"You've done well, child. I'm proud of you."
In which I ramble about the ending of Mass Effect, themes and emotions and the difference between being a reader/spectator and actively participating in something.
“I can't hear you. I'm getting a lot of bullshit on this line.” (Shepard)
Lore-wise, I thought the ending made a reasonable amount of sense for a Bioware game. It's not without plot holes. I don't think they've ever explained their technology or even philosophy well enough for it to be a complete, solid solution in terms of lore and that is annoying. But not unexpected. Dragon Age's lore doesn't hold up too well to scrutiny either - just trying to make a time line charting the lore presented in the first game will give you a stroke, even without adding the tie-in novels. I think Bioware makes engaging games, but their franchise is all over the place and they're not ever going to give me a fully logical universe to play in. I'm okay with that.
I entered the endgame with good stats thanks to a lack of time to properly play the game, and a lot of quick matches on MP. I also had an imported Shepard who did everything ever in both previous games. So, Perfect Ending for me.
My Shepard destroyed the Reapers. It's the only option that I could ever see for her. Her past - her ruthless reputation and her childhood back on Earth - pointed towards this, as did the fact that it was the choice represented by Anderson. My Shepard trusts very few people a hundred percent but Anderson is definitely one of those. Above all, she would never in her life trust anyone or anything in the Catalyst's position - she rejected Saren, she rejected the Illusive Man - twice at that - and she's rejected every absolute truth of the galaxy so far, forging peace and unity from the pieces of those old prejudices.
Three games now have told her that she cannot break the cycle.
Did she break the cycle? I don't know. But I know that her decision was true to her determination to not let fear compromise her, to not sacrifice the humanity of the human race for anything. And I think that she made her decision thinking “hell yeah, I'm breaking this cycle. Fuck you very much.”
It also felt like a really heavy choice, far from a light-hearted heroic moment but I actually loved that. Because Mass Effect has always been really gritty beneath the space opera surface and this is a good way of showing it.
Like Anderson says: “there is always another way”. The Catalyst claims that the created will always rebel and Shepard says “perhaps”. But she has proven over and over again that this doesn't have to be true. She has proven it to all the races she has helped. It's not a fleeting notion, it's something that's part of their myths and stories now - how the galaxy once stood united against a mutual threat. Yes, it cost a lot. But a lot was gained, too. Perhaps the records of the Reaper War will lead to synthetics destroying organics again, perhaps they won't. Perhaps the loss of the Geths will be viewed as a necessity, the same way millions of others have been necessary casualties to end the war.
To me, destroying the ones who told me I had to follow a pattern felt like breaking the cycle, it felt like finding another way - or more importantly, letting the universe find another way.
“Stand in the ghosts of a trillion souls and ask again if honour matters.” (Javik)
“War is an atrocity committed in the name of survival” (Javik)
It's very dark that the destruction of the reapers also destroys all non-Reaper synthetics (if that's true an if it is, then I want to know why since it makes no sense) but I felt at that point that Shepard couldn't find a single reason not to blow them up anyway. Sacrifice a few for the good of the many and all that. Is it morally flawed? Yes. Is it awful? Yes. But I think for me, war is so completely disgusting in itself, so utterly without any redeeming quality whatsoever that I can accept this. And I think Shepard can, too.
I don't think the things Shepard has done during three games are invalidated by the ending, I don't think her struggle has been for nothing. The war is won. As "won" as any war can ever be. The losses are monstrous but they were monstrous even to begin with - what did the Turians lose, 80% of their population on Palaven? Several civilisations were already at the point of being utterly destroyed. And Shepard's legacy, such as it is, will be known in many different parts of the galaxy even after it resets itself with this reset-button.
And I can really work with this interpretation. My Shepard helped people all over the galaxy. She changed the world in many ways for many beings.
