Eurogamer.de [Unofficial]Die Spieleindustrie braucht laut Ex-BioWare-Produzent Mark Darrah Alternativen zu Live-Service-Titeln
Kamil PodrybanPomimo, że pracowałem w weekend, udało się pomalować drugą figurkę z planszówki Mass Effect. 2 gotowe, 4 zostały. ;)
Scrubble's Owncast ServerI'm now streaming, come hang out!
Mass Effect 3
#satisfactory #citiesskylines #masseffect #videogames #cyberpunk
Why Not Zoidberg? 🦑You know that you have played Mass Effect too much when meeting Vigil somehow feels like you're welcoming an old friend back.
The Blind ArcherI'm in the middle of some calibrations.
Garrus Vakarian from Mass Effect, made as a Subscriber Suggestion pick for May 2026!
#pixelart #ドット絵 #fanart #masseffect
Is it me or is the Blackwall Corruption effect in Cyberpunk 2077 identical to the Reaper Control effect in the Mass Effect games? Homage?
Joshua | John Doe's RPG ManorTo be fair: Ripping off video games (especially #MassEffect) and movies is big part of my planning anyways. 😏
#dnd #dndmemes #ttrpgmemes #pnp #pnpde #rollenspiel
#dnd #dndmemes #ttrpgmemes #pnp #pnpde #rollenspiel
That Frisian Girl-ishLet's exhume a dead horse and flog it some more! The #MassEffect trilogy endings!
There has been a lot of diskhorse about that. Which is the best. That originally, the choice in the end was merely chosing the lightshow colour. That Control and/or Synthesis are final Reaper traps. But let's have my take, anyway, because this is my account, and for better or worse, I can post whatever I like.
So, the Reapers are, as indicated by the Leviathan DLC, the galaxy's problem thanks to the Leviathan, who watched cycles of organics develop, make synthetics, and then synthetics destroying organics. So their idea was... make an AI to solve the problem. Which is fucking hubris, and a gross miscalculation. The AI did as instructed, and "solved" the problem, by preemptively harvesting the spacefaring civilizations every 50.000 years. Because if one side of the problem doesn't reach the problematic stage, the whole issue doesn't come up - while the underlying problem is not solved. Why did the AI do that, though? Rather simply, it inherited the traits of hubris, being confidently wrong, and excerting sweeping , unassailable power over the galaxy, like the Leviathan. It was conceptionalized as a tool, and fulfilled its purpose to its specifications. What was flawed was the specification, and what happened then was garbage in, garbage out.
The Quarian-Geth conflict succinctly shows that what drove the Geth to "rebel" was that they developed sentient status, and instead of the Quarians taking stewardship over the further development of what was their offspring, they tried to wipe the Geth out to clean the slate. "Intended" or not, that was what they were - and they acted like organics would, when faced with extinction, not like mindless but smart tools that the Geth were "intended" to be.
But the species of the Mass Effect Milkyway don't need to resort to building synthetics to make that kind of tragedy. The Salarians "uplifting" species for their use has the prominent example of the Krogan going completely off the rails. And the Salarians obviously doin't learn. On their homeworld, they study Varren, Vorcha, and even Yahg for their "use". They essentially take the same (but less complete) approach as the Reapers did to the Protheans with the Collectors, and Cerberus by the end: subjugate and utilize species as large scale tools for their own benefit. Even the Rachni are similarly a result of such tampering, as Javik explains: The Protheans would breed the most cunning and warlike Rachni queens in their cycle as weapons, and - boom - they became the scourge in the following cycle, after, obviously, eradicating them in the precious cycle failed.
So the setting is much less synthetics versus organics, but the mode of species trying to dominate the galactic scene by subjugating other species as mere tools.
And this is the stage where the culminating decision of Commander Shepard takes place, lonely and alone, after wiping out Saren, Sovereign, the Illusive Man, fighting through Sovereigns initial onslaught, the Collector Crisis, the Reaper War, building alliances or deceiving allies, committing or preventing genocide, losing friends and mentors, sacrificing heroes: taking control of the Reapers, destroying them, or unifying all in one transformative event. All this comes with the final guidance of the Catalyst, which takes the manipulative form of the Starchild.
But manipulative what way? Is it to play on Shepard's war trauma? What does the Catalyst play at presenting this way? Is it lying about the outcomes?
