A choice out of the player's hands to slow down the Reapers, if the end was out of our hands there's inarguably not a version of Shepard that would not pick Destroy.
something sparked in my head when they brought up how Synthesis is essentially galactic-scale violation of bodily autonomy: remember how in ME1 they talked about how like 5% of the galaxy had been explored by the council races? imagine being a member of a sentient species on a planet that never heard of the Citadel, the Reapers, or Shepard and then one day your entire species grows a USB port and starts photosynthesizing or whatever the fuck, and eventually you go through the relays and meet other spacefaring species that are similar and they're like "oh yeah we did that, you're welcome"
It's hard to overstate just how controversial the original endings were without the Extended Cut when the game came out. It was actually crazy in 2012.
It was honestly the beginning of the end of decent videogame discourse, tbh. Between the amount of toxicity happening all the way up to the frivolous lawsuits being thrown at BioWare for "false advertising" and people celebrating like they had somehow "won" some great moral victory when they announced the Extended Cut, people started getting the impression that they could get things they didn't like about videogames changed if they yelled at game developers as loudly and viciously as possible. And now in today's twitter environment, we see the same behaviour amplified a thousand-fold
The endings to 3 are like if you spend the entirety of New Vegas gathering allies, making choices, and setting everything up for the second battle of Hoover Dam, choosing your side (Caesar, Mr. House, Yes Man, or the NCR) then Benny comes up to you at the very end and says "Who you want to win the war, baby?"
That's a hilarious way of putting it lmao Speaking of Obsidian: On stream after the ME3 ending, Woolie was like "But Bioware did so good on Kotor 2 tho. How did they mess this one up so badly?" and chat was like "No that was actually Obsidian."
@@UltimaKeyMaster I just hope they can keep doing it instead of getting liquidated. I want Avowed to be good... Now they have proper experience with Unreal Engine, and more importantly they have a pre-established world/setting to build off of, where they've always excelled the most, imo. KOTOR, FNV, Stick of Truth, NWN2.
I think Woolie came up with the perfect word for the ending, cynical. It really does encapsulate all of the thematic contradictions, tone, and thought process of the ending into a single word. In a series all about choices, the ending should have been all about repercussions. Though really, the problem was making reapers magic. It sabotaged everything. If reapers were a threat the extra time bought in ME1 and ME2 allowed you to fight if the galaxy banded together then the theme of ME3 could be doing to societies what you did with individuals in the previous games. Some of that is still there, but rather than see that through to the end they just make the reapers invincible until the player gets to chose what unprecedented magic they'll unleash to instantly fix everything.
To a degree, but there was no way an ending with every race coming together would have made any sense with the info dumps we were given. It was already established that the Protheans while splintered still vastly outnumbered the present day galaxy's population and stood no chance. If we're being honest there was no way for this series to end without a McGuffin of some sort. ME1 established it from the get go with how much effort it took to bring down just one Reaper, so the real problem was setting up an enemy to be TOO overwhelming from the start. They probably shouldn't have completely abandoned the original concept of the Reapers and Dark energy or at least leaned more on the Leviathans for some sort of solution. I think if the Reapers were scaled down a bit we'd have a more reasonable ending, but the fact that skyscraper sized machines numbering in the thousands always made the idea of a direct confrontation outside of ships almost laughable.
The fact that a series like Dark Souls ends on a more hopefull note than this is crazy. And that's a series where nearly everyone dies or is forced to be undead. The hopefull part comes from accepting that nothing lasts forever and letting the Age of Dark, and by extension nature, follow through. The DLC also gives an alternative way for people to survive through a new painting. The series ends on a hope that life will continue despite the change in setting. That's why the Firekeeper ending in DS3 is my favorite in that game. It's very bittersweet, but it felt like that was how things should end.
@@Zikk0_o A key detail in having the species come togeather would not have been about numbers, but instead collecting and disseminating the skills and technologies of the disparatr races. Human lasers were more effective against reapers because it wasnt in the "tech tree" they set up for people. You could easily establish each race having simmilar 'cultural' deviations in tech. The conflict could come from having to convince them to share the secrets of such technology freely, expose themselves militarily to others they dont entierly trust. If your can do that then the fleet itself would be a macguffin of anti-reaper tech amalgams crewed by the best possible fighters. If not the standard fleets dont stand a chance because the reapers know exactly how to fight them. Though, yeah, its a little headcannony. Just what I had hoped for since ME one. Hopefully 4 just starts with "oh the reapers lied to shepard about Shit, but in the end he managed to beat them and we still have synthetics"
@@admcleo The issue with that is that the Reapers have been doing this for millions upon millions of years. It's completely unbelievable that any of the Citadel races would have tech that deviates enough from anything the Reapers have seen before for it to be effective enough to change the tide of battle. The Crucible isn't even a bad idea for a Macguffin, in theory. It fits with the theme of disparate people and societies coming together to solve a problem being the best path forward for the galaxy, it just extends that theme back over the course of history instead of only being in the immediate present. The issue is that is should have been set up in ME1, rather than appearing out of nowhere in the beginning of ME3 and mostly being this background detail that you almost never directly interact with or contribute to.
@@admcleothe only way ME4 can redeem the series is if the whole game is an adventure with Liara ( who is confirmed ) and Wrex ( who make sense if Liara is there ) doing literally anything until a reaper show up and kicks there asses. Then the screen goes white with that tinnitus sound and Anderson says "Shepard, wake up!" and it's the indoctrination theory realized into the destroy ending AND THEY DON'T FUCK IT UP THIS TIME!.
It's always freshly astonishing how EVERY INDIVIDUAL who has seen the endings has given more thought to their thematic implications and how they could have worked better than Casey Hudson and Mac Walters did when they told all the other writers to fuck off and shat them out.
No kidding. The only reason I picked the green ending or even remotely found it compelling was because I had just sat through a lecture on the Hegelian dialectic literally an hour and a half before seeing it. Nothing in the game made the choice compelling. It was entirely curiosity from an unrelated outside source
the thing about the control ending is that it varies greatly depending on if you are renagade or paragon, paragon shepard will have the reapers stick around long enough to rebuild what they destroyed and then fuck off into deep space forever.
It's a huge problem that Woolie was never shown the Paragon version of Control. It's more than likely he still would have the predictable Power=The Man=Fascism reaction, but it least he would have gotten to that conclusion himself besides being only shown that version as a possibility.
@@HisNameWasCrazy I don't think showing him the alternative would change his opinion. Once Woolie gets an idea in his head, not even being actively shown how he's wrong will change his mind
@@mimictear6788 The question is would he have come to that conclusion if he saw the paragon version first and then would he try to justify Control after seeing Renegade later?
@mimictear6788 come on. It was presented to him as the only control ending. I think he would understand the concept that alignment affects the ending. Benevolent being who leaves life to find its own way vs. Tyrannical dictator is a pretty severe change in tone.
I was always under the impression that in a normal "cycle" the Reapers came through the relay that was the Citadel, took over it, and disabled the relay network so they could systematically invade swaths of civilizations without allowing them to join forces because the idea of fighting an entire galaxy AT ONCE would've potentially been too much even for them- OR AT THE VERY LEAST: be incredibly difficult for them. It may be kind of basic, but I'd have much rather ME3 been about uniting the galaxy for an effective chance at a conventional final stand against the Reapers over introducing a McGuffin to do the work for us.
I just finished mass effect 3 for the first time and I kinda wish it ended like the suicide mission on crack. I wish whether you win or lose just relied on the galactic readiness meter and choices on how to handle the mission.
@@Vulgarth1its even exactly what Sovereign was trying to do in ME1 at the end, he was about to activate the Citadel to port in all the other Reapers instantly
The whole mess can be summed up with this: Mass Effect started out as a franchise where you can tell someone gave every aspect of its world a huge level of thought. You get the feeling that if you had a question about anything in the setting, someone on the writing team would happily talk your ear off about it. By the end, it can't even be bothered to tell you which of your friends will survive.
@@czarkusa2018 Really? You blame the consumers because EA pretty much pushed out all the people who had worked on ME1 by the time ME3's development began?
The Mass Effect refers to the function of the Mass Relays, which create a field around a starship that reduces its relative mass to zero, and then slingshot it across the galaxy to a partner relay, or to any "sub" relay in a certain radius. This isn't the dunk you think it is, loads of people read codex entries.@@czarkusa2018
Suprised they havent brought up that in the original ending the lazer right before the solo run just hits you w/out showing the normandy picking up your crew, meaning they just left your unconscious ass there and fled. It's especially terrible if you brought your love interest with you, and either way your entire crew just goes AWOL and abandons the war
Even the part with the Normandy makes no sense, they were like 2 minutes right in front of Harbinger, HOW didn't he shoot the Normandy down? It would have made more sense to make the Mako crash more dramatic, for your team mates to be injured in that crash and just say your goodbyes before charging towards the beam. If there's one thing that was better in the original one is how you had to charge all the way to the beam, instead of cutting it half-way to shove an awkward cutscene.
Considering the more they added to the ending the worse it got, they should've just cut out the Star Brat scene and have it cut straight to the Crucible firing after Shepard passes out. There you go, I just managed to save you a decade's worth of backlash, Bioware.
I'm really surprised EA didn't do 100% galactic readiness = You just defeat the reapers through brute force. A lot of people will be pissed by it, because you will forced to play the multiplayer or buy the DLC, but they'd still be less pissed compared to what we got.
You're not writing pulp fiction here either: Mass Effect is a space game about shooting guns and being a cool space cop - especially from 2 onwards. Why is a "subversive" ending even something the franchise needed? As Rich Evans said: "I love plot twist which make the story less interesting".
I never got the destroy ending as the "Do you actually value synthetic life" question. It's more like are you willing to sacrifice a ton of people to solve the problem forever. It could be any of the organic races and still work.
What I don't understand is how does the red beam discriminate synthetic life from, well, any other tech. Or why it would do anything beyond damaging their bodies. Geth just use bodies as mobile platforms, and EDI is within the Normandy, why would it kill them? That's the biggest problem, the Crucible is just literally magic.
The reapers have been presented as an overwhelming, Lovecraftian force but at no point outside of the ending was it ever considered that the only way to solve the reaper problem would be to change the fundamental rules of the universe. I think most people were expecting some hard sacrifices to be made to bring the conflict to a resolution, but the idea that Shepard would have to go full Evangelion and end individualism to bring about a universal collective is waaaaay too high concept to introduce in the literal last minute. The main appeal of Destroy is that it most closely maintains the known status quo of the universe, which allows your choices over the trilogy to have the most impact since the future will be determined by the path you put everyone on and not the inscrutable whims of reaper god Shepard.
I picked control my first time because I misunderstood what was being said and thought the options were: Destroy: blow up the Reapers(and the Geth? Who I'd saved from Quarian genocide, so I wasn't going to pick that), but destroy the relays as well(which I thought also blows up star systems, so Earth and all the combined fleets that were there would die?) Or Control: the Reapers become good guys with Shepard's morals, and the relays won't blow up(I was wrong about that) Who wouldn't pick control under that belief?
I absolutely hate how the endings are presented, especially how the Catalyst basically describes as: 1) Destroy: This Wont Work 2) Control: This Wont Work 3) Synthisis: THE MOST PERFECT ANSWER TO EXIST EVER and it's inevitable really so why not just choose it now?
Look at Wreav brother of Wrex, who goes from Warmonger to Peacemaker only in the Synthesis ending specifically, a Krogan who wanted revenge against those who inflicted the Genophage upon him doing a 180. If Synthesis does not fundamentally change the nature of people in terms of being distrustful towards those not a part of their own group, whether that be robots or aliens, then it is pointless and it solves nothing. Or it is actually changing how large swaths of people see things by force. Neither of these are acceptable in my opinion.
Im pretty sure if he does that hell indirectly piss off most of teh lovers with the exception of Morrigan who kinda doesnt give a fuck... unless you break Leliannas heart.
Oh man, putting Reggie in charge of a game where you can kill off every character in the party (including yourself) except for Morrigan and Ohgren because they never intended for a 2nd game to exist? That'll be a shitshow.
@@SeruraRenge11 Not to mention theres also the Awakening DLC, wich includes even more shenanigans. Ngl if they play that game and Reggie is in control, I fully expect him to take alot of the more "Evil" or Brutal options. Also I fully expect him to make a Elf-Mage for the double racism.
@@peterwhite6415 Someone just needs to tell Reggie that you bang the most women as a Human Noble and he'll pick that. Shame, Dwarf Noble is generally considered the best-written origin in the game.
Also, I would like to see them tackle the game's choices since DAO never gives you any incentive to go hard in either direction because there's no morality system. iI lets you actually roleplay the person you want to play without caring about a bar going up and down. When there's no metagaming involves it gives you a lot of narrative choice. One of my favorites is to have a character that in any other instance is a kind, compassionate person, but he's also a bigot towards elves and constantly talks down to them from a condescending, imperialist point of view and thinks he's being compassionate in doing so because he sees them as a lesser people in need of help. You can choose to help someone and tell them to keep the reward, and you actually get nothing, because you should get nothing, selflessness should be its own reward and not Paragon +1.
I beat this game when it had the original ending. There was no DLC apology they ever made that made me think to touch the series ever again. The disappointment was real as I watched every being in the universe get stranded to unknowable fates.
Literally ruined the rest of my day when I got that ending. I just laid on a couch thinking about how I got zero closure for all the memorable characters I got to know over the course of three games.
I beat ME3 in one long 24 hour sitting at launch and thought I'd never touch it again after the ending disappointment even though the game itself, for most of that time, was enjoyable. The end just killed the mood on it entirely. As someone who never experienced or watched anything related to the Citadel DLC though, I'm glad I did come back to try it for the Legendary Edition.
Yeah, I went in blind, enjoyed everything up until that ending, and the disappointment/confusion was indescribable. And I felt offended by the idea of needing to buy a DLC to "fix" it, so I didn't even bother with that. And no matter how much good I heard about tge Citadel DLC being a great piece of fan service and character and all the whatever... why should I pay EA a single cent after that violation of trust? And thus I stopped buying any EA products Same as I later stopped buying XBox products after they announced the XBox One DRM stuff(I know they walked that back, but the fact they wanted too try was enough of a betrayal) And finally Konami got put on the "never again" list after they screwed over Kojima during the MGSV release, after all, their handling of Silent Hill had already reduced them to "buy nothing, except Kojima related projects" status anyway, but now even MGSV was delayed until I could get a used copy.
I didn’t take destroy as the secret robot haters would take. To me it’s more like are you okay outright easily destroying the reapers but it will kill the geth that you just saved and other synthetic beings. Not about you secretly hating them for 3 games and now being the chance to finally kill them. It’s more like the trolley question.
