11 - Mass Effect 3 - Mythic Mind Games

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
I'm Commander Shepherd and this is my favorite podcast on
the Citadel.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
Hello, and welcome to Mythic Mind Games, where we discuss
video games through the lens of the Christian humanities. I'm
doctor Andrew Snyder, and I'm glad that you're here. Hey there,
Welcome back as we wrap up our Mass Effect series.
I've really enjoyed these conversations. I enjoyed playing through these

(00:39):
games for the first time for me. Now, unfortunately for
this last one, I've been running a bit of a
cold for the last few days, so I'm a little
bit spacy in this conversation. But my companions do a
good job of carrying it, and I definitely appreciate their
company through this venture. All Right, well, let's go ahead
and jump right into it. Welcome back, as we finish

(01:01):
our Mass Effect series with Mass Effect three. I really
enjoy this game.

Speaker 1 (01:08):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:09):
I've found that Mass Effect two seems to be probably
the predominant fan favorite for most people. That's the vibe
I've gotten. But I actually think that this is my
favorite of the series. I don't know. Maybe I'm just
a sucker for a good heroic death. Sorry for the spoilers,
but I guess feel listening to this that you've probably

(01:30):
been been through that already, But I don't know, we'll
get into more of that. I want to hear from
you guys first, And so, Michael, why don't you kick
us off this time? Tell us something about this game.

Speaker 3 (01:42):
It's it was obviously hugely controversial when it came out.
I was one of the rare people that didn't actually
mind the original endings, although I think the when they
when they patched the endings what four or five months
later and added on to them, they obviously improved them.

Speaker 2 (01:59):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (02:00):
The best, really, the best thing about this game is
all the neat, big ideas with all these different races.
The game just does such a fantastic job of then
just putting it under the microscope and saying, here's the
the Solarians and the Krogans, here's the big moral dilemma.

(02:21):
Let's see it play out. Here's the Quarry and and
the Gath, here's the big moral dilemma. Let's see it
play out. And it does a fantastic job of the
big racial tension in the galaxy and leads just some
really really memorable moments.

Speaker 4 (02:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:41):
The first my first go around, I lied to Rex
about the geniphage, you know, make sure it'll it gets avotage.
He can't have them spreading and restarting the Kroken Empire
or whatever. And then I felt so bad, especially when
later on when Rex attacked me and I had to
kill him. Just not satisfying move. This time around, I'm

(03:05):
being much more egalitarian, I suppose, and I it's a
lot more fulfilling, I think, although at the same time,
I mean, that's like one thing that I like about
this game is that it's pretty obvious that the right
choice is often a risky choice, right, like like with

(03:25):
the Brokens, Like there's a real threat there of letting
these war mongering people, you know, breed and grow and expand,
and so, you know, I feel like the scheme does
a good job of balancing morality with kind of you know,
real politic or pragmatism or you know, whatever term we
want to use here. But we can circle back to
some of that. David, tell us something about this game

(03:48):
before I get to Ian.

Speaker 4 (03:49):
That's okay. I actually remember this game the least of
the three, probably just because when the when the collection
remaster election came out, I played through the first two,
and then something happened and I never got around or
replaying the third one, so it's not as fresh in
my mind as the others, but I do remember just

(04:11):
loving the gravity of the whole thing, the entire galaxy
at war. Things are bad everywhere. I think there's some
really good set pieces in cinematics, and especially when they
did come back in and try to add more detail
to the ending. I read a list today just to
try to refresh myself of all of the improvements that

(04:33):
they made to the ending, and I think most of
it went through and made some of the things that
happened not so sudden and unexplained, and it gave you
more follow up to see what happened after the events
of the game. So I thought that that worked really well.
And at the time, there was multiplayer and you could
play the multiplayer and that would increase your I forget

(04:56):
what the term is, like your combat readiness the the game,
and there was also like a phone game that had
little timed things you could do, so it kind of
it kind of felt like the whole world was playing
this game together and actually trying to save the galaxy
in the game, and it was it was kind of
a neat a neat experience to just sort of feel

(05:19):
like you were part of this community who's bringing this
whole story to a conclusion. But yeah, the the roughest
part in the whole trilogy is if you light to
Wrecks about the genophage, because then you put him down basically,
and then people come in the room and you just say, oh,
I don't know what happened. He just came in here

(05:39):
and went nuts, which is just just a terrible disservice
to do to the man that you will not man
the krogan that you just killed. But anyway, yeah, I
did like it. I was skeptical that the improved endings,
like when I heard, oh, we're going to make more
of We're going to make the ending you didn't like longer,

(06:01):
and I thought, how is that going to improve it?
But I really do think it went a long way
to improve it, and I enjoyed it.

Speaker 2 (06:08):
Yeah, as A mentioned before, you know, I can't really
speak to the contrast having only played the legendary and
we have heard this and that.

Speaker 4 (06:16):
But.

Speaker 2 (06:18):
I well, I think that communal aspect that you talked
about was probably something that's neat to engage with again
something that I missed out on. But as far as
just the idea of kind of working under pressure here
throughout the entire game, that's it's a lot of fun.
Like you always have that you know, reaper sound coming
at you, that you always have the reapers chasing you
as you're trying to scan the little systems, and even

(06:42):
though it's I mean, it's not really that big of
a deal to catch you, it's still like it feels
like it's inspiring the right mood of anxiety that I
think makes the ending all that more fulfilling. That that
you have kind of a stressful experience throughout the game
that just continues to build until you get to the
end and then it just stops. I feel like that's
how you get that kind of ending to be satisfactory,

(07:04):
the constant pressure. Megan tells something about this game.

Speaker 5 (07:09):
Yeah, for context, I did play the original when it
came out, so I came to massif I one and
too late, but I had discovered them before the third
game came out, so I was really excited the build up.
You know, all the gaming community online was really invested
speculating on what was going to happen, because what was

(07:29):
promised was all these different endings that were going to
be variable dependent on the decisions you made throughout the
first two games, and you know over the course of
the third, and so I won't talk about the ending
right off. I will say that I agree with Michael's
point that the payoff for these different conflicts that you

(07:49):
see building over the first two games, there's a real
emotional narrative weight that I think is really dependent on
the whole structure of the trilogy. That is to say,
I think you could enter the trilogy as a newcomer
and play it and probably enjoy it, but you're not
going to have the same payoff obviously unless you've been
through the first two and you've you've felt the way

(08:12):
of those decisions, and you've been anticipating what's going to
happen next with Rex, with anybody else that we named
or haven't. But yeah, playing it through, I thought, because
I'm not a multiplayer person, and so I don't know
who played it originally without the DLC amended ending, But

(08:35):
what happened was if you did not play multiplayer, you
could be a completionist as a single player and do
the game. But if you do not play any multiplayer
you could not achieve the ideal ending for the destroy
the one of three options, the red ending. Basically you
couldn't achieve the ideal maybe Shepherds alive at the end ending.

(09:00):
And so I thought I did something wrong. I beat
this game at like three or four in the morning
on a school night for me because I was in
high school, and I was depressed the next day because
I was like, did I Where did I go wrong?
Was it in game three? Was it in game one?
What happened?

Speaker 1 (09:14):
Like?

Speaker 5 (09:14):
How could this happen? And I think we were seeing
at this time, probably not starting with Mass Effect three,
but this creep of multiplayer needs to be integrated into
everything and make a ton of money, and if you
don't do it, you're gonna get kind of narratively punished
as a gamer. So what are my thoughts on it?
I love Mass Effect three. It is my favorite of
the three. I think the whole trilogy needs to play

(09:36):
be played as one entity, but I love it. I
think the payoff is great, the narrative payoff that Michael
was mentioning. I think the performances are excellent. The soundtrack
is beautiful, It's very cinematic, the most cinematic of the three.
It feels very urgent, but appropriately so. That ending, though,
was a killer. And I think the adjustments and the DLC,

(09:57):
the Citadel DLC, that kind of fan service send off
was fun. But yeah, it's a hard it's a hard
thing to get over when you have one of three endings,
only one of them is good in my opinion. We
can talk about that later, but it was that was disappointing.
So the backlash that happened for like months afterwards was

(10:21):
totally understandable in my opinion. I was I was resentful
for a while towards Firework.

Speaker 1 (10:27):
Cool.

Speaker 2 (10:28):
Yeah, and I'm sure we'll get into the endings in detail.
Ian tell us something about this game.

Speaker 1 (10:35):
So I think, actually, this is a game where I'm
really torn, Like I'm really really torn because on an
on an emotional level, Mass Effect three hit me harder
than any of the other two games. And it was

(10:56):
actually just one scene. It's the scene where More has
to save the program, and that scene when I played,
I posted to the discord because I actually hadn't played
it until a month ago. I posted the discord. I
have not okay because more than the way he goes

(11:17):
out is just so well written and so everything works
together to make it one of the best, you know,
sac heroic sacrifices I've ever seen, and unfortunately, I don't
think anything else in the game quite matches that. So emotionally,

(11:38):
it's extremely effective, but on a gameplay level, and this
is weird, but there's a huge I promised I would
dropped this word luter narrative dissonance when the the powers
I used, they did a great job in sort of
transferring my character from Mass Effect two to Mass Fact three,

(12:00):
but the powers that I was using in Mass Effect
to work differently and even look differently than they did
in the last game. That since I'm playing the Legendary
Edition for the first time. For me, it's been literally
a day since I finished the Suicide mission and now I'm,
you know, Earth being invaded, I'm using the same powers
and everything feels different and the same thing goes for

(12:23):
the weapons, like the names for the pistols are all different,
the way the pistols work, the way modifications work, the
physical and like reactive difference between the two games was
really dissonant, especially playing them so close together, and I
don't think it was better. I think that the changes
they made were made the game less fun than Mass

(12:45):
Effect to just in terms of my moving around, my shooting,
and my ability to you know, do damage and use
my powers. So even before we get to the ending,
which for me, it's not even the fact that has
three different colored endings that are basically the same. My
problem is there is a meme that came out back

(13:07):
when the game first came out and I had friends
who were playing it. My housemates were playing it, so
I saw them playing it, and I saw this meme
and it was I heard, you don't like synthetics destroying organics,
so I'm sending a bunch of synthetics to destroy organics.
And I still don't understand how that made any sense.

Speaker 2 (13:24):
I actually think that overall, I kind of like the
gameplay of three, although I do miss out on how
effective the shockwave was in two, how you can shoot
people like, you know, behind barriers whatnot. And yeah, I
took David's advice on this run and just had to
go adept versus what I now recognize was a really

(13:45):
boring soldier run. Just using guns. It's so much more
fun just to keep people flying in the air all
over the place. But yeah, I definitely see what you
mean by some of those changes you think of the legendary.
They could do a better job of making continuity, but
I guess they wanted to preserve that the feels of
the originals is to some extent. All right, I can't
tell us something about this game.

Speaker 4 (14:07):
Well, I was there.

