Literary term confusion...

[padawanmage]

A while back I'd heard certain terms used with regards to certain aspects of the game (and no, I'm not talking swear words).

I'll post the question in this

Comments

[luslanz]

The Catalyst is not a Deus ex Machina. A DEM is basically a miracle that comes out of nowhere at the last minute and solves everyone's problems, like the eagles at the end of Lord of the Rings, or the virus in War of the Worlds. The Crucible and the Catalyst however were introduced very early in the story and it was established they they were capable of stopping the Reapers. Even if we didn't know what it was or how it worked, we already knew that it could stop the Reapers.

A real DEM would've been... an army of "beings of light" from another galaxy whisking away all the Reapers because of reasons.

[skellington1]

Eh, I'd say you could make a pretty good argument that the cruciblewasn't a DEM but the StarChild was -- by the exact reasoning you already used. We knew the crucible was a weapon and building it was a huge part of the plot throughout the third game; that means the crucible is definitely not a deus ex machinia (it's arguably a poorly timed plot device -- it would have flowed better if the super weapon plans were discovered at the end of 2, rather than the beginning of 3 -- but it's not a DEM). The StarChild, though, is almost literally a god from the machine. He appears out of nowhere; you have no foreshadowing that this will be a being rather than a missing part for a device, and he presents your only 'solutions' with very little connection to what's gone previously.

That's not exactly the ancient greek version (nothing is summed up tidily, the solutions aren't happy), but it's pretty fitting with modern usage.

[luslanz]

The Catalyst didn't appear out of nowhere, it was first mentioned before you even meet the Council if I remember right. Later we learn that the Citadel is the Catalyst, you go to the Citadel, and use it to get rid of the Reaper threat. Sure there were some last minute revelations about it's exact nature, but they didn't change its place in the story.

If the Crucible had failed and then the Catalyst had appeared with no previous mention, that'd have been a DEM.

[skellington1]

I think the character of the StarChild, rather than the *idea* of the catalyst, counts as a DEM. We knew there was a missing piece; that piece being the Citadel is a reasonable twist. The entire new character, though? Seems to me the Citadel+Crucible is the machina the deus comes out of -- and the one may have been forshadowed well, but the other certainly wasn't.

[4thofeleven]

The odd thing about the Catalyst is that it doesn't just come out of nowhere to solve a problem, the problem it solves itself comes out of nowhere in the last ten minutes. I have no idea what you'd call that sort of plot device*; the whole 'problem' of synthetic/organic coexistance that the star child's 'solutions' are supposed to solve has no forshadowing itself.

I mean, it's one thing to have the gods suddenly descend on stage to save the hero or smite the villian, but this is more like the gods suddenly showing up to announce that a random member of the chorus was the real hero and carrying them off to the heavens instead...

* Besides 'bad writing'...

[skellington1]

Yeah, that... definitely makes it harder to evaluate on literary terms. It's why it's broken, not an example of a specific device.

[st_mk]

Considering itself a God doesn't make it one.

[musa_nocturna]

"You want to be a god? Then be a god."

S'what I wanted to tell it.