| — | Bill Whittle, unknowingly describing much of the tumblr community |
Making a good case for a bad idea as smart person is as easy as making a good case for a good idea as a stupid person.
Okay, I’m going to shift away from angry pseudo-political commentary for a moment and talk about something that everyone in the gaming community has probably heard about: Mass Effect 3’s ending. I don’t really have one concrete thesis in what I’m about to write, I just want to share my thoughts more generally.
In my opinion, Mass Effect’s story was flawed from the start. I love the games, I love the sub-plots, but the over-arching main plot never seemed great to me. Why? Well, the Reapers don’t seem like a good villain. They are so much more powerful than the rest of the galactic races, the whole idea of any kind of struggle against them seems absurd. Also, their motives are declared unknowable, “like explaining color to creature without eyes”, in Mass Effect. A villain whose motives are unknowable can’t be very interesting. And we have a natural inclination to know the motives of an antagonist for the plot to be complete. This puts Bioware between a rock and a hard place: we can either learn the Reaper’s motivation, and feel fulfilled, but contradict what was previously established, or we can not learn their motivation, and feel like a key component of the plot was missing.
See, I think the plot of the Mass Effect series was FUBAR from the start. When you have a powerful villain coming to destroy everyone you know and love, what you most look forward to in the story is finding out his/her/its motives and origins. Since the Reapers are declared by Sovereign to have “no beginning” and “no end”, and their motives are beyond the comprehension of the human mind, neither of these things can be discovered without contradicting what was previously established.
But from what I read from commenters, I don’t think this contradiction is what bothered most people about the ending. I don’t think many people minded the Reapers having a comprehensible motive and origin, for whatever reason. And also, you could make the argument that we still don’t understand the Reaper’s motives entirely because we don’t know why it is utterly necessary for synthetics to “rise against their creators.” That’s a stretch, but like I said there’s really no way to win with a plot where the enemy declares his motives incomprehensible.
A lot of people seem to think the motives of the Reapers, as explained by the “God child” were stupid. They wave them aside with rather eagerly. They say that because EDI and the Geth can cooperate with the player, the God child’s statement is false that synthetics will rebel against their creators. I think partly because people WANT to hate the ending that they dismiss this idea so quickly. Yes, there is peace with the Geth and EDI at the moment, but that does not mean it will last. Also, just because those iterations of synthetic life have not rebelled, does not mean later, more advanced ones won’t, recognizing their own superiority. Just because SIRI hasn’t tried to take over your iphone, doesn’t mean a more advanced machine race 300 years in the future won’t try to rebel against you, especially if its intellect is superior to your own. EDI and the Geth seem to have intellects roughly equal to that of humans. An AI that felt superior to humans would have much more reason to rebel, dominate, and even exterminate organic life.
People also seem to think the God child’s motives were self-defeating. That, in order to protect organics from being destroyed by synthetics, it devised…a way to ensure organics would always be destroyed by synthetics (the Reapers). This, however, is again overly simplistic. The Reapers do not destroy all organic life every 50,000 years, only life on the precipice of creating advanced synthetics. So, if God child’s theory is true, I imagine two possible paths for the universe:
1) The Reapers destroy advanced civilizations, preventing them from creating mechanical monsters, while leaving primitive civilizations alone. Advanced civilizations die, the primitive ones are allowed to continue to grow.
2) The Reapers don’t do their thang, and Citadel civilizations continue to advance. They would incorporate more and more pre-Relay civilizations, “up lifting” them. Then, when they did make advanced synthetics, the rebellion would touch and destroy civilizations which were previously untouched by advanced technology, and perhaps this uber race of synthetics would even go around conquering and destroying primitive civilizations that did not even know mass relays existed.
So, in scenario 1, the advanced civilizations die, the others are allowed to live another 50,000 years. In scenario 2, the advanced civilizations die, the newly incorporate civilizations die, and the civilizations that have not yet discovered any mass relays die.
(Upon further consideration I realize that the synthetic life could create bigger, badder synthetic life that would do the same thing, however, so it may be questioned why the Reapers don’t wipe out synthetic life as well. But maybe its just part of that something we don’t understand, that color with which we have no eyes to see.)
So the Reapers motives make some sense, and I think a lot of people are just hating this ending to follow the herd, or the Halo Effect (the idea that seeing one negative quality in something will cause you to see everything else about it in a negative light, nothing to do with the game series).
BUT…
There is a lot about this ending that is genuinely bad. It really comes off like a drug trip, which makes sense if the Indoctrination Theory is true, but does not otherwise.
First off, the God child itself is a silly concept. Why would an ancient alien race which built the Reapers look like human children, especially one that Shepard recognizes? It just doesn’t make sense. It’s poetic, it’s beautiful, but it’s nonsensical.