I don't think the mass relays being destroyed is meant to translate into “everyone dies” but rather “everyone is now trapped in their own systems and left there, forced to rebuild.” Start over, start a new intergalactic community free of Reaper technology. Is this explained? No. But neither do I get an explanation that tells me otherwise. Will this be an easy time for the galaxy? No, quite a few people will still die in the years to come, I presume. There will be conflicts and fighting. But the galaxy was already really, really fucked up by the Reaper war. Several races have almost been extinguished, planets have burned. The end to the war could never have been any better - I think this game is so anti-war that it takes your breath away at times. It paints war as the ultimate hell, a game with absolutely no winners, regardless of position. It seems to centre around the old Hemingway quote that war, no matter how justified or necessary, is always a crime.
Thematically, I'm more than fine with that.
Thematically, I appreciate that Shepard has to die, but also that Shepard gets the possibility to live.
My Shepard was breathing at the end. I think she lives.
I also see the life signs at the end as a definite answer to the question echoing all through ME2 and raised again at the Cerberus base - is Shepard still to be counted as a human being? The answer is yes. She is human enough for Kaidan (that line, my god) and apparently she is also human enough for the ME universe.
But. There's something else, too. Something that really bothers me. Because while my thousand billion hours of comparative literature studies at Uni can sustain me through a lot of vague and “symbolic” writing and extract meaning from a stone, I'm not just a spectator here. I'm a participant in the game.
Which is why we had the following conversation in casa the Lilith after I was done with my Perfect Ending. *
Me: *sobbing * They came for Jesus, didn't they?
K: What?
Me: Jesus. They came for him when he died, right? *wailing *HE DIDN'T HAVE TO BE ALL ALONE? PEOPLE WERE THERE AND THEY MOURNED HIM.
K: Yes. Yes, they did.
Me: They wouldn't just leave him there in THE RUBBLE OF DYSTOPIA!LONDON!
K: Oh no, did they go the Space Jesus route with Shepard?
Me: *sobbing *
K: Oh fuck, that's such a shitty ending. I hate it when they tweak theology into my space opera.
“Without that 'affection', all I have in my life is death. And that's not enough.” (Shepard)
“I can't lose you again.” (Kaidan)
Emotionally, the trilogy ended with a (grumpy) whimper for me, not with a bang.
I think the part where I feel truly dissatisfied is the emotional closure part. I felt that the game was so powerful in so many ways, it made Shepard so real to me, so human and so conflicted. It gave her the most pitch-perfect in-game romance I've ever played through, it gave her friendships that made me tear up. (Cortez saying "anything for you" at the end? I cried.) And her journey through the hells of war made me feel so many, many things that I honestly felt deprived of something at the very end of it. Not even sad, just empty. That's not a great success in terms of emotional manipulation - which storytelling is all about.
I've cried more times during this game than during all other games combined - it was a game clearly intended to make me feel things. In every other case, the feelings have been sad and sometimes downright tragic, but always with a slight sense of catharsis because of the overlaying theme of “we haven't seen the end of this yet, there's still hope”. I think the aftermath of Thessia was brilliant, down to the angry outburst I let my Shepard have at Joker and his equally angry retort; it was full of frustration and there was no real closure but it was real, it was utterly human all over the place.
The endgame hurts so much to go through. It's dramatic and emotional and epic and then finally it ends in a "twist" that feels like it's not even trying to please me in any way, thematically or emotionally. Everything (except the scene with Anderson) after the big beam of doom has a detached sort of feel to it that doesn't match the emotional impact of the rest. I think that's why it's jarring, why I feel so disappointed even though - unlike most of the fandom - I liked the overall themes of the ending.
It physically hurt seeing Shepard so worn down, seeing Anderson defeated. I cried like a baby when Anderson says “you've done well, child, I'm proud of you” since he's the only father figure my Shepard has. It also hurt because they weren't heroes at that point, they were just human beings caught in a war they hadn't even started but had to finish all the same. They were fumbling in the dark, trying to gather the last scraps of hope and determination and Shepard does it. She doesn't give up, she doesn't even give the Catalyst what it obviously wants. At least there is comfort in that. And then it sort of stops, as though it's about to peak and the real end drama is about to begin, but it never really does. Anderson's death is the real end for me, since that's when I stopped feeling I was part of the story. His death is the last punch - one story coming full circle, very sad but very fitting.
Then... I don't know.
