@@AusSP well I call bullying the fact of pressuring an overworked team who crunched for months, pressured by out of touch ceos and shareholders to go into overtime and crunch time because the ending was rushed and utter garbage, thus accelerating the fall of Bioware studios by pushing people to quit because of the working conditions. But that's just me. Edit: oh and ME andromeda bad cause rushed and all that.
@@Egenix52 Doesn't help that they didn't even have the ME3 ending thought out until pretty late into the project. That seems like a pre-production thing to me. Not that I know who made that decision.
Yeah one of the things I was disappointed in was the direction they took the Reapers in. They went from this eldritch race of beings beyond mortal comprehension, to a bunch of glorified machines with flawed programming. Which I think ended up entirely undermining Sovereign's haunting monologue in ME1. It made it out to be like Sovereign was just shit-talking/trying to sound more threatening to Shepard. *Sovereign:* We have no beginning, we have no end, we, are infinite. *Leviathan:* Yeah, well, that was a straight up lie
Except you could identify them, shoot them and if you tried really hard kill them. Now that is motivation for the protagonist. Thing me no like, me shoot thing dead, is fun to kill thing ugh ugh lizard brain.
5:12 - the dark energy plot is mentioned on Illium as well. If you help Gianna Parasini (from ME1) she tells you her superiors want her to investigate Dark Energy as it may be something to worry about - can’t remember the exact quote but it’s in there Edit: just thought of a few possible “endings” for dark energy plot: 1 - Shepard convinces humanity to go along with the Reaper’s plan, allowing them to be harvested in an attempt to stop the dark energy 2 - Reapers are stopped, Shepard heavily invested in Cerberus ideas to salvage the reapers - humanity becomes the enemy of the rest of the galaxy 3a - Reapers destroyed, galaxy races join forces to investigate dark energy solution 3b - Reapers destroyed, status quo resumed until too late (probably something to do with having, or not having, influence over the council)
In the dark energy ending, the idea was that we were originally going to be given two choices: 1) sacrifice humanity and Earth to be harvested to solve the dark energy problem, because apparently humanity was biologically diverse enough to be what the Reapers were looking for. Or 2) Destroy the Reapers and take our chances with solving the dark energy problem with the rest of the races. This leaves the ending open-ended and neither of these choices leaves us with a stereotypical happy ending or even a blatantly tragic one, but one that is grey. It would've also made the title relevant; the whole overuse of biotics manipulating mass effect fields that cause dark energy to kill stars prematurely. Mass...Effect. My only gripe with this ending is how it makes humanity out to be this special race capable of the solution simply because they're inheritantly diverse enough, because it just feels like a tacked on trope and like it's obviously written by a human putting themselves up on a pedestal. However, it was an idea that never got fully realized so it makes sense that's it isn't fleshed out. And despite how vague it is, I still think it's more nuanced than the ending we got in regards to the whole 'synthetics x organics coexisting bad' argument from the Reapers. An argument that I thought was cliche, overdone, and had more holes than swiss cheese considering Shepard can _literally_ prove them wrong by brokering peace between the Geth and Quarians. The whole problem with the endings we got is that they don't reflect any of our choices we've made throughout the series
The other problem is that it made the Reapers effectively the Good Guys even though 1 and 2 were building the Reapers up to be the bad guys. The final decision also seems very black and white. I feel most would choose for humanity to survive and try to find a solution just cause of the fact the Reapers were unable to do so for Eons. At that point just have a singular ending.
@@fenrisvermundr2516 I wouldn't go as far as to say it makes the Reapers the good guys. They're still commiting galaxy-wide genocide on the slim chance that they can find a solution. But it certainly makes the antagonist more interesting. The best villains are the ones you can empathize with, the ones that align with the protagonist's goals, but you just don't agree with their actions or methods.
@@CelestialDraconis Still the fact it's Biotics causing it means we basically have to genocide at least every Asari and Biotic Krogan. For Humans, Turians, Quarians, Salarians, etc you can just manufacture implants that reduce possible impact. This honestly just feels like the plot of TNG episode Force of Nature where Warp travel was causing damage to sub-space and they had to limit Warp Speeds to minimize damage. The problem was solved within a few years.
I think if given enough time to flesh out the dark energy plot, it could be a pretty awesome plot line for the next game, but I'm worried that bioware is just going for the generic "good guy vs. Bad guy storyline again
@@molasorrosalom4846 We don't know exactly what would've happened. I'm grateful that Drew created such amazing sci-fi universe. But "nobody's perfect". He could just screw up everything. Or ended up with more plot holes than we already have. Who knows.
Bad guy isn't "bad" if he has got his motivation. Examples: Dr. Otto Octavius in Spiderman 2, General Zod in Man of Steel, and even the Illusive man himself. All these characters had their reason, not just standard "bad-doing-evil-things-because-why-not" trope villains.
You're assuming the Dark Energy plot had to be fully resolved to provide a good ending. We never really got a satisfactory motive for why the Reapers harvest advanced organic life, we got little more than "because it's what we do". It could have been an uncertain plot line trying to develop Dark Energy Weapons to win the war only late in the game to discover that's what's been slowly destroying the galaxy. Using these weapons would advance whatever catastrophic process so you'd be stuck with the dilemma of "risking our own doom to destroy the Reapers or being word or anyway". Different factions would have very different attitudes to this dilemma Using the dark energy weapons would win the war, but at a great cost. You'd advance whatever galaxy destroying event the Reapers were trying to prevent but that would be the set up for the next trilogy. The Reapers were working on it by advancing civilisations to the point they were ready to be harvested and using their collective scientific minds they'd harvested to help work away at it. But now that they're gone you've got to pick through the remnants of their dead civilisation
The way I saw it, if they had gone through with the Dark Energy plotline we would see that the Reapers are essentially "cleaning" the galaxy where as Andromeda didn't have such a luxury and as such the scourge is one of the effects of leaving Dark Energy rampart.
Didn't the Reapers create the Mass Relays to speed up the time between harvests ? Fine tuning the time line. If the Relays use dark Energy the Reapers were the ones who contributed to the rapid expansion of the universe...in the Dark Energy plot line..
Perhaps the Mass Relays' main purpose is to close the space between the far reaches of the galaxy, basically attempting to slow down the expansion. The teleportation aspect of it is just an additional benefit. It would explain why most organic species have such a hard time understanding Mass Relays, as they are looking at it from the perspective they are just meant to be used for transportation. The Reapers still use the Mass Relays to ensure that organic civilization will progress in a particular way so they could be something they could actually take on in combat, and also try to create an organic species that could be the solution to the big problem.
I think dark energy as a motive would have made the reapers more interesting. They would have been trying to solve a real problem, but not viewing anything they destroyed in the process with a care in the universe. Like humans suplimenting diets with meat, they see sentient species as nothing more than a resource to be exploited. Solving the dark energy problem isn't nessicary. Bioware obviously intended to continue the series so that could have been the hook into Mass Effect 4. However, this wouldn't have "fixed" the ending, because a lack of good concepts isn't what made the ending disappointing.
Yeah, the "big crunch" is only a problem for the Reapers, who are immortal, for the other species it's just a fact of life. The fact that everything has an end is even one of the main principles of Buddhism, a principle that Shepard will teach them the hard way.
@@arx3516 Judging from Tali's recruitment mission in ME2 it could very well be a problem for even Shepherd's generation. Especially since no galactic civilisation has advanced past where it is by ME1 and going further could 2x or 3x the use of dark energy and hasten the crunch
It think the dark energy plot could have worked great. Say you get down to using the Catalyst to destroy the Reapers, but learn that due to dark energy the galaxy/universe will be destroyed in several hundred years. If the Reapers can harvest humanity they would have enough know how to reverse the problem. So the ultimate choice would be let the Reapers win and doom humanity but save the universe. The Reapers would not need to harvest anymore and just retreat into dark space forever. Or you defeat the Reapers now, save humanity, but doom the universe. That would make for an incredible weighty decision to make that would have great meaning.
The big problem is coming up with the mechanism by which turning an organic into a goo takes care of anything. It was a stretch to use mushed up people as a building block for a reaper, let alone somehow deal with dark energy leakage. My "fuck it...just believe" button is only so big.
My problem with the ending for Mass Effect 3 wasn't the overall synthetics vs organics conflict, it was the execution. If fans got endings tailored to their choices and even got to live as Shepard/survivors for a mission or two AFTER in a *epilogue, the game would've been much better received.
Agreed; it seems that they traded high, underdeveloped concepts for detail and cohesion, which made the story much less interesting. But it makes sense given that Bioware was forced to rush and pump a game out; EA reasoned that it could make a profit anyway since the Mass Effect brand was already well built up.
Also, I respectfully disagree about the 'dark energy being a bad antagonist' point. Dark energy would not be the antagonist. The Reapers would still be the antagonist of this ending. Dark energy would be the motivation they use to justify genocide/harvesting. If it got fleshed out more, I think it could've been quite interesting. But I heard that the ending was initially leaked, which was why Bioware decided to change it last minute. Probably wasn't a good idea to not have a solid ending in mind much earlier so that they could build the trilogy's themes towards that, but oh well. ME3 was still a great game imo.
i think the dark energy plot could have been interesting if it played on a message. the reaper threat had to make people come to terms with their own mortality. the dark energy plotline could have maybe focused on the reapers coming to terms with theirs as well. idk idk something about how all life comes to an end or w/e
I just finished finished the playthrough of the Legendary Edition minutes before I found this video 🙂 I'm quite happy with the red ending. And I'm curious about the next Mass Effect game.
I get the feeling they might bring this plotline back for the next game. I imagine the game itself will take place many years into the future with Liara either as the lead or secondary like Anderson. We'll find out that this was still something the Reapers were working against and plot will involve using salvaged reaper tech to prevent disaster somehow while also dealing with the long term consequences of Sheppard's choices in the original trilogy. That's my hunch anyway.
I think the Dark energy plot could work because a similar dilemma happened in the series "Gurren Lagann" I'm not going go through all of it but basics are are in that universe there's a energy that's accelerating the death of the universe and the villains are the ones trying to prevent it by keeping all races that have that energy from reaching a threshold very similar to the Reapers in the dark energy plot. So it leaves Shepherd(and the player) with a very difficult choice destroy the Reapers and let the current races live potentially too the end of everything or let the Reapers continue allowing new life to rise for potentially forever it would've been a gut wrenching choice. Shepherd:"Just who the hell do you think I am!?"
There's another mention of Dark Energy in ME2. If Gianna Parasini is still alive from ME1 of Noveria and you helped her put Anoleis in jail and help her quickly with a vendor on Illium in ME2, you can talk with her and she mentions that some people are investigating or mentioning dark matter and why that has become a hot search topic as of late.
I really hope this is the plot that Mass Effect 4 returns to. I fucking love when science fiction does stuff like this: taking a real astrophysical concept and warping it to an insane degree. It’s why I like Mass Effect technology anyway! It’s a difficult - even maybe impossible - plot to realistically write because of how vague it is. But death and decay are inevitable and the heat death of the universe is just taking a personal concept of death and personifying it with big space ideas. Literally what Sci fi does. And I trust Mass Effect to discuss confronting something so inevitable
Honestly, I don't think this would have made the ending better. I think one of the major issues with the ending that people don't talk about (or at least I haven't seen it) is that *any* ending where we learn more about the reapers' goals/motivations was going to be inherently disappointing. The reapers' popularity was in no small part based on their mystery, their inscrutability. To learn that their motivations were so damned mundane, as well as based on the kind of flawed logic that only a computer could come up with, was always going to be viewed as disappointing by a large number of people. That's something that I don't see as changing if they had instead gone with the dark energy idea instead. Quite the opposite, it could have opened up a whole new can of worms, with questions like "well what about civilizations in other galaxies?" and "what about the reapers themselves using mass effect cores, or the fact that they're the ones that built the mass relays that they say are hastening the end of the universe?" and the like. Mysterious "big bads" work *because* of the mystery. Once that's gone, you end up with villains like Voldemort, whose motivation laughably ends up being "I'm afraid to die."
