Posted: Nov 29, 2012 12:42 am
Ok so I'm a bit behind on this.. the fact that I only finished this game today tells you something about how I feel about Mass Effect.. I find it pretty fun but not amazing, never have. But couldn't resist throwing in my 2 cents on this whole ending controversy, in particular the rationale of the so called god-child. I'm not going to defend the other bits (red green blue / why is Joker on some random planet / what happened to x character / relays exploding.. etc etc). Honestly I'm not into the games enough to care about those things.
So the god-child. Here is my take on his rationale and how it makes sense. It is necessary for the reapers to come to this galaxy (and presumably others) in order to kill organic life, because if they do not, organic life will inevitably create synthetic life which will wipe out all organic life, not just those advanced species. We can assume this is an empirical observation based on thousands of cycles and galaxies. The fact that some kind of peace is made between one particular organic species (Quarians) and one particular type of synthetic (Geth) in extreme circumstances does nothing to change that. That peace could be temporary, or other synthetics may be invented.
Killing the synthetics would not be good enough, as some time afterwards the organics will create new synthetics. Again we can assume this is an empirical observation. It is not unlikely. In a galaxy with many different factions, are they all going to agree to not create synthetics and miss out on the technological, military advantage they provide? Of course not. Even Shepard had EDI. Perhaps the reapers are kept busy in multiple galaxies and cannot afford to go back to each one every 300 years to kill off synthetics, and cannot risk the life in any galaxy getting to the point where they'd stop the reapers and thus doom all organic life in all galaxies. So that is his solution, as he puts it.
I'll admit there are still some questions unanswered with respect to this explanation though.. most importantly why it is necessary to protect organic life in the first place? From their perspective. And who the fuck is this god-child and the reapers and where did they come from anyway?
But in general that explanation does seem to make sense to me, although truth be told I'm a sucker for robot voices speaking pseudo philosophy to awesome music, so maybe I've just been indoctrinated to believe that..
Edit: Haven't yet seen the extended cut endings, will probably watch tomorrow.
So the god-child. Here is my take on his rationale and how it makes sense. It is necessary for the reapers to come to this galaxy (and presumably others) in order to kill organic life, because if they do not, organic life will inevitably create synthetic life which will wipe out all organic life, not just those advanced species. We can assume this is an empirical observation based on thousands of cycles and galaxies. The fact that some kind of peace is made between one particular organic species (Quarians) and one particular type of synthetic (Geth) in extreme circumstances does nothing to change that. That peace could be temporary, or other synthetics may be invented.
Killing the synthetics would not be good enough, as some time afterwards the organics will create new synthetics. Again we can assume this is an empirical observation. It is not unlikely. In a galaxy with many different factions, are they all going to agree to not create synthetics and miss out on the technological, military advantage they provide? Of course not. Even Shepard had EDI. Perhaps the reapers are kept busy in multiple galaxies and cannot afford to go back to each one every 300 years to kill off synthetics, and cannot risk the life in any galaxy getting to the point where they'd stop the reapers and thus doom all organic life in all galaxies. So that is his solution, as he puts it.
I'll admit there are still some questions unanswered with respect to this explanation though.. most importantly why it is necessary to protect organic life in the first place? From their perspective. And who the fuck is this god-child and the reapers and where did they come from anyway?
But in general that explanation does seem to make sense to me, although truth be told I'm a sucker for robot voices speaking pseudo philosophy to awesome music, so maybe I've just been indoctrinated to believe that..
Edit: Haven't yet seen the extended cut endings, will probably watch tomorrow.