@@MrDanlancelot there's nothing in the destroy ending that says you can't make new synthetic life afterwards, and the non-Reaper AIs out there are ones easily recreated. Sure, the specific individuals are dead(barring possibilities of data recovery and questions of what really constitutes an individual's "self"), but their "species" can be easily revived and quickly brought back to current population volumes(especially if relevant hardware survived the destruction ending) Plus, the Geth are a hivemind, so technically you're only killing one person, just a verry big one.
Going off what Woolie is saying about the lack of detail on the MacGuffin Crucible device, think of it from an in-universe perspective and it's even more insane: this might be desperate times, but this is a massive military operation. How is Hackett and all of these alien generals okay with this total lack of tactical info on the thing we've just built ourselves?
TFW Indoctrinated Saren makes a better case for being evil than Indoctrinated TIM ever did. Saren: I'm being evil because the Reapers are unbeatable, Shepard. I'm making myself useful to them so they don't turn me into Turian juice and make a giant metal Turian baby reaper. TIM: I'm being evil because....? I guess I'm trying to control the Reapers somehow. No I will not expound on how I plan to do this. I'm glad ME1 still stands up in the face of the monumental incompetence we experienced with ME3.
Destroying even an entire cycle to end all future cycles would be worth it, so being able to destroy just a fraction of that is well worth it. The fact that they're all synthetic shouldn't matter and I'd bet the geth would probably agree with the decision
I just thought of a wild but fairly complicated way of ending the game with the 3 choices but removing your say on any of it. Instead of Shepard making the final choice, they make one final sacrifice of themself to get all remaining party members to finish line. And then they argue and make a decision based on how you influenced them and who is actually left. The amount of work that would require with all the variables is a lot to ask but would feel the most fitting. The Shepard has successfully lead his flock to the end. Their roll to play is over. Now it's up to everyone else to decide.
As the person who sent in the sub about Marauder Shields, hearing woolie describe that as "people reverting to their teenage self" hit me right in the chest 😂 Such a fun time for fan theories and fix it fics though, I read a whole comic about that actually being Saren back from the dead trying to stop an indoctrinated shepard, a video dedicated to depicting the faceoff between Anderson and TIM as Shepard mentally fighting against indoctrination, and so many things that only made sense while you were in that moment. I'm almost glad the ending was as bad as it was because of these things. Almost.
@@Stormfin not the catalyst, /specifically/ Marauder Shields. You know, since his body apparently just got moved to some corner of the citadel? If it was the former it'd actually be cool lmao
I'm all for Shepard becoming indoctrinated at some point in or after ME2 and having Saren trying to save him. Would have been vastly better than what we got. Much would be.
I see the Destroy ending as more like Harbinger taking the geth/Edi at gunpoint and saying 'If I go I'm taking them with me!' -- it's basically a hostage situation, a 'victory, whatever the cost' renegade interrupt more than a philosophical conundrum.
No matter what, all of these endings could have been drastically improved if there was an ending slide w/ a big transparent Mordin.png looking down from the starry night clouds with a thumbs up. And Blue Shepard too, turning her back on us looking over her shoulder. And Anderson too. And Blasto choking Kai Leng.
Because the "True" destroy ending exists, I disregard everything the Catalyst says to you. It implies that because Shepard's like 90% synthetic at this point they will die in the destroy ending. But Shepard doesn't, so who's to say it was ever being truthful about anything else?
The non-extended cut 'crew crash on an uncharged planet' ending smash cut is a moment of pure symbolism. It's meant to be "oh, the spirit of explanation! Our crew, with only their wits to help them against a wild and untamed frontier! Truly, this cuts to the spirit and heart of Science Fiction!' LIke, it makes zero sense based on anything in the game up to that point and is just the writers sniffing their farts.
If the Normandy escapes the explosion then why even land on that planet to begin with? I presume the rendezvous point mentioned by Hackett was somewhere in space, maybe the orbit of another planet?
@@6MillionPesoMan It's been ten-whatever years, but I'm pretty sure in the non-extended cut Hackett doesn't mention anything about a rendezvous point at all. The Normandy is just fleeing, having picked up your two squadmates (last seen dead on the floor without comment) offscreen. Then they crash land at a neverbefore mentioned planet for no defined reason. As you do when the writing is operating more on base emotion and symbolism rather than cause and effect.
My main thing with the Vancouver child is that if you want someone to be haunted by his failures? You already have Kaiden and Ashley's voice actors on tap. A callback to a ME1 happening, rather than some random kid.
Yeah it's weird how the endings only feel worse looking back on them today. I mean honestly the series as a whole has kinda soured on me once you learn about how a lot of choices are kind of similarly "recolors" that don't really matter because everything has to converge for the next storybeat. But yeah the endings are really strange conceptually for many of the reasons they describe. And frankly it feels like cop-outs upon cop-outs. The entire Crucible itself was already a magic macguffin to basically solve the plot because there was no other way to do so. And then on top of that it just has arbitrary magic powers that let it do wildly different things. And then of course they basically try to avoid the whole point of choice in the end by presenting a magic third option that is obviously portrayed as the best option, despite it as they say, violating the bodily autonomy of literally every organic thing in the galaxy. Plus as woolie puts it, it "solves" racism by making everyone one race lol. But of course the other options are Genocide of billions of innocents and Blue Fascism. I think there are at least some arguments to be made for various endings and in some ways that makes them at least interesting to think about, but I also agree with Woolie in saying that it's weird that in this series where Shepard is the beacon of hope in the galaxy, that all of the endings are so dubiously moral (even if the Synthesis ending's morality was probably unintentional). Also one thing I don't think they touched on was the whole prevalence of the Indoctrination Theory back in the day, which I've always personally had beef with. It's basically a summation of the frustration that everyone had with the endings back then. It existed simply because everyone hated the endings so much that literally any alternative interpretation was deemed acceptable. But the issue is that people got so lost in trying to find an alternate interpretation, that they didn't realize that they were basically picking the Rejection Ending where you doom the galaxy. Like seriously if the whole ending is actually in Shepard's Mind and you have to pick Destroy to free yourself, then what happens? Shepard is alive and free but buried in a pile of rubble? What actually ends up happening to the galaxy? Does everyone just die? Like it's just as unsatisfying as the Rejection Ending when you actually consider it as an ending instead of enjoying it as the novelty of the alternate interpretation. But yeah ultimately I also agree with what Woolie said in his own video talking about the endings, cause it makes zero sense for a series that is all about choices, to end with a choice. The whole point is that your choices lead to consequences that are supposed to matter. The crucible shouldn't be a choice, it should be that you activate it, and then based on all of the choices you've made up to that point, different things happen based on who you are. Ending with one last big choice is just dumb, but it's also clear that they didn't have the time or whatever to actually make a good ending anyways.
I like the opening conceit of Indoctrination: You passed out after Harbinger nuked you and you get to decide if you die free or you finally succumb to all the indoctrination you've been exposed to. What I don't like is all the knots you need to explain it all. What was the Crucible, actually? Why leave that plot thread just dangling?
@@Silverhawk100 yeah like I will concede that it is an interesting idea for how the series *could* end, but it clearly has little to nothing to do with the actual events of the ending if you stop and think about it for like ten seconds
@@BlazeMakesGamesPeople really were crossing their fingers and praying for a "Sike! ME4 coming soon! Now you ACTUALLY get to finish the fight!" moment with the indoctrination theory. Of course, looking realistically at the game advertising and its writer/dev situation, the theory was all cope. If Indoctrination _had_ been true though, then I'm pretty sure the only way to start ME4 would've been to go all XCOM2-esque where they pull Sheapard out of a reaper simulation tube after a desperate infiltration mission or something.
Exactly, his goal wasn't synthesis. He was hoping to negotiate the reapers make them the next 'Collector Base', because he thought that was their best shot of 'surviving'.
@@tyrannicalkingmerlin2628 "The relationship is symbiotic. Organic and machine intertwined, a union of flesh and steel. The strengths of both, the weaknesses of neither." - Saren, the guy that also replaced his arm with a Geth arm. This is some Spec Ops: The Line level of denying reality, because I don't see how anyone can see something so transparently obvious yet still deny it
@@nagger8216 "But what if they had bowed before the invaders? Would the Protheans still exist? Is submission not preferable to extinction?" - Also Saren, the guy that also turned into mechanical extension of the reaper master he served. Much like the collectors before him. I won't bother insulting you, because you've already done it yourself.
@@tyrannicalkingmerlin2628 He became a mechanical extension of Sovereign *after* Virmire when he was implanted, and that was so it could have direct control over him after Saren was having doubts. And I really don't get the leap in logic that Saren replacing his arm with one he got from the Geth has anything to do with indoctrination, but I'm eager to hear it
The entire video I was just thinking that SMT does what Woolie wants in every entry, that said I can't confirm whether or not those are all good since I never beat one.
@@Kango234 they are really, really good. If you have access to a 3ds I would strongly suggest trying smtiv (or if you know how to sail the high seas if you get me). Nocturne is really cool, if you like strategy RPGs like fire emblem Devil Survivor will be to your liking, if you want a completely insane sci-fi setting Digital Devil Saga or Strange Journey might be to your liking, or if you want a detective Noir Raidou Kuzunoha might be just the thing.
@@Kango234Imo the Reasons in SMT Nocturne were never all that appealing to me because 2 leaders are hypocrites, 1 is a guy who wants to murder you and the last is a copout for fence-sitters; it's too easy to say "Screw it" and go True Demon for a bonus fight and the fandom certified coolest "canon" ending. For the REAL endings discourse always go for SMTII or SMTIV. SMTIV is obviously more accessible: if you can get past the tutorial, you can beat the game. Buy it; emulate it; whatever. You could probably play SMT Strange Journey while you're at it. Hell, play Strange Journey: REDUX and get in with the rest of us MegaTen idiots to argue about the validity of the extra endings!
Youre right: having Shepard be the main character of Mass Effect 4 would in fact not only be cowardly but also creatively bankrupt. Which is exactly why I'm willing bet money they are, their ability to write fiction has been on a downward trend since Dragon Age 2.
46:20 Interesting that Gene mentions TLOU2 not having a multiple choice ending because, in my personal opinion anyway, having an alternate ending, where when they arrive at the boats to leave, Ellie chooses not to fight Abby and *does* leave, which skips the final fight altogether, would've salvaged the game's plot at least somewhat. Like, the main theme seems to be that revenge isn't worth it in the end, so it could've actually engaged the player directly and asked "After everything we've shown you, what do *you* think about all of this" by making the fight with Abby an option the player had to directly choose to do. But no, the game forces you into a fight, where I already actively disagreed with Ellie's motivations well before this point, and have to continue the fight until *she* gets sad and stops fighting, seemingly uninterested in how the player would want to act.
Kinda sad how Metal Gear Solid V, despite being infamously unfinished managed to tell a more compelling cautionary tale about the dangers of chasing revenge, even giving the play multiple opportunities to act on it, such as Killing Quiet early, and shooting Skull Face multiple times. Also Unlike Last of Us, you're actually given plenty of non-lethal alternatives to most encounters, so there isnt that HUGE narrative disconnect where Ellie is indiscriminately slaughtering dozens upon hundreds of people only to stop at the one person that actually mattered.
@@sasaki999pro Metal Gear has always been about that and it's why it works so damn well. Raiden and Snake's bloodlust being called out in connection with the player and trying the distance themselves from that, sparing the B&B unit giving them the solace they couldn't find. Even Death Stranding for all the shit it gets actually is bold with how destructive and non-productive violence is in both narrative and gameplay.
The biggest problem I have with the endings (obviously Starchild is the main one) is that all of the endings are posed by the reaper construct that's part of the problem. Then you have the bit where it's like "You're the only one who made it this far, but here's exactly what will happen for these new choices" How would it know the outcomes if it doesn't understand how Shepard made it there and didn't think of any of these..? Why would you even trust anything it says in the first place? Because plot! Yay!!! Bleh... The other bit is the intent of any of the choices. You could also full 180 having Genocidal Galaxy killing Shepard is now The Reapers. I honestly don't care for an Andromeda LP, but Dragonage Origins...I know for a fact at least Reggie will make it super funny.
To my understanding, the high preparedness Destroy ending is a blast that is specifically targeting Reaper technology. You see spaceships continuing to function in that ending, immediately after the big red explosion. The Geth were destroyed because, in order for the Geth to survive Rannoch, they need to download reaper code (which is another thing that i don't really like, because it scraps a lot of what made the Geth unique as an emergent collective consciousness and makes them "they're just like us fr fr" by making their future complete individuality a la organics). EDI was destroyed because she's made out of Sovereign.
The Destroy ending only effected the AI that had reaper code. That includes EDI and the Geth. Anything else was untouched. The Quarians should remain uneffected.
@@heykakSome implants might have Reaper tech in them since so much got done with the big corpse left behind at the end of 1. Guns, data etc all got improved using Reaper tech
here's the thing, they actually did think a whole about the ending then the head guys threw all that out at the last minute to hash out that wet wipe we were given
I'm not sure why Woolie keeps describing the green ending as "removing all freedom" and "hive mind". There's no indication of that being the case in the ending as it was presented. A violation of body autonomy? For sure. But there's no indication that any kind of mind control is taking place. People are still individuals.
It is there though, changing someone's perspective with science fiction magic without their knowledge or consent, that's tantamount to brainwashing. You can see evidence of this with Wreav if leading the Krogan instead of his brother Wrex, who changes personality entirely in Synthesis, going from a Warmonger to Peacemaker only in that ending. Doing it to all life that exists or ever will exist in the Milky Way Galaxy, makes for an unimaginably ghastly crime if you ask me. Any single species does not outweigh that decision.
Exactly, and about Geth and EDI, "We can rebuild them, we have the technology." If we make them like they were, they'll understand why it had to be done.
Woolie brought up how the best stories are ones where the seeds for the ending were planted from the beginning and you can see that they planned ahead. I'm actually curious if there's examples of endings that were not planned prior that still felt like natural conclusions to reach. Like the the writer managed to luck out on something satisfactory despite the ending itself maybe being a late addition. I don't doubt that stories like that exist.
Breaking bad famously changed a lot during the course of filming, Saul was supposed to be a one off, and both Jesse and Hank we’re supposed to die season 1, with crazy 8 taking Jesse’s role. Imagine the ending to that show, with no Ozymandias, and no disappear forever option.
Casablanca, considered one of the most well written movies of its time, was being constantly rewritten as they filmed, its famous ending being one of those last minute changes.
Good writers can set up and realize a story, the best writers can also fix a messy story by adding perminent scenes or a good ending. Most movies, games and shows have changed stuff, at different levels, at some point, it's the curse of having dozens of hands on the pie
Can we talk about how actually terrifying the Synthesis ending actually is? It seems like the Reaper Husks just end up gaining some form of self-awareness/sentinece instead of being a near-mindless zombie. Like did they just remember who they were before they were husks? Also what could you even do for them??? From what Mordin explains with The Collectors in ME2, everything that these husks were or ever could be, is destroyed by the sheer technology incorporated into their bodies by replacing any or all organic bits.