The biggest issue I have with this plot line is that, logistically, what the reapers are doing is pointless. If we assume, that every galaxy in the ME universe is like the Milky Way (abundant with life that uses dark energy), then purging one galaxy, (out of the billions in the universe mind you), every 50,000 years isn't going to do squat. Now this could be resolved if there were Reapers in other galaxies, but that's another can of worms
I definitely was disappointed that the dark energy plot didn't have much follow up after Tali's mission, however I don't really mind the endings we got. They're not ideal, but I'm fine with that. At least the first time around, to me it really felt like a very difficult decision to make, and I got quite emotional about it too. I think maybe the endings get more hate than they actually deserve.
Dark energy in Mass Effect Andromeda plays a subtle but significant role in the game, The Scourge is mysterious and powerful much like what we understand of Dark Energy today, it's responsible for ravaging planets to the point where they're barely livable, it rendered whole swathes of the Heleus cluster unpassable and all of this was just a byproduct of the Scourge's true purpose The Scourge is a weapon that specifically targets remnant technology Who could have the power to create such a devastating weapon? Why would they ever need to use it? It's mysteries like this that make me hope for another Mass Effect set in Andromeda
I think that was a pretty decent storyline. I would have liked that actually. It always pissed me off that made Tali turn down my invite and waste my time with that mission later only to ignore it lol
I don't think the force of nature argument is a particularly good one. Sometimes complex problems that can't be solved by shooting a bad guy in the face are more interesting. I think what would have been the biggest issue for the dark energy plot would have been the fact that the civs of the galaxy are only using mass effect technology because it's what the reapers wanted them to use, as per what Sovereign said. It would be like giving a tribe access to fossil fuel consumption technology and then killing them for using it to stop global warming. Counter intuitive at best, completely nonsensical at worst. All that said, might still be better than "We must kill all organics to save all organics" which is already both those things, sooo...
You pointed out that how would the player deal with the dark energy at the end of the game and I would like to point out that that issue is still in the current game. we have our three options to deal with the reapers but non of them solve the issue on why the reapers where created which was to find a solution to created synthetics killing off there organic creators. The dark energy idea just served as some background reason for the reapers actions that could be swapped out with some other reason like the synthetic vs organic reason we got in this case (which has a bunch of issues its self) so I feel like its wouldn't actually have changed the quality of what we got in the end. The ending of 3 wasn't bad because of bad story writing it was bad because the devs wherent given time to finish it and had to slap on some rushed ending. I remember hearing some stuff about a possible reaper queen thats been imprisond by the other reapers that you meet in the ending but with the same three choices which could have been a better ending given the devs had more time.
Wow the article i read years ago actually fleshed this out more then the actual developer. The key idea was that the harvesting was creating super computers to solve the issue. The character choice was to sacrifice humanity to likely save the galaxy or destroy the reapers and take our chances. Sounded like a classic scifi choice. Ive never heard the original source since then.
The only issue with that is the fact our meatware makes for remarkably inefficient supercomputing. Why even expend resources to harvest organics, create supercomputers, then stop the DE expansion, when they can cut to the chase and build a Matrioshka Brain?
I think the conflict with the Reapers on the Dark Energy issue could stem from their long lifespans and their fear of death. They view Dark Energy as an issue to be solved for their survival, yet for hummanity, the big crunch is something so far in the future that it would be equivilant to the sun going supernova. The Reapers want to solve the Big Crunch no matter what, and Humanity does not care in the slightest and neither do they want to die to help these monsters who are responsible for several galactic genocides. That's what the conflict could be if the plot decided to go down that path.
Reapers should have remained Lovecraftian abominations, Sovereign style. If a relatable antagonist was needed, Loghain-syle, Illusive Man could have been handled much better.
i remember a bit of speculation i read back when mass effect 2 came out that the Reapers were trying to solve the problem of entropy. Advanced civilisations accelerate entropy, which increases dark energy, which accelerates entropy. So the original reapers found a solution..store themselves in an energy efficient solid state form while working on the entropy problem. So they created the mass relays as a way to distribute the dark energy created by entropy, then converted themselves into virtual life forms. They didnt want to wipe out all life though. non-technological life is not highly entropic. They also wanted and needed the perspectives of new civilisations to help them solve the problem of entropy. So they then put the cycles into motion, waiting for dark energy increases to reach a certain level, harvesting the civilisations, storing them in virtual form and using the increased processing power to continue work on solving the entropy problem. These civilisations would still exist as virtual life forms within the processing matrix of the reapers.
Now that got me thinking with how you tied Andromeda into it. It would be actually amazing if they tied it to Andromeda. Shepard talks to the catalyst, catalyst mentions the scourge or dark energy, shepard makes a decision to help the reapers but in the benefit of the galaxy. Still having a choice but probably limit it to 2. Have the reapers work with the galaxy by allowing access to their knowledge or have the catalyst give all the knowledgeable to the citadel and deactivate the reapers. I give two as a way of making the reapers a war assets to future mass effects. gives leeway to 4 i assume. Andromeda comes out but plays a bit different. Its a new galaxy with the same people. Geth made more progress on studying Andromeda and have ftl info stations along the way. still encounter the scourge, but they try to give a warning to the milky way via the ftl stations but are intercepted along the way. They arrive to Andromeda to still make it hospitable fight kett and the scourge. But some geth units are present. They warn about how the Andromeda galaxy is being changed by an unknown alien race thats still unknown to the angara, using dark matter that was destabilized and spreading out of the galaxy in an alarming rate, sending flares out that even affects the milky way, such as the sun tali team was studying. You continue working with the geth along with the angara. The kett still plays a role and are still angaran, but are basically transformed angara due to the dark energy. I say this due to the angaran fondness to energy in general. Fast forwad to the cutscenes of ryder finding out more about the alien race, they find that the reapers made contact with Andromeda, and wanted to subjugate enough of the milky way to take over Andromeda and fight back the scourge. This leads to a possibility reaper invasion but not with the reapers encountered on the milky way. Reapers using older civilizations they subjugated. After they get a small glimpse about it, mass effect 4 takes place back in the milky way. And the games follow after takes place until they collided into one. "Ik its not perfect and probably got alot of plot holes, but this is a possible out come i think that could be used had they used the dark energy theory."
I think the crucible as weapon idea is sound just have your military might rating depend on who is destroyed and how much of the galaxy is damaged if the rating is low. Have control and synthesis as other choices (though I think control is a stupid one) or a refuse ending where it is possible to beat the Reapers through a maxed out military rating and depending on what you did throughout the trilogy such as: saving the Rachni making them swarm a reaper from the inside for example. I am shocked they didn't at least try this like they implied in their interviews where your choices depend on what ending you got.
I love how you show Cyperpunk 2077 while talking about hopefull ideas :D Actually what Drew Karpyshyn said is damn real. Seriously. Listen this story. In 2017 even before Cyberpunk 2077 first E3 trailer was shown my friend that had firends in CPD Red told me that all rumours about Red are true and if they show anything playable on E3 will be specially prepared closed section. I did now wanted to believe until first premiere delay. In the end he was right and well... I was too hopeful and bought pre-order xD
BioWare won’t change a plot that we have now. 99,9% that’s just impossible. But anyway I would be happy if the Mass Effect script was brought back to basics
Why didn't you mention the essay written by Conrad Verner on the subject? Its a minor thing but at least he did try to shed a light on it. Also dark energy could work if it was treated as a time bomb, in the background. The villain/s is trying to harness it for (insert plot reasons) and we have to stop that plus find a way to prevent the dark energy event. It would be hard to write it in such a way that it feels suspenseful while giving the player enough content on the side. Maybe Bioware didn't go this route because to much complexity.
6:31 I don’t know if this was intentional on your part, but it’s a bit ironic that your three hypothetical endings here are kind of pretty much exactly what ME3’s actual endings are 😂
The Reapers weren't exactly your standard cliche villains with clear motivation.That's why it made no sense that we got exactly blend cliche villains with stupid motivation. If they truly fleshed out the dark energy plot they would have made so much more sense than the original ending.
It's a similar conceit with what we got the whole "cosmic environmentalism" angle, one is conservation, the other is pollution. I personally wanted something more interesting and IMO why the endings didn't work is because the Reapers had no agency, they became much less interesting when the AI reveal itself, Ditto for TIM. Kapershyn hit the nail on head with respect to an idea, vs it's execution.
They were worried it was too out of left-field or disconnected from Shepard, but the horrifying implications of discovering technology, repeating mistakes, and finding new solutions to larger issues through cooperation were already big pieces of the games. From the opening credits we learn about the 'mass effect'- and even in 3 we are able to solve problems thought impossible. I'm not sure 'fans filling in the details' was exactly a fair observation. To some, it felt more natural a direction than the 'AI Problem' route they went.
i guess the dark energy theory i read back when MC3 came out was different then everyone els. i remember it being something like "the dark energy is going to end the universe and the reapers are actually 'saving' all the races by harvesting their bodies and DNA, they would keep doing this with every sentient race for as long as the universe kept going which wouldn't be much further past the human era and through some techno space magic when the universe collapsed and was reborn the reapers would somehow survive it and then remake all the races with their original memories and what not so the big choice at the end would be something like sacrifice all the races so they can be reborn in a new universe or kill the reapers and keep living in that universe for however long it has left"
The Dark Energy (DE) plotline would not have worked and I predict that it would have been even more controversial/hated than what we got if they had gone through with it. It had all the problems you mentioned like not being a good antagonist and another huge issue you didn‘t even consider: even if it wasn‘t the writer‘s intention, the DE plotline would assuredly have been seen as an allegory to fossil fuels and climate change. Consider: all the civilizations in the galaxy rely on DE (for space travel and biotics) and thereby destroy their environment (universe). After having been seen as an allegory, the ME3 story would immediately have been politicized and used as fuel in the culture wars. The right would have trashed it, called for boycotts and such and Mass Effect, instead of being a beloved trilogy with a disappointing ending would today probably be remembered only as “left-wing SJW propaganda”. So I‘m glad they didn‘t follow through on the DE plotline as I think it would have hurt the franchise, far worse than the current ending and Andromeda.
eh, heavily disagree about a dark energy ending resulting in that outcome, cause things like final fantasy vii exist, a game that is extremely blatant about it's anti-fossil fuel, pro-environment message and it's still one of the most beloved video games ever. also, at the time, the right was already complaining about mass effect 3 being "left-wing sjw propaganda" when it released, because of the large amount of gay romance options, so in the end, it wouldn't have been only remembered as that.
Dark plot would be better. Well, yeah, in my head, but this is actually not THAT hard to pull off: 1. Renegade/Paragon system would actually affect the game ending. For example: 1) Add a quest about dark energy and make it skippable with the renegade dialogue option. Something like "I don't have time to waste on something that isn't related to reapers. Everything is at stake so just concentrate on the mission". Paragon would be "sure thing. What we should do?" That simple quest will put you on two game routs: "war" rout or "seeker" rout. 2) Both routs would be like Mass Effect 3 (not endings) - search for resources, clues or war assets, but with the difference being that in "seeker" rout you'd be more concerned about scientific research. In both cases that "crucible" can be present. In "war" the reapers will be cincerned about it and will try to destroy it at some point, when in "seeker" they would contact you through some indoctrinated person. 2. Add some severely different endings to each rout. Let's even use "war assets" from ME 3. "War": 1) The crucible didn't work. United galaxy has fallen. All known races are saved in reaper form. The cycle continues. 2) The crucible did work. You've successfully destroyed the reapers. Great. Many generations later the gamaxy is dying due to the dark energy. 3) You tried to controll the reapers. It worked. You never was assimilited by sime plot device - it just worked. But when you searched/reviewed data files you've found out about dark energy problem. After years, maybe generations of research nobody never found the solution. Due to the lack of any solution reaper program has been restored. The cycle continues. "Seeker": 1) This would actually throw you off to the "war" rout. You couldn't even grasp the whole concept of "dark energy". Now all you can do is defend the galaxy against reaper threat minus all assets you've wasted in failing rout. Outcome is similar to "war ending 1". I'm too lazy to add more. Nobody will ever notice this comment anyway. 2) You've found out about dark energy problem. Your decision is: join reapers and try to accumulate solution or fight them with all knowledge you have. First one simply "put your hands down and wait to be harvested". Second - "war" rout with 1.5 resources. Best outcome is similar to "war ending 3". 3) You've found about the whole dark energy threat and reapers contacted you through indoctrinated person. You can: ask reapers to wait a few years so that you can give this problem a shot. If you succeed then cycle will stop. If not - let the cycle be, but without the bloodshed. In first one human is augmented with newer generation of implants. They try to extort dark energy via biotics of a star. Quarians analyse the process, asari help with overall control training, turians and others... Well, do something too. And your "war assets" are now "research assets". You travel across galaxy, stoping any conflicting yada yada yada. If you succeed you get the good ending. Like "synthesis" in ME 3 but with no bs galaxy orgy crap. If not - well, better luck next time.
