Eclectic Dreck said:
Which NPC acted in an inconsisent way - that is, a way that was not justified by the fiction in those closing moments? TiM? He was indoctrinated. Anderson? Acted consistently with his displayed character. Hackett? Dude did what he said he was going to do. Who precisely is left to act weird in that?
This was well discussed at the time of the endings. Joker fleeing the system made no sense. The fact your crew apparently was all with him made even less sense. The fact some of those crew members may have been seen dead on Earth before later fleeing the system with Joker made the least sense of all. All of this was remedied to some extent with the extended cut, again at the cost of destroying the pacing during the beam charge. Which was unfortunate, because that was one of the game's moments of brilliance.
In all honesty, even the extended cut is a little hard to swallow, because I don't see anyone bailing at that point, injured or not, but whatever. At that point even I have to admit it's slightly churlish to complain, but it's not what I would have imagined those characters doing in those circumstances.
Eclectic Dreck said:
You're constructing a straw man here and I'll have no part of it. My claim was that people loved the franchise until the closing moments. I didn't claim that the thing they loved was good.
I'm not sure how I'm constructing a straw man. I know "straw man" is a knee jerk accusation around here every time someone doesn't like the way a counterpoint is shaping up, but the choice to use "99.9%" was yours, not mine. To wit...
It is my opinion that most don't end up with such a hyperbolic notion that the last .1% of a thing they loved was so bad that it retroactively ruined their enjoyment of the previous 99.9% without a lot of external influence.
Eclectic Dreck said:
My argument is simply that it is rather hyperbolic to claim that some insignificant fraction is so very bad that it retroactively undermines your enjoyment of something you previously liked. You see the same argument with Star Wars.
Your argument also appears to include assigning percentages. Apparently I liked 99.9% of ME, so I have to like the last 0.1%, or whatever weighting you've decided to give the ending in this hypothetical mathematical formula, or I run the risk of "hyperbole". I state again, loving a franchise and finding that franchise to be "99.9%" perfect are two very different things. And if we could even begin to assign a % of importance to the elements of a narrative, I think the
ending of that narrative would likely account for more than .1%. Endings are generally considered to be fairly important, in the grand scheme of things. Your mileage may vary.
My suggestion would be not to bandy about percentages like this or accuse people en masse of "hyperbole" for reaching subjective assessments of how much they enjoy or do not enjoy pieces of entertainment media. It's hardly unheard of for a bad ending to undermine the enjoyment of a piece of fiction. I'm not sure why people expressing that sentiment here constitutes "hyperbole", except that some people get very cross when folks hold opinions that differ strongly from theirs.
Eclectic Dreck said:
The "natural" conclusion is that this cycle, like thousands of others would end in Reapers killing everyone. If you want something less grim, you have to introduce some extraordinary outside influence. A deus ex machina which in this case is quite literal.
That's not a natural conclusion at all. This is a story, not a historical footnote. Stories get told for a reason. The story you're describing is "The Reapers came and killed everyone, just as they had every time before, and nothing of any real significance happened".
I imagine you're familiar with this debate by now, so you're probably also familiar with the irritated response to the presumption I want something "less grim". Anyone remotely familiar with my taste in literature or film or even games would find the prospect that I wanted a super happy funshine ending ludicrous in the extreme, but I appreciate you are not that person, so I won't make a big stink out of it. Needless to say, I do not want or require something "less grim".
Eclectic Dreck said:
Present both by having various species present along with what was necessary to get them there as well as the requirement to build a reasonable coalition to even have the hope of suceeding.
In an utterly meaningless show of conventional force that accomplishes nothing, except to get you a tete a tete with an AI that is
quite clearly insane, whose lunatic conclusions you must accept as sooth if you don't want to get the special Fuck You Whiners ending included in the extended cut.
Eclectic Dreck said:
The synthesis ending is not the same as the usual reaperification. For starters everyone doesn't die. Beyond that, you can simply split hairs about what constitutes organic and non-organic life.
Husks aren't dead, they're just a new form of life. Shepard making a decision like that for every species in the entire galaxy seems a tad heavy handed to me, and quite a split from the "our strength is our diversity" theme they were exploring with Javik. But we're splitting hairs now.
Eclectic Dreck said:
That said, I do agree that certain themes are discarded in the end. That doesn't mean the end is devoid of tone or theme or that the tone or theme clash with those already present.
Of course it's not devoid of tone or theme. The question is whether or not the tone/theme was appropriate, or supported by what came before it. Perhaps your argument is "yes". Mine is clearly "no". It would be nice, for a change of pace, if I could hold that position without having people accusing me of hyperbole, or sour grapes, or wanting a happy ending, as if this was the first time in the history of creation a work of fiction was ever criticized.