Latest / Mythic Mind Games / 11 - Mass Effect 3: Shepard, Reapers, and the Controversial Ending

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11 - Mass Effect 3: Shepard, Reapers, and the Controversial Ending · Mythic Mind Games

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: I'm Commander Shepherd and this is my favorite podcast on
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: the Citadel.
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to Mythic Mind Games, where we discuss
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: video games through the lens of the Christian humanities. I'm
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: doctor Andrew Snyder, and I'm glad that you're here. Hey there,
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: Welcome back as we wrap up our Mass Effect series.
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: I've really enjoyed these conversations. I enjoyed playing through these
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: games for the first time for me. Now, unfortunately for
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: this last one, I've been running a bit of a
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: cold for the last few days, so I'm a little
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: bit spacy in this conversation. But my companions do a
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: good job of carrying it, and I definitely appreciate their
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: company through this venture. All Right, well, let's go ahead
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: and jump right into it. Welcome back, as we finish
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: our Mass Effect series with Mass Effect three. I really
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: enjoy this game.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: I've found that Mass Effect two seems to be probably
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: the predominant fan favorite for most people. That's the vibe
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: I've gotten. But I actually think that this is my
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: favorite of the series. I don't know. Maybe I'm just
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: a sucker for a good heroic death. Sorry for the spoilers,
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: but I guess feel listening to this that you've probably
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: been been through that already, But I don't know, we'll
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: get into more of that. I want to hear from
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: you guys first, And so, Michael, why don't you kick
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: us off this time? Tell us something about this game.
• 1:42
  Speaker 3: It's it was obviously hugely controversial when it came out.
• 1:48
  Speaker 3: I was one of the rare people that didn't actually
• 1:50
  Speaker 3: mind the original endings, although I think the when they
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: when they patched the endings what four or five months
• 1:56
  Speaker 3: later and added on to them, they obviously improved them.
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: Uh.
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: The best, really, the best thing about this game is
• 2:03
  Speaker 3: all the neat, big ideas with all these different races.
• 2:07
  Speaker 3: The game just does such a fantastic job of then
• 2:11
  Speaker 3: just putting it under the microscope and saying, here's the
• 2:14
  Speaker 3: the Solarians and the Krogans, here's the big moral dilemma.
• 2:21
  Speaker 3: Let's see it play out. Here's the Quarry and and
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: the Gath, here's the big moral dilemma. Let's see it
• 2:25
  Speaker 3: play out. And it does a fantastic job of the
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: big racial tension in the galaxy and leads just some
• 2:36
  Speaker 3: really really memorable moments.
• 2:40
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: The first my first go around, I lied to Rex
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: about the geniphage, you know, make sure it'll it gets avotage.
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: He can't have them spreading and restarting the Kroken Empire
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: or whatever. And then I felt so bad, especially when
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: later on when Rex attacked me and I had to
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: kill him. Just not satisfying move. This time around, I'm
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: being much more egalitarian, I suppose, and I it's a
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: lot more fulfilling, I think, although at the same time,
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: I mean, that's like one thing that I like about
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: this game is that it's pretty obvious that the right
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: choice is often a risky choice, right, like like with
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: the Brokens, Like there's a real threat there of letting
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: these war mongering people, you know, breed and grow and expand,
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: and so, you know, I feel like the scheme does
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: a good job of balancing morality with kind of you know,
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: real politic or pragmatism or you know, whatever term we
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: want to use here. But we can circle back to
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: some of that. David, tell us something about this game
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: before I get to Ian.
• 3:49
  Speaker 4: That's okay. I actually remember this game the least of
• 3:54
  Speaker 4: the three, probably just because when the when the collection
• 3:59
  Speaker 4: remaster election came out, I played through the first two,
• 4:02
  Speaker 4: and then something happened and I never got around or
• 4:04
  Speaker 4: replaying the third one, so it's not as fresh in
• 4:06
  Speaker 4: my mind as the others, but I do remember just
• 4:11
  Speaker 4: loving the gravity of the whole thing, the entire galaxy
• 4:14
  Speaker 4: at war. Things are bad everywhere. I think there's some
• 4:20
  Speaker 4: really good set pieces in cinematics, and especially when they
• 4:25
  Speaker 4: did come back in and try to add more detail
• 4:27
  Speaker 4: to the ending. I read a list today just to
• 4:30
  Speaker 4: try to refresh myself of all of the improvements that
• 4:33
  Speaker 4: they made to the ending, and I think most of
• 4:34
  Speaker 4: it went through and made some of the things that
• 4:38
  Speaker 4: happened not so sudden and unexplained, and it gave you
• 4:41
  Speaker 4: more follow up to see what happened after the events
• 4:44
  Speaker 4: of the game. So I thought that that worked really well.
• 4:47
  Speaker 4: And at the time, there was multiplayer and you could
• 4:52
  Speaker 4: play the multiplayer and that would increase your I forget
• 4:56
  Speaker 4: what the term is, like your combat readiness the the game,
• 5:01
  Speaker 4: and there was also like a phone game that had
• 5:03
  Speaker 4: little timed things you could do, so it kind of
• 5:06
  Speaker 4: it kind of felt like the whole world was playing
• 5:08
  Speaker 4: this game together and actually trying to save the galaxy
• 5:12
  Speaker 4: in the game, and it was it was kind of
• 5:15
  Speaker 4: a neat a neat experience to just sort of feel
• 5:19
  Speaker 4: like you were part of this community who's bringing this
• 5:21
  Speaker 4: whole story to a conclusion. But yeah, the the roughest
• 5:27
  Speaker 4: part in the whole trilogy is if you light to
• 5:30
  Speaker 4: Wrecks about the genophage, because then you put him down basically,
• 5:36
  Speaker 4: and then people come in the room and you just say, oh,
• 5:38
  Speaker 4: I don't know what happened. He just came in here
• 5:39
  Speaker 4: and went nuts, which is just just a terrible disservice
• 5:43
  Speaker 4: to do to the man that you will not man
• 5:46
  Speaker 4: the krogan that you just killed. But anyway, yeah, I
• 5:50
  Speaker 4: did like it. I was skeptical that the improved endings,
• 5:55
  Speaker 4: like when I heard, oh, we're going to make more
• 5:58
  Speaker 4: of We're going to make the ending you didn't like longer,
• 6:01
  Speaker 4: and I thought, how is that going to improve it?
• 6:02
  Speaker 4: But I really do think it went a long way
• 6:05
  Speaker 4: to improve it, and I enjoyed it.
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, as A mentioned before, you know, I can't really
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: speak to the contrast having only played the legendary and
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: we have heard this and that.
• 6:16
  Speaker 4: But.
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: I well, I think that communal aspect that you talked
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: about was probably something that's neat to engage with again
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: something that I missed out on. But as far as
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: just the idea of kind of working under pressure here
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: throughout the entire game, that's it's a lot of fun.
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: Like you always have that you know, reaper sound coming
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: at you, that you always have the reapers chasing you
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: as you're trying to scan the little systems, and even
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: though it's I mean, it's not really that big of
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: a deal to catch you, it's still like it feels
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: like it's inspiring the right mood of anxiety that I
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: think makes the ending all that more fulfilling. That that
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: you have kind of a stressful experience throughout the game
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: that just continues to build until you get to the
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: end and then it just stops. I feel like that's
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: how you get that kind of ending to be satisfactory,
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: the constant pressure. Megan tells something about this game.
• 7:09
  Speaker 5: Yeah, for context, I did play the original when it
• 7:14
  Speaker 5: came out, so I came to massif I one and
• 7:16
  Speaker 5: too late, but I had discovered them before the third
• 7:19
  Speaker 5: game came out, so I was really excited the build up.
• 7:23
  Speaker 5: You know, all the gaming community online was really invested
• 7:26
  Speaker 5: speculating on what was going to happen, because what was
• 7:29
  Speaker 5: promised was all these different endings that were going to
• 7:32
  Speaker 5: be variable dependent on the decisions you made throughout the
• 7:35
  Speaker 5: first two games, and you know over the course of
• 7:37
  Speaker 5: the third, and so I won't talk about the ending
• 7:42
  Speaker 5: right off. I will say that I agree with Michael's
• 7:45
  Speaker 5: point that the payoff for these different conflicts that you
• 7:49
  Speaker 5: see building over the first two games, there's a real
• 7:53
  Speaker 5: emotional narrative weight that I think is really dependent on
• 7:56
  Speaker 5: the whole structure of the trilogy. That is to say,
• 8:00
  Speaker 5: I think you could enter the trilogy as a newcomer
• 8:03
  Speaker 5: and play it and probably enjoy it, but you're not
• 8:06
  Speaker 5: going to have the same payoff obviously unless you've been
• 8:09
  Speaker 5: through the first two and you've you've felt the way
• 8:12
  Speaker 5: of those decisions, and you've been anticipating what's going to
• 8:14
  Speaker 5: happen next with Rex, with anybody else that we named
• 8:19
  Speaker 5: or haven't. But yeah, playing it through, I thought, because
• 8:25
  Speaker 5: I'm not a multiplayer person, and so I don't know
• 8:29
  Speaker 5: who played it originally without the DLC amended ending, But
• 8:35
  Speaker 5: what happened was if you did not play multiplayer, you
• 8:40
  Speaker 5: could be a completionist as a single player and do
• 8:44
  Speaker 5: the game. But if you do not play any multiplayer
• 8:46
  Speaker 5: you could not achieve the ideal ending for the destroy
• 8:52
  Speaker 5: the one of three options, the red ending. Basically you
• 8:55
  Speaker 5: couldn't achieve the ideal maybe Shepherds alive at the end ending.
• 9:00
  Speaker 5: And so I thought I did something wrong. I beat
• 9:02
  Speaker 5: this game at like three or four in the morning
• 9:04
  Speaker 5: on a school night for me because I was in
• 9:05
  Speaker 5: high school, and I was depressed the next day because
• 9:09
  Speaker 5: I was like, did I Where did I go wrong?
• 9:12
  Speaker 5: Was it in game three? Was it in game one?
• 9:13
  Speaker 5: What happened?
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: Like?
• 9:14
  Speaker 5: How could this happen? And I think we were seeing
• 9:17
  Speaker 5: at this time, probably not starting with Mass Effect three,
• 9:21
  Speaker 5: but this creep of multiplayer needs to be integrated into
• 9:24
  Speaker 5: everything and make a ton of money, and if you
• 9:25
  Speaker 5: don't do it, you're gonna get kind of narratively punished
• 9:28
  Speaker 5: as a gamer. So what are my thoughts on it?
• 9:31
  Speaker 5: I love Mass Effect three. It is my favorite of
• 9:34
  Speaker 5: the three. I think the whole trilogy needs to play
• 9:36
  Speaker 5: be played as one entity, but I love it. I
• 9:40
  Speaker 5: think the payoff is great, the narrative payoff that Michael
• 9:42
  Speaker 5: was mentioning. I think the performances are excellent. The soundtrack
• 9:45
  Speaker 5: is beautiful, It's very cinematic, the most cinematic of the three.
• 9:50
  Speaker 5: It feels very urgent, but appropriately so. That ending, though,
• 9:54
  Speaker 5: was a killer. And I think the adjustments and the DLC,
• 9:57
  Speaker 5: the Citadel DLC, that kind of fan service send off
• 10:01
  Speaker 5: was fun. But yeah, it's a hard it's a hard
• 10:07
  Speaker 5: thing to get over when you have one of three endings,
• 10:10
  Speaker 5: only one of them is good in my opinion. We
• 10:12
  Speaker 5: can talk about that later, but it was that was disappointing.
• 10:17
  Speaker 5: So the backlash that happened for like months afterwards was
• 10:21
  Speaker 5: totally understandable in my opinion. I was I was resentful
• 10:25
  Speaker 5: for a while towards Firework.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: Cool.
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I'm sure we'll get into the endings in detail.
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: Ian tell us something about this game.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: So I think, actually, this is a game where I'm
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: really torn, Like I'm really really torn because on an
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: on an emotional level, Mass Effect three hit me harder
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: than any of the other two games. And it was
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: actually just one scene. It's the scene where More has
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: to save the program, and that scene when I played,
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: I posted to the discord because I actually hadn't played
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: it until a month ago. I posted the discord. I
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: have not okay because more than the way he goes
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: out is just so well written and so everything works
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: together to make it one of the best, you know,
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: sac heroic sacrifices I've ever seen, and unfortunately, I don't
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: think anything else in the game quite matches that. So emotionally,
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: it's extremely effective, but on a gameplay level, and this
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: is weird, but there's a huge I promised I would
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: dropped this word luter narrative dissonance when the the powers
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: I used, they did a great job in sort of
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: transferring my character from Mass Effect two to Mass Fact three,
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: but the powers that I was using in Mass Effect
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: to work differently and even look differently than they did
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: in the last game. That since I'm playing the Legendary
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: Edition for the first time. For me, it's been literally
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: a day since I finished the Suicide mission and now I'm,
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: you know, Earth being invaded, I'm using the same powers
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: and everything feels different and the same thing goes for
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: the weapons, like the names for the pistols are all different,
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: the way the pistols work, the way modifications work, the
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: physical and like reactive difference between the two games was
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: really dissonant, especially playing them so close together, and I
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: don't think it was better. I think that the changes
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: they made were made the game less fun than Mass
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: Effect to just in terms of my moving around, my shooting,
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: and my ability to you know, do damage and use
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: my powers. So even before we get to the ending,
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: which for me, it's not even the fact that has
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: three different colored endings that are basically the same. My
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: problem is there is a meme that came out back
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: when the game first came out and I had friends
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: who were playing it. My housemates were playing it, so
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: I saw them playing it, and I saw this meme
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: and it was I heard, you don't like synthetics destroying organics,
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: so I'm sending a bunch of synthetics to destroy organics.
