I finished mass effect and the big question I have is,

WHY THE FUCK IS STAR CHILD NOT THE ENEMY?

• That guy orchestrated the deaths of uncountable organic species and civilizations
• he created the reapers and let them do their work
• he played god and decided that Organics and synethtics couldn't play nice when Shepard had proved, through EDI and the Geth (If you were paragon) that they absolutely could.
• he's a synthetic himself, unleashed upon the universe by some unnamed ancient race who thought they were helping.

The ending should have been to shoot that bastard and end his control of all this nonsense, or something to that effect. He tried to manipulate you into either killing all synthetic life, forcing them to do your bidding rather than let them be free, or to take all beings in the galaxy and completely transform them into something they did not ask to become. (Through the extended cut you find it's not so bad as that but at the point where you need to make a choice, thats what he tells you)

Clearly he's a real bad dude and Kowtowing to him was not what should have happened. Will they potentially have you face off with him in a future game?

Will they potentially have you face off with him in a future game?

We should let this series die. In peace or in pieces is a matter of opinion, but either way it should stay dead.

Anyway, an end boss fight would have been nice but I wanted one against Harbinger. A good one. Maybe a boss fight that counted as an entire level, instead of just seeing him in the distance and then getting nearly killed (and then subsequently saved by one Marauder Shields).

Well, I did shoot him in the Extended Cut and, uh, things ended poorly. I mean to say, that ending is by far the shittiest.

But yes, I think the Star Child is just the worst way they could've ended things. First he tells you he's responsible for all this shit (kind of) and then you're supposed to take what he says into consideration and listen to him? HA.

@believer258 said:

Anyway, an end boss fight would have been nice but I wanted one against Harbinger. A good one. Maybe a boss fight that counted as an entire level, instead of just seeing him in the distance and then getting nearly killed (and then subsequently saved by one Marauder Shields).

Yea, for all their talk of harbinger in the last 2 games, he really doesn't play an important role.

Well, I did shoot him in the Extended Cut and, uh, things ended poorly. I mean to say, that ending is by far the shittiest.

@nosiwohL said:

Well, I did shoot him in the Extended Cut and, uh, things ended poorly. I mean to say, that ending is by far the shittiest.

But yes, I think the Star Child is just the worst way they could've ended things. First he tells you he's responsible for all this shit (kind of) and then you're supposed to take what he says into consideration and listen to him? HA.

I honestly consider that ending to be the best of the bunch. Even though the war is lost, Shepard putting his faith in the fleet is sitll better than kowtowing to the Star Child.

And really, what the hell was with the design of the Crucible, anyway. You either destroy the Reapers by blowing up a control station (who would build a user interface that requires being blown up in order to use?), control them by grapping onto a a couple of hand holds until your body disintigrates, or synthesize all life in the galaxy (including life that isn't yet capable of interstellar travel and would therefore have no idea what the fuck is going on) by jumping into a giant ray of light.

Really. The designers of the Crucible were idiots.

@MikeGosot said:

@nosiwohL said:

Well, I did shoot him in the Extended Cut and, uh, things ended poorly. I mean to say, that ending is by far the shittiest.

Rejection is the best ending, dude.

But why do they still have a screen that says "Congratulations on bringing an end to the reaper threat. Commander Shepard has become a legend." when you beat the game?

@MikeGosot said:

@nosiwohL said:

Well, I did shoot him in the Extended Cut and, uh, things ended poorly. I mean to say, that ending is by far the shittiest.

Rejection is the best ending, dude.

But why do they still have a screen that says "Congratulations on bringing an end to the reaper threat. Commander Shepard has become a legend." when you beat the game?

@Hailinel said:

@nosiwohL said:

Well, I did shoot him in the Extended Cut and, uh, things ended poorly. I mean to say, that ending is by far the shittiest.

But yes, I think the Star Child is just the worst way they could've ended things. First he tells you he's responsible for all this shit (kind of) and then you're supposed to take what he says into consideration and listen to him? HA.

I honestly consider that ending to be the best of the bunch. Even though the war is lost, Shepard putting his faith in the fleet is sitll better than kowtowing to the Star Child.

And really, what the hell was with the design of the Crucible, anyway. You either destroy the Reapers by blowing up a control station (who would build a user interface that requires being blown up in order to use?), control them by grapping onto a a couple of hand holds until your body disintigrates, or synthesize all life in the galaxy (including life that isn't yet capable of interstellar travel and would therefore have no idea what the fuck is going on) by jumping into a giant ray of light.

Really. The designers of the Crucible were idiots.

There was nothing right about choosing to force evolution on all organics, that's more twisted than flat out exterminating all life. Synthesis means Shepard decided Humanity, the asari, the geth, the elcor... all organic and synthetic life, wasn't good enough to keep on existing in it's current form. Which is nonsense, Paragon Shepard wouldn't want that. Star Child is an asshole.

Yeah, I thought that was super weird. I'm, in principle, fine with games ending with "Pick A, B, or C", but the way that it happened in this game felt entirely messed up. Right at the end, an entirely new (and really effed up, for reasons that you've pretty much nailed) entity is introduced, and gives you a choice between three pretty messed up options. And again, I'm fine with endings being dark or unclean, but the way that it was handled here just felt kinda gross. It largely felt out of place with the previous story and storytelling "style" of the series.

So did people not hear the part of the dialog where he says the Reapers doesn't want to antagonize you?

The Reapers are machines after all they're doing what they were built to do, the war is just a consecuence of their cycle of destruction , the Catalyst is an IA contruct built by those who where use to create 'the first reaper' it was tasked by them with finding a solution to the conflict between organics and syntetics based on the assumption that synsthetic construct will eventually destroy their organic creators said assumption was confirmed to be true as in the cycle before ours the Protheans were threatened by synthetic force , sure it chose to resolve the problem by preserveing organic life in Reaper form wich seems a extremely harsh solution by organic standards but the Catalyst is an IA it lacks the emotions an organic has it is only a colective of minds Reaper minds so it chose what it thought it was best for preservation without care for individuality

I guess people just wanted a big robot with a life bar , " you will never understand us! " as Shepard shoots him non stop right?... Ugh I can see now why so many people hated the ending some of them not even payed attention to the dialog, barely bother reading the codex entries and just wanted a regular end boss to shoot at a 'bad guy' I liked the fact that the intentions of both Reapers and the Catalyst intentions weren't clear black and white . Sure before the EC a lot of context was missing and it made for a lackluster conclusion but at the end this just proves how people just wanted a happy ending " But I don't want to kill my Geth friends and EDI! " of course you didn't you wanted a perfect videogame ending where everyone could be save and you weren't force to make sacrifice in order to resolve the situation.

The fact that some people think the refuse ending is 'the best' prooves even more how people didn't even thought of how the Reaper threat was going to be solve, since the first game they established just how powerful the Reaper army is and how there was the need for a device killswitch-something to defeat them but nop " I want to win on my own terms " oh you mean just shoot them right? I mean is not like Sword and Hammer teams were being decimated just by the Reapers forces stationed on Earth you actually thought you could defeat those plus the other thousands dreadnoughts and major forces on the other systems? Is not like Javik didn't say how they lose the war because they fought city by city , planet by planet system by system because they couldn't complete de Crucible or even understand the porpuse of the Catalyst.

People thought and wanted to defeat the Reapers by sheer use of strength, they wanted a gigantic space battle where all and I mean ALL the Reaper dreadnoughts where shot down, " The Catalyst is the real bad guy! " you mean the collective inteligence of all the Reapers? you don't say... just say you thought they ending suck instead of interpret what you didn't bother to in the first place.

@AngelN7: Look at it this way. The Reapers spent cycles upon cycles annhilating advanced, space-fairing civilizations, enacting the Xzibit Protocol of murdering organic life so that they could not be killed by synthetics (despite the Reapers murdering organics anyway). This cycle finally constructs the Crucible, and Shepard manages to make it all the way to the end, only to be confronted by Star Child; the creator and controller of the Reapers. Star Child then gives Shepard the option of stopping his own creations through three flavors of possible defeat. Why does he give Shepard these options? Because he was apparently the first organic being to stand on the choose-your-own-ending deck of the Crucible.