The way the second act was played, the way the endgame unfolded, I don't think the vague and sort of detached ending was merited at all. You need to write your story with the framework and the ending in mind. You need to respect the internal logic of your own universe and follow through with your themes.
If you set up the endgame as a lecture in hope and faith and Shepard rallying people's feelings and reasons for living, you kind of committ yourself. When you show me Shepard alone and beaten halfway to death in the rubble while her closest friends (and Joker) are seemingly stuck in a completely different location, that's not signalling hope to me, or closure for that matter.
Do I feel that Shepard deserves a break? A life that isn't just about death and duty and soldiering on? A life that is about her friends and about Kaidan, just like she told Javik? Hell yes. While I could never see her retire, I think she deserves an extended shore leave spent drinking, sleeping, laughing and having great sex. But I also agree with Tali that life isn't so much about what you deserve. And if Bioware agrees with Tali, too, then fine.
What you cannot do without being overly melodramatic or just plain cheap is having my Shepard admit that Kaidan and her friends are the reasons she wants to live - and then let her live, but hint at actually taking away her reasons for it.
That, right there, is not gritty space opera - it's tragedy. People like tragedy. I love tragedy. As a reader and a spectator.
There is no way I'm going to be satisfied with tragedy as a participator.
Basically I would have enjoyed my big red explosive finish, such as it was, if not for the crash landing clusterfuck. I wouldn't have needed any other scene or any further explanation but for the shot of that N7 chestplate gasping for air to make this ending perfectly open and still perfectly vague. That breath alone would have told me Shepard is alive and then I could have extrapolated the hell out of the incomplete data. Gritty, imperfect, dark. But with enough room to move around in it without feeling weighed down by the utter sadness of watching my reluctant Space Jesus waking up all alone in a destroyed city.
What the crash landing did was adding a shoddily done “symbolic” scene of what I assume is meant to represent hope and rebuilding but that only served as cheap, needless drama.
That left a bad taste in my mouth.
I loved the game, however, and I still find myself invested in the ME universe.
*) Husband is a minister in the Church of Sweden, I'm an agnostic at best. Which explains why I have to ask him questions like that.
“I can't hear you. I'm getting a lot of bullshit on this line.” (Shepard)
Lore-wise, I thought the ending made a reasonable amount of sense for a Bioware game. It's not without plot holes. I don't think they've ever explained their technology or even philosophy well enough for it to be a complete, solid solution in terms of lore and that is annoying. But not unexpected. Dragon Age's lore doesn't hold up too well to scrutiny either - just trying to make a time line charting the lore presented in the first game will give you a stroke, even without adding the tie-in novels. I think Bioware makes engaging games, but their franchise is all over the place and they're not ever going to give me a fully logical universe to play in. I'm okay with that.
I entered the endgame with good stats thanks to a lack of time to properly play the game, and a lot of quick matches on MP. I also had an imported Shepard who did everything ever in both previous games. So, Perfect Ending for me.
My Shepard destroyed the Reapers. It's the only option that I could ever see for her. Her past - her ruthless reputation and her childhood back on Earth - pointed towards this, as did the fact that it was the choice represented by Anderson. My Shepard trusts very few people a hundred percent but Anderson is definitely one of those. Above all, she would never in her life trust anyone or anything in the Catalyst's position - she rejected Saren, she rejected the Illusive Man - twice at that - and she's rejected every absolute truth of the galaxy so far, forging peace and unity from the pieces of those old prejudices.
Three games now have told her that she cannot break the cycle.
Did she break the cycle? I don't know. But I know that her decision was true to her determination to not let fear compromise her, to not sacrifice the humanity of the human race for anything. And I think that she made her decision thinking “hell yeah, I'm breaking this cycle. Fuck you very much.”
It also felt like a really heavy choice, far from a light-hearted heroic moment but I actually loved that. Because Mass Effect has always been really gritty beneath the space opera surface and this is a good way of showing it.
