Mass Effect 3 Spoiler Thread [Spoiler tag free, beware]

[MournelitheCalix]

The Kid Sucked:  





The Consequence of the Ending:

[Fordel]

How long did we have gunpowder before someone invented a proper weapon with it? Ancient Greeks had all the technology and science available to start work on steam engines, but never made the leap due to various factors.

Or conversely, how has the gun actually improved in the last say, 50-75 years? Is say, a WW2 era artillery piece all that different from the ones they use today?



The idea of civilizations sorta staying where they are for awhile isn't that hard for me to accept, especially when there isn't any real pressure to change.



The fact the game lets you double your effectiveness with your 'research' is just gameplay, nothing more.



-fake edit-

Storm, I did not take the council intervening in any way for our benefit in the initial first contact war. I took it as a "Holy shit, someone handed the Turians their asses, we can probably use them to balance out the Turians I bet".

Then once they got to know us they went "Holy shit, good thing we stopped this before it really got started, those humans were barely trying, lord knows where a full blown Turian/Human war would have went!"

[tmp]

Council Space is complacent. They're wealthy beyond measure and untouchably powerful. They don't need to work for anything, they're coasting on the profits of their earlier investments. They've made it.

The thing i don't understand (without bringing the "because we couldn't put humans into spotlight otherwise" into it) is, why this is supposed to apply seemingly universally to the Council space when there's supposedly large number of species who came later and as such didn't actually "make it", and who continue to have deep interest in trying to increase their power/position. Pretty much just like the humans. Except with centuries of headstart which they've apparently spent doing fuck all.

And that's not even getting into those who live outside of the Council space, and have literally "do or die" incentive to push research, technology and everything else as far as possible.

[Fordel]

A lot of the 'lesser' species have severe biological limitations they are working around. Like the little fat merchant race, they can barely exist in "normal" environments, let alone wage any kind of war of conquest.

Then you have species like the Batarians, which mirror humanity in a lot of ways. They are just like us, doing their damnedest to 'make it' and be one of the big players. We've already fought a few minor wars with them over shit I believe.


-edit- Like, I have no idea how long Batarians were developing their tech independently of council exposure. How long they had to colonize and expand before they ran into the council. If I remember right, I believe the Turians for example, were already cruising around with a bunch of colonies before they ever met the council. Humanity also had this pre-council time frame where we went "We don't know if anyone else is out here, but there is evidence they MIGHT be, so we are making some god damn fleets, JUST INCASE", which is what saved us in the first contact war.

[tmp]

How long did we have gunpowder before someone invented a proper weapon with it? Ancient Greeks had all the technology and science available to start work on steam engines, but never made the leap due to various factors.

Supposedly ~300 years for the firearms to appear. And the ancient greeks did actually come up with steam engine -- Hero of Alexandria, to be exact.

The catch is, these examples are bit of red herring. Development in ancient times was considerably slower thanks to very limited ability to share/distribute discoveries and ideas, as well as to small number of people involved. That's not a case with modern societies, and even less so for ones which couple that communication prowess with think tanks the size of multiple planets.

[Fordel]

How long did we have gunpowder before someone invented a proper weapon with it? Ancient Greeks had all the technology and science available to start work on steam engines, but never made the leap due to various factors.

Supposedly ~300 years for the firearms to appear. And the ancient greeks did actually come up with steam engine -- Hero of Alexandria, to be exact.

The catch is, these examples are bit of red herring. Development in ancient times was considerably slower thanks to very limited ability to share/distribute discoveries and ideas, as well as to small number of people involved. That's not a case with modern societies, and even less so for ones which couple that communication prowess with think tanks the size of multiple planets.

The problems are also scaled up in magnitude though. Like, warping space/time itself is no trivial task 

[tmp]

Then you have species like the Batarians, which mirror humanity in a lot of ways. They are just like us, doing their damnedest to 'make it' and be one of the big players.

