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[Brawndo Addict]

You misunderstand my point in a number of ways.

1) I never said he wasn't a synthetic. I emphasized he was still AI, not some demi-god.

2) It still has a cold, but not infallible, logic to it. We synthetics realize that we must protect organics from lesser synthetics. It's akin to playing God.

3) It doesn't have to be airtight perfect and sensible! The problem is the game never actually acknowledges the holes, and instead just has Shepard chug along saying 'lol k ur right'.

In logic, an argument is valid if and only if its conclusion is entailed by its premises. That doesn't mean the premises have to be true for an argument to be valid or not. Let's break down the argument of the star child.

1. Anything that is synthetic will kill all organics.

2. I am a synthetic.

3. I will not kill all organics.

The conclusion does not follow from the premises so the logical argument is invalid. I'm not saying the AI can't think his argument is foolproof, just that his argument is structurally invalid, something I would expect an AI to understand.

 

[SerArthurDayne]

Sovereign tried to exterminate the races before the geth, but failed because the keepers wouldn't react.

No. Sovereign was left behind the entire time in some kind of stasis to be the gatekeeper. Apparently the 50,000 year cycle is very strictly maintained, because after the Geth kicked the Quarian's asses, he just decided to keep napping for 300 more years, not doing anything. Apparently the whole reason of their existence unfolding in front of him was not sufficient justification to accelerate the cycle.

Then he launched his code and nothing happened. And then he was like, oh yes, I will use these synthetics to help with my devious plans!

 

[Zeal]

Just hit number one best seller on NYT. Just sayin'.

 

[Duki]

the shittiest part of the ending was that it reduced the reapers to bumbling morons

in me1 sovereign told me their goals and machinations were far beyond me, and unknowable to mankind

turns out the plan is actually really easy to understand, and dumb as fuck on top of that

fuck you bioware, dont even know what made your villains enjoyable to begin with

 

[Cagey]

I'm also pissed off that Shep just went "Oh okay then, I choose one of those options" instead of "Die you dumbass POS synthetic/god!"

Y'know, in a Final Fantasy game, we would have fight that space Casper as a final boss and it'd eventually morph into monstrous form. I can't believe I'm saying this but that'd have been preferable.

We'd get some huge speech from the main character, his/her buddies would back them up, they'd talk about love and unity and fighting fate and why the villain's plot to destroy the world is wrong, and then you'd get that four part boss fight. After that, a final boss comes OUTTA NOWHERE, gives you a two sentence explanation for why they're here, your party says "lol k" and then kills that boss too.

In ME3, we only got that last part.

 

[DTKT]

Just hit number one best seller on NYT. Just sayin'.

Hahaha.

I mean, the endings were really bad but the images just keep on giving.

 

[Dresden]

Again, that's what makes it a good motivation. It's not perfect. It has holes. You can get the epic "YOU'RE WRONG!" dialogue confrontation from it.

The problem is that it's revealed in the last 5 mins of a 100+ hour series, and, in a series where the main char will argue when shit is stupid, the main char just nods and says "ohhhhh... that makes sense."

EDIT: I should add I still prefer the Lovecraftian-horror "you can't comprehend our motivations, insect" storyline instead of the above.

They had no good answers for anything the Reapers did, so they should've kept silent on the whole thing . . . instead we get Starchild.

 

[SerArthurDayne]

the shittiest part of the ending was that it reduced the reapers to bumbling morons

in me1 sovereign told me their goals and machinations were far beyond me, and unknowable to mankind

turns out the plan is actually really easy to understand, and dumb as fuck on top of that

fuck you bioware, dont even know what made your villains enjoyable to begin with

So you admit you fail to understand. Foolish Organic.

Vanguard of your Destruction!

 

[Thagomizer]

EDIT: I should add I still prefer the Lovecraftian-horror "you can't comprehend our motivations, insect" storyline instead of the above.

Yup. If you are going to have an explanation like this, you should unveil it fairly early in the story, a second act twist at the latest, if not just explain the motivation outright. If you must do something like this at the climax, whatever you do better live up to expectations.

Even better, if you introduce something as mysterious Cosmic Horror, it should fucking stay mysterious cosmic horror, with only a minimum of explanations. Nothing ruins a mystique like a weak-ass origin story.

 

[lastplayed]

Starchild sounds too good for what it is. It's Vent Kid dammit!

 

[Bowdz]

Hahaha.

I mean, the endings were really bad but the images just keep on giving.

Seriously. I think the internet has just been satiated for the next few months on this clusterfuck alone.

 

[CrazyDude]

No. Sovereign was left behind the entire time in some kind of stasis to be the gatekeeper. Apparently the 50,000 year cycle is very strictly maintained, because after the Geth kicked the Quarians asses, he just decided to keep napping for 300 more years, not doing anything. Apparently the whole reason of their existence unfolding in front of him was not sufficient justification to accelerate the cycle.

Then he launched his code and nothing happened. And then he was like, oh yes, I will use these synthetics to help with my devious plans!

