MiracleOfSound said:
OniaPL said:
But I liked the ME3 ending. Does that make me a bad person?
No it makes us jealous of you.
Genuine curiosity, not flamebait: Could you tell me what you liked about it? I have yet to meet someone who actually can.
I feel inclined to respond to this because I too liked the ending.
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I went in dreading what would turn up on my play-through, knowing that whatever it was served to piss a lot of people off. After all was said and done, I actually spent a few hours reading up on the conflict wondering to myself: "What exactly pissed so many people off, then? I don't get it."
I went into the climax expecting a sudden last-minute exposition on the Reapers' deeper motivations, so that already served to warm me up to something like the Catalyst's appearance. Sovereign's and Harbinger's more memorable quotes and further elaboration on the cyclical pattern of organic life during the third game left me wanting for answers, and they were provided. Having heard of and debated the concept of technological singularity prior - and knowing that organics vs synthetics was a recurring theme, I mostly accepted and was fascinated by the new information.
As for how it was presented, writing could have been better, admittedly. I mostly got the impression, however, that both the Catalyst and the Reapers were trapped in their own logic, their age-old self-fulfilling prophecy. I felt that their manipulated cycles encouraged and confirmed the singularity they feared rather than prevented or solved it - that border that they were afraid to ever cross.
I have read many arguments from people who argue the Reapers' nature seems comparable to the danger they claim to protect organic life from, but I consider them at least partly organic. I think their fear was mostly synthetic dominance, organic redundancy. To lose what humans would say 'makes us human.' So for all their synthetic additions, they held on to something they were afraid to let go of. Despite this, seeing the cycle come to pass over and over rendered them arrogant towards 'younger' organic life, as it lacked the 'perspective' they had. Ironically, they were trapped into becoming the very thing they fear.
Because this is how I interpreted the Catalyst's logic, Synthesis made a lot of sense to me. I thought for minutes about the choice - it was a difficult one - but in the end I felt like Synthesis would be the only choice that would allow life to finally transcend the hurdle that the Reapers both feared and fuelled, to move past a paradigm where organics and synthetics are considered opposites. To move on into something new.
I was sad as hell about sacrificing myself - leaving Liara behind, again. I promised her I wouldn't and that tore at me, but it made making the choice even more significant, somehow. The moment I fell into the beam, my doubts evaporated and I felt that it had been the only right choice for me all along. I pitied the Reapers and their master, in a way. So I wanted to forgive them, and life to move on. When would be the next opportunity to resolve this conflict in this way, if ever? This was the confirmed first chance for it in what must have been eons. I thought of Mordin's parting words: "Someone else might have gotten it wrong."
As such, the ending satisfied me personally, emotionally. These thoughts swept me up so much that I didn't take much offense at some inconsistencies around it, though in reading up on other people's grievances with the ending I agree some things do not add up, should have been left out or could use clearing up. I also feel that if the military force a player had assembled had been more visually present during the battle leading up to the Citadel (Dragon Age's ending comes to mind, storming a castle together with the factions that joined you), it would have done a lot to better reassure people that their actions made a difference. Where were my Geth, Krogan, Rachni? Not fighting by my side, on Earth.
In the broader sense, however, I felt that I left behind a galaxy that would face many challenges, but they would be
new challenges - free from a cycle and its technology that trapped and constrained us all - for the first time ever. And that felt good.