@EXTomar said:

Again the basic problem is the suggestion is that it is all obvious but then use a convoluted set of rules or logic to explain it doesn't lend itself to be a feature of "it is all obvious".

There was no indicator to Shepard or anyone else working on the Crucible knew it was anything more than "something to use against The Reapers". It was implied the Crucible was missing a critical component called the Catalyst. It is later implied the Catalyst was the Citadel. The obvious thing to do was open the Citadel and attach the Crucible but there was no one who knew what exactly would happen.

Another way to look at it: If the it was obvious what was going to happen when Crucible was attached to the Citadel, wouldn't some races object to Shepard's plan?

Thank you! You put into words exactly what I was thinking.

@TheHT said:

@Lord_Punch said:

@TheHT said:

@Lord_Punch said:

@Enigma777 said:

@Lord_Punch said:

@Enigma777 said:

@Lord_Punch said:

This is the essence of my issue with the ending. Shepard may have stopped the Reapers, but it was at the behest of the same evil intelligence that created, enacted, and controlled them. It wasn't Shepard's actions or decisions that led to their demise. It wasn't the will of the organics nor the synthetics whose lives are at stake. It was the Catalyst Child. It decided to stop the Reaper Cycle, and instructs Shepard on how to wreak devastation upon the universe in order to reach his/her goal of stopping them for good.

You answered your own question:

@Lord_Punch said:

Catalyst: "The Crucible changed me. Created...new possibilities. I know you've thought about destroying us. You can wipe out all synthetic life if you want. Including the Geth. Even you are partly synthetic."

I don't see what you are getting at.

Who built the Crucible? Organics (and Shepard).

Ergo the ending was a direct result of Shepard's actions and will.

Everyone worked together to construct The Crucible as a weapon to use against the Reapers. They could not have intended nor predicted that it would interact with an unknown intelligence and create the 3 solutions presented to us.

So then you agree that the 3 solutions come from the Crucible, not the Catalyst.

It was the magical blending of the two that made the 3 choices possible. It wasn't only The Crucible nor only The Catalyst.

Right, so without the Crucible, that technological interaction wouldn't have occured. Organics designed the Crucible and used it on the Catalyst. Organics, the very beings who lives are at stake, through their actions and decisions, their will and determination, brought about an event (that technological interaction) that resulted in 3 choices for Shepard, each of which end of the Reaper threat. Whether they knew what it would do is irrelevant when determining responsibility. They had a tool they believed would end the threat, and it did.

As for your analogy, the kitchen manufacturer is those who first created the Crucible's designs. The killer is the organics of this cycle, particularly Shepard. The knife is the Crucible and the victims are the Reaper threat. Those who first created the Crucible's designs may not be immediately responsible for this cycle's use of it to eliminate of the Reaper threat, but the organics of this cycle, particularly Shepard, are.

TheHT, this is the last time I will respond to you. If you want to know why, look no futher than the final paragraph that I have quoted from you. You managed to take a simple analogy and overcomplicate it to the point of barely resembling what it originally represented.

And that's been your whole debate style throughout this entire thread. You jump through a million logic loopholes so that your point of view can make a semblance of sense, and you act like the more simple and direct explanations are unfounded and wrong.

Good day! Glad you enjoyed the ending.

I'm not even sure where this is going anymore. So: INTERMISSION TIME. Take five, rethink, and GO GO GO.
 
Also I think you guys are both inadvertently proving just how bad the ending was. If you have to explain or rationalize the ending by grasping at straws that aren't even there, it's not going to end well. At least the indoctrination theory has spokes in the beginning, middle, and end. This is just "Well, LOGICALLY, here's what would happen", even though that's not what happened, no matter how logical it would have been.
 
Bioware may be clever enough to pull the Indoctrination Theory, but they aren't clever enough to do this.
 
Both Mass Effect games ended on completely rational, logical, and well rounded notes. If you're like me, and consider Arrival to be the finality of Mass Effect 2, then even the under all technicality's second ending was better than what we got. It laid it down for us, it set us up, but even the twist worked in our favor as we were able to delay the Reapers for six months. It's not what we set out to do, but we were still able to do something beneficial. Not only that, but we get a closer look into the work of indoctrination. If anything was clear, it was the Reapers were close, and they were pissed.
 
The final conversation between Harbinger and Shepard was such a perfect conclusion to an already pretty goshdarn good game.
 
Harbinger: Shepard, you see this!?
Shepard: Is that-
Harbinger: IT'S MY REAPER DICK, SHEPARD.
Shepard: UH EWW! What are-
Harbinger: AND I'M GONAN FUCK YOUR WHOLE GALAXY WITH IT. YOU HEAR ME SHEPARD!? FUCK YOU.
Shepard: Yeah? Well we'll be ready, asshole!
 
That was me paraphrasing, but good god. How do you NOT follow up with that? How was Harbinger NOT the one leading the charge against Earth? After all this shit, after all of Mass Effect 2, after Harbinger had the Collector's kill your ass, build a Reaper out of your friends and THEN try to kill you again, he threatens to fuck your whole species with his giant Reaper dick, and his ass is NOWHERE to be seen until he comes out of literally nowhere at the last possible second, and fiars hes lazor, somehow knocking your friends into the Normandy and fucking your shit up, before turning around and saying "Adios, bitch!".
 
You think if Macho Man Randy Savage told Hulk Hogan to leave Elizabeth alone, he wouldn't kick the shit out of him if he saw Hulk messing with her? First, Macho Man Randy Savage doesn't make threats, he makes promises, second, HE DID, third, may his soul rest in peace.

@N7 said:

I'm not even sure where this is going anymore. So: INTERMISSION TIME. Take five, rethink, and GO GO GO.

Also I think you guys are both inadvertently proving just how bad the ending was. If you have to explain or rationalize the ending by grasping at straws that aren't even there, it's not going to end well. At least the indoctrination theory has spokes in the beginning, middle, and end. This is just "Well, LOGICALLY, here's what would happen", even though that's not what happened, no matter how logical it would have been.

Bioware may be clever enough to pull the Indoctrination Theory, but they aren't clever enough to do this.

Both Mass Effect games ended on completely rational, logical, and well rounded notes. If you're like me, and consider Arrival to be the finality of Mass Effect 2, then even the under all technicality's second ending was better than what we got. It laid it down for us, it set us up, but even the twist worked in our favor as we were able to delay the Reapers for six months. It's not what we set out to do, but we were still able to do something beneficial. Not only that, but we get a closer look into the work of indoctrination. If anything was clear, it was the Reapers were close, and they were pissed.

The final conversation between Harbinger and Shepard was such a perfect conclusion to an already pretty goshdarn good game.

Harbinger: Shepard, you see this!?
Shepard: Is that-
Harbinger: IT'S MY REAPER DICK, SHEPARD.
Shepard: UH EWW! What are-
Harbinger: AND I'M GONAN FUCK YOUR WHOLE GALAXY WITH IT. YOU HEAR ME SHEPARD!? FUCK YOU.
Shepard: Yeah? Well we'll be ready, asshole!

That was me paraphrasing, but good god. How do you NOT follow up with that? How was Harbinger NOT the one leading the charge against Earth? After all this shit, after all of Mass Effect 2, after Harbinger had the Collector's kill your ass, build a Reaper out of your friends and THEN try to kill you again, he threatens to fuck your whole species with his giant Reaper dick, and his ass is NOWHERE to be seen until he comes out of literally nowhere at the last possible second, and fiars hes lazor, somehow knocking your friends into the Normandy and fucking your shit up, before turning around and saying "Adios, bitch!".

You think if Macho Man Randy Savage told Hulk Hogan to leave Elizabeth alone, he wouldn't kick the shit out of him if he saw Hulk messing with her? First, Macho Man Randy Savage doesn't make threats, he makes promises, second, HE DID, third, may his soul rest in peace.

Well said, but your post is missing a certain... je ne sais quoi.

...there we go.

@onan said:

@TheHT said:

Your crew was leaving for the same reason there aren't any other Allied forces in Earth space when the Crucible is activated: no one knows what it will do. What if it's a Reaper trap? What if it destroys everything in its wake? The risk of things like that being the case isn't worth sticking around to find out, so they all pulled back once the mission was completed.

You don't think the protheans had access to the Citadel for hundreds of years after the Reapers arrived do you? If I recall correctly the Reapers took the Citadel first in that cycle.

I'm not spinning anything man. Either what you say is reasonable and can be supported or it isn't and you can't.

Whoa whoa whoa! What game were you playing? What are you basing the fleets leaving on? And when? This is a completely different topic.

It wasn't when the Crucible docked, Hackett calling pretty much confirmed they were still there. It wasn't during the dogfighting you could see overhead as you made your way to your decision point. The power buildup and blast wasn't so slow that they could get away, otherwise the Reapers would have gotten away too. Assuming it was slow enough and anyone was afraid enough to run, the people in command wouldn't have allowed it if it almost meant there was a chance of the Reapers getting away. They would have sacrificed their lives to make sure Reapers got caught in the blast, especially the Alliance fleet. They all had men on the ground, there was in-atmosphere dogfighting still happening in London. The Normandy had the least reason to run and was the most advanced ship in the fleet, but they ran too, with all hands on deck. Even if I accept your "Everyone fleeing the final battle" theory, that means the chances of them all lucking out and landing on the earth-atmosphere planet the Normandy landed on (which itself is incredibly fortunate) would be astronomical... meaning with the kind of damage the Normandy received, every other ship in the zero mass channel would have been destroyed.

I'll give these scientists working on the Crucible some credit. I'd hope they at least understood they weren't building a giant bomb. If they knew it would utilize the relays in some way, you'd think they'd make a point of not being IN the relays when that happened. I also thought it was pretty much universally agreed upon that if Indoctrination Theory was wrong, the end result would be that the combined fleets are stuck orbiting Earth in every ending. I mean, it's not terribly relevant, but Whiskey Media's own Gary Whitta, a professional screenwriter and game writer in his own right took that as being the result of the ending in the PC Gamer podcast last month and thought Bioware would have a great start for the next game with everyone vying for space in the Sol system. I'm not sure how you even got the the conclusion that everyone fled. This is the first I've heard anyone mention that at all.

As far as the Protheans having access to the Citadel, yes, that's what enabled the events of Mass Effect 1. I'm assuming it was hundreds of years, but it may have been decades, in any case, it was after the Reapers had left and they were the only ones left of their civilization. Javik didn't know about any of it because he was already asleep by then. As far as he knew, no one in his generation had ever set foot on the Citadel.

http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Conduit

The surviving Prothean scientists, trying to break the cycle of genocide the Reapers perpetuate, used the Conduit to travel to the Citadel once the Reapers had departed. They stopped the keepers from receiving the signal from Sovereign that would open the Citadel relay into dark space. However the Conduit's relay corridor only links in one direction, and the researchers were then trapped on the station, presumably, as Vigil sadly suggests, left to slowly starve to death.

So, yeah.

It's said multiple times that they don't know if the Crucible is a weapon or not. It would be treated as dangerous then. You activate it, and the next thing you see is Earth space with no allied ships around and the Normandy flying away from the Crucible's beam. Ships can still engage in FTL travel so they could be gone between making your choice and seeing the cinematic, and the Reapers were hunkering down around Earth and the Citadel, so seeing the people they're engaged in battle with pull back probably won't raise much alarm.

I've had this argument before with another (or maybe it was with you) who suggested they would fight to the death, but they wouldn't risk their lives to ensure the Reapers are caught in a blast they don't even know would happen or what it would do. They'd get out once the mission is complete (use the Crucible) and if it does nothing make new plans, either for continued resistance or securing information for the next cycle as the last cycles have done. Also, we do not know the extent of the Normandy's damage, whether it life-support systems are still online or if the damage was just to its mobility.

That's assuming the Catalyst didn't inform them of what was happening and have them stay where they are, or not inform them at all and have them stay where they are. Of course there's also the question of how far exactly running would save a Reaper, since the Crucible is a tool for dealing with the entire Reaper threat, and all of the Reapers aren't only at Earth, its reach would be far greater (probably where it would tap into the mass relays, to carry its effects across the galaxy).

I can't think of any other reason they would all leave at that particular time, can you? If there is another reason or not, hopefully BioWare shows why that happens, because it's the one thing in the ending I have a real problem with. That and the Normandy apparently picking up crewmates that were with you before you ran to the Conduit.

Absolutely, but I wonder if Joker knew about that, or if in a rush to get away decided to try and outrun it with the Normandy. Stuff like that BioWare needs to deal with. Well we don't see any ships around Earth, but the allied forces that were around would indeed be displaced at least around the Sol system. Still capable of FTL travel, but with no relays, the could blast back home and would probably be in no shape for the journey that would otherwise take. Really? I've heard it multiple times on this board (and no, those times weren't all by me).

I see. Apparently after decades of study they found that connection to the keepers, at which time they made the jump. I don't know how long a prothean lives, but they were already scientists and then spent decades studying and then went to the Citadel to fuck up the keepers, 100 years sounds like a big overshot especially considering there was no food or water left. I can't speak to the physiology of a prothean, but I doubt they could last long, let alone have enough of their cognitive faculties firing on all cylinders from their increasingly deparate state to study the Citadel further and find out about the AI on it and then make appropriate changes to the Crucible's designs. Although all we know from that is that they changed the signal affecting the keepers, not that they found out anything about the actual Catalyst and then relayed that information back to be included in information to be left behind for the next cycle, or at the very least in Vigil.

@Lord_Punch said:

@TheHT said:

@Lord_Punch said:

@TheHT said:

It was the magical blending of the two that made the 3 choices possible. It wasn't only The Crucible nor only The Catalyst.

Right, so without the Crucible, that technological interaction wouldn't have occured. Organics designed the Crucible and used it on the Catalyst. Organics, the very beings who lives are at stake, through their actions and decisions, their will and determination, brought about an event (that technological interaction) that resulted in 3 choices for Shepard, each of which end of the Reaper threat. Whether they knew what it would do is irrelevant when determining responsibility. They had a tool they believed would end the threat, and it did.

As for your analogy, the kitchen manufacturer is those who first created the Crucible's designs. The killer is the organics of this cycle, particularly Shepard. The knife is the Crucible and the victims are the Reaper threat. Those who first created the Crucible's designs may not be immediately responsible for this cycle's use of it to eliminate of the Reaper threat, but the organics of this cycle, particularly Shepard, are.

TheHT, this is the last time I will respond to you. If you want to know why, look no futher than the final paragraph that I have quoted from you. You managed to take a simple analogy and overcomplicate it to the point of barely resembling what it originally represented.

And that's been your whole debate style throughout this entire thread. You jump through a million logic loopholes so that your point of view can make a semblance of sense, and you act like the more simple and direct explanations are unfounded and wrong.

Good day! Glad you enjoyed the ending.

I'm sorry if I seem to be needlessly complicating my responses. I'm not familiar with any logic loopholes. Where have I used a logical loophole to make something make sense instead of just using mere logic?

I didn't alter your analogy in any way. You didn't state what the elements of the analogy represented, so I filled in your blanks and found your analogy to actually work against you. No loopholes involved duder. Even though it's kind of irrelevant at this point since you've essentially agreed that the ending was not just at the behest of the Catalsyt as your original statement claimed, I'll try and present it simpler for you:

@Lord_Punch said:

That's like holding the manufacturer for kitchen cutlery responsible is someone kills a few people with one of their knives.

So the killer is responsible for killing the victims with the knife, not the manufacturer of theknife.

The "organics of this cycle" are the "killers", the "Reaper threat" is the "victim", the "manufacturer of the knife" is the "those who first created the Crucible's designs", and the "knife" is the "Crucible".

So the organics of this cycle are responsible for killing the Reaper threat with the Crucible, not those who frist created the Crucible's designs.

Your original statement was that the ending only exists at the behest of the Catalyst, ultimately denying any responsibility to the organics. Using your own analogy, that is not the case. Or did you mean something else by "manufactuer", "someone", "few people", and "knives"?

@N7 said:

I'm not even sure where this is going anymore. So: INTERMISSION TIME. Take five, rethink, and GO GO GO.

Also I think you guys are both inadvertently proving just how bad the ending was. If you have to explain or rationalize the ending by grasping at straws that aren't even there, it's not going to end well. At least the indoctrination theory has spokes in the beginning, middle, and end. This is just "Well, LOGICALLY, here's what would happen", even though that's not what happened, no matter how logical it would have been.

Bioware may be clever enough to pull the Indoctrination Theory, but they aren't clever enough to do this.

Both Mass Effect games ended on completely rational, logical, and well rounded notes. If you're like me, and consider Arrival to be the finality of Mass Effect 2, then even the under all technicality's second ending was better than what we got. It laid it down for us, it set us up, but even the twist worked in our favor as we were able to delay the Reapers for six months. It's not what we set out to do, but we were still able to do something beneficial. Not only that, but we get a closer look into the work of indoctrination. If anything was clear, it was the Reapers were close, and they were pissed.

The final conversation between Harbinger and Shepard was such a perfect conclusion to an already pretty goshdarn good game.

Harbinger: Shepard, you see this!?
Shepard: Is that-
Harbinger: IT'S MY REAPER DICK, SHEPARD.
Shepard: UH EWW! What are-
Harbinger: AND I'M GONAN FUCK YOUR WHOLE GALAXY WITH IT. YOU HEAR ME SHEPARD!? FUCK YOU.
Shepard: Yeah? Well we'll be ready, asshole!

That was me paraphrasing, but good god. How do you NOT follow up with that? How was Harbinger NOT the one leading the charge against Earth? After all this shit, after all of Mass Effect 2, after Harbinger had the Collector's kill your ass, build a Reaper out of your friends and THEN try to kill you again, he threatens to fuck your whole species with his giant Reaper dick, and his ass is NOWHERE to be seen until he comes out of literally nowhere at the last possible second, and fiars hes lazor, somehow knocking your friends into the Normandy and fucking your shit up, before turning around and saying "Adios, bitch!".

You think if Macho Man Randy Savage told Hulk Hogan to leave Elizabeth alone, he wouldn't kick the shit out of him if he saw Hulk messing with her? First, Macho Man Randy Savage doesn't make threats, he makes promises, second, HE DID, third, may his soul rest in peace.

" his ass is NOWHERE to be seen until he comes out of literally nowhere at the last possible second, and fiars hes lazor, somehow knocking your friends into the Normandy and fucking your shit up, before turning around and saying "Adios, bitch!"."

If that is represented in a cutscene in the Extended Cut, I will gladly download it.

@TheHT said:

@onan said:

@TheHT said:

Your crew was leaving for the same reason there aren't any other Allied forces in Earth space when the Crucible is activated: no one knows what it will do. What if it's a Reaper trap? What if it destroys everything in its wake? The risk of things like that being the case isn't worth sticking around to find out, so they all pulled back once the mission was completed.

You don't think the protheans had access to the Citadel for hundreds of years after the Reapers arrived do you? If I recall correctly the Reapers took the Citadel first in that cycle.

I'm not spinning anything man. Either what you say is reasonable and can be supported or it isn't and you can't.

Whoa whoa whoa! What game were you playing? What are you basing the fleets leaving on? And when? This is a completely different topic.