It is explained in the game that during the Rachni war, the Sovereign was controlling them. If you look at the timeline for the series you will see that the Rachni war was 1,894 years before Geth rebellion. The only way that could happen is if Sovereign was awake.

 

[Freeza Under The Shower]

I'm also pissed off that Shep just went "Oh okay then, I choose one of those options" instead of "Die you dumbass POS synthetic/god!"

Y'know, in a Final Fantasy game, we would have fight that space Casper as a final boss and it'd eventually morph into a monstrous form. I can't believe I'm saying this but that'd have been preferable. Anything but going quietly with the dumb RGB explosions.

Too videogamey.

No. Sovereign was left behind the entire time in some kind of stasis to be the gatekeeper. Apparently the 50,000 year cycle is very strictly maintained, because after the Geth kicked the Quarian's asses, he just decided to keep napping for 300 more years, not doing anything. Apparently the whole reason of their existence unfolding in front of him was not sufficient justification to accelerate the cycle.

Then he launched his code and nothing happened. And then he was like, oh yes, I will use these synthetics to help with my devious plans!

You could say she..

overslept.

*pa da dunts*

 

[EatChildren]

So we have four potential endings we could have had;

1) Super duper everything is hunky doory ending. Final battle on Earth has Quarian armadas laying down fire from the skies to clear the frontlines, dropping in allied Geth units to clean up stragglers, meanwhile Turian warships bring in armies of Krogan soldiers to watch your back. Volus, Hanar and Elcor warships show up to do what they can. Your allies and friends from the last two games lead assaults on various fronts. It's the culmination of all your effort to unite the species of the galaxy and forge alliances, in unison fighting until the bitter end to take down the Reapers. Shepard and Anderson confront TIM on the Citadel and in struggling from wounds caused by Harbinger activate the Crucible, sending out the Reaper killing shock wave across Earth, using the Relays (intact) as peer-to-peer signal amplifiers to purge the galaxy. The Citadel plummets to Earth. Nobody suspects you to have survived yet, from smouldering ruins they find you. Alive, barely, but alive. Your faithful buddies carry your broken body from the ashes, fade to black. Time to heal, rejuvenated, and the galaxy celebrates their moment of absolute triumph. Brief cuts to each homeworld show the state of things as you left them; the Asari grieving their lost homeworld, the Turians rebuilding, the Geth and/or Quarians revitalising Rannoch, and the Krogan empire triumphing or perishing. You alive, your friends alive, the future restored: but still plenty of mystery as to what will happen next.

2) Middle ground. Shaky alliances and a few poor choices cause heavy causalities. Some good friends die, but there's not much you can do. Warships drop from the sky. Species are bought to the brink of annihilation. Not everybody will recover. Yet, you prevail, but at a cost. Shepard's activation of the Crucible is something he/she cannot survive, and his/her body is lost as the Citadel plummets through the atmosphere. Earth is devastated, The universe is building. But people will rebuild. Wounds will heal, in time. The species gather to salute and say fair well to the fallen hero who was the key to ending the Reaper threat, then return to the homes to clean up the rubble, bury their dead, and begin their new lives.

3) Failure. Failed alliances. Enemies at every turn. Dead friends because you're a stupid dumb idiot. Nobody works together, the armada isn't strong enough, and the ground forces are completely decimated. Shepard fails to activate the Crucible as the Reapers break through Alliance warships, ripping it to shreds. It is lost. Everybody tries to flee. Most are caught and destroyed. Some escape, though are doomed to be hunted down, as the galaxy is drenched in an organic harvest. Worlds burn, and it ends. Credits roll. Post-credits sequence of an unidentifiable ship landing on a strange world. A mysterious alien species, unlike anything you've seen before, exists the ship. Digging through the dirt, they unearth a strange black box. Suddenly it lights up, a holographic image of Shepard appears, and Liara's voice can be heard, issuing a warning of things to come. End.

4) EDI, Tali, Liara and all the sexy alien babes have sexy time and it's really cool.

 

[OpinionatedCyborg]

the shittiest part of the ending was that it reduced the reapers to bumbling morons

in me1 sovereign told me their goals and machinations were far beyond me, and unknowable to mankind

turns out the plan is actually really easy to understand, and dumb as fuck on top of that

fuck you bioware, dont even know what made your villains enjoyable to begin with

if you go back and watch the conversation shepard has with the reaper on virmire (ME1), you will see that the reapers have been retarded space lobsters since day one.

So we have four potential endings we could have had;

1) Super duper everything is hunky doory ending. Final battle on Earth has Quarian armadas laying down fire from the skies to clear the frontlines, dropping in allied Geth units to clean up stragglers, meanwhile Turian warships bring in armies of Krogan soldiers to watch your back. Volus, Hanar and Elcor warships show up to do what they can. Your allies and friends from the last two games lead assaults on various fronts. It's the culmination of all your effort to unite the species of the galaxy and forge alliances, in unison fighting until the bitter end to take down the Reapers. Shepard and Anderson confront TIM on the Citadel and in struggling from wounds caused by Harbinger activate the Crucible, sending out the Reaper killing shock wave across Earth, using the Relays (intact) as peer-to-peer signal amplifiers to purge the galaxy. The Citadel plummets to Earth. Nobody suspects you to have survived yet, from smouldering ruins they find you. Alive, barely, but alive. Your faithful buddies carry your broken body from the ashes, fade to black. Time to heal, rejuvenated, and the galaxy celebrates their moment of absolute triumph. Brief cuts to each homeworld show the state of things as you left them; the Asari grieving their lost homeworld, the Turians rebuilding, the Geth and/or Quarians revitalising Rannoch, and the Krogan empire triumphing or perishing. You alive, your friends alive, the future restored: but still plenty of mystery as to what will happen next.

