I guess it's the same space magic that kills off all the reapers but not everyone around it.
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Mass Effect 3 Spoiler Thread |OT2| Taste the Rainbow
- Thread starter Patryn
- Start date
everyone can imagine whatever they like...
bioware should have said "no need to play the game,just imagine....."
Illusive Man will use the force to freeze everyone and kill them all off until it's just Shepard and Anderson. Then the same exact scene you normally get triggers.
Zomba13
Member
-We were given a massive info dump that didn't make sense in the last 5 minutes of an epic 3 game, 100+ hour space opera.
-It was full of plot holes and nonsense (How did Anderson get ahead of you when he followed you up? How did TIM get behind you when he should have already been there? How did you squad on Earth get to the Normandy? Why was the Normandy fleeing?)
-The 3 endings were virtually the same. The colour was different and some things change but it all boils down to: Relays gone, Reapers gone, Citadel destroyed (and all those who were on it dead), Normandy (and crew) stranded, Galactic fleet stuck in Sol system.
-We never got closure on our choices. Yes, our choices did make a difference during the game (Did we cure the genophage? Did we get back Rannoch?) but we never get to see or even know of what effect it does have and in the end, doesn't even matter (Quarian fleet in Sol, large amount of Krogen including Wrex on Earth).
-We were straight up lied to, as late as February of this year. We were told that our choices would matter in the end and that we'd get answers etc and not just a choice of A, B or C with a bucketful of speculation for everyone.
Also a few more:
-No ability to argue against the starchilds stupid logic. We have proof of organics and synthetics getting along, why can't we use that evidence against him?
-Why can't we just say 'Screw you' and take our chances? It'd mean the EMS system actually had a use (other than determining if Big Ben stands or falls) and would be something I think Shepard would do. The EMS thingie even says, when it's t full, that the chances of victory are even. It means, at full preparedness, the united fleet are just as strong as the reapers and stand a chance of winning.
-A minor one, but there isn't a 'everyone dies' ending. It'd have been nice if there was an option where the reapers win, you don't break the cycle. It'd then show a civilisation 50,000 years in the future finding one of Liara's time boxes and seeing her message and then cutting to dark space and then the reapers light up again and start making their way back tot he galaxy.
The Librarian
Banned
A lot of the people I know who brush off the criticisms of the ending, or just label the fans as overreacting, are ignoring the fact that BioWare straight-up lied to the fans prior to the game's release.
Zomba13
Member
You do realise the stuff on the Galaxy map isn't to scale (size or time) right?
The Normandy isn't really the size of a planet...
Everything I know is a lie!
Zomba13
Member
I do this too.
We killed the crew. All of ME from the moment you first do that is a dream. Everyone is already dead.
How profound.
Hopefully that was a joke post.
Precisely. An exploding mass relay is capable of releasing as much energy as found in an average supernova. So our solar system as we know it would have been decimated along with all solar systems that Mass Relays.
Typographenia
Member
It's not a dream. You're actually playing as Conrad Verner the whole time.
Slackbladder
Member
Also where do you re-fuel?. Also an FTL drive needs to discharge its build up of static electricity every 50 hours, so there needs to be a planet or at least a moon near-by for this to work.
Anyway, how much faster than light is an FTL drive anyway? It'd still take 2 years to get to Proxima Centauri which is 4.24 light years away (the nearest star to Earth) travelling at twice the speed of light.
Basically, without Mass Relays you're fucked.
I think a major mistake Hudson/Walters (assuming that they wrote the ending without peer review) made was to not commit either way. They could have written a single, explain-all ending that could have been any flavor of bittersweet, and the fans would have lapped it up. They could've mapped the ending to your class: a Soldier takes them out through fiery destruction, Engineer hacks the central AI etc. etc. There would've been some bitching about how the choices didn't play into it, but it would have been a very defensible position.
Or they could have gone all out and made a bunch of somewhat related endings that derived from your choices. Hard work, and perhaps understandable given the timelines, but it would've earned them the undying devotion of the fans.
They tried to force-fit an ending that had three color variations to avoid the "You're lazy!" charge, while making them close enough in terms of galactic disaster to make them irrelevant. Would've liked to be a fly on the wall at that meeting.