Precisely. And the Batarians had been part of the Council space since 200 BCE, that is... nearly 2400 years. And in that time they achieved and invented fuck all, to the point as soon as humans appeared and started to colonize systems in the space Batarians considered their own, the Batarians withdrawn leaving the humans free to wave their little Alliance flags.

[Fordel]

They didn't withdraw, we kicked them out. 

[tmp]

See. SEE

("fuck yeah, HUMAN SPIRIT" )

[Velorath]

Answers to 1 and 2 are simple. They're machines and their programming doesn't include "creativity."  How do you program spontaneity and imagination?  That's one of the biggest problems with AI in the ME universe. Even the Geth and EDI don't appear to have that.. they just act within their programming with minor variances.

Windows 7 isn't going to suddenly become an accounting software.  Why would intelligent machines spontaneously develop.. spontaneity?

Wouldn't the plan to harvest organic races every so often be a sign of trying to creatively solve a problem?  Certainly it wouldn't be the kind of plan you'd expect software to just come upon logically.

You're making the assumption that the Reapers came upon that idea themselves and weren't programmed for exactly that purpose by the organic versions of themselves who were seeing their own extinction on the horizon. 

That... makes even less sense.  And the more time they'd have to devote to explaining everything, the less it works as a plot in a video game.  I wouldn't want some Kojima-esque hour long info-dump cutscene.  They probably would have been better off not explaining anything else about the Reapers at all.  We got some indication from Harbinger as to their motives in ME2 and you could either take that at face value or not.  Beyond that, why bother trying to understand an ancient race of sentient machines?  At the end of the day, they're trying to kill and harvest organics, and organics are trying to stop them.

[Simond]

Where was Harbinger, anyway?

[Stormwaltz]

Where was Harbinger, anyway?

Just to the left.

[Fabricated]

I thought it was weird that the genetic/personal diversity of humanity is brought up a lot over the series (mostly in 2 however), but they don't really seem to go anywhere with it.

[Sjofn]

Everyone covered why I felt "humanity ... FUCK YEAH" was a running theme of Mass Effect, good job, team.  


More ending shit:

EDIT:
Oh! Oh oh!

[MournelitheCalix]

Where was Harbinger, anyway?

Harbringer's Location:

[Sjofn]

That's what I thought too, yeah.

[MournelitheCalix]

I might have missed this but has anyone else noticed just how similar the endings to ME 3 is with Deus Ex (the original)?

As I remember it you have three endings:

I can't take credit for this but when it was pointed out to me... man I can't help but think this can't be a coincidence and I think that is even more tragic all things considered.  What the hell is happening to Bioware???

[Sjofn]

I know this is the spoiler thread, but shouldn't you spoiler tag that? Someone might be coming here to talk about something earlier in the game before actually finishing it.

[MournelitheCalix]

I know this is the spoiler thread, but shouldn't you spoiler tag that? Someone might be coming here to talk about something earlier in the game before actually finishing it.

I thought it was safe since it was in the spoilers section my mistake.  Spoiler tagged now.  However it is a remarkable coincidence isn't it?  I have to believe its way too much of a coincidence. 

[Kail]

I know this is the spoiler thread, but shouldn't you spoiler tag that? Someone might be coming here to talk about something earlier in the game before actually finishing it.

I thought that was kind of the point of having a spoiler thread?  It honestly struck me as a bit odd that people were spoliering text within the spoiler thread.  Like, it's pretty much a given that people will be discussing the ending here, if you don't want to hear it, why would you visit the thread?  What are you really going to be able to discuss halfway through the game without bumping into spoilers?  Plus, it means I have to log in to read it.    But eh, what do I know.  *shrug*

[Lakov_Sanite]

I believe the endings are completely original in that they were created without the conscious intent to rip anyone off but I guarantee that a conversation happened like this:

"Wow, I hadn't thought of it before but these endings are a LOT like Deus ex, should we change them up a bit?"