Like Anderson says: “there is always another way”. The Catalyst claims that the created will always rebel and Shepard says “perhaps”. But she has proven over and over again that this doesn't have to be true. She has proven it to all the races she has helped. It's not a fleeting notion, it's something that's part of their myths and stories now - how the galaxy once stood united against a mutual threat. Yes, it cost a lot. But a lot was gained, too. Perhaps the records of the Reaper War will lead to synthetics destroying organics again, perhaps they won't. Perhaps the loss of the Geths will be viewed as a necessity, the same way millions of others have been necessary casualties to end the war.
To me, destroying the ones who told me I had to follow a pattern felt like breaking the cycle, it felt like finding another way - or more importantly, letting the universe find another way.
“Stand in the ghosts of a trillion souls and ask again if honour matters.” (Javik)
“War is an atrocity committed in the name of survival” (Javik)
It's very dark that the destruction of the reapers also destroys all non-Reaper synthetics (if that's true an if it is, then I want to know why since it makes no sense) but I felt at that point that Shepard couldn't find a single reason not to blow them up anyway. Sacrifice a few for the good of the many and all that. Is it morally flawed? Yes. Is it awful? Yes. But I think for me, war is so completely disgusting in itself, so utterly without any redeeming quality whatsoever that I can accept this. And I think Shepard can, too.
I don't think the things Shepard has done during three games are invalidated by the ending, I don't think her struggle has been for nothing. The war is won. As "won" as any war can ever be. The losses are monstrous but they were monstrous even to begin with - what did the Turians lose, 80% of their population on Palaven? Several civilisations were already at the point of being utterly destroyed. And Shepard's legacy, such as it is, will be known in many different parts of the galaxy even after it resets itself with this reset-button.
And I can really work with this interpretation. My Shepard helped people all over the galaxy. She changed the world in many ways for many beings.
I don't think the mass relays being destroyed is meant to translate into “everyone dies” but rather “everyone is now trapped in their own systems and left there, forced to rebuild.” Start over, start a new intergalactic community free of Reaper technology. Is this explained? No. But neither do I get an explanation that tells me otherwise. Will this be an easy time for the galaxy? No, quite a few people will still die in the years to come, I presume. There will be conflicts and fighting. But the galaxy was already really, really fucked up by the Reaper war. Several races have almost been extinguished, planets have burned. The end to the war could never have been any better - I think this game is so anti-war that it takes your breath away at times. It paints war as the ultimate hell, a game with absolutely no winners, regardless of position. It seems to centre around the old Hemingway quote that war, no matter how justified or necessary, is always a crime.
Thematically, I'm more than fine with that.
Thematically, I appreciate that Shepard has to die, but also that Shepard gets the possibility to live.
My Shepard was breathing at the end. I think she lives.
I also see the life signs at the end as a definite answer to the question echoing all through ME2 and raised again at the Cerberus base - is Shepard still to be counted as a human being? The answer is yes. She is human enough for Kaidan (that line, my god) and apparently she is also human enough for the ME universe.
But. There's something else, too. Something that really bothers me. Because while my thousand billion hours of comparative literature studies at Uni can sustain me through a lot of vague and “symbolic” writing and extract meaning from a stone, I'm not just a spectator here. I'm a participant in the game.
Which is why we had the following conversation in casa the Lilith after I was done with my Perfect Ending. *
Me: *sobbing * They came for Jesus, didn't they?
K: What?
Me: Jesus. They came for him when he died, right? *wailing *HE DIDN'T HAVE TO BE ALL ALONE? PEOPLE WERE THERE AND THEY MOURNED HIM.
K: Yes. Yes, they did.
Me: They wouldn't just leave him there in THE RUBBLE OF DYSTOPIA!LONDON!
K: Oh no, did they go the Space Jesus route with Shepard?
Me: *sobbing *
K: Oh fuck, that's such a shitty ending. I hate it when they tweak theology into my space opera.
“Without that 'affection', all I have in my life is death. And that's not enough.” (Shepard)
“I can't lose you again.” (Kaidan)
Emotionally, the trilogy ended with a (grumpy) whimper for me, not with a bang.