Or they could have gone all out and made a bunch of somewhat related endings that derived from your choices. Hard work, and perhaps understandable given the timelines, but it would've earned them the undying devotion of the fans.
They tried to force-fit an ending that had three color variations to avoid the "You're lazy!" charge, while making them close enough in terms of galactic disaster to make them irrelevant. Would've liked to be a fly on the wall at that meeting.
Zomba13
Member
Hudson: So... what've you got for the ending?
Walters: Umm... I was thinking this space kid would be controlling the reapers and would give you three choices. That sound good?
Hudson: *sigh* I don't fucking know, just get something done so we can be finished with this.
Can buy that. It's easy to end up in a position where you're so drained, yet under pressure, to just want to get something out the door no matter the shape it's in.
Were we? I think the main reason I wasn't too bothered by the Deus Ex Machina (and I usually always am), is because it didn't really add anything new to the table. To me it was always going to boil down to a choice between controlling the reapers or defeating them, from the moment TIM talked about control. The game could have ended with the fight with TIM for all I care, but the starkid was introduced to explain the existence of the reapers, namely to sustain biological life; and that was something everyone could've pretty much inferred from what the reapers and Javik said before as well. So the only new thing was that the reapers were created by the citadel, personified in the starkid. It's kind of weak but not very important.
Those are not plotholes. Anderson said they got teleported to different parts, TIM could've been standing at the edge of the room, maybe the squad on Earth moved back to the normandy when they heard the hammer team was decimated. Normandy could be fleeing because they saw that explosion and they are the fastest ship in the galaxy, or when the crucible didn't work parts of the fleet said fuck it we're out. Weak perhaps, but not plotholes, nor nonsense.
...so?
An ending where they'd wrap everything up would be totally longwinded and dull imo. Sure I would've liked to see a bit more too (especially from the romance characters), but getting closure on your choices would not matter for this story.
A developer big upped his own game, that makes him an asshole, but not this game bad.
These are fair points I think, that would have made the game/ending better.
The Librarian
Banned
Except, you know, the incredibly stupid reason for the Reapers' existence. A huge part of the game's fiction. "Yo dawg. I heard you liked to be killed by synthetics. So we created synthetics to kill you every 50K years so you won't be killed by your own synthetics."
Typographenia
Member
Things like "How did the Reapers never once hear about the Crucible either in this cycle or previous cycles?", "The Reapers created the Citadel and the Citadel created the Reapers?", and "Reapers are going to harvest humens to make them into a Reaper before ending this cycle = zap everyone with a laser?" are.
The Librarian
Banned
Did you pay attention to the ending at all? No wonder you like it.
Yes these definitely are.
(although I'm not sure whether the reapers were actually oblivious to the existence of the crucible, or whether the crucible was actually completed in any of the previous cycles)
No I was too busy fantasizing how, with dick in hand, I would gloat at people on message boards that didn't get it.
Yea the thing about the existence of Crucible and the near perfect Reapers that have evolved via a large yet unknown number harvest cycles remaining completely oblivious to it bothered me. However, what bothered me even more is why would the creators of Reapers also create the crucible?
BigTnaples
Todd Howard's Secret GAF Account
Regardless of if he did or did not like the ending he is right and you are wrong. So there is that.
The Reapers harvest, where a war with a more advanced form of the Geth would end in extinction, not "evolution" as the Reapers call it.
Ciastek3214
Junior Member
How can you be 100% sure that there would be such war?
I wanted to talk to him too. Or any Reaper really (enjoyed it in 1, arrival, and rannoch).
Blue Ninja
Member
His voice actor apparently wasn't available. It's a shitty reason, they should've just recast him or something. Give us an enemy that's actually intimidating.
Talking to the Reaper on Rannoch was pretty cool.
BigTnaples
Todd Howard's Secret GAF Account
It sort of bothered me as well, but well, the galaxy is a place so large most of us cannot comprehend its actuall size, so hiding something the size of the Crucible for only a couple months shouldn't be THAT difficult. Considering it takes the Reapers hundreds of years to find and harvest or exterminate all advanced life.
Typographenia
Member
They would have to be oblivious to it. Their "purpose" was to keep order, and the crucible would destroy/remove the reapers (chaos).