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: And I still don't understand how that made any sense.
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: I actually think that overall, I kind of like the
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: gameplay of three, although I do miss out on how
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: effective the shockwave was in two, how you can shoot
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: people like, you know, behind barriers whatnot. And yeah, I
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: took David's advice on this run and just had to
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: go adept versus what I now recognize was a really
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: boring soldier run. Just using guns. It's so much more
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: fun just to keep people flying in the air all
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: over the place. But yeah, I definitely see what you
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: mean by some of those changes you think of the legendary.
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: They could do a better job of making continuity, but
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: I guess they wanted to preserve that the feels of
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: the originals is to some extent. All right, I can't
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: tell us something about this game.
• 14:07
  Speaker 4: Well, I was there.
• 14:08
  Speaker 6: I'm pretty sure I got the metal casing version when
• 14:11
  Speaker 6: it first came out, because I you know, he had
• 14:13
  Speaker 6: to be first in line, so good times, good memories
• 14:16
  Speaker 6: on trying to get this thing completed. And then yeah,
• 14:19
  Speaker 6: once you first get into the game, the trumpet sounds
• 14:24
  Speaker 6: and it's the Apocalypse right there, So I it was
• 14:28
  Speaker 6: really jarring that soundtrack goes piano to trumpet blast. And
• 14:37
  Speaker 6: now I understand it a little more. But yeah, the
• 14:42
  Speaker 6: gameplay is entire shake up. Playing the multiplayer, it made
• 14:46
  Speaker 6: more sense to keep the game going like this. It
• 14:49
  Speaker 6: was really something that had to be updated, for sure.
• 14:53
  Speaker 6: And this is the last time they used the same engine,
• 14:58
  Speaker 6: whereas the next game that comes out is completely different things,
• 15:02
  Speaker 6: so it feels entirely different. But I'm only told those
• 15:07
  Speaker 6: things because I never went on to Andromeda. But I'll
• 15:10
  Speaker 6: stick with our galaxy, because that's the one that we
• 15:16
  Speaker 6: know and that's the one that is created. So I
• 15:22
  Speaker 6: would say, really, all the exploring that you did in
• 15:27
  Speaker 6: the first and second.
• 15:29
  Speaker 4: All that is gone.
• 15:31
  Speaker 6: You were now no longer running really against a clock.
• 15:34
  Speaker 6: The second game was more you were timed once you
• 15:37
  Speaker 6: hit the reaper or FF mission. Once you hit these things,
• 15:41
  Speaker 6: then you had to do so many missions Otherwise if
• 15:45
  Speaker 6: you didn't move fast enough, you'd lose your crew. If
• 15:48
  Speaker 6: you didn't move fast enough, certain things happened. So the
• 15:51
  Speaker 6: second game triggered a lot and sort of forced you
• 15:55
  Speaker 6: into the life or death scenario. This one was more
• 16:01
  Speaker 6: of a you have to go out and really this
• 16:07
  Speaker 6: is just the last thing you can do. There is
• 16:10
  Speaker 6: a sense of hopelessness. I mean the size of Reapers
• 16:13
  Speaker 6: versus Shepherd. Yeah, you get to take down two of them,
• 16:16
  Speaker 6: which is entirely satisfying. Well, calrous was much more satisfying
• 16:20
  Speaker 6: than ran out for me. But uh, yeah, the the
• 16:26
  Speaker 6: scale of this plays out, and yeah, the original ending
• 16:33
  Speaker 6: that let everything leads up to. I guess I was
• 16:37
  Speaker 6: okay with it. I didn't want to be I just
• 16:40
  Speaker 6: didn't want to go along with the crowd. The saying
• 16:42
  Speaker 6: it sucked, That's really what it was. So I'm like, no,
• 16:45
  Speaker 6: it's fine. I get it. It started out as a
• 16:48
  Speaker 6: nihilistic exploration. I mean, the first specter we meet is
• 16:52
  Speaker 6: called Nihilis, and I'm pretty sure that is no coincidence.
• 16:56
  Speaker 6: So hey, all these endings make bring a boat to
• 17:01
  Speaker 6: the same thing.
• 17:01
  Speaker 4: Then there you go.
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: So well that sure as cheery. Yeah, I mean for
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: my part, as I already mentioned, I just really enjoy
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: the intensity the emotional stakes that are present from the
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: very beginning. You know, I like the idea of fighting
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: for hope when there is no hope, right, is that
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: that Northern ideas, the idea you see throughout Tolkien and
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: really any great epic stories that you're out to accomplish
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: something that seems impossible. You know, never tell me the odds, right,
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: But I'm going to keep going anyways, and I'm just
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: going to do what I can and hope that that's
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: going to do something. And even if I lose, well,
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: at least I can die a noble death. Right that,
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: as Socrates says, you know, they're far worse things for
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: the soul than death, such as cowardice, right, And so
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: it's this courageous move of I'm going to do what
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: I can. I'm going to gather people together. We're going
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: to rally around Hope and just see what happens. I
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: like that kind of story, and then even the kind
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: of weird dream sequences that he has about that that
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: kid that keeps bursting into flames. I see. I was
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: torn at first. Okay, I didn't really like it because
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: I mean, I was playing like one in the morning.
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: It's kind of creepy. But I decided that for the
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: first round, I actually kind of like that. I mean, obviously,
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: it's Shepherd dealing with the trauma of the things that
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: he's experienced, the fact that he can't save everybody, and
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: so you know, he's dealing with all this emotional stuff,
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: and just that emotional experience continues to build up until
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: the very end. Now, I will say that in my
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: second run, I don't appreciate those dream sequences quite so
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: much because they're so slow, But I still appreciate kind
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: of cinematically and aesthetically what it is they're trying to do.
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: That they're trying to kind of give you this sense
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: of surreal help you to get more in his head.
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: And I like a good existential at story as well,
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: and so I feel like there's something like that plane
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: out and so yeah, I just I really appreciate the
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: emotional stakes here. Well, where do we want to go
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: from here? Do you want to throw something out there?
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: I am curious what scenes like really stick out from
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: this third game for you, Like I talked about how
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: morgan sacrifice on Ranak really hit me. Are there any
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: pieces the ending or the senat Old Party.
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: I think.
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: Some of the big things that are going to stick
• 19:37
  Speaker 3: out to basically everyone are the how you basically watch
• 19:41
  Speaker 3: most of the species deal with extinction hitting their home world,
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: with the Reapers reaching their home world.
• 19:48
  Speaker 4: You know, you start.
• 19:49
  Speaker 3: With seeing the stakes are suddenly real, the Reapers are
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: at Earth and it's cataclysmic, and then you see, you know,
• 19:59
  Speaker 3: glimpses of it, and it's a short it's a short,
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: shorter section, but the Terrans, it's that the Turrian homeworlders
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: at their moon.
• 20:05
  Speaker 4: I can't remember the moon.
• 20:08
  Speaker 3: It's the moon, right, but it's basically there too. And
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: then you know, you see at the Krogans and then
• 20:16
  Speaker 3: you see, uh, basically, yeah, you get you get this
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: whole whole, whole set through it as you see all
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: of the there's this major set piece scene where many
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: of the species are facing basically the end of their civilization,
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: and so all of those are are memorable on some ways,
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: as you're seeing the different the the different crew members
• 20:40
  Speaker 3: reacting to these crises and the different NPCs and stuff
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: like that, and so those are some of the most
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: memorable spots for sure, and some of those are major
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: story ones too.
• 20:51
  Speaker 6: But in my recent playthrough, I went mostly Renegade, pretty
• 20:57
  Speaker 6: much all Renegade, so none of the Morton already died,
• 21:01
  Speaker 6: so when I got to priority to CHUNKA, it was
• 21:05
  Speaker 6: Paddock Wicks who took his place, and he believes in
• 21:10
  Speaker 6: an originator, which is very different from Morton, who's very
• 21:13
  Speaker 6: much the science evolutionary sort of guy. So that was
• 21:16
  Speaker 6: an interesting play I kind of liked that a little better,
• 21:19
  Speaker 6: but obviously the emotional state wasn't there losing Morton.
• 21:23
  Speaker 4: But in the after doing.
• 21:27
  Speaker 6: That and realizing it's just not fun playing with full crew,
• 21:31
  Speaker 6: you get like four people that choose from inform missions,
• 21:34
  Speaker 6: and I avoided Javic just because I wanted to keep
• 21:37
  Speaker 6: it small and it was not entirely satisfying, so I
• 21:44
  Speaker 6: ended up going back and doing a larger crew where
• 21:47
  Speaker 6: everybody play through that I had, where everybody had lived.
• 21:51
  Speaker 6: And I've come to the conclusion after doing all these
• 21:55
  Speaker 6: and really after our first chat together, we know that
• 22:04
  Speaker 6: the AI is evil. So I started to I decided
• 22:09
  Speaker 6: to turn against Legion, who had survived. But if you
• 22:13
  Speaker 6: do it at the end of party Rannock, as he's
• 22:17
  Speaker 6: trying to upload everything and you try to stop him,
• 22:20
  Speaker 6: he grabs you, lifts you up by the throat, drags
• 22:23
  Speaker 6: you across, and then Tolly comes in with a backstab
• 22:28
  Speaker 6: and then he dies slowly and asks does this unit
• 22:32
  Speaker 6: have a soul? And it's that was really cool, and
• 22:37
  Speaker 6: I'm like, that is probably the way it should have been. Overall,
• 22:40
  Speaker 6: we have to get rid of the AI, and this
• 22:42
  Speaker 6: is the way it should go out. Tally should be
• 22:44
  Speaker 6: the one to kill Legion.
• 22:45
  Speaker 3: There's gonna be a lot of calls for the Bootlery
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: and ghat tonight, aren't there?
• 22:50
  Speaker 4: You know?
• 22:51
  Speaker 5: Not for me?
• 22:53
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I had to look that that death for Legion up,
• 22:58
  Speaker 4: because that was never going to kill a Legion. He's
• 23:01
  Speaker 4: just too esthetically cool and obviously in real life I
• 23:05
  Speaker 4: would agree with you. But yeah, in the game. He's
• 23:08
  Speaker 4: too cool of a character for sure.
• 23:12
  Speaker 5: I think the Tachanka episode is the I know that
• 23:18
  Speaker 5: was from my memory the bits that were shown for
• 23:23
  Speaker 5: teaser trailers a lot. I think they showed other scenes,
• 23:25
  Speaker 5: but it was the Tachanka stuff that they kept showing,
• 23:28
  Speaker 5: and I think that's one of the best written episodes
• 23:31
  Speaker 5: in the whole game. I think it kind of in
• 23:35
  Speaker 5: a way functions as a microcosm of the larger plot,
• 23:37
  Speaker 5: which is you're facing extinction. The Krogan are facing extinction,
• 23:40
  Speaker 5: and what are they going to do to try to
• 23:41
  Speaker 5: fight to survive and save their species, And that is
• 23:45
  Speaker 5: the larger plot of the entire game, in the entire trilogy,
• 23:48
  Speaker 5: So that stuck everything there, whatever decisions you made in
• 23:52
  Speaker 5: previous games. I think that is one of the most
• 23:54
  Speaker 5: emotionally consequential moments or prolonged moments in the game. I
• 23:59
  Speaker 5: want to add too that I had a few playthroughs
• 24:03
  Speaker 5: of the trilogy, a three that were complete, and I
• 24:06
  Speaker 5: think also depending on how you play the game Paragon Retegade,
• 24:09
  Speaker 5: who you romance also will change how you view certain moments.
• 24:14
  Speaker 5: So I think my third complete playthrough, I had romance
• 24:19
  Speaker 5: Fane from the second game and then carried that into
• 24:22
  Speaker 5: the third, and his death just had so much more
• 24:25
  Speaker 5: weight doing that, and the same with the other characters too.
• 24:27
  Speaker 5: So I think depending on how you play the game,
• 24:29
  Speaker 5: it can shift some moments where you wouldn't have not
• 24:32
  Speaker 5: that you wouldn't have cared in one instance, but if
• 24:36
  Speaker 5: you play in a certain way, I think it really
• 24:38
  Speaker 5: changes the Yeah, the emotional depth to the game, the
• 24:44
  Speaker 5: AI stuff. I'm torn because I am very anti Legion
• 24:50
  Speaker 5: having a soul ed being somebody that Joker should go
• 24:54
  Speaker 5: for for many reasons. Logistically, I just not. I'm not
• 24:57
  Speaker 5: sure how that relationship would work out physical level. But
• 25:02
  Speaker 5: the game asks provocative questions about AI and then answers
• 25:07
  Speaker 5: them for you by pretty heavy handedly letting you know
• 25:11
  Speaker 5: that you should empathize with Edi or Legion. I want
• 25:18
  Speaker 5: to say that those are interesting questions about does this
• 25:21
  Speaker 5: unit have a soul or oh, should Edy and Joker
• 25:23
  Speaker 5: even be together? Does it even make sense? You know
• 25:25
  Speaker 5: they have such a you know, chemistry together. The game
• 25:30
  Speaker 5: speculates on these, but then it kind of it really
• 25:33
  Speaker 5: guides you to approving of these relationships. You're you're kind
• 25:36
  Speaker 5: of the a hole if you tell Joker not to
• 25:39
  Speaker 5: date ed, which I did because it didn't have any
• 25:43
  Speaker 5: military consequences, so I felt better about doing that. I
• 25:46
  Speaker 5: did let Legion live only because I needed everybody to survive.
