Having read your post, I get the impression that you might think I'm talking about the Extended Cut, but I'm not. With the addition of Leviathan and the Extended Cut, the ending of Mass Effect 3 is no longer entirely broken, now it's just on the downside of mediocre. It's the original version of the game's ending that I am chiefly referring to.
Mike Richards said:
Not only did the series frequently explore conflict between synthetics and organics, but the underlying theme behind every major conflict in the series was the way in which they were created and sustained by a lack of empathy towards one's 'enemies'. It's saying that differing groups will turn to conflict when no effort is made to understand each other because things that are different are frightening or confusing.
Subtext is not the same thing as text. There is a theme of of conflict between organics and synthetics, but the plot itself is always directed by an impetus to
defeat the Reapers, by any means necessary. The Reapers were not a complex villain that the story invested character development into. One could argue that the story would have been more interesting had it placed more emphasis on understanding them, but until the very end of the game, no attempt is made by the story to do so. This is what makes it contrived; it's the worst kind of exposition dump.
Of course they have no idea who would use it or under what circumstances. The design was slowly assembled and refined by each successive cycle of galactic evolution, either in theory or in practice, all of them finding a way to pass their work on to the next cycle until someone was finally able to get it right. It's a long shot but that's the point, it's the only thing they can do.
The Catalyst tells Shepard that he is the only person to have ever made it to the room they are currently in, obviously nobody else could have "Refined" that part of the design; no one else has ever been there.
The Catalyst wasn't actually designed to destroy synthetics since, as you've pointed out, the game seems to present Synthesis as the ideal option. If you really want to get try and get into the mechanics you can probably just assume Shepard is destroying some power regulator or limiter that prevents the energy released from being so strong that it fries the synthetics it's targeting instead of modifies them. That's also why this option seems to destroy the relays instead of damaging them as in the other endings. On a more symbolic level, firing the gun is appropriate for the most violent and militant ending. It's the path of attack.
I'm not going to assume shit; the story should not require me to literally make up a version of it that makes sense. At no point is the concept you suggested ever even implied; the catalyst literally just gestures towards the tube as he talks about destruction. There is no logical reason for Shepard to do what he or she does in this scene. Symbolism doesn't count for shit if your story doesn't make sense on a basic level.
A human mind couldn't control the Reapers because a Reaper consciousness is not the same as a human one, they make that pretty clear. By interrupting the data stream or something else appropriately sci-fi, Shepard's mind is effectively reformatted into something that can. They aren't the same entity anymore in the same way that the Reaper's aren't the same entities as they were before they were created (But more on that in a moment), but they share enough of the same pieces that they can still empathize with the person they used to be. The 'slaughtering millions and brink of extinction' thing is part of the tragic misunderstanding between the Reapers and organics, which again, we'll get too in a moment.
Nothing is made "Clear". "You will die" and " You will lose everything that you have"; these two vague, broad statements are the only explanation the Catalyst offers you on how the fuck you are able to both retain consciousness and be dead at the same time.
And the slaughter of millions of organics is, first and foremost, evidence that the giant monster robot squids from beyond the reaches of space do not have your best interests at heart, and that they are probably more than willing to fucking lie to you.
Yes, there are a lot of practical considerations that aren't addressed that I would be fascinated to have some more solid answers too. That being said, I don't really need them because none of them are important enough questions to break the thematic logic or emotional satisfaction of what's just a really great optimistic ending. The important part is that Synthesis is meant to give people the tools to make real strides in understanding one another, to put people on an even playing field and tear down the walls of over-reactionary mistrust and irrational misunderstanding that plagued the prior conflicts of the series.
It's a little practically fuzzy to be sure, but not really any more-so then "This magic element we invented manipulates mass really easily because Dark Energy is a thing people have heard of." Speculation and scientific debate is fun, but it's not really the point.
There's also a lot of varied discussion on how exactly Shepard was able to achieve this. The Catalyst says they had experimented with Synthesis before the Reapers were built but were unsuccessful, so some people think that the work the galactic cycles did in creating the device were able to finally solve the problem en masse. A particularly interesting theory is that Shepard themself was so cybernetic at that point due to Cerberus's reconstruction that it provided the Catalyst with a roadmap for successfully integrating synthetics and organics to a degree no one had even accomplished before.