2) Middle ground. Shaky alliances and a few poor choices cause heavy causalities. Some good friends die, but there's not much you can do. Warships drop from the sky. Species are bought to the brink of annihilation. Not everybody will recover. Yet, you prevail, but at a cost. Shepard's activation of the Crucible is something he/she cannot survive, and his/her body is lost as the Citadel plummets through the atmosphere. Earth is devastated, The universe is building. But people will rebuild. Wounds will heal, in time. The species gather to salute and say fair well to the fallen hero who was the key to ending the Reaper threat, then return to the homes to clean up the rubble, bury their dead, and begin their new lives.

3) Failure. Failed alliances. Enemies at every turn. Dead friends because you're a stupid dumb idiot. Nobody works together, the armada isn't strong enough, and the ground forces are completely decimated. Shepard fails to activate the Crucible as the Reapers break through Alliance warships, ripping it to shreds. It is lost. Everybody tries to flee. Most are caught and destroyed. Some escape, though are doomed to be hunted down, as the galaxy is drenched in an organic harvest. Worlds burn, and it ends. Credits roll. Post-credits sequence of an unidentifiable ship landing on a strange world. A mysterious alien species, unlike anything you've seen before, exists the ship. Digging through the dirt, they unearth a strange black box. Suddenly it lights up, a holographic image of Shepard appears, and Liara's voice can be heard, issuing a warning of things to come. End.

4) EDI, Tali, Liara and all the sexy alien babes have sexy time and it's really cool.

Yeah, this is more in line with what people were expecting based on how ME2 worked.

 

[Cagey]

Endings.

Yep. Rainbows and sunshines ending, happy but somber ending, failure. It fits the series perfectly to have these sorts of options as the potential endings.

#4 clearly best ending.

 

[hateradio]

So we have four potential endings we could have had . . .

We don't want your fanficion! Or fanservice for that matter.

Too videogamey.

At first I let that slide, but now that concept is so frustrating. It's a video game BW. What is wrong with you?

 

[Zeliard]

Again, that's what makes it a good motivation. It's not perfect. It has holes. You can get the epic "YOU'RE WRONG!" dialogue confrontation from it.

The problem is that it's revealed in the last 5 mins of a 100+ hour series, and, in a series where the main char will argue when shit is stupid, the main char just nods and says "ohhhhh... that makes sense."

EDIT: I should add I still prefer the Lovecraftian-horror "you can't comprehend our motivations, insect" storyline instead of the above.

I have trouble buying that he is fallible in such a fashion because of the way he's built up. He's likely lived through hundreds if not thousands of cycles and through his powers of observation - the guy is the living Citadel, the nexus of the galactical community - he's never seen synthetics and organics all buddy-buddy? It's also not as if he wipes organics out as soon as they can create synthetics; he's put himself on a strict 50,000 year timespan for that, for whatever reason.

The Reapers are able to communicate directly with other synthetics such as the Geth, and the Catalyst is almost certainly privy to these communications since he is essentially the Reaper race. This must have happened countless times. There have never been any synthetics to show a modicum of care for organics, throughout all that time?

He also has a puzzling lack of empathy. It took people like Legion and EDI and even the Geth as a whole a relatively small amount of time to understand organics and to become understood by them, yet this vastly more advanced A.I. can't grasp it until countless cycles of genocide have passed. It would be somewhat neat if he was a godlike artificial intelligence who was simply stuck in his ancient ways, but it doesn't seem to really fit.

 

[Derrick01]

So we have four potential endings we could have had;

1) Super duper everything is hunky doory ending. Final battle on Earth has Quarian armadas laying down fire from the skies to clear the frontlines, dropping in allied Geth units to clean up stragglers, meanwhile Turian warships bring in armies of Krogan soldiers to watch your back. Volus, Hanar and Elcor warships show up to do what they can. Your allies and friends from the last two games lead assaults on various fronts. It's the culmination of all your effort to unite the species of the galaxy and forge alliances, in unison fighting until the bitter end to take down the Reapers. Shepard and Anderson confront TIM on the Citadel and in struggling from wounds caused by Harbinger activate the Crucible, sending out the Reaper killing shock wave across Earth, using the Relays (intact) as peer-to-peer signal amplifiers to purge the galaxy. The Citadel plummets to Earth. Nobody suspects you to have survived yet, from smouldering ruins they find you. Alive, barely, but alive. Your faithful buddies carry your broken body from the ashes, fade to black. Time to heal, rejuvenated, and the galaxy celebrates their moment of absolute triumph. Brief cuts to each homeworld show the state of things as you left them; the Asari grieving their lost homeworld, the Turians rebuilding, the Geth and/or Quarians revitalising Rannoch, and the Krogan empire triumphing or perishing. You alive, your friends alive, the future restored: but still plenty of mystery as to what will happen next.

