243 réponses à ce sujet

[Revan312]

Solomen wrote...
It makes perfect sense to me

Care to explain the sense involved then?  I know if I was a sentient, 30+ million year old technological marvel that had near endless power and the potential to wipe out countless civilizations with almost no effort and could think on a level that was so far beyond any other being known to exist that I really wouldn't concern myself with using Campbells human noodle soup to create a ridiculous baby reaper human cyborg mutant that puked plasma but could literally die to pistol fire...

I don't care how much logic you try to infuse into the concept (99% of which is just assumption), it's contrived, threadbare and goes completely against the grain of the first games sovereign convorsation.  In my mind, the reapers act just like Na,zi's ( I can't believe that word is censored, what next, Germany?). They look down on every other race to the point of calling them bacteria and vermin. Yet the Na,zi's didn't try to make a giant Na,zibot out of the millions of people they slaughtered.  That's how ridiculous the concept is to me when taking in the first games logic behind the reapers.  It's contradictory to how they speak of us and it seems totally out of place that they would even attempt this human/reaper construction, let alone in the completely inefficiant way they tried. 

I'm just disappointed that THIS was the best Bioware could come up with even though they had the opportunity, in the open ended fashion the first game ended with, to literally go in a million different directions.  Instead we get the Contra 3 boss with little to no explanation as to why they would even make it. *sigh*

Modifié par Revan312, 16 avril 2010 - 03:43 .

[Solomen]

You obviously lack any sort of imagination...

Try putting yourself into the reapers' position.

[Il Divo]

I feel like the mistake here is people are assuming that they understand or rather should understand how a Reaper thinks. It is a pure machine, AI. Any comparison to Naz zis is illogical. It implies that a Reaper must think like a human when this is clearly not the case. They are not humans, they do not feel obliged to fit our definition of logic.

Modifié par Il Divo, 16 avril 2010 - 03:53 .

[Ecael]

enormousmoonboots wrote...

Ecael wrote...

Up until that point, Mass Effect had probably the most plausible scientific explanations of plot and gameplay devices of any sci-fi game (or sci-if movie or TV show) ever.

Ecael...? Not...being EDI?

OH GOD WHAT IS HAPPENING

I can't be anyone else?

[Revan312]

Solomen wrote...

You obviously lack any sort of
imagination...
Try putting yourself into the reapers' position.

Theres a fine line between having to use  your imagination and the story not being up to par.  ME2 is the latter imo.  Also, my first paragraph of the last post was putting myself into their shoes.  I wouldn't give two damns about the races of the galaxy and would only annihilate them just so I wouldn't have any potential rivals later in their evolutionary ladder.  To think that after however many millions of years they've been around that they somehow think they're "saving" us by killing us is just, well... dumb...

I still don't think any amount of imagination on my part is going to change my view that the reapers are, as of ME2's conclusion,  just dogmatic zealots that are no smarter than a 13th century peasant. They're cylons on steroids, and ME2's resolution has actually made me fear them far less than at the end of ME1.  Hell, I bet you could just yell "divide by zero!" and they'd fry their blue box's trying to compute it.  Human reaper cylon fetus mutant cyborg... what a waste of time and energy

Il Divo wrote...

I feel like the mistake here is people are assuming that they understand or rather should understand how a Reaper thinks. It is a pure machine, AI. Any comparison to Naz zis is illogical. It implies that a Reaper must think like a human when this is clearly not the case. They are not humans, they do not feel obliged to fit our definition of logic.

I understand that, but it doesn't change the fact that they could use their time and resources so much more efficiently elsewhere.  The reapers are technological wonders that have had millions of years to learn how to be super efficient, genetically manipulating and brainwashing an entire race just to abduct another race just to liquefy them and pump the substance into a construct that can be killed with small arms fire is just dumb.. dumb dumb dumb...

[enormousmoonboots]

Ecael wrote...

enormousmoonboots wrote...

Ecael...? Not...being EDI?

OH GOD WHAT IS HAPPENING

I can't be anyone else?

It's quite a surprise; I'm used to seeing EDI, then suddenly BAM JENTHA. I don't know how much RPing you can get out of Jentha...she's most notable for her hairstyle THAT I CAN'T HAVE *fistshake*.

