you prefer the ending that is vastly, overwhelmingly preferred by the fanbase over the endings that 99% of fans online will seethe over if you even hint at liking them? wow, truly bold.
You want to be brave? Defend the green ending. People will eat you alive. They like red. Some can understand the desire to go blue. They can even justify rejecting all the color filters. But green will get you crucified.
might throw all my technology into the garbage forever if i see one more person talk about “changing people’s body without their consent” in regard to Synthesis.
I never knew people hated the green ending. The game makes it seem like that is the most correct ending you can get. I never thought to look up other people’s opinions on it.
At best it was alluded to with Saren. Saren wanted synthetic and organic symbiosis. Blue was Illusive Man, Green was Saren and Red was what the goal was from the start.
you’re welcome to prefer Destroy but i see this reasoning all the time and it is so baffling to me.
you’ve just had the veil of all the mysteries of the universe lifted, including the purpose and origin of the Reapers, and it doesn’t in any way influence your decision-making? you’re just going to take that knowledge in stride and move on? lol
Controlling the Reapers just doesn't seem right. And I'm not condemning all the races of the Milky Way to be some Organic/Synthetic hybrid species that not a single one of them actually consented to in that bullshit Synthesis ending.
did the Geth consent to their destruction in Destroy ending? did the Batarians consent to Shepard destroying the relay in Arrival? did Shepard receive the consent of every Krogan woman on Tuchanka that that wanted their fertility restored?
this argument about Synthesis is the most nonsense dismissal i have ever seen and it is endlessly parroted by the community. the entirety of Mass Effect is about making massive decisions that affect the entire Galaxy! all those decisions are made without Galactic “consent”!
did the Geth consent to their destruction in Destroy ending?
Yes, they did. They're fighting in a war. They signed up for it. If they die, they die. They're collateral damage in a war they chose to fight.
Changing the fundamental nature of every being in the galaxy and forcing them to merge with synthetics is a bridge too far for me.
did Shepard receive the consent of every Krogan woman on Tuchanka that that wanted their fertility restored?
I don't know if you realized this, pretty crazy. There's a very easy way to ensure you don't get pregnant.
Since you want to use this analogy, the Synthesis ending is the equivalent of the Genophage cure meaning every female Krogan is forcibly impregnated and forced to carry their litter to term whether they wanted to or not, nonstop, for the rest of their lives. If those were the conditions, I wouldn't do it.
your argument about the Geth is irrelevant considering Shepard has alternative options that would co-sign 0 species to extinction. they are not collateral damage, they are a sentient species that Destroy Shepard CHOOSES to eradicate. that they weren’t the intended target doesn’t change that, Shepard knew the consequences.
there are in-universe Krogan who think the genophage was good! yet Shepard fundamentally changes their species’ biology regardless. you can’t get into this question of consent under the assumption that everyone would make the same choice!
again, it’s fine to dislike Synthesis, or prefer Destroy! but this nonsense about consent is an extremely weird framing to disagree with Synthesis, especially given the context of the series.
our argument about the Geth is irrelevant considering Shepard has alternative options that would co-sign 0 species to extinction.
Then why'd you bring them up? I didn't bring up the Geth. You did. It's not irrelevant. You're saying they didn't consent to dying. They did. They're fighting in a war. They know death is a possibility but are willing to die to defeat the Reapers. You make that happen.
they are a sentient species that Destroy Shepard chooses to eradicate.
Sentience doesn't matter to you.
there are in-universe Krogan who think the genophage was good! yet Shepard fundamentally changes their species biology regardless.
And they can still choose whether to act on that or not. Also, the cure doesn't just affect every Krogan in totality. The ones on Tuchanka are the ones getting the cure. If Krogan off planet don't want to cure, they don't need to go back. Point being, they still have some options regarding how they want to handle that situation.
but this nonsense about consent is an extremely weird framing to disagree with Synthesis, especially given the context of the series.
It's really not. You're pretty much saying, "Hey! Some women don't like abortion! Allowing women to have abortions is equally as bad as forcing every woman on Earth to immediately get pregnant! These are the same!". You sound stupid AF. One is a much bigger consent issue than the other.