Further, why does Star Child even present these options to Shepard? He didn't build the Crucible. He didn't even design it. Yet he's playing Monty Hall with the outcome of organic and synthetic existence. ("And behind door number one is...!") He shows up at the very end and offers Shepard three options to stop his own creations from doing what they were designed to do based on hilariously arbitrary criteria.

@nosiwohL said:

Well, I did shoot him in the Extended Cut and, uh, things ended poorly. I mean to say, that ending is by far the shittiest.

But yes, I think the Star Child is just the worst way they could've ended things. First he tells you he's responsible for all this shit (kind of) and then you're supposed to take what he says into consideration and listen to him? HA.

Yup. It's like the soviets tearing through Berlin in the spring of 1945. They find the Fuhrer-bunker, crack it open, to find Adolf standing there smiling and saying: "Pick a card."

Another ME3 topic. Tbh we never knew of the star child's existence until that point so how could we know who was controlling the reapers or gave them purpose. For all we knew harbinger was the first true reaper and the one controlling the show. But you got the option with the update to do what you wanted.

@believer258 said:

Will they potentially have you face off with him in a future game?

We should let this series die. In peace or in pieces is a matter of opinion, but either way it should stay dead.

Anyway, an end boss fight would have been nice but I wanted one against Harbinger. A good one. Maybe a boss fight that counted as an entire level, instead of just seeing him in the distance and then getting nearly killed (and then subsequently saved by one Marauder Shields).

The series will absolutely return, just not with Shepard at the helm. And frankly I think it should, it's a universe of limitless possibility. Hopefully something more intimate and less galaxy-spanning next time.

And did you REALLY want a boss fight? Really? Look at Bioware's track record with those. Even the all-worshiped Baldur's Gate 2 had PRETTY lousy boss fights, KotoR as well, DA: O's were okay, but not great (especially the last one), and I never played Jade Empire, but all the other ME games also had mediocre-bad boss fights. I'm glad, to some extent, that Bioware just did away with them entirely in this one.

You are wrong. The real enemy in the Mass Effect universe is EA

@Hailinel said:

@AngelN7: Look at it this way. The Reapers spent cycles upon cycles annhilating advanced, space-fairing civilizations, enacting the Xzibit Protocol of murdering organic life so that they could not be killed by synthetics (despite the Reapers murdering organics anyway). This cycle finally constructs the Crucible, and Shepard manages to make it all the way to the end, only to be confronted by Star Child; the creator and controller of the Reapers. Star Child then gives Shepard the option of stopping his own creations through three flavors of possible defeat. Why does he give Shepard these options? Because he was apparently the first organic being to stand on the choose-your-own-ending deck of the Crucible.

Further, why does Star Child even present these options to Shepard? He didn't build the Crucible. He didn't even design it. Yet he's playing Monty Hall with the outcome of organic and synthetic existence. ("And behind door number one is...!") He shows up at the very end and offers Shepard three options to stop his own creations from doing what they were designed to do based on hilariously arbitrary criteria.

Again it was tasked with finding a solution to the conflict, the Reapers were just the first and the only one who at the time 'solved' the problem it's porpuse wasn't to antagonize organics or synthetics (at least not in what bad/good sense means for us) but instead to understand them and bring some sort of balance (said balance wasn't all that fair to organics when view from their perspective , the Catalyst couldn't understand since it is an IA) , Shepard being in front of the him... it, just proved how his solution wasn't useful anymore if the Reapers where destroyed by pew-pew them then there was a need for another solution before that if not then a few cycles down the road said organics would build syntetics and be threatened by them again until they cease to exist, the Crucible (more like Shepard instead) gave the Catalyst new options on how to solve the conflict. Did all of those options make sense to you? maybe not, where they the best? maybe not, did you wanted more than 3 (4 now)? it seems like it , they chose to use the Paragon/Renegade colors to make "clear" wich choice corresponded to wich moral stance would have really matter what color they where or what each represented as long as it solved the problem? again that seems to matter to some . it didn't need to know what the Crucible did as he states how is just a big power source , and all except for syntesis in a way make sense in execution depending on how you interpret what could happen in the future.

Destroy doesn't really solve anything just kills the Reapers and the synthetics of that cycle, hopefully organics learned their lesson? hopefully the next synthetic creations will understand the value in organic life and how their inperfections doesn't make them obsolte in their brains; who knows the problem wasn't really gonna be solved that easely . Control makes the Shepard " Paragon of all organic life" be the new overmind of the Reapers using them for good instead of destroying them let's hope he doesn't get corrupted by the way IA thinks right? again doesn't really mater , and finally syntesis does actually solve the problem but is the one that makes the least sense from an execution perspective (it's space magic so it's dumb , the other space magic technobable wasn't dumb because they explained ... so sci-fi ) and Refusal isn't clear since we don't know how the new cycle defeated the Reapers maybe they had the best solution.

At the end it only matters how Shepard chose to deal with the Reapers and how when you get into the "do machines have soul" thing you're only talking from the perspective of one of the sides, and it gets so philosophical that you start blurring the lines with who's in the wrong and who isn't (Them machines don't know! we better killed them! even though we create them to be better than us). Mass Effect was always choose you're own adventure and it was either make 3 different games with 3 different philosophies to please those who disagree with the others or try to make convergence (wich is what they did but poorly explained) and go with : "there's hope alright we don't know how but there's hope for life be organic or syntethic".

@Hailinel It gets even worse when you actually listen to The Star Child's yammer. That stupid thing tells you "I could trigger Synthesis whenever but waited for you so I can tell you about it." Wait what?

Mass Effect 3 feels like the fallout of Lost where the leads felt they needed to be more clever than the audience and failed to realize the ending was just flat out stupid.

@EXTomar said:

@Hailinel It gets even worse when you actually listen to The Star Child's yammer. That stupid thing tells you "I could trigger Synthesis whenever but waited for you so I can tell you about it." Wait what?

Mass Effect 3 feels like the fallout of Lost where the leads felt they needed to be more clever than the audience and failed to realize the ending was just flat out stupid.

When does it (The Catalyst) states that? when does it ever say " I can implement this method by myself I just want you to see it" when all the solutions require Shepard's intervention, since you know it can't make them happen by itself... again just say the ending suck don't try to understand what you didn't care to in the first place.

@EXTomar: All those choices were not available until the Crucible was added into the mix and Shepard was standing in the heart of the Citadel. Then he said that the only way to have Synthesis to work is for Shepard to be broken down piece by piece to upgrade/evolve all life to help avoid any synthetic life from destroying any organic civilization again. Thats what the whole series has been about story wise, Organic vs Synthetic and if there will be war or peace amongst the galaxy.

The options at the end aren't Star Child 'forcing you' into options; they're literally what the Crucible is capable of. Star Child's opinion is Keep on Reapin', but at that specific moment he can't stop you from using it; "My solution won't work anymore". unless you drag ass long enough for the Reapers to destroy the Crucible.

Here's what I don't get; you played the entire game expecting to build the Crucible and blow up the Reapers. At the end of the game, one of the options is to blow up the Reapers and Star Child with them. If you don't like the other options, why wouldn't you pick Destroy? Is it because it has a sacrifice tied to it, like everything else? I'm sorry that saving the galaxy comes at a high price, Mass Effect fans, but that's the entire theme of this game; Victory Through Sacrifice. Remember Victus' son riding the bomb to his death? "Victory... At any cost". the refusal isn't Shepard taking a stand against Star Child, it's him/her shying away from the responsibility of destroying the Reapers. The thing they spent the entire game building came with a blood price, and Shepard wasn't willing to pay it in the Refusal ending. I chose Destroy, because I don't believe in having Gods, and I didn't like forcibly rewriting the galaxy's DNA. I sacrificed friends to destroy the Reapers, and I'd do it again. Sic semper tyrannus.