[Solomen]

The reapers have a pattern. It is part of their system to harvest mass effect using races every 50k years. They need to do this because of their nature but they loathe it. That "GODS" need to harvest lesser creatures offends them. Of course they are going to insult and ridicule their prey at every opportunity. The only lesser being they think is actually worth their time is Shepard since he managed to kill Sovereign.



You don't actually know that the larva was going to be a reaper. They could be using the reaper process to make a suitable body for Shepard, with the human race as the components. He actually killed one of them after all. Salvation through destruction.

"We will let you ascend at the expense of your pathetic species."



For all you know Harbinger could be the entire Prothean species aside from a few drones left behind as builders. There could very well be a giant prothean inside Harbinger.



Reapers don't have to be very smart, just effective. They've been playing the same game for MILLIONS of years. They were expecting an easy harvest like all the other harvests. How many times do you think they've taken any casualties? Twice?



As to killing the larva with a pistol, I killed the derelict reaper with an assault rifle.

[Ecael]

enormousmoonboots wrote...

It's quite a surprise; I'm used to seeing EDI, then suddenly BAM JENTHA. I don't know how much RPing you can get out of Jentha...she's most notable for her hairstyle THAT I CAN'T HAVE *fistshake*.

Maybe I should change it to Jedore after all...

"I'm not paying you people to post garbage! Leave the thread immediately or I will take away all your salaries!"

[Space Shot]

viverravid wrote...
Same as all 5 1/4" computer discs being pretty much all the same useless hunks of plastic and iron oxide as each other these days, unless you still have a 5 1/4" disk drive equipped computer to read them with.

The analogy only works if the discs contain within all relevant information as to how to build the disk drive as well as all associated components, which makes them a bit more than resplendent frisbees.

i guess I could be really really generous and assume that the reapers are just constructing the human-reaper from liquified humans as a psych warfare tactic - so they can kill you with your own grandmothers liquified corpse. And they made it look like a skeleton just to make it look scarier. And poor EDI was just confused and making stuff up to cover for it, knowing Shepard skipped genetics 101 and wouldn't notice..

Or, more likely, you're misapplying real-world concepts to a fictional setting based on faulty pretenses.  The primary one, Reaper=big human.  It's not, any more than the late late show's Geoff Peterson is a normal sized one.

Secondly is that you can get a valid sample of all of humanity from just one genetic sample.  You can't, as the Human Genome Project is taking as much consideration as possible for.

Modifié par Space Shot, 16 avril 2010 - 05:07 .

[Revan312]

Solomen wrote...

You don't actually know that the larva was going to be a reaper. They could be using the reaper process to make a suitable body for Shepard, with the human race as the components. He actually killed one of them after all. Salvation through destruction.
"We will let you ascend at the expense of your pathetic species."

For all you know Harbinger could be the entire Prothean species aside from a few drones left behind as builders. There could very well be a giant prothean inside Harbinger.

Well if they wanted to ascend shepard by puting him in a reaper then they have a funny way of showing their interest, i.e. trying to kill him throughout the entire story and even being succesful at it in the beginning.

And even if Harbinger is a prothean (I doubt it for some reason) it doesn't change the fact that the way they go about creating more of themselves is beyong ridiculous.

Reapers don't have to be very smart, just effective. They've been playing the same game for MILLIONS of years. They were expecting an easy harvest like all the other harvests. How many times do you think they've taken any casualties? Twice?

Yet they have to be smart as they had built the mass relays/citadel and have seen hundreds of civilizations with different technologies come and go, civilizations that are at galactic exploration levels of technology. I just can't see them being dumb, yet they are from the conceptual standpoint of reaper reproduction displayed in this game which leaves a feeling of contradiction to it all.  If you can suspend disbelief well enough to swallow the explanation then that's fine, I just find that the entire plot of ME2 was a huge slap in the face of the enemy they established in the first game.  It's their license and franchise but I still feel that it was a wasted opportunity at something more.

Modifié par Revan312, 16 avril 2010 - 05:11 .

[Solomen]

[quote]Revan312 wrote...

[quote]Solomen wrote...

You don't actually know that the larva was going to be a reaper. They could be using the reaper process to make a suitable body for Shepard, with the human race as the components. He actually killed one of them after all. Salvation through destruction.
"We will let you ascend at the expense of your pathetic species."

For all you know Harbinger could be the entire Prothean species aside from a few drones left behind as builders. There could very well be a giant prothean inside Harbinger. [/quote]

Well if they wanted to ascend shepard by puting him in a reaper then they have a funny way of showing their interest, i.e. trying to kill him throughout the entire story and even being succesful at it in the beginning.