It wasn't when the Crucible docked, Hackett calling pretty much confirmed they were still there. It wasn't during the dogfighting you could see overhead as you made your way to your decision point. The power buildup and blast wasn't so slow that they could get away, otherwise the Reapers would have gotten away too. Assuming it was slow enough and anyone was afraid enough to run, the people in command wouldn't have allowed it if it almost meant there was a chance of the Reapers getting away. They would have sacrificed their lives to make sure Reapers got caught in the blast, especially the Alliance fleet. They all had men on the ground, there was in-atmosphere dogfighting still happening in London. The Normandy had the least reason to run and was the most advanced ship in the fleet, but they ran too, with all hands on deck. Even if I accept your "Everyone fleeing the final battle" theory, that means the chances of them all lucking out and landing on the earth-atmosphere planet the Normandy landed on (which itself is incredibly fortunate) would be astronomical... meaning with the kind of damage the Normandy received, every other ship in the zero mass channel would have been destroyed.

I'll give these scientists working on the Crucible some credit. I'd hope they at least understood they weren't building a giant bomb. If they knew it would utilize the relays in some way, you'd think they'd make a point of not being IN the relays when that happened. I also thought it was pretty much universally agreed upon that if Indoctrination Theory was wrong, the end result would be that the combined fleets are stuck orbiting Earth in every ending. I mean, it's not terribly relevant, but Whiskey Media's own Gary Whitta, a professional screenwriter and game writer in his own right took that as being the result of the ending in the PC Gamer podcast last month and thought Bioware would have a great start for the next game with everyone vying for space in the Sol system. I'm not sure how you even got the the conclusion that everyone fled. This is the first I've heard anyone mention that at all.

As far as the Protheans having access to the Citadel, yes, that's what enabled the events of Mass Effect 1. I'm assuming it was hundreds of years, but it may have been decades, in any case, it was after the Reapers had left and they were the only ones left of their civilization. Javik didn't know about any of it because he was already asleep by then. As far as he knew, no one in his generation had ever set foot on the Citadel.

http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Conduit

The surviving Prothean scientists, trying to break the cycle of genocide the Reapers perpetuate, used the Conduit to travel to the Citadel once the Reapers had departed. They stopped the keepers from receiving the signal from Sovereign that would open the Citadel relay into dark space. However the Conduit's relay corridor only links in one direction, and the researchers were then trapped on the station, presumably, as Vigil sadly suggests, left to slowly starve to death.

So, yeah.

It's said multiple times that they don't know if the Crucible is a weapon or not. It would be treated as dangerous then. You activate it, and the next thing you see is Earth space with no allied ships around and the Normandy flying away from the Crucible's beam. Ships can still engage in FTL travel so they could be gone between making your choice and seeing the cinematic, and the Reapers were hunkering down around Earth and the Citadel, so seeing the people they're engaged in battle with pull back probably won't raise much alarm.

I've had this argument before with another (or maybe it was with you) who suggested they would fight to the death, but they wouldn't risk their lives to ensure the Reapers are caught in a blast they don't even know would happen or what it would do. They'd get out once the mission is complete (use the Crucible) and if it does nothing make new plans, either for continued resistance or securing information for the next cycle as the last cycles have done. Also, we do not know the extent of the Normandy's damage, whether it life-support systems are still online or if the damage was just to its mobility.

That's assuming the Catalyst didn't inform them of what was happening and have them stay where they are, or not inform them at all and have them stay where they are. Of course there's also the question of how far exactly running would save a Reaper, since the Crucible is a tool for dealing with the entire Reaper threat, and all of the Reapers aren't only at Earth, its reach would be far greater (probably where it would tap into the mass relays, to carry its effects across the galaxy).

I can't think of any other reason they would all leave at that particular time, can you? If there is another reason or not, hopefully BioWare shows why that happens, because it's the one thing in the ending I have a real problem with. That and the Normandy apparently picking up crewmates that were with you before you ran to the Conduit.

Absolutely, but I wonder if Joker knew about that, or if in a rush to get away decided to try and outrun it with the Normandy. Stuff like that BioWare needs to deal with. Well we don't see any ships around Earth, but the allied forces that were around would indeed be displaced at least around the Sol system. Still capable of FTL travel, but with no relays, the could blast back home and would probably be in no shape for the journey that would otherwise take. Really? I've heard it multiple times on this board (and no, those times weren't all by me).

I see. Apparently after decades of study they found that connection to the keepers, at which time they made the jump. I don't know how long a prothean lives, but they were already scientists and then spent decades studying and then went to the Citadel to fuck up the keepers, 100 years sounds like a big overshot especially considering there was no food or water left. I can't speak to the physiology of a prothean, but I doubt they could last long, let alone have enough of their cognitive faculties firing on all cylinders from their increasingly deparate state to study the Citadel further and find out about the AI on it and then make appropriate changes to the Crucible's designs. Although all we know from that is that they changed the signal affecting the keepers, not that they found out anything about the actual Catalyst and then relayed that information back to be included in information to be left behind for the next cycle, or at the very least in Vigil.

I'm not going to seriously address this "fleet turning tail and running" nonsense because you're supporting it based on unfavorable camera angles. Real reason you didn't see Alliance fleet ships in the shot of the Reapers next to the Citadel: It was cheaper to animate.

To clarify, the original comment I said about the Protheans was "If the scientists on Ilos had completed the design, I'd be completely ok with it. They cracked the code, they had no resources except their minds, they knew what the Catalyst was, they had access to the Citadel for hundreds of years after the cullings, they were in a unique position to make this work. If we made exactly what they told us to make, then yes. Sure. It's the plans for a Win Button, but so what? At least it makes sense."

It was a hypothetical comment. If those scientists, the same ones that made the changes to the Keepers after learning what the Citadel really was were the ones to "crack the code" and make a perfect Crucible plan that integrated the Citadel, I'd accept that over "communally-created-super-thing." It's like a crime drama, they had the means, motive, and opportunity. They had unfettered access to the Citadel, the Keepers, and presumably evidence of the Catalyst. I find it absolutely insane you're willing to try pick apart my hypothetical statement (that would be COMPLETELY sound in the fiction) by saying silly things like "They'd die of starvation and thirst and PTSD before they could possibly figure out how to jury-rig the Crucible designs."

Seriously? These were smart people. They reworked the genetic code and psychology of an engineered race of beings. I'm pretty sure they brought camping gear.

I'm not saying those scientists actually updated the Crucible plans, mind you. I'm saying it would have made more sense if they did. You're saying they would have been too stressed out and in need of a sandwich. You've got a strange way of looking at things.

@onan said:

@TheHT said:

It's said multiple times that they don't know if the Crucible is a weapon or not. It would be treated as dangerous then. You activate it, and the next thing you see is Earth space with no allied ships around and the Normandy flying away from the Crucible's beam. Ships can still engage in FTL travel so they could be gone between making your choice and seeing the cinematic, and the Reapers were hunkering down around Earth and the Citadel, so seeing the people they're engaged in battle with pull back probably won't raise much alarm.

I've had this argument before with another (or maybe it was with you) who suggested they would fight to the death, but they wouldn't risk their lives to ensure the Reapers are caught in a blast they don't even know would happen or what it would do. They'd get out once the mission is complete (use the Crucible) and if it does nothing make new plans, either for continued resistance or securing information for the next cycle as the last cycles have done. Also, we do not know the extent of the Normandy's damage, whether it life-support systems are still online or if the damage was just to its mobility.

That's assuming the Catalyst didn't inform them of what was happening and have them stay where they are, or not inform them at all and have them stay where they are. Of course there's also the question of how far exactly running would save a Reaper, since the Crucible is a tool for dealing with the entire Reaper threat, and all of the Reapers aren't only at Earth, its reach would be far greater (probably where it would tap into the mass relays, to carry its effects across the galaxy).

I can't think of any other reason they would all leave at that particular time, can you? If there is another reason or not, hopefully BioWare shows why that happens, because it's the one thing in the ending I have a real problem with. That and the Normandy apparently picking up crewmates that were with you before you ran to the Conduit.

Absolutely, but I wonder if Joker knew about that, or if in a rush to get away decided to try and outrun it with the Normandy. Stuff like that BioWare needs to deal with. Well we don't see any ships around Earth, but the allied forces that were around would indeed be displaced at least around the Sol system. Still capable of FTL travel, but with no relays, the could blast back home and would probably be in no shape for the journey that would otherwise take. Really? I've heard it multiple times on this board (and no, those times weren't all by me).

I see. Apparently after decades of study they found that connection to the keepers, at which time they made the jump. I don't know how long a prothean lives, but they were already scientists and then spent decades studying and then went to the Citadel to fuck up the keepers, 100 years sounds like a big overshot especially considering there was no food or water left. I can't speak to the physiology of a prothean, but I doubt they could last long, let alone have enough of their cognitive faculties firing on all cylinders from their increasingly deparate state to study the Citadel further and find out about the AI on it and then make appropriate changes to the Crucible's designs. Although all we know from that is that they changed the signal affecting the keepers, not that they found out anything about the actual Catalyst and then relayed that information back to be included in information to be left behind for the next cycle, or at the very least in Vigil.

I'm not going to seriously address this "fleet turning tail and running" nonsense because you're supporting it based on unfavorable camera angles. Real reason you didn't see Alliance fleet ships in the shot of the Reapers next to the Citadel: It was cheaper to animate.

To clarify, the original comment I said about the Protheans was "If the scientists on Ilos had completed the design, I'd be completely ok with it. They cracked the code, they had no resources except their minds, they knew what the Catalyst was, they had access to the Citadel for hundreds of years after the cullings, they were in a unique position to make this work. If we made exactly what they told us to make, then yes. Sure. It's the plans for a Win Button, but so what? At least it makes sense."

It was a hypothetical comment. If those scientists, the same ones that made the changes to the Keepers after learning what the Citadel really was were the ones to "crack the code" and make a perfect Crucible plan that integrated the Citadel, I'd accept that over "communally-created-super-thing." It's like a crime drama, they had the means, motive, and opportunity. They had unfettered access to the Citadel, the Keepers, and presumably evidence of the Catalyst. I find it absolutely insane you're willing to try pick apart my hypothetical statement (that would be COMPLETELY sound in the fiction) by saying silly things like "They'd die of starvation and thirst and PTSD before they could possibly figure out how to jury-rig the Crucible designs."

Seriously? These were smart people. They reworked the genetic code and psychology of an engineered race of beings. I'm pretty sure they brought camping gear.

I'm not saying those scientists actually updated the Crucible plans, mind you. I'm saying it would have made more sense if they did. You're saying they would have been too stressed out and in need of a sandwich. You've got a strange way of looking at things.

It's more than camera angles. It's whole scenes including Joker running from the energy beam, and dialogue in the game.

I'm aware it was hypothetical. That of course doesn't make it immune from criticism, especially if you're going to suggest it makes more sense and that it would be completely sound in the fiction. I didn't say anything about stress or PTSD. There was no more food or water, and they supposedly died from that. I don't know how long a prothean can live, so hundreds of years may be a feasible length of time (since the asari live for well over a hundred years), but unless as a part of their camping gear they brought some means of replenishing their food and drink (which they obviously didn't, because the died of starvation), I don't think they would last that long no matter how smart they are, not even for a decade.

There's no telling how long it would take to discover the actual nature of the Catalyst especially considering the fact that it took them decades to make the keeper connection.

What makes you think they had unfettered access to the Citadel? They did their work on Ilos, uncovering the connection to the keepers, and then went to the Citadel to change them. That doesn't mean they're capable of shifting around he Citadel like at the end of Mass Effect 3, in order to access all of it. They'd just be stuck on the Citadel with as much access as this cycle's civilizations had.

It's worth pointing out too that the at this point the protheans had already learned about the Catalyst from remnants of the previous cycles, so they wouldn't be searching for a catalyst like Shepard was.

Like stories of the Catalyst orchestrating everything, it's nonsensical, needlessly complicated, and doesn't fit with the game's fiction. But somehow they would neatly tie everything together for you. Peculiar.

@TheHT said:

Like stories of the Catalyst orchestrating everything, it's nonsensical, needlessly complicated, and doesn't fit with the game's fiction. But somehow they would neatly tie everything together for you. Peculiar.

Well that seems a little hypocritical. That's pretty much what everyone has been saying about the ending as a whole and you seem perfectly happy with it.

...right. I think TheHT needs a hint: The most sensible, straightforward, explanation for the ending of Mass Effect 3 is not what TheHT has been yammering on about (elegant systems, implied purpose, etc). Instead the most sensible, straightforward explanation of the ending of Mass Effect 3 is "It was badly written".

@EXTomar said:

...right. I think TheHT needs a hint: The most sensible, straightforward, explanation for the ending of Mass Effect 3 is not what TheHT has been yammering on about (elegant systems, implied purpose, etc). Instead the most sensible, straightforward explanation of the ending of Mass Effect 3 is "It was badly written".

If you feel that any ending that does not explicitly spell out everything in a laundry list of exposition is "badly written" that is certainly your right, but a majority of the complaints about the ending seem to be founded on the notion that the ending is illogical and full of plot holes. Those complaints are wrong as very simple, straightforward, and logical explanations can be made for all the events that transpire at the end of ME3 if people are only willing to use the tiniest amounts of deductive reasoning.

A distaste for vague endings is one thing, but it seems like most people are actively choosing to dislike the ending by making wildly inaccurate assumptions then criticizing BioWare based on those assumptions.

I have to point out (again) it appears an issue is that Bioware went out of their way to expound on detail that wasn't germane to "the cinematic ending" and got into trouble for doing it. The ending could have easily been "a straight cut" before going up to The Star Child's penthouse to have a really odd chat. Bioware went to extra effort to create a situation where a lot of players were confused and dissatisfied when a simpler, more straightforward conclusion would have worked better and the irony is there is evidence they were under a time crunch too. A lot of the complaints aren't that people wanted the ending spelled out (I don't want to preclude that because that might have helped some) but players weren't sure at all what had happened or how the story lead them to that. Unless there is a theme of "confuse the viewer", I'm unclear how such an ending in any story is a good one where instead I believe that qualifies as a poor one instead.

Favoring a vague ending over an explicit version is one thing but it seems like some people are actively choosing to love the ending by making wildly inaccurate assumptions then criticizing opponents based on those assumptions.

@EXTomar said:

I have to point out (again) it appears an issue is that Bioware went out of their way to expound on detail that wasn't germane to "the cinematic ending" and got into trouble for doing it. The ending could have easily been "a straight cut" before going up to The Star Child's penthouse to have a really odd chat. Bioware went to extra effort to create a situation where a lot of players were confused and dissatisfied when a simpler, more straightforward conclusion would have worked better and the irony is there is evidence they were under a time crunch too. A lot of the complaints aren't that people wanted the ending spelled out (I don't want to preclude that because that might have helped some) but players weren't sure at all what had happened or how the story lead them to that. Unless there is a theme of "confuse the viewer", I'm unclear how such an ending in any story is a good one where instead I believe that qualifies as a poor one instead.

Favoring a vague ending over an explicit version is one thing but it seems like some people are actively choosing to love the ending by making wildly inaccurate assumptions then criticizing opponents based on those assumptions.

Yeah, it actually reminds me of the ending to AI.

Movie spoilers, obviously:

http://www.motionpicturescomics.com/2011/04/06/the-worst-movie-endings-of-all-time/

Not that the first two-thirds of this film were so perfect to begin with, but had the movie ended with David trapped underwater, left forever in sight of the Blue Fairy while wishing, over and over again, to be human, I think it would have been a suitably sad, poetic end to the film. But, of course, the film doesn’t end there, and instead continues for 25 more insanity-filled minutes with futuristic robotic aliens who recover David and are able to use a strand of Monica’s hair that Teddy somehow had secretly kept all this time to recover her psychic essence from the timestream and restore that essence to a cloned artificial body that can only live for one day before dying forever so David can have one last joyous day with his mommy before she dies and he goes to sleep and apparently dies too. Hurgh. It’s just madness — possibly the worst 25 minutes Mr. Spielberg has ever committed to film. Any attempt by Spielberg and co. to create a scientifcially plausible future world goes out the window in the face of hokey philosophical mumbo-jumbo that’s all just a shameless attempt to bring the audience to tears by repeatedly bringing David hope only to snatch that hope away. It’s all just such ridiculous nonsense that it makes my teeth hurt. The music swells, schmaltz is piled on schmaltz, and I’m left wondering what happened to the director Steven Spielberg whose work I used to unabashedly, unquestionably love.

It's just tacking on nonsense at the end of a work that doesn't support any of it and makes the entire product all the worse for it. Both works seem content complete, if a little bittersweet, right up to the part where someone flips a switch and it becomes batshit insane, when it becomes "snatch protagonist from the 'real world' and subject him to hokey philosophical bullshit." It's a thematic switch in the last few minutes that never works.

Yet they keep trying to do it. They beat audiences over the head with it.

Sigh.

@EXTomar said:

I have to point out (again) it appears an issue is that Bioware went out of their way to expound on detail that wasn't germane to "the cinematic ending" and got into trouble for doing it. The ending could have easily been "a straight cut" before going up to The Star Child's penthouse to have a really odd chat. Bioware went to extra effort to create a situation where a lot of players were confused and dissatisfied when a simpler, more straightforward conclusion would have worked better and the irony is there is evidence they were under a time crunch too. A lot of the complaints aren't that people wanted the ending spelled out (I don't want to preclude that because that might have helped some) but players weren't sure at all what had happened or how the story lead them to that. Unless there is a theme of "confuse the viewer", I'm unclear how such an ending in any story is a good one where instead I believe that qualifies as a poor one instead.

Favoring a vague ending over an explicit version is one thing but it seems like some people are actively choosing to love the ending by making wildly inaccurate assumptions then criticizing opponents based on those assumptions.

A majority of the complaints I see about the ending don't seem to be about confusion. People are very definitively stating that X or Y doesn't make sense, not that they can't make sense of it. I suppose I'm splitting hairs here, but even if we do accept your suggestion that these malcontents are coming from a place of bewilderment, I still can't agree with them. As I said, any confusion seems to be self imposed as I had no trouble following along with everything that happened at the end of ME3 and I certainly don't believe that I'm much smarter than the average ME3 player, just likely less prepared to hate the ending before I even experienced it.

And while I appreciate the attempt at satire in your last sentence, what you said doesn't actually make sense. Why would the assumptions I'm making about other people's complaints have anything to do with my opinion of the ending? After all, I enjoyed the ending of ME3 before I ever opened up one of these ending threads.

@onan said:

It's just tacking on nonsense at the end of a work that doesn't support any of it and makes the entire product all the worse for it. Both works seem content complete, if a little bittersweet, right up to the part where someone flips a switch and it becomes batshit insane, when it becomes "snatch protagonist from the 'real world' and subject him to hokey philosophical bullshit." It's a thematic switch in the last few minutes that never works.

Except the ending to ME3 directly addresses what I feel are the main themes of the ME series, namely incredibly difficult "greater good" decisions that exist within a murky morality and the constant struggle between organic and synthetic life.

The ending doesn't matter either way. Bioware substituted being confusing with being art, thus the ending was formed.

@onan said:

@spazmaster666 said:

I think that whether or not what the child does is evil depends on whether or not what the child says is true about synthetics destroying organics. Sure the Geth turned out to be nice guys, but that by no means is proof that eventually organic life wouldn't cease to exist because of synthetics. If the child is looking on with the perspective of eternity, then a few trillion lives destroyed every 50,000 years, over a time scale of billions of years, to ultimately prevent organic life from perishing forever may not seem that bad. At least that's what I would have liked to argue. Unfortunately, the "synthesis" ending kind of negates my previous argument since if the child knew that he could end the cycle by simply combining organic life with synthetic life (the ultimate evolution as he said) then why has he not done it before?

