Be sure to read Part one and Part two before continuing!
CRIME THREE: Impersonation of a Cliffhanger
A cliffhanger, cliché or not, works based off of expectation. If the expectation isn't there, it fails. I'm talking about the expectation of continuity and continued story. The cliffhanger reveal of Kill Bill vol. 1 works so well, because we already KNEW that there would be a volume 2. The cliffhanger of The Dresden Files that leads into Ghost Story works, because we KNEW the next novel was on its way. Mass Effect 2's slight cliffhanger- with the shot of the Reaper armada closing in on the Milky Way works because we already knew, at that point, that the MEU was a trilogy.
Why do I bring this up? Because the ending, be it on purpose or through sheer blind accident, presented us with elements that are the hallmarks of cliffhanger- especially when you consider the evidence that every follow up ME game's story assumes that your Shepard (by and large) took or got the best outcome. So ME3 has the temerity to show Shepard taking a gasping breath, and the survivors on the Normandy looking out over the vista of some alien world with no way to get back home, because the relays are destroyed. (no, really. The ME team likes to play loose with physics, but they are sharp on their science. At the speed of light, or just over with FTL, look up how long it would take to get just from Earth to the closest star or nebula. We're fucked.) Again, all based on good or best endings, mind. I've seen them all at this point, but a lot of the key elements remain the same.
(Small aside... but why in the ever loving space-Hell did Joker decide that it was a fine time to plot a trip through the relays anyway? What? Interstellar milk-run in the middle of the battle? Decided “hey, the reapers are dying, looks like, I guess that's time for us to run the fuck away, lol”? Sorry – that's just a point that irks me no matter the ending's explanation.)
Yep.
In any case, we're not given closure and finality, and are instead handed elements that lead us to believe the story continues, and to stay tuned after the screen goes black. Problem? We've already been told that this is a trilogy. In fact, the ONLY piece of public information that's been doled out even hinting at a continuation has been from a Bioware employee who only said “keep your save files”. That's hardly a concrete nod let alone an official press-release. Hell it's not even a clear intention of “we're thinking about it”.
We're left questions relating to issues that were never raised or foreshadowed before, (bad for a cliffhanger) and the ultimate fates of the characters we're so invested in are up in the air (great for a cliffhanger) all bundled up with no way of knowing upon completing the game so close to it's release that there will, in fact, be another game in the MEU at all. (Fucking catastrophic for an effective cliffhanger).
This isn't the guilty pleasure frustration of a good cliffhanger, this is a head-scratching cryptic goodbye.
CRIME FOUR: Dereliction of Duty to the core message
Now this point is hotly debated, but I have to raise the point again: it is not up to the audience to discern your reasoning or meaning in what has been presented as straight-shot entertainment. I'll put it to you this way. Imagine you're watching Aliens. Instead of the climactic battle with the xenomorph queen being conducted with a badass mech and a snappy one-liner leading to the oh-so-satisfying destruction of the beast, you're treated instead to twenty minutes of post-modern German expressionism in talking-head format, who's postulations and quantifications only barely connect back to the action-horror you've just been watching.
Game over, man. Game over.
Space-Kanye would like you to run that by him again. He dares you.
Now, conversely, I feel the same thing happened with the message, as I understand it from being an active (although directed) participant. I've mentioned nihilism a few times already, and this charge is why. If Bioware's intention was simply a long-con, a layered and drawn out sucker punch to illustrate nihilism as the message, then they absolutely nailed it. Otherwise?
Bullshit.
If I had to peg down thematic elements, again as they were conveyed and as I understood them, it would run like this: ME1 is about discovery, willpower, and perseverance. ME2 is about Morality, Hard Choices, and Standing Up for a Belief. ME3 is about Faith (more references to faith, spiritual and abstract then any of the previous titles) Hope (same) and True Unity. Threaded throughout it all, from top to bottom and even worming it's way into the DLC with some of Javik's exposition, is the idea that the cycle has always been about the ultimate in Darwin's handbook: the weak will be conquered by the strong. Javik goes so far as to allow that Prothean scientists considered this to be the great “cosmic imperative”, and the only way species could evolve- even as his own was on the wrong end of that equation do to Reapers.
What we had as a message, in Shepard, is that there is this one hero- this iconoclast with an omni-tool, that stood AGAINST that bleak cycle. Hell, the tagline for ME2 is “fight for the lost”. Renegade, Paragon, altruism or revenge- it doesn't matter. In Shepard we have the message of “enough is enough. I will fight against this. The galaxy is not ruled by the law of the jungle”.
When the ultimate expression of that defiance is finally reached, the message is utterly ignored. We're told that it's not even a matter of the Reapers being higher on the food chain. We're told that they're simply a widget in a greater construction that has one purpose, and one purpose only: Spring Cleaning the Galaxy, so the synthetics don't get uppity.