And even if Harbinger is a prothean (I doubt it for some reason) it doesn't change the fact that the way they go about creating more of themselves is beyong ridiculous.


[quote]Reapers don't have to be very smart, just effective. They've been playing the same game for MILLIONS of years. They were expecting an easy harvest like all the other harvests. How many times do you think they've taken any casualties? Twice?[/quote]

Yet they have to be smart as they had built the mass relays/citadel and have seen hundreds of civilizations with different technologies come and go, civilizations that are at galactic exploration levels of technology. I just can't see them being dumb, yet they are from the conceptual standpoint of reaper reproduction displayed in this game which leaves a feeling of contradiction to it all.  If you can suspend disbelief well enough to swallow the explanation then that's fine, I just find that the entire plot of ME2 was a huge slap in the face of the enemy they established in the first game.  It's their license and franchise but I still feel that it was a wasted opportunity at something more.

As to killing the larva with a pistol, I killed the derelict reaper with an assault rifle. [/quote]
[/quote]

The reapers want you to believe they built the mass relays   
They may have the tech but they lack the drive to use it.  They've been doing this for so long that changing their tactics is difficult for them.  Shepard forced them to change tactics they have been using for millions of years.

If you listen to Harbinger...
"Retrieve Shepard, even if you must kill him "

Dead or alive Harbinger wants Shepard's body

[The Sapien]

Revan312 wrote...

The Sapien wrote...

Why completely omit the religious reasons?

Think of the Collectors as a cult and not a research lab.

But the collectors aren't a cult, they're mindless zombie slaves doing the reapers bidding.  You would have to say that the reapers are religious as they're the ones controlling the collectors, which in my mind, as they've been around for millions of years and have seen countless religions practiced by the races they've destroyed, would make them seem less than what they are and how they portray themselves. 

Most of the time when a civilization reaches such a point in technology that they've explained, through science, nearly everything in the universe and aren't relying on dogma to reason through things there would be no "religious" aspect to them, just my opinion though.

I yearn for the original villain, sovereign, as he seemed much more threatening and had more of an air of dread surrounding him than Harbinger in ME2.  Maybe that stems from never having a convo with him or seeing him but still, his pseudo religious rambling was annoying to me.  "We are your salvation through destruction" "We are the harbinger of your perfection/destiny/ascendence" "We are your genetic destiny" it's all so... bleh after listening to sovereigns speech from the first game.  What's ironic is that Harbinger actually says at some point "Asari, reliance on alien species for reproduction shows genetic weakness"

Also it makes it even more ridiculous when you listen to all the quotes harbinger and sovereign make about us. "They are vermin" "They are bacteria" "Your death is assured" "Your form is fragile" etc etc...  If they hate us that much and see us as nothing but the weakest, most insignificant of lifeforms than why are they trying to "ascend" us.  It's all so contradictory..

[RobertM5252]

adamm24680 wrote...

I agree with the OP, and

JKoopman wrote...

Honestly, I've got a lot of problems with ME2 but the trainwreck that was the ending revelation overshadows them all. Suddenly the Reapers went from being a badass race of ancient artificially intelligent machines that can only just barely be destroyed by the combined fleets of the entire Council to a race of sentient "biomechanical" organisms grown from the organic soup of lesser beings that can now be destroyed by a single guy with a machinegun. Way to turn the greatest threat in the galaxy into a bunch of pansies, BioWare...

Man, this is exactly how I felt after finishing ME2, I was so disappointed, all the Cthulhu&stuff feel has disappeared.

Indeed, though not because of the life-goo thing so much as the totally not-epic conclusion to the build up of the entire game. When you find out that the Collectors are reengineered Protheans, I was totally shocked. Didn't see it coming. I thought it was totally cool and consistent with the ME universe revealed thus far. At that point I was thinking that the Reapers intended to do the same with humanity. But I had a feeling there was still a piece missing that I'd discover at the end of the game.

And then I saw that they were liquifying all the people they were capturing. At that point I was thinking, "Ummm... okay... <_< Why did they wait to do this? Why didn't they just liquify them in the first place and bring them all back in gigantic tanks rather than individual pods?"