He did. They're called the Reapers. Sovereign told Shepard this in the first game: "Organic life is nothing but a genetic mutation, an accident. Your lives are measured in years and decades. You wither and die. We are eternal. The pinnacle of evolution and existence. Before us, you are nothing. Your extinction is inevitable. We are the end of everything."

They're the fusion of organic and synthetics. A similar concept pops up throughout Sci-fi, God-like beings who turn out to be incredibly powerful machines that use organic life as parts. If I recall correctly, that was the ultimate reveal of Xenogears, among other games.

The merge of man and machine is happening right as we speak. Imagine how integrated they will be in our lives in say... 30 years. Its pretty much inconceivable, because of the speed at which we are improving them. That "self-conscious" AI that the game talks about? We will very likely see one in our own lifetime. The Synthesis ending is the next evolution, DNA constructed from Shepard's essence.

It is not the same as Saren (who wanted to submit, not merge). Husks do not come pouring out of the Normandy at the end. Its not that hard IMO.

Also, the Quarians were the dicks in the conflict. They essentially attacked the geth at the moment of its "birth". The last scene with Legion reveals that they have developed a sense of individual conscious. Proving that Synthetic life grows and evolves like Organic life.

And finally, many Sci-Fi's especially older ones, end asking more questions then answered. When Sci-Fi was first created, it was a method for people to dream about the future. The authors want the viewer/reader to keep thinking and pondering. That is what is so great about it.

@StarvingGamer said:

@onan said:

It's just tacking on nonsense at the end of a work that doesn't support any of it and makes the entire product all the worse for it. Both works seem content complete, if a little bittersweet, right up to the part where someone flips a switch and it becomes batshit insane, when it becomes "snatch protagonist from the 'real world' and subject him to hokey philosophical bullshit." It's a thematic switch in the last few minutes that never works.

Except the ending to ME3 directly addresses what I feel are the main themes of the ME series, namely incredibly difficult "greater good" decisions that exist within a murky morality and the constant struggle between organic and synthetic life.

I must have been playing a different Mass Effect series, then, because this "constant struggle between organic and synthetic life" was only introduced in my game in the last 5 minutes with minor hints at it through some conversations with Edi when she wasn't asking for sexing advice, and with the resolution to the Quarian conflict in the last 5 hours of the trilogy (and honestly, I felt the conversations with Edi were specifically in service of making that Rannoch decision). The first game had none of this middle ground with the Geth and husks being fodder enemies that were supposed to just be terrifying. The second game didn't feature this struggle AT ALL, potentially, if you sold off Legion to Cerberus for cash monies. The third game made a great argument AGAINST a "constant struggle" by showing that the Geth actually didn't want to harm the Quarians, contrary to popular belief.

In my games the themes have been about unity in the face of adversity, sacrifice, the Hero's Journey, and Mass Effect 2 focused almost entirely on themes of difficult parent/child or mentor/student relationships. Saying the Mass Effect series has been about the constant struggle between synthetics and organics as a philosophical thing and not a literal "oh those organics are in conflict with those synthetics!" is like saying Star Wars is about the conflict between naturally born beings and clones. Do clones have a right to live? Do they have souls? Are they people with rights? Yes you can bring up all of those points until the cows come home, but at the end of the day, the series is not about that, it's all in service of the plot. Same thing with Mass Effect up until the last 5 minutes. You can't retroactively create a theme for a series. Not well, anyway.

@815Sox said:

@onan said:

@spazmaster666 said:

I think that whether or not what the child does is evil depends on whether or not what the child says is true about synthetics destroying organics. Sure the Geth turned out to be nice guys, but that by no means is proof that eventually organic life wouldn't cease to exist because of synthetics. If the child is looking on with the perspective of eternity, then a few trillion lives destroyed every 50,000 years, over a time scale of billions of years, to ultimately prevent organic life from perishing forever may not seem that bad. At least that's what I would have liked to argue. Unfortunately, the "synthesis" ending kind of negates my previous argument since if the child knew that he could end the cycle by simply combining organic life with synthetic life (the ultimate evolution as he said) then why has he not done it before?

He did. They're called the Reapers. Sovereign told Shepard this in the first game: "Organic life is nothing but a genetic mutation, an accident. Your lives are measured in years and decades. You wither and die. We are eternal. The pinnacle of evolution and existence. Before us, you are nothing. Your extinction is inevitable. We are the end of everything."

They're the fusion of organic and synthetics. A similar concept pops up throughout Sci-fi, God-like beings who turn out to be incredibly powerful machines that use organic life as parts. If I recall correctly, that was the ultimate reveal of Xenogears, among other games.

The merge of man and machine is happening right as we speak. Imagine how integrated they will be in our lives in say... 30 years. Its pretty much inconceivable, because of the speed at which we are improving them. That "self-conscious" AI that the game talks about? We will very likely see one in our own lifetime. The Synthesis ending is the next evolution, DNA constructed from Shepard's essence.

It is not the same as Saren (who wanted to submit, not merge). Husks do not come pouring out of the Normandy at the end. Its not that hard IMO.

Also, the Quarians were the dicks in the conflict. They essentially attacked the geth at the moment of its "birth". The last scene with Legion reveals that they have developed a sense of individual conscious. Proving that Synthetic life grows and evolves like Organic life.

And finally, many Sci-Fi's especially older ones, end asking more questions then answered. When Sci-Fi was first created, it was a method for people to dream about the future. The authors want the viewer/reader to keep thinking and pondering. That is what is so great about it.

I don't think you understand what any of the words in this sentence mean: "The Synthesis ending is the next evolution, DNA constructed from Shepard's essence."

DNA is a defined thing. Its a combination of four nucleotides that are the building blocks of organic life. Evolution is the mutation over time of a species to include more favorable traits. Shepard's essence is... what? His mind? His DNA? his experiences? The technology in his body that helped it recover from the necrosis of death? What in that is Shepard, and what part of it makes him a template for the mass conversion of every organic cell in existence to be more like him, down to insects and the leaves in ivy? Evolutionary speaking, it leads to a homogenization of all life in the galaxy, something that life strives against by the very nature of evolution because homogenized populations tend to get wiped out very easily by predators, viruses, changes in climate and food.

It's all space magic and complete BS. This is someone who readily accepts mass effect fields, teleporters, faster than light travel, alien-human hybrids, universal translators, all in service of a story. If it were integrated better, earlier, I'd probably be ok with it, but provided at the last moment as some sort of resolution, it's complete BS.

Hey guys lets alter every living cell in the galaxy every animal, every plant, every microbe all of their individual cells on all the planets and all the stars to somehow make synthetic material part of everythings reproduction process. (how the fuck is a leaf defined as being synthetic anyway?)
While we are at it how about we use the galaxy as a frisbee for sport, seeing as the effort required is about on the same scale, it wouldnt even take as much precision seing as how we are not going down to individual cells and adjusting them, altering the very molecues.
Anything with such capability can turn every Reaper into a giant pony and it would require less skill technology or effort.
 
Not even having your entire body be robotic (with the exception of your brain) is anywhere even remotely on the same technological playing field as a cellular integration. This is not even nanomachine level. This is near godhood.
Even Reapers are only incredibly cruedly mixing the two, the mechanical exists seperately from biological system even in a husk/indoctrinated body, it is simply a more sophisticated form of prosthesis, to a finer degree of enabling the 2 to coexist in a completely forced union kept functioning by pure synthetic nanite tech.
As for Shepard he is as much synthetic as a dude with a prosthetic leg or a kettle. His DNA is fully organic, his brain is fully organic, his cybernetics are fully mechanical. His is an entirely human being with some really heavy and sophisticated proshetics.
in fact you could throw a random dude and a kettle into that beam and achieve the same net effect.
 
And what effect:
How does even the DNA template of a single human have absolutely any effect on the alteration of the DNA of every organism in the galaxy.
This is nonsense, it's no longer science fiction, it is a logic suicide.
 
All of the above idiocy is even besides the point that synthesis has fuck all to do with evolution as Onan mentioned. it is in fact the oposite of evolution.

@onan said:

@StarvingGamer said:

@onan said:

It's just tacking on nonsense at the end of a work that doesn't support any of it and makes the entire product all the worse for it. Both works seem content complete, if a little bittersweet, right up to the part where someone flips a switch and it becomes batshit insane, when it becomes "snatch protagonist from the 'real world' and subject him to hokey philosophical bullshit." It's a thematic switch in the last few minutes that never works.

Except the ending to ME3 directly addresses what I feel are the main themes of the ME series, namely incredibly difficult "greater good" decisions that exist within a murky morality and the constant struggle between organic and synthetic life.

I must have been playing a different Mass Effect series, then, because this "constant struggle between organic and synthetic life" was only introduced in my game in the last 5 minutes with minor hints at it through some conversations with Edi when she wasn't asking for sexing advice, and with the resolution to the Quarian conflict in the last 5 hours of the trilogy (and honestly, I felt the conversations with Edi were specifically in service of making that Rannoch decision). The first game had none of this middle ground with the Geth and husks being fodder enemies that were supposed to just be terrifying. The second game didn't feature this struggle AT ALL, potentially, if you sold off Legion to Cerberus for cash monies. The third game made a great argument AGAINST a "constant struggle" by showing that the Geth actually didn't want to harm the Quarians, contrary to popular belief.

In my games the themes have been about unity in the face of adversity, sacrifice, the Hero's Journey, and Mass Effect 2 focused almost entirely on themes of difficult parent/child or mentor/student relationships. Saying the Mass Effect series has been about the constant struggle between synthetics and organics as a philosophical thing and not a literal "oh those organics are in conflict with those synthetics!" is like saying Star Wars is about the conflict between naturally born beings and clones. Do clones have a right to live? Do they have souls? Are they people with rights? Yes you can bring up all of those points until the cows come home, but at the end of the day, the series is not about that, it's all in service of the plot. Same thing with Mass Effect up until the last 5 minutes. You can't retroactively create a theme for a series. Not well, anyway.

ME1: Geth + Sovereign vs. Galaxy = Synthetic vs. Organic. Creation of synthetic life it outlawed. Quarians exist as living example of the follies of creating self-aware AI. Synthetic life is BAD.

ME2: Synthetic life is still bad...? Joker hates AI. But even if you get rid of Legion it still introduces the concept of a friendly Geth when it saves Shepard's life and no matter what you do, eventually Joker and EDI have a breakthrough. Maybe synthetic life has a place in this universe.

ME3: Synthetics and organics are still fighting. Quarians and Geth can't put aside their differences for the good of the galaxy without direct intervention from Commander Shepard. Even then, Shepard is set upon with dilemmas of whether to side with the Quarians or be sympathetic to the Geth and, depending on various factors, may eventually have to choose one over the other.

It's a pretty classic arc. Act 1: Enemies. Act 2: Friends? Act 3: Depending on the fiction, yes friends!, no wait enemies!, or enemies but now I'm on the other side cuz my original side actually sucks.

@StarvingGamer: You're describing a conflict, not a theme. It's not the same. It would be like saying that the main Super Mario Bros theme is the struggle between humanity and turtles. Themes are core to the story, conflicts are interchangeable.

Could we have swapped out the Geth with, say, the Flood from Halo in Mass Effect 1 and had little to no difference in the plot? Yes.

Mass Effect 2 had absolutely nothing to do with Synthetics. I don't even think the word was uttered. You had two synthetic characters that were fairly inconsequential to the plot, Legion and EDI. One was a Shepard fanboy, basically a robotic Conrad Verner, and that was cute. He also gave us a little insight into the Geth if we chose to speak with him that made them a little less obviously evil bad guy fodder. You had EDI, a character introduced to give Joker something to do, and mostly to show how renegade Cerberus was (OH CRAP, they put an AI on the Normandy! These guys are breaking laws left and right!). At no point does any of it even approach theme. The closest comes in Overlord, but you could argue that has more to do with the familial themes present in ME2 than Synthetics vs Organics, especially since it's an organic controlling and directing synthetics. I'm not even going to acknowledge the giant terminator robot.

(Terminator is a very good point of comparison, incidentally. It's very much about the struggle between organics and synthetics. It's the very core of that franchise.)

Mass Effect 3 had almost nothing to do with synthetics up until Priority: Rannoch. Taken separately, yes, the theme there is the struggle between organics and synthetics, between Created and Creators. It is honestly the ONLY POINT IN THE SERIES that even remotely supports any of what mentioned in the 11th hour exposition dump from the Catalyst. Even then, in the paragon conclusion to the battle, the Paragon themes of unity contradict directly contradict what the Catalyst says. Not saying from an academic standpoint that hey, maybe he's right, but from a storytelling perspective, it really gets pulled out of his ass at the last second as a justification with no foreshadowing or anything. Two out of three resolutions of that conflict, actually: Peace between the Quarians and Geth, and the Quarian victory. It's also at the end of Act 2.

I don't want to sound like a broken record here, but you really, really can't hang your ending hat on a 33% chance that the resolution of Act 2 in a 3-act story will in any way support or foreshadow your conclusion. It also has nothing to do with the events on Tuchanka, or on the Palaven moon, or anything happening anywhere else in the game. If the game ended immediately after Anderson died, that "Theme" wouldn't even exist. The themes of, as the Catalyst phrases it, "Created turning against creator" "synthetics destroying organics." No, until he actually says those sentences in the span of two minutes, the nature of "synthetic life" was irrelevant. The enemy were synthetic, yes, but it wasn't a conflict based on our differences because our allies were also potentially synthetic, so was our ship. The Geth were like, "Hey, they're out enemy too, we're people too, we want to fight." It wasn't a theme. The Reapers up until the end were cryptically and incomprehensibly evil. You didn't know why they wanted to kill you, and frankly, it didn't matter. Instead they just quickly explain Reaper motivations in an elevator pitch and shoehorn "created vs creator" as a new theme in the last 2 minutes of a work and say, "Yep, that's a theme. That's an overarching theme. Surprise!"

The fact that artificial intelligences and androids exist in this sci-fi universe don't support this "theme." It just means it's sci-fi.

@onan: I don't know what to tell you. The entire series revolves around the tension that exists between organic and synthetic life. The wars between the Reapers/Organics and Geth/Quarians are conflicts, but questions about validity, morality and potential superiority of synthetic life are all very strong themes. It was obvious to me. It was obvious to the writers. I guess it just wasn't obvious to you.

@onan: I don't know what to tell you. The entire series revolves around the tension that exists between organic and synthetic life. The wars between the Reapers/Organics and Geth/Quarians are conflicts, but questions about validity, morality and potential superiority of synthetic life are all very strong themes. It was obvious to me. It was obvious to the writers. I guess it just wasn't obvious to you.

@Tennmuerti: Well said.

@StarvingGamer said:

@onan: I don't know what to tell you. The entire series revolves around the tension that exists between organic and synthetic life. The wars between the Reapers/Organics and Geth/Quarians are conflicts, but questions about validity, morality and potential superiority of synthetic life are all very strong themes. It was obvious to me. It was obvious to the writers. I guess it just wasn't obvious to you.

The lead writer himself for the first 2 games confirmed that there was no core underlying reason for the Reapers to do what they did that was there from the outset set in stone, they were undesided on why the reaping was happening themselves.His most likely plan ws infact was to go with dark matter issue hinted at in ME2. The entire reason given by the Reapers at the end of ME3 ie: synthetics killing organics; was never planned for or meant to be untill ME3. This is not a disputable opinion, this is a confirmed fact. By the main writer of the bulk of the series.So sorry it was not as you put it "obvious to the writers" Even without the above knowledge: This has been disgussed ad nauseum, Geth vs. Quarians was always just another conflict in the ME universe which is full of such conflicts between races. One race in this particular conflict happened to be synthetic. I can with the same success say that the entire series revolved around interspecies conflict, in fact this would be backed up by far more examples the the syn/org.Likewise like Onan mentioned synthetics vs. organics was never even a part of ME2 except in sidemissions.  The series never evolved around this supposed tention between orgenics and synthetics. Because there was no tention. There was a war between 2 species. And Reaper is not even revealed to be AI untill the end of ME1. Sorry you can't say "but the geth" the Geth in ME1 were always referred to simply as Sarren's pawns, and they were not his only army even at that.Nor is the Reaper conflict ever presented to be there because they are AI, they destroy everything regardless, them happening to by AIs never implied to be at the core of their deeds. It is simply a trait.  One cannot deny that synthetics vs. organics is a theme present in ME universe. it is indeed such and it is there. However it is but one theme among many. It was never surfaced by the games as the main theme, never meant to be by the lead writer as the main theme. The entire series never revolved around it. (untill exposition in ME3 ending tried to push this)It was always simply another issue with a galaxy full of issues.  Even the books that were done by the main writer of the franchise never pursued the synthetic vs. organics theme. It is only mentioned as a reference to a Reaper artifact at the start of the initial book in order to have an excuse for the main character to have an association to the important chracters ingame vie her research. But only as a factor due to Reaper artifact involvement. The AI part of it is never mentioned again from then on and in further books, she doesn't even have shit to do with electronics, much less AI. Instead the main issues centre around Biotics and hence the mass effect which is connected to dark matter.

@Tennmuerti said:

Hey guys lets alter every living cell in the galaxy every animal, every plant, every microbe all of their individual cells on all the planets and all the stars to somehow make synthetic material part of everythings reproduction process. (how the fuck is a leaf defined as being synthetic anyway?)
While we are at it how about we use the galaxy as a frisbee for sport, seeing as the effort required is about on the same scale, it wouldnt even take as much precision seing as how we are not going down to individual cells and adjusting them, altering the very molecues.
Anything with such capability can turn every Reaper into a giant pony and it would require less skill technology or effort.

Not even having your entire body be robotic (with the exception of your brain) is anywhere even remotely on the same technological playing field as a cellular integration. This is not even nanomachine level. This is near godhood.
Even Reapers are only incredibly cruedly mixing the two, the mechanical exists seperately from biological system even in a husk/indoctrinated body, it is simply a more sophisticated form of prosthesis, to a finer degree of enabling the 2 to coexist in a completely forced union kept functioning by pure synthetic nanite tech.
As for Shepard he is as much synthetic as a dude with a prosthetic leg or a kettle. His DNA is fully organic, his brain is fully organic, his cybernetics are fully mechanical. His is an entirely human being with some really heavy and sophisticated proshetics.
in fact you could throw a random dude and a kettle into that beam and achieve the same net effect.

And what effect:
How does even the DNA template of a single human have absolutely any effect on the alteration of the DNA of every organism in the galaxy. This is nonsense, it's no longer science fiction, it is a logic suicide. All of the above idiocy is even besides the point that synthesis has fuck all to do with evolution as Onan mentioned. it is in fact the oposite of evolution.

I don't see why the Crucible must be capable of transforming a Reaper into a giant pony. The Crucible affects synthetics. If Shepard sacrifices himself/herself the resulting amalgamation extends the Crucible's reach to organics too, and repeats that combination for all organics and synthetics.

If godhood is measured by just being technology more advanced than nanomachines, you may live long enough to have your tender mind thoroughly blown.

Shepard's enhancements are more than just akin to a prosthetic leg. S/he didn't bob his/her toe and get a shiny new metal one. S/he was braid dead. Braid dead. And they brought you back. FemShepard even says "I don't remember anything. Maybe the really just fixed me. Or maybe I'm just a high-tech VI that thinks it's Commander Shepard." We don't know the extent of the modifications. S/he could've very well been synthetic life.

