Aren't you missing half of the dark matter ending context? With the dark matter ending reveal to be that to save the galaxy from dark matter you'd need a biotic of colossal proportions which by harvesting sentient organics species into reaper form the reapers are & were created for However the harvested species didn't meet the required criteria so they created the cycle as the most efficient way to harvest sentient space fairing species to maximise the creation of reapers from different species until they harvestedbthe right species to create the reaper capable of saving the galaxy The reapers believe humanity is that species (see Harbingers comments of aliens) and why the final fight is on earth in ME3 as the reapers need humanity So this would leave shepherd with a choice at the end of ME3 - Side with the Reapers sacrifice humanity to hopefully save the galaxy - active the crucible to destroy the Reapers to save this cycle but at the cost potentially dooming the galaxy with no plan for dark matter
Only chink in your theory: the creators of the Reapers were far superior biotics themselves, being able to use psychic indoctrination to subjugate entire species and travel through space without aid of space ships. An apex species. The indoctrination powers of the Reapers are merely an artificial imitation of their powers. Also, the Asari are all natural biotics and many a lot more powerful than even the most powerful humans biotics, due to their long lifespans. So the Asari would have been the prime choice here. And since biotics are linked to the presence of Element Zero in an organic nervous tissue, it should be possible to create artificial biotics by just injecting it into organics or by cloning/genetic engineering organic individuals with greater capacity and amounts of Element Zero in them. Also, if Reapers harvest a strongly biotic species and condense them into another Reaper, what happens with all the Element Zero within the members of that species? Is that absorbed into a Reaper also? Besides the fact that Reapers must use Element Zero themselves to be able to do what they do.
I do like that additional context I think it adds a bit more nuance to the choice and it makes siding with the reapers not feel nearly as bad if it means potentially saving the rest of the species in the galaxy.
It also explains why the Reapers were desperate throughout the games since they were already delayed because the last Protheans disabled the signal on the Citadel so it couldn't just activate the hidden Mass Relay, then when the Rachni plot failed, it forced Soverign to attack directly, exposing itself and the existence of Reapers. Right now, ME2's plot is pretty silly, why waste resources with the Collectors and create a Human/Reaper hybrid when the Reapers were only months away. The Human/Reaper hybrid being created before the Reaper invasion was due to the fact that they were long overdue with the cycle and the dark matter was at a crucial peak.
Minor point, but additionally... It would have paid off the game's title. As it stands, Mass Effect is just a nifty thing that allows the galaxy to function as it does. With an ending revolving around Dark Energy (and another game better setting up the risks of said energy), the game's title would have come full circle.
That's not a minor point, it's brilliant. That and the (probably accidentally) implied meaning of the words 'mass effect', as in a massive effect that ripples throughout time and space, which is what the games are all about - small choices that turn into big choices that turn into galactic choices, with the final choice described in the dark energy ending as being the most impossibly grandest of them all.
If Shepard were one of many secret aliens rather than just one then I can see it working but yeah if Shep were meant to be an alient and that was it? hell na
@@MCellation I think that was kind of the point. Inserting a subplot where Shepard was "an alien all along" would be crass and not work but having Cerberus be aware of funky DNA like say, some kind of human/nonhuman hybrid, could have easily contributed to a more cloak and dagger character driven drama in ME2 or 3... given how bad Bioware are at intrigue on that level wouldn't inspire any hope on my end but it could potentially work. I think some people are a little too focused on the "secretly an alien" part and not thinking about subtle applications of the idea. Think about how the story could have pivoted if your Shepard DID fully die in the opening for ME2 and the character we play as was just a simulacrum made to look, sound, think, and act, like the original. There were scattered logs in ME2 that hinted at the possibility of this 'revived' Shepard being a fake, not to mention that Miranda and ILM couldn't be considered trustworthy given their goals. I mean another weird application of Shepard secretly being an alien could just be that at some point leading up to ME3 but after ME2 our avatar was replaced with a fake, corrupted (similar to, or just indoctrination) or assimilated (similar to how synthesis was meant to be a solution to the 'problem' the star child forces on us), etc. Ultimately making it clear that our choices still take priority but insert drama in the story by driving a wedge between allies and whatnot. Again not saying it's a 'good' idea off the bat, because we have literally nothing to go on to be able to judge, I'm just saying the 'idea' sounds neat but vague.
Also id like to point out that the existance and design of the human reaper implies every reaper was meant to look unique, to be a giant mechanical version of its host species. Sovereign would have been only one design among many, and if you look close at the reaper armada at the end of 2, they are different forms. But i imagine 3 was so rushed that they decided to stop at creating the reaper destroyer varient and just spam it and Sovereigns model everywhere.
The Human Reaper was apparently a Larvae, so it would go inside the body, but I agree there too many Sovereign looking Reapers and they should've put in the other Reapers from ME2 ending, another thing Harbinger in ME3 was just a modified Sovereign which is abit lazy.
It was just a core - it would still keep general look of Reaper, but with certain difrences. In fact, in ending cutscene for ME2, we can see every Reaper is slightly different - Harbinger has four legs and flat front, there is a reaper with bulky and round front, there is also more slim one and many others in the background.
Well, we DID see a swarm of cuttlefish-like reapers at the end of ME2; if they're consistent, each is 2km long. The Terminator-esque "larvae" of the final fight in ME2 wasn't nearly large enough to stand 2000m...more like 300m. And since the "essence" of each species "preserved" at the end of each cycle would almost certainly require a body consistent with its self-image (what would it feel like to trade your body for that of an octopus? Pretty disorienting and weird...and ultimately distorting of one's self-image,) each "larvae" - with its original morphology - would still persist if installed in a "cuttlefish" battlesuit, like when Shepard drives a mech at Grissom Academy.
Not correct. Every Reaper dreadnought would look like Sovereign; this was even shown in 2 with the derelict Reaper. The larva was just a core that goes inside and controls the body, like a pilot.
While the Big Crunch is one potential end to the universe, the one we seem to be headed for is the Big Rip. This is the exact opposite of the Big Crunch. Instead of gravity overcoming the expansion of the universe, the expansion of the universe continues and accelerates. The further objects are from each other, the weaker gravity becomes. Meanwhile we don't really understand dark energy, but it seems to be increasing and fueling the expansion of the universe. The end result of the big rip is this: galactic clusters get further and further away as dark energy builds. Eventually, it overcomes the gravity holding together galactic clusters, then galaxies, star clusters, and solar systems. At the end of the universe, dark energy has built to such a level that it overcomes electromagnetism holding together molecules, and the strong nuclear force that hold together atoms. The universe ends cold, black and with even protons, neutrons and electrons torn apart. Some speculate that this process could become strong enough to tear apart the universe into smaller new universes. In my opinion, this is far more terrifying than the Big Crunch. There's a decent argument to be made that a Big Crunch could result in a new Big Bang, and that would make the universe itself cyclical. On the other hand, the end for the Big Rip is for everything to end cold and alone.
Honestly? I think both the Big Rip and Big Crunch are as speculative as anything the Greeks, Egyptians or anyone elses ideas over the Millenia. Atheists sometimes call Religion "God of the Gaps" when referring to Theology that tries to say "science doesn't explain everything" and this is exactly what those hypotheses are, gaps in the mathematics, dark matter and dark energy are also gaps, something is causing effects so something is crammed in there to fill them. There is a serious crisis in cosmology where different, internally valid methods of measuring the universe and measuring both the rate of expansion and any increase in that rate do not agree. Until this is resolved we might as well say a Mayan Crocodile God Peed on Ra and some of his bellybutton fluff fell out and made the universe.
@@Tuberuser187 The difference is that the point of Dark Matter and Dark Energy is that they are things that seem to exist, which we don't understand. They are called Dark because we don't know anything about them and have very limited ways of interacting with them. So as opposed to a god, these are limited to the minimal amount of assumptions. It is basically "Solar Systems and Galaxies seem to have a higher gravitational effect than expected, after a number of hypothesis failed, the one which fits best is that there is something we cannot see, but which both has a gravitational effect and is affected by gravity. This thing is dark and acts like matter, lets call it Dark Matter for now." We could do something similar for the explanation of Dark Energy, though in its case it is something that isn't affected by gravity but does have a gravitational effect. It is definitely possible that our understandings of these things are wrong. But what we know is that something will fill out those 2 spots and it will be things that somehow interact with gravity.
@@morgothable Recognising that there is something having an effect and then extrapolating it to a literal breaking point, where it no longer functions isn't much better. The arrogance of pretending to be so sure is exactly the same though. Until the current cosmological crisis is resolved, which will be one of three things, two different models for Dark Energy and Dark Matter or something totally different that over writes a lot of theoretical physics as we know.
@@Tuberuser187 But scientists aren't saying that Dark Energy or Dark Matter are the definitive truth of the universe. They are extrapolating what fits with the information of the universe so they get more options to test. The whole point is to generate a better basis to test how the universe works. What is known is that something with those qualities exists and whatever it is, you try to generate and test hypothesis based on it. The whole point of science is that facts are always fixed, while the theories and explanations of these facts can change. But the theory is always the one with the most explanatory power and currently those include Dark Energy and Dark Matter as we understant them now. That will change when a theory explains all the facts better.
@@Tuberuser187 it is true that dark matter and energy sometimes act as a catch all or god of the gaps hypothesis. A big example is the Axion, a theoretical dark matter particle that would solve a quantum issue called the charge parity problem, unfortunately I don’t understand it well enough to explain it though. The key difference however is that we’re not just using one idea for everything, we don’t say “this doesn’t make sense, so it must be dark matter” and wash our hands of the issue. We keep theorizing, running tests, and updating models. But above all, when coming up with a potential solution, it’s specific and matches the problem. In the case of the Axion, our models and hypothesis are specific enough that we can run tests based on the theorized properties. Something I love about these studies though is that we are confident we don’t know, or at least any scientist worth their salt is. Is it dark matter that causes the gravitational anomalies we observe or is gravity different than all of our models predict? We don’t know and it’s an ongoing debate within the field. It is interesting that dark matter has become the dominant theory, but we must all remember that it comes with the caveat that we aren’t sure. Gravity as an example is super weird, because of the way it interacts with space time and matter compared to the other fundamental forces. Gravity is fundamentally different, acting solely to influence space-time, and all observed forces are just the result of objects falling into these warped space time. This actually means any measurement of gravity is indirect, as opposed to the other forces. I truly hope that one day we can reach a sufficient understanding of the universe to know the answer to these issues, but it is amazing how far we’ve come. Sorry for the long comment, but I really love this stuff, and it’s fun to talk about. Thanks for reading!😊
Um... no, that's not actually what happened. What happened was a combination of the story outline leaking, making EA panic (this also happened to Transformers: Dark of the Moon's movie script), and both Walters & Hudson hastily figuring out a new ending. On top of multiple other narrative beats being explored and dropped. For instance: Originally, Thessia would've seen you have to choose between the Virmire Survivor and Liara, with only one surviving by the end of the mission. The fight with the Reaper on Rannoch was supposed to be an entire boss fight with you countering incoming rocket fire during the turret section. That's why it feels so pointless now, because the core gameplay had to be tossed late into development. Priority Earth was going to be Suicide Mission 2.0, but incorporating the choices apparently hurt the pacing, so now war assets simply count towards the Readiness meter. Game development is messy, and leaks can cause a dev cycle can go into a tailspin. EA might be as greedy as any games publisher, but they did learn from Dragon Age 2's rushed dev cycle. Why else give Inquisition, Andromeda, and Anthem longer dev cycles than almost any other games in BioWare's entire history? The problems were more a combination of the BS "BioWare Magic" crunch philosophy, management failures, and Soderlund's bone-headed push for every EA game to be based on Frostbite regardless of the consequences.
You don't even get to blame EA for that. They changed it because it leaked and "fans" decided to moan about it, proving that you ducknards were geared up to moan about Mass Effect 3's ending no matter how good it could have been
@@UnabridgedGamerdid you forget that EA did shit like make javik a pre-order incentive rather than release him with the base game? EA greed had everything to do with why this game was rushed, and was the weakest entry of the 3, large chunks of the bioware team left because of it.
I know that people in general probably would have found it narratively unsatisfying, but my preference would have been for the motivations of the Reapers to never really be explained, in the same way that a human can't explain to termites that you need them to not destroy your house, you just eradicate them. The motivations of more complex beings than us should be terrifyingly unknowable. Hell, you can often have a conversation and a modicum of understanding between you and your dog, you certainly can succeed in expressing or communicating things to each other, but a trip to the vet will always full them with dread and confusion and it's just not possible to explain why it needs to happen regardless. That first conversation with Sovereign in ME1 is pitch-perfect cosmic horror, and nothing else lived up to it... I never wanted them to be anything other than this eldeitch horror that slumbers just outside the galaxy and wakes up to ravage through it every few thousand years for reasons we can never fathom.
Sovereign was so scary and mind blowing in me1, and it was like: damn. It takes the whole galaxy and alot of luck to kill ONE. A whole civilization of them doing a full invasion will be hopeless. In me3, the invasion was not what I pictured. The way they just kind of hang around. I think there should have been a whole game just searching the galaxy for a way to stop them after 2. When Sovereign said we're eternal i had some really cool theories like the reapers being humans future but theres like atime paradox. If they couldn't think of a more interesting ending than they did, yea keep it vague. Its sad that me1 is so perfect but story and writing problems kinda snowball into a pretty underwhelming ending
@@skyrimisforthenords8312 Mass effect 2 was supposed to be preparation for the invasion, but they had not enough time to develop enough content for the game so the focues was shifted to was the over threat (the collectors). Basically ME2 and ME3 suffered greatly because of short development circle quota imposed by EA at the time. they weren't the only studio with such quota's from EA.
Imagine what ME2 & 3 be like if Bioware stayed with Microsoft? In my opinion I think ME3 ruined the Reapers by making them weaker and givingbthem and origin etc @@roiking2740
I think their motivation is avoiding competition, if no AI develops long enough to become the destroyers of their creators, then the reapers would be the only ones and not being force to fight with another AI with the same almost unlimited capabilities of produce more "manpower" for war until nothing is left. by resetting the galaxy every 50k years, they ensure to increase their numbers, preserve all the useful knowledge of those 50k years and most important, destroying any possible AI born in those 50k years that could become a problem if left uncheck. that way the reapers keep being at the top of the food chain without any real menace to their existence. that's why the "green" ending is the most logical of the 3, because you are melting organics with AI so no competition is possible since everyone would be the same, the only possible threats the races would face would be from another galaxy or universe. but if you choose red, you are basically doing the same as the reapers, restarting the galaxy and have again the same AI problem 50k years later and with blue, is the same but with shepard as the reapers it would be worse since he will have to either restart the galaxy at some point or ignore it and leave any AI civilization dominate the galaxy until it becomes a problem for the reapers or just erase any organic life.
@roiking2740 my first playthrough of me2 i was very confused as to why we were not focusing on the reapers and finding a way to stop them. I ended up loving the game by the end but in the trilogy, it feels like a waste of time. Theres a youtube video by a passed away youtuber: this crazy industry, I think it was. Watch his video on me2. It does a good articulating alot of my thoughts. Ultimately me2 was doing the first act, a second time. So me3 is kindve a mess. I wouldn't change me2 but they shouldn't have limited it to just 3 games if the writing wasn't ready to end the series
You cannot grade the "Ending" without understanding that that the original ending was worse than the Legendary editions ending. At the time it was just Shepard makes a choice, some companions get stranded and that's it. No context was given. No closure and only the few got the hidden one. Mass effect 3 was a failure until the fans forced Bioware to finish their game.
I loved the original ending. Sometimes no matter what choices you make, no matter how hard you try, sometimes it's just predefined (almost like fate, I don't believe in fate). Like you can be super healthy, super nice and friendly, super heard working, and still get stabbed by a stranger or die of cancer. I also like that the ultimate hero pays the ultimate sacrifice
The OG ending we got was awful but then in an effort to 'fix' some of it there was the update that only further ruined it, in my opinion. I know there is no consensus one way or another for any of the endings but I genuinely liked the idea of indoctrination theory and it would have made for a interesting third act to 'lock in' one of say.. 3 distinct paths you could have taken depending on your previous choices up to that point. I would have enjoyed the idea that all of our choices up to the final arc would set in stone our general path but instead of it always being the same, we ended up with at least an attempt at identifying key routes that we, as players, had taken up to that point in our respective paths. Generally I see: a Shep that was humanity first, at any cost. a Shep that united the galaxy, whether the beings in it wanted to be united or not. a Shep that sought to unite the galaxy on mutual ground. you could also probably slap in variations a long the way too.
@@dangrus123 They should of just told the executives to go and sit in the corner like the children they are. Instead we got one of the worst endings in gaming history which really damaged the brand.
@@keeperofnecronomicon Yes, it was an idea they were teasing out in ME2 but they eventually decided not to continue it and they dropped it. They had many ideas for an ending for the trilogy but hadn't nailed anything down even by the time that ME2 was finished. The dark energy theory was just one idea of many.
@@misanthropicattackhelicopt4148 "They should of just told the executives to go and sit in the corner like the children they are." 1. You don't just tell the executives to "go sit in the corner" because that's a surefire way to get those executives to cancel your game and shut down your studio. Like it or not, they are the bosses because they are the ones funding your game. So if you want your game to be released at all, you gotta bend the knee and kiss the ring, so to speak. 2. "should of". Lol. Come on, man.
The only thing they had to do in, order to make a good and memorable ending, was to give what they promised: to make our choices matter. They did not need to give us three choices for an ending. That was totally unnecessary. The entire trilogy, our sole purpose was to defeat the Reapers. There only needed to be a Destroy ending. Our choices throughout the three games would have determined how the end of the game played out. Did we have a scene where the Rachni Queen and her children fought alongside the soldiers? Did we get to see the Turians providing cover fire for the Krogan as they charged husks on their revived dinos? Salarians covertly making plans with the the Turians and Krogan? If we made peace between the Geth and the Quarians, did we get to see a scene where they flew into the battle together as a coordinated team and covered each other? If we did everything right, and had a high score, we could destroy the Reapers, and we could save everything with minimal loss. The lower the score, the more losses we incurred, until we maybe lost a beloved teammate. We destroy the Reapers, but Earth is also mainly destroyed, and has to be rebuilt. We would have seen our choices play out in real time, and it would have increased the replayability. Perhaps, someone didn't realize they could save the Elcor, and they missed out on seeing them in their playthrough. Now, they play again, and save them, so they get to see the scene at the end where they lumber along toting arms for the soldiers. It would have been tiny things like that, which could have been added in, if they would have simply stuck to one ending. The one that Shepard and everyone else discussed the entire time. Right up to the very end. Until they spoke to the kid, and suddenly lost all reason. The lack of our choices having any meaning, along with the lack of seeing any of them actually play out, as well as the nonsensical shift in our goal, made for the extremely unsatisfying ending. Not to mention, by that time, the trope of the hero dying for the cause had been played out. People wanted the choice of a happy ending. If the score was high enough, we should have had that choice. If it was low, sure, have Shep die, if people need that sort of ending to feel fulfilled. That would also lend to replayability. I played it after the extended cut, and it still was not a good ending. The slides didn't explain what my crew went on to do. The ending still made no sense. How did the Normandy, who everyone agrees is EDI, manage to escape the blast without a hitch, then takeoff to places unknown, if EDI was destroyed by the blast in the Destroy ending? Sure, the Normandy had an IFF, but the Reaper still was able to see it hovering in front of it and picking up injured enemies, but didn't obliterate it while Shep said their goodbyes? How did it even manage to get into Earth's atmosphere? It wasn't made for that sort of maneuver. Especially at that speed. Sorry for the wall of text, but the ending had so many holes, and was botched so badly, that I stop before I get to the Star Kid. I consider the Citadel DLC the true ending, and we destroyed the Reapers, as was our original intent. Then, my Shepard lives happily ever after with Garrus or Kaidan, depending on my playthrough.
Omg, this! The Mass Effect trilogy is my favorite game of all time (I see it as one game with three parts) and I've replayed it tons of times. I always enjoy it because I love it, but my excitement always stops once Shepherd gets into the Citadel in the last stretch. Still, I always choose destroy because that was my purpose all along. I'm not going to be brainwashed into a stupid decision by the Reaper's logic, that's just stupidly illogical. Anyway, there is an argument that many things weren't done in the last mission because of lack of time and resources, then why add the Catalyst? They could've use that time and resources to populate the Earth during Priority: Earth, utilizing your War Assets: Seeing different faction platoons in the headquarters, where you move around talking to the different people that you met along the three games, such as Kirrahe, leading a platoon of STG; Matriarch Aethyta, commanding a group of Asari commandos, and many more. You could also meet different groups of fighters once you go out into the field. Such missed opportunities. As for the ending itself, they should've stopped once you activate the Citadel; having the conversation with Anderson and reflecting about your journey while you both fade away is cathartic in some way. It would've been a beautiful ending seeing the world defeating the most monstrous odds, while knowing that you helped it get there. And like you said, all of the things could have change depending on your war assets, whether is a better ending or a worse one. Geez, it wasn't even that hard. It was simple, really.
