more on Mass Effect

[xparrot]

gnine is here for the month, and with a little urging she re-played ME3 with the DLC. So I now have watched all the ME3 DLC, as well as the mShep romance with Kaidan. (Gnine was pleased to do so, as the main reason she played mShep originally was for the m/m relationship, which she screwed up the first time around by accidentally staying with Tali instead.) And most of the rest of ME3 again as well...random thoughts to follow.

I didn't have that much trouble adjusting to mShep - actually I think the thing I found most jarring was the pronouns when other people are talking about Shepard. "He" never sounds quite right! fShep is always going to be the 'real' Shepard to me, I think. And I do think Jennifer Hale's performance is better - the regular action hero moments are okay either way, but she's better with the subtle emotional stuff.

And Shepard/Garrus is still my OTP. The Kaidan romance was really cute! (and I do like Kaidan more than Ashley, he seems to integrate with the team better, while as Ash never quite gets over her xenophobia. I was disappointed as I hoped that would be her story arc - that she'd befriend at least one alien, the way Garrus and Wrex make friends in spite of the odds. But while she doesn't seem to dislike your alien squadmates, pretty much all her interactions are with the human side of the crew.)

But Shepard/Garrus - I was terribly amused by how many of the conversations are nearly the same whether you're romancing Garrus or just his friend. Most especially the last dialog on Earth, which is almost identical except for a couple of lines - considering how beautifully romantic that exchange is, I was really not expecting it in the platonic version! The "no Shepard without Vakarian" line, and, just, all of it - maybe Shepard romanced Kaidan, but Garrus is the one he's making plans to meet in the afterlife with. Uh-huh. And Garrus is completely in love with Shepard no matter Shepard's gender or inclinations. Like in the bottle-shooting contest on the Presidium, in the friendship scene Garrus makes a joke about a marriage proposal which I suspect is less a joke than an invitation...

I totally missed meeting Liara's father! In fact we all did - the brother and Gnine both failed to talk to her as well (it's not that hard to do, she's placed just out of the way of your normal paths...) I enjoyed her character on Illium in ME2, so finding out about that personal connection was a nice touch. And the quarter-krogan does explain Liara.

The DLC - Leviathan has some interesting world-building. Omega is frustrating because you can't bring along any of your crew (I totally would want Garrus along, Archangel back on Omega, what could go wrong!?) but I did like meeting Nyreen. While that lasted, aww.

And From Ashes is marvelous - Javik is amazing. And awful. Amazingly awful? Awfully amazing! Everything he has to say about Protheans is fascinating, no more or less because it's such a biased viewpoint. You really can't tell how much of it is what Protheans are really like, vs how Protheans were at the twilight of their civilization, vs how much is Javik screwing with the primitives - because occasionally he very clearly is, and it calls into question everything else he says. And I keep thinking of what, say, Garrus would be like, were he the last survivor of this era, 50,000 years later.

However accurate, Javik's revelations add another dimension to the story. I have to wonder how he'd take to Synthesis - he's already planning to die anyway. And Synthesis on the one hand means the Prothean empire might be able to be revived (provided that Reaper made it through the war. And if reviving the Prothean empire is something anybody wants, which maybe not!) But on the other hand, given Javik's feelings about synthetic life, he might just kill himself on the spot...he makes it to adding Shepard's name to the wall, that's a good sign, anyway...

Then there's the question of the Protheans' relationship with the asari. Even without Javik it's revealed in ME3 that the Protheans were instrumental to the asari's development; Javik provided more hints on this, but few details. The brother has a theory that in addition to everything else the Protheans did to help the asari with their biotics and the rest, they also might have been responsible for the asari's mating/mind-melding abilities. The asari ability to 'interbreed' with aliens doesn't make much sense as an evolved trait - how would they have evolved it? (unless they were merging with animals on their world, but this is never implied anywhere, that I recall?) And Javik's touch ability seems the closest parallel to the asari's sympathetic nervous systems of anything we see.

The irony is, if the Protheans did give the asari that capability, it was almost certainly to make them the dominant race of the cycle. The Protheans seemed to realize at their civilization's end that their total domination of the other species put them at a disadvantage - that their lack of diversity made them vulnerable, they were too predictable and culturally rigid. So they gave the asari the ability to take the strengths of other species and incorporate them into their own culture.