@Mikemcn said:

@Hailinel said:

@nosiwohL said:

Well, I did shoot him in the Extended Cut and, uh, things ended poorly. I mean to say, that ending is by far the shittiest.

But yes, I think the Star Child is just the worst way they could've ended things. First he tells you he's responsible for all this shit (kind of) and then you're supposed to take what he says into consideration and listen to him? HA.

I honestly consider that ending to be the best of the bunch. Even though the war is lost, Shepard putting his faith in the fleet is sitll better than kowtowing to the Star Child.

And really, what the hell was with the design of the Crucible, anyway. You either destroy the Reapers by blowing up a control station (who would build a user interface that requires being blown up in order to use?), control them by grapping onto a a couple of hand holds until your body disintigrates, or synthesize all life in the galaxy (including life that isn't yet capable of interstellar travel and would therefore have no idea what the fuck is going on) by jumping into a giant ray of light.

Really. The designers of the Crucible were idiots.

There was nothing right about choosing to force evolution on all organics, that's more twisted than flat out exterminating all life. Synthesis means Shepard decided Humanity, the asari, the geth, the elcor... all organic and synthetic life, wasn't good enough to keep on existing in it's current form. Which is nonsense, Paragon Shepard wouldn't want that. Star Child is an asshole.

But didn't the ending kinda prove that organic life wasn't good enough in it's current form? Every incarnation of organic life had failed to defeat the reapers throughout history, and it was implied that every single one of them would have destroyed themselves with their own synthetic creations anyway. The ending implies that organic life is self defeating, depressing yes, but that doesn't make it evil. If anything it feels like the neutral ending. At least this way, the cycle is broken, life goes on. Synthetic and organic life together as one thing can push life forward into a previously unseen age, so there is also a sense of optimism to that ending. The game's writers are clearly friendly to the idea of trans-humanism.

I can see why if one believes everything The Star Child said it isn't the Crucible that was "missing" but Shepard. But the thing says clearly that once the Crucible was attached it had all of the parts needed to activate any of the endings. In either event Hailinel has a point....why does it bother to wait for Shepard? This is the most advanced thing that has existed in the galaxy for millions of years that needed a species that didn't exist to come along and listen to what it says and jump into a beam of light or grab some thing, or shoot out some tube. Right... But lets look at it from a different angle: Why not after Shepard faces Illusive Man? To become a captive surrogate for audience. That is the hallmark of terrible writing. Does that sound better?

This is silly I have to explain this to you because I hate these endings but if you wanted to this correctly: Have Shepard and Illusive Man "discuss" all 4 options and make the choice at that junction instead of getting them from The Star Child. By doing it this way the writers properly uses The Star Child as a dues ex machina as the thing that implementing whatever the player chose. The player is much more familiar with Illusive Man and automatically lends more credence to even his wild ranting than whatever The Star Child says even if you believe it could do anything.

In simple terms: It is much more believable and makes far more sense that Shepard and Illusive Man confront each other on "We have to make this choice" than Shepard and God/Shiva/Cthulhu/Star Child/whatever.

@EXTomar said:

I can see why if one believes everything The Star Child said it isn't the Crucible that was "missing" but Shepard. But the thing says clearly that once the Crucible was attached it had all of the parts needed to activate any of the endings. In either event Hailinel has a point....why does it bother to wait for Shepard? This is the most advanced thing that has existed in the galaxy for millions of years that needed a species that didn't exist to come along and listen to what it says and jump into a beam of light or grab some thing, or shoot out some tube. Right... But lets look at it from a different angle: Why not after Shepard faces Illusive Man? To become a captive surrogate for audience. That is the hallmark of terrible writing. Does that sound better?

This is silly I have to explain this to you because I hate these endings but if you wanted to this correctly: Have Shepard and Illusive Man "discuss" all 4 options and make the choice at that junction instead of getting them from The Star Child. By doing it this way the writers properly uses The Star Child as a dues ex machina as the thing that implementing whatever the player chose. The player is much more familiar with Illusive Man and automatically lends more credence to even his wild ranting than whatever The Star Child says even if you believe it could do anything.

In simple terms: It is much more believable and makes far more sense that Shepard and Illusive Man confront each other on "We have to make this choice" than Shepard and God/Shiva/Cthulhu/Star Child/whatever.

Because the most advanced thing in the galaxy already had a working solution , when you appeared in front of it, you made it's solution usless... again people heard what the Catalyst even said? or they just hated The Catalyst because it took the form of the kid , Would have made any difference to have The Illusive Man and Anderson in the decision walkway having the same conversation about Destroying/Controlling the Reapers? not really , it would have made for a more striking scene sure but at the end it was the player's choice The Catalyst as the world implies is what is needed to execute said choice along with the Crucible.

@Hailinel said:

@nosiwohL said:

Well, I did shoot him in the Extended Cut and, uh, things ended poorly. I mean to say, that ending is by far the shittiest.

But yes, I think the Star Child is just the worst way they could've ended things. First he tells you he's responsible for all this shit (kind of) and then you're supposed to take what he says into consideration and listen to him? HA.

I honestly consider that ending to be the best of the bunch. Even though the war is lost, Shepard putting his faith in the fleet is sitll better than kowtowing to the Star Child.

And really, what the hell was with the design of the Crucible, anyway. You either destroy the Reapers by blowing up a control station (who would build a user interface that requires being blown up in order to use?), control them by grapping onto a a couple of hand holds until your body disintigrates, or synthesize all life in the galaxy (including life that isn't yet capable of interstellar travel and would therefore have no idea what the fuck is going on) by jumping into a giant ray of light.

Really. The designers of the Crucible were idiots.

And to think, they could have cut the build time in half by just building one of those win condition machines instead of three. So many lives lost because of showy engineers.

He is. But just because he is doesn't mean there's any way to stop him outside of the 3 choices given. Hell, even the 3 choices are ambivalence on his part.

http://threepanelsoul.com/

Would have been a better ending. But Gainax Mechs make everything better.

@Mesoian: So Garrus turns into a mech piloted by a crazy coked up Shepard ?... way more plausible! but not enough birth juice.

@Revan_NL said:

You are wrong. The real enemy in the Mass Effect universe is EA

EA didn't write it. sorry man, but Bioware fucked it up.

I wish they had gone with the indoctrination theory or continued with the Dark Matter things they were hinting at in 2.

@Vinny_Says: Because the next cycle used the data Liara left in her archive to actually prepare and beat the reapers.

@AngelN7 said:

@Hailinel said:

@AngelN7: Look at it this way. The Reapers spent cycles upon cycles annhilating advanced, space-fairing civilizations, enacting the Xzibit Protocol of murdering organic life so that they could not be killed by synthetics (despite the Reapers murdering organics anyway). This cycle finally constructs the Crucible, and Shepard manages to make it all the way to the end, only to be confronted by Star Child; the creator and controller of the Reapers. Star Child then gives Shepard the option of stopping his own creations through three flavors of possible defeat. Why does he give Shepard these options? Because he was apparently the first organic being to stand on the choose-your-own-ending deck of the Crucible.

Further, why does Star Child even present these options to Shepard? He didn't build the Crucible. He didn't even design it. Yet he's playing Monty Hall with the outcome of organic and synthetic existence. ("And behind door number one is...!") He shows up at the very end and offers Shepard three options to stop his own creations from doing what they were designed to do based on hilariously arbitrary criteria.

