Mass Effect 3: It's not the endings, its the final battle (And synthesis)

[JellySlimerMan]

I do like that idea better than the Reapers being giant flesh smoothies. But I still can't imagine how you could have a plausible plot resolution without them having some crippling weakness. They're just terrible villains in my opinion.

Still bugs me how people think that Reapers CANT be defeated conventionally. Even without the Klendagon Weapon, Thanix Cannons, Cains, hit and run tactics of Turians in Palaven, and researching anti indoctrination by scanning the brains of the people manipulated by The Thorian like Shiala (we find out in ME3 that they are immune to indoctrination thanks to being a Hive Mind), we could have researched the Geth VR machine to see if we can get a version where you can infiltrate a Reaper network or mind and destroy the programing codes that make it work, making it braindead enough to blow it up later.

Alternatively, we could either reprogram if it is possible, to make Reaper attack each other by altering the IFF system they have. Or even better! since all Reapers are interconnected to one another, we could surf the Reaper mental network until we get to Harbinger or The Catalyst and confront it directly or wipe out its mind.

No need to destroy the shell ships, just make an Internet Powered Lobotomy, and Reapers begone. Too bad that the narrative forgets that such tools exist and that COULD be useful. Like how everyone forgot about The Conduit on Ilos even if it wasnt broken.

EDIT1: Even with all their technology, the Reapers werent able to make their bodies as durable as the very Mass Relays they built. Think about it, wont be much more efficient in durability a body that can survive a NOVA explotion like the Relays do? it also makes the job of preserving life in their bodies alot easier.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

Truth be told the possibility of the reapers subtly sponsoring the crucible had crossed my mind. But ultimately there were a few details that I found very difficult to reconcile with it. You mention the Reapers not destroying the Crucible during construction and cite their lack of attack on it as evidence for your premise. That's certainly a reasonable hypothesis, but not necessarily a logically sound one (possibly, yes, certainly, no), especially given the sliding scale the EMS created with the endings, justified in-game as determined by the amount of damage the Crucible takes from the Reapers while moving into position, which in turn would seem to indicate that they aren't particularly invested in seeing it used (an implication further supported by the fact that if you wait too long to choose a solution, the game ends explicitly because the Reapers destroy the Crucible). And yes, the Catalyst does indicate (in the EC) that it was aware of the Crucible being planned several cycles ago, though when prodded it also claims to have believed that the concept had been destroyed (though again: Reaper collective consciousness. I can't dismiss the possibility that it's lying through its teeth).

Through logs found in Liara's room throughout the third game it is clear that it is possible to track tonnage of vessels heading through a mass Relay and this information can be gathered by third party brokers who have almost no information about how the device works. It stands to reason that the Reapers are privy to at least this level of information. Tracking the escaping fleets from earth would be relatively trivial given there is no indication they made any effort to cover their escape route thus their eventual escape of an enemy that has near perfect knowledge, greater mobility and dramatically greater firepower can only be a stroke of luck (which is wildly unlikely) or intentional on the part of the Reapers.

Similarly, the collection of fleets, scientists, materials and the rest that represented the building of the crucible would likewise be activity noted by the reapers. They admit encountering the device in the past so they are certainly familiar with the intent of the device yet they made no effort to counter or even observe the process. For anything you might say about them, the Reapers don't seem the type to leave things to chance even if it is considered an impossibly small chance. Thus their reliance on misdirection, clever maneuver, indoctrination and huskification when the sheer power of their fleets would be sufficient for their purposes.

In my view, the most reasonable explanation for all of this, from the persistent survival of the crucible plans to failing to stop or even investigate it's construction is that the device was a part of their plan all along. To put it another way, they would not have managed to wipe out all advanced life on thousands of occasions were they making such gambles.

To me though, much of this can be all too easily explained by sloppy execution. The base concept behind the Crucible is a tried and true method, and at the end of the day it just seems to me as if this particular train of thought is more us in the audience trying to justify plot holes than an honest attempt from the writers at subverting that convention...

