114 réponses à ce sujet

[krownhunter07]

Maybe its less a glitch and more them trying to validate their existence.

[Mir5]

digby69 wrote...

I partially agree with Durasteel. But cut out the religion bit.

Basically a very advanced species either tried for immortallity or was dieing out and tried to save its selve by uploading its mind into a computer program (a bit like the geth) however "they" didn't do too well with there quality controll and basically the progrqam is bugged. A glitch causes the reapers to go a reaping every 50,000 years.

This is classic SciFi.

So they're basically idiots?
Repeating a pointless cycle without even realizing the vanity?
Not too hot story material from my perspective.

Back in Mass1 days, as the Reapers apparently had no progressive traits, I kinda imagined they'd be agents of something bigger and even worse. A sentience beyond this universe? Couldn't come here but could build these machines(?) to be their controls.

Modifié par Mir5, 16 septembre 2010 - 01:22 .

[Archontor]

Mallissin wrote...

It's so nice to see the same discussions replayed from months ago, with new people taking credit for old discoveries and the argument playing out the same way.

Seems like the Reaper culling MIGHT BE TO STOP THESE THREADS!

well to be fair i directly quoted on the first page that i drew inspiration from someone else

[Lord_Tirian]

Flamesz wrote...

Others, like me however would see it as BioWare being lazy and not giving the Reapers a motivation and that they are just mindless killing machines.

That's always a danger - and it's a fine line. But BioWare has good writers and they haven't really disappointed me in the story department for a long time (there were lows, but... mostly only because their highs are so good that "average" stories look bad) - so I actually expect them to pull off the mystique without being lazy - which is possible. If they create a story that has motivations that we can understand without mentioning explicitly - hence leaving it open to various interpretations - you pretty much get the best of both worlds.

The Blade Runner is a good example how something like this can work (though it's a different idea there) - you have the feeling that there' an answer to "is Deckard a replicant", but depending on the person you ask, you'll get a different (but often well-reasoned) answer. Or, as more recent example, the ending of Inception.

And if they can do that - convince us that there *is* a reason, without actually spelling it out explicitly... well, then BioWare really is the "story game" company!

[--Master of All--]

I do hope they can find a way to reveal the nature of the Reapers without a ridiculous amount of exposition (I don't want Harbinger giving me a twenty minute lecture on Reaper Origins 101). Ideally, the purpose of the Reapers would be something that the player suddenly 'realizes' by assembling previous bits of evidence from all three of the games. To have a Reaper explain everything to the player would not only contradict previous statements made by Sovereign (that the nature of Reapers can not be comprehended), it would also diminish the player's feeling of personal achievement at solving a mystery on their own that was supposed to be unsolvable.

As an added bonus, it would provide evidence that Bioware had a plan all along for the Reapers, and didn't wait until ME3 to decide what the Reapers are and then insert it suddenly into the plot.

Modifié par --Master of All--, 16 septembre 2010 - 10:09 .

[Zan Mura]

TBH I just figure this whole thing as lab test of galactic proportions. They allow species to develop to a certain point to see their potential, then wipe the slate clean when the results aren't satisfactory enough. Sort of like putting a rat through a maze and if 50 000 years isn't enough for it to pass, then store the data and send in another rat. Keep doing it over and over and over until one of them passes. The reason the protheans were harvested and molded into collectors, and now they're attempting to do the same to humans, is likely just because these two races were the most able in fighting the reapers back. IE. the rats that got further than others.

There's some kind of a gimmick there. Some important revelation or discovery that's waiting to be found. If we can do that before the reapers get to us, we win. If not, the cycle begins anew with humans being nothing but yet another footnote on the reaper's way to finding whatever they're looking for.

Because whatever the heck's going on, I'd be pretty amazed if we actually beat reaper in open combat. Hell, I'd be amazed if we beat them, period. No matter which Shepard-tactics were used. They are aeons more advanced than us after all, and they've had just as much time to build up their fleet.

While some cool out-of-galaxy superthreats would be fun and all, the story cannot be too far-fetched or take too much time to explain and to wrap your head around. Otherwise it would feel like some quasi-intelligent bs that people just can't bring themselves to understand or like. BW's never done that before, and I don't think they're gonna start now. Whatever the end goal of the reapers is, it's bound to be something ultimately quite simple. Something that we CAN affect, we can end, and doesn't leave our future hanging by a thread.