2) Middle ground. Shaky alliances and a few poor choices cause heavy causalities. Some good friends die, but there's not much you can do. Warships drop from the sky. Species are bought to the brink of annihilation. Not everybody will recover. Yet, you prevail, but at a cost. Shepard's activation of the Crucible is something he/she cannot survive, and his/her body is lost as the Citadel plummets through the atmosphere. Earth is devastated, The universe is building. But people will rebuild. Wounds will heal, in time. The species gather to salute and say fair well to the fallen hero who was the key to ending the Reaper threat, then return to the homes to clean up the rubble, bury their dead, and begin their new lives.

3) Failure. Failed alliances. Enemies at every turn. Dead friends because you're a stupid dumb idiot. Nobody works together, the armada isn't strong enough, and the ground forces are completely decimated. Shepard fails to activate the Crucible as the Reapers break through Alliance warships, ripping it to shreds. It is lost. Everybody tries to flee. Most are caught and destroyed. Some escape, though are doomed to be hunted down, as the galaxy is drenched in an organic harvest. Worlds burn, and it ends. Credits roll. Post-credits sequence of an unidentifiable ship landing on a strange world. A mysterious alien species, unlike anything you've seen before, exists the ship. Digging through the dirt, they unearth a strange black box. Suddenly it lights up, a holographic image of Shepard appears, and Liara's voice can be heard, issuing a warning of things to come. End.

4) EDI, Tali, Liara and all the sexy alien babes have sexy time and it's really cool.

I would be happy if we had the chance to get these choices. I thought I was going to get #1 after working so hard to bring everyone together.

 

[Empty Space]

Just hit number one best seller on NYT. Just sayin'.

Oh man Marauder Shields is the best thing to come out of all of this.

 

[Replicant]

So we have four potential endings we could have had;

1) Super duper everything is hunky doory ending. Final battle on Earth has Quarian armadas laying down fire from the skies to clear the frontlines, dropping in allied Geth units to clean up stragglers, meanwhile Turian warships bring in armies of Krogan soldiers to watch your back. Volus, Hanar and Elcor warships show up to do what they can. Your allies and friends from the last two games lead assaults on various fronts. It's the culmination of all your effort to unite the species of the galaxy and forge alliances, in unison fighting until the bitter end to take down the Reapers. Shepard and Anderson confront TIM on the Citadel and in struggling from wounds caused by Harbinger activate the Crucible, sending out the Reaper killing shock wave across Earth, using the Relays (intact) as peer-to-peer signal amplifiers to purge the galaxy. The Citadel plummets to Earth. Nobody suspects you to have survived yet, from smouldering ruins they find you. Alive, barely, but alive. Your faithful buddies carry your broken body from the ashes, fade to black. Time to heal, rejuvenated, and the galaxy celebrates their moment of absolute triumph. Brief cuts to each homeworld show the state of things as you left them; the Asari grieving their lost homeworld, the Turians rebuilding, the Geth and/or Quarians revitalising Rannoch, and the Krogan empire triumphing or perishing. You alive, your friends alive, the future restored: but still plenty of mystery as to what will happen next.

2) Middle ground. Shaky alliances and a few poor choices cause heavy causalities. Some good friends die, but there's not much you can do. Warships drop from the sky. Species are bought to the brink of annihilation. Not everybody will recover. Yet, you prevail, but at a cost. Shepard's activation of the Crucible is something he/she cannot survive, and his/her body is lost as the Citadel plummets through the atmosphere. Earth is devastated, The universe is building. But people will rebuild. Wounds will heal, in time. The species gather to salute and say fair well to the fallen hero who was the key to ending the Reaper threat, then return to the homes to clean up the rubble, bury their dead, and begin their new lives.

3) Failure. Failed alliances. Enemies at every turn. Dead friends because you're a stupid dumb idiot. Nobody works together, the armada isn't strong enough, and the ground forces are completely decimated. Shepard fails to activate the Crucible as the Reapers break through Alliance warships, ripping it to shreds. It is lost. Everybody tries to flee. Most are caught and destroyed. Some escape, though are doomed to be hunted down, as the galaxy is drenched in an organic harvest. Worlds burn, and it ends. Credits roll. Post-credits sequence of an unidentifiable ship landing on a strange world. A mysterious alien species, unlike anything you've seen before, exists the ship. Digging through the dirt, they unearth a strange black box. Suddenly it lights up, a holographic image of Shepard appears, and Liara's voice can be heard, issuing a warning of things to come. End.

4) EDI, Tali, Liara and all the sexy alien babes have sexy time and it's really cool.

Why can't we have those? Those are nice.

 

[Dany]

I just did Thessia again in an old save. I love that mission to death. I'd feel its the only moment that makes me feel for shepard and laira. Also javik is a fucking badass. I need to bring him around more often.