Simple. That minor addition to the Crucible's energy changed it. You could in fact had thrown a random dude in the beam and had the same effect. Unfortunately no was else was readily available.

Synthesis indeed has fuck all to do with evolution. It takes everything out of the realm of evolution. Synthetics can no longer evolve. Organics can no longer evolve. And it's obviously not the opposite of evolution. The opposite of evolution would be devolution and would have a life-form returning to a more primitive state. Synthesis is just going outside of evolution altogether, which is why it solves the Catalyst's problem. In that sense, its problem isn't so much synthetics vs. organics, it's evolution itself. Since synthetics are believed to always be a product of organic evolution, and the evolution of synthetics is believe to always result in the extinction of all organics. Interesting.

@onan said:

@StarvingGamer: You're describing a conflict, not a theme. It's not the same. It would be like saying that the main Super Mario Bros theme is the struggle between humanity and turtles. Themes are core to the story, conflicts are interchangeable.

Could we have swapped out the Geth with, say, the Flood from Halo in Mass Effect 1 and had little to no difference in the plot? Yes.

Mass Effect 2 had absolutely nothing to do with Synthetics. I don't even think the word was uttered. You had two synthetic characters that were fairly inconsequential to the plot, Legion and EDI. One was a Shepard fanboy, basically a robotic Conrad Verner, and that was cute. He also gave us a little insight into the Geth if we chose to speak with him that made them a little less obviously evil bad guy fodder. You had EDI, a character introduced to give Joker something to do, and mostly to show how renegade Cerberus was (OH CRAP, they put an AI on the Normandy! These guys are breaking laws left and right!). At no point does any of it even approach theme. The closest comes in Overlord, but you could argue that has more to do with the familial themes present in ME2 than Synthetics vs Organics, especially since it's an organic controlling and directing synthetics. I'm not even going to acknowledge the giant terminator robot.

(Terminator is a very good point of comparison, incidentally. It's very much about the struggle between organics and synthetics. It's the very core of that franchise.)

Mass Effect 3 had almost nothing to do with synthetics up until Priority: Rannoch. Taken separately, yes, the theme there is the struggle between organics and synthetics, between Created and Creators. It is honestly the ONLY POINT IN THE SERIES that even remotely supports any of what mentioned in the 11th hour exposition dump from the Catalyst. Even then, in the paragon conclusion to the battle, the Paragon themes of unity contradict directly contradict what the Catalyst says. Not saying from an academic standpoint that hey, maybe he's right, but from a storytelling perspective, it really gets pulled out of his ass at the last second as a justification with no foreshadowing or anything. Two out of three resolutions of that conflict, actually: Peace between the Quarians and Geth, and the Quarian victory. It's also at the end of Act 2.

I don't want to sound like a broken record here, but you really, really can't hang your ending hat on a 33% chance that the resolution of Act 2 in a 3-act story will in any way support or foreshadow your conclusion. It also has nothing to do with the events on Tuchanka, or on the Palaven moon, or anything happening anywhere else in the game. If the game ended immediately after Anderson died, that "Theme" wouldn't even exist. The themes of, as the Catalyst phrases it, "Created turning against creator" "synthetics destroying organics." No, until he actually says those sentences in the span of two minutes, the nature of "synthetic life" was irrelevant. The enemy were synthetic, yes, but it wasn't a conflict based on our differences because our allies were also potentially synthetic, so was our ship. The Geth were like, "Hey, they're out enemy too, we're people too, we want to fight." It wasn't a theme. The Reapers up until the end were cryptically and incomprehensibly evil. You didn't know why they wanted to kill you, and frankly, it didn't matter. Instead they just quickly explain Reaper motivations in an elevator pitch and shoehorn "created vs creator" as a new theme in the last 2 minutes of a work and say, "Yep, that's a theme. That's an overarching theme. Surprise!"

The fact that artificial intelligences and androids exist in this sci-fi universe don't support this "theme." It just means it's sci-fi.

That's crazy-talk. It's like writing off the theme of sacrifice as just a feautre of the dialogue system. Artificial (synthetic) life and its relationship with organic life is a prevalent subject in the series, right up there with sacrifice, and not just through armed conflicts. Whether it's talk of outlawing AI, discussing right to autonomy, or a questioning of purpose, the theme of synthetics vs. organics is more than just the enemies you fight. That this theme is also expressed through the primary conflict is no coincidence, and certainly not interchangeable with something else.

Reapers are core to the Mass Effect story. Geth are core to the Mass Effect story. Synthetics are core to the Mass Effect story. Their place in the world, including where they clash with organics, is core to the Mass Effect story.

It's totally insane to think that any of these things could be replaced with something else and not have a massive effect (har har) on the story.

You really didn't play any of these games did you? In Mass Effect 2, you're dealing with creatures that have been turned into husks of their former selves and are controlled by giant synthetic insect squids. You're dealing with aritificial life-forms actually being a part of your crew. You're dealing with the aforementioned robot space bugs using organics and creating a giant synthetic human and then attempting to use it as a part of their giant robot jellyfish army to come kill all organics.

Again, Mass Effect 3 has the robot squiggly-igglies coming to Earth to kill the organics there. And you had a synthetic agent fucking shit up on Mars. And you had robot squiggly-igglies coming to Palaven to kill the organics there. And you had your ship AI take that synthetic agent's body and attemp to start a relationship with an organic. And you had robot squiggly-igglies coming to Thessia to kill the organics there. And you had squiggly-iggly tech changing organics all along the way. And you had your geth buddy being used by synthetics to alter other synthetics to kill the organics that created the synthetics but then tried to kill them causing them to kill them back. And then there's the ending.

How does one instance of synthetics and organics making peace mean that synthetics could never eventually wipe out all organics. It contradicts nothing.

If you can't see that this topic has been in the series from the get-go and in big ways too, then you actually managed to not pay attention to and think about the majority of all three games.

@N7 said:

Saying that the main theme of the series was synthetics vs. organics by going "Just look at the Geth!" is totally valid, but it's not the main theme. It is one of the many underlying themes.

Of course it isn't the main theme. It's one of the main themes. Believe it or not, works of fiction can have more than one primary theme.

Forgot to copy this over:

@N7 said:

I'm not even sure where this is going anymore. So: INTERMISSION TIME. Take five, rethink, and GO GO GO.

Also I think you guys are both inadvertently proving just how bad the ending was. If you have to explain or rationalize the ending by grasping at straws that aren't even there, it's not going to end well. At least the indoctrination theory has spokes in the beginning, middle, and end. This is just "Well, LOGICALLY, here's what would happen", even though that's not what happened, no matter how logical it would have been.

Bioware may be clever enough to pull the Indoctrination Theory, but they aren't clever enough to do this.

Both Mass Effect games ended on completely rational, logical, and well rounded notes. If you're like me, and consider Arrival to be the finality of Mass Effect 2, then even the under all technicality's second ending was better than what we got. It laid it down for us, it set us up, but even the twist worked in our favor as we were able to delay the Reapers for six months. It's not what we set out to do, but we were still able to do something beneficial. Not only that, but we get a closer look into the work of indoctrination. If anything was clear, it was the Reapers were close, and they were pissed.

The final conversation between Harbinger and Shepard was such a perfect conclusion to an already pretty goshdarn good game.

Harbinger: Shepard, you see this!?
Shepard: Is that-
Harbinger: IT'S MY REAPER DICK, SHEPARD.
Shepard: UH EWW! What are-
Harbinger: AND I'M GONAN FUCK YOUR WHOLE GALAXY WITH IT. YOU HEAR ME SHEPARD!? FUCK YOU.
Shepard: Yeah? Well we'll be ready, asshole!

That was me paraphrasing, but good god. How do you NOT follow up with that? How was Harbinger NOT the one leading the charge against Earth? After all this shit, after all of Mass Effect 2, after Harbinger had the Collector's kill your ass, build a Reaper out of your friends and THEN try to kill you again, he threatens to fuck your whole species with his giant Reaper dick, and his ass is NOWHERE to be seen until he comes out of literally nowhere at the last possible second, and fiars hes lazor, somehow knocking your friends into the Normandy and fucking your shit up, before turning around and saying "Adios, bitch!".

You think if Macho Man Randy Savage told Hulk Hogan to leave Elizabeth alone, he wouldn't kick the shit out of him if he saw Hulk messing with her? First, Macho Man Randy Savage doesn't make threats, he makes promises, second, HE DID, third, may his soul rest in peace.

At that point we were actually arguing over the Crucible, particularly how it got from idea to deployment, which doesn't have to do with the ending.

Mass Effect 1 ended on fairly safe grounds. You defeat the enemies, and the game is officially on (at least until you die at the beginning of Mass Effect 2).

Mass Effect 2 ended with you saving (or not) people from turning into human cheese-whiz, destroying a human-shaped proto-Reaper, and deciding whether or not you destroy this base or use it for research. Then you leave as Harbinger puffs smoke, and the game is officially on, unless you pay for and play that DLC and delay the Reapers. If that's rational, logical, and well rounded, I don't see how people could raise such hooplah over what happens in Mass Effect 3.

And you're totally right. Harbinger would've been an awesome boss. Even if you choose Control or Synthesis, a chance to tear that smug squid a new one would've been awesome, especially since its the only Reaper Shepard has a lot of personal interaction with. They wouldn't even have to create a new main story beat for it, just redo the underwhelming final Earth mission, and have him be the final boss, then once you beat him he gets in a final shot and the game picks up like it already does. Oh well.

@TheHT said:

@onan said:

@StarvingGamer: You're describing a conflict, not a theme. It's not the same. It would be like saying that the main Super Mario Bros theme is the struggle between humanity and turtles. Themes are core to the story, conflicts are interchangeable.

Could we have swapped out the Geth with, say, the Flood from Halo in Mass Effect 1 and had little to no difference in the plot? Yes.

Mass Effect 2 had absolutely nothing to do with Synthetics. I don't even think the word was uttered. You had two synthetic characters that were fairly inconsequential to the plot, Legion and EDI. One was a Shepard fanboy, basically a robotic Conrad Verner, and that was cute. He also gave us a little insight into the Geth if we chose to speak with him that made them a little less obviously evil bad guy fodder. You had EDI, a character introduced to give Joker something to do, and mostly to show how renegade Cerberus was (OH CRAP, they put an AI on the Normandy! These guys are breaking laws left and right!). At no point does any of it even approach theme. The closest comes in Overlord, but you could argue that has more to do with the familial themes present in ME2 than Synthetics vs Organics, especially since it's an organic controlling and directing synthetics. I'm not even going to acknowledge the giant terminator robot.

(Terminator is a very good point of comparison, incidentally. It's very much about the struggle between organics and synthetics. It's the very core of that franchise.)

Mass Effect 3 had almost nothing to do with synthetics up until Priority: Rannoch. Taken separately, yes, the theme there is the struggle between organics and synthetics, between Created and Creators. It is honestly the ONLY POINT IN THE SERIES that even remotely supports any of what mentioned in the 11th hour exposition dump from the Catalyst. Even then, in the paragon conclusion to the battle, the Paragon themes of unity contradict directly contradict what the Catalyst says. Not saying from an academic standpoint that hey, maybe he's right, but from a storytelling perspective, it really gets pulled out of his ass at the last second as a justification with no foreshadowing or anything. Two out of three resolutions of that conflict, actually: Peace between the Quarians and Geth, and the Quarian victory. It's also at the end of Act 2.

I don't want to sound like a broken record here, but you really, really can't hang your ending hat on a 33% chance that the resolution of Act 2 in a 3-act story will in any way support or foreshadow your conclusion. It also has nothing to do with the events on Tuchanka, or on the Palaven moon, or anything happening anywhere else in the game. If the game ended immediately after Anderson died, that "Theme" wouldn't even exist. The themes of, as the Catalyst phrases it, "Created turning against creator" "synthetics destroying organics." No, until he actually says those sentences in the span of two minutes, the nature of "synthetic life" was irrelevant. The enemy were synthetic, yes, but it wasn't a conflict based on our differences because our allies were also potentially synthetic, so was our ship. The Geth were like, "Hey, they're out enemy too, we're people too, we want to fight." It wasn't a theme. The Reapers up until the end were cryptically and incomprehensibly evil. You didn't know why they wanted to kill you, and frankly, it didn't matter. Instead they just quickly explain Reaper motivations in an elevator pitch and shoehorn "created vs creator" as a new theme in the last 2 minutes of a work and say, "Yep, that's a theme. That's an overarching theme. Surprise!"

The fact that artificial intelligences and androids exist in this sci-fi universe don't support this "theme." It just means it's sci-fi.

That's crazy-talk. It's like writing off the theme of sacrifice as just a feautre of the dialogue system. Artificial (synthetic) life and its relationship with organic life is a prevalent subject in the series, right up there with sacrifice, and not just through armed conflicts. Whether it's talk of outlawing AI, discussing right to autonomy, or a questioning of purpose, the theme of synthetics vs. organics is more than just the enemies you fight. That this theme is also expressed through the primary conflict is no coincidence, and certainly not interchangeable with something else.

Reapers are core to the Mass Effect story. Geth are core to the Mass Effect story. Synthetics are core to the Mass Effect story. Their place in the world, including where they clash with organics, is core to the Mass Effect story.

It's totally insane to think that any of these things could be replaced with something else and not have a massive effect (har har) on the story.

You really didn't play any of these games did you? In Mass Effect 2, you're dealing with creatures that have been turned into husks of their former selves and are controlled by giant synthetic insect squids. You're dealing with aritificial life-forms actually being a part of your crew. You're dealing with the aforementioned robot space bugs using organics and creating a giant synthetic human and then attempting to use it as a part of their giant robot jellyfish army to come kill all organics.

Again, Mass Effect 3 has the robot squiggly-igglies coming to Earth to kill the organics there. And you had a synthetic agent fucking shit up on Mars. And you had robot squiggly-igglies coming to Palaven to kill the organics there. And you had your ship AI take that synthetic agent's body and attemp to start a relationship with an organic. And you had robot squiggly-igglies coming to Thessia to kill the organics there. And you had squiggly-iggly tech changing organics all along the way. And you had your geth buddy being used by synthetics to alter other synthetics to kill the organics that created the synthetics but then tried to kill them causing them to kill them back. And then there's the ending.

How does one instance of synthetics and organics making peace mean that synthetics could never eventually wipe out all organics. It contradicts nothing.

If you can't see that this topic has been in the series from the get-go and in big ways too, then you actually managed to not pay attention to and think about the majority of all three games.

@N7 said:

Saying that the main theme of the series was synthetics vs. organics by going "Just look at the Geth!" is totally valid, but it's not the main theme. It is one of the many underlying themes.

Of course it isn't the main theme. It's one of the main themes. Believe it or not, works of fiction can have more than one primary theme.

@TheHT: If this game series was about Shepard, the first QUARIAN Spectre, yes, you'd have a point, then the series would be likely be completely about the struggle between organics and synthetics, created rising up against creators. Absolutely. Unfortunately that was not the case.

Seriously, in a vacuum, if you weren't trying to prove a point, could you honestly say these games were about "organics vs synthetics" and "created against creators"? The latter theme doesn't exist in the first two games at all, and the first theme is one of those meaningless ones that's rarely at the core of anything. The role of the Geth in ME1 is inconsequential. They are fodder enemies, on equal footing with the cloned Krogan and the insane Rachni. They don't speak, can't be reasoned with, you may as well be dealing with army ants or the Flood. You find out from Geth terminals that the reason they are following Saren and Sovereign at all is because they revere the Reapers as gods. They take even more of a backseat in ME2, with the lone exception of Legion, a character that everyone groaned about when they first heard about him because *they were putting a face onto fodder enemies from the last game.* He exists to let you know that the Geth aren't really your enemy and they're ticked at the Reapers too, and to enable cute little scenes like this one:

(Aw, Legion. You kind of want to give him a hug.)

There's been plenty of sci-fi about the humanity struggling against machines, their creations. Terminator. Battlestar Galactica. All very well done fiction that really delves into the heart of the matter. Unfortunately none of it really applies here. The Reapers in the first two games may as well have been Sci-fi Cthulhu monsters. Without the context of the ending of ME3, the Geth may as well have been any other brainwashed alien population. You know, like the Collectors.

I never said that peace on Rannoch disproves that synthetics could never wipe out organics, you must be confusing me for someone else. HOWEVER, I am saying that as the sole instance that could really be pointed at to support the conclusion to the trilogy and the last minute reveal that everything was happening because "The created will always rise against the creator." From a storytelling standpoint it would have helped their case to force a bad end to that where the Quarians are always wiped out. If you don't have that, literally nothing in the series supports what the Catalyst says. Over the course of the series, the only time anyone EVER comes into hostile contact with synthetics are ones under Reaper control, and Reapers again are scary Lovecraftian monstrosities who apparently don't count in the fiction because they're doing the culling and policing so the TRUE conflicts between organics and synthetics never really take root. Geth and reaper forces weren't trying to kill you and vice versa because of philosophical disagreements. They were trying to kill you because evil monsters told them to, and you were trying to kill them because THEY ARE SHOOTING AT YOU.

I know you have trouble with analogies, but lets say we had a story about a teenaged girl whose loving father is brutally murdered, and she bands together with others who also have lost caring parents to this serial killer. She finally corners the killer, and the killer reveals he was just protecting them because "all fathers will eventually molest their children." Does that mean the work is retroactively about child abuse and incest based on that one line of dialogue? Or, more logically, is that killer just batshit insane and spouting nonsense that only warrants a "wtf are you even talking about, you psycho?" (Feel free to tie this analogy into a knot and confuse yourself, I'm sure someone else will appreciate it.)

@Tennmuerti said:

Hey guys lets alter every living cell in the galaxy every animal, every plant, every microbe all of their individual cells on all the planets and all the stars to somehow make synthetic material part of everythings reproduction process. (how the fuck is a leaf defined as being synthetic anyway?)
While we are at it how about we use the galaxy as a frisbee for sport, seeing as the effort required is about on the same scale, it wouldnt even take as much precision seing as how we are not going down to individual cells and adjusting them, altering the very molecues.
Anything with such capability can turn every Reaper into a giant pony and it would require less skill technology or effort.

Not even having your entire body be robotic (with the exception of your brain) is anywhere even remotely on the same technological playing field as a cellular integration. This is not even nanomachine level. This is near godhood.
Even Reapers are only incredibly cruedly mixing the two, the mechanical exists seperately from biological system even in a husk/indoctrinated body, it is simply a more sophisticated form of prosthesis, to a finer degree of enabling the 2 to coexist in a completely forced union kept functioning by pure synthetic nanite tech.
As for Shepard he is as much synthetic as a dude with a prosthetic leg or a kettle. His DNA is fully organic, his brain is fully organic, his cybernetics are fully mechanical. His is an entirely human being with some really heavy and sophisticated proshetics.
in fact you could throw a random dude and a kettle into that beam and achieve the same net effect.

And what effect:
How does even the DNA template of a single human have absolutely any effect on the alteration of the DNA of every organism in the galaxy. This is nonsense, it's no longer science fiction, it is a logic suicide. All of the above idiocy is even besides the point that synthesis has fuck all to do with evolution as Onan mentioned. it is in fact the oposite of evolution.

