FULL REVIEW
Part 16: The Death of Gaia
Unlike ME2, the start of ME3 is relatively awkward and requires a little more time to get into, and this despite the trilogy’s best cinematic (leaving Earth). For all the buildup in the first two games, when the Reapers actually attack it is very sudden and rings a bit hollow. Although “sudden” is precisely how it must feel to the characters, the script asks a great deal of players to immediately care about a besieged Earth and immerse themselves in the story and the characters. Fortunately, the next two missions (Mars and Citadel) quickly establish ME3 as a serious and thoughtful drama.
Earth
It is obvious that the game intended to throw us into the fray from the get-go. Look at your watch: within 7 minutes of “BioWare presents” screen, you have a gun in your hand and you’re fighting Reapers in Vancouver. This is not enough to build drama or introduce meaningful story arcs, and what we see is pretty formulaic: Shepard’s been grounded pending an investigation into the destruction of the relay that killed 300,000 Batarians (ME2, “Arrival” DLC), Ashley’s been promoted, the Defense Council are stalling on war preparations, etc. A couple of pointless conversations later, Squidface McSquid and his buddies crash down on Earth and hell breaks loose. In fact, the introductory antics are so useless that it would have been better to just skip them: “BioWare presents... Shepard looking out the window at A BIG-ASS REAPER.” Nothing feels more like a slap-in-the-face, hello-there, deep-end-of-the-pool rude awakening than a cold open. What little information we do get in the initial convos that we may use later could be gleaned from off-hand remarks during the walk-and-talk with Anderson to get to the landing zone.
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The rest of the mission on Earth is little more than a new-player tutorial, so pretty much by definition it has nothing interesting to say. But then the game shows that it means business by delivering a total gut-punch of a cutscene. When escaping the husks, Shepard sees a child in an air duct and tries to rescue him, but the boy disappears. Later, she sees the boy board a shuttle, which is promptly shot down by a Reaper. Clint Mansell’s piano theme, which is reminiscent of Bach’s 5th violin sonata, is absolutely heartbreaking, and the scene has perfect pacing: that dramatic motivation that was so clearly lacking in the first few minutes now hits us like a freight train, perhaps too heavy-handed but nonetheless effective. Arguably, the goal of the child is to give Shepard an emotional hook to Earth and explore her guilt for not being able to save those she left behind, blah blah blah... but on some readings there’s more to it, which I’ll discuss in a later post. For now, suffice it to say that no other person acknowledges or interacts with the child, not even when he struggles to get on the shuttle in plain view of civilians and soldiers. And while I do not believe the infamous Indoctrination Theory, I do think that the child signifies something deeper.
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When Normandy leaves Earth, Anderson’s decision to stay behind feels like another one of those cheap dramatic moments to fabricate heroism when none is warranted, but in retrospect, at the end of the game, his newfound role as a frontline soldier turns out to be well suited to his character arc. No sooner than we get back to the Normandy, Admiral Hackett orders Shepard & Co. to Mars, where an archaeological team led by none other than Liara T’Soni has discovered an important Prothean artifact that may hold information on defeating the Reapers. So the game continues linearly as we’re dropped from the Vancouver harbor to the stormy sands of the Red Planet. Here, too, James Vega’s insistence that he stay behind and fight sounds like pointless military bravado, but this too receives proper analysis later as the greater theme of sacrificing your loved ones to win the war is fleshed out.
*cue Clint Mansell's piano*
Mars
I love the atmosphere in this mission. It excels in three categories that I value highly: music (Sam Hulick’s score is extremely suggestive), art direction (the Archives look grandiose, at once ancient and cutting-edge), and pacing (each combat encounter is more challenging than the previous one and they never feel repetitive). Cerberus’ intro as the game’s #2 enemy lacks some of the grandeur that one would expect of it. Instead, the script channels the drama through the personal diatribe between Shepard and Ashley. While I don’t find it very exciting to watch or play, it is consistent with these characters’ current arcs. In ME1, Ashley is a bigot but nonetheless disavows Cerberus for being too xenophobic. In ME2, she gives Shepard hell for working with them, though she seems more concerned with Shepard’s betrayal than with their methods and politics. In ME3, then, it makes sense that she would doubt whether Shepard is really Shepard and whether her allegiances have shifted. After all, Ashley didn’t have an entire game’s worth of soul-searching and questioning those allegiances, so a little catching up is warranted. This also serves as a convenient device to introduce new players to Shepard’s Cerberus past, using Ashley as a vehicle in this case. All of this happens fairly seamlessly, and although Ashley still seems pretentious at times, her chagrin is valid, unlike in ME2, where it felt fabricated for shock value. And Shepard’s reply in one of the Paragon dialogue options is absolutely on point: “I shouldn’t have to explain myself to you, Ash.” Yep.
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Liara’s reintroduction is also handled well. Some players criticize her transition from wunderkind archaeologist in ME1 to Shadow Broker in ME2 and then to an unholy archeo-Broker mixture in ME3. Personally, I find that both of these transitions are sensible. In ME2, Liara’s quest to recover Shepard’s body (driven by either friendship or love) lets her discover a talent for handling information and tracing data patterns, plus an insatiable curiosity, three skills also essential in academic studies. And it’s through her Shadow Broker contacts that she discovers the information that eventually justifies her eventual return to archaeology, spurred also by the aptly-termed mixture of “process of elimination and desperation” given the Reapers’ impending return. Indeed, my favorite part of this mission may well be the rebuilding of Liara’s rapport with Shepard. In three conversations (in the loading area and at two security stations), Liara is open about her worries and reaffirms her trust in and appreciation for her former colleague and friend. Plus, her line “I don’t know if I believe. I believe that you believe: maybe that’s enough” encapsulates well her attitude throughout the war, and indeed the attitudes of many others, humans and aliens alike, who follow Shepard reluctantly or without much faith, but knowing that her charisma is strong enough to pull them along.
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As a side note on the Mars topic, while the sudden discovery of the Prothean blueprints in the Mars Archives is convenient, it’s not finding-an-old-derelict-Reaper-just-when-we-need-a-Reaper-IFF convenient. ME2 did stretch the suspension of disbelief very very thin with that one, but the same cannot be said of ME3. At most, to reduce this convenience the script could have
How about a big ol' cup of shut-the-fuck-up, LC?
