spoilers The Ending II (Huge Spoilers) - Page 5

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quote Memento Mori

The biggest flaw I have with the indoctrination theory is this: What is the purpose of the two different endings which both effectively signify the same thing?

One represents Sarens choice (to merge with the machines) and the other represents TIMS choice (to control them). It's a symbolic thing.

quote Ded Valve

If I chose the destroy ending, unless Bioware comes up with the indoc theory or something else that negates the last 15 minutes, there is no reason to hang on to my ME3 save since the destroy ending means everything and everyone sapient or not is dead...including germs.

No it doesn't, the relays break apart and get get destroyed but they don't explode like the Alpha Relay.

Anyway the developers have said before that they have no interest in creating a sequel to Mass Effect 3. Any game they make will be a Prequel or concurrent with one of the main games. At least thats what they are saying. Who know what they actually do.


I do know that I want the Ending explained better but one other thing that was boring and bugging me was Shep's dreams. Instead of that or maybe added onto the end would be to have a segment where you play as random people on Earth, similar to playing as Joker on the Normandy. One instance its a random soldier and he's the last survival and he's fighting hard but eventually gets overwhelmed. Another is a girl who was too slow and gets locked out of a bunker and goes on the run but gets cut down no matter how fast she goes. A guy wakes up in the hospital with no one in it and gets attacked by husks. I don't know just random things you personally control that show the hopelessness on Earth so I actually feel like I'm rushing to save the day as opposed to leisurely gathering a fleet and Allies, while Earth burns. Hell maybe even a semi-happy story where a child is cowering in some type of ruins and theirs dirty exhausted soldiers being pushed back and one spots the kid and grabs them and makes a run for it and they actually manage to make it to the shuttle and fly off only to see the horizon studded with Reapers with even more people being killed down below while they fly off. Not every one is an N7 or multiplayer badass like Shep or Kai Leng that can mow down husks with advanced weaponry. I'm talking like a common grunt with an Avenger not upgraded and low Health and no or little Shields. Anyway it would serve the same purpose as dreams but be more emotional and fun to play.

Just throwing things out there...

quote Ded Valve

Arrival DLC makes a law "If a relay is destroyed (which it is) the system it resides in will also be destroyed. Relay goes, system goes"

The relays where destroyed, technically that means the galaxy should implode. We don't know though because it immediately cuts to joker on some random planet. However it should since it's a law made by bioware themselves.

The difference being that they didn't have giant asteroids thrown at them at tremendous speeds.

quote Ded Valve

This is not possible without the mass relays.

You don't know that for certain. They still have faster-than-light travel. They could make a sequel set in the Local cluster a few years after the ending, for example.

quote Spectre

quote Ded Valve

Arrival DLC makes a law "If a relay is destroyed (which it is) the system it resides in will also be destroyed. Relay goes, system goes"

The relays where destroyed, technically that means the galaxy should implode. We don't know though because it immediately cuts to joker on some random planet. However it should since it's a law made by bioware themselves.

The difference being that they didn't have giant asteroids thrown at them at tremendous speeds.

It's still, as Ded Valve adequately puts it: space magic.

There is not a single explanation how the beam works and it does something that was seemingly impossible (which we've been led to believe throughout the whole series). And to top it all of the last DLC confirms/proofs it once again. It's just plain bad story telling to suddenly in the last seconds of a saga change everything and don't give a single credible explanation for it. *Poof* magic, The end.

Same applies to "synthesis" by the way. How does it work? Merging living DNA with computers? How? Magic, is the answer. Space magic.

Major disappointment because up till the last 15 minutes of the game, Mass Effect was a game primarily based on science. They explained everything. Ezoo and the mass effect fields etc.. I loved listening to the codex how the universe made sense.

Oh and by the by, why did Shepard have to jump to his death if everyone else can be 'synthesized' without dying?
In the immortal words of Notorious B.I.G: mo magic mo problems (paraphrasing here..)

quote Ded Valve

On my phone. Ignore grammar and shit.

spartanninja11 they can't recreate the mass relays at least not for another several hundred thousand years.

They MAY be able to recreate the technology in the same way the protheans where able to create a small one, but not for a long long time (they still have other problems to worry about such as rebuilding). The way a relay works is that it sends you from one relay to another an tremendous speed and this is the only way the reapers are able to zip around the galaxy.

So even if they did make a mass relay they would have to make another one then they have to travel trillions of miles across the galaxy to place the second one in order for the relay to work. That alone will take a millenia plus. To install relays all across the galaxy would take an enormous amount of time. By the time they've set up one relay we could easily be looking into 500,000+ years into the future.