Instead, due perhaps to the asari's nature, and also to the nature of the ability, the asari became the ultimate diplomats. Intermarriage and shared children has always been a way to create alliances between peoples, and the asari offered a way to forge those bonds between all different species of sentients. It made the asari invested in good relationships with other races, if only to keep their breeding pool wide; and it simultaneously made other species invested, when so many asari were their children as well. And it's those alliances which make this cycle succeed where all those past failed.

(Even if the Protheans weren't responsible, this cycle did luck out, that the asari were the most advanced race - they can be patronizing, but compared to the Protheans, or the Leviathans, yeah, the asari are much preferred!)

That's one thing I love about the Mass Effect story, that it depends on so many factors, on so many people and peoples. In a lot of epic adventures, salvation is thanks to the specialness of the hero. But while Shepard is an amazing heroic hero, their win wouldn't be possible alone. And it's not thanks to general human specialness, either, but rather everyone. The Crucible isn't the invention of one brilliant individual or past superior species, but rather the work of many races over many cycles, changing and refining the design. And while Shepard is a motivating force on bringing all the species of this cycle together, the galactic civilization wouldn't exist at all without the asari - who wouldn't be what they are without the Protheans before them.

I also have to say, I liked the end better this time. Knowing what's coming, and having a better idea of what the Catalyst is talking about, makes it more satisfying. (If also more tragic, because there is so much foreshadowing about Shepard's death, but also so many people who want them to come back.) It also helps to have read all the various fan speculation/interpretation, there is some brilliant meta. In particular this essay's analysis of scientific themes and theories invoked added a lot of depth for me.

I definitely prefer the Extended Cut. I kind of think the ending monologue/montages are unnecessary - it's nice to have a glimpse of the future like that, but at the same time I think there is something as satisfying about having it left open and up to your imagination. But what comes before it is needed.

...Also not blowing up the mass relays. Because while I can understand what they were going for there - ending the cycle doesn't just mean stopping the Reapers, but dismantling their system - the worst-case scenario there is way, way too depressing.

Especially as because, in the original ending, it's kind of implied that's what happens? That destroying the mass relays also destroys every star system they're in - killing pretty much everyone you know and ending every existing civilization. So the only survivors are your crew on the Normandy, crashed on that random garden world. Which, looking at the moons, is the same world in the post-credits tag with the stargazer and child. Who are talking about the galaxy like it's somewhere they want to go, but can't yet...and it must have been a very long time, given that Shepard has become a figure of legend (given that Liara was on the crew, at a minimum more than a thousand years, as at least while she's alive Shepard would be memory, not legend...)

(Which doesn't really make sense, as especially with both Control and Synthesis endings, even if the mass relays are destroyed and all the systems with them, some people would survive in other systems, and should be able to communicate still, enough to respond to a distress signal? In the Destroy ending, that's less likely; but then in the high-score Destroy ending, Shepard lives anyway, which implies that possibly Earth at least survived. ...or that the Citadel shielded Shepard from Sol going supernova. Leaving Shepard alone and helpless on a station filled with the dead.)

(OTOH according to the ME wiki, even in the original ending if your score was high enough, the endings wouldn't physically damage the galaxy - but I'm not sure how that's established, as it doesn't seem to be in the Catalyst's original dialog?)

So yeah. I am much happier with the mass relays just getting damaged - or whatever happens to them - they lose their inner rings, anyway, so I'm guessing they'll need fixing. But FTL is still a thing, if slower; and the quantum entanglement communication networks mean that the galaxy can still coordinate and work together. Also it makes Shepard's choice more plausible - because I have a very hard time seeing any Shepard accept any solution that means the death of almost all of the galaxy.

Though watching again did leave me with a few unanswered questions/plot holes:

What happened to all the people on the Citadel? I was watching closely for it this time, and no one ever mentions the people, after the Reapers take control of it and move it to over Earth. Did anyone have time to evacuate? Or were they all fed into the Collector slurry? Or were they all bunkered down in the Wards and the Reapers hadn't had time to collect them? Either way, why doesn't Shepard even bother asking about it?

The Collectors never quite made sense to me. In particular, why were they only targeting humans? The Reapers are supposed to be harvesting civilizations, making a new Reaper out of them - why did they decide that only humans are worth harvesting in this cycle? Or were they going to do each species in turn and just started with humans? Also, why did the baby Reaper look human, when all the Reapers are modeled on the initial Leviathan form?

