Mass Effect 3 - - Part 11

[Upset Spideyfan]

Originally Posted by Balthus Dire

I thought that was just a deleted audio clip that someone found within the files on PC? And then I think "Final Hours" confirmed that there was an extended scene including that missing audio, but it was cut.

That was what I read as well. Probably just a rumor.

[webhead921]

From BSN, concerning the "Hudson and Walters wrote the ending with no peer review rumor:

[XEdge]

Originally Posted by webhead921

From BSN, concerning the "Hudson and Walters wrote the ending with no peer review rumor:

so.....iow.....******* up the ending was a collaborative effort..........

[Master Chief]

I read all of those in Mordin's voice.

[Fenrir]

Originally Posted by Master Chief

I read all of those in Mordin's voice.

Hahaha, same thing here. I think it is the lack of pronouns.

[Matt]

Originally Posted by XEdge

I know.......

now.....for the deviant sadists out there.......if only we had a totally renegade option to get rid of both!!

of course, my paragon, War Hero, Arielle Shepard would never do that..........

or would she????

My word that would've been awesome. And fitting with all of the choices we were promised. Sigh....if only.

Originally Posted by Balthus Dire

I thought it was pretty fitting, too, but I still hate the fact that if you didn't pick the right dialogue options throughout ME3 you are forced to shoot Illusive Man. The first time I actually got shot and killed by Illusive Man because I refused to press the Renegade prompt. I was floored when it went to the "Critical Mission Failure" screen.


I also feel like the Illusive Man/Anderson talk might've been a great prelude to a final boss fight, perhaps with Harbinger or something. Or, as a post boss fight scene. It seems to me from the concept art and stuff that the intention was probably to have Illusive Man morph into the stupid boss-monster after the dialogue sequence, but it was scrapped so instead of having a boss fight it's just a dialogue scene. As much as I like it, as a finale it's kinda flat IMO.

That is an excellent point, regarding being forced to shoot the Illusive Man. Yes, he was a villain, but not in a traditional sense. Like Shepard's other mentor, he wanted what was best for humanity. The two men just had vastly different ideas of what that means and how to attain it. They were such polar opposites, both striving for the same thing. Shepard was in many ways the middle ground of both. He took their best qualities while leaving their worst. Anderson was not willing to do what was necessary and TIM went too far. Shepard was the perfect middle, so why not a middle ground solution?

What is curious, is that the Illusive Man may have been right all along. Shepard has two choices....kill the Illusive Man or talk him into suicide. There is no middle ground. That feels a hell of a lot more like TIM's logic than Anderson's. And Anderson's option (destroy the Reapers) is painted as the renegade choice where as the Illusive Man's is painted as the paragon choice. I found that to be particularly curious. Is the implication that the Illusive Man was right all along and Anderson was a naive fool?

[Fenrir]

Originally Posted by Matt

And Anderson's option (destroy the Reapers) is painted as the renegade choice where as the Illusive Man's is painted as the paragon choice. I found that to be particularly curious. Is the implication that the Illusive Man was right all along and Anderson was a naive fool?

I think it has more to do with the level of sacrifice you have to make to achieve your goals. In the Paragon option, the only "loss" you have to endure is your own life and compromising your objective of destroying the Reapers. The Renegade one is about sticking to your guns no matter what, even if it meant sacrificing your synthetic allies for it.

[webhead921]

It's important to note that Anderson would choose the "destroy" option because he has no real attachment to the geth, and is unaware of what they are capable of. If I'm not mistaken, the only time Anderson interacted with the Geth was in Mass Effect 1, when they were just Saren/Soverign's goons. He might not know all of the things that shepard knows about the geth.

[Matt]

Originally Posted by Fenrir

I think it has more to do with the level of sacrifice you have to make to achieve your goals. In the Paragon option, the only "loss" you have to endure is your own life and compromising your objective of destroying the Reapers. The Renegade one is about sticking to your guns no matter what, even if it meant sacrificing your synthetic allies for it.

True, but the destroy ending feels thoroughly evil....especially when presented by the Star Child which could add to the theory that the Star Child was lying about the benevolent motivations of the Reapers and perhaps other aspects. Perhaps merging with the control ending is more sinister than we realize. We know that the Reapers are hell bent on absorbing parts of each cycle. MAybe they consider Shepard enough and with humanity's best as a part of them (with no real control over them), they will return in 50,000 years and finish the job? Maybe destroy doesn't even destroy the Geth at all. Maybe it is all just a lie in a last ditch effort by Harbinger to deter Shepard? Letting the destroy option come off as more of a Reaper trick/show down with Harbinger would certainly improve the ending in my eyes.

That said I doubt it'll happen....

BTW, speaking of the Geth, perhaps they are the key to rebuilding the universe in the synthesize and control endings? Tali mentioned that with the Geth's help the Quarians were almost instantly adapting to life on Rannoch. The Geth absorbed the Reaper on Rannoch. Perhaps they could rebuild the relays, or at the very least have technology to quickly terraform planets that are within traveling distance to make Sol a suitable system for all of the stranded fleets?