But it got worse. When I saw the end-boss and I totally face-palmed. "Seriously? A gigantic Terminator with human-goo syringes in it?  Which conventiently have armor that retracts periodically? You've got to be kidding me. This is retarded. :pinched:"

The OP articulated that point nicely: human "genetic material" isn't some kind of liquifiable "essence." It's a string of protein codes (and other so-called junk DNA whose function, if it has one, we don't understand). Period. As the OP points out, if you wanted DNA from tons of humans, you don't need the entire body: one sample would do. Their little techno-bug swarms could grab a little chunk of flesh off of people instead of immobilizing them and then you'd have all you need.

As far as the excuses people have been making for Bioware's writing in this thread: none of that was stated in-game. EDI tells us that the Reapers want human genetic material to make a Reaper with. That the liquified humans are what is in the gigantic syringes and are being injected into the Terminator-frame. (She knows this because of the "organic energy signatures," whatever the hell that is.) That Reapers reproduce by using the "essence" of species which are "acceptable" for their gooing-and-injecting.

Like the OP, I felt the final boss was an affront to the generally high level of detail the Bioware team had gotten together on the sci-fi part of the backstory. It's one thing to make up something that doesn't exist and give it special properties (e.g., eezo and mass effect fields) in order to explain how things that aren't (yet) possible are being done. It's quite another to literally contradict existing science, especially at so basic a level as to treat DNA like it's  "magical human essence."

I can forgive Bioware repeatedly referring to humans as genetically diverse (relative to other species on Earth, we're completely not). I can forgive Bioware not really understanding how evolution works (evolution does not equal "gradual improvement"). I can understand Bioware not understanding how psychotherapy works (as in Kelly's excessive... "empathizing" with her quasi-clients). And a great many other things. Why? Because they generally hinge upon more arcane levels of understanding in the fields they're screwing up (biology, physics, psychology, etc.).

But the human-goo thing crossed a line. And worse still it didn't even do it for a good reason: the end-boss was lame and the reveal for the abductions was a total let down. If you're going to screw up science as bad as that in sci-fi, you'd better at least be doing it for a good story-related reason.

[Ieldra]

RobertM5252 wrote...
Like the OP, I felt the final boss was an affront to the generally high level of detail the Bioware team had gotten together on the sci-fi part of the backstory. It's one thing to make up something that doesn't exist and give it special properties (e.g., eezo and mass effect fields) in order to explain how things that aren't (yet) possible are being done. It's quite another to literally contradict existing science, especially at so basic a level as to treat DNA like it's  "magical human essence."

I can forgive Bioware repeatedly referring to humans as genetically diverse (relative to other species on Earth, we're completely not). I can forgive Bioware not really understanding how evolution works (evolution does not equal "gradual improvement"). I can understand Bioware not understanding how psychotherapy works (as in Kelly's excessive... "empathizing" with her quasi-clients). And a great many other things. Why? Because they generally hinge upon more arcane levels of understanding in the fields they're screwing up (biology, physics, psychology, etc.).

But the human-goo thing crossed a line. And worse still it didn't even do it for a good reason: the end-boss was lame and the reveal for the abductions was a total let down. If you're going to screw up science as bad as that in sci-fi, you'd better at least be doing it for a good story-related reason.

I wish I could've said it as well as you did. That human Reaper and the reasoning for it is an insult to the SF genre. Millions of humans used up for that thing is a cheap horror effect playing more on disgust than anything else. Cheesy. The Reapers as ancient machine gods? Great idea, I loved it in ME1. ME2.....total disappointment. I wonder if they can make it right in ME3.

[RobertM5252]

Revan312 wrote...
Science fiction to me is a piece of fiction that asks if a certain technology or situation or ability is possible in the future, without knowing whether or not it could realisticly happen, a genre of ideas and questions. It's also about the human condition and how humans might cope with advances in technology.

Fantasy is a genre that is about having a story in an alternate world where things can happen that in our reality are already proven impossible.  Mass Effect sits squarely into the fantasy genre.

Actually, I'd say your perspective is too binary/black-and-white. I believe it is more logical to view it more as a continuum. On the one hand, you have pure fantasy, which has absolutely no interest in science and uses magic to explain anything that is impossible (or simply ignores what is impossible). On the other hand, you have (super-)hard sci-fi, which grounds everything in current scientific knowledge and refuses to speculate on anything. Most hard sci-fi will stray a little from this extreme, adding some speculation or hand-waving unobtainium-type element, either to advance the plot or as the basis for the plot itself (i.e., what would happen if X were possible...?).