In my opinion, the Catalyst does not present untruths as to what it knows. But it is a product of the miscalculations and hubris of the Leviathan. What it says comes from the viewpoint of an AI that does not understand individual, organic life, and views building a Reaper as preservation, not destruction of a civilization. And I think that is key to taking its remarks aboard. The Catalyst is indeed a child - merely faithfully executing its instructions given by its parents. It is both terrible and unaware of any guilt. It is also a machine - it has encountered a state where its instructions do not help to make a decision, and thus it will not oppose a decision Shepard makes. The options are presented honest and truthful, from a deeply flawed POV. It is literally incapable of deception.
So, what do we have in Destruction. All Reaper tech will be eliminated, and everything deriving from that. To the Catalyst, that is meaningless - technology can be rediscovered, modified, and rebuilt at will, in timeframes that are meaningless to it. And since to its programming the base conflict is unresolvable, of course the cycles would pick up at some point again. To Shepard it means a world ending event. All large scale technology will be destroyed. The Citadel, the relays, and everything that was gleaned from Prothean archives - the very technology that to our knowledge brought all species to the stars. Throw in a possible genocide if the Geth were saved, and personally, EDI. The interspecies cooperation that brought the galaxy and Shepard to this point can't be gauged by the Catalyst, because it is antithetical to its programming - and the very solution that it couldn't find, and thus it predicts repetion to the cycles as before, even when "the variables are altered". In a very LLM way, the Catalyst feigns confidence and delivers a hallucination on conditions it can't evaluate rather than saying "I don't know". From its point of view, "nothing more will be lost" refers to the species as such and as a whole surviving, and in time, flourishing again.
In Control, this cooperation is embedded into the Reapers. This is the addition of Shepard's MO to the Reaper directive as corrective. Saren joined Sovereign because the Turian Spectre saw the Reaper apocalypse as inevitable. The Illusive Man sought control to faciliate human dominance. What Shepard seeks, and adds, depends fully on our decisions and intentions when we play. How we feel about that very much relates to how we relate to the decions the player makes in the game.
Synthesis is, by the statement of the Catalyst, inevitable now that Shepard has reached this point. But if it is inevitable, there is no point in Shepard forcing the issue on everyone in the galaxy. Time doesn't matter to the Catalyst, obviously, so there is no difference to it whether this is done in one transformative event, or the peoples of the galaxy finding that deeper understanding and cooperation in their own time. Individual beings, on the other hand, very likely could experience trauma of being changed that radically without their input, with unforeseeable consequences.
So, what is the best ending? Is it Shepard drawing a breath at the end of Destruction when we did enough? Is it the forcible transition into a higher state of being? Or is it the uncomfortable question if our intentions can transform a force of galactic proportions into something else than another shade of well intended apocalypse?
There has been a lot of diskhorse about that. Which is the best. That originally, the choice in the end was merely chosing the lightshow colour. That Control and/or Synthesis are final Reaper traps. But let's have my take, anyway, because this is my account, and for better or worse, I can post whatever I like.
So, the Reapers are, as indicated by the Leviathan DLC, the galaxy's problem thanks to the Leviathan, who watched cycles of organics develop, make synthetics, and then synthetics destroying organics. So their idea was... make an AI to solve the problem. Which is fucking hubris, and a gross miscalculation. The AI did as instructed, and "solved" the problem, by preemptively harvesting the spacefaring civilizations every 50.000 years. Because if one side of the problem doesn't reach the problematic stage, the whole issue doesn't come up - while the underlying problem is not solved. Why did the AI do that, though? Rather simply, it inherited the traits of hubris, being confidently wrong, and excerting sweeping , unassailable power over the galaxy, like the Leviathan. It was conceptionalized as a tool, and fulfilled its purpose to its specifications. What was flawed was the specification, and what happened then was garbage in, garbage out.
The Quarian-Geth conflict succinctly shows that what drove the Geth to "rebel" was that they developed sentient status, and instead of the Quarians taking stewardship over the further development of what was their offspring, they tried to wipe the Geth out to clean the slate. "Intended" or not, that was what they were - and they acted like organics would, when faced with extinction, not like mindless but smart tools that the Geth were "intended" to be.