• 25:50
  Speaker 5: But yeah, I know, I'm kind of drifting into a
• 25:53
  Speaker 5: tangent here the AI question. I wish the game gave
• 25:59
  Speaker 5: you more room to disagree with the writers about whether
• 26:06
  Speaker 5: a machine that has the semblance of consciousness is actually
• 26:10
  Speaker 5: conscious and has a rational soul. The writers seem very
• 26:14
  Speaker 5: intent on letting you know that that is what they thought,
• 26:16
  Speaker 5: and you really don't have room to disagree in the
• 26:19
  Speaker 5: playthrough unless you want to sabotage the whole fate of
• 26:23
  Speaker 5: humanity and everybody else. Those are my thoughts on the
• 26:27
  Speaker 5: AI questions. Again, I think the questions are interesting, but
• 26:30
  Speaker 5: the game also answers them for you without letting you
• 26:33
  Speaker 5: do so.
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: Before we continue on, I want to say one little thing.
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: I'm glad you mentioned Thane. I think one thing that's
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: really interesting about Thane and Mass Effect three is you
• 26:45
  Speaker 3: can't save him right, And in RPGs you can always
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: go look up the game a game facts guide that
• 26:52
  Speaker 3: somebody you know poorly formatted years ago and figure out
• 26:56
  Speaker 3: the optimal way through, and there's no optimal story for
• 26:59
  Speaker 3: thank And I think that that's a a moment of
• 27:03
  Speaker 3: good writing, is that it's okay for there to be
• 27:07
  Speaker 3: stories where there's there's a golden ending where everything is
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: hapvily ever after. I'm not totally against that, right, there's
• 27:13
  Speaker 3: a time for fairy tale endings, but that's also not
• 27:16
  Speaker 3: the story that Mass Effect is telling. And it would
• 27:19
  Speaker 3: have been very easy for there to be a side
• 27:23
  Speaker 3: mission that resolves that in a different way, when instead
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: it's just a little side story. He's barely in it.
• 27:30
  Speaker 3: It's a tragedy of life thing, and the universe goes
• 27:33
  Speaker 3: on without saying so he was going.
• 27:36
  Speaker 5: To die of natural causes, So I think we'll have
• 27:39
  Speaker 5: some room to feel like, oh okay, but oh so sad.
• 27:43
  Speaker 5: I mean sad regardless, but especially with the romance storyline
• 27:48
  Speaker 5: that I had, very sad and then very satisfying. When
• 27:51
  Speaker 5: you get to kill Kylang is that his name? I
• 27:54
  Speaker 5: can't remember saying that was for Thane, Like it was
• 27:59
  Speaker 5: a very It's very rare that in playing a video game,
• 28:02
  Speaker 5: I'm actually like cheering as if I'm watching a film happen.
• 28:05
  Speaker 5: But it was so satisfying to be able to kill
• 28:09
  Speaker 5: him in the end.
• 28:10
  Speaker 3: That's interesting because most people that definitely makes Kyle Lang
• 28:14
  Speaker 3: more interesting because a lot of people think he's like
• 28:16
  Speaker 3: the most boring edge lord side villain ever. That just
• 28:20
  Speaker 3: kind of comes out of nowhere, because if you play
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: it with that angle, there is actually a personal stake
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: involved with him. Yeah, normally there really isn't.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 28:28
  Speaker 5: I think they had some kind of book with him.
• 28:31
  Speaker 5: I never read it, I think, right, I.
• 28:34
  Speaker 4: Think he might have been in an iOS game as well.
• 28:38
  Speaker 4: I can't recall.
• 28:39
  Speaker 5: Listen who's playing that, I mean, especially now, but yeah,
• 28:43
  Speaker 5: he is. He is pretty dull. He's like an interesting
• 28:46
  Speaker 5: little guy that just comes in and out. But it's
• 28:47
  Speaker 5: more frustrating with the elusive man and it's like, oh, yeah,
• 28:51
  Speaker 5: ky Lang's kind of part of it.
• 28:53
  Speaker 3: You're like, you're playing it and you're like, where did
• 28:54
  Speaker 3: this anime character come from?
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: He's the shepherd replacement, which makes it even more frustrated
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: that you have to work for servers. In the second game.
• 29:06
  Speaker 6: In the book, he is shot by Anderson once in
• 29:10
  Speaker 6: the upper thigh and once in the calf, so he's
• 29:13
  Speaker 6: basically left limp and has to monkey bars way to
• 29:16
  Speaker 6: his ship because he can't walk, and that's why he
• 29:20
  Speaker 6: has all these cybernetic upgrades when he comes back, and
• 29:22
  Speaker 6: Anderson seems really interested in him.
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and going back to the AI stuff that make
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: was talking about, I definitely agree, and I suppose that
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: you know, in the end, this is not a game
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: about philosophy, even though there's a lot of philosophy that
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: surrounds it, and I it could have been much better
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: if they if they explored more the ED stuff, if
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: they explored more of the Legion stuff that they should
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: have made Legion like this AI philosopher right where he's
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: not just asking, you know, do I have a soul?
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: But you know, maybe we even get into a little
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: bit like what is the soul? Like that we are
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: basically fed this idea that whatever Legion is is functionally
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: or bontologically the same thing as a human, but we
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: don't ever get into the question of like what is
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: a soul? I think that that would have been something
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: interesting to explore in this dynamic, but it's just it's
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: just not there. It's kind of a waste of potential,
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: which again I get that this is not a philosophy text.
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: I'd imagine we don't have expert philosophers writing the story here,
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: but at the same time, I think that would have
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: been compelling on a pretty broad level.
• 30:43
  Speaker 4: Well, the it's just crazy how different how quickly we've
• 30:49
  Speaker 4: moved from AIS as just a philosophical imagining of the
• 30:54
  Speaker 4: distant future to the kind of you know, things that
• 30:58
  Speaker 4: can pass the Turing tests of stuff that we have today.
• 31:02
  Speaker 4: And you know, Joker falling in love with the AI
• 31:07
  Speaker 4: and people are on the subway having chats with a
• 31:11
  Speaker 4: chatbot and treating it like it's their girlfriend and things
• 31:14
  Speaker 4: like that. Now, like I wonder, is.
• 31:16
  Speaker 3: A sub there is a subreddit dedicated to basically AI
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: significant others, all right, and it's a wild place.
• 31:27
  Speaker 4: And I just wonder how differently they would have handled
• 31:30
  Speaker 4: the discussion of AI if they'd made this game today.
• 31:34
  Speaker 4: I wonder how differently they may handle it in the
• 31:36
  Speaker 4: when they're supposedly developing at the.
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: Moment, Given the palacity of thought that went into how
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: they handled in this game and how they've degraded as
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: a company since then, I don't think it will be
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: more interesting, And unfortunately.
• 31:48
  Speaker 3: It won't be more interesting, but I would say there
• 31:50
  Speaker 3: might be a more negative tone considering how anti AI
• 31:55
  Speaker 3: most artist types tend to be, so we won't miss
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: be positive. I will push back against something that you
• 32:02
  Speaker 3: guys have saying that the game has a default positive
• 32:06
  Speaker 3: it does with Dan Joker agreed, I don't know that
• 32:09
  Speaker 3: it necessarily does overall, especially because there's a sense that
• 32:14
  Speaker 3: red is the default. I mean, I know we're getting
• 32:16
  Speaker 3: this is the ending and we won't have to get
• 32:18
  Speaker 3: into it. Yet there's a sense that the well do
• 32:21
  Speaker 3: we got other stuff first? We got other cool stuff
• 32:23
  Speaker 3: before we get there. But there's a sense that read
• 32:25
  Speaker 3: is the default ending because that's the only one that
• 32:27
  Speaker 3: has an after credits scene where the does Shepherd live? Right?
• 32:31
  Speaker 3: So there is a a Okay, so is the anti
• 32:35
  Speaker 3: AI route actually the canonical route is a good question,
• 32:40
  Speaker 3: serious question, But I don't know.
• 32:42
  Speaker 5: I don't know. I it's my canonical ending, but I
• 32:45
  Speaker 5: and I agree there's incentive when Shepherd gets to live.
• 32:49
  Speaker 5: But the synthesis, I think, like the hybridization whatever they
• 32:54
  Speaker 5: called it. I think, yeah, the green ending, the synthesized
• 32:57
  Speaker 5: ending that you only unlock if you completed a certain
• 33:01
  Speaker 5: number of points like readiness points or something. So it's
• 33:06
  Speaker 5: I think in terms of what is gameplay gearing you
• 33:09
  Speaker 5: towards as viewing as the ideal ending Shepherd living with
• 33:15
  Speaker 5: the red ending. On the one hand, yes, seems like
• 33:17
  Speaker 5: that's the ideal, But on the other when there's an
• 33:20
  Speaker 5: intempi to say, oh, well, if you work really hard,
• 33:21
  Speaker 5: you can unlock this ultimate ending, which is everybody gets
• 33:25
  Speaker 5: to live as this new hybridized kind of synthetic organic being,
• 33:30
  Speaker 5: and Edie gets to live. Then, I don't know. I
• 33:34
  Speaker 5: don't know what the I don't think necessarily the game
• 33:37
  Speaker 5: is gearing us towards the red ending, as much as
• 33:39
  Speaker 5: I think that is philosophically and morally the right way
• 33:42
  Speaker 5: to go.
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: I know we're going to go round and round with
• 33:45
  Speaker 3: this stuff, but do we want to hit any of
• 33:47
  Speaker 3: the other big plot points, Thekroge and stuff for any
• 33:50
  Speaker 3: of that first, because I'm sure we could talk the
• 33:52
  Speaker 3: rest of the night about the ending.
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: Okay, so Andrew, why should we jennifage the Kroger?
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: I mean, I I don't think that is super cut
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: and dry now. For for I first played through, I
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: was very much doing a you know, Earth first, let's
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: keep everyone else handicapped a little bit, but more more
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: philosophically thinking about this that I'm I'm not really a
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: fan of sterilizing good people. So when we put that
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: out there pretty clearly, I think that the moral thing
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: to do, obviously is to not genophage them. And so
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: I don't know, I guess that's that's my my answer.
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: I know it's kind of disappointing.
• 34:40
  Speaker 4: What you were saying anyone genophage though, I mean I
• 34:44
  Speaker 4: generally I played through all of them, one as paragon
• 34:48
  Speaker 4: and one is renegade, so at at some point I did.
• 34:50
  Speaker 4: But what you were saying in the beginning, Andrew, about
• 34:55
  Speaker 4: the moral dilemmas in this game, and how they're all
• 34:59
  Speaker 4: you need to take a risk, and I do think
• 35:02
  Speaker 4: it's more than taking a risk. It's is it right
• 35:05
  Speaker 4: to kill someone or to damn or race to extinction
• 35:11
  Speaker 4: on the expectation that they might it might go the
• 35:16
  Speaker 4: wrong way? Is that a fair thing too? Is that
• 35:20
  Speaker 4: a fair judgment to make? Is that?
• 35:22
  Speaker 5: Is that just?
• 35:23
  Speaker 4: And I don't I don't really think it is. But
• 35:25
  Speaker 4: these are all hypotheticals presented in the game. I mean,
• 35:28
  Speaker 4: Michael is furrowing his brow over there.
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: I mean I would say just to I mean, make
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: the argument if you you know how things have played
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: out in the past, and even now you talk to Rex,
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: you talk to the other Crokens, and they're very clear
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: that they want to go re establish their empire, so
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: that they're not really hiding their plans to go out
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: war mongering again, and so is that necessarily a risk?
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: I mean, it seems like their intentions are pretty clear.
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: Actually, I this is something that I think the game
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: did reasonably well, but I wish there had been more
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: of a thought proces of buying this because it's my
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: belief the way I play the game is that basically Rex,
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: your relationship with him shapes him into the leader who
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: can take the Krogan into a fertile that he can
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: get rid of the genifhe without them becoming a genocidal
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: risk again, because he has both the strength of character
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: to lead, and also he has a relationship with you,
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: and your philosophy and your relationship as an alien have
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: changed his perspective, so he no longer has that it
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: doesn't matter if we genocide people to expand their empire attitude.
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: And I feel like that is there in the game,
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: but I wish it had been a little more intentional
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: so some of your choices could have been, you know,
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: you saying there's a better way to rect I think
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: there are some moments like that, but I wish it
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: had been more intentional. But I think it still works
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: in the sense that you take agency as an ambassador
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: for humanity and for like this united alien human alliance,
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: and you change the way, similar to the way Revin
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: changes Candorus if you're light side in Kotar one, and
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: so in Kotar two, his vision of the Mandalorians is
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: no longer genocidal. So I think there's a lot of
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: parallels between the Mandalorians and the Krogan And I think
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of parallels between a paragon Shepherd and
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: Rex and Candoras.
• 37:27
  Speaker 3: So that theme is it's definitely there. I one hundred
• 37:31
  Speaker 3: percent agree Mass Effect three does portray if Rex is there,
• 37:36
  Speaker 3: and if Rex is the one that's pushing the cure,
• 37:38
  Speaker 3: it does portray him as a reformer of sorts. Now
• 37:42
  Speaker 3: it is much more obvious if you have if Rex
• 37:46
  Speaker 3: dies in mass Effect one, in Mass Effect three, Rex
• 37:50
  Speaker 3: is replaced by his brother er not Reeve, who is
• 37:53
  Speaker 3: very clearly the exact opposite, and it becomes very the
• 37:58
  Speaker 3: the pragmatic reason to not cure the gena face suddenly
• 38:01
  Speaker 3: becomes very much more pressing if you do not have
• 38:07
  Speaker 3: Rex there in Mass Effect three, because Reeve it does
• 38:11
  Speaker 3: not hide at all that he is ready to go
• 38:13
  Speaker 3: back to pillaging, right, So that that theme that you're
• 38:16
  Speaker 3: talking about, Ian, it's more obvious on multiple playthroughs when
• 38:20
  Speaker 3: you see the difference between Rex and Reeve that you go, Okay,
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: you can risk, you can risk the you can risk
• 38:27
  Speaker 3: the cure with Reeve or sorry with Rex. But with
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: Reeve it's like, do you really want to do that?
