ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 18 ก.ค. 2023
- This video essay explores the themes of Cosmic Horror present throughout the Mass Effect Trilogy, and how it does so in a complete and fulfilling manner.
Indoctrination Theory Documentary
• Mass Effect 3 - The In...
Big Dan Gaming Indoctrination Video
• Mass Effect 3's Mind B...
Green Footage
• Mass Effect 3: Extende...
FluffyNinjaLlama Footage
• Mass Effect 3: Extende... - เกม
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Ah yes, "Reapers". The immortal race of sentient starships allegedly waiting in dark space. We have dismissed that claim.
Don't forget the quotey hands.
I've always seen Mass Effect as a Cosmic Horror game. But at the same time, I am not generally a fan of cosmic horror, or at least how it is normally done.
I Love Mass Effect for a very simple reason. We get to fight Against the Cosmic Horror and potentially win. Its not a case of an easy victory, no victory against cosmic horror ever should be, but the fact that it is hard, near impossible, with roadblocks at every junction, that every fight both on the field and off you have to make tough choices and Never give in to the creeping nihilism and hopelessness that threatens to swallow everything. That if you just keep going and never give in, you might just prevail.
Its not a guarantee by any means, it may be fundamentally near impossible, but that barest sliver of a chance? That is what I love. And that is what Mass Effect delivered for me.
I love how the ME3 Leviathan DLC is pure cosmic horror at it's finnest
They (the Reapers) begin as a rumor, something that existed 50000 years ago. Then you start to see how they destroyed an entire species that controlled the galaxy. And then you encounter the collectors that are indoctrinated by them. And you delay an invasion (Arrival dlc). You realize they are creeping closer and closer. And then they are here in the beginning of ME3. The Reapers are real.
I thought you were going to go with the low EMS "SO BE IT" ending, where in the end nothing mattered and succeeded.
I only came to the series recently so I wasn't subject to the disappointment people had about the start of the third game. It made perfect sense to me. But also, the victories up until that point gave the galaxy a fighting chance: the Reapers' plans A, B, C and D had failed.
I think part of the issue for the ending if ME3 is that Mass Effect has been both a Cosmic Horror story and a Space Opera. It did a good job weaving the two ideas together for the first two entries, but as ME3 came around they really struggled to stick the landing. Given the issues they had with the original Dark Energy plotline I could see that they werent sure how to make an ending which satisfied both narrative threads.
I think they should have stuck with the dark energy plot. It at least tied with all the other plot threads they had set up in two. From tali's research to the human reaper. The new ending just makes them feel displaced and unnecessary.
One of the horror moments that really sunk its hooks into me was the start of Mass Effect 3. Earth gets invaded and all that, big spectacle, yadda yadda, but it was the first time I took a good look at a Cannibal and realized, holy shit, that's a Batarian. That entire species was wiped out, consumed, repurposed, and now the Reapers are parading around their corpses to do their bidding and destroy the other races. If I don't stop them, that husk is going to be me, and that Marauder over there is going to be Garrus. I got a pit in my stomach the likes of which I haven't felt since.
Excellent commentary and lore dive! Mass Effect is one of the few series that does justice to it's inspiration.
My last play through was the Low EMS run, but I chose destroy. It's so sad seeing your LI vaporized before your eyes, especially after seeing most of my friends die getting to that point. Poor Shepard lost everyone. She was a colonist and sole survivor, then assembled a new family on the Normandy, and lost them too. I'm her final minutes she decided to inflict as much damage on the enemy as she could, not entirely trusting that it would end them, but doing it anyway. But the sacrifices she endured to get there, and the bleak, empty feeling knowing so many more had to die in the aftermath... I was upset for days after.
Mass Effect is pure cosmic horror, with some action thrown in. And you really ge to see the horror side of it when you play the most realistic version of it, Low EMS. I hate that ending, but I'm glad it's there.
And oddly enough I like the Control ending the best out of them all, but I can't do it if everyone Shepard cares for dies in the playthrough. It hits the emotional beats better for me than the others, and Shep sacrificing themselves to protect their teammates and lover is so damn heroic. They become the horror to save those they love.
The entertaining thing about Sovereign's speech is that he doesn't even realize that HE has been indoctrinated; by the Citadel AI. None of the Reapers realize they have no will that isn't the AI's will.
Let's not forget that the hardest difficulty setting is called "Insanity".
I am become Reaper, the destroyer of Organics.
Cool
I have a theory now for some time that the strongest race during "the harvest" becomes a New reaper and its mind is the "strongest" reaper agent at that time they wanted to use saren but shepard was stronger so they tried to use him/her but failed
You're on point. It was also said in the Indoctrination Codex that a Reaper indoctrinates a well-placed political or military leader, it leads to resulting disasters that could bring down nations. Stuff like that terrifies me, but it also intrigues me just thinking about it.