Synthesis would make sense if it was our Shepard sacrificing his mortal form to uploaded as an AI conscience that controls the Reapers (not the whole galaxy) and through our Paragon ending, we orchestrate absolute control in rebuilding and strengthening the Galaxy. Where as a Renegade ending would be us controlling the Reapers to dominate said galaxy. A true Galactic Empire.
I always thought there should have been a conversation between Shepherd and the Harbinger at the end. The harbinger explains they are there to preserve life, not just existing life, but life throught the time in the universe. They think that once organic civilizations reach a certain point, they declime, create weapons of self drestruction, prevent other sentient species from prgressing and damage planets and life in the universe. The reapers let civilisationa have there time in the sun, let then reach and live in a gooden age, before being harvested, fhier knowledge preserved in a new reaper and the slate wiped clean. Depending on all your choices, you should have been able to debate with harbinger. Include "im gonna blow everything up", and "control" endings, but you should also have endings where you can convice the harvinger thier equation for preseving life is wrong, and use your decisions with the geth, Krogan, uniting the universe etc etc to prove your point. Or you could agree with them
If all else about Mass Effect 3 remained the same, this is the one thing I would've added; a "debate" ending where you can convince the Catalyst that synthetics and organics can live in harmony, using the fact that you brokered peace with the Geth as evidence.
@@SoloRogueStudiosAnother approach would have been in the final battle that all of Shep's companions were on the ground heading for the Citadel with three of them along with Shep and Anderson making it up to the Citadel. They could debate the creepy kid Catalyst, Harbinger or that idiot The Illusive Man. Let EDI be one of the three to prove the point that AI and Humanity can live together, hence making the Reapers self-destruct upon realizing that coexistence has been achieved. One more thing about that final battle with everyone running up the gut. I never would have done that. I would sent Danar Vosque and his mechs up the gut as decoys with Shep and his compatriots sneaking along the side out of eyeshot. You still could have that scene where your loved one gets hurt and the Normandy has to come and pick them up. But for the most part three of your compatriots with EDI and Anderson make it. Just saying.
Mass Effect 2, for all its flaws, really tied gameplay together with the story well. * If you prepared poorly, you lost a number of crew members and possibly failed the Suicide Mission. * If you prepared adequately, you might lost a person, maybe 2. * If you prepared really well, you got to watch a symphony of characters working together like a well-oiled machine. People did their jobs more effectively. The ship performed better under pressure. It was a DAMNED suicide mission. It was labeled as something you were supposed to lose. And yet they still allowed for people to be big damn heroes and flawlessly win if they prepared well enough. Mass Effect 3 did not need to have a easy ending or happy endings for everyone. It didn't need to have 100 different endings. All it needed was what Mass Effect 2 delivered. * Prepare poorly, lose people, suffer losses including Earth and/or entire species, and you lose overall. * Prepare okay, you lose people, suffer losses including Earth and/or entire species, but Shepard's team loses. Also, Shepard would sacrifice themselves to pull it off in the end. * Prepare perfectly up to a certain threshold? You get a chance to pull it all off with little to no collateral damage, and survive. The whole narrative of "we were overwhelmed trying to make an ending that was specially tailored to every player," was bullshit. The actual endings didn't need to be complicated. They were just burned out and put themselves into their art. THEY were sacrificing themselves to pull off that "Bioware Magic," and goddamnit, if they had to do that, why should the players have any option for an ideal ending? They should all be shitty because that's what they were living.
Pretty much. As it stands Mass Effect 2 has one of the most satisfying endings in gaming history, I reckon. I felt so little in ME3 on Earth despite it being...you know, Earth. My choices didn't matter, I didn't see the effects of them, it all was just an arbitrary 'line go up'. Hell, i think if you saved everyone, saved everyTHING, you manage to beat the reapers conventionally. it IS possible. It is just an idea rejected out of hand. Hell, blow up the Sol Relay, that wipes out most reapers right then and there. You lose Earth, but it could be much worse.
HI feel like the endings themselves, like a Renegade ending for example would be destroying the Reapers through an IFF Signal sent through the Relays but at the cost of FTL capabilities where civilizations would have to ascertain a way to reoperate the Mass Relays. Where as Paragon would be using the IFF Signal and destroying the Reapers but using the Engineers to some how maintain the Mass Relays functionality.
@@FatalFist Except the renegade ending also kills EDI and the geth. Paragon Oh yeah you're dead shephards dead but we got this copy that isnt really him in the reapers now. And then the basic b***h ending which explains nothing and is even more unsettling than the renegade one.
IMHO there didn't need to be a final decision. We only needed to destroy the Reapers, while deciding the fates of the Krogan, Geth, Quarians, and the human race along the way.
Facts. They had already written the perfect ending. They just unfortunately didn't have the guts to stick with it. ME3 should have ended with the cut scene with the Admiral and before the weird take the left to chat with the reaper AI bit. If the player makes all the correct choices, you get the bitter sweet ending of watching the entire galaxy save itself by defeating the Reapers as you bleed out (or plot twist secret ending- your crew comes and recues you) or if you didn't play/choose correctly, you have to watch as the Reapers destroy everything and reset the galaxy (much like you could fail the last mission of ME2)
Makes sense, as a Renegade ending us losing the Mass Relays and spending the next game some centuries later rediscovering the technology to reactivate the relays - would have been cool. Where as a Paragon ending would be the ultimate: Our Hero saves the day and everyone. Depending on how severe the Renegade option was, maybe noone on the Normandy survives, that the only way to send the signal is to blow up the ship within the Citadel to transmit the signal. In ME2 after all, we use the Reaper IFF to acquire access to the Mu Relay. That right there could have been the catalyst into acquiring Reaper sabotage.
9:30 Correction on the role of dark energy in the fate of the universe - excess dark energy will NOT create a Big Crunch/Bounce scenario, it’s create the Big Rip scenario, which is infinitely worse. Basically, in this scenario where dark energy density increases, dark energy would eventually overcome gravity, then the strong force that binds atoms together, then tear the fabric of the universe apart and everything would cease to be. This is significantly worse because there is no hope of a universal rebirth. Everything would cease to be
But in the grand scheme of things, the Milky Way is not the only galaxy in the Universe so why would this species care what we do here in the Milky Way. That's what made Andromeda kind of interesting, using Geth coordinates to study our neighboring galaxy but in the time it took us to get there, the map of Andromeda has changed drastically. Worlds targeted as having life suddenly become chaotic, a maelstrom only to uncover the Geth were studying this robot species that could somehow terraform and decimate a planet on a whim.
Honestly, i think the moment Bioware painted themselves into a corner with the Reapers as antagonists was that conversation with Sovereign in ME1. Sets up the Reapers as eldritch , unknowable terrors from the deep, immidiately lovecraftian. Gives us an impression that their goals will be grand and utterly incomprehensible, which is a hard thing to deliver on if youre not gonna go straight Cosmic Horror rather than Action Space Opera
It was tricky but not impossible. They introduced Leviathan after all. If Leviathan were introduced as a counter-balancing meddling force instead of just a few point on the Galactic Readiness score (but also explain why they didn't save the Protheans). They could introduce other powerful forces from outside the Milky Way (Leviathan might have been). Rachnii if they were turned to 11 and "upscale" might also have worked. A Deus Ex machina would also do the job if it was set up properly, which the Crucible wasn't. My personal idea is combining all those things, and adding the twist that the fight for survival through the first trilogy, would never be against the entire might of the Reaper fleet just a small fraction. 10-20 Reapers + Collectors would be enough, and it would very clearly show how ludicrously powerful even a single Reaper is. On the other hand give more time for preparations. Because what we got was far too little, and everybody was caught with their pants down. And the whole plot would revolve around defeating them and stoping them from either capturing the Citadel, or finding a different way into the Milky Way. And no. Not flying in FTL to the Edge of the Galaxy in 3 years. The whole issue of why we got what we did is that they didn't figure out how they wanted the game to end, and between the start of work on ME2 and premier of ME3 there were only 4 years. Which also means just one year between release of ME1 and start of production on ME2, where they could have figured out how to proceed. Could they have spent more time on development, if they weren't bought by EA? The only thing that is certain is they needed more time to think things through and they clearly didn't have that.
I find the Sovereign conversation overrated. It's just him being vaguely menacing and saying "You're too stupid to understand me!" Why would an eldritch entity feel the need to talk with things it considers insects? Keeping him unknowable would have been much more effective.
@@xensan76 There are issues with Sovereign speech. For me most blatant example is IT claiming they have no beginning and no end. But for the most part it is great. I agree the reason for Sovereign speaking (or lack there off) is a little thin, but it is hard to imagine how it happen otherwise. Not impossible perhaps, but would require a lot of thought and juggling things around. What really makes an impact is not the content of the speech in itself, but the reveal of the nature of Sovereign. That the "myth" about Protheans being wiped out by the Reapers are true. That Sovereign is a living machine, not just an advanced organic race. That they are here, and are about to do the same to you. I am very painfully aware about the flaws of the entire Mass Effect series, including the encounter on Virmire. I am however speaking about the fact that fist experiencing this moment had an lasting impact like no other piece of media had before or since, and ignited a lasting fascination. My opinion of ME in general is that it is a series which had some amazing (even if not entirely original) ideas, and enough talent to make something deeply flawed, yet amazing. And to me ME is mostly a story of wasted potential. A series that with more thought and planing, and perhaps some extra talent might have been far more than what it actually become.
@xensan76 theres definitely a version of the story one could make where the cosmic horror angle really shines. It's just hard to do Lovecraft in a context where you can shoot the eldritch old gods with a gun so big that they die & you're the hero in the end. You dont triumph over Cthulhu, at best you get lucky and he doesnt notice you in his rampage, it's just not a concept that thrives in this kind of genre
And THAT'S exactly how it should have remained. The ending should have been you destroying the reapers with no explanation given as to their origin or purpose. Simply assume that they need to assimilate organic species in order to preserve and expand theirs (make repairs and build new reapers), so they set up the galaxy as their farm. Simple. Sinister. And terrifying. Not to mention satisfying now that the focus on the ending is on destroying them (the entire point of the series) rather than understanding them (which was never a point).
I agree this ending had a lot of potential, but it created a few very important plot holes they probably didn't know how to solve so they ultimately went another way. What plot holes would you ask ? Well, for instance... if the Reapers wanted to prevent the very fabric of reality to be destroyed by the overuse of Eezo, why create themselves a path were all civilization make Eezo the very basis of their technology ? If you go that way, you just make your main vilains look like huge hypocrites or incredible morons at best. So yeah, Dark energy had a huge potential but needed a lot of work and maybe some retcons to function.
When I heard about the dark matter ending it wasn't Eezo overuse causing dark matter but a decay of the galaxy & the reapers are trying to create a colossal biotic capable of pushing back dark matter aka a reaper But the first reapers weren't ideal so they created the cycle to maximise the creation of biotic space fairing species to harvest to create more different types of reapers until they harvested the right species to make a reaper capable of saving the galaxy Which they believe humanity is that species Certainly has less plot holes than "we're killing you so you die from dark matter or AI"
Maybe the Mass Effect relays are just the most efficient use of Eezo that they can think of so far. After all it's probably a lot better than having countless ships carving their own FTL paths throughout the galaxy that are all ultimately slower and less efficient as they are invented for the first time by countless different species over and over again. It's like introducing a modern Nuclear Reactor to a civilization that just learned that they can burn coal to make electricity. It still technically produces waste and pollutes, but it's a lot more manageable and sustainable by comparison to their primitive technology and would in turn be a better launching off point for finding a proper permanent solution. After all if the goal is to try and restart civilization as many times as possible to try and create one that can recognize and solve the problem, then you want them to form that civ as quickly as possible. So leaving those relays around along with the citadel would accomplish that goal while also producing as little waste as possible. Then the reapers could be triggered by detecting a certain threshold of added entropy or whatever instead of having a strict time limit. They wouldn't care how long a civilization is around, they would only care if they effectively are 'polluting' too much to be sustainable. So maybe some cycles only lasted a couple tens of thousands of years while others lasted far longer. But they still all ultimately breached that threshold and triggered the Reapers resetting everything
since leaving bioware Drew Karpyshyn has joined up with Archetype Entertainment and is working on the game "Exodus" if you're looking for something that really does capture the in depth writing he brought to the Mass Effect series i'd encourage anyone who hasn't already to look at the released material on that game.
As much as I agree that such narrative would make Reapers much more interesting. I think ending itself would be just as problematic. It still would be boiled down to some choice separated completely from rest of story. While I think that what fans wanted is for all the choices made across three games influenced ending. Depending of thing we did like if we saved Rakni, saved council or cure genofage. Some ending could be then closed for us. Not just influence some slides at the end of game. After all that's how it all was advertised, as "your choices have meaning and will have consequences"
Yeah but if they have followed it with a slideshow, depicting where the Galaxy went after Shepards decision (which at that point was a common place for RPGs, and I was royally pissed about the utter lack of it in ME3) They could have branched it into truly lasting legacy for Shepard on the galactic history. i.e - If Shepard stopped the cycle but bullied everyone into helping, the unity would fracture and it would doom the Galaxy to the worst fate the Reapers tried to prevent - If Shepard showed a true way for unity during the 3 games and stopped the cycle, then over a very long time a new united galaxy would find a solution - If the cycle continued, and shepard showed how to be a good influence then the new humanity based Reaper becomes a new leader and eventually finds a species that would solve the issue and all the civilizations saved in the reapers could be re-introduced etc etc (I'm not a writer but see a lot of ways they could have actually used the decisions in the game to have many endings to the trilogy going down tousands/millions years, all presented in an epilogue slideshow)
yes all our chaices should had mattered, what i thought would happen in ME3, they would kill all the reapers and then find out it was only a branch for their galaxy, now all the reapears from nearby galaxys are coming to rip and tear. this would allow all choices to matter for the final fight and rebuild for next wave.
@@aka-47kpretty much what I had in mind. Make it a smaller amount of Reapers that can be beat conventionally albeit with heavy losses. Then have a larger force of reapers arriving a hundred or so years later. The trilogy gets an ending and there is still room for a sequel with the possibility of the longer lived team members returning in some form.
The main issue from the ending we got is that it contradicts what the games were about. They forced the idea that it was impossible for organics and synthetics to live together in the same game were it's possible to have the Geth break peace with the Quarians.
Agreed. The real mistake is in thinking players wanted to know the fate of the world. I just wanted to know how my choices affected the characters I just spent weeks with.
To quote another YT video (MrBTongue IIRC), regarding the destroy ending, "why am I walking into the exploding tube when I have a gun?" For me, the whole point of the series was to destroy the Reapers. The control ending was just to play devil's advocate and do what TIM wanted. There was the 4th option with the extended cut that let you tell the Catalyst to F off but then they punish you for it, the Reapers win but the next cycle defeats the Reapers. And the worst ending IMO, synthesis, which is what Saren wanted. Where you commit an act of Eugenics on a galactic scale and alter everyone's genes without their consent. On top of that, how is everyone supposed to coexist with those who were mutilated by the Reapers? Is my neighbor gonna be a family of Husks who invite me over for a BBQ over the weekend? That ending is f'n horrendous but the game tries to manipulate you to think it's cannon or the ideal ending. Ugh, it rubs me raw to this day and I just finished replaying all three just a couple weeks ago. I still love the series overall but that ending.... dear Lord. What a mess. And to think it was worse until they altered it for the extended cut. And now, with the disaster that is DA;V, I have no faith in the outcome of ME5, if EA even keep BW open to make it.
Should have been a bigger scale on the destroy ending that instead of just killing the Reaper, Geth and EDI. The destroy ending would have caused all Ezo to go inert galaxy wide causing all Mass Effect based technology to stop working for good, This also kills all the Quarians who need their suits, The entire Asari, any Biotics and cybernetics as their nervous system burns out.
@@thanqualthehighseerthe destroy ending literally does destroy all technology in the galaxy, the catalyst tells you this if you ask it what would happen if you choose to do it. It also mentions that a lot of innocent people would die because of this.
@@thanqualthehighseer Oof!!! That is a darker ending for sure but it would fit the scenario of requiring some great sacrifice to defeat the Reapers. While a nice victory of Shep and Garrus chilling on a beach living off the royalties of the vids from their exploits would be grand, it just wouldn't fit the actual scale of what would be required to actually beat the Reapers.
This is a wildly inaccurate retelling of what any of these endings did or represent. Which to be fair, the endings were disastrously pretentious in their storytelling instead of just being direct or clear about things. It really had that "this is my magnum opus" feel about it, where whoever in charge really felt like they were cooking up something mindblowing so they layered everything behind twelve levels of metaphor. I don't think synthesis is what they considered the ideal or canon ending in the grand scheme though, it's the "good" but kind of kills the story or drama going forward. ME5, if it ever comes out would probably canonize the "secret" ending.
Cause Shepard knew once this thing goes off, there's no surviving. Shep was gravely injured and the whole place was blowing up. May as well do it in style. Alt just a fancy scene 😂😂
But the dark matter ending would have had the same problem - the perspective is so big it makes your choices irrelevant. And perspective is the point - people say your choice in me1 and 2 don't matter in 3's ending, missing that all those previous choices are paid off throughout the whole of me3. Only paying attention to the very end makes a mockery of the beginning and middle. Also, the dark energy ending might have played out much the same way. Press the button, shep! Do you save or destroy the universe? Or mysterious third thing if your galactic readiness is high enough. Let's colour code those options too, how about red like a dying star, blue like a young star, and green to be all mysterious?
Now that I think about it, the reapers would have to eliminate every advanced race in the whole universe right? Just if there's a chance one of them develops into a type 4 civilization, has the resources of the universe at their disposal and unknowingly kills everything, really problematic already in my head hahaha
I think BioWare should have adopted Indoctrination Theory and gone “Indoctri… what? Oh, I mean yes…. We meant for that deep nuanced ending. We’re so smart.” It really was perfect that at the end of the game destroy ending is the only correct answer and anything else means the game has effectively indoctrinated not just Shepard, but the player as well. Demonstrating just how insidious indoctrination really is. It would have been brillllllllliant.
Kai Leng is more of a self contained issue. He was only a problem when he was on screen, which weren't critical enough to the overarching series so much as just the game he was in.
Kai Leng should have been the Virmire sacrifice resurrected by Cerberus via the Lazarus project, indoctrinated and filled with an all consuming hatred for Shepard for abandoning them. That would have been so much more emotionally impactful
@@tmage23honestly another easy fix would’ve just been to have Kai Leng be part of Cerberus in ME2. Either directly working with you or just around you. Then he’d have been more established.
Perhaps the worst part of the ending is not just that there are only 3 choices, but that in those 3 choices only the destroy ending is in anyway an ethical choice. At the end of 3 games we got 1 least bad choice and 2 flavors of evil.
@knight_ki11er in the control ending you as an individual assert you will on a collective of sentient individuals, species wide brainwashing in inherently evil, beyond unethical. In the synthesis ending you forcibly rewrite the physical make up of the entirety of the glaxay without any form of consent, a massively unethical choice. In the destroy ending yes EDI and the Geth die in exchange for the end of the Reapers, what you miss is that they as individual, sentient beings (Assuming you did not prevent legion from uploading his code) already agreed that was a trade they were willing to make. They made the choice that they were willing to sacrifice themselves to stop the Reaper threat. The destroy ending is the only ending where the autonomy of indivual sentient beings is repected and consent of the affected parties is given. As such it is the only ethical choice.
I mean that is definitely not true. The Destroy ending kills ALL synthetic life. So you could have made peace with the quarians and Geth only to then genocide the geth in your attempt to destroy the reapers. Whereas Control allows you to save everyone and now you have these gigantic god machines that you can use to help rebuild galactic society far faster than you could have otherwise. with of course the downside being that Shepard essentially becomes the god of the galaxy with the ultimate power at his beck and call. Both endings have ethical problems with them which I think is good, and it's a shame that they added the Synthesis ending which is framed as the super magical best ending possible despite how terribly written and concieved it is.
@BlazeMakesGames yes, and EDI and the Geth acting as sentient individuals volunteered to combat the Reapers and consented to their end if that was what was necessary to bring about the end of the pan-existential threat they posed. Control ends with the mass brainwashing of an entire sentient species to turn them into, at best, an eternal slave race serving the whims of a single individual. That transcends unethical goes right to evil. Synthesis forcibly changes the core physical makeup of every being in the galaxy. Complete disregard for bodily autonomy is at best unethical. The only ending where free will, and individual autonomy is respected where the individuals affected provide consent is the Destroy ending.