The Normandy Retrofit
I may be in the minority here, but I really like the progression of the Normandy through the three games. In ME1, it is a gloomy frigate with blocky lines and poorly detailed interiors, which is a good fit for that game’s tonal quality. In ME2, where everything is orange and shiny and full of clunky menus, so is the ship, and the Cerberus refit makes welcome additions in terms of discrete locales, areas, etc. And the Normandy in ME3 is how I always imagined a military frigate to look like: half-finished, patched-up, with abundant but functional lights, and a much more logical layout than either previous incarnation. From a perspective of gameplay, the addition of a fifth-level shuttle bay separate from engineering is valuable, as it helps diversify ship functions. From a perspective of aesthetics, the retrofit is the ideal vessel to take into a galaxy-wide war. While the first SR-1 looked unfinished in the sense of undecorated (like someone got lazy with the design and just added bulkhead after bulkhead without much thought), the retrofitted SR-1 looks unfinished in the sense of incomplete, and every hint of incompletion is highly detailed: cables hanging from the ceiling, half-off bulkheads, crates everywhere, improvised workstations like the vidcomm room and the XO office, and so on. The retrofitted Normandy looks like a real ship with a history and where actual people live and work. No doubt, some of this is attributable to technical progress in graphics: much changed in the five years between ME1 and ME3. But even now with the Legendary Edition, where ME1 got a big graphics boost, the layout of the original Normandy has stayed true to its 2007 version, and that is a good thing: I would have hated to see things remastered that needn’t have been.
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It is not until after the first visit to the Citadel that we truly get to enjoy the Normandy. A completionist might take a full hour just to explore the ship and exhaust every dialogue option, even in the early game with so few characters unlocked. Some old faces return (Joker, Adams, and Chakwas if you choose her over Michel) and some new ones appear. I’m absolutely in love with the new Alliance crew, Traynor and Cortez. Where do I even begin? Samantha is a delight: brilliant, witty, and charming, the perfect evolution of the yeoman role after Kelly Chambers, and with a much stronger role to play. It’s also a plus that she’s a potential flirt/casual sex option for Shepard, and I love that she’s lowkey jealous of Shepard’s more serious romances! Cortez also is fantastic, not only because of explicit gay representation (about time, too), but especially because of his backstory. He is the human face of the tragic loss of so many colonists over the last two games, and his sorrow comes through so well through his dialogue and side quest. His semi-platonic friendship and banter with Vega are also highly entertaining. Chawkas says that it’s people like Joker and Jenkins that make the Alliance so special, and likewise it’s characters like Traynor and Cortez that add so much personality to a game. They’re not needed, per se, but we see what happens when a game focuses strictly on what’s needed and hardly bothers to garnish it... *cough*ME1*cough*.
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Of course, EDI’s new body is the major addition to “the Normandy,” so to speak, so consequential in fact that I will discuss it in a separate post. Meanwhile, in the next part I tackle ME3’s emphasis on interstellar politics.
“I'll just be here... flying the ship.”
Click on each image for the full version.
Part 17: Quid Pro Quo
Building on ME2’s assemble-your-team, ME3 is best described as this-for-that: Shepard needs help for Earth, so she turns to the Turians; but the Turians need the Krogan for Palaven; but the Krogan need a cure from the Salarians; but the Salarians won’t give it; etc. So the story quickly turns into a political give-and-take depending on each race’s most pressing need. Not only is all of this realistic, as each species look out for themselves in their hour of need, but it’s also compelling, forcing Shepard to look beyond human interests and develop a more diverse moral understanding than in the previous games.
Palaven Burning
The first main story mission outside the mandated prologue immediately sets the tone for the entire game. The best fleet in the galaxy, the Turians, are being “wiped out entire platoons at a time,” as Garrus puts it, leading Shepard to comment that “that’s not war: it’s slaughter.” Seeing the proud Turians recoil before a massively superior invader is shocking to the lore-conscious player, so I can imagine the terror that the sight of Palaven burning must instill in the characters. And although the game’s first emotional hook is Earth (obviously), it’s the sight of the turian homeworld on fire that drives home how bad things really are. The mission on Palaven’s moon Menae is average and serves mostly as a two-fold introduction: (1) to the Reaper main enemy types, from Marauders to Brutes; (2) to the plot’s first motivating factor, Victus’ sudden promotion and the necessity of building difficult, impromptu alliances.
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As many commentators remark, Ashley Williams’ fears in ME1 that aliens will end up turning their back to humans come true when no species answer Earth’s call. Nor should they, as all Council homeworlds are attacked at roughly the same time (and no, that doesn’t make Ashley not-a-racist: it just means that she has basic common sense). The script handles this obvious fact with the very bare minimum talent that is required not to screw it up. As I argued in Part 11, good stories are natural consequences of intriguing settings, and settings don’t get much more intriguing than an invasion of big-ass machines. It’s inherently compelling drama, so, at first, all you need to do as a writer is sit back and let it unfold. The Reapers are attacking every world; so every world will be scrambling; so everyone will need to receive help; so nobody will be willing to give help; and everyone realizes that they cannot win unless they help one another, which is the very thing they cannot do; and pronto, you’ve got your basic quid pro quo plot.
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So despite the occasionally formulaic elements—combat on Menae is fairly basic and involves a lot of walking and backtracking, which are required for tons of expository dialogue—the beginning of the game holds up well precisely because not much is needed except for the story itself. I’m grateful that the authors, in these early missions, keep it all very simple and allow us to just sit back and be scared shitless of the Reapers.
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But some of the game’s most interesting conversations happen right after Menae, as newly-minted Primarch Victus lays down a shocking demand: if the Krogan could “take the pressure off Palaven,” the Turians will assist humanity. This may seem convoluted: why involve a third party instead of just requesting human-turian mutual aid? Because a seasoned officer like Victus, who also has a knack for unconventional tactics, knows what everybody hesitates to admit: the war cannot be won without the Krogan. Even Joker knows it: “where’s the meat?” he asks; “where are the Krogan and the Batarians?” Yep. So Victus’ request is reasonable. If anything, what’s weird is that he’d ask Shepard or that the Council’s efforts to involve the Krogan are limited to asking one Spectre on a small frigate. But: (1) The galaxy is clearly in disarray and official channels are breaking down: Shepard herself only becomes involved due to unofficial machinations by the turian Councilor. (2) There may well have been other diplomatic attempts behind the scenes. (3) This is simply the one effort that the game decides to narrate: while authorial omniscience—choosing which stories to tell and which ones to ignore—ought to be seamless, certain contrivances are forgivable because “oh yeah of course they’re asking Shepard: she’s the hero of THIS game!” In this case, all of that is rather harmless, though that’s not always the case in ME3.
Menae being so close to Palaven makes for impressive imagery.
Waterfall Poetry
If we thought that Victus’ terms were bad, Wrex’s are worse: cure the genophage. This, too, is sensible given this universe’s background assumptions. The Krogan have only one bargaining chip and they must use it. Thankfully, the game doesn’t drop a deus ex machina by suddenly coming up with a cure. One had been developed/destroyed in ME1, and Mordin’s student Maelon was researching one in ME2, so none of this comes out of the blue in ME3. But neither is it entirely predictable, because the plot introduces it in a believable and interesting way. A Salarian mole has leaked to the Urdnot clan that a fertile female Krogan from Maelon’s experiments is still alive and is fully immune. Dramatically speaking, it’s a nice touch that the cure comes from Salarians and that a Salarian reveals its existence despite his government’s best efforts to keep it secret. Of course, when we learn who that Salarian is, it all makes sense. It’s quite in-character for the great Mordin Solus to have anticipated that this would be the right time to reveal the cure’s existence, as he too has realized that this war cannot be won without the Krogan and that this is the only way to get them to fight. (Whether any of this is ethical, of course, is a debate for the next post).