While initially I was annoyed with the Starchild Catalyst, the more I think about it the more interesting I find it. (And the various theories I've read about it, in the essay I linked above, and in some of the discussions on the Bioware forums.)

One of the most interesting ideas to me - I am not convinced that the Catalyst is actually a true AI. I think it's a (very, very!) advanced VI. It was created to solve a specific problem - to ensure synthetic life doesn't end organic life. And that's what it does - and that's all it does. All the true AIs we see - the geth, EDI - eventually question their original purpose, and rewrite their programming to exceed their original scope. But the Catalyst has never deviated from its purpose, and doesn't seem to have the ability to rewrite itself (in fact, it seems like that might be one of the functions, if not the main function, of the Crucible - to either give the Catalyst that ability, or possibly to give Shepard the ability to re-program the Catalyst?)

The Reapers, on the other hand, are confirmed to be synthetic intelligences - but they don't deviate from their purpose, either. And Shepard can take control of them. The implication is that they are shackled AIs, like EDI before Joker releases her - capable of independent thought but not capable of acting upon it, limited by programming they are unable to change. Which explains why synthetic intelligences made up of millions or billions of absorbed organic life are willing to genocide other races. The Catalyst is their shackle, directing them over all the cycles.

If that's the case, then the Reapers, which seem to be about the most straightforward example of evil monsters that can be imagined, are actually a very complicated moral question. If the Reapers are being controlled, then they can't be morally responsible for what they've done (presumably, given that they're each a harvested civilization intended to be preserved, they wouldn't be allowed to self-destruct; they have no choice whatsoever but to reap.). But if the Catalyst that controls them is a VI with no free will of its own, where does the moral responsibility lie? With the Leviathans who created the Catalyst without including the 3 Laws of Robotics? But they already paid for that mistake, eons ago.

Even if the Catalyst is an AI with full sentience, willfully fulfilling its purpose, the scale it works on makes mortal morality almost invisible. Its sole goal is the preservation of organic life - but that's such a broad mandate, over such an immense span of time (a billion years or more, according to the Leviathan DLC) that not only does it disregard the lives of individual people, but whole civilizations don't last long enough to matter. To an entity with a billion-year lifespan, 50,000 years is equivalent to about a day and a half, in human time. The cycles are the Catalyst's daily work.

The Catalyst compares its harvests with cleansing fire - it claims not to be in conflict with any of the life it harvests, and I think it's being honest, as it sees it. Shepard's conversation with the Catalyst is, to it, like a grain of wheat asking a farmer why the farmer is at war with wheat, threshing it every year rather than letting it go to seed. It doesn't have the perspective to understand.

I do wonder what becomes of the Catalyst in the Synthesis ending. Destroy obviously destroys it, and Control seems like Shepard replaces it; but there's no hint one way or another what happens with Synthesis. I also wonder what happens to the Citadel in Synthesis - though given the implied technological advances, it might just be rendered superfluous?

(Trying to figure out just what happens in the Synthesis ending is part of the fun of it. Reading fic now, I'm a bit disappointed that nearly all the post-game stories go with either the Destroy ending or a denial-Destroy, in which the Reapers are destroyed but the other synthetics somehow survive. I get it, it's the easiest ending to write since it's the most status quo, and Shepard can canonically survive - but the other endings have so many possibilities, I wish they were explored more!)

If nothing else, I have to respect the ending for how much speculation and discussion it inspires...though yeah, while I'll a bit disappointed to have gotten into it late enough that the fandom is less active, I am glad to have missed the initial flamewars.

And naye has now gotten into it as well, and fallen for Garrus and Shepard/Garrus as hard as I have, so between her and Gnine, and my brother, and sheliana and the other lovely folks on my flist and in my comments, I'm not lacking for people to fan with! :D


Gnine and I have done some other things, last week we went to Age of Ultron and Furious 7, but while I enjoyed both and have some thoughts I might get down later, my fannish heart is definitely still taken with ME.

(And whyyyyyyyyy are there no space operas on TV now? I miss them more than ever! If only it were possible to adapt ME...it has to be a game, it wouldn't be the same any other way, but there's several non-gamers I'd love to show it to. They could at least do a mini-series set in the same universe, the First Contact war with the turians, perhaps?)