Mass Effect has a logical, objectively presented story, free from any sort of metaphorical logic; there has never been any indication that what we're seeing is not meant to be taken literally. The game devotes a great deal of effort to holding the underlying logic of it's setting together, and it generally follows the rules it sets out for itself.
Let me direct you to Superman; what is the contrivance people most commonly pose about Superman? That nobody can figure out he's Clark Kent, despite the fact that he doesn't wear a mask. It is not, for example, the fact that he can shoot laser beams out of his eyes and fly.
This is the basic rule of suspension of disbelief, and it really is all about timing. Mass Effect introduces the impossible aspects of it's story early on, and builds it's story outwards from them. This is a world where technology has advanced a great deal from the modern day. But that doesn't mean anything can happen; this is still a world that has rules and limits, like our own, it's just that the specifics of those rules are different.
The key here is that, while the rules are not in step with the ones we have here in reality, the world still
has rules and limits that we can understand. This is not exactly our world, but it does have a correlation with our world. The audience trusts that the author will not break these rules, because they are the method with which the story has a logical link to our world.
The nature of humanity can still be seen evident in this story, even though it's circumstances are different. Humans can understand and relate to the idea of learning a new set of rules, or abandoning an old rule when it is proven incorrect; what we as humans cannot relate to is a world where rules and limits don't exist. Such a thing goes against the very core of our programming as a creature that survives by innovating and adapting to our environment.
Mass Effect is not an allegory; all the dramatic questions and goals of the story are oriented towards the objective, not the subjective. The audience wants the answers to concrete questions first and foremost; What happens to our friends? Do the Krogan learn to live in peace? Does Mordin find redemption? Do the Quarians get their homeworld back? Do the Geth ever gain acceptance?
In order for a story to resonate, to relate to the real world, it has to maintain some form of internal consistency; if random things can happen for no reason, then the whole point of hypothesizing is lost. We would then know for a fact that what we are seeing has no relation to reality.
Without the basic rules of cause and effect, the story can only
state it's point of view; it can no longer
prove it.
So when it comes to Synthesis supposedly bringing everybody together, I have a question; How? In what logical manner is any of this supposed to work, and if it doesn't logically function, then what fucking use is it? You can't bring peace to the world by ignoring the way that it functions, and that's why the theme rings so hollow. Of course things work out perfectly in an imaginary world where things can happen for no reason and without unforeseen consequences.
And no, none of the theories you brought up are satisfactory for explaining how a machine can shoot out a wave of energy that makes everyone into a cyborg. The game doesn't even bother to explain the specifics of what this means. For all we know, this could have just been a nicer way of saying "We're gonna turn everybody into Reapers". "Synthetic" and "Organic" in this case are really just vague extremes on a scale; Mass Effect is a world in which many people have technology built into their bodies, but are still considered to be "Organic".
I'm not even sure that words alone can express just how insanely illogical this part of the ending is on every conceivable level; for all intents and purposes, the game doesn't tell you what the Synthesis ending is; it just throws some vague tehnobabble at you.
Sure, the ending posits that people should be understanding of each other and put away their intolerance, but it has no earthly idea of how anyone should go about achieving this end. A 4 year old could tell you that life would be better if everybody got along; if all it took to bring about world peace was for us to wish for it, it would have already happened.
The Relays only explode in Destroy, which is one of the many reasons why it's what I consider to be the 'bad' ending. They're only damaged in the others with basically the outright confirmation that they will be repaired. Even in the case of Destroy, ships can still accelerate to FTL on their own, that's how you explore systems in a local cluster in the map. It's just less practical then the Relays, so presumably people can still get around only with greater difficulty and time spent.
In any case, they didn't go nova because the energy stored in the Relay was fired into the beams that broadcast the signal. It would take a hell of a lot of power to transmit something that strong on that scale, and it uses the Relays to feed into the effect.
Aside from the very concept of an objectively "Bad" ending being totally out of place in this series, this is more or less a valid point. It was, however, only added to the game after the Extended Cut, which I already stated I am not basing my analysis on.