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Unlike the mission on Menae, the one on Sur’Kesh is innovative and exciting. While it’s the same Cerberus troops as on Mars, each tight-quarters battle gets more challenging, culminating in a difficult Atlas mech at the end. If the player has completed the Eden Prime mission (“From Ashes” DLC) before this, as they should have, then this isn’t the first Atlas they run into; but if not, it may come as a shock. The Atlas is much harder than the YMIR mechs from ME2, where all you needed to do was duck and pop out occasionally. Too bad that Wrex plays no part in taking it down, because there is nothing I want more than to see a large Krogan take on a large machine.
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Fun fact: if you played the ME2 DLC “Lair of the Shadow Broker,” and if you bring Garrus and Liara as your squad mates here, you are treated to a hilarious line. After the yahg test subject escapes containment, Shepard remarks “there goes the next Shadow Broker,” and Garrus piles on with “could’ve sworn he was muttering T’Soni the whole time.” Liara can only reply “not funny.” Oh but it is. So much.
Funniest line of the trilogy, hands-down.
A Krogan Renaissance
“Priority: Tuchanka” is one of the trilogy’s cornerstone missions. There is a strong sense that this is a mission that we were always meant to play, somehow, somewhen, ever since ME1. Aside from the brief forays in ME2 loyalty missions, the Krogan homeworld has been shrouded in mystery and so many questions are left unanswered. Why did the Krogan blow themselves up, pre-genophage? What did their civilization look like? What makes their planet so treacherous to have molded them into warmongering tank-lizards? All these questions are answered here. The exploration of the ancient catacombs is one of the game’s most fascinating backdrops, and Liara can provide great archaeological and anthropological commentary. Eve’s and Wrex’s voiceovers are also interesting.
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Other than that, the mission has two highlights: (1) the salarian dalatrass’ revelation to Shepard that the cure can be sabotaged without anyone knowing, thus posing a moral dilemma; and (2) the first up-close encounter with a Reaper Destroyer. The latter enemy is obviously too strong for Shepard to bring down, and it won’t be until later in the game (Rannoch) that she gets that chance. She has to find another way, and letting the Mother of All Thresher Maws have a shot at the Reaper is absolutely ridiculous... in a good way! Everything is exaggerated on Tuchanka, the Texas of the galaxy, and a giant worm killing a giant machine has a cool factor of a thousand. Eve’s comment makes sense, too: if Kalros represents Tuchanka as a whole, then her taking down the Reaper is symbolic of the upcoming Krogan renaissance. But poetry aside, it’s just plain fun to watch.
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As for the genophage cure sabotage, I’ve always enjoyed that the game allows you this choice. I always felt bitter about not being able to save the cure on Virmire in ME1, where our choice was limited to whether or not to kill the only dissenting voice. Here, instead, the player can actively decide whether or not to cure the Krogan, a massive decision that has real repercussions in the rest of the story. One, of course, is the morality of the choice itself: to allow the Krogan to be deceived is a huge Renegade boost. Another is Mordin’s fate. While it is possible to save Mordin (if one killed Wrex on Virmire in ME1 and destroyed Maelon’s data in ME2 and deceives the Krogan here), the vast majority of players will opt to allow the cure to be dispersed, which always results in Mordin’s death, either in the shroud’s explosion or by Shepard’s own hand. Finally, choosing to deceive the Krogan will effectively remove their support later in the game, resulting in a pretty big hit to the war assets. For these reasons, actually curing the genophage and allowing Mordin to sacrifice himself are the canon choices. They’re also the most defensible ones from an ethical perspective. As I discuss in the next post, Mordin is not exactly a good guy. He’s funny and likable, but he’s written specifically as an aging man tormented by his role in the galaxy’s worst genocide, so redemptive suicide marks the ideal conclusion to his character arc. Plus, if you let Mordin die you get Wrex’s hilarious line: “we will name a baby after him, maybe a girl.” Krogan aren’t exactly known for egalitarian gender roles...
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In the next post, I will discuss the morality of the genophage in some more detail.
I don’t know what those genophage-curing snowflakes are supposed to be, but they look like hope.
Click on each image for the full version.
Part 18: The Gentle Genocide
Few issues in the trilogy are more heavily philosophical than the artificial uplifting of the Krogan and their consequent forced sterilization through the genophage. These are incredibly demanding topics that ME1 introduces and that ME2 and ME3 develop in fine detail. Through a cornucopia of fascinating conversations with Shepard and among NPCs, the authors reveal a nuanced understanding of the morality of genocide that is totally unusual for this sort of medium. In fact, from a purely philosophical viewpoint, the genophage (not the organics-synthetics conflict) is the trilogy’s narrative high point.
Genophage, Genocide
Is what the Salarians do to the Krogan “genocide”? Is it attempted genocide? Dictionaries are too vague to assess real-world connotations, so let’s use real-world examples. Article II of the 1948 U.N. Genocide Convention defines genocide as a list of acts “with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” The list includes killing, serious bodily or mental harm, forcible relocation of children, intentional hindrance of life conditions to bring about destruction... and, crucially, “imposing measures intended to prevent births.” Ding! We have a winner. According to the best understanding of 21st-century Earthlings, the genophage is genocide. (And if you really do like dictionaries, check out the definitions in the OED and M-W, which are conceptually identical).
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But it’s not that simple. Mordin insists that the genophage does not kill, as it does not directly cause the death of any Krogan; and that it does not harm and is not a sterilization plague, as it does not render the Krogan infertile as a whole. Instead, he calls it a sterility plague that adjusts fetus viability to ensure specific Krogan population target numbers. And what numbers are those? Mordin says that the final goal is to keep the Krogan population stable, but of course stability is a relational and teleological concept: something can only be stable relative to a specified goal. In this case, the goal in question is producing a population of Krogan that is not too large. Too large for whom? For the rest of the galaxy’s liking, of course. Then the reasons for this liking are a separate concern: it could be that the galaxy fears that unchecked numbers of Krogan will kill everyone, which would make self-defense the telos of their stability; or it could be that they simply don’t like their smell, which would make racism the telos. I’ll talk about this in the next section. For now, if we take Mordin at his word, we can agree that the goal of the genophage is to adjust Krogan population for a specific goal that is set by someone other than the Krogan.
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(Notice I did not use words like ‘natural’ or ‘unnatural’. Everything that happens in nature is natural by definition, and all species are part of nature, so Krogan reproduction without Salarian interference has no more right to naturality than genophage-affected Krogan reproduction. Simply, the unnatural does not exist. At most, we can say that the genophage is a morally unwarranted natural action, and that is fine... but again that is no different than other kinds of morally unwarranted natural actions, like theft, murder, assault, and so on).
“Rest, young mother. Find your gods. Find someplace better.” It's the word 'mother' that gets me.
