That is when the Reapers are at their best. (Destiny)

by Ragashingo , Official DBO Cryptarch, Wednesday, February 10, 2016, 07:24 (3304 days ago) @ narcogen

Funny how that game so clearly communicates that message, and yet we still get an outcry at the end of the trilogy that the universe didn't properly take into account all the protagonist's choices.

For some reason what you said here rubbed me wrong. The implication I got was something along the line of "people complaining about the ending shouldn't have because the bad guy already told us what was coming."

I just don't think the two have anything to do with each other.

I think most people's expectation, even with Sovereign's original speech being as good and chilling as it was, was that the Reapers were somehow wrong, were somehow fallible, were somehow defeatable. Just neither they or we knew how yet. I'd wager that most people figured that we'd eventually get to be the clever and competent hero who would defy the impossible odds and find the weakness or flaw that nobody in millions of years had found.

For me at least, the outcry wasn't because the game didn't respect my choices. It was because none of the original three outcomes were satisfying. In the end I didn't so much get to be that clever hero as I was forced to choose which way I would die while solving the problem of the Reapers with solutions that had very little backing with the rest of the series.

Ultimately, I think Sovereign's original speech can stand as one of the greatest "you have no chance" villain speeches of all time and players can have legitimate complaints about the series screwing up its ending without it being "funny."

(All that said, I really liked the "everyone loses and the cycle continues" ending they added in later because while it still didn't satisfy that "being the clever hero" itch, it was at least consistent with the rest of the series and Sovereign's original speech.)