This begs the question though, so what really happened to Haestroms Sun? and could it have some involvement to ME:4 as a way to adapt that part of the writing that already exists🤔
I always wondered where they were going with that plot thread and then yeah, completely disappeared. Like someone came along and removed every shred of evidence that it ever existed. Lol no in all seriousness, I didn't mind the basic organics vs synthetics story that we got, it was just poorly executed in the end, but the dark energy plot would have lended itself better to the idea that the Reapers motivations were unknowable. Honestly, as you touched on, how many times do we have to be let down by franchises that we're never fully fleshed out resulting in a mad dash, half assed scramble at the end only to come up with something incoherent. Also, I've never been a huge fan of open ended grey area endings. I think a lot of people desire resolution to their stories. I don't necessarily need a happy ending, but just something that completes a story. You can use other unresolved plot threads to make a sequel.
I just came up with a new possible ending / plotline: i always had an issue with the crucible being this all powerful weapon, what if the crucible was actually just a communication device, a network node. It allowed shepard or a user to interface with the collective consciousness of the reapers. The player would then bring up all their past choices and either succeed or fail in convincing the reapers that this cycle was unique and would prevail. The reapers would then either leave peacefully or continue to harvest. Everyone would be happy cos player decisions would actually matter.
this cycle is already different in many ways, the reason of reapers is that "synthetics and organics want to kill eachother" which is not true, even if you don't make quarian-geth peace, geth are helping the rest of galaxy, reapers and the crucible are just retarded and don't see that
I wish this concept was explored in ME3 or at least in a DLC it would have made the story soo much better, it could have been the catalyst, the definition of that word is a new element that constitutes a reaction or change in a subject when applied to said project
another thing to consider is that drew left bioware as mass effect 2 was lauching so if the dark enegery plot was used they would have needed to keep him and then overall mass effect 3 would have been more consistent with the rest of the games ending or not. on the sad part The darth bane trilogy would never have been made.
Even though they can't connect it to the Reapers any more, it would be something to at least look into in ME4 (or maybe make it a result of whatever the new Big Bad is doing)
Well. At least they somehow involved the dark energy plot in Andromeda in form of "The Scourge". And since Andromeda is going to somewhat merge with the trilogy, it's possible that the dark energy plot will be revived in the next Mass Effect.
I always wondered about the whole Dark Energy concept. Frequently mentioned but little talk. Conrad Verner had that Dissertation on Dark Matter as well. That odd mention but not explained. The description on the Dissertation emphasized a strong struggle of a pre-existing argument for sure.
Harvesting advanced species just to "feed" or maintain their supremacy was simple and effective, and pretty much laid out in the dialogue on Virmire. The mass relays being left to direct the evolution of sentient species in the direction the Reaper wants makes sense for it, and me3 answer broke logic (if you gatekeep organics from creating synths that would end them, why even HELP them in technological advances?)
IMO: This could have been a cool SUB-PLOT to the main story. I had actually expected that we'd have to sacrifice Earth via destroying the Sol Relay similar to Alpha Relay just this time it'd basically be the suicide mission of all suicide missions- i.e. all the fleets hold the Reapers back to also be obliterated. Would have been hella bleak but like, would have made a lot of sense that one of the only ways to stop all the Reapers is to take them out with the united fleets.
I think it would be more interesting to have the reapers be basically bug spray for some extremely intelligent beings. The the motive of these beings is more along the lines of" i don't like ants in my kitchen" At the end of mass effect 3 the bugs become resistant to the bug spray (you blow up the reapers) This prompts a random extremely intelligent being to say something along the lines of " i say! how interesting! i wonder how they would adapt if we try and some other things..."
I think they should've used the indoctrinated illusive man as a pathway to speak to harbinger. The illusiveman would go over everything you've done in all 3 games and decide whether to trust you or not. If your choices don't appeal to him you would try to convince him about his humanity. Maybe even devolving into a fight if he deemed you unworthy of talking to harbinger through him. It would validate your journey, up the stakes, and bring everything full circle
"Any ending would've been better and vague ideas give people hope they're better" now that I got it out the way, Bioware could still make the dark energy thing work, earth is wiped out, the reapers do their thing, Sheppard is MIA, ME4 starts with the fear of the return of the reapers, with the trailer in mind, Liara finds out Sheppard is alive somewhere, after finding him/her they find out about dark energy and what the reapers were doing. But again, it's a vague idea.
This dark energy ending would have had a huge plot hole - if element zero usage and mass effect fields was what was causing the universe to rip apart, why not just go around scooping up all eezo periodically so that no one would use it? Why create mass relays to herd spacefaring races into certain areas and harvest them? Wouldn’t allowing those races to use mass effect field technology before and during the harvest actually exacerbate the problem?
Im curious of a new experiment. You already showed us what happens if you dont complete any loyalty missions at all in me2 but you keep shephard and as many squadmates alive as possible, including getting the 3 Ship upgrades. But what happens if you do the exact opposite? You complete all loyalty missions and get everyones loyalty, but you skip the 3 Ship upgrades and choose horribly on all special assignments and let as many squadmates die as possible? How many squadmates will make it afterwards and will Shephard survive too?
I think it would have been better if in the end you found out, that what the Reapers are doing is actually the best thing that could be done in the interest of all life in the universe. Then your choice would have been to either ignore that and destroy the Reapers anyway and live with the consequences of the dying universe, or surrender to them and let the harvest continue. This also would have been a better point to connect it with later instalments.
It could be that the reapers are wrong about the big crunch. And shepherd finfs out the trith and the reapers dont believe him so they would still be the antagonist. It have to be more fleshed out but it ckuld go that way
I think the Dark Energy ending could of worked for some of the same reasons you Said it couldn’t. Firstly; you said it wouldn’t make a good antagonist. “It’s a force of nature, it cannot be reasoned with” But that’s precisely what would make it so terrifying. Unlike every other problem you can talk your way out of, you can’t with this. It’s completely indifferent to you. It doesn’t care about you, it doesn’t even know you exist but it will annihilate you and everyone you love just by virtue of what it is. The conflict doesn’t come from fighting dark energy itself, but from the conflicting ideals, mantras and groups you would have to fight *in order* to deal with it. There could be multiple ways of solving it. With various groups and factions advocating for different ones. Each one believing they are just as right, and you are just as wrong, as you believe about them. There could be some who view the coming end times as a prophecy and may wish to help it along. It could serve as a powerful commentary on how civilisation would react when faced with the end (the trilogy actually did this very well, there’s a lot of NPC interactions and terminal entires about various cults and civilisations committing global suicide that make the threat feel dynamic and real). Secondly; The ending wouldn’t have been Shepard pressing a button. I can’t remember where but BioWare talked about this. The ending would have been a choice between letting Humanity be harvested by the reapers so that they can save the universe, or destroying them, and risking trying to solve the Dark energy issue with the rest of the organic civilisations. I personally do feel that’s a better motive. If not for the fact that it’s less contradictory. The reapers killing organics to save organics is a bit of a paradox. I’m aware it’s a commentary on how an AI - which would think differently to us - would interpret it’s programming far different than the way our minds may. But I feel the dark energy ending was more compelling. That being said; I did enjoy the endings we got. The only thing I think they should have added, is a little epilogue cutscene for the Shepard lives ending, showing how Shepard and their Love Interest and friends lived after the war. We spent so much time crafting these relationships through the entire trilogy, and people - including myself - wanted to see the fruits of their labour. Shepard dying tied the endings in a neat bittersweet tragic little bow. But for those of us who wanted to get the ending where Shepard lives, we got a cliffhanger.
Dark Energy is probably a better motivation for the Reapers than the one we got. But there tons of possible motivations for the Reapers that would be better than what we got, and a better motivation alone doesn't create a good ending for the game. As you imply, the hard part of coming up with an ending for Mass Effect is coming up with a solution to the Reapers that's reasonably related to what comes before and which respects the agency of both Shepard-the-character and the player. And I agree with you that the Dark Energy plot doesn't seem like a good way to get that solution.
The biggest problem with this plot line would have been the whole thing with the Mass Relays and the Prothean artifacts left lying around. It would mean that the whole plot makes no sense. Because if it were an issue of overuse or misuse of dark energy and what not, the simple way to solve things would be to completely remove the relays and other mass effect tech from the equation and therefore force the races of the galaxy to actually develop their own unique tech for once instead of doing the same thing over and over. Then again, the Reapers harvesting organics is counterintuitive in the first place as far the whole organic and synths question goes. Though that does support the idea of their own programming being corrupted. Edit: After-all, what they are doing is essentially trying the same experiment over and over expecting a different result while at the same time throwing up interference in the experiment and therefore invalidating any possible way to get new results.
Its only a concept because its not represented by anything, that can be easily changed. That being said, i do agree that it only blew up big as it did because many people disliked the actual ending and that says a lot imo. The thing is that it could have been better but to be honest so could have the ending we got, they Bioware just messed up with resources and time allocation as they often do, having a story without a clear idea of where it goes is how we got the sequal star wars trilogy, luckily Bioware had some competent writers.
I think the Dark Energy ending that got scrapped would be very difficult to imagine Bioware pulling off, especially if they had not fully fleshed out how that could work out. The making-it-up-as-you-go approach to Storytelling can have some particularly devastating results if you don't have any clear plan on how it will all wrap up. Another RPG series that's very dear to me with similar problems is Kingdom Hearts. The difference, however, is that it seemed that BioWare had at least an idea on how the plot of each game in their trilogy was going to play out; it was simply the ending that got them stuck. With Kingdom Hearts, they just kept adding more and more details that were never even remotely hinted at in the past games until fans started speculating that not even Tetsuya Nomura knew what he was doing. For what its worth though, he seemed to have calmed down the convoluted storytelling significantly since the release of Dream Drop Distance, and now it's abundantly clear that there is a more coherent vision in the works. Getting back to Mass Effect, it's honestly amazing that the trilogy as a whole turned out as well as it did. Since Mass Effect 3 was an insanely rushed development, it could have very easily suffered from some buggy, unresponsive gameplay and suffered a severe lack of content. The one thing I was a bit upset about the game was that absolutely none of the Mass Effect 2 squadmates make a return in Mass Effect 3 with EDI being the only character introduced in said game to join as one. Some earlier promotional material seemed to suggest that plans to bring back characters like Mordin, Thane and Legion as squadmates were in the works, but were ultimately cut due to time constraints, and were instead killed off during the story. In hindsight, I honestly believe that Samara and Grunt could have easily been brought back into the fold as well had Bioware had an extra year to work on the game similar to Mass Effect 2 before it.
It is a big problem that good writers should be able to easily avoid. Write the end in the beginning, and then write a story that gets you to that end. If you do that, then you don't end up with a Mass Effect 3 debacle. Really the Reapers should have been like Galactus. For their survival they need to consume organics with advanced biotic capabilities (Galactus has to eat worlds)... for reasons. They must extinguish cycles because they know that eventually organics will figure out a way to defeat them, thus they risk extinction. A conflict of an apparently mutually exclusive nature for survival of one's own kind is sufficient motivation for both protagonist and antagonist to provide for a good narrative.
6:10 The enemy was the reapers and their agents, same as in the final version of ME3. Their reasoning and source of the conflict was the dark energy crisis. How the player solve the problem at the end of the game is for the writers to figure out. You're reasoning from the point of view of the story never being fleshed out. It doesn't mean it couldn't have.
The second video on the subject I’ve observed. Why are y’all concluding that. 1: The Dark Energy subplot must be solved in ME3 2: That it’s too difficult to internalize the threat of destruction via a force of nature instead of a clear antagonist. There’s a book series called the 3-body problem it’s world building starts off very close to Mass Effect but branches off considerably as more and more devastating and Universe Ending conflicts are introduced. Mass Effect could have done this as well, they could not solve the issue and the Galaxy must contend with the fact that they are doomed. The Dark Energy plot simply fits better within the Mass Effect lore that AI bad does. Not every Civilization uses AI in Lore in fact only the Quarrians ever made it to AI uprising and Humanity has only 1 known sentient AI. So making AI the Life Ending Threat just doesn’t fit. But every Civilization uses Mass Effect tying the End of Life to the core function of Space Civilization fits far better than AI bad. So it’s not that Dark Energy is Vague that gets people excited it’s that Dark Energy fits Mass Effect which gets people excited.