The (Im)morality of Design
Every war criminal, every genocidal maniac, every mass murderer, hell even every petty thief or adulterer can come up with “reasons” for what they’re doing. But as I said in Part 3 when discussing Ashley’s racism, having reasons is hardly special since they can be bad reasons, and to explain does not mean to justify, let alone to endorse. Now let us consider this fact in conjunction with the observation that the unnatural does not exist and that we should judge each action based only on its practical and moral justification.
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The resulting questions are simple: when the Salarians uplifted the Krogan to fight the rachni, and later affected their fertility through the genophage, (1) were they practically justified? and (2) were they morally justified? It may be obvious that the answer to question #1 is yes, but the answer to question #2 is unclear. Those who take a more pragmatic view of ethics might conclude that practical justification underlies all moral justification and that both questions should be answered in the same way. Conversely, those adhering to strict deontological ethics will be hard-pressed to morally justify these actions no matter the consequences. And those with utilitarian views might conclude that while these actions were objectively evil, they were a necessary evil to prevent further suffering. In the rest of this post I will briefly discuss these three views.
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The consequentialist view
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To endorse consequentialism about ethics is to argue that a certain goal that is subjectively valuable justifies the means are necessary to achieve it, insofar as those means entail less suffering; that is, the overall utility should be a net gain. In Mass Effect, the end in question is the survival of the galaxy, and the means are the krogan’s uplifting (to fight the rachni) and their subsequent subjugation (to keep them from turning on their uplifters). In both cases, all other major sentient species seem to have agreed and cooperated, although the turians and the salarians were most instrumental. So these actions make good consequentialist sense, because when the likely alternative is a bloody war, first via the rachni and then the krogan themselves, uplifting and sterilizing the krogan is the solution with the least amount of suffering for all parties involved.
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Even then, one should distinguish between the two actions, because the krogan’s uplifting doesn’t carry the same moral weight of their subjugation. It’s one thing to put a gun in their hands and point them to the fight, but another to chase them back to their rubble once their demands are deemed too big to handle. The uplifting does not require or predict the genophage, while the genophage is supposedly made necessary by the uplifting. This is not to say that one is more right or wrong than the other, but only that they are on two different moral levels. The krogan’s uplifting is either an act of great generosity or a way to use a less advanced species as a tool, while the genophage is either a massacre to avoid taking responsibility for the uplifting or a late fix for badly calculated odds during the uplifting. So there may be moral reasons to justify the uplifting that do not apply to the genophage, and vice-versa. These concerns are discussed by both Mordin and Maelon in ME2, and in more detail by the krogan characters in ME3.
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The deontological view
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The Kantian-deontological perspective is mercifully easy: it is immoral to use any rational being as a mere means to a goal that they did not determine and could not even in theory consent to. This seems to be the crux of Mordin’s soul-searching in ME2, where he states that the krogan uplifting was “foolish” because it turned the krogan into an “instrument” -- i.e., a mere means. The genophage itself, of course, similarly uses the krogan, this time to keep their numbers in check. In both cases, the concept is the same: the fate of the krogan is determined by outsiders against the krogan’s will. And while we could say that the krogan may have welcomed the uplifting, which leapfrogged their technology by centuries, they may not have accepted if they had known its consequences down the road; and for sure they could not have consented rationally to their own sterilization. Therefore, at the very least the genophage is deontologically immoral, and the uplifting is probably immoral too.
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Notice that on this view the consequences are irrelevant. Measurable effects do matter, practically speaking, and certainly they can be considered when deciding whether to act, but they play no part in the moral assessment of an action. This means that the uplifting and the genophage are forever morally wrong, and they remain morally wrong even if one decides that they are the best thing to do for practical and consequentialist reasons. At most, we can say that they are circumstantially sensible but morally impermissible, which is fancy way to say “necessary evil”.
In conclusion, I think that this issue turns on the veracity of the predictions that a violent krogan expansion was really going to happen. As usual, it is a fine line between “the krogan grow too fast and they will kill us all, so we must defend ourselves” and “the krogan grow too fast for our own subjective taste and we don’t fancy giving away some of our riches, so we must keep them in their place.” Mordin remains convinced that the krogan were a real threat; Wrex is not so sure. It’s hard to say, as this is a fictional problem in a fictional world, but we do know that in the real world oppressors often resort to the argument of self-defense to justify the annihilation of those that they perceive as their moral inferiors... so when the salarians say that krogan expansion endangers all galactic life, that should be a big fat red flag.
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In the next post, I discuss the lowest point of ME3’s writing, namely the total mess that is the Citadel coup.
Salarians created the problem by unwarranted intervention...
...and they attempted to fix it through another. I guess Maelon & Mordin do believe two wrongs make a right.
Part 19: Coup d’Éclat
The Citadel coup orchestrated by Cerberus and Udina, while spectacular and full of éclat, is badly written, hastily executed, and does not advance the plot significantly. It feels like a contrivance devised solely to justify a few dramatic moments: Thane’s death, KAshley’s confrontation with Shepard, and bringing the war to the Citadel. These moments are valid and deserved much better treatment than this kitchen-sink mission. In this post I suggest an alternative rewriting (with minor but crucial changes) that would fix most of these problems.
A Coup, a Coup, What Is It to You?
Note: throughout this article I refer to Williams because that is who I always save on Virmire in ME1, but the same exact events happen with Alenko instead, so replace “Ashley” with “Kaiden” as needed.
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It takes a lot of creativity to come up with a good reason for the Citadel coup. Even the Codex, post-facto, is vague. Presumably, it must have been motivated by the same reason behind all coups: to obtain more power for someone that doesn’t have it and who thinks they can do a better job at running things. So, presumably, Cerberus intends to assassinate the Council, with Udina’s help. Why? Presumably, to install him as the only Councilor. What would that get Ceberus? Presumably, control over the Citadel and its fleets, plus C-Sec. And would that get Cerberus?
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Answering this question requires a bit of “reading the script” through to the end, and even then the answers are not satisfactory. Say, first, that both Udina and The Illusive Man are indoctrinated and seize the Citadel on the Reapers’ behalf. Why would the Reapers care? When they want to take the Citadel, they just do, as shown by the ease with which Sovereign did in ME1 and Harbinger does toward the end of ME3. So it would be needlessly convoluted to orchestrate a coup driven by indoctrinated human pawns, especially at this junction of the story when the Reapers have no use or interest for the Citadel. Nor would it make sense for the Reapers to stoke the fires of the Cerberus conflict to weaken the other species by making them fight among themselves, as the Reapers show zero interest in anything that isn’t the Harvest itself (which makes sense, given their vast superiority).
