Mass Effect 3 Extended Cut - A Disappointed Fan Responds
Once again players are not offered the opportunity to point out that they may well have already solved the synthetic versus organic conflict that has him worked up in such a tizzy; synthetics and organics are currently working together right now, knocking on the outside door to come in and kick his ass. Likewise we still get no explanation for why he's decided to wear a dead kid's face to have this conversation; nor do we know why he's so eager to tell us the best way to wipe he and his creations out, despite arguing that his is the only solution. And so, unswayed, the Catalyst, ultimate face and voice of the Reapers, goes ahead and explains his new options to resolve the conflict, each of which remain precisely as they were in the original ending, and all still carrying the arbitrary price of death: Firstly, you can Destroy the Reapers, but by doing so also wipe out all sentient life forms, thereby committing genocide on a race of creatures that have been proven to respect life and fear the implications of death, and who in most case are fighting alongside you at that very moment. Secondly, you can Control the Reapers, dissolving yourself to overtake the hive mind of the Reapers, brainwashing them to do your will (something that you've been trying to stop people doing for three straight games). Thirdly, you can choose to merge all organics and synthetics together as one race, thereby destroying all distinction and diversity and removing (in the Catalyst's rather eugenically-perverse vision) all cause for conflict. Essentially you pull a reverse King Solomon, employing his wisdom in some ugly, monstrous reverse: 'Can't decide which is better, robots or fleshbags? Well just smoosh them together, natch!' If anything, the three conclusions become even more twisted and unappealing, because the source of these options is better understood: each of these options are the product of an incomprehensibly deranged mind; the most successful, pitiless mass-murderer in all of existence is offering you three options that will fulfil his ultimate scheme, and you get to pick one to help him out. ...So yay? In your name you get to impose his will upon the universe, become a Reaper yourself, and decide how all life will be lived in the future. But for three games we have been invited to investigate the myriad examples of when authority is unwillingly exerted over another species when decisions of how another sentient being should live their life is unceremoniously stripped away: Indoctrination, the Geth, the Krogan, the horror of the Batarian slave-traders, Protheans misguidedly dominating other species under their rule, the mass slaughter perpetrated by the Reapers. Every race we meet seems to be healing from some kind of atrocity in which their autonomy was maligned or abused, and in every instance every single one the writers present these acts with all the grim moral ambiguities that such domination evokes. That's not to say that they are always depicted as outright wrong (one may of course side with the decisions to keep the Krogan sterile; to wipe out the Geth wholesale), but at no point in this universe is it appropriate to say that 'I-will-force-my-will-upon-you-because-I-know-better' ever ends happily. There is always resentment, there is always horror, and the game invites (does not compel, but I would argue encourages) you to fight against the arrogance of such dominion. Until the end. In the end you are directly responsible for making such a choice. After years of wandering the universe sweeping up the wreckage of a hundred such abuses from the thuggery of pirates, to the persecution of entire species the game forces you to become the thing you have fought. To me it felt like I was not only becoming a Reaper (embracing at least one of their nut-bag visions of the universe), but I also had to be a bully. Click "next" below to read part 3...