kadayi

@feliciano182 said:

For my part, I loved the destruction of the Mass Relays, it highlighted the sheer cost that had to be paid for the war to end, and that has always been something Mass Effect did better than most modern Sci-Fi stories, it made the serious, committed, attempt at letting it's audience know that the races of the galaxy were at war, and that the consequences of such a conflict would resonate forever after it ended, to pretend one can walk cleanly and unscathed from a war (as most of the people who disliked the ending thought was the case) is believing in something that was never going to happen in Mass Effect 3.

The problem is they essentially set up in ME2 DLC 'Arrival' that blowing a relay will cause a supernova. You're on trial for that very 'crime' at the beginning of the game having wiped out an entire Batarian colony in the game as a consequence.

@haggis said:

"The Catalysts job was to come up with a solution to preserve life (keep the galactic peace) at whatever cost..."

That's the problem, then, isn't it? I think we're reading this differently. Tribute, harvest. I see these things being different sides of the same coin.

Whom exactly do you think your kidding at this point in time Haggis? Interpretation of tribute? Lets see: -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribute

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/tribute?s=t

http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/tribute?showCookiePolicy=true

Tribute has a very specific meaning. The Harvest is not collecting tribute. The harvest is the catalysts 'solution' to stopping organics from wiping themselves out when they reach a certain technological level by preserving them in reaper form.

"That's not an adequate answer, it's a poor excuse...There is absolutely no justification for the Catalyst relinquishing control of any of the systems it has built around the trap and placing it's fate solely in the hands of remote agents like Sovereign. Give it up already."

You haven't offered any reason to. You're not actually making an argument as to why this is inadequate. You just keep stomping your feet. Give me a reason to change my mind, and I will. The trap works. So far as we know, it has never not worked. And as I've said, the Catalyst's habit is to not exercise direct control. Let's say, I'm in a house. I know I might be attacked. On the other side of the room, I have a gun. Right next to me, I have a wrench. I hear someone banging on the door. I'll just go over and get my gun. But you keep saying, "You've got that wrench right there! Why didn't you pick it up and use that!" That's basically how I'm seeing this argument. I know you don't agree, and that's fine, but you're not offering a reason for me to think of it differently.

But it's not a case that you need to go get the gun is it? The gun in the form of a body guard (Sovereign) has to come to you (distance/time), and given it's entirely possible that said gun man might get waylaid or even taken out by the attackers before getting to you in time, it makes perfect sense that you'd have a second line of defense on hand.

Then how did the Catalyst destroy the Leviathans the first time, without any Reapers at all? And one Reaper nearly took out the combined fleets of several of the largest intelligent races. Truth is, we have no idea how the Catalyst destroyed the Leviathans--but we know that it did actually do it, which makes your doubt about its abilities unconvincing. If the Leviathans are as powerful as you suggest, they would never have lost the first time. But they did--badly.

I'd mark that particular conundrum (chicken Vs egg) down to Biowares ill considered retcon writing tbh. However there's no doubting the fact that in the DLC the leviathans quite clearly take out the reaper at the end and took out the one at Dis as well . At a guess I'd say given the enormity of time between the first harvest and the events of ME3 the Leviathans have evolved and become much much stronger than their ancestors, and are now more than a match for them. Certainly not enough to overwhelm the current reaper force given the weight of numbers they'd face, but clearly more than capable of taking them one on one.

And with that, I'm done. Partly because I don't think you have an answer (which is fine, really, since this was always going to be an endless debate), but mostly because you're being a prick. I'm really trying to understand what other people didn't like about the ending, and all I'm really getting is this stuff about Keepers, and stuff that really doesn't seem to matter. It was interesting at first, but now it's tedious. Thanks for the chat--I actually did enjoy a good bit of it.

I'm many things, but I'm certainly not a blind apologist for piss poor writing, but yes no run along now.