Now, where do our popular "sci-fi" universes fall on this spectrum? Star Wars, as "science fantasy" (I didn't make the term up) space opera, falls quite far on the fantasy side of the continuum. It's not completely devoid of all things scientific (especially in the expanded universe), but it's obviously not bound in any way by current scientific understanding. Dune? Not much better than Star Wars, if at all. (Genetic memory? Give me a break!) Star Trek? A little more to the science end, but it routinely either bungles the science (e.g., referring to the thalamus as part of the human memory system rather than the hippocampus as Dr. Crusher did on an episode of TNG that I saw the other day) or just skips it altogether (e.g., telepathy).

Mass Effect is far more on the science end than Star Trek. More on the science end, in fact, that virtually any other popular form of sci-fi story I've ever seen. It really looks like Bioware did some work in the Codex entries and the planet descriptions and the like. Sure, it's not perfect (see my previous post in this thread), but overall, they've done a great job.

And then there's the final boss of ME2. Oy. What a mess...

Revan312 wrote...
  It's IMPOSSIBLE to

Stop right there, sparky. No good scientist should ever say what is possible or impossible. All scientific knowledge is tenative. It is much better to say, "We do not know of any way to..." than to say, "It is impossible to..." Newtonian physics would probably suggest that gravity bending time is impossible, but there you have it. Likewise, even Stephen Hawking didn't like the idea of Hawking radiation because he thought it should be impossible.

I don't think it's at all out of line for sci-fi authors to suggest that something that currently seems impossible could be possible in the distant future. It all just depends on how they go about doing it.

Revan312 wrote...
Also, if you believe their story was original I'll go ahead and point you to this list

home.austarnet.com.au/petersykes/topscifi/

Go ahead and browse through it and I guarentee you'll find at least 5-10 works that have the same story when boiled down.

Sadly, gaming writers generally suck. Even the best ones write stories that are highly derrivitive. ME's writing is, IMO, among the cream of the current crop. I'm hoping as gaming continues to develop that writing will be seeing as more and more important, as right now it takes a very, very distant backseat to gameplay and graphics for most developers. I'm quite glad that at least someone (Bioware, in this case) thinks it's integral to the gaming experience.

Revan312 wrote...
My only point was, that to compare any of this to science is redundent as it's not based on actual scientific principles.  Sure, having some techno babble about how quantum communications works is neat, but when that's in the same setting with ships that can travel many times the speed of light it's nothing but alternate reality fluff.

Again, personally I'm of the opinion that you can step on science to varying degrees in science fiction without totally destroying suspension of disbelief. Some things (e.g., FTL travel) are much less of a threat to suspension of disbelief than others (e.g., the end boss of ME2). And when you create a series that is generally more of the former than the latter, the latter, especially when it's really bad, can be so jarring as to be noteworthy.

[RobertM5252]

Revan312 wrote...

But, I'll bite, so what is the "what if?" question that ME poses?  What if we discovered an implausible universe where rules don't apply?  I think my definition of science fiction trends much closer to the original sci-fi genre writers of the past than the current writers/producers. Minus intergalactic travel in Starship troopers, I don't think that I Robot or Dune breaks any physics laws so I have no problem with considering them part of the genre (Though it's been a looong time since I read Dune.)

A lot of Dune relies on things that are completely contradictory to current scientific knowledge. Like genetic memory, for instance. That is one of those things where's it's not a matter of us not knowing how such a thing could be possible as us literally knowing that it is impossible: we know how DNA works enough to know that there isn't enough "storage space" in DNA to store the memories of all of one's ancestors. Not in any way, shape or form. OTOH, all Frank Herbert needed to do was invent some other explanation and I think he still would've been fine.

Other than that, I can't remember off the top of my head any other glaring science blunders in Dune. But my memory of it is that, over all, it was more "science fantasy" than "science fiction."

Oh, and BTW, yeah, the setting is all people use to discriminate sci-fi from fantasy as the terms are used in common parlance. Sci-fi = future, fantasy = past. That's as far as most people take it. It's why sub-genres were created.  (Your definition of "sci-fi" is virtually the definition for "hard science fiction.")

