JackSlack wrote:Seriously? I thought thematically the end of the game came out of fucking no-where, and posited a basic conflict that I spent the entirely of the Rannoch missions disproving.
I don't think it's fair to say the ending was thematically out of left field. It wasn't. All three games have had major central themes about the interactions between synthetic and organic life, and the final choice was an obvious culmination of that thematic thread.
Now you can argue that it was narratively poor for the exact reason you've noted (though I disagree with that argument, obviously) but thematically? I'm not sure how that claim holds up. The final choice takes the conflict central to the last three games and puts it's resolution in your hands. Do you control synthetics, destroy synthetics, submit to synthetics, or unify wuith synthetics?
Relating too the natrrative point, the implications of the Rannoch mission are a lot less superficial than simply proving that synthetics and organics can coexist.
On the one hand, the Geth are an infant race complared to the Catalyst. The Catalyst is potentially millions of years old. The Geth are merely thousands. The Catalyst is the final legacy of the first cycle - the end product of all organic and synthetic life within. The Geth are the first sentient synthetic race of this cycle. The fisrt thing they did was nearly eradicate their creators. Yeah, you brought an end to that war, but what happens the next time someone picks a fight with the Geth? You're talking to a supreme mechanical being who has seen the same pattern of synthetic prevailing over organic for millenia.
On the other hand, yeah, you did manage to bring peace between the Geth and the Quarians. The unification of those species behind the banner of their collective rights to existence are what help you get to the citadel at all (assuming, of course, that your mission on Rannoch ended with both the Geth and the Quarians offering their support - the mission doesn't actually have to play out that way). Shepard's presence on the citadel - confronting the Catalyst - demonstrates that organic life has advanced to the point where they have become formidable - The reapers no longer provide a suitable counterbalance to the galaxy's natural march towards chaos. The Catalyst's system ceases to be viable. Organic life has ascended, and met the synthetic god character as an equal, and is now given the choice as to how it will proceed. Organic life has reached a point where the triumph of synthetics is no longer certain, and will no longer be certain in future cycles. The solutions you choose, then, all stem from this point.
You can choose to subjugate the synthetic - forging the role of the organic as the superior form of life.
You can choose to destroy the synthetic - and risk that the cycle of synthetic uprising begins anew.
You can unify the synthetic and the organic - and create a new future, at peace, moving life into a new form where syntetic and organic are equal, unified, and symbiotic. Ending the cycles of destruction and rebirth completely.
Alternately, (though not explicitly) you can also choose to let the reapers do their thing. This is sort of an unwritten option.
In context - these all seem like pretty natural outcomes for the story, dependent on how you played your shepard.
The fact that no one ending is clearly right or good also makes the ending of the game really interesting. Each solution is apropriate to the story, but they all have clear down sides. It's a choice that makes you consider what the Shepard you built would do - and what that means for the galaxy you've inhabited.
Cybren wrote:None of your choices had any consequence besides filling up a score bar, itself an absurd mechanic that was as anachronistic as asking you for quarters every time shepard dies.
Narrative consequenses - not mechanical ones.
The core of ME3's narrative was the resolution of storylines opened over the previous three games. The choices you made in previous games exerted substantial influence over the events and structure of ME3, and the choices you made in ME3 dictated the final outcomes of those storylines, even if their impact on the mechanics of the game were marginal. (Though they certainly did have influence over the narrative options available to you in the final mission).
So, the game about the consequence of your decisions is about the legacy of the consequence of your decisions but no matter what decisions you make your legacy is identical?
the 30-second cutscene is identical [similar, really]. That 30-second cutscene is NOT shepard's legacy. That 30 second cutscene is the denoument of the game following from the chioce you made at the game's resolution.
Shepard's
legacy is the 120 hours of gameplay you sunk into the games as you played through them, as well as the narrative results of shepard's final decision. Shepard's legacy is that of the galaxy's savior, or destroyer, or god, based on the outcome you choose.
That cutscene is just an irelevant little tidbit in the millena of galactic progress you have just had a hand in shaping.
-m