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Could TIM and Udina have acted independently of the Reapers, instead? That’s still dubious. First, it is unclear to what extent can TIM do things that are not the direct will of the Reapers; and while we don’t know whether Udina was indoctrinated, we do know that TIM is. Second, even if TIM does retain a modicum of free will, as Saren did, it’s unclear what he would want with the Citadel. Maybe he thinks that it would help him control the Reapers, as the Citadel will be the missing piece to complete the Catalyst... but he cannot possibly know that at this point of the story, so this answer requires more “reading the script.” Another possibility is that he may believe that the Citadel assets might help him prevail against those who seek to destroy the Reapers; and yet another option is that he could be looking for more subjects for his indoctrination experiments. Neither option would be contradictory.
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But these options have two big problems: (1) there is no evidence for them in the script; and (2) the Citadel coup is the absolute worst way to attain them. The Citadel a risky target with very heavy security, and failure would expose Cerberus to massive retaliation, lose them the only potentially sympathetic seat on the Council, and jeopardize any pull with the Citadel population they might have had pre-coup. It’s a terrible strategic decision. It would make more sense to try and capture Omega; surely enough, Cerberus does try that too, and the “Omega” DLC isn’t fraught by the same plot problems. But as it stands, the Citadel coup makes no sense from a story viewpoint.
i cry evri tiem
Living and Dying on the Citadel
Of course, the fourth-wall-breaking reason for the Citadel coup is that the authors need three things to happen and didn’t think of a better place to make them happen. The first is Thane’s death; here I am assuming that Thane was recruited in ME2 and didn’t die in the suicide mission, and I won’t consider alternative scenarios with Kirrahe, etc. Thane’s death serves only one purpose: to make us hate Kai Leng. It’s okay to use the death of a sympathetic ally to motivate antagonism toward a villain. Indeed, nearly all villains are hated precisely because they kill or want to kill good people. But as there is no real reason for the Citadel coup, Kai Leng also has no real reason to be there, so all of his actions are automatically gratuitous. How he kills Thane also irks me: in an insignificant fistfight, while Shepard watches, and while the Salarian Councilor is already safe. Thane’s death is bad not only because it’s inconsequential to the plot, but because it’s so anti-climactic. None of this erases the tragic beauty of his actual death scene in the hospital, which is among the trilogy’s most emotional moments: I literally ugly-cry whenever Shepard says “meet you across the sea.” But I wish that it had been for something more than villain-baiting.
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The second goal that the Citadel coup serves is the reintroduction of Ashley in the Normandy... or the possibility of killing her off for good. I’ve heard players say that they save their most hated character on Virmire, typically Ashley, just so they can kill her themselves here. Ouch! Unlike Thane’s death, this scene makes some sense. Not because of the Council: the dynamics between Udina and the other Councilors are as poorly rendered as Udina’s reason for orchestrating the coup, and the standoff feels artificial; i.e., not even for one second do I believe that this Council is actually in any danger. But the personal confrontation between Ashley and Shepard carries more weight. If Shepard has a high Reputation and has reassured Ashley earlier that she no longer works for Cerberus, then it is sensible that she gets to win her trust now. Still, that does not justify Ashley literally drawing a gun on her superior officer, something that both Shepard and Garrus give her hell for later on. Just as in ME2, Ashley’s anger is unjustified, inconsistent, and puerile, and this scene is no exception.
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Finally, the third goal of the Citadel coup is to “bring the war” to the Citadel. A good idea, in theory, with two issues: (1) Most of the changes to the Citadel post-coup are cosmetic: blasted glass, smoke in the lake, sparks from power lines. It’s almost as if the authors wanted the players to see the war hit the Citadel, because aside from than these visual clues almost nothing changes. (2) The Citadel’s pre-coup portrayal was already quite good. Civilians talk only about the war, all side quests are about procuring help for the war, all one-click mini-interventions are about settling disputes related to war resource management, and even background conversations that Shepard has no part in are about the war, from the asari PTSD patient to the heartbreaking case of the human mother looking for her deployed son. Visually, too, the Citadel is already in full war mode: a refugee camp in the docking bay, a busy hospital, and a lot of troops everywhere do a lot more than some fire and smoke to remind us that this is a galaxy at war.
Life support is so empty without him!
How It Could Have Been
Again, although the three major events that happen during and after the coup -- Thane dies, the Ashley conflict is resolved, and the war comes to the Citadel -- are each individually important and valid, they feel contrived and find poor justification in the script. How could have they taken place, instead? Say that we want to preserve these three events, and maybe also keep at least one aspect of the whole coup debacle: Udina’s betrayal. I’m a sucker for intra-human conflict in this trilogy, and he’s a sleazy bastard, so let’s say that he does betray the Council and that he’s in bed with Cerberus.
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Here’s an alternative story that makes a lot more sense and is only slightly less spectacular than the Citadel coup, as that is certainly a valid concern when writing an action shooter.
When Shepard first comes to the Citadel after Mars with a wounded Ashley, Udina downplays the Cerberus threat and insists that Shepard focus on the war while he “will take care of Cerberus.” This plants the first seed of doubt that Udina may be shady. Their conversation is cut short by the turian Councilor, who offers Shepard the deal on Palaven that jumpstarts the plot, and everything else happens as before. Some time later, Udina offers Spectre status to Ashley and insists that she focus on infiltrating and crippling Cerberus, while he “will take care of the Reapers.” While this may reassure players that this is what he meant when he said he’d take care of Cerberus, it should also reinforce their suspicions that Udina is dirty because he’s using the same language with Ashley as with Shepard, seemingly pitting them against one another. Then, after Tuchanka, Shepard receives a distress call by the salarian Councilor. An assassin is hunting down the Council, and there is evidence that Udina and a new Spectre were the ones who smuggled him onto the Citadel. Upon landing at the Citadel, Shepard is contacted by Thane, who is trying to make his way up to her. He tells her that the assassin is a Cerberus agent named Kai Leng, who he used to know by fame. He also tells her that Ashley is at the embassy with Udina, which all but confirms to the player that Ashley and Udina are responsible for the attempted coup. After defeating Cerberus troops all over C-Sec, Shepard chases Kai Leng to the elevator and reaches the Council before he does. Udina has told them that Shepard is the assassin who’s after them. The Council seem to believe him, but Ashley is not sure. Shepard explains about Kai Leng, whom Ashley believes to be a diplomat and whom she admits to letting onto the station for the purpose of peace talks with the Council. Both Ashley and Shepard thus realize that they’ve been had. A showdown ensues, and players can decide whether to trust Ashley or kill her. And while all the humans are busy accusing each other, Kai Leng, hidden in the shadow, is lining up his shots to kill the Council... when fellow assassin Thane arrives, understands immediately what Kai Leng’s vantage point must be, and throws himself in the way of his shot, saving the Council and giving Shepard and/or Ashley time to either arrest or execute Udina. Kai Leng beats it. Crisis averted. Thane dies in the hospital later.
