Daamn.
But wouldn't that give aliens the moral justification to kill us?
If we were to all, instead, agree not to fight in interstellar space, then we'd all survive. Otherwise, there is only one survivor, and it's probably not us.
Our best bet would be to develop a symbiotic relationship where both become dependent on eachother.
You realize the mass effect 3 ending is Shepherd being indoctrinated by the reapers into choosing anything but the correct option, which is destroying the reapers, right?
The only way for Shepherd wakes up and does not die is when you choose the "evil" or racist option. I was playing a good character up until the final scene when I thought, fuck it, I'm not going to betray everyone by just changing my mind and bringing about some symbiotic bullshit just cause the correct option is color-marked red (for evil). We agreed to bring down the reapers, so that's what I'll do. It's not up to me to decide the fate of the entire Universe on a whim.
That's what I choose to believe, I refuse to accept that they ruined one of the best games in history with the ending. It was all an illusion, and the devs are fucking masterminds. It is seriously the best fucking ending a game can have if you realize the ingenuity of it all.
Choosing that red option is the only way you get this scene where Shepherd wakes up in the midst of ruins at the very end. That scenes gives it away. It was an illusion, a brainwashing by the aliens, and it worked, and the only thing they had to do was color-code your options. You were brainwashed, I was not.
AppleGenius said:You realize the mass effect 3 ending is Shepherd being indoctrinated by the reapers into choosing anything but the correct option, which is destroying the reapers, right?
The Indoctrination arc was very well written, I like that they played it more like a mental poisoning through exposure to Reaper sound frequencies with the room for Reaper Grafts to further the indoctrination, rather than something direct like full blown possession. You even hear their invasion noises during dream sequences that resemble a description vaguely given by the Rachni Queen (oily shadows). By the second game after what happens to Shepard you are able to put on cosmetics that resemble that kind of structural damage Indoctrination does to a person, which I feel was meant to be a hint. You are outright questioned wtf you are doing by members of your former team in the second game, no matter what path you pick, showing control leave your hands more and more overtime beyond that of picking the fate of one race over another, with each having a pick that benefits The Reapers available without expressly punishing you for it. You are in fact given many chances to overtly help The Reapers through Red options, while Paragon picks tend to be a "The best of intentions" case gone wrong, such as it's lack of solution to the Krogan problem.
If you play sensibly and colorblind, you tend to end up more neutral, but the color system is just so inviting and taking an extreme side makes you stronger.
They presented the risk for a while, and as time goes on you keep switching sides further and further from the human cause even as a Magnificent Space Racist, from the System's Alliance to Cerberus, a human group affiliated you EXPRESSLY HATE with the Sole Survivor backstory in the first game and you even get called on it for how crazy that is, that aims to repurpose Reaper tech instead of destroy it, something they already warn you about through the Salarians and numerous other pieces of lore... and then you even turn against THEM like every other Reaper project in the short term has proven to do with you having no choice to stay with Cerberus. If you look at the story the game tells you more as setting and Encyclopedic lore, you quickly start to see how everything is a bad decision with room to benefit The Reapers.
There are ways to remove options you have at the ending, and with that Destroy remains one of the choices. I can't help but feel Destroy, from it being an option handed to you by them rather than something you truly earn yourself, is not really a choice either. Even Anderson ends up more of an archetype to represent Sheperd's Humanity, and guess what happens there? The most obvious Reaper-Adjacent ending is the neutral choice, one that repeatedly has been shown to you to be a bad idea, and would only be considered if you by the end of all of it truly agree with and attempt to sympathize with something that inhuman (using a child proxy to talk to you and push you further even).
As early as the start of the game you are already relying heavily on Reaper technology, you can't escape them at all over how their technology is rooted into the foundation of your own, as well as those of the other alien races. The Reapers control Culture basically, and the culture they've cultivated is doomed to eat itself for their benefit. If you destroy The Reapers, they will either come back like a Phoenix through existing tech, be reinvented by someone within Reaper-themed culture without even needing indoctrination, lingering indoctrination could easily rebuild them, and if they went as far as to "start over" technologically they'd lose what lets them connect to the greater world, insulating themselves into a non-issue that may even die off without Reaper aid.
The only way for Shepherd wakes up and does not die is when you choose the "evil" or racist option. I was playing a good character up until the final scene when I thought, fuck it, I'm not going to betray everyone by just changing my mind and bringing about some symbiotic bullshit just cause the correct option is color-marked red (for evil). We agreed to bring down the reapers, so that's what I'll do. It's not up to me to decide the fate of the entire Universe on a whim.
In general the game presents picking good/evil as the classic moral paradigm for Bioware games, but then flips it on it's head when it's questioned if it is or isn't a part of Reaper conditioning. At the end your paths are color coded to match the themes, and there are some outcomes you can get from more Neutrally leaning options, or from resisting the impulse to rush an alignment answer.