So while the idea of the reapers harvesting the genetic material, culture and technology of the most advanced and successful species to fight off some intergalactic doomsday event is fun, I really don't think it's likely. It would basically take the control out of our hands and make the events in ME1 and 2 seem rather redundant.

Modifié par Zan Mura, 16 septembre 2010 - 10:20 .

[Archontor]

Mark B wrote...

Archontor I agree, the engergy required to have an effect on a star would be massive and if it's origin was mass relays, I'm pretty sure one of the many races using them may have noticed this vast discharge in their attempts to study them, so I think Haestrom is the result of something else entirely.

"I'm pretty sure one of the many races using them may have noticed this vast discharge in their attempts to study them" the turian council-man would dissmiss those claims anyway

[Mir5]

Mallissin wrote...
 with new people taking credit for old discoveries and the argument playing out the same way.

We are now taking ownerships on ideas, on a third party forum? And is it so wrong if new people come here and discuss things that you already know?

[I_am_a_Spoon]

COPY/PASTED FROM ANOTHER SITE:

Just my two cents...
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I get the feeling that the Reapers are collecting humans for a much greater purpose than reproduction. As already mentioned, they're immmortal, and the inclusion of organic material in their makeup could probably be bypassed by such a technologically-evolved race. I was always confused as to why Reapers were half-organic and not fully synthetic... why the hell do they need to incorporate organic components at all?
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Harbinger's line was: "We are your salvation through destruction."
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Does that mean that the Reapers might actually believe that they're ensuring the survival of various species by storing "backup" genetic material? The massive amount of matter contained within each Reaper (millions of humans were to be harvested) is easily enough to maintain and/or reconstruct numerous viable genepools of the species from which it was created, and the Reapers' survivability and sheer power would ensure that the precious organic cargo within each of them would be protected from external harm, even against forces originating from beyond the galactic border. Maybe they're nothing but gigantic, armoured, armed, self-aware gene-storage facilities for some unknown, even higher power...
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Or a second possibility; maybe they're a race of 'hunters'? Maybe, each 50 000 years, they emerge to kill and recover genetic material from all intelligent life in the galaxy? This, to me, seems plausible; modern-day hunters and poachers stalk animals through the wild; when they make a significant kill (such as a bear, lion or moose), they hang the animal's severed head up on thir wall as a trophy. Maybe this is the Reaper equivelent. Once they have their trophy (a construct in the image of the intelligent species used to create it, and containing a massive sample of their collective genetic material) they begin to eradicate all traces of intelligent life. This ensures that when they wake after 50 millenia for their next hunt, the galaxy will be populated by completely new intelligent life forms to stalk, all easy prey for the God-like Reaper fleet.
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Maybe it's even a kind of test; they could be searching for a new species that is adaptable and strong enough to fight back and reist their hunt. Perhaps they are searching for the "perfect organic race", or an "evolutional prodigy"... after all, Sovereign itself stated that the mass relays had initially been created with the sole purpose of forcing new civilisations down the paths the Reapers had intended... who's to say what they were trying to achieve by doing that? It could be an experiment on a galactic scale; when a scientist returns to his project only to find it a complete failure, he/she disposes of it and begins again. According to Sovereign, intelligent life "was an accident". Maybe 'life' is just the Reaper equivelent of 'penicillin', one of the most important medical developments in recent history (and also discovered by accident). Maybe the Reapers CREATED life, and are researching its origins or development, pruning it back to the roots every 50 000 years so that they can repeat their galactic experiment...
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Or maybe they're just cold-hearted, psychopathic, genocidal, mechanical bastards who want to kill everything with a pulse out of sheer spite. Don't forget that possibility.

Modifié par I_am_a_Spoon, 16 septembre 2010 - 11:32 .

[Anacronian Stryx]

Fourth Possibility : The reapers detests biological being so much that they actually See's it as a salvation for them to escape their flesh and be processed and made into reapers.



biological life is nothing but an accident

[AngryFrozenWater]

A while ago I wrote this:

AngryFrozenWater wrote...

