Well, today Im feeling particularly loquacious and voluble. So lets talk about an outdated classic game, MASS EFFECT 3! (I can almost smell the garrulousness!) T̲h̲e̲ ̲T̲r̲u̲e̲ ̲H̲e̲r̲o̲ ̲o̲f̲ ̲M̲a̲s̲s̲ ̲E̲f̲f̲e̲c̲t̲ ̲a̲n̲d̲ ̲t̲h̲e̲ ̲t̲r̲u̲t̲h̲ ̲o̲f̲ ̲t̲h̲e̲ ̲R̲e̲j̲e̲c̲t̲ ̲E̲n̲d̲i̲n̲g̲ (Warning! Spoilers ahoy! If you game and have not played the Mass Effect trilogy, stop reading, get out and buy the game now! Its worth it!) In light of the rather incomplete ending of Mass Effect 3, Bioware released a DLC, free of charge in response to the outraged cries of the fandom, dubbed the Extended Cut, in order to pacify and provide closure to the players who followed this series from day one. At the end of it all, after fending off hordes of Reapers, after a final confrontation with the ever-so mysterious Illusive Man, our protagonist, Shepard ends up in the middle of the Citadel, alone save for the anthromorphication of the Catalyst, taking the holographic form of a small boy that Shepard failed to save earlier. (Never liked that brat anyway.) He is offered three choices, provided that the player did everything right and brought enough War Assets to the field. All options provided via the Reaper tech of the Catalyst. 1) Destroy the Reapers, at the cost of the lives of the Geth, his crewmate EDI and himself. 2) Control the Reapers at the cost of his physical body. 3) Render the Reapers’ mission meaningless by combining organic and synthetic life, thus ending the cycle of synthetic/organic violence. As the player, we can look at this objectively, and make a choice, but imagine for a second that youre Shepard, youre the one at the epicentre and that there is no save point. None of these options are perfect. For example, finishing off the Reapers would involve the mass genocide of the Geth, a race that has proven itself over the course of three games that they are perfectly sentient and most importantly, non-malicious against organics. To say nothing of your teammate EDI, who has saved Shepard and his crew on quite a few occasions. To throw them under the bus to take down the Reapers would probably not be the best start to a new age of rebuilding and peace. The second one, Control, is presented as the Paragon option, it is also the goal of the Illusive Man, who intends to utilize the Reapers to better humanity. It is a noble and selfless goal, supreme firepower notwithstanding. It also reeks of Indoctrination. One of the most prevalent and insidious methods utilized by the Reapers to take down civilisations from within. And yet it is presented as a Paragon option. I have every reason to believe that a Paragon Shepard holds nothing but contempt for the Reapers methods and to choose this option, desperate as he is, is a direct violation of his principles and personal intergrity, something that a Paragon Shepard has proven over the course of the trilogy would never do. Option 3, as much of an asspull as it sounds, looks like a suitable compromise between the former two, but the ramifications of this choice far exceeds the others, as Shepard would be changing the fundamental ways of how the universe works. Putting that choice in one mans hands. Thats a lot of responsiblity that the Catalyst has put on him. We also have no reason to believe that the Catalyst is telling the truth. Think about it again, you are in the epicenter of choice, people are dying silently around you, you are handed all this responsibility to choose, and whatever choice you make, it is irrevocable, final, no more changes, done. To put it in another perspective: You are in a dungeon, you, not a player character youre controlling, you. No save points. In front of you stands three bottles of potion; red, green, blue. Choose one. Drink. Hesitant? I thought so. And through this new perspective, Bioware has given us a fourth option: None of the above. The first three options would respectively, provide victory via sacrifices of a race and and a teammate, loss of personal intergrity, (and lets face it, youd have no prior guarantee youd actually be ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL!) and the third is a totally different outcome of what the games been telling you to expect. The fourth? The Reject option? It may actually be the best option amongst all. Through the Reject option, Shepards galaxy cycle ends. They may go down fighting, kicking and screaming, but they go down nonetheless. But thanks to the efforts of one hero, for without that heros actions the next cycle would never have gained the necessary intel and tech to finally bring down the Reapers once and for all. Oh and by the way, that hero is not Commander Shepard of Earth. Its Doctor Liara T’Soni of Serrice University Archeology Department, planet Thessia. No. Seriously. Werent you paying attention? Commander Shepard is a soldier. A very good soldier, the best the galaxy has seen in a long while, but essentially a soldier – until he touches the Prothean relic. At that point, he becomes a soldier who has weird dreams. Without the intervention of Liara T’Soni, the rest of Mass Effect would be an increasingly frustrated Shepard roaming the galaxy shooting at Geth while having nightmares that resemble nothing so much as a Nine Inch Nails video covered in marmalade, until the Reapers arrive and civilized life is extinguished from the galaxy. Liara brings knowledge, and the ability not just to extract the visions