Also, was anyone else jarred by the size of hte citadel compared to earth, I'd assume it would be 5x times of our planet.

 

[Tajin]

. The Citadel plummets to Earth.

Wouldn't the Citadel completely wipe out Earth in a collision?

 

[Brawndo Addict]

So we have four potential endings we could have had;

1) Super duper everything is hunky doory ending.

2) Middle ground.

3) Failure.

4) EDI, Tali, Liara and all the sexy alien babes have sexy time and it's really cool.

What's so strange to me is that these types of endings write themselves. It's literally the first thing anyone would have thought of, so Bioware must have gone out of their way to decide they didn't want to do something along these lines. It's perfectly serviceable and totally in line with the tone and spirit of the other two games. Did they think it was too cliched? Everything is a cliche nowadays, so no matter what you do it's gonna be 'generic' and 'predictable'. Why did they throw this idea in the trash?

 

[Cagey]

I have trouble buying that he is fallible in such a fashion because of the way he's built up. He's likely lived through hundreds if not thousands of cycles and through his powers of observation - the guy is the living Citadel, the nexus of the galactical community - he's never seen synthetics and organics all buddy-buddy? It's also not as if he wipes organics out as soon as they can create synthetics; he's put himself on a strict 50,000 year timespan for that, for whatever reason.

The Reapers are able to communicate directly with other synthetics such as the Geth, and the Catalyst is almost certainly privy to these communications since he is essentially the Reaper race. This must have happened countless times. There have never been any synthetics to show a modicum of care for organics, throughout all that time?

He also has a puzzling lack of empathy. It took people like Legion and EDI and even the Geth as a whole a relatively small amount of time to understand organics and to become understood by them, yet this vastly more advanced A.I. can't grasp it until countless cycles of genocide have passed. It would be somewhat neat if he was a godlike artificial intelligence who was simply stuck in his ancient ways, but it doesn't seem to really fit.

We're talking past one another. I agree with everything you said.

My defense of the "I heard you are afraid of synthetics..." argument from godbaby is that it's a fine motivation for a video game villain. As I reiterated numerous times, I absolutely despise how they went about implementing this: how late the reveal occurred, how it's entirely out of the blue with no prior hints in the series at all, how there's no rebuttal with all the various things you listed, how we the gamer must eat all of the aforementioned shit...

 

[Duki]

Wouldn't the Citadel completely wipe out Earth in a collision?

would it though? its not like its an asteroid moving at extreme speed

who knows

it was so near earth atmosphere too

 

[Replicant]

What's so strange to me is that these types of endings write themselves. It's literally the first thing anyone would have thought of, so Bioware must have gone out of their way to decide they didn't want to do something along these lines. It's perfectly serviceable and totally in line with the tone and spirit of the other two games. Did they think it was too cliched? Everything is a cliche nowadays, so no matter what you do it's gonna be 'generic' and 'predictable'. Why did they throw this idea in the trash?

This is what happens when someone tries to be 'original' just for the sake of it. The story of ME would naturally lead to those kind of endings but it's obvious someone is too arrogant to give ME3 some normal endings and leave the weird ass one for easter egg or something (see: Silent Hill's UFO ending).

 

[SerArthurDayne]

if you go back and watch the conversation shepard has with the reaper on virmire (ME1), you will see that the reapers have been retarded space lobsters since day one.

I just watched this, and I don't agree. I think the last five minutes of ME3 was a huge retcon of everything Sovereign says to you.

Now it is possible Sovereign is just fucking with you, but why?

Sovereign is 100% certain that the end of current galactic civilization is about one week away. Is the urge to troll strong in this one? One of the programs that makes Sovereign just felt the need to tweak Shepard one last time?

Sovereign doesn't fuck around. Sovereign is going to fucking eat everybody, then let the next round grow up, and then eat the fuck out of them too. None of this protecting organic life bullshit. More like we want you to explore the galaxy, develop. Then we are going to cut you off, have a few hundred years of fun, hibernate, and then do it again.

It is cruel, sadistic, and much more frightening than, sorry, I know that this hurts you, but trust me, I love you!!!! Do they do it to survive? Do they do it for sport? Do they do it because they are bored? It doesn't matter!

 

[lastplayed]

Wouldn't the Citadel completely wipe out Earth in a collision?

It'd cause some damage, but I don't think it's that big.

 

[Bowdz]

What's so strange to me is that these types of endings write themselves. It's literally the first thing anyone would have thought of, so Bioware must have gone out of their way to decide they didn't want to do something along these lines. It's perfectly serviceable and totally in line with the tone and spirit of the other two games. Did they think it was too cliched? Everything is a cliche nowadays, so no matter what you do it's gonna be 'generic' and 'predictable'. Why did they throw this idea in the trash?

Not enough speculation.

 

[ElFly]

We're talking past one another. I agree with everything you said.

