[cDnStealth]

Originally Posted by Henry Fool

Spoiler!

Whether promises were broken, that's not a discussion I can add to.

On the war, I maintain that it's hopeless and more importantly it's presented to us as hopeless. The one thing you have to accept that it's the Crucible or nothing. They wouldn't have put all their resources on it and all their fleets behind it if they thought there was any other way. That's something I feel very strongly about. There's no knowing how many Repears there really are. I'm not sure you're right that most of them were in Sol, but even so, there may be many more outside the active theaters. If they were beaten back in Sol, they can simply continue their work. They won't run out of resources but the allience will, and soon.

It's not a winnable war strategically, not by a long shot. But like I said, much more importantly, that's how the story is told to us. If there was any other source of hope, they would not have committed everything to this crazy, desperate plan.

As for leaving the players with new questions. In a sense, but I still think that what the player actually gets is an explanation of their motivation more than an introduction of a new mystery. The mystery is essentially the same as it was before: the existence of millions of years old AIs. It's the same mystery as with the Reapers and I think it's one that's better left unexplained at this point. I don't think people would complain if the mystery had not been given a new face (the child), but it really is just a new face.

EDIT

Spoiler!

On the war, remember that it can take centuries to harvest and root out the advanced civilizations. That's how it was with the Protheans. Javik had known nothing else but the war against the Reapers. That's the time scale and it means nothing to the Reapers. Slowly but surely the races will run out of resources. It's not that you can retreat and build new civilizations to gather your strength. The Reapers can hit anywhere they like, literally endlessly.

One battle is meaningless by itself in the scheme of things. What made the Sol battle meaningful was the Crucible.

I agree, commenting on broken promises was not in our original discussion. I just brought it up because I see a lot of people complaining about it and I guess I see where they're coming from.

Spoiler!

The whole, "relying on the Crucible" thing is where I feel the ending fails. You spend the time building up your forces in the event that this thing might not be the solution. I mean, what if the Crucible docks and it does nothing? What if you get on board and find out that all it's capable of is obliterating everything? Do you just fire it because "its the last thing we were banking on?" No. And that's why I didn't like the choices presented to me at the end because, to me, I might as well have just been droping a giant nuke on the galaxy and all that I cared for. I'd rather go down fighting then submit and that is what the god is asking me to do. It would be like you get to Soveriegn in ME1 and it tells you that you're going to be annihilated and you are presented with the choice of submitting or dieing. That's what the ending of 3 feels like to me. I can't stand up and say, no. It's not a good ending because it throws out 3 games worth of build-up and decisions.

There is an article I linked to a couple pages back which I thought was an excellent read as to why the ending is terrible. I'll link it here again because he brings up a lot of points that I have issues with. http://jmstevenson.wordpress.com/201...mass-effect-3/

Saying the war is unwinable is different from showing it is unwinable. To me I've seen a lot of success to suggest that well coordinated attacks could be the ticket to destroying the Reapers. Perhaps its not but they haven't shown that it's impossible. Again I bring up the mass relays. You destroy a few of those in a few key systems with large Reaper presences and all of a sudden those enemy forces drop considerably.

Which brings me to my biggest question regarding the ending. When the Reapers capture the Citadel why do they not just go ahead with their original plan? They have control of the Citadel so why not lock down the mass relays and prevent the Crucible force from even being able to enter the system? It doesn't make sense.

EDIT

Spoiler!

Also, if the Citadel is sentient why did they need Sovereign to activate the mass relay? Couldn't the god just have opened the relay and signaled the Reapers?