It bugged me the entire game that reapers never once caught a transmission to/from the crucible, never noticed scientists/engineers/resources going towards one place, or even noticed something as giant as the crucible being constructed. It just isn't something they could have missed.
Plus, they are on top of the normandy the instant they hear some beeping in a system, but they never even saw the Crucible being moved to earth, despite the entire galaxy map being covered in reaper presence? How?!
BigTnaples
Todd Howard's Secret GAF Account
We can't but apparantly in the world of ME it is ineveitable. Should we humans know better than a race that has seen life evolve from nothing countless times and seen war with synthetics happen every time? Who are we to argue?
But but but, we got the Quarians and the Geth to make nice for about a month.
Does that suddenly make humans (still very primitive even in the ME universe) the authority on synthetic vs organic relations? The Geth are also in their infancy.
EmCeeGramr
Member
Yeah but the Reapers literally mind control people by being around them, and mind controlling people is one of their major weapons. In tens of millions of years, if not billions, you're telling me that the Reapers never indoctrinated anybody who knew about something called the Crucible? You'd think after the fiftieth time they'd swap out the right connector ports on the Citadel so it wouldn't work.
By this logic, the Catalyst could have said that any second now all organic life will magically turn into ice cream, and that's why they Reap, to stop the ice creamization, and it would "make sense." After all, who are we to argue withbullshit plot asspulls from writer stand-ins all-powerful Reapers?
By this logic, the Catalyst could have said that any second now all organic life will magically turn into ice cream, and that's why they Reap, to stop the ice creamization, and it would "make sense." After all, who are we to argue with
I wasn't talking about this cycle. The designs for Crucible had existent from the time of Reapers' inception. The Crucible was altered, advanced and built upon during every single cycle.
Yes but apparently it's been built in previous cycles, but it never really functioned, in fact, was it even a weapon before the catalyst? So it could be that the reapers were just like 'whatever'.
Photolysis
Banned
Uh... because of gameplay reasons. You know, because spending the hours that the game establishes is the case would be boring?
BigTnaples
Todd Howard's Secret GAF Account
The Crucible was created after the Reapers, but yes has been around for many a cycle. My point still stands though, the galaxy is huge, and most of the cycles did not get as far into constructing the crucibe as this cycle did. In fact, they may have never began actual construction on the thing, but rather were working on the plans for it, which we found the most up to date version of on Mars. This would be much easier to conceal.
The Protheans on Mars during the Reaper harvest of last cycle were in VERY small numbers, and there was no life on Earth the Reapers were ready to harvest. In fact I would wager that the Protheans constructing the plans for the Crucible on Mars died from lack of resources rather than being actually harvested. (think ilos)
Jake Tower
Banned
Typographenia
Member
I was under the impression it wasn't built on physically in previous cycles, but the design itself was improved on.
Well even if it took hours, that's four ly in a few hours. It can't be much more, because it's obviously okay to do all this scanning and flying around without my team suddenly growing long beards and the extinction of the galaxy all but over.
(fuel seems to be a problem in the ME universe though)
TheBioLover
Member
So what are the "smaller" races the Reapers are not attacking, in the Human harvesting cycle? As in, what are the races in this cycle, that are the Humans of the cycle where the Protheans were harvested?
Zomba13
Member
At least the Yahgs (the race the last shadow broker was).
Jake Tower
Banned
And then... Shepard remembers his favorite movie Superman 2 and totally fakes out the Starchild and is like ok dude I'll go along with it and then like totally hacks the Catalyst to use the cosmic inevitability of icecreamization on the Reapers. That's what I call a sticky situation.
Okay, I can see that happening to an extent. Still think that the creator of the Reapers who thought that it was perfect solution would leave plans for the crucible.
Life existed during the last Reaper invasion. The holographic kid says so himself. Apparently, our species were too young and primitive to harvest (never mind if that is what you meant). At least, they got this right with regards to science otherwise, it would have been as if Bioware were promoting Young Earth Creationism crap.
BigTnaples
Todd Howard's Secret GAF Account
Creatures that are not races yet.
We were cavemen, the Salarians were eating flies, the Krogan were beast like creatures, the Hanar could not speak etc in the Protheans cycle.
The creatures of next cycle will be things we pay no mind to now.
Jake Tower
Banned
The gas bags, space monkeys, and space crabs from ME1 will rule the next cycle.