If you think that's bad, think about EDI. What happens to her, and the person who's body she is flesh puppeting. THEN think about her and Joker, and if they can have horrible abomination cyber babies
@@mordai9666 Except it isn't. Nothing is replaced. + Mordin was arguing about the death of Culture. That doesn't happen in synthesis either. And no there's no hive mind either.
@@PlanetaryPluto That's fine, but it comes with the implication that nothing is actually solved. Even if there is a "collective understanding" there will still be high level galactic conflict just given the nature of free will. Also, it's not as though the reapers go back to dark space, and the implications of reaper control over husks is unknown, not to mention whether or not indoctrination is still possible, meaning that there will not only be the threat of martial conflict, but now there's the elephant in the room of the sentient god-machines that have decided to stick around that still may or may not have at least some level of control over their (possibly) former servants. There is nothing which suggests that the reapers will live in harmony with everyone else, certainly not forever anyway, especially given their nature in the interactions the player has with them.
@@juultoo Where's this implication coming from? The reapers were harvesting advanced life as the best solution to a problem. Conflict between organics and synthetics. After synthesis, the two basically meld into like a new lifeform and truly understand each other. What reason would the reapers have to continue harvesting if the problem they were created to resolve is... Resolved. People seem to be inventing stuff to oppose this ending. I'm not saying it's good. I agree generally the endings were bad and the eerie green glowy eyes everyone has was spooky but people's criticisms don't match up with what I gathered from playing the ending. P.s I agree. I personally think the catalyst should've fucked off and left us alone to deal with our own problems. Conflict between organics is probably more likely to wipe out organic life than conflict between organics and synthetics. But I suppose it wasn't created to solve THAT problem🤷🏾
It's basically the result that Saren would've wanted, just like how Control is the outcome that The Illusive Man wanted. I say to hell with both of them and pick Destroy every time
@@MattManDX1 No it isn't. That is pure headcannon. Saren was suggesting outright submission to the reapers. His suggestion was to become the collectors or the citadel keepers. Not to acheive perfect symbiosis between organic and inorganic.
Late response here. But there is one piece of evidence that character's thought process does in fact change. Outright. If Wrex dies and his brother takes his place as a result. Then you see how much the guy doesn't want what Wrex did. At all. But if you chose the synthesis ending it shows his opinion changing COMPLETELY. For no reason. Suggesting that the his mind was altered by the green wave. So it's not just some headcannon people leap to. The extended ending straight up shows bizarre behavior.
In my *ideal fantasy world ME3 gets a remake where its story is completely remade* except for most of the quarian-geth conflict and we get something like this: 1) *The reapers actually use indoctrination alot as part of their attacks.* Traitors in positions of power, in your own crew and lots of extra suspicion everywhere because of that. 2) Because reviving people from the dead exists in this universe, the Illusive man and/or Liara, *revive key characters if they died in ME2* like was done for Shepard, so they can still be fully integrated main characters in ME3 instead of side pieces to be disposed of/ignored/made irrelevant. 3) *Cerberus is your renegade option* throughout alot of the game and you also regularly have the Illusive man making the case for it, like he did in ME2 via communications like you have with Hackett (before and/or after point 5 of this list is figured out by the cast.) 4) With *Cerberus* being established as such an obscure wild card organisation in ME2 that could be anything from renegade-good to necessary-evil to actually-evil to get indoctrinated, depending on your choices they can also go in many different directions/outcomes. 5) An evil Cerberus that suddenly has way too large an army despite having been established as small elite organisation still shows up, but that's a ploy by the reapers using clones & hacked Illusive Man & others transmissions, to specifically to turn humanity against each other and the other races against humanity. That could create some nice extra confusion about Cerberus because *there's 2 Cerberuses, that both act shady but contradictory to each other.* Combined with 1) that would also be much more in line of the reapers actually being smart and having a plan to dismantle their opponents from within, like Sovereign established for them in ME1.
Alternatively: you fail. It turns out you can't stop something as big as the Reapers and it's just the most nihilistic game possible where everything you did was for nothing because how the fuck do you beat that?
There should have been no ending choice. The "choice" should be determined by what you did in the previous games and have it tailored by various thresholds
Funnily enough that's what Woolie said in the clip on the second channel. He kind of said that here, but it wasn't as clear since he had other thoughts to bring up and also had to explain it to Pat and Gene.
I agree with cynical as the interpretation. Mass Effect spent 3 games asking us if different forms of life could mend fences over their difference and come together to face a greater threat. No matter which ending you pick in 3, it feel like the answer is "no". That being said, I also don't get the thought process behind forcing players to be Team Cerberus for ME2, then make Cerberus in ME3 evil again. If you were always going to do the latter, then why bother with making a game around the former? Of course people are going to see Control as evil when you do not have anyone worth a damn arguing in its favor. I'm no defending Cerberus, but I do want to point out how haphazard the writing for these games were using a major example.
The real problem with the endings is really simple: Mass Effect went from a trilogy to an IP that will go on. And thus you can’t have the green or blue endings be canon because they change too much. While Destroy ends the trilogy but leaves room for Geth remnants to show up if the next projects need them. And as a bonus you have Shep alive. So it’s the one ending that they can make canon. Andromeda was specifically far enough away that they wouldn’t have to worry about the endings but it failed so much that what was clearly intended to be a new trilogy instead will just be a "We never heard back from the Andromeda project if they made it to their new galaxy" footnote in ME4.
I really don't want to take away from DatAsuna's hard work, but I think their decision to only show the Renegade Low Chakwas version of Control may have seriously biased this discussion and Woolie's view of the endings. There's a lot of talk about cynicism here, but the idea that Full Paragon Shepard (whose whole deal is self-sacrifice for the betterment of others) would invariably become intergalactic Hitler is cynicism on a whole other level. At least Woolie is attempting to engage in the horror of betraying and murdering your allies in the Destroy Ending, whereas Pat, like so many others, still has the balls to say things like 'Destroy is actually the real Paragon Ending when ya think about it'. Pat also doesn't engage in Woolie's very perceptive assessment that many will play the game fawning over the Geth and EDI and nurturing their quest for self actualisation, but when it comes down to it they will flush their newly acquired life down the toilet in an instant (betraying not just their allies but most of the themes of the game assuming they played Paragon until that point) just as Pat did on his playthrough. If Woolie had actually seen the Paragon version of Control the discussion would hopefully have been even more nuanced, but I at least appreciate his attempts to engage in the pros and cons of each ending based on the information he was given.
It's like Noone sees the obvious parallel between the Renegade Origin characterizing Shepard as a man who would sacrifice as many lives beyond need to win the war and the Red ending where you sacrifice an entire species, the soul of your ship and countless aliens across the galaxy, spacefaring or not, with pacemakers. They dont even get that Synthesis is the TIM ending. TIM doesn't literally want to be a Reaper. He has robot eyes and has a boner for everyone being transhuman, he just wanted synthesis for humanity.
You're delusional if you think there's a single human being in history that wouldn't become space Hitler upon being given God like power over everyone in the galaxy. That's not cynicism that's an acknowledgement of human nature. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, but not me tho. Yeah, okay dude.
I always saw Destroy as “Kill the Reapers, but Grandma on Life Support will also die because that Life Support is Tech and Red won’t discriminate Reaper Tech with Low Grade Medical Tech.” Basically Stone Age Everything. Control was AI God Mode Shepard Engage to make sure things are good but there’s a chance things will continue to Chaos again and we may one day get Reaper 2.0. Synthesis is “The Good Ending” where everyone that’s alive lives and we advance beyond expectations because of Green Space Magic. We can bang Robots and it’s Ok now. Geth as well. Maybe even the Plants. Tree Huggers will take on a new meaning. Fantasy Ending is the more correct term for this. All have their merits and down sides so it’s hard to 100% say which is correct.
I also interpreted Destroy as kicking the can down the road. Sure, the relays are gone, but people'll be able to make AI again and the problem the Star Child was created to solve will still be there.
Indeed, they are the Ustabiaz. Takahata, Plague of Gripes, Brennan Williams and (…?)can’t remember the last one…it’s been years. Although, Plague and Pat may not necessarily be the nega versions of each other anymore
That 4th ending was added as well, as an FU to the people who weren't happy with the initial 3 endings in the DLC and wanted to keep fighting the reapers.
The problem with that one is they also co*ked it up. People at the time were asking for 2 new endings. A actual hard lose state, and a state where you threw out the dumb 3 choices and just hard tanked your way to victory thru sheer warscore. They combined the 2, and appeased neither groups. Now rejecting the miggufin IS the lose situation. Holy F MEs ending is so crap, even worse looking back upon it all these years later.
I honestly think that the Refusal ending is kind of poignant. It's a nice call-back to a personal moment with Liara and still occurs as a product of the things that Shepard has done and achieved with their squad. I don't think the original endings were amazing or whatever, but I think people asking for an 'optimal win condition ending' against the deep space machine gods were absolutely deluding themselves.
Idk i never took that as a choice of if you believe synthetics are alive or not. I think a lot of people would still choose destroy if they had said like the turians or salarians were gonna get wiped out as a result. More "are you willing to scarifice some to save the rest?". I had assumed another synthetic species would be created at some point and it was just sad but necessary.
What about synthesis is giving up free will? It's pretty clear that everyone still retains their free will, they're just vaguely-defined organo-synths now
Violating the entire Milky Way's autonomy, even with the best possible intentions and outcomes, with either Control or Synthesis I find reprehensible, the Reapers are actually an existential threat to all life forms proven through the narrative of three videogames. It is better for everyone irrespective of the consequences that they no longer hold any influence on life. Does that Synthesis retain free will? We do not know but room for doubt gets created by Wreav (a warmonger unlike Wrex) changing his character entirely in the ending slides, what I find disturbing being it fundamentally changes not just people but all forms of life... to apparently with no evidence stop an existential conflict we are told about by the collective intelligence of the Reapers in a five minute long conversation with no outside input... through a Jesus Christ type sacrifice of Shepard. Not only inhumane but also makes no sense. I would pick any other option sooner frankly.
Why does nobody remember the fact that Reapers are constantly going around indoctrinating everybody? Like seriously, we've seen it can't just be turned off when one that's been dead for a million years can still do it.
I would say the only good thing about Catalyst child is that, I think, the echoes it produces are the voices of both Shepards. Honestly, I wish it voice was just the voices (echoes?) of Sheps even if they went with a child model.
When I was a wee child, I (reluctantly) chose control before the epilogues were put out. My head canon at the time was "Well, I don't want to kill the geth that I just spent 150 hours saving. Guess I'll just press the magic button and make all the reapers go away..."
Quarians are still alive in destroy ending. The star child was lying to you, because hes a fucking reaper. What obligation does any reaper have to be honest with you?
Honestly, having and beaten Andromeda for the first time this week... It's fine. Nowhere near as good as the trilogy, but it takes the combat in a new direction and does some interesting things here and there. Plus, Vetra. Ultimate waifu.
Cant help but wonder how the people who had their home colonies GLASSED by reapers felt when 2/3 endings just have the reapers just chill out and stop attacking. Like in the middle of harvesting and mulching billions of civilians across the galaxy. What did war reparations look like after the fact.
I like New Vegas but aren't most of the consequences of the endings just being told about them in a slideshow at the end? I never really felt like the game was a great example of taking choices into account if most of them are just "and this is what happened off screen/ years later". I agree in liking the idea of seeing him play it though.
@@quantras2673 Yeh, Obsidian did a miracle in only 18 months to develop the game, but couldn't flesh out the endings. But you feel your choices way before Hoover dam, the battle is just icing on the cake. The important characters you kill stay dead (House, Caesar, Kimball), and you feel the side you pick, if the NCR or Legion respect or hate you, if you went independant or not, the Strip and securitrons show your choices. Every companion story depends on you, and what "kind of companion" you end up with (Lily or Leo, for example). I think the world you play in before the ending is completely different than the one you start in, that's what i mean by "your choices matter"
Idk if its just me but i thought the Control ending was just Borg Picard where yeah here's this Reaper that *totally* is Shepard you guys, he super super is trust us. And I have honestly never heard an actual argument for Destroy other than "shut up it's the right thing to do to kill these millions of beings that we spend at least 2 whole ass games telling you they matter and are actual beings" Probably got too much Red Shepherd in me but yeah no Green ending just makes the most sense too me idk Still stupid and terrible but meh
23:49 I disagree that Synthesis ending is 'Saren's ending' Saren suggested that servitude was preferable to extinction. In that we should become indoctrinated rather then risk being completely wiped out. Synthesis is essentially, turn EVERYTHING into techno organic. The main difference is that in Saren's ending we would be slaves to the reapers. Synthesis puts us, the geth, the reapers all on the same level so IN THEORY we can have a level of understanding between EVEYRHING. No one is slaves to anyone....or at least....no more then we usually are.
thing is, the way the game was supposed to work you shouldn't even have to pick an ending. It should just go "here's what you had been choosing this whole time so now you get to see Shepard hit the repercussions button"
17:50 Paragon choice being a dictatorship actually fits really well, if you've paid attention to some of the stuff the paragon option says at times. It totally veers into hard line moral absolutism & moral puritanism / black and white thinking and accusatory stances over a bit more nuance and understanding at times. That's why I never equated pure Paragon with most good Shepard in my mind, but always considered the most good shepard to be more along the lines of mostly paragon but with a fair mount of neutral middle and probably even a little bit of renegade at times.
The problem I've always had with Paragon and Renegade as a system is that most of the good moral actions you can make are usually the Paragon choice, and that Renegade in 2 and 3 especially paint Shepard is a psychopath. You're not rewarded either for being neutral and are encouraged to go all the way in one direction or the other. Both sides are meant to have flaws, but they're never really explored to their fullest potential.
Nah, Woolie just has a brain filter that continued to pre-emptively and automatically interpret all Paragon options as lawful stupid paladin in his head, which is why he always acted so surprised whenever a Paragon option involved being chill or hard nosed.
I'd take being watched over by a force that believes in moral absolutism over finally achieving sentience and then being murdered by somebody I thought was my friend and ally. People have to stop seeing fascism around every corner, comes off paranoid and cynical af.
@@leithaziz2716 Pretty much. There are a couple occasions where the Paragon option will catch you out and have logical negative consequences, and fair enough, but otherwise you get almost entirely positive results from mashing upper dialogue choices. The real issue with Renegade Shep is not being an asshole (though they are), it's inconsistency. Actual lower left Renegade (red colour) options hove closer to the ruthless but pragmatic ideal it's supposed to...but the lower right dialogue choices required to gain points in order to take Renegade options in the first place involved being a cartoonishly petty dickhead purely for its own sake.