The Dark Energy/Dark Matter idea could have worked if they had time to flesh is out. Too bad that the usage of the concept was with Andromeda, because they could have done something similar. The expansion of the universe leads to the creation of Dark Energy which could materialize into Dark Matter, usage of Biotics and Mass Relays by Advanced Civilizations speeds up the process, but the Reapers have learned that wiping out said civilizations will allow the universe to "heal" over time, but each time they have to do it, it takes longer for the universe to restore itself. So the Reapers keep watch on Galactic Civilization in order to see if any of the races learn enough to actually start reversing the affects of the damage. There could be one person who does discover this...Dr. Conrad Verner. That would be a wild plot twist. His research and study of Dark Energy lead him to this conclusion before the events of Mass Effect, but like his dissertation, it was contested and argued over, which is what lead him to dropping academia and ending up a social recluse who eventually runs into Shepard on the Citadel. As for how this would be represented in gameplay, about the time the Reapers start preparing to harvest, some of the worlds start seeing the appearance of Dark Matter, which looks similar to the poisonous and dangerous material through out the worlds in Andromeda. And Conrad's research is actually the key in figuring out how to deal with it. The Protheans designed the Crucible to work with the Citadel to basically fully eradicate the problem, but only after they understood it was an issue, when it was too late for them to save their race. This is just a quick and very rough outline, but it could have worked in theory, it would need to be thought through and it is something that BioWare could have done if it wasn't for EA.
Honestly they didn't even need to give a real explanation to the reapers. An AI that goes rogue, or along those lines, and keeps evolving and improving upon itself over millions of years, harvesting sentients as a way to get even more perfect is already quite terrifying enough, and you can keep all the necessary mystery with just hints of what the original goal was, if there even was one, or if it even was an AI at all. Go down the eldritch road, do gown all the way. And with a machine/part machine/non aging species, when you add the scale of time, and in millions of years, the eldritch stage is easily reached.
It was kind of a missed opportunity since Dark Energy actually holds entire galaxy clusters together (as Baryonic mass alone isn't enough to do this.) Element Zero would then equal positrons in this equation. The original plot reminds me of a similar one in the IDW Transformers comics where one robot had the genius idea of concentrating all of the universe's energy into one single point, restart the universe and thus solve an energy crisis, even if it meant that everyone would kind of die. I'm not surprised Bioware didn't really want to go there.
I think the dark energy idea could have worked if the damage to the universe repair itself when the use of it stops. So the big reveal at the end Iis thar you have to choose between the current races surviving but harvesting the end of the universe, or you can let the reapers kill the advance races so the universe can heal and allow new races to flourish. Meanwhile the reapers harvest the races and thier technology into the reapers collective in thier own warped Ai perspective of it being better than complete eradication. You'd actually consider letting them do it at that point.
How do we solve the dark energy problem by the end of the game… maybe we don’t, maybe we can’t. This would also work for the base game too. Maybe at the end of the day the weapon itself is nothing more than a trap, the weapon wont work because the reapers have seen it before as they might see it again. Instead have having three choices that don’t mean anything you could have three that on the grand scale don’t mean anything but to you. When faced with utter defeat your choices could have been: 1) rage against the machine: fighting an ultimately useless last stand against unnumbered waves of enemies while your surviving party members die one by one until you too are finally slain. Maybe even if you reach a certain hidden wave number or enemies slain harbinger turns his weapon batteries on area you are himself. You might even get some grudging acknowledgment of respect from the eldritch creature. 2) breakout: you and your surviving teammates fight a desperate retreat back towards your boarding craft in some slim hope that you and the fleet can escape. Here if Shepard dies the game is over and the ending plays but if they do get to the end and reboard the Normandy you could a scene where the fleet attempts to break away but his met by more reaper reinforcements as the jaws of their trap snap shut and the fleet is cut to pieces. 3) accceptance: have Shepard take a seat in either defeat or acceptance that they really have lost, that there is no chance of victory or hope in a scene like Thanos in endgame. Have them grasp the hand of their love interest as they close their eyes and the screen goes white.
There could have been an interesting morally dilemma, if shepard finds out that the species of the milky way still have 100k years to live happily and to find a solution to the dark energy crisis if they destroy the reapers and just continue to harness the powers of dark energy. But then, without the reapers controlling their growth to some extent (and hiding the secrets of dark energy), they (the species of the milky way) develop rapidly and 300 years later in mass effect 4 we start to see the beginning of the end and someone decides to revive the reapers to find a real solution.
I actually think this is a better motivation for why the Reapers do what they do. Sheppard brokering an alliance between the Geth and the Quarians is already proof enough the Reapers are wrong. And I agree it wouldn't be possible to resolve the Dark Energy conflict, but perhaps the conflict should not be resolved. I think the Starchild should've said something like "we couldn't solve this problem, but after seeing how you united the galaxy, we are convinced that you deserve a chance to try". Sheppard's actions are so extraordinary, that it convinces the reapers that AIs didn't solve this problem because AIs can't solve this problem, but maybe people can, maybe people can come together, to work together... all it takes is a leader, and Sheppard is that leader. Then Sheppard would be given a choice to either let the Reapers go back to deep space, promising not to return, maybe to warn other galaxies of the real threat... or to destroy them.
You wanna know how the dark energy plotline could work? Check out Tengen Toppa Gurren-Lagann, with Spiral Energy ~= Dark Energy, Antispirals ~= Reapers As for how the protagonist solves this issue, (and this could be considered spoilers), he isn't involved in that part, because he figures that he's completely out of his depth and there's people far more qualified for that part. His part of the battle is against the Antispirals, who act as the villains of the story even though their goals are noble
I very much like this as the motivation for the Reapers, but I don't think that there should have been a solution to the dark energy problem. Some things you can only "solve" by accepting them. You cannot fix death. You cannot fix no longer being young. You cannot fix the hand you've been dealt in live. Attempting to fix these kinds of problems always leads to suffering for everyone involved. Which would have been the perfect ending dialogue for the series, Shepard arguing with a lovecraftian god like Harbinger about accepting the finitude of life. That would have even been on-theme with Mass Effect's theme of different cultures and species trying to understand and work with each other. I'd imagine that a paragon *or* renegade Shepard could perhaps have been able to persuade the Reapers to stop the cycle, kind of like they are able to make Saren see what he had become. With the catalyst being the ultimate leverage to make them listen to you for a goddamn minute. And the neutral option would of course have been to sacrifice yourself to destroy them.
Dark energy is referenced alot in the mass effect 2 codex. I like this plotline the most but the glaring problem with it is why would reapers develop the mass relays and guide organic technology since mass effect technology contributes to the big crunch???
Dark Energy doesn't work if the reapers are against it, it could however if it was the end goal of the reapers. Their final form, shedding their physical bodies. They just need the harvest so many civilisations to become powerful enough that they can do so, as we know each cycle ends with the birth of a Reaper.
I don't think the actual ending plot was bad, it was just badly implemented, resulting in too similar endings. If that choice came a little earlier so that there could be more gameplay before the final cutscenes, and if the endings were more elaborated and diverse, then it wouldn't have all the hate it had. In fact, even if the ending cutscenes were better written and a little longer to have proper closure on several arches and considering each players choices, it would have been better.
Dark energy ending would have been cool AF. With that plot you could: -Sacrifice the races to the reapers because they were right, and save the universe in a dozen cycles -Save everybody and destroy the reapers but see in the final cutscene the universe decaying faster and faster with citadel races expanding (maybe somebody would recreate the reapers, else the universe would die) -With enough paragon or renegade point you could convince/intimidate the reapers into cooperation (maybe they started systematically killing because the first races were unreasonably hostile to stopping expansion, or were contron maniacs like the illusive man in ME3) Hell, you could even have a first playthrough where you find many probes telling how the reapers are right, dismiss everything as indoctrination (as any sane person would do), and end up with the universe-death ending, having to replay with what you discovered in the previous run in mind to make better choices. Also war assets could be a measure of how many information you pass down to future cycles to warn them to let the reapers do their job, or how much resistence you put against them, or how many rescources you provide as an ally, each influencing their own ending. I dislike the actual endings SO MUCH MORE after hearing they scrapped this
I don't know about that, it sounds like you have even less choice than the established ending Atleast in the one we've got there are discussions, pros and cons, for each ending, nothing is perfect because nothing can be That plot line just sounds like 2 bad endings and 1 objectively good ending, which just means that anyone and everyone will be shoehorned into making that choice
With Drew Karpyshyn writing it, it would have worked - he's not one of those Ruin Johnson types who have to "subvert" (more like disapoint) expections, no matter the cost!
The dark energy plot also doesn't make a ton of sense with what the previous games set up regarding prothean technology. If the mass relays were causing the universe to gain entropy faster, why wouldn't the Reapers just nuke or disable the relays instead of leaving them for future civilizations to find?
I think they could have made it a side quest and if you had tali and legions loyalty then you get one step closer to saving shep and having more people. Have the dark energy be console the reapers then implode part of a system or something.
The Dark Energy ending would be better for the simple reason that it wouldn't take a subplot you already resolved and go "Ta-da! This was the REAL problem all along! Forget how the Geth never wanted to attack the Quarians, fought against them in self-defence, never launched a full-scale attack against organics until we encouraged them to, and are now happily at peace helping the Quarians rebuild Rannoch! Forget how EDI was always loyal to Shepard and their crew and is now in a romantic relationship with Joker! Forget how those are the only sentient AI that exist in the galaxy! Organics and AI can NEVER get along!" Additionally, remember one of Sovereign's coolest lines? One of two lines Legion specifically quotes in ME2? "Your civilization is based on the technology of the mass relays, our technology. By using it, your society develops along the paths we desire." That lines makes a lot of sense if there's a question the Reapers want to answer and need organic races to keep researching. Obviously they want each cycle to go down the same path, they need them to build on what the previous cycle discovered. Doesn't make sense when there's a situation the Reapers want to prevent from happening. "Well guys, the last 50 cycles we guided the organic civilizations along this path they developed advanced AI and tried to kill each other. But THIS TIME we'll guide their civilization down the exact same path and things will turn out differently! Why no, I've never heard of someone named "Einstein". Who is that?"
They were ripping off Gurren Lagann is what I would say if there wasn't the Leviathan DLC which affirms that they did intend for the reapers to be synthetics that once rebelled against their masters. That or they rewrote Leviathan because that also sounds possible
Never forget the time the fan base bullied Bioware for the ME3 ending by sending them dozens of cupcakes green, blue and red that all tasted the same.
Those were the days
Is... Is that how bullying works? I kinda wish I was bullied more if so.
@@AusSP well I call bullying the fact of pressuring an overworked team who crunched for months, pressured by out of touch ceos and shareholders to go into overtime and crunch time because the ending was rushed and utter garbage, thus accelerating the fall of Bioware studios by pushing people to quit because of the working conditions.
But that's just me.
Edit: oh and ME andromeda bad cause rushed and all that.
@@Egenix52 Doesn't help that they didn't even have the ME3 ending thought out until pretty late into the project. That seems like a pre-production thing to me.
Not that I know who made that decision.
@Egenix52 The developers weren't even allowed to eat them for fears of poisoning. :-( They were tossed as rubbish.
"It has no motivations and cannot be reasoned with" was exactly what the reapers were right up until the end of mass effect 3.
Yeah one of the things I was disappointed in was the direction they took the Reapers in. They went from this eldritch race of beings beyond mortal comprehension, to a bunch of glorified machines with flawed programming. Which I think ended up entirely undermining Sovereign's haunting monologue in ME1. It made it out to be like Sovereign was just shit-talking/trying to sound more threatening to Shepard.
*Sovereign:* We have no beginning, we have no end, we, are infinite.
*Leviathan:* Yeah, well, that was a straight up lie
Yeah they both can't be reasoned with.
The Reapers did have motivation. It was to harverst all organics plus keep the Cicle ongoing.
Except you could identify them, shoot them and if you tried really hard kill them. Now that is motivation for the protagonist.