Speaker 6 (14:08):
I'm pretty sure I got the metal casing version when
it first came out, because I you know, he had
to be first in line, so good times, good memories
on trying to get this thing completed. And then yeah,
once you first get into the game, the trumpet sounds
and it's the Apocalypse right there, So I it was

(14:28):
really jarring that soundtrack goes piano to trumpet blast. And
now I understand it a little more. But yeah, the
gameplay is entire shake up. Playing the multiplayer, it made
more sense to keep the game going like this. It

(14:49):
was really something that had to be updated, for sure.
And this is the last time they used the same engine,
whereas the next game that comes out is completely different things,
so it feels entirely different. But I'm only told those
things because I never went on to Andromeda. But I'll

(15:10):
stick with our galaxy, because that's the one that we
know and that's the one that is created. So I
would say, really, all the exploring that you did in
the first and second.

Speaker 4 (15:29):
All that is gone.

Speaker 6 (15:31):
You were now no longer running really against a clock.
The second game was more you were timed once you
hit the reaper or FF mission. Once you hit these things,
then you had to do so many missions Otherwise if
you didn't move fast enough, you'd lose your crew. If
you didn't move fast enough, certain things happened. So the

(15:51):
second game triggered a lot and sort of forced you
into the life or death scenario. This one was more
of a you have to go out and really this
is just the last thing you can do. There is
a sense of hopelessness. I mean the size of Reapers

(16:13):
versus Shepherd. Yeah, you get to take down two of them,
which is entirely satisfying. Well, calrous was much more satisfying
than ran out for me. But uh, yeah, the the
scale of this plays out, and yeah, the original ending
that let everything leads up to. I guess I was

(16:37):
okay with it. I didn't want to be I just
didn't want to go along with the crowd. The saying
it sucked, That's really what it was. So I'm like, no,
it's fine. I get it. It started out as a
nihilistic exploration. I mean, the first specter we meet is
called Nihilis, and I'm pretty sure that is no coincidence.
So hey, all these endings make bring a boat to

(17:01):
the same thing.

Speaker 4 (17:01):
Then there you go.

Speaker 2 (17:03):
So well that sure as cheery. Yeah, I mean for
my part, as I already mentioned, I just really enjoy
the intensity the emotional stakes that are present from the
very beginning. You know, I like the idea of fighting
for hope when there is no hope, right, is that

(17:24):
that Northern ideas, the idea you see throughout Tolkien and
really any great epic stories that you're out to accomplish
something that seems impossible. You know, never tell me the odds, right,
But I'm going to keep going anyways, and I'm just
going to do what I can and hope that that's
going to do something. And even if I lose, well,
at least I can die a noble death. Right that,

(17:47):
as Socrates says, you know, they're far worse things for
the soul than death, such as cowardice, right, And so
it's this courageous move of I'm going to do what
I can. I'm going to gather people together. We're going
to rally around Hope and just see what happens. I
like that kind of story, and then even the kind

(18:08):
of weird dream sequences that he has about that that
kid that keeps bursting into flames. I see. I was
torn at first. Okay, I didn't really like it because
I mean, I was playing like one in the morning.
It's kind of creepy. But I decided that for the
first round, I actually kind of like that. I mean, obviously,

(18:30):
it's Shepherd dealing with the trauma of the things that
he's experienced, the fact that he can't save everybody, and
so you know, he's dealing with all this emotional stuff,
and just that emotional experience continues to build up until
the very end. Now, I will say that in my
second run, I don't appreciate those dream sequences quite so
much because they're so slow, But I still appreciate kind

(18:54):
of cinematically and aesthetically what it is they're trying to do.
That they're trying to kind of give you this sense
of surreal help you to get more in his head.
And I like a good existential at story as well,
and so I feel like there's something like that plane
out and so yeah, I just I really appreciate the
emotional stakes here. Well, where do we want to go
from here? Do you want to throw something out there?

Speaker 1 (19:17):
I am curious what scenes like really stick out from
this third game for you, Like I talked about how
morgan sacrifice on Ranak really hit me. Are there any
pieces the ending or the senat Old Party.

Speaker 2 (19:33):
I think.

Speaker 3 (19:35):
Some of the big things that are going to stick
out to basically everyone are the how you basically watch
most of the species deal with extinction hitting their home world,
with the Reapers reaching their home world.

Speaker 4 (19:48):
You know, you start.

Speaker 3 (19:49):
With seeing the stakes are suddenly real, the Reapers are
at Earth and it's cataclysmic, and then you see, you know,
glimpses of it, and it's a short it's a short,
shorter section, but the Terrans, it's that the Turrian homeworlders
at their moon.

Speaker 4 (20:05):
I can't remember the moon.

Speaker 3 (20:08):
It's the moon, right, but it's basically there too. And
then you know, you see at the Krogans and then
you see, uh, basically, yeah, you get you get this
whole whole, whole set through it as you see all
of the there's this major set piece scene where many

(20:29):
of the species are facing basically the end of their civilization,
and so all of those are are memorable on some ways,
as you're seeing the different the the different crew members
reacting to these crises and the different NPCs and stuff
like that, and so those are some of the most
memorable spots for sure, and some of those are major

(20:50):
story ones too.

Speaker 6 (20:51):
But in my recent playthrough, I went mostly Renegade, pretty
much all Renegade, so none of the Morton already died,
so when I got to priority to CHUNKA, it was
Paddock Wicks who took his place, and he believes in
an originator, which is very different from Morton, who's very

(21:13):
much the science evolutionary sort of guy. So that was
an interesting play I kind of liked that a little better,
but obviously the emotional state wasn't there losing Morton.

Speaker 4 (21:23):
But in the after doing.

Speaker 6 (21:27):
That and realizing it's just not fun playing with full crew,
you get like four people that choose from inform missions,
and I avoided Javic just because I wanted to keep
it small and it was not entirely satisfying, so I
ended up going back and doing a larger crew where
everybody play through that I had, where everybody had lived.

(21:51):
And I've come to the conclusion after doing all these
and really after our first chat together, we know that
the AI is evil. So I started to I decided
to turn against Legion, who had survived. But if you

(22:13):
do it at the end of party Rannock, as he's
trying to upload everything and you try to stop him,
he grabs you, lifts you up by the throat, drags
you across, and then Tolly comes in with a backstab
and then he dies slowly and asks does this unit
have a soul? And it's that was really cool, and

(22:37):
I'm like, that is probably the way it should have been. Overall,
we have to get rid of the AI, and this
is the way it should go out. Tally should be
the one to kill Legion.

Speaker 3 (22:45):
There's gonna be a lot of calls for the Bootlery
and ghat tonight, aren't there?

Speaker 4 (22:50):
You know?

Speaker 5 (22:51):
Not for me?

Speaker 4 (22:53):
Yeah, I had to look that that death for Legion up,
because that was never going to kill a Legion. He's
just too esthetically cool and obviously in real life I
would agree with you. But yeah, in the game. He's
too cool of a character for sure.

Speaker 5 (23:12):
I think the Tachanka episode is the I know that
was from my memory the bits that were shown for
teaser trailers a lot. I think they showed other scenes,
but it was the Tachanka stuff that they kept showing,
and I think that's one of the best written episodes
in the whole game. I think it kind of in

(23:35):
a way functions as a microcosm of the larger plot,
which is you're facing extinction. The Krogan are facing extinction,
and what are they going to do to try to
fight to survive and save their species, And that is
the larger plot of the entire game, in the entire trilogy,
So that stuck everything there, whatever decisions you made in
previous games. I think that is one of the most
emotionally consequential moments or prolonged moments in the game. I

(23:59):
want to add too that I had a few playthroughs
of the trilogy, a three that were complete, and I
think also depending on how you play the game Paragon Retegade,
who you romance also will change how you view certain moments.
So I think my third complete playthrough, I had romance
Fane from the second game and then carried that into

(24:22):
the third, and his death just had so much more
weight doing that, and the same with the other characters too.
So I think depending on how you play the game,
it can shift some moments where you wouldn't have not
that you wouldn't have cared in one instance, but if
you play in a certain way, I think it really
changes the Yeah, the emotional depth to the game, the

(24:44):
AI stuff. I'm torn because I am very anti Legion
having a soul ed being somebody that Joker should go
for for many reasons. Logistically, I just not. I'm not
sure how that relationship would work out physical level. But
the game asks provocative questions about AI and then answers

(25:07):
them for you by pretty heavy handedly letting you know
that you should empathize with Edi or Legion. I want
to say that those are interesting questions about does this
unit have a soul or oh, should Edy and Joker
even be together? Does it even make sense? You know
they have such a you know, chemistry together. The game

(25:30):
speculates on these, but then it kind of it really
guides you to approving of these relationships. You're you're kind
of the a hole if you tell Joker not to
date ed, which I did because it didn't have any
military consequences, so I felt better about doing that. I
did let Legion live only because I needed everybody to survive.
But yeah, I know, I'm kind of drifting into a

(25:53):
tangent here the AI question. I wish the game gave
you more room to disagree with the writers about whether
a machine that has the semblance of consciousness is actually
conscious and has a rational soul. The writers seem very

(26:14):
intent on letting you know that that is what they thought,
and you really don't have room to disagree in the
playthrough unless you want to sabotage the whole fate of
humanity and everybody else. Those are my thoughts on the
AI questions. Again, I think the questions are interesting, but
the game also answers them for you without letting you
do so.

Speaker 3 (26:35):
Before we continue on, I want to say one little thing.
I'm glad you mentioned Thane. I think one thing that's
really interesting about Thane and Mass Effect three is you
can't save him right, And in RPGs you can always
go look up the game a game facts guide that
somebody you know poorly formatted years ago and figure out

(26:56):
the optimal way through, and there's no optimal story for
thank And I think that that's a a moment of
good writing, is that it's okay for there to be
stories where there's there's a golden ending where everything is
hapvily ever after. I'm not totally against that, right, there's
a time for fairy tale endings, but that's also not

(27:16):
the story that Mass Effect is telling. And it would
have been very easy for there to be a side
mission that resolves that in a different way, when instead
it's just a little side story. He's barely in it.
It's a tragedy of life thing, and the universe goes
on without saying so he was going.

Speaker 5 (27:36):
To die of natural causes, So I think we'll have
some room to feel like, oh okay, but oh so sad.
I mean sad regardless, but especially with the romance storyline
that I had, very sad and then very satisfying. When
you get to kill Kylang is that his name? I
can't remember saying that was for Thane, Like it was

(27:59):
a very It's very rare that in playing a video game,
I'm actually like cheering as if I'm watching a film happen.
But it was so satisfying to be able to kill
him in the end.

Speaker 3 (28:10):
That's interesting because most people that definitely makes Kyle Lang
more interesting because a lot of people think he's like
the most boring edge lord side villain ever. That just
kind of comes out of nowhere, because if you play
it with that angle, there is actually a personal stake
involved with him. Yeah, normally there really isn't.

