Mass Effect 3 - Catharsis

Mass Effect 3 - Catharsis

I've written about a lot of difficult issues in my time, but this one takes the cake. This article is going to be extremely lengthy, and is essentially a study of thematic elements in fiction and the human condition, while using the Mass Effect universe as the platform to discuss these issues. The inspiration for this article is a directly driven by a search for catharsis to fill the empty void that the Mass Effect series has left me with.

Please note that this article is teeming with spoilers, it couldn't be avoided. Sorry about that. I structured this article in a way that those with no interest in playing through the game can still understand what I'm talking about, though.

This article is not my analysis of the ending of Mass Effect 3, even though my opinion on the matter is very similar to what is being dubbed 'The Indoctrination Theory' which you can find more information about here. Even though the theory has a lot of peculiarities to it that are hard to ignore, I feel that speculation is counter-intuitive in the light that there's a strong possibility that Bioware/EA has yet to release more content that will shed more light on the issue. So until then, we have to work with what we got, and I've decided instead of rejecting the given ending, to analyze what it means in comparison to the themes that have been touched on throughout the series.

The Ghost in the Machine

The war between synthetic and organic life is the basis of the entire series. The ultimate threat that Shepard (the protagonist) is trying to stop is a dormant machine race called the Reapers that wake up every 50,000 years to destroy all advanced civilization. The issue seems very black and white at first, but as the games progress, the theme is expanded on through your interactions with other intelligent machines, namely the Geth: a humanoid race that gained sentience and nearly obliterated its creating race; and EDI, an AI core created as an advanced assistant for Shepard's ship: the Normandy. Notably, neither of these AI creations are inherently evil, and both most definitely have the capacity to empathize and coexist with organic life, as especially made clear by the potential romance option available between EDI and Joker, your ship's pilot.

The Geth are very interesting in their own right. The only reason they turned on their creating race was simply survival instinct since their creators turned on them. This entire period of their history is rife with confusion, as the Geth didn't inherently understand why they were being exterminated, and despite being technologically advanced, were ultimately too underdeveloped to truly understand the consequences of their actions, or to understand the motivations of other types of life around them. However, while the Geth represent an entire species of sentient life, complete with their own culture and ideals, I believe the true theme of AI sentience is expressed through EDI's character arc.

EDI begins the game with advanced characteristics for an AI: she understands humor, and is able to discern the motivations of other life forms. However she is very calculating, and has a very utilitarian mindset centered almost specifically around self-preservation. During the third game, she acquires a cybernetic body that allows her to gain a first person perspective on the universe, and ultimately drives her to ask questions about the nature of her own programming. What's interesting to note here is that the more she understands about humanity, the more human she herself becomes. She is not directly adverse to the human condition, and views the act of achieving humanity as enlightenment.

I believe this suggests that human-level sentience is a natural progression in the evolution of intelligent beings. Even Legion, a Geth commando that operates differently than other AI incarnations in that all 'his' decisions are based off of the consensus of a collective hive-mind, eventually became enamored with the idea of individuality. Without clear explanation, Legion uses some of your armor to augment his own, and one could easily argue that Legion's entire sub-text is that he views Shepard as some sort of god-like figure, looking up to him, perhaps trying to achieve something about Shepard's humanity that his own race could never allow him. This is kind of in the realm of speculation, but I believe this point specifically was being made when Legion used the word 'I' as opposed to 'we' in his final moments, right before he disseminates his own personality for the good of the rest of his race, no less, an important note of foreshadowing, but I'll touch more on that later.

This concept is put into overdrive when you start to receive the Reaper's motivations for destroying civilization. Their argument, in a nutshell, is that an advanced enough machine race will inevitably turn on their organic counterparts and therefore wipe out organic life as we know it. So in order to stop this from happening, an endless cycle was created where only civilizations on the brink of creating this advanced of an AI will be destroyed and harvested, allowing younger species their chance to grow and inevitably do the same thing.

What is odd about this conclusion is that it doesn't quite explore their motivations. Why not allow organic life to become extinct if it is truly obsolete unless there's something truly special inherent about it? If there is something truly special inherent in organic life, why would an extremely sophisticated AI species destroy it? Were the Reapers just naive, or was the cycle necessary for some other reason?

Diversity of Life

Many of the most important decisions you'll make throughout the series is deciding the fate of entire species. Honestly, this game is chock full of these scenarios, I don't even know where to begin. But for the sake of brevity, lets just say that the entire fate of the Quarians, Geth, Krogan, and Rachni are entirely up to you. Each species has its own instincts for self preservation and usually make their ascent to power accordingly, often at the unfortunate conflict with other species. You have the ability to allow humans to bypass the other alien races in political power grabs, and many of the choices you make in general are specifically designed to paint your relationship with other species.

One common recurring theme is whether or not humanity is superior to aliens and deserve their position of power. I believe this is a precursor designed to make Shepard wonder whether he/she is special or not, but either way, the issue is plainly very grey, and the theme usually subverted by the subject of sacrifice, anyway. The whole theme here gets stretched pretty thin as a result, since more often than not, you're making decisions based on what is best for the survival of the galaxy rather than deciding whether or not to maintain genetic diversity or empower your own race.