Thing me no like, me shoot thing dead, is fun to kill thing ugh ugh lizard brain.
well your not reasoning with the reapers. your reasoning with the one who made them.
5:12 - the dark energy plot is mentioned on Illium as well. If you help Gianna Parasini (from ME1) she tells you her superiors want her to investigate Dark Energy as it may be something to worry about - can’t remember the exact quote but it’s in there
Edit: just thought of a few possible “endings” for dark energy plot:
1 - Shepard convinces humanity to go along with the Reaper’s plan, allowing them to be harvested in an attempt to stop the dark energy
2 - Reapers are stopped, Shepard heavily invested in Cerberus ideas to salvage the reapers - humanity becomes the enemy of the rest of the galaxy
3a - Reapers destroyed, galaxy races join forces to investigate dark energy solution
3b - Reapers destroyed, status quo resumed until too late (probably something to do with having, or not having, influence over the council)
I like this more than AI bad ending we got.
The dark energy problem doen't matter to mortal races. When the universe dies everyone will be dead already.
Thats so much better than what we got
In the dark energy ending, the idea was that we were originally going to be given two choices: 1) sacrifice humanity and Earth to be harvested to solve the dark energy problem, because apparently humanity was biologically diverse enough to be what the Reapers were looking for. Or 2) Destroy the Reapers and take our chances with solving the dark energy problem with the rest of the races. This leaves the ending open-ended and neither of these choices leaves us with a stereotypical happy ending or even a blatantly tragic one, but one that is grey. It would've also made the title relevant; the whole overuse of biotics manipulating mass effect fields that cause dark energy to kill stars prematurely. Mass...Effect.
My only gripe with this ending is how it makes humanity out to be this special race capable of the solution simply because they're inheritantly diverse enough, because it just feels like a tacked on trope and like it's obviously written by a human putting themselves up on a pedestal. However, it was an idea that never got fully realized so it makes sense that's it isn't fleshed out. And despite how vague it is, I still think it's more nuanced than the ending we got in regards to the whole 'synthetics x organics coexisting bad' argument from the Reapers. An argument that I thought was cliche, overdone, and had more holes than swiss cheese considering Shepard can _literally_ prove them wrong by brokering peace between the Geth and Quarians. The whole problem with the endings we got is that they don't reflect any of our choices we've made throughout the series
Well. In ME 2 Harbinger said that humans have the biggest potential of all races. Every other race was categorized as a fail.
The other problem is that it made the Reapers effectively the Good Guys even though 1 and 2 were building the Reapers up to be the bad guys.
The final decision also seems very black and white. I feel most would choose for humanity to survive and try to find a solution just cause of the fact the Reapers were unable to do so for Eons. At that point just have a singular ending.
@@fenrisvermundr2516 I wouldn't go as far as to say it makes the Reapers the good guys. They're still commiting galaxy-wide genocide on the slim chance that they can find a solution. But it certainly makes the antagonist more interesting. The best villains are the ones you can empathize with, the ones that align with the protagonist's goals, but you just don't agree with their actions or methods.
Yeah, we'd end up with more or less the same problem.
@@CelestialDraconis Still the fact it's Biotics causing it means we basically have to genocide at least every Asari and Biotic Krogan. For Humans, Turians, Quarians, Salarians, etc you can just manufacture implants that reduce possible impact. This honestly just feels like the plot of TNG episode Force of Nature where Warp travel was causing damage to sub-space and they had to limit Warp Speeds to minimize damage. The problem was solved within a few years.
I still would've liked to have seen the Dark Energy idea fleshed out. Drew Karpyshyn wrote the first two games, he should've been able to finish it.
He also wrote Revan, and the darth bane trilogy he’s a legend
I think if given enough time to flesh out the dark energy plot, it could be a pretty awesome plot line for the next game, but I'm worried that bioware is just going for the generic "good guy vs. Bad guy storyline again
Yeah true because most of the time it's against bad guys, but if it's something natural it will make the story more interesting.
If the main writer didn't leave or was he fired, it would have worked.
@@molasorrosalom4846 you do have a point
@@molasorrosalom4846 We don't know exactly what would've happened. I'm grateful that Drew created such amazing sci-fi universe. But "nobody's perfect". He could just screw up everything. Or ended up with more plot holes than we already have. Who knows.
Bad guy isn't "bad" if he has got his motivation. Examples: Dr. Otto Octavius in Spiderman 2, General Zod in Man of Steel, and even the Illusive man himself. All these characters had their reason, not just standard "bad-doing-evil-things-because-why-not" trope villains.
The fact that you overlayed Drew's monologue about how you should set reasonable expactations with CP2077 gameplay is just beautiful.
Tbf cp2077 was just an andromeda
You're assuming the Dark Energy plot had to be fully resolved to provide a good ending. We never really got a satisfactory motive for why the Reapers harvest advanced organic life, we got little more than "because it's what we do".
It could have been an uncertain plot line trying to develop Dark Energy Weapons to win the war only late in the game to discover that's what's been slowly destroying the galaxy. Using these weapons would advance whatever catastrophic process so you'd be stuck with the dilemma of "risking our own doom to destroy the Reapers or being word or anyway". Different factions would have very different attitudes to this dilemma
Using the dark energy weapons would win the war, but at a great cost. You'd advance whatever galaxy destroying event the Reapers were trying to prevent but that would be the set up for the next trilogy.
The Reapers were working on it by advancing civilisations to the point they were ready to be harvested and using their collective scientific minds they'd harvested to help work away at it. But now that they're gone you've got to pick through the remnants of their dead civilisation
The way I saw it, if they had gone through with the Dark Energy plotline we would see that the Reapers are essentially "cleaning" the galaxy where as Andromeda didn't have such a luxury and as such the scourge is one of the effects of leaving Dark Energy rampart.
Didn't the Reapers create the Mass Relays to speed up the time between harvests ? Fine tuning the time line. If the Relays use dark Energy the Reapers were the ones who contributed to the rapid expansion of the universe...in the Dark Energy plot line..
Perhaps the Mass Relays' main purpose is to close the space between the far reaches of the galaxy, basically attempting to slow down the expansion. The teleportation aspect of it is just an additional benefit. It would explain why most organic species have such a hard time understanding Mass Relays, as they are looking at it from the perspective they are just meant to be used for transportation.
The Reapers still use the Mass Relays to ensure that organic civilization will progress in a particular way so they could be something they could actually take on in combat, and also try to create an organic species that could be the solution to the big problem.
I think dark energy as a motive would have made the reapers more interesting. They would have been trying to solve a real problem, but not viewing anything they destroyed in the process with a care in the universe. Like humans suplimenting diets with meat, they see sentient species as nothing more than a resource to be exploited. Solving the dark energy problem isn't nessicary. Bioware obviously intended to continue the series so that could have been the hook into Mass Effect 4. However, this wouldn't have "fixed" the ending, because a lack of good concepts isn't what made the ending disappointing.
Yeah, the "big crunch" is only a problem for the Reapers, who are immortal, for the other species it's just a fact of life. The fact that everything has an end is even one of the main principles of Buddhism, a principle that Shepard will teach them the hard way.
The optimization for end of universe is such a typical crazy immortal AI motivation.
@@arx3516 Judging from Tali's recruitment mission in ME2 it could very well be a problem for even Shepherd's generation. Especially since no galactic civilisation has advanced past where it is by ME1 and going further could 2x or 3x the use of dark energy and hasten the crunch
It think the dark energy plot could have worked great. Say you get down to using the Catalyst to destroy the Reapers, but learn that due to dark energy the galaxy/universe will be destroyed in several hundred years. If the Reapers can harvest humanity they would have enough know how to reverse the problem. So the ultimate choice would be let the Reapers win and doom humanity but save the universe. The Reapers would not need to harvest anymore and just retreat into dark space forever. Or you defeat the Reapers now, save humanity, but doom the universe. That would make for an incredible weighty decision to make that would have great meaning.
The big problem is coming up with the mechanism by which turning an organic into a goo takes care of anything. It was a stretch to use mushed up people as a building block for a reaper, let alone somehow deal with dark energy leakage. My "fuck it...just believe" button is only so big.
My problem with the ending for Mass Effect 3 wasn't the overall synthetics vs organics conflict, it was the execution. If fans got endings tailored to their choices and even got to live as Shepard/survivors for a mission or two AFTER in a *epilogue, the game would've been much better received.
Epilogue is what happens after, Prologue is what happens before.
@@flamesofchaos13 Danke
Agreed; it seems that they traded high, underdeveloped concepts for detail and cohesion, which made the story much less interesting. But it makes sense given that Bioware was forced to rush and pump a game out; EA reasoned that it could make a profit anyway since the Mass Effect brand was already well built up.
I swear, ME1 has like 10,000 quests about biotic terrorists.
Makes sense that biotics would be a major aspect of the final ending.
Also, I respectfully disagree about the 'dark energy being a bad antagonist' point. Dark energy would not be the antagonist. The Reapers would still be the antagonist of this ending. Dark energy would be the motivation they use to justify genocide/harvesting. If it got fleshed out more, I think it could've been quite interesting. But I heard that the ending was initially leaked, which was why Bioware decided to change it last minute. Probably wasn't a good idea to not have a solid ending in mind much earlier so that they could build the trilogy's themes towards that, but oh well. ME3 was still a great game imo.
i think the dark energy plot could have been interesting if it played on a message. the reaper threat had to make people come to terms with their own mortality. the dark energy plotline could have maybe focused on the reapers coming to terms with theirs as well. idk idk something about how all life comes to an end or w/e
I just finished finished the playthrough of the Legendary Edition minutes before I found this video 🙂
I'm quite happy with the red ending. And I'm curious about the next Mass Effect game.
Ah i see a fellow man of culture....
I get the feeling they might bring this plotline back for the next game. I imagine the game itself will take place many years into the future with Liara either as the lead or secondary like Anderson. We'll find out that this was still something the Reapers were working against and plot will involve using salvaged reaper tech to prevent disaster somehow while also dealing with the long term consequences of Sheppard's choices in the original trilogy. That's my hunch anyway.
I think the Dark energy plot could work because a similar dilemma happened in the series "Gurren Lagann" I'm not going go through all of it but basics are are in that universe there's a energy that's accelerating the death of the universe and the villains are the ones trying to prevent it by keeping all races that have that energy from reaching a threshold very similar to the Reapers in the dark energy plot.
So it leaves Shepherd(and the player) with a very difficult choice destroy the Reapers and let the current races live potentially too the end of everything or let the Reapers continue allowing new life to rise for potentially forever it would've been a gut wrenching choice.
Shepherd:"Just who the hell do you think I am!?"
There's another mention of Dark Energy in ME2. If Gianna Parasini is still alive from ME1 of Noveria and you helped her put Anoleis in jail and help her quickly with a vendor on Illium in ME2, you can talk with her and she mentions that some people are investigating or mentioning dark matter and why that has become a hot search topic as of late.
I really hope this is the plot that Mass Effect 4 returns to. I fucking love when science fiction does stuff like this: taking a real astrophysical concept and warping it to an insane degree. It’s why I like Mass Effect technology anyway!
It’s a difficult - even maybe impossible - plot to realistically write because of how vague it is. But death and decay are inevitable and the heat death of the universe is just taking a personal concept of death and personifying it with big space ideas. Literally what Sci fi does.
And I trust Mass Effect to discuss confronting something so inevitable
Honestly, I don't think this would have made the ending better. I think one of the major issues with the ending that people don't talk about (or at least I haven't seen it) is that *any* ending where we learn more about the reapers' goals/motivations was going to be inherently disappointing. The reapers' popularity was in no small part based on their mystery, their inscrutability. To learn that their motivations were so damned mundane, as well as based on the kind of flawed logic that only a computer could come up with, was always going to be viewed as disappointing by a large number of people. That's something that I don't see as changing if they had instead gone with the dark energy idea instead. Quite the opposite, it could have opened up a whole new can of worms, with questions like "well what about civilizations in other galaxies?" and "what about the reapers themselves using mass effect cores, or the fact that they're the ones that built the mass relays that they say are hastening the end of the universe?" and the like.
Mysterious "big bads" work *because* of the mystery. Once that's gone, you end up with villains like Voldemort, whose motivation laughably ends up being "I'm afraid to die."