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This story is very similar to the one we see in the game, but it avoids all of the pitfalls. (1) Cerberus doesn’t attempt a silly invasion and instead relies on clean infiltration to score an advantageous political assassination. (2) Udina’s prior behavior anticipates his eventual betrayal during the coup. (3) Thane’s sacrifice is truly heroic, giving his life to prevent a political power grab, consistently with his drive to save as many lives as he can with the time he has left. He also dies doing the reverse of what he had spent a lifetime doing, placing himself in the crossfire for once... as his wife once had. His death scene can then play out normally. (4) Ashley learns that her distrust of Shepard made her easy to manipulate, so her fruitless anger is now punished: after all, bad things should happen to you when you fail to trust the hero. Then she can still be killed or reasoned with, and let on to the Normandy or left behind. To add a layer of moral choice, Shepard may even decide to have Bailey arrest her for complicity in attempted murder, of course after the Council revokes her Spectre status on the spot.
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To be honest, I’d be fine if the assassin weren’t in this game at all. Kai Leng is a broody incel who scares absolutely no one and who isn’t even a challenge in a boss fight. In fact, the whole revised story above could work with just Udina and without Kai Leng. But since we never get to fight TIM or Harbinger (two decisions that I wholeheartedly support), it makes good ludic sense to be able to fight a top lieutenant; plus, in my revised story, he can be actually threatening and we can despise him for murdering Thane in the “right way.” As it stands, instead, the sole purpose of the Citadel coup is to make us afraid of him, and that’s not happening.
Joker's fictional account of the Citadel coup (Citadel DLC) is still better than the actual coup.
Part 20: A Home on Rannoch
The geth-Quarian conflict finds a dramatic and exciting resolution after two games’ worth of buildup. While not perfect, this is the moment in the trilogy where the player’s past choices matter the most, although the repercussions for the rest of ME3 are surprisingly mild. Fan-favorites Tali and Legion steal the show with a series of exceptional conversations about the plight of AIs in a universe dominated by organics.
A Geth Consensus?
Already in ME1, the geth are more than your average mad robots. While this is never central to the plot, the conflict with the Quarians is detailed in a couple of conversations with Tali. More importantly, we learn from both Saren and Vigil the prothean VI that the geth worship the Reapers, or “Old Machines,” as they call them. It is unclear by ME1 lore alone why exactly this is, other than they see the Reapers as the pinnacle of all synthetic life. Then, in ME2, we learn that a schism is taking place within the geth consensus. The geth that Legion refers to as “heretics” worship the Old Machines, while others (perhaps a majority?) do not. We also conclude, though this is not stated explicitly, that the non-heretical geth are still self-isolating on Rannoch, the old quarian homeworld, as they would have had no reason to come out of exile to follow Saren.
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What does it mean for a machine to “worship” another? Is “heretic” a proper moniker for a synthetic being? For that matter, what even constitutes a difference of opinion among machines that lack individuality? As Legion explains in ME2, the geth are pure software who can be occasionally uploaded to mobile platforms, and from these platforms they experience a modicum of individuality, namely perspective. No two geth see the same thing, so all of the data collected from multiple geth platforms coalesces into a consensus shared instantly among all geth. Contrast this with the Borg from Star Trek, who retain similar spatial distinctions but whose consensus is centralized through a Queen. The geth, instead, appear to function democratically, and as disagreement is the heart of democracy, a schism of this sort was all but inevitable. What ultimately tempted some geth but not others was the promise of code upgrades from Nazara, the Reaper that humans know as Sovereign; plus the desire to follow the “pinnacle” of synthetic life. It is unclear, instead, why many geth did not follow Nazara: did they find the Reapers’ goals morally objectionable? Were they uncomfortable with how the code may denature the geth? We can only speculate.
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Not that Legion (or Shepard) have a lot of respect for this schism, as they shouldn’t, since the heretics have turned violent and intentionally allied with the Reapers. Thus, toward the end of ME2, players are given the option of either destroying the heretics or rewriting them to make them agree with the rest of the geth. Ironically, destroying them is more respectful of their individuality as sentient programs: Shepard has no qualms killing sentient beings who align with the Reapers—she kills people for much less!—so the geth are no different. Instead, rewriting them reaffirms their machine nature and in a sense deprives them of individuality. And while in ME2 this conflict is limited to the player’s head and has no consequences on either gameplay or storytelling, it becomes important to ME3, where the consequences of this choice (and others) begin to matter.
In retrospect, it makes no sense for the geth to keep the most advanced non-heretical platform alive...
“Does This Unit Have Rights?”
Four geth-related choices from ME2 make a difference in ME3: (1) whether Legion’s loyalty mission was completed successfully; (2) whether Tali’s loyalty mission was completed successfully; (3) whether the heretics were destroyed or rewritten; and (4) whether a disagreement between Tali and Legion about sending quarian intel to the geth was resolved through either a Paragon or a Renegade dialogue choice. These four, combined with three more choices in ME3, determine whether Shepard can broker a peace treaty between the Quarians and the geth, ending a 300-year-old war and cementing her reputation as a peacemaker. As it turns out, the Reaper upgrades that were given to the heretical geth have turned them into fully evolved AIs with individuality, which makes sense as that would be pretty much the only upgrade that sentient machines would crave. This fact is a game-changer, and when Legion discovers it, the dilemma shifts back to what it always was and should have been: do the geth deserve to exist as self-determining individuals? This dilemma is all the more pressing as it happens in the middle of a quarian attack to retake Rannoch, so allowing Legion to disseminate the Reaper code to the rest of the geth presents the very real danger of strengthening the geth to the detriment of the Quarians.
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This, then, is why those choices in ME2 matter so much. If Shepard has sufficient clout with both the geth and the Quarians, as exemplified through Legion and Tali, the newly-minted geth AIs cease hostilities and the Quarians do not take advantage of the situation to kill them all. Legion is lost either way. But without such sufficient clout, either the geth or the Quarians are wiped out and the player’s EMS score is severely damaged. More importantly, if the player chooses the save the geth, Tali commits suicide when faced with the destruction of her people, which has a major emotional impact on the story. (Side note. Tali is a huge favorite of Mass Effect fans. I love her, don’t get me wrong, but she’s not even among my top five NPCs, so her suicide here doesn’t hit me like it seems to hit others. Now, I never played this game with a male Shepard, so Tali has never been a romance option for me. Plus, as an older person, I am not susceptible to youthful “waifu” charm, as it were. Thus, I may be less emotionally invested than others, and her death is on par with all the other major death scenes in the trilogy, from Mordin to Thane to Legion himself: beautifully tragic and well scripted and acted, but not any more special).
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While ME3 hints at the moral core of the geth plot, it stops short of making a compelling moral analysis. The conflict between organics and synthetics is interesting not so much from a technical or even a metaphysical viewpoint, but from an ethical one. “Does this unit have a soul?” asks Legion. Fascinating, sure, but not as important as “does this unit have rights?” Can the geth, who are pure software, determine their own interest and how to pursue it? Let’s be clear, I’m not saying that Legion’s famous line is badly written. On the contrary, possessing a soul is one sure way to ensure that one is an individual. But it is one thing to be an individual, and quite another to be an individual with rights that are both nominally equal and actually equitably enforced. The latter is a further step, one that ME3 does not explore in as much depth as it could have. Perhaps this is a gripe from a philosophy professor like myself, but it always rubbed me wrong that the script assumes that being an individual automatically grants one full personhood and incontrovertible moral recognition. That is at least debatable, so I wish that it were debated. For example, one might say that even though Legion and the new geth AIs are definitely individuals, they lack the full recognition granted to other individuals because they have no culture, and freedom and rights are to be developed culturally and negotiated socially through rival value-constructions—i.e., are individuals born free or do they become free? It would have been nice to hear something about that. Perhaps I am so spoiled by how intensely philosophical these scripts can be, so it sucks when they miss out on an opportunity.
