"Synthetics will destroy organics" theme

Soooooo..we have

a) The Reapers as kinda godlike, creepy machines, harvesting and destroying everything on their path; their motives being mostly unknown or just based on hypothetical assumptions. Terrifying and cruel "creatures" that let you shiver in fear.
b) The Reapers as galactic janitors.

I am pretty sure, Bioware did exactly know what to choose for the "closure".

Oh and btw, I also found THE answer, whether the Godchild is an AI or a VI....

It's an anagram. The AI stands for.... *drum roooooooooll* Artistic Integrity! *badummtss* (because that's what it IS!)

Another mystery solved. Yes, I'm a fucking genious, thank you. And it's damn late I suppose. Good night.

Well, first up, that is completely ridiculous. Reaper Kid out right says "including the geth".. Oh, and I have seen her "maybe he is lying" replies. If it is not in the game and they never PLANNED on elaborating, then speculating is useless. That option came with "Wipe out all synthetic life, including the geth, and hell, even you" and no amount of twitter speculation will change that. This was the end of Shep. There was to be no more on this. Even the Ending DLC is ONLY because we are all like "WTF?????????" and is an afterthought. So no. This is a load of horsecrap meant to placate us because clearly we are too stupid to know that "Wipe out all synthetic life, including the geth" doesn't mean exactly what he said...

Otherwise, many kudos to the OP. Well written, agree completely.

For a species that is going to "preserve" life, they are doing a whole lot of killing. That ending insults my intelligence. And comments like Merizan's just compound the insult.

As cliched as that would be, at least it would have made sense...

You win the internet for the day sir.

Indeed, i'm not sure she thought out the replies, and the rest of them are the same, i read quite a few of mac walters's posts and it seems he just talks out of his arse about the end.
If the catalyst is lying...why can't i call him on that? Wheres the renegade interrupt when you need it most? My Shepard acts like a hero and talks like a jerk, there was not enough "being a dick to the ancient AI" for me, in fact, there was none.
I don't think any of us want all the symbolism and adam and eve thing we got. Personally if i wanted that, i would read the bible. Selective murder was totally god's style(don't quote me on that, i have never even cracked open the bible). Nothing they say proves..anything really. If i recall Merizan also said no one starves to death, which means either the mass relays did in fact wipe out everything, ergo there is no one left to starve, or we'll get lots more space magic.

Placation? For sure. If we had said nothing we would just be left with the crappy ending as it stands, and while we didn't exactly(UNDERSTATEMENT) succeed, we did get pretty far(so far) when everyone else figured and hoped we would fail. Even the resurgence pack is an attempt to make us go away, as i'm damn sure it was not intended to be free.

It does seem like the extended cut is "The ending is awesome! But because you can't understand that, here is more cinematics and cutscenes to explain it to you! All is joy now right?"
99% of the retake movement: "What the hell? That's not what we asked for, although we do like the epilogue...the ending is still broken!"

First of all, as you said at least it would have made sense - and that's a huge step forward if we look at the current ending.

What I also like about this idea is that organics would still be irrelevant to the reapers, as Sovereign stated.

The moment organics create AI, they create some risk for the reapers, but organics themselves are never a threat.
Those created synthetics (such as EDI and the geth) are not a threat themselves either but as they are able to evolve and advance they might reach technological singularity and create even more intelligent and advanced synthetics who will eventually threaten the reapers. What happens at this point to organics is irrelevant to the reapers. Organics might be destroyed or enslaved by synthetics, or might work together, but they are not truly important.
From Mass Effect Wiki: "The geth continued development of new technology and variations of mobile platforms, separating their technology base from the rest of the galaxy."
This means they are starting to drift away from mass relay (reaper) technology, making them potentially dangerous in the future.
The reapers take preventive action and cut the problem in it's root - technologically advanced organics get wiped out.

Why the reapers perfom the cycle is revealed, yes. But the reapers themselves still remain a mystery.
I don't know about you, but this certainly seems a lot better to me than what we got.

Don't forget, if it is a VI then it stands for Virtual Idiot...

...and if it is neither, then it is still so.


I did like the Reaper better when they indeed were The Mysterious Antagonists rather than The Mindless Marionettes. That was a bad name-change for their band, even if they still play a wicked horn.