Somehow the whole reaper thing reminds me of the the Omega Point theories. There are several variations on this theme, but in this case it looks like the reapers are trying to reach the Omega Point by using technology. They will become immortal and all knowing. In fact they might want to become a god. If they succeed they (for all intents and  purposes) will become one.

In addition to that I think that the reapers are using an extreme form of "survival of the fittest" method. Before exterminating the most dominant species they include the technology (if any) and traits of the that species to their own. By providing us their technology they allow civilizations to follow a controlled path to reduce the risk. It looks like they have done that countless times, so they must be good at that by now.

It takes time to engulf the galaxy with their technology to approach the Omega Point. But it seems that time is not important to them. After all, they have enough of that.

For me that's the only theory that makes sense. It fits what they tell us. It fits what they are doing to us.

Edit: It follows that they don't want to dominate just this galaxy. Their goal would be the universe. Without that, the Omega Point cannot be reached.

Modifié par AngryFrozenWater, 16 septembre 2010 - 11:49 .

[Archontor]

I_am_a_Spoon wrote...

COPY/PASTED FROM ANOTHER SITE:

Just my two cents...
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I get the feeling that the Reapers are collecting humans for a much greater purpose than reproduction. As already mentioned, they're immmortal, and the inclusion of organic material in their makeup could probably be bypassed by such a technologically-evolved race. I was always confused as to why Reapers were half-organic and not fully synthetic... why the hell do they need to incorporate organic components at all?
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Harbinger's line was: "We are your salvation through destruction."
*
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Does that mean that the Reapers might actually believe that they're ensuring the survival of various species by storing "backup" genetic material? The massive amount of matter contained within each Reaper (millions of humans were to be harvested) is easily enough to maintain and/or reconstruct numerous viable genepools of the species from which it was created, and the Reapers' survivability and sheer power would ensure that the precious organic cargo within each of them would be protected from external harm, even against forces originating from beyond the galactic border. Maybe they're nothing but gigantic, armoured, armed, self-aware gene-storage facilities for some unknown, even higher power...
*
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Or a second possibility; maybe they're a race of 'hunters'? Maybe, each 50 000 years, they emerge to kill and recover genetic material from all intelligent life in the galaxy? This, to me, seems plausible; modern-day hunters and poachers stalk animals through the wild; when they make a significant kill (such as a bear, lion or moose), they hang the animal's severed head up on thir wall as a trophy. Maybe this is the Reaper equivelent. Once they have their trophy (a construct in the image of the intelligent species used to create it, and containing a massive sample of their collective genetic material) they begin to eradicate all traces of intelligent life. This ensures that when they wake after 50 millenia for their next hunt, the galaxy will be populated by completely new intelligent life forms to stalk, all easy prey for the God-like Reaper fleet.
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Maybe it's even a kind of test; they could be searching for a new species that is adaptable and strong enough to fight back and reist their hunt. Perhaps they are searching for the "perfect organic race", or an "evolutional prodigy"... after all, Sovereign itself stated that the mass relays had initially been created with the sole purpose of forcing new civilisations down the paths the Reapers had intended... who's to say what they were trying to achieve by doing that? It could be an experiment on a galactic scale; when a scientist returns to his project only to find it a complete failure, he/she disposes of it and begins again. According to Sovereign, intelligent life "was an accident". Maybe 'life' is just the Reaper equivelent of 'penicillin', one of the most important medical developments in recent history (and also discovered by accident). Maybe the Reapers CREATED life, and are researching its origins or development, pruning it back to the roots every 50 000 years so that they can repeat their galactic experiment...
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Or maybe they're just cold-hearted, psychopathic, genocidal, mechanical bastards who want to kill everything with a pulse out of sheer spite. Don't forget that possibility.

assuming your reffering to the simmillarities between my hypothisis and possibility three (appoligies if your not) i'll admit it's very simmillar but i used a singular example i found from the game and also i stated in my theory that it was a test of our moralles and intelligence spescificaly also i never confirmed or denied wether the reapers created organic life

[Anacronian Stryx]

AngryFrozenWater wrote...

A while ago I wrote this:

AngryFrozenWater wrote...

Somehow the whole reaper thing reminds me of the the Omega Point theories. There are several variations on this theme, but in this case it looks like the reapers are trying to reach the Omega Point by using technology. They will become immortal and all knowing. In fact they might want to become a god. If they succeed they (for all intents and  purposes) will become one.