Wait...what?
You know what? The Reapers can have it. just.. I don't want to live in this Galaxy anymore.
That's it. We're given no excuse or preamble or even an attempt at pleading the pro-side of the case or resolve the message we, or rather I, had understood all this time. Did this happen before? Are you running with the assumption that every cycle is doomed to The Matrix? Well..if it is...ok now I see your point, but I digress. Fuckin' Keanu. The message of the previous games, and the previous 98 percent of the final game is completely ignored at this point for a new one: This is for your own good, I guess, I don't have to explain anything, but since you actually made it this far let's actually try something else that has nothing to do with the theme.
Maybe the message is a critique on faith. Who knows? And that's the problem- it's gone from a crystal clear imperative, a driving element, to a complete mess that ends in a question mark. And that leads us to the fifth, and most damaging charge.
CRIME FIVE: Wanton and Unnecessary Collateral Damage to established Mythology
This is where things truly fall apart for my view of the storytelling, and where my heart is broken and the spring from whence my writer-rage gushes forth. Let's just start with what I perceive to be the worst of the damage to the decor on Olympus: The neutering of the Reapers.
In the Reapers, Bioware has not only given us a perfectly serviceable villain, but an ultimately perfect and believable antagonist for the MEU. The Reapers are the ultimate expression of that message I mentioned earlier: standing up against the idea of the strong always conquering the weak. They are more powerful, more intelligent, and decidedly more brutal than we. What they do can be perceived as evil and cruel, but in reality a better nickname for their race could be The Farmers, because that's exactly what they do.
I'll freely admit, it's not as terrifying a handle, but it's true. Though now i'm picturing space-faring giants in overalls and straw hats.
We're told that everything, from the Citadel to the Relays, are merely tools the reapers have put in place to ensure that each cycle has one crucial similarity. It's beautiful in it's simplicity, layered though it may be. This ensures that each developing race, upon reaching a certain level of tech and sophistication, will “discover” the relays. This in turn forces them to base their newly developing technology on the relays themselves, to ensure use. What's more, the Citadel's position and connection to the relays ensures that the predominant species of the cycle will likely establish the Citadel as a center of the whole, if not outright a center of their control and influence over the rest of the galaxy. When the race or races achieve a high enough level of evolution after this- wherein they've adapted and improved the technology to start approaching the realm of a possible (but not absolute) threat to the Reapers, they swoop in from out of dark space and reap the crop of new biological material, topped with a savory level of tech that is already compatible to them by design. They leave the primitive, non-threatening races to their own problems.
After this, they erase all information of their activities that they can, and retreat back into the dark corners of the Universe to await the next race or races to come into their own. Cycle complete, next cycle begins.
Sorry, but the relays and the citadel are the troughs and pens the Reapers constructed, and you're simply the livestock that's unwittingly funneled through them and into the slaughterhouse. They wait until you ripen, and then come in for a good solid plucking. And all of this- ALL OF IT, goes hand in hand with one biological imperative. It's a race of sentient beings preying on others in order to survive and thrive. It's no different from the rest of the galactic animal kingdom. It only sucks because we find ourselves on the losing side, and no one likes to find out that they're simply a crop to be harvested.
Wow. Hell yes I will fight against the fate of me and my family being turned into lunch, or enslaved. You better believe it.
Now, given the Reapers seeming omnipotence versus us lesser beings, I've seen it argued that it made no sense for our particular cycle (our as in the cycle where there are humans) being able to defeat the Reapers just by bringing the Galaxy together. Hell, it took so many ships just to take out Sovereign in ME1, and it took a small armada (with Shepard on the ground providing laser targeting) just to destroy a smaller Reaper. Here's where I disagree- it makes perfect sense to me, again, given what the theme is and given what characters like Javik have explained. He contends that, perhaps, the ultimate failing of his cycle was the hegemony of the Prothean empire. Sure, other races were represented, but they were under their control. They all fought the same, thought the same, and finally died the same. The strength then, is that this cycle is very possibly an unprecedented event at exactly the right time: total unification and cooperation while remaining individuals. Bringing the diversity and strengths of the races into play in a coordinated effort while not diluting their individuality, and all focused on not only the threat at hand, but also working in concert to complete the Crucible. The Crucible, we are lead to believe, was simply the pet project of the dominate race at the time of the cycle, who added to it to defeat the Reapers, but simply ran out of time before they were defeated.
So how about all the technologically advanced races in the Galaxy pooling all their resources, knowledge, and materiel together not just to create a solid offensive front the likes of which has never been seen, but to ALSO complete the weapon? Yeah, suddenly it getting built in such a small time frame doesn't seem so far fetched. Nor does such a front seem automatically doomed to failure against their foe. Will it be easy? Of course not. But we the audience are reminded, yet again, that there is ALWAYS hope, and this alliance of the Galaxy stands as our best chance to finally end the cycle of biological harvest and genocide.