As a Lovecraft fan, I recognized his influence on the Mass Effect series. And I applaud the writers for getting the cosmic horror theme right. It's one big reason I enjoy the series. I have always struggled with the Starchild ending because most of the ending options runs counter to the entire theme of the story, namely, that you cannot outrun/outgun/overcome the horrors that are the Reapers. Though I have yet to play this ending (because it makes me sick to my stomach to contemplate), it seems to be the most logical outcome to this story. Most Lovecraftian protagonists either die, go mad, or become the horror they feared. Stands to reason Shepard would wind up the same.
Excellent commentary!
Sick to the stomach = just what this guy is looking for
@@drakefs_Try dangerous sports. Nothing sates my craving for the sick at the stomach feeling like certain situations in dangerous sports. Provided you survive of course. Lovecraftian horror= existential dread= fear of dying. In my arrogant/ignorant opinion.
@@blairhaffly1777 You mean like... literal sports?
@@drakefs_ Yeah. Rock climbing, catching biggish waves, free sparring. Excellent relatively controllable ways to get massive infusions of that coveted sick at the stomach feeling. I'm a long time connoisseur.
I feel the endings can still work with the Cosmic Horror aspect.
Destroy: Sure, you can destroy us. But will you be able to destroy what comes after?
Control: Shepard _becomes_ the Cosmic Horror. While Low EMS-Renegade works best, the same can be applied to all Variations of this ending.
Synthesis: Everything in the galaxy is now merged with the Cosmic Horror.
That Introduction, that *felt* different. It's all Black, then, Sovereign's Speech comes in, with a summary of Cosmic Horror following it.
The end, that I feel forced to do it, like Cosmic Horror. I just started a new playthourgh, and it's a Renegade one. I use a ton of mods, I'm planning to change my mod list for this one so...
"I'm Sorry."
ME3 is really gonna test me.
All my hours of watching analog horror finally paid off
@@drakefs_what do you know about the situation of Uighurs in China and who is responsible for the invasion of Ukraine? And who you from country?
@@eneidekhtoia4111ципсобот, ты?
I agree the Reapers are a fine embodiment of cosmic horror, built up through the trilogy. This is most exceptional in the first game through the dialog we have with Sovereign on Virmire. The horror of their influence is probably most haunting in ME2, inside the dead reaper and listening to the recordings of the research team... how frail our perceptions of reality are.
At least up until near the end when Bioware *undermines* the very theme of cosmic horror, something that's supposed to be undefinable.... by giving the Reapers of an origin confined to the reality of galaxy. I mean being an AI creation from a long past civilization, beings who were themselves while vastly powerful, still rooted in natural and organic reality. An AI given boundaries and now limited in scope, simply trying to carry out its instruction from its creator.... albeit done in a laughably illogical manner that got memed to hell and back.
I mean look back to that first conversation on Virmire and how it CHALLENGES our sense of reality; We think of all machines as creations of organics, the mechs and the Geth. But the way Sovereign speaks of something older than LITERALLY ANYTHING ELSE IN THE UNIVERSE, that a synthetic race PRECEDED all known life, ourselves, the Protheans, and who knows just HOW many species and civilizations before them??
From their perspective, all organic life is the intruder into THEIR DOMAIN. This really had me questioning, If they're older than anything we know of, if they were really the first/original intelligence in the galaxy, does that make them the true authority, no matter how uncomfortable that makes us feel? Is our concept to our existence and place in the universe *insignificant* in the face of something who's existence is on a scale we can't even begin to define?
I think the Reapers were better left as an AMBIGUOUS threat, that we didn't need some clear definable "rules of engagement" in conventional warfare, not confined by motives we can relate to, motives that we can't challenge if we can't truly comprehend them to begin with.
very nice! i agree with you--however i think me3 suffered by not committing to either being a space opera or a cosmic horror. it couldn't decide on what exactly it wanted to be, so the ending got muddled.
I think it's also important to consider one very major influence on mass effect, the tv show babylon 5. babylon 5 had a similar alien cosmic horror story, but the cosmic horror elements were a backdrop to the space opera forefront. b5 solved its cosmic horror problem via philosophical discussion and big guns. it also helped in b5 that their cosmic horrors, the shadows, had a pretty solid motivation/goal/morality, whereas the reapers' goals remain kind of murky and confusing. that's not necessarily bad for a cosmic horror, but me also has that space opera desire to explore non-supernatural aspects of reality.