Should have mentioned that the manipulation of that dark energy is what's literally called the "mass effect"
The biggest issue I have with this plot line is that, logistically, what the reapers are doing is pointless. If we assume, that every galaxy in the ME universe is like the Milky Way (abundant with life that uses dark energy), then purging one galaxy, (out of the billions in the universe mind you), every 50,000 years isn't going to do squat.
Now this could be resolved if there were Reapers in other galaxies, but that's another can of worms
I definitely was disappointed that the dark energy plot didn't have much follow up after Tali's mission, however I don't really mind the endings we got. They're not ideal, but I'm fine with that. At least the first time around, to me it really felt like a very difficult decision to make, and I got quite emotional about it too. I think maybe the endings get more hate than they actually deserve.
Dark energy in Mass Effect Andromeda plays a subtle but significant role in the game,
The Scourge is mysterious and powerful much like what we understand of Dark Energy today, it's responsible for ravaging planets to the point where they're barely livable, it rendered whole swathes of the Heleus cluster unpassable and all of this was just a byproduct of the Scourge's true purpose
The Scourge is a weapon that specifically targets remnant technology
Who could have the power to create such a devastating weapon?
Why would they ever need to use it?
It's mysteries like this that make me hope for another Mass Effect set in Andromeda
I think that was a pretty decent storyline. I would have liked that actually. It always pissed me off that made Tali turn down my invite and waste my time with that mission later only to ignore it lol
Even at its raw stage the Dark Energy plot already seems much more sound than the "organics vs synthetics" bullshit we got.
I don't think the force of nature argument is a particularly good one. Sometimes complex problems that can't be solved by shooting a bad guy in the face are more interesting. I think what would have been the biggest issue for the dark energy plot would have been the fact that the civs of the galaxy are only using mass effect technology because it's what the reapers wanted them to use, as per what Sovereign said. It would be like giving a tribe access to fossil fuel consumption technology and then killing them for using it to stop global warming. Counter intuitive at best, completely nonsensical at worst. All that said, might still be better than "We must kill all organics to save all organics" which is already both those things, sooo...
You pointed out that how would the player deal with the dark energy at the end of the game and I would like to point out that that issue is still in the current game. we have our three options to deal with the reapers but non of them solve the issue on why the reapers where created which was to find a solution to created synthetics killing off there organic creators. The dark energy idea just served as some background reason for the reapers actions that could be swapped out with some other reason like the synthetic vs organic reason we got in this case (which has a bunch of issues its self) so I feel like its wouldn't actually have changed the quality of what we got in the end. The ending of 3 wasn't bad because of bad story writing it was bad because the devs wherent given time to finish it and had to slap on some rushed ending. I remember hearing some stuff about a possible reaper queen thats been imprisond by the other reapers that you meet in the ending but with the same three choices which could have been a better ending given the devs had more time.
Wow the article i read years ago actually fleshed this out more then the actual developer. The key idea was that the harvesting was creating super computers to solve the issue. The character choice was to sacrifice humanity to likely save the galaxy or destroy the reapers and take our chances. Sounded like a classic scifi choice. Ive never heard the original source since then.
The only issue with that is the fact our meatware makes for remarkably inefficient supercomputing. Why even expend resources to harvest organics, create supercomputers, then stop the DE expansion, when they can cut to the chase and build a Matrioshka Brain?
I think the conflict with the Reapers on the Dark Energy issue could stem from their long lifespans and their fear of death. They view Dark Energy as an issue to be solved for their survival, yet for hummanity, the big crunch is something so far in the future that it would be equivilant to the sun going supernova. The Reapers want to solve the Big Crunch no matter what, and Humanity does not care in the slightest and neither do they want to die to help these monsters who are responsible for several galactic genocides. That's what the conflict could be if the plot decided to go down that path.
Reapers should have remained Lovecraftian abominations, Sovereign style. If a relatable antagonist was needed, Loghain-syle, Illusive Man could have been handled much better.
i remember a bit of speculation i read back when mass effect 2 came out that the Reapers were trying to solve the problem of entropy. Advanced civilisations accelerate entropy, which increases dark energy, which accelerates entropy. So the original reapers found a solution..store themselves in an energy efficient solid state form while working on the entropy problem. So they created the mass relays as a way to distribute the dark energy created by entropy, then converted themselves into virtual life forms.
They didnt want to wipe out all life though. non-technological life is not highly entropic. They also wanted and needed the perspectives of new civilisations to help them solve the problem of entropy.
So they then put the cycles into motion, waiting for dark energy increases to reach a certain level, harvesting the civilisations, storing them in virtual form and using the increased processing power to continue work on solving the entropy problem. These civilisations would still exist as virtual life forms within the processing matrix of the reapers.
This has to be what ME4 is about
Now that got me thinking with how you tied Andromeda into it. It would be actually amazing if they tied it to Andromeda. Shepard talks to the catalyst, catalyst mentions the scourge or dark energy, shepard makes a decision to help the reapers but in the benefit of the galaxy. Still having a choice but probably limit it to 2. Have the reapers work with the galaxy by allowing access to their knowledge or have the catalyst give all the knowledgeable to the citadel and deactivate the reapers. I give two as a way of making the reapers a war assets to future mass effects. gives leeway to 4 i assume. Andromeda comes out but plays a bit different. Its a new galaxy with the same people. Geth made more progress on studying Andromeda and have ftl info stations along the way. still encounter the scourge, but they try to give a warning to the milky way via the ftl stations but are intercepted along the way. They arrive to Andromeda to still make it hospitable fight kett and the scourge. But some geth units are present. They warn about how the Andromeda galaxy is being changed by an unknown alien race thats still unknown to the angara, using dark matter that was destabilized and spreading out of the galaxy in an alarming rate, sending flares out that even affects the milky way, such as the sun tali team was studying. You continue working with the geth along with the angara. The kett still plays a role and are still angaran, but are basically transformed angara due to the dark energy. I say this due to the angaran fondness to energy in general. Fast forwad to the cutscenes of ryder finding out more about the alien race, they find that the reapers made contact with Andromeda, and wanted to subjugate enough of the milky way to take over Andromeda and fight back the scourge. This leads to a possibility reaper invasion but not with the reapers encountered on the milky way. Reapers using older civilizations they subjugated. After they get a small glimpse about it, mass effect 4 takes place back in the milky way. And the games follow after takes place until they collided into one.
"Ik its not perfect and probably got alot of plot holes, but this is a possible out come i think that could be used had they used the dark energy theory."
Well, that was interesting. Way more feets on the ground that the lunacy of the "star brat" in the end.
I think the crucible as weapon idea is sound just have your military might rating depend on who is destroyed and how much of the galaxy is damaged if the rating is low. Have control and synthesis as other choices (though I think control is a stupid one) or a refuse ending where it is possible to beat the Reapers through a maxed out military rating and depending on what you did throughout the trilogy such as: saving the Rachni making them swarm a reaper from the inside for example. I am shocked they didn't at least try this like they implied in their interviews where your choices depend on what ending you got.
I love how you show Cyperpunk 2077 while talking about hopefull ideas :D Actually what Drew Karpyshyn said is damn real. Seriously. Listen this story. In 2017 even before Cyberpunk 2077 first E3 trailer was shown my friend that had firends in CPD Red told me that all rumours about Red are true and if they show anything playable on E3 will be specially prepared closed section. I did now wanted to believe until first premiere delay. In the end he was right and well... I was too hopeful and bought pre-order xD
They traded a cool more original concept for a generic overdone one. SMH
BioWare won’t change a plot that we have now. 99,9% that’s just impossible. But anyway I would be happy if the Mass Effect script was brought back to basics
Why didn't you mention the essay written by Conrad Verner on the subject? Its a minor thing but at least he did try to shed a light on it.
Also dark energy could work if it was treated as a time bomb, in the background. The villain/s is trying to harness it for (insert plot reasons) and we have to stop that plus find a way to prevent the dark energy event. It would be hard to write it in such a way that it feels suspenseful while giving the player enough content on the side. Maybe Bioware didn't go this route because to much complexity.
6:31
I don’t know if this was intentional on your part, but it’s a bit ironic that your three hypothetical endings here are kind of pretty much exactly what ME3’s actual endings are 😂
The Reapers weren't exactly your standard cliche villains with clear motivation.That's why it made no sense that we got exactly blend cliche villains with stupid motivation. If they truly fleshed out the dark energy plot they would have made so much more sense than the original ending.
It's a similar conceit with what we got the whole "cosmic environmentalism" angle, one is conservation, the other is pollution.
I personally wanted something more interesting and IMO why the endings didn't work is because the Reapers had no agency, they became much less interesting when the AI reveal itself, Ditto for TIM.
Kapershyn hit the nail on head with respect to an idea, vs it's execution.
Do a video about the vorcha . I know so little about them
Yeah true a video on the vorchw would be good because they are so vague in the mass effect trilogy.
They were worried it was too out of left-field or disconnected from Shepard, but the horrifying implications of discovering technology, repeating mistakes, and finding new solutions to larger issues through cooperation were already big pieces of the games. From the opening credits we learn about the 'mass effect'- and even in 3 we are able to solve problems thought impossible. I'm not sure 'fans filling in the details' was exactly a fair observation. To some, it felt more natural a direction than the 'AI Problem' route they went.
i guess the dark energy theory i read back when MC3 came out was different then everyone els. i remember it being something like "the dark energy is going to end the universe and the reapers are actually 'saving' all the races by harvesting their bodies and DNA, they would keep doing this with every sentient race for as long as the universe kept going which wouldn't be much further past the human era and through some techno space magic when the universe collapsed and was reborn the reapers would somehow survive it and then remake all the races with their original memories and what not so the big choice at the end would be something like sacrifice all the races so they can be reborn in a new universe or kill the reapers and keep living in that universe for however long it has left"
The Dark Energy (DE) plotline would not have worked and I predict that it would have been even more controversial/hated than what we got if they had gone through with it. It had all the problems you mentioned like not being a good antagonist and another huge issue you didn‘t even consider: even if it wasn‘t the writer‘s intention, the DE plotline would assuredly have been seen as an allegory to fossil fuels and climate change. Consider: all the civilizations in the galaxy rely on DE (for space travel and biotics) and thereby destroy their environment (universe). After having been seen as an allegory, the ME3 story would immediately have been politicized and used as fuel in the culture wars. The right would have trashed it, called for boycotts and such and Mass Effect, instead of being a beloved trilogy with a disappointing ending would today probably be remembered only as “left-wing SJW propaganda”. So I‘m glad they didn‘t follow through on the DE plotline as I think it would have hurt the franchise, far worse than the current ending and Andromeda.
eh, heavily disagree about a dark energy ending resulting in that outcome, cause things like final fantasy vii exist, a game that is extremely blatant about it's anti-fossil fuel, pro-environment message and it's still one of the most beloved video games ever. also, at the time, the right was already complaining about mass effect 3 being "left-wing sjw propaganda" when it released, because of the large amount of gay romance options, so in the end, it wouldn't have been only remembered as that.
I think the dark energy theory could work but not as antagonist, rather as a force being used by the next enemy to destroy/assimilate the galaxy
Dark plot would be better. Well, yeah, in my head, but this is actually not THAT hard to pull off:
1. Renegade/Paragon system would actually affect the game ending. For example:
1) Add a quest about dark energy and make it skippable with the renegade dialogue option. Something like "I don't have time to waste on something that isn't related to reapers. Everything is at stake so just concentrate on the mission". Paragon would be "sure thing. What we should do?" That simple quest will put you on two game routs: "war" rout or "seeker" rout.
2) Both routs would be like Mass Effect 3 (not endings) - search for resources, clues or war assets, but with the difference being that in "seeker" rout you'd be more concerned about scientific research. In both cases that "crucible" can be present. In "war" the reapers will be cincerned about it and will try to destroy it at some point, when in "seeker" they would contact you through some indoctrinated person.
2. Add some severely different endings to each rout. Let's even use "war assets" from ME 3.
"War":
1) The crucible didn't work. United galaxy has fallen. All known races are saved in reaper form. The cycle continues.
2) The crucible did work. You've successfully destroyed the reapers. Great. Many generations later the gamaxy is dying due to the dark energy.
3) You tried to controll the reapers. It worked. You never was assimilited by sime plot device - it just worked. But when you searched/reviewed data files you've found out about dark energy problem. After years, maybe generations of research nobody never found the solution. Due to the lack of any solution reaper program has been restored. The cycle continues.