Second, the God child’s reason for surrendering the choices of synthetic destruction, Reaper control, or synthesis to you makes little sense. I haven’t read much about the synthesis ending, so I can’t speak much about this, but from what I understand he/it offers you these choices because its lost faith in its ability to keep humans from stopping the cycle. And yet you would never have gotten to the Reaper control center without its help, because it takes you there after you’re already lying on the floor crippled. It seems like a cheap plot device…or maybe even an unnecessary one: Why not have Shepard fight his way to the Reaper control room before getting confronted with the God child? Then the “loss of faith” in the cycle would make more sense.
Third, the whole connection with the God child and the Crucible is really…messy and vague. ”The Crucible changed me. Created new…possibilities. But I can’t make them happen, and I won’t.” That is perhaps the vaguest sentence I have ever read in my life. So it sounds like the creator of the Reapers was somehow put in the Crucible. But the Crucible was supposed to be a creation to stop the Reapers, a creation made by previous civilizations who were finding themselves “victims” of the cycle. You probably explain this but it would require some incredible mental back-flips.
Fourth and perhaps foremost, it feels like they only finished the “destroy” ending. The final cutscene makes sense in this case, with the Normandy being torn to pieces. However, the “synthesis” and “control” endings don’t when you watch the Normandy being torn apart. What the HELL does that have to do with synthesis or control?
If you chose the destroy ending, I think you’ll have much less of a bad taste left in your mouth when you finish the game. But even so…the ending isn’t great. But it won’t feel terrible.
Okay, but that brings up another question: what would have been a GOOD way to handle the ending of Mass Effect 3?
I really like the concept behind the “destroy” ending. It reminds me a bit of the Tracer Tong ending for Deus Ex (the original). So I like the idea of the Crucible releasing, let’s say, a giant EMP pulse that travels through Mass Relays and fries every computer on the planet. So keeping that in mind, let’s construct a new ending.
Shepard should still confront the Illusive Man like he does originally, but instead of the Illusive Man claiming the Reapers can be “controlled” by the Crucible, what if he was simply aware of what the Crucible did: that is, he’s aware it will release a massive EMP blast that will destroy all advanced technology in the galaxy. He does not think ending the war this way is worth the cost when he might be able to end it another way and gain control of the Reapers. Then the player would be given two possible endings, similar to the “control” and “destroy” endings. The player can either ignore the Illusive Man’s ideas, and fire the Crucible, destroying all advanced technology in the galaxy with a cutscene similar to the one already in place, or he can somehow wreck the Crucible, causing the Reaper war to continue but not sending the galaxy back to the stone age.
Knowing the Reapers’ motives may be for the better or worse. Judging by the fan response, it was probably for the worse. If it was for the better, though, we could still have an AI in the Citadel confront Shepard out of desperation (and it need not look like a child) telling him why the Reapers do what they do, in hopes that he won’t fire the Crucible and might cease to fight the Reapers later.
There, that’s a decent ending, and it comes down to simplifying everything, rather than adding more to it.
It is a heart-breaking feeling to look back on a game whose visuals once impressed you and find they’ve been left behind in the dust of mediocrity by time :(
I played Battlefield 3. I had to quit very soon afterwards because it kept crashing. The game doesn’t work, but the visuals have ruined me. Now every other game looks at best bland and worst like vommit. Dammit :(
The tenet of ultra-rightwing Orthodox Christians: ”If it’s sexual and it makes you feel good, STOP.”
The tenet of ultra-leftwing health Nazis and Luddite greeney cynics: “If it’s purchasable and it makes you feel good, STOP!”
| — | A biblical quote often cited by self-righteous westerners who make much more in one hour than the three billion of Earth’s people who still rely on solid fuel for cooking make in a day. |
The advantage that people making incredibly stupid arguments have in debate is that they catch the other side off guard, and require them to think about things a healthy mind normally wouldn’t and therefore has little experience in. It’s hard to defend common sense for the same reason it’s hard to protect yourself from your mother deciding to plunge a steak knife in your back: it’s something you shouldn’t have to do and don’t plan for.
The show Crossballs, an old (and hilarious) show on Comedy Central (a few episodes are on youtube) was a great example of this. Real-life experts would be put in debates with comedians posing as experts, and often left stunned and at a loss for words at the arguments the comedians made…not because these arguments were so good, but because they were so bad. People who make extremely intelligent points and extremely stupid points both have a tendency to leave the other side speechless and flustered and at a (in the latter case, temporary) loss for how to respond. The comedians (literal or metaphorical), on the other hand, never have to worry about getting angry or appearing unconfident themselves because they have no conviction to begin with. But we should be careful not to mistake extreme stupidity for extreme intelligence because of this.
