Mass Effect

Il y a parfois moyen de résumer tout un argumentaire en une phrase. Je ne m'étendrai pas sur tout un argumentaire. Je vous soumets juste la phrase qui résume fort bien comment se casser la figure à la ligne d'arrivée :


Sur les 10 dernières minutes d'un marathon de plus de 150 heures en ce qui me concerne, je suis... désappointé...

N'est ce pas !

Tiens, le lien pour voir les autres fins, que tu t'amuses !
Mass Effect 3 - Ending Movie Comparison - All the Colors

Attention, très très gros spoiler, de la part de la théorie du complot. Ce n'est pas voulu par Bioware (confirmé à une convention), mais je trouve que c'est la seule chose qui rende la fin du jeu acceptable.

Lien: Un post détaillant toute la théorie, c'est de là que tout vient. A la fin du premier post, il y a des liens vidéos histoire de voir plus en détail certains des points mentionnés. Le post est arrivé à 1375 pages, preuve de l'intérêt que les joueurs portent à la théorie, que beaucoup trouvent mieux que la fin officielle (en même temps c'est pas dur...)

A noter que Bioware a laissé entendre qu'ils n'utiliseraient pas cela dans leur "nouvelle" fin.

J'ai vu toutes les fins, même si le fait de devoir reprendre depuis le portail, avec un Shepard qui avance comme un escargot est agaçant à faire trois fois de suite...

Sans aller sur les 1380 pages, je donnerais deux éléments qui laissent à penser que ça n'est pas le cas :
- si les deux choix sont des illusions/indoctrinations, pourquoi faut-il un meilleur taux de War Assets pour obtenir la Synthèse ? Cela signifie, pour les développeurs, que cette fin est "meilleure" que le contrôle ou la destruction. Bémol : avec un encore meilleur taux de War Assets, la fin Destruction "complète" devient la "vraie" bonne fin car la plus dure à avoir, impossible sans avoir joué en multi ou cheaté. On peut obtenir la destruction sans la synthèse avec peu de War Assets, mais on peut avoir la Synthèse sans la destruction avec survie... Comment dire... Circular Thinking. Ils n'auraient pas dû demander à Harbinger d'écrire la fin du jeu...
- Même hors de cette séquence, plusieurs éléments laissent à penser que le Catalyst est bien ce qu'il prétend être. Le Reaper sur Rannoch parle de leur rôle de contrôle sur le chaos, et à un autre moment, il y a une explication de Samantha Traynor (je crois) sur le pattern qui se répète et où les Reapers ne sont que les exécutants d'une force supérieure. Donc, la séquence finale n'est pas une hallucination, car des éléments la confirmant ont été posés bien avant dans le jeu.

Mais pour le reste, je suis d'accord, on a une vraie impression que toute la séquence finale a été confiée à un studio complètement différent tant elle tranche avec le reste des jeux. Shepard ne remet rien en question, il n'y a pas de possibilité de discuter, le principe de la richesse de la diversité est complètement balayé, le fait d'avoir réuni Geth et Quariens, c'est comme si ça n'avait pas eu lieu, et j'en passe sur la forme également (les emplacements permettant destruction ou contrôle existent sur la citadelle, et personne ne les a vus auparavant ; Shepard est dans l'espace, entre la citadelle et le Crucible, sans casque, etc.)
Donc, on pourrait bien croire à une hallucination/indoctrination.

Je conseille cette vidéo car elle reprend à merveille à mon avis tout ce qui cloche avec cette fin : si les mass relays sont détruits, toutes les flottes sont bloquées dans le système solaire, tout le monde finira par mourir et s'entretuer ; comment les gens qui étaient avec toi sur Terre peuvent être sur le Normandy, comment le Normandy peut s'échapper, etc.
http://angryjoeshow.com/2012/03/top-10-reasons-we-hate-mass-effect-3s-ending/

Des infos par des gens qui semblent très bien renseignés :

After checking these boards, bioware forums, the twitters of various people involved with the game, audio file rips as well as some information I've gathered from other sources, I decided to talk with someone who used to run their own review website who still has ties to some people in the video game industry. That includes Bioware (they had sent him early review copies of the first ME). Anyway that's not what's important. The point is what I'm about to say you can take with a grain of salt if you want. I'm not here for attention or because I'm a fanboy of bioware. I'm simply here to help you all make sense of this situation. It will make a lot of sense and put the little things you've all found together. The reasoning for the ending change was they needed more time to implement it (this was supposed to be the reason for the delay) but Kinect implementation and the desire by some people (perhaps EA) to have an ending where things are left to interpretation messed with this. The ending was quickly altered which is why things don't "fit" and there are plot holes. Anyway, below is how things were supposed to happen.