I think it was meant to illustrate the illusion of choice as control over outcomes becomes more and more nebulous the bigger you try to extend your grasp. Without going out of your way for some outcomes you can't even select, or at points even fathom the option, and by asigning good and bad colors it rids of the other Good and Bad options that could have been picked outside of Indoctrination.
What was originally seen as limitations in the writing staff for number of choices goes meta and becomes about mental conditioning, as we even saw much, much more alignment options in Knights of the Old Republic and even Jade Empire. Bioware-wise this isn't the first time they explained that your choices made were brainwashed into you. In KOTOR1 they went there as well with Revan to rationalize how his Good choices were Bad and Unnatural, in KOTOR2 your master expressly spends the course of the game chastising you for ever making an alignment decision, rather than a fiercely practical one, over how strong alignment ties make you controlled by The Force, and in Jade Empire your will is not deemed your own either, with whatever path you picked having been picked before you by your master with reason for him to do so for his benefit in advance.
That's what I choose to believe, I refuse to accept that they ruined one of the best games in history with the ending. It was all an illusion, and the devs are fucking masterminds. It is seriously the best fucking ending a game can have if you realize the ingenuity of it all.
Apparently the endings weren't even supposed to be color coded, you were meant to see it look the same.
A lot of players felt ripped off over how it rid them of that much more choice, but ffs they just got through arcs like if they do or don't save the Krogans. The ending was also admitted by development to have been rushed, and some of the writing staff shifted around such as Mac Walters becoming the new head developer. We also have not seen a properly good Bioware come out since, and I don't think that's a coincidence.
I picked the symbiosis ending because if you pick the red one, your artificial friend dies too. And friends are uber alles.
How arrogant. What if it were the other way around, you discussed and agreed to get everyone to become symbiotic and then some dude goes there and kills the reapers and your buddies. Betrayal.
Turncoat said:The Indoctrination arc was very well written, I like that they played it more like a mental poisoning through exposure to Reaper sound frequencies with the room for Reaper Grafts to further the indoctrination, rather than something direct like full blown possession. You even hear their invasion noises during dream sequences that resemble a description vaguely given by the Rachni Queen (oily shadows). By the second game after what happens to Shepard you are able to put on cosmetics that resemble that kind of structural damage Indoctrination does to a person, which I feel was meant to be a hint. You are outright questioned wtf you are doing by members of your former team in the second game, no matter what path you pick, showing control leave your hands more and more overtime beyond that of picking the fate of one race over another, with each having a pick that benefits The Reapers available without expressly punishing you for it. You are in fact given many chances to overtly help The Reapers through Red options, while Paragon picks tend to be a "The best of intentions" case gone wrong, such as it's lack of solution to the Krogan problem.
Yeah it's amazing.
The part that does it for me is this:
Suppose you do well in the game, i.e., complete almost everything. In that case, you will get a different ending. Namely, at the end, Shepard will wake up in the midst of rubble, alive, back on the ground. However, this happens only if your war assets are high enough and only if you choose the "destroy" ending. Otherwise, it won't happen.
Why would the devs make that ending only if you choose the destroy ending. Otherwise, nothing you did in the game matters, all your war assets will be for nothing -- it will be the same ending every time, no matter what you did throughout the game. Nothing mattered. Except if you resisted the reapers.
That is, you can only really complete the game by having enough war assets and choosing the destroy option. Shepard then presumably gets up and goes to destroy the reapers for real.
I picked the symbiosis ending because if you pick the red one, your artificial friend dies too. And friends are uber alles.
How arrogant. What if it were the other way around, you discussed and agreed to get everyone to become symbiotic and then some dude goes there and kills the reapers and your buddies. Betrayal.
Turncoat said:The Indoctrination arc was very well written, I like that they played it more like a mental poisoning through exposure to Reaper sound frequencies with the room for Reaper Grafts to further the indoctrination, rather than something direct like full blown possession. You even hear their invasion noises during dream sequences that resemble a description vaguely given by the Rachni Queen (oily shadows). By the second game after what happens to Shepard you are able to put on cosmetics that resemble that kind of structural damage Indoctrination does to a person, which I feel was meant to be a hint. You are outright questioned wtf you are doing by members of your former team in the second game, no matter what path you pick, showing control leave your hands more and more overtime beyond that of picking the fate of one race over another, with each having a pick that benefits The Reapers available without expressly punishing you for it. You are in fact given many chances to overtly help The Reapers through Red options, while Paragon picks tend to be a "The best of intentions" case gone wrong, such as it's lack of solution to the Krogan problem.Yeah it's amazing.