• 38:33
  Speaker 3: It becomes a significantly more complicated question.
• 38:37
  Speaker 7: I think, I agree, I agree, and I think that's
• 38:49
  Speaker 7: a good segue into something else I wanted to mention
• 38:53
  Speaker 7: unless we wanted to stay on this topic, which.
• 38:55
  Speaker 5: Is, depending on what you do in the previous games,
• 38:58
  Speaker 5: you'll have different characters who are of substituting the defaults,
• 39:03
  Speaker 5: so or not Reeve instead of or not Recks the
• 39:07
  Speaker 5: what is it? The Rack and I? The Rack and
• 39:09
  Speaker 5: I are kind of back whether you wanted them to
• 39:12
  Speaker 5: be or not, but in a complicated way. So that
• 39:17
  Speaker 5: was frustrating to me upon multiple playthroughs to realize, Okay,
• 39:21
  Speaker 5: like I made these different decisions. I was hoping to
• 39:23
  Speaker 5: see very consequential differences from one play through to the next,
• 39:28
  Speaker 5: and sometimes there is a difference as you're describing with
• 39:31
  Speaker 5: or not really like, oh okay, yeah, the Jennifaged question
• 39:33
  Speaker 5: feels different the Rack and I question. To my memory,
• 39:37
  Speaker 5: it feels like you're just kind of like, oh, okay,
• 39:39
  Speaker 5: well they're back again, so you know, now, what do
• 39:42
  Speaker 5: we do? It didn't really matter what I did back then,
• 39:44
  Speaker 5: though it felt very important at the time. I guess
• 39:47
  Speaker 5: I'm wondering what everyone thought of these I don't know
• 39:50
  Speaker 5: how many of us did multiple playthroughs and solve the differences.
• 39:53
  Speaker 5: But I didn't love the way that all the variables
• 39:58
  Speaker 5: were handled. I know it's a big ask. I know
• 40:01
  Speaker 5: it's a big ass for a multimillion dollar company to
• 40:04
  Speaker 5: handle their own storylines and tackle the different narrative lines
• 40:08
  Speaker 5: that can spread. But I didn't love the way that
• 40:12
  Speaker 5: things from previous decisions from previous games manifested in the
• 40:17
  Speaker 5: third Again. I think there are some cool differences that
• 40:20
  Speaker 5: come up and others that just felt kind of like, Okay, well,
• 40:24
  Speaker 5: we were heading in this direction whether we liked it
• 40:27
  Speaker 5: or not, and maybe that's I would say, maybe that's
• 40:30
  Speaker 5: the point. It didn't strike me though, as like a
• 40:33
  Speaker 5: what was that one BioShock Infinite where there's a very
• 40:35
  Speaker 5: conscious play of like, oh, your decisions don't matter. What's
• 40:39
  Speaker 5: going to happen is going to happen. I don't think
• 40:40
  Speaker 5: that's what the writer's mass effect theory were doing. It
• 40:43
  Speaker 5: just felt like they needed certain things to happen in
• 40:46
  Speaker 5: the narrative to get to the end.
• 40:49
  Speaker 3: I was gonna say, I think a lot of that
• 40:51
  Speaker 3: is simply technical and budget constraints of you know, building
• 40:55
  Speaker 3: an entire second layer of story as opposed to building
• 41:00
  Speaker 3: variant of the story.
• 41:03
  Speaker 4: Where a lot of players would potentially not see a
• 41:07
  Speaker 4: lot of content that you had to work like, you know,
• 41:10
  Speaker 4: as for three games, I mean you have ten different
• 41:16
  Speaker 4: options and choices that you make, like the permutations of
• 41:20
  Speaker 4: which of which you pick, and by the time you
• 41:22
  Speaker 4: get to the third game, if you made the difference
• 41:25
  Speaker 4: as that drastic, I could see that they would have
• 41:28
  Speaker 4: to make just tons of tons of different content. But
• 41:31
  Speaker 4: I do agree with you, Megan, because I always found
• 41:35
  Speaker 4: it frustrating like, well, that person died and now they've
• 41:38
  Speaker 4: just replaced them with someone I don't really know who
• 41:41
  Speaker 4: serves the exact same role, so the plot will go
• 41:44
  Speaker 4: almost the exact same direction. I didn't even remember that
• 41:47
  Speaker 4: there were differences that much in the New Solarium and
• 41:52
  Speaker 4: the New Krogan. I just remembered somebody else is there,
• 41:55
  Speaker 4: and they have a couple slightly different lines. Y'all are
• 41:58
  Speaker 4: making me feel like it was more different than I
• 41:59
  Speaker 4: had called.
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: So if you kill the rack Nin, what happens in
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: the third game, the.
• 42:05
  Speaker 5: Rakney are back, but they were brought back by the Reapers.
• 42:11
  Speaker 4: Reapers made some made of fake Reckni.
• 42:14
  Speaker 5: But there's no there's no difference of like, oh, well,
• 42:16
  Speaker 5: you killed us the first time, so now we don't
• 42:18
  Speaker 5: trust you. Like if there was that, Okay, Like I
• 42:21
  Speaker 5: could see that.
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: I think I read that if you kill them the
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: first time, you can get them to align with you,
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: but they actually backstab you. Yeah, because I kept them alive,
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: so they kept the faith with me, And.
• 42:38
  Speaker 3: That was That's a way that BioShock tried to handle
• 42:41
  Speaker 3: a lot of these smaller choices through the series, were
• 42:45
  Speaker 3: these tiny little stories that happened in the war preparedness.
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: So killing the rack N, I align with them. It
• 42:54
  Speaker 3: doesn't work you get it in like a little text blurb,
• 42:58
  Speaker 3: isn't it. It's not like a major story thing that right,
• 43:01
  Speaker 3: So a lot of those little decisions play out in
• 43:03
  Speaker 3: tiny little things that you read on the terminal, which
• 43:07
  Speaker 3: isn't ultimately that satisfying for the most part. You know,
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: I get it, I get it. The ones that work better,
• 43:15
  Speaker 3: I do think are I do think generally, and I'm
• 43:19
  Speaker 3: going to disagree with you here, David, but I do
• 43:20
  Speaker 3: think the main character absences do tend to play a
• 43:23
  Speaker 3: bigger part. Not having Legion or not having Tally, for instance,
• 43:31
  Speaker 3: just really or not having Rex really changes those stories respectively. Yeah,
• 43:38
  Speaker 3: there's a replacement, but it definitely changes the feel of
• 43:45
  Speaker 3: all those at least the smaller things like what Megan
• 43:48
  Speaker 3: is talking about. You're right, they're they're they're kind.
• 43:50
  Speaker 5: Of the rock now are not a small issue. This
• 43:53
  Speaker 5: is like one of the major decisions you make in
• 43:55
  Speaker 5: the first game, and they present it as if it's
• 43:58
  Speaker 5: going to lead to the death of millions of people.
• 44:02
  Speaker 3: I guess what it is is it's it's it's not
• 44:05
  Speaker 3: a character issue, though it's not wrapped up in a
• 44:09
  Speaker 3: character's story, is what I What I mean? Does that
• 44:11
  Speaker 3: make sense, and so Mass Effect three with those stories
• 44:16
  Speaker 3: that does do so well that we are so personal
• 44:19
  Speaker 3: like with Rex, and more than part of what sells
• 44:25
  Speaker 3: it so much as there's somebody, a character that we
• 44:27
  Speaker 3: intimately know over multiple games, who is intimately bound up
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: in these issues and it becomes very personal. The rakneye
• 44:36
  Speaker 3: isn't that way. You're right, it is a major decision,
• 44:38
  Speaker 3: but none of our major characters entire life is bound
• 44:42
  Speaker 3: within that narrative. So that's that's what I mean by
• 44:45
  Speaker 3: by lesser.
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what we needed was a character like Tally who
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: had a relationship with the Rakney like Tally has with
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: the death.
• 44:56
  Speaker 3: We need about to say, when you say mass effect
• 44:59
  Speaker 3: in relationship, if you should be careful.
• 45:01
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, well yeah the rak Knight Queen, doesn't she
• 45:08
  Speaker 4: like she speaks to you telepathically through an Assari in
• 45:11
  Speaker 4: the second game. If so, you get kind of and
• 45:14
  Speaker 4: she thanks you right for Yeah, kid, you held your finger.
• 45:18
  Speaker 6: It's the first game that she speaks through an Assari
• 45:21
  Speaker 6: and the second one it's a bunch of Krogan that
• 45:23
  Speaker 6: fall down into the ravine or sorry, the third game
• 45:27
  Speaker 6: is when you see the rak Knight Queen.
• 45:29
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and the second one is like the Thorian talks
• 45:33
  Speaker 4: to you through an Assari in the first one, but
• 45:36
  Speaker 4: I think.
• 45:37
  Speaker 5: Right, you're right. So you go to the sorry planet
• 45:40
  Speaker 5: that the name of which I cannot recall, but yeah, right,
• 45:45
  Speaker 5: it's not part of the main plot, so it's easily missed.
• 45:48
  Speaker 5: But you could encounter in a Sary who has the
• 45:51
  Speaker 5: rack Knight speaking and says like, oh, we've we've gone
• 45:54
  Speaker 5: off to this other planet. We're not killing anybody, thank
• 45:56
  Speaker 5: you for not killing us. But it's it's easily missed.
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I remember that. That was kind of Yeah,
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: it was a kind of fun, little creepy twist.
• 46:07
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's right. Yeah, And I got yeah, yeah, And Michael,
• 46:12
  Speaker 4: you kind of mentioned the messages you get. I do.
• 46:14
  Speaker 4: I do think it's fun in the third one that
• 46:16
  Speaker 4: you get emails from really insignificant side quest things you
• 46:20
  Speaker 4: could have done through the other two games that just
• 46:22
  Speaker 4: kind of give an epilogue and hey, we're doing great
• 46:25
  Speaker 4: over here now because you you know, found the thing
• 46:28
  Speaker 4: of a jig for us or whatever it was. And yeah,
• 46:32
  Speaker 4: I just enjoyed that. I was surprised that the data
• 46:36
  Speaker 4: carried that many small choices that you made through.
• 46:42
  Speaker 6: As giving out Shepherd's email to everyone. That's all I
• 46:45
  Speaker 6: want to know.
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: It's eaty of course.
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, speaking of all the very sketching these time, I
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: couldn't help but to think. And with all the filler
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: fetch quests in this game of where there's really no
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: story behind it, you just kind of find something and
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: then randomly give to somebody on citadel, you know they'll
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: have some like little non dialogue very much reminded me
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: of Dragon h two with all of those fetch quests,
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: which I guess something was working through biowaar. Yeah, I'm
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: not a fan of of fillers.
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: Oh, that reminds me. The biggest gameplay thing that I
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: hated about Masspect three is in Masspects one and two
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: you have to initiate dialogue to have conversations. In mass
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: Effect three, you sort of enter their space and you
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: hang out and listen to them hawking. And I hate
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: that because it means I'm a passive participant in my
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: relationship with these characters. I want to be active. I
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: want to talk to my crew members. I want to
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: talk to people on planets to get quests. I don't
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: want to just wander by and hear them it's like
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: I'm the world's most nosy neighbor hearing quests and then
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: fixing things. I'm just I hated that gameplay.
• 48:02
  Speaker 6: Change, but that's the change through the time of the
• 48:04
  Speaker 6: second one. Second one I said, you were you know,
• 48:06
  Speaker 6: you're pushed by the clock and then order of missions
• 48:10
  Speaker 6: that you do, and this one you're at war. What
• 48:13
  Speaker 6: good is it to start making these relationships with the
• 48:16
  Speaker 6: guy who wants to play Jurassic Park.
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: You know, I just I resent becoming a passive participant
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: in relationships.
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I definitely would agree that, David Ore.
• 48:32
  Speaker 4: You can say I was going to bring up something else, because.
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: No, I don't know that, Okay.
• 48:40
  Speaker 4: I was just gonna mention that I really like the
• 48:42
  Speaker 4: husks of all the different races in this particularly the
• 48:45
  Speaker 4: A Sorry is pretty terrifying. I like, yeah, yeah, it's
• 48:52
  Speaker 4: just that's a good idea, and it was cool for
• 48:55
  Speaker 4: them to kind of hold that off until this third
• 48:58
  Speaker 4: game for a good finale, because it really adds some
• 49:02
  Speaker 4: different instead of just like different skinned guys with guns
• 49:07
  Speaker 4: that you're fighting, and it's pretty interesting.
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it definitely adds to the general creepiness and just
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: sense of dread. That's falling upon you right, that you're
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: fighting all of these different kinds of zombies, that it
• 49:20
  Speaker 2: does add to the aesthetic very well.
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: The Morgan orsamara that the Justic Car Sorry Academy mission
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: was very horrory in an effective way.
• 49:31
  Speaker 5: I thought, Yeah, hearing the screams, I think it was.
• 49:37
  Speaker 5: It was very unsettling. I think the mission variety was.