Speaker 1 (28:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (28:28):
I think they had some kind of book with him.
I never read it, I think, right, I.

Speaker 4 (28:34):
Think he might have been in an iOS game as well.
I can't recall.

Speaker 5 (28:39):
Listen who's playing that, I mean, especially now, but yeah,
he is. He is pretty dull. He's like an interesting
little guy that just comes in and out. But it's
more frustrating with the elusive man and it's like, oh, yeah,
ky Lang's kind of part of it.

Speaker 3 (28:53):
You're like, you're playing it and you're like, where did
this anime character come from?

Speaker 1 (28:58):
He's the shepherd replacement, which makes it even more frustrated
that you have to work for servers. In the second game.

Speaker 6 (29:06):
In the book, he is shot by Anderson once in
the upper thigh and once in the calf, so he's
basically left limp and has to monkey bars way to
his ship because he can't walk, and that's why he
has all these cybernetic upgrades when he comes back, and
Anderson seems really interested in him.

Speaker 2 (29:31):
Yeah, and going back to the AI stuff that make
was talking about, I definitely agree, and I suppose that
you know, in the end, this is not a game
about philosophy, even though there's a lot of philosophy that
surrounds it, and I it could have been much better
if they if they explored more the ED stuff, if

(29:53):
they explored more of the Legion stuff that they should
have made Legion like this AI philosopher right where he's
not just asking, you know, do I have a soul?
But you know, maybe we even get into a little
bit like what is the soul? Like that we are
basically fed this idea that whatever Legion is is functionally

(30:14):
or bontologically the same thing as a human, but we
don't ever get into the question of like what is
a soul? I think that that would have been something
interesting to explore in this dynamic, but it's just it's
just not there. It's kind of a waste of potential,
which again I get that this is not a philosophy text.

(30:35):
I'd imagine we don't have expert philosophers writing the story here,
but at the same time, I think that would have
been compelling on a pretty broad level.

Speaker 4 (30:43):
Well, the it's just crazy how different how quickly we've
moved from AIS as just a philosophical imagining of the
distant future to the kind of you know, things that
can pass the Turing tests of stuff that we have today.
And you know, Joker falling in love with the AI

(31:07):
and people are on the subway having chats with a
chatbot and treating it like it's their girlfriend and things
like that. Now, like I wonder, is.

Speaker 3 (31:16):
A sub there is a subreddit dedicated to basically AI
significant others, all right, and it's a wild place.

Speaker 4 (31:27):
And I just wonder how differently they would have handled
the discussion of AI if they'd made this game today.
I wonder how differently they may handle it in the
when they're supposedly developing at the.

Speaker 1 (31:38):
Moment, Given the palacity of thought that went into how
they handled in this game and how they've degraded as
a company since then, I don't think it will be
more interesting, And unfortunately.

Speaker 3 (31:48):
It won't be more interesting, but I would say there
might be a more negative tone considering how anti AI
most artist types tend to be, so we won't miss
be positive. I will push back against something that you
guys have saying that the game has a default positive
it does with Dan Joker agreed, I don't know that

(32:09):
it necessarily does overall, especially because there's a sense that
red is the default. I mean, I know we're getting
this is the ending and we won't have to get
into it. Yet there's a sense that the well do
we got other stuff first? We got other cool stuff
before we get there. But there's a sense that read
is the default ending because that's the only one that
has an after credits scene where the does Shepherd live? Right?

(32:31):
So there is a a Okay, so is the anti
AI route actually the canonical route is a good question,
serious question, But I don't know.

Speaker 5 (32:42):
I don't know. I it's my canonical ending, but I
and I agree there's incentive when Shepherd gets to live.
But the synthesis, I think, like the hybridization whatever they
called it. I think, yeah, the green ending, the synthesized
ending that you only unlock if you completed a certain
number of points like readiness points or something. So it's

(33:06):
I think in terms of what is gameplay gearing you
towards as viewing as the ideal ending Shepherd living with
the red ending. On the one hand, yes, seems like
that's the ideal, But on the other when there's an
intempi to say, oh, well, if you work really hard,
you can unlock this ultimate ending, which is everybody gets
to live as this new hybridized kind of synthetic organic being,

(33:30):
and Edie gets to live. Then, I don't know. I
don't know what the I don't think necessarily the game
is gearing us towards the red ending, as much as
I think that is philosophically and morally the right way
to go.

Speaker 3 (33:43):
I know we're going to go round and round with
this stuff, but do we want to hit any of
the other big plot points, Thekroge and stuff for any
of that first, because I'm sure we could talk the
rest of the night about the ending.

Speaker 1 (33:53):
Okay, so Andrew, why should we jennifage the Kroger?

Speaker 2 (34:00):
I mean, I I don't think that is super cut
and dry now. For for I first played through, I
was very much doing a you know, Earth first, let's
keep everyone else handicapped a little bit, but more more
philosophically thinking about this that I'm I'm not really a
fan of sterilizing good people. So when we put that

(34:25):
out there pretty clearly, I think that the moral thing
to do, obviously is to not genophage them. And so
I don't know, I guess that's that's my my answer.
I know it's kind of disappointing.

Speaker 4 (34:40):
What you were saying anyone genophage though, I mean I
generally I played through all of them, one as paragon
and one is renegade, so at at some point I did.
But what you were saying in the beginning, Andrew, about
the moral dilemmas in this game, and how they're all
you need to take a risk, and I do think

(35:02):
it's more than taking a risk. It's is it right
to kill someone or to damn or race to extinction
on the expectation that they might it might go the
wrong way? Is that a fair thing too? Is that
a fair judgment to make? Is that?

Speaker 5 (35:22):
Is that just?

Speaker 4 (35:23):
And I don't I don't really think it is. But
these are all hypotheticals presented in the game. I mean,
Michael is furrowing his brow over there.

Speaker 2 (35:31):
I mean I would say just to I mean, make
the argument if you you know how things have played
out in the past, and even now you talk to Rex,
you talk to the other Crokens, and they're very clear
that they want to go re establish their empire, so
that they're not really hiding their plans to go out
war mongering again, and so is that necessarily a risk?
I mean, it seems like their intentions are pretty clear.

Speaker 1 (35:54):
Actually, I this is something that I think the game
did reasonably well, but I wish there had been more
of a thought proces of buying this because it's my
belief the way I play the game is that basically Rex,
your relationship with him shapes him into the leader who
can take the Krogan into a fertile that he can

(36:19):
get rid of the genifhe without them becoming a genocidal
risk again, because he has both the strength of character
to lead, and also he has a relationship with you,
and your philosophy and your relationship as an alien have
changed his perspective, so he no longer has that it
doesn't matter if we genocide people to expand their empire attitude.

(36:42):
And I feel like that is there in the game,
but I wish it had been a little more intentional
so some of your choices could have been, you know,
you saying there's a better way to rect I think
there are some moments like that, but I wish it
had been more intentional. But I think it still works
in the sense that you take agency as an ambassador
for humanity and for like this united alien human alliance,

(37:07):
and you change the way, similar to the way Revin
changes Candorus if you're light side in Kotar one, and
so in Kotar two, his vision of the Mandalorians is
no longer genocidal. So I think there's a lot of
parallels between the Mandalorians and the Krogan And I think
there's a lot of parallels between a paragon Shepherd and
Rex and Candoras.

Speaker 3 (37:27):
So that theme is it's definitely there. I one hundred
percent agree Mass Effect three does portray if Rex is there,
and if Rex is the one that's pushing the cure,
it does portray him as a reformer of sorts. Now
it is much more obvious if you have if Rex
dies in mass Effect one, in Mass Effect three, Rex

(37:50):
is replaced by his brother er not Reeve, who is
very clearly the exact opposite, and it becomes very the
the pragmatic reason to not cure the gena face suddenly
becomes very much more pressing if you do not have
Rex there in Mass Effect three, because Reeve it does

(38:11):
not hide at all that he is ready to go
back to pillaging, right, So that that theme that you're
talking about, Ian, it's more obvious on multiple playthroughs when
you see the difference between Rex and Reeve that you go, Okay,
you can risk, you can risk the you can risk
the cure with Reeve or sorry with Rex. But with
Reeve it's like, do you really want to do that?

(38:33):
It becomes a significantly more complicated question.

Speaker 7 (38:37):
I think, I agree, I agree, and I think that's
a good segue into something else I wanted to mention
unless we wanted to stay on this topic, which.

Speaker 5 (38:55):
Is, depending on what you do in the previous games,
you'll have different characters who are of substituting the defaults,
so or not Reeve instead of or not Recks the
what is it? The Rack and I? The Rack and
I are kind of back whether you wanted them to
be or not, but in a complicated way. So that

(39:17):
was frustrating to me upon multiple playthroughs to realize, Okay,
like I made these different decisions. I was hoping to
see very consequential differences from one play through to the next,
and sometimes there is a difference as you're describing with
or not really like, oh okay, yeah, the Jennifaged question
feels different the Rack and I question. To my memory,
it feels like you're just kind of like, oh, okay,

(39:39):
well they're back again, so you know, now, what do
we do? It didn't really matter what I did back then,
though it felt very important at the time. I guess
I'm wondering what everyone thought of these I don't know
how many of us did multiple playthroughs and solve the differences.
But I didn't love the way that all the variables
were handled. I know it's a big ask. I know

(40:01):
it's a big ass for a multimillion dollar company to
handle their own storylines and tackle the different narrative lines
that can spread. But I didn't love the way that
things from previous decisions from previous games manifested in the
third Again. I think there are some cool differences that
come up and others that just felt kind of like, Okay, well,

(40:24):
we were heading in this direction whether we liked it
or not, and maybe that's I would say, maybe that's
the point. It didn't strike me though, as like a
what was that one BioShock Infinite where there's a very
conscious play of like, oh, your decisions don't matter. What's
going to happen is going to happen. I don't think
that's what the writer's mass effect theory were doing. It
just felt like they needed certain things to happen in

(40:46):
the narrative to get to the end.

Speaker 3 (40:49):
I was gonna say, I think a lot of that
is simply technical and budget constraints of you know, building
an entire second layer of story as opposed to building
variant of the story.

Speaker 4 (41:03):
Where a lot of players would potentially not see a
lot of content that you had to work like, you know,
as for three games, I mean you have ten different
options and choices that you make, like the permutations of
which of which you pick, and by the time you
get to the third game, if you made the difference

(41:25):
as that drastic, I could see that they would have
to make just tons of tons of different content. But
I do agree with you, Megan, because I always found
it frustrating like, well, that person died and now they've
just replaced them with someone I don't really know who
serves the exact same role, so the plot will go
almost the exact same direction. I didn't even remember that

(41:47):
there were differences that much in the New Solarium and
the New Krogan. I just remembered somebody else is there,
and they have a couple slightly different lines. Y'all are
making me feel like it was more different than I
had called.

Speaker 1 (42:01):
So if you kill the rack Nin, what happens in
the third game, the.