I don't see why the Crucible must be capable of transforming a Reaper into a giant pony. The Crucible affects synthetics. If Shepard sacrifices himself/herself the resulting amalgamation extends the Crucible's reach to organics too, and repeats that combination for all organics and synthetics.

If godhood is measured by just being technology more advanced than nanomachines, you may live long enough to have your tender mind thoroughly blown.

Shepard's enhancements are more than just akin to a prosthetic leg. S/he didn't bob his/her toe and get a shiny new metal one. S/he was braid dead. Braid dead. And they brought you back. FemShepard even says "I don't remember anything. Maybe the really just fixed me. Or maybe I'm just a high-tech VI that thinks it's Commander Shepard." We don't know the extent of the modifications. S/he could've very well been synthetic life.

Simple. That minor addition to the Crucible's energy changed it. You could in fact had thrown a random dude in the beam and had the same effect. Unfortunately no was else was readily available.

Synthesis indeed has fuck all to do with evolution. It takes everything out of the realm of evolution. Synthetics can no longer evolve. Organics can no longer evolve. And it's obviously not the opposite of evolution. The opposite of evolution would be devolution and would have a life-form returning to a more primitive state. Synthesis is just going outside of evolution altogether, which is why it solves the Catalyst's problem. In that sense, its problem isn't so much synthetics vs. organics, it's evolution itself. Since synthetics are believed to always be a product of organic evolution, and the evolution of synthetics is believe to always result in the extinction of all organics. Interesting

If Shepard sacrifices himself/herself the resulting amalgamation extends the Crucible's reach to organics too, and repeats that combination for all organics and synthetics.
Simple. That minor addition to the Crucible's energy changed it.

And (again) I have to point out if Bioware's main focus was synthetics vs organics then there was a simpler, more direct way to conclude it. Again and again, I'm not saying the core concept of any of the endings was automatically a bad idea (that is another thread) but the execution was clumsy and bad and hence a bad ending.

Another way to put it: If their focus really was synthetics vs organics then they should have setup many more moments to point towards that theme. Someone should have asked "Could going converting to fully artificial help?" "How would we even do that?" "It maybe theoretically possible if we do this..." and so on. Instead it was just brought up as a possible solution in the closing minutes of the closing part of the game. Some can thinking that is a vague and mysterious way to end a story but I call it poor.

@onan said:

@815Sox said:

@onan said:

@spazmaster666 said:

I think that whether or not what the child does is evil depends on whether or not what the child says is true about synthetics destroying organics. Sure the Geth turned out to be nice guys, but that by no means is proof that eventually organic life wouldn't cease to exist because of synthetics. If the child is looking on with the perspective of eternity, then a few trillion lives destroyed every 50,000 years, over a time scale of billions of years, to ultimately prevent organic life from perishing forever may not seem that bad. At least that's what I would have liked to argue. Unfortunately, the "synthesis" ending kind of negates my previous argument since if the child knew that he could end the cycle by simply combining organic life with synthetic life (the ultimate evolution as he said) then why has he not done it before?

He did. They're called the Reapers. Sovereign told Shepard this in the first game: "Organic life is nothing but a genetic mutation, an accident. Your lives are measured in years and decades. You wither and die. We are eternal. The pinnacle of evolution and existence. Before us, you are nothing. Your extinction is inevitable. We are the end of everything."

They're the fusion of organic and synthetics. A similar concept pops up throughout Sci-fi, God-like beings who turn out to be incredibly powerful machines that use organic life as parts. If I recall correctly, that was the ultimate reveal of Xenogears, among other games.

The merge of man and machine is happening right as we speak. Imagine how integrated they will be in our lives in say... 30 years. Its pretty much inconceivable, because of the speed at which we are improving them. That "self-conscious" AI that the game talks about? We will very likely see one in our own lifetime. The Synthesis ending is the next evolution, DNA constructed from Shepard's essence.

It is not the same as Saren (who wanted to submit, not merge). Husks do not come pouring out of the Normandy at the end. Its not that hard IMO.

Also, the Quarians were the dicks in the conflict. They essentially attacked the geth at the moment of its "birth". The last scene with Legion reveals that they have developed a sense of individual conscious. Proving that Synthetic life grows and evolves like Organic life.

And finally, many Sci-Fi's especially older ones, end asking more questions then answered. When Sci-Fi was first created, it was a method for people to dream about the future. The authors want the viewer/reader to keep thinking and pondering. That is what is so great about it.

I don't think you understand what any of the words in this sentence mean: "The Synthesis ending is the next evolution, DNA constructed from Shepard's essence."

DNA is a defined thing. Its a combination of four nucleotides that are the building blocks of organic life. Evolution is the mutation over time of a species to include more favorable traits. Shepard's essence is... what? His mind? His DNA? his experiences? The technology in his body that helped it recover from the necrosis of death? What in that is Shepard, and what part of it makes him a template for the mass conversion of every organic cell in existence to be more like him, down to insects and the leaves in ivy? Evolutionary speaking, it leads to a homogenization of all life in the galaxy, something that life strives against by the very nature of evolution because homogenized populations tend to get wiped out very easily by predators, viruses, changes in climate and food.

It's all space magic and complete BS. This is someone who readily accepts mass effect fields, teleporters, faster than light travel, alien-human hybrids, universal translators, all in service of a story. If it were integrated better, earlier, I'd probably be ok with it, but provided at the last moment as some sort of resolution, it's complete BS.

Hi. I have a slight problem with your use of the words evolution and mutation (I'm sure you know what you're saying, but maybe you wrote the sentence too quickly). Evolution is the selection of favorable traits that are randomly arrived at through mutation. On initial reading of your post, I was like, dude, that's Lamark's theory on evolution (I know it's not what you're saying)... Just a little rearrangement and you could make your point more clearly.

Despite this correction, I dislike your constrained definition of evolution considering that its entry into the common lexicon has come to mean more than just the biological changes it was first coined to describe. Pertinent to the current conversation, @815Sox was talking more about how we can "evolve" to no longer be constrained by random mutations determining the fate of our species if we become more adaptable. I agree with him quite a bit; it really is difficult to argue against our advances in technology making us more adaptable (and so less at the whims of natural selection). You can even look to the vorcha to see how Mass Effect treats this idea of adaptability allowing a species to break the shackles of random mutation. It's full of awesome ideas when you come to think of it, a lot of depth to the way it handles.

To the point of the original topic, I'm very ambivalent towards the ending of Mass Effect 3. On the one hand, I feel that there was a lot of laziness to it when you think about how it was put together (only the colors changed? really?). On the other, the wrapping up of the little side stories I enjoyed so much from the first and second game were so well put together, the ending to the entire story arc couldn't take away from my enjoyment of them (how Mordin was handled, how the Geth were handled, Samara's daughters, Miranda, just a ton of great tiny stories with a satisfying end to each one for my play through of the entire series). I could see how it's very dissatisfying to have the ending of the entire story arc be so lazy, but at the same time, it means that I'm done with the universe (and all of the people in it) and it's time I enjoyed another one.

In fact, getting into these discussions about the ending has made me think more about the ending of this game than any other I've played, which adds to my enjoyment (I find discussion of my experiences of art as an integral part of my enjoyment of said art).

Editted cause I got confused by the reply train. :( I remember making fun of someone for that... :(

@Tennmuerti said:

@TheHT said:

@Tennmuerti said:

Hey guys lets alter every living cell in the galaxy every animal, every plant, every microbe all of their individual cells on all the planets and all the stars to somehow make synthetic material part of everythings reproduction process. (how the fuck is a leaf defined as being synthetic anyway?)
While we are at it how about we use the galaxy as a frisbee for sport, seeing as the effort required is about on the same scale, it wouldnt even take as much precision seing as how we are not going down to individual cells and adjusting them, altering the very molecues.
Anything with such capability can turn every Reaper into a giant pony and it would require less skill technology or effort.

Not even having your entire body be robotic (with the exception of your brain) is anywhere even remotely on the same technological playing field as a cellular integration. This is not even nanomachine level. This is near godhood.
Even Reapers are only incredibly cruedly mixing the two, the mechanical exists seperately from biological system even in a husk/indoctrinated body, it is simply a more sophisticated form of prosthesis, to a finer degree of enabling the 2 to coexist in a completely forced union kept functioning by pure synthetic nanite tech.
As for Shepard he is as much synthetic as a dude with a prosthetic leg or a kettle. His DNA is fully organic, his brain is fully organic, his cybernetics are fully mechanical. His is an entirely human being with some really heavy and sophisticated proshetics.
in fact you could throw a random dude and a kettle into that beam and achieve the same net effect.

And what effect:
How does even the DNA template of a single human have absolutely any effect on the alteration of the DNA of every organism in the galaxy. This is nonsense, it's no longer science fiction, it is a logic suicide. All of the above idiocy is even besides the point that synthesis has fuck all to do with evolution as Onan mentioned. it is in fact the oposite of evolution.

I don't see why the Crucible must be capable of transforming a Reaper into a giant pony. The Crucible affects synthetics. If Shepard sacrifices himself/herself the resulting amalgamation extends the Crucible's reach to organics too, and repeats that combination for all organics and synthetics.

If godhood is measured by just being technology more advanced than nanomachines, you may live long enough to have your tender mind thoroughly blown.

Shepard's enhancements are more than just akin to a prosthetic leg. S/he didn't bob his/her toe and get a shiny new metal one. S/he was braid dead. Braid dead. And they brought you back. FemShepard even says "I don't remember anything. Maybe the really just fixed me. Or maybe I'm just a high-tech VI that thinks it's Commander Shepard." We don't know the extent of the modifications. S/he could've very well been synthetic life.

Simple. That minor addition to the Crucible's energy changed it. You could in fact had thrown a random dude in the beam and had the same effect. Unfortunately no was else was readily available.

Synthesis indeed has fuck all to do with evolution. It takes everything out of the realm of evolution. Synthetics can no longer evolve. Organics can no longer evolve. And it's obviously not the opposite of evolution. The opposite of evolution would be devolution and would have a life-form returning to a more primitive state. Synthesis is just going outside of evolution altogether, which is why it solves the Catalyst's problem. In that sense, its problem isn't so much synthetics vs. organics, it's evolution itself. Since synthetics are believed to always be a product of organic evolution, and the evolution of synthetics is believe to always result in the extinction of all organics. Interesting

Because the catalyst is adjusting the very fucking atoms in every cell in the galaxy.
You are no longer even working with distinctions between organics or synthetics, you are moving around goddamn atomic structures in everything. Initial source is irrelevant, you are modifying everything.
So yes the catalyst could just as easily then convert all reaper matter into full fledged biological organisms even ponies.
All it has to do is adjust the structure of matter composition inside them, it won't even take as much effort, due to an incredibly smaller scale of work required.

Godhood convergence is measured by the sheer power available and used as well as how precisely one can wield that power.
Beyond certain levels of said power and capability you are approaching that godhood threshold.
At which point you can explain and do away with everything with a wave of your magic wand and everything ceases to matter as such.
When your power spans an entire galaxy it is already phenomenal as such. When said power has the capability to alter every microbe every cell at a level far far beyond nanoscale surgery simultaneously in the whole galaxy yes I would define it as near godhood.

Your comment about my mind tender being blown is condescending yet at the same time completely misses the point. Good job.
Nanomachines? Is this conversation even serious? nanomachines are to what the Catalyst did, like monkeys rubbing sticks are compared to say Culture level of technology.
it's not even in the same realm of theoretical fiction, much less the same ballpark.

We do know more about Shepards modification.
His/her brain is fully organic and has been confirmed to be so by multiple sources during the games.
Even from the same parts of the game when Shepard has the speculation you mentioned.

Sorry I read a lot a LOT of science fiction, there is a reason a lot of science fiction writers steer away from the godhood threshold that the Catalyst exhibits and if they do it is usually only ever toyed with marginally or it's influence is self limited.
(lets not bring Space Odyssey into this, it's magical closure is exactly why it seems so cool to the masses, yet quite a few consider it to be quite simplistic as far as sci-fi goes, ie: shit)
Because at such levels of power logic and normal flow of events starts to break down and become meaningless.
Kind of like the Big Bang is to even relativistic physics.

If Shepard sacrifices himself/herself the resulting amalgamation extends the Crucible's reach to organics too, and repeats that combination for all organics and synthetics.
Simple. That minor addition to the Crucible's energy changed it.

Nice lets change what is effectively an EMP distribution device or a viral distribution device into something that can alter matter at whim instantly on billions of stars, with pretty much disregard for basic physical laws such as energy conservation principles.
Just add some DNA to the beam, simple. Woooooo!(not that the Reapers themselves aren't full of human DNA already or even the Citadel itself) (If you are going to argue that the Crucible+Catalyst are not emp/viral device and could already alter matter, then sorry DNA addition is bollocks, it's un needed, matter manipulation on cellular level to all flora, founa, bacteria etc hinges on an near infinite amount of varied DNA, and basic samples are in any random bacteria) Now lets take off our pants, get some acid and start tripping balls! /facepalm

... I now know why I like you. Space Odyssey always rubbed me the wrong way. ALWAYS! Now I know why. It's the same reason I was never satisfied with Descartes's explanation of why he can trust in his perception of the world. Thank you.

@Tennmuerti said:

@TheHT said:

@Tennmuerti said:

Hey guys lets alter every living cell in the galaxy every animal, every plant, every microbe all of their individual cells on all the planets and all the stars to somehow make synthetic material part of everythings reproduction process. (how the fuck is a leaf defined as being synthetic anyway?)
While we are at it how about we use the galaxy as a frisbee for sport, seeing as the effort required is about on the same scale, it wouldnt even take as much precision seing as how we are not going down to individual cells and adjusting them, altering the very molecues.
Anything with such capability can turn every Reaper into a giant pony and it would require less skill technology or effort.

Not even having your entire body be robotic (with the exception of your brain) is anywhere even remotely on the same technological playing field as a cellular integration. This is not even nanomachine level. This is near godhood.
Even Reapers are only incredibly cruedly mixing the two, the mechanical exists seperately from biological system even in a husk/indoctrinated body, it is simply a more sophisticated form of prosthesis, to a finer degree of enabling the 2 to coexist in a completely forced union kept functioning by pure synthetic nanite tech.
As for Shepard he is as much synthetic as a dude with a prosthetic leg or a kettle. His DNA is fully organic, his brain is fully organic, his cybernetics are fully mechanical. His is an entirely human being with some really heavy and sophisticated proshetics.
in fact you could throw a random dude and a kettle into that beam and achieve the same net effect.

And what effect:
How does even the DNA template of a single human have absolutely any effect on the alteration of the DNA of every organism in the galaxy. This is nonsense, it's no longer science fiction, it is a logic suicide. All of the above idiocy is even besides the point that synthesis has fuck all to do with evolution as Onan mentioned. it is in fact the oposite of evolution.

I don't see why the Crucible must be capable of transforming a Reaper into a giant pony. The Crucible affects synthetics. If Shepard sacrifices himself/herself the resulting amalgamation extends the Crucible's reach to organics too, and repeats that combination for all organics and synthetics.

If godhood is measured by just being technology more advanced than nanomachines, you may live long enough to have your tender mind thoroughly blown.

Shepard's enhancements are more than just akin to a prosthetic leg. S/he didn't bob his/her toe and get a shiny new metal one. S/he was braid dead. Braid dead. And they brought you back. FemShepard even says "I don't remember anything. Maybe the really just fixed me. Or maybe I'm just a high-tech VI that thinks it's Commander Shepard." We don't know the extent of the modifications. S/he could've very well been synthetic life.

Simple. That minor addition to the Crucible's energy changed it. You could in fact had thrown a random dude in the beam and had the same effect. Unfortunately no was else was readily available.

Synthesis indeed has fuck all to do with evolution. It takes everything out of the realm of evolution. Synthetics can no longer evolve. Organics can no longer evolve. And it's obviously not the opposite of evolution. The opposite of evolution would be devolution and would have a life-form returning to a more primitive state. Synthesis is just going outside of evolution altogether, which is why it solves the Catalyst's problem. In that sense, its problem isn't so much synthetics vs. organics, it's evolution itself. Since synthetics are believed to always be a product of organic evolution, and the evolution of synthetics is believe to always result in the extinction of all organics. Interesting

Because the catalyst is adjusting the very fucking atoms in every cell in the galaxy.
You are no longer even working with distinctions between organics or synthetics, you are moving around goddamn atomic structures in everything. Initial source is irrelevant, you are modifying everything.
So yes the catalyst could just as easily then convert all reaper matter into full fledged biological organisms even ponies.
All it has to do is adjust the structure of matter composition inside them, it won't even take as much effort, due to an incredibly smaller scale of work required.

Godhood convergence is measured by the sheer power available and used as well as how precisely one can wield that power.
Beyond certain levels of said power and capability you are approaching that godhood threshold.
At which point you can explain and do away with everything with a wave of your magic wand and everything ceases to matter as such.
When your power spans an entire galaxy it is already phenomenal as such. When said power has the capability to alter every microbe every cell at a level far far beyond nanoscale surgery simultaneously in the whole galaxy yes I would define it as near godhood.

Your comment about my mind tender being blown is condescending yet at the same time completely misses the point. Good job.
More advanced then nanomachines? Is this conversation even serious? Nanomachines are to what the Catalyst did, like monkeys rubbing sticks are compared to say Culture level of technology.
it's not even in the same realm of theoretical fiction, much less the same ballpark.

We do know more about Shepards modification.
His/her brain is fully organic and has been confirmed to be so by multiple sources during the games.
Even from the same parts of the game when Shepard has the speculation you mentioned.
(this is even further confirmed by Shepard being able to survive the red choice unlike, geth, edi)

Sorry I also read a lot of science fiction, there is a reason a lot of good science fiction writers steer away from the godhood threshold that the Catalyst exhibits and if they do it is usually only ever toyed with marginally or it's influence is self limited.
(lets not bring Space Odyssey into this, it's magical closure is exactly why it seems so cool to the masses, yet quite a few consider it to be quite simplistic as far as sci-fi goes, ie: shit)
Because at such levels of power logic and normal flow of events starts to break down and become meaningless.
Kind of like the Big Bang is to even relativistic physics.

If Shepard sacrifices himself/herself the resulting amalgamation extends the Crucible's reach to organics too, and repeats that combination for all organics and synthetics.
Simple. That minor addition to the Crucible's energy changed it.

Nice lets change what is effectively an EMP distribution device or a viral distribution device into something that can alter matter at whim instantly on billions of stars, with pretty much disregard for basic physical laws such as energy conservation principles.
Just add some DNA to the beam, simple. Woooooo!(not that the Reapers themselves aren't full of human DNA already or even the Citadel itself) (If you are going to argue that the Crucible+Catalyst are not emp/viral device and could already alter matter, then sorry DNA addition is bollocks, it's un needed, matter manipulation on cellular level to all flora, founa, bacteria etc hinges on an near infinite amount of varied DNA, and basic samples are in any random bacteria) Now lets take off our pants, get some acid and start tripping balls! /facepalm OH COME ON!

People should either burn this thread or put it on a pedestal and start worshiping it.

@onan said:

@TheHT said:

That's crazy-talk. It's like writing off the theme of sacrifice as just a feautre of the dialogue system. Artificial (synthetic) life and its relationship with organic life is a prevalent subject in the series, right up there with sacrifice, and not just through armed conflicts. Whether it's talk of outlawing AI, discussing right to autonomy, or a questioning of purpose, the theme of synthetics vs. organics is more than just the enemies you fight. That this theme is also expressed through the primary conflict is no coincidence, and certainly not interchangeable with something else.