• 49:44
  Speaker 5: I mean, it wasn't a huge variety here, but definitely
• 49:48
  Speaker 5: that stands out versus like t Chonka, when you have
• 49:52
  Speaker 5: big action packed you're rolling, you're running, you have to
• 49:55
  Speaker 5: be sprinting during one point where everything's just kind of
• 49:57
  Speaker 5: falling down all around you. Yeah, I think I was
• 50:01
  Speaker 5: a fan of the gameplay personally, but I also recognize
• 50:06
  Speaker 5: that this was the furthest shift away from the RPG origins,
• 50:12
  Speaker 5: where I think that's why when you're encountering quest from people,
• 50:16
  Speaker 5: I think that's why you are so passive when you're
• 50:18
  Speaker 5: just walking by people and the game kind of hands
• 50:20
  Speaker 5: you new side quests without you having to explore or investigate.
• 50:25
  Speaker 5: This is the most action packed, user friendly, new user
• 50:30
  Speaker 5: friendly game of the trilogy, and so that's that's probably
• 50:35
  Speaker 5: why you don't have to go exploring and looking for things.
• 50:38
  Speaker 5: On the other hand, as you're saying, with the horror
• 50:41
  Speaker 5: element to this, I feel it is the most cinematic,
• 50:44
  Speaker 5: like you're getting this flavor of I don't know, a
• 50:47
  Speaker 5: lot of things are happening to you, and you get
• 50:49
  Speaker 5: to kind of guide your character through them. But yeah,
• 50:53
  Speaker 5: I think the benefit, if there is a benefit to
• 50:57
  Speaker 5: shifting away from the RPG element of exploring and finding
• 51:01
  Speaker 5: your own path, is that the game it curates different experience,
• 51:07
  Speaker 5: different stylistic and tonal experiences like the Oh my gosh,
• 51:11
  Speaker 5: I can't remember what the the Banshee where you encounter them.
• 51:16
  Speaker 5: I know it's on It's not anth Asia. It's on
• 51:19
  Speaker 5: some remote like monastery kind of planet to where they
• 51:23
  Speaker 5: sequested them off to. Anyway, I liked the horror element.
• 51:29
  Speaker 5: I liked some of the variety in the different missions.
• 51:32
  Speaker 5: I think they were able to achieve that because the
• 51:35
  Speaker 5: game feels less like you're making a bunch of individual
• 51:38
  Speaker 5: choices about where you're going to go next and what
• 51:40
  Speaker 5: you're going to do exactly. It feels like you are
• 51:42
  Speaker 5: kind of guided through and so it's maybe the least
• 51:45
  Speaker 5: RPG ish, but I think they were able to make
• 51:47
  Speaker 5: some tonal choices that were fun and interesting as a result.
• 51:54
  Speaker 2: Continuing with the horror eerie theme here, what did y'all
• 51:59
  Speaker 2: think of Leviathan that whole sequence. I heard some people
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: say they didn't like it because it took away from
• 52:06
  Speaker 2: the mystery of the reapers, But I personally, I'm an
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: I really enjoy that whole sequence. I'm curious what you
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: guys think.
• 52:13
  Speaker 6: Leviathan is the one that kind of ties the entire
• 52:17
  Speaker 6: theme that, again from all of our talks have really
• 52:21
  Speaker 6: popped out. So looking at Shepherd as a Christ figure
• 52:26
  Speaker 6: means that he's going up against evil, which is in
• 52:29
  Speaker 6: the form of Ai. And the only reason Leviathan is
• 52:34
  Speaker 6: like the perfect name, not just for the mythological sense
• 52:37
  Speaker 6: of having a water beast, is because Shepherd is going
• 52:41
  Speaker 6: up against what we saw with the elusive man trying
• 52:44
  Speaker 6: to be God. Saren playing as an anti Christ legion,
• 52:47
  Speaker 6: being a false Shepherd with a giant hole in him,
• 52:51
  Speaker 6: so I mean like he's already got a wounded body
• 52:54
  Speaker 6: of a Christ figure. This all leads to them playing
• 52:58
  Speaker 6: the prophet the anti Christ of the beast, and in
• 53:02
  Speaker 6: order to get the Beast from revelation that comes out
• 53:05
  Speaker 6: of the water, that's Leviathan if you look at Revelation
• 53:08
  Speaker 6: in Book of Job, but you can see the parallels
• 53:10
  Speaker 6: between those two. So having Leviathan there means that, yes,
• 53:17
  Speaker 6: it is kind of like, here's the origin of the Reapers,
• 53:20
  Speaker 6: but it makes more sense in an apocalyptic sense from Revelation.
• 53:28
  Speaker 6: This is all really where it's coming to, which I
• 53:33
  Speaker 6: only have one question left from that, and that is
• 53:35
  Speaker 6: where's the serpent? If we have a representation for an Antichrist,
• 53:42
  Speaker 6: we have a representation for the Reapers, which is the Beast,
• 53:46
  Speaker 6: what else is out there? I think there's one more
• 53:49
  Speaker 6: thing happening, which is why there's a fifth game, unless,
• 53:53
  Speaker 6: of course, you wanted to just take AI as a
• 53:56
  Speaker 6: symbolic serpent. I guess I don't know, but I think
• 54:00
  Speaker 6: I think the fifth game, if they're going to try
• 54:01
  Speaker 6: to bring back Shepherd, then they're going to have to
• 54:05
  Speaker 6: create something that kind of fills this, and I don't
• 54:07
  Speaker 6: even think they're trying. That's the weird thing about it.
• 54:10
  Speaker 6: They went on such a biblically sound storyline throughout all
• 54:14
  Speaker 6: three games and they didn't even know.
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: So I think both Leviathan and the Promethean DLCs really
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: add to the game in rich ways, because you feel
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: you get back to that Cuthulhues cult horror thing when
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: you're tracking down Leviathan, and your confrontation with Leviathan really
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: does have an uncanny sense to it. And then Javic
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: giving you a sense of fifty to one hundred thousand
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: years ago and a different galaxy facing the same problems
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: just gives a lot more richness to your sense of
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: your problems.
• 55:06
  Speaker 2: I think, yeah, And I think it's interesting that the leviathant.
• 55:12
  Speaker 2: So we'll find out that the Leviathan are the creators
• 55:15
  Speaker 2: of the Reapers, essentially that they it. I may not
• 55:20
  Speaker 2: be remembering this super clearly, and so correct me if
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: I'm missing some of this. But basically, there was this
• 55:26
  Speaker 2: problem that they witnessed that AI tended to generate and
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: you know, turn against organics, and so didn't they essentially
• 55:33
  Speaker 2: create AI in order to solve the problem of AI.
• 55:36
  Speaker 2: Am I missing something or is it that.
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: This is what I'm saying? It doesn't make sense.
• 55:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So I don't quite understand the motivations there, but
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: I still appreciate the idea, the warning perhaps that when
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: you kind of export your consciousness to the point where
• 55:56
  Speaker 2: you know, you're you're really taking direction from AI, which
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: is taking direction from you, right, And that's how AI works,
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: at least initially from the consciousness that is sort of
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: reflecting off of that. I mean that you're going to
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: end up consuming yourself.
• 56:12
  Speaker 4: You know.
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: I mentioned this probably is early as the first episode
• 56:15
  Speaker 2: that it reminds me of Paradise Lost, when Satan basically
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: falls in love with his own genius and that gives
• 56:23
  Speaker 2: birth to a monstrosity. And I can't help but to
• 56:27
  Speaker 2: think that that's how we often use AI. Definitely the
• 56:31
  Speaker 2: direction that we're headed as we export more and more
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: of ourselves to this thing that is mimicking our thought,
• 56:37
  Speaker 2: but in so doing, we end up losing our own thought,
• 56:39
  Speaker 2: and so in turn, this ghost of our thought, of
• 56:41
  Speaker 2: our consciousness ends up consuming us. I think that's kind
• 56:45
  Speaker 2: of the the worst case scenario, but I think that's
• 56:48
  Speaker 2: also what happens on a rather mundane step by step level,
• 56:52
  Speaker 2: and so well, it doesn't really make sense to me
• 56:56
  Speaker 2: that they're going to create AI to solve the AI problem.
• 56:59
  Speaker 2: I still can really appreciate some of the warning signs
• 57:01
  Speaker 2: that they are implicitly giving us.
• 57:04
  Speaker 3: So I'm not I'm not going to disagree with you
• 57:07
  Speaker 3: guys on the broad AI stuff, but I think there
• 57:09
  Speaker 3: are some things I'm going to disagree with in a
• 57:12
  Speaker 3: few places with you guys on how the game interprets
• 57:17
  Speaker 3: some of it. So Legion and Tally, what does everybody
• 57:24
  Speaker 3: do there? What's your ideal solution there? Do you have
• 57:27
  Speaker 3: the Gath and Korean's reconcile or what do you do?
• 57:31
  Speaker 3: What's the consensus here?
• 57:33
  Speaker 2: Kill the goth.
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: Yep obviously reconcile. I don't know what you guys are spoken.
• 57:41
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm thinking back on my gameplay when I hear
• 57:44
  Speaker 4: you all discussing this and what you think is the
• 57:46
  Speaker 4: right ending and all this, Like I pick the synthesis ending,
• 57:49
  Speaker 4: And I'm thinking, why do I do these things? And
• 57:51
  Speaker 4: I think it's because I am trying to pick whatever
• 57:57
  Speaker 4: option lets everybody come out of, Like I just want
• 58:01
  Speaker 4: to leave everybody alive as best as I can. And
• 58:04
  Speaker 4: that was really the only option that I saw there.
• 58:07
  Speaker 4: But yeah, I want everybody to get along, darn it.
• 58:11
  Speaker 3: So, Megan, what's your what's your Gath Choreyan solution?
• 58:14
  Speaker 5: Okay, So I had them reconcile because I needed to
• 58:18
  Speaker 5: defeat the reapers and it was entirely a practical decision.
• 58:22
  Speaker 5: Were it up to me, I think I would deprogram
• 58:26
  Speaker 5: whatever semi consciousness the Gath have and I would return
• 58:30
  Speaker 5: them to their slave like state and have them serve
• 58:34
  Speaker 5: perpetuity as slaves to servants of the servants of the Koreans.
• 58:39
  Speaker 5: But yes, I had them reconcile. It was a practical decision.
• 58:43
  Speaker 5: I didn't want to do it. The game made me
• 58:46
  Speaker 5: for my ideal outcome.
• 58:47
  Speaker 3: So I like the reconcile the most for you know,
• 58:51
  Speaker 3: you can again, the game obviously assumes that there is
• 58:55
  Speaker 3: a reality of AI becoming safety and or sensient, right,
• 59:02
  Speaker 3: and that's it. It asks that question specifically there. I
• 59:04
  Speaker 3: think it's very interesting that that the game is rejected
• 59:08
  Speaker 3: up to that point that Legion and in mass Fect
• 59:10
  Speaker 3: two was not alive, is how you have to interpret it.
• 59:13
  Speaker 3: And Legion became alive in the mean in the interim
• 59:17
  Speaker 3: with the Reaper code. Right, So in Masspect two, he
• 59:21
  Speaker 3: wasn't No matter how much you like him, David, he
• 59:23
  Speaker 3: was he was. He wasn't the game. I mean, that's
• 59:25
  Speaker 3: just the text of the game, right, So yeah, it
• 59:27
  Speaker 3: does ask those questions, what you know, it it also
• 59:34
  Speaker 3: there's a sense that you can get that what is
• 59:38
  Speaker 3: what is supposed to be the relationship between man and machine. Okay,
• 59:45
  Speaker 3: up until that point, the assumption has been that that
• 59:49
  Speaker 3: it is ultimately will be conflict and disaster. Right that
• 59:54
  Speaker 3: that ultimately all speed all species eventually reach an A
• 59:57
  Speaker 3: or all intelligence species eventually reaching a I phase, and
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 3: that's this danger and that is uh, you know, ultimately
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 3: you know, extinction level sort of thing. Hence the Reaper
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 3: is the solution of, well, we're gonna have one AI,
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 3: so we're not going to let all sorts of AI
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 3: run around and it just be chaos. And now that
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 3: that it's just we're going to allow civilization, right, Well,
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 3: the Quarian and the Gath. It's interesting because it says, okay,
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 3: what if there's a different solution, and that is I mean,
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 3: ultimately the Koreans are mostly back to what they were doing.
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 3: What what what were they? What were they built to do?
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 3: They were are not the Quoreans, I'm sorry, the Gath.
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 3: What were the Gath built to do? The Gath were
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 3: built to serve the Quoreans. What are the Gath doing?
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 3: If you if you reconcile the geth are still serving
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 3: the Quarrians. So in some ways it's a reconciliation of purpose. Uh,
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 3: you know, it's it's funny how you took the the
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 3: Reaper imagery of the n seven as a as a
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 3: false shepherd. You could look at it a different way,
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 3: as he's a lesser shepherd. That man is made in
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 3: the image of God and Ai is made in the
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 3: image of man. So there's this this lesser echo of
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 3: shepherd of what man has created and it has it
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 3: has to fulfill the same purpose with machines.
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 4: And it's interesting.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 3: It's interesting, but like I said, I enjoy that. It says, okay,
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 3: but we've said it always leads to disaster, but there
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 3: is a return to purpose of machine ultimately still serving man.
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 3: We're recognizing the game recognizes maybe they're alive, but the
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 3: gather are still fulfilling their created purpose as being created
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 3: by man Quarrians. I'm saying, man create, you know, machine
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 3: created by man. They return to their created purpose in that.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 3: And I like that.
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 4: I like that.