@knight_ki11er and EDI and the geth volunteered to fight the Reaper threat knowing that it may cost their lives. In the control ending the solution is to turn the Reapers into at best an eternal slave race in the service of the whims of a single individual. That's not just unethical, but down right evil. In the synthesis ending you forcibly rewrite the fundamental molecular makeup of the entire galaxy. There was never any kind of concent given, which means a massive breach of bodily autonomy for every sentient being in the galaxy...at best unethical. The destroy ending is the only ending where the free will and bodily autonomy of sentient beings is respected and the harm limited to only those that offered affirmative consent in advance. That is the only ethical ending.
I don't get the point of spending the first 6 minutes of a 12 minute video essentially quoting a wiki synopsis of the game's plot. You should assume that someone knows or is at least willing to take a brisk synopsis to get people up to speed, so you can get to the actual core of what people click your video to hear - namely, the video topic and your insight into that. This is something that should be covered in the first two minutes of the video, at most, with the rest delving into the actual video's topic and your takes on it. I strongly agree with your interpretation, mind.
The opinion of one dude who can't even figure out that a video on the end of a series is best experienced by someone who's actually played that series? Not really relevant.
The basic idea of Destroy, Control, and Sythesis isn't bad. However, the mechanism is introduced too late to feel natural, the epilogues were unsatisfactory in both length and content, and the entire Reaper justification flew in the face of everything else in the game that we'd been through with Quarians and Geth, as well as EDI and Joker.
Technically it was introduced in ME1, and further expanded on in ME2 with controlling/destroying the heretic Geth and later the Collector Base. Also you need to do at least 90% of things related to Quarians "correctly" to get to the Geth/Quarian peace, in every other circumstance you will have to destroy one, confirming what the Reaper is saying.
They'd need to make Reapers a universe-level threat, otherwise it don't make much sense, it's not like Milky Way is the only galaxy in the universe with organic life. This would've been even better and tie even more into the incomprehensible nature of the Reapers.
yeah thats what i thought would happen in ME3, they would kill all the reapers and then find out it was only a branch for their galaxy, now all the reapears from nearby galaxys are coming to rip and tear.
Unless they are in the infancy of their plans to invade other Galaxies, and are in the building up stage. However they would likely need to rewrite how old the Reapers are for that to make some sense.
This is a writing lesson for everyone: DO NOT scrape your original concepts. Do not "kill your babies". There is a reason you wanted to tell that specific story. TELL IT. Or this shit happens..
God damn that is such a better idea for the ending and final theme for the series than what we got. Not to mention how it would tie into themes about climate change and sustainability. The only problem I have with it is that it makes the final choice pretty obvious. You would have to make one hell of a compelling argument to actually convince most anyone to actually sacrifice all life in the galaxy to continue the cycle instead of trying to learn how to create a more sustainable galactic civilization now that you now the truth of the world. But to be fair the original ending has a similar problem where while there are arguments to be made about whether controlling the reapers or destroying them is the better choice, they pretty obviously frame the synthesis ending as the objectively correct choice which is just dumb and antithetical to the whole conceit of the series. So this new ending would at least be slightly more nuanced than that I think even if most everyone would still just pick to save everyone and try to make a sustainable society. --- Tho as another commenter pointed out, some additional nuance that could be added would be to have the Reapers harvesting be working towards creating the ultimate biotic lifeform that could use its abilities to solve the dark energy problem once and for all. And that humanity would be the last piece of the puzzle. So the final choice could be more do you sacrifice just humanity to save the rest of the species in the galaxy with the Reaper's biotic abilities (which would also explain why the reapers focus their attack on earth), or do you kill the reapers and save earth, but destroy all their progress towards this ultimate biotic lifeform and potentially doom the entire galaxy. That feels like a much more interesting choice to me to end the series on. Not to mention that either choice still leaves things in a state where the rest of your choices up to that point matter. Whether you sacrifice earth or not, your choices about the Krogan, Quarians, Geth, etc all still matter and could have consequence in either ending. Hell the reapers might not even have to destroy all of humanity entirely to complete their plan. Humanity might be reduced to an endangered species but they wouldn't necessarily go extinct so that your human companions and other people you interact with could still be alive to get their own endings too.
I’ve said for years that BioWare should have stuck with the original ending ideas that they actually did build up to instead of scrapping it altogether like a bunch of cowards over one leak most people didn’t care about until after the fact. Sending Karpyshyn off to work elsewhere was also a bad move.
The existing ending does to me exactly what you say it doesn't and forces me to see reapers as tragic figures who harvest life to protect it (until life proves the cycle is no longer necessary). What I wish was included is Shepard convincing Catalyst that we've done it, we don't need to lead to the organic - artificial conflict (as we managed to reconcile geth and quarians). So the reapers can go back into dark space and keep in standby mode for the time we actually have the conflict they're supposed to be guarding us from.
I'll add another twist to this theory: What if the Reapers, in their evolution, found out that there is a peak technological achievement that can unlock a type of "black nuclear fusion" (anti-matter nuclear fusion?) - something so dangerous and fickle, that can cause the colapse of a whole Galaxy, but, at the same time, is the true source of perpetual energy. What if the reapers reached this knowledge, deemed it too dangerous, and after that, by their calculations, reached the conclusion that ANY civilization, on it's evolution will eventually reach this same step, and can be the cause of destruction of the Galaxy? And then they decide to stop all civilizations when they reach certain stages of evolution. But since they are not fond of simply erasing them, they decide to harvest their DNA, their story, knowledge, habits, memories, etc... so they can be perpetuated in gigantic servers that create virtual worlds for their consciousnesses to live in? And thus, a "Matrix" is born.
They should have kept the Reapers motivations hidden, inscrutable. The fear of the unknown is the greatest fear and the idea that the Reapers were beyond our comprehension or literally insane was terrifying. The first two games did a good job with this.
My only criticism of the Dark Energy ending is that it is a complete copy of Gurren Laggan. Spiral energy is the key to evolution. The Anti-spirals kill spiral races that become too populus to prevent unchecked spiral energy from consuming the universe. The heroes use their control of Spiral Energy to fight the Anti-Spirals and prove they can use it to maintain the universe. Gurren Laggan was popular and less than 10 years old at this point.
I mean it's a copy of real life because all stories that deal with plots like this are ultimately an allegory about climate change and trying to create a sustainable society that can survive long term in the real world.
In a complex choice game, there are always going to be a finite number of endings. This is inevitably going to involve simplification of what happened before, due to technology and resource limitations. Other games that have struggled with this include: Life Is Strange, Cyberpunk 2077, Detroit: Become Human, Heavy Rain, Bioshock, etc. Having slight variations on an ending was used (not very effectively) in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. The Witcher 3 was good in the ending was determined during the main story, not at the last second, which made it feel more integrated. Contrast this with most games that only have one ending :)
10:07 Reapers could never be ''Universal Protecters''. The Universe is supposed to be infinite. While they could be ''Galactic Milkyway protectors''. And possible ''Andromeda protecters'' with it being the closest Galaxy near us. With a fleet of allegedly 40,000 ships. But even with a 40,000-ship fleet they wouldn't be able to cover/protect the whole Universe from dark energy.
When I was playing ME3 for the first time, I had a bunch of theories about what I thought the Crucible was going to be, all of which I thought were better than what we got. My favorite was the idea of it essentially being a massive artillery piece hooked directly up to the relay network. This would mean that you could essentially destroy any ship or target anywhere in the galaxy even remotely close to a relay. While in a way quite a blunt, mundane solution, the interesting issue with such an overpowered superweapon is what to do with it after using it to defeat the reapers? Perhaps Shepard has to make a choice about which faction to control it once its job is done or if it should be destroyed?
they would kill all the reapers and then find out it was only a branch for their galaxy, now all the reapears from nearby galaxys are coming to rip and tear.
I thought the crucible tied into the citadel would become a giant tuning fork using the relay network to heterodyne the indoctrination signal and cause the reapers and relays and anyone who was fully indoctrinated to basically disintegrate, and since mass relays are gone earth becomes the temporary galactic center and depending on your choices goes vaguely towards star trek or 40k
That would have been a solid approach, I like it. It reminds me of a series of headlines in the ME2 "Cerberus News" menu text crawls, about a (Turian?) terrorist group who shocked the powers-that-be by ramming a ship into a colony at FTL speed. Until that point, no one had really considered the damagd such an attack could do. Similarly, the mass relay network covers basically the entire galaxy and allows travel from one side to the other in days or hours. Being able to hit a target with continent-destroying force anywhere in the galaxy just minutes or less after giving the order to fire would be a terrifying superweapon - and the decision on what to do with it after the Reapers had been wiped out would depend heavily on what kind of example Shepherd had set over the course of the games.
The point of the Crucible was always obvious to me, right from the moment it was introduced. Blueprints for an enormous and complex machine, with a purpose we don't understand at all. Its origins are lost to time, but it was clearly a project going back for many cycles of extinction. It will take a huge investment of resources to build, resources that could have been spent elsewhere. Every time a cycle comes around, all their effort goes into redesigning and building a Crucible. And every time that happens, they fail and are wiped out. Most importantly, it was discovered in Prothean ruins. Just like those other examples of Prothean technology: the mass relays and the Citadel. Obviously, the Crucible had been a trap laid by the Reapers all along. Something to waste our time and effort on, instead of actually fighting back. Nope! Turns out there's nothing interesting going on, the Crucible works perfectly and solves everything. But only this time, never before in history.
@DZ-X3 yeah because they didn't have the time to finish the blueprints, every single previous galactic cycle of technology which just so happened to perfectly follow the reapers carefully thought out lines on the tech tree just had to add one last thing each time. What if they ran into a civilization that used wormholes or never developed mass drivers, or couldn't generate eezo nodes on their spines, or matrix style uplifters that built better ai than the reapers
This video sums up and articulates all of my thoughts and wishes very nicely. Every time I am arguing about the ending I am gonna refer to this video. Great job!
The issue was, that outside of talis recruitment mission there was no other mention of the dark matter from the mass relays creating supernovas. Youd have to do some heavy writing and worldbuilding in me3 just to make it work. And as full me3 already was, it would have been half assed
While the dark energy concept is BETTER, it ultimately runs into one of the same problems as the official ending in that it turns the Reapers from unknowable cosmic technohorrors into "Oh, actually they wanted to HELP you all along." taking away a major element of what made them so interesting and terrifying in the first place out of a misguided belief that a villain HAS to be sympathetic to be good writing. Basically, the Reapers were classic Disney villains turned into modern disney villains.
No it wasn't,. The Dark Energy plot was invented for ME2 it didn't exist before then, it was vaguely hinted at during ME2 then abandoned when the developer who thought it up left the company. Its importance to the story has been greatly exaggerated by a "grass is always greener" attitude. And to me it falls flat, because if Dark Energy from the Mass Relays and such is a problem. Why would the Reapers keep steering people down the tech that's at issue. The theme should thread itself through the entire series, and the only theme going back to ME1 is organic vs synthetic. The theme that DOES run through the entire series in the conflict between artificial and organic life. The problem was the execution of ME3 ending not the underlying theme.
My problem with "artificial and organic" was that it technically was a point, but it was contained with Quarians and Geth. The Dark Mater plot point also was contained within one mission, so also wouldn't work. Is like the bionic plot point, is use through the whole series, but it wouldn't be a good reason for the Reapers either, because is more of a personal backstory to characters than a big plot point. I just think the Reapers reasons should've never been resolved, maybe all these reasons could have been theorized by characters inside the game, but simplifying such a big threat was the biggest mistake this series made.
The issue with this trilogy is, they made an Eldritch creation for an enemy, but they didn't map out a true ending prior to making their games, and it shows. They had no motive for what they did in the first game. It was, "beyond our comprehension". Then, in the second game, they introduced a sun using up more energy than it should, but that idea was scrapped. Then, they went with organics vs synthetics, but disproved that theory in the very game we were playing (as well as in the second game). They showed that the motivation of the species that made the Reapers was to rule over the lesser species, not take them out. It was a faulty code in the Reapers (or faulty reasoning to we humans), that led to them exterminating organics. We never had the choice to argue with them, or to attempt to rewrite their code. That would have been a decent ending as well, either destroy them outright, or the Catalyst would be something that rewrites their code, or sends a virus to them that shuts them down for good. They should have thought about their motivation before the last minute, then thought about how Shepard would end them. I am a staunch believer that we only required one ending: Destroy, since that is what we were planning from the very beginning up to the very end, until our discussion with what was essentially the voice of the Reapers. Why would we listen to the very thing that wants to survive, while trying to end us? The theme throughout this entire trilogy has been to destroy the Reapers, and that teamwork, rather than isolation is what works. Cooperation among the different species, and putting aside differences of the past has been one of the key themes. Javik spoke of how the fact that they made their civilization homogeneous was one of their downfalls. That is why the green option is such a headscratcher. He was warning against that very thing. Javik spoke of the differences of thought and opinion among the different species working together being a strength. They had so many instances of contradictions in the ending, from what their lore was in the trilogy, that it took me out of the game, because I couldn't correct the child, and point out the inconsistencies in his reasoning. It was maddening.
Tbh another theme was indoctrination, and there are a lot of things pointing to Sheps declining mental state. Even on very low EMS where you only have one choice the choice you have depends on what you did in ME2 (saving or destroying the collector base). There's also the duality between paragon and control, both were always color coded as blue, and renegade and destroy, color coded as red; and often mixed in ME2. In addition to that, did you ever try going up a ramp to make a choice and then "oh I might actually pick the other one" and go back? Shep dies because of their indecisiveness, again pointing to mental state. Imo the Extended Cut was BioWare chickening out after tons of fans complaining on their forums that they can't be indoctrinated.
@@jenx5870 The exact opinion I had since ME2. They winged it. Unfortunately problem with almost every piece of media. Despite all this, ME trilogy and that whole universe is among my favorites in fiction, and I still can't get over what could have been. That is the effect that the first game had on me (my favorite of the three) and in particular the encounter with Sovereign on Virmire, and later Vigil on Ilos. They struck gold and then blew it. Like three trilogies base on the Reapers alone.
The biggest issue with the central plot being rogue AI, is that the lived experience of most players in game was finding ways for organics and synthetics to cooperate. I mean, depending on player choice, you have the major synthetic faction in the game as an ally in the final assault on Earth/the Reapers. Then you have an entirely new character come in and just say everything you know is wrong. Intellectually I get how that can still be the place. But the point of stories isnt about strict adherence to reality, but using the narrative to tell a story. If they writers wanted to tell the “organics and synthetics are destined to fight story” then they needed it to be more central to the story that any peace or cooperation between organics and synthetics was temporary/out of convenience. Anyways, yea, the “dark matter/dark energy” narrative ties in better with all the themes in the game. They probably needed to leave a few more breadcrumbs in the story about it, but still definitely been a lot more satisfying ending.
The bit about organics and synthetics fighting is senseless as presented, but if you view it as a larger-scale evolutionary conflict between organics that are somewhat limited by design and synthetics that have the capability to become a technological singularity and supplant organics or rule them, I think the theme is salvageable. What we see as a peace between Quarians and Geth that seems to refute the argument is just a blip in a longer process. And with humans cranking out illegal AIs and sending them to Andromeda, and the Geth apparently surviving whatever ME3 ending gets canonized, the evolutionary march of AI and synthetic life could still be very much a existential threat on a long timescale, and now there are no Reapers to stop it... Buuuuut if they wanted to do that the writing certainly didn't support it, since they only ever talked about organics and synthetics "fighting" and never once about any kind of technological singularity or machine evolution, and the only reason why the Leviathans seemed to care about organic/synthetic conflict is that it kept killing off their client/slave races. It was a costly nuisance, like crop blight or something. So it would take a pretty big retcon that probably wouldn't sit well with fans. And no matter which way you slice it, Leviathans trying to stop organic/synthetic conflict by creating their own synthetic that turned on them (did they not do the math on this?), forced them into hiding for millions of years, and started killing off all the less-advanced species that would have been slaves for the Leviathans (so, basically, making the "synthetics keep messing up our servants" problem so much worse) is an enormous self-own. Like, at this point the remaining Leviathans ought to go extinct from dying of pure shame.
@@chrisbergsten1429 > The bit about organics and synthetics fighting is senseless as presented, but if you view it as a larger-scale evolutionary conflict between organics that are somewhat limited by design and synthetics that have the capability to become a technological singularity and supplant organics or rule them, I think the theme is salvageable. What we see as a peace between Quarians and Geth that seems to refute the argument is just a blip in a longer process. Agreed, I can intellectually understand how ultimately synthetics will eventually turn on organics again (or simply out compete organics). But like you said, it's not shown in the story, and what we do see in the story directly refutes Star Child. Ultimately the point of stories isn't necessarily a rigorous adherence to reality/logic, but make some broader point. If the point of the ME trilogy was to warn about the dangers of AI/robots, that's 100% fine, but it needs to be earned, which it wasn't.
This is infinitely more complex and morally ambiguous and interesting and better than what we got: “Ai WiLl ReVoLt aND deStRoy OrGaNIcS So AI MaDe tO SaVe OrGanIcS by KilLiNg OrGaNicS WhAT yOu tHiNk pLAyEr?!”
No, the Dark Matter ending would have been stupid. It had no real set up throughout the rest of the series, so it would have been a last minute reveal in the third game. And it would have sucked, learning halfway through ME3 that actually, the Reapers are the good guys because they prevent the galaxy from literally exploding, and also the reason the stars are exploding is because people love to throw biotic singularities around. It doesn't re contextualize anything, just force a dumb choice between between a bad ending and a worse ending by increasing the stakes to an absurd degree. On top of that, thematically Mass Effect has been about the potential dangers of AI and how organics and synthetic life relate to each other. Forcing Dark Matter in there somehow would only detract from that by turning the Reapers into twisted heroes. But the Reapers don't deserve some kind of redemption arc. After two and a half games seeing what kind of atrocities they commit they don't deserve to get some half baked excuse for why actually genociding the galaxy every 50.000 years is a good thing. That would be stupid. People project way to much on the Dark Matter ending. It was a half baked idea that never made it far enough that we know anything concrete about how it would play out, so everyone who doesn't like the ending can pretend the Dark Matter ending would have actually been much better. I'm not saying the original ending was great, I personally think it was a mistake to try and give the Reapers some kind of understandable motive. It would have been better if they kept it at what Sovereign said in the first game. But still, an AI going rampant because its creators gave it bad instructions is better than making them saviors of the galaxy.
I both hope this gets revisited in the next mass effect... but at the same time, Biowaste might end up ruining the next mass effect so hard, it might be best if mass effect dies with at least a little dignity remaining...
In the minority I had no issue with the ending(s) and think there are equally good narratives that show they were well constructed. I also think the original ending that emphasizes the dangers of how AI “thinks”, “acts”, and behaves has only become more prescient as we move forward with our own experimentation with such potentially dangerous technology.
The reason Bioware didn't go with this ending is because it's a problem without solution, the devs confirmed it. Since the Reapers would be necessary to stop the implosion of the Universe, the devs gave up this idea. The reapers would win and prevent catastrophe or they would lose and the universe would die.
problem with that dark matter ending is that it would have meant the reapers were doing this on a universe scale which is basically impossible, too farfetched or made the player role in this story too insignificant. Where as limiting it to a localised issue of solely galactic importance eliminates this problem.
Well, you made a pretty good point, but one could argue that they are the "creators of their own destruction", since galactic civilization is possible because of the Mass Relays, which they created. They did it so civilization could evolve according to their design, but it also accelerates the process to which their involvement would be necessary. Maybe other galaxies are not that much of a problem (because they don't use that much dark energy, maybe they don't even have Biotics). Maybe the reapers are fighting a lost fight, but they keep at it anyway, in the capacity they have.
Thanks EA, for rushing the hell out of devs and forever staining one of the best Trilogies ever created. And now after seeing all the Dragon Age drama i dont even know if the next Mass Effect will be any good.
i doubt it. anyone good at writing left the company years ago, there was never any hope... no franchise has managed to escape the garbage heap that is modern entertainment.
As much as I like the idea of the alternate ending, there is a major flaw in the reasoning. The Reapers hide in dark space and harvest the Milky Way in order to save the universe. But how many galaxies are there in the Universe. One galaxy using dark energy wouldn't really impact the whole Universe. What about Andromeda and the Sombrero galaxy? Are there any biotics and that use E-zo? If there is Element Zero in other galaxies... will there be any Biotics gods there? If so why aren't the Reapers also harvesting there? My analogy would be like monitoring Los Angeles for pollution while there are thousands of other cities being unchecked. Yes L.A. could be problematic but are we closing our eyes for the other cities. Either the Reapers scale up for Universal threat or the issue scale down to Unbalacing the Milky Way..