Reapers are core to the Mass Effect story. Geth are core to the Mass Effect story. Synthetics are core to the Mass Effect story. Their place in the world, including where they clash with organics, is core to the Mass Effect story.

It's totally insane to think that any of these things could be replaced with something else and not have a massive effect (har har) on the story.

You really didn't play any of these games did you? In Mass Effect 2, you're dealing with creatures that have been turned into husks of their former selves and are controlled by giant synthetic insect squids. You're dealing with aritificial life-forms actually being a part of your crew. You're dealing with the aforementioned robot space bugs using organics and creating a giant synthetic human and then attempting to use it as a part of their giant robot jellyfish army to come kill all organics.

Again, Mass Effect 3 has the robot squiggly-igglies coming to Earth to kill the organics there. And you had a synthetic agent fucking shit up on Mars. And you had robot squiggly-igglies coming to Palaven to kill the organics there. And you had your ship AI take that synthetic agent's body and attemp to start a relationship with an organic. And you had robot squiggly-igglies coming to Thessia to kill the organics there. And you had squiggly-iggly tech changing organics all along the way. And you had your geth buddy being used by synthetics to alter other synthetics to kill the organics that created the synthetics but then tried to kill them causing them to kill them back. And then there's the ending.

How does one instance of synthetics and organics making peace mean that synthetics could never eventually wipe out all organics. It contradicts nothing.

If you can't see that this topic has been in the series from the get-go and in big ways too, then you actually managed to not pay attention to and think about the majority of all three games.

@N7 said:

Saying that the main theme of the series was synthetics vs. organics by going "Just look at the Geth!" is totally valid, but it's not the main theme. It is one of the many underlying themes.

Of course it isn't the main theme. It's one of the main themes. Believe it or not, works of fiction can have more than one primary theme.

@TheHT: If this game series was about Shepard, the first QUARIAN Spectre, yes, you'd have a point, then the series would be likely be completely about the struggle between organics and synthetics, created rising up against creators. Absolutely. Unfortunately that was not the case.

Seriously, in a vacuum, if you weren't trying to prove a point, could you honestly say these games were about "organics vs synthetics" and "created against creators"? The latter theme doesn't exist in the first two games at all, and the first theme is one of those meaningless ones that's rarely at the core of anything. The role of the Geth in ME1 is inconsequential. They are fodder enemies, on equal footing with the cloned Krogan and the insane Rachni. They don't speak, can't be reasoned with, you may as well be dealing with army ants or the Flood. You find out from Geth terminals that the reason they are following Saren and Sovereign at all is because they revere the Reapers as gods. They take even more of a backseat in ME2, with the lone exception of Legion, a character that everyone groaned about when they first heard about him because *they were putting a face onto fodder enemies from the last game.* He exists to let you know that the Geth aren't really your enemy and they're ticked at the Reapers too, and to enable cute little scenes like this one:

(Aw, Legion. You kind of want to give him a hug.)

There's been plenty of sci-fi about the humanity struggling against machines, their creations. Terminator. Battlestar Galactica. All very well done fiction that really delves into the heart of the matter. Unfortunately none of it really applies here. The Reapers in the first two games may as well have been Sci-fi Cthulhu monsters. Without the context of the ending of ME3, the Geth may as well have been any other brainwashed alien population. You know, like the Collectors.

I never said that peace on Rannoch disproves that synthetics could never wipe out organics, you must be confusing me for someone else. HOWEVER, I am saying that as the sole instance that could really be pointed at to support the conclusion to the trilogy and the last minute reveal that everything was happening because "The created will always rise against the creator." From a storytelling standpoint it would have helped their case to force a bad end to that where the Quarians are always wiped out. If you don't have that, literally nothing in the series supports what the Catalyst says. Over the course of the series, the only time anyone EVER comes into hostile contact with synthetics are ones under Reaper control, and Reapers again are scary Lovecraftian monstrosities who apparently don't count in the fiction because they're doing the culling and policing so the TRUE conflicts between organics and synthetics never really take root. Geth and reaper forces weren't trying to kill you and vice versa because of philosophical disagreements. They were trying to kill you because evil monsters told them to, and you were trying to kill them because THEY ARE SHOOTING AT YOU.

I know you have trouble with analogies, but lets say we had a story about a teenaged girl whose loving father is brutally murdered, and she bands together with others who also have lost caring parents to this serial killer. She finally corners the killer, and the killer reveals he was just protecting them because "all fathers will eventually molest their children." Does that mean the work is retroactively about child abuse and incest based on that one line of dialogue? Or, more logically, is that killer just batshit insane and spouting nonsense that only warrants a "wtf are you even talking about, you psycho?" (Feel free to tie this analogy into a knot and confuse yourself, I'm sure someone else will appreciate it.)

When did I say anything about a created vs. creator theme? Though that technically exists throughout with all the quarian-geth relations and in ME2 with all the family business, it's not same as synthetics vs. organics. I don't see what makes synthetics vs. organics "one of those meaningless" themes. What makes a theme meaningful and what makes it meaningless? Whether you've recognized it or not? How terribly arbitrary.

Yes, synthetics revering advanced synthetics as gods. You also learn about the quarians and the geth. You learn about how that event shaped galactic law. You learn about their existence shaped Saren's belief that organics could be spared from the harvest. You learn that when the Reapers, no longer having access to the keepers (which they used for millions of years), lost their ace in the hole, the geth (who went to the Reapers) fortuitously compensated for that loss. How could they then have been replaced by the flood and not had an impact on the story?

I don't see how the geth in Mass Effect 1 are 'fodder'. Husks are fodder. Lowly geth troopers are fodder. Standard Cerberus troopers are fodder. The entirety of the geth in Mass Effect 1 are not fodder just like the entirety of the Reaper forces in Mass Effect 3 are not fodder, despite the fodderest of fodder (husks) belonging to that faction.

Try not to overlook the fact that the mere existence of thee geth is not all there is to the theme of synthetics vs. organics. The Mass Effect series is large and deals with lots of things in multiple ways.

What's this about Old Ones? The Reapers were known to be synthetic in Mass Effect 1. Before that, Sovereign was thought to be just a ship. The cycle of harvest was explained in Mass Effect 1. Have you forgotten your talk with Sovereign? Have you forgotten your talk with Vigil?

Replace the geth with something completely different you set of a chain reaction that alters all of the Mass Effect series. You haven't shown how replaced the geth with something else deals with all of these repercussions in ways that result in the same series, nor have you shown how replacing the Reapers or any other synthetic still somehow manages to keep things the same.

@onan said:

Mass Effect 3 had almost nothing to do with synthetics up until Priority: Rannoch. Taken separately, yes, the theme there is the struggle between organics and synthetics, between Created and Creators. It is honestly the ONLY POINT IN THE SERIES that even remotely supports any of what mentioned in the 11th hour exposition dump from the Catalyst. Even then, in the paragon conclusion to the battle, the Paragon themes of unity contradict directly contradict what the Catalyst says.

I was responding to this, but you're right, 'disprove' was too strong a word. Nonetheless, as I did say, what happens on Rannoch in that paragon ending contradicts nothing.

@Tennmuerti said:

@TheHT said:

@Tennmuerti said:

Hey guys lets alter every living cell in the galaxy every animal, every plant, every microbe all of their individual cells on all the planets and all the stars to somehow make synthetic material part of everythings reproduction process. (how the fuck is a leaf defined as being synthetic anyway?)
While we are at it how about we use the galaxy as a frisbee for sport, seeing as the effort required is about on the same scale, it wouldnt even take as much precision seing as how we are not going down to individual cells and adjusting them, altering the very molecues.
Anything with such capability can turn every Reaper into a giant pony and it would require less skill technology or effort.

Not even having your entire body be robotic (with the exception of your brain) is anywhere even remotely on the same technological playing field as a cellular integration. This is not even nanomachine level. This is near godhood.
Even Reapers are only incredibly cruedly mixing the two, the mechanical exists seperately from biological system even in a husk/indoctrinated body, it is simply a more sophisticated form of prosthesis, to a finer degree of enabling the 2 to coexist in a completely forced union kept functioning by pure synthetic nanite tech.
As for Shepard he is as much synthetic as a dude with a prosthetic leg or a kettle. His DNA is fully organic, his brain is fully organic, his cybernetics are fully mechanical. His is an entirely human being with some really heavy and sophisticated proshetics.
in fact you could throw a random dude and a kettle into that beam and achieve the same net effect.

And what effect:
How does even the DNA template of a single human have absolutely any effect on the alteration of the DNA of every organism in the galaxy. This is nonsense, it's no longer science fiction, it is a logic suicide. All of the above idiocy is even besides the point that synthesis has fuck all to do with evolution as Onan mentioned. it is in fact the oposite of evolution.

I don't see why the Crucible must be capable of transforming a Reaper into a giant pony. The Crucible affects synthetics. If Shepard sacrifices himself/herself the resulting amalgamation extends the Crucible's reach to organics too, and repeats that combination for all organics and synthetics.

If godhood is measured by just being technology more advanced than nanomachines, you may live long enough to have your tender mind thoroughly blown.

Shepard's enhancements are more than just akin to a prosthetic leg. S/he didn't bob his/her toe and get a shiny new metal one. S/he was braid dead. Braid dead. And they brought you back. FemShepard even says "I don't remember anything. Maybe the really just fixed me. Or maybe I'm just a high-tech VI that thinks it's Commander Shepard." We don't know the extent of the modifications. S/he could've very well been synthetic life.

Simple. That minor addition to the Crucible's energy changed it. You could in fact had thrown a random dude in the beam and had the same effect. Unfortunately no was else was readily available.

Synthesis indeed has fuck all to do with evolution. It takes everything out of the realm of evolution. Synthetics can no longer evolve. Organics can no longer evolve. And it's obviously not the opposite of evolution. The opposite of evolution would be devolution and would have a life-form returning to a more primitive state. Synthesis is just going outside of evolution altogether, which is why it solves the Catalyst's problem. In that sense, its problem isn't so much synthetics vs. organics, it's evolution itself. Since synthetics are believed to always be a product of organic evolution, and the evolution of synthetics is believe to always result in the extinction of all organics. Interesting

Because the catalyst is adjusting the very fucking atoms in every cell in the galaxy.
You are no longer even working with distinctions between organics or synthetics, you are moving around goddamn atomic structures in everything. Initial source is irrelevant, you are modifying everything.
So yes the catalyst could just as easily then convert all reaper matter into full fledged biological organisms even ponies.
All it has to do is adjust the structure of matter composition inside them, it won't even take as much effort, due to an incredibly smaller scale of work required.

Godhood convergence is measured by the sheer power available and used as well as how precisely one can wield that power.
Beyond certain levels of said power and capability you are approaching that godhood threshold.
At which point you can explain and do away with everything with a wave of your magic wand and everything ceases to matter as such.
When your power spans an entire galaxy it is already phenomenal as such. When said power has the capability to alter every microbe every cell at a level far far beyond nanoscale surgery simultaneously in the whole galaxy yes I would define it as near godhood.

Your comment about my mind tender being blown is condescending yet at the same time completely misses the point. Good job.
More advanced then nanomachines? Is this conversation even serious? Nanomachines are to what the Catalyst did, like monkeys rubbing sticks are compared to say Culture level of technology.
it's not even in the same realm of theoretical fiction, much less the same ballpark.

We do know more about Shepards modification.
His/her brain is fully organic and has been confirmed to be so by multiple sources during the games.
Even from the same parts of the game when Shepard has the speculation you mentioned.
(this is even further confirmed by Shepard being able to survive the red choice unlike, geth, edi)

Sorry I also read a lot of science fiction, there is a reason a lot of good science fiction writers steer away from the godhood threshold that the Catalyst exhibits and if they do it is usually only ever toyed with marginally or it's influence is self limited.
(lets not bring Space Odyssey into this, it's magical closure is exactly why it seems so cool to the masses, yet quite a few consider it to be quite simplistic as far as sci-fi goes, ie: shit)
Because at such levels of power logic and normal flow of events starts to break down and become meaningless.
Kind of like the Big Bang is to even relativistic physics.

If Shepard sacrifices himself/herself the resulting amalgamation extends the Crucible's reach to organics too, and repeats that combination for all organics and synthetics.
Simple. That minor addition to the Crucible's energy changed it.

Nice lets change what is effectively an EMP distribution device or a viral distribution device into something that can alter matter at whim instantly on billions of stars, with pretty much disregard for basic physical laws such as energy conservation principles.
Just add some DNA to the beam, simple. Woooooo!(not that the Reapers themselves aren't full of human DNA already or even the Citadel itself) (If you are going to argue that the Crucible+Catalyst are not emp/viral device and could already alter matter, then sorry DNA addition is bollocks, it's un needed, matter manipulation on cellular level to all flora, founa, bacteria etc hinges on an near infinite amount of varied DNA, and basic samples are in any random bacteria) Now lets take off our pants, get some acid and start tripping balls! /facepalm OH COME ON!

It seems to just adjust them in a very specific way. I don't see why being able to adjust everything in the specific way it does means it has to be able to turn Reapers into ponies. The Crucible was designed the way it was, made to integrate with the Citadel in a very specific way and alter the Catalyst. The options that resulted from this didn't include "make these specific synthetics this other specific thing, but leave other synthetics alone and organics too" so why assume it's possible? You could say that if the Crucible was worked on more perhaps it could be altered to make specifically targeted changes like that, but then you're arguing about something that doesn't exist in the series, which is pointless.

The Crucible's power isn't that of godhood. Well, again, unless someone's measure of godhood is anything beyond nanomachines. Then, for that person it would seem so. But despite that, the Crucible remains a piece of technology, just like the Reapers (who the geth saw as gods). The Crucible is a far more advanced technology than anything else the current cycle has created, and works in tandem with other far more advanced technology that the current cycle doesn't totally understand either.

Doesn't matter if his brain matter is organic, we don't know what modifications were made to it. But yes, Shepard's survival answers the question of whether Shepard is actually a synthetic life-form at that point or not.

Why would the Reapers or the Citadel be full of human DNA? And why would that even matter? The Reapers are synthetic life-forms. The Crucible obviously affects synthetic life-forms only.

I'm not going to even bother trying to argue about exactly how the Crucible does what it does. We've got the consequences, and the effect Shepard's integration has and nothing else to go on. That's enough to get some understanding, but not enough to get into the real nitty-gritty of it, especially to say with certainty things like 'it releases a virus' or 'just releases an electromagnetic pulse'. That doesn't validate thinking it's power is that of godhood though. It's a mistake to think that because you don't understand something, it's magic.

And that certainly doesn't invalidate the ending either. You used technology you don't completely understand to deal with an enemy you don't completely understand to hopefully end a threat you do completely understand.

@TheHT said:

When did I say anything about a created vs. creator theme? Though that technically exists throughout with all the quarian-geth relations and in ME2 with all the family business, it's not same as synthetics vs. organics. I don't see what makes synthetics vs. organics "one of those meaningless" themes. What makes a theme meaningful and what makes it meaningless? Whether you've recognized it or not? How terribly arbitrary.

Yes, synthetics revering advanced synthetics as gods. You also learn about the quarians and the geth. You learn about how that event shaped galactic law. You learn about their existence shaped Saren's belief that organics could be spared from the harvest. You learn that when the Reapers, no longer having access to the keepers (which they used for millions of years), lost their ace in the hole, the geth (who went to the Reapers) fortuitously compensated for that loss. How could they then have been replaced by the flood and not had an impact on the story?

I don't see how the geth in Mass Effect 1 are 'fodder'. Husks are fodder. Lowly geth troopers are fodder. Standard Cerberus troopers are fodder. The entirety of the geth in Mass Effect 1 are not fodder just like the entirety of the Reaper forces in Mass Effect 3 are not fodder, despite the fodderest of fodder (husks) belonging to that faction.

Try not to overlook the fact that the mere existence of thee geth is not all there is to the theme of synthetics vs. organics. The Mass Effect series is large and deals with lots of things in multiple ways.

What's this about Old Ones? The Reapers were known to be synthetic in Mass Effect 1. Before that, Sovereign was thought to be just a ship. The cycle of harvest was explained in Mass Effect 1. Have you forgotten your talk with Sovereign? Have you forgotten your talk with Vigil?

Replace the geth with something completely different you set of a chain reaction that alters all of the Mass Effect series. You haven't shown how replaced the geth with something else deals with all of these repercussions in ways that result in the same series, nor have you shown how replacing the Reapers or any other synthetic still somehow manages to keep things the same.

@onan said:

Mass Effect 3 had almost nothing to do with synthetics up until Priority: Rannoch. Taken separately, yes, the theme there is the struggle between organics and synthetics, between Created and Creators. It is honestly the ONLY POINT IN THE SERIES that even remotely supports any of what mentioned in the 11th hour exposition dump from the Catalyst. Even then, in the paragon conclusion to the battle, the Paragon themes of unity contradict directly contradict what the Catalyst says.

I was responding to this, but you're right, 'disprove' was too strong a word. Nonetheless, as I did say, what happens on Rannoch in that paragon ending contradicts nothing.

Oh my mistake, you meant synthetics destroying organics was a theme, like the catalyst summarized.

Not "created rebelling against creator." Man, where did I get that poppycock from?

No idea. But weird how one thing he says is meaningful and the other is meaningless. How terribly arbitrary.

Incidentally, the Geth could have been replaced by just a bunch more cloned krogan or rachni and ME1 would have played out almost exactly the same. Or the Flood, or storm troopers. Just more things to shoot. I didn't think it needed explanation because the explanation would be something along the lines of "and nothing happened" because nothing happened with the Geth. Seriously, I don't know how I can explain it more clearly, the Geth do NOTHING in ME1 other than shoot at you. Saren and Sovereign even referred to them as tools. Pretty sure they never even spoke, just electronic growling. Their status as synthetic beings wasn't exploited for plot purposes, they may as well have been feral. The Quarians were a complete non-event in ME1, Tali being an oddity, a unique alien on your ship, serving as a cautionary tale that in this fiction, they were going to avoid using AIs because they open themselves up to too much potential story abuse, much like Battlestar ships used fuel and didn't have teleporters. The Morning War was interesting backstory, but so were the Krogan Rebellions, the First Contact War, the Skyllian Blitz, the Rachni Wars, etc. The geth/quarian conflict was an interesting side thing and didn't factor into the main plot. The fact that you're fighting robots in a sci-fi game is inconsequential because you're fighting robots in a sci-fi game. Yes, it's a tautology, but that's just how sci-fi rolls. Robots are easy enemies. You don't have to explain where they're coming from, or what their motivations are. They're robots programmed to kill you and you should stop worrying about logistics and enjoy the rest of the story.

But hey, let's bring it forward. Convert the Quarian/Geth conflict with the Romulan/Reman conflict, instead of synthetics, it could be a subjugated slave race ejecting their masters from the planet and everything else would be the same except you'd be pointing your gun at things that weren't shiny metal. It wouldn't have changed the Reapers actions. Mass Effect 1 and 2 would have been almost identical, except for the Heretic Base mission. Priority Rannoch would have played out differently. Although honestly, the entire quarian/geth conflict, to me at least, felt like a sci-fi slavery allegory from the moment Legion opened his mouth. (figuratively speaking.)