In addition to that I think that the reapers are using an extreme form of "survival of the fittest" method. Before exterminating the most dominant species they include the technology (if any) and traits of the that species to their own. By providing us their technology they allow civilizations to follow a controlled path to reduce the risk. It looks like they have done that countless times, so they must be good at that by now.

It takes time to engulf the galaxy with their technology to approach the Omega Point. But it seems that time is not important to them. After all, they have enough of that.

For me that's the only theory that makes sense. It fits what they tell us. It fits what they are doing to us.

Edit: It follows that they don't want to dominate just this galaxy. Their goal would be the universe. Without that, the Omega Point cannot be reached.

It's always funny to me when i read somebody suggesting that the reapers wants to reach good hood because my own theory is an exceedingly primal one.

I think they want to reproduce pure and simple - reproduction is the primary goal of any race anywhere, Now as we learn in the game the Prothons couldn't be made into reapers but humans could for reasons unknown.

So i guess it goes like this - every 50.000 years the reapers come and take stock of the races that have developed - if none of them can be used to make more reapers they "sanitize the Galaxy and let it start over...on and on until they find a race that can be made into reapers - that race is then harvested and then the circle is continued over and over.

[AngryFrozenWater]

7 months ago I wrote this about the reaper's "survival of the fittest" method:

AngryFrozenWater wrote...

I think the main theme is a simple "survival of the fittest" which the reapers have taken to the extreme. Their seeds are the mass effect technology which causes civilizations to develop along similar lines. By harvesting the races after 50,000 years they can examine which were the biggest threats compared to previous harvests. They will then incorporate the traits of the dominant species into their own and thus improve their chances of survival for the future. The previous cycle got them the protheans and in the current one the humans are their likely target.

We are outnumbered so a total war doesn't seem likely. If the reapers have a central base of operations then that might be a target, otherwise negotiations are a way out. Or, if we know how they incorporate these traits, we can set a trap to give them samples which modify the traits they are after, much like a virus, and bring them down that way.

Shepard has no easy task in ME3. I wonder how it will end.

Modifié par AngryFrozenWater, 16 septembre 2010 - 12:05 .

[Major Truth]

My own two cents:



The Reapers were created by an advanced civilisation years ago. They rose up against their makers and after a long war which nearly saw them defeated, wiped them out. Over time they continued to evolve and naturally saw organic life as a threat and as a enemy



As a result once organic life reaches a certain point they wipe them out to ensure they don't evolve to a point where they are a threat to the reapers. They harvest species in order to learn from them, each reaper gaining the knowledge of each spiecies. The Protheons were deemed not to have any knowledge needed so were enslaved as agents. The fact that they werre building a human reaper suggests that humanity has the knowledge to threaten the reapers



The Reapers for thousand of years to ensure they are in optimum condition to wipe out civilisations. In ME1, the reapers were tagetting all species, however in ME2 they are specifically targetting humans. I think that once Shepard destroyed Soverign they now see humanity as the biggest threat to their existance and are looking to wipe them out first

[Mark B]

Zan Mura wrote...

While some cool out-of-galaxy superthreats would be fun and all, the story cannot be too far-fetched or take too much time to explain and to wrap your head around. Otherwise it would feel like some quasi-intelligent bs that people just can't bring themselves to understand or like.

Cough, Matrix, cough.

Anacronian Stryx wrote...

Fourth Possibility : The reapers detests biological being so much that they actually See's it as a salvation for them to escape their flesh and be processed and made into reapers.

biological life is nothing but an accident

Seems like the most straightforward reason supported v. well by your quote.

[krownhunter07]

Makes me wonder if they'll use the Vong tactic... 'give up the Jed... were, humans and will let you live.

[durasteel]

Mir5 wrote...

durasteel,
any species or entity that has full comprehension on physics and genetics would've long since abandoned superstitious fairytales about souls and such.

On the contrary, in ancient Egypt the elite priesthood understood physics, engineering, the exact dimentions of the Earth and its rotational wobble, and possibly had electricity and incandescent lighting.  They used religion as a tool to control the masses to great effect.

