Ok, if it wasn't obvious to those reading my G+ post, I'm a little peeved about this whole "Let's bitch at Bioware for the ending they put into the game that I love!" rant that seemingly everyone with the Internet as decided to get behind. it's absolutely ridiculous on many, many levels.
I'm not going to cross post it, so if you want to read my original rant, go here.
Let me put a warning here: I'm going to be spoilerific. The reason why I'm posting this on my blog is so that I CAN be spoilerific. For the most part, I don't think people are going to come read this unless they expect this, so if somehow, you've gotten this far and don't want to read on about the endings of Mass Effect 3, STOP READING NOW. Thank you.
Now, I've done a little more research, having a few more in-depth conversations with people, read a few blogs, looked up some rants on Youtube, checked out a few more of the endings myself, etc. I get it a bit more. I can sort of see why a lot of people are angry.
It's still REALLY DUMB. But I get it. If I made a bunch of stupid assumptions about what was going on without examining anything for myself, or decided to make enormous jumps in my conclusions as to what things mean, sure, I'd be pissed too. I'd be stupid, but I'd be pissed (but then, those two tend to go hand in hand pretty often).
There are a few, specific issues that have been brought up multiple times in multiple ways that I simply feel are inaccurate at best, and presumptive at worse. I'm going to start with the simpler ones.
There's been a lot of complaints that Shepherd's team somehow "miraculously" made it back to Normandy. Despite a clearing of the hot-zone you performed not too long ago, the fact that there are multiple Makos and other vehicles in the area, and the fact that the team all left you in the damn ship when it last exploded, seemingly everyone is SHOCKED that somehow, for some reason, your surviving team left for and made it to the Normandy while you died. Not sure how this is surprising, nor why people had to make up stories about teleporters.
Many people complained about the emotional connection, that they wouldn't have left it in that situation. Well, I'm sorry, but it came down to two things. Your team either saw you dead, or they saw you limp your way into the lift. The lift that took you to the Citadel, where you most likely weren't going to be returning to Earth unless the Citadel crashed. You limped through that damn place for the better part of an hour. It's not suprising that, when someone gave the order to retreat, your damn team beat feet.
The next issue I had is with people wanting to tell the little robot-child-thing off, shoot it or otherwise do something else than submit to the choices in that situation. My question is: what the fuck do you want Shepherd to do?? Bleed on it? It's a hologram! It's a program! It's NOT THERE!! You want to kill it? Well, low and behold, that's one of the GORRAM CHOICES!! Destroying the Repears destroys it too (and if you think about it, you're actually doing it the other way around: destory IT is what destroys the Reapers)! This isn't hard, people.
Seriously, what the hell else would Shepherd do in that situation?? Bleed out? The longer you wait, the more people die. Decisions are made. And when you're stuck in a room, dying, with a few decisions in front of you, not making a decision, or telling the child to fuck off without doing anything, is dying, and condemning everyone else to dying. Seriously, what else do you want? Getting three options (assuming you came fully prepared) was a bit shocking, in my opinion.
Ok, now to get all pseudo-gaming-science all up in this bitch.
First of all: This whole "People are stranded here" thing.
They have said MULTIPLE TIMES throughout the games--twice in ME3 alone!!--that FTL travel between systems is entirely possible. it just takes years, instead of seconds. The relays were a convenience more than anything else... In fact, some times when you escape a system from the Reapers, Evi says, "Faster than light jump successful."
So, they're not fucking stranded. If the ships they are using can use the stupid relays, they can use FTL. Granted, it's just gonna take the better part of a decade (for some, like the Quarians and the Geth, it's could take almost half a century, but they're the best equipped to handle it anyway). Seriously, if you think they're stranded their, either (a) you haven't been paying attention the entire game, or (b) you're stupid, and you're not thinking about it.
Ok, second: Joker running away.
First of all, if I saw a giant wave of destructive energy shooting out at me, and Shepherd was confirmed dead... HELL YEAH I'D RUN!! His loyalty is to the friggin' ship. That was made obvious at the beginning.
My only problem is that he was smiling when he got off the crashed ship. He should have been pissed, and definitely shouldn't be the first one off the ship.
Setting that aside...
The reviews and rants I have read lead me to believe that everyone assumes Joker went to a Mass Effect relay and jumped. Assuming he did so, yeah, this entire ending would be ridiculous. With this assumption, you also had to be assuming that Joker pretty much had to start running almost as soon as Shepherd got hit with the laser-blast-thing.
Ok, let's just assume this is wrong because it's stupid. Why would anyone write an ending where that kind of simple physics issue is overlooked? Heck, they even mentioned something in game about on-board sound-synthesizers that make it sound like an explosion happens in space when there isn't one (although, scientifically, that's still in question). If you take away that assumption, and just assume that Joker hit the ship's FTL when crazy-ray-of-WTF-ness started happening, it doesn't seem that illogical anymore, right? Why did anyone even jump to this conclusion?
To make it worse, the ending pretty much takes us by the hand, doing its best to try to show us that this didn't happen in a Mass Relay jump.
Three considerations: One, he's making adjustments and piloting. This means he is NOT traveling via the Relays, as that is near-instantaneous, and he's said before that he makes all adjustments for jumps before he touches the relay. Two: the beam *caught him*. No way it could do that in near-instantaneous travel. Three: The beam that caught him was a wave, not the destructive-looking-lazer-thing shot out by the relays, but the wave that came of the Crucible. That means he's not on the relay's path.
The only logical thing was that, as crazy shit started to go down, he hit FTL tried to escape with the fleet, and got caught in the blast from the Crucible. Regardless of which ending you choose, the subsequent change to Edi would mess with the ship, pull it out of FTL, and cause the ship to crash.
Ok, that is done.
So this pretty much reduces the complaints the fact that they haven't wrapped up everyone elses' stories (which I hope they do in comics and books, and not in this game, because I loved the other media), the lack of more variation in the endings (ok, seriously, I don't know what you were expecting here, high quality CG is expensive especially in design, and what they pulled off was great-looking, and IMO it all had to end somewhat the same way anyway), and the fact that the endings were color-coded.
I do have to admit, I am kind of irritated by the color-coded-morality endings (although I don't think they correspond entirely). Still, I understand why they did it: Because they took us by the fucking hand while trying to still do a decent, somewhat artistic ending, and we still didn't get it.
So shut up. However much I don't like including myself in this, it's our fault this crap is happening, and our bitching and whining just means we're going to have more Navis in our future.