Speaker 5 (42:05):
Rakney are back, but they were brought back by the Reapers.

Speaker 4 (42:11):
Reapers made some made of fake Reckni.

Speaker 5 (42:14):
But there's no there's no difference of like, oh, well,
you killed us the first time, so now we don't
trust you. Like if there was that, Okay, Like I
could see that.

Speaker 1 (42:23):
I think I read that if you kill them the
first time, you can get them to align with you,
but they actually backstab you. Yeah, because I kept them alive,
so they kept the faith with me, And.

Speaker 3 (42:38):
That was That's a way that BioShock tried to handle
a lot of these smaller choices through the series, were
these tiny little stories that happened in the war preparedness.
So killing the rack N, I align with them. It
doesn't work you get it in like a little text blurb,
isn't it. It's not like a major story thing that right,

(43:01):
So a lot of those little decisions play out in
tiny little things that you read on the terminal, which
isn't ultimately that satisfying for the most part. You know,
I get it, I get it. The ones that work better,
I do think are I do think generally, and I'm
going to disagree with you here, David, but I do
think the main character absences do tend to play a

(43:23):
bigger part. Not having Legion or not having Tally, for instance,
just really or not having Rex really changes those stories respectively. Yeah,
there's a replacement, but it definitely changes the feel of

(43:45):
all those at least the smaller things like what Megan
is talking about. You're right, they're they're they're kind.

Speaker 5 (43:50):
Of the rock now are not a small issue. This
is like one of the major decisions you make in
the first game, and they present it as if it's
going to lead to the death of millions of people.

Speaker 3 (44:02):
I guess what it is is it's it's it's not
a character issue, though it's not wrapped up in a
character's story, is what I What I mean? Does that
make sense, and so Mass Effect three with those stories
that does do so well that we are so personal
like with Rex, and more than part of what sells

(44:25):
it so much as there's somebody, a character that we
intimately know over multiple games, who is intimately bound up
in these issues and it becomes very personal. The rakneye
isn't that way. You're right, it is a major decision,
but none of our major characters entire life is bound
within that narrative. So that's that's what I mean by

(44:45):
by lesser.

Speaker 1 (44:47):
Yeah, what we needed was a character like Tally who
had a relationship with the Rakney like Tally has with
the death.

Speaker 3 (44:56):
We need about to say, when you say mass effect
in relationship, if you should be careful.

Speaker 4 (45:01):
Yeah, yeah, well yeah the rak Knight Queen, doesn't she
like she speaks to you telepathically through an Assari in
the second game. If so, you get kind of and
she thanks you right for Yeah, kid, you held your finger.

Speaker 6 (45:18):
It's the first game that she speaks through an Assari
and the second one it's a bunch of Krogan that
fall down into the ravine or sorry, the third game
is when you see the rak Knight Queen.

Speaker 4 (45:29):
Yeah, and the second one is like the Thorian talks
to you through an Assari in the first one, but
I think.

Speaker 5 (45:37):
Right, you're right. So you go to the sorry planet
that the name of which I cannot recall, but yeah, right,
it's not part of the main plot, so it's easily missed.
But you could encounter in a Sary who has the
rack Knight speaking and says like, oh, we've we've gone
off to this other planet. We're not killing anybody, thank
you for not killing us. But it's it's easily missed.

Speaker 1 (46:01):
Yeah, I think I remember that. That was kind of Yeah,
it was a kind of fun, little creepy twist.

Speaker 4 (46:07):
Yeah, that's right. Yeah, And I got yeah, yeah, And Michael,
you kind of mentioned the messages you get. I do.
I do think it's fun in the third one that
you get emails from really insignificant side quest things you
could have done through the other two games that just
kind of give an epilogue and hey, we're doing great
over here now because you you know, found the thing

(46:28):
of a jig for us or whatever it was. And yeah,
I just enjoyed that. I was surprised that the data
carried that many small choices that you made through.

Speaker 6 (46:42):
As giving out Shepherd's email to everyone. That's all I
want to know.

Speaker 1 (46:47):
It's eaty of course.

Speaker 2 (46:53):
Yeah, speaking of all the very sketching these time, I
couldn't help but to think. And with all the filler
fetch quests in this game of where there's really no
story behind it, you just kind of find something and
then randomly give to somebody on citadel, you know they'll
have some like little non dialogue very much reminded me
of Dragon h two with all of those fetch quests,

(47:15):
which I guess something was working through biowaar. Yeah, I'm
not a fan of of fillers.

Speaker 1 (47:23):
Oh, that reminds me. The biggest gameplay thing that I
hated about Masspect three is in Masspects one and two
you have to initiate dialogue to have conversations. In mass
Effect three, you sort of enter their space and you
hang out and listen to them hawking. And I hate
that because it means I'm a passive participant in my

(47:44):
relationship with these characters. I want to be active. I
want to talk to my crew members. I want to
talk to people on planets to get quests. I don't
want to just wander by and hear them it's like
I'm the world's most nosy neighbor hearing quests and then
fixing things. I'm just I hated that gameplay.

Speaker 6 (48:02):
Change, but that's the change through the time of the
second one. Second one I said, you were you know,
you're pushed by the clock and then order of missions
that you do, and this one you're at war. What
good is it to start making these relationships with the
guy who wants to play Jurassic Park.

Speaker 1 (48:20):
You know, I just I resent becoming a passive participant
in relationships.

Speaker 2 (48:29):
Yeah, I definitely would agree that, David Ore.

Speaker 4 (48:32):
You can say I was going to bring up something else, because.

Speaker 2 (48:37):
No, I don't know that, Okay.

Speaker 4 (48:40):
I was just gonna mention that I really like the
husks of all the different races in this particularly the
A Sorry is pretty terrifying. I like, yeah, yeah, it's
just that's a good idea, and it was cool for
them to kind of hold that off until this third
game for a good finale, because it really adds some

(49:02):
different instead of just like different skinned guys with guns
that you're fighting, and it's pretty interesting.

Speaker 2 (49:11):
Yeah, it definitely adds to the general creepiness and just
sense of dread. That's falling upon you right, that you're
fighting all of these different kinds of zombies, that it
does add to the aesthetic very well.

Speaker 1 (49:22):
The Morgan orsamara that the Justic Car Sorry Academy mission
was very horrory in an effective way.

Speaker 5 (49:31):
I thought, Yeah, hearing the screams, I think it was.
It was very unsettling. I think the mission variety was.
I mean, it wasn't a huge variety here, but definitely
that stands out versus like t Chonka, when you have

(49:52):
big action packed you're rolling, you're running, you have to
be sprinting during one point where everything's just kind of
falling down all around you. Yeah, I think I was
a fan of the gameplay personally, but I also recognize
that this was the furthest shift away from the RPG origins,
where I think that's why when you're encountering quest from people,

(50:16):
I think that's why you are so passive when you're
just walking by people and the game kind of hands
you new side quests without you having to explore or investigate.
This is the most action packed, user friendly, new user
friendly game of the trilogy, and so that's that's probably
why you don't have to go exploring and looking for things.

(50:38):
On the other hand, as you're saying, with the horror
element to this, I feel it is the most cinematic,
like you're getting this flavor of I don't know, a
lot of things are happening to you, and you get
to kind of guide your character through them. But yeah,
I think the benefit, if there is a benefit to
shifting away from the RPG element of exploring and finding

(51:01):
your own path, is that the game it curates different experience,
different stylistic and tonal experiences like the Oh my gosh,
I can't remember what the the Banshee where you encounter them.
I know it's on It's not anth Asia. It's on
some remote like monastery kind of planet to where they

(51:23):
sequested them off to. Anyway, I liked the horror element.
I liked some of the variety in the different missions.
I think they were able to achieve that because the
game feels less like you're making a bunch of individual
choices about where you're going to go next and what
you're going to do exactly. It feels like you are
kind of guided through and so it's maybe the least

(51:45):
RPG ish, but I think they were able to make
some tonal choices that were fun and interesting as a result.

Speaker 2 (51:54):
Continuing with the horror eerie theme here, what did y'all
think of Leviathan that whole sequence. I heard some people
say they didn't like it because it took away from
the mystery of the reapers, But I personally, I'm an
I really enjoy that whole sequence. I'm curious what you
guys think.

Speaker 6 (52:13):
Leviathan is the one that kind of ties the entire
theme that, again from all of our talks have really
popped out. So looking at Shepherd as a Christ figure
means that he's going up against evil, which is in
the form of Ai. And the only reason Leviathan is

(52:34):
like the perfect name, not just for the mythological sense
of having a water beast, is because Shepherd is going
up against what we saw with the elusive man trying
to be God. Saren playing as an anti Christ legion,
being a false Shepherd with a giant hole in him,
so I mean like he's already got a wounded body

(52:54):
of a Christ figure. This all leads to them playing
the prophet the anti Christ of the beast, and in
order to get the Beast from revelation that comes out
of the water, that's Leviathan if you look at Revelation
in Book of Job, but you can see the parallels
between those two. So having Leviathan there means that, yes,

(53:17):
it is kind of like, here's the origin of the Reapers,
but it makes more sense in an apocalyptic sense from Revelation.
This is all really where it's coming to, which I
only have one question left from that, and that is
where's the serpent? If we have a representation for an Antichrist,

(53:42):
we have a representation for the Reapers, which is the Beast,
what else is out there? I think there's one more
thing happening, which is why there's a fifth game, unless,
of course, you wanted to just take AI as a
symbolic serpent. I guess I don't know, but I think
I think the fifth game, if they're going to try
to bring back Shepherd, then they're going to have to

(54:05):
create something that kind of fills this, and I don't
even think they're trying. That's the weird thing about it.
They went on such a biblically sound storyline throughout all
three games and they didn't even know.

Speaker 1 (54:17):
So I think both Leviathan and the Promethean DLCs really
add to the game in rich ways, because you feel
you get back to that Cuthulhues cult horror thing when

(54:40):
you're tracking down Leviathan, and your confrontation with Leviathan really
does have an uncanny sense to it. And then Javic
giving you a sense of fifty to one hundred thousand
years ago and a different galaxy facing the same problems

(55:00):
just gives a lot more richness to your sense of
your problems.

Speaker 2 (55:06):
I think, yeah, And I think it's interesting that the leviathant.
So we'll find out that the Leviathan are the creators
of the Reapers, essentially that they it. I may not
be remembering this super clearly, and so correct me if
I'm missing some of this. But basically, there was this
problem that they witnessed that AI tended to generate and

(55:31):
you know, turn against organics, and so didn't they essentially
create AI in order to solve the problem of AI.
Am I missing something or is it that.

Speaker 1 (55:37):
This is what I'm saying? It doesn't make sense.

Speaker 2 (55:41):
Yeah, So I don't quite understand the motivations there, but
I still appreciate the idea, the warning perhaps that when
you kind of export your consciousness to the point where
you know, you're you're really taking direction from AI, which
is taking direction from you, right, And that's how AI works,

(56:02):
at least initially from the consciousness that is sort of
reflecting off of that. I mean that you're going to
end up consuming yourself.