[VampireCommando]

I agree with the OP to a certain point on where everything in the ME universe is belivable, however when your ranting about why does the reaper look human, you said that its because EDI says that its because its made from the 'essense' of humans, wel that answer is both correct and incorrect at the same time. Yes she does say that but she doesnt say thats why it looks human, she actully says it looks human because they likely model it on the speices that they are using to create it. So there for if they were builing a reapers out of Krogan, then they would most likely model it after a krogan, and if they built a Turian one they would model it after a Turian and so on so fourth, you get the jist, so it is plausable after all, you just missunderstood what EDI actully said.

[Ronin Slayd]

viverravid wrote...

But then in the collector base we learn that the bulk of the humans aren't being repurposed in this way, but are being rendered down into a raw "genetic paste", which is somehow the "essence" of humans, and it is being used to... make a giant robot that looks like a human skeleton. Why does it look like a human? Because it's made from the "essence" of humans, of course. EDI tells us this, and she isn't ever wrong.

I didn't get this from EDI's comment. I was left with the impression it was more akin to trophy-like psychology. The reaper is made in the image of the race they found most "impressive".

Why is it silly? All any gene actually does is describe how to make a particular protein by joining a series of amino acids together.

Except here the human DNA is being used as construction material or food for a larve, plausible. It's injected? A novel game point. Consider at the embryo stage, nutrition is injected drirectly too.

So lets make a bigger stretch and assume the reaper is being grown from actual human cells...

OR we can consider the base molecules are being extracted and use to "grow" the human reaper.
Personally, I consider the whole concept of transitions between human and machine to be "fiction". Our bodies don't like metal in them being used as replacement parts. This whole phenomenom of "rejection" is interesting to me.

We are more than the sum of our parts, the DNA is the instruction set on our bodies and I do enjoy admiring my gf's genetics, for sure. But the part of us that makes us who we are, interests, dreams, creativity, these are not genetically coded.... IMO. Nor is any animal's, cunning, endurance or strength acqured through drinking it's blood.

I guess I could be really really generous and assume that the reapers are just constructing the human-reaper from liquified humans as a psych warfare tactic - so they can kill you with your own grandmothers liquified corpse. And they made it look like a skeleton just to make it look scarier. And poor EDI was just confused and making stuff up to cover for it, knowing Shepard skipped genetics 101 and wouldn't notice. (Maybe that's why Mordin dies so easily holding the line at the end - so he won't pipe up and point out the giant genetic plot holes).

How many peoples still drink the blood of an animal to capture it's "essence" or it's "spirit"?
Personally, I think such practices are ridiculous but this is my own opinion.

For me ME2 was a good story to enjoy, I was a bit disappointed with the romances this time around however.
I am on my 8th play through and it is, all-in-all, a good bang for my buck.

Modifié par Ronin Slayd, 24 avril 2010 - 09:12 .

[adam_grif]

Ecael wrote...

Up until that point, Mass Effect had probably the most plausible scientific explanations of plot and gameplay devices of any sci-fi game (or sci-if movie or TV show) ever.

My thoughts exactly.

Nearly nothing in ME is scientifically "better" than the stock standard generic space opera rubbish that pollutes games and TV. People read the codex and think that because there are words coming from the television that sound sciency, that what it's saying is plausible and well thought out.

Of course, everytime there's a cutscene the art department sends out a big F-U to the people writing the codex, taking a huge dump over all of their work, ignoring things, contradicting things and not even bothering to be internally consistent. The GARDIAN "lasers" on Freedom's Progress are quite clearly projectile weapons. After writing essays on how railguns are the ultimate arbiters of space warfare and how everything happens at extreme distances, the final cutscene has the Geth and Citadel fleets huling slow moving fireballs at each other and wallowing around like beached ****ing whales. The Citadel fleet was supposed to be guarding the relay (we have dialogue to this effect in game) because they're expecting a Geth attack... cue cutscene where they pop out of FTL and the Citadel fleet is still just milling about next to the Citadel, not in weapon range of the fleet that just appeared. Whoops?

The great rift on that planet was supposedly created by a big gun? First of all, that's stupid. It's actually a photograph of mars, and there's no way one impact could create a thing that looks like that, because it's bendy and curvy, and has a sharp turn midway down. Secondly, if Reapers took that much energy to kill, then the whole point of the first game was totally invalidated. The reason Sovereign had to take such a "subtle" approach was because a reaper  couldn't take their defenses by itself. It needed the geth. Otherwise he could have just showed up by himself and landed on the Citadel. Who could have stopped him?

The space battle at the end of ME2... don't even get me started...