My defense of the "I heard you are afraid of synthetics..." argument from godbaby is that it's a fine motivation for a video game villain. As I reiterated numerous times, I absolutely despise how they went about implementing this: how late the reveal occurred, how it's entirely out of the blue with no prior hints in the series at all, how there's no rebuttal with all the various things you listed, how we the gamer must eat all of the aforementioned shit...

Better writers could have made the Xzibit plot twist work.

But it is not only a bad idea, it's terribly written too, and prefaced by a long discussion that made no sense between anderson, tim and shepard.

 

[hateradio]

This is what happens when someone tries to be 'original' just for the sake of it. The story of ME would naturally lead to those kind of endings but it's obvious someone is too arrogant to give ME3 some normal endings and leave the weird ass one for easter egg or something (see: Silent Hill's UFO ending).

All the endings are Easter eggs. The colors are part of the dye.

prefaced by a long discussion that made no sense between anderson, tim and shepard.

I thought their conversation made sense. TIM was indoctrinated and dies, then we have a heart-to-heart with Shep and Anderson. After that, the nonsense commences, imo.

 

[Thagomizer]

I know that this hurts you, but trust me, I love you!

I just pictured Harbinger saying this and I had to fight to not laugh out loud.

 

[DTKT]

So we have four potential endings we could have had;

1) Super duper everything is hunky doory ending. Final battle on Earth has Quarian armadas laying down fire from the skies to clear the frontlines, dropping in allied Geth units to clean up stragglers, meanwhile Turian warships bring in armies of Krogan soldiers to watch your back. Volus, Hanar and Elcor warships show up to do what they can. Your allies and friends from the last two games lead assaults on various fronts. It's the culmination of all your effort to unite the species of the galaxy and forge alliances, in unison fighting until the bitter end to take down the Reapers. Shepard and Anderson confront TIM on the Citadel and in struggling from wounds caused by Harbinger activate the Crucible, sending out the Reaper killing shock wave across Earth, using the Relays (intact) as peer-to-peer signal amplifiers to purge the galaxy. The Citadel plummets to Earth. Nobody suspects you to have survived yet, from smouldering ruins they find you. Alive, barely, but alive. Your faithful buddies carry your broken body from the ashes, fade to black. Time to heal, rejuvenated, and the galaxy celebrates their moment of absolute triumph. Brief cuts to each homeworld show the state of things as you left them; the Asari grieving their lost homeworld, the Turians rebuilding, the Geth and/or Quarians revitalising Rannoch, and the Krogan empire triumphing or perishing. You alive, your friends alive, the future restored: but still plenty of mystery as to what will happen next.

2) Middle ground. Shaky alliances and a few poor choices cause heavy causalities. Some good friends die, but there's not much you can do. Warships drop from the sky. Species are bought to the brink of annihilation. Not everybody will recover. Yet, you prevail, but at a cost. Shepard's activation of the Crucible is something he/she cannot survive, and his/her body is lost as the Citadel plummets through the atmosphere. Earth is devastated, The universe is building. But people will rebuild. Wounds will heal, in time. The species gather to salute and say fair well to the fallen hero who was the key to ending the Reaper threat, then return to the homes to clean up the rubble, bury their dead, and begin their new lives.

3) Failure. Failed alliances. Enemies at every turn. Dead friends because you're a stupid dumb idiot. Nobody works together, the armada isn't strong enough, and the ground forces are completely decimated. Shepard fails to activate the Crucible as the Reapers break through Alliance warships, ripping it to shreds. It is lost. Everybody tries to flee. Most are caught and destroyed. Some escape, though are doomed to be hunted down, as the galaxy is drenched in an organic harvest. Worlds burn, and it ends. Credits roll. Post-credits sequence of an unidentifiable ship landing on a strange world. A mysterious alien species, unlike anything you've seen before, exists the ship. Digging through the dirt, they unearth a strange black box. Suddenly it lights up, a holographic image of Shepard appears, and Liara's voice can be heard, issuing a warning of things to come. End.

4) EDI, Tali, Liara and all the sexy alien babes have sexy time and it's really cool.

I still think that the answer is time.

They simply didn't have enough to properly finish. So they made what we have. One ending barely modified by a very limited set of parameters.

I mean, the design on a napkin just screams: "WE NEED AN ENDING THAT ACTUALLY WORKS!". It doesn't have to be good, it doesn't have to make sense. We just need something to put before the credits.

And that's what so sad about all of this.

 

[OpinionatedCyborg]

I just watched this, and I don't agree. I think the last five minutes of ME3 was a huge retcon of everything Sovereign says to you.

Now it is possible Sovereign is just fucking with you, but why?

Sovereign is 100% certain that the end of current galactic civilization is about one week away. Is the urge to troll strong in this one? One of the programs that makes Sovereign just felt the need to tweak Shepard one last time?

Sovereign doesn't fuck around. Sovereign is going to fucking eat everybody, then let the next round grow up, and then eat the fuck out of them too. None of this protecting organic life bullshit. More like we want you to explore the galaxy, develop. Then we are going to cut you off, have a few hundred years of fun, hibernate, and then do it again.

It is cruel, sadistic, and much more frightening than, sorry, I know that this hurts you, but trust me, I love you!!!! Do they do it to survive? Do they do it for sport? Do they do it because they are bored? It doesn't matter!