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 3: That's that's interesting to think about. And yes, it may
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 3: be presented a little bit utopian, you know, and there's questions, Okay,
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 3: what does that look like in two centuries. Well, it
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 3: may be problems and who knows what. I enjoy that story.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 3: I enjoy the way it plays out with reconciliation and
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 3: just whatever you do. Don't choose the death over tally,
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 3: because it is the most is the bleakest scene in
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 3: the entire series.
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 2: It is so bleak.
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 3: Okay, that's that. Somebody tear me apart. Somebody tell me
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 3: where I'm wrong there.
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: It depends on what.
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 6: Yeah, it depends on how you look at again the AI.
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 6: I view it as from a part of Satan's minions.
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 6: I view it as part of something that is evil.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 6: So the other two options if we don't mind going
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 6: in the end at this point, but the other two
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 6: options are control of all synthetics or synthesisms synthetics. If
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 6: sinthetics are going to be what is evil and what
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 6: is part of the old dragons you know play here,
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 6: then you're choosing two options that work with it and
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 6: in revelation and then you know, when Christ wins, then
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 6: that's gone. So I really I'm gonna have to take
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 6: the red path on this.
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: I just think that's imposing something external to what the
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: game really allows.
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's fair. We need to ask Kate,
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 2: what is the in game story? I mean kind of like,
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 2: you know, if I'm watching Lord of the Rings, I'm
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 2: not going to condemn Gandalf for using wizardry.
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 4: Yeah, but and I feel the same. But then Meghan
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 4: brought up in the first one of these talks about
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 4: the Shepherd and the imagery of the Shepherd, which honestly
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 4: I hadn't really thought about before, and how at the
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 4: end they're saying, tell me the story of the Shepherd
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 4: is that I remember it was an astronaut. They got
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 4: to do that with really bad acting. Was it buzz
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 4: Aldrin or Okay, yeah, bless his heart. They asked him
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 4: to do it, and he did it. But doesn't go.
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 3: I love it.
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 4: I'll take it from me.
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 3: Okay, it's cheesy, but I love it.
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 4: Yeah. So I do think Shepherd imagery at the very
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 4: least is intended. Yes, it's overt. Yeah, yeah, my question.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 2: There are definitely christ themes.
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree, there's christological themes, and I think it's intentional.
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: I just I don't accept the idea that synthetics are sin.
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: The Reapers, I would agree, are are demonic. Cthulhu asking
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: me definitely partakes in huge demonic imagery. But to me,
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: I think that I think we have to be fair
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: to the writers of Mass Effect three because I agree
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: with Megan, they do think that Ed and Legion are
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: our friends and our people, even though I agree with
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: Andrew that we really should question what does people mean
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: more within the game? They are people in the same
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: way that in Narnia, the White Witch is evil. You
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: could write a story and Neil Gamon did where the
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: White Witch is allied with Asthma, but that is I
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: think unfair to Narnia, in the same way that it's
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: unfair to say that Ed and Legion are sin because
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: they're synthetic, because I don't think that's what the game says.
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: I don't think that that works on us. As I said,
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: you're imposing a very external set of parameters on everything.
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 6: I'll give a little bit of a Well, this is
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 6: where my understanding comes from. This is a game that
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 6: was created in the way of the Matrix movies, and
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 6: it was created in a timeframe in which nihilism was
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 6: very popular for children's stories, for a bunch of cartoons
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 6: that were coming out, for a lot of what was
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 6: going on in Hollywood at the time, and in that
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 6: the choice that you make is really just a choice.
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 6: Look at what happened at the end of the Matrix
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 6: with Agent Smith asking Neil, why do you keep fighting?
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 6: Why do you keep doing this? And his answer is
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 6: because I choose to, which is another answer, right, So
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 6: I mean, can you you can? I think just because
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 6: this is an apocalyptic thing, and because this game takes
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 6: place in the created universe, in the known universe, if
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 6: this was Andromeda, i'd call that science fantasy. This I
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 6: can call science fiction because it takes place within the
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 6: parameters of creation itself. Star Wars would be signs of
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 6: fantasy because everything is outside of Earth and can be
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 6: picked off to what everyone to do. So because it
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 6: still has those roots even though they don't intend it.
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 6: I mean, there's a lot of people that live in
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 6: creation that don't intend to recognize the Creator or as Paddock,
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 6: which would say the Originator, or Ashley going on with God.
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 6: So because they add those things in there, it's not
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 6: too far off, even if it is against what the
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 6: author's intent was. And there were many authors that went
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 6: onto this. The first two were Drew Carpustion and then
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 6: this last one forget who it was, but they had
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 6: a whole new head writer for this and a lot
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 6: of mac Walters, thank you and.
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and Drew Drew had left to work on Knight
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 4: to the Old Republic. I believe the Old Republic, the
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 4: Old Republic. Yeah, yeah, no, Knights of that was that
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 4: was already made.
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 5: I think there was another ending that was intended for
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 5: this game, or another way that the Reapersons was to
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 5: go about destroying the universe that was built up, not
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 5: quite foreshadowed. It's not the right term, but they started
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 5: sending the president in the second game when you find
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 5: Tally again and she's on this planet and they're discovering
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 5: why is this sun aging so rapidly and it's dying
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 5: way before it's supposed to. I think I read somewhere
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 5: that was actually how the Reapers was to go about
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 5: destroying the universe. That was the plan for the third game,
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 5: and then the plans got leaked. Does anybody know anything
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 5: about this?
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 3: So what I I'll tell you. I'm kind of glad
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 3: that the plan was aborted if it's what kind of
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 3: those leaks were, because it seemed to be it was
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 3: something another about intelligent races and something about creating more
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 3: dark matter, and this dark matter was basically accelerating the
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 3: death of the universe. So I think what it was
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 3: going to be is that the Reafers were actually the
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 3: good guy's calling civilization that was hastening the death of
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 3: the universe and I hate hate. Oh No, the villain
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 3: was trying to save everybody all along Trope. So if
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 3: my understanding, if that's the way it was going to
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 3: work out, I'm pretty glad it was shifted.
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 4: That's a very Western sort of a good guy though.
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 4: I mean, if your only goal is just so that
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 4: life can possibly continue, so you're going to wipe out
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 4: life in order to make it continue, that is terrible.
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 5: I like killing those villains. That's a very fanos kind
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 5: of a thing. I think there's a very real contingent
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 5: of people, academics and not who believe that if we
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 5: had fewer humans that life would be better off on
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 5: the planet, and so I think destroying those kinds of
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 5: villains is important for the public consciousness.
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 3: Yes, but I'm too afraid that the writers would set
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 3: it up to actually sympathize with it. And no, this
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 3: is actually they were actually the good guys, you know,
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 3: because there would I guarantee you there'd be some sort
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 3: of ending. That was no, let the cycle continue. We
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 3: must let the Reapers do their God ordained function in
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 3: the universe of harvesting, so that the universe continues sort
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 3: of well, speaking of it, that was it was gonna go.
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 3: I'm glad we didn't get that.
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: Speaking of endings, where I think that the writers think
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: that the villain should actually be our point of view.
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: I think that the control ending is actually what the
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: writers want us to pick because it's Blue, which is paragon, yes,
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: and because they forced us to work for that lunatic
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: for an entire game.
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 3: So is it time to get to the ending?
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: Andrews, I think.
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 2: It is, yeah. I mean it seems to me like
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 2: the control ending probably is the best ending. I like
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 2: the idea of killing off the Reapers get rid of
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 2: all the synthetics. I'm on board with that, but at
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 2: the same time, they are all kinds of consequences that
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 2: are going to lead to a great deal of suffering
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 2: out of that decision. I don't like the we're just
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 2: going to force everyone to be synthetic like that. That
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 2: seems monstrous to me. But the idea.
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 4: That they're not synthletic there, you know, it's it's it's
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 4: a whole new thing, man, it's a whole.
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 2: New just they're trans humanist.
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 4: It's happily ever after No, I don't know.
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 2: No, I don't like that, but I figure control. I mean,
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 2: Shepherd essentially sacrifices himself, and now we're going to guarantee
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 2: that the the main force in the universe, or at
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 2: least galaxy or however far they go, that they're going
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 2: to help us. Now right that Shepherd geekn guide them,
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 2: he can direct them. He at at least his consciousness
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 2: can whatever that entails. And so I don't like what
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 2: happens to Shepherd, but it seems to be the best
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 2: solution for everybody.
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 4: I don't think Shepherd doesn't survive the synth as a
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 4: sending either, right, yeah.
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: I think you should. You only to create a synthetic
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: body for himself.
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 4: Go ahead, Michael, I'm sorry, Well I was.
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 3: Gonna say I agree. I think that Blue is in
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 3: a way kind of pointed as like this default ending
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 3: or or or the good ending, even though I think
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 3: Red is anticipated as the this is what people are
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 3: going to take and this is the real ending. If
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 3: that makes sense. I'm a blue guy. I think blue
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 3: is the correct solution because because again okay, so it
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 3: plays into the Shepherd and and and christological archetype the most,
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 3: where Shepherd sacrifices himself and leaves the universe better saves
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 3: everyone in a way, you know, the way that I
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 3: interpret it. I don't think that no separate Shepherd lives
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 3: on in the machine the way I interpret it, and
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 3: I think it's the case the way he says the
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 3: man I was, I think there is the insinuation that
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 3: Shepherd is dead, he's not still living on in the
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 3: reaper bodies, that he basically just reprogrammed them. I like
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 3: it because one thing that Ian was disagreeing with me
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 3: about in the discord was he was saying, but you're
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 3: enslaving an entire race. It's like, no, this is the
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 3: judgment of God. They're over written and executed for annihilating
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 3: billions of people over hundreds of thousands of years. It's like,
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 3: that's just pure justice. Man, There's no there's no enslavement there.
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 3: They're dead. What's left is reapered, right, Shepherd reapered Shepherd reaper.
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 3: But I think it it plays out to the happy
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 3: ending the most where everyone gets everyone basically gets the
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 3: happy ending except Shepherd, you know, is why I think
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 3: that that is the intended ending. And also this goes
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 3: into the original endings were a little different. They're not
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 3: just expanded in the original endings. In the red ending,
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 3: the mass effect relays were destroyed, and so yes, they
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 3: are totally destroyed, which means all the races are isolated.
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 3: They're not going to be able to ever go home,
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 3: even at FTL speeds, or it's going to be you know,
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 3: decades and decades and decades all the combined fleets that
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 3: are people were doing the numbers. It was basically lots
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 3: and lots of death. And so I liked it better
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 3: like that, where if you really wanted to choose that, no, AI,
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 3: there's serious consequences to it, right, It's like you can
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 3: do it, you can do it. There's consequences. But again,
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 3: I like Blue because it is a It is a
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 3: restoration of what is the purpose of man making a machine?
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 3: Is that machine is supposed to serve man? And so
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 3: what do you get Shepherd rewrites the reapers and now
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 3: machine serves man again. It is a restoration of order
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 3: that should be always the case.
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: I really like the way you put that. I have
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: two problems with that, even as I I think you've
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: handled my enslaving argument well, I think my two problems
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: with it that remain are number One, Functionally, I feel
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: like green and blue are sort of the same, except
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: that now everybody has robot eyes in green.
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 3: Nothing about green makes any sense at all, but we
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 3: can talk about that in a minute.
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: Doesn't make sense, control doesn't make sense. But the real
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: objection I have this is the one I come down to,
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: is the freaking elusive man is right the whole time,
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: and I am unwilling to accept that.
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 4: He is bend. So you know he's.
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 3: I was trying to look at my discord of her
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 3: for a conversation had we had on this years ago,
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 3: because we had a great, big argument over it, and
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 3: there's a good answer to it, but I haven't played
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 3: it in a number of years, and I can't remember
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 3: my answer because I can't remember there is a good one.
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 3: I just don't remember it because it's been like six
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 3: years since I've played Massive Victory. If I find that conversation, Ian,
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 3: I'll get back with you, because I've got an apologetic
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 3: for it. I just don't remember it.
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 4: I'm sorry.
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 2: And I think the simple answer I think is that
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 2: motives matter. Right, the Elusive Man wants to control the
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 2: Reapers to primarily advance his own agenda, Like yeah, I am.
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 2: He generally wants to stop the Reapers from killing everybody,
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 2: but also he wants to control them for his little,
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 2: his imperial ambitions, whereas Shepherd, if you go that route,
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 2: he controls them to shepherd the cosmos, right, And so
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 2: I think that the motivations definitely matter. I don't think
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 2: that taking the control route makes you the Elusive Man.
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: I just think it's a mistake in writing to have
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: the main advocate for that ending be the most incompetent
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 1: and annoying person in the game. But it's.
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 3: But there, there's an there is an interesting storytelling thing
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 3: where where villains are almost right but get key details wrong.
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 3: I think that's the way you can look at it
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 3: is that the the Elusive Man understands that that the
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 3: machines are supposed to serve man.
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 3: However, right as Andrew is saying, his methods are entirely wrong,
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 3: his methods are to destroy anything in his path to
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 3: get to that whereas Shepherd is going to give himself
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 3: first and foremost to reach, he's going to give of
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 3: himself in order to get there. And so there is
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 3: a there's the selfish versus the selfless path to that
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 3: and the and the other interesting thing about that is
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 3: Shepherd never pursues that goal of control, right, that is
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 3: not something he ever sets out to do. And when
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 3: the day a sex machina strikes at the very end,
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 3: and you know, and these things are thrust upon him,
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 3: that's a very different matter than saying that that was
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 3: his goal all align was goal all along, has become
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 3: to become this galactic Shepherd, or you know, to reprogram
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 3: the Reapers, because that obviously wasn't okay. Megan has had
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 3: all sorts of shaking her head at me.