The reapers themselves had to use the relays as their only mode of transportation around the galaxy.

Um hmm, counter argument, they still have comm buoys and quantum entanglement chains, most were destroyed but they are communicating somehow throughout the Galaxy on some level. Now pooling knowledge and lets say they build one on the Local Cluster they simply talk to the Asari on their home world in the Athena Nebula and they build two roughly simultaneously by sharing the knowledge with each other, hell maybe even using the remnants of the Relays (and in Earth's case the Citadel) to study and halp rebuild them. 100 thousand years? wtf? when the Protheans studied Relays (albeit intact ones) and were able to make on of there own (anyone else remember driving the Mako through that Relay on Ilos? yeah, thats all Prothean baby). Hovering in orbit (destroyed or not) Earth has the Culmination of supposedly millions of years of technology, in one large ass packet and this Cycle were the ones that finally completed it in its entirety and then proceeded to build it. Using whats left of the communication network they could have those babies up in a year if they didn't have to rebuild and stabilize. And this explanation doesn't use Space Magic, like what destroyed it in the first place. All hard, fictional technology and perseverance, and in game references.

quote Machienzo

quote CAGarber

For those of you who have played the game through, there is but one thing you must see... Mass Effect 3 Gamer Poop

Ugh, not really relative to this thread.

Milkenobi one of the problems with the idea of a ME game which does not feature the Mass Relays is that the Mass Effect series is based around those very devices. They are the meant to be the pinnacle of technology and what makes the ME series so unique as they are the origin of the "Mass Effect" technology.

It's like having a mainstream Halo game without Master Chief or whatever kind of soldier he is (not too familiar with the series). Or having a main-series Assassin's Creed game without any Assassins. Or a Metal Gear game without a Metal Gear. Even a Fallout game that isn't set in a post-apocalyptic setting. How can Mass Effect be without Mass Effect?

It would be a stretch to say that the Mass Effect relays are the iconic imagery tied to the franchise in a similar way that The Master Chief is to Halo. When you ask someone what the main thing they think about when someone mentions the Halo video games they'll likely say The Master Chief or the Halo rings. If you ask someone what the first thing that comes to their head when they think of Mass Effect I don't think they'd say 'oh definitely the Mass Effect relays, that's what the series is best known for'.

But let's say that was the case, surely you couldn't possibly make a Halo game without The Master Chief or a Halo ring right? Well there's ODST, that has no MC or Halo ring, there's Reach, no Halo ring or MC, there's Halo Wars ...

Mass Effect doesn't need relays for the game to be a Mass Effect game.

And show me the law that says Mass Relays must destroy a galaxy absolutely every single time they're disabled without fail 100% of the time. You have a single instance where that happened and it was because an asteroid crashed through it. Will the exact same thing happen every single time? If the answer is yes, show me proof.

And the story can absolutely continue. There would still be many operational space ships that can travel a system without a mass relay. There could also be long buried Reaper tech underground that allows inter-galaxy travel on a personal level. There could even be other galaxies out there full of relays. Where is the proof that the few dozen relays in this game are without a doubt the only relays ever and there's no more at all? Who says the Reapers have explored every inch of space?

I could think of a dozen ways the story could continue and I'm not a writer by any means; I just have an imagination. Imagine what a talented sci fi writer could dream up. The fact is the story is still wide open. That was not at all what I'd call a conclusive ending, not even close.

And once again, as far as the space magic goes, I'll say it again, there's so much mystical stuff in this game that has a scientific explanation attached to it. There's space mages and space zombies. The stuff in Mass Effect, even when explained with codexes, is delightfully outrageous and in my opinion the Reapers, being even more advanced than the races we know, could be capable of the things that happen in the ending. I'm sure a sci fi writer could equally dream up outlandish explanations to how the tech worked but it wouldn't make sense to have a codex explaining that because the codexes in the game relate directly to what the races of the galaxy understand and Reaper tech is not fully explained in the codexes beyond what is already known by the allied races. The codex narrations are not some all-knowing base of knowledge, they're a fictional device that's based on what has been discovered by the races so far. How could a codex explaining in length how the crucible works and what happens when it is activated even exist? Not even the races working on the device understood what it was or how it worked so if the codexes suddenly had all the answers it wouldn't be right:

hows a communicator gonna help?
"hey Earth just got wiped the *bleep* out by the Reapers, how you guys doing?"
"yeah, were pretty jacked up over here too"