The original ending was SUPPOSED to be extremely varied. Everything remained the same up until the part when Harbinger shoots at you and your team. This is when information that has appeared here already comes into play. There were going to be various outcomes determining how you reached the citadel and it was HOW you got there that determined what endings would be available to you. The following were the different scenarios from worst to best (based on EMS and war assets)

A: Your whole squad gets wiped out (the two crew members you took with you, Anderson). You struggle to make it to the citadel. Right as you're about to make it to the beam, Harbinger talks to you, saying you've been defeated and he kills you. Joker tries to swoop down to save you, but he also gets shot down.

B: Most of your squad gets wiped out. Still only you are able to make it to the citadel. Once up there, you must confront the illusive man alone. Because of this, unless you have high reputation and either talk him down or renegade interrupt and shoot him, he kills you and tries to control the reapers, but fails as he discovers he was indoctrinated.
It makes sense why TIM cannot control the reapers. Because, they aren't going to let TIM control the reapers by virtue that they don't want him to. It's not that TIM cannot in this ending, it's that the reapers dub that TIM WILL NOT control them.
In the ending we have now, vent kid says "TIM can't control the reapers because we control him." Which doesn't make a lick of sense.

C: You and Anderson make it up to the citadel together and make your way to the control panel where you confront TIM. The same thing plays out where you can talk him down. With high enough reputation, you can "save" Anderson but its not necessary for you to make it to the next part. Anderson dies after TIM is shot or kills himself like in the ending we got.

D: You and Anderson make it up to the citadel together while you're two squad maters, who clearly survive, are holding off the reapers from following you to the citadel. Everything continues the same here as "C" until after TIM is shot and killed and the final conversation that Anderson and Shepard have (which is much longer than what we got). You get the shorter convo in C.

Le dialogue final avec Anderson tel qu'il aurait dû être :
http://vulpesetuva.tumblr.com/post/19107540704/because-were-not-all-depressed-enough-one-thing

[The following you only see with outcome "C' and "D"] Shepard looks out at the war going on and activates the crucible. Hacketts says its not working. This is when Harbinger talks to Shepard through TIM as he lies on the ground. Harbinger tries to convince you that you've fail but you can argue with him. Harbinger says that he has your crew in his cross hairs. We see the Normandy arrive (the joker dialogue that was cut) and the rest of your friends help the two squad members you brought with you face off against Harbinger and his reaper minions.

You basically have a choice. You can submit to him and he claims he will spare your squad and earth until the next cycle because he is impressed that you were able to make it this far. This is when the motive of the reapers is more clearly established. Harbinger reveals that in the previous cycle, the prothean empire became too vast and they began to control all the other races, which would have prevented all of our races from developing. However, through more discussion, Shepard can uncover their true motives. They fear that they will be rivaled by something more powerful than they are (that this cycle will create AI that can topple the reapers). This implies they are merely fearful for their own survival and that is why they purge all life but they convince themselves they are protecting us.

Either way, you can submit to him and save your people or take your chances. Having 4000 EMS, not submitting to him you would lose everyone, but still eventually get to the three choices we actually got (more on this in a second). Having 5000+ and depending on how you resolved conflicts between characters and races, certain people will live or die.

After rejecting him (whether you lose everyone or not), you end up in the area where vent boy was but hes not there. It's just you and "Harbinger". He explains that a new solution is needed. The solution he tries to convince you to take is merge (to perseve his kind). But if you have high enough reputation once again, you can open the control and destroy option. Harbinger tries to talk you out of it by discussing how your races are divided and mentioning the geth incident. You convince him otherwise, and it is at this point, the control option opens next where he admits that shepard may have a perspective he never considered. Harbinger tells Shepard that if he destroys them, the relays will be destroyed as will the geth (which is true. This is the only ending where the relays are destroyed).

Now for the four endings.

If you submit to him before the three main choices, the reapers leave earth but end up wiping out every other race who haven't proved themselves worthy. Shepard dies.

