One will be an epic, 10,000 word
The second is a hard one to write because it will be the most personal thing I've ever written on this blog. I have started it 3 times only to delete it. It will be about how Mass Effect saved my love of gaming as well as....how it helped me with depression. I want to write this. I'm just not sure how yet. Maybe in a few months it will be up.
ANYWAY: TO THE TOPIC AT HAND.
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I highly recommend reading part 1 and especially part 2 if you haven't already. Otherwise, this won't make any sense.
Since I got absolutely ZERO questions about my ending, thanks a lot dicks, I came up with ten questions a reader might hypothetically have.
1. "If you make the right choices in the Earth Mission, shouldn't you have a bunch of people to take on Harbinger?"
Yep! Aaaand it's something I didn't think about. So to fix it, say there is a short cutscene where Shepard and Anderson decide to climb inside Harbinger with just their two teams while all the rest of the forces that made it there set up defenses to hold back a Reaper counter-offensive. There. Fixed.
2. "I get Harbinger wanting to use the Crucible as a Reaper weapon, but why bother considering the risk? Wouldn't the Reapers win without it anyway?"
I'm banking on the Reapers arrogance here. Think of what Sovereign says in ME1 about their intelligence being on a level that is incomprehensible to the races in the galaxy, "I am beyond your comprehension", and so on. Harbinger, knowing that he has control of the Illusive Man, doesn't even think failure is an option. The Illusive Man is convinced he is doing this for the betterment of mankind, when in reality, he is just Harbingers stooge. (Also, remember Harbinger needs a human to use the Crucible at all).
When Shepard makes it inside Harbinger, Harbinger tries to use indoctrination to stop Shepard. Once the Illusive Man is killed/shoots himself, Harbinger then tries to use indoctrination on a wounded Shepard to complete the task.
3. "Yeah, wait. Why does Harbinger need a human again?"
It's said many times in the game that by using the Mass Relays, as well as all Mass Effect technology, that races are using the technology of the Leviathans/Reapers. The Crucible should be technology that is completely independent of the Reapers. There would probably have to be some minor dialogue changes throughout Mass Effect 3 concerning the Crucible, but it should be doable in theory. It will kind of be like why a MacBook shouldn't be able to communicate with the alien mothership in Independence Day. Harbinger needs an indoctrinated human, or any other race really, because he cannot control it without an intermediary.
4. "About that Reaper motive. Evolution wouldn't make the thrall races of the Leviathans into Leviathans. What did you mean by those races not reaching their apex?"
While the Leviathans consider themselves the apex of evolution, they want all their thrall races to become more self reliant while still basically being slaves. They want their thrall races to reach their apex so that they can be the best slaves, so to speak. They are not expecting them to magically turn into Leviathans, defying all evolutionary science.
This, I hope, would also drive home the point of the Reapers arrogance. The Leviathans are also arrogant and never realized that by forcing these races into slavery was the very reason they stopped evolving on a desired path. (This is over millions of years BTW, so evolution can absolutely be a motive here).
5. "Why exactly does the Leviathan AI rebel?"
In my version, the Leviathans have no qualms with using AI. This AI is made specifically to figure out why the thrall races are not evolving on a desired path. I assume, these races would still create AI, like they do in the real version. The Leviathan AI sees this, claims organics are not integrating or incorporating or whatever Sci-Fi nonsense you want to use, with their AI's correctly. Because of this flaw, the Leviathan AI concludes that this is why the thrall races are not reaching their apex, and comes up with a plan. That plan, is the Reapers.
The Leviathans balk at the plan because this means they too have not reached their apex, nor are they the perfect beings in existence. They try to shut down the AI, then....
6. "So, WHY is Harbinger?"
I made a mistake here so lets fix this too.
One Leviathan, a single scientist, likes what the AI has to offer and agrees to "merge" with it. By doing so, Harbinger becomes the first Reaper and infects all the other Leviathan computers with the AI code to start the war. It uses the Leviathan artifacts (those orb things) and other technology to indoctrinate the thrall races and lead them in overthrowing the Leviathans and processing them into more Reapers. A tiny number escape of course, but the Leviathans stay arrogant as ever by claiming the war isn't a mistake because a single Leviathan agreed with the AI......or something.
7. "Why the cycle?"
For the same reason as before only now it's not to stop organics from killing themselves with AI. Now it's because those organics that use Reaper technology (Mass Effect tech, Mass Relays, etc.) are the best suited to be processed into new Reapers. The Reapers wait for organics to prove they are worthy.
(I know this makes the Reapers less altruistic, but it makes them more evil and keeps their sense of god-like superiority. I never liked the altruistic nature of the Reapers anyway. I like this line from Sovereign, "We impose order on the chaos of organic evolution. You exist because we allow it. And you will end because we demand it." It sounds far less like the Reapers are secretly wanting to help everybody and more like forcing everybody into their goals. The Reapers are better villains when they stick to this kind of writing.)
8. "Those 3 choices are still dumb."
I know.
9. "How do you NOT choose one of them."
It's easy. When the game leaves the conversation scene, simply walk back up to the star child and choose the right dialogue options. It'll be an option like, "Something doesn't feel right about this", for example. From there, you can press the issue until an option comes up where Shepard realizes that he/she is being indoctrinated and that all of this is some sort of dream. I wouldn't make this THAT hard, maybe only three dialogue choices in or so.
10. "Doesn't this ending have the same problem with being impossible to continue?"
Well it hasn't stopped EA/Bioware from working around the existing ending for Mass Effect:Andromeda (putting the next game in a different galaxy is a great way to get around that problem but shitty because all the established races should be back home. If I find out the Asari has been in Andromeda for hundreds of years in secret I'm going to fucking riot!). I didn't really make up this ending as a way to make ME4 in the Milky Way make sense, knowing entire races may or may not exist in the future.
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And since I have no where else to put this, I really don't know what to think about the future of Mass Effect. There will be another post about this topic, but for now, the trilogy should be considered it's own thing, ending be whatever. I'm confident Mass Effect:Andromeda will be great......wait no I'm not. It looks like fucking Dragon Age:Inquisition, a good but heavily flawed game. Shit.
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Future links to remaining Mass Effect posts will be updated here if I remember or give a shit months from now.
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