It's honestly not the story's fault. They had no idea where they were going with this series and it completely shows. Retroactively applying themes with the tiniest bits of connective tissue don't really work. Just look at what happened to Cerberus. In the first game they were a minor terrorist organization, while in ME2 they were large enough and well-funded enough to put the Alliance to shame, along with with completely reworked values, becoming misunderstood heroes with a questionable leader. Seriously, they were something like al Queda in the first game, and then in the second game, they're not only able to easily fund the creation of a next generation prototype F-22 Raptor (A plane cost taxpayers $28 billion to develop and build and that's the planes that aren't classified), they're capable of improving on a joint Turian/human technological venture to such a degree that it dwarfs the original in terms of firepower and scope, and they're STILL not hurting for cash, best in class personnel, they have everything.

Anyway, we're getting into really subjective territory now so there's no point continuing this conversation. Especially since we can't even agree on what themes are spelled out for the player at the end of the game.

@onan said:

@TheHT said:

When did I say anything about a created vs. creator theme? Though that technically exists throughout with all the quarian-geth relations and in ME2 with all the family business, it's not same as synthetics vs. organics. I don't see what makes synthetics vs. organics "one of those meaningless" themes. What makes a theme meaningful and what makes it meaningless? Whether you've recognized it or not? How terribly arbitrary.

Yes, synthetics revering advanced synthetics as gods. You also learn about the quarians and the geth. You learn about how that event shaped galactic law. You learn about their existence shaped Saren's belief that organics could be spared from the harvest. You learn that when the Reapers, no longer having access to the keepers (which they used for millions of years), lost their ace in the hole, the geth (who went to the Reapers) fortuitously compensated for that loss. How could they then have been replaced by the flood and not had an impact on the story?

I don't see how the geth in Mass Effect 1 are 'fodder'. Husks are fodder. Lowly geth troopers are fodder. Standard Cerberus troopers are fodder. The entirety of the geth in Mass Effect 1 are not fodder just like the entirety of the Reaper forces in Mass Effect 3 are not fodder, despite the fodderest of fodder (husks) belonging to that faction.

Try not to overlook the fact that the mere existence of thee geth is not all there is to the theme of synthetics vs. organics. The Mass Effect series is large and deals with lots of things in multiple ways.

What's this about Old Ones? The Reapers were known to be synthetic in Mass Effect 1. Before that, Sovereign was thought to be just a ship. The cycle of harvest was explained in Mass Effect 1. Have you forgotten your talk with Sovereign? Have you forgotten your talk with Vigil?

Replace the geth with something completely different you set of a chain reaction that alters all of the Mass Effect series. You haven't shown how replaced the geth with something else deals with all of these repercussions in ways that result in the same series, nor have you shown how replacing the Reapers or any other synthetic still somehow manages to keep things the same.

@onan said:

Mass Effect 3 had almost nothing to do with synthetics up until Priority: Rannoch. Taken separately, yes, the theme there is the struggle between organics and synthetics, between Created and Creators. It is honestly the ONLY POINT IN THE SERIES that even remotely supports any of what mentioned in the 11th hour exposition dump from the Catalyst. Even then, in the paragon conclusion to the battle, the Paragon themes of unity contradict directly contradict what the Catalyst says.

I was responding to this, but you're right, 'disprove' was too strong a word. Nonetheless, as I did say, what happens on Rannoch in that paragon ending contradicts nothing.

Oh my mistake, you meant synthetics destroying organics was a theme, like the catalyst summarized.

Not "created rebelling against creator." Man, where did I get that poppycock from?

No idea. But weird how one thing he says is meaningful and the other is meaningless. How terribly arbitrary.

Incidentally, the Geth could have been replaced by just a bunch more cloned krogan or rachni and ME1 would have played out almost exactly the same. Or the Flood, or storm troopers. Just more things to shoot. I didn't think it needed explanation because the explanation would be something along the lines of "and nothing happened" because nothing happened with the Geth. Seriously, I don't know how I can explain it more clearly, the Geth do NOTHING in ME1 other than shoot at you. Saren and Sovereign even referred to them as tools. Pretty sure they never even spoke, just electronic growling. Their status as synthetic beings wasn't exploited for plot purposes, they may as well have been feral. The Quarians were a complete non-event in ME1, Tali being an oddity, a unique alien on your ship, serving as a cautionary tale that in this fiction, they were going to avoid using AIs because they open themselves up to too much potential story abuse, much like Battlestar ships used fuel and didn't have teleporters. The Morning War was interesting backstory, but so were the Krogan Rebellions, the First Contact War, the Skyllian Blitz, the Rachni Wars, etc. The geth/quarian conflict was an interesting side thing and didn't factor into the main plot. The fact that you're fighting robots in a sci-fi game is inconsequential because you're fighting robots in a sci-fi game. Yes, it's a tautology, but that's just how sci-fi rolls. Robots are easy enemies. You don't have to explain where they're coming from, or what their motivations are. They're robots programmed to kill you and you should stop worrying about logistics and enjoy the rest of the story.

But hey, let's bring it forward. Convert the Quarian/Geth conflict with the Romulan/Reman conflict, instead of synthetics, it could be a subjugated slave race ejecting their masters from the planet and everything else would be the same except you'd be pointing your gun at things that weren't shiny metal. It wouldn't have changed the Reapers actions. Mass Effect 1 and 2 would have been almost identical, except for the Heretic Base mission. Priority Rannoch would have played out differently. Although honestly, the entire quarian/geth conflict, to me at least, felt like a sci-fi slavery allegory from the moment Legion opened his mouth. (figuratively speaking.)

It's honestly not the story's fault. They had no idea where they were going with this series and it completely shows. Retroactively applying themes with the tiniest bits of connective tissue don't really work. Just look at what happened to Cerberus. In the first game they were a minor terrorist organization, while in ME2 they were large enough and well-funded enough to put the Alliance to shame, along with with completely reworked values, becoming misunderstood heroes with a questionable leader. Seriously, they were something like al Queda in the first game, and then in the second game, they're not only able to easily fund the creation of a next generation prototype F-22 Raptor (A plane cost taxpayers $28 billion to develop and build and that's the planes that aren't classified), they're capable of improving on a joint Turian/human technological venture to such a degree that it dwarfs the original in terms of firepower and scope, and they're STILL not hurting for cash, best in class personnel, they have everything.

Anyway, we're getting into really subjective territory now so there's no point continuing this conversation. Especially since we can't even agree on what themes are spelled out for the player at the end of the game.

I keep injecting myself into this debate when I really shouldn't... But I feel like in you're desire to prove a point you're putting together straw man arguments. Let me reiterate, I agree with your ultimate point, but you have to be very careful about how you phrase your argument because if someone disproves the weakness of the strawman, your argument can be thrown out. You're giving Cerberus far too little credit. If you read the books, you'd know that they have had their hands in a ton of things (the books were written by Karpyshin, one of the original writers of ME). For example, you come to find out that not only can this organization fund major bases, but they can get their people into every type of building. For example, they had people accepted into and experimented on one of the stories bases for training biotic human children. There's also evidence of their reach within the first game, when you find out that they were behind the death of all of Shepard's squadmates (if you went with lone survivor). Comparing them to an unfunded terrorist group is dishonest. Talking about how their morality seems to have changed between game 1 and 2 is more understandable, but if you read the book right after ME2, you'll see that their morality has always been about following the Illusive Man's vision (also written by Karpyshyn).

Again, I agree that the story was put together weakly because of having to go back and fix things, but this happens all the time. Hell, even Battlestar Galactica had this problem. I feel like just as with Battlestar Galactica, there will always be holes in the plot if the story is not completely planned out in advance; however, if the characters are memorable and enjoyable enough, we'll suspend disbelief a little bit more. Obviously, some people are more willing to suspend disbelief than others.

In all of this, what drives me up a wall is that ME3 is ranked lower than Syndicate on Amazon because of the over-reaction of gamers to the ending. Why this angers me is because people make purchasing decisions when a game has two and a half stars. I know that BioWare should be made aware of their misstep with how they handled the ending. What I don't agree with is saying that Mass Effect 3 was worse than Syndicate. I've played Syndicate. I really enjoyed Syndicate. In fact, I'm playing Syndicate right now (if you see me on XBL in the lobby, join my syndicate, I just need a few hundred more syndicate heals/reboots/saviors to get 100%). I would not say that I enjoyed Syndicate more than Mass Effect 3. The attention to plot details for Syndicate are not even on the same level as half of the compendium for Mass Effect 3 (okay, maybe Syndicate has some decent backstory text, but here's my trump card - Mordin). Yet people are going to make purchasing decisions based on the Amazon score. And we're going to lose out on some excellent games because we're going to have control of a smaller share of the market.

tl;dr version: Cerberus was not that weak, even in the first game. The ending was poorly written, but so are the endings for a lot of well-loved sci-fi epics in which the creators had no expectation of the ultimate success of the epic. Saying the ending of the game makes the entire game far worse than other games does a disservice to us as gamers because it will ultimately limit our options.

@Sgykah: "Always" is a very weird word with this franchise. I actually started replaying ME1, and Cerberus is a very minor player in the events of the game. The culmination of the Cerberus stuff in ME1 was them kidnapping a military officer and feeding him to some wild rachni they were experimenting on. The Illusive man wasn't even conceptualized until work began on what would become ME2, and of course Karpyshyn being both in charge of the ME2 story and writing his own supporting fiction worked it all in. Overnight, Cerberus basically turned into Section 31 from DS9, a shadow government that would do anything to protect human lives.

I don't mind any of this, the backwards rationalizations and "slap it together as we go" because the characters make it worth going along for the ride.

By now most people realistically know both that amazon reviews are generally ways to evangelize and protest, and also if they're going to buy ME3 or not. Those people who had no interest in the story up until now are only showing up because people are playing the multiplayer, and the reviews are all very clearly about the single-player, which, as the achievement lists for players in CoD lobbies can attest to, isn't something they give a shit at all about.

Let's also not go down the rabbit hole of comparing one game's star rating against another's star rating because it never really lines up and makes all of these bizarre parallels between games you otherwise would have never compared.

edit: According to the ME Wiki, Cerberus went from a rogue black ops group in ME1 to an organization funded by a lucrative aerospace front company and started by a charismatic leader with what turn out to be reaper augmentations. I suspect they did that in order to give renegade players a chance to act out, since working for the alliance really favored Paragon play in ME1. It meshed with the tones of play quite well. Paragons were about unity and working together, Renegades were about getting things done yourself, and the indomitable nature of humanity. The Alliance needed a counterpoint and Cerberus was the closest thing to fitting the bill.

Again, totally cool with the retcon. I still really enjoyed the series and ME2 was amazing.

The Crucible's power isn't that of godhood. Well, again, unless someone's measure of godhood is anything beyond nanomachines

Why would the Reapers or the Citadel be full of human DNA?

The Crucible obviously affects synthetic life-forms only.

@Winternet said:

People should either burn this thread or put it on a pedestal and start worshiping it.

Am I allowed to vote for pedestal?

@Tennmuerti said:

@TheHT said:

The Crucible's power isn't that of godhood. Well, again, unless someone's measure of godhood is anything beyond nanomachines

At this point you are deliberately and actively ignoring the points I have made. (and reading further you are continuing to ignore them just as frequently and twisting others)
Nor do you even begin to grasp either the sheer ludicrous amount of power, technology, precision levels that a required to perform something akin to the green ending.
Likewise I see you completely missed the entire point being made as to why such sheer capability is bad, such all solving deus ex machina.

I don't mind arguing and doing the mental dance, but when I can clearly see the person i'm arguing with is simply ignoring what I said, or in other cases twisting what I said it's no longer a debate, there are only 2 predominantly possible explanations for this either a it is done very deliberaetly like this by a smart person who will just continue to misinterpret everythig on purpose to twist every which way , or it's all just going over your head, like a /woosh.

Why would the Reapers or the Citadel be full of human DNA?

Here I'm starting to suspect the second explanation.

The Crucible obviously affects synthetic life-forms only.

And here. Therefore I don't see a point in arguing further. Sorry.

It's not just you. The HT does that with all of us.

@onan said:

@TheHT said:

When did I say anything about a created vs. creator theme? Though that technically exists throughout with all the quarian-geth relations and in ME2 with all the family business, it's not same as synthetics vs. organics. I don't see what makes synthetics vs. organics "one of those meaningless" themes. What makes a theme meaningful and what makes it meaningless? Whether you've recognized it or not? How terribly arbitrary.

Yes, synthetics revering advanced synthetics as gods. You also learn about the quarians and the geth. You learn about how that event shaped galactic law. You learn about their existence shaped Saren's belief that organics could be spared from the harvest. You learn that when the Reapers, no longer having access to the keepers (which they used for millions of years), lost their ace in the hole, the geth (who went to the Reapers) fortuitously compensated for that loss. How could they then have been replaced by the flood and not had an impact on the story?

I don't see how the geth in Mass Effect 1 are 'fodder'. Husks are fodder. Lowly geth troopers are fodder. Standard Cerberus troopers are fodder. The entirety of the geth in Mass Effect 1 are not fodder just like the entirety of the Reaper forces in Mass Effect 3 are not fodder, despite the fodderest of fodder (husks) belonging to that faction.

Try not to overlook the fact that the mere existence of thee geth is not all there is to the theme of synthetics vs. organics. The Mass Effect series is large and deals with lots of things in multiple ways.

What's this about Old Ones? The Reapers were known to be synthetic in Mass Effect 1. Before that, Sovereign was thought to be just a ship. The cycle of harvest was explained in Mass Effect 1. Have you forgotten your talk with Sovereign? Have you forgotten your talk with Vigil?

Replace the geth with something completely different you set of a chain reaction that alters all of the Mass Effect series. You haven't shown how replaced the geth with something else deals with all of these repercussions in ways that result in the same series, nor have you shown how replacing the Reapers or any other synthetic still somehow manages to keep things the same.

@onan said:

Mass Effect 3 had almost nothing to do with synthetics up until Priority: Rannoch. Taken separately, yes, the theme there is the struggle between organics and synthetics, between Created and Creators. It is honestly the ONLY POINT IN THE SERIES that even remotely supports any of what mentioned in the 11th hour exposition dump from the Catalyst. Even then, in the paragon conclusion to the battle, the Paragon themes of unity contradict directly contradict what the Catalyst says.

I was responding to this, but you're right, 'disprove' was too strong a word. Nonetheless, as I did say, what happens on Rannoch in that paragon ending contradicts nothing.

Oh my mistake, you meant synthetics destroying organics was a theme, like the catalyst summarized.

Not "created rebelling against creator." Man, where did I get that poppycock from?

No idea. But weird how one thing he says is meaningful and the other is meaningless. How terribly arbitrary.

Incidentally, the Geth could have been replaced by just a bunch more cloned krogan or rachni and ME1 would have played out almost exactly the same. Or the Flood, or storm troopers. Just more things to shoot. I didn't think it needed explanation because the explanation would be something along the lines of "and nothing happened" because nothing happened with the Geth. Seriously, I don't know how I can explain it more clearly, the Geth do NOTHING in ME1 other than shoot at you. Saren and Sovereign even referred to them as tools. Pretty sure they never even spoke, just electronic growling. Their status as synthetic beings wasn't exploited for plot purposes, they may as well have been feral. The Quarians were a complete non-event in ME1, Tali being an oddity, a unique alien on your ship, serving as a cautionary tale that in this fiction, they were going to avoid using AIs because they open themselves up to too much potential story abuse, much like Battlestar ships used fuel and didn't have teleporters. The Morning War was interesting backstory, but so were the Krogan Rebellions, the First Contact War, the Skyllian Blitz, the Rachni Wars, etc. The geth/quarian conflict was an interesting side thing and didn't factor into the main plot. The fact that you're fighting robots in a sci-fi game is inconsequential because you're fighting robots in a sci-fi game. Yes, it's a tautology, but that's just how sci-fi rolls. Robots are easy enemies. You don't have to explain where they're coming from, or what their motivations are. They're robots programmed to kill you and you should stop worrying about logistics and enjoy the rest of the story.

But hey, let's bring it forward. Convert the Quarian/Geth conflict with the Romulan/Reman conflict, instead of synthetics, it could be a subjugated slave race ejecting their masters from the planet and everything else would be the same except you'd be pointing your gun at things that weren't shiny metal. It wouldn't have changed the Reapers actions. Mass Effect 1 and 2 would have been almost identical, except for the Heretic Base mission. Priority Rannoch would have played out differently. Although honestly, the entire quarian/geth conflict, to me at least, felt like a sci-fi slavery allegory from the moment Legion opened his mouth. (figuratively speaking.)

It's honestly not the story's fault. They had no idea where they were going with this series and it completely shows. Retroactively applying themes with the tiniest bits of connective tissue don't really work. Just look at what happened to Cerberus. In the first game they were a minor terrorist organization, while in ME2 they were large enough and well-funded enough to put the Alliance to shame, along with with completely reworked values, becoming misunderstood heroes with a questionable leader. Seriously, they were something like al Queda in the first game, and then in the second game, they're not only able to easily fund the creation of a next generation prototype F-22 Raptor (A plane cost taxpayers $28 billion to develop and build and that's the planes that aren't classified), they're capable of improving on a joint Turian/human technological venture to such a degree that it dwarfs the original in terms of firepower and scope, and they're STILL not hurting for cash, best in class personnel, they have everything.

Anyway, we're getting into really subjective territory now so there's no point continuing this conversation. Especially since we can't even agree on what themes are spelled out for the player at the end of the game.

No, not arbitrary. Your mistake was thinking I was getting the theme from the last 10 minutes. And I never said anything about themes of synthetics destroying organics. Synthetics vs. organics. Their relationship. How they compare and contrast, where they align and clash, in this world. If you had read my posts in their entirety you should have figured the 'vs.' wasn't simply a synonym for 'fighting' and even if you did, that's not the same as destruction. And none of all that is the same as a theme of creator vs. created. So yeah, I don't know where you got that poppycock from either. Wasn't from me.

Hm? What's this about sci-fi and robots? You're not being serious are you? That's actually kinda funny. And I thought your sense of humour was merely reliant on scouring the internet for 'funny' images and videos.

Anyways, you're just repeating yourself without taking into account where I refute your claims. Particularly:

Yes, synthetics revering advanced synthetics as gods. You also learn about the quarians and the geth. You learn about how that event shaped galactic law. You learn about their existence shaped Saren's belief that organics could be spared from the harvest. You learn that when the Reapers, no longer having access to the keepers (which they used for millions of years), lost their ace in the hole, the geth (who went to the Reapers) fortuitously compensated for that loss.

None of that would happen as it did with romulans. Or remans. Whichever is meant to be the geth analog. But first some corrections. Apparently Sovereign approached the geth, the thought being that controlling synthetics is easier than controlling organics. So the geth did not seek out Sovereign. Coincidentally, this works in favour of my argument.

There wouldn't be any brash decision to kill their creations when they got too smart (which would end up affecting quarian mentality towards synthetics as well as other aspects of their society). There wouldn't be any outlawing of artificial intelligence. There wouldn't be a group of geth who worship Reapers as the apex of synthetic being who would then be approached by Sovereign because they were synthetic and made into its army. Sovereign wouldn't then use the geth to muscle their way to an alternative means of bringing the Reapers from dark space as well as a tool for preparing for their coming. Saren wouldn't then be inspired by the geth to prove that organics could be put to use by the Reapers, and spared from destruction. And that's only the things from Mass Effect 1. The geth are important and can't just be replaced with romulans or remans.