If you merge, the reapers leave and like the ending we got, we see all the characters we know with green eyes as a green light brightens the sky. Shepard dies for the same reasons in the ending we got.

The control option, the reapers leave. Everyone cautiously celebrates while joker and your LI look up to the sky and wonder what exactly happened. Life goes on but its hinted that the reaper threat may return. This ending ends on a cliffhanger.

The destroy ending does destroy the relays, but its implied that with all the races on earth, they, together, will restore what they lost and will attempt to work together. if shepard lives, your LI leading your squad, will be looking for you. You are beamed back down to earth (its assumed shepard was somehow blasted into the beam? this is the only questionable part). It ends with shepard's hand coming out of the rubble and breathing. Still a cliffhanger of sorts, but you can assume they will find him/her obviously.

Source : http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/995452-mass-effect-3/62230265

L'un de mes moments préférés :

Il y a plein de répliques très bonnes tout au long de la trilogie, mais c'est un moment très représentatif de la vie à bord, que l'on peut facilement replacer d'ailleurs dans une partie de Jdr.

Avec la blague bonus :

"Joker: What complain did the color blind player have with mass effect 3?
Garrus: What?
Joker: He got only one ending!"

J'avais bien aimé aussi, surtout la surprise de Joker quand il apprend qu'ils ont une blague rien que pour lui ^^
Il y a plein d'autres petits moments comme ça qui sont super sympa. Il y a pas à dire, la trilogie était vraiment exceptionnelle, et c'est sans doute pour ça que la déception n'en a été que plus grande pour tant de monde.

Une étude faite par Reddit:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/sr.aspx?sm=Vw_2boz9miNaqEfEQzUN0o9x6fb1L4vwDM2rWBmgdEPFg_3d

À écouter, pour les fans :

http://soundcloud.com/malukah/reignite-masseffecttribute-by

La nouvelle fin étendue est arrivée.

Autant dire que la première vraie modification (au cours de la course vers le rayon emmenant à la Citadelle) m'a bien fait marrer. On peut difficilement faire quelque chose de plus stupide, et on voit clairement qu'ils ont fait leur "nouvelle" fin uniquement dans un but de justifier leur version précédente, sans aucune prise en compte du réalisme ou non de la situation...

Une théorie intéressante et qui pourrait faire sens pour justifier ces fins avec l'extended cut.

Toute l'explication est là, mais elle sert surtout à argumenter pourquoi le fait de rejeter les trois choix est une bonne option (ce qui ne m'a pas convaincu).

J'ai repris les passages qui me paraissent intéressants. En substance, le premier Reaper créé aurait pu être la solution de dernier recours d'une race en guerre contre ses propres synthétiques rebellés. Ils auraient créé le catalyst pour créer l'arme la plus puissante et les sauver. Le catalyst aurait créé le reaper dans ce double objectif. Sa programmation aurait été qu'il faut détruire les synthétiques car ils tuent les organiques. Une fois cette guerre finie, avec à la fois les synthétiques et les organiques morts, le reaper + catalyst auraient poursuivi leur programmation, à savoir détruire les synthétiques car ils se rebellent (vision de l'époque d'un seul conflit, étendue par le catalyst à toute la galaxie). Il aurait donc cherché à continuer à avoir l'arme la plus puissante, en continuant à créer des reapers.
Mais le catalyst est conscient que c'est plus ou moins faux, il cherche donc un moyen de faire autre chose, sans avoir la possibilité de toucher lui-même à sa programmation (une sécurité de l'époque contre un truc synthétique de plus qui aurait pu se rebeller). D'où les solutions proposées à Shepard.

Même si ça n'est pas l'explication des concepteurs du jeu, je trouve que c'est plutôt cohérent. Ça permet de se réconcilier avec la fin, pour ma part.



Fairly obviously, the Catalyst is the anthropomorphic personification of an AI – and, it is safe to assume, an AI created by the last survivors of the race which also created the first Reaper.

And when we say “created”, we mean “were agonizingly rendered down into paste and turned into”. One can assume further that they did this as a last-ditch response to impending annihilation by synthetic life.

This first Reaper then wiped out the rebelling synthetics and/or the remaining organics, saving the primitive species which would otherwise have been destroyed, and allowing them to become spacefaring races in turn. And then those races developed synthetic life, and the Reaper did what its creators – confronting the possible extinction of all organic life – had unwittingly programmed it to do.