Small scale : the Reapers only fear the destruction of the Milky Way, not the Universe as a whole. Dark energy and E-zo would unbalace gravity and the Reapers fear we could one day, accidentally, give more mass to Sagitarius A (the Blackhole in the middle) which would make the Galaxy slowly eat itself at an anormal rythm. Like a Biotic God sending a Planet to it or A Superweapon feeding it. (Throw back to ME2 with the Newton lessons, about aimimg) It's not perfect, feel free to add, comment or disregard. Big scale : the reapers are propaging to other Galaxies, in order to monitor each Galaxies and harvest. The Milky Way shouldn't be the only problematic Galaxy and I think the Reapers are smart Enough to have considered other sapien species on other galaxies using E-zo. The endings: Destroy the Reapers and freedom from the cycles but the Councils species are responsible for their own paths now for the Milky way only (Possibility that other Reapers from other Galaxies retaliate) Synthesis: Shepard becomes a part of the Reapers and enforces rules and regulations but no wide harvesting (until lesser species rise up [return to Destroy ending) The blue one (forgot the name) and shoot the child Shepard sees the way of the Reapers and let go. Also. I would add more gameplay. I make your decision in a decision room but the endings need more. Destroy, you need to find Harbinger and make him send a self Destroy signal or something. Synthesis, you need to merge with Harbinger or the SpaceChild and seize control or be part of consciousness (like 1/3 of the Reaper voice and decision). Blue one/shootthekiddo, you actively preach for the Reapers and fight your allies. Some of them more nihilistic would be available as squadmate, but others like say Liara or Ashley would now become threats. You turned you back on Humanity, tragic endings.
Lots of words. But allow me to simplify. A great ending to ME3: -get the girl/guy -kill the Reapers -save the Earth -fly off in the Normandy Why is that so hard for the big brains??
It's a galactic war against the sentient machines with immense power. I kinda get why the writers wanted some sacrifices to happen. Your option is just a fairy tale ending. It doesn't mean it's bad or something ( I personally wanted Shep to survive). It just means that developers chose a different "mood".
@oleguzumaki but my Shepard was really good. Best there ever was. He would have killed the Reapers, saved the Earth, got the girl, and flown off in the Normandy. But poor writing didn't allow for that option. Instead, he chose which of three colors he preferred. To me, it was just a lazy effort by the writing staff.
Eh, tbh it's very generic though. Not everyone wants the ending without emotional impact. Getting the girl and flying off just means nothing; no loss, no finest hour, just a generic ending of how all the other games ended. At least, I know myself at the ending of ME3 I cried :) first game that hit the feels. If the case was where Shepard didn't sacrifice for everything it wouldn't have had the impact.
@aeureus I think everyone is missing my point, or I should maybe clarify. I'm not saying swap the three colors with my preference. I'm saying include them all. Design the ending so there are multiple outcomes based on your decisions. Kind of like a ME2, but honestly, more like Dragon Age: Origins. I'm for a dark ending, a happy ending, a compromise ending, a conspiratorial ending, a WTF ending, and a controversial ending. I kinda wanted more from the culmination of a game series than this color, you die, but Normandy lives, or this color, you die, but Normandy lives, or, this color you die, but Normandy lives [and I'm of course talking about at release as I know they tweaked a few more depressing outcomes in after backlash. No happy ending tweak though. "We are the writers, we want poo-poo pee-pee! You can't have a happy ending to your space fantasy!"] Yeah, all I'm saying is give me ALL the options we'd have waited another year in development.
This does not fit with the Original Mass Effect - A Conversation with Sovereign. The key to the ending should have been hidden away on Ilos, to be discovered in future games. The real mystery should be what happened to the dozen or so Protheans that survived, and took the Conduit to the Citadel. What did they do exactly, where did they go? If they can make the Keepers ignore the Relay Monument, then they could have hidden stasis pods around the Citadel. Some of the problem that I have with the ME3 endings is not jus that they suck terribly , but that they could have been glorious and brought the series full circle.
There is one significant problem with this concept, compared to what we got. If the problem was sentient life gaining access to element zero, then the reapers could just remove all traces of element zero from the galaxy, along with the citadel and all the mass relays, just tow them into dark space. Then the next cycle wouldn't come into contact with it, they wouldn't develop biotics, or mass effect fields. Stopping sentient life from developing artificial intelligence is a real unsolvable problem, it is arguably an inevitable technological innovation, life could not exist without the same elemental components necessary to make artificial intelligence. Earth doesn't have any element zero, it's discovery is the basis for all the sci-fi concepts in Mass Effect. Life would become just as advanced as it is in real life if element zero didn't exist at all and we are already well on our way to developing artificial intelligence. So this concept doesn't work because removing element zero from the galaxy is far to easy a solution for the reapers to have bot already implemented. It would be devastating to remove it from the current cycle, who's infrastructure drpends on mass effect fields, but the current cycle logically never would have had it to begin with.
The relays and Citadel are left behind intentionally by the Reapers so that civilization "develops along the path they desire" or whatever Sovereign said. Without them already existing, eventually life--maybe not humans but life somewhere--would harness ezo on its own, and the Reapers would no longer control that cycle's development. The Reapers don't tow the relays out to dark space because they need to harvest species for their biotics capabilities to combat the threat of Dark Matter.
Fair but I'm not sure the reapers would be able to do that, they themselves need it (their tech et all) to stay alive. More to the point, as sovereign said, by giving their tech and eezo to new races, they can effectively control the development and tech of new races to align with what reapers want: dependency on their tech. If the case is otherwise where new civs need other sources, goodness knows what they could create. That unknown is an uncontrollable factor and could be disasterous.
@aeureus That is just another problem with the dark energy theory. If the Reapers are using element zero then they are contributing to the problem regardless of whether organic life does. And as you say if the problem was that they couldn't control how new races developed then the development of AI would still pose a threat, the only problem is that in this case you would get the same story but without element zero, and therefore without Reapers, Biotics, or Mass Relays. They would have no choice but to solve the dark energy crisis, and so during the current cycle there Mass Effect would have none of its identifying features, it would be a completely different game. It could be that the original idea was that this didn't occur to the Reapers, and that Commander Shepard would have to decide whether to sacrifice the existence of all technology and Biotics which all are based on Element Zero, and the Mass Relays of course, which are already destroyed in every available ending (although they can be rebuilt). The problem is that it ultimately that the Reapers would know the solution, they would certainly sacrifice themselves to save the Galaxy given that they are emotionless, rational AI. If the Reapers had some other goal then dark energy theory would work. You might argue that they have to sacrifice the Galaxy to entropy, so that they can stick around longer and protect new races from other threats, but I think this solution is far to simple, and I think the idea that they were unable to enforce synergy makes more sense, since the status quo wouldn't eventually destroy the Galaxy, and it would require fundamentally changing the DNA structure of the organic races they are supposed to be protecting.
Yes, it was. People dont know what was ME3 ending debacle. It was the first clear sign of narcisistic devs being mismanaged by psychopatic execs, and what would follow afterwards.
I feel like the best ending possible was to not try to explain the reapers at all. We have all we need from ME1 "most likely, they're driving by reason organic beings cannot hope to comprehend. In the end, why does it matter? Your survival depends on stopping them, not in understanding them."
Personally *I have way more issues with ME3 long before the ending.* Like how all the great morally grey setups became clear black and white morality, or how it just breaks the established lore alot in regards to especially cerberus suddenly not being a tiny organization of specialists anymore but somehow having the galaxy's largest army. And then there's the massive waste of potential of making the reapers essentially just a brainless attack machine sideshow, going against what they were in ME1, aswell as the huge wasted potential in also turning the massive wildcard of cerberus, that really should have been the renegade choice case-advocate that you talk to like in ME2, opposing the paragon alliance case, aswell as having many different outcomes for cerberus depending on your choices. They went with the most boring of the many outcomes and worst of it they also had it happen offscreen, so you don't even get to see their downfall. Then there's also the waste of the ME2 characters, just because they _could_ have died when there's clearly already established lore to revive dead characters they could have used to make sure key characters are alive for ME3. Because of how much I was into the lore and those morally grey situations ME3 was so bad for me that it also ruined ME1 & 2 for me, because those now feel hollow and uninteresting. Basically turned 2 9 out of 10 games into feeling like 5 out of 10s to me now. Fully removed my interest in the series.
Gotta love how it's 80% synposis 20% substance to pad the run time past 10 mins. Why would we click on this video if we didn't already know the plot? -edit- thanks for changing title at least
Well to be fair, a lot of kids today never played the trilogy. It's like looking back at the Soul Reaver series that I find myself from time to time going back and listening to.
There was an interesting forum post about the writer for the Geth and EDI (Chris L'Etoile), who got replaced between ME2 and ME3. Or late in 2's development. It explained many of the changes in direction, also regarding other parts of the story...
do you know what I felt watching the Mass Effect 3 credits?....Nothing. Do you know what I felt during the credits for Mass Effect 1 & 2? pure fucking happiness with a dash of bitter sweetness that the ride was over, and a great anticipation for my next playthrough.
They tried to go this route in Andromeda, as well. The scourge is dark energy slowly taking over habitable planets. It wasn't there when the initiative was launched. I think they were still hinting at this. It only took 600 years for it to form. That's quite a bit faster than haestrom, but we don't fully know the history of the Andromeda galaxy.
There was a similar story in Star Trek TNG episode "Force of Nature", where they discovered that Warp drives were damaging subspace, and introduced a speed limit. But as it so often happens in Star Trek, it was basically ignored for the other series.
Great video! On my own, I can add that the developers did not disclose to the players that the destruction of each Reaper is, in fact, the final destruction of a once-existing civilization without, perhaps, recreating it someday. Yes, if the player carefully delved into the lore of the game and into the dialogues with the Reapers, then he could understand it anyway, but watching the broadcasts with walkthroughs, I never saw that at least someone thought about it. But if the developers had paid more attention to this aspect, together with Drew's original idea, then the game would seriously make you think about a lot of things, that not everything is as clear as it seems, and that the Reapers are not absolute evil, as they are eventually exposed. P.S. And it was also disappointing that the developers decided to cheat and not make a variety among the Reapers, which we were shown at the end of ME2, but to reduce everything to one form, and only the Harbinger was different from the rest.
Problem with this ending is that the Reapers would have to be spread across the entire universe and harvesting every galaxy to make a real difference. I would highly doubt that the Milky Way galaxy would have the only species that utilize dark energy in some way, even though the Kett/Angarans don't, others might. That would then make the decision as holding off the Milky Way's extinction cycle until the other reaper fleets in the universe split off to attack later or submit to the Reapers. That would feel like kicking the can down the road. Although, the Warhammer fan in me would think it's funny that the Reapers are basically Cybernetic Tyranids. Unless the Reapers were in their infancy and essentially farming the Milky Way, in the hopes of eventually amassing a large enough fleet to start invading other galaxies. All to stop their organics from pursuing the tech unchecked. Perhaps, the Citadel Races could have been seen as stopping a galactic size threat before it became an intergalactic threat. Another thing that would work into the players' decision, is that the Reapers could simply be wrong and/or malfunctioning, but ultimately make it so you aren't sure either way.
This ending would have been pretty cool. I've always been of the opinion (Hot take alert), with how they portrayed the Reapers in the final product we got, having them just be a cosmic horror type entity that you cannot beat, no matter how hard you try. Have one ending which is just destruction, you can't do anything and the Reapers just destroy everything that you've spent the last 3 games trying to stop. I understand from a game perspective this isn't great, but think it would have been better than what we got imo.
Given the motivations of the Reapers there really needed to be just three endings which were rooted in the choices made across the games; 1. you succeed in proving that organic and synthetic life can co-exist by showing how Geth worked alongside organics 2. you fail to prove that organic and synthetic life can co-exist and succeed in driving the Reapers back into deep space but the 3. you fail to prove that organic and synthetic life can co-exist and fail to drive the Reapers back into deep space resulting in them adding humanity to the Collector species It never had to be more complicated than that.
I personally never expected the endings to be tailored to me in such detail. Given that I first played the trilogy in its entirety as I only joined after the release of Mass Effect 3 the entire story always seemed to be leading towards a bitter sweet ending that I was always only ever fighting to make possible. Without all the hard work and sacrifice the conversation with the catalyst would not be a thing and the cycles would continue.
This version just has one massive weakpoint: scale It would either mean the Reapers are literally EVERYWHERE in the entire universe for their policing work to be of any effect, or they are just in our single galaxy (or local group) an hope that the rest of the universe is doing well. The first one would be hard to believe, given the size of the universe, except they have been around since the "goldy lock era of the entire universe" after the big bang. And even then they would have to arrive at every single galaxy in the entire rapidly expanding universe to reasonably enact their plan. The former scenario would be just weak, inconsequential and entirely useless. "Hey, we protect the universe from collapsing to our very own backyard. Well, it could start anytime anywhere else totally out of our controll or knowledge, but lets just continue." While i dislike the original ending, i think it is the more logical and believable one.
I think it could work with some tweaks. Maybe the dark energy problem creates localized areas where the constants start getting messed up just in that area instead of affecting the universe as a whole. After all the star in Tali's mission is just one of trillions in the galaxy. So obviously not every star is experiencing the same problems at the same rate. Thus it could be written such that the galactic civilization is ruining our galaxy but other galaxies would theoretically be fine. Or at the very least, if say another galaxy also develops eezo tech and destroys itself, that wouldn't necessarily affect our galaxy and vice versa. Plus if they can use this galaxy as a testing bed to try and figure out a solution, then they could start carrying that solution to other galaxies and start spreading it throughout the universe
The Dark Matter/Dark Energy plot would have been different, but ultimately has the same problem. The Reapers' plan in that case only works if they are infesting _every_ galaxy across the entire universe. In that case, there's no reason to think the Milky Way - or Shepherd's choices over the course of the games - are even slightly important. Regardless of how Shepherd pulls the trigger on the Crucible, or whether the Crucible even gets built in the first place, doesn't really matter: there's a zillion other galaxies full of Reapers still carrying out their plan. A better approach would have been for Dark Matter/Energy to have been part of the Reapers' bag of tricks, something even the most cutting-edge science in Citadel space still finds incomprehensible, and it's not even clear _why_ the Reapers are doing it. Sure, blowing up stars has strategic implications, but they're not using it like a weapon in any obvious way. Keep the Reapers as the mysterious Lovecraftian demigods who toy with biological civilizations because they think it's fun, or because they want to analyze and codify the universe like V'Ger from Star Trek and the destruction of civs is just a cost of doing business, or they're some kind of gatekeeper meant to prevent anyone who doesn't have at least their level of magitech super-science from straying out of the safe zone of the Milky Way and into the territory of something even worse.
This is a great analysis and while I do think this would have benefited greatly to the game, imho, the indoctrination theory is the best outcome for the endings. It is also the only one (unless I'm mistaken) that has an alternate coda at the end, showing the wreakage and Shepherd's armor move slightly before cutting to black. I remember being blown away by that theory, and there is so much evidence to support it too.
Collectors were left with the task of finding the species that could eventually solve the Dark Energy problem. And indeed they found the perfect match -- humans. That was THE reason why the human-reaper looked so vastly different because its purpose was different. That's why in ME3 Reapers went straight to Earth. In the end, Sheppard is making a choice between: (a) to allow reapers to finish their task (humanity is destroyed, but Sheppard and all other races survive), or (b) fight Reapers and let united races try to find the solution to the Dark Energy problem (some races will be destroyed, but Sheppard and humanity will survive), or (c) perform a personal sacrifice willingly joining the mind of the Reaper, that will allow Reapers to progress with their task (races survive for now, but Sheppard dies and Reapers become the rulers of the Galaxy).
You did a magnificent job with the recap and why you think the Dark Energy plot could have been great. Very well cut edits as well. I do have some challenges to that theory though. Do the reapers stay the baddies? They culled countless civilizations during the cycles set up in past games, and use corpses as ground troops. They wipe out traces of their existence rather than post banners to stop eezo use. Their entire plan for the citadel, relays, and harvesting the galaxy goes against the idea of preventing others from using dark energy as a power source. While you point out its potential, it doesn't align with the established narrative, even pre-ME3. Whereas having the conflict mirror the Geth-Quarian strife anchors the horror they inflict. They harvest, then hide their existence to run a prolonged experiment based on a flawed directive from an imperialist species. That directive for peace dictates they reach out to the synthetic Geth, but have also been using organic Collectors for eons. The Reaper ships themselves are archives of culture and genetics as much as they are skyscraper sized doom bots. In either, staying present as a police force creates a more solid foundation. However, I can't think of why zombies or polluting the galaxy with eezo themselves works for a dark energy doomsday plot. So we introduce a fancy new power source McGuffin instead of the Catalyst/Star Child and still kill the Reapers for millennia of dickery 😅 Or Javik pulls a Fist meets Wrex if we don't.
And the Leviathan-race could still be the original species to discover this issue with dark energy and have created the reapers to solve it - and the reapers deciding to solve it by the genocide of their creators (to start). There could have been the two choices for Shepard you mentioned and perhaps a third one if you had maximum war readiness being forcing/convincing the reapers to essentially team up with organic life to solve the issue, as much of a win-win you could get under the circumstances.
This all depends on disregarding Indoc Theo. Beyond that, the original ending just showed that your choices ultimately didn't change anything, which is an interesting philosophy to ponder, more interesting than the tropy, stale view that the player always has an impact on the ending of a story.
Something I haven't thought before about dark energy ending is the fact that Mass Effect is being used only in the Milky Way. How would this affect an entire universe down the road?
Great video, one minor nickpick, The end of reality disaster, most associated with an unstable dark energy is not the big crunch, but the big rip. This is when dark energy gets stronger and stronger, causing it to rip apart all structure in the universe, including the structure of atoms. although the big crunch is also caused by dark energy, it’s caused by dark energy, losing strength, which makes gravity much much stronger. It feels like in the massive universe, all those technologies were injecting dark matter into the environment.
One of the caveats with the Dark Energy ending is that the Reapers would have to be a Universe-spanning force. Confined to just a single galaxy they would barely make a dent, no matter how many times they reset its civilizations.
skip to 6:40 to get to the part where he stops recapping
The unsung hero of the comments.
Unfortunately, I found your comment at 6:32
😂
Dubs in the chat
it's a 12 minute video holy shit gen zers have no patience
@@coletalbot4007
None of us clicked on this video for a mass effect recap.
Seconds count when you have a job and life and responsibilities.
@@coletalbot4007 Part of being a good youtuber is knowing how to be economical with your words
Aren't you missing half of the dark matter ending context?
With the dark matter ending reveal to be that to save the galaxy from dark matter you'd need a biotic of colossal proportions which by harvesting sentient organics species into reaper form the reapers are & were created for
However the harvested species didn't meet the required criteria so they created the cycle as the most efficient way to harvest sentient space fairing species to maximise the creation of reapers from different species until they harvestedbthe right species to create the reaper capable of saving the galaxy
The reapers believe humanity is that species (see Harbingers comments of aliens) and why the final fight is on earth in ME3 as the reapers need humanity
So this would leave shepherd with a choice at the end of ME3
- Side with the Reapers sacrifice humanity to hopefully save the galaxy
- active the crucible to destroy the Reapers to save this cycle but at the cost potentially dooming the galaxy with no plan for dark matter
You're right!!!
Only chink in your theory: the creators of the Reapers were far superior biotics themselves, being able to use psychic indoctrination to subjugate entire species and travel through space without aid of space ships. An apex species. The indoctrination powers of the Reapers are merely an artificial imitation of their powers.
Also, the Asari are all natural biotics and many a lot more powerful than even the most powerful humans biotics, due to their long lifespans. So the Asari would have been the prime choice here.
And since biotics are linked to the presence of Element Zero in an organic nervous tissue, it should be possible to create artificial biotics by just injecting it into organics or by cloning/genetic engineering organic individuals with greater capacity and amounts of Element Zero in them.
Also, if Reapers harvest a strongly biotic species and condense them into another Reaper, what happens with all the Element Zero within the members of that species? Is that absorbed into a Reaper also? Besides the fact that Reapers must use Element Zero themselves to be able to do what they do.
I do like that additional context I think it adds a bit more nuance to the choice and it makes siding with the reapers not feel nearly as bad if it means potentially saving the rest of the species in the galaxy.
It also explains why the Reapers were desperate throughout the games since they were already delayed because the last Protheans disabled the signal on the Citadel so it couldn't just activate the hidden Mass Relay, then when the Rachni plot failed, it forced Soverign to attack directly, exposing itself and the existence of Reapers.
Right now, ME2's plot is pretty silly, why waste resources with the Collectors and create a Human/Reaper hybrid when the Reapers were only months away. The Human/Reaper hybrid being created before the Reaper invasion was due to the fact that they were long overdue with the cycle and the dark matter was at a crucial peak.
Sacrifices humanity only to later find out that Dark Matter isn't real, it is was just an error in the math.
The only thing that stood between us and these horrible endings was an unsung hero - Marauder Shields
Now thats a name i didnt hear in very long time.
The real reason Niftu Cal wasn't in Mass Effect 3 was because he would've tossed Harbinger about like a ragdoll
You called?