I love the series and I really think it epitomises cosmic horror. Thinking about the plot, it starts discovering the mystery of what happened on Eden prime. Following this you discover the beacon which depicts death and destruction. The myth of the reapers begins. You start discovering they committed genocide on a galactic scale and have been for millions of years. The protheans, regarded as far more technologically advanced didn't even stand a chance. Some even regard the protheans as gods! Then discover they are returning and will destroy all intelligent life in the galaxy.
It is something to see well in perspective for this game, as now starting Mass Effect Fan I've now come to realized this. Now I'll look with a good perspective of this now Space Opera/Cosmic Horror Sci-fi Action series that Is Mass Effect, I also need to utilize Biotics more often.
Try the Adept in ME3. You are exploding everything with combo blasts. Ton of fun.
FIRST, gonna watch this at work. You are working so hard and making so many videos I’m tryna finish ur ME2 AI series still wtffff lol
#nolifegang
Today I learned you can see James and liara get killed at the end.
This was really cool take. Nicely done. Thank you and the algorithm for this recommendation 😊
Honestly while that is a good way to explain that ending I still think the refuse ending is the most cosmic horror, Shepard resigns himself from any of the options put in front of him, he wants to end it on his terms, and the full might of the reapers takes its toll and the races of the galaxy just become another in the long list of cycles. It proves the reapers right, that the cycles continue and that they are inevitable.
The Ending on his terms doesn't necessarily invoke the same horror for me. Being forced to decide on the Reaper's terms is more fitting imo
@@drakefs_ that's fair, I just find the thought of doing nothing and resigning your entire civilization to the fate of the monsters is freaky for me, I mean what isn't shown by that option is the decades conflict that would ensue until the final breath of that cycle is snuffed out, as Javik explained happened to his cycle. Brother against brother kind of stuff as more and more people are twisted into Kronenberg type monsters.
We only see less than a year's worth of conflict in ME3, and the refuse ending jumps from the crucible straight to Liara's module. That's a lot of time and destruction to pass over.
We are kept in the dark about the horrors that befell everyone that gave their final stand, every person hunted and killed...
That to me is the most horrifying fate, the isolation of the last pockets of life in the galaxy, fending for themselves. There's a lot of horror that is implied throughout the trilogy and not shown.
Just my two cents though.
The Indoctrination Theory holds a decent amount of weight with me. There's enough going on in the general atmosphere of the game that the compilations of evidence for it make a good case. There are definitely some moments that seem as if they are in a dream and not quite in the game's reality. Either way though, I love the series.
Wow bro. Excellent video - I never played the games but I'm familiar with the mythology. I think you've inspired me to go back and play them.
Lack of experience with games in terms of Cosmic Horror but the Reapers in Mass Effect were definitely memorable and a horrific threat. Only played the Trilogy for the first time 7 months ago. Wished the leviathan dlc was just a "rouge" Reaper not the creators, kinda ruined the questions of where they came from out the window.
Prey (2017) I thought did Cosmic horror quite well, wondering if you ever played that?
Old Gods,Outer Gods like Illyria besides the Reapers...as for the endings shep would of chosen the red ending as for choice of the player i picked the green ending ( everyone lives together in harmony including the reapers with only one sacrifice..
I wish they embraced the indoctrination theory for the synthesis and control ending. I also wish they embraced to the galactic devastation for the destroy ending that would have logically occurred with the destruction of the Mass Relays. It was implied through world building that the Galactic civilization had not yet cracked the ability to build or even repair the Relay network.
The Mass Relays were not destroyed. Earth and all those other planets with a mass relay in their systems would have been destroyed too. We saw that in the Arrival DLC in ME2. It is said, in that extended cut version of the ending, that the Mass Relays were "heavily damaged" but that they could be "rebuilt."
Before ME3, it felt like you could kind of piece together what the original idea behind the Reapers' motivations were, and it was kinda spooky to me. Mass Effect is named after a phenomenon in its setting: When you run an electric current through element eezo and it's positive, you are expanding space and time, and when you run a negative current through it, you are decreasing space and time. Biotics is the ability to use mass effect fields. But there's a quiet issue, which was then momentarily explored in ME2: Mass effect fields, and biotics, are causing premature entropy. Things are disintegrating faster. Time is unknowingly being sped up. Stars, planets, atoms, everything's half-life is being divided multiple times, so atomic annihilation is around the corner. This is a huge concern for a race of machines that are effectively immortal and seemingly want to reach an end of time, or what Sovereign seems to consider another reality, without this end of time or separate realm being destroyed. It made some sense as to why they would want to routinely get rid of organic life: Take their resources to make repairs and keep on low battery mode while hanging out in dark space, and ensure that they're all dead so that they can't fully reach any huge potential with biotics like a Dyson Sphere or a man-made Boltzmann Brain, because if organics ever reached that level of power and success, they'd accidentally eat up all the material in the galaxy.