The part that does it for me is this:
Suppose you do well in the game, i.e., complete almost everything. In that case, you will get a different ending. Namely, at the end, Shepard will wake up in the midst of rubble, alive, back on the ground. However, this happens only if your war assets are high enough and only if you choose the "destroy" ending. Otherwise, it won't happen.
Why would the devs make that ending only if you choose the destroy ending.
My guess was so that fans don't sperg, an ending of a trilogy where all the outcomes are truly the same, as a story where hundreds of hours are thrown in just to have Reapers win as a fate play is not what they signed up for. I personally think it's fine, choices getting wider and then tapering off as you fight Foundational forces is a classic Bioware staple to try to throw the players off by showing them some things are even bigger than Choice.
They also added an ending with the DLC where you turn down every option, giving organic life another cycle of Reaper harvesting. Shepard surviving if you ask me is a BAD ending over how the Encyclopedia entries talk about the latent and lingering effects of Indoctrination. Shepard being kept alive is, very much like the War Asset battery or the 2nd Rachni Queen, a way to ensure their own survival through their former enemies.
You can't kill Reapers, you just can't. Even if you break them like Terminator 1, there's a Miles Dyson out there somewhere, either lost to innovation or outright indoctrinated into rebuilding the problem from the fragments that are left over. Even the very spaceship you use at the beginning of the game, prided as a combination of Human and Turian innovation, is basically just more Reaper tech over their implanted culture being at the base of both races, explaining how their tech could even be compatible in the first place.
Otherwise, nothing you did in the game matters, all your war assets will be for nothing -- it will be the same ending every time, no matter what you did throughout the game. Nothing mattered. Except if you resisted the reapers.
Did you know the writers threw in bad endings at different portions?
You can fuck up the mission in Mass Effect 2, and they've written outcomes for if you play a completely aromantic Shepard. In the Spacer background you even get to know Shepard's mom, there's TONS of Causal details in the players' hands that are meant to illustrate how Reaper problems are deeper and harder to destroy than that.
It's basically Deus Ex Machina, you can't win without going full Savage and writing yourself out of the larger world which still ends up a Reaper victory through their efficient spinoff of Mercy.
My guess was so that fans don't sperg, an ending of a trilogy where all the outcomes are truly the same, as a story where hundreds of hours are thrown in just to have Reapers win as a fate play is not what they signed up for. I personally think it's fine, choices getting wider and then tapering off as you fight Foundational forces is a classic Bioware staple to try to throw the players off by showing them some things are even bigger than Choice.
They also added an ending with the DLC where you turn down every option, giving organic life another cycle of Reaper harvesting. Shepard surviving if you ask me is a BAD ending over how the Encyclopedia entries talk about the latent and lingering effects of Indoctrination. Shepard being kept alive is, very much like the War Asset battery or the 2nd Rachni Queen, a way to ensure their own survival through their former enemies.
You can't kill Reapers, you just can't. Even if you break them like Terminator 1, there's a Miles Dyson out there somewhere, either lost to innovation or outright indoctrinated into rebuilding the problem from the fragments that are left over. Even the very spaceship you use at the beginning of the game, prided as a combination of Human and Turian innovation, is basically just more Reaper tech over their implanted culture being at the base of both races, explaining how their tech could even be compatible in the first place.Otherwise, nothing you did in the game matters, all your war assets will be for nothing -- it will be the same ending every time, no matter what you did throughout the game. Nothing mattered. Except if you resisted the reapers.
Did you know the writers threw in bad endings at different portions?
You can fuck up the mission in Mass Effect 2, and they've written outcomes for if you play a completely aromantic Shepard. In the Spacer background you even get to know Shepard's mom, there's TONS of Causal details in the players' hands that are meant to illustrate how Reaper problems are deeper and harder to destroy than that.
It's basically Deus Ex Machina, you can't win without going full Savage and writing yourself out of the larger world which still ends up a Reaper victory through their efficient spinoff of Mercy.
Yeah, I guess. It could also be laziness.
So what are your final thought on the transgender issue? Are chimpanzees allowed to crush men in MMA? I see no issue.
Homosexuals should compete with their own gender.
Also if they made a unisex olympics only fruity men and the odd queer zir will sign up, while women ( the real ones ) will keep playing in women's sports.
Aman.
Would the same happen for all-race sports if we made race-specific sports?
Yeah, I guess. It could also be laziness.
As I mentioned already they were victim of time constraints, the ending was rushed.
So what's your final thought on the transgender issue? Are chimpanzees allowed to crush men in MMA? I see no issue.
I still see it as mostly a consent problem, I am not convinced that a Chimp can grasp the situation any more than a child.
If they could be on our level of sentience, like Gunter from Futurama, then I'd see no reason to hold them back any more than an alien race. They at that point could follow the rules of a sport rather than behave like a wild animal, and it'd be of their own volition rather than just training a circus animal that fights. 