"Yes, but most of the people that are going to buy this game have never played the Deus ex, so just go with it."

[ajax34i]

[...] how has the gun actually improved in the last say, 50-75 years? Is say, a WW2 era artillery piece all that different from the ones they use today?

Fordel, they have GPS-assisted shells, their firing control allows them to fire rounds in succession at different angles and have them all land at the same time, and if nothing else the platforms that the guns are attached to (such as tanks) are better than before.  Vehicle-mounted, they have microwave and sonic energy weapons, and the lasers are kinda taking off.

For small arms, smart ammo that detonates after it passes through the window, the various types of rounds designed for different targets, and all the non-lethal systems that they didn't really have in the past.

Watch more Discovery channel, heh (although, this past year it's been all Ancient Aliens).

[Sjofn]

What are you really going to be able to discuss halfway through the game without bumping into spoilers?  Plus, it means I have to log in to read it.    But eh, what do I know.  *shrug*

If you read my posts prior to my "OK, finished the game now" post, you'll see that I, for one, like to react to something right after it happens sometimes. And crazy as it sounds, I actually like to read all the posts in a thread (while avoiding clicking on spoiler tags if I'm not sure I know what's under it) before posting.

It's not really a big deal, it was just a thought. <shrug>

[Margalis]

That kid really smacks of an idea that one guy fell in love with and just refused to admit was terrible. Conceptually it just doesn't make sense that some random kid out of nowhere would be made a focal point and expected to emotionally resonate with the player.

[Sjofn]

Yeah, I didn't like all the wanky bullshit with that stupid kid, but I would've hated it less (probably) if it was, say, Dead Ashley or something in those scenes. Someone I actually sort of cared was dead.

They would've still been stupid, of course. Just LESS stupid.

[Velorath]

In regards to the post-credits epilogue scene:

[Sjofn]

In regards to the post-credits epilogue scene:

[Velorath]

In regards to the post-credits epilogue scene:

[luckton]

Seriously, it's a spoiler thread.  Do we really need to hide everything when the warning on the title itself? 

[Surlyboi]

That's my thought. We all talked in the ME3 non-spoiler thread about a potential "everything goes to shit" ending and how if handled right, could be awesome. The problem I have with the ending wasn't that everybody got fucked, because in the grand scheme of things, everyone was only temporarily fucked. Yeah, all the people you were close to ate a big shit sandwich, but that's kinda what they signed up for and in the long run, after the long dark night, civilizations will survive and find their ways back to each other.

That said, the way it was all handled sucked monkey balls. The noble sacrifice of my Shep and his/her peers is only dimly seen through the haze of ham-fisted shit writing.

[kildorn]

So, Legion question:

[Fabricated]

Legion doesn't die, it just uploads the various geth programs that make "legion" to the cloud so to speak. The programs that made up legion are "alive" and well pretty much, just the hole-blasted hardware platform they were on isn't moving anymore.

[kildorn]

Legion doesn't die, it just uploads the various geth programs that make "legion" to the cloud so to speak. The programs that made up legion are "alive" and well pretty much, just the hole-blasted hardware platform they were on isn't moving anymore.

The prime afterwords distinctly says he's sacrificed himself and is gone/will be remembered. They heavily imply he's quite Dead/No Longer Legion. It would make sense in the lore of the Geth mechanics if he WAS the prime that shows up a minute later, and he's with his people now/not coming with you. But instead they just flat out kill Legion in a manner that makes no sense within the fiction of his race.

[Fabricated]

Well, legion's programs merged with the collective, + the reaper code. That mass of programs just got a lot, a lot of new input. If you added one new geth program to Legion's platform he'd be "dead" the same way in that he'd be different.

[kildorn]

I mean dead in that his programs that made his personality do not appear to be able to inhabit another platform. The Prime flat out says he's dead.

I agree with your take on it from a Geth Lore standpoint, but the game seems to be either stating or implying that in Legion's specific case, Legion's programs were erased during the upgrade somehow.