Regardless of what you end up thinking of the other races, it becomes clear that each race is clearly unique. They evolved differently, have different ideals, different cultures, they all have something unique to offer galactic civilization. The Reapers obviously realize this and make a point to not just destroy races, but to assimilate them into their own machines so that their traits aren't completely forgotten to genocidal annihilation. It is unclear whether or not the Reapers maintain the personalities and cultures of the species they assimilate, but it seems pretty important that our only interactions with these assimilated races is in combat against grotesque and mindless husks, suggesting that the Reapers might only evaluate a race's worth by their genetic properties rather than their societal ideals. But this too, of course, is just speculation.

According to the catalyst's claims, the cycles were created in order to preserve order, lest the universe descend into chaos. Ignoring the question of whether or not chaos is inherently bad, it does give you some insight into their methodology. Each incarnation of the cycle is inherently different for two reasons: the life forms that must ultimately fight the Reapers are essentially products of random mutations and therefore can be virtually anything; and the Reapers themselves change form each iteration due to their varying selection of assimilated species.

One more thing to note about the Reapers is that they leave their mass effect relays behind, their network for extremely fast space travel. Races usually end up coming across this technology, and thus their 'technological arc' is usually centered around this discovery, which could be seen as a tactical advantage for the Reapers, since it makes it much easier to predict the path these races will take and thus how to systematically destroy them.

A correlation can be seen here with the Krogan and Salarians. The Krogan were culturally uplifted by the Salarians, which had dire consequences. Since the Krogan weren't ethically prepared to deal with their new technology, it ended up nearly destroying their species and their home planet to nuclear warfare. The game does a good job of not condemning technology however, but rather puts a great deal of emphasis on doing your best to understand new technology and not to go blindly into the night, as it were.

Free Agency

Reliance on Reaper technology has a similar warning signal, in that Reaper technology has the ability to corrupt people who use it, as seen multiple times in the first game when entire settlements studying this technology are turned into mindless husks. Not to mention indoctrination, a process Reaper ships use on organic life-forms to slowly subvert their free will. Make no mistake about it, the game tackles the issue of free will almost exclusively through the indoctrination process.

The specifics of how it works is largely unknown, as it's kind of a hotly debated philosophical dilemma but while the game is fairly vague on how it works specifically, it does make it clear that it works using the power of suggestion. The question here is whether or not the suggestions are lies or not, since it appears that the indoctrinated are clued in to the Reaper's ultimate goals, though they do show signs that they have trouble articulating those goals, which indicates that either the concepts are too advanced for normal sentient minds to comprehend and is the reason that indoctrination eventually deteriorates the mind... or it works by lying and confusing the subject, which leads to deterioration for similar reasons.

The game makes a considerably stronger argument for the latter, since it's unlikely that Shepard's pretty basic reasoning skills is enough to undermine indoctrination by confusing them enough to question their own enlightened status. Though it is worthy to note that The Illusive Man hints that he understands the bigger picture right before he dies, the entire scene makes it strongly obvious that he is also quite confused and conflicted as well, leading me to conclude that he has probably gone mad by this point in the game. (The game also makes a point to show you that the Illusive Man was oblivious to EDI's capabilities, which would be strange for someone enlightened to the nature of AI to miss) Still, this is just speculation.

Sacrifice and Loss

The bulk of the emotional punch that Mass Effect 3 in particular centers on is the theme of sacrifice. This is hard to deny, pretty much every major decision you make is about choosing who lives and who dies for the sake of the greater good versus your own personal attachment. 'Ruthless calculus' as Garrus so eloquently puts it.

Though you spend most of the game sacrificing others, this feels so much like self-sacrifice, that when it comes time to put your own life on the line, the transition is seamless. The usual dilemma of self-preservation doesn't apply normally in games as it would in real life, though. While you may be invested in your character, I would argue you're more invested in the game experience and its potential offerings. You feel that by sacrificing certain elements, you yourself are sacrificing some of your personal enjoyment by taking those away from yourself. And for what? The outcome of a fictional galaxy? While it's certainly possible to play selfishly, I think most people empathized with the game universe and became immersed to the point where they felt the end mattered more than fulfilling their own selfish desires, and therefore banked everything they could on giving the galaxy the best fighting chance. It became more important to the player that the game's universe had a better outcome rather than maximizing his own enjoyment. This worked beautifully.

And then the player found out that his sacrifice didn't really matter at all.

The Illusion of Choice

The hole in my soul that I was talking about at the head of the article was the direct result of realizing that the ending theme wasn't about sacrifice at all, but rather transitioned very bluntly into the illusion of choice. The reason the entire game mattered to me was because the game led me on the entire time making me believe I had a choice in the matter, that sacrifice meant something, but really, just like the Reaper's plans for the galaxy, it was all pre-decided, I was just playing along, content following the strings of the two-handed puppet master.

