What I would have written (Destiny)

by narcogen , Andover, Massachusetts, Friday, February 12, 2016, 12:32 (2996 days ago) @ Ragashingo

Yup. You wanted it to be something different than its creators intended.

Indeed. Because sometimes the creators get it wrong. I firmly believe that Mass Effect is one of those cases because the ending completely and utterly failed to live up to the rest of the series.

I think it did. Do you happen to think this is some kind of objective fact that can be determined?

Saving both the Geth and Quarians is the hardest thing in the game. I believe it requires having taken the correct actions in Mass Effect 1, 2, and 3, and holding out when hope of ending the conflict between the two fleets seems lost, and finally using a reputation interrupt in the final seconds of the upload countdown. It is the best example of the player's choices mattering and an example of organics and synthetics coexisting which is why it is such a travesty that your actions get completely wiped out roughly an hour later by the ending.

Indeed. A very satisfying mission. If your criticism is that the finale fails to live up to that, then I'd concede the point, but sometimes that is just how things turn out, especially in a complex work.

How does static buildup explore the theme of race relations? You're dealing with this on the level of plot devices, and I don't care about that because I'm discussing the themes.

Wrong. My example solutions are only viable if you spent the three games of the series confronting those themes.

The games do. If you, as a player, did not, then that was your choice, but it seems to me that the creators of the game wanted you to.

A victory wouldn't be achieved is spite of or by ignoring those themes, it would be the reward for interacting with them and addressing them over and over and over again.

Throughout Mass Effect you are constantly dealing with races who at a minimum don't like each other (Humans vs Turians), who are locked in an eternal stalemate (Quarians vs Geth), and at worst who, if given the chance, would commit xenocide on a galaxy wide scale (Krogran vs everyone). Ultimately, any victory vs the Reapers in my examples requires three games worth of caring about and dealing with those themes. If you don't save every race and have the correct leadership in charge of every race then my solutions result in either a total fail or a devastating partial fail.

Rewarding the player with a partial or total victory based on them interacting with the theme of race relations and coexistance seems a lot better to me than wiping all the player's choices out at the very very very end of the series. Remember, the four potential endings were: Destroy (Reapers & Geth & EDI all die), Synthesis (Geth no longer exist as a distinct race after the player spent three games working to save them), Everyone dies (all the player's work is undone) or Control (a solution that was extremely heavily implied to be both morally wrong and not actually possible).

To meet the work on its own level you'd have to accept its premises but desire a different conclusion. The relevant characters, and the framework of the fiction itself, indicates that all other things being equal, conflict between organic and synthetic lifeforms is inevitable. Since Bioware defines and controls the universe, I think it's necessary to accept that premise, and once accepted, I think the possible endings, as outlined above, necessarily follows.

To wish for some other victory condition, to ask that everyone "just get along" is naive. It is wanting something for nothing. And again, look at the race relations metaphor, these are exactly the outcomes we see: destruction, assimilation, subversion, revolution. As cultures coexist and commingle (as intermarriage is made legal, becomes acceptable, and perhaps even desirable) cultures become less distinct from one another. Sure, I'll grant that the Synthesis ending is both an extreme and literal example of that, but there you have it.

Sorry, I don't think I'm required to meet your arbitrary standard for reductionism. All of the above reads to me like "have a different McGuffin that lets me win the battle" and that, to me, sounds cheap and silly.

Your idea that Bioware always intended the series to end badly

Who said it ends badly? The Synthesis ending, to me, is not "badly". What I think Bioware intended was that positive resolution would not come without perceived cost, because there's no magical doohicky that's going to let you issue a monologue and go kick Reaper ass and then chew bubble gum.

ignores that the player spent the series interacting with and potentially resolving several major race relation based conflicts, could save several races from extinction, and can prove the Reapers' entire grand idea about synthetics always destroying organics wrong. If all you see is a McGuffin in suggested solutions that reward the player for engaging with the philosophical and technological themes present in the games then you clearly aren't putting effort into looking.

All you suggested was static buildup. All the other stuff you mentioned is already in the game, it just comes before the final conversation.

As for "proving that the Reaper's grand idea about synthetics always destroying organics wrong" you can't prove that wrong outside of Synthesis because in that universe it is not wrong. You can say you don't like that, you can say it's not an accurate reflection of the world or the universe we live in, but that's established as a fact in the canonical universe by the only relevant authority-- that all other things being equal, this is what happens. and Synthesis is presented as the only remedy with the potential to work because it is the only thing that changes the fundamental reasons for the conflict-- membership in exclusive groups. People being both Geth and Quarian is looked upon by the game's fiction as superior and preferable to continued coexistence of forever separate Geth and Quarian for those reasons. It is necessary to bring the organic-synthetic conflict down to the level of race relations as we know them, because despite every other difference they might have, members of different races in the world we know are members of the same species, can intermarry, can interbreed, can blend the social groups they are in in a real and primal way that is not possible for the different species we meet; it is an intellectual and philosophical process only. I might also imagine a world where organic and synthetic life need not ever come into conflict. If I were to predict the future of our own world, I might also be so idealistic as to say such conflict need not arise, or that should it arise, it could be remedied by measures far less drastic as presented.

But that is not the universe of Mass Effect as presented by the creators of the Mass Effect universe.

I think you're far too busy reducing others' ideas into insultingly simple statements like "have a different McGuffin that lets me win the battle."

I wasn't reducing anything. You literally had no other suggestion. You said it yourself, you defeat the Reapers through a technical process. That was it. As for the answer to the central conflict-- how is the inevitable conflict between organic and synthetic life resolved, I see your solution now is a non-solution, since you don't accept the premise, but I think that's a poor interpretation unsupported by the primary work.

And you know what? You do have to meet my standards if you want to talk to me.

In that case you better be sure not to reply, because this is me, not meeting your standards.

You haven't, so this is the last time I engage you on anything.

Okey dokey.

Worse, you have now shown repeatedly that you are incapable of having a discussion without reducing other's arguments until they are completely unrecognizable and completely different from their intent.

Stop, don't, come back.

It's not my job here or anywhere else to attempt to tease your intent out of your argument. I asked for what you would write, and you literally suggested static electricity. Before that, the thread's suggestion was space battles. I don't need to reduce these ideas, they came that way. You've literally suggested that the alternative to an (admittedly forced) racial combination of synthetic and organic life was STATIC ELECTRICITY to basically do something that defeats the Reapers. I wasn't asking for the mechanism, because one is as good as the other for the purpose at hand.

The work says organic-synthetic conflict is inevitable. Your answer is to say "no it isn't" which isn't an answer. The answer has to be in the form of what, on a fundamental level, you would change about the reality of this universe to make that not true. The game has a very strong suggestion. You've offered criticism of that suggestion with no credible alternative.

This thread is just one of the milder examples of you doing so and I see now that I should have never responded to you based on your past history alone, much less on your conduct in this thread.

My conduct in this thread? Are you joking, or are your feelings hurt? I'm sorry man, I'll go easy next time.

In the immortal words of Willy Wonka:

"You lose! Good day, sir!"

Whatever, man. I never addressed anything to you whatsoever, I was suggesting to Quirel to the effect that the ending of ME3 can be accurately predicted from just paying attention to Sovereign-- and it absolutely can. You chose to write that monologue off as standard villainous puffery, but it wasn't. It was the author speaking to the audience about what the theme of the work is-- what the essential conflict that needed to be resolved was going to be, and that such resolution was going to come at great cost.

Static electricity indeed.