Again it was tasked with finding a solution to the conflict, the Reapers were just the first and the only one who at the time 'solved' the problem it's porpuse wasn't to antagonize organics or synthetics (at least not in what bad/good sense means for us) but instead to understand them and bring some sort of balance (said balance wasn't all that fair to organics when view from their perspective , the Catalyst couldn't understand since it is an IA) , Shepard being in front of the him... it, just proved how his solution wasn't useful anymore if the Reapers where destroyed by pew-pew them then there was a need for another solution before that if not then a few cycles down the road said organics would build syntetics and be threatened by them again until they cease to exist, the Crucible (more like Shepard instead) gave the Catalyst new options on how to solve the conflict. Did all of those options make sense to you? maybe not, where they the best? maybe not, did you wanted more than 3 (4 now)? it seems like it , they chose to use the Paragon/Renegade colors to make "clear" wich choice corresponded to wich moral stance would have really matter what color they where or what each represented as long as it solved the problem? again that seems to matter to some . it didn't need to know what the Crucible did as he states how is just a big power source , and all except for syntesis in a way make sense in execution depending on how you interpret what could happen in the future.

Destroy doesn't really solve anything just kills the Reapers and the synthetics of that cycle, hopefully organics learned their lesson? hopefully the next synthetic creations will understand the value in organic life and how their inperfections doesn't make them obsolte in their brains; who knows the problem wasn't really gonna be solved that easely . Control makes the Shepard " Paragon of all organic life" be the new overmind of the Reapers using them for good instead of destroying them let's hope he doesn't get corrupted by the way IA thinks right? again doesn't really mater , and finally syntesis does actually solve the problem but is the one that makes the least sense from an execution perspective (it's space magic so it's dumb , the other space magic technobable wasn't dumb because they explained ... so sci-fi ) and Refusal isn't clear since we don't know how the new cycle defeated the Reapers maybe they had the best solution.

At the end it only matters how Shepard chose to deal with the Reapers and how when you get into the "do machines have soul" thing you're only talking from the perspective of one of the sides, and it gets so philosophical that you start blurring the lines with who's in the wrong and who isn't (Them machines don't know! we better killed them! even though we create them to be better than us). Mass Effect was always choose you're own adventure and it was either make 3 different games with 3 different philosophies to please those who disagree with the others or try to make convergence (wich is what they did but poorly explained) and go with : "there's hope alright we don't know how but there's hope for life be organic or syntethic".

Realistically, when it came time to use the Crucible, there shouldn't have been any choice beyond "Use it" or "Don't use it." It makes absolutely no sense for the anti-Reaper superweapon to come with more than one way of stopping the Reapers. It's a giant machine with a specific purpose in mind, not a Swiss Army knife. And then there's the whole question of how and why that elevator carried an unconscious Shepard from the control panel up onto the Crucible's deck. Why was the elevator even there? From a pure standpoint of usability design, the Crucible is a catastrophic failure. There's no simple button to press or lever to pull to get the desired result, even for the Destroy ending. You have to blow something up. And that's if you can find the hidden elevator to carry you up to the platform where the exploding barrel of a control unit is located.

Did the people building the Crucible seriously not know what it was that they were constructing? Was someone with horrible vision squinting at the schematics the whole time and just taking random guesses as to what parts went where? I'd say that the Crucible feels like it was designed by a seven-year-old, but even a child knows well enough that when you build a a giant weapon meant to thwart an entire invasion force, you give it one primary function, not three choices.

In short, this is a choice that should nor have never been offered in the first place.

That's sort of what the reveal is at the end. He is the "bad" guy, because he pretty much admits that the Reapers are his solution.

@EXTomar said:

@Hailinel It gets even worse when you actually listen to The Star Child's yammer. That stupid thing tells you "I could trigger Synthesis whenever but waited for you so I can tell you about it." Wait what?

Mass Effect 3 feels like the fallout of Lost where the leads felt they needed to be more clever than the audience and failed to realize the ending was just flat out stupid.

Also, what? When does he say that? In fact he very directly says that the new solutions have only recently been presented to him with the introduction of the Crucible, but that he needs Shepard to do it all.

@Hailinel: Sure you can argue that the the acutal design of the machine makes little sense from a practical point , at end is just a showy elaborated stage for the final choice in the game instead of having a dialog wheel with "blue, red , green" like in the original game or having Shepard tapping some buttons on a terminal ta-tap... cue to big ray bean, that still doesn't make the function of the device null, is a power source could have had any form. I don't know maybe I wasn't all that bothered by the design and wasn't trying to find an plausible explanation as to why it looked like it did I get what you're saying but at the end it just serves as the " edge of the cliff while it is raining with lighting, wind and ground is shaking" last stage for a game, the way they chose to show how would those choices triggered shouldn't have a bearing in what the choices acutally stand for, if they would've took away those colored choices and just have , control the reapers be bad , kill the reapers be good it would've cause them more problems.

@AngelN7 said:

@Hailinel: Sure you can argue that the the acutal design of the machine makes little sense from a practical point , at end is just a showy elaborated stage for the final choice in the game instead of having a dialog wheel with "blue, red , green" like in the original game or having Shepard tapping some buttons on a terminal ta-tap... cue to big ray bean, that still doesn't make the function of the device null, is a power source could have had any form. I don't know maybe I wasn't all that bothered by the design and wasn't trying to find an plausible explanation as to why it looked like it did I get what you're saying but at the end it just serves as the " edge of the cliff while it is raining with lighting, wind and ground is shaking" last stage for a game, the way they chose to show how would those choices triggered shouldn't have a bearing in what the choices acutally stand for, if they would've took away those colored choices and just have , control the reapers be bad , kill the reapers be good it would've cause them more problems.

There is no reason that the endings need to be shoehorned into the Paragon/Renegade dichotomy. Bioware has always demonstrated a very poor grasp of tying morality to game mechanics. With all of the variables in place, the Mass Effect team could have attempted something far more elaborate that exceeded the limitations of the morality system, but all they did was create a multiple choice question with a third color and the additional option to stab your teacher with the #2 Pencil.

@AngelN7: Look at it this way. The Reapers spent cycles upon cycles annhilating advanced, space-fairing civilizations, enacting the Xzibit Protocol of murdering organic life so that they could not be killed by synthetics (despite the Reapers murdering organics anyway). This cycle finally constructs the Crucible, and Shepard manages to make it all the way to the end, only to be confronted by Star Child; the creator and controller of the Reapers. Star Child then gives Shepard the option of stopping his own creations through three flavors of possible defeat. Why does he give Shepard these options? Because he was apparently the first organic being to stand on the choose-your-own-ending deck of the Crucible.

Further, why does Star Child even present these options to Shepard? He didn't build the Crucible. He didn't even design it. Yet he's playing Monty Hall with the outcome of organic and synthetic existence. ("And behind door number one is...!") He shows up at the very end and offers Shepard three options to stop his own creations from doing what they were designed to do based on hilariously arbitrary criteria.

@AngelN7: I'm sorry i don't think it's a matter of people wanting a perfect ending or people not understanding or taking the time to read everything. It's simply a flawed plot device created for a mysterious ending which i think they failed to capture which made Bioware backtrack and make the ending feel more normal. Reapers being created to kill organics to preserve them as a solution to the fighting between synthetic does not make sense in human or computer logic. The main problem with that logic is the solution does more damage then the problem itself. I would think an AI would have the knowledge to know that as well. The fighting between organic and synthetic has not reach the point of a galactic crisis but the reapers are endangering organics galaxy wide. The synthetics the Protheans had to deal with may have been a bigger issue but it hardly touched on so it hard for us to believe such a overkill solution is needed.

Now if bioware handle it better maybe they just needed more time and EA said no but the reapers logic could have been more on the borg side of things, as in the only way to truly stop the fighting is to combine all organic and synthetic life. I could list more ways the reapers could make more sense but the point is just killing all advanced life and rinse and repeat does not fix the problem. This continue with the star child because why give Shepard these choices now, what did Shepard really prove to star child to change his logic? I also feel all the choices are so manufactured to kill off your Shepard. I don't mind my Shepard dieing (it sucks) but i feel it have to happen organically and be logical for people to feel justified in their act of selflessness. The control ending is the only one that made sense for your Shepard to die. If i generally felt i was the only man to do this to save everyone i would have done it in a heartbeat. But when you give me these weird solutions that end with oh and you will die and i have to wonder why then there is a problem.