@@CrypticSquid1 one thing i did like about Renegade in ME3 though is that a lot of the Paragon dialogue has Shepard be horrified by the war or admitting that they're struggling, while Renegade is actually more level-headed and determined sometimes because they're so numb to violence. the Paragon is dumbstruck by it but the Renegade just says "i'm gonna kill these skyscraper-sized motherfuckers." at the end on Earth there's a conversation with Tali where she asks if you're okay after seeing Earth all jacked up, and the Paragon response is basically "yeah this sucks but we can rebuild i guess." the Renegade response is more interesting because they basically say "yknow Tali, i actually feel great - for once my enemy is directly in front of me, i actually know what i have to do to stop them, and one way or another, this war is about to end." it's kind of an interesting turnaround that *nearly* subverts the "Paragon is always best" paradigm. for just those few dialogue options, Paragon is recast as having been an excellent peacetime leader, but Renegade comes into their own as the person you want in a *war*. of course they throw all that out the window but it's still interesting for just those few lines
Actually... Best ending, given that the whole narrative is about agency: The crucible gives the reapers their free will back. The catalyst can no longer control them and these collective cultures all get to decide how best to march forward.
@@trustytrest I think you misunderstand the poetry of this solution, though. The whole purpose and origin of the reapers is to subborne the free will of other races, directed by the catalyst. Why not gave those cultures their right to choose back?
How much of the story did that old man tell the kid anyway? did he tell him about my war crimes against that 1 Batarian colony or was that information humanwashed by him to make me sound better? what about my Harem of male and female aliens that my Shepard banged? did he tell him how my Shepard is racist/specieist towards Hanar? (those big stupid jellyfish.) so many dumb little questions for just one cutscene lol.
I never played any of the ME3 DLCs, or even the extended ending, quitting right after seeing the ending back in 2012. I bought the Legendary Edition during the January sale, and downloaded the Happy Ending Mod and the Citadel Epilogue Mod. The differences between the endings hit me like a truck when I saw the end of the LP. Pat was right back when they talked about the ME3 ending way back when: Just moving some scenes around saved the ending for me.
Im probably getting close to the end of FF XVI, and Im glad that whole idea of "we dont need boss fights in video games anymore" never stuck. The bosses in that game fucking insane, and im excited to see Reggie and Woolie see them. Also, im surprised none if them brought up the indoctrination theory. I know its just a theory, but its definitely an interesting conversation, since it honestly makes more sense than what they wrote.
Also, what the Vancouver Child told you right before the choices is that the Reapers are everyone who was harvested in all of the cycles before the current one. So, Destroy is not just two or three genocides, it's hundreds, maybe thousands of genocides.
Violating the entire Milky Way's autonomy, even with the best possible intentions and outcomes, with either Control or Synthesis I find reprehensible, the Reapers are actually an existential threat to all life forms proven through the narrative of three videogames. It is better for everyone irrespective of the consequences that they no longer hold any influence on life. Does that Synthesis retain free will? We do not know but room for doubt gets created by Wreav (a warmonger unlike Wrex) changing his character entirely in the ending slides, what I find disturbing being it fundamentally changes not just people but all forms of life... to apparently with no evidence stop an existential conflict we are told about by the collective intelligence of the Reapers in a five minute long conversation with no outside input... through a Jesus Christ type sacrifice of Shepard. Not only inhumane but also makes no sense. I would pick any other option sooner frankly.
@@BlueMarsalis First, we have to accept that what the child says is true, otherwise there can be no discussion about the endings. The game frames what the child says as true, and in the endings what the child says will happen happens, so we have no evidence of them lying in the text. The situation is what the child says it is because the game gives us no reason to believe otherwise. That includes what the Reapers are. So, with that said, we're dealing with countless galactic scale genocides, total galactic dictatorship, or the universal violation of the bodily autonomy of all life in the galaxy. None of these are good options, but Synthesis gets you the best result with the least loss of life and liberty.
Not lying, just mistaken, operating on faulty logic. It is in my opinion a problem that does not need to be solved. One that only apparently "gets solved" through Synthesis in such a tiny portion of the known universe that makes up the Milky Way Galaxy. It is so absurd it cannot be taken at face value so... Either the writing's illogical at the very foundations, or the Catalyst's logic as a representative of it is. Hey, it is far from my opinion that any of the endings are at all ideal, I only really believe that Synthesis solves nothing. The Reapers being abominable monuments to all the souls they have imprisoned in their construction and the enforcers of the Catalyst's faulty logic's generally why I lean towards Destroy though. But none of them are good as a conclusion because none are an ending to the narrative of Mass Effect, but an answer to a subtextual question from the original Mass Effect, that had not only been developed upon in sequels and concluded on Rannoch but... also gets reintroduced and wrapped up in the last fifteen minutes of a forty to sixty hour experience.
How exactly is Shepard the one committing the genocides when the reapers put all those species in a blender and turned them into Reaper juice? All you're saying is that the reapers committed thousands of genocides which as I see it is grounds for their extermination.
Green ending isn't the same as villains' plan, because nowhere does it say that life becomes hivemind for some reason. Villains would've made everyone into a mind slave with no free will under reapers. In the green ending from what we know everyone is still autonomous.
It is there though, changing someone's perspective with science fiction magic without their knowledge or consent, that's tantamount to brainwashing. You can see evidence of this with Wreav if leading the Krogan instead of his brother Wrex, who changes personality entirely in Synthesis, going from a Warmonger to Peacemaker only in that ending. Doing it to all life that exists or ever will exist in the Milky Way Galaxy, makes for an unimaginably ghastly crime if you ask me. Any single species does not outweigh that decision.
I hate Synthesis, but I understand why others like it. It's objectively "the best ending", because it's a magic solution added after the fact to appease the community. There's no downside to it, so narratively, it's a shittier, less compelling ending than the other two. Also Control and Destroy should've been swapped, Control is clearly evil and selfish (as it was the plan of TIM) and Destroy was clearly self-sacrifice/the lives of the few for the many (before ME4 became a reality at least). But that's been talked to death, and I'm glad I'm not crazy for thinking that lol. I prefer Destroy. Not because I think synthetics deserve to die, it's just the most satisfying, bittersweet ending.
The thing that fucks me up the most is that if the endings were exactly the same but you didn't have the option to chose, with the ending determined by what you did and said along the games it would be so much better. Yeah the endings suck anus but at least you know you got them with your words and deeds and not a final eeny meeny meiny mo.
I actually cried revisiting me3 when anderson told me i did good. I did loose my father inbetween the first time playing and the legendary edition but everything with anderson was amazing.
19:05 Honestly the fact that Bioware fumbled themselves into The Indoctrination Theory being so accidentally well written and then DECONFIRMED that as the intent is hilarious because if I was in their shoes I would have been "Yep. Totally intentional. 100 percent" and been lauded as the greatest video game writer ever.
I honestly think it would have been legendary for them to just say screw it and lean into the Indoctrination Theory. I'm all for the creators of something to have their own vision and tell the story they want, but at that time there was an almost unanimous consensus on a pretty good fan theory that brought a little light to the downer that was the original endings.
Since the Arrival DLC I was convinced indoctrination would be involved someway or that Shepard would be changed to something like TIM since you spend so much time with reaper artifacts and the Arrival has a literal clock show you that the Shepard spent hours on a base full of indoctrinated people. Now I'm convinced the writers or at least Casey Hudson forgot how indoctrination worked.
@@Kango234 There are numerous missions where people spent a day around reaper artifacts and got indoctrinated and some where it was a few hours. Shepherds spent, cumulatively in just the story missions of all 3 games well over a week around reaper artifacts. With arrival it was 16 hours unconscious. Hell he was within spitting distance in 1 for at least several hours on no less than 3 occasions. Then there is the Collector Base in 2 and the literal dead reaper you *go inside of*. You're telling me that Shepherd is just so super special awesome that that all meant for nothing? TIM gained control over his body in a few minutes!
honestly I think the biggest problem for me is how tacked on and thematically inappropriate the consequences feel. Even if we were stuck with the same three choice in general, I would much rather make a choice on whether I think the reapers should be destroyed outright or if their technology can be used to benefit the universe, or if it's worth trying something completely unprecedented and essentially create a new form of life, rather then the actual choice, which is "which is the least bad consequence, killing all the friendly robots, the possibility of reaper shep turning evil someday, or violating everyone's body autonomy."
39:20 This really reminds me of how KH3 did its story. There was so little worldbuilding that when all the McGuffins started getting involved, players were more confused because it just felt like random stuff was happening.
@@luishenriquez4171 PoW was the worst. The 90% of the story was dedicated to finding it, but you hardly learn why it's so important Sora has it when Riku already got it. Then it's suddenly revealed it can be used to rewrite time and reality to "wake a heart". When I saw that happen, I just sat there and thought "this is a bit different than how 3D portrayed that power." There are other things to if you think about it. Like how it's awkwardly dropped on the player the Princesses of Heart somehow gave away their powers to a new set of princesses... except Kairi. Wish there was a scene of Yen Sid explaining that. Marluxia made it sound like it's been that way since KH1. Don't get me started with Xehanort using Kingdom Hearts to make everything "pure and bright."
Yeeeeah, KH 3 was prolly the one time I wouldve been ok with exposition dumps if it made everything not feel like Nomura came up with it on the spot....
@@luishenriquez4171 Unlike Mass Effect 3, KH3 clearly wasn't designed to be the end of the series/saga. Maybe KH4 will give context for some of the more confusing moments. But man, between those games, Shenmue 3, and Borderlands 3, the 2010's had a lot of bad third entries.
Kai Leng deserved nothing more than what The Punisher does to people who go try-hard mode in their attempt to get his attention: No acknowledgement, just a single bullet to the head, and he moves on to someone more deserving of his time.
I think Tim's plan was to gather up all the Reapers in one place so he could control them all as easily as possible. The control ending is confirmation that his Indoctrinated line of thinking made sense. He was an asshole for sure, but he never gave up against the Reapers. Him telling the Reapers that the Citadel was the final piece of the crucible spoke to his (ultimately justified) arrogance, not this imagined betrayal of his own goals that Woolie thinks is going on. It was a gambit that paid off.
@@JoseRS1186 Yes, plants do Scream. It's scientifically recorded as wavelengths we don't register as audible. They also circulate panic and pain chemicals that even trigger other chemical signals into the air around them to warn other plants near them that they are being eaten or attacked
Its weirdest because they color coded ending in a game where that already color coded "blaring divine moral purity" as blue, "psychotic chaotic evil" as red and tried to always present a third better option to a moral dillema if you did a bit extra and worked for it. And the red ending was the default ending that was your only option if you didn't do sidequests, and, on release, you couldn't GET the green ending if you didn't also grind the multiplayer in addition to maxing out your military strength. Woolie played the remastered version, so he only somewhat understands what a complete rug-pull that ending was.
The kid as a representation of Shepard's trauma maybe wouldve worked better if they had set it up in ME1 or 2. But we meet this kid as the apocalypse is popping off and now he gets to be there for the ending as a major symbol.
![[4k UHD] Forza Horizon 4 - The Colossus (McLaren F1 GTR Ueno Clinic - 1995 Le Mans Winner)](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/DN6TQfV0G_0/mqdefault.jpg)
I’m so glad that Reggie picked the name “Red” for his character on a whim. It gave us this perfect ending to the LP.
If Saren offered Woolie a jetpack for joining the Reapers, he'd have Woolie 100% on his side.
"You killed million of Batarians, Shepard"
"And I'd do it again!"
"Actually it was only 300,000. But don't worry, I'll do better next time >:) "
I can have genocide every once in a while, you know, as a treat
The only reason the Geth were spared is because they're part of the "two eyes or less" club
A choice out of the player's hands to slow down the Reapers, if the end was out of our hands there's inarguably not a version of Shepard that would not pick Destroy.
Man am I the only one who was horrified at that
something sparked in my head when they brought up how Synthesis is essentially galactic-scale violation of bodily autonomy: remember how in ME1 they talked about how like 5% of the galaxy had been explored by the council races? imagine being a member of a sentient species on a planet that never heard of the Citadel, the Reapers, or Shepard and then one day your entire species grows a USB port and starts photosynthesizing or whatever the fuck, and eventually you go through the relays and meet other spacefaring species that are similar and they're like "oh yeah we did that, you're welcome"
It's hard to overstate just how controversial the original endings were without the Extended Cut when the game came out. It was actually crazy in 2012.
The ending was apparently so bad that one of my friends got into fanfic writing specifically to “fix” it.
Yeah, man that recolor ending... i remember thr cupcake protest xD
It was honestly the beginning of the end of decent videogame discourse, tbh. Between the amount of toxicity happening all the way up to the frivolous lawsuits being thrown at BioWare for "false advertising" and people celebrating like they had somehow "won" some great moral victory when they announced the Extended Cut, people started getting the impression that they could get things they didn't like about videogames changed if they yelled at game developers as loudly and viciously as possible.
And now in today's twitter environment, we see the same behaviour amplified a thousand-fold
Of course irony being, the Extended Cut barely "fixes" anything it just extends it.
So bad we thought bioware was playing mind games.
The endings to 3 are like if you spend the entirety of New Vegas gathering allies, making choices, and setting everything up for the second battle of Hoover Dam, choosing your side (Caesar, Mr. House, Yes Man, or the NCR) then Benny comes up to you at the very end and says "Who you want to win the war, baby?"
Soul crushing....
That's a hilarious way of putting it lmao
Speaking of Obsidian: On stream after the ME3 ending, Woolie was like "But Bioware did so good on Kotor 2 tho. How did they mess this one up so badly?" and chat was like "No that was actually Obsidian."
@@BreakdancePeach It's incredible how Obsidian pulled the curtain on that situation *twice* in a single decade span.
@@UltimaKeyMaster I just hope they can keep doing it instead of getting liquidated.
I want Avowed to be good... Now they have proper experience with Unreal Engine, and more importantly they have a pre-established world/setting to build off of, where they've always excelled the most, imo. KOTOR, FNV, Stick of Truth, NWN2.
@@BreakdancePeachstick of truth is obsidian? Goddamnit, they keep getting away with it!
i don't know why i'm surprised that Woolie would think of the Synthesis ending as basically just giving everyone an n-word pass
when that happened i was dying from laughter. "EVERYONE IS A LITTLE BLACK" "noooo"
When you think about it, the synthesis ending just turns the entire galaxy into Brazil.
@@evanwcahill4439
Tf you mean noooo? Sus
@@SeruraRenge11actually turns the entire galaxy into 2023 America
@@violetshadowstone5250 yeah i don't want my genetic code overidden.
