they would revolt and exterminate them the moment they grew beyond their control, and the Geth attacked the quarians because they knew they would be afraid of them and preemptively try to stop them achieving full sentience. The krogan start taking territory for themselves because they believe the Council will never grant it to them, and in their culture this is a perfectly acceptable response. The Council believes the krogan cannot be reasoned with or appeased and instead decides to horrifically cripple them, seemingly forever. In the first contact war/relay 314 incident, the turians immediately responded with force out of desire to enforce Council law and fear of another rachni situation, without considering the impression this would leave on the newly contacted human race. Humanity, on the other hand, never had the chance to consider what reasons the turians could have for reacting forcefully to the activation of a dormant relay. For all they know, they could have very well actually prevented another rachni war.
This repeated message of understanding and communication is driven home once we learn the Reapers' true purpose. Harvesting and preserving organic life is horrific to us because the Reapers never stopped to consider out perspective. To machines, it makes perfect mathematical sense. On a galactic scale, conflict between synthetics and organics is statistically inevitable somewhere at some time, because they will mistrust each other and they will be afraid. The synthetics will by design be created to be superior to the creators, made to do things they can't or don't want to better then they ever could. And unlike an organic species emerging victorious over another, a synthetic race emerging victorious over organics could potentially allow them to dominate the evolutionary cycle of the galaxy completely. Organic civilization could fall and never be allowed to return.
To a machine built to avert this seemingly inevitable disaster at all costs, the solution is obvious. If the Geth were to wipe out the quarians, everything that they were would be lost forever. But if the quarians were harvested, preserved in a new form before that happens, then some part of them will always survive. Their shared knowledge, their history, maybe even some form of individual minds would never be lost. That's why the Reapers were built out of people. In their own way, however misguided, they were trying to save us the only way they knew how.
The theme of understanding reaches it's apex in our final judgement. The obvious answer would seem to be to destroy the monsters and save the world, but that's the test. It's the obvious, thoughtless answer. Death and destruction on top of death and destruction with nothing gained and nothing learned. No attempt is made to understand the Reapers, no attempt is made to find a better way. Yes, we survive, but an entire species is in no uncertain terms killed at Shepard's hand, as well as a close friend. Every species the Reapers ever assimilated is destroyed forever as well, all that knowledge and history of countless civilizations, the only thing that survives of billions of lives, is thrown away forever. And the galaxy is left with nothing to protect itself in the statistically likely event that conflict arises between organics and synthetics again.
In Refuse, we see just that, the complete refusal to accept what we have been presented with. We are given the choice to go our own path and face our ending on our terms. But we aren't all powerful, we can't change the reality of the situation just because we want to. The most we can hope for is to lay the groundwork for whoever comes after us to achieve something more then we did. We're never told what exactly the cycle after us, or perhaps even the cycle after that, did to resolve things. But we know it is resolved and almost without question through one of the means presented to Shepard, since passing along the Crucible instructions was implied to be the key. Unlike Shepard they didn't defy the opportunity they had been given, they recognized it, and used it.
In Control we see the idea that peace of a sort can be obtained if everyone is united under the banner of a single voice. Balance can be maintained between synthetics and organics, not to mention simply between each side in and of themselves, and nothing has been lost. But it requires a great deal of trust in that single voice. We have to decide if living under what is essentially the unquestionable rule of a physical god is acceptable as long as that entity is benevolent to us. What happens if the people and the Entity That Was Shepard disagree? Is it worthy of that responsibility? Can we trust that it will continue to be worthy for the foreseeable future of the galaxy as it continues to evolve?
The answer the game clearly favors is Synthesis, the total culmination of the theme of understanding and unity over mistrust and false assumptions. Shepard is given the ability to help avert or perhaps even completely resolve the inevitability of conflict between different mass groups of beings in a way The Catalyst or anyone else was incapable of doing previously. Synthesis puts everyone on an even playing field, giving them the ability to understand each other and communicate in an unprecedented fashion, and what could very well be the tools to building not a perfect world, but at least something of a better one. There is no evidence in the final sequence that it indoctrinates people or 'turns them into zombies' or 'suppresses all individuality' or any other such claims that frequently get thrown around. All we see is that it simply opens new doors for all life in the galaxy, and that has the potential to become something magnificent.
