User blog comment:Caramellson/Try Honesty?/@comment-4237253-20120913021619/@comment-2228120-20120913175557

As for the whole deus ex machina issue, I’m excerpting from comments under my blog about Leviathan, on the subject of foreshadowing:

“In ME1, you 1)see Sovereign – 2) learn that it’s Saren’ a mysterious ship – 3)learn from Benezia that it affects minds of those onboard – 4) learn that it’s a Reaper ship – 5) learn that it’s a Reaper itself. Gradual reveal. Take out part 2-4, does it really work? Like in, 1a) you need the Catalyst to connect to the Crucible, 1b) Reapers are controlled by something, 2) I’m the Catalyst AND I control the Reapers? Is this anywhere on the same scale, story-telling-wise? If you want an ME2 analogy, you don't jump from people disappearing by thousands right to the construction of a Reaper, you get to see for yourself on Freedom's Progress, on Horizon and on the "derelict" ship in between.”

In ME3, you must distinguish between the Catalyst as the device which you need to attach to the Crucible to make it work, and the Catalyst as the AI which created the Reapers. The former is basically a Conduit analogy – you don’t know what it is but you know you need to find it and use it somehow, and story-wise, it play little role. The latter is the big secret behind the main storyline, and way more important than the former. Throughout the whole game, you learn next to nothing new about the Reapers, and dropping this A-bomb only at the end, without previous clues leading to it, is why it gets labelled deus ex machina, since Vendetta’s one-liner about it, which gets totally ignored by Shepard et al., is highly insufficient. With the Leviathan, the foreshadowing finally works, but without it, I consider the deus ex machina label fitting.

@Temporary editor: “stop spamming, all of you, and do something worthwhile with your account here. this is the first and last time i am explicitly going to call all of you (who should be concerned) out for excessive blog wh*****.”

That was highly undeserving, and also disappointing from you. Last time I checked, freedom of speech applied even to wikis, and since the blogs are the users’ private space to be used as they deem fit, within reason (http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/User_talk:Commdor), I fail to see what makes you entitled to your comment. While I can understand that you may perceive the blog activity as non-beneficial to the workings of the wiki, such a heavy-handed approach will serve no good. Even a blog like this can sparkle an interesting, well-thought discussion, no matter how many times the topic has been done before.