fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3161 ]

[ SECRET POST #3161 ]

⌈ Secret Post #3161 ⌋

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To be perfectly honest that whole ending was so dissatisfying to me that I don't even want to give this any thought.

Like, I hate Starchild pretty hardcore, but I don't know if he 'broke the lore'. I just know I hate him and the reapers became a lot less interesting to me after we learned a bit more about them.

I'm the odd man out in the fandom on this one. I was happy with the ending and it made perfect sense to me, which puts me at odds with, well, basically everyone. I also much prefer the Reapers having an actual purpose and not wiping out life "just cuz."

I got your back Anon. I came into Mass Effect late so I missed all the hate for the ending. I was genuinely agonizing over the choice. If it makes me stop and think about how my actions are going to effect my crewmates, then that means I enjoyed it, at least it left an impression.

I was wayyy more pissed about the ending of the Omega DLC.

Edited 2015-08-30 21:37 (UTC)

Didn't their reasons boil down to "We're culling you so you won't cull each other, and also we want to learn from you?"

I've played ME3 all the way through once. (Never got to the DLC though. If I had played on computer I probably would have.) The end is admittedly fuzzy, but I never had any desire to return to it.

You're cool, though. You're allowed to like unpopular things.

Edited 2015-08-30 22:20 (UTC)

Eh, I think it's a bit more complex than that. It was more that they had the realization that synthetics and oraganics inevitably clashed and only one would inevitably survived, potentially leading to great enough conflicts to destroy everything, IMO. So cull the organics because without them the synthetics will die, too, or never come to be!

That's a bit better, imo. Not sure how much, but a bit, lol.

I agree with you! I played it right when it came out (on my birthday! :D) and was really happy with the ending. Then I found out that apparently "everyone" hated it. And I was a bit confused, because I'd been hugely satisfied with it. *shrugs*

I think the big thing is that people are used to the hero somehow pulling off happy endings and miracles, when the point was always that the best miracle we could hope for was survival. Shep was never going to live, and the endings weren't meant to be 100% happy or comfortable. It was about making hard decisions and deciding what was best for you.

Destruction forces you to genocide even unrelated races because it's blinded by it being pure unadulterated destruction. Control makes you just as bad as the Reapers because you're imposing your will PERMANENTLY on them. Synthesis has its problems, but it's also the closest you get to a happy ending because, well, you make it so the Reapers literally have no reason to pursue anything because not only did you make everything organic part synthetic, you made everything synthetic part organic!

I thought it was pretty likely that Shep would die, I just wish there was an option that allowed everyone else to be okay without feeling like a total asspull.

And in the end I think that's a big part of what differentiates those who liked the ending from those who didn't - whether or not synthesis felt like an asspull. To me it did.

I'm honestly happy for people who liked the ending though. I adore the ME trilogy and it would have been even more meaningful to me in the end if the ending had been satisfactory.

Eh, maybe it's because I'm a vet's daughter, but it portrays a war. There's no way to be 100% okay at the end, and I don't think everyone is even okay at the end even in synthesis. So I was satisfied.

ah, I worded myself badly.

True, but a lot of people DID die, crew members and civilians and others, including those you killed. It is already messy and violent. And people died in the final fight, LOTS of people. It's not like they were ever going to come out completely fine.

What I meant is "everyone" as in, every race/general group of people. The galaxy will eventually be able to recover, life will go on, etc.

The options for me were a) genocide, b) creepy control (that also, weirdly, challenged my suspension of disbelief even more than synthesis) or c) an asspull.

But again, to each their own and all.

I don't know about you, but Control challenged my suspension of disbelief because it was offered as a serious, successful option literal minutes after it was proven to be an absolutely terrible idea that wouldn't work in either the short or the long term. And the only explanation given for why it would work for Shepard was basically "oh, well, you're the hero :D".

It felt like they weren't even trying to make it plausible, it was just "okay, here's your rule the galaxy with an iron fist option. Next!"

To me it was more like, how would that even work??? It just seemed implausible. Which is weird because it's not really any more implausible than synthesis - probably less so though they're both SUPER out there - but something about it hit that "no way would that work" button for me before I really stopped to think about it.

I don't think Synthesis is an asspull at all. Synthesis is /disturbing./ It's changing peoole irreparably without their consent and without knowing what the unintended consequences might be. It's beating the Reapers by turning everyone into them.

And what about all of the creatures of war the Dealers have created? They have to stay in those bodies and live with all of the dreadful impulses they've been programmed with /forever./ I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of them killed themselves. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of other people in the universe couldn't deal with what had been done to them and took their own lives.

It definitely looks like it's a "good" option but really, it's as fucked up as the other two. There are a lot of people who won't choose it because it makes them the most uncomfortable. A mere asspull wouldn't make people feel like that.

Dealers should be Reapers. Wtf autocorrect.