Speaker 4 (56:12):
You know.

Speaker 2 (56:12):
I mentioned this probably is early as the first episode
that it reminds me of Paradise Lost, when Satan basically
falls in love with his own genius and that gives
birth to a monstrosity. And I can't help but to
think that that's how we often use AI. Definitely the
direction that we're headed as we export more and more

(56:33):
of ourselves to this thing that is mimicking our thought,
but in so doing, we end up losing our own thought,
and so in turn, this ghost of our thought, of
our consciousness ends up consuming us. I think that's kind
of the the worst case scenario, but I think that's
also what happens on a rather mundane step by step level,
and so well, it doesn't really make sense to me

(56:56):
that they're going to create AI to solve the AI problem.
I still can really appreciate some of the warning signs
that they are implicitly giving us.

Speaker 3 (57:04):
So I'm not I'm not going to disagree with you
guys on the broad AI stuff, but I think there
are some things I'm going to disagree with in a
few places with you guys on how the game interprets
some of it. So Legion and Tally, what does everybody

(57:24):
do there? What's your ideal solution there? Do you have
the Gath and Korean's reconcile or what do you do?
What's the consensus here?

Speaker 2 (57:33):
Kill the goth.

Speaker 1 (57:36):
Yep obviously reconcile. I don't know what you guys are spoken.

Speaker 4 (57:41):
Yeah, I'm thinking back on my gameplay when I hear
you all discussing this and what you think is the
right ending and all this, Like I pick the synthesis ending,
And I'm thinking, why do I do these things? And
I think it's because I am trying to pick whatever
option lets everybody come out of, Like I just want

(58:01):
to leave everybody alive as best as I can. And
that was really the only option that I saw there.
But yeah, I want everybody to get along, darn it.

Speaker 3 (58:11):
So, Megan, what's your what's your Gath Choreyan solution?

Speaker 5 (58:14):
Okay, So I had them reconcile because I needed to
defeat the reapers and it was entirely a practical decision.
Were it up to me, I think I would deprogram
whatever semi consciousness the Gath have and I would return
them to their slave like state and have them serve
perpetuity as slaves to servants of the servants of the Koreans.

(58:39):
But yes, I had them reconcile. It was a practical decision.
I didn't want to do it. The game made me
for my ideal outcome.

Speaker 3 (58:47):
So I like the reconcile the most for you know,
you can again, the game obviously assumes that there is
a reality of AI becoming safety and or sensient, right,
and that's it. It asks that question specifically there. I
think it's very interesting that that the game is rejected

(59:08):
up to that point that Legion and in mass Fect
two was not alive, is how you have to interpret it.
And Legion became alive in the mean in the interim
with the Reaper code. Right, So in Masspect two, he
wasn't No matter how much you like him, David, he
was he was. He wasn't the game. I mean, that's
just the text of the game, right, So yeah, it
does ask those questions, what you know, it it also

(59:34):
there's a sense that you can get that what is
what is supposed to be the relationship between man and machine. Okay,
up until that point, the assumption has been that that
it is ultimately will be conflict and disaster. Right that
that ultimately all speed all species eventually reach an A

(59:57):
or all intelligence species eventually reaching a I phase, and
that's this danger and that is uh, you know, ultimately
you know, extinction level sort of thing. Hence the Reaper
is the solution of, well, we're gonna have one AI,
so we're not going to let all sorts of AI
run around and it just be chaos. And now that
that it's just we're going to allow civilization, right, Well,

(01:00:21):
the Quarian and the Gath. It's interesting because it says, okay,
what if there's a different solution, and that is I mean,
ultimately the Koreans are mostly back to what they were doing.
What what what were they? What were they built to do?
They were are not the Quoreans, I'm sorry, the Gath.
What were the Gath built to do? The Gath were
built to serve the Quoreans. What are the Gath doing?

(01:00:44):
If you if you reconcile the geth are still serving
the Quarrians. So in some ways it's a reconciliation of purpose. Uh,
you know, it's it's funny how you took the the
Reaper imagery of the n seven as a as a
false shepherd. You could look at it a different way,
as he's a lesser shepherd. That man is made in

(01:01:05):
the image of God and Ai is made in the
image of man. So there's this this lesser echo of
shepherd of what man has created and it has it
has to fulfill the same purpose with machines.

Speaker 4 (01:01:18):
And it's interesting.

Speaker 3 (01:01:19):
It's interesting, but like I said, I enjoy that. It says, okay,
but we've said it always leads to disaster, but there
is a return to purpose of machine ultimately still serving man.
We're recognizing the game recognizes maybe they're alive, but the
gather are still fulfilling their created purpose as being created

(01:01:40):
by man Quarrians. I'm saying, man create, you know, machine
created by man. They return to their created purpose in that.
And I like that.

Speaker 4 (01:01:49):
I like that.

Speaker 3 (01:01:49):
That's that's interesting to think about. And yes, it may
be presented a little bit utopian, you know, and there's questions, Okay,
what does that look like in two centuries. Well, it
may be problems and who knows what. I enjoy that story.
I enjoy the way it plays out with reconciliation and
just whatever you do. Don't choose the death over tally,

(01:02:09):
because it is the most is the bleakest scene in
the entire series.

Speaker 2 (01:02:15):
It is so bleak.

Speaker 3 (01:02:17):
Okay, that's that. Somebody tear me apart. Somebody tell me
where I'm wrong there.

Speaker 1 (01:02:22):
It depends on what.

Speaker 6 (01:02:24):
Yeah, it depends on how you look at again the AI.
I view it as from a part of Satan's minions.
I view it as part of something that is evil.
So the other two options if we don't mind going
in the end at this point, but the other two

(01:02:45):
options are control of all synthetics or synthesisms synthetics. If
sinthetics are going to be what is evil and what
is part of the old dragons you know play here,

(01:03:06):
then you're choosing two options that work with it and
in revelation and then you know, when Christ wins, then
that's gone. So I really I'm gonna have to take
the red path on this.

Speaker 1 (01:03:21):
I just think that's imposing something external to what the
game really allows.

Speaker 2 (01:03:30):
Yeah, I think that's fair. We need to ask Kate,
what is the in game story? I mean kind of like,
you know, if I'm watching Lord of the Rings, I'm
not going to condemn Gandalf for using wizardry.

Speaker 4 (01:03:49):
Yeah, but and I feel the same. But then Meghan
brought up in the first one of these talks about
the Shepherd and the imagery of the Shepherd, which honestly
I hadn't really thought about before, and how at the
end they're saying, tell me the story of the Shepherd
is that I remember it was an astronaut. They got
to do that with really bad acting. Was it buzz
Aldrin or Okay, yeah, bless his heart. They asked him

(01:04:14):
to do it, and he did it. But doesn't go.

Speaker 3 (01:04:16):
I love it.

Speaker 4 (01:04:18):
I'll take it from me.

Speaker 3 (01:04:19):
Okay, it's cheesy, but I love it.

Speaker 4 (01:04:22):
Yeah. So I do think Shepherd imagery at the very
least is intended. Yes, it's overt. Yeah, yeah, my question.

Speaker 2 (01:04:33):
There are definitely christ themes.

Speaker 1 (01:04:35):
Yeah, I agree, there's christological themes, and I think it's intentional.
I just I don't accept the idea that synthetics are sin.
The Reapers, I would agree, are are demonic. Cthulhu asking
me definitely partakes in huge demonic imagery. But to me,

(01:04:57):
I think that I think we have to be fair
to the writers of Mass Effect three because I agree
with Megan, they do think that Ed and Legion are
our friends and our people, even though I agree with
Andrew that we really should question what does people mean
more within the game? They are people in the same

(01:05:18):
way that in Narnia, the White Witch is evil. You
could write a story and Neil Gamon did where the
White Witch is allied with Asthma, but that is I
think unfair to Narnia, in the same way that it's
unfair to say that Ed and Legion are sin because
they're synthetic, because I don't think that's what the game says.

(01:05:42):
I don't think that that works on us. As I said,
you're imposing a very external set of parameters on everything.

Speaker 6 (01:05:52):
I'll give a little bit of a Well, this is
where my understanding comes from. This is a game that
was created in the way of the Matrix movies, and
it was created in a timeframe in which nihilism was
very popular for children's stories, for a bunch of cartoons
that were coming out, for a lot of what was

(01:06:13):
going on in Hollywood at the time, and in that
the choice that you make is really just a choice.
Look at what happened at the end of the Matrix
with Agent Smith asking Neil, why do you keep fighting?
Why do you keep doing this? And his answer is
because I choose to, which is another answer, right, So

(01:06:35):
I mean, can you you can? I think just because
this is an apocalyptic thing, and because this game takes
place in the created universe, in the known universe, if
this was Andromeda, i'd call that science fantasy. This I
can call science fiction because it takes place within the

(01:06:57):
parameters of creation itself. Star Wars would be signs of
fantasy because everything is outside of Earth and can be
picked off to what everyone to do. So because it
still has those roots even though they don't intend it.
I mean, there's a lot of people that live in
creation that don't intend to recognize the Creator or as Paddock,

(01:07:21):
which would say the Originator, or Ashley going on with God.
So because they add those things in there, it's not
too far off, even if it is against what the
author's intent was. And there were many authors that went
onto this. The first two were Drew Carpustion and then
this last one forget who it was, but they had

(01:07:42):
a whole new head writer for this and a lot
of mac Walters, thank you and.

Speaker 4 (01:07:47):
Yeah, and Drew Drew had left to work on Knight
to the Old Republic. I believe the Old Republic, the
Old Republic. Yeah, yeah, no, Knights of that was that
was already made.

Speaker 5 (01:08:02):
I think there was another ending that was intended for
this game, or another way that the Reapersons was to
go about destroying the universe that was built up, not
quite foreshadowed. It's not the right term, but they started
sending the president in the second game when you find
Tally again and she's on this planet and they're discovering

(01:08:24):
why is this sun aging so rapidly and it's dying
way before it's supposed to. I think I read somewhere
that was actually how the Reapers was to go about
destroying the universe. That was the plan for the third game,
and then the plans got leaked. Does anybody know anything
about this?

Speaker 3 (01:08:42):
So what I I'll tell you. I'm kind of glad
that the plan was aborted if it's what kind of
those leaks were, because it seemed to be it was
something another about intelligent races and something about creating more
dark matter, and this dark matter was basically accelerating the
death of the universe. So I think what it was
going to be is that the Reafers were actually the

(01:09:04):
good guy's calling civilization that was hastening the death of
the universe and I hate hate. Oh No, the villain
was trying to save everybody all along Trope. So if
my understanding, if that's the way it was going to
work out, I'm pretty glad it was shifted.