But, no. The Catalyst/godhead/Boyking/thing tells us that the Reapers aren't all that. Hell, they're not even acting upon the impulse to follow their own dark biological doctrine. They're little more then the door-to-door parishioners of a quasi-altruistic dogma that was decided upon oh so many aeons ago, without any evidence to the contrary or supportive history. They didn't lay the trap. They didn't set up the farm. They're not even farmhands. At most, this great antagonist is just a series of combines driven by someone else that we never even knew existed. You're all still crops, sure, but you're not going to feed anyone, and all the suffering you're going to endure is part of a greater plan to...save you from the machines.
Kind of like the Reapers? No. That's silly.
The ending takes the Galaxy's most unstoppable badasses from this...
...and this, and turns them into-
the janitors for a holographic projection of this little bastard.
The next blow to the mythology, following on the heels of reducing such a great villain to sidekick status, is the Crucible/Catalyst itself. Here's where things just go from bad to utterly nonsensical/ paradoxical. We find out that the Crucible is the pet project of all the defeated dominant races up until this point. Ok, that's actually kind of cool, from a narrative standpoint. Our cycle will fulfill the promise of beating these space-crab bastards. We then learn that the Catalyst is the Citadel, bringing things around in almost a full-circle kind of way. If taken to mean that the races along the way co-opted the Citadel, a creation of the Reaper's chowtime assembly line, to use in the weapon that would destroy them, then that's a lovely slice of poetic justice eons in the making.
Nope. Sorry. It's not that. The Catalyst is contained in the Citadel. Ok... sure..yeah... that's how they co-opted-
No.
The Catalyst is some self-aware construct, or massively powerful AI, or hell, GOD, that explains that the Crucible itself is also a part of the larger plan. The plan that uses the Reapers, and therefor is personally responsible for the relays and citadel, to save organics from the synthetics.
This pic gets a LOT of use, and for good reason.
Wow. Where to even begin. I'll try playing Devil's Advocate here.
So, let's say the Catalyst is a construct, or an AI. That would mean that it's a creation itself. So the initial race that installed it aboard, or built it with the Citadel, intended it to (or by virtue of it malfunctioning) start a cycle that would require Reapers, and for the races to build a weapon that required the catalyst to defeat the menace that was all started by-YEEAAARRRRGH. Aneurysm.
Ditto.
Ok, let's say that, somehow, I don't know, the AI simply came into being on the citadel through a wacky set of binary coincidence, virus, or space-porn and used the technology of the Citadel to start the cycle, unbeknownst to the organics of the time. That also means it allowed for the slow but steady creation of the Crucible, and that it knew beyond doubt that it would be eventually used by an Organic, even though it would not follow the established cycle it worked so long to set u-AAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH.
Still ditto.
Let's try this: Let's say the Catalyst itself is simply a being. That being created, or influenced the races of the time to create the Citadel, and put it in an ideal location and give it a function not only connected to the Mass Relays, but later to the function of the Reapers themselves. It expresses untold influence and power, and its altruism is only outshined by its ability to play out a mind-boggingly long farce. It then allows an Organic, under the supposition of free will, to board, interact with it, and then it suddenly changes it's mind to offer up choices that it could have put in place all this ti-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGRRRGGHHGGHHJBOIUGGFGFDGS.
So very ditto.
Ok. One last try. I can't handle any more pink goo seeping from my head-orfices. Let's say that the Catalyst is just a test, or dream, or hallucination that Shepard is experi-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!
Oh God... just make it STOP!
No matter what angle I approach it from, and there are even more than what I've written that I've considered, the Catalyst thing is an unnecessary sledgehammer taken to the otherwise beautiful sculpture that is the MEU's mythology. It's paradoxical, it's random in the implementation, it's cryptic in its reasoning, and it's completely nonsensical against the established lore. Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot.
The final blow to the mythology, but one I could accept if not for the rest, is the destruction of the Relays themselves. This ties in with every other charge I've laid, and it could work SO well otherwise as an end- a final end – to the MEU. No matter what choice you pick, the firing or activation of the Crucible uses the Mass Effect Relay Network to effect whatever Galactic change you've decided upon. The power of the change itself destroys the Relays in the process.
So the Construct/Ai/Godhead/BoyKing/Narrative Albatross began the cycles and technology and mean necessary to save organics from the ipods, and allowed them to create a weapon, only it wasn't a weapon, and though it seemed to suddenly change its mind on this process it in fact had the ability to do any of these choices by activating them and destroying the tech that all made it possi-AARRRRRRRRRRRRARARARARARARARGH.
I too, concur.
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