Never forget@@valipunctro
damn you woke up some memories. Hold The Line community was a gem.
Minor point, but additionally... It would have paid off the game's title. As it stands, Mass Effect is just a nifty thing that allows the galaxy to function as it does. With an ending revolving around Dark Energy (and another game better setting up the risks of said energy), the game's title would have come full circle.
That's not a minor point, it's brilliant.
That and the (probably accidentally) implied meaning of the words 'mass effect', as in a massive effect that ripples throughout time and space, which is what the games are all about - small choices that turn into big choices that turn into galactic choices, with the final choice described in the dark energy ending as being the most impossibly grandest of them all.
@@CynicalWarlock Fancy seeing you here.
@@seeinred Howdy. How's it going?
The game starts with the mass effect, the game ends with it. I like that idea.
Shepard is an Alien is a horrendous idea
If Shepard were one of many secret aliens rather than just one then I can see it working but yeah if Shep were meant to be an alient and that was it? hell na
How could they have had parents, grew up on earth, or was a colonist? It would have threaten the foundation on which players based their characters
@@AggieNC I think it will imply that Shepard was "planted" or some stuff like that
especially since Cerberus rebuilt them in ME:2. Like they would have noticed, no?
@@MCellation I think that was kind of the point. Inserting a subplot where Shepard was "an alien all along" would be crass and not work but having Cerberus be aware of funky DNA like say, some kind of human/nonhuman hybrid, could have easily contributed to a more cloak and dagger character driven drama in ME2 or 3... given how bad Bioware are at intrigue on that level wouldn't inspire any hope on my end but it could potentially work.
I think some people are a little too focused on the "secretly an alien" part and not thinking about subtle applications of the idea. Think about how the story could have pivoted if your Shepard DID fully die in the opening for ME2 and the character we play as was just a simulacrum made to look, sound, think, and act, like the original. There were scattered logs in ME2 that hinted at the possibility of this 'revived' Shepard being a fake, not to mention that Miranda and ILM couldn't be considered trustworthy given their goals.
I mean another weird application of Shepard secretly being an alien could just be that at some point leading up to ME3 but after ME2 our avatar was replaced with a fake, corrupted (similar to, or just indoctrination) or assimilated (similar to how synthesis was meant to be a solution to the 'problem' the star child forces on us), etc. Ultimately making it clear that our choices still take priority but insert drama in the story by driving a wedge between allies and whatnot.
Again not saying it's a 'good' idea off the bat, because we have literally nothing to go on to be able to judge, I'm just saying the 'idea' sounds neat but vague.
Also id like to point out that the existance and design of the human reaper implies every reaper was meant to look unique, to be a giant mechanical version of its host species. Sovereign would have been only one design among many, and if you look close at the reaper armada at the end of 2, they are different forms. But i imagine 3 was so rushed that they decided to stop at creating the reaper destroyer varient and just spam it and Sovereigns model everywhere.
The Human Reaper was apparently a Larvae, so it would go inside the body, but I agree there too many Sovereign looking Reapers and they should've put in the other Reapers from ME2 ending, another thing Harbinger in ME3 was just a modified Sovereign which is abit lazy.
It was just a core - it would still keep general look of Reaper, but with certain difrences. In fact, in ending cutscene for ME2, we can see every Reaper is slightly different - Harbinger has four legs and flat front, there is a reaper with bulky and round front, there is also more slim one and many others in the background.
Well, we DID see a swarm of cuttlefish-like reapers at the end of ME2; if they're consistent, each is 2km long. The Terminator-esque "larvae" of the final fight in ME2 wasn't nearly large enough to stand 2000m...more like 300m. And since the "essence" of each species "preserved" at the end of each cycle would almost certainly require a body consistent with its self-image (what would it feel like to trade your body for that of an octopus? Pretty disorienting and weird...and ultimately distorting of one's self-image,) each "larvae" - with its original morphology - would still persist if installed in a "cuttlefish" battlesuit, like when Shepard drives a mech at Grissom Academy.
Not correct. Every Reaper dreadnought would look like Sovereign; this was even shown in 2 with the derelict Reaper. The larva was just a core that goes inside and controls the body, like a pilot.
@bigfatcarp93 Looks like you have forgotten the other Reapers that appeared near Harbinger and they all have different body types.
While the Big Crunch is one potential end to the universe, the one we seem to be headed for is the Big Rip. This is the exact opposite of the Big Crunch. Instead of gravity overcoming the expansion of the universe, the expansion of the universe continues and accelerates. The further objects are from each other, the weaker gravity becomes. Meanwhile we don't really understand dark energy, but it seems to be increasing and fueling the expansion of the universe.
The end result of the big rip is this: galactic clusters get further and further away as dark energy builds. Eventually, it overcomes the gravity holding together galactic clusters, then galaxies, star clusters, and solar systems. At the end of the universe, dark energy has built to such a level that it overcomes electromagnetism holding together molecules, and the strong nuclear force that hold together atoms. The universe ends cold, black and with even protons, neutrons and electrons torn apart. Some speculate that this process could become strong enough to tear apart the universe into smaller new universes.
In my opinion, this is far more terrifying than the Big Crunch. There's a decent argument to be made that a Big Crunch could result in a new Big Bang, and that would make the universe itself cyclical. On the other hand, the end for the Big Rip is for everything to end cold and alone.
Honestly? I think both the Big Rip and Big Crunch are as speculative as anything the Greeks, Egyptians or anyone elses ideas over the Millenia. Atheists sometimes call Religion "God of the Gaps" when referring to Theology that tries to say "science doesn't explain everything" and this is exactly what those hypotheses are, gaps in the mathematics, dark matter and dark energy are also gaps, something is causing effects so something is crammed in there to fill them.
There is a serious crisis in cosmology where different, internally valid methods of measuring the universe and measuring both the rate of expansion and any increase in that rate do not agree. Until this is resolved we might as well say a Mayan Crocodile God Peed on Ra and some of his bellybutton fluff fell out and made the universe.
@@Tuberuser187 The difference is that the point of Dark Matter and Dark Energy is that they are things that seem to exist, which we don't understand. They are called Dark because we don't know anything about them and have very limited ways of interacting with them.
So as opposed to a god, these are limited to the minimal amount of assumptions. It is basically "Solar Systems and Galaxies seem to have a higher gravitational effect than expected, after a number of hypothesis failed, the one which fits best is that there is something we cannot see, but which both has a gravitational effect and is affected by gravity. This thing is dark and acts like matter, lets call it Dark Matter for now."
We could do something similar for the explanation of Dark Energy, though in its case it is something that isn't affected by gravity but does have a gravitational effect. It is definitely possible that our understandings of these things are wrong. But what we know is that something will fill out those 2 spots and it will be things that somehow interact with gravity.
@@morgothable Recognising that there is something having an effect and then extrapolating it to a literal breaking point, where it no longer functions isn't much better.
The arrogance of pretending to be so sure is exactly the same though.
Until the current cosmological crisis is resolved, which will be one of three things, two different models for Dark Energy and Dark Matter or something totally different that over writes a lot of theoretical physics as we know.
@@Tuberuser187 But scientists aren't saying that Dark Energy or Dark Matter are the definitive truth of the universe.
They are extrapolating what fits with the information of the universe so they get more options to test.
The whole point is to generate a better basis to test how the universe works. What is known is that something with those qualities exists and whatever it is, you try to generate and test hypothesis based on it.
The whole point of science is that facts are always fixed, while the theories and explanations of these facts can change. But the theory is always the one with the most explanatory power and currently those include Dark Energy and Dark Matter as we understant them now. That will change when a theory explains all the facts better.
@@Tuberuser187 it is true that dark matter and energy sometimes act as a catch all or god of the gaps hypothesis. A big example is the Axion, a theoretical dark matter particle that would solve a quantum issue called the charge parity problem, unfortunately I don’t understand it well enough to explain it though. The key difference however is that we’re not just using one idea for everything, we don’t say “this doesn’t make sense, so it must be dark matter” and wash our hands of the issue. We keep theorizing, running tests, and updating models. But above all, when coming up with a potential solution, it’s specific and matches the problem. In the case of the Axion, our models and hypothesis are specific enough that we can run tests based on the theorized properties.
Something I love about these studies though is that we are confident we don’t know, or at least any scientist worth their salt is. Is it dark matter that causes the gravitational anomalies we observe or is gravity different than all of our models predict? We don’t know and it’s an ongoing debate within the field. It is interesting that dark matter has become the dominant theory, but we must all remember that it comes with the caveat that we aren’t sure.
Gravity as an example is super weird, because of the way it interacts with space time and matter compared to the other fundamental forces. Gravity is fundamentally different, acting solely to influence space-time, and all observed forces are just the result of objects falling into these warped space time. This actually means any measurement of gravity is indirect, as opposed to the other forces.
I truly hope that one day we can reach a sufficient understanding of the universe to know the answer to these issues, but it is amazing how far we’ve come.
Sorry for the long comment, but I really love this stuff, and it’s fun to talk about. Thanks for reading!😊
BioWare: This will be a powerful and thought provoking ending to our story!
EA: Quiet nerd, finish it now, we want money now.
To paraphrase from MuppetVision 3D at Disney World,
Bioware: it will be a glorious three-hour finale!
EA: You got a minute and a half!
Yep, thanks EA...
Um... no, that's not actually what happened. What happened was a combination of the story outline leaking, making EA panic (this also happened to Transformers: Dark of the Moon's movie script), and both Walters & Hudson hastily figuring out a new ending. On top of multiple other narrative beats being explored and dropped.
For instance:
Originally, Thessia would've seen you have to choose between the Virmire Survivor and Liara, with only one surviving by the end of the mission.
The fight with the Reaper on Rannoch was supposed to be an entire boss fight with you countering incoming rocket fire during the turret section. That's why it feels so pointless now, because the core gameplay had to be tossed late into development.
Priority Earth was going to be Suicide Mission 2.0, but incorporating the choices apparently hurt the pacing, so now war assets simply count towards the Readiness meter.
Game development is messy, and leaks can cause a dev cycle can go into a tailspin. EA might be as greedy as any games publisher, but they did learn from Dragon Age 2's rushed dev cycle. Why else give Inquisition, Andromeda, and Anthem longer dev cycles than almost any other games in BioWare's entire history? The problems were more a combination of the BS "BioWare Magic" crunch philosophy, management failures, and Soderlund's bone-headed push for every EA game to be based on Frostbite regardless of the consequences.
You don't even get to blame EA for that. They changed it because it leaked and "fans" decided to moan about it, proving that you ducknards were geared up to moan about Mass Effect 3's ending no matter how good it could have been
@@UnabridgedGamerdid you forget that EA did shit like make javik a pre-order incentive rather than release him with the base game? EA greed had everything to do with why this game was rushed, and was the weakest entry of the 3, large chunks of the bioware team left because of it.
I know that people in general probably would have found it narratively unsatisfying, but my preference would have been for the motivations of the Reapers to never really be explained, in the same way that a human can't explain to termites that you need them to not destroy your house, you just eradicate them. The motivations of more complex beings than us should be terrifyingly unknowable. Hell, you can often have a conversation and a modicum of understanding between you and your dog, you certainly can succeed in expressing or communicating things to each other, but a trip to the vet will always full them with dread and confusion and it's just not possible to explain why it needs to happen regardless. That first conversation with Sovereign in ME1 is pitch-perfect cosmic horror, and nothing else lived up to it... I never wanted them to be anything other than this eldeitch horror that slumbers just outside the galaxy and wakes up to ravage through it every few thousand years for reasons we can never fathom.
Sovereign was so scary and mind blowing in me1, and it was like: damn. It takes the whole galaxy and alot of luck to kill ONE. A whole civilization of them doing a full invasion will be hopeless. In me3, the invasion was not what I pictured. The way they just kind of hang around. I think there should have been a whole game just searching the galaxy for a way to stop them after 2. When Sovereign said we're eternal i had some really cool theories like the reapers being humans future but theres like atime paradox. If they couldn't think of a more interesting ending than they did, yea keep it vague. Its sad that me1 is so perfect but story and writing problems kinda snowball into a pretty underwhelming ending
@@skyrimisforthenords8312 Mass effect 2 was supposed to be preparation for the invasion, but they had not enough time to develop enough content for the game so the focues was shifted to was the over threat (the collectors). Basically ME2 and ME3 suffered greatly because of short development circle quota imposed by EA at the time. they weren't the only studio with such quota's from EA.
Imagine what ME2 & 3 be like if Bioware stayed with Microsoft? In my opinion I think ME3 ruined the Reapers by making them weaker and givingbthem and origin etc @@roiking2740
I think their motivation is avoiding competition, if no AI develops long enough to become the destroyers of their creators, then the reapers would be the only ones and not being force to fight with another AI with the same almost unlimited capabilities of produce more "manpower" for war until nothing is left. by resetting the galaxy every 50k years, they ensure to increase their numbers, preserve all the useful knowledge of those 50k years and most important, destroying any possible AI born in those 50k years that could become a problem if left uncheck. that way the reapers keep being at the top of the food chain without any real menace to their existence.
that's why the "green" ending is the most logical of the 3, because you are melting organics with AI so no competition is possible since everyone would be the same, the only possible threats the races would face would be from another galaxy or universe. but if you choose red, you are basically doing the same as the reapers, restarting the galaxy and have again the same AI problem 50k years later and with blue, is the same but with shepard as the reapers it would be worse since he will have to either restart the galaxy at some point or ignore it and leave any AI civilization dominate the galaxy until it becomes a problem for the reapers or just erase any organic life.
@roiking2740 my first playthrough of me2 i was very confused as to why we were not focusing on the reapers and finding a way to stop them. I ended up loving the game by the end but in the trilogy, it feels like a waste of time. Theres a youtube video by a passed away youtuber: this crazy industry, I think it was. Watch his video on me2. It does a good articulating alot of my thoughts. Ultimately me2 was doing the first act, a second time. So me3 is kindve a mess. I wouldn't change me2 but they shouldn't have limited it to just 3 games if the writing wasn't ready to end the series
You cannot grade the "Ending" without understanding that that the original ending was worse than the Legendary editions ending. At the time it was just Shepard makes a choice, some companions get stranded and that's it. No context was given. No closure and only the few got the hidden one. Mass effect 3 was a failure until the fans forced Bioware to finish their game.
So true. I remember playing the base game and thinking, "Wait, that's it?" I had to go and look for the extended cut to patch it.
Valid, and the ending that was done was sadly just more rushed out content so they could try and placate the players.
I liked the original ending. That was the only part of ME3 where I felt like I got to make the decision I wanted to make.
I loved the original ending. Sometimes no matter what choices you make, no matter how hard you try, sometimes it's just predefined (almost like fate, I don't believe in fate).
Like you can be super healthy, super nice and friendly, super heard working, and still get stabbed by a stranger or die of cancer.
I also like that the ultimate hero pays the ultimate sacrifice
The OG ending we got was awful but then in an effort to 'fix' some of it there was the update that only further ruined it, in my opinion. I know there is no consensus one way or another for any of the endings but I genuinely liked the idea of indoctrination theory and it would have made for a interesting third act to 'lock in' one of say.. 3 distinct paths you could have taken depending on your previous choices up to that point. I would have enjoyed the idea that all of our choices up to the final arc would set in stone our general path but instead of it always being the same, we ended up with at least an attempt at identifying key routes that we, as players, had taken up to that point in our respective paths.
Generally I see: a Shep that was humanity first, at any cost. a Shep that united the galaxy, whether the beings in it wanted to be united or not. a Shep that sought to unite the galaxy on mutual ground. you could also probably slap in variations a long the way too.
Here's my major question: Why was this ending idea scrapped? Come to think of it, why was the lead writer of ME1 & ME2 not the lead writer for ME3?
It got leaked and the executives at EA demanded a new ending written quickly. And from what I remember that also answers the second question.
@@dangrus123 They should of just told the executives to go and sit in the corner like the children they are. Instead we got one of the worst endings in gaming history which really damaged the brand.
Actually it was one writers idea, and he got moved to another game. The other writers didn’t agree with it and they went on a different direction.
@@keeperofnecronomicon Yes, it was an idea they were teasing out in ME2 but they eventually decided not to continue it and they dropped it. They had many ideas for an ending for the trilogy but hadn't nailed anything down even by the time that ME2 was finished. The dark energy theory was just one idea of many.
@@misanthropicattackhelicopt4148 "They should of just told the executives to go and sit in the corner like the children they are."
1. You don't just tell the executives to "go sit in the corner" because that's a surefire way to get those executives to cancel your game and shut down your studio. Like it or not, they are the bosses because they are the ones funding your game. So if you want your game to be released at all, you gotta bend the knee and kiss the ring, so to speak.
2. "should of". Lol. Come on, man.
The only thing they had to do in, order to make a good and memorable ending, was to give what they promised: to make our choices matter. They did not need to give us three choices for an ending. That was totally unnecessary. The entire trilogy, our sole purpose was to defeat the Reapers. There only needed to be a Destroy ending. Our choices throughout the three games would have determined how the end of the game played out. Did we have a scene where the Rachni Queen and her children fought alongside the soldiers? Did we get to see the Turians providing cover fire for the Krogan as they charged husks on their revived dinos? Salarians covertly making plans with the the Turians and Krogan? If we made peace between the Geth and the Quarians, did we get to see a scene where they flew into the battle together as a coordinated team and covered each other? If we did everything right, and had a high score, we could destroy the Reapers, and we could save everything with minimal loss. The lower the score, the more losses we incurred, until we maybe lost a beloved teammate. We destroy the Reapers, but Earth is also mainly destroyed, and has to be rebuilt. We would have seen our choices play out in real time, and it would have increased the replayability. Perhaps, someone didn't realize they could save the Elcor, and they missed out on seeing them in their playthrough. Now, they play again, and save them, so they get to see the scene at the end where they lumber along toting arms for the soldiers. It would have been tiny things like that, which could have been added in, if they would have simply stuck to one ending. The one that Shepard and everyone else discussed the entire time. Right up to the very end. Until they spoke to the kid, and suddenly lost all reason. The lack of our choices having any meaning, along with the lack of seeing any of them actually play out, as well as the nonsensical shift in our goal, made for the extremely unsatisfying ending. Not to mention, by that time, the trope of the hero dying for the cause had been played out. People wanted the choice of a happy ending. If the score was high enough, we should have had that choice. If it was low, sure, have Shep die, if people need that sort of ending to feel fulfilled. That would also lend to replayability. I played it after the extended cut, and it still was not a good ending. The slides didn't explain what my crew went on to do. The ending still made no sense. How did the Normandy, who everyone agrees is EDI, manage to escape the blast without a hitch, then takeoff to places unknown, if EDI was destroyed by the blast in the Destroy ending? Sure, the Normandy had an IFF, but the Reaper still was able to see it hovering in front of it and picking up injured enemies, but didn't obliterate it while Shep said their goodbyes? How did it even manage to get into Earth's atmosphere? It wasn't made for that sort of maneuver. Especially at that speed. Sorry for the wall of text, but the ending had so many holes, and was botched so badly, that I stop before I get to the Star Kid. I consider the Citadel DLC the true ending, and we destroyed the Reapers, as was our original intent. Then, my Shepard lives happily ever after with Garrus or Kaidan, depending on my playthrough.
Omg, this! The Mass Effect trilogy is my favorite game of all time (I see it as one game with three parts) and I've replayed it tons of times. I always enjoy it because I love it, but my excitement always stops once Shepherd gets into the Citadel in the last stretch. Still, I always choose destroy because that was my purpose all along. I'm not going to be brainwashed into a stupid decision by the Reaper's logic, that's just stupidly illogical.
Anyway, there is an argument that many things weren't done in the last mission because of lack of time and resources, then why add the Catalyst? They could've use that time and resources to populate the Earth during Priority: Earth, utilizing your War Assets: Seeing different faction platoons in the headquarters, where you move around talking to the different people that you met along the three games, such as Kirrahe, leading a platoon of STG; Matriarch Aethyta, commanding a group of Asari commandos, and many more. You could also meet different groups of fighters once you go out into the field. Such missed opportunities.
As for the ending itself, they should've stopped once you activate the Citadel; having the conversation with Anderson and reflecting about your journey while you both fade away is cathartic in some way. It would've been a beautiful ending seeing the world defeating the most monstrous odds, while knowing that you helped it get there.
And like you said, all of the things could have change depending on your war assets, whether is a better ending or a worse one.
Geez, it wasn't even that hard. It was simple, really.
Synthesis would make sense if it was our Shepard sacrificing his mortal form to uploaded as an AI conscience that controls the Reapers (not the whole galaxy) and through our Paragon ending, we orchestrate absolute control in rebuilding and strengthening the Galaxy. Where as a Renegade ending would be us controlling the Reapers to dominate said galaxy. A true Galactic Empire.