"Seeker":
1) This would actually throw you off to the "war" rout. You couldn't even grasp the whole concept of "dark energy". Now all you can do is defend the galaxy against reaper threat minus all assets you've wasted in failing rout. Outcome is similar to "war ending 1". I'm too lazy to add more. Nobody will ever notice this comment anyway.
2) You've found out about dark energy problem. Your decision is: join reapers and try to accumulate solution or fight them with all knowledge you have. First one simply "put your hands down and wait to be harvested". Second - "war" rout with 1.5 resources. Best outcome is similar to "war ending 3".
3) You've found about the whole dark energy threat and reapers contacted you through indoctrinated person. You can: ask reapers to wait a few years so that you can give this problem a shot. If you succeed then cycle will stop. If not - let the cycle be, but without the bloodshed. In first one human is augmented with newer generation of implants. They try to extort dark energy via biotics of a star. Quarians analyse the process, asari help with overall control training, turians and others... Well, do something too. And your "war assets" are now "research assets". You travel across galaxy, stoping any conflicting yada yada yada. If you succeed you get the good ending. Like "synthesis" in ME 3 but with no bs galaxy orgy crap. If not - well, better luck next time.
This begs the question though, so what really happened to Haestroms Sun? and could it have some involvement to ME:4 as a way to adapt that part of the writing that already exists🤔
Awesome. You should do a review of the MEHEM Mod.
This is what I came here to say. The first mod I ever downloaded for a Bioware game; I was that traumatized.
@@christineherrmann205 By the mod?
imagine doing tali's recruitment mission without the cain
I always wondered where they were going with that plot thread and then yeah, completely disappeared. Like someone came along and removed every shred of evidence that it ever existed.
Lol no in all seriousness, I didn't mind the basic organics vs synthetics story that we got, it was just poorly executed in the end, but the dark energy plot would have lended itself better to the idea that the Reapers motivations were unknowable.
Honestly, as you touched on, how many times do we have to be let down by franchises that we're never fully fleshed out resulting in a mad dash, half assed scramble at the end only to come up with something incoherent.
Also, I've never been a huge fan of open ended grey area endings. I think a lot of people desire resolution to their stories. I don't necessarily need a happy ending, but just something that completes a story. You can use other unresolved plot threads to make a sequel.
I just came up with a new possible ending / plotline: i always had an issue with the crucible being this all powerful weapon, what if the crucible was actually just a communication device, a network node. It allowed shepard or a user to interface with the collective consciousness of the reapers. The player would then bring up all their past choices and either succeed or fail in convincing the reapers that this cycle was unique and would prevail. The reapers would then either leave peacefully or continue to harvest. Everyone would be happy cos player decisions would actually matter.
this cycle is already different in many ways, the reason of reapers is that "synthetics and organics want to kill eachother" which is not true, even if you don't make quarian-geth peace, geth are helping the rest of galaxy, reapers and the crucible are just retarded and don't see that
I wish this concept was explored in ME3 or at least in a DLC it would have made the story soo much better, it could have been the catalyst, the definition of that word is a new element that constitutes a reaction or change in a subject when applied to said project
another thing to consider is that drew left bioware as mass effect 2 was lauching so if the dark enegery plot was used they would have needed to keep him and then overall mass effect 3 would have been more consistent with the rest of the games ending or not. on the sad part The darth bane trilogy would never have been made.
"I will destroy Spira! I will save it!" - Reapers probably
Even though they can't connect it to the Reapers any more, it would be something to at least look into in ME4 (or maybe make it a result of whatever the new Big Bad is doing)
Your probably won't ever see this but thank you for the videos you make. The mass effect ones. I always smile when I see them. Keep going👍
Well. At least they somehow involved the dark energy plot in Andromeda in form of "The Scourge". And since Andromeda is going to somewhat merge with the trilogy, it's possible that the dark energy plot will be revived in the next Mass Effect.
I always wondered about the whole Dark Energy concept. Frequently mentioned but little talk. Conrad Verner had that Dissertation on Dark Matter as well. That odd mention but not explained. The description on the Dissertation emphasized a strong struggle of a pre-existing argument for sure.
Harvesting advanced species just to "feed" or maintain their supremacy was simple and effective, and pretty much laid out in the dialogue on Virmire. The mass relays being left to direct the evolution of sentient species in the direction the Reaper wants makes sense for it, and me3 answer broke logic (if you gatekeep organics from creating synths that would end them, why even HELP them in technological advances?)
IMO: This could have been a cool SUB-PLOT to the main story. I had actually expected that we'd have to sacrifice Earth via destroying the Sol Relay similar to Alpha Relay just this time it'd basically be the suicide mission of all suicide missions- i.e. all the fleets hold the Reapers back to also be obliterated. Would have been hella bleak but like, would have made a lot of sense that one of the only ways to stop all the Reapers is to take them out with the united fleets.
I think it would be more interesting to have the reapers be basically bug spray for some extremely intelligent beings. The the motive of these beings is more along the lines of" i don't like ants in my kitchen"
At the end of mass effect 3 the bugs become resistant to the bug spray (you blow up the reapers)
This prompts a random extremely intelligent being to say something along the lines of " i say! how interesting! i wonder how they would adapt if we try and some other things..."
I think they should've used the indoctrinated illusive man as a pathway to speak to harbinger. The illusiveman would go over everything you've done in all 3 games and decide whether to trust you or not. If your choices don't appeal to him you would try to convince him about his humanity. Maybe even devolving into a fight if he deemed you unworthy of talking to harbinger through him. It would validate your journey, up the stakes, and bring everything full circle
"Any ending would've been better and vague ideas give people hope they're better" now that I got it out the way, Bioware could still make the dark energy thing work, earth is wiped out, the reapers do their thing, Sheppard is MIA, ME4 starts with the fear of the return of the reapers, with the trailer in mind, Liara finds out Sheppard is alive somewhere, after finding him/her they find out about dark energy and what the reapers were doing.
But again, it's a vague idea.
This dark energy ending would have had a huge plot hole - if element zero usage and mass effect fields was what was causing the universe to rip apart, why not just go around scooping up all eezo periodically so that no one would use it? Why create mass relays to herd spacefaring races into certain areas and harvest them? Wouldn’t allowing those races to use mass effect field technology before and during the harvest actually exacerbate the problem?
Im curious of a new experiment. You already showed us what happens if you dont complete any loyalty missions at all in me2 but you keep shephard and as many squadmates alive as possible, including getting the 3 Ship upgrades. But what happens if you do the exact opposite? You complete all loyalty missions and get everyones loyalty, but you skip the 3 Ship upgrades and choose horribly on all special assignments and let as many squadmates die as possible? How many squadmates will make it afterwards and will Shephard survive too?
I think it would have been better if in the end you found out, that what the Reapers are doing is actually the best thing that could be done in the interest of all life in the universe. Then your choice would have been to either ignore that and destroy the Reapers anyway and live with the consequences of the dying universe, or surrender to them and let the harvest continue. This also would have been a better point to connect it with later instalments.
It could be that the reapers are wrong about the big crunch. And shepherd finfs out the trith and the reapers dont believe him so they would still be the antagonist. It have to be more fleshed out but it ckuld go that way
I think the Dark Energy ending could of worked for some of the same reasons you
Said it couldn’t.
Firstly; you said it wouldn’t make a good antagonist.
“It’s a force of nature, it cannot be reasoned with”
But that’s precisely what would make it so terrifying. Unlike every other problem you can talk your way out of, you can’t with this. It’s completely indifferent to you. It doesn’t care about you, it doesn’t even know you exist but it will annihilate you and everyone you love just by virtue of what it is.
The conflict doesn’t come from fighting dark energy itself, but from the conflicting ideals, mantras and groups you would have to fight *in order* to deal with it.
There could be multiple ways of solving it. With various groups and factions advocating for different ones. Each one believing they are just as right, and you are just as wrong, as you believe about them.
There could be some who view the coming end times as a prophecy and may wish to help it along.
It could serve as a powerful commentary on how civilisation would react when faced with the end (the trilogy actually did this very well, there’s a lot of NPC interactions and terminal entires about various cults and civilisations committing global suicide that make the threat feel dynamic and real).
Secondly; The ending wouldn’t have been Shepard pressing a button. I can’t remember where but BioWare talked about this.
The ending would have been a choice between letting Humanity be harvested by the reapers so that they can save the universe, or destroying them, and risking trying to solve the Dark energy issue with the rest of the organic civilisations.
I personally do feel that’s a better motive. If not for the fact that it’s less contradictory. The reapers killing organics to save organics is a bit of a paradox.
I’m aware it’s a commentary on how an AI - which would think differently to us - would interpret it’s programming far different than the way our minds may.
But I feel the dark energy ending was more compelling.
That being said; I did enjoy the endings we got. The only thing I think they should have added, is a little epilogue cutscene for the Shepard lives ending, showing how Shepard and their Love Interest and friends lived after the war.
We spent so much time crafting these relationships through the entire trilogy, and people - including myself - wanted to see the fruits of their labour.
Shepard dying tied the endings in a neat bittersweet tragic little bow.
But for those of us who wanted to get the ending where Shepard lives, we got a cliffhanger.
Dark Energy is probably a better motivation for the Reapers than the one we got. But there tons of possible motivations for the Reapers that would be better than what we got, and a better motivation alone doesn't create a good ending for the game. As you imply, the hard part of coming up with an ending for Mass Effect is coming up with a solution to the Reapers that's reasonably related to what comes before and which respects the agency of both Shepard-the-character and the player. And I agree with you that the Dark Energy plot doesn't seem like a good way to get that solution.
The biggest problem with this plot line would have been the whole thing with the Mass Relays and the Prothean artifacts left lying around.
It would mean that the whole plot makes no sense. Because if it were an issue of overuse or misuse of dark energy and what not, the simple way to solve things would be to completely remove the relays and other mass effect tech from the equation and therefore force the races of the galaxy to actually develop their own unique tech for once instead of doing the same thing over and over.
Then again, the Reapers harvesting organics is counterintuitive in the first place as far the whole organic and synths question goes. Though that does support the idea of their own programming being corrupted.
Edit: After-all, what they are doing is essentially trying the same experiment over and over expecting a different result while at the same time throwing up interference in the experiment and therefore invalidating any possible way to get new results.
Its only a concept because its not represented by anything, that can be easily changed. That being said, i do agree that it only blew up big as it did because many people disliked the actual ending and that says a lot imo. The thing is that it could have been better but to be honest so could have the ending we got, they Bioware just messed up with resources and time allocation as they often do, having a story without a clear idea of where it goes is how we got the sequal star wars trilogy, luckily Bioware had some competent writers.
I think the Dark Energy ending that got scrapped would be very difficult to imagine Bioware pulling off, especially if they had not fully fleshed out how that could work out. The making-it-up-as-you-go approach to Storytelling can have some particularly devastating results if you don't have any clear plan on how it will all wrap up. Another RPG series that's very dear to me with similar problems is Kingdom Hearts. The difference, however, is that it seemed that BioWare had at least an idea on how the plot of each game in their trilogy was going to play out; it was simply the ending that got them stuck. With Kingdom Hearts, they just kept adding more and more details that were never even remotely hinted at in the past games until fans started speculating that not even Tetsuya Nomura knew what he was doing. For what its worth though, he seemed to have calmed down the convoluted storytelling significantly since the release of Dream Drop Distance, and now it's abundantly clear that there is a more coherent vision in the works.
Getting back to Mass Effect, it's honestly amazing that the trilogy as a whole turned out as well as it did. Since Mass Effect 3 was an insanely rushed development, it could have very easily suffered from some buggy, unresponsive gameplay and suffered a severe lack of content. The one thing I was a bit upset about the game was that absolutely none of the Mass Effect 2 squadmates make a return in Mass Effect 3 with EDI being the only character introduced in said game to join as one. Some earlier promotional material seemed to suggest that plans to bring back characters like Mordin, Thane and Legion as squadmates were in the works, but were ultimately cut due to time constraints, and were instead killed off during the story. In hindsight, I honestly believe that Samara and Grunt could have easily been brought back into the fold as well had Bioware had an extra year to work on the game similar to Mass Effect 2 before it.