A literal hero.
Are the Quarians Bad?
Another major point of contention in the geth-quarian conflict is who shares the worst culpability. Background: the Quarians accidentally created artificial intelligence (called ‘geth’ after the Khelish word for “servant of the people”), which acquired sentience and demanded moral recognition. The Quarians attempted to shut them down, but failed, and the geth fought back in self-preservation. In the ensuing war, called Morning War by the geth and simply Geth War by the Quarians, the geth drove the Quarians to near-extinction, and spared the last few million survivors as they fled Rannoch through the system’s mass relay. The quarian survivors would gather in the Migrant Fleet over the next three centuries, while the geth would hold Rannoch and remain in full isolation beyond the Perseus Veil.
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Are the geth bad because they revolted? Are the Quarians bad because they repressed the geth? This dilemma is represented through the disagreements of the Quarian admirals in ME2-3. Gerrel wants to retake the homeworld and destroy all the geth holdouts; Koris believes that the Quarians are at fault and must seek peace; Xen is mostly interested in the geth for research, but is likely to side with Gerrel to obtain their subjugation; and Raan, Tali’s “aunt,” tries to fly the moderate flag among these warring parties. Tali herself, once made an admiral after her father’s demise, opposes the war to retake Rannoch but has insufficient political clout to make a difference.
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On the one hand, the dilemma is pretty clear: the Quarians started it and the geth have a right to self-preserve. But there are two complicating factors. The first is the events of the Morning War. It is unclear whether the geth’s self-preservation truly required them to drive the Quarians to near-extinction. We do not know if the Quarians made the geth kill almost them by insisting that all geth had to be destroyed, or if instead sought peace but the geth refused out of an abundance of caution given the Quarians’ past actions. Both are possible, given what we know. The other complicating factor is that Fleet-Quarians may not necessarily bear moral responsibility for the choices of Rannoch-Quarians. It would be different if Fleet-Quarians still reaped the benefits of their ancestors’ geth oppression, just like (say) today’s white Americans do, but that is not the case. Instead, Fleet-Quarians reap no benefits at all from their exile, and in fact have developed a lifestyle—replete with cultural attitudes, mores, and behaviors—that amounts to an oppressed status of sorts. And who oppressed the Fleet-Quarians? Why, it is both the geth (who still occupy the homeworld) and Rannoch-Quarians (whose actions doomed their descendants). That’s a big part of why this is so complicated. Otherwise, it would be clear-cut, and of course the Quarians would be at fault. But the Quarians who are at fault have been dead for a very long time. Thus, taking sides in the new geth-quarian conflict is all the more important and consequential from a moral perspective.
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A very brief historical side note to conclude. The geth-quarian conflict obviously recalls the Israeli-Palestinian one, although it is not a perfect analogy. In the history of the real world, Jews have been victims of brutal discrimination, resulting in the diaspora and culminating in the Shoah. After WWII, the European powers enforced a colonialist solution by establishing Israeli statehood on contested land, a unilateral act followed by eight decades’ worth of brutal Israeli oppression of resident Muslim minorities, followed by Arab backlash, followed by, followed by, followed by, etc. And while the story in Mass Effect is obviously different, it bears relevant similarities. The Quarians are exiles, like the Israelis before the British Mandate and like the Palestinians today. Both groups have been victims of oppression but have also becomes oppressors, like Israeli Zionists and some Palestinian fringe groups. After that, the analogy quickly falls apart, but the similarities are still interesting. The Quarians are also designed to look and sound Middle-Eastern, perhaps in an attempt to hint to all of this. I don’t have a deeper point here, nor do I think that these similarities should justify an interpretive framework for the role of the geth-quarian conflict in the larger Mass Effect lore; I just always found this interesting.
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The battle for Rannoch is one of the game’s last missions before the conclusion, so my review also begins to take stock: in the next part, I analyze what in my opinion is the absolute best part of the trilogy and the one thing that, more than any other, keeps me coming back.
The air of a free world... though I'm not sure that y'all deserve this.
"Organics and synthetics don't have to destroy each other." "The battle for Rannoch disproves your assertion." More on this later.
Part 21: The Mass Relay Baton
The single most fascinating element of the Mass Effect saga is the cyclical nature of civilization in the Milky Way galaxy. Each cycle realizes too late that it is ripe for the harvest and can no longer be saved, but in doing so it also thinks forward to the next iteration. Each cycle adds to the blueprints for the Crucible, knowing that while this knowledge may not save them, it may give a chance to someone, some time, some place. This act of timeless faith, combined with the sacrifice of the last Protheans who gave their lives to delay the harvest, portrays a jaw-dropping picture of a galaxy-wide relay race millions of years in the making, where the baton of resistance is passed across billions of claws, wings, and hands—until it lands, fatefully, in Shepard’s.
A Stranger’s Sacrifice
Let me begin by saying that I am not usually sensitive to notions like self-sacrifice or heroism. That’s not because I don’t find them praiseworthy, but because they’re almost always co-opted by jingoistic institutions for the purpose of political domination. For example, there is nothing inherently heroic in giving one’s life for one’s country. It is heroic only if that country is good and worth defending; otherwise, it is a life wasted and the hero is actually a victim. And since most real-world countries, states, nations, and ideologies are morally bankrupt, genuine heroism of this sort is very hard to find.
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Self-sacrifice is only praiseworthy if it serves the Good, and for the sake of argument let’s assume that resisting the Reapers is morally good. This is not self-evident, and in the final post of this review I will discuss the possibility that the Catalyst and the harvest are right... but as I end up arguing against that view, I feel confident merely assuming it for now. But even if giving one’s life fighting the Reapers is genuine heroism, not all heroes play the same role. An infantry soldier who gets wiped out from an orbital strike with the rest of their platoon may be heroic based on their motivations or mental state, or because cannon fodder delays the enemy and gives them something to shoot at, but is certainly less consequential than (say) a pilot who flies a cruiser into a destroyer. This much is obvious, and there is no ethical problem to both recognize the intrinsic value of all acts of heroism while at the same time measuring their consequences. If all of this is true, then it follows that the most heroic acts are those that save the lives of others to the detriment of one’s own... and that is precisely what we see in Mass Effect.