So, the Catalyst is implementing insane instructions, and the Reapers are obeying orders based on the trauma of a long-dead race of creators. Their entire mission is ill-conceived.
They have been carrying out the same mission a billion or more years, based on the instructions of a race convinced that every other cycle would make the same mistake they did – thus endangering all organic life – unless prevented.

The Reapers, after all, are machines – very smart, very old, very complex machines, but machines; Shepard is using that term against Sovereign as far back as Mass Effect – telling Sovereign that it is just a machine, and can be destroyed like any other. Ultimately, it seems, they have considerable flexibility but no actual free will when it comes to fulfilling their objective. So, when the Protheans sabotaged the Keepers, so that they could no longer arrive automatically, the Catalyst (presumably) tried to route around the point of failure by ordering Sovereign to open it by hand. Well, tentacle. Well, cat’s paw.

Anyway.

When that failed, the Collectors appear to have been another failsafe – a way to harvest enough material for a Reaper ahead of the fleet’s arrival – presumably allowing the deployment of total destructive force, in lieu of the information on planetary population contained in the Citadel. And so on. The Reapers are still fulfilling their programming, however they approach it. It seems that they cannot do otherwise.

However, the game is clearly up, or nearly up. The Protheans found out enough to sabotage the Keepers, which meant that Shepard and company were alerted to Sovereign’s existence early – and that the spacefaring races had time to prepare – however badly they used it – and to consolidate information.

Let’s assume that the Catalyst is the AI which coordinates the Reapers once they arrive in Citadel space. And let us further assume that the Catalyst is aware that, on some level, its programming is wrong. Shepard has demonstrated that, potentially – synthetics and organics may be fighting together outside the Citadel even as the Catalyst is maintaining within that synthetics will always turn on organics. Because that is what it is programmed to believe, and to say, and to act on.

This all seems pretty clear. The Crucible is a way to reprogram the AI controlling the Reapers – or managing them by exception, perhaps more accurately. The AI knows that continuing to follow its programming will lead to the destruction of the Reapers – probably not this cycle, but soon. But the AI cannot reprogram itself. The race that made it gave up their lives in exchange for a specific kind of immortality, and wrongly believed that every other apex race would make the same mistakes and want the same kind of immortality – as hugely complex and somewhat autonomous tools of their grand, misguided plan.

The Crucible uses an organic being’s free will as the impetus to change the direction of the Reapers, or destroy them.

They believe that they have to prevent the obliteration of organic life by synthetics. They believe, perhaps, that they are choosing to do this. But, even when it is clear that they will no longer be able to do this, and that attempting to do so will lead to their destruction, they cannot stop themselves from intending to do it. The Crucible is the thing that allow their programming to be revised (or obliterated): if Shepard had just reached the Citadel without the Crucible being in place, the unchanged Catalyst would, it seems, be unable to change its ways. Shepard reaching the Citadel proves that its solution will not work any more – the galaxy has, over countless cycles, developed increasingly effective countermeasures – but only the presence of Shepard and the Crucible together creates the possibility of changing the cycle. It’s a programming interface.

L'idée se défend vu comme ça, en effet.

De toute façon, vu la cohérence de l'explication des concepteurs, on peut difficilement faire pire qu'eux avec nos fins alternatives

Oups, oubliez mon message précédent. C'était avant le DLC Leviathan. Qui explique vraiment tout, ou presque. Et l'explication tient la route. Je ne vous spoilerai pas sur ce DLC, si ce n'est pour vous dire qu'il est autant, si ce n'est plus indispensable que Shadow Broker, From Ashes ou autres. Il met le point final à l'ensemble des pièces du puzzle. Sans lui, il vous manque la clé de compréhension de l'ensemble.
Et il est très bien mené par ailleurs, de l'action, du pathos, de l'enquête, des révélations, une bonne durée de vie (6 h en Insanity)... Sans doute l'un des meilleurs et des plus indispensables DLC de la trilogie.

Just un mini spoil : Harbinger était le premier Reaper.

"Darkness cannot be breached"

Ouais, c'est bien un truc dans leur genre ça... Un DLC hyper indispensable, payant bien évidemment, histoire de s'en foutre plein les poches sur le dos des joueurs...

Bon ba j'essayerai ça une fois ma rédac finie...