User blog comment:The Milkman/End of the Line/@comment-212.78.179.247-20120712111051

I have been going over various websites regarding the ending of Mass Effect 3. First and foremost, I never played ME3 without the EC. I bought ME3 after the EC was released. My post isn't specifically about the various endings and why each of them were better or worse than the other. In my opinion the ending couldn't have been any better than it is, for the simple reason that the entire trilogy's story was poorly planned. Indeed, the ending failed because it wanted to do something that, given the previous installements of the triolgy, it simply couldn't. Let me explain, and bear with me through the entire post.

The journey from ME1 through ME3 was nothing less than amazing to me. Never did I have the feeling that making choices mattered quite in the way it did here. And that is indeed the heart of the series: that you can make - literally - game-changing choices. It is what has shaped it from the beginning, it is the main point that has given the series the acclaim that it received. You can't deny that making choices is what the series revolves around.

The fact of the matter is that in my eyes, the entire plot of the game is ultimately incompatible with the one major goal of the game: to always give choices. See, the entire plot of the trilogy revolves around having no choice at all: kill the reapers or be killed. The one thing you are doing basically all the time is survive. At no point in the trilogy do you have any other choice but to fight the reapers in some way or another.

One of the videos I watched that endorse the Indoctrination Theory actually does a good job in highlighting some points of the basic structure of the trilogy, and that got me thinking. Bioware planned all this from the start, right? Logically, that means that the trilogy's separate parts must fit in some consistent way, and not just in a mere "continue the story" sort of thing. I have been thinking about this, and here's my version of the Mass Effect triology's basic structure:

Mass Effect 1: introduces the basic problem of the synthetic vs organic struggle by means of the Quarians and Geth. After all, after one mission, namely the one on Eden Prime, you already met the Geth, and you start hearing about their story and the war with the Quarians. Secondly, you hear about the reapers for the first time. You hear of what they did in the previous cycle and that they should be stopped. Finally, you meet Saren, who presents you with the first of the three solutions: synthesis; combine machine and organic tissue to create something greater.

Mass Effect 2: Continues the story. You learn more about the reapers, but ultimately, as I see it, the main goal of ME2 is to introduce the second solution of the three: control. The illusive Man promotes this to no end.

Mass Effect 3: Concludes the story, and lets you choose between the three ultimate solutions, of which the third one is, of course, to destroy the reapers for good. This reveals a glaring problem within the very heart of the plot of the Mass Effect trilogy. Ask yourself now: "what is the main conflict in the Mass Effect trilogy?" I would say it's the reaper invasion. And what was your main goal from the very moment you learned of their existence? Indeed, to destroy them. Here's where the heart of the matter is.

The fact that you wanted to destroy them from the first moment onwards isn't the problem per se. You can change your opinion, provided you are shown sufficient reason to do so. And, in my opinion, you are shown sufficient reason not to destroy them. Saren tries to argue that synthesis is the best option, The Illusive man tries to convince you to control them, and I think they do so quite well. At least, The Illusive Man always came quite close to winning me over for his cause. Call it scientific curiosity.

No, the problem is not that you set out to destroy the reapers from the start, nor is the problem that the other options are not convincing enough. The problem is that throughout the trilogy, you were never given the chance to form an opinion on the alternative solutions presented to you. Step back to Mass Effect 1: did you not kill Saren because you rejected his synthesis solution? Go to ME2/ME3: did you not kill The Illusive Man because you rejected his solution of control? And now ask yourself: "Who made these choices to reject the alternative solutions? Was it really me, or did the dialog options steer me in that direction?" Indeed, you never had a choice on what to do. Your only option was always to reject Saren and the Illusive Man. And not only reject them, but try to convince them to join your side, making them admit that they were wrong. So how can you choose for their solutions if they themselves end up concluding that they were wrong?

In summary, the ultimate fault of the Mass Effect trilogy is that it wants you to make a choice at the point where that choice has become completely irrelevant. It never gave the player the chance to follow Saren or The Illusive Man. Then, in the final 10 minutes of the game, you are suddenly given the choice between the three solutions, even though you already rejected two of them before, by killing their advocates. As such, the way Bioware wanted to build the Mass Effect triolgy, was faulty from the very beginning

As I see it, Bioware could have done only one thing: Never have allowed the player to choose anything at the end, just let us shoot the reapers to hell. This is also what I think many of us, if not all of us, were probably expecting, right? It's what all of the games posed as the end goal. However, I think it is a fairly large omission to not give the players a choice from the start regarding the biggest, most morally difficult problem of the entire series. For a game that lets you heavily choose if and to what extent your character will be paragon or renegade, it makes a hell of a lot of assumptions on who is right (Shepard and the Alliance) and wrong (Saren, Cerberus and The Illusive Man)

As such, I think it would have been awesome and the ultimate solution if you could have chosen to follow Saren or the Illusive Man on their path, instead of following the Alliance on theirs. Mind you, this has been done before: just give Fallout New vegas a look. What else are you doing than choosing between three factions and completing the main storyline under the banner of the chosen faction? I recognize that in Fallout New vegas things are simpler due to the lesser amount and scope of choices made, which simply can't compare to the intricate complexity of the Mass

Effect storyline.I think that, had Bioware positioned the various Mass Effect "factions" differently, they could have pulled off the same thing. It's a pity they went in a different direction and thereby closed the door on themselves.

Finally, let me say that even though I am very critical of the structure of the trilogy as a whole, I loved playing through each one of the games and I by no means aim to say that the games are bad. Taken one by one, they are defintely very good, but as a whole, the overarching structure could have been executed much better.

I have spoken.