Dark Souls. 204 hours logged. That game consumed me for a good few months, and it's still not remotely finished because I'm a serial restarter and love exploring/trying out different things.

@Slag said:

But what I was trying to get at is that is their problem, not ours. We've got other options for opinions and given how vast the internet is there is undoubtedly somebody out there willing to be intellectually honest about how ME3's ending was deservedly a letdown.

You'd think so, but the hard reality is up until the recent Bombcast and railing on the ending by Brad & Patrick there's been very little from the actual gaming press as far as I'm aware.

@MildMolasses said:

This is part of the reason why I don't understood people's objection to it being more accessible. Didn't most people just turn to the internet to help them through the game?

Yeah I'm not against it in truth. I love Dark Souls (200+ hours clocked) but it could definitely of done with a bit more guidance in the early stages as to what is going on. I've been extolling it's virtues to lots of my friends but very few of them have shown interest because by on large the broader impression they have is its intimidatingly hard and no one wants to throw money at a game that might prove to be beyond them.

@CrunchbiteJr said:

RIP The Brodeo.

This. Also The best Hero of the web ever (Halo 3): -

@haggis said:

The Leviathans did intend the other races to be harvested, just not completely--but that contradicts your earlier assertion that there was no part way, that it was either complete or not.

No they didn't.

Skip to the around the 6.30 mark for the conversational stuff. There's nothing in there about the Leviathans wanting to harvest other species whatsoever (they wanted tribute in the same way that the Romans wanted tribute from its conquered subjects). They didn't want their thralls to keep annihilating themselves as always seemed to happen whenever any of them developed advanced AI. The Catalysts job was to come up with a solution to preserve life (keep the galactic peace) at whatever cost and it came up with the idea of the cycle and the Leviathans were it's first harvest. Please do continue to spout complete nonsense that fly in the face of the actual games footage though....

And as I said, the question of the keepers isn't all that important, but I have offered an answer (which you still haven't responded to): that the AI basically sees the Keepers as unimportant custodians of the Citadel. They do their job, do it well, and don't need interference. No one controls them, they just do the job they were programmed to do. And what is this werewolf you keep talking about?

That's not an adequate answer, it's a poor excuse. The citadel is the integral part of the catalysts trap. Cycle after cycle galactic civilizations have been lured into using it as their central point of governance and countless times they've fallen victim to it as the first point of attack by the reapers and the swift annihilation of their leadership, making the harvesting that much easier for the reaper fleet. There is absolutely no justification for the Catalyst relinquishing control of any of the systems it has built around the trap and placing it's fate solely in the hands of remote agents like Sovereign. Give it up already.

And again, you assert that the AI is "completely vulnerable" but you haven't responded to my argument about that, either (and I've asked a few times now). Sovereign could show up with an army of indoctrinated or allied soldiers if there were trouble. We have precedent in Saren, the Geth, the Collectors, etc. Why would it need the Keepers to do this, when they're designed to be mechanics and it already has a defense mechanism in the Reapers? So ... do you have something to say about either argument? I really do want to hear a response.

Based on what happens around the 14 minute mark in the video I'd say Sovereign wouldn't be much of a defense against a few leviathans in truth. Also space is kind of big and takes time to cross, it's not like Sovereign could be at the Citadel instantly if the catalyst was in trouble. I suppose you're next explanation is that 'we'll there's probably more than one reaper protecting the catalyst' so where were they in the climatic battle in ME1? Out of frame, doing the shopping, had a cold? I'm all ears for your response on this one.

*popcorn*

@algertman said:

The Worst Thing In Gaming This Year - Videogame Journalism.

Agreed with that. The amount of angst and misplaced anger caused by some occasional games writer (strictly a side line to his principal career of being a TV comedian/personality BTW) throwing a wobbly over an editorial decision regarding a piss poor article he wrote that had every gaming conspiracy theorist reaching for the torches and pitchforks to hunt down the 'corruption' in the gaming press was frankly hilarious. For a couple of weeks everyone was convinced Rab Florence was the second coming, and then he wrote an article basically outline that Pete Molyneux was the devil and would destroy kickstarter......people weren't so convinced on that score strangely enough.