Speaker 4 (01:09:22):
That's a very Western sort of a good guy though.
I mean, if your only goal is just so that
life can possibly continue, so you're going to wipe out
life in order to make it continue, that is terrible.

Speaker 5 (01:09:34):
I like killing those villains. That's a very fanos kind
of a thing. I think there's a very real contingent
of people, academics and not who believe that if we
had fewer humans that life would be better off on
the planet, and so I think destroying those kinds of
villains is important for the public consciousness.

Speaker 3 (01:09:52):
Yes, but I'm too afraid that the writers would set
it up to actually sympathize with it. And no, this
is actually they were actually the good guys, you know,
because there would I guarantee you there'd be some sort
of ending. That was no, let the cycle continue. We
must let the Reapers do their God ordained function in
the universe of harvesting, so that the universe continues sort

(01:10:15):
of well, speaking of it, that was it was gonna go.
I'm glad we didn't get that.

Speaker 1 (01:10:20):
Speaking of endings, where I think that the writers think
that the villain should actually be our point of view.
I think that the control ending is actually what the
writers want us to pick because it's Blue, which is paragon, yes,
and because they forced us to work for that lunatic
for an entire game.

Speaker 3 (01:10:41):
So is it time to get to the ending?

Speaker 1 (01:10:43):
Andrews, I think.

Speaker 2 (01:10:44):
It is, yeah. I mean it seems to me like
the control ending probably is the best ending. I like
the idea of killing off the Reapers get rid of
all the synthetics. I'm on board with that, but at
the same time, they are all kinds of consequences that
are going to lead to a great deal of suffering

(01:11:04):
out of that decision. I don't like the we're just
going to force everyone to be synthetic like that. That
seems monstrous to me. But the idea.

Speaker 4 (01:11:14):
That they're not synthletic there, you know, it's it's it's
a whole new thing, man, it's a whole.

Speaker 2 (01:11:20):
New just they're trans humanist.

Speaker 4 (01:11:23):
It's happily ever after No, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:11:27):
No, I don't like that, but I figure control. I mean,
Shepherd essentially sacrifices himself, and now we're going to guarantee
that the the main force in the universe, or at
least galaxy or however far they go, that they're going
to help us. Now right that Shepherd geekn guide them,
he can direct them. He at at least his consciousness

(01:11:47):
can whatever that entails. And so I don't like what
happens to Shepherd, but it seems to be the best
solution for everybody.

Speaker 4 (01:11:54):
I don't think Shepherd doesn't survive the synth as a
sending either, right, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:12:00):
I think you should. You only to create a synthetic
body for himself.

Speaker 4 (01:12:06):
Go ahead, Michael, I'm sorry, Well I was.

Speaker 3 (01:12:08):
Gonna say I agree. I think that Blue is in
a way kind of pointed as like this default ending
or or or the good ending, even though I think
Red is anticipated as the this is what people are
going to take and this is the real ending. If

(01:12:29):
that makes sense. I'm a blue guy. I think blue
is the correct solution because because again okay, so it
plays into the Shepherd and and and christological archetype the most,
where Shepherd sacrifices himself and leaves the universe better saves

(01:12:56):
everyone in a way, you know, the way that I
interpret it. I don't think that no separate Shepherd lives
on in the machine the way I interpret it, and
I think it's the case the way he says the
man I was, I think there is the insinuation that
Shepherd is dead, he's not still living on in the
reaper bodies, that he basically just reprogrammed them. I like

(01:13:18):
it because one thing that Ian was disagreeing with me
about in the discord was he was saying, but you're
enslaving an entire race. It's like, no, this is the
judgment of God. They're over written and executed for annihilating
billions of people over hundreds of thousands of years. It's like,
that's just pure justice. Man, There's no there's no enslavement there.

(01:13:40):
They're dead. What's left is reapered, right, Shepherd reapered Shepherd reaper.
But I think it it plays out to the happy
ending the most where everyone gets everyone basically gets the
happy ending except Shepherd, you know, is why I think
that that is the intended ending. And also this goes

(01:14:04):
into the original endings were a little different. They're not
just expanded in the original endings. In the red ending,
the mass effect relays were destroyed, and so yes, they
are totally destroyed, which means all the races are isolated.
They're not going to be able to ever go home,

(01:14:25):
even at FTL speeds, or it's going to be you know,
decades and decades and decades all the combined fleets that
are people were doing the numbers. It was basically lots
and lots of death. And so I liked it better
like that, where if you really wanted to choose that, no, AI,

(01:14:46):
there's serious consequences to it, right, It's like you can
do it, you can do it. There's consequences. But again,
I like Blue because it is a It is a
restoration of what is the purpose of man making a machine?
Is that machine is supposed to serve man? And so
what do you get Shepherd rewrites the reapers and now

(01:15:07):
machine serves man again. It is a restoration of order
that should be always the case.

Speaker 1 (01:15:15):
I really like the way you put that. I have
two problems with that, even as I I think you've
handled my enslaving argument well, I think my two problems
with it that remain are number One, Functionally, I feel
like green and blue are sort of the same, except
that now everybody has robot eyes in green.

Speaker 3 (01:15:35):
Nothing about green makes any sense at all, but we
can talk about that in a minute.

Speaker 1 (01:15:39):
Doesn't make sense, control doesn't make sense. But the real
objection I have this is the one I come down to,
is the freaking elusive man is right the whole time,
and I am unwilling to accept that.

Speaker 4 (01:15:53):
He is bend. So you know he's.

Speaker 3 (01:15:58):
I was trying to look at my discord of her
for a conversation had we had on this years ago,
because we had a great, big argument over it, and
there's a good answer to it, but I haven't played
it in a number of years, and I can't remember
my answer because I can't remember there is a good one.
I just don't remember it because it's been like six
years since I've played Massive Victory. If I find that conversation, Ian,
I'll get back with you, because I've got an apologetic

(01:16:21):
for it. I just don't remember it.

Speaker 4 (01:16:22):
I'm sorry.

Speaker 2 (01:16:23):
And I think the simple answer I think is that
motives matter. Right, the Elusive Man wants to control the
Reapers to primarily advance his own agenda, Like yeah, I am.
He generally wants to stop the Reapers from killing everybody,
but also he wants to control them for his little,
his imperial ambitions, whereas Shepherd, if you go that route,
he controls them to shepherd the cosmos, right, And so

(01:16:47):
I think that the motivations definitely matter. I don't think
that taking the control route makes you the Elusive Man.

Speaker 1 (01:16:54):
I just think it's a mistake in writing to have
the main advocate for that ending be the most incompetent
and annoying person in the game. But it's.

Speaker 3 (01:17:08):
But there, there's an there is an interesting storytelling thing
where where villains are almost right but get key details wrong.

Speaker 1 (01:17:17):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:17:17):
I think that's the way you can look at it
is that the the Elusive Man understands that that the
machines are supposed to serve man.

Speaker 4 (01:17:26):
Right.

Speaker 3 (01:17:27):
However, right as Andrew is saying, his methods are entirely wrong,
his methods are to destroy anything in his path to
get to that whereas Shepherd is going to give himself
first and foremost to reach, he's going to give of
himself in order to get there. And so there is
a there's the selfish versus the selfless path to that
and the and the other interesting thing about that is

(01:17:48):
Shepherd never pursues that goal of control, right, that is
not something he ever sets out to do. And when
the day a sex machina strikes at the very end,
and you know, and these things are thrust upon him,
that's a very different matter than saying that that was
his goal all align was goal all along, has become
to become this galactic Shepherd, or you know, to reprogram

(01:18:11):
the Reapers, because that obviously wasn't okay. Megan has had
all sorts of shaking her head at me.

Speaker 5 (01:18:20):
There's not enough defense of the destroy ending. So I
am here to justify why that is correct. Ending. I listen.
I think there's a lot of cope about trying to
join with the Reapers, join with the ai. You are
here from the beginning of this game because you see

(01:18:43):
the corruption of all kinds of technology on the human
body at first with the Husks, and then we see
the Reapers and the psychological infection that comes with even
their proximity. And what our solution is to continue using that?
Was that not the justification used, not just by the
Elusive Man, but all these different people. Oh well, if

(01:19:04):
you just figure out the technology enough, then it will
be helpful. You know, we're going to figure out how
to use it correctly. Absolutely not. Didn't fly with me.
Every bit of technology got destroyed. Do people die? Yeah, well,
I think it's a death to have everyone have green
eyes and suddenly become you know, oh, I agree with that.

(01:19:24):
I don't even know what that was even supposed to mean, Like,
what is what is happening here? What? What energy is
infused that? Now synthetic things?

Speaker 4 (01:19:34):
You no means?

Speaker 5 (01:19:37):
But so that's an abomination. I think we all agree
at least No, okay, okay, well I agree for all
of us that it's an abomination, so we can move
on from that point. No, but as far as control it,
I liked there was this fan theory going around before
they corrected the endings. There was a whole thing. If

(01:19:58):
you weren't there in real time, I'll tell you there
were all these different YouTube videos people saying, no, this
is bio ware showing that there was this uh, this
kind of syop thing where Shepherd is actually getting influenced
by the Reapers and by the time you get to
the ending, because Shepherd's had all this contact with the

(01:20:18):
Reapers and we know what that means, that's why she
which according to my canonical playthrough, I'm gonna say she
that's why she is getting pulled into Oh now I'm
gonna side with the Reapers and not destroy them because
there it's the last ditch effort. There was a whole thing.
We were all desperate for the ending to make sense
and be good, not just be three different colors. If

(01:20:40):
you know, again, if you weren't there at the time,
that's what was going on. But yeah, I I held
no quarter for the Reapers, unlike you traders that decided
that they were okay by the end, I guess I. Yeah.
Are there casualties, that's war, that's life, Okay, going to
happen anyway. But I think the worst casualty would be

(01:21:04):
the casualty of the human spirit that's subsuming itself to
an affinity and affiliation and relationship with this ultra destructive
synthetic force.

Speaker 3 (01:21:17):
If it makes you fail any better. In my In
my theory, Reaper sticks around for just a couple of decades,
fixing everything that the Reapers screwed up, and then decommissions itself.
That's my theory.

Speaker 5 (01:21:29):
That's what they would say, That's what they would tell you.

Speaker 3 (01:21:32):
Forever, just gonna So here's here's the thing, though, the
Blue at least provides a solution to the problem of
AI that mass effect poses, and Red offers no solution
to the problem of AI because twenty years from now, Ague,

(01:21:53):
a rogue scientist is going to be doing AI research
and the genie is going to be out of the
bottle again, and the Red ending.

Speaker 5 (01:22:00):
To kill him too. It's fine, okay.

Speaker 3 (01:22:03):
But that's here. But that is one of the main
theses of the series is that it's always going to
come back. It's always going to be a problem. So
Red's Red is a kick it down the cann kick
kick the can down the road. We will have to
deal with it.