of the marmalade apocalypse from Shepard’s head, but to interpret them in a useful fashion. Face it, without Liara, the entire mission is dead in the water. Shes the one that directs Shepard to Ilos, to the Citadel. Granted that Liara would have died on Therum without Shepard, but without Liara, Shepard would have died like everyone else, and for nothing. Im not saying that Shepard is a false hero, he is anything but. But he is a force given direction only through Liaras efforts. She plays a piviotal part in the Reaper war, perhaps even greater than Shepard. It is only thanks to her that Shepards body is recovered from the Collector attack, only her efforts allowed Shepard to be resuscitated and while Shepard deals with the immediate threats, Liara sets off to accumulate the informational resources necessary to win the war. After the events of Mass Effect 2 and the Lair of the Shadow Broker arc, Liara finds herself being the most powerful information broker in the galaxy. Now she immediately dedicates those resources, as far as possible, to finding ways to assist the Alliance in preparation for the Reaper threat. It is this that leads her to Mars, where she is reunited with Shepard in time to help her to rescue the plans for the Crucible. Now as you can see, none of this kind of effectiveness against the Reapers would have been possible without Liara. She plays an incredibly bigger part in this than we give her credit for. So, while Shepard blazes around the galaxy recruiting allies however he can, Liara devotes her archeological skills and network to trying to do what none of the previous races have achieved. However, she also has a backup plan. If the allied races are not able to defeat the Reapers this cycle, she plans to make sure that the next cycle will not be scrambling around, like Shepard and she are, trying to find obscure clues from archeological artifacts. Instead, she is going to take advantage of the time they have to create a complete record of all the available anti-Reaper data up to that moment, so that, instead of being surprised when the Reapers appear from deep space, the next cycle of spacefaring races will have millennia to prepare. And now we are back to the Reject ending. In this ending, to Shepard, none of the above three options are viable. As mentioned previously, Shepard would not sacrifice billions of Geth, even if the alternative is most likely the extinction over the coming decades or centuries of the Geth and many other races. Or perhaps he very wisely does not believe that he can control the Reapers, or that even the remarkably advanced science that created the Reapers could amend the DNA of every being in the universe. And finally, once more, what makes you so sure that the Catalyst is even telling the truth at all? So he opts out. And commits to the long war. Why? Because Doctor Liara Tsoni has his back. The Reapers would almost certainly win. Harvest, hide in dark space, and the cycle begins anew. During which time Liara’s complete collection of Reaper intel will be found – someone smart enough to get this far will, it is fair to say, find a way to conceal it from the Reapers while making it available to future races. Shepard and his allies had to scramble through Reaper-occupied space scanning for possible clues, as their industrial and scientific base was destroyed around them. But next cycle, thanks to Liara, will potentially have millennia to prepare, and a complete set of plans to start out from. During this time, whichever species are at the apex of galactic civilization can perhaps work out how to get the Crucible to function more as hoped, or reverse-engineer its technology to create a different weapon entirely. Shepard is dooming his cycle to almost certain defeat. But he is doing so in the knowledge that the next cycle will have the tools to win – and to win without compromise. And from the Reject ending epilogue, he was right. By refusing to use the Crucible, Shepard is taking a moral stance – saying that he is willing to play the long game, if that’s what it takes to defeat the Reapers. He is not prepared to write off an entire sentient race as an acceptable cost. He is, in that sense, refusing to think like a Reaper – with their genocidal utilitarianism – or to accept the Reapers’ tools as the only way to deal with them. Without Liara T’Soni’s knowledge, making that choice would be insane. Without Liara T’Soni’s perspective, Shepard would not be able to consider it. But he has both. So, the rejection ending is the ending where Shepard stays true to his principles, refuses to compromise and places his trust in his current cycle not to want victory at any cost, and the cycles to come to defeat the Reapers without having to compromise. It’s a difficult ending, and certainly a bittersweet one – in all probability, none of the characters we have met over the three games will get to live to a ripe old age surrounded by little blue children. But it is still a heroic ending – and, thanks to the real hero of Mass Effect, still a hopeful one. If you made it this far, I thank you for reading. Have a cookie. Disclaimer: This post is parphrased and plagarized from this online article. Heres the full story. forbes/sites/danielnyegriffiths/2012/06/28/real-hero-of-mass-effect/ Timothy SooKC TanBenjamin Tan
Posted on: Mon, 11 Nov 2013 17:04:46 +0000
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