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 5: There's not enough defense of the destroy ending. So I
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 5: am here to justify why that is correct. Ending. I listen.
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 5: I think there's a lot of cope about trying to
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 5: join with the Reapers, join with the ai. You are
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 5: here from the beginning of this game because you see
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 5: the corruption of all kinds of technology on the human
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 5: body at first with the Husks, and then we see
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 5: the Reapers and the psychological infection that comes with even
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 5: their proximity. And what our solution is to continue using that?
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 5: Was that not the justification used, not just by the
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 5: Elusive Man, but all these different people. Oh well, if
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 5: you just figure out the technology enough, then it will
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 5: be helpful. You know, we're going to figure out how
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 5: to use it correctly. Absolutely not. Didn't fly with me.
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 5: Every bit of technology got destroyed. Do people die? Yeah, well,
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 5: I think it's a death to have everyone have green
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 5: eyes and suddenly become you know, oh, I agree with that.
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 5: I don't even know what that was even supposed to mean, Like,
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 5: what is what is happening here? What? What energy is
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 5: infused that? Now synthetic things?
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 4: You no means?
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 5: But so that's an abomination. I think we all agree
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 5: at least No, okay, okay, well I agree for all
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 5: of us that it's an abomination, so we can move
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 5: on from that point. No, but as far as control it,
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 5: I liked there was this fan theory going around before
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 5: they corrected the endings. There was a whole thing. If
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 5: you weren't there in real time, I'll tell you there
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 5: were all these different YouTube videos people saying, no, this
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 5: is bio ware showing that there was this uh, this
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 5: kind of syop thing where Shepherd is actually getting influenced
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 5: by the Reapers and by the time you get to
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 5: the ending, because Shepherd's had all this contact with the
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 5: Reapers and we know what that means, that's why she
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 5: which according to my canonical playthrough, I'm gonna say she
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 5: that's why she is getting pulled into Oh now I'm
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 5: gonna side with the Reapers and not destroy them because
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 5: there it's the last ditch effort. There was a whole thing.
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 5: We were all desperate for the ending to make sense
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 5: and be good, not just be three different colors. If
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 5: you know, again, if you weren't there at the time,
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 5: that's what was going on. But yeah, I I held
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 5: no quarter for the Reapers, unlike you traders that decided
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 5: that they were okay by the end, I guess I. Yeah.
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 5: Are there casualties, that's war, that's life, Okay, going to
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 5: happen anyway. But I think the worst casualty would be
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 5: the casualty of the human spirit that's subsuming itself to
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 5: an affinity and affiliation and relationship with this ultra destructive
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 5: synthetic force.
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 3: If it makes you fail any better. In my In
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 3: my theory, Reaper sticks around for just a couple of decades,
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 3: fixing everything that the Reapers screwed up, and then decommissions itself.
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 3: That's my theory.
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 5: That's what they would say, That's what they would tell you.
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 3: Forever, just gonna So here's here's the thing, though, the
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 3: Blue at least provides a solution to the problem of
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 3: AI that mass effect poses, and Red offers no solution
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 3: to the problem of AI because twenty years from now, Ague,
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 3: a rogue scientist is going to be doing AI research
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 3: and the genie is going to be out of the
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 3: bottle again, and the Red ending.
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 5: To kill him too. It's fine, okay.
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 3: But that's here. But that is one of the main
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 3: theses of the series is that it's always going to
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 3: come back. It's always going to be a problem. So
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 3: Red's Red is a kick it down the cann kick
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 3: kick the can down the road. We will have to
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 3: deal with it.
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 4: Again, and Green makes it a non issue. Everybody's both
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 4: all And let me just say real quick on the
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 4: Green ending the synthesis ending, the Normandy crashes on this
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 4: Eden like planet and everybody comes walking out a completely
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 4: new creation. So in that ending, the Shepherd has made
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 4: all things new, and so I will just I'll leave
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 4: it there.
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 1: I'm with you. I'm telling you it's a It's basically
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 1: a thematic continuation of healing the jenifer age and reuniting
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 1: the death and the Quarians. Now, I like what Michael
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: says about machines serving man. I think that is good.
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: But I think that it really is coming together. I
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 1: think that's the theme, you know, the tearing of the
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 1: veil by Jesus. I agree that it doesn't work in
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 1: real life i'd like, but in the world of the game,
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 1: I feel it is a coming together.
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 6: So you have to forgive them for corrupting all the
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 6: other biological life forms into the banshees, the husks, the
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 6: abominations and all those things.
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 1: Those were the destructive elements of an abused child. When
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: they are brought into harmony with the family of organics,
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 1: they understand the proper way to propagate the species.
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 4: Did you just make that up? That's amazing, that was great.
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 2: So what I'm hearing is neuralink is the path to
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 2: the escuton, the new creation. Is that what Ian and
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 2: David are for posing here.
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 1: I mean it is the trust humanist way, but I
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: believe that it works in the universe of the game.
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's not. What the elusive man is trying to
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 4: do is not the weird monstrosity that he's become at
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 4: the end of the game.
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 2: It's the other weird once trusting the good one.
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 3: Look, I will say that my thought on Green going
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 3: into it was I always thought Green was kind of
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 3: just a Niester egg, a throwaway ending. And the reason
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 3: for that is there's a long history and sci fi
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 3: of a weird, out of nowhere metaphysical ending that really
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 3: doesn't make sense. I think two thousand and one of
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 3: Space Odyssey. Does anyone understand the end of that movie? No,
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 3: have you read the book and tried to understand it.
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 3: It doesn't make any more sense if you read the book, right,
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 3: And so I've always kind of there's always been this
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 3: subcurrent and sci fi from very secular writers of we're
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 3: going to throw this metaphysical ending in and because we
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 3: don't understand anything about the spiritual world, it's not going
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 3: to make any sense at all. And I always kind
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 3: of thought that Green ending was an homage to that
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 3: long history of insecular sci fi that's all I'm gonna
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 3: say about that.
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 5: Listen, none of you had the courage to do what
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 5: I did, which is destroy destroy the enemy that we
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 5: were fighting. I know, controversial. I defeated the enemy that
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 5: I set out to defeat, and I saved humanity in
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 5: the process. And you know the rest of them. Did
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 5: the robots die? Sorry? They did. Turns out the robots
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 5: that were trying to kill us most of the time
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 5: also died. I don't know why it's controversial this ending,
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 5: but I did the right thing and I rest easy
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 5: with that.
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 3: Probably three of you.
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 2: That took Red right, I did take the Red.
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 5: Ending, yep, yeah, but that was your renegade playthrough.
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 3: I am actually one one blue.
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 2: Actually, I will say in my pro human kill of AI,
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 2: I actually came out Paragon, So make of that what
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 2: you will.
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: I'm really glad we have representatives from each here. I
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 1: think it makes it much matter, much more interesting.
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 6: Well, and the ratio is here too, So depending on
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 6: the war assets you get in the game, there are
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 6: six different playouts for the Red ending. There are four,
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 6: oh well reverse then, but there's four for the Blue
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 6: ending and two for the Green ending. Depending on how
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 6: much you bring to the final battle, which determines the
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 6: survivability of the.
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 5: Crucible, right, and that was something they corrected post DLC
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 5: fixed the ending ad citadel, which was you can now
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 5: play single player and have ideal outcomes. Whereas, as I
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 5: mentioned before, if you did not play multiplayer, it was
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 5: it was definitive you could not access the full range
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 5: of endings. They had baked in this kind of kind
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 5: of junkie multiplayer from what I've seen, like it was
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 5: nothing super special, but they really wanted you to play.
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 4: It such that fun with a friend, I'll defend it.
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 4: I don't like multiplayer stuff either, but I really enjoyed this. Mainly,
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 4: I don't like multiplayer usually because I'm playing against twelve
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 4: year olds who are way better at it than I
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 4: am that are just calling me names and stuff. And
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 4: with this, it's just you and three other human players
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 4: against ten waves of enemies or defend your guy while
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 4: he extracts some data or something, and then at the
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 4: end you've got to guard the X field point and
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 4: wait for the ship to come and pick you up.
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 4: And it's got like randomized loot drop new character classes
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 4: you unlock and things like that, So it was fun.
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 4: For a while. I was surprised how much I enjoyed it.
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 4: But it is kind of gross to hide single player
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 4: game content behind forcing you to play.
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 3: I kind of think it was a field experiment. I
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 3: think it was an experiment that ultimately just doesn't pan
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 3: out as well in practice as as they were thinking
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 3: and they're like, oh, it'll be because David talked about
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 3: kind of getting this feel of we're all trying to
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 3: save the galaxy, to get that up, and I think
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 3: that that's probably the feeling they were aiming at.
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 5: Yeah, there was some like app or some other game
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 5: I don't remember, Like there was that, and then there's
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 5: the single player game. There's multiplayer, so you know, recruiting
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 5: different assets. If we're doing the most generous view of it,
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 5: it's probably what they had in mind. Except multiplayer. Also
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 5: in general, I think makes you more money because you
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 5: can buy more stuff and whatever, So that's the ultimate motivation.
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 5: But yeah, they fixed that. No, probably not.
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 4: No, I doubt it. Servers are shut down. No, unless
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 4: some fan has figured out how to run their own server,
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 4: which happens a lot, but I haven't heard anything about it. Right.
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 5: Well, the game's like thirteen. It came out in twenty twelve.
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 5: I think so it's yeah, there's no way. Yeah.
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 4: There were also people upset about Javic being DLC at
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 4: launch because they'd planned to make him part of the
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 4: main game, but then they ran into a lot of
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 4: developmental delays and had to cut a lot. I think
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 4: they had intended originally a lot more ending options than
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 4: they actually had to resort to.
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 6: More missions too.
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 4: Yeah, but Javic I really thought he was an interesting character.
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 4: I love that everything Leara thinks she knows about the
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 4: Prothians is just thrown back in her face because he's
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 4: this warlike guy that she'd never imagined the Prothians being like.
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 1: And that was a lot of fun, especially on that
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 1: mission on the a Sorry Home World. If you take
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 1: Leara and Javic, it's just it's both funny and sad
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 1: because there is just having your head exploded, and Javic's like,
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 1: you guys are so stupid. This is obviously Prothians.
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I like Javic. I've been paling around with him
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 2: in this run. I think my favorite party so far
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 2: was that limited time when I got to use Rex
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 2: in the third game with Javic. I feel like between
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 2: the two of them were just you know, this this
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 2: little war gang just annihilating everybody. Yeah, I like I
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 2: like Java. You you tend to think like Leara does that,
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 2: you know when you're thinking about sort of this mystical
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 2: kind of race, right, the people who lived fifty thousand
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 2: years ago, it's very easy to build up a fantasy
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 2: lore around them. But then you know, it's kind of
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 2: like the way that people, uh, well, the way that
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 2: we talk about paganism sometimes and you go back and
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 2: look at how the Pagans actually lived, and you know,
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 2: it's it's very different than what we tend to have
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 2: in our mind in our romanticizations.
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 4: Another weird little storyline that runs through all three games
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 4: is that guy Conrad Werner. Did you guys? It's such
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 4: a funny I love him. Yeah.
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 1: Uh.
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 4: My favorite delivery of dialogue in the first game is
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 4: when you shut him down and he's just like, I
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 4: thought you were a hero, and he's just whining and
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 4: does the weird mass effect turn and walk off after
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 4: he minds. But yeah, depending on how you interact with him,
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 4: he just goes off and gets himself killed for masquerading
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 4: as a specter and stuff. Like that. I just I
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 4: enjoy when they manage to carry through really small, little
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 4: almost side jokes like that through all the games.
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 5: Yeah, and it so enriches the overall experience, which sounds
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 5: like an obvious thing to say. But when I see
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 5: and I've brought up Dragon Age Vallguard before, and I
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 5: won't go on a tangent. But when you hear developers
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 5: complain or writers complain about well there's too many variables,
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 5: Oh my god, like all these different decisions. How are
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 5: we going to do it? Let's just burn down the
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 5: whole map and move on from it. What else are
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 5: you doing? BioWare What else are you known for other
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 5: than really rich storytelling and all these companion side quests
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 5: and everything? But yeah, I think those are those are
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 5: moments that make Mass Effect really good. Where you see,
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 5: whether it's in the little messages that you get or
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 5: and you know, more overt Conrad vertus storyline. What else
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 5: are we doing here? Because what else is Buyer We're
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 5: known for. It's not for like the really excellent gameplay mechanics, obviously,
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 5: especially not in the first Mass Effect game. I think
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 5: if Buyerer can get back to and not that you
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 5: mass Effect didn't have its problems. We've already talked about
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 5: some of them. But I think if the studio can
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 5: get back to its prioritization of detailed storytelling and follow through,
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 5: like narrative follow through across different games, I think that
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 5: would be a huge boon. There's other ideological stuff going
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 5: on there that needs to be addressed as well, But
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 5: the idea that, oh, well, there's there's too many storytelling
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 5: elements we can't you know, can't address them all, so
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 5: we're just gonna sweep them under the rug it doesn't
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 5: fly with me. What else are they doing? What else
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 5: they known for? What about these millions of dollars? Like,
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 5: where else is it going other than to fulfill my
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 5: little fun Conrad Werner storylines that I expect to see
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 5: after three games. That's my rant about what they should
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 5: be doing in the future of BioWare after this because yeah, Andromeda,
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 5: nobody wants to see it, Nobody cares. Because I think
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 5: there was also very little carryover from this trilogy into
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 5: that one. I understand that was kind of the point,
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 5: but I think that's also why it flopped, in addition
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 5: to some other issues.