@Hailinel: They did that for games 1 and 2 ... it's like people forgot that's what the series has been always about they tried to make some of the choices morally abiguous (does killing synthetics makes you a ruthless apatethic person? should that be considered Renegade? , is Controling the Reapers the Paragon choice? you didn't sacrifice anything other than yourself but should that kind of power be in the hands of the heroic compassionate Shepard? , Synthesis seems the correct choice right? but isn't Shepard forcing every organic into being part Synthetic taking away what makes both different froms of life unique? is that sort of evolutionary path is the correct one? ... that seems like a neutral choice path in other choose your alliance/philosphy game out there) yet people hated it because it wasn't clear enough?... so yeah I don't get what people wanted (not counting the context and closure provided by the EC , I'm talking about what they wanted from a resolution to the problem that isn't just black and white choices be Paragon , be Renegade).

@Undeadpool said:

@believer258 said:

Will they potentially have you face off with him in a future game?

We should let this series die. In peace or in pieces is a matter of opinion, but either way it should stay dead.

Anyway, an end boss fight would have been nice but I wanted one against Harbinger. A good one. Maybe a boss fight that counted as an entire level, instead of just seeing him in the distance and then getting nearly killed (and then subsequently saved by one Marauder Shields).

The series will absolutely return, just not with Shepard at the helm. And frankly I think it should, it's a universe of limitless possibility. Hopefully something more intimate and less galaxy-spanning next time.

And did you REALLY want a boss fight? Really? Look at Bioware's track record with those. Even the all-worshiped Baldur's Gate 2 had PRETTY lousy boss fights, KotoR as well, DA: O's were okay, but not great (especially the last one), and I never played Jade Empire, but all the other ME games also had mediocre-bad boss fights. I'm glad, to some extent, that Bioware just did away with them entirely in this one.

We did have a boss fight, his name was Marauder Shields. God bless.

@AngelN7 said:

@Hailinel: They did that for games 1 and 2 ... it's like people forgot that's what the series has been always about they tried to make some of the choices morally abiguous (does killing synthetics makes you a ruthless apatethic person? should that be considered Renegade? , is Controling the Reapers the Paragon choice? you didn't sacrifice anything other than yourself but should that kind of power be in the hands of the heroic compassionate Shepard? , Synthesis seems the correct choice right? but isn't Shepard forcing every organic into being part Synthetic taking away what makes both different froms of life unique? is that sort of evolutionary path is the correct one? ... that seems like a neutral choice path in other choose your alliance/philosphy game out there) yet people hated it because it wasn't clear enough?... so yeah I don't get what people wanted (not counting the context and closure provided by the EC , I'm talking about what they wanted from a resolution to the problem that isn't just black and white choices be Paragon , be Renegade).

That it's the way that the endings of ME1 & 2 were constructed doesn't mean that it had to be the same way for three. After all, Mass Effect 3 already forsook the idea of a final boss fight. The only thing that the vast majority of people wanted was closure, and an ending that made some form of coherent sense. The answer is nothing more complex than that.

But the problem at the very core is none of that. It's that the set piece that Bioware created for the ending, the Crucible and the circumstances surrounding it, was a terrible idea from the star. It is a literal deus ex machina; a device that magically makes all of the Reapers throughout the galaxy just go away. It's a cheap, silly conclusion, both in its original and extended formats.

@Undeadpool said:

@believer258 said:

Will they potentially have you face off with him in a future game?

We should let this series die. In peace or in pieces is a matter of opinion, but either way it should stay dead.

Anyway, an end boss fight would have been nice but I wanted one against Harbinger. A good one. Maybe a boss fight that counted as an entire level, instead of just seeing him in the distance and then getting nearly killed (and then subsequently saved by one Marauder Shields).

The series will absolutely return, just not with Shepard at the helm. And frankly I think it should, it's a universe of limitless possibility. Hopefully something more intimate and less galaxy-spanning next time.

And did you REALLY want a boss fight? Really? Look at Bioware's track record with those. Even the all-worshiped Baldur's Gate 2 had PRETTY lousy boss fights, KotoR as well, DA: O's were okay, but not great (especially the last one), and I never played Jade Empire, but all the other ME games also had mediocre-bad boss fights. I'm glad, to some extent, that Bioware just did away with them entirely in this one.

I didn't say that it wouldn't return, just that I'd rather it not.

And yes, I wanted a good boss fight. Bioware's track record of them isn't good, I know, but I still wanted a good boss fight.

@Undeadpool said:

@believer258 said:

Will they potentially have you face off with him in a future game?

We should let this series die. In peace or in pieces is a matter of opinion, but either way it should stay dead.

Anyway, an end boss fight would have been nice but I wanted one against Harbinger. A good one. Maybe a boss fight that counted as an entire level, instead of just seeing him in the distance and then getting nearly killed (and then subsequently saved by one Marauder Shields).

The series will absolutely return, just not with Shepard at the helm. And frankly I think it should, it's a universe of limitless possibility. Hopefully something more intimate and less galaxy-spanning next time.

And did you REALLY want a boss fight? Really? Look at Bioware's track record with those. Even the all-worshiped Baldur's Gate 2 had PRETTY lousy boss fights, KotoR as well, DA: O's were okay, but not great (especially the last one), and I never played Jade Empire, but all the other ME games also had mediocre-bad boss fights. I'm glad, to some extent, that Bioware just did away with them entirely in this one.

I agree with your first point 100%, this is a great world bioware created so why end it so soon. I would love to play another created character that does not have to deal with saving the galaxy. Have a more personal story and be free to explore the corners of the mass effect world and have a space adventure of sorts. Your second point yes we want a boss battle and it does not have to be a giant enemy with a health bar. Hell, if the last mission was better you would not even need a boss battle but the last mission was lacking. If it was set up just like mass effect 2 but with the army behind you it would have been awesome.

Choosing who fought where and having all your ME2 crew head some of these groups would give you an advantage. Picking which army would role with you on a given field for example if you had to deal with a wave of brutes it may work out better to have the Krogan front line role with you. But if you had to take down anti air cannons that's being protected by a bunch of marauder shields it may work out to have the Geth or Quarians front line. That would have been awesome and i would have also been a good way to show the fruit of all the choices you made.

Again, the Catalyst said it was complete and the Crucible altered it where Shepard didn't need to do anything more to activate any of them. And in the other thread and various critiques people ask what seem to be important questions like "How is grabbing that going to take control of The Reapers let alone stop the feared 'cycle'?" I guess the answer of "space magic" is enough for some but I don't fault anyone for asking because none of it is defined like the story should have done.

This is the fundamental divide in the issue that was not addressed in either the original or EC: The ending was poorly constructed let alone upon light inspection each solution offered is nonsense. The Crucible was obsessed with stopping synthetics from killing off organics when those organics end up making "bad synthetics". The Crucible claims Shepard can take control and that will stop it. How is Shepard driving The Reapers going to stop anything? The Crucible claims Shepard should try Synthesis and that will ensure peace. Why would that create peace? The Crucible says Destruction is bad because it just ensures the cycle continues. Has The Star Child made the case that the current solution (just reaping the hell out of the galaxy every 50K years) is a more compelling solution that halting it and letting chaos take over? And as already mentioned Reject is probably the one that makes the most straightforward sense only because the others are pathetic at making sense out of the setup from Mass Effect to this room in Mass Effect 3.

If some of the decisions actually made sense I think many complaints would be silenced. Especially having the Star Child insistent and obsessed with the notion that "synthetics will destroy organics" when the player has been shown that the only synthetics that are like that are The Reapers should make one wonder if that thing is even remotely correct about what it has assessed are "the only options".

@phantomzxro said:

Reapers being created to kill organics to preserve them as a solution to the fighting between synthetic does not make sense in human or computer logic.

What do we know about computer logic? how come we have known the porpuse of the Reapers and how they come to be since Mass Effect 2 yet no one said anything?

I would think an AI would have the knowledge to know that as well. The fighting between organic and synthetic has not reach the point of a galactic crisis but the reapers are endangering organics galaxy wide. The synthetics the Protheans had to deal with may have been a bigger issue but it hardly touched on so it hard for us to believe such a overkill solution is needed.