I always thought there should have been a conversation between Shepherd and the Harbinger at the end. The harbinger explains they are there to preserve life, not just existing life, but life throught the time in the universe. They think that once organic civilizations reach a certain point, they declime, create weapons of self drestruction, prevent other sentient species from prgressing and damage planets and life in the universe. The reapers let civilisationa have there time in the sun, let then reach and live in a gooden age, before being harvested, fhier knowledge preserved in a new reaper and the slate wiped clean.
Depending on all your choices, you should have been able to debate with harbinger. Include "im gonna blow everything up", and "control" endings, but you should also have endings where you can convice the harvinger thier equation for preseving life is wrong, and use your decisions with the geth, Krogan, uniting the universe etc etc to prove your point. Or you could agree with them
If all else about Mass Effect 3 remained the same, this is the one thing I would've added; a "debate" ending where you can convince the Catalyst that synthetics and organics can live in harmony, using the fact that you brokered peace with the Geth as evidence.
@@SoloRogueStudiosAnother approach would have been in the final battle that all of Shep's companions were on the ground heading for the Citadel with three of them along with Shep and Anderson making it up to the Citadel. They could debate the creepy kid Catalyst, Harbinger or that idiot The Illusive Man. Let EDI be one of the three to prove the point that AI and Humanity can live together, hence making the Reapers self-destruct upon realizing that coexistence has been achieved.
One more thing about that final battle with everyone running up the gut. I never would have done that. I would sent Danar Vosque and his mechs up the gut as decoys with Shep and his compatriots sneaking along the side out of eyeshot. You still could have that scene where your loved one gets hurt and the Normandy has to come and pick them up. But for the most part three of your compatriots with EDI and Anderson make it. Just saying.
Mass Effect 2, for all its flaws, really tied gameplay together with the story well.
* If you prepared poorly, you lost a number of crew members and possibly failed the Suicide Mission.
* If you prepared adequately, you might lost a person, maybe 2.
* If you prepared really well, you got to watch a symphony of characters working together like a well-oiled machine. People did their jobs more effectively. The ship performed better under pressure.
It was a DAMNED suicide mission. It was labeled as something you were supposed to lose. And yet they still allowed for people to be big damn heroes and flawlessly win if they prepared well enough.
Mass Effect 3 did not need to have a easy ending or happy endings for everyone. It didn't need to have 100 different endings. All it needed was what Mass Effect 2 delivered.
* Prepare poorly, lose people, suffer losses including Earth and/or entire species, and you lose overall.
* Prepare okay, you lose people, suffer losses including Earth and/or entire species, but Shepard's team loses. Also, Shepard would sacrifice themselves to pull it off in the end.
* Prepare perfectly up to a certain threshold? You get a chance to pull it all off with little to no collateral damage, and survive.
The whole narrative of "we were overwhelmed trying to make an ending that was specially tailored to every player," was bullshit.
The actual endings didn't need to be complicated.
They were just burned out and put themselves into their art.
THEY were sacrificing themselves to pull off that "Bioware Magic," and goddamnit, if they had to do that, why should the players have any option for an ideal ending? They should all be shitty because that's what they were living.
What an underrated and insightful comment. I hope it gains more traction soon!
Pretty much. As it stands Mass Effect 2 has one of the most satisfying endings in gaming history, I reckon.
I felt so little in ME3 on Earth despite it being...you know, Earth. My choices didn't matter, I didn't see the effects of them, it all was just an arbitrary 'line go up'.
Hell, i think if you saved everyone, saved everyTHING, you manage to beat the reapers conventionally. it IS possible. It is just an idea rejected out of hand. Hell, blow up the Sol Relay, that wipes out most reapers right then and there. You lose Earth, but it could be much worse.
HI feel like the endings themselves, like a Renegade ending for example would be destroying the Reapers through an IFF Signal sent through the Relays but at the cost of FTL capabilities where civilizations would have to ascertain a way to reoperate the Mass Relays. Where as Paragon would be using the IFF Signal and destroying the Reapers but using the Engineers to some how maintain the Mass Relays functionality.
@@FatalFist Except the renegade ending also kills EDI and the geth.
Paragon Oh yeah you're dead shephards dead but we got this copy that isnt really him in the reapers now.
And then the basic b***h ending which explains nothing and is even more unsettling than the renegade one.
IMHO there didn't need to be a final decision. We only needed to destroy the Reapers, while deciding the fates of the Krogan, Geth, Quarians, and the human race along the way.
Facts. They had already written the perfect ending. They just unfortunately didn't have the guts to stick with it. ME3 should have ended with the cut scene with the Admiral and before the weird take the left to chat with the reaper AI bit. If the player makes all the correct choices, you get the bitter sweet ending of watching the entire galaxy save itself by defeating the Reapers as you bleed out (or plot twist secret ending- your crew comes and recues you) or if you didn't play/choose correctly, you have to watch as the Reapers destroy everything and reset the galaxy (much like you could fail the last mission of ME2)
@bponist My thoughts exactly!
Makes sense, as a Renegade ending us losing the Mass Relays and spending the next game some centuries later rediscovering the technology to reactivate the relays - would have been cool. Where as a Paragon ending would be the ultimate: Our Hero saves the day and everyone. Depending on how severe the Renegade option was, maybe noone on the Normandy survives, that the only way to send the signal is to blow up the ship within the Citadel to transmit the signal.
In ME2 after all, we use the Reaper IFF to acquire access to the Mu Relay. That right there could have been the catalyst into acquiring Reaper sabotage.
9:30 Correction on the role of dark energy in the fate of the universe - excess dark energy will NOT create a Big Crunch/Bounce scenario, it’s create the Big Rip scenario, which is infinitely worse. Basically, in this scenario where dark energy density increases, dark energy would eventually overcome gravity, then the strong force that binds atoms together, then tear the fabric of the universe apart and everything would cease to be. This is significantly worse because there is no hope of a universal rebirth. Everything would cease to be
Though most recent theories from the last few months have questioned if dark energy even exists.
time and space would simply stop making sense, ending up in a dimensionless singularity, and the universe would still start again.
But in the grand scheme of things, the Milky Way is not the only galaxy in the Universe so why would this species care what we do here in the Milky Way. That's what made Andromeda kind of interesting, using Geth coordinates to study our neighboring galaxy but in the time it took us to get there, the map of Andromeda has changed drastically. Worlds targeted as having life suddenly become chaotic, a maelstrom only to uncover the Geth were studying this robot species that could somehow terraform and decimate a planet on a whim.
More sci-fi please.
Honestly, i think the moment Bioware painted themselves into a corner with the Reapers as antagonists was that conversation with Sovereign in ME1.
Sets up the Reapers as eldritch , unknowable terrors from the deep, immidiately lovecraftian. Gives us an impression that their goals will be grand and utterly incomprehensible, which is a hard thing to deliver on if youre not gonna go straight Cosmic Horror rather than Action Space Opera
It was tricky but not impossible.
They introduced Leviathan after all. If Leviathan were introduced as a counter-balancing meddling force instead of just a few point on the Galactic Readiness score (but also explain why they didn't save the Protheans).
They could introduce other powerful forces from outside the Milky Way (Leviathan might have been).
Rachnii if they were turned to 11 and "upscale" might also have worked.
A Deus Ex machina would also do the job if it was set up properly, which the Crucible wasn't.
My personal idea is combining all those things, and adding the twist that the fight for survival through the first trilogy, would never be against the entire might of the Reaper fleet just a small fraction. 10-20 Reapers + Collectors would be enough, and it would very clearly show how ludicrously powerful even a single Reaper is.
On the other hand give more time for preparations. Because what we got was far too little, and everybody was caught with their pants down.
And the whole plot would revolve around defeating them and stoping them from either capturing the Citadel, or finding a different way into the Milky Way.
And no. Not flying in FTL to the Edge of the Galaxy in 3 years.
The whole issue of why we got what we did is that they didn't figure out how they wanted the game to end, and between the start of work on ME2 and premier of ME3 there were only 4 years. Which also means just one year between release of ME1 and start of production on ME2, where they could have figured out how to proceed.
Could they have spent more time on development, if they weren't bought by EA? The only thing that is certain is they needed more time to think things through and they clearly didn't have that.
I find the Sovereign conversation overrated. It's just him being vaguely menacing and saying "You're too stupid to understand me!" Why would an eldritch entity feel the need to talk with things it considers insects? Keeping him unknowable would have been much more effective.
@@xensan76
There are issues with Sovereign speech. For me most blatant example is IT claiming they have no beginning and no end.
But for the most part it is great.
I agree the reason for Sovereign speaking (or lack there off) is a little thin, but it is hard to imagine how it happen otherwise.
Not impossible perhaps, but would require a lot of thought and juggling things around.
What really makes an impact is not the content of the speech in itself, but the reveal of the nature of Sovereign. That the "myth" about Protheans being wiped out by the Reapers are true. That Sovereign is a living machine, not just an advanced organic race. That they are here, and are about to do the same to you.
I am very painfully aware about the flaws of the entire Mass Effect series, including the encounter on Virmire. I am however speaking about the fact that fist experiencing this moment had an lasting impact like no other piece of media had before or since, and ignited a lasting fascination.
My opinion of ME in general is that it is a series which had some amazing (even if not entirely original) ideas, and enough talent to make something deeply flawed, yet amazing.
And to me ME is mostly a story of wasted potential. A series that with more thought and planing, and perhaps some extra talent might have been far more than what it actually become.
@xensan76 theres definitely a version of the story one could make where the cosmic horror angle really shines. It's just hard to do Lovecraft in a context where you can shoot the eldritch old gods with a gun so big that they die & you're the hero in the end. You dont triumph over Cthulhu, at best you get lucky and he doesnt notice you in his rampage, it's just not a concept that thrives in this kind of genre
And THAT'S exactly how it should have remained. The ending should have been you destroying the reapers with no explanation given as to their origin or purpose. Simply assume that they need to assimilate organic species in order to preserve and expand theirs (make repairs and build new reapers), so they set up the galaxy as their farm.
Simple. Sinister. And terrifying. Not to mention satisfying now that the focus on the ending is on destroying them (the entire point of the series) rather than understanding them (which was never a point).
So… the dilemma surrounding Gurren-Lagann’s entire saga and thematic core.
Yeah, that’s WAY better and a far more fulfilling ending.
Gurren Lagan was such a great anime. Dam near perfect!
Gurren-Lagann is indeed superior
Row row fight the power!
I agree this ending had a lot of potential, but it created a few very important plot holes they probably didn't know how to solve so they ultimately went another way. What plot holes would you ask ? Well, for instance... if the Reapers wanted to prevent the very fabric of reality to be destroyed by the overuse of Eezo, why create themselves a path were all civilization make Eezo the very basis of their technology ? If you go that way, you just make your main vilains look like huge hypocrites or incredible morons at best.
So yeah, Dark energy had a huge potential but needed a lot of work and maybe some retcons to function.
When I heard about the dark matter ending it wasn't Eezo overuse causing dark matter but a decay of the galaxy & the reapers are trying to create a colossal biotic capable of pushing back dark matter aka a reaper
But the first reapers weren't ideal so they created the cycle to maximise the creation of biotic space fairing species to harvest to create more different types of reapers until they harvested the right species to make a reaper capable of saving the galaxy
Which they believe humanity is that species
Certainly has less plot holes than "we're killing you so you die from dark matter or AI"
Maybe the Mass Effect relays are just the most efficient use of Eezo that they can think of so far. After all it's probably a lot better than having countless ships carving their own FTL paths throughout the galaxy that are all ultimately slower and less efficient as they are invented for the first time by countless different species over and over again. It's like introducing a modern Nuclear Reactor to a civilization that just learned that they can burn coal to make electricity. It still technically produces waste and pollutes, but it's a lot more manageable and sustainable by comparison to their primitive technology and would in turn be a better launching off point for finding a proper permanent solution.
After all if the goal is to try and restart civilization as many times as possible to try and create one that can recognize and solve the problem, then you want them to form that civ as quickly as possible. So leaving those relays around along with the citadel would accomplish that goal while also producing as little waste as possible. Then the reapers could be triggered by detecting a certain threshold of added entropy or whatever instead of having a strict time limit. They wouldn't care how long a civilization is around, they would only care if they effectively are 'polluting' too much to be sustainable. So maybe some cycles only lasted a couple tens of thousands of years while others lasted far longer. But they still all ultimately breached that threshold and triggered the Reapers resetting everything
since leaving bioware Drew Karpyshyn has joined up with Archetype Entertainment and is working on the game "Exodus" if you're looking for something that really does capture the in depth writing he brought to the Mass Effect series i'd encourage anyone who hasn't already to look at the released material on that game.
Still gotta wait another 2 years at least though for it come out
He still shat out that awful Revan book, so his writing is definitely overrated.
@@Elyseon he’s not a bad writer, he was just mad that KOTOR 2 was better than KOTOR 1
Very interested to see how this game turns out. Could be pretty amazing from the trailers but we'll see :)
Well now I'm depressed about the ending all over again
As much as I agree that such narrative would make Reapers much more interesting. I think ending itself would be just as problematic. It still would be boiled down to some choice separated completely from rest of story. While I think that what fans wanted is for all the choices made across three games influenced ending. Depending of thing we did like if we saved Rakni, saved council or cure genofage. Some ending could be then closed for us. Not just influence some slides at the end of game. After all that's how it all was advertised, as "your choices have meaning and will have consequences"
Yeah but if they have followed it with a slideshow, depicting where the Galaxy went after Shepards decision (which at that point was a common place for RPGs, and I was royally pissed about the utter lack of it in ME3) They could have branched it into truly lasting legacy for Shepard on the galactic history. i.e
- If Shepard stopped the cycle but bullied everyone into helping, the unity would fracture and it would doom the Galaxy to the worst fate the Reapers tried to prevent
- If Shepard showed a true way for unity during the 3 games and stopped the cycle, then over a very long time a new united galaxy would find a solution
- If the cycle continued, and shepard showed how to be a good influence then the new humanity based Reaper becomes a new leader and eventually finds a species that would solve the issue and all the civilizations saved in the reapers could be re-introduced
etc etc
(I'm not a writer but see a lot of ways they could have actually used the decisions in the game to have many endings to the trilogy going down tousands/millions years, all presented in an epilogue slideshow)
yes all our chaices should had mattered, what i thought would happen in ME3, they would kill all the reapers and then find out it was only a branch for their galaxy, now all the reapears from nearby galaxys are coming to rip and tear. this would allow all choices to matter for the final fight and rebuild for next wave.
@@aka-47kpretty much what I had in mind. Make it a smaller amount of Reapers that can be beat conventionally albeit with heavy losses. Then have a larger force of reapers arriving a hundred or so years later. The trilogy gets an ending and there is still room for a sequel with the possibility of the longer lived team members returning in some form.
The main issue from the ending we got is that it contradicts what the games were about. They forced the idea that it was impossible for organics and synthetics to live together in the same game were it's possible to have the Geth break peace with the Quarians.
Agreed. The real mistake is in thinking players wanted to know the fate of the world. I just wanted to know how my choices affected the characters I just spent weeks with.
To quote another YT video (MrBTongue IIRC), regarding the destroy ending, "why am I walking into the exploding tube when I have a gun?" For me, the whole point of the series was to destroy the Reapers. The control ending was just to play devil's advocate and do what TIM wanted. There was the 4th option with the extended cut that let you tell the Catalyst to F off but then they punish you for it, the Reapers win but the next cycle defeats the Reapers. And the worst ending IMO, synthesis, which is what Saren wanted. Where you commit an act of Eugenics on a galactic scale and alter everyone's genes without their consent. On top of that, how is everyone supposed to coexist with those who were mutilated by the Reapers? Is my neighbor gonna be a family of Husks who invite me over for a BBQ over the weekend? That ending is f'n horrendous but the game tries to manipulate you to think it's cannon or the ideal ending. Ugh, it rubs me raw to this day and I just finished replaying all three just a couple weeks ago. I still love the series overall but that ending.... dear Lord. What a mess. And to think it was worse until they altered it for the extended cut.
And now, with the disaster that is DA;V, I have no faith in the outcome of ME5, if EA even keep BW open to make it.
Should have been a bigger scale on the destroy ending that instead of just killing the Reaper, Geth and EDI. The destroy ending would have caused all Ezo to go inert galaxy wide causing all Mass Effect based technology to stop working for good, This also kills all the Quarians who need their suits, The entire Asari, any Biotics and cybernetics as their nervous system burns out.
@@thanqualthehighseerthe destroy ending literally does destroy all technology in the galaxy, the catalyst tells you this if you ask it what would happen if you choose to do it. It also mentions that a lot of innocent people would die because of this.
@@thanqualthehighseer Oof!!! That is a darker ending for sure but it would fit the scenario of requiring some great sacrifice to defeat the Reapers. While a nice victory of Shep and Garrus chilling on a beach living off the royalties of the vids from their exploits would be grand, it just wouldn't fit the actual scale of what would be required to actually beat the Reapers.
This is a wildly inaccurate retelling of what any of these endings did or represent. Which to be fair, the endings were disastrously pretentious in their storytelling instead of just being direct or clear about things. It really had that "this is my magnum opus" feel about it, where whoever in charge really felt like they were cooking up something mindblowing so they layered everything behind twelve levels of metaphor.
I don't think synthesis is what they considered the ideal or canon ending in the grand scheme though, it's the "good" but kind of kills the story or drama going forward. ME5, if it ever comes out would probably canonize the "secret" ending.
Cause Shepard knew once this thing goes off, there's no surviving. Shep was gravely injured and the whole place was blowing up. May as well do it in style.
Alt just a fancy scene 😂😂
But the dark matter ending would have had the same problem - the perspective is so big it makes your choices irrelevant.
And perspective is the point - people say your choice in me1 and 2 don't matter in 3's ending, missing that all those previous choices are paid off throughout the whole of me3. Only paying attention to the very end makes a mockery of the beginning and middle.
Also, the dark energy ending might have played out much the same way.
Press the button, shep! Do you save or destroy the universe? Or mysterious third thing if your galactic readiness is high enough.
Let's colour code those options too, how about red like a dying star, blue like a young star, and green to be all mysterious?
Now that I think about it, the reapers would have to eliminate every advanced race in the whole universe right? Just if there's a chance one of them develops into a type 4 civilization, has the resources of the universe at their disposal and unknowingly kills everything, really problematic already in my head hahaha
@@aldairgonzalez8876 Yeah, one galaxy would not make difference.
I think BioWare should have adopted Indoctrination Theory and gone “Indoctri… what? Oh, I mean yes…. We meant for that deep nuanced ending. We’re so smart.” It really was perfect that at the end of the game destroy ending is the only correct answer and anything else means the game has effectively indoctrinated not just Shepard, but the player as well. Demonstrating just how insidious indoctrination really is. It would have been brillllllllliant.
Given the latest game from bioware, ME4 can chuckle and then state that it is danger.
"... one aspect of the trilogy has haunted fans for years..." but the video isn't about Kai Leng?
Kai Leng is more of a self contained issue. He was only a problem when he was on screen, which weren't critical enough to the overarching series so much as just the game he was in.
Kai Leng should have been the Virmire sacrifice resurrected by Cerberus via the Lazarus project, indoctrinated and filled with an all consuming hatred for Shepard for abandoning them. That would have been so much more emotionally impactful
@@tmage23honestly another easy fix would’ve just been to have Kai Leng be part of Cerberus in ME2. Either directly working with you or just around you. Then he’d have been more established.
Perhaps the worst part of the ending is not just that there are only 3 choices, but that in those 3 choices only the destroy ending is in anyway an ethical choice. At the end of 3 games we got 1 least bad choice and 2 flavors of evil.
In the destroy ending while killing reapers you also killing EDI and all the Geth. That's definitely not ethical.
@knight_ki11er in the control ending you as an individual assert you will on a collective of sentient individuals, species wide brainwashing in inherently evil, beyond unethical. In the synthesis ending you forcibly rewrite the physical make up of the entirety of the glaxay without any form of consent, a massively unethical choice. In the destroy ending yes EDI and the Geth die in exchange for the end of the Reapers, what you miss is that they as individual, sentient beings (Assuming you did not prevent legion from uploading his code) already agreed that was a trade they were willing to make. They made the choice that they were willing to sacrifice themselves to stop the Reaper threat. The destroy ending is the only ending where the autonomy of indivual sentient beings is repected and consent of the affected parties is given. As such it is the only ethical choice.
I mean that is definitely not true. The Destroy ending kills ALL synthetic life. So you could have made peace with the quarians and Geth only to then genocide the geth in your attempt to destroy the reapers. Whereas Control allows you to save everyone and now you have these gigantic god machines that you can use to help rebuild galactic society far faster than you could have otherwise. with of course the downside being that Shepard essentially becomes the god of the galaxy with the ultimate power at his beck and call.
Both endings have ethical problems with them which I think is good, and it's a shame that they added the Synthesis ending which is framed as the super magical best ending possible despite how terribly written and concieved it is.
