Dr. Dumb_lunatic on 31/10/2007 at 10:33
*sigh*...I was so just going to give up on this, because I really couldn't be fucked to argue over something so pointless, but never mind...
Quote Posted by Pyrian
...I have to note, DDL is weirdly consistent in claiming that the various Deus Ex endings somehow don't follow from the story. Way the heck off base, but consistent nonetheless. I mean, seriously, do we have to point out to him the ways in which the main ending of Deus Ex was foreshadowed throughout the plot? Judging by his reaction to the same principles with Tong, I don't think that sort of discussion is going to get through. He seems to have some sort of weird blindspot to a basic storytelling technique.
Christ, just
fuck off with the smugness, or just fuck off entirely. It's bad enough with fucking silkworm 'lol subtly' hurling literary superiority around, but now you as well? You can effectively reply to someone's posts without being a raging asshat, you know.
TTLG users seem to have a fearsome habit of just coming to a very early opinion and then NEVER changing it, and reading into EACH AND EVERY POST (post-opinion forming) EXACTLY what they want, and not what might actually be there, or what might be intended. And then being incredibly fucking LOL SMUG about it.
STOP. READ. DON'T JUMP TO ASSUMPTIONS.
It's getting fucking tiresome having everything I fucking write be misinterpreted and then used to go LOL U SUK in some childish fucking interweb pointscoring system.
Since I clearly cannot appeal to reason (you appear to have made up your mind already), I'll will try to analyze this scientifically in the hope you can actually grasp where I'm coming from.
Now: if we're going to go down the literal LOL FUCKING POINTSCORING approach, all I need to do is provide a
single ending that appears to be a deus ex machina to 'disprove' Silkworm's claim that "none of them" are, yes?
Ok, so first, let's gather a bunch of definitions of D.E.Ms from the internet, shall we?
Quote:
The phrase deus ex machina (Latin IPA: [ˈdeːus eks ˈmaːkʰina] (literally "god out of a machine") describes an unexpected, artificial, or improbable character, device, or event introduced suddenly in a work of fiction or drama to resolve a situation or untangle a plot
Quote:
Something or someone that comes in the nick of time to solve a difficulty, especially in works of fiction.
Quote:
Few modern works feature deities suspended by wires from the ceiling, but the term deus ex machina is still used for cases where an author uses some improbable (and often clumsy) plot device to work his or her way out of a difficult situation.
Quote:
a person or thing that appears or is introduced into a situation suddenly and unexpectedly and provides an artificial or contrived solution to an apparently insoluble difficulty.
Right, so the general requirements appear to be
A) Unexpectedness, or improbability
B) It resolves the situation
Are we happy with that? Please say we are.
Ok, now ALL of the ending of DX are...endings. In a game context, they resolve the situation. It's not EXPLICITLY spelled out exactly HOW they treat the world subsequently, but they unarguably end the game, and thus 'finish' the story. No further information is presented: the situation is resolved. Game over.
So now we need to look at unexpectedness/improbability.
Now, the general impression
I get from the Tong ending is that YES, it was WAAAAY out of left field. Ok? YOU, and your vastly superior literary abilities may have concluded from the moment you MET tong that
"yeah, he's gonna want to destroy civilisation as we know it."
But me? No, I'm sorry to say I didn't. In fact, I didn't right up until he suggested it, at which point I did a doubletake.
Remember, a LOT of DX makes more sense in hindsight, so saying "Oh, I knew fer SHURE that merging with an AI was on the cards, right back at UNATCO island, because of datacubes X, Y and Z" is rarely an accurate assessment of what you were thinking at the time.
An additional caveat is that when you're playing games, for the most part, you tend to take things as presented. An awful lot of games have you running from A to B for no real good reason, really, but you do it anyway because within the context of playing the game it's the thing you have to do. It takes a fairly jarring inconsistency to make you leap out of game involvement and go "WHA?".
...I mean, the very first level simply asks you to go 'talk to the bloke in the statue'. You're allowed to do whatever you want with all the armed angry guys, so it makes for fairly open-ended playing..but what on earth made anyone at HQ so sure the guy at the top of the statue would calmly stand there so you could talk to him? It's illogical, but hardly illogical enough to raise notice WHEN PLAYING.
So, taking that into account, the illuminti ending is probably fairly reasonable: "maintain the status quo", these people have been running the world for years, so it's not a massive jump to assume they'd do a decent job of running it again.
The Helios ending? Well, the sudden merging of "LOL EVIL AI" and "rogue but well-intentioned AI" into "possibly benevolent but needing guidance AI" was a bit unexpected at the time, but it fits nicely into the story with hindsight. The big reveal that YOU could be the "merging buddy" instead of page is also fairly easy to work into plausibility, but "Oh, also we'll pretty much have the power to fix everything, btw. I'm already sorting out hong kong, so hay: team up?" is a bit of a stretch. Still, I'll let you have that one.
The Tong ending? No. I just don't see it.
"OMG HOW I CAN FIX TEH WORLD?"
"Blow up all global communications, JC! We'll live in villages!"
"LOL WHUT?"
It blindsided me. I STILL don't really think it fits his character. Someone as resourceful as that man
should be able to come up with a better way of keeping this out of the hands of the illuminati than just denying it to everyone, and fucking the planet over in the process. It's clumsy, unexpected, improbable, and yet it resolves the situation.
So, really: all we're arguing over here is...opinions on "unexpectedness/improbability". Ultimately that's ALL it comes down to.
I personally feel that the Tong ending was both unexpected and improbable.
You apparently don't.
We thus come to different conclusions regarding the D.E.M. nature of this ending....yes?
And that's ALL it is. An opinion-based difference. "Way off base" may refer to your "base", and probably silkworm's "base", but not necessary everyone's "base", or even the general opinion. Just because you think something is so, does not make it so. Just because I think something is so, does not make it so, either. On a matter a open to interpretation as this, however, there really IS no "CORRECT" answer.
So please, for the love of fucking GOD, try and understand WHAT I AM SAYING, and not 'what you want to read, so you can make jokes at my expense again', because it's fucking irritating having my points repeatedly ignored in favour of smugly questioning my ability to comprehend 'basic storytelling' or 'literary concepts'. It's childish, pointless, and fucking irritating. Really, really fucking irritating. Really, really
really fucking irritating (Can you tell?).