Speaker 4 (01:22:19):
Again, and Green makes it a non issue. Everybody's both
all And let me just say real quick on the
Green ending the synthesis ending, the Normandy crashes on this
Eden like planet and everybody comes walking out a completely
new creation. So in that ending, the Shepherd has made

(01:22:40):
all things new, and so I will just I'll leave
it there.

Speaker 1 (01:22:45):
I'm with you. I'm telling you it's a It's basically
a thematic continuation of healing the jenifer age and reuniting
the death and the Quarians. Now, I like what Michael
says about machines serving man. I think that is good.
But I think that it really is coming together. I
think that's the theme, you know, the tearing of the
veil by Jesus. I agree that it doesn't work in

(01:23:09):
real life i'd like, but in the world of the game,
I feel it is a coming together.

Speaker 6 (01:23:16):
So you have to forgive them for corrupting all the
other biological life forms into the banshees, the husks, the
abominations and all those things.

Speaker 1 (01:23:27):
Those were the destructive elements of an abused child. When
they are brought into harmony with the family of organics,
they understand the proper way to propagate the species.

Speaker 4 (01:23:38):
Did you just make that up? That's amazing, that was great.

Speaker 2 (01:23:43):
So what I'm hearing is neuralink is the path to
the escuton, the new creation. Is that what Ian and
David are for posing here.

Speaker 1 (01:23:51):
I mean it is the trust humanist way, but I
believe that it works in the universe of the game.

Speaker 4 (01:23:57):
Yeah, it's not. What the elusive man is trying to
do is not the weird monstrosity that he's become at
the end of the game.

Speaker 2 (01:24:05):
It's the other weird once trusting the good one.

Speaker 3 (01:24:09):
Look, I will say that my thought on Green going
into it was I always thought Green was kind of
just a Niester egg, a throwaway ending. And the reason
for that is there's a long history and sci fi
of a weird, out of nowhere metaphysical ending that really
doesn't make sense. I think two thousand and one of
Space Odyssey. Does anyone understand the end of that movie? No,

(01:24:32):
have you read the book and tried to understand it.
It doesn't make any more sense if you read the book, right,
And so I've always kind of there's always been this
subcurrent and sci fi from very secular writers of we're
going to throw this metaphysical ending in and because we
don't understand anything about the spiritual world, it's not going
to make any sense at all. And I always kind
of thought that Green ending was an homage to that

(01:24:55):
long history of insecular sci fi that's all I'm gonna
say about that.

Speaker 5 (01:25:04):
Listen, none of you had the courage to do what
I did, which is destroy destroy the enemy that we
were fighting. I know, controversial. I defeated the enemy that
I set out to defeat, and I saved humanity in
the process. And you know the rest of them. Did
the robots die? Sorry? They did. Turns out the robots

(01:25:25):
that were trying to kill us most of the time
also died. I don't know why it's controversial this ending,
but I did the right thing and I rest easy
with that.

Speaker 3 (01:25:35):
Probably three of you.

Speaker 2 (01:25:36):
That took Red right, I did take the Red.

Speaker 5 (01:25:39):
Ending, yep, yeah, but that was your renegade playthrough.

Speaker 3 (01:25:43):
I am actually one one blue.

Speaker 2 (01:25:48):
Actually, I will say in my pro human kill of AI,
I actually came out Paragon, So make of that what
you will.

Speaker 1 (01:25:57):
I'm really glad we have representatives from each here. I
think it makes it much matter, much more interesting.

Speaker 6 (01:26:03):
Well, and the ratio is here too, So depending on
the war assets you get in the game, there are
six different playouts for the Red ending. There are four,
oh well reverse then, but there's four for the Blue
ending and two for the Green ending. Depending on how
much you bring to the final battle, which determines the

(01:26:28):
survivability of the.

Speaker 5 (01:26:29):
Crucible, right, and that was something they corrected post DLC
fixed the ending ad citadel, which was you can now
play single player and have ideal outcomes. Whereas, as I
mentioned before, if you did not play multiplayer, it was
it was definitive you could not access the full range
of endings. They had baked in this kind of kind

(01:26:52):
of junkie multiplayer from what I've seen, like it was
nothing super special, but they really wanted you to play.

Speaker 4 (01:26:57):
It such that fun with a friend, I'll defend it.
I don't like multiplayer stuff either, but I really enjoyed this. Mainly,
I don't like multiplayer usually because I'm playing against twelve
year olds who are way better at it than I
am that are just calling me names and stuff. And
with this, it's just you and three other human players

(01:27:18):
against ten waves of enemies or defend your guy while
he extracts some data or something, and then at the
end you've got to guard the X field point and
wait for the ship to come and pick you up.
And it's got like randomized loot drop new character classes
you unlock and things like that, So it was fun.

(01:27:40):
For a while. I was surprised how much I enjoyed it.
But it is kind of gross to hide single player
game content behind forcing you to play.

Speaker 3 (01:27:50):
I kind of think it was a field experiment. I
think it was an experiment that ultimately just doesn't pan
out as well in practice as as they were thinking
and they're like, oh, it'll be because David talked about
kind of getting this feel of we're all trying to
save the galaxy, to get that up, and I think
that that's probably the feeling they were aiming at.

Speaker 5 (01:28:09):
Yeah, there was some like app or some other game
I don't remember, Like there was that, and then there's
the single player game. There's multiplayer, so you know, recruiting
different assets. If we're doing the most generous view of it,
it's probably what they had in mind. Except multiplayer. Also
in general, I think makes you more money because you
can buy more stuff and whatever, So that's the ultimate motivation.

(01:28:31):
But yeah, they fixed that. No, probably not.

Speaker 4 (01:28:36):
No, I doubt it. Servers are shut down. No, unless
some fan has figured out how to run their own server,
which happens a lot, but I haven't heard anything about it. Right.

Speaker 5 (01:28:44):
Well, the game's like thirteen. It came out in twenty twelve.
I think so it's yeah, there's no way. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:28:52):
There were also people upset about Javic being DLC at
launch because they'd planned to make him part of the
main game, but then they ran into a lot of
developmental delays and had to cut a lot. I think
they had intended originally a lot more ending options than
they actually had to resort to.

Speaker 6 (01:29:12):
More missions too.

Speaker 4 (01:29:14):
Yeah, but Javic I really thought he was an interesting character.
I love that everything Leara thinks she knows about the
Prothians is just thrown back in her face because he's
this warlike guy that she'd never imagined the Prothians being like.

Speaker 1 (01:29:31):
And that was a lot of fun, especially on that
mission on the a Sorry Home World. If you take
Leara and Javic, it's just it's both funny and sad
because there is just having your head exploded, and Javic's like,
you guys are so stupid. This is obviously Prothians.

Speaker 2 (01:29:50):
Yeah. I like Javic. I've been paling around with him
in this run. I think my favorite party so far
was that limited time when I got to use Rex
in the third game with Javic. I feel like between
the two of them were just you know, this this
little war gang just annihilating everybody. Yeah, I like I
like Java. You you tend to think like Leara does that,

(01:30:12):
you know when you're thinking about sort of this mystical
kind of race, right, the people who lived fifty thousand
years ago, it's very easy to build up a fantasy
lore around them. But then you know, it's kind of
like the way that people, uh, well, the way that
we talk about paganism sometimes and you go back and
look at how the Pagans actually lived, and you know,

(01:30:32):
it's it's very different than what we tend to have
in our mind in our romanticizations.

Speaker 4 (01:30:39):
Another weird little storyline that runs through all three games
is that guy Conrad Werner. Did you guys? It's such
a funny I love him. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:30:49):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (01:30:50):
My favorite delivery of dialogue in the first game is
when you shut him down and he's just like, I
thought you were a hero, and he's just whining and
does the weird mass effect turn and walk off after
he minds. But yeah, depending on how you interact with him,
he just goes off and gets himself killed for masquerading

(01:31:11):
as a specter and stuff. Like that. I just I
enjoy when they manage to carry through really small, little
almost side jokes like that through all the games.

Speaker 5 (01:31:23):
Yeah, and it so enriches the overall experience, which sounds
like an obvious thing to say. But when I see
and I've brought up Dragon Age Vallguard before, and I
won't go on a tangent. But when you hear developers
complain or writers complain about well there's too many variables,
Oh my god, like all these different decisions. How are

(01:31:44):
we going to do it? Let's just burn down the
whole map and move on from it. What else are
you doing? BioWare What else are you known for other
than really rich storytelling and all these companion side quests
and everything? But yeah, I think those are those are
moments that make Mass Effect really good. Where you see,

(01:32:05):
whether it's in the little messages that you get or
and you know, more overt Conrad vertus storyline. What else
are we doing here? Because what else is Buyer We're
known for. It's not for like the really excellent gameplay mechanics, obviously,
especially not in the first Mass Effect game. I think

(01:32:25):
if Buyerer can get back to and not that you
mass Effect didn't have its problems. We've already talked about
some of them. But I think if the studio can
get back to its prioritization of detailed storytelling and follow through,
like narrative follow through across different games, I think that
would be a huge boon. There's other ideological stuff going

(01:32:45):
on there that needs to be addressed as well, But
the idea that, oh, well, there's there's too many storytelling
elements we can't you know, can't address them all, so
we're just gonna sweep them under the rug it doesn't
fly with me. What else are they doing? What else
they known for? What about these millions of dollars? Like,
where else is it going other than to fulfill my

(01:33:07):
little fun Conrad Werner storylines that I expect to see
after three games. That's my rant about what they should
be doing in the future of BioWare after this because yeah, Andromeda,
nobody wants to see it, Nobody cares. Because I think
there was also very little carryover from this trilogy into
that one. I understand that was kind of the point,
but I think that's also why it flopped, in addition

(01:33:29):
to some other issues.

Speaker 4 (01:33:31):
Right, Yeah, and you do get to the end of
games like this sometimes in Wonder or you know, like
a TV series or a movie series, whatever, and I'm
just sometimes shocked that it appears like they did not
have the end in mind when they began. And I
really feel like that's a really important part of storytelling.
And I've never written a book, Michael, so you can

(01:33:53):
correct me if I'm wrong, but I just feel like
an outline that includes where you are trying to ultimately go.
Unless you're just trying to make a serialized TV program
that you're going to run as many seasons as you
can until you get canceled, I think you ought to
have this is how I am going to neatly wrap
all this up whatever I do between the beginning and

(01:34:14):
the end.

Speaker 3 (01:34:15):
So you got two kinds of writers. You have plotters
and pantsers. And plotters are architects that have an outline.
They have an ending in mind, you know how detailed
That outline might vary, but they work through it towards
the end. And then you have panthers that write by
the seat of their pants. And there's some panthers that
don't have an ending in mind. This is Stephen King.