Also, before I forget, you've yet to explain how replacing other synthetics would work. Other synthetics like, you know, the Reapers.

I don't agree with the slavery allegory, but I see how you could make that connection, and it's definitely an interesting one.

The theme was there in the first game, and they only built upon it in the later games. The same goes for Cerberus. They were just some shadowy extreme pro-human xenophobic terrorist organization. In Mass Effect 2, they're the ones that save your ass, and your experience with them is all in line with the little you know of them from Mass Effect 1. I don't see where they would fit in elsewhere in the first game. You're an alliance soldier, the first human spectre, on some serious spectre business that has nothing to do with them. They only really enter the fray in Mass Effect 2. Just because you don't see much of them doesn't mean they're insignificant in the game universe at that point.

@Tennmuerti said:

@TheHT said:

The Crucible's power isn't that of godhood. Well, again, unless someone's measure of godhood is anything beyond nanomachines

At this point you are deliberately and actively ignoring the points I have made. (and reading further you are continuing to ignore them just as frequently and twisting others)
Nor do you even begin to grasp either the sheer ludicrous amount of power, technology, precision levels that a required to perform something akin to the green ending.
Likewise I see you completely missed the entire point being made as to why such sheer capability is bad, such all solving deus ex machina.

I don't mind arguing and doing the mental dance, but when I can clearly see the person i'm arguing with is simply ignoring what I said, or in other cases twisting what I said it's no longer a debate, there are only 2 predominantly possible explanations for this either a it is done very deliberaetly like this by a smart person who will just continue to misinterpret everythig on purpose to twist every which way , or it's all just going over your head, like a /woosh.

Why would the Reapers or the Citadel be full of human DNA?

Here I'm starting to suspect the second explanation.

The Crucible obviously affects synthetic life-forms only.

And here. Therefore I don't see a point in arguing further. Sorry.

Curious. What did I twist? I assure you, I'm not responding maliciously.

My point is that measures of godhood are constantly being pushed back. Fire, atom-splitting, faster-than-light travel, creating synthetic life. At some point all of these things were seen as being near godhood, but the advancements life-forms contineu to make continue to never really reach the power of gods. The Crucible is no different here. All that changes for these things to stop being considered magic is your frame of reference. Just so, the Crucible is just another piece of technology, not something that's actually close to omnipotence.

There's something I failed to mention in my earlier response: the process of synthesis doesn't occur simultaneously across the galaxy.

As for what's required for the Crucible to work, I've already said I wouldn't get into the nitty gritty of the Crucible. We simply don't know enough about it, let alone the Citadel and mass relay system it makes use of, to make claims about the specifics of its engineering.

I don't see what the problem is with my questions. You made a statement:

@Tennmuerti said:

If Shepard sacrifices himself/herself the resulting amalgamation extends the Crucible's reach to organics too, and repeats that combination for all organics and synthetics.
Simple. That minor addition to the Crucible's energy changed it.

Nice lets change what is effectively an EMP distribution device or a viral distribution device into something that can alter matter at whim instantly on billions of stars, with pretty much disregard for basic physical laws such as energy conservation principles.
Just add some DNA to the beam, simple. Woooooo!(not that the Reapers themselves aren't full of human DNA already or even the Citadel itself) (If you are going to argue that the Crucible+Catalyst are not emp/viral device and could already alter matter, then sorry DNA addition is bollocks, it's un needed, matter manipulation on cellular level to all flora, founa, bacteria etc hinges on an near infinite amount of varied DNA, and basic samples are in any random bacteria) Now lets take off our pants, get some acid and start tripping balls! /facepalm OH COME ON!

And I asked for clarification.

Or is that what you consider twisting words? Pointing out peculiar things you say and asking for clarification? Well that would be peculiar in and of itself. If that's the case then if you ever meet a sophist, I suggest you run. They'll melt your tender mind.

@Lord_Punch: Hey guy. For your consideration:

@TheHT said:

@Lord_Punch said:

@TheHT said:

@Lord_Punch said:

@TheHT said:

It was the magical blending of the two that made the 3 choices possible. It wasn't only The Crucible nor only The Catalyst.

Right, so without the Crucible, that technological interaction wouldn't have occured. Organics designed the Crucible and used it on the Catalyst. Organics, the very beings who lives are at stake, through their actions and decisions, their will and determination, brought about an event (that technological interaction) that resulted in 3 choices for Shepard, each of which end of the Reaper threat. Whether they knew what it would do is irrelevant when determining responsibility. They had a tool they believed would end the threat, and it did.

As for your analogy, the kitchen manufacturer is those who first created the Crucible's designs. The killer is the organics of this cycle, particularly Shepard. The knife is the Crucible and the victims are the Reaper threat. Those who first created the Crucible's designs may not be immediately responsible for this cycle's use of it to eliminate of the Reaper threat, but the organics of this cycle, particularly Shepard, are.

TheHT, this is the last time I will respond to you. If you want to know why, look no futher than the final paragraph that I have quoted from you. You managed to take a simple analogy and overcomplicate it to the point of barely resembling what it originally represented.

And that's been your whole debate style throughout this entire thread. You jump through a million logic loopholes so that your point of view can make a semblance of sense, and you act like the more simple and direct explanations are unfounded and wrong.

Good day! Glad you enjoyed the ending.

I'm sorry if I seem to be needlessly complicating my responses. I'm not familiar with any logic loopholes. Where have I used a logical loophole to make something make sense instead of just using mere logic?

I didn't alter your analogy in any way. You didn't state what the elements of the analogy represented, so I filled in your blanks and found your analogy to actually work against you. No loopholes involved duder. Even though it's kind of irrelevant at this point since you've essentially agreed that the ending was not just at the behest of the Catalsyt as your original statement claimed, I'll try and present it simpler for you:

@Lord_Punch said:

That's like holding the manufacturer for kitchen cutlery responsible is someone kills a few people with one of their knives.

So the killer is responsible for killing the victims with the knife, not the manufacturer of theknife.

The "organics of this cycle" are the "killers", the "Reaper threat" is the "victim", the "manufacturer of the knife" is the "those who first created the Crucible's designs", and the "knife" is the "Crucible".

So the organics of this cycle are responsible for killing the Reaper threat with the Crucible, not those who frist created the Crucible's designs.

Your original statement was that the ending only exists at the behest of the Catalyst, ultimately denying any responsibility to the organics. Using your own analogy, that is not the case. Or did you mean something else by "manufactuer", "someone", "few people", and "knives"?

@Lord_Punch said:

@Winternet said:

People should either burn this thread or put it on a pedestal and start worshiping it.

Am I allowed to vote for pedestal?

You are free to choose. Without choice, you're nothing more than a machine.

@Tennmuerti said:

@TheHT said:

The Crucible's power isn't that of godhood. Well, again, unless someone's measure of godhood is anything beyond nanomachines

At this point you are deliberately and actively ignoring the points I have made. (and reading further you are continuing to ignore them just as frequently and twisting others)
Nor do you even begin to grasp either the sheer ludicrous amount of power, technology, precision levels that a required to perform something akin to the green ending.
Likewise I see you completely missed the entire point being made as to why such sheer capability is bad, such all solving deus ex machina.

I don't mind arguing and doing the mental dance, but when I can clearly see the person i'm arguing with is simply ignoring what I said, or in other cases twisting what I said it's no longer a debate, there are only 2 predominantly possible explanations for this either a it is done very deliberaetly like this by a smart person who will just continue to misinterpret everythig on purpose to twist every which way , or it's all just going over your head, like a /woosh.

Why would the Reapers or the Citadel be full of human DNA?

Here I'm starting to suspect the second explanation.

The Crucible obviously affects synthetic life-forms only.

And here. Therefore I don't see a point in arguing further. Sorry.

Curious. What did I twist? I assure you, I'm not responding maliciously.

My point is that measures of godhood are constantly being pushed back. Fire, atom-splitting, faster-than-light travel, creating synthetic life. At some point all of these things were seen as being near godhood, but the advancements life-forms contineu to make continue to never really reach the power of gods. The Crucible is no different here. All that changes for these things to stop being considered magic is your frame of reference. Just so, the Crucible is just another piece of technology, not something that's actually close to omnipotence.

There's something I failed to mention in my earlier response: the process of synthesis doesn't occur simultaneously across the galaxy.

As for what's required for the Crucible to work, I've already said I wouldn't get into the nitty gritty of the Crucible. We simply don't know enough about it, let alone the Citadel and mass relay system it makes use of, to make claims about the specifics of its engineering.

I don't see what the problem is with my questions. You made a statement:

@Tennmuerti said:

If Shepard sacrifices himself/herself the resulting amalgamation extends the Crucible's reach to organics too, and repeats that combination for all organics and synthetics.
Simple. That minor addition to the Crucible's energy changed it.

Nice lets change what is effectively an EMP distribution device or a viral distribution device into something that can alter matter at whim instantly on billions of stars, with pretty much disregard for basic physical laws such as energy conservation principles.
Just add some DNA to the beam, simple. Woooooo!(not that the Reapers themselves aren't full of human DNA already or even the Citadel itself) (If you are going to argue that the Crucible+Catalyst are not emp/viral device and could already alter matter, then sorry DNA addition is bollocks, it's un needed, matter manipulation on cellular level to all flora, founa, bacteria etc hinges on an near infinite amount of varied DNA, and basic samples are in any random bacteria) Now lets take off our pants, get some acid and start tripping balls! /facepalm OH COME ON!

And I asked for clarification.

Or is that what you consider twisting words? Pointing out peculiar things you say and asking for clarification? Well that would be peculiar in and of itself. If that's the case then if you ever meet a sophist, I suggest you run. They'll melt your tender mind.

Evil didn't win Shepard won the fight, the reapers lose through each of shepards choice. 1 he destroys the reapers, mass effect tech gets destroyed, galaxy gets isolated until some one builds new mass effect gates. 2 he becomes the reapers through assimilation and thus changes their main objective, they stop destroying galaxy and leave the races to grow into what ever they will be and to creat possible new machines that could end up being new future style reapers, mass effect tech survives galaxy grows by organics choices. 3 synthesis shepard becomes the original creator of the reapers thus changes everything, they have now to protect all life as they take on mankind and shepards ideals that all life is precious. Galaxy keeps mass effect tech and gains reapers as guardians of all life be it organic or synthetic.

@aspaceinvader said:

Evil didn't win Shepard won the fight, the reapers lose through each of shepards choice. 1 he destroys the reapers, mass effect tech gets destroyed, galaxy gets isolated until some one builds new mass effect gates. 2 he becomes the reapers through assimilation and thus changes their main objective, they stop destroying galaxy and leave the races to grow into what ever they will be and to creat possible new machines that could end up being new future style reapers, mass effect tech survives galaxy grows by organics choices. 3 synthesis shepard becomes the original creator of the reapers thus changes everything, they have now to protect all life as they take on mankind and shepards ideals that all life is precious. Galaxy keeps mass effect tech and gains reapers as guardians of all life be it organic or synthetic.

You're missing the point.

The Catalyst CHOSE to bring Shepard up to meet it. The Catalyst DECIDED to tell Shepard that he/she must choose between the 3 choices which all have terrible consequences for the universe at large.

Shepard did nothing heroic. He/She didn't win. Shepard did what he/she was TOLD to do by the same intelligence that is responsible for the murders of entire civilizations, including several million human beings.

Have you seen the movie, Se7en? What I'm describing is similar to what happens between Detective Mills and John Doe in the end of that film.

@Tennmuerti said:

@TheHT said:

@Tennmuerti said:

@TheHT said:

The Crucible's power isn't that of godhood. Well, again, unless someone's measure of godhood is anything beyond nanomachines

At this point you are deliberately and actively ignoring the points I have made. (and reading further you are continuing to ignore them just as frequently and twisting others)
Nor do you even begin to grasp either the sheer ludicrous amount of power, technology, precision levels that a required to perform something akin to the green ending.
Likewise I see you completely missed the entire point being made as to why such sheer capability is bad, such all solving deus ex machina.

I don't mind arguing and doing the mental dance, but when I can clearly see the person i'm arguing with is simply ignoring what I said, or in other cases twisting what I said it's no longer a debate, there are only 2 predominantly possible explanations for this either a it is done very deliberaetly like this by a smart person who will just continue to misinterpret everythig on purpose to twist every which way , or it's all just going over your head, like a /woosh.

Why would the Reapers or the Citadel be full of human DNA?

Here I'm starting to suspect the second explanation.

The Crucible obviously affects synthetic life-forms only.

And here. Therefore I don't see a point in arguing further. Sorry.

Curious. What did I twist? I assure you, I'm not responding maliciously.

My point is that measures of godhood are constantly being pushed back. Fire, atom-splitting, faster-than-light travel, creating synthetic life. At some point all of these things were seen as being near godhood, but the advancements life-forms contineu to make continue to never really reach the power of gods. The Crucible is no different here. All that changes for these things to stop being considered magic is your frame of reference. Just so, the Crucible is just another piece of technology, not something that's actually close to omnipotence.

There's something I failed to mention in my earlier response: the process of synthesis doesn't occur simultaneously across the galaxy.

As for what's required for the Crucible to work, I've already said I wouldn't get into the nitty gritty of the Crucible. We simply don't know enough about it, let alone the Citadel and mass relay system it makes use of, to make claims about the specifics of its engineering.

I don't see what the problem is with my questions. You made a statement:

@Tennmuerti said:

If Shepard sacrifices himself/herself the resulting amalgamation extends the Crucible's reach to organics too, and repeats that combination for all organics and synthetics.
Simple. That minor addition to the Crucible's energy changed it.

Nice lets change what is effectively an EMP distribution device or a viral distribution device into something that can alter matter at whim instantly on billions of stars, with pretty much disregard for basic physical laws such as energy conservation principles.
Just add some DNA to the beam, simple. Woooooo!(not that the Reapers themselves aren't full of human DNA already or even the Citadel itself) (If you are going to argue that the Crucible+Catalyst are not emp/viral device and could already alter matter, then sorry DNA addition is bollocks, it's un needed, matter manipulation on cellular level to all flora, founa, bacteria etc hinges on an near infinite amount of varied DNA, and basic samples are in any random bacteria) Now lets take off our pants, get some acid and start tripping balls! /facepalm OH COME ON!

And I asked for clarification.

Or is that what you consider twisting words? Pointing out peculiar things you say and asking for clarification? Well that would be peculiar in and of itself. If that's the case then if you ever meet a sophist, I suggest you run. They'll melt your tender mind.

Ah further insults on my tender mind.
How novel.

Yet you continue to miss the point of the crucible's power/capability and why such is detrimental to the narative. Still not even grasping the techological or scientific concepts involved.Why would Reapers and the Citadel be full of human DNA? Seriously? What do you think they have been doing the entire game? Harvesting humans. Where are they storing it, in buckets? And the Citadel itself has a huge human population not to mention a room full of corpses you pass.How does this even need to be explained?

Funny how you assume that that question is what I refered to as twisting my words, when they were very clearly pointed out for a different matter entirely. And try to use it as an insult, ouch.Yep i'm going with the second option. /woosh

Ah there i go arguing again, even tho i said there wasn't point, my mistake.

Is that an admission to having a tender mind?

Well than please, explain again why the Crucible is detrimental to the narrative, and by all means try to tell me how it actually works. I've already invited you to do the latter. I've already went into how the Crucible isn't near godhood, but since you seem to have moved past the godhood business too, what's this narrative problem that remains?

Oh I see, you meant literally holding humans matter? Or am I misunderstanding your non-answer? I thought your original vague and unrelated statement suggested that the Reapers themselves have organic DNA woven into their being, which is why I said they're just synthetic life-forms. Whether the Reapers have human remains onboard doesn't matter though, since they're not initiating the reaction to the Crucible, so again, why does that matter?

The Citadel absolutely has human corpses. So what? Would you have Shepard go back and toss Anderson's body in the Crucible's energy? OK, but again, so what?

You assumed that I assumed that's what you were referring to. I only presented a possibility and responded to it, all the while recognizing it could very well not be the case. Perhaps what I'm doing right now you consider twisting words? If that is in fact the case, then my alleged twisting is just a matter of understanding words. Funny how something so rudimentary to communication takes on a negative connotation when it works against you.

Also, maybe think about lightening up? This is far from serious business, and my light jabs shouldn't be as bothersome to you as they seem to have been.

@Lord_Punch said:

@aspaceinvader said:

Evil didn't win Shepard won the fight, the reapers lose through each of shepards choice. 1 he destroys the reapers, mass effect tech gets destroyed, galaxy gets isolated until some one builds new mass effect gates. 2 he becomes the reapers through assimilation and thus changes their main objective, they stop destroying galaxy and leave the races to grow into what ever they will be and to creat possible new machines that could end up being new future style reapers, mass effect tech survives galaxy grows by organics choices. 3 synthesis shepard becomes the original creator of the reapers thus changes everything, they have now to protect all life as they take on mankind and shepards ideals that all life is precious. Galaxy keeps mass effect tech and gains reapers as guardians of all life be it organic or synthetic.

You're missing the point.

The Catalyst CHOSE to bring Shepard up to meet it. The Catalyst DECIDED to tell Shepard that he/she must choose between the 3 choices which all have terrible consequences for the universe at large.

Shepard did nothing heroic. He/She didn't win. Shepard did what he/she was TOLD to do by the same intelligence that is responsible for the murders of entire civilizations, including several million human beings.

Have you seen the movie, Se7en? What I'm describing is similar to what happens between Detective Mills and John Doe in the end of that film.

You've already made that argument and then denied it:

@TheHT said:

@Lord_Punch said:

@TheHT said:

@Lord_Punch said:

@Enigma777 said:

@Lord_Punch said:

@Enigma777 said:

@Lord_Punch said:

This is the essence of my issue with the ending. Shepard may have stopped the Reapers, but it was at the behest of the same evil intelligence that created, enacted, and controlled them. It wasn't Shepard's actions or decisions that led to their demise. It wasn't the will of the organics nor the synthetics whose lives are at stake. It was the Catalyst Child. It decided to stop the Reaper Cycle, and instructs Shepard on how to wreak devastation upon the universe in order to reach his/her goal of stopping them for good.

You answered your own question:

@Lord_Punch said:

Catalyst: "The Crucible changed me. Created...new possibilities. I know you've thought about destroying us. You can wipe out all synthetic life if you want. Including the Geth. Even you are partly synthetic."

I don't see what you are getting at.

Who built the Crucible? Organics (and Shepard).

Ergo the ending was a direct result of Shepard's actions and will.

Everyone worked together to construct The Crucible as a weapon to use against the Reapers. They could not have intended nor predicted that it would interact with an unknown intelligence and create the 3 solutions presented to us.

So then you agree that the 3 solutions come from the Crucible, not the Catalyst.

It was the magical blending of the two that made the 3 choices possible. It wasn't only The Crucible nor only The Catalyst.

Right, so without the Crucible, that technological interaction wouldn't have occured. Organics designed the Crucible and used it on the Catalyst. Organics, the very beings who lives are at stake, through their actions and decisions, their will and determination, brought about an event (that technological interaction) that resulted in 3 choices for Shepard, each of which end of the Reaper threat. Whether they knew what it would do is irrelevant when determining responsibility. They had a tool they believed would end the threat, and it did.

Well than please, explain again why the Crucible is detrimental to the narrative

  I've already went into how the Crucible isn't near godhood

I only presented a possibility and responded to it, all the while recognizing it could very well not be the case.