Most obviously Shepard's final journey, like Odysseus' quest, is about returning home (leave aside the fact that for many people's Shepard's home probably wasn't
Earth; it's clearly meant to be symbolically important); we are being compelled, just as Odysseus was, to 'Take back' what is ours. And like Odysseus, Shepard's journeys are not only about who you shot in the head, or who you romanced, or whether you bought that space-hamster, they are about the
whys: the
who you met along the way, what you learnt from them and their individual struggles in order to choose the path forward. The game is about developing yourself and your relationships throughout the galaxy: learning about the Genophage; the Geth/Quarian conflict; the downfall of the Protheans; the advancement of AI. You smite physical and ideological monsters (the Thorian, the Shadow Broker, whatever the hell Jacob's father was doing on that horrible planet); you descend into the underworld to gather intelligence (the Reaper Base); and each time you glean more information about this universe and Shepard's place within it. You literally and figuratively bring back everything you have learnt and assembled on your quest to aid you in the final push... And so when Shepard (read: Odysseus) returns to Earth (Ithaca) to clear out the Reapers (the suitors are plaguing his land and smashing stuff up good), we expect him/her to employ all of the life-lessons gathered on the journey up until that point. We see Odysseus show
poise and
humility, disguising himself as a beggar and awaiting the right time to strike. He
outwits his opponents by cunningly devising a trap in which to snare his enemies. He proves his
bravery and
tenacity by facing insurmountable odds. He exhibits, through each of his actions and choices, the proof of the personal growth he has attained over the course of this quest... In contrast, when Shepard returns to Earth he/she... well, has a conversation with a creature that reveals itself to be the cause of several millennia of devastation, then does one of the three things that this creature says each of which appear to contradict the sum total of his/her experience up to this point. And again, that is why I found the endings so disconcerting. They seemed to be
superficially connected to the intellectual principles teased out throughout the remainder of the story synthetic and organics; control versus domination; sacrifice for the greater good but the actual
application of these notions was in stark contrast to everything that had come before it (unless, perhaps, you were a Renegade, humanity-first destroyer). The three options with which the game concludes, at the point of the text in which the sum total of these lessons should be reaffirmed, force Shepard to be sacrificed in order to initiate an act that sits in complete opposition to all that he/she has previously experienced. Unity in respect of diversity; the validity of artificial life; the right to autonomy; all are summarily ignored as Shepard dissolves in an ideological self-immolation. The
destination undoes the entirety of the
journey at least thematically leaving the quest itself void and the character's growth stagnant. To argue that 'it is the journey not the destination', is to actually entirely misunderstand the structure of all quest narrative. The journey is indeed where the heart of the text lies, but until the lessons gleaned from this expedition have been confirmed by the endpoint of the tale, they are merely a series of things that happened to one person, without resonance and coherency, failing to unify into a cohesive narrative whole. Again, maybe the
Extended Cut, though clarification and expansion, will be able to flesh these final options out further, to tie them to the thematic threads that have operated up to this point and return the sense of urgency and propulsion that (up until this moment) have defined the series but I'm not exactly sure how that could work in light of Bioware's insistence that they intend to keep the entirety of the narrative's current form, merely adding narrative spackle in the cracks. p.s. Oh, I forgot to mention:
Spoiler Alert for the
Odyssey. Although, I guess since it is almost three thousand years old maybe I'm in the clear. p.p.s But you know about
The Sixth Sense, right?