(01:34:35):
Stephen King is very famous for not planning anything as
he writes novels. Right, plans a little bit of a
pants er too, but he pants over like fifteen years,
and so that's a little different. But here's the problem
with some of these big budget things. You can't really
pants very well by committee. Right, with a novel, you

(01:34:55):
can write. What ends up happening with most pantss is
they write a novel, they get there and it's really rough,
but it's been a very just let's just say, organic process.
But a pants tends to have a lot of time
editing and very often actually rewriting it from scratch. That's
not how a video game where a movie really works, right,

(01:35:20):
you don't. You don't write it all then rewrite. And
why you're working it's I mean you do because there
is a lot of people working on it. But especially
over three games. You see you see story by committee.
It's the same thing with a Star Wars sequel trilogy.
I mean, just to pull something else in. You can
see it kind of works for the second. You can

(01:35:40):
see everyone's offended by all right, it kind of works
for the first, people are offended by the second, but
it's still basically a narrative. And then by the third one,
there's not even really a cohesive narrative anymore because there's
never been a plan and it's entirely by committee, right,
So you need a plan. You do, really need a
plan for these big multidiscipline projects, I think or or

(01:36:03):
Or You need a head writer who has more sway
than than the sub writers and the quest riders and
the individual people. You need somebody that really is in charge.

Speaker 1 (01:36:14):
And who sticks around. I mean, part of the problem
is that Sure Drew left.

Speaker 6 (01:36:18):
Yeah, one third of the original staff for this Massfect
three was left by the end of it.

Speaker 4 (01:36:27):
And yeah, they.

Speaker 6 (01:36:28):
Got three months of reprieve, pushed it back from a
Christmas launch to March. But the original ending is still
the original ending.

Speaker 3 (01:36:35):
Which the the original timeline for launch was probably way
too aggressive anyway. You know, let's be real. It would
have could it could have used another year to bake,
you know.

Speaker 4 (01:36:49):
But there was even a problem which I don't hear
people talking about anymore. But when it launched and I
transferred my paragon A Shepherd over, he did not look
like himself at all, and they realized, yeah, there's something
wrong with the importer. We're gonna fix it. But I
had already finished the game by the time they fixed it,

(01:37:12):
and then I re imported my character and I was like, yeah,
I wish he'd look like that the whole way through
the game, but yeah, it didn't work out.

Speaker 3 (01:37:21):
Oh, I was gonna I was gonna ask one other
little question. Did anybody do ever do? Ending?

Speaker 4 (01:37:27):
For did you shoot the shot?

Speaker 3 (01:37:32):
Or you don't do anything if you just wait long
enough to do you know about that? Andrew? So they
added this later too, and basically, if you refuse to
uh choose one of the colors or if you walk away,
what happens to Shepherd? Does does the star Child kill
Shepherd or something? I don't remember how it does it,

(01:37:53):
but it basically treats a Oh it's a game over, right,
but it goes yeah, it goes to this cut scene
that fifty thousand years later of basically it's Leara's time capsule.
And so they added in this ending for Okay, for
all of you people that really just hate all this,
In these endings, there is a forget all this. We're

(01:38:14):
gonna let the next cycle have their their better chance
with leear A's time capsule. So there is there is
there is a fourth ending for the people.

Speaker 4 (01:38:22):
That's funny.

Speaker 3 (01:38:26):
Yeah, I'd probably google or probably YouTube Lear's ending for
Mass Effect three, will probably show it up.

Speaker 4 (01:38:32):
It's very short. It's very short.

Speaker 3 (01:38:34):
It's clearly something they threw together in you know, two
days as a we're sorry. If you hate it, fine,
you can you can reject our endings. You can reject
our endings.

Speaker 4 (01:38:46):
So Mass Effect Andromeda, which I enjoyed well enough. The
story not so much, but I kind of liked the
premise and the gameplay I think was better. It was
I don't know, it's been a while. There's good and
bad things about it, but it's more open world. You

(01:39:07):
have a vehicle that you drive around. You have a
lot of little, unimportant things to do all over the map.
But the premise of it is that these people left
the Milky Way before the events of even the first
Mass Effect I believe, and then they travel in a

(01:39:28):
suspended animation for like six hundred years and get to
the Andromeda galaxy. So it's way past the events of
the Mass Effect trilogy in the distant future in another galaxy,
and they have no way to even know what did
happen here because they traveled so far. I felt like
it had a pretty good setup, which I said in

(01:39:48):
the discord the ending was a good setup for better
games that we won't ever get to play. There are
whole races that aren't in the game because they had
intended to make I think possibly deal see where there
were other ships that came that had like the Quarrians
and the other races on it. I know the Krogans
are in it, but there are a few races that

(01:40:09):
are are missing, like they had their own ships. But yeah,
now that they're going back for a fifth one and
apparently making it because I think Leara was in the
revealed trailer for it. Maybe it was that fourth ending, Michael,
I don't know, but I don't see how they can
raise the stakes from the entire galaxy surviving Annihilation. I

(01:40:33):
don't know what you may maybe it'll be a buddy
cop game.

Speaker 3 (01:40:36):
I am a big proponent of stories need to end,
and as far as I'm concerned, Mass Effect is ended.

Speaker 4 (01:40:42):
Yeah, well, BioWare and largely seems to have ended. But
I realized the other day I have Vailguard because PlayStation
Plus gave it away a few months ago when I
claimed it, and I totally forgot.

Speaker 5 (01:40:56):
It was like free on Xbox Marketplace after I spent
seventy dollars on the pre order like a dummy, or but.

Speaker 1 (01:41:07):
Years later.

Speaker 5 (01:41:08):
Yeah, No, I think I don't know what's ahead for
mass Effect. I think their options are either to continue
in the Andromeda universe and do dramatically better than they
did the first time. Or maybe they could go a
little bit earlier in the timeline, like the Human Turian War.
But we already know the outcome, and so you know,

(01:41:31):
it is hard to imagine what they're going to do
next with this. I think, you know, Shepherd and the
other characters that you get, they're great, They're really memorable,
and they're fun andrama. They would need to do something
very different. I know this isn't an Androma discussion, but
I don't even know. If I played it multiple times.

(01:41:52):
It wasn't even that it was bad for me. It
was very bland in my view. Was it was hard
to remember, and that I think was its greatest in
in addition to the pretty gnarly launch, where somehow the
animation and character design looked very funky.

Speaker 3 (01:42:07):
And bars from the broken animation, Oh my god, there's
so wonderful.

Speaker 5 (01:42:13):
Eyes that are like going in different directions. It was
It was crazy that you had this triple a huge game.
I remember like watching The Walking Dead and there were
these cinematic ads for Mass Effect three, like this was
a big event for a video game release, and then
in drama it just kind of appeared and then disappeared

(01:42:33):
from the public consciousness without much notice. It was it
was kind of sad to think about it.

Speaker 4 (01:42:40):
I don't remember the villain. I don't remember what his
goal was. I kind of remember what he looks like
a little bit, but I don't remember what he was doing,
so that doesn't speak well of it.

Speaker 2 (01:42:53):
Well, is there anything else be probably wrap up this
whole series, anything else that anyone wants to mention?

Speaker 1 (01:43:00):
I can't. I don't think we've talked about it here.
We talked about it before we started. But I really
recommend at least giving yourself a save so you can
play the Citadel DLC party after you do whatever choice
you make, because it's so much more fun to end
the game just hanging out with your friends and your

(01:43:21):
apartment than with whatever the crap and then you picked.

Speaker 3 (01:43:25):
I have heard people that they they stop their play through,
they do sit at the last and they stop their
play through at the party and they're done because they
remember the dings, they don't need to do it again.
Although they miss Anderson's wonderful death. That's the Anderson's death
makes the whole, the whole end of worth it, no
matter what it is. So it is such a good scene.

(01:43:47):
Keith David's knocks it out of the park. He just
has to say, I'm proud of you, son.

Speaker 2 (01:43:53):
I'm like, see, I appreciate the wanting to and with
a party, hanging out with your friends in the apartment.
At the same time, I think you need the Catharsis, like,
you need it to come to an emotional, abrupt ending.
And so even if we might debate what some of
those endings are, I feel like you need something. You

(01:44:16):
need some loss amidst the victory. And while I did
say that, I feel like the control ending is the
best way to go about it. Within what's given in
the universe that there is this fatalism, that AI is
always going to re emerge and try to wipe this out. Essentially,
that you need something to try to put it into that,

(01:44:37):
and I feel like the control provides a way of
doing that. However, I do think that in my reckoning,
the best, most satisfying ending is the Red destroy the machines.
Shepherd dies. I don't even want Shepherd to be alive
at the end. I don't consider that to be the
best ending. I think that the best ending on a
story level is he dies, and in his dying, well

(01:44:59):
he read team's death. Right, That's what the Reapers stand for, essentially,
and so I think that that is the most satisfying ending.

Speaker 4 (01:45:07):
Well, it's your podcast, so we'll give you the final word.

Speaker 2 (01:45:12):
All right, Well, thank you for joining us. Thank you
Michael and Meghan for joining us for this series, and
I hope to see you again. Megan, definitely pull you
in when we do Dragon Age and whatever else you
want to join in for Yes, and all right, we'll
go ahead and wrap it there for mass effect, and

(01:45:33):
we will figure out what we're getting into next time.
So then god speed. All right, thank you for listening.
I've really enjoyed the conversation. I've really enjoyed all these conversations,
and I hope that you have as well. And if
you like to participate in some of these conversations, then
you can head over to Patreon dot com. Slash Mythmind.

(01:45:53):
Become a patron at any tier, even five dollars a month,
and that will give you an open invitation to all
three of our shows, because as a reminder, we have
three shows running right now. We have the main Mythic
Mind podcast, which is currently focusing on some CS Lewis stuff.
We also have Mythic Mind Movies and shows, which is
in the midst of a Star Wars series, and of

(01:46:14):
course we have Mythic Mind games. And so becoming a
patron at any level give you access to all of
those podcasts early and ad free, delivered into one single feed,
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the way. Oh and also to your two patrons as
ten dollars a month in higher are also getting access

(01:46:35):
to my new Intro to Philosophy course, and so that's
available if that's something that interests you, all right, Well
that's it for now. Looking forward to next time in
a couple of weeks, I think that we're going to
start a series on Final Fantasy Now that is going
to interest a number of you. If that doesn't interest you,
then know that there are gonna be a lot of
episodes between This is gonna be a long, kind of

(01:46:57):
overarching series. They are a number of titles in this
franchise that I haven't played yet that i'd like to
before we talk about them. There are some that I
would like to revisit that I haven't played for a
long time. And so that being said, seeing as I'm
not playing video games all day every day these days,
there's gonna be plenty of opportunity for other things in between.
As far as just the big ongoing series, that's what

(01:47:17):
we're gonna be looking at starting next time. All Right, Well,
that's it for now. The next thing to be coming
out from Mythic Mind will be over on the main
Mythic Mind podcast, where I think we'll be doing an
introduction to that Hideous Strength by C. S.

Speaker 4 (01:47:32):
Lewis.

Speaker 2 (01:47:33):
All Right, well that's it for now until next time. Godspeed,

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11 - Mass Effect 3

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