The leviathans indicate the device is far older than the Protheans with each species adding a little something to it along the way. Chance alone should have been sufficient to break the chain without active intervention of the Reapers. As the EC demonstrates, by the end of a cycle, the process of creating a reaper preserves all knowledge of import the species created and there is little reason to believe the final act of defiance in the face of annihilation would not be included regularly.

Assuming chance is the reason the device persisted for an untold number of cycles relies on odds incalculably slim. Assuming the reapers assisted in the devices persistence offers the more reasonable explanation.

especially when things such as the Final Hours docs point to the bulk of the ending as contrived at the last minute and at least one of the authors supposedly blasted the ending as having been a pet project that - to its detriment - eschewed peer review and indicated a certain distaste for the catalyst in the form it was introduced in...It simply seems too much of a stretch in an ending which forces you to adopt the Big Bad's ideology in the eleventh hour, which in and of itself points to at least some writing problems. This isn't to say that the idea of the reapers banking on the Crucible's use couldn't have worked (Heck, one of my favorite fan variations made explicit use of the idea, and I similarly appreciated its use in the Marauder Shields comic), just that I don't think it works within the framework the writers apparently rolled with.

I won't argue that, at the very best, this would be an example of fridge brilliance. There certainly doesn't seem to be much about the whole thing that seems planned. Since they never explicitly stated much about the crucible, all you're left with is the information surrounding it that we can see. And, from my point of view, the information points to the Crucible being a part of the Reaper plan simply because the alternate explanations are either inconsistent or so tremendously unlikely as to make it a poor choice for explanation.

 

[JellySlimerMan]

(an implication further supported by the fact that if you wait too long to choose a solution, the game ends explicitly because the Reapers destroy the Crucible).

Tecnically the pop up text on the game over screen says "The Crubible has been destroyed" it doesnt explicity say that the Reapers did it, but then again who ELSE is going to destroy it? or who else made The Crusible suffer enough damage to explode on its own?

SNIP

I remember this bit from ME2 that actually gives a canonical explanation to what the Human Reaper. But you have to let the crew die before the Suicide Mission and THEN talk to Legion later.


This open up the question of: How would you handle crusial information that the audience needs to know? Sure, there is the codex and lot of other ways like logs to fill you in details, but there are thing like that bit of information that SHOULD be in the main plot.

 

[Monster_user]

if we can get back to the battle of earth (what this thread was about)

Is there anything really worth talking about that? (Besides, Synthesis was brought up)

1. The war assests that seemed to contibute nothing, and weren't really shown.
2. Inconsistent weapons capabilities
3. Seemingly forgotten plot points.

Yeah, the battle sucks. Yet the endings seem to generate much more conversation, and it is almost as if the games were written for the express purpose of proving the ending wrong. Almost as if there was a competition to see who could create the most plot holes in the ending.

The Geth and EDI claimed to become "True" AI, only once they aquired Reaper code. If this Reaper code is so advanced, how are they simply VI's, subject to the control of a "Starchild"? If the Reapers are merely VI, then surely the Geth and EDI are not AI's, but merely VI's. Something that is not alive, cannot feel, nothing more than Avina (Don't tell Jeff).

1. So with Control, you suddenly control hundreds or thousands of sentient beings. You are suddenly in control of what, Al Qaeda? Nazi Soldiers? Does this make any sense?

2. Or, with Control, are you suddenly in control of thousands of VI warmachines? You now have control over nothing more than the Geth of ME1. The Sentient Geth of ME3 are completely nullified, and are likely under your control as well.

With Synthesis you get "space magic", from a rogue AI. This space magic supposedly accomplishes the exact same result as your actions within the game itself. You unite organics and sythetics. This is either redundant, or completely nullifies your actions within the game.

 

[AD-Stu]

Now, if you want to nitpick about motivations, the best place to start I'd say is asking a simple question: what makes this cycle different from the rest? If you take the Catalyst at his word, something makes this cycle special and thus eligible for his preferred solution of synthesis. Given we only have information regarding three cycles (the first, the prothean, and the current), there simply isn't sufficient data to make any solid determination.

I thought the answer to that one was pretty clear - it's not about the species involved or genetics or anything. What makes this cycle special is simply that this is the first cycle to actually finish the Crucible and put itself in a position to destroy the Reapers.