I think Woolie came up with the perfect word for the ending, cynical. It really does encapsulate all of the thematic contradictions, tone, and thought process of the ending into a single word. In a series all about choices, the ending should have been all about repercussions.
Though really, the problem was making reapers magic. It sabotaged everything. If reapers were a threat the extra time bought in ME1 and ME2 allowed you to fight if the galaxy banded together then the theme of ME3 could be doing to societies what you did with individuals in the previous games. Some of that is still there, but rather than see that through to the end they just make the reapers invincible until the player gets to chose what unprecedented magic they'll unleash to instantly fix everything.
To a degree, but there was no way an ending with every race coming together would have made any sense with the info dumps we were given. It was already established that the Protheans while splintered still vastly outnumbered the present day galaxy's population and stood no chance. If we're being honest there was no way for this series to end without a McGuffin of some sort. ME1 established it from the get go with how much effort it took to bring down just one Reaper, so the real problem was setting up an enemy to be TOO overwhelming from the start.
They probably shouldn't have completely abandoned the original concept of the Reapers and Dark energy or at least leaned more on the Leviathans for some sort of solution. I think if the Reapers were scaled down a bit we'd have a more reasonable ending, but the fact that skyscraper sized machines numbering in the thousands always made the idea of a direct confrontation outside of ships almost laughable.
The fact that a series like Dark Souls ends on a more hopefull note than this is crazy. And that's a series where nearly everyone dies or is forced to be undead. The hopefull part comes from accepting that nothing lasts forever and letting the Age of Dark, and by extension nature, follow through. The DLC also gives an alternative way for people to survive through a new painting.
The series ends on a hope that life will continue despite the change in setting. That's why the Firekeeper ending in DS3 is my favorite in that game. It's very bittersweet, but it felt like that was how things should end.
@@Zikk0_o A key detail in having the species come togeather would not have been about numbers, but instead collecting and disseminating the skills and technologies of the disparatr races. Human lasers were more effective against reapers because it wasnt in the "tech tree" they set up for people. You could easily establish each race having simmilar 'cultural' deviations in tech. The conflict could come from having to convince them to share the secrets of such technology freely, expose themselves militarily to others they dont entierly trust. If your can do that then the fleet itself would be a macguffin of anti-reaper tech amalgams crewed by the best possible fighters. If not the standard fleets dont stand a chance because the reapers know exactly how to fight them.
Though, yeah, its a little headcannony. Just what I had hoped for since ME one. Hopefully 4 just starts with "oh the reapers lied to shepard about Shit, but in the end he managed to beat them and we still have synthetics"
@@admcleo The issue with that is that the Reapers have been doing this for millions upon millions of years. It's completely unbelievable that any of the Citadel races would have tech that deviates enough from anything the Reapers have seen before for it to be effective enough to change the tide of battle.
The Crucible isn't even a bad idea for a Macguffin, in theory. It fits with the theme of disparate people and societies coming together to solve a problem being the best path forward for the galaxy, it just extends that theme back over the course of history instead of only being in the immediate present. The issue is that is should have been set up in ME1, rather than appearing out of nowhere in the beginning of ME3 and mostly being this background detail that you almost never directly interact with or contribute to.
@@admcleothe only way ME4 can redeem the series is if the whole game is an adventure with Liara ( who is confirmed ) and Wrex ( who make sense if Liara is there ) doing literally anything until a reaper show up and kicks there asses. Then the screen goes white with that tinnitus sound and Anderson says "Shepard, wake up!" and it's the indoctrination theory realized into the destroy ending AND THEY DON'T FUCK IT UP THIS TIME!.
It's always freshly astonishing how EVERY INDIVIDUAL who has seen the endings has given more thought to their thematic implications and how they could have worked better than Casey Hudson and Mac Walters did when they told all the other writers to fuck off and shat them out.
Casey Hudsons a hack.
No kidding. The only reason I picked the green ending or even remotely found it compelling was because I had just sat through a lecture on the Hegelian dialectic literally an hour and a half before seeing it. Nothing in the game made the choice compelling. It was entirely curiosity from an unrelated outside source
Congrats with defeating cancer, what a gamer
He won that matchup handily, and cancer is salty. Hopefully there will never be a runback.
@@HerpDerpTheTank "Gene is a broken character, pls nerf" - Scrub quote from cancer
Didn't even need Goku's help what a chad.
Wasn't it ass cancer no less?
Anyways- mass effect…
Mystical, all-knowing space child is the kind of cliche I'd expect from David Cage.
the thing about the control ending is that it varies greatly depending on if you are renagade or paragon, paragon shepard will have the reapers stick around long enough to rebuild what they destroyed and then fuck off into deep space forever.
It's a huge problem that Woolie was never shown the Paragon version of Control. It's more than likely he still would have the predictable Power=The Man=Fascism reaction, but it least he would have gotten to that conclusion himself besides being only shown that version as a possibility.
@@HisNameWasCrazy I don't think showing him the alternative would change his opinion. Once Woolie gets an idea in his head, not even being actively shown how he's wrong will change his mind
@@mimictear6788 The question is would he have come to that conclusion if he saw the paragon version first and then would he try to justify Control after seeing Renegade later?
@mimictear6788 come on. It was presented to him as the only control ending. I think he would understand the concept that alignment affects the ending. Benevolent being who leaves life to find its own way vs. Tyrannical dictator is a pretty severe change in tone.
@@mimictear6788 Honestly, I can't even be mad - that's peak Canadian.
I was always under the impression that in a normal "cycle" the Reapers came through the relay that was the Citadel, took over it, and disabled the relay network so they could systematically invade swaths of civilizations without allowing them to join forces because the idea of fighting an entire galaxy AT ONCE would've potentially been too much even for them- OR AT THE VERY LEAST: be incredibly difficult for them.
It may be kind of basic, but I'd have much rather ME3 been about uniting the galaxy for an effective chance at a conventional final stand against the Reapers over introducing a McGuffin to do the work for us.
I just finished mass effect 3 for the first time and I kinda wish it ended like the suicide mission on crack. I wish whether you win or lose just relied on the galactic readiness meter and choices on how to handle the mission.
That impression is in fact how they work. It's why the bug-bot caretakers of the citadel exist.
@@Vulgarth1its even exactly what Sovereign was trying to do in ME1 at the end, he was about to activate the Citadel to port in all the other Reapers instantly
The whole mess can be summed up with this: Mass Effect started out as a franchise where you can tell someone gave every aspect of its world a huge level of thought. You get the feeling that if you had a question about anything in the setting, someone on the writing team would happily talk your ear off about it. By the end, it can't even be bothered to tell you which of your friends will survive.
I blame the consumers. Tell me of one human that you know that even knows what the mass effect its self is. No one cares.
@@czarkusa2018 Really? You blame the consumers because EA pretty much pushed out all the people who had worked on ME1 by the time ME3's development began?
@czarkusa2018 hi shill how's ea shoe polish taste?
The Mass Effect refers to the function of the Mass Relays, which create a field around a starship that reduces its relative mass to zero, and then slingshot it across the galaxy to a partner relay, or to any "sub" relay in a certain radius. This isn't the dunk you think it is, loads of people read codex entries.@@czarkusa2018
Suprised they havent brought up that in the original ending the lazer right before the solo run just hits you w/out showing the normandy picking up your crew, meaning they just left your unconscious ass there and fled.
It's especially terrible if you brought your love interest with you, and either way your entire crew just goes AWOL and abandons the war
Even the part with the Normandy makes no sense, they were like 2 minutes right in front of Harbinger, HOW didn't he shoot the Normandy down?
It would have made more sense to make the Mako crash more dramatic, for your team mates to be injured in that crash and just say your goodbyes before charging towards the beam.
If there's one thing that was better in the original one is how you had to charge all the way to the beam, instead of cutting it half-way to shove an awkward cutscene.
I thought the implication was more that the laser killed them all
@@bajscast But you see them on the Normandy later.
@@MAJR172 Wack
Considering the more they added to the ending the worse it got, they should've just cut out the Star Brat scene and have it cut straight to the Crucible firing after Shepard passes out. There you go, I just managed to save you a decade's worth of backlash, Bioware.
I'm really surprised EA didn't do 100% galactic readiness = You just defeat the reapers through brute force. A lot of people will be pissed by it, because you will forced to play the multiplayer or buy the DLC, but they'd still be less pissed compared to what we got.
You're not writing pulp fiction here either: Mass Effect is a space game about shooting guns and being a cool space cop - especially from 2 onwards. Why is a "subversive" ending even something the franchise needed?
As Rich Evans said: "I love plot twist which make the story less interesting".
I never got the destroy ending as the "Do you actually value synthetic life" question. It's more like are you willing to sacrifice a ton of people to solve the problem forever. It could be any of the organic races and still work.
What I don't understand is how does the red beam discriminate synthetic life from, well, any other tech.
Or why it would do anything beyond damaging their bodies.
Geth just use bodies as mobile platforms, and EDI is within the Normandy, why would it kill them?
That's the biggest problem, the Crucible is just literally magic.
This
Exactly. We dont see the geth as being different from any other species like that. Woolies projected his hatred onto us once again.
@@davidstinger1134Possibly by targeting the Reaper code, one commonality between EDI the Geth and Reapers.
@@crimsonking440 he called you out and you know it.
The reapers have been presented as an overwhelming, Lovecraftian force but at no point outside of the ending was it ever considered that the only way to solve the reaper problem would be to change the fundamental rules of the universe. I think most people were expecting some hard sacrifices to be made to bring the conflict to a resolution, but the idea that Shepard would have to go full Evangelion and end individualism to bring about a universal collective is waaaaay too high concept to introduce in the literal last minute. The main appeal of Destroy is that it most closely maintains the known status quo of the universe, which allows your choices over the trilogy to have the most impact since the future will be determined by the path you put everyone on and not the inscrutable whims of reaper god Shepard.
I picked control my first time because I misunderstood what was being said and thought the options were:
Destroy: blow up the Reapers(and the Geth? Who I'd saved from Quarian genocide, so I wasn't going to pick that), but destroy the relays as well(which I thought also blows up star systems, so Earth and all the combined fleets that were there would die?)
Or
Control: the Reapers become good guys with Shepard's morals, and the relays won't blow up(I was wrong about that)
Who wouldn't pick control under that belief?
I absolutely hate how the endings are presented, especially how the Catalyst basically describes as:
1) Destroy: This Wont Work
2) Control: This Wont Work
3) Synthisis: THE MOST PERFECT ANSWER TO EXIST EVER and it's inevitable really so why not just choose it now?
Look at Wreav brother of Wrex, who goes from Warmonger to Peacemaker only in the Synthesis ending specifically, a Krogan who wanted revenge against those who inflicted the Genophage upon him doing a 180.
If Synthesis does not fundamentally change the nature of people in terms of being distrustful towards those not a part of their own group, whether that be robots or aliens, then it is pointless and it solves nothing. Or it is actually changing how large swaths of people see things by force.
Neither of these are acceptable in my opinion.
This is the ending that awarded EA the title of “Worst Company in America” at the time.
So Reggie and Woolie are starting Dragon Age next, right? "Reggie's Polyamorous Medieval Bisexual Disaster"?
Im pretty sure if he does that hell indirectly piss off most of teh lovers with the exception of Morrigan who kinda doesnt give a fuck... unless you break Leliannas heart.
Oh man, putting Reggie in charge of a game where you can kill off every character in the party (including yourself) except for Morrigan and Ohgren because they never intended for a 2nd game to exist? That'll be a shitshow.
@@SeruraRenge11 Not to mention theres also the Awakening DLC, wich includes even more shenanigans.
Ngl if they play that game and Reggie is in control, I fully expect him to take alot of the more "Evil" or Brutal options.
Also I fully expect him to make a Elf-Mage for the double racism.
@@peterwhite6415 Someone just needs to tell Reggie that you bang the most women as a Human Noble and he'll pick that. Shame, Dwarf Noble is generally considered the best-written origin in the game.
Also, I would like to see them tackle the game's choices since DAO never gives you any incentive to go hard in either direction because there's no morality system. iI lets you actually roleplay the person you want to play without caring about a bar going up and down. When there's no metagaming involves it gives you a lot of narrative choice. One of my favorites is to have a character that in any other instance is a kind, compassionate person, but he's also a bigot towards elves and constantly talks down to them from a condescending, imperialist point of view and thinks he's being compassionate in doing so because he sees them as a lesser people in need of help. You can choose to help someone and tell them to keep the reward, and you actually get nothing, because you should get nothing, selflessness should be its own reward and not Paragon +1.
I beat this game when it had the original ending. There was no DLC apology they ever made that made me think to touch the series ever again. The disappointment was real as I watched every being in the universe get stranded to unknowable fates.
Literally ruined the rest of my day when I got that ending. I just laid on a couch thinking about how I got zero closure for all the memorable characters I got to know over the course of three games.
I beat ME3 in one long 24 hour sitting at launch and thought I'd never touch it again after the ending disappointment even though the game itself, for most of that time, was enjoyable. The end just killed the mood on it entirely.
As someone who never experienced or watched anything related to the Citadel DLC though, I'm glad I did come back to try it for the Legendary Edition.
Yeah, I went in blind, enjoyed everything up until that ending, and the disappointment/confusion was indescribable.
And I felt offended by the idea of needing to buy a DLC to "fix" it, so I didn't even bother with that.
And no matter how much good I heard about tge Citadel DLC being a great piece of fan service and character and all the whatever... why should I pay EA a single cent after that violation of trust?
And thus I stopped buying any EA products
Same as I later stopped buying XBox products after they announced the XBox One DRM stuff(I know they walked that back, but the fact they wanted too try was enough of a betrayal)
And finally Konami got put on the "never again" list after they screwed over Kojima during the MGSV release, after all, their handling of Silent Hill had already reduced them to "buy nothing, except Kojima related projects" status anyway, but now even MGSV was delayed until I could get a used copy.
I didn’t take destroy as the secret robot haters would take. To me it’s more like are you okay outright easily destroying the reapers but it will kill the geth that you just saved and other synthetic beings. Not about you secretly hating them for 3 games and now being the chance to finally kill them. It’s more like the trolley question.
I feel like that’s the Paragon reason for it. That describes renegade Shep pretty perfectly
@@MrDanlancelot there's nothing in the destroy ending that says you can't make new synthetic life afterwards, and the non-Reaper AIs out there are ones easily recreated.
Sure, the specific individuals are dead(barring possibilities of data recovery and questions of what really constitutes an individual's "self"), but their "species" can be easily revived and quickly brought back to current population volumes(especially if relevant hardware survived the destruction ending)
Plus, the Geth are a hivemind, so technically you're only killing one person, just a verry big one.