While I can sen the artistic merit of this, it brought on a stage of profound denial. It hit close to home. I felt betrayed by no one in particular. I felt angry at myself for falling into this trap, that I never saw it coming, that I didn't prepare for it 'the right way'. I had no catharsis and I generally just felt pretty shitty. I immediately understood the backlash the game received, and was in awe at the same time. It reminded me of Bioshock, and its presentation of the illusion of control. It reminded me of Fable 2, where sacrifice actually punished you. It reminded me of Irreversible, where the idea of inevitability haunted me for days. It reminded me of Half-Life 2, and that feeling of dancing with something unknowable. It was all that yet different... Mass Effect 3 made me feel... shitty... conflicted...

I usually have some sort of philosophy to rely on, some sort of phrase that helps me sleep better at night that I can turn to for comfort. But this game gave me a message I couldn't wrap my mind around, that I couldn't outright deny or disprove. It showed to me clear as day that personal resolve counts for nothing, that believing in some fleeting hope for a better tomorrow can be taken from you at the drop of a hat, and it had a sound logical argument to back it up.

Denial of Fatalism

Going back to the Reaper's motivations, something became a bit clearer. The cycle of destruction has been going on for ages, and we can't take anything the Catalyst says at face value. The cycle was designed to be some sort of test for advanced civilization, as well as prevent an unwanted logical outcome. We're talking about an extremely advanced intelligence here, truly on the cusp of a Technological Singularity... yet it stopped. It decided that it's more important for living beings to dream and hope for a better future, to believe they have a fighting chance of seeing a better tomorrow... all for nothing. Again and again. That's pretty dark.

As a transhumanist myself, I bank a lot of my hopes and dreams on attaining a better future myself. Regardless of whether or not a Singularity is attainable, it does represent a sort of ideal, a vision of something to aspire to. It's a symbol of salvation in a way. I can't bring myself to believe that the future isn't worth fighting for because to me it screams of arrogance on an unprecedented scale, it assumes a hypothetical brick wall, despite evidence to the contrary showing boundaries being surpassed time and time again, almost always for the good of humanity and life in general. Though to have a highly intelligent machine, albeit a fictional one, behave in a way contrary to this is quite unsettling, I have to believe that there's still more to the story than meets the eye.

And yet, this denial is what Shepard represents the entire game. His resolve, an absolute refusal to be beaten, a soldier through and through that simply can not, will not give up. It's the entire emotional investment of the story. It's obviously clear that the writers are attacking the subject of fatalism as honestly as they can. If I took away anything from the game, cliche as it might be, it's that fatalism is destructive, that perseverance means something, that understanding is enlightenment, and understanding is achieved by going out and god damn achieving it.

Conclusion: Trial by Fire

I'm not going to pretend that the makers of Mass Effect 3 are enlightened souls that know something about ultimate destiny of mankind that the rest of us don't. I think they know just as well as we do that if it's out there, it's got to be achieved somehow. I'm pretty sure the Crucible is as honest a metaphor as the writer could come up with at presenting this as an extremely honorable goal. In the game, the Crucible is a huge mysterious device that represents the only real shot civilization has at defeating the Reapers, and everything comes down to completing it and getting it to work. Beat the Crucible, beat the Reapers. Beat the Reapers, bring on the golden age. Eloquent but simple metaphor really.

All that said... the point of this article was to explore the emotions that the ending inspired, but I might as well end this article on my own theory about the ending.

Lets talk about the Crucible for a second. For one, no one knows who first started the Crucible, but I'm betting it was the Reapers. I mean, think about it, no one knows what it does, each successive cycle of races adds more to it and passes it onto the next cycle, and it happens to requires the Citadel, a Reaper capitol ship, and only the Reapers know this. That's a lot of hints right there, but there's more. Even though the Catalyst is presumably unreliable, I do believe that he's being honest that the cycle will truly end if you choose the Synthesis option, and is actually the entire point of the cycle in the first place.

It's debatable whether or not the Reapers were capable of building the Crucible in the first place, but maybe there's a point to waiting for organic life to do it instead. There seems to be something inherently special about mankind's ability to think for itself, to make decisions based on intuition. There's a lot of emphasis on technology being harmful unless you're genuinely ready for it, and ready to take on the consequences. It might have been counter-productive for the Reapers to force this on organic life, as even the most advanced intelligence in the universe knows that evolution can't be forced. The Reapers remained stagnant, collecting races and different societies, cultures, ways of thinking, etc, biding its time until the Crucible would finally be completed, and civilization was ready to face the next step of evolution. The Catalyst actually goes to say that it's the final form of evolution.

Its also interesting to note that the Synthesis ending isn't available unless you get a high enough ready score, an option that doesn't make quite as much sense if it's just as ineffective as the other endings. But I digress.

This doesn't negate the criticisms people have about the ending, though. In particular, that punch from negating your sacrifices is still quite real and hard to get over, but I still think it serves a very intricate purpose. Just like life, you make choices throughout, but by the end of it, you don't get to see the fruits of your labors, all you can hope for is that you left a better world for your loved ones and hope that they can finish what you started.

Hopefully this provided some catharsis for anyone feeling a bit empty after this experience. All I can really say is... don't give up, really.