Forum:Analysis: failed premise of ending

I felt the need to put this into words somewhere so here goes.

There are several problems with the ending, but I will focus on the one I see as the biggest. I am warning you, this is going to be long. For the impatient, here is the TL;DR: The catalyst tells us that synthetics will inevitably be the death of organics and so a “solution” is needed, but we have almost no reason to believe this. Thus, having the ending be about choosing a solution is a failure.

First, a few asides concerning some of my other gripes with the ending. If you want to get to my main discussion, skip the next two paragraphs.

ME is a hero’s story. Any variant of Shepard is just awesome, and Shepard is potentially capable of setting right just about situation he comes across. To strip all that away in the last moment completely breaks with the philosophy of the story. ME goes from being a heroic adventure to being a tragedy in an instant without there being any discernible reason for it. If you want to break with the underlying philosophy of a story (like hope and the possibility of heroism saving the day) there must be a reason, such as wanting to drive home a message like “existence is meaningless”. In that case it needs to be clear that this is what you’re doing, and your story becomes a commentary on the perceived delusions of mankind. I don’t think this is what Bioware was trying to do. A simpler explanation is that they screwed up.

Also the catalyst’s actions do not make sense. The catalyst must have a motivation for letting Shepard choose whether, and which part of the galaxy to kill. Instead there is no discernible motive for giving Shepard that choice and so it seems like the catalyst is insane or whatever passes for insanity among god-likes. If that is in fact the case, then this needs to be at least pointed out, for example by Shepard. Another thing that makes no sense is why the catalyst doesn’t simply kill Shepard, thereby insuring the continued feasibility of the already working reaper solution. Remember that Shepard is the only one who knows. Did some of their conversation make it to the fleet via radio? Is the catalyst incapable of dealing with Shepard? Could it not just lock the exits, shut off any consoles and block Shepards omni-tool, letting him bleed or starve to death? Does Cerberus know? Then we need to be told so. Finally, if the synthesis solution is the best option, as we are led to believe, then why not go with it in the first place? Are we to believe someone were able to create the reapers, come up with synthesis as an alternative, and facilitate synthesis when Shepard showed up, but they couldn’t pull it off earlier? If there is a good explanation for this it eluded me.

Now, on to my main topic.

There is especially one premise that has to hold for the ending to make sense. It is the “destroy all humans” premise, i.e. the inevitability that synthetics will always conflict with, and subsequently conquer organics. We are supposed to accept the necessity of choosing one of the catalyst’s options because we are Shepard and so Shepard’s actions are our actions. Therefore we, as Shepard, must believe the catalyst when it tells us that synthetics cannot coexist peacefully with organics. If peaceful coexistence is possible there is no problem which means no solution is needed.

Let’s look at the evidence.

The reapers are mostly synthetic and their imperative is to destroy all humans as well as everyone else, but they are irrelevant in this picture because that imperative is forced on them by their creators. They don’t have a choice.

Then we have the geth. They killed most of the quarians and one can argue that they overreacted (took the war too far, seemingly an honest mistake), but then they decided to mind their own business and do what peaceful organics do, which is to build their own future. We don’t know what they eventually would have done if left alone, but this is also true of every sentient organic race or being, and we don’t judge them on basis of what they might do when we have no good reason to think they will do it. As I remember it Legion tells us in ME2 that the geth do not know what their goals will be past the completion of a dyson sphere. And in ME3 the geth can choose to make peace with the quarians. I don’t remember this part well enough to say exactly how it comes about, but Legions actions are key here, and while Shepard tells Legion what to do he doesn’t force Legion to do it. I can only interpret this event as evidence that synthetics are capable of choosing peace with organics.

Then there is the AI on the presidium in ME1. We don’t really know much about this AI, but it seems to be of the “bully” conviction; that it can take whatever it wants from anyone whenever it wants to. In this case conflict is inevitable, but not only with organics. For instance it seems likely that if this AI became powerful enough the geth would take notice of its causing trouble and pissing off organics, so it would be in the geth’s self-interest to deal with it, thereby effectively aiding everyone else including organics.

Finally, we have EDI who comes across as a perfectly organic-friendly AI. Interestingly her origin is the VI on the moon, which was hostile. That she was hostile by virtue of being synthetic is not clear however. It would make sense that her sentient capabilities were rudimentary to begin with so she followed something analogous to a fight or flight instinct. Or she was already aware enough to know that AIs weren’t too popular and therefore went into survival mode. In any case she is clearly developing throughout ME2 and ME3 and at least in the playthrough I have finished there is no evidence that she will want to destroy all humans. In fact she got it on with Joker and has developed “preferences” which I take to mean the synthetic equivalent of emotions. This implies a pretty deep understanding of organics and a significant sense of kinship which further diminishes our reasons to expect attempted conquest of organics from her.

EDI also says something about what manner of synthetics are more likely to be enemies of organics, namely hive-mind synthetics like the geth. Meanwhile, AIs with individual selves are less likely to be hostile. Here, there are implications pointing toward (individual) self-interest tempering behavior in sentient beings. This could, for instance be the conclusion that cooperation with other sentients will in the long term be more beneficial to oneself than destruction of them will. Now since creation of hive-mind synthetics is inevitable there is clearly a potential for conflict here, if what EDI says is true. Still, keep in mind what we’ve learned about the geth. They chose not to exterminate the quarians even though they would likely have succeded and they showed no aggressive intent after this until some (a minority) of them joined Sovereign.

How about organic hostility toward synthetics? Could this be the reason for peaceful coexistence being impossible? Here there is some precedent, at least. The quarians attempted genocide when the geth became sentient. AI research is mostly illegal and viewed with suspicion. Cerberus kept EDI shackled. And the Alliance violently shut down pre-EDI on the moon (though she apparently wasn’t open to diplomacy). However, not all are afraid of AIs. The team mates and the Normandy crews in ME2 and ME3 seem to accept EDI pretty readily, and in ME3 the quarians (who have about the greatest possible motivation to be AI-phobic) can be persuaded to make peace with the geth. Clearly, if total war between organics and synthetics is inevitable, it is not because of the organics. And in the only case we have seen anything like that, look what happened. The war between the quarians and the geth ended because the geth were levelheaded enough to call it quits when the quarians were no longer a threat.

There are a few things pointing towards the necessity of synthetic hostility toward organics, but they are few and minor enough that they could at best function as an excuse for Shepard to believe the catalyst. We need way more than an excuse. Since the catalyst’s claims are literally of galactic importance we need a big reason to believe those claims and accept the catalyst’s options as necessary. As it stands, Shepard has no reason to think that the catalyst knows what it’s talking about.

The ending, therefore, stops making sense by the time star child stops talking. Since at least paragon Shepard cannot believe star child’s claims the only possible reactions that make sense are either to give up and lie down to die (big downer, not an option for a space epic like ME), to give in and pick an option anyway (nothing in the narrative points to Shepard having surrendered his will, and again, big downer) or Shepard could say “I don’t like your alternatives. I’ll make my own” (appropriate for a big guddamn hero). This last reaction is the only one that makes sense for a character like Shepard, but the writers would have to pull one hell of a left turn to make it work given the desperate situation Shepard is in at this time.

Conclusion: The writers had the freedom to write whatever ending they wanted, but they chose to go with star child giving Shepard three options all of which depend on a premise they've spent a lot of time and effort disproving. This breaks the ending.