He states that the Reapers are doing what they were built to do (because they're machines after all hybrid constructs in nature but they think as a machine) , they are preserving organic life while leaving the younger ones to continue (even the Yagh deserve a chance) the war is just a consecuense of that and that's the kind of 'cold' logic machines ( what to us organics appears to be) apply to solve things, just solve them... if orgnanics and machines weren't in cosntant war then the Reapers would've been rendered usless many cycles ago, but that didn't happen until videogame starting you! , you said the solution is an overkill woudn't be the same as continuing the development of IA? what about the Geth they build a Dreadnought bigger than aything on citadel space the only thing hampered their progress was time and they already attacked the heart of organic space who's to say they wouldn't be wiping other races?

This continue with the star child because why give Shepard these choices now, what did Shepard really prove to star child to change his logic? I also feel all the choices are so manufactured to kill off your Shepard. I don't mind my Shepard dieing (it sucks) but i feel it have to happen organically and be logical for people to feel justified in their act of selflessness. The control ending is the only one that made sense for your Shepard to die. If i generally felt i was the only man to do this to save everyone i would have done it in a heartbeat. But when you give me these weird solutions that end with oh and you will die and i have to wonder why then there is a problem.

The Crucible gave the Catalyst more options (pretty much just gave it a bigger power source and a new understanding on how to use it) it was Shepard the one that used the power of the Crucible to execute them , so how did you get to the conclusion that Shepard is the most adept to go for the control option? what if my Shepard is a renegage? why not someone else (because this is a videogame and you need to be the hero) , you say you don't mind Shepard sacrificing himself yet you didn't like who he did it for Syntesis? then how? have him dying in a blaze of glory rampage against Harby, because he's the real enemy right?. tasking Bioware in finding a solution to the question do machines have souls? (the whole point of the conflict and the reason why the Reapers were created) is pretty ridiculous (do you have one as you say you do by the way?) there isn't just a simple answer so they tried (to no avail, and poorly executed) to present you the player with different choices on how to solve the problem with the Reapers just the Reapers not synthetic life and make your on conclusions about the moral stance of each choice lands they probably went into a topic that needed more care and attention than what they provided but the nature of the Reapers makes sense in that a sci-fi universe , the execution was flawed the idea itself is not.

@Hailinel said:

@AngelN7 said:

@Hailinel: They did that for games 1 and 2 ... it's like people forgot that's what the series has been always about they tried to make some of the choices morally abiguous (does killing synthetics makes you a ruthless apatethic person? should that be considered Renegade? , is Controling the Reapers the Paragon choice? you didn't sacrifice anything other than yourself but should that kind of power be in the hands of the heroic compassionate Shepard? , Synthesis seems the correct choice right? but isn't Shepard forcing every organic into being part Synthetic taking away what makes both different froms of life unique? is that sort of evolutionary path is the correct one? ... that seems like a neutral choice path in other choose your alliance/philosphy game out there) yet people hated it because it wasn't clear enough?... so yeah I don't get what people wanted (not counting the context and closure provided by the EC , I'm talking about what they wanted from a resolution to the problem that isn't just black and white choices be Paragon , be Renegade).

That it's the way that the endings of ME1 & 2 were constructed doesn't mean that it had to be the same way for three. After all, Mass Effect 3 already forsook the idea of a final boss fight. The only thing that the vast majority of people wanted was closure, and an ending that made some form of coherent sense. The answer is nothing more complex than that.

But the problem at the very core is none of that. It's that the set piece that Bioware created for the ending, the Crucible and the circumstances surrounding it, was a terrible idea from the star. It is a literal deus ex machina; a device that magically makes all of the Reapers throughout the galaxy just go away. It's a cheap, silly conclusion, both in its original and extended formats.

But they totally set themselves up for that since the first game ... as they didn't talk about any way realistic to stop the Reapers other than (We can't let Sovergein take the citadel! in ME1 and ) , the second game took it even farther away to find any solution almost like some sort of middle episode before the series finale that shouldn't be there (it was about the Collectors and the suicide mission the Reapers were just behind all of that). I guess I didn't have a problem because I was expecting them to introduce the killswitch/Machine/IA thiny to use agaisn't the Reapers in the middle of Mass Effect 3 it surprise me that they did it so early in the game (the Mars mission) I feel like I'm repetating myself they way they set up the Reaper thread (almost God-like machines with incredible force and numbers) leave them with little to no other solution than to use a "device that magically makes all the Reapers throught the galaxy just to go away" where people not expecting that? then I must say I'm really surprised , so people wanted Shepard to drag his galatic army from system to system planet to planet and kill all the Reapers like that? 'The killswitch' is an stablish Sci-Fi trope and the only one that made sense or was people expecting something completely different? if so then I finally can understand the dissapoiment if not then I don't know what people expected to be the solution.

@AngelN7 said:

@Hailinel said:

@AngelN7 said:

@Hailinel: They did that for games 1 and 2 ... it's like people forgot that's what the series has been always about they tried to make some of the choices morally abiguous (does killing synthetics makes you a ruthless apatethic person? should that be considered Renegade? , is Controling the Reapers the Paragon choice? you didn't sacrifice anything other than yourself but should that kind of power be in the hands of the heroic compassionate Shepard? , Synthesis seems the correct choice right? but isn't Shepard forcing every organic into being part Synthetic taking away what makes both different froms of life unique? is that sort of evolutionary path is the correct one? ... that seems like a neutral choice path in other choose your alliance/philosphy game out there) yet people hated it because it wasn't clear enough?... so yeah I don't get what people wanted (not counting the context and closure provided by the EC , I'm talking about what they wanted from a resolution to the problem that isn't just black and white choices be Paragon , be Renegade).

That it's the way that the endings of ME1 & 2 were constructed doesn't mean that it had to be the same way for three. After all, Mass Effect 3 already forsook the idea of a final boss fight. The only thing that the vast majority of people wanted was closure, and an ending that made some form of coherent sense. The answer is nothing more complex than that.

But the problem at the very core is none of that. It's that the set piece that Bioware created for the ending, the Crucible and the circumstances surrounding it, was a terrible idea from the star. It is a literal deus ex machina; a device that magically makes all of the Reapers throughout the galaxy just go away. It's a cheap, silly conclusion, both in its original and extended formats.

But they totally set themselves up for that since the first game ... as they didn't talk about any way realistic to stop the Reapers other than (We can't let Sovergein take the citadel! in ME1 and ) , the second game took it even farther away to find any solution almost like some sort of middle episode before the series finale that shouldn't be there (it was about the Collectors and the suicide mission the Reapers were just behind all of that). I guess I didn't have a problem because I was expecting them to introduce the killswitch/Machine/IA thiny to use agaisn't the Reapers in the middle of Mass Effect 3 it surprise me that they did it so early in the game (the Mars mission) I feel like I'm repetating myself they way they set up the Reaper thread (almost God-like machines with incredible force and numbers) leave them with little to no other solution than to use a "device that magically makes all the Reapers throught the galaxy just to go away" where people not expecting that? then I must say I'm really surprised , so people wanted Shepard to drag his galatic army from system to system planet to planet and kill all the Reapers like that? 'The killswitch' is an stablish Sci-Fi trope and the only one that made sense or was people expecting something completely different? if so then I finally can understand the dissapoiment if not then I don't know what people expected to be the solution.

All you're really arguing is that the core storyline of Mass Effect was poorly thought out and written. If Bioware had given any forethought to the process, they would have conceived the nature of how the Repaers are defeated from the very start of the story's development. Provide a reasonable build up over the course of all three games. The initial investigation and encounters with the Reapers. Further investigation and a search for a way to stop them. The final preparations and the actual act of stopping them. At the very least, if a superweapon is what's required to be rid of the Reapers, the story should have done better to provide better details on how they could be stopped. I remember reading a thread where one of the posters suggested an alternative approach would have been Shepard being informed that the Crucible's design is incomplete and over the cycles, three different means of defeating the Reapers were developed. Shepard could then tell the people building which one to focus on. Shepard has her last moments with the crew, goes on the last mission, nearly gets blown to shit by Harbinger, has a final encounter with the Illusive Man, and then makes her way to the Crucible's control station.