Going off what Woolie is saying about the lack of detail on the MacGuffin Crucible device, think of it from an in-universe perspective and it's even more insane: this might be desperate times, but this is a massive military operation. How is Hackett and all of these alien generals okay with this total lack of tactical info on the thing we've just built ourselves?
TFW Indoctrinated Saren makes a better case for being evil than Indoctrinated TIM ever did.
Saren: I'm being evil because the Reapers are unbeatable, Shepard. I'm making myself useful to them so they don't turn me into Turian juice and make a giant metal Turian baby reaper.
TIM: I'm being evil because....? I guess I'm trying to control the Reapers somehow. No I will not expound on how I plan to do this.
I'm glad ME1 still stands up in the face of the monumental incompetence we experienced with ME3.
Man Gene looks great! So glad to have him back!
Destroying even an entire cycle to end all future cycles would be worth it, so being able to destroy just a fraction of that is well worth it. The fact that they're all synthetic shouldn't matter and I'd bet the geth would probably agree with the decision
I just thought of a wild but fairly complicated way of ending the game with the 3 choices but removing your say on any of it.
Instead of Shepard making the final choice, they make one final sacrifice of themself to get all remaining party members to finish line. And then they argue and make a decision based on how you influenced them and who is actually left.
The amount of work that would require with all the variables is a lot to ask but would feel the most fitting.
The Shepard has successfully lead his flock to the end. Their roll to play is over. Now it's up to everyone else to decide.
Oh that's brilliant actually
As the person who sent in the sub about Marauder Shields, hearing woolie describe that as "people reverting to their teenage self" hit me right in the chest 😂
Such a fun time for fan theories and fix it fics though, I read a whole comic about that actually being Saren back from the dead trying to stop an indoctrinated shepard, a video dedicated to depicting the faceoff between Anderson and TIM as Shepard mentally fighting against indoctrination, and so many things that only made sense while you were in that moment. I'm almost glad the ending was as bad as it was because of these things. Almost.
Man, I remember reading so many fixed ME3 ending fanfics back in the day lol
Holy shit, Saren as the Catalyst would have been amazing.
@@Stormfin not the catalyst, /specifically/ Marauder Shields. You know, since his body apparently just got moved to some corner of the citadel? If it was the former it'd actually be cool lmao
I'm all for Shepard becoming indoctrinated at some point in or after ME2 and having Saren trying to save him. Would have been vastly better than what we got. Much would be.
I see the Destroy ending as more like Harbinger taking the geth/Edi at gunpoint and saying 'If I go I'm taking them with me!' -- it's basically a hostage situation, a 'victory, whatever the cost' renegade interrupt more than a philosophical conundrum.
No matter what, all of these endings could have been drastically improved if there was an ending slide w/ a big transparent Mordin.png looking down from the starry night clouds with a thumbs up. And Blue Shepard too, turning her back on us looking over her shoulder. And Anderson too. And Blasto choking Kai Leng.
Because the "True" destroy ending exists, I disregard everything the Catalyst says to you. It implies that because Shepard's like 90% synthetic at this point they will die in the destroy ending. But Shepard doesn't, so who's to say it was ever being truthful about anything else?
The non-extended cut 'crew crash on an uncharged planet' ending smash cut is a moment of pure symbolism. It's meant to be "oh, the spirit of explanation! Our crew, with only their wits to help them against a wild and untamed frontier! Truly, this cuts to the spirit and heart of Science Fiction!' LIke, it makes zero sense based on anything in the game up to that point and is just the writers sniffing their farts.
If the Normandy escapes the explosion then why even land on that planet to begin with? I presume the rendezvous point mentioned by Hackett was somewhere in space, maybe the orbit of another planet?
@@6MillionPesoMan It's been ten-whatever years, but I'm pretty sure in the non-extended cut Hackett doesn't mention anything about a rendezvous point at all. The Normandy is just fleeing, having picked up your two squadmates (last seen dead on the floor without comment) offscreen. Then they crash land at a neverbefore mentioned planet for no defined reason. As you do when the writing is operating more on base emotion and symbolism rather than cause and effect.
My main thing with the Vancouver child is that if you want someone to be haunted by his failures? You already have Kaiden and Ashley's voice actors on tap. A callback to a ME1 happening, rather than some random kid.
Yeah it's weird how the endings only feel worse looking back on them today. I mean honestly the series as a whole has kinda soured on me once you learn about how a lot of choices are kind of similarly "recolors" that don't really matter because everything has to converge for the next storybeat. But yeah the endings are really strange conceptually for many of the reasons they describe. And frankly it feels like cop-outs upon cop-outs.
The entire Crucible itself was already a magic macguffin to basically solve the plot because there was no other way to do so. And then on top of that it just has arbitrary magic powers that let it do wildly different things. And then of course they basically try to avoid the whole point of choice in the end by presenting a magic third option that is obviously portrayed as the best option, despite it as they say, violating the bodily autonomy of literally every organic thing in the galaxy. Plus as woolie puts it, it "solves" racism by making everyone one race lol. But of course the other options are Genocide of billions of innocents and Blue Fascism. I think there are at least some arguments to be made for various endings and in some ways that makes them at least interesting to think about, but I also agree with Woolie in saying that it's weird that in this series where Shepard is the beacon of hope in the galaxy, that all of the endings are so dubiously moral (even if the Synthesis ending's morality was probably unintentional).
Also one thing I don't think they touched on was the whole prevalence of the Indoctrination Theory back in the day, which I've always personally had beef with. It's basically a summation of the frustration that everyone had with the endings back then. It existed simply because everyone hated the endings so much that literally any alternative interpretation was deemed acceptable. But the issue is that people got so lost in trying to find an alternate interpretation, that they didn't realize that they were basically picking the Rejection Ending where you doom the galaxy. Like seriously if the whole ending is actually in Shepard's Mind and you have to pick Destroy to free yourself, then what happens? Shepard is alive and free but buried in a pile of rubble? What actually ends up happening to the galaxy? Does everyone just die? Like it's just as unsatisfying as the Rejection Ending when you actually consider it as an ending instead of enjoying it as the novelty of the alternate interpretation.
But yeah ultimately I also agree with what Woolie said in his own video talking about the endings, cause it makes zero sense for a series that is all about choices, to end with a choice. The whole point is that your choices lead to consequences that are supposed to matter. The crucible shouldn't be a choice, it should be that you activate it, and then based on all of the choices you've made up to that point, different things happen based on who you are. Ending with one last big choice is just dumb, but it's also clear that they didn't have the time or whatever to actually make a good ending anyways.
I like the opening conceit of Indoctrination: You passed out after Harbinger nuked you and you get to decide if you die free or you finally succumb to all the indoctrination you've been exposed to. What I don't like is all the knots you need to explain it all. What was the Crucible, actually? Why leave that plot thread just dangling?
@@Silverhawk100 yeah like I will concede that it is an interesting idea for how the series *could* end, but it clearly has little to nothing to do with the actual events of the ending if you stop and think about it for like ten seconds
@@BlazeMakesGamesPeople really were crossing their fingers and praying for a "Sike! ME4 coming soon! Now you ACTUALLY get to finish the fight!" moment with the indoctrination theory. Of course, looking realistically at the game advertising and its writer/dev situation, the theory was all cope. If Indoctrination _had_ been true though, then I'm pretty sure the only way to start ME4 would've been to go all XCOM2-esque where they pull Sheapard out of a reaper simulation tube after a desperate infiltration mission or something.
Also, Saren wasn't proposing Synthesis, he was proposing that biological life just surrender their will to the Reapers. Not that they become equals.
Exactly, his goal wasn't synthesis. He was hoping to negotiate the reapers make them the next 'Collector Base', because he thought that was their best shot of 'surviving'.
@@tyrannicalkingmerlin2628 "The relationship is symbiotic. Organic and machine intertwined, a union of flesh and steel. The strengths of both, the weaknesses of neither." - Saren, the guy that also replaced his arm with a Geth arm. This is some Spec Ops: The Line level of denying reality, because I don't see how anyone can see something so transparently obvious yet still deny it
@@nagger8216 "But what if they had bowed before the invaders? Would the Protheans still exist? Is submission not preferable to extinction?" - Also Saren, the guy that also turned into mechanical extension of the reaper master he served. Much like the collectors before him. I won't bother insulting you, because you've already done it yourself.
@@tyrannicalkingmerlin2628 He became a mechanical extension of Sovereign *after* Virmire when he was implanted, and that was so it could have direct control over him after Saren was having doubts. And I really don't get the leap in logic that Saren replacing his arm with one he got from the Geth has anything to do with indoctrination, but I'm eager to hear it
@@nagger8216 I didn't say the word indoctrination once, but you seem to be having a fun time arguing with yourself.
So basically Woolie wants the Mass Effect endings to be Nocturne reasons, I get him.
The entire video I was just thinking that SMT does what Woolie wants in every entry, that said I can't confirm whether or not those are all good since I never beat one.
@@Kango234 they are really, really good.
If you have access to a 3ds I would strongly suggest trying smtiv (or if you know how to sail the high seas if you get me).
Nocturne is really cool, if you like strategy RPGs like fire emblem Devil Survivor will be to your liking, if you want a completely insane sci-fi setting Digital Devil Saga or Strange Journey might be to your liking, or if you want a detective Noir Raidou Kuzunoha might be just the thing.
@@Kango234Imo the Reasons in SMT Nocturne were never all that appealing to me because 2 leaders are hypocrites, 1 is a guy who wants to murder you and the last is a copout for fence-sitters; it's too easy to say "Screw it" and go True Demon for a bonus fight and the fandom certified coolest "canon" ending.
For the REAL endings discourse always go for SMTII or SMTIV. SMTIV is obviously more accessible: if you can get past the tutorial, you can beat the game. Buy it; emulate it; whatever. You could probably play SMT Strange Journey while you're at it. Hell, play Strange Journey: REDUX and get in with the rest of us MegaTen idiots to argue about the validity of the extra endings!
Youre right: having Shepard be the main character of Mass Effect 4 would in fact not only be cowardly but also creatively bankrupt.
Which is exactly why I'm willing bet money they are, their ability to write fiction has been on a downward trend since Dragon Age 2.
Doubt it, the trailer seems like it's waaaay into the future.
Liara might be in it, but that's it.
@@davidstinger1134 and I have zero faith in Bioware at this point, so we're at an impasse
46:20
Interesting that Gene mentions TLOU2 not having a multiple choice ending because, in my personal opinion anyway, having an alternate ending, where when they arrive at the boats to leave, Ellie chooses not to fight Abby and *does* leave, which skips the final fight altogether, would've salvaged the game's plot at least somewhat.
Like, the main theme seems to be that revenge isn't worth it in the end, so it could've actually engaged the player directly and asked "After everything we've shown you, what do *you* think about all of this" by making the fight with Abby an option the player had to directly choose to do.
But no, the game forces you into a fight, where I already actively disagreed with Ellie's motivations well before this point, and have to continue the fight until *she* gets sad and stops fighting, seemingly uninterested in how the player would want to act.
Kinda sad how Metal Gear Solid V, despite being infamously unfinished managed to tell a more compelling cautionary tale about the dangers of chasing revenge, even giving the play multiple opportunities to act on it, such as Killing Quiet early, and shooting Skull Face multiple times. Also Unlike Last of Us, you're actually given plenty of non-lethal alternatives to most encounters, so there isnt that HUGE narrative disconnect where Ellie is indiscriminately slaughtering dozens upon hundreds of people only to stop at the one person that actually mattered.
@@sasaki999pro Metal Gear has always been about that and it's why it works so damn well. Raiden and Snake's bloodlust being called out in connection with the player and trying the distance themselves from that, sparing the B&B unit giving them the solace they couldn't find. Even Death Stranding for all the shit it gets actually is bold with how destructive and non-productive violence is in both narrative and gameplay.
The biggest problem I have with the endings (obviously Starchild is the main one) is that all of the endings are posed by the reaper construct that's part of the problem. Then you have the bit where it's like "You're the only one who made it this far, but here's exactly what will happen for these new choices" How would it know the outcomes if it doesn't understand how Shepard made it there and didn't think of any of these..? Why would you even trust anything it says in the first place? Because plot! Yay!!! Bleh...
The other bit is the intent of any of the choices. You could also full 180 having Genocidal Galaxy killing Shepard is now The Reapers. I honestly don't care for an Andromeda LP, but Dragonage Origins...I know for a fact at least Reggie will make it super funny.
To my understanding, the high preparedness Destroy ending is a blast that is specifically targeting Reaper technology.
You see spaceships continuing to function in that ending, immediately after the big red explosion. The Geth were destroyed because, in order for the Geth to survive Rannoch, they need to download reaper code (which is another thing that i don't really like, because it scraps a lot of what made the Geth unique as an emergent collective consciousness and makes them "they're just like us fr fr" by making their future complete individuality a la organics). EDI was destroyed because she's made out of Sovereign.
The Destroy ending only effected the AI that had reaper code. That includes EDI and the Geth. Anything else was untouched. The Quarians should remain uneffected.
He said "all synthetics"
Not some honey.
@@markervine1855 No he’s right Quarians are shown to still be alive in the slideshow at the end.
So Shephard has reaper code in him?
@@heykak Shepard lives if you picked Destroy and you are competent.
@@heykakSome implants might have Reaper tech in them since so much got done with the big corpse left behind at the end of 1. Guns, data etc all got improved using Reaper tech
The length of this video is probably more time than the people who were paid to make the endings actually spent thinking about it.
here's the thing, they actually did think a whole about the ending
then the head guys threw all that out at the last minute to hash out that wet wipe we were given
I'm not sure why Woolie keeps describing the green ending as "removing all freedom" and "hive mind". There's no indication of that being the case in the ending as it was presented.
A violation of body autonomy? For sure. But there's no indication that any kind of mind control is taking place. People are still individuals.
It is there though, changing someone's perspective with science fiction magic without their knowledge or consent, that's tantamount to brainwashing.
You can see evidence of this with Wreav if leading the Krogan instead of his brother Wrex, who changes personality entirely in Synthesis, going from a Warmonger to Peacemaker only in that ending.
Doing it to all life that exists or ever will exist in the Milky Way Galaxy, makes for an unimaginably ghastly crime if you ask me.
Any single species does not outweigh that decision.
I mean, apparently in that ending everyone is suddenly fine with Reapers and Husks, that does requiere some degree of brainwashing.
The destroy ending was the ultimate goal of the series. The other endings were just +3 to me.
Exactly, and about Geth and EDI, "We can rebuild them, we have the technology."
If we make them like they were, they'll understand why it had to be done.
I see you naming this highlight the same way as the first ME video. You remain king Woolie.
Peak bookend.
Woolie brought up how the best stories are ones where the seeds for the ending were planted from the beginning and you can see that they planned ahead. I'm actually curious if there's examples of endings that were not planned prior that still felt like natural conclusions to reach. Like the the writer managed to luck out on something satisfactory despite the ending itself maybe being a late addition. I don't doubt that stories like that exist.
