Lots of massive (and I mean
massive) spoilers about the state of the Milky Way post-ME3 to follow, would censor them but A. I'm too drunk to navigate the BB-Code, and B. If you're clicking a thread called "Mass Effect 3" a full month or so after the game's been released and
then reading past this warning, you're kind of bringing it on yourself.
I mean what sort of logic is that? Organic life kills itself by developing synthetic life which rises up and kills its creators, so we've decided to save organic life by, uh, killing them?
Dude!! But they're harvesting them and keeping them "alive" inside immortal Reaper bodies... or some bullshit like that.
Yeah, the point is the preservation of genetic code. Compare the Encyclopod from Futurama. It's the same thing. Just... with more Kelly Chambers flavoured smoothies.
(Which does beg the question, if the Reapers resemble the species they assimilate - "why have the Reapers been harvesting so many cuttlefish?")
Didn't mind the ending, though. I didn't
like it - found it horrendously upsetting, it felt like losing a friend, absolutely heartbreaking - but it was beautiful, and it closed everything nicely. I don't mind the effects of my decisions being left off-screen. I was kind of expecting it, it's
the end of the game. That's what it means. Things stop. Agonising to destroy the community I'd loved, but Tuchanka's still thriving with or without FTL travel, the geth get to chill on Rannoch as they absolutely deserve to, I'll have saved what's left of Palaven... maybe it's just me, but knowing that my Shepard everything better was absolutely grand. I don't need a shot of krogan hordes to know that the genophage is cured, I understood the gravity of the decision when I made it, that's
why I made the decision.
I don't think it was perfect; it was all a little quick, Joker's actions were a little odd, my military strength didn't make a massive difference, and I'm not at all convinced that war is any more inevitable between synthetics and organics as it is between any other two factions. But what mattered is that the Reapers
believed that it was inevitable. It wasn't a fact, just their motivation! And sure, the geth had proven themselves to be a peaceful race and united with organics to fight the Reapers at least in
my timeline, but if I were a Reaper and I'd witnessed the cycle repeating itself in one way or another over the last X-billion years,
I'd believe it was inevitable, too. It's not a fact as much as a motivation, and that's a huge distinction that a lot of the more, er, vicious "fans" don't seem to be in a hurry to recognise. Honestly, if you asked me what my biggest gripe about the game was, I'd probably say "those lines you get, just every now and then, where the voice actors clearly haven't quite understood the context of the line and they've ended up emphasising the wrong word" - and that's a tiny, tiny thing. I don't know if the ending would even make the top three.
Frankly, when I look back on Mass Effect 3, I'll be remembering the characters, the increasing sense of doom, the storytelling, the Reapers attacking Earth (with
that music), watching my old team kill themselves one by one as the situation becomes more and more desperate - it's a masterclass in storytelling, worldbuilding, and building up beautiful characters only to
crush them with fire. Mordin, singing away, saving the krogan! Tali, driven to suicide by her race's insistence on war. And ohhhh, the conversation with Garrus in London - broke my heart. Find me a more immersive story and I'll tell you "no, sorry, try again" - this franchise is the pinnacle. Blazing trails in the field of modern storytelling; no franchise has ever used technology so deftly to tell such a flexible and all-consuming story. I'll always be a Mass Effect fan.
Topic: Mass Effect (merged thread) (Read 68763 times)