That's a really interesting take on synthesis! I kind of like it that way, and while my headcanon is more of a fixit situation because I'm a sucker for good endings, I would totally read a fic with this as a premise when in the mood for something dark.

I don't think that's how it was intended in canon, and even if your interpretation makes sense (and it makes more sense than the way it was written, tbh) it still felt like an asspull to me because of the way it was portrayed and implemented in the game. Eh.

And what about all of the creatures of war the Reapers* have created? They have to stay in those bodies and live with all of the dreadful impulses they've been programmed with /forever./

I never thought of those as actually being alive? I thought they were kind of like zombies, powered by technology but actually made up of dead bodies. Functionally speaking they seem to me to be more like VIs than actual sapient life. Or do you think that would change with synthesis? :|a

*saw your correction, but that was pretty funny at first. I wasn't sure what you were referring to, and ironically it made me think of the collectors.

Yes! Interestingly, I'd assumed pretty much by the time you left Earth in 3 that Shep was going to die at the end. It just had that sort of thematic feel to it, a tragedy backed by hope for the future. Just that restrained sadness throughout the whole game. With that in mind in my playthrough, the ending felt completely right and fitting to me.

Also I've not been able to bring myself to play any of the endings than Synthesis. I just can't.

I could see your point if this wasn't Mass Effect. 1, at least the Paragon path, was all about being the hero, with a couple token "choices" like which of two soldiers to let die. 2 tried to be more morally ambiguous, but it was still very much an option to be the hero and save people. I didn't play 3 because I never downloaded Origin, but it seems a little disingenous to try to have "tough choices" that late in the series.

Eh, I always found it a steady build up toward them. It's why your choices in 1 even affect things in 3. It's like real life. You don't always know the consequences, and in some cases, the Paragon option isn't always sunshine and roses (the DLC character in 3 kills himself in the end after everything is said and done because you urge him to do something that brings back painful memories, while he lives to be perfectly fine in Renegade).

Most of the fandom expected Shepard to die in ME3. Most of the fandom expected a lot of casualties, because the game takes place during a war and Virmire, the Suicide Mission, and the unavoidable deaths in ME3 itself made it pretty clear that people, even the ones the audience cared about, were going to die. People love trotting out the "oh, you just wanted a ~happy ending~" horseshit, but it's only true of a small faction of the fanbase.

The problem most people have with the endings is that 1) yeah, Synthesis is a total asspull, 2) the ending ignores a lot of what's happened throughout the course of the game, potentially including shit that happened all of two chapters previously, 3) the attempts to steer players towards what the devs considered the golden ending were screamingly obvious, which is incredibly annoying, and 4) the fact that prior to the Citadel DLC it was almost imposible to unlock all possible endings without playing multiplayer and a lot of Mass Effect fans are not PVP fans. Completionist nerds, sure, but not PVP fans.

I think the big thing is that people are used to the hero somehow pulling off happy endings and miracles, when the point was always that the best miracle we could hope for was survival.

Nooooooooooooooooooooo. No. Nooooooooooooooo.

I absolutely adore bleak, no-one-wins endings. The Mist is one of my favourite endings of all time. If this had simply been a case of a well-executed, but less-than-ideal ending, I would have been absolutely thrilled about it.

No, the problem I had with it - and the problem absolutely everyone I've spoken to who didn't like the endings has had with it - is that it was: 1) poorly executed (it introduces a brand new character at the very end of the third act whose reveals/rationale are largely nonsensical), 2) ran counter to theme (you had just prior to this resolved the synthetic/organic issue between the geth and their synthetic creators, making it utterly redundant, yet Shep never brings this up with the Starbrat; has Shep end a series focused on team-building and an ensemble cast solo), 3) meant that ultimately your choices up until that point literally did not matter at all (which the developers had repeatedly lied about prior to this), etc.

Not one of these reasons is "well, it wasn't happy" - honestly I'm beginning to suspect, given how often this gets trotted out by people who disagree to write off the arguments of those who didn't like it without actually engaging those arguments, that either the aforementioned haven't given these arguments any thought, or have, and have no rebuttals, and so just resort to pat dismissals "baw you just wanted a miracle/happy times/poor baby/they were keeping is realz" instead :/

No, I think the ending was a piece of shit because ME3 was a piece of shit starting with Hackett's early self-contradictory monologue about TIM. From there, Bioware Editorial couldn't pick just one Big Idea(tm) to plagiarize, so they half assed at least three of them. Meanwhile, the big reveal of ME that the citadel is a motherfucking piece of reaper technology that's been subtly manipulating galactic history from the time it was "discovered" was completely ignored through ME2 up to the third act of ME3. Let's get insulted by the government again in a reaper. Let's go shopping in reaper. Let's dance awkwardly in a reaper. Let's have an entire DLC about holding an end-of-the-world party in a fucking reaper.

So the solution? A last act deus ex machina to didactically tell us what the plot really should have been about in the first place.

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[ SECRET POST #3161 ]

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