Before activating the Crucible, Shepard ponders what the end result of the previously chosen method of destroying the Reapers will actually be. Will it be worth the sacrifice? If yes, then she pulls the trigger. If not, then she puts her faith in the galactic alliance she had spent so much effort in organizing. If she goes this route, then the potential for success is determined by the galactic readiness/effective military strength of the alliance. If it's high enough, they manage to beat back the Reapers. If not, then Liara's pod gives the next cycle the information they need.

And at no point does Star Child suddenly appear as host of the game's last ten minutes.

@AngelN7:

I think you are making computer logic or synthetic logic seem god like or outer worldly in that we organic could not comprehend machine logic at all. I don't think that is the case. Machines think in numbers, pure statistic if you will so there is an understandable logic to them. Not saying organic life could simply process it or anything but we can guess how they work. Legion even helps us understand this. Also we knew their function but not their true purpose until mass effect 3.

I still don't buy the cold machine logic because yes the reapers will do what their told to do but the star child is the one governing this and it's just hard to believe that this solution is all that useful to anyone. The geth as we find out were not trying to end organic life they simply were driven to fight by their creators. Also Reaper intervention made the problem worse by creating heretic geth who followed the ""old machine logic". Which i believe were explained to be the main geth you were fighting in pass mass effect games. Even considering all geth are bad the galaxy was not in a start of terror from the geth it was more of a quarian problem and a living burden for everybody else.

yes i get its a video game and your character has to be the guy to be the hero but it all in how it done. My control point was only stating that i can understand you leaving your human body to be a part of the reaper/star child AI. Destroy seems a little silly to walk slowly to your death when it not clearly stated that your can't escape but whatever i get it. Synthesis just does not make much sense really purely space magic logic.

I agree with your end point I'm not saying wipe everything from the end game but it just that if you are going to throw new characters and new plot devices at the very end you should have all your ducks in a row to make it make sense or everything falls apart.

@Hailinel said:

@AngelN7 said:

@Hailinel said:

@AngelN7 said:

@Hailinel: They did that for games 1 and 2 ... it's like people forgot that's what the series has been always about they tried to make some of the choices morally abiguous (does killing synthetics makes you a ruthless apatethic person? should that be considered Renegade? , is Controling the Reapers the Paragon choice? you didn't sacrifice anything other than yourself but should that kind of power be in the hands of the heroic compassionate Shepard? , Synthesis seems the correct choice right? but isn't Shepard forcing every organic into being part Synthetic taking away what makes both different froms of life unique? is that sort of evolutionary path is the correct one? ... that seems like a neutral choice path in other choose your alliance/philosphy game out there) yet people hated it because it wasn't clear enough?... so yeah I don't get what people wanted (not counting the context and closure provided by the EC , I'm talking about what they wanted from a resolution to the problem that isn't just black and white choices be Paragon , be Renegade).

That it's the way that the endings of ME1 & 2 were constructed doesn't mean that it had to be the same way for three. After all, Mass Effect 3 already forsook the idea of a final boss fight. The only thing that the vast majority of people wanted was closure, and an ending that made some form of coherent sense. The answer is nothing more complex than that.

But the problem at the very core is none of that. It's that the set piece that Bioware created for the ending, the Crucible and the circumstances surrounding it, was a terrible idea from the star. It is a literal deus ex machina; a device that magically makes all of the Reapers throughout the galaxy just go away. It's a cheap, silly conclusion, both in its original and extended formats.

But they totally set themselves up for that since the first game ... as they didn't talk about any way realistic to stop the Reapers other than (We can't let Sovergein take the citadel! in ME1 and ) , the second game took it even farther away to find any solution almost like some sort of middle episode before the series finale that shouldn't be there (it was about the Collectors and the suicide mission the Reapers were just behind all of that). I guess I didn't have a problem because I was expecting them to introduce the killswitch/Machine/IA thiny to use agaisn't the Reapers in the middle of Mass Effect 3 it surprise me that they did it so early in the game (the Mars mission) I feel like I'm repetating myself they way they set up the Reaper thread (almost God-like machines with incredible force and numbers) leave them with little to no other solution than to use a "device that magically makes all the Reapers throught the galaxy just to go away" where people not expecting that? then I must say I'm really surprised , so people wanted Shepard to drag his galatic army from system to system planet to planet and kill all the Reapers like that? 'The killswitch' is an stablish Sci-Fi trope and the only one that made sense or was people expecting something completely different? if so then I finally can understand the dissapoiment if not then I don't know what people expected to be the solution.

All you're really arguing is that the core storyline of Mass Effect was poorly thought out and written. If Bioware had given any forethought to the process, they would have conceived the nature of how the Repaers are defeated from the very start of the story's development. Provide a reasonable build up over the course of all three games. The initial investigation and encounters with the Reapers. Further investigation and a search for a way to stop them. The final preparations and the actual act of stopping them. At the very least, if a superweapon is what's required to be rid of the Reapers, the story should have done better to provide better details on how they could be stopped. I remember reading a thread where one of the posters suggested an alternative approach would have been Shepard being informed that the Crucible's design is incomplete and over the cycles, three different means of defeating the Reapers were developed. Shepard could then tell the people building which one to focus on. Shepard has her last moments with the crew, goes on the last mission, nearly gets blown to shit by Harbinger, has a final encounter with the Illusive Man, and then makes her way to the Crucible's control station.

Before activating the Crucible, Shepard ponders what the end result of the previously chosen method of destroying the Reapers will actually be. Will it be worth the sacrifice? If yes, then she pulls the trigger. If not, then she puts her faith in the galactic alliance she had spent so much effort in organizing. If she goes this route, then the potential for success is determined by the galactic readiness/effective military strength of the alliance. If it's high enough, they manage to beat back the Reapers. If not, then Liara's pod gives the next cycle the information they need.

And at no point does Star Child suddenly appear as host of the game's last ten minutes.

But I can also pull something out of my Mass Effect 3 conclusion fan fiction and make a "better ending" that would have fitted too (acording to me of course just like that alternative provided by other posters seems right to them) I'm not saying the core storyline was poorly thought out. The threat was the Reapers (ME1) , you needed to find out what their intentionts were (ME2) , and you needed to find a way to stop them (ME3) simple, did it matter wich way was given the nature of the incredible force the Reapers are? Superweapon , Master plan , IA morality Virus , using an argument to prove organics can co-exist with machines by creating a Organic/Syntethic being capable of destroying the reapers (that one is like a bad anime resolution scrap that) , contacting the first race that created the Reapers, using a Dark Energy to stop them a Dark hole? ( I don't know much about Dark matter) ... and so many other posiblities I bet that you or anyone can come up with. I must say again given the nature of the Reapers and how their cycle work there wasn't a way to defeat them with the galatic alliance. Javik told Shepard how they lost because they fought the Reapers individually using weapons (Ships, ground forces) even though they didn't fight as one the difference would have been minimal at best "equal" for every Reaper Dreadnought there's 10 Destroyers , for every destroyer there's 10000 ground units , and that's not even counting the indoctrinated agents wich are even more dangeruous add all that over the course of 70 years? ... Reaper Victory you don't need a Catalyst you don't need Crucible but you won't deal with such a complex threat with such crude , starightfoward approach unless again that's what people wanted pew-pew the Reapers to death.