[Fenrir]

Originally Posted by Matt

True, but the destroy ending feels thoroughly evil....especially when presented by the Star Child which could add to the theory that the Star Child was lying about the benevolent motivations of the Reapers and perhaps other aspects. Perhaps merging with the control ending is more sinister than we realize. We know that the Reapers are hell bent on absorbing parts of each cycle. MAybe they consider Shepard enough and with humanity's best as a part of them (with no real control over them), they will return in 50,000 years and finish the job? Maybe destroy doesn't even destroy the Geth at all. Maybe it is all just a lie in a last ditch effort by Harbinger to deter Shepard? Letting the destroy option come off as more of a Reaper trick/show down with Harbinger would certainly improve the ending in my eyes.

That said I doubt it'll happen....

That's what I thought earlier. I can see why the Destroy ending feels thorougly evil, but it is also uncompromising. That is the basic premise of every renegade decision in the series. So in a twisted way, I guess it feels fitting that a renagade would annihilate entire synthetic species if it meant getting rid of the Reaper threat once and for all.

[Matt]

But it still makes sense. Like you said in your post, the Star Child points out that Shepard is part synthetic....yet he lives. Was the Star Child lying? My guess is that BW will gloss over it.

[Balthus Dire]

My guess: Shepard dies "differently."

[Balthus Dire]

So apparently this is based on a deleted scene with Ash:

Spoiler!!! Click to Read!:

Crazy how much stuff got cut, man.

[SolarTiger]

What the hell. That made me like Ash more. What was the point of cutting that?

[zenith16]

Money and time it's always about money and time, and the publishers pushing how close the dead line. other then that who knows? shouldn't have been cut. But i digress. who knows what some pf the people make the chose to take stuff out of the game were thinking? unless it was gonna added later in their DLC plans cause they wanted it to part of some thing else they wanted to put in later on too. That's if that latter part of what i said is the case. might not be.

[gohei_]

That scene with Ashley didn't have great dialogue but it's a shame it got cut.

[CapedCrusader14]

Yeah some of that dialogue was pretty hammy. Still seemed like a nice moment.

[Upset Spideyfan]

Originally Posted by Balthus Dire

Crazy how much stuff got cut, man.

Do remember, that all kinds of stuff does in fact get cut before release for every game. I know with the whole ending controversy its easy to get into a string of fits (not talking about you here) over every little deleted scene people find but ME2 was actually pretty chock full of similar stuff as well (Mordin vs Grunt comes in mind as being much like this for example).

Its actually pretty normal.

As to the scene:

I like most of it, Ash coming to ask Shepard about the afterlife makes a lot of sense - I'd cut it off before the end personally, not comfortable with the game dictating my emotional state during ME2.

[Matt]

I personally love the Shepard/Ashley dialogue. I've wondered a lot of those questions myself. Is Shepard a clone? Is he the real Shepard? How do you really bring someone back? It is a great scene and a pity that it got cut.

[Upset Spideyfan]

Actually pre-ME2 launch my "guess" was that Shepard was actually dead and that you were playing as a robotic duplicate that was using Geth technology, and that Legion was a failed Shepard prototype. Didn't quite turn out that way.

I just don't like the bit where Shepard is all "I emotionally shut down during ME2" since that was not how I played that game at all. The nice thing about when the game brings up the question during the Cerberus base is that I can essentially take the position that it really didn't faze Shepard in the end.

[Matt]

I'm sure like any conversation, there are dialogue options. My guess is that is the paragon one. There are probably options like, "Nope....didn't phase me at all. Quit asking dumb questions."

[Upset Spideyfan]

Originally Posted by Matt

There are probably options like, "Nope....didn't phase me at all. Quit asking dumb questions."

"Now take off your clothes"

but granted, you are probably right.

[Matt]

Speaking of Ash, I really didn't like her build this time around. Assault rifle and sniper rifle? Maybe it's just me, but in ME1, I used her as a tank character similar to Wrex. Her primary weapon was a shotgun and she handled close combat (which made her useful on those early missions with her and Kaiden). In ME3, they made her into Garrus with grenades. I would've preferred a build similar to Vega for her. Vega is the only tank in the party and I don't use Vega save the one mission that it is required. Ashley with more of a traditional soldier build rather than a sniper build would've made her a hell of a lot more useful. It's weird because her powers do not really lend themselves to sniping but rather close combat with a shotgun.

[Upset Spideyfan]

I think you're right in that Ashley ends up in a weird spot that ironically I thought Kaidan fell into in the first game. That is in ME1, if I wanted Biotics I brought Liara or Wrex and if I wanted tech stuff I used Garrus/Tali.

And in ME3, if I want a tank I use Vega or EDI (if you build her right), and if I want a sniper I just use Garrus. I guess if Garrus was dead, she'd be your sole sniper though.

[Erzengel]

I'm not sure if anyone mentioned this but how great would it have been if Kaiden/Ashley was "Kai Leng", the soldier you left behind.

That would have been so much of a better story. Of course I would have felt no remorse for putting a bullet in Kaiden again.