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For example, we learn that the Protheans enacted certain contingencies when they realized they were going to be defeated; they had ample time, after all, as allegedly the Reapers took centuries to finish them off. Some of these countermeasures sought to reconstruct the empire post-harvest (ME3 DLC “From Ashes”), while others focused on giving future cycles a fighting chance. It is the latter that can properly be called heroic in the sense just described. On Ilos in ME1, Vigil says that the last remaining Prothean scientists used the Conduit to reach the Citadel, sealed off access from the other side, and sabotaged the keepers to ignore the Reapers’ signal to begin the next harvest some 50,000 years later. Those Protheans would then presumably starve to death on the Citadel. This is genuine heroism of the highest order. It is a story of how some people who no longer had any hope of success or survival used their last remaining days to give a fighting chance to perfect strangers fifty millennia removed. This is all the more extraordinary considering that the Protheans ran a ruthlessly colonial empire that did not hold the survival of lesser species in high regard... although I am sure that facing extinction does wonders to put things in perspective.
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And just how consequential was this sacrifice? Vigil speculates that when the keepers failed to acknowledge the signal to begin the harvest, Sovereign may have scrambled to find alternatives and possibly activated its sleeper agents. This process may have taken centuries, giving the dominant species of this cycle more time to prepare. Not only that, but the Protheans’ sacrifice may have unwittingly caused humanity’s emergence as this cycle’s wild card, since it is a human who would eventually succeed in standing up to the Reapers. Remember that ME1 takes place a meager 40 years after humanity discovered prothean ruins on Mars and joined the galactic community, so it is quite believable that Sovereign may have considered the cycle ripe for the harvest when humanity was still using gunpowder, circa 1800-1900 CE or earlier. But since it couldn’t proceed right away, humanity had just enough time to find the Charon Relay, and the rest is history. So the Protheans really did us humans (and everyone else) a solid.
(Also, here’s a fun piece of alternative history to consider. Without the Protheans’ sacrifice, humans may not have been touched by the harvest at all, since we know that the Reapers ignore primitive species. Without Shepard, the harvest may have been over quickly, and humanity may have emerged when all was said and done, discovered an empty Citadel, and established themselves as the dominant species of the next cycle, perhaps along with the raloi and/or in conflict with the yahg. Or perhaps the other species (asari, turians, krogan, etc.) may have put up enough of a fight that the harvest took centuries anyway, in which case humanity would have discovered the Charon Relay and popped up right in the middle of galactic extinction, pretty much like the raloi did. Talk about a rude awakening).
...and if only the asari and turians had studied the keepers in any significant depth, they may have even noticed all this...
The Crucible of Battle
The other major instance of forward-looking sacrifice in the trilogy has less to do with heroism and more with the realization that the so-called extinction of life is anything but. According to Vendetta, the blueprints for the weapon known in this cycle as the Crucible are ancient, and it is unclear who first designed them. It is certain, however, that they were passed down from cycle to cycle. In Vendetta’s words, “Each cycle adds to it. Each improves upon it.” We do not know how the Protheans discovered the plans, but the current cycle discovered them on Mars, where the Protheans were observing humanity. Since there does not seem to be anything special about Mars or humanity, it stands to reason that similar blueprints may have been hidden in other archives elsewhere, too. If anything, it may be surprising that no other species had discovered these blueprints before, especially as the asari were hoarding a prothean beacon on Thessia (which also contained Vendetta, which the asari archaeologists also failed to activate). This is definitely a weakness in the plot, somewhat tempered by the fact that according to the ME1 Codex only about 1% of the galaxy’s stars have been explored in this cycle, so perhaps of the many prothean data caches containing the blueprints for the Crucible, only the Mars one was located within currently explored space.
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There is also the matter of secrecy. At the end of ME3, Catalyst claims that it “thought the concept [of the Crucible] had been eradicated,” and is surprised at the resourcefulness of organics. While it may seem far-fetched that many thousands of species could keep something like this hidden for millions of years, consider that: (1) They didn’t, not really. The Reapers did know about the Crucible. Although no one had used it successfully, some cycles probably did build it, so the Reapers would have known to look for it in the future. (2) The blueprints’ existence is not common knowledge. Even in the current cycle, which was somewhat forewarned of the harvest, the blueprints were found at the last minute and fairly accidentally. (3) The galaxy is a massive place. This fact is always underestimated. The Reapers are powerful, but there’s only about 20,000 of them, and cosmically speaking they too are tiny creatures who must move and search through conventional means: space travel, direct sensory interaction, etc. They are not space magicians and they must actually turn every stone. And there are so many haystacks to hide this minuscule needle: even in an age of zettabytes, surely the plans for a machine that Hackett describes as “surprisingly simple” cannot take up more than a few megabytes. You can hide that sort of data in the DNA of one cell.
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But why pass the plans on at all? First, it is not clear that every cycle participates in this (mass) relay. We do not know what “version” of the Crucible Liara found on Mars. The plans that the Protheans found and passed on may have come from the cycle right before them, or from many cycles away. Some cycles may not pass the plans on. Some cycles may pass them on exactly as they found them, without making any improvements. Some cycles may make improvements but keep those secret or have no way to add them to the plans. And some cycles may never know about the Crucible at all. For all we know, there may be a great diversity of purpose regarding the Crucible, meaning that only some species may have had an altruistic motive to benefit the next cycle. I like to believe that this would be pretty common, though: if even colonialist assholes like the Protheans found it within themselves to think of the future, surely the less self-centered cycles and species would have done so, too. Of course, discovering the plans already increases the likelihood of also passing them forward, out of a simple desire for reciprocity.
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Two characters in the current cycle act on this desire. One is Liara, who prepares a series of time capsules that her VI drone Glyph will disseminate across many worlds. In a poignant scene, which is even better if Shepard and Liara are dating, Liara includes a description of Shepard in the capsules. She reasons that future cycles will need not just knowledge, but also heroes, and of course Shepard fits the bill. The other character who thinks along these lines is asari Councilor Tevos, who after the major blow on Thessia claims that there are “preparations to make” to ensure “continuity of civilization.” Certainly since the start of the harvest, many species would have enacted contingencies similar to the Protheans’: hibernation, seed vaults, data caches, etc. And we know that some species, like the raloi who had just joined the galactic community six months prior (as per Cerberus news in ME2), promptly retreated to their homeworld and destroyed their own spacefaring technology in hopes that the Reapers would spare them. All of these measures are sensible, and while some of them are purely self-interested, others are forward-looking.
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Overall, the Crucible symbolizes the cooperative nature of the fight against the Reapers. To borrow a phrase from Hegel, these games tell the story of how the absolute spirit of resistance marches through (galactic) history. No theme in Mass Effect is more vivid or important to me. Yes, synthetics and organics, genophage, leadership, the place of humanity in the cosmos, etc. But ultimately, to me, the game is “about” this. For this reason, among others, I find the ending of ME3 to be almost perfect. And it is to the analysis of this ending that I now, finally, turn.
No one understands better than an archaeologist the importance of leaving clear information for the future.
Shepard's own fate, especially in the Control ending, can also be seen as a future-looking self-sacrifice of sorts.