@AngelN7 said:

@Hailinel said:

@AngelN7 said:

@Hailinel said:

@AngelN7 said:

@Hailinel: They did that for games 1 and 2 ... it's like people forgot that's what the series has been always about they tried to make some of the choices morally abiguous (does killing synthetics makes you a ruthless apatethic person? should that be considered Renegade? , is Controling the Reapers the Paragon choice? you didn't sacrifice anything other than yourself but should that kind of power be in the hands of the heroic compassionate Shepard? , Synthesis seems the correct choice right? but isn't Shepard forcing every organic into being part Synthetic taking away what makes both different froms of life unique? is that sort of evolutionary path is the correct one? ... that seems like a neutral choice path in other choose your alliance/philosphy game out there) yet people hated it because it wasn't clear enough?... so yeah I don't get what people wanted (not counting the context and closure provided by the EC , I'm talking about what they wanted from a resolution to the problem that isn't just black and white choices be Paragon , be Renegade).

That it's the way that the endings of ME1 & 2 were constructed doesn't mean that it had to be the same way for three. After all, Mass Effect 3 already forsook the idea of a final boss fight. The only thing that the vast majority of people wanted was closure, and an ending that made some form of coherent sense. The answer is nothing more complex than that.

But the problem at the very core is none of that. It's that the set piece that Bioware created for the ending, the Crucible and the circumstances surrounding it, was a terrible idea from the star. It is a literal deus ex machina; a device that magically makes all of the Reapers throughout the galaxy just go away. It's a cheap, silly conclusion, both in its original and extended formats.

But they totally set themselves up for that since the first game ... as they didn't talk about any way realistic to stop the Reapers other than (We can't let Sovergein take the citadel! in ME1 and ) , the second game took it even farther away to find any solution almost like some sort of middle episode before the series finale that shouldn't be there (it was about the Collectors and the suicide mission the Reapers were just behind all of that). I guess I didn't have a problem because I was expecting them to introduce the killswitch/Machine/IA thiny to use agaisn't the Reapers in the middle of Mass Effect 3 it surprise me that they did it so early in the game (the Mars mission) I feel like I'm repetating myself they way they set up the Reaper thread (almost God-like machines with incredible force and numbers) leave them with little to no other solution than to use a "device that magically makes all the Reapers throught the galaxy just to go away" where people not expecting that? then I must say I'm really surprised , so people wanted Shepard to drag his galatic army from system to system planet to planet and kill all the Reapers like that? 'The killswitch' is an stablish Sci-Fi trope and the only one that made sense or was people expecting something completely different? if so then I finally can understand the dissapoiment if not then I don't know what people expected to be the solution.

All you're really arguing is that the core storyline of Mass Effect was poorly thought out and written. If Bioware had given any forethought to the process, they would have conceived the nature of how the Repaers are defeated from the very start of the story's development. Provide a reasonable build up over the course of all three games. The initial investigation and encounters with the Reapers. Further investigation and a search for a way to stop them. The final preparations and the actual act of stopping them. At the very least, if a superweapon is what's required to be rid of the Reapers, the story should have done better to provide better details on how they could be stopped. I remember reading a thread where one of the posters suggested an alternative approach would have been Shepard being informed that the Crucible's design is incomplete and over the cycles, three different means of defeating the Reapers were developed. Shepard could then tell the people building which one to focus on. Shepard has her last moments with the crew, goes on the last mission, nearly gets blown to shit by Harbinger, has a final encounter with the Illusive Man, and then makes her way to the Crucible's control station.

Before activating the Crucible, Shepard ponders what the end result of the previously chosen method of destroying the Reapers will actually be. Will it be worth the sacrifice? If yes, then she pulls the trigger. If not, then she puts her faith in the galactic alliance she had spent so much effort in organizing. If she goes this route, then the potential for success is determined by the galactic readiness/effective military strength of the alliance. If it's high enough, they manage to beat back the Reapers. If not, then Liara's pod gives the next cycle the information they need.

And at no point does Star Child suddenly appear as host of the game's last ten minutes.

But I can also pull something out of my Mass Effect 3 conclusion fan fiction and make a "better ending" that would have fitted too (acording to me of course just like that alternative provided by other posters seems right to them) I'm not saying the core storyline was poorly thought out. The threat was the Reapers (ME1) , you needed to find out what their intentionts were (ME2) , and you needed to find a way to stop them (ME3) simple, did it matter wich way was given the nature of the incredible force the Reapers are? Superweapon , Master plan , IA morality Virus , using an argument to prove organics can co-exist with machines by creating a Organic/Syntethic being capable of destroying the reapers (that one is like a bad anime resolution scrap that) , contacting the first race that created the Reapers, using a Dark Energy to stop them a Dark hole? ( I don't know much about Dark matter) ... and so many other posiblities I bet that you or anyone can come up with. I must say again given the nature of the Reapers and how their cycle work there wasn't a way to defeat them with the galatic alliance. Javik told Shepard how they lost because they fought the Reapers individually using weapons (Ships, ground forces) even though they didn't fight as one the difference would have been minimal at best "equal" for every Reaper Dreadnought there's 10 Destroyers , for every destroyer there's 10000 ground units , and that's not even counting the indoctrinated agents wich are even more dangeruous add all that over the course of 70 years? ... Reaper Victory you don't need a Catalyst you don't need Crucible but you won't deal with such a complex threat with such crude , starightfoward approach unless again that's what people wanted pew-pew the Reapers to death.

Call the alternate ending concept I whipped up in all of five minutes fanfiction if you like, but in my opinion, it's still a better concept than what Bioware actually produced.

@phantomzxro: I was fine with the final push around the missile batteries. The game through banshees, brute hordes, and swarms of lesser enemies at you and all you had to do was HOLD. THE. LINE. I even like that you can trigger it WITHOUT killing everyone, that always seemed artificial to me. "Almost there...almost activated...just...just kill two or three more..."

@phantomzxro said:

@AngelN7:

I think you are making computer logic or synthetic logic seem god like or outer worldly in that we organic could not comprehend machine logic at all. I don't think that is the case. Machines think in numbers, pure statistic if you will so there is an understandable logic to them. Not saying organic life could simply process it or anything but we can guess how they work. Legion even helps us understand this. Also we knew their function but not their true purpose until mass effect 3.

I still don't buy the cold machine logic because yes the reapers will do what their told to do but the star child is the one governing this and it's just hard to believe that this solution is all that useful to anyone. The geth as we find out were not trying to end organic life they simply were driven to fight by their creators. Also Reaper intervention made the problem worse by creating heretic geth who followed the ""old machine logic". Which i believe were explained to be the main geth you were fighting in pass mass effect games. Even considering all geth are bad the galaxy was not in a start of terror from the geth it was more of a quarian problem and a living burden for everybody else.

yes i get its a video game and your character has to be the guy to be the hero but it all in how it done. My control point was only stating that i can understand you leaving your human body to be a part of the reaper/star child AI. Destroy seems a little silly to walk slowly to your death when it not clearly stated that your can't escape but whatever i get it. Synthesis just does not make much sense really purely space magic logic.

I agree with your end point I'm not saying wipe everything from the end game but it just that if you are going to throw new characters and new plot devices at the very end you should have all your ducks in a row to make it make sense or everything falls apart.

... Man we're going into something too DEEP like this is barely about the game ( that's exactly the kind of disscusion I want) , I must say I have a bias for machines I do think they're more capable than organic minds because they're not limited by the only thing organics cannot control (time) you see organics base their decisions with logic , understanding , reasoning and their hearts . That last part the part the machines lack makes their judgement all so much different than the organic , that's why the Catalyst is able to make what to organics seems like an abomination of what organic life represent with little to no guilt, in his mind preserving life comes first that's his solution it has worked so far until a variable changes he doesn't need to come up with a new one. The Geth are all fine when you put them all in a single unit why organics not? because they're more individualistic , also the Geth are view by the Reapers as an insult they're very primitive form of what the Reapers are a collective of minds , The Reaper logic (the collective mind also the Catalyst) is flawed when looked by organics and synthetics (since they are also whiped out in each cycle) but their logic is one forged by the collective of all harvested civilizations throughout the cycles so maybe it's organics who have a flawed logic in how to solve the problem?, maybe the Reapers should be made out of brains instead of that weird flesh-goo and multiple IA?.