It is a big problem that good writers should be able to easily avoid. Write the end in the beginning, and then write a story that gets you to that end. If you do that, then you don't end up with a Mass Effect 3 debacle.
Really the Reapers should have been like Galactus. For their survival they need to consume organics with advanced biotic capabilities (Galactus has to eat worlds)... for reasons. They must extinguish cycles because they know that eventually organics will figure out a way to defeat them, thus they risk extinction. A conflict of an apparently mutually exclusive nature for survival of one's own kind is sufficient motivation for both protagonist and antagonist to provide for a good narrative.
6:10 The enemy was the reapers and their agents, same as in the final version of ME3. Their reasoning and source of the conflict was the dark energy crisis. How the player solve the problem at the end of the game is for the writers to figure out. You're reasoning from the point of view of the story never being fleshed out. It doesn't mean it couldn't have.
The second video on the subject I’ve observed.
Why are y’all concluding that.
1: The Dark Energy subplot must be solved in ME3
2: That it’s too difficult to internalize the threat of destruction via a force of nature instead of a clear antagonist.
There’s a book series called the 3-body problem it’s world building starts off very close to Mass Effect but branches off considerably as more and more devastating and Universe Ending conflicts are introduced.
Mass Effect could have done this as well, they could not solve the issue and the Galaxy must contend with the fact that they are doomed.
The Dark Energy plot simply fits better within the Mass Effect lore that AI bad does.
Not every Civilization uses AI in Lore in fact only the Quarrians ever made it to AI uprising and Humanity has only 1 known sentient AI. So making AI the Life Ending Threat just doesn’t fit.
But every Civilization uses Mass Effect tying the End of Life to the core function of Space Civilization fits far better than AI bad.
So it’s not that Dark Energy is Vague that gets people excited it’s that Dark Energy fits Mass Effect which gets people excited.
The Dark Energy/Dark Matter idea could have worked if they had time to flesh is out. Too bad that the usage of the concept was with Andromeda, because they could have done something similar. The expansion of the universe leads to the creation of Dark Energy which could materialize into Dark Matter, usage of Biotics and Mass Relays by Advanced Civilizations speeds up the process, but the Reapers have learned that wiping out said civilizations will allow the universe to "heal" over time, but each time they have to do it, it takes longer for the universe to restore itself. So the Reapers keep watch on Galactic Civilization in order to see if any of the races learn enough to actually start reversing the affects of the damage. There could be one person who does discover this...Dr. Conrad Verner. That would be a wild plot twist. His research and study of Dark Energy lead him to this conclusion before the events of Mass Effect, but like his dissertation, it was contested and argued over, which is what lead him to dropping academia and ending up a social recluse who eventually runs into Shepard on the Citadel.
As for how this would be represented in gameplay, about the time the Reapers start preparing to harvest, some of the worlds start seeing the appearance of Dark Matter, which looks similar to the poisonous and dangerous material through out the worlds in Andromeda. And Conrad's research is actually the key in figuring out how to deal with it. The Protheans designed the Crucible to work with the Citadel to basically fully eradicate the problem, but only after they understood it was an issue, when it was too late for them to save their race.
This is just a quick and very rough outline, but it could have worked in theory, it would need to be thought through and it is something that BioWare could have done if it wasn't for EA.
Honestly they didn't even need to give a real explanation to the reapers.
An AI that goes rogue, or along those lines, and keeps evolving and improving upon itself over millions of years, harvesting sentients as a way to get even more perfect is already quite terrifying enough, and you can keep all the necessary mystery with just hints of what the original goal was, if there even was one, or if it even was an AI at all.
Go down the eldritch road, do gown all the way. And with a machine/part machine/non aging species, when you add the scale of time, and in millions of years, the eldritch stage is easily reached.
It was kind of a missed opportunity since Dark Energy actually holds entire galaxy clusters together (as Baryonic mass alone isn't enough to do this.) Element Zero would then equal positrons in this equation. The original plot reminds me of a similar one in the IDW Transformers comics where one robot had the genius idea of concentrating all of the universe's energy into one single point, restart the universe and thus solve an energy crisis, even if it meant that everyone would kind of die. I'm not surprised Bioware didn't really want to go there.
I think the dark energy idea could have worked if the damage to the universe repair itself when the use of it stops. So the big reveal at the end Iis thar you have to choose between the current races surviving but harvesting the end of the universe, or you can let the reapers kill the advance races so the universe can heal and allow new races to flourish. Meanwhile the reapers harvest the races and thier technology into the reapers collective in thier own warped Ai perspective of it being better than complete eradication. You'd actually consider letting them do it at that point.
How do we solve the dark energy problem by the end of the game… maybe we don’t, maybe we can’t. This would also work for the base game too. Maybe at the end of the day the weapon itself is nothing more than a trap, the weapon wont work because the reapers have seen it before as they might see it again.
Instead have having three choices that don’t mean anything you could have three that on the grand scale don’t mean anything but to you. When faced with utter defeat your choices could have been:
1) rage against the machine: fighting an ultimately useless last stand against unnumbered waves of enemies while your surviving party members die one by one until you too are finally slain. Maybe even if you reach a certain hidden wave number or enemies slain harbinger turns his weapon batteries on area you are himself. You might even get some grudging acknowledgment of respect from the eldritch creature.
2) breakout: you and your surviving teammates fight a desperate retreat back towards your boarding craft in some slim hope that you and the fleet can escape. Here if Shepard dies the game is over and the ending plays but if they do get to the end and reboard the Normandy you could a scene where the fleet attempts to break away but his met by more reaper reinforcements as the jaws of their trap snap shut and the fleet is cut to pieces.
3) accceptance: have Shepard take a seat in either defeat or acceptance that they really have lost, that there is no chance of victory or hope in a scene like Thanos in endgame. Have them grasp the hand of their love interest as they close their eyes and the screen goes white.
There could have been an interesting morally dilemma, if shepard finds out that the species of the milky way still have 100k years to live happily and to find a solution to the dark energy crisis if they destroy the reapers and just continue to harness the powers of dark energy.
But then, without the reapers controlling their growth to some extent (and hiding the secrets of dark energy), they (the species of the milky way) develop rapidly and 300 years later in mass effect 4 we start to see the beginning of the end and someone decides to revive the reapers to find a real solution.
I actually think this is a better motivation for why the Reapers do what they do.
Sheppard brokering an alliance between the Geth and the Quarians is already proof enough the Reapers are wrong.
And I agree it wouldn't be possible to resolve the Dark Energy conflict, but perhaps the conflict should not be resolved.
I think the Starchild should've said something like "we couldn't solve this problem, but after seeing how you united the galaxy, we are convinced that you deserve a chance to try". Sheppard's actions are so extraordinary, that it convinces the reapers that AIs didn't solve this problem because AIs can't solve this problem, but maybe people can, maybe people can come together, to work together... all it takes is a leader, and Sheppard is that leader.
Then Sheppard would be given a choice to either let the Reapers go back to deep space, promising not to return, maybe to warn other galaxies of the real threat... or to destroy them.
You wanna know how the dark energy plotline could work? Check out Tengen Toppa Gurren-Lagann, with Spiral Energy ~= Dark Energy, Antispirals ~= Reapers
As for how the protagonist solves this issue, (and this could be considered spoilers), he isn't involved in that part, because he figures that he's completely out of his depth and there's people far more qualified for that part. His part of the battle is against the Antispirals, who act as the villains of the story even though their goals are noble
I very much like this as the motivation for the Reapers, but I don't think that there should have been a solution to the dark energy problem.
Some things you can only "solve" by accepting them. You cannot fix death. You cannot fix no longer being young. You cannot fix the hand you've been dealt in live. Attempting to fix these kinds of problems always leads to suffering for everyone involved.
Which would have been the perfect ending dialogue for the series, Shepard arguing with a lovecraftian god like Harbinger about accepting the finitude of life. That would have even been on-theme with Mass Effect's theme of different cultures and species trying to understand and work with each other.
I'd imagine that a paragon *or* renegade Shepard could perhaps have been able to persuade the Reapers to stop the cycle, kind of like they are able to make Saren see what he had become. With the catalyst being the ultimate leverage to make them listen to you for a goddamn minute. And the neutral option would of course have been to sacrifice yourself to destroy them.
Dark energy is referenced alot in the mass effect 2 codex. I like this plotline the most but the glaring problem with it is why would reapers develop the mass relays and guide organic technology since mass effect technology contributes to the big crunch???
In ME2 if you talk to Giana Parassini on Illium she’ll mention that people are all of a sudden interested in Dark Energy
Dark Energy doesn't work if the reapers are against it, it could however if it was the end goal of the reapers. Their final form, shedding their physical bodies. They just need the harvest so many civilisations to become powerful enough that they can do so, as we know each cycle ends with the birth of a Reaper.
I don't think the actual ending plot was bad, it was just badly implemented, resulting in too similar endings. If that choice came a little earlier so that there could be more gameplay before the final cutscenes, and if the endings were more elaborated and diverse, then it wouldn't have all the hate it had. In fact, even if the ending cutscenes were better written and a little longer to have proper closure on several arches and considering each players choices, it would have been better.
Dark energy ending would have been cool AF. With that plot you could:
-Sacrifice the races to the reapers because they were right, and save the universe in a dozen cycles
-Save everybody and destroy the reapers but see in the final cutscene the universe decaying faster and faster with citadel races expanding (maybe somebody would recreate the reapers, else the universe would die)
-With enough paragon or renegade point you could convince/intimidate the reapers into cooperation (maybe they started systematically killing because the first races were unreasonably hostile to stopping expansion, or were contron maniacs like the illusive man in ME3)
Hell, you could even have a first playthrough where you find many probes telling how the reapers are right, dismiss everything as indoctrination (as any sane person would do), and end up with the universe-death ending, having to replay with what you discovered in the previous run in mind to make better choices. Also war assets could be a measure of how many information you pass down to future cycles to warn them to let the reapers do their job, or how much resistence you put against them, or how many rescources you provide as an ally, each influencing their own ending.
I dislike the actual endings SO MUCH MORE after hearing they scrapped this
I don't know about that, it sounds like you have even less choice than the established ending
Atleast in the one we've got there are discussions, pros and cons, for each ending, nothing is perfect because nothing can be
That plot line just sounds like 2 bad endings and 1 objectively good ending, which just means that anyone and everyone will be shoehorned into making that choice
With Drew Karpyshyn writing it, it would have worked - he's not one of those Ruin Johnson types who have to "subvert" (more like disapoint) expections, no matter the cost!
Baffling they scrapped this without a plan for the ending. It sounds much better
The dark energy plot also doesn't make a ton of sense with what the previous games set up regarding prothean technology. If the mass relays were causing the universe to gain entropy faster, why wouldn't the Reapers just nuke or disable the relays instead of leaving them for future civilizations to find?
I think they could have made it a side quest and if you had tali and legions loyalty then you get one step closer to saving shep and having more people. Have the dark energy be console the reapers then implode part of a system or something.
The Dark Energy ending would be better for the simple reason that it wouldn't take a subplot you already resolved and go "Ta-da! This was the REAL problem all along! Forget how the Geth never wanted to attack the Quarians, fought against them in self-defence, never launched a full-scale attack against organics until we encouraged them to, and are now happily at peace helping the Quarians rebuild Rannoch! Forget how EDI was always loyal to Shepard and their crew and is now in a romantic relationship with Joker! Forget how those are the only sentient AI that exist in the galaxy! Organics and AI can NEVER get along!"
Additionally, remember one of Sovereign's coolest lines? One of two lines Legion specifically quotes in ME2? "Your civilization is based on the technology of the mass relays, our technology. By using it, your society develops along the paths we desire." That lines makes a lot of sense if there's a question the Reapers want to answer and need organic races to keep researching. Obviously they want each cycle to go down the same path, they need them to build on what the previous cycle discovered. Doesn't make sense when there's a situation the Reapers want to prevent from happening. "Well guys, the last 50 cycles we guided the organic civilizations along this path they developed advanced AI and tried to kill each other. But THIS TIME we'll guide their civilization down the exact same path and things will turn out differently! Why no, I've never heard of someone named "Einstein". Who is that?"
They were ripping off Gurren Lagann is what I would say if there wasn't the Leviathan DLC which affirms that they did intend for the reapers to be synthetics that once rebelled against their masters. That or they rewrote Leviathan because that also sounds possible