I think the part where I feel truly dissatisfied is the emotional closure part. I felt that the game was so powerful in so many ways, it made Shepard so real to me, so human and so conflicted. It gave her the most pitch-perfect in-game romance I've ever played through, it gave her friendships that made me tear up. (Cortez saying "anything for you" at the end? I cried.) And her journey through the hells of war made me feel so many, many things that I honestly felt deprived of something at the very end of it. Not even sad, just empty. That's not a great success in terms of emotional manipulation - which storytelling is all about.
I've cried more times during this game than during all other games combined - it was a game clearly intended to make me feel things. In every other case, the feelings have been sad and sometimes downright tragic, but always with a slight sense of catharsis because of the overlaying theme of “we haven't seen the end of this yet, there's still hope”. I think the aftermath of Thessia was brilliant, down to the angry outburst I let my Shepard have at Joker and his equally angry retort; it was full of frustration and there was no real closure but it was real, it was utterly human all over the place.
The endgame hurts so much to go through. It's dramatic and emotional and epic and then finally it ends in a "twist" that feels like it's not even trying to please me in any way, thematically or emotionally. Everything (except the scene with Anderson) after the big beam of doom has a detached sort of feel to it that doesn't match the emotional impact of the rest. I think that's why it's jarring, why I feel so disappointed even though - unlike most of the fandom - I liked the overall themes of the ending.
It physically hurt seeing Shepard so worn down, seeing Anderson defeated. I cried like a baby when Anderson says “you've done well, child, I'm proud of you” since he's the only father figure my Shepard has. It also hurt because they weren't heroes at that point, they were just human beings caught in a war they hadn't even started but had to finish all the same. They were fumbling in the dark, trying to gather the last scraps of hope and determination and Shepard does it. She doesn't give up, she doesn't even give the Catalyst what it obviously wants. At least there is comfort in that. And then it sort of stops, as though it's about to peak and the real end drama is about to begin, but it never really does. Anderson's death is the real end for me, since that's when I stopped feeling I was part of the story. His death is the last punch - one story coming full circle, very sad but very fitting.
Then... I don't know.
The way the second act was played, the way the endgame unfolded, I don't think the vague and sort of detached ending was merited at all. You need to write your story with the framework and the ending in mind. You need to respect the internal logic of your own universe and follow through with your themes.
If you set up the endgame as a lecture in hope and faith and Shepard rallying people's feelings and reasons for living, you kind of committ yourself. When you show me Shepard alone and beaten halfway to death in the rubble while her closest friends (and Joker) are seemingly stuck in a completely different location, that's not signalling hope to me, or closure for that matter.
Do I feel that Shepard deserves a break? A life that isn't just about death and duty and soldiering on? A life that is about her friends and about Kaidan, just like she told Javik? Hell yes. While I could never see her retire, I think she deserves an extended shore leave spent drinking, sleeping, laughing and having great sex. But I also agree with Tali that life isn't so much about what you deserve. And if Bioware agrees with Tali, too, then fine.
What you cannot do without being overly melodramatic or just plain cheap is having my Shepard admit that Kaidan and her friends are the reasons she wants to live - and then let her live, but hint at actually taking away her reasons for it.
That, right there, is not gritty space opera - it's tragedy. People like tragedy. I love tragedy. As a reader and a spectator.
There is no way I'm going to be satisfied with tragedy as a participator.
Basically I would have enjoyed my big red explosive finish, such as it was, if not for the crash landing clusterfuck. I wouldn't have needed any other scene or any further explanation but for the shot of that N7 chestplate gasping for air to make this ending perfectly open and still perfectly vague. That breath alone would have told me Shepard is alive and then I could have extrapolated the hell out of the incomplete data. Gritty, imperfect, dark. But with enough room to move around in it without feeling weighed down by the utter sadness of watching my reluctant Space Jesus waking up all alone in a destroyed city.
What the crash landing did was adding a shoddily done “symbolic” scene of what I assume is meant to represent hope and rebuilding but that only served as cheap, needless drama.
That left a bad taste in my mouth.
I loved the game, however, and I still find myself invested in the ME universe.
*) Husband is a minister in the Church of Sweden, I'm an agnostic at best. Which explains why I have to ask him questions like that.