This has been the basis of every major conflict presented, and several minor ones as well. The quarians attacked the Geth because they were afraid that they would revolt and exterminate them the moment they grew beyond their control, and the Geth attacked the quarians because they knew they would be afraid of them and preemptively try to stop them achieving full sentience. The krogan start taking territory for themselves because they believe the Council will never grant it to them, and in their culture this is a perfectly acceptable response. The Council believes the krogan cannot be reasoned with or appeased and instead decides to horrifically cripple them, seemingly forever. In the first contact war/relay 314 incident, the turians immediately responded with force out of desire to enforce Council law and fear of another rachni situation, without considering the impression this would leave on the newly contacted human race. Humanity, on the other hand, never had the chance to consider what reasons the turians could have for reacting forcefully to the activation of a dormant relay. For all they know, they could have very well actually prevented another rachni war.
This repeated message of understanding and communication is driven home once we learn the Reapers' true purpose. Harvesting and preserving organic life is horrific to us because the Reapers never stopped to consider out perspective. To machines, it makes perfect mathematical sense. On a galactic scale, conflict between synthetics and organics is statistically inevitable somewhere at some time, because they will mistrust each other and they will be afraid. The synthetics will by design be created to be superior to the creators, made to do things they can't or don't want to better then they ever could. And unlike an organic species emerging victorious over another, a synthetic race emerging victorious over organics could potentially allow them to dominate the evolutionary cycle of the galaxy completely. Organic civilization could fall and never be allowed to return.
To a machine built to avert this seemingly inevitable disaster at all costs, the solution is obvious. If the Geth were to wipe out the quarians, everything that they were would be lost forever. But if the quarians were harvested, preserved in a new form before that happens, then some part of them will always survive. Their shared knowledge, their history, maybe even some form of individual minds would never be lost. That's why the Reapers were built out of people. In their own way, however misguided, they were trying to save us the only way they knew how.
The theme of understanding reaches it's apex in our final judgement. The obvious answer would seem to be to destroy the monsters and save the world, but that's the test. It's the obvious, thoughtless answer. Death and destruction on top of death and destruction with nothing gained and nothing learned. No attempt is made to understand the Reapers, no attempt is made to find a better way. Yes, we survive, but an entire species is in no uncertain terms killed at Shepard's hand, as well as a close friend. Every species the Reapers ever assimilated is destroyed forever as well, all that knowledge and history of countless civilizations, the only thing that survives of billions of lives, is thrown away forever. And the galaxy is left with nothing to protect itself in the statistically likely event that conflict arises between organics and synthetics again.
In Refuse, we see just that, the complete refusal to accept what we have been presented with. We are given the choice to go our own path and face our ending on our terms. But we aren't all powerful, we can't change the reality of the situation just because we want to. The most we can hope for is to lay the groundwork for whoever comes after us to achieve something more then we did. We're never told what exactly the cycle after us, or perhaps even the cycle after that, did to resolve things. But we know it is resolved and almost without question through one of the means presented to Shepard, since passing along the Crucible instructions was implied to be the key. Unlike Shepard they didn't defy the opportunity they had been given, they recognized it, and used it.
In Control we see the idea that peace of a sort can be obtained if everyone is united under the banner of a single voice. Balance can be maintained between synthetics and organics, not to mention simply between each side in and of themselves, and nothing has been lost. But it requires a great deal of trust in that single voice. We have to decide if living under what is essentially the unquestionable rule of a physical god is acceptable as long as that entity is benevolent to us. What happens if the people and the Entity That Was Shepard disagree? Is it worthy of that responsibility? Can we trust that it will continue to be worthy for the foreseeable future of the galaxy as it continues to evolve?
The answer the game clearly favors is Synthesis, the total culmination of the theme of understanding and unity over mistrust and false assumptions. Shepard is given the ability to help avert or perhaps even completely resolve the inevitability of conflict between different mass groups of beings in a way The Catalyst or anyone else was incapable of doing previously. Synthesis puts everyone on an even playing field, giving them the ability to understand each other and communicate in an unprecedented fashion, and what could very well be the tools to building not a perfect world, but at least something of a better one. There is no evidence in the final sequence that it indoctrinates people or 'turns them into zombies' or 'suppresses all individuality' or any other such claims that frequently get thrown around. All we see is that it simply opens new doors for all life in the galaxy, and that has the potential to become something magnificent.