And you know why? SPACE MAGIIIIIIC! *sing it in the highest possible tone*

Sovereign literally scared my skin off. But oh well....intergalactical janitors is also a nice job. You get paid quite well and you always experience something new. Blablabla...

I don't NEED to know the reaper's intension for destroying the galaxy.They could be those huge monsters you just want to get rid off.
But I DO know now, why they said "You can't comprehend our motivations." They are ASHAMED. They feel kinda dumb for working for an Artistic Integrit.....Artificial Intelligence (sorry) that's looking like a human child and which's decisions are based on wrong or not-proven theories. Well, I would be ashamed by myself, too. YES, I feel sorry for them!

...I wonder if he washes his tentacles between jobs... Ew, that's a scary thought, yes...

Well, if he cleans the restrooms he will mostly see something... second-hand...

Yes, poor Sovvie and Harbie, went from being Spooktacular to being Spooftacular...

BUMP
Old forum members, sorry for bothering you.
New members please read my wall of text.

I'm a firm believer in every1's inherent right to cookies, but the catalyst just doesn't deserve 1

My crystal ball told me its a void topic since anyway in the future organics will become synthetics a la Appleseed or a la Hamilton's Void trilogy

Ugh, this is probably the most annoying thing about this whole fiasco.

Did no one at BioWare think any of this?

Surely, after all this time, after three games which have stayed reasonably consistent, you'd think they wouldn't mess up quite as badly. It seems inconceivable that they could have done something so insanely stupid.

I mean, the themes of singularities and artificial intelligences in general are porbably the two most used themes in recent science-fiction. It's fairly easy to pull off, a trope that people are already familiar with, and it's a great way to add variety to a story.

I wouldn't mind Mass Effect revolving around this, but aside from the complete lack of any foreshadowing or narrative support this shift of focus in the last few minutes has, it's an incredibly simplistic, abstract, and down-right idiotic form of the general concept. It's not interesting or thought-provoking, just rage inducing and stupid, serving as an example of what you shouldn't do.

At least in the numerous other stories that use the theme they pull it off reasonably well. Often cliched but a cliche is better than stupidity. BioWare couldn't even do that. The entire plot point is asinine and something that can be easily ignored with no detriment to the narrative. Seriously, you can talk to the Catalyst and literally glance over everything it says on the matter and lose nothing. That in and of itself is a failure. No parts of your story should be line that, especially not parts you're obviously trying to push as important to the plot.

bump

I have a few more things to say on the subject that got me to join this great community...

Some people pointed out that the theme of the game is "All the races against the reapers", therefore the theme of the game is "organics vs. synthetics".

This is not true. And here's why...

All the races fought the reapers - this is true. But they didn't fight the reapers because the reapers are synthetic.
They fought the reapers because the reapers intended to kill everyone.
They fought the reapers in order to ensure their own survival.
They fought the reapers because what reapers were doing is wrong.

The fight against the reapers wasn't a fight with the purpose of destroying synthetic life.
It was a fight for our survival, a fight to give us our own future, where we could live freely.

Reaper's synthetic nature is completely irrelevant in this fight. The reapers might have been organics too. It doesn't matter.


On the other hand the Geth vs. Quarians subplot was the one dealing with the relationship between organics and synthetics and "synthetic-organic conflict".
And indeed, that was a major theme. But the message of that theme and the entire subplot wasn't that synthetics will inevitably kill us.
Quite the opposite. The message was "You are more like us than we thought". That we are similar. That we can work together. That we can coexist in peace. That there's more to life than flesh and blood.

Bioware ruined both the main plot and this subplot (which were both amazing) due to reckless writing at the end.

I do wonder sometimes if the whole organic v sythetic thing was supposed to be the major theme, but got de-railed by an accident. I vaguely remember reading something that said the orignal idea for Legion came about as an artist drawing a geth in N7 armour for a joke, then some1 liked it so much they put him in the game, and he was just so cool that every1 liked him so they had to do a whole reconcilliation thing to fit him in. Maybe that was never part of the original plan. But then again the Geth did just sit behind the veil for 300 years post Quarian spanking so maybe not. Who knows what goes through BWs heads at the moment.