I agree that there's a huge shift in tone, but my point was that the reapers were stupid from day one. If you listen to Sovereign in that conversation, besides noticing his inflated sense of self-importance and wondering why he's even bothering speak to you if nothing he says will be comprehensible to your puny human mind anyway, you'll hear him betray his complete ignorance of how evolution works.

I still think that the answer is time.

They simply didn't have enough to properly finish. So they made what we have. One ending barely modified by a very limited set of parameters.

I mean, the design on a napkin just screams: "WE NEED AN ENDING THAT ACTUALLY WORKS!". It doesn't have to be good, it doesn't have to make sense. We just need something to put before the credits.

And that's what so sad about all of this.

Yeah, a lot of elements of the game feel half-baked. The whole war assets feels like it descended from a cool, original idea that was stripped down and modified so many times by committee that it became completely shitty. I really loved ME3 through Tuchanka, but the game started losing steam after that...

 

[Dany]

Someone needs to cut the ending sequence with 'all da colors' and the Reading Rainbow song

I need this.

 

[this guy]

So which ending is supposed to be the "best" one in this case? The synthesis ending or the destroying the Reapers ending?

The game would've been so much better if it had just ended with a Liara, FemShep, Miranda, Ashley, EDI, Traynor, and Samara wild orgy. Not Tali though. Not Tali.

 

[DTKT]

So which ending is supposed to be the "best" one in this case? The synthesis ending or the destroying the Reapers ending?

The game would've been so much better if it had just ended with a Liara, FemShep, Miranda, Ashley, EDI, Traynor, and Samara wild orgy. Not Tali though. Not Tali.

You monster. :|

 

[Dresden]

So which ending is supposed to be the "best" one in this case? The synthesis ending or the destroying the Reapers ending?

The game would've been so much better if it had just ended with a Liara, FemShep, Miranda, Ashley, EDI, Traynor, and Samara wild orgy. Not Tali though. Not Tali.

Yeah, Tali is too pure for that orgy of sluts.

 

[Dany]

Yeah, Tali is too pure for that orgy of sluts.

Tali wouldn't go anywhere near Miranda, that bitch.

 

[Cagey]

So which ending is supposed to be the "best" one in this case? The synthesis ending or the destroying the Reapers ending?

The game would've been so much better if it had just ended with a Liara, FemShep, Miranda, Ashley, EDI, Traynor, and Samara wild orgy. Not Tali though. Not Tali.

I hope Morinth shows up and kills them all because of this omission.

 

[Replicant]

So which ending is supposed to be the "best" one in this case? The synthesis ending or the destroying the Reapers ending?

The game would've been so much better if it had just ended with a Liara, FemShep, Miranda, Ashley, EDI, Traynor, and Samara wild orgy. Not Tali though. Not Tali.

I'm not racist, but have you seen her fingers? Also, sharp knees and all.

 

[Zeliard]

So we have four potential endings we could have had;

1) Super duper everything is hunky doory ending. Final battle on Earth has Quarian armadas laying down fire from the skies to clear the frontlines, dropping in allied Geth units to clean up stragglers, meanwhile Turian warships bring in armies of Krogan soldiers to watch your back. Volus, Hanar and Elcor warships show up to do what they can. Your allies and friends from the last two games lead assaults on various fronts. It's the culmination of all your effort to unite the species of the galaxy and forge alliances, in unison fighting until the bitter end to take down the Reapers. Shepard and Anderson confront TIM on the Citadel and in struggling from wounds caused by Harbinger activate the Crucible, sending out the Reaper killing shock wave across Earth, using the Relays (intact) as peer-to-peer signal amplifiers to purge the galaxy. The Citadel plummets to Earth. Nobody suspects you to have survived yet, from smouldering ruins they find you. Alive, barely, but alive. Your faithful buddies carry your broken body from the ashes, fade to black. Time to heal, rejuvenated, and the galaxy celebrates their moment of absolute triumph. Brief cuts to each homeworld show the state of things as you left them; the Asari grieving their lost homeworld, the Turians rebuilding, the Geth and/or Quarians revitalising Rannoch, and the Krogan empire triumphing or perishing. You alive, your friends alive, the future restored: but still plenty of mystery as to what will happen next.

2) Middle ground. Shaky alliances and a few poor choices cause heavy causalities. Some good friends die, but there's not much you can do. Warships drop from the sky. Species are bought to the brink of annihilation. Not everybody will recover. Yet, you prevail, but at a cost. Shepard's activation of the Crucible is something he/she cannot survive, and his/her body is lost as the Citadel plummets through the atmosphere. Earth is devastated, The universe is building. But people will rebuild. Wounds will heal, in time. The species gather to salute and say fair well to the fallen hero who was the key to ending the Reaper threat, then return to the homes to clean up the rubble, bury their dead, and begin their new lives.