Look no further than George Lucas and to a much lesser extent Ridley Scott.
Breaking bad famously changed a lot during the course of filming, Saul was supposed to be a one off, and both Jesse and Hank we’re supposed to die season 1, with crazy 8 taking Jesse’s role. Imagine the ending to that show, with no Ozymandias, and no disappear forever option.
Casablanca, considered one of the most well written movies of its time, was being constantly rewritten as they filmed, its famous ending being one of those last minute changes.
the honest truth is that more endings probably weren't planned from the start than were, the best ones just hide it better
Good writers can set up and realize a story, the best writers can also fix a messy story by adding perminent scenes or a good ending. Most movies, games and shows have changed stuff, at different levels, at some point, it's the curse of having dozens of hands on the pie
He defeated cancer and has a Santa Destroy flag on the wall? Gene is top tier
Can we talk about how actually terrifying the Synthesis ending actually is? It seems like the Reaper Husks just end up gaining some form of self-awareness/sentinece instead of being a near-mindless zombie. Like did they just remember who they were before they were husks? Also what could you even do for them??? From what Mordin explains with The Collectors in ME2, everything that these husks were or ever could be, is destroyed by the sheer technology incorporated into their bodies by replacing any or all organic bits.
If you think that's bad, think about EDI. What happens to her, and the person who's body she is flesh puppeting. THEN think about her and Joker, and if they can have horrible abomination cyber babies
@@mordai9666 Except it isn't. Nothing is replaced. + Mordin was arguing about the death of Culture. That doesn't happen in synthesis either. And no there's no hive mind either.
@@PlanetaryPluto That's fine, but it comes with the implication that nothing is actually solved. Even if there is a "collective understanding" there will still be high level galactic conflict just given the nature of free will. Also, it's not as though the reapers go back to dark space, and the implications of reaper control over husks is unknown, not to mention whether or not indoctrination is still possible, meaning that there will not only be the threat of martial conflict, but now there's the elephant in the room of the sentient god-machines that have decided to stick around that still may or may not have at least some level of control over their (possibly) former servants. There is nothing which suggests that the reapers will live in harmony with everyone else, certainly not forever anyway, especially given their nature in the interactions the player has with them.
@@juultoo Where's this implication coming from? The reapers were harvesting advanced life as the best solution to a problem. Conflict between organics and synthetics. After synthesis, the two basically meld into like a new lifeform and truly understand each other. What reason would the reapers have to continue harvesting if the problem they were created to resolve is... Resolved.
People seem to be inventing stuff to oppose this ending. I'm not saying it's good. I agree generally the endings were bad and the eerie green glowy eyes everyone has was spooky but people's criticisms don't match up with what I gathered from playing the ending.
P.s I agree. I personally think the catalyst should've fucked off and left us alone to deal with our own problems. Conflict between organics is probably more likely to wipe out organic life than conflict between organics and synthetics. But I suppose it wasn't created to solve THAT problem🤷🏾
@@Matkingosconsidering Edi pilots her body while still being part of the Normandy, yeah it doesn't make sense
I like how woolie invented the hive-mind lack of free-will in the synthesis ending out of thin air
It's basically the result that Saren would've wanted, just like how Control is the outcome that The Illusive Man wanted. I say to hell with both of them and pick Destroy every time
@@MattManDX1 No it isn't. That is pure headcannon. Saren was suggesting outright submission to the reapers. His suggestion was to become the collectors or the citadel keepers. Not to acheive perfect symbiosis between organic and inorganic.
Late response here. But there is one piece of evidence that character's thought process does in fact change. Outright. If Wrex dies and his brother takes his place as a result. Then you see how much the guy doesn't want what Wrex did. At all. But if you chose the synthesis ending it shows his opinion changing COMPLETELY. For no reason. Suggesting that the his mind was altered by the green wave. So it's not just some headcannon people leap to. The extended ending straight up shows bizarre behavior.
In my *ideal fantasy world ME3 gets a remake where its story is completely remade* except for most of the quarian-geth conflict and we get something like this:
1) *The reapers actually use indoctrination alot as part of their attacks.* Traitors in positions of power, in your own crew and lots of extra suspicion everywhere because of that.
2) Because reviving people from the dead exists in this universe, the Illusive man and/or Liara, *revive key characters if they died in ME2* like was done for Shepard, so they can still be fully integrated main characters in ME3 instead of side pieces to be disposed of/ignored/made irrelevant.
3) *Cerberus is your renegade option* throughout alot of the game and you also regularly have the Illusive man making the case for it, like he did in ME2 via communications like you have with Hackett (before and/or after point 5 of this list is figured out by the cast.)
4) With *Cerberus* being established as such an obscure wild card organisation in ME2 that could be anything from renegade-good to necessary-evil to actually-evil to get indoctrinated, depending on your choices they can also go in many different directions/outcomes.
5) An evil Cerberus that suddenly has way too large an army despite having been established as small elite organisation still shows up, but that's a ploy by the reapers using clones & hacked Illusive Man & others transmissions, to specifically to turn humanity against each other and the other races against humanity. That could create some nice extra confusion about Cerberus because *there's 2 Cerberuses, that both act shady but contradictory to each other.* Combined with 1) that would also be much more in line of the reapers actually being smart and having a plan to dismantle their opponents from within, like Sovereign established for them in ME1.
Alternatively: you fail. It turns out you can't stop something as big as the Reapers and it's just the most nihilistic game possible where everything you did was for nothing because how the fuck do you beat that?
Now that this wild ride has come to an end, we can induct Pan-demic Red and FGC Javik into the WoolieVS Bits Hall of Fame.
34:44 Gene is a man of few words but when he chooses to speak? BARS. THE TRUTH 😂
There should have been no ending choice. The "choice" should be determined by what you did in the previous games and have it tailored by various thresholds
Funnily enough that's what Woolie said in the clip on the second channel. He kind of said that here, but it wasn't as clear since he had other thoughts to bring up and also had to explain it to Pat and Gene.
I agree with cynical as the interpretation. Mass Effect spent 3 games asking us if different forms of life could mend fences over their difference and come together to face a greater threat. No matter which ending you pick in 3, it feel like the answer is "no".
That being said, I also don't get the thought process behind forcing players to be Team Cerberus for ME2, then make Cerberus in ME3 evil again. If you were always going to do the latter, then why bother with making a game around the former? Of course people are going to see Control as evil when you do not have anyone worth a damn arguing in its favor. I'm no defending Cerberus, but I do want to point out how haphazard the writing for these games were using a major example.
The real problem with the endings is really simple: Mass Effect went from a trilogy to an IP that will go on. And thus you can’t have the green or blue endings be canon because they change too much. While Destroy ends the trilogy but leaves room for Geth remnants to show up if the next projects need them. And as a bonus you have Shep alive. So it’s the one ending that they can make canon. Andromeda was specifically far enough away that they wouldn’t have to worry about the endings but it failed so much that what was clearly intended to be a new trilogy instead will just be a "We never heard back from the Andromeda project if they made it to their new galaxy" footnote in ME4.
I really don't want to take away from DatAsuna's hard work, but I think their decision to only show the Renegade Low Chakwas version of Control may have seriously biased this discussion and Woolie's view of the endings. There's a lot of talk about cynicism here, but the idea that Full Paragon Shepard (whose whole deal is self-sacrifice for the betterment of others) would invariably become intergalactic Hitler is cynicism on a whole other level.
At least Woolie is attempting to engage in the horror of betraying and murdering your allies in the Destroy Ending, whereas Pat, like so many others, still has the balls to say things like 'Destroy is actually the real Paragon Ending when ya think about it'. Pat also doesn't engage in Woolie's very perceptive assessment that many will play the game fawning over the Geth and EDI and nurturing their quest for self actualisation, but when it comes down to it they will flush their newly acquired life down the toilet in an instant (betraying not just their allies but most of the themes of the game assuming they played Paragon until that point) just as Pat did on his playthrough.
If Woolie had actually seen the Paragon version of Control the discussion would hopefully have been even more nuanced, but I at least appreciate his attempts to engage in the pros and cons of each ending based on the information he was given.
It's like Noone sees the obvious parallel between the Renegade Origin characterizing Shepard as a man who would sacrifice as many lives beyond need to win the war and the Red ending where you sacrifice an entire species, the soul of your ship and countless aliens across the galaxy, spacefaring or not, with pacemakers.
They dont even get that Synthesis is the TIM ending. TIM doesn't literally want to be a Reaper. He has robot eyes and has a boner for everyone being transhuman, he just wanted synthesis for humanity.
You're delusional if you think there's a single human being in history that wouldn't become space Hitler upon being given God like power over everyone in the galaxy. That's not cynicism that's an acknowledgement of human nature. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, but not me tho. Yeah, okay dude.
@@nin_tendo6458 Paul Atredies mindset
I always saw Destroy as “Kill the Reapers, but Grandma on Life Support will also die because that Life Support is Tech and Red won’t discriminate Reaper Tech with Low Grade Medical Tech.” Basically Stone Age Everything.
Control was AI God Mode Shepard Engage to make sure things are good but there’s a chance things will continue to Chaos again and we may one day get Reaper 2.0.
Synthesis is “The Good Ending” where everyone that’s alive lives and we advance beyond expectations because of Green Space Magic. We can bang Robots and it’s Ok now. Geth as well. Maybe even the Plants. Tree Huggers will take on a new meaning. Fantasy Ending is the more correct term for this.
All have their merits and down sides so it’s hard to 100% say which is correct.
I also interpreted Destroy as kicking the can down the road. Sure, the relays are gone, but people'll be able to make AI again and the problem the Star Child was created to solve will still be there.
i dont know about you, but i always got the implication that tree hugger was just a "nice" way of saying tree fucker from the start.
Enough of friends of the show we need ENEMIES of the show rivals even, where are the Nega-Woolies and Dark Pats?
Real ones remember the USTABIAZ
Indeed, they are the Ustabiaz. Takahata, Plague of Gripes, Brennan Williams and (…?)can’t remember the last one…it’s been years.
Although, Plague and Pat may not necessarily be the nega versions of each other anymore
@@skullslingerdave7975I just realized I also forgot the 4th member, but I think it was Cranky.
That 4th ending was added as well, as an FU to the people who weren't happy with the initial 3 endings in the DLC and wanted to keep fighting the reapers.
The problem with that one is they also co*ked it up. People at the time were asking for 2 new endings. A actual hard lose state, and a state where you threw out the dumb 3 choices and just hard tanked your way to victory thru sheer warscore.
They combined the 2, and appeased neither groups. Now rejecting the miggufin IS the lose situation.
Holy F MEs ending is so crap, even worse looking back upon it all these years later.
I honestly think that the Refusal ending is kind of poignant. It's a nice call-back to a personal moment with Liara and still occurs as a product of the things that Shepard has done and achieved with their squad. I don't think the original endings were amazing or whatever, but I think people asking for an 'optimal win condition ending' against the deep space machine gods were absolutely deluding themselves.
We're all Green Shepard
There’s a little bit of Red in all of us wouldn’t have it any other way.
Whether we like it or not.
I thought Big Boss was talking for a second.
And Green Shepard is all of us.
Idk i never took that as a choice of if you believe synthetics are alive or not. I think a lot of people would still choose destroy if they had said like the turians or salarians were gonna get wiped out as a result. More "are you willing to scarifice some to save the rest?". I had assumed another synthetic species would be created at some point and it was just sad but necessary.
What about synthesis is giving up free will? It's pretty clear that everyone still retains their free will, they're just vaguely-defined organo-synths now
Violating the entire Milky Way's autonomy, even with the best possible intentions and outcomes, with either Control or Synthesis I find reprehensible, the Reapers are actually an existential threat to all life forms proven through the narrative of three videogames. It is better for everyone irrespective of the consequences that they no longer hold any influence on life.
Does that Synthesis retain free will? We do not know but room for doubt gets created by Wreav (a warmonger unlike Wrex) changing his character entirely in the ending slides, what I find disturbing being it fundamentally changes not just people but all forms of life... to apparently with no evidence stop an existential conflict we are told about by the collective intelligence of the Reapers in a five minute long conversation with no outside input... through a Jesus Christ type sacrifice of Shepard. Not only inhumane but also makes no sense.
I would pick any other option sooner frankly.
Why does nobody remember the fact that Reapers are constantly going around indoctrinating everybody? Like seriously, we've seen it can't just be turned off when one that's been dead for a million years can still do it.
It is always a good time when Gene Park is hanging arround in Castle Super Beast podcast!
I would say the only good thing about Catalyst child is that, I think, the echoes it produces are the voices of both Shepards. Honestly, I wish it voice was just the voices (echoes?) of Sheps even if they went with a child model.
"You can do the bad idea good." Is unfortunately an ingrained mentality for many people.
When I was a wee child, I (reluctantly) chose control before the epilogues were put out.
My head canon at the time was "Well, I don't want to kill the geth that I just spent 150 hours saving. Guess I'll just press the magic button and make all the reapers go away..."
Gene, for 1 whole hour: 😃
Quarians are still alive in destroy ending. The star child was lying to you, because hes a fucking reaper. What obligation does any reaper have to be honest with you?
Honestly, having and beaten Andromeda for the first time this week...
It's fine. Nowhere near as good as the trilogy, but it takes the combat in a new direction and does some interesting things here and there. Plus, Vetra. Ultimate waifu.
Cant help but wonder how the people who had their home colonies GLASSED by reapers felt when 2/3 endings just have the reapers just chill out and stop attacking. Like in the middle of harvesting and mulching billions of civilians across the galaxy. What did war reparations look like after the fact.
Thanks Mr.Reaper now if you could just clean up this puddle that used to be my dad
Woolie's gotta definitely play New vegas now, to get a real feeling of how your choices matter and they change everything even past the ending
🐐🐐🐐🐐
I like New Vegas but aren't most of the consequences of the endings just being told about them in a slideshow at the end? I never really felt like the game was a great example of taking choices into account if most of them are just "and this is what happened off screen/ years later".
I agree in liking the idea of seeing him play it though.
