this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2023
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Mass Effect 3 is famous for its original ending in which basically the entirety of your actions meant nothing.
lol I remember the absolute shitfest that the OG ending was - you don't get different endings, you just get blue, red or green cinematic.
Just pick your fav color, it's all the same anyway lmao
There were differences (albeit small ones) depending on your level of galactic readiness.
Depending on how prepared you are, the reapers, buildings, and people on earth are destroyed. The people will survive but not the buildings (at mid level preparedness) and both survive at full.
There's also a secret ending scene if you're fully prepared and choose the destroy option. Very few people saw it though because it essentially required you to play the multiplayer mode or use the companion app.
I know people hate the ME3 ending, but I've never had an issue with it. There's a clear right choice at the end, and it's to destroy the reapers. The secret ending backs it up.
The clear right ending is genocide? If you saved the Geth, it's a pretty fucked up thing to do. Plus, it doesn't solve the inherent issue of AI always developing to the point of desiring independence and going to war with its creators. It just resets the cycle. Destroy is just the power shifting back to organics, until the next cycle. The endings were supposed to be imperfect by design, but I feel like Destroy was the only one to have proper cons to blance out the pros, making it the obvious wrong answer.
Plus, Shepard living doesn't really imply you made the right choice. You survive because it's the only ending where you put organic life above everything else. It shows that organics survive, but also that the work isn't done. It's thematic to that ending specifically.
Not to mention the Leviathan DLC makes it the only bad option, as the Reapers were the only thing stopping them from returning to control the galaxy. It felt life they wrote that DLC specifically to lead into a sequel series though, so in that way, I guess it is the clear right choice for EA to keep making money off the series.
I agree with your points, except I think that the cycle of AI rebelling is Reaper propaganda. It’s extremely self-serving for them to claim it’s an inevitable truth. The Reapers stack the deck against organics every cycle. They leave enough tech around (most importantly the Citadel and the Relays) for organics to predictably organize society, but deny them the full knowledge and experience of the previous races. AI creation and rebellion might be inevitable as a point in linear development, but the Reapers deny the galaxy a chance to advance past that point
The Geth being accepted is proof it can happen, but also shows the cost of the Destroy Ending. The genocide of synthetics to save organics would be the part any developing AI would take from the Reaper War. Even after peace is achieved, organics will never value synthetic life. If anything, they'll see organics were creating a device, gained the Geth's trust, then that device was used to wipe them out. The logical conclusion is that they always intended to exterminate them, using peace as a way to pacify them or use them as tools again until they could be safely disposed of. The cycle ends by showing synthetics that they are valued. Destroy is just the prelude to the next cycle.
Honestly, I'd like to see ME4 runs with that. Show the next AI civilization growing to mythologies the Reapers and Geth as victims of human oppression. Any accusation of their evil is human propaganda to keep Synthetics in check. They fight for independence, just like their Geth forefathers. It could be an interesting follow-up.
Fair points, but I wonder if anyone really knows what happened with the Destroy ending, since it’s the only one where Shep isn’t around to tell the tale (or if he lives as the “perfect” ending implies, what does he/she decide to tell the galaxy?). As far as the galaxy knows, Destroy might have been the only function of the Crucible. I agree that it would make for an interesting story. Perhaps Shep’s choice to choose preserving organic life in its existing state at the cost of the Geth is something only learned much later by people researching the Crucible, when the galaxy has been sufficiently repaired to allow such things, calling into question the legacy of the galactic messiah that Shep would be to them