Once that happens it's forced to look for alternative solutions (including synthesis... *shudder*) because its existing solution is broken. I expect if the Protheans had have been successful in finishing the Crucible and docking it with the Citadel then they would've bee offered synthesis by the Catalyst too.

 

[Monster_user]

Is completing, and docking the Crucible enough to warrant reconsidering their strategy? Call me stupid, but I don't see where it actually changes anything, or proves anything. Especially if they weren't worried about it before now.

I suppose one of the biggest problems I have with it, is that I don't believe a word out of Harbinger's, excuse me, Starchild's mouth.

 

[JediMB]

Agreed.

Personally I'd have done away with the entire 'catalyst' idea to begin with, it just reeks of being a last-second ass pull excuse for how to kill the Reapers. An excuse I don't think was really needed either: You kill Sovereign, you know they're not immortal. Tough as hell but the Reapers can be destroyed, and what's more thanks to the events of Mass Effect 1 and 2 for possibly the first time in potentially billions of years, the Reapers don't have the advantage of surprise on their side. They're going to have to fight an organized foe, something that they've not had to do against any of the recorded previous invasions.

So do away with the catalyst junk and just have the game building up towards a battle against them, with your decisions throughout the previous games determining how well the battle goes and what happens. That's how I'd have hoped Bioware would do it.

Ah well!

Yeah that is similar to how I would have liked it to go, but I'd add a few things. I would have liked the crucible to end up being a device for nullifying the reapers indoctrination, akin to a gigantic radar jammer, and from then it would be a massive battle between the combined fleets of the galaxy vs the reapers and how well you did depends on on the choices you made in regards to uniting the various races.

That's pretty much what I've been saying/thinking since I finished the game nearly a year ago. It would be the best way to salvage the Crucible arc, although the whole thing was a lazy way to resolve the conflict to begin with.

It's just so utterly obvious that the rewrites that lead up to the ending we got were catastrophically limited by EA's marketing campaign ("Take Earth Back"). They had to scrap their original ending, yet still keep the human-centric battle for Earth at the climax of the game. And they really wanted to come up with a clever twist at the very end, but only ended up contradicting themselves.

 

[JediMB]

The Reapers only converted major civilizations, and doing so presented the risks of losing species before they could be harvested (for example, the quarians can potentially be killed off by synthetics) and losing Reapers in the case that galatic civilization had advance warning (as the current cycle did).

Harbinger (ME2): Only species found worthy (the humans this cycle) would be allowed/forced to ascend.

Catalyst (ME3): All species are preserved in Reaper form. Well, except for the unlucky sods who get turned into Husks (Oops!) or simply blown into bits.

CAPTCHA: broken heart

 

[Atmos Duality]

Anyway, the only way that a game about choice would EVER have just one ending cinematic, is if the game revolves around Fatalysm and Predestination. You get a huge sandbox game where you get to make shit but in the end all actions end up either futhering the antagonist plans or become meaningless because Fate works around your pesky intrusions of murdering the prophesied antagonist or whoever. Thus, you get an ending where all your choices are explained and deconstructed on how utherly stupid it was for you to believe that doing X would change anything, and then comes the ending cinematic of the protagonist becoming insane and comiting suicide or something.

Predestination and Fatalism are common tropes in sequential story telling, but they are by no means its exclusive tropes.

Thinking about it practically: creating a branching story with convincing consequence is quite difficult and prohibitively expensive because if you want your consequences to go beyond "incidental/fluff" (as most consequences in the Mass Effect are) you MUST create new/unique content for your alternate paths which takes even more time and effort.

Doing that over the course of a long game series..that is a major undertaking.

I'm not dismissing criticism from Mass Effect; it was an ambitious series by its very premise, and that I think knowing that makes its failure sting all that much more.

However, if there is an ounce of truth in what I've read about the writers; e.g., them making shit up as they went along, then it's no surprise to me that this failed.
Branching plotlines is not something you write as openly at each step so you can change the story for the whim of mass-market appeal.