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, and you do get to the end of
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 4: games like this sometimes in Wonder or you know, like
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 4: a TV series or a movie series, whatever, and I'm
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 4: just sometimes shocked that it appears like they did not
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 4: have the end in mind when they began. And I
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 4: really feel like that's a really important part of storytelling.
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 4: And I've never written a book, Michael, so you can
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 4: correct me if I'm wrong, but I just feel like
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 4: an outline that includes where you are trying to ultimately go.
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 4: Unless you're just trying to make a serialized TV program
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 4: that you're going to run as many seasons as you
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 4: can until you get canceled, I think you ought to
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 4: have this is how I am going to neatly wrap
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 4: all this up whatever I do between the beginning and
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 4: the end.
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 3: So you got two kinds of writers. You have plotters
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 3: and pantsers. And plotters are architects that have an outline.
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 3: They have an ending in mind, you know how detailed
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 3: That outline might vary, but they work through it towards
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 3: the end. And then you have panthers that write by
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 3: the seat of their pants. And there's some panthers that
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 3: don't have an ending in mind. This is Stephen King.
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 3: Stephen King is very famous for not planning anything as
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 3: he writes novels. Right, plans a little bit of a
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 3: pants er too, but he pants over like fifteen years,
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 3: and so that's a little different. But here's the problem
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 3: with some of these big budget things. You can't really
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 3: pants very well by committee. Right, with a novel, you
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 3: can write. What ends up happening with most pantss is
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 3: they write a novel, they get there and it's really rough,
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 3: but it's been a very just let's just say, organic process.
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 3: But a pants tends to have a lot of time
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 3: editing and very often actually rewriting it from scratch. That's
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 3: not how a video game where a movie really works, right,
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 3: you don't. You don't write it all then rewrite. And
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 3: why you're working it's I mean you do because there
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 3: is a lot of people working on it. But especially
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 3: over three games. You see you see story by committee.
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 3: It's the same thing with a Star Wars sequel trilogy.
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 3: I mean, just to pull something else in. You can
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 3: see it kind of works for the second. You can
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 3: see everyone's offended by all right, it kind of works
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 3: for the first, people are offended by the second, but
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 3: it's still basically a narrative. And then by the third one,
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 3: there's not even really a cohesive narrative anymore because there's
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 3: never been a plan and it's entirely by committee, right,
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 3: So you need a plan. You do, really need a
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 3: plan for these big multidiscipline projects, I think or or
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 3: Or You need a head writer who has more sway
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 3: than than the sub writers and the quest riders and
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 3: the individual people. You need somebody that really is in charge.
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 1: And who sticks around. I mean, part of the problem
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 1: is that Sure Drew left.
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 6: Yeah, one third of the original staff for this Massfect
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 6: three was left by the end of it.
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 4: And yeah, they.
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 6: Got three months of reprieve, pushed it back from a
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 6: Christmas launch to March. But the original ending is still
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 6: the original ending.
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 3: Which the the original timeline for launch was probably way
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 3: too aggressive anyway. You know, let's be real. It would
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 3: have could it could have used another year to bake,
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 3: you know.
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 4: But there was even a problem which I don't hear
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 4: people talking about anymore. But when it launched and I
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 4: transferred my paragon A Shepherd over, he did not look
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 4: like himself at all, and they realized, yeah, there's something
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 4: wrong with the importer. We're gonna fix it. But I
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 4: had already finished the game by the time they fixed it,
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 4: and then I re imported my character and I was like, yeah,
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 4: I wish he'd look like that the whole way through
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 4: the game, but yeah, it didn't work out.
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 3: Oh, I was gonna I was gonna ask one other
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 3: little question. Did anybody do ever do? Ending?
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 4: For did you shoot the shot?
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 3: Or you don't do anything if you just wait long
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 3: enough to do you know about that? Andrew? So they
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 3: added this later too, and basically, if you refuse to
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 3: uh choose one of the colors or if you walk away,
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 3: what happens to Shepherd? Does does the star Child kill
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 3: Shepherd or something? I don't remember how it does it,
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 3: but it basically treats a Oh it's a game over, right,
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 3: but it goes yeah, it goes to this cut scene
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 3: that fifty thousand years later of basically it's Leara's time capsule.
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 3: And so they added in this ending for Okay, for
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 3: all of you people that really just hate all this,
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 3: In these endings, there is a forget all this. We're
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 3: gonna let the next cycle have their their better chance
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 3: with leear A's time capsule. So there is there is
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 3: there is a fourth ending for the people.
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 4: That's funny.
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I'd probably google or probably YouTube Lear's ending for
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 3: Mass Effect three, will probably show it up.
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 4: It's very short. It's very short.
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 3: It's clearly something they threw together in you know, two
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 3: days as a we're sorry. If you hate it, fine,
• 1:38:40
  Speaker 3: you can you can reject our endings. You can reject
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 3: our endings.
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 4: So Mass Effect Andromeda, which I enjoyed well enough. The
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 4: story not so much, but I kind of liked the
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 4: premise and the gameplay I think was better. It was
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 4: I don't know, it's been a while. There's good and
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 4: bad things about it, but it's more open world. You
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 4: have a vehicle that you drive around. You have a
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 4: lot of little, unimportant things to do all over the map.
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 4: But the premise of it is that these people left
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 4: the Milky Way before the events of even the first
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 4: Mass Effect I believe, and then they travel in a
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 4: suspended animation for like six hundred years and get to
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 4: the Andromeda galaxy. So it's way past the events of
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 4: the Mass Effect trilogy in the distant future in another galaxy,
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 4: and they have no way to even know what did
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 4: happen here because they traveled so far. I felt like
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 4: it had a pretty good setup, which I said in
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 4: the discord the ending was a good setup for better
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 4: games that we won't ever get to play. There are
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 4: whole races that aren't in the game because they had
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 4: intended to make I think possibly deal see where there
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 4: were other ships that came that had like the Quarrians
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 4: and the other races on it. I know the Krogans
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 4: are in it, but there are a few races that
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 4: are are missing, like they had their own ships. But yeah,
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 4: now that they're going back for a fifth one and
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 4: apparently making it because I think Leara was in the
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 4: revealed trailer for it. Maybe it was that fourth ending, Michael,
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 4: I don't know, but I don't see how they can
• 1:40:27
  Speaker 4: raise the stakes from the entire galaxy surviving Annihilation. I
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 4: don't know what you may maybe it'll be a buddy
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 4: cop game.
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 3: I am a big proponent of stories need to end,
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 3: and as far as I'm concerned, Mass Effect is ended.
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 4: Yeah, well, BioWare and largely seems to have ended. But
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 4: I realized the other day I have Vailguard because PlayStation
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 4: Plus gave it away a few months ago when I
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 4: claimed it, and I totally forgot.
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 5: It was like free on Xbox Marketplace after I spent
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 5: seventy dollars on the pre order like a dummy, or but.
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 1: Years later.
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 5: Yeah, No, I think I don't know what's ahead for
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 5: mass Effect. I think their options are either to continue
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 5: in the Andromeda universe and do dramatically better than they
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 5: did the first time. Or maybe they could go a
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 5: little bit earlier in the timeline, like the Human Turian War.
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 5: But we already know the outcome, and so you know,
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 5: it is hard to imagine what they're going to do
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 5: next with this. I think, you know, Shepherd and the
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 5: other characters that you get, they're great, They're really memorable,
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 5: and they're fun andrama. They would need to do something
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 5: very different. I know this isn't an Androma discussion, but
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 5: I don't even know. If I played it multiple times.
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 5: It wasn't even that it was bad for me. It
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 5: was very bland in my view. Was it was hard
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 5: to remember, and that I think was its greatest in
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 5: in addition to the pretty gnarly launch, where somehow the
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 5: animation and character design looked very funky.
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 3: And bars from the broken animation, Oh my god, there's
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 3: so wonderful.
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 5: Eyes that are like going in different directions. It was
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 5: It was crazy that you had this triple a huge game.
• 1:42:20
  Speaker 5: I remember like watching The Walking Dead and there were
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 5: these cinematic ads for Mass Effect three, like this was
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 5: a big event for a video game release, and then
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 5: in drama it just kind of appeared and then disappeared
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 5: from the public consciousness without much notice. It was it
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 5: was kind of sad to think about it.
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 4: I don't remember the villain. I don't remember what his
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 4: goal was. I kind of remember what he looks like
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 4: a little bit, but I don't remember what he was doing,
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 4: so that doesn't speak well of it.
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 2: Well, is there anything else be probably wrap up this
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 2: whole series, anything else that anyone wants to mention?
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 1: I can't. I don't think we've talked about it here.
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 1: We talked about it before we started. But I really
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 1: recommend at least giving yourself a save so you can
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 1: play the Citadel DLC party after you do whatever choice
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 1: you make, because it's so much more fun to end
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 1: the game just hanging out with your friends and your
• 1:43:21
  Speaker 1: apartment than with whatever the crap and then you picked.
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 3: I have heard people that they they stop their play through,
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 3: they do sit at the last and they stop their
• 1:43:31
  Speaker 3: play through at the party and they're done because they
• 1:43:34
  Speaker 3: remember the dings, they don't need to do it again.
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 3: Although they miss Anderson's wonderful death. That's the Anderson's death
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 3: makes the whole, the whole end of worth it, no
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 3: matter what it is. So it is such a good scene.
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 3: Keith David's knocks it out of the park. He just
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 3: has to say, I'm proud of you, son.
• 1:43:53
  Speaker 2: I'm like, see, I appreciate the wanting to and with
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 2: a party, hanging out with your friends in the apartment.
• 1:44:03
  Speaker 2: At the same time, I think you need the Catharsis, like,
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 2: you need it to come to an emotional, abrupt ending.
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 2: And so even if we might debate what some of
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 2: those endings are, I feel like you need something. You
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 2: need some loss amidst the victory. And while I did
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 2: say that, I feel like the control ending is the
• 1:44:25
  Speaker 2: best way to go about it. Within what's given in
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 2: the universe that there is this fatalism, that AI is
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 2: always going to re emerge and try to wipe this out. Essentially,
• 1:44:35
  Speaker 2: that you need something to try to put it into that,
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 2: and I feel like the control provides a way of
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 2: doing that. However, I do think that in my reckoning,
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 2: the best, most satisfying ending is the Red destroy the machines.
• 1:44:50
  Speaker 2: Shepherd dies. I don't even want Shepherd to be alive
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 2: at the end. I don't consider that to be the
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 2: best ending. I think that the best ending on a
• 1:44:56
  Speaker 2: story level is he dies, and in his dying, well
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 2: he read team's death. Right, That's what the Reapers stand for, essentially,
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 2: and so I think that that is the most satisfying ending.
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 4: Well, it's your podcast, so we'll give you the final word.
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 2: All right, Well, thank you for joining us. Thank you
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 2: Michael and Meghan for joining us for this series, and
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 2: I hope to see you again. Megan, definitely pull you
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 2: in when we do Dragon Age and whatever else you
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 2: want to join in for Yes, and all right, we'll
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 2: go ahead and wrap it there for mass effect, and
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 2: we will figure out what we're getting into next time.
• 1:45:36
  Speaker 2: So then god speed. All right, thank you for listening.
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 2: I've really enjoyed the conversation. I've really enjoyed all these conversations,
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 2: and I hope that you have as well. And if
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 2: you like to participate in some of these conversations, then
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 2: you can head over to Patreon dot com. Slash Mythmind.
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 2: Become a patron at any tier, even five dollars a month,
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 2: and that will give you an open invitation to all
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 2: three of our shows, because as a reminder, we have
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 2: three shows running right now. We have the main Mythic
• 1:46:05
  Speaker 2: Mind podcast, which is currently focusing on some CS Lewis stuff.
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 2: We also have Mythic Mind Movies and shows, which is
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 2: in the midst of a Star Wars series, and of
• 1:46:14
  Speaker 2: course we have Mythic Mind games. And so becoming a
• 1:46:17
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• 1:46:20
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• 1:46:25
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• 1:46:29
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• 1:46:32
  Speaker 2: ten dollars a month in higher are also getting access
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 2: to my new Intro to Philosophy course, and so that's
• 1:46:37
  Speaker 2: available if that's something that interests you, all right, Well
• 1:46:40
  Speaker 2: that's it for now. Looking forward to next time in
• 1:46:43
  Speaker 2: a couple of weeks, I think that we're going to
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 2: start a series on Final Fantasy Now that is going
• 1:46:50
  Speaker 2: to interest a number of you. If that doesn't interest you,
• 1:46:52
  Speaker 2: then know that there are gonna be a lot of
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 2: episodes between This is gonna be a long, kind of
• 1:46:57
  Speaker 2: overarching series. They are a number of titles in this
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 2: franchise that I haven't played yet that i'd like to
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 2: before we talk about them. There are some that I
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 2: would like to revisit that I haven't played for a
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 2: long time. And so that being said, seeing as I'm
• 1:47:09
  Speaker 2: not playing video games all day every day these days,
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 2: there's gonna be plenty of opportunity for other things in between.
• 1:47:15
  Speaker 2: As far as just the big ongoing series, that's what
• 1:47:17
  Speaker 2: we're gonna be looking at starting next time. All Right, Well,
• 1:47:21
  Speaker 2: that's it for now. The next thing to be coming
• 1:47:23
  Speaker 2: out from Mythic Mind will be over on the main
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 2: Mythic Mind podcast, where I think we'll be doing an
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 2: introduction to that Hideous Strength by C. S.
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 4: Lewis.
• 1:47:33
  Speaker 2: All Right, well that's it for now until next time. Godspeed,