Similarly, in the late middle ages in Europe, science, engineering, and architecture were re-introduced from works preserved in Islamic libraries.  While the clergy became increasingly educated, they actively prevented enlightenment of  the masses, since ignorance and superstition made the peasants easier to control.

Human history is full of examples of a stratification of society whereby an educated elite uses religion to control the ignorant masses.  Just because some among them understand the mass effect well enough to build mass relays and reapers does not mean that 99% of their population doesn't live in supersticious fear of it all.

[008Zulu]

Survival of the fittest is one of the oldest paradigms. Whoever created the Reapers wanted to make sure that those who inhabit the Galaxy are worthy of living in it. As for the Dark Energy buildup in Haestrom, my theory is that the Reapers "infect" a star in this fashion to turn it in to a Mass Effect core strong enough to power a Reaper.

[Zan51]

durasteel wrote...

On the contrary, in ancient Egypt the elite priesthood understood physics, engineering, the exact dimentions of the Earth and its rotational wobble, and possibly had electricity and incandescent lighting.  They used religion as a tool to control the masses to great effect.

Similarly, in the late middle ages in Europe, science, engineering, and architecture were re-introduced from works preserved in Islamic libraries.  While the clergy became increasingly educated, they actively prevented enlightenment of  the masses, since ignorance and superstition made the peasants easier to control.

Human history is full of examples of a stratification of society whereby an educated elite uses religion to control the ignorant masses.  Just because some among them understand the mass effect well enough to build mass relays and reapers does not mean that 99% of their population doesn't live in supersticious fear of it all.

Actually they believed that the building of the massive stone temples created energy for the gods and kept chaos at bay. By perfornming all the rites, the Pharaoh and his priests fed that energy.
Also, From http://www.touregypt...ies/priests.htm which is a site where ALL articles are vetted by Dr Zahi Hawas, Secretary General for the Supreme Council of Antiquities. Many writers are guest archeologists.

"No preaching was required because every Egyptian accepted the validity of the traditional religious theology, i.e. the world was created, ordered and governed by the gods, through the intermediary the king, the only actual priest in Egypt. It was accepted that people tried to live good lives in the hope of earning merit for the life to come; they didn’t need to be "converted" to a way that was already considered to be theirs. The authors of religious works had
no responsibility for instructing the people as a whole in the ways of the gods. The same was true for the ritual priests.

Egyptian priests did have a vital role in the religious ritual of daily and festival life. Whereas today a god may be worshipped who is believed to bestow his grace upon his followers, the Egyptian priest offered and performed material and ritually magic services to the god of his temple, to ensure that god’s presence would continue on
earth, and thus maintain the harmony and order of the world as it had been created. That was why the priests were called "servants of the god," or hem-netjer, the traditional title for a priest."

So they were not so much supressing the peasants as getting on with thier own thing. The peasants had their own shrines and temples that they used as they were not allowed int he State ones in places like Karnak.

Modifié par Zan51, 21 septembre 2010 - 06:16 .

[Lebrine]

A little off topic but I wonder exactly what the Protheans did to humanity when they was playing with the cavemen. I've been wondering if the Protheans had been guiding and genetically improving us to be their weapons against the reapers, it could explain Harbingers interests in humanity and why it sets the collectors on humanity to create a human reaper. After all, lets face it none of the other species in Mass Effect seem to be on the same level as humanity on a whole and humans are singled out as Harbingers target. Maybe it will turn out that humanity is indeed the key to it all and not just Shepard!!



As for the reapers, I have to agree with some points. It could be that the reapers do indeed think they are the good guys and that they are saving civilisations by turning them into ships. On the other hand it could be simply that they are very much like another sci fi enemy that seeks to perfect themselves by assimilating other races that have some sort of benefit to them. Eg. humanity. That might also be why Protheans couldn't be made into a reaper, possibly they didn't have any beneficial qualities.

[hitorihanzo]

Upon seeing the Human Reaper, and seeing what it did to the colonists, did anyone else draw a correlation between what the Reapers do to us, and what Humans do to Cattle? We slaughter cattle, and then often times process the carcass into a form more easily digested by the human palate? Does the Cow know that it's about to become two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions, on a sesame seed bun? I think not. So when Sovereign spoke of their motives being "beyond our comprehension", he spoke correctly. Up until ME2, no one in the history of the galaxy knew why the Reapers do this. All we knew was that ancient, sentient machines wanted to kill us for some unknown reason. To Reapers, we're no smarter than cattle.