This is the big one. Their goal is not to kill. This cannot be overstated. The Reapers are confirmed to be built out of the species they assimilate. They're like the Borg, but as one organism instead of a Hive. The only people they kill are the ones who get in their way, the ones who are harvested to become a Reaper are preserved, as a Reaper, as a record of that species and it's accomplishments.
Having the memories of a species does not equate to those species still being alive. This goal makes no sense, because if their only goal is the preservation of knowledge, well there's no reason for a synthetic species to just flush all the history they have of their creators down the toilet. The species is still, in the traditional sense, dead when the Reapers are done with it. The Catalyst even call what happens to Shepard in Control by the name "Death".
In a sense the idea that on a galactic scale conflict between synthetics and organics is inevitable kinda seems to be true, or at least likely enough as to be worth taking precautions. We see conflicts arise between groups with much, much less fundamental differences with much less reason to mistrust each other all the damn time.
Doesn't change the fact that the Reaper's solution is an inherent contradiction of terms. There may be a need for a solution, but that does not make every solution a viable one.
But the Catalyst is right in that the Created are always made to be better then the Creators, if they weren't there wouldn't be a reason to make them in the first place. We build machines to do the things we can't. And if a real full war broke out between sufficiently advanced Created and Creator, the synthetics would probably win in the end because they would effectively be built to. They could adapt themselves, replace themselves, and leverage the natural superiority of not being constrained by the same things that restrain us because we only sort of know how we work, and we can only sort of manipulate the parts that we do know.
Machines are built to do
specific things. This isn't Dragon Ball Z, where every person and every species fits into a vertical power chart, where the person above you is always better at everything no matter what, and the person below you is always worse at everything, not matter what.
There is no logical reason why a machine race would always or even usually be a more capable military faction than their organic creators. Especially in a world where races like Asari, Krogan, and Rachni exist, all of whom have destructive and inborn physical abilities.
And if they set their sights on all organics? They wouldn't be susceptible to the same evolutionary forces, they wouldn't decay, they wouldn't tire. They could conceivably wipe out organic life and then, that's it, game over. And with the continued cycle of galactic evolution the chances get worse and worse. The more times you let the pattern play out the more and more likely a critical disaster becomes by pure probability alone.
Literally everything you just said applies to the Reapers themselves; they are contradicting their own stated code just by existing.
The Catalyst was created to prevent this from happening, but it's an AI. A good AI, but still an AI, and here's where it miscalculates. And miscalculates badly. From it's practical, mechanical perspective it all makes perfect sense. Let organics evolve, live their lives and be generally awesome as all hell. And when we think they're as awesome as they're gonna get, we seal them in a little glass jar and keep them preserved so nothing can ever happen to them.
If the geth wiped out the quarians, the quarians would be gone. That would be it, nothing left. But if the Reapers harvest them, the knowledge and experience of the quarians still exists. It's in Reaper form now, but it's out there, and because it wasn't wiped out it can be used. They're an attempt at Synthesis. A bad one, a limited one, but the best the Catalyst could do with what it had to work with.
None of this logic is inherent in a machine mind, it's just insane. The basis of the Reaper's goal is apparently the lack of a dictionary; having your knowledge still exist does not mean you're alive, that's some vague philosophical shit. Anyone with even a basic, civilian level understanding of psychology understands that when people say they want to live, they don't mean they want there to be a record of their existence.
The proclivity to preserve knowledge is no more mechanical or practical than the impetus to preserve life; both are value judgments, and therefore cannot be objective or rooted in logic alone.
And this sure as hell isn't a cold, logical perspective; it's motivated by a DESIRE, and is therefore emotional. There is no purely rational way to
want something; a mind devoid of emotion would have no impetus to do anything for any reason whatsoever.
Nothing about the Catalyst is an inherent quality of machines.
The Catalyst doesn't understand how horrifying this is to us because it doesn't understand the way we view the world. We don't understand that the Catalyst is trying to help us because we don't understand how it views the world. And so we fight because we disagree, and we're afraid. But if we understood each other, imagine what we could accomplish together? That's the optimistic promise of Synthesis. We can work together if we try to understand who we are and why we are who we are.