 

[AD-Stu]

Is completing, and docking the Crucible enough to warrant reconsidering their strategy? Call me stupid, but I don't see where it actually changes anything, or proves anything. Especially if they weren't worried about it before now.

I suppose one of the biggest problems I have with it, is that I don't believe a word out of Harbinger's, excuse me, Starchild's mouth.

When there's a human literally ten feet away from the "destroy all Reapers" button yeah, I guess it's probably enough to reconsider the strategy. Of course, Shepard only got ten feet from that button because the Catalyst put him/her there, but that's a different kettle of plot holes

And I agree, I don't think we should necessarily consider the Starchild to be a reliable and truthful source either.

Even this "the solution no longer works" doesn't make sense though because:

-Why can't Shepard make some decision not presented by the starchild, other than destroy? That implies that the Starchild has the only possible solutions, even when it was just proven two minutes earlier that the solution can fail.

-Why does the starchild actually give the choice to Shepard when systhesis is the ideal option? If the Starchild has all of the potential solutions, then just choose the one you want you nitwit hologram.

-How is synthesis different from what they've been doing for millions of years? Integrating organic and synthetic material so this conflict no longer arises was thepoint, correct? Am I supposed to believe that the ideal solution is the exact same thing they've been doing?

-The Reapers have obviously taken casualties in previous cycles, why haven't they thought of the Synthesis option sooner? Isn't killing a Reaper enough to prove that the solution no longer works? His solution doesn't rely on being logical in every situation, but rather overwhelming firepower. Thats not some sort of solution, its a basic war strategy.

-Why wasn't synthesis chosen millions of years ago, and whenever a species uplifts itself, the Reapers force assmiliation? The Starchild says "It can't be forced", but thats exactly what has been happening in every cycle when they create a Reaper of a species. Its exactly what synthesis is doing as well, and surely not every single organic and synthetic is all on board for cooperating.

Hey, I only said I had some thoughts on why Synthesis had never been offered before, not a solution for all the myriad of other plot holes!

That said, here's a few thoughts (which are purely conjecture on my part):

- As of the EC Shepard can make another decision not presented by the Starchild: he/she can just die without doing anything. Because that'll show them mean nasty Reapers! Aside from that, who knows. It makes sense that the Starchild (whether or not it's telling the truth) would only present the options whose outcomes it was willing to accept.

Plus there's probably only a limited number of things that you can do with the Catalyst, so it's possible the Starchild really is presenting the only three things it's capable of doing. It's unlikely it has a "paint all the Reapers bright pink, put big clown noses on them and hope they die of shame" button, for example.

- The only answer I can give for your second point is that, in their own twisted way, I think the Starchild / Reapers are still working from the point of view that they're doing what they're doing for the good of all the species in the galaxy. Once all the species break the current solution, maybe the Starchild feels those species should have a say in the new solution - hence offering the Red/Green/Blue endings instead of enforcing one of them.

FWIW I'd strongly disagree with Synthesis being the "ideal" solution, but that's just me

- Synthesis is different to what they've been doing before because... well, they've never turned the entire universe into hybrid organic-robots before. The previous solution of harvesting the advanced races and leaving the other ones alone was working (by their definition of "working").

- I don't think simply having taken a few casualties in previous cycles is proof that their solution wasn't working. In fact the evidence points to the contrary: despite the casualties they still succeeded in harvesting every race they wanted to harvest in previous cycles. Besides, it's not like the Allies just packed up, went home and let the Nazis win when they took their first few casualties, I don't see the Reapers panicking and looking for a new solution when the same thing happened to them.

 

[Blade_125]

My biggest issue was the points you collect for the side missions to raise galactic readiness, and how they do absolutely nothing. It really seemed to me that they either ran out of time or budget for the ending, so they slapped together the endings and made the only benefit to readiness being the different ending choices. It unfortunetly made replaying the game not worth much for me.

 

[AD-Stu]

Again, why? Its stupid to give your enemy control over your fate, hoping they choose the self-defeating option, or at least force you into slavery.

Just throwing this out there again... the Starchild / Reapers don't necessarily consider organics to be their "enemies", as such. In their twisted way they believe they're doing what they're doing for the good of organics.

Do you think that changes the situation at all?