Looking forward to ME3 AI run even though Jane screwed the pooch.
You should play in my CoC game I run, Drake.
That said, we could use more happy endings XD
I did a CoC campaign once. It was super rad
Videos like this one is why love the work of DrakeFS.
I feel like the "Starchild" scenes severely muted the cosmic horror element of the game. It's not cosmic horror if it can be explained.
To me, ME2 is the entry in the franchise which really nailed the cosmic horror vibe - especially in the IFF mission when you're going through the "dead" Reaper and reading all the logs of the indoctrinated scientist - that's vintage Lovecraft.
“It’s not cosmic horror if it can be explained.”
If something cannot be explained, it generally doesn’t exist. Cosmic horror was made by man. It can be understood.
Gotta love H.P Lovecraft
Shepard....You fight against inevitability, dust struggling against cosmic winds. This seems a victory to you a star system sacrificed. But even now your greatest civilizations are doomed to fall, your leaders will beg to serve us. Prepare yourselves for the arrival.
The thing is, that for ME to be good cosmic horror, you must play it in specific style. And by doing that, you lack free will. Is that still a game and not some sort of "movie" you want to see?
If you play it in normal way, then there is still some hope. Just by having option to destroy the Reapers, you loosing the inevitability. That feeling that no matter what you do, you can´t win.
But still, really nice video. It give me new point of view on the game.
Assuming direct control!
Need fight Reapers vs Death planets from Dead Space
What about Dead Space?
I always felt the Reapers were a great explanation and expansion of WHY the ME universe exists. Such knowledge collected into each of their bodies like the Dead Space Brother Moons, but the way they were explained further in ME3 was so bad, the Catalyst was the EMBODIMENT of writer's madness!?!? They should have kept the Leviathans as the original creators and leaders of the Reapers like how they were before robot wars happened in the early universe. Heck, if that happened, humanity would still be alive but forced to accept that the only gods that "care" for them is within the homeworld's waters!
I agree. Also, Our lord and savior Indoctrination Theory is a plausible explanation of some inconsistencies from the writing team and devs. Shepard was near at least 3 sources of active indoctrination- Sarin's base where it was studied and used, the artifact in me2, and the several indoctrination artifacts in me3
EA owns two series with cosmic horror elements. Mass Effect and Dead Space. What did EA mean by this?
Hmm I wonder if you have ever played Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem?
It the only other game that did cosmic horror well I’m my humble opinion.
I would love to see a full remake of that game.
I'd love to see a more Lovecraftian ending to the games. For example Shepard could be presented with multiple choices, each seeming to lead to a different resolution against the Reapers. However, regardless of the choice, the outcome remains the same - the Reapers cannot be fully defeated, emphasizing the hopelessness often found in Lovecraft's stories.
Or instead of the original choices, it could be a choice between allowing the cycle to continue in hopes that the next cycle would find a solution, or sacrificing humanity (and all current galactic civilization) to inflict a significant but non-fatal blow to the Reapers, giving future civilizations a better chance. In either case, the ending would emphasize the smallness of even Shepard's heroic efforts in the face of cosmic horror.
Or we could perhaps have awakened the original creators of the Reapers, the ending could have Shepard activating an ancient device or summoning that awakens these beings. The elder gods could then vanquish the Reapers, but the fate of the galaxy remains uncertain under these new, potentially more powerful entities. It would not be good news in any of the cases.
But we do meet their creators, the Leviathans, and convince them to join the fight. But, sadly, they didn't have any major plot significance. Just another war asset.
Yeah, but they were quite lame. They should have been made more godlike, not just some gigantic creatures hiding in the deep ocean on a planet.
Love your theory. It gives a final, thematic ending to Mass Effect. I do think indoctrination theory was correct, but wondered why they didn't continue it. I think this interpretation is best. The journey was amazing, but the Reapers were actually right the whole time. Mass Effect 3 is the best ending I've ever experienced by far. Realizing it was an indoctrination attempt and then choosing was actually really cool.
there is no indoctrination no lie to yourself I think people just indoctinate themselfs by it
Expanse
Alistair Reynolds
It's almost like Corey Hudson and Drew Karpyshyn didn't even read their own story.
I'm no fan of Lovecraftian horror, but damn, if the Indoctrination Theory isn't true, what the hell was the story about, then? And I don't believe that BS happy ending extended cut, either.
They could have made the reapers even beter by one simple thing . Do Nothing . They should not have explained what they are and how they came into existence . Keep them misterious . And the reapers should have won .
I know many people would not have liked this at first but it would have been more fiting .
❤️ Promo-SM