3) Failure. Failed alliances. Enemies at every turn. Dead friends because you're a stupid dumb idiot. Nobody works together, the armada isn't strong enough, and the ground forces are completely decimated. Shepard fails to activate the Crucible as the Reapers break through Alliance warships, ripping it to shreds. It is lost. Everybody tries to flee. Most are caught and destroyed. Some escape, though are doomed to be hunted down, as the galaxy is drenched in an organic harvest. Worlds burn, and it ends. Credits roll. Post-credits sequence of an unidentifiable ship landing on a strange world. A mysterious alien species, unlike anything you've seen before, exists the ship. Digging through the dirt, they unearth a strange black box. Suddenly it lights up, a holographic image of Shepard appears, and Liara's voice can be heard, issuing a warning of things to come. End.

4) EDI, Tali, Liara and all the sexy alien babes have sexy time and it's really cool.

I would have preferred an ending where they do everything right and everything goes to shit anyway. #3 except they didn't fail. They were simply not able to win regardless of their efforts, and regardless of uniting various disparate races.

That regardless of a single very powerful race like the Protheans going up against the Reapers, or several united as in Shep's case, it's ultimately a losing battle. I mean surely in the past, other races must have tried to band together to destroy the Reapers, and failed horribly. Given how ridiculously advanced the Catalyst is, he must have been around for a hell of a long time doing his thing, especially given that he only works every 50,000 years.

An ultra-bleak ending that truly communicates the devastation the Reapers and The Biggest Asshole in the Universe have wrought. Why not? Gives it a very dark spin, and an appropriate one I think. It would have also been a very rare thing to find in videogames which are generally all about player empowerment. I think it would have been ballsy and could have worked well if done right.

Post-credits seen has Garrus and Shep in some strange-looking location, sharing drinks, as they discussed prior to the final battle. Turns out it's the Catalyst who has created a makeshift Turian heaven for them in the afterlife. He's not all bad.

 

[Brawndo Addict]

Better writers could have made the Xzibit plot twist work.

But it is not only a bad idea, it's terribly written too, and prefaced by a long discussion that made no sense between anderson, tim and shepard.

I keep saying it, but I vehemently disagree. This plot twist is not logical and no writer could make it work. The only way it works is if the Catalyst-kid-being is not a synthetic or AI, but instead some kind of mystical god or highly evolved organic. Only then can the Catalyst employ and believe in invalid arguments. People say it is fine for the villain to believe in something that’s not actually true or logically consistent, and I agree. But that doesn’t work if the villain in question is a machine whose existence is dependent on programming.

Synthetics do not inevitably kill all organics because at some point in time this Catalyst-AI decided not to kill all organics. He literally embodies the logical error of the argument.

 

[Thagomizer]

I agree that there's a huge shift in tone, but my point was that the reapers were stupid from day one. If you listen to Sovereign in that conversation, besides noticing his inflated sense of self-importance and wondering why he's even bothering speak to you if nothing he says will be comprehensible to your puny human mind anyway, you'll hear him betray his complete ignorance of how evolution works.

I never got the impression that he was talking about literal, natural-selection evolution. It was just a metaphor.

 

[ElFly]

All the endings are Easter eggs. The colors are part of the dye.


I thought their conversation made sense. TIM was indoctrinated and dies, then we have a heart-to-heart with Shep and Anderson. After that the nonsense commences, imo.

Ok maybe no sense is too strong a qualifier, but they didn't really said anything worth the cutscene.

Like, I don't need to know that tim sacrificed too much, cause I saw what happened in sanctuary.

 

[hateradio]

So which ending is supposed to be the "best" one in this case? The synthesis ending or the destroying the Reapers ending?

The game would've been so much better if it had just ended with a Liara, FemShep, Miranda, Ashley, EDI, Traynor, and Samara wild orgy. Not Tali though. Not Tali.

No ending is considered the best. Not because they're all pretty awful, but simply because we are left to speculate on the positives and negatives of each.

 

[EmCeeGramr]

Apparently L'Etoile was opposed to the dark energy motivation because it made the Reapers into yet another cliche misunderstood villain (undercutting Shepard), it makes the Reapers look incompetent for being unable to solve a problem for millions of years despite being godlike computers with all the time in the universe at hand, and their methods are self-defeating.

He hasn't seen the final endings yet.

 

[Freeza Under The Shower]

I just watched this, and I don't agree. I think the last five minutes of ME3 was a huge retcon of everything Sovereign says to you.

No, I have to agree here that what Sovereign states, matches the statements given by 'AI representative' if we assume that the reapers simply don't know their "creator" exists within the citadel, for whatever reason. And just think they build it, but didn't.

The citadel might just as well have been the place where the reapers were orginally made, by going for planet to planet and setting up some ploy to get organics to go there or something.

If the reapers are controlled by the citadel, then it deleting the reapers of their potential end and their beginning might just start be sensical. Not that it actually is, but to the average player that might just do the trick.

edit: and yeah, his words on life and evolution don't mix. So yeah. But again, that might make sense if he.. uh... she did not possess all relevant data. Second rate god, but oh well.

 

[Dresden]

I think people were invested so heavily in the characters that no amount of asspulls would've been too much (for most) if the ending didn't throw away all the characters in the process of painting the world in RGB.