Couple that with the whole Arthur Gies/Colin Moriarty 'entitled whiners' thing it's not exactly been a great year as regards 'games journalism' for sure

I'm kind of with the GB guys in that 'journalism' is not what they do, or what Jeff Keightley does either, so trying to hold the entire industry to these notional standards of excellence is a nonsense, least of all from a guy whose largely outside the industry and isn't reliant on it to make a living. If people believe that a writers a shill for a company, a game or a platform then that's going to reflect in their writing, and people are going to assess it accordingly. If a writer wants to maintain an audience then honesty of opinion is the only currency they have. I think the bigger insult is really that people like Florence believe, We the readers are seemingly too stupid to spot a bad review at the end of the day, or we don't shop around for opinions.

@haggis said:

There's nothing that I said that was a lie, and suggesting that it is tells me that you're not being serious. It's basically what the Leviathans said to Shepard--so, did the game lie, then? The Leviathans did not intend for the Catalyst to harvest them, but to harvest everyone else. The fact that both the Leviathans and the Catalyst share the same blind spot is a thematic element that you don't seem to have seen, and which I think helps us understand why the Catalyst does things the way it does. One of the themes of the game's story is how learned lessons don't always get passed on, something addressed by the very existence of the Crucible (ie., knowledge that actually was passed on).

No the leviathans set up the catalyst to 'preserve life' and stop the thrall races from ending up getting wiped out by their own synthetics. The Leviathan Shepard speaks to says 'Dead races offer no tribute (to us)' (or words to that effect). They didn't want those races harvested, they wanted them kept down technologically so that they could continue to be exploited by the Leviathans. The catalyst had radically different views as to what 'Preserve life' meant as a mandate and how to achieve it. Effectively it waits till any civilization is about to reach the tipping point of technological advancement with AI and then traps them in a butterfly jar. Rinse repeat ad infinitum.

I've already explained why I think the Catalyst did things the way it did, and why I think its behavior is consistent. You seem to be making a different argument, that what the Catalyst didn't somehow wasn't optimal. That's a different argument. All I'm saying is that the game offers reasons why the Catalyst did things as it did. Perhaps you would have done something differently if you were the Catalyst. That's fine--but that doesn't mean that what the Catalyst does is illogical. You say it's illogical that the Catalyst would have left itself unable to control the Keepers--but I've argued that it wouldn't need to, so why bother? We can keep going around and around, but since the Catalyst goes out of its way not to directly control anything (it leaves that to Harbinger and Sovereign) I don't see why the Catalyst would suddenly behave differently there. But I've said this over and over again.

It's not the catalysts behaviour I'm worried about (it's your atypical crazy computer AI). What concerns we is the weakness of the overarching plot to the series with regard to it being on the Citadel all the time. You haven't provided one good response so far so to the simple question as to why wouldn't the very creator of the Citadel and the architect of the entire cycle have any control over the very creatures it tasked to maintain the structure it calls home? If it doesn't have any control of them, then who does? The werewolf again? The idea that this all powerful AI is going to leave itself completely vulnerable in its very nerve centre is farcical as a proposition.

@punkxblaze said:

It's a conversation that's almost certainly going to happen in the GOTY Delib Podcasts, man. They already foreshadowed it with a brief touching on the subject either this past week, or the one before that. So if you're planning on listening to those, be ready for it to in fact be very up for discussion.

They might discuss the extent of game-play within the game, but they're there's not going get into 'not a game' and decide that holds up as an argument because there's quite clearly play with it. Dear Esther is certainly something where in you can get into 'not a game' discussions because bar walking there's no interaction in it at all, however there's plenty of interaction in TWD.