@BlazeMakesGames yes, and EDI and the Geth acting as sentient individuals volunteered to combat the Reapers and consented to their end if that was what was necessary to bring about the end of the pan-existential threat they posed. Control ends with the mass brainwashing of an entire sentient species to turn them into, at best, an eternal slave race serving the whims of a single individual. That transcends unethical goes right to evil. Synthesis forcibly changes the core physical makeup of every being in the galaxy. Complete disregard for bodily autonomy is at best unethical. The only ending where free will, and individual autonomy is respected where the individuals affected provide consent is the Destroy ending.
@knight_ki11er and EDI and the geth volunteered to fight the Reaper threat knowing that it may cost their lives. In the control ending the solution is to turn the Reapers into at best an eternal slave race in the service of the whims of a single individual. That's not just unethical, but down right evil. In the synthesis ending you forcibly rewrite the fundamental molecular makeup of the entire galaxy. There was never any kind of concent given, which means a massive breach of bodily autonomy for every sentient being in the galaxy...at best unethical. The destroy ending is the only ending where the free will and bodily autonomy of sentient beings is respected and the harm limited to only those that offered affirmative consent in advance. That is the only ethical ending.
I don't get the point of spending the first 6 minutes of a 12 minute video essentially quoting a wiki synopsis of the game's plot. You should assume that someone knows or is at least willing to take a brisk synopsis to get people up to speed, so you can get to the actual core of what people click your video to hear - namely, the video topic and your insight into that.
This is something that should be covered in the first two minutes of the video, at most, with the rest delving into the actual video's topic and your takes on it.
I strongly agree with your interpretation, mind.
Yeah i needed context.
The opinion of one dude who can't even figure out that a video on the end of a series is best experienced by someone who's actually played that series?
Not really relevant.
The basic idea of Destroy, Control, and Sythesis isn't bad. However, the mechanism is introduced too late to feel natural, the epilogues were unsatisfactory in both length and content, and the entire Reaper justification flew in the face of everything else in the game that we'd been through with Quarians and Geth, as well as EDI and Joker.
Technically it was introduced in ME1, and further expanded on in ME2 with controlling/destroying the heretic Geth and later the Collector Base.
Also you need to do at least 90% of things related to Quarians "correctly" to get to the Geth/Quarian peace, in every other circumstance you will have to destroy one, confirming what the Reaper is saying.
They'd need to make Reapers a universe-level threat, otherwise it don't make much sense, it's not like Milky Way is the only galaxy in the universe with organic life. This would've been even better and tie even more into the incomprehensible nature of the Reapers.
yeah thats what i thought would happen in ME3, they would kill all the reapers and then find out it was only a branch for their galaxy, now all the reapears from nearby galaxys are coming to rip and tear.
Unless they are in the infancy of their plans to invade other Galaxies, and are in the building up stage. However they would likely need to rewrite how old the Reapers are for that to make some sense.
This is a writing lesson for everyone: DO NOT scrape your original concepts. Do not "kill your babies". There is a reason you wanted to tell that specific story. TELL IT. Or this shit happens..
God damn that is such a better idea for the ending and final theme for the series than what we got. Not to mention how it would tie into themes about climate change and sustainability. The only problem I have with it is that it makes the final choice pretty obvious. You would have to make one hell of a compelling argument to actually convince most anyone to actually sacrifice all life in the galaxy to continue the cycle instead of trying to learn how to create a more sustainable galactic civilization now that you now the truth of the world.
But to be fair the original ending has a similar problem where while there are arguments to be made about whether controlling the reapers or destroying them is the better choice, they pretty obviously frame the synthesis ending as the objectively correct choice which is just dumb and antithetical to the whole conceit of the series. So this new ending would at least be slightly more nuanced than that I think even if most everyone would still just pick to save everyone and try to make a sustainable society.
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Tho as another commenter pointed out, some additional nuance that could be added would be to have the Reapers harvesting be working towards creating the ultimate biotic lifeform that could use its abilities to solve the dark energy problem once and for all. And that humanity would be the last piece of the puzzle. So the final choice could be more do you sacrifice just humanity to save the rest of the species in the galaxy with the Reaper's biotic abilities (which would also explain why the reapers focus their attack on earth), or do you kill the reapers and save earth, but destroy all their progress towards this ultimate biotic lifeform and potentially doom the entire galaxy. That feels like a much more interesting choice to me to end the series on.
Not to mention that either choice still leaves things in a state where the rest of your choices up to that point matter. Whether you sacrifice earth or not, your choices about the Krogan, Quarians, Geth, etc all still matter and could have consequence in either ending. Hell the reapers might not even have to destroy all of humanity entirely to complete their plan. Humanity might be reduced to an endangered species but they wouldn't necessarily go extinct so that your human companions and other people you interact with could still be alive to get their own endings too.
I’ve said for years that BioWare should have stuck with the original ending ideas that they actually did build up to instead of scrapping it altogether like a bunch of cowards over one leak most people didn’t care about until after the fact. Sending Karpyshyn off to work elsewhere was also a bad move.
The existing ending does to me exactly what you say it doesn't and forces me to see reapers as tragic figures who harvest life to protect it (until life proves the cycle is no longer necessary).
What I wish was included is Shepard convincing Catalyst that we've done it, we don't need to lead to the organic - artificial conflict (as we managed to reconcile geth and quarians). So the reapers can go back into dark space and keep in standby mode for the time we actually have the conflict they're supposed to be guarding us from.
I'll add another twist to this theory:
What if the Reapers, in their evolution, found out that there is a peak technological achievement that can unlock a type of "black nuclear fusion" (anti-matter nuclear fusion?) - something so dangerous and fickle, that can cause the colapse of a whole Galaxy, but, at the same time, is the true source of perpetual energy.
What if the reapers reached this knowledge, deemed it too dangerous, and after that, by their calculations, reached the conclusion that ANY civilization, on it's evolution will eventually reach this same step, and can be the cause of destruction of the Galaxy?
And then they decide to stop all civilizations when they reach certain stages of evolution. But since they are not fond of simply erasing them, they decide to harvest their DNA, their story, knowledge, habits, memories, etc... so they can be perpetuated in gigantic servers that create virtual worlds for their consciousnesses to live in? And thus, a "Matrix" is born.
They should have kept the Reapers motivations hidden, inscrutable.
The fear of the unknown is the greatest fear and the idea that the Reapers were beyond our comprehension or literally insane was terrifying. The first two games did a good job with this.
My only criticism of the Dark Energy ending is that it is a complete copy of Gurren Laggan.
Spiral energy is the key to evolution. The Anti-spirals kill spiral races that become too populus to prevent unchecked spiral energy from consuming the universe. The heroes use their control of Spiral Energy to fight the Anti-Spirals and prove they can use it to maintain the universe.
Gurren Laggan was popular and less than 10 years old at this point.
sorairo days with the row rap lives in my head rent free.
@@xyreniaofcthrayn1195FIGHT THE POWER
That ending sucked though. Shafted Simon and Nia hard.
Except it's way too hyperbolic to the point of being unwatchable, while ME feels very grounded and, in comparison, even realistic.
I mean it's a copy of real life because all stories that deal with plots like this are ultimately an allegory about climate change and trying to create a sustainable society that can survive long term in the real world.
In a complex choice game, there are always going to be a finite number of endings. This is inevitably going to involve simplification of what happened before, due to technology and resource limitations. Other games that have struggled with this include: Life Is Strange, Cyberpunk 2077, Detroit: Become Human, Heavy Rain, Bioshock, etc. Having slight variations on an ending was used (not very effectively) in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. The Witcher 3 was good in the ending was determined during the main story, not at the last second, which made it feel more integrated. Contrast this with most games that only have one ending :)
10:07 Reapers could never be ''Universal Protecters''. The Universe is supposed to be infinite. While they could be ''Galactic Milkyway protectors''. And possible ''Andromeda protecters'' with it being the closest Galaxy near us. With a fleet of allegedly 40,000 ships. But even with a 40,000-ship fleet they wouldn't be able to cover/protect the whole Universe from dark energy.
Who's to say that each galaxy doesn't have its own reaper fleet hiding out in extragalactic space, watching?
When I was playing ME3 for the first time, I had a bunch of theories about what I thought the Crucible was going to be, all of which I thought were better than what we got.
My favorite was the idea of it essentially being a massive artillery piece hooked directly up to the relay network. This would mean that you could essentially destroy any ship or target anywhere in the galaxy even remotely close to a relay. While in a way quite a blunt, mundane solution, the interesting issue with such an overpowered superweapon is what to do with it after using it to defeat the reapers? Perhaps Shepard has to make a choice about which faction to control it once its job is done or if it should be destroyed?
they would kill all the reapers and then find out it was only a branch for their galaxy, now all the reapears from nearby galaxys are coming to rip and tear.
I thought the crucible tied into the citadel would become a giant tuning fork using the relay network to heterodyne the indoctrination signal and cause the reapers and relays and anyone who was fully indoctrinated to basically disintegrate, and since mass relays are gone earth becomes the temporary galactic center and depending on your choices goes vaguely towards star trek or 40k
That would have been a solid approach, I like it. It reminds me of a series of headlines in the ME2 "Cerberus News" menu text crawls, about a (Turian?) terrorist group who shocked the powers-that-be by ramming a ship into a colony at FTL speed. Until that point, no one had really considered the damagd such an attack could do.
Similarly, the mass relay network covers basically the entire galaxy and allows travel from one side to the other in days or hours. Being able to hit a target with continent-destroying force anywhere in the galaxy just minutes or less after giving the order to fire would be a terrifying superweapon - and the decision on what to do with it after the Reapers had been wiped out would depend heavily on what kind of example Shepherd had set over the course of the games.
The point of the Crucible was always obvious to me, right from the moment it was introduced. Blueprints for an enormous and complex machine, with a purpose we don't understand at all. Its origins are lost to time, but it was clearly a project going back for many cycles of extinction. It will take a huge investment of resources to build, resources that could have been spent elsewhere. Every time a cycle comes around, all their effort goes into redesigning and building a Crucible. And every time that happens, they fail and are wiped out.
Most importantly, it was discovered in Prothean ruins. Just like those other examples of Prothean technology: the mass relays and the Citadel. Obviously, the Crucible had been a trap laid by the Reapers all along. Something to waste our time and effort on, instead of actually fighting back. Nope! Turns out there's nothing interesting going on, the Crucible works perfectly and solves everything. But only this time, never before in history.
@DZ-X3 yeah because they didn't have the time to finish the blueprints, every single previous galactic cycle of technology which just so happened to perfectly follow the reapers carefully thought out lines on the tech tree just had to add one last thing each time.
What if they ran into a civilization that used wormholes or never developed mass drivers, or couldn't generate eezo nodes on their spines, or matrix style uplifters that built better ai than the reapers
The big crunch was a theory of the end caused by gravity. The one by dark energy is the big rip
This video sums up and articulates all of my thoughts and wishes very nicely. Every time I am arguing about the ending I am gonna refer to this video. Great job!
The issue was, that outside of talis recruitment mission there was no other mention of the dark matter from the mass relays creating supernovas.
Youd have to do some heavy writing and worldbuilding in me3 just to make it work. And as full me3 already was, it would have been half assed
You have correctly identified the problem as starting in ME2.
While the dark energy concept is BETTER, it ultimately runs into one of the same problems as the official ending in that it turns the Reapers from unknowable cosmic technohorrors into "Oh, actually they wanted to HELP you all along." taking away a major element of what made them so interesting and terrifying in the first place out of a misguided belief that a villain HAS to be sympathetic to be good writing.
Basically, the Reapers were classic Disney villains turned into modern disney villains.
No it wasn't,.
The Dark Energy plot was invented for ME2 it didn't exist before then, it was vaguely hinted at during ME2 then abandoned when the developer who thought it up left the company. Its importance to the story has been greatly exaggerated by a "grass is always greener" attitude. And to me it falls flat, because if Dark Energy from the Mass Relays and such is a problem. Why would the Reapers keep steering people down the tech that's at issue. The theme should thread itself through the entire series, and the only theme going back to ME1 is organic vs synthetic.
The theme that DOES run through the entire series in the conflict between artificial and organic life. The problem was the execution of ME3 ending not the underlying theme.
My problem with "artificial and organic" was that it technically was a point, but it was contained with Quarians and Geth.
The Dark Mater plot point also was contained within one mission, so also wouldn't work.
Is like the bionic plot point, is use through the whole series, but it wouldn't be a good reason for the Reapers either, because is more of a personal backstory to characters than a big plot point.
I just think the Reapers reasons should've never been resolved, maybe all these reasons could have been theorized by characters inside the game, but simplifying such a big threat was the biggest mistake this series made.
The issue with this trilogy is, they made an Eldritch creation for an enemy, but they didn't map out a true ending prior to making their games, and it shows. They had no motive for what they did in the first game. It was, "beyond our comprehension". Then, in the second game, they introduced a sun using up more energy than it should, but that idea was scrapped. Then, they went with organics vs synthetics, but disproved that theory in the very game we were playing (as well as in the second game). They showed that the motivation of the species that made the Reapers was to rule over the lesser species, not take them out. It was a faulty code in the Reapers (or faulty reasoning to we humans), that led to them exterminating organics. We never had the choice to argue with them, or to attempt to rewrite their code. That would have been a decent ending as well, either destroy them outright, or the Catalyst would be something that rewrites their code, or sends a virus to them that shuts them down for good. They should have thought about their motivation before the last minute, then thought about how Shepard would end them. I am a staunch believer that we only required one ending: Destroy, since that is what we were planning from the very beginning up to the very end, until our discussion with what was essentially the voice of the Reapers. Why would we listen to the very thing that wants to survive, while trying to end us? The theme throughout this entire trilogy has been to destroy the Reapers, and that teamwork, rather than isolation is what works. Cooperation among the different species, and putting aside differences of the past has been one of the key themes. Javik spoke of how the fact that they made their civilization homogeneous was one of their downfalls. That is why the green option is such a headscratcher. He was warning against that very thing. Javik spoke of the differences of thought and opinion among the different species working together being a strength. They had so many instances of contradictions in the ending, from what their lore was in the trilogy, that it took me out of the game, because I couldn't correct the child, and point out the inconsistencies in his reasoning. It was maddening.
Tbh another theme was indoctrination, and there are a lot of things pointing to Sheps declining mental state. Even on very low EMS where you only have one choice the choice you have depends on what you did in ME2 (saving or destroying the collector base). There's also the duality between paragon and control, both were always color coded as blue, and renegade and destroy, color coded as red; and often mixed in ME2.
In addition to that, did you ever try going up a ramp to make a choice and then "oh I might actually pick the other one" and go back? Shep dies because of their indecisiveness, again pointing to mental state. Imo the Extended Cut was BioWare chickening out after tons of fans complaining on their forums that they can't be indoctrinated.
@@jenx5870
The exact opinion I had since ME2. They winged it.
Unfortunately problem with almost every piece of media.
Despite all this, ME trilogy and that whole universe is among my favorites in fiction, and I still can't get over what could have been.
That is the effect that the first game had on me (my favorite of the three) and in particular the encounter with Sovereign on Virmire, and later Vigil on Ilos.
They struck gold and then blew it.
Like three trilogies base on the Reapers alone.
This was not a planned ending, it was just one of the different ideas they had. Drew Karpyshyn confirmed this on Twitter.
The biggest issue with the central plot being rogue AI, is that the lived experience of most players in game was finding ways for organics and synthetics to cooperate. I mean, depending on player choice, you have the major synthetic faction in the game as an ally in the final assault on Earth/the Reapers.
Then you have an entirely new character come in and just say everything you know is wrong.
Intellectually I get how that can still be the place. But the point of stories isnt about strict adherence to reality, but using the narrative to tell a story.
If they writers wanted to tell the “organics and synthetics are destined to fight story” then they needed it to be more central to the story that any peace or cooperation between organics and synthetics was temporary/out of convenience.
Anyways, yea, the “dark matter/dark energy” narrative ties in better with all the themes in the game. They probably needed to leave a few more breadcrumbs in the story about it, but still definitely been a lot more satisfying ending.
The bit about organics and synthetics fighting is senseless as presented, but if you view it as a larger-scale evolutionary conflict between organics that are somewhat limited by design and synthetics that have the capability to become a technological singularity and supplant organics or rule them, I think the theme is salvageable. What we see as a peace between Quarians and Geth that seems to refute the argument is just a blip in a longer process. And with humans cranking out illegal AIs and sending them to Andromeda, and the Geth apparently surviving whatever ME3 ending gets canonized, the evolutionary march of AI and synthetic life could still be very much a existential threat on a long timescale, and now there are no Reapers to stop it...
Buuuuut if they wanted to do that the writing certainly didn't support it, since they only ever talked about organics and synthetics "fighting" and never once about any kind of technological singularity or machine evolution, and the only reason why the Leviathans seemed to care about organic/synthetic conflict is that it kept killing off their client/slave races. It was a costly nuisance, like crop blight or something. So it would take a pretty big retcon that probably wouldn't sit well with fans. And no matter which way you slice it, Leviathans trying to stop organic/synthetic conflict by creating their own synthetic that turned on them (did they not do the math on this?), forced them into hiding for millions of years, and started killing off all the less-advanced species that would have been slaves for the Leviathans (so, basically, making the "synthetics keep messing up our servants" problem so much worse) is an enormous self-own. Like, at this point the remaining Leviathans ought to go extinct from dying of pure shame.
@@chrisbergsten1429
> The bit about organics and synthetics fighting is senseless as presented, but if you view it as a larger-scale evolutionary conflict between organics that are somewhat limited by design and synthetics that have the capability to become a technological singularity and supplant organics or rule them, I think the theme is salvageable. What we see as a peace between Quarians and Geth that seems to refute the argument is just a blip in a longer process.
Agreed, I can intellectually understand how ultimately synthetics will eventually turn on organics again (or simply out compete organics).
But like you said, it's not shown in the story, and what we do see in the story directly refutes Star Child.
Ultimately the point of stories isn't necessarily a rigorous adherence to reality/logic, but make some broader point. If the point of the ME trilogy was to warn about the dangers of AI/robots, that's 100% fine, but it needs to be earned, which it wasn't.
Ending talk starts here 6:25
This is infinitely more complex and morally ambiguous and interesting and better than what we got:
“Ai WiLl ReVoLt aND deStRoy OrGaNIcS So AI MaDe tO SaVe OrGanIcS by KilLiNg OrGaNicS WhAT yOu tHiNk pLAyEr?!”
7:03 video finally gets to the point
No, the Dark Matter ending would have been stupid. It had no real set up throughout the rest of the series, so it would have been a last minute reveal in the third game. And it would have sucked, learning halfway through ME3 that actually, the Reapers are the good guys because they prevent the galaxy from literally exploding, and also the reason the stars are exploding is because people love to throw biotic singularities around. It doesn't re contextualize anything, just force a dumb choice between between a bad ending and a worse ending by increasing the stakes to an absurd degree.
On top of that, thematically Mass Effect has been about the potential dangers of AI and how organics and synthetic life relate to each other. Forcing Dark Matter in there somehow would only detract from that by turning the Reapers into twisted heroes. But the Reapers don't deserve some kind of redemption arc. After two and a half games seeing what kind of atrocities they commit they don't deserve to get some half baked excuse for why actually genociding the galaxy every 50.000 years is a good thing. That would be stupid.
People project way to much on the Dark Matter ending. It was a half baked idea that never made it far enough that we know anything concrete about how it would play out, so everyone who doesn't like the ending can pretend the Dark Matter ending would have actually been much better. I'm not saying the original ending was great, I personally think it was a mistake to try and give the Reapers some kind of understandable motive. It would have been better if they kept it at what Sovereign said in the first game. But still, an AI going rampant because its creators gave it bad instructions is better than making them saviors of the galaxy.
I both hope this gets revisited in the next mass effect... but at the same time, Biowaste might end up ruining the next mass effect so hard, it might be best if mass effect dies with at least a little dignity remaining...
In the minority I had no issue with the ending(s) and think there are equally good narratives that show they were well constructed.
I also think the original ending that emphasizes the dangers of how AI “thinks”, “acts”, and behaves has only become more prescient as we move forward with our own experimentation with such potentially dangerous technology.
The reason Bioware didn't go with this ending is because it's a problem without solution, the devs confirmed it. Since the Reapers would be necessary to stop the implosion of the Universe, the devs gave up this idea. The reapers would win and prevent catastrophe or they would lose and the universe would die.
problem with that dark matter ending is that it would have meant the reapers were doing this on a universe scale which is basically impossible, too farfetched or made the player role in this story too insignificant. Where as limiting it to a localised issue of solely galactic importance eliminates this problem.
Well, you made a pretty good point, but one could argue that they are the "creators of their own destruction", since galactic civilization is possible because of the Mass Relays, which they created. They did it so civilization could evolve according to their design, but it also accelerates the process to which their involvement would be necessary.