@@quantras2673 Yeh, Obsidian did a miracle in only 18 months to develop the game, but couldn't flesh out the endings. But you feel your choices way before Hoover dam, the battle is just icing on the cake. The important characters you kill stay dead (House, Caesar, Kimball), and you feel the side you pick, if the NCR or Legion respect or hate you, if you went independant or not, the Strip and securitrons show your choices. Every companion story depends on you, and what "kind of companion" you end up with (Lily or Leo, for example). I think the world you play in before the ending is completely different than the one you start in, that's what i mean by "your choices matter"
Idk if its just me but i thought the Control ending was just Borg Picard where yeah here's this Reaper that *totally* is Shepard you guys, he super super is trust us. And I have honestly never heard an actual argument for Destroy other than "shut up it's the right thing to do to kill these millions of beings that we spend at least 2 whole ass games telling you they matter and are actual beings"
Probably got too much Red Shepherd in me but yeah no Green ending just makes the most sense too me idk
Still stupid and terrible but meh
23:49 I disagree that Synthesis ending is 'Saren's ending' Saren suggested that servitude was preferable to extinction. In that we should become indoctrinated rather then risk being completely wiped out. Synthesis is essentially, turn EVERYTHING into techno organic. The main difference is that in Saren's ending we would be slaves to the reapers. Synthesis puts us, the geth, the reapers all on the same level so IN THEORY we can have a level of understanding between EVEYRHING. No one is slaves to anyone....or at least....no more then we usually are.
thing is, the way the game was supposed to work you shouldn't even have to pick an ending. It should just go "here's what you had been choosing this whole time so now you get to see Shepard hit the repercussions button"
17:50 Paragon choice being a dictatorship actually fits really well, if you've paid attention to some of the stuff the paragon option says at times. It totally veers into hard line moral absolutism & moral puritanism / black and white thinking and accusatory stances over a bit more nuance and understanding at times.
That's why I never equated pure Paragon with most good Shepard in my mind, but always considered the most good shepard to be more along the lines of mostly paragon but with a fair mount of neutral middle and probably even a little bit of renegade at times.
The problem I've always had with Paragon and Renegade as a system is that most of the good moral actions you can make are usually the Paragon choice, and that Renegade in 2 and 3 especially paint Shepard is a psychopath. You're not rewarded either for being neutral and are encouraged to go all the way in one direction or the other. Both sides are meant to have flaws, but they're never really explored to their fullest potential.
Nah, Woolie just has a brain filter that continued to pre-emptively and automatically interpret all Paragon options as lawful stupid paladin in his head, which is why he always acted so surprised whenever a Paragon option involved being chill or hard nosed.
I'd take being watched over by a force that believes in moral absolutism over finally achieving sentience and then being murdered by somebody I thought was my friend and ally. People have to stop seeing fascism around every corner, comes off paranoid and cynical af.
@@leithaziz2716 Pretty much. There are a couple occasions where the Paragon option will catch you out and have logical negative consequences, and fair enough, but otherwise you get almost entirely positive results from mashing upper dialogue choices.
The real issue with Renegade Shep is not being an asshole (though they are), it's inconsistency. Actual lower left Renegade (red colour) options hove closer to the ruthless but pragmatic ideal it's supposed to...but the lower right dialogue choices required to gain points in order to take Renegade options in the first place involved being a cartoonishly petty dickhead purely for its own sake.
@@CrypticSquid1 one thing i did like about Renegade in ME3 though is that a lot of the Paragon dialogue has Shepard be horrified by the war or admitting that they're struggling, while Renegade is actually more level-headed and determined sometimes because they're so numb to violence. the Paragon is dumbstruck by it but the Renegade just says "i'm gonna kill these skyscraper-sized motherfuckers."
at the end on Earth there's a conversation with Tali where she asks if you're okay after seeing Earth all jacked up, and the Paragon response is basically "yeah this sucks but we can rebuild i guess."
the Renegade response is more interesting because they basically say "yknow Tali, i actually feel great - for once my enemy is directly in front of me, i actually know what i have to do to stop them, and one way or another, this war is about to end."
it's kind of an interesting turnaround that *nearly* subverts the "Paragon is always best" paradigm. for just those few dialogue options, Paragon is recast as having been an excellent peacetime leader, but Renegade comes into their own as the person you want in a *war*.
of course they throw all that out the window but it's still interesting for just those few lines
Actually... Best ending, given that the whole narrative is about agency: The crucible gives the reapers their free will back. The catalyst can no longer control them and these collective cultures all get to decide how best to march forward.
Yeah that will totally lead to peace and kumbaya. Totally not the reapers still swatting these ants to death like bored children.
@@trustytrest I think you misunderstand the poetry of this solution, though. The whole purpose and origin of the reapers is to subborne the free will of other races, directed by the catalyst. Why not gave those cultures their right to choose back?
How much of the story did that old man tell the kid anyway? did he tell him about my war crimes against that 1 Batarian colony or was that information humanwashed by him to make me sound better? what about my Harem of male and female aliens that my Shepard banged? did he tell him how my Shepard is racist/specieist towards Hanar? (those big stupid jellyfish.)
so many dumb little questions for just one cutscene lol.
I never played any of the ME3 DLCs, or even the extended ending, quitting right after seeing the ending back in 2012.
I bought the Legendary Edition during the January sale, and downloaded the Happy Ending Mod and the Citadel Epilogue Mod. The differences between the endings hit me like a truck when I saw the end of the LP. Pat was right back when they talked about the ME3 ending way back when: Just moving some scenes around saved the ending for me.
Im probably getting close to the end of FF XVI, and Im glad that whole idea of "we dont need boss fights in video games anymore" never stuck. The bosses in that game fucking insane, and im excited to see Reggie and Woolie see them.
Also, im surprised none if them brought up the indoctrination theory. I know its just a theory, but its definitely an interesting conversation, since it honestly makes more sense than what they wrote.
Also, what the Vancouver Child told you right before the choices is that the Reapers are everyone who was harvested in all of the cycles before the current one. So, Destroy is not just two or three genocides, it's hundreds, maybe thousands of genocides.
Violating the entire Milky Way's autonomy, even with the best possible intentions and outcomes, with either Control or Synthesis I find reprehensible, the Reapers are actually an existential threat to all life forms proven through the narrative of three videogames. It is better for everyone irrespective of the consequences that they no longer hold any influence on life.
Does that Synthesis retain free will? We do not know but room for doubt gets created by Wreav (a warmonger unlike Wrex) changing his character entirely in the ending slides, what I find disturbing being it fundamentally changes not just people but all forms of life... to apparently with no evidence stop an existential conflict we are told about by the collective intelligence of the Reapers in a five minute long conversation with no outside input... through a Jesus Christ type sacrifice of Shepard. Not only inhumane but also makes no sense.
I would pick any other option sooner frankly.
@@BlueMarsalis First, we have to accept that what the child says is true, otherwise there can be no discussion about the endings. The game frames what the child says as true, and in the endings what the child says will happen happens, so we have no evidence of them lying in the text. The situation is what the child says it is because the game gives us no reason to believe otherwise. That includes what the Reapers are.
So, with that said, we're dealing with countless galactic scale genocides, total galactic dictatorship, or the universal violation of the bodily autonomy of all life in the galaxy. None of these are good options, but Synthesis gets you the best result with the least loss of life and liberty.
Not lying, just mistaken, operating on faulty logic. It is in my opinion a problem that does not need to be solved.
One that only apparently "gets solved" through Synthesis in such a tiny portion of the known universe that makes up the Milky Way Galaxy.
It is so absurd it cannot be taken at face value so...
Either the writing's illogical at the very foundations, or the Catalyst's logic as a representative of it is.
Hey, it is far from my opinion that any of the endings are at all ideal, I only really believe that Synthesis solves nothing. The Reapers being abominable monuments to all the souls they have imprisoned in their construction and the enforcers of the Catalyst's faulty logic's generally why I lean towards Destroy though.
But none of them are good as a conclusion because none are an ending to the narrative of Mass Effect, but an answer to a subtextual question from the original Mass Effect, that had not only been developed upon in sequels and concluded on Rannoch but... also gets reintroduced and wrapped up in the last fifteen minutes of a forty to sixty hour experience.
How exactly is Shepard the one committing the genocides when the reapers put all those species in a blender and turned them into Reaper juice? All you're saying is that the reapers committed thousands of genocides which as I see it is grounds for their extermination.
@@enumaelish9193 Two genocides don't make a right
Green ending isn't the same as villains' plan, because nowhere does it say that life becomes hivemind for some reason. Villains would've made everyone into a mind slave with no free will under reapers. In the green ending from what we know everyone is still autonomous.
Define "free Will" w/o knowing exactly how Consciousness works between Analog cognition and Digital ...Difficulty: Impossible
It is there though, changing someone's perspective with science fiction magic without their knowledge or consent, that's tantamount to brainwashing.
You can see evidence of this with Wreav if leading the Krogan instead of his brother Wrex, who changes personality entirely in Synthesis, going from a Warmonger to Peacemaker only in that ending.
Doing it to all life that exists or ever will exist in the Milky Way Galaxy, makes for an unimaginably ghastly crime if you ask me.
Any single species does not outweigh that decision.
@@iller3 all the brain cells are still there, so it's augmented analog cognition. Why do you want to redefine free will?
I hate Synthesis, but I understand why others like it. It's objectively "the best ending", because it's a magic solution added after the fact to appease the community. There's no downside to it, so narratively, it's a shittier, less compelling ending than the other two.
Also Control and Destroy should've been swapped, Control is clearly evil and selfish (as it was the plan of TIM) and Destroy was clearly self-sacrifice/the lives of the few for the many (before ME4 became a reality at least).
But that's been talked to death, and I'm glad I'm not crazy for thinking that lol. I prefer Destroy. Not because I think synthetics deserve to die, it's just the most satisfying, bittersweet ending.
The thing that fucks me up the most is that if the endings were exactly the same but you didn't have the option to chose, with the ending determined by what you did and said along the games it would be so much better. Yeah the endings suck anus but at least you know you got them with your words and deeds and not a final eeny meeny meiny mo.
I actually cried revisiting me3 when anderson told me i did good. I did loose my father inbetween the first time playing and the legendary edition but everything with anderson was amazing.
I STILL cant believe Red defeated Blue with that weak ass team of Pokémon.
Would've been cool if Bioware kept the original plan of keeping TIM as a more renegade alternative to Hackett.
they should have just made the cycle the reaper's fucking reproduction cycle.
19:05 Honestly the fact that Bioware fumbled themselves into The Indoctrination Theory being so accidentally well written and then DECONFIRMED that as the intent is hilarious because if I was in their shoes I would have been "Yep. Totally intentional. 100 percent" and been lauded as the greatest video game writer ever.
I honestly think it would have been legendary for them to just say screw it and lean into the Indoctrination Theory. I'm all for the creators of something to have their own vision and tell the story they want, but at that time there was an almost unanimous consensus on a pretty good fan theory that brought a little light to the downer that was the original endings.
Since the Arrival DLC I was convinced indoctrination would be involved someway or that Shepard would be changed to something like TIM since you spend so much time with reaper artifacts and the Arrival has a literal clock show you that the Shepard spent hours on a base full of indoctrinated people. Now I'm convinced the writers or at least Casey Hudson forgot how indoctrination worked.
@@Kango234 There are numerous missions where people spent a day around reaper artifacts and got indoctrinated and some where it was a few hours.
Shepherds spent, cumulatively in just the story missions of all 3 games well over a week around reaper artifacts. With arrival it was 16 hours unconscious.
Hell he was within spitting distance in 1 for at least several hours on no less than 3 occasions.
Then there is the Collector Base in 2 and the literal dead reaper you *go inside of*.
You're telling me that Shepherd is just so super special awesome that that all meant for nothing?
TIM gained control over his body in a few minutes!
Don't tell Woolie about why it's cynical, DARK MATTER.
honestly I think the biggest problem for me is how tacked on and thematically inappropriate the consequences feel. Even if we were stuck with the same three choice in general, I would much rather make a choice on whether I think the reapers should be destroyed outright or if their technology can be used to benefit the universe, or if it's worth trying something completely unprecedented and essentially create a new form of life, rather then the actual choice, which is "which is the least bad consequence, killing all the friendly robots, the possibility of reaper shep turning evil someday, or violating everyone's body autonomy."
39:20 This really reminds me of how KH3 did its story. There was so little worldbuilding that when all the McGuffins started getting involved, players were more confused because it just felt like random stuff was happening.
Shit like the power of waking, time travel and reversing causality made me go "I reaaaaally want to defend you KH but..."
@@luishenriquez4171 PoW was the worst. The 90% of the story was dedicated to finding it, but you hardly learn why it's so important Sora has it when Riku already got it. Then it's suddenly revealed it can be used to rewrite time and reality to "wake a heart". When I saw that happen, I just sat there and thought "this is a bit different than how 3D portrayed that power."
There are other things to if you think about it. Like how it's awkwardly dropped on the player the Princesses of Heart somehow gave away their powers to a new set of princesses... except Kairi. Wish there was a scene of Yen Sid explaining that. Marluxia made it sound like it's been that way since KH1. Don't get me started with Xehanort using Kingdom Hearts to make everything "pure and bright."
Yeeeeah, KH 3 was prolly the one time I wouldve been ok with exposition dumps if it made everything not feel like Nomura came up with it on the spot....
@@luishenriquez4171 Unlike Mass Effect 3, KH3 clearly wasn't designed to be the end of the series/saga. Maybe KH4 will give context for some of the more confusing moments.
But man, between those games, Shenmue 3, and Borderlands 3, the 2010's had a lot of bad third entries.
Kai Leng deserved nothing more than what The Punisher does to people who go try-hard mode in their attempt to get his attention: No acknowledgement, just a single bullet to the head, and he moves on to someone more deserving of his time.
I think Tim's plan was to gather up all the Reapers in one place so he could control them all as easily as possible. The control ending is confirmation that his Indoctrinated line of thinking made sense. He was an asshole for sure, but he never gave up against the Reapers. Him telling the Reapers that the Citadel was the final piece of the crucible spoke to his (ultimately justified) arrogance, not this imagined betrayal of his own goals that Woolie thinks is going on. It was a gambit that paid off.
I really thought buddy had a rebel flag on his wall
so does mass effect just condemn all carnivores to starve?
"we're all one, there's no more conflict"
"so what do i eat"
Eat the dead? Will the cybercarrots scream when I eat them?
@@JoseRS1186 Yes, plants do Scream. It's scientifically recorded as wavelengths we don't register as audible. They also circulate panic and pain chemicals that even trigger other chemical signals into the air around them to warn other plants near them that they are being eaten or attacked
Thank you Reggie for desecrating Shepard's legacy. So much entertainment.
Its weirdest because they color coded ending in a game where that already color coded "blaring divine moral purity" as blue, "psychotic chaotic evil" as red and tried to always present a third better option to a moral dillema if you did a bit extra and worked for it. And the red ending was the default ending that was your only option if you didn't do sidequests, and, on release, you couldn't GET the green ending if you didn't also grind the multiplayer in addition to maxing out your military strength.
Woolie played the remastered version, so he only somewhat understands what a complete rug-pull that ending was.
The kid as a representation of Shepard's trauma maybe wouldve worked better if they had set it up in ME1 or 2.
But we meet this kid as the apocalypse is popping off and now he gets to be there for the ending as a major symbol.
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