It's simply a galactic food chain. Reapers require organics to survive or procreate. Hence, Reapers destroy all organic infrastructure and for a few centuries, have a buffet.

[Anacronian Stryx]

I have been wondering about what the Reapers actually do in the process of making people-soup and building Reapers out of them.



Why use whole people?



Well the only reason i can see is DNA - Deoxyribonucleic acid is pretty much in every cell we posses, So i was thinking that maybe they use a process that splits up the polymers of the DNA strand into single nucleotides and voila you got a single bit system (Adenine<->Thymine) These 1 bit systems would then have to be organized into processors but still the result would be a processor of staggering magnitude.



Still this warrants the question : why use people at all?



And this is where i fear that words like "life force" will sneak into the story.. though this is just my fear sneaking in.

[Zan Mura]

I still stand behind the idea that BW's plots are typically fundamentally very simple. They're just written well enough and carried out in a highly polished, professional manner often making people believe them to be more complex than what they really are.

Currently knowing that the Reapers were behind the Collectors, the Rachni attacks, and how some of the characters hint at the little things like Mordin with his cultural and artistic death, the human genetic variation and all the testing that's done based on it... the simplest conclusion would be that the whole galaxy is nothing but a lab and our progress throughout those 50k years is nothing but a maze. After every 50k years the old batch of rats is exterminated and new ones are put in based on what was learned from the last ones. The goal is nothing more than to see what the heck happens, when will they pass the maze... or when will they develop something new altogether to grant a culturally dead race of superbeings something new worth their infinite time.

It's like a child's little chemistry lab where you just throw in stuff and let it react, over and over and over until something cool comes out. Last time, the Protheans were cool, but apparently not cool enough. So they were used for whatever they were worth, but like the Krogan rejects, they were not perfect. Humans however seem to be, and especially because they have produced the singular entity known as Shepard, who obviously defies everything.

While I don't believe this is the case, I will admit that if it turned out that Reapers had a hand in Cerberus' ability to resurrect Sheps in the first place, I wouldn't be all that surprised. That's a far-fetched thing though, so I'm just putting it out there.

What's really gonna get interesting is how in the heck we're supposed to stop the Reapers in ME3. I hope they won't just suddenly claim that we can take on a race of beings at least hundreds of thousands - if not millions - of years ahead of us in technological advancement in an open battle.

...

In fact, that opens up another continuation of that theory. Maybe Reapers really don't have technology millions of years ahead of us after all.

Maybe the only reason the Reapers do what they do, is because they really are dead. They have no creativity, no real ability to develop and learn beyond what they already know. In reality, they are nothing but parasites waiting away for new organics to come, only to swoop in and steal their technology and knowledge before they become a danger. This is their only means of evolving. While that would certainly make them old, it would only give them power comparable to the combined knowledge of all the past civilizations. Which considering their own need to force the progress of these races down a certain predictable path in order to leave them open for an easy attack, may not be that great at all.

It would certainly explain why Sovereign wasn't blatantly obviously advanced beyond anything the Geth could fathom in a million years, according to the Council.

In this case, humans would represent the occasional leap of evolution that swooshes right past anything the Reapers could have predicted, completely catching them by surprise. So perhaps given that random variation and the extra time bought by the incident with the Mu relay and knowledge of the Reapers, we actually CAN fight them, provided we get a few extra cards up our sleeves.

Modifié par Zan Mura, 21 septembre 2010 - 12:50 .

[008Zulu]

One thing that got me was the Collectors have particle beam weapons, while the Reapers, or atleast Sovereign, use mass accelerator based tech. Perhaps Soveriegn was a sacraficial pawn to make the war more challenging (sentirent machines may like excitment as much as the next man) since the Reapers outnumber the collective total of all ships in the galaxy and that each Reaper is a Dreadnought class vessel. Also the Collectors/Protheans may have bartered their freedom for their lives as per Harbinger's message "You have failed us, we will find another way."



In this context the Reapers might simply show up and say "Willingly surrender and be our slaves and we will spare you, if not, we will smash you to bits and have a jolly good time of it."