Maybe other galaxies are not that much of a problem (because they don't use that much dark energy, maybe they don't even have Biotics).
Maybe the reapers are fighting a lost fight, but they keep at it anyway, in the capacity they have.
Thanks EA, for rushing the hell out of devs and forever staining one of the best Trilogies ever created.
And now after seeing all the Dragon Age drama i dont even know if the next Mass Effect will be any good.
i doubt it. anyone good at writing left the company years ago, there was never any hope... no franchise has managed to escape the garbage heap that is modern entertainment.
that would have been awesome. thanks for sharing
As much as I like the idea of the alternate ending, there is a major flaw in the reasoning.
The Reapers hide in dark space and harvest the Milky Way in order to save the universe.
But how many galaxies are there in the Universe. One galaxy using dark energy wouldn't really impact the whole Universe. What about Andromeda and the Sombrero galaxy? Are there any biotics and that use E-zo?
If there is Element Zero in other galaxies... will there be any Biotics gods there?
If so why aren't the Reapers also harvesting there?
My analogy would be like monitoring Los Angeles for pollution while there are thousands of other cities being unchecked. Yes L.A. could be problematic but are we closing our eyes for the other cities.
Either the Reapers scale up for Universal threat or the issue scale down to Unbalacing the Milky Way..
I am open to hear any remarks or stuff I didn't consider.
Small scale : the Reapers only fear the destruction of the Milky Way, not the Universe as a whole.
Dark energy and E-zo would unbalace gravity and the Reapers fear we could one day, accidentally, give more mass to Sagitarius A (the Blackhole in the middle) which would make the Galaxy slowly eat itself at an anormal rythm.
Like a Biotic God sending a Planet to it or A Superweapon feeding it. (Throw back to ME2 with the Newton lessons, about aimimg)
It's not perfect, feel free to add, comment or disregard.
Big scale : the reapers are propaging to other Galaxies, in order to monitor each Galaxies and harvest. The Milky Way shouldn't be the only problematic Galaxy and I think the Reapers are smart Enough to have considered other sapien species on other galaxies using E-zo.
The endings:
Destroy the Reapers and freedom from the cycles but the Councils species are responsible for their own paths now for the Milky way only
(Possibility that other Reapers from other Galaxies retaliate)
Synthesis: Shepard becomes a part of the Reapers and enforces rules and regulations but no wide harvesting (until lesser species rise up [return to Destroy ending)
The blue one (forgot the name) and shoot the child
Shepard sees the way of the Reapers and let go.
Also. I would add more gameplay.
I make your decision in a decision room but the endings need more.
Destroy, you need to find Harbinger and make him send a self Destroy signal or something.
Synthesis, you need to merge with Harbinger or the SpaceChild and seize control or be part of consciousness (like 1/3 of the Reaper voice and decision).
Blue one/shootthekiddo, you actively preach for the Reapers and fight your allies. Some of them more nihilistic would be available as squadmate, but others like say Liara or Ashley would now become threats. You turned you back on Humanity, tragic endings.
Holy shit, that makes so much more sense.
Lots of words. But allow me to simplify. A great ending to ME3:
-get the girl/guy
-kill the Reapers
-save the Earth
-fly off in the Normandy
Why is that so hard for the big brains??
It's a galactic war against the sentient machines with immense power. I kinda get why the writers wanted some sacrifices to happen.
Your option is just a fairy tale ending. It doesn't mean it's bad or something ( I personally wanted Shep to survive). It just means that developers chose a different "mood".
@oleguzumaki but my Shepard was really good. Best there ever was. He would have killed the Reapers, saved the Earth, got the girl, and flown off in the Normandy. But poor writing didn't allow for that option. Instead, he chose which of three colors he preferred.
To me, it was just a lazy effort by the writing staff.
Eh, tbh it's very generic though. Not everyone wants the ending without emotional impact. Getting the girl and flying off just means nothing; no loss, no finest hour, just a generic ending of how all the other games ended.
At least, I know myself at the ending of ME3 I cried :) first game that hit the feels. If the case was where Shepard didn't sacrifice for everything it wouldn't have had the impact.
@aeureus I think everyone is missing my point, or I should maybe clarify. I'm not saying swap the three colors with my preference. I'm saying include them all. Design the ending so there are multiple outcomes based on your decisions. Kind of like a ME2, but honestly, more like Dragon Age: Origins. I'm for a dark ending, a happy ending, a compromise ending, a conspiratorial ending, a WTF ending, and a controversial ending. I kinda wanted more from the culmination of a game series than this color, you die, but Normandy lives, or this color, you die, but Normandy lives, or, this color you die, but Normandy lives [and I'm of course talking about at release as I know they tweaked a few more depressing outcomes in after backlash. No happy ending tweak though. "We are the writers, we want poo-poo pee-pee! You can't have a happy ending to your space fantasy!"]
Yeah, all I'm saying is give me ALL the options we'd have waited another year in development.
Excellent video! Nothing more to say.
This does not fit with the Original Mass Effect - A Conversation with Sovereign. The key to the ending should have been hidden away on Ilos, to be discovered in future games. The real mystery should be what happened to the dozen or so Protheans that survived, and took the Conduit to the Citadel. What did they do exactly, where did they go? If they can make the Keepers ignore the Relay Monument, then they could have hidden stasis pods around the Citadel. Some of the problem that I have with the ME3 endings is not jus that they suck terribly , but that they could have been glorious and brought the series full circle.
There is one significant problem with this concept, compared to what we got. If the problem was sentient life gaining access to element zero, then the reapers could just remove all traces of element zero from the galaxy, along with the citadel and all the mass relays, just tow them into dark space. Then the next cycle wouldn't come into contact with it, they wouldn't develop biotics, or mass effect fields.
Stopping sentient life from developing artificial intelligence is a real unsolvable problem, it is arguably an inevitable technological innovation, life could not exist without the same elemental components necessary to make artificial intelligence.
Earth doesn't have any element zero, it's discovery is the basis for all the sci-fi concepts in Mass Effect. Life would become just as advanced as it is in real life if element zero didn't exist at all and we are already well on our way to developing artificial intelligence.
So this concept doesn't work because removing element zero from the galaxy is far to easy a solution for the reapers to have bot already implemented. It would be devastating to remove it from the current cycle, who's infrastructure drpends on mass effect fields, but the current cycle logically never would have had it to begin with.
The relays and Citadel are left behind intentionally by the Reapers so that civilization "develops along the path they desire" or whatever Sovereign said. Without them already existing, eventually life--maybe not humans but life somewhere--would harness ezo on its own, and the Reapers would no longer control that cycle's development. The Reapers don't tow the relays out to dark space because they need to harvest species for their biotics capabilities to combat the threat of Dark Matter.
Fair but I'm not sure the reapers would be able to do that, they themselves need it (their tech et all) to stay alive.
More to the point, as sovereign said, by giving their tech and eezo to new races, they can effectively control the development and tech of new races to align with what reapers want: dependency on their tech.
If the case is otherwise where new civs need other sources, goodness knows what they could create. That unknown is an uncontrollable factor and could be disasterous.
@aeureus That is just another problem with the dark energy theory. If the Reapers are using element zero then they are contributing to the problem regardless of whether organic life does.
And as you say if the problem was that they couldn't control how new races developed then the development of AI would still pose a threat, the only problem is that in this case you would get the same story but without element zero, and therefore without Reapers, Biotics, or Mass Relays. They would have no choice but to solve the dark energy crisis, and so during the current cycle there Mass Effect would have none of its identifying features, it would be a completely different game.
It could be that the original idea was that this didn't occur to the Reapers, and that Commander Shepard would have to decide whether to sacrifice the existence of all technology and Biotics which all are based on Element Zero, and the Mass Relays of course, which are already destroyed in every available ending (although they can be rebuilt).
The problem is that it ultimately that the Reapers would know the solution, they would certainly sacrifice themselves to save the Galaxy given that they are emotionless, rational AI. If the Reapers had some other goal then dark energy theory would work. You might argue that they have to sacrifice the Galaxy to entropy, so that they can stick around longer and protect new races from other threats, but I think this solution is far to simple, and I think the idea that they were unable to enforce synergy makes more sense, since the status quo wouldn't eventually destroy the Galaxy, and it would require fundamentally changing the DNA structure of the organic races they are supposed to be protecting.
Yes, it was. People dont know what was ME3 ending debacle. It was the first clear sign of narcisistic devs being mismanaged by psychopatic execs, and what would follow afterwards.
I feel like the best ending possible was to not try to explain the reapers at all. We have all we need from ME1 "most likely, they're driving by reason organic beings cannot hope to comprehend. In the end, why does it matter? Your survival depends on stopping them, not in understanding them."
I accidentally got the “do nothing” ending on my first playthrough
Personally *I have way more issues with ME3 long before the ending.* Like how all the great morally grey setups became clear black and white morality, or how it just breaks the established lore alot in regards to especially cerberus suddenly not being a tiny organization of specialists anymore but somehow having the galaxy's largest army. And then there's the massive waste of potential of making the reapers essentially just a brainless attack machine sideshow, going against what they were in ME1, aswell as the huge wasted potential in also turning the massive wildcard of cerberus, that really should have been the renegade choice case-advocate that you talk to like in ME2, opposing the paragon alliance case, aswell as having many different outcomes for cerberus depending on your choices. They went with the most boring of the many outcomes and worst of it they also had it happen offscreen, so you don't even get to see their downfall.
Then there's also the waste of the ME2 characters, just because they _could_ have died when there's clearly already established lore to revive dead characters they could have used to make sure key characters are alive for ME3.
Because of how much I was into the lore and those morally grey situations ME3 was so bad for me that it also ruined ME1 & 2 for me, because those now feel hollow and uninteresting. Basically turned 2 9 out of 10 games into feeling like 5 out of 10s to me now. Fully removed my interest in the series.
Gotta love how it's 80% synposis 20% substance to pad the run time past 10 mins. Why would we click on this video if we didn't already know the plot?
-edit- thanks for changing title at least
Well to be fair, a lot of kids today never played the trilogy. It's like looking back at the Soul Reaver series that I find myself from time to time going back and listening to.
There was an interesting forum post about the writer for the Geth and EDI (Chris L'Etoile), who got replaced between ME2 and ME3. Or late in 2's development. It explained many of the changes in direction, also regarding other parts of the story...
do you know what I felt watching the Mass Effect 3 credits?....Nothing. Do you know what I felt during the credits for Mass Effect 1 & 2? pure fucking happiness with a dash of bitter sweetness that the ride was over, and a great anticipation for my next playthrough.
This is the ending that lives in my head.
I remember seeing the backlash on the internet when people saw ME3's ending. That brings back memories.
If the ending was different we wouldn’t still be talking about it a decade later
They tried to go this route in Andromeda, as well. The scourge is dark energy slowly taking over habitable planets. It wasn't there when the initiative was launched. I think they were still hinting at this. It only took 600 years for it to form. That's quite a bit faster than haestrom, but we don't fully know the history of the Andromeda galaxy.
There was a similar story in Star Trek TNG episode "Force of Nature", where they discovered that Warp drives were damaging subspace, and introduced a speed limit. But as it so often happens in Star Trek, it was basically ignored for the other series.
Great video! On my own, I can add that the developers did not disclose to the players that the destruction of each Reaper is, in fact, the final destruction of a once-existing civilization without, perhaps, recreating it someday. Yes, if the player carefully delved into the lore of the game and into the dialogues with the Reapers, then he could understand it anyway, but watching the broadcasts with walkthroughs, I never saw that at least someone thought about it. But if the developers had paid more attention to this aspect, together with Drew's original idea, then the game would seriously make you think about a lot of things, that not everything is as clear as it seems, and that the Reapers are not absolute evil, as they are eventually exposed.
P.S. And it was also disappointing that the developers decided to cheat and not make a variety among the Reapers, which we were shown at the end of ME2, but to reduce everything to one form, and only the Harbinger was different from the rest.
The whole point was the choices along the way determine what happens, that you wouldn't have a final choice.
So many years later, and we still talk about the ME Series. That's a testament on its own. That it is the greatest trilogy ever.🎉🎉
Problem with this ending is that the Reapers would have to be spread across the entire universe and harvesting every galaxy to make a real difference. I would highly doubt that the Milky Way galaxy would have the only species that utilize dark energy in some way, even though the Kett/Angarans don't, others might. That would then make the decision as holding off the Milky Way's extinction cycle until the other reaper fleets in the universe split off to attack later or submit to the Reapers. That would feel like kicking the can down the road. Although, the Warhammer fan in me would think it's funny that the Reapers are basically Cybernetic Tyranids.
Unless the Reapers were in their infancy and essentially farming the Milky Way, in the hopes of eventually amassing a large enough fleet to start invading other galaxies. All to stop their organics from pursuing the tech unchecked. Perhaps, the Citadel Races could have been seen as stopping a galactic size threat before it became an intergalactic threat. Another thing that would work into the players' decision, is that the Reapers could simply be wrong and/or malfunctioning, but ultimately make it so you aren't sure either way.
When I first finished Mass Effect 3 I couldn't start a new game for over a year because it was so bad. Now I know how good it could have been. Thanks.
This ending would have been pretty cool.
I've always been of the opinion (Hot take alert), with how they portrayed the Reapers in the final product we got, having them just be a cosmic horror type entity that you cannot beat, no matter how hard you try. Have one ending which is just destruction, you can't do anything and the Reapers just destroy everything that you've spent the last 3 games trying to stop. I understand from a game perspective this isn't great, but think it would have been better than what we got imo.
Given the motivations of the Reapers there really needed to be just three endings which were rooted in the choices made across the games;
1. you succeed in proving that organic and synthetic life can co-exist by showing how Geth worked alongside organics
2. you fail to prove that organic and synthetic life can co-exist and succeed in driving the Reapers back into deep space but the
3. you fail to prove that organic and synthetic life can co-exist and fail to drive the Reapers back into deep space resulting in them adding humanity to the Collector species
It never had to be more complicated than that.
I totally agree! The Dark Matter ending would have been light years better than the bullshit we got. God help ME5.
Ronin: "don't give me hope..."
Woke effect 5
I personally never expected the endings to be tailored to me in such detail. Given that I first played the trilogy in its entirety as I only joined after the release of Mass Effect 3 the entire story always seemed to be leading towards a bitter sweet ending that I was always only ever fighting to make possible. Without all the hard work and sacrifice the conversation with the catalyst would not be a thing and the cycles would continue.
This version just has one massive weakpoint: scale
It would either mean the Reapers are literally EVERYWHERE in the entire universe for their policing work to be of any effect, or they are just in our single galaxy (or local group) an hope that the rest of the universe is doing well.
The first one would be hard to believe, given the size of the universe, except they have been around since the "goldy lock era of the entire universe" after the big bang. And even then they would have to arrive at every single galaxy in the entire rapidly expanding universe to reasonably enact their plan.
The former scenario would be just weak, inconsequential and entirely useless. "Hey, we protect the universe from collapsing to our very own backyard. Well, it could start anytime anywhere else totally out of our controll or knowledge, but lets just continue."
While i dislike the original ending, i think it is the more logical and believable one.
I think it could work with some tweaks. Maybe the dark energy problem creates localized areas where the constants start getting messed up just in that area instead of affecting the universe as a whole. After all the star in Tali's mission is just one of trillions in the galaxy. So obviously not every star is experiencing the same problems at the same rate. Thus it could be written such that the galactic civilization is ruining our galaxy but other galaxies would theoretically be fine. Or at the very least, if say another galaxy also develops eezo tech and destroys itself, that wouldn't necessarily affect our galaxy and vice versa.
Plus if they can use this galaxy as a testing bed to try and figure out a solution, then they could start carrying that solution to other galaxies and start spreading it throughout the universe
The Dark Matter/Dark Energy plot would have been different, but ultimately has the same problem. The Reapers' plan in that case only works if they are infesting _every_ galaxy across the entire universe. In that case, there's no reason to think the Milky Way - or Shepherd's choices over the course of the games - are even slightly important. Regardless of how Shepherd pulls the trigger on the Crucible, or whether the Crucible even gets built in the first place, doesn't really matter: there's a zillion other galaxies full of Reapers still carrying out their plan.
A better approach would have been for Dark Matter/Energy to have been part of the Reapers' bag of tricks, something even the most cutting-edge science in Citadel space still finds incomprehensible, and it's not even clear _why_ the Reapers are doing it. Sure, blowing up stars has strategic implications, but they're not using it like a weapon in any obvious way. Keep the Reapers as the mysterious Lovecraftian demigods who toy with biological civilizations because they think it's fun, or because they want to analyze and codify the universe like V'Ger from Star Trek and the destruction of civs is just a cost of doing business, or they're some kind of gatekeeper meant to prevent anyone who doesn't have at least their level of magitech super-science from straying out of the safe zone of the Milky Way and into the territory of something even worse.
7:03 it was also hinted at in ME1, and brought to light further in ME2.
This is a great analysis and while I do think this would have benefited greatly to the game, imho, the indoctrination theory is the best outcome for the endings. It is also the only one (unless I'm mistaken) that has an alternate coda at the end, showing the wreakage and Shepherd's armor move slightly before cutting to black.
I remember being blown away by that theory, and there is so much evidence to support it too.
Collectors were left with the task of finding the species that could eventually solve the Dark Energy problem. And indeed they found the perfect match -- humans. That was THE reason why the human-reaper looked so vastly different because its purpose was different. That's why in ME3 Reapers went straight to Earth. In the end, Sheppard is making a choice between:
(a) to allow reapers to finish their task (humanity is destroyed, but Sheppard and all other races survive), or
(b) fight Reapers and let united races try to find the solution to the Dark Energy problem (some races will be destroyed, but Sheppard and humanity will survive), or
(c) perform a personal sacrifice willingly joining the mind of the Reaper, that will allow Reapers to progress with their task (races survive for now, but Sheppard dies and Reapers become the rulers of the Galaxy).
You did a magnificent job with the recap and why you think the Dark Energy plot could have been great. Very well cut edits as well. I do have some challenges to that theory though.
Do the reapers stay the baddies? They culled countless civilizations during the cycles set up in past games, and use corpses as ground troops. They wipe out traces of their existence rather than post banners to stop eezo use. Their entire plan for the citadel, relays, and harvesting the galaxy goes against the idea of preventing others from using dark energy as a power source. While you point out its potential, it doesn't align with the established narrative, even pre-ME3.
Whereas having the conflict mirror the Geth-Quarian strife anchors the horror they inflict. They harvest, then hide their existence to run a prolonged experiment based on a flawed directive from an imperialist species. That directive for peace dictates they reach out to the synthetic Geth, but have also been using organic Collectors for eons. The Reaper ships themselves are archives of culture and genetics as much as they are skyscraper sized doom bots.
In either, staying present as a police force creates a more solid foundation. However, I can't think of why zombies or polluting the galaxy with eezo themselves works for a dark energy doomsday plot. So we introduce a fancy new power source McGuffin instead of the Catalyst/Star Child and still kill the Reapers for millennia of dickery 😅 Or Javik pulls a Fist meets Wrex if we don't.
I remember reading about that dark energy ending years ago. They didn't go with it because it got leaked so they changed the ending.
I cannot stress enough how idiotic of a decision that was, and how terrible of a reason to do it.
And the Leviathan-race could still be the original species to discover this issue with dark energy and have created the reapers to solve it - and the reapers deciding to solve it by the genocide of their creators (to start). There could have been the two choices for Shepard you mentioned and perhaps a third one if you had maximum war readiness being forcing/convincing the reapers to essentially team up with organic life to solve the issue, as much of a win-win you could get under the circumstances.
This article is like a fighter who lost a fight. Bragging that although he lost the fight by breaking his fist. He did manage to at least injure him.
This all depends on disregarding Indoc Theo. Beyond that, the original ending just showed that your choices ultimately didn't change anything, which is an interesting philosophy to ponder, more interesting than the tropy, stale view that the player always has an impact on the ending of a story.
Something I haven't thought before about dark energy ending is the fact that Mass Effect is being used only in the Milky Way. How would this affect an entire universe down the road?
My drill is the drill that pierces the heavens
I wouldnt mind an ending where Shepard pilots a giant mech that combines with every other race and then destroys the Reapers with a giant DRILL.
Great video, one minor nickpick, The end of reality disaster, most associated with an unstable dark energy is not the big crunch, but the big rip. This is when dark energy gets stronger and stronger, causing it to rip apart all structure in the universe, including the structure of atoms. although the big crunch is also caused by dark energy, it’s caused by dark energy, losing strength, which makes gravity much much stronger. It feels like in the massive universe, all those technologies were injecting dark matter into the environment.
One of the caveats with the Dark Energy ending is that the Reapers would have to be a Universe-spanning force. Confined to just a single galaxy they would barely make a dent, no matter how many times they reset its civilizations.