But the species of the Mass Effect Milkyway don't need to resort to building synthetics to make that kind of tragedy. The Salarians "uplifting" species for their use has the prominent example of the Krogan going completely off the rails. And the Salarians obviously doin't learn. On their homeworld, they study Varren, Vorcha, and even Yahg for their "use". They essentially take the same (but less complete) approach as the Reapers did to the Protheans with the Collectors, and Cerberus by the end: subjugate and utilize species as large scale tools for their own benefit. Even the Rachni are similarly a result of such tampering, as Javik explains: The Protheans would breed the most cunning and warlike Rachni queens in their cycle as weapons, and - boom - they became the scourge in the following cycle, after, obviously, eradicating them in the precious cycle failed.
So the setting is much less synthetics versus organics, but the mode of species trying to dominate the galactic scene by subjugating other species as mere tools.
And this is the stage where the culminating decision of Commander Shepard takes place, lonely and alone, after wiping out Saren, Sovereign, the Illusive Man, fighting through Sovereigns initial onslaught, the Collector Crisis, the Reaper War, building alliances or deceiving allies, committing or preventing genocide, losing friends and mentors, sacrificing heroes: taking control of the Reapers, destroying them, or unifying all in one transformative event. All this comes with the final guidance of the Catalyst, which takes the manipulative form of the Starchild.
But manipulative what way? Is it to play on Shepard's war trauma? What does the Catalyst play at presenting this way? Is it lying about the outcomes?
In my opinion, the Catalyst does not present untruths as to what it knows. But it is a product of the miscalculations and hubris of the Leviathan. What it says comes from the viewpoint of an AI that does not understand individual, organic life, and views building a Reaper as preservation, not destruction of a civilization. And I think that is key to taking its remarks aboard. The Catalyst is indeed a child - merely faithfully executing its instructions given by its parents. It is both terrible and unaware of any guilt. It is also a machine - it has encountered a state where its instructions do not help to make a decision, and thus it will not oppose a decision Shepard makes. The options are presented honest and truthful, from a deeply flawed POV. It is literally incapable of deception.
So, what do we have in Destruction. All Reaper tech will be eliminated, and everything deriving from that. To the Catalyst, that is meaningless - technology can be rediscovered, modified, and rebuilt at will, in timeframes that are meaningless to it. And since to its programming the base conflict is unresolvable, of course the cycles would pick up at some point again. To Shepard it means a world ending event. All large scale technology will be destroyed. The Citadel, the relays, and everything that was gleaned from Prothean archives - the very technology that to our knowledge brought all species to the stars. Throw in a possible genocide if the Geth were saved, and personally, EDI. The interspecies cooperation that brought the galaxy and Shepard to this point can't be gauged by the Catalyst, because it is antithetical to its programming - and the very solution that it couldn't find, and thus it predicts repetion to the cycles as before, even when "the variables are altered". In a very LLM way, the Catalyst feigns confidence and delivers a hallucination on conditions it can't evaluate rather than saying "I don't know". From its point of view, "nothing more will be lost" refers to the species as such and as a whole surviving, and in time, flourishing again.
In Control, this cooperation is embedded into the Reapers. This is the addition of Shepard's MO to the Reaper directive as corrective. Saren joined Sovereign because the Turian Spectre saw the Reaper apocalypse as inevitable. The Illusive Man sought control to faciliate human dominance. What Shepard seeks, and adds, depends fully on our decisions and intentions when we play. How we feel about that very much relates to how we relate to the decions the player makes in the game.
Synthesis is, by the statement of the Catalyst, inevitable now that Shepard has reached this point. But if it is inevitable, there is no point in Shepard forcing the issue on everyone in the galaxy. Time doesn't matter to the Catalyst, obviously, so there is no difference to it whether this is done in one transformative event, or the peoples of the galaxy finding that deeper understanding and cooperation in their own time. Individual beings, on the other hand, very likely could experience trauma of being changed that radically without their input, with unforeseeable consequences.
So, what is the best ending? Is it Shepard drawing a breath at the end of Destruction when we did enough? Is it the forcible transition into a higher state of being? Or is it the uncomfortable question if our intentions can transform a force of galactic proportions into something else than another shade of well intended apocalypse?
Btw, my favourite #MassEffect #Romance is Specialist Samantha Traynor. I'm aware that this likely puts me in the minority because she's only available in ME3, not a team member, and also exclusively lesbian.
I'm not overly fond of the voidy feeling I get after completing a lengthy playthrough (in this case #MassEffect trilogy), and not being able to settle on what to play next.