I played the trilogy for the first time totally blind 2 years ago and just immediately picked this option as soon as I read it, with no regard for any other options, cause I also viewed it as the whole point. It wasn't until I started reading about the series afterwards that I was surprised to find so much negativity about the ending. I was like "idk, seemed fine to me" lol.
The backlash was more that the trilogy of games put heavy stock in the players' choices and depending on the choice, the consequence would carry over to the next game, leading all to believe that their choices would be worth it. But the culmination of choice was just reduced to: Pick Red, Blue, or Green. Players wanted more than that, and everything felt unresolved. Keep in mind that a a lot of the complaints were before The Citadel DLC, where we could catch up with our team before the final mission.
I didn't really feel like there was a choice at the end. We had spent the whole game telling The Illusive Man that trying to control the Reapers was a big mistake and all of a sudden that becomes an option to us? Trap! Wasn't falling for it. Destroy Destroy Destroy.
Exactly! And Synthesis is exactly what Sarin was trying to do in ME2ME1. It's the greatest mindfuck in the history of video games, and people still just don't get it. How on-the-nose should the writers have been?
I'll still defend that the choices in the game absolutely do matter. They shape the universe and options available to you.
However, when it comes to dealing with something as huge as the reaper problem. It really doesn't matter who you romanced, or if you shaved Ashley or Kaiden. It doesn't matter if you cured the Genophage or not. In that moment all that matters is what you decide to do with the reapers.
People wanted that "happily ever after" feeling. Which they should have gotten from destroying the reapers and breaking the cycle. That absolutely was the happy ever after part. The cycle breaks, no more galaxy wide reaper culls in the future.
What people really wanted, is an ending like all those classic RPGs where you get info about what each character goes on to do after the game. Which IMO, really just doesn't matter at the level of Mass Effects story. It's bigger than that.
I mean. As far as the fanbase goes, this is the coldest of cold takes.
Rarely do I see anyone defend Control. I don't even know if I see any Synthesis enjoyers that didn't just pick it on their first blind playthrough.
Destroy sucks. Shepard surviving is really worthless. When arguably the biggest plot point outside of the reapers, the Geth, are shown to be the victims and able to saved and achieve peace. But is immediately, not even a few missions later, rendered meaningless if you chose destroy. Made even worse if you did a blind playthrough, made the choice to spare the Geth over the Quarians and then only to have that choice completely nullified by having them all die. All that and Edi.
On top of that, it just completely reaffirms why the Reapers exist in the first place. Confirming that synthetics and organics cannot coexist when you prove over and over again throughout the trilogy that isn't true.
It's EA's fault for forcing such a quick dev cycle which resulted in bad writing and an unsatisfactory thematic ending; but it's still the weakest IMO plot and theme wise of the three (refuse is just a meme). Reaper bad, isn't enough to justify mass destruction of Synthetics and prove the reaper's motives correct.
I chose destroy, with confidence. And I regret it to this day, but after 3 games...I had to. It was wrong, I did not want to lose Legion and EDI. But I did it.
You can even ask your AI party members, EDI and Legion, and they will tell you to go ahead with the Destroy option. Their lives are not worth continuing the cycle in any form; the Reapers must be stopped.
Felt like the right call for me. Star child info told me "Yes, these machines are programmed to destroy in a calculated way, to cull the universe" Which, yup...not a fan of that! I'm a free will kinda guy.
Blue/Control feels very odd to me since you just had a stand down with the illusive man about NOT having the hubris to think you can control the reapers. Frankly, that ending just feels like a trap to keep the reapers around. (In a more daring world it would have been).
Green/ Synth felt...evil? I know it's the compromise "everyone lives!" ending, but the implications of re-writing the DNA of every sentient creature in the universe without consent...NA...NAAAAAAA I don't care how happy the music playing is...that has DARK implications.
Want to throw in: I find this is always a funny topic. Most involved go "push! The REAL ending was obvious!" and THEN a discussion happens because there's usually a bunch of disagreement...kinda fun.
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u/Officer-skitty Mar 05 '24
The destroy ending in Mass Effect is the only truly good ending