The Catalyst doesn't understand why a human being, a creature biologically inclined to
stay alive would have a problem with being liquefied? That's just fucking idiotic. You don't have to have first hand experience with an instinct to understand it scientifically. The fact that a person created the Catalyst and it's mindset is proof of this.
We're not fighting the Reapers because we "Don't understand them", we just don't wanna die! I understand the motivations of the Reapers completely, I happen to think they're moronic, but they aren't alien or complicated. And understanding them had nothing to do with my decision to Destroy them, it was just the only remotely reasonable option I had if I didn't want to doom all my friends and loved ones.
Conflict and understanding are not opposites; sometimes understanding something is the very reason you want to destroy it. Understanding isn't an inherently empathetic; it can be just as cold and ruthless as ignorance. Just because I can understand someone doesn't mean I like them.
It lays waste to what a lot of people assumed the story was, that's all. And if that's what they assumed the story was, it should lay waste to it. Reapers are evil because 'ooh, scary machines with growly voices', that should be simple. But every other fight in the game was more complicated then it looked. The geth weren't evil. The krogan weren't evil. The rachni weren't evil. But the Reapers should just be evil? They don't get to be any more complex or potential sympathetic in the same way everyone else did? Why not? Even the Illusive Man did some really aggressively shitty things but all the name of protecting his people and ensuring that the galaxy wouldn't kick the shit out of them.
There are a lot of games about killing evil aliens because evil aliens, it's what you do. But Mass Effect isn't one of them. It was never one of them. And why would you want it to be? It's about learning about people and what makes them tick, friends and foes alike. And in the end it says that we can be so much and learn so much more from trying to see things from their point of view then we can from blindly destroying anyone different from us because we think we're supposed to.
It doesn't come out of nowhere, it comes out of the theme of the story. Where all the best endings should.
What people perceive the story to be is, well... what they perceive the story to be. So from the perspective of anyone watching, anything that falls out of step with what they think the story is will seem contrived. It's the job of the storyteller to prevent this kind of confusion.
The Reapers absolutely should have gotten the same treatment as the Geth and company, and it's a shame that all this moronic shit is what they got instead. A while back, I actually wrote a piece on exactly how I thought Bioware could have satisfied their dramatic goal of making the Reapers a more complex entity. I think that all the problems with Mass Effect 3's narrative can be traced back to the Crucible, which is essentially a story version of cancer; thematic dead weight that serves no purpose other than to take up space.
If Bioware had just swapped the overarching plot structure of "Build the Crucible" with "Find the Leviathan to discover the origin of the Reapers, and by extension how to stop them", instead of trying to explain all this shit with 12 lines of dialogue in the last 5 minutes of the game, you could have replaced all the miscellaneous technobabble about how the Crucible works with a more well thought out motivation for the Reapers.
This error, I believe, is due to Bioware's addiction to the Hero's Journey, and the conflict between their increasingly lofty thematic goals and the limitations of the plot structure they keep trying to fit them into.
There is no objective entity that is Mass Effect 3, there is only everyone's perception of it. The fact that Bioware attempted to get a certain point across does not make the game objectively representative of that point; if the point didn't come across to the audience, then it is not the fault of their senses, but a result of Bioware's ham-handed technique. They failed to properly prepare the audience for a metaphorical story, and failed to deliver on the literal story they HAD prepared the audience for.
The ending comes from the themes of the story only; it ignores the plot, the characters, and the setting entirely. Depth and meaning aren't things that can be artificially infused into a story whenever you want; they have to arise naturally from the events on the page or on the screen.
I would have loved for Mass Effect to have handled it's central conflict just as artfully as it handled it's extra content. The Reapers as "Evil Other" does not do the story any favors, but unfortunately that's the angle they went with for 99% of the series; the last 5 minutes of the story is too late to restructure the narrative from the ground up. By the time the ending of the story rolled around, they would have been better off leaving the Reapers as the enigmatic, implacable Eldritch Abominations they were implied to be in Mass Effect 1.
[/footnote], video games don't have good writing. Sometimes there're gems, but only rarely, and even then I think they fail to integrate the story, gameplay, and setting the way they have the potential to.
