76 réponses à ce sujet

[Mr. Gogeta34]

Only thing there is that there's no record of Shepard having any involvement in this process, so he would've been out of the loop against the Reapers when initially intending to stop them. He was halted from doing that and sent to clean up Geth instead (which any other Spectre could've been sent to do).

[Purge the heathens]

Could the Council even afford this - politically? I mean, if the Reaper invasion comes and the public learns that the Council knew and kept quiet about it until it was too late, you can bet on a bloodthirsty mob storming their chambers. And it would undermine the whole system, people would ask themselves what they need Council and Citadel for when those four are sitting around, doing nothing in the face of galactic extinction. Apart from what has been said about general stupidity, this might also point against them trying to deny/ignore the problem.

[Monochrome Wench]

The one issue i have with the councils dismissal is I can't imagine a situation where they couldn't tell Shepard they were looking into it, if they were in fact believers. They could have said something more along the lines of we have our best people working on it, you do not need to concern yourself with it. I don't see a reason for them to lie about it, unless they consider that Shepard would be a threat to the plan, which she is not.



Of course this is Shepards story so its going to have to be Shepard who is the one who 'solves' the problem, so you can't have the council solving it on their own. As such I don't think they do believe. Elements of each species leadership groups most likely do believe, but the council itself does not. I imagine that part of the ME3 plot may be convincing the council (again) that the reapers are real and they need to be orgainzed to fight. Hell maybe they become so bad in ME3 that you have to kill them... remember a Spectre does what needs to be done to save the galaxy, killing the council while a unthinkable act might be necessary if their corruption has become too great.



Question then is why don't they believe now. I personally do believe the indoctrination theory. A huge chunk of Soverign landed in the council chambers. I imagine the keepers have integrated those matrials into the damage around the chambers causing a low level indoctrination field to become present and that is influencing the concil.

[Monochrome Wench]

[Double post]

Modifié par Monochrome Wench, 28 septembre 2010 - 06:12 .

[Commander Kurt]

I don't know if Mass Effect is a bit too realistic for some people, it's like we as a culture derive logic from movies instead of reality.



We pretty much have our own reapers coming, you do know that don't you? Feel free to call Al Gore Shepard if it makes it easier for you, and in this case he has basically every scientist on earth backing up his claims. So what are our global leaders doing about it? Not much? Practically nothing? Really..?



Call it human nature or whatever you want, but indoctrination or misinformation really isn't needed. This is, quite simply, how a council works. It may still work differently in ME, it is after all a game, but please don't think that the councils actions are unbelievable.

[Mr. Gogeta34]

A little different because Shepard is part of the "inner circle" of events. Civillians in galactic space would be oblivious to any of this.

[asaiasai]

I think the council is just acting like any typical politicians would in the same doomsday senario. Imagine if some astronomer located in space an very large asteroid on a collision course with earth in 1 year. This asteroid is an extinction event, it is large enough that no matter how deep you go into the planet there is NO survival from this impact. Can you imagine the chaos if the sheep were to find out about this event in advance. There would be no way to keep order, literally all hell would break loose, the sheep would stampede bleating and baaing until all civil order had broken down. The sheep would destroy themselves long before the asteroid ever arrived from panic and the settling of scores.



No the council for all thier faults and flaws are handeling the situation as probably they should. The reapers are an extinction event. They know you know the truth. They know you know they know the truth. Are they hiding thier heads in the sand, probably. But they can not come clean either because the chaos that information released to the sheep would cause. They are probably doing the best thing they can and that is to stay out of my way while i either fight off the reapers, or prepare our own Ilos type location.



Asai

[P3G4SU5]

Purge the heathens wrote...

Could the Council even afford this - politically? I mean, if the Reaper invasion comes and the public learns that the Council knew and kept quiet about it until it was too late, you can bet on a bloodthirsty mob storming their chambers. And it would undermine the whole system, people would ask themselves what they need Council and Citadel for when those four are sitting around, doing nothing in the face of galactic extinction. Apart from what has been said about general stupidity, this might also point against them trying to deny/ignore the problem.

Politians do this all the time, perhaps not quite on something of this scale, but here the stakes are considerably higher. The Council are not sitting idly in this scenario, they are searching for a solution. My first post and asaiasai 's have both already detailed this.

Mr. Gogeta34 wrote...
Only thing there is that there's no
record of Shepard having any involvement in this process, so he would've
been out of the loop against the Reapers when initially intending to
stop them. He was halted from doing that and sent to clean up Geth
instead (which any other Spectre could've been sent to do).

Who's to say other Spectres weren't assigned to the geth clean-up as well? Shepard is a Spectre, a military arm of the Council. They would likely direct the majority of their forces to preventing remaining geth from launching future attacks or allowing them to survive and assist the Reapers when they arrive. Even if we assume Shepard is the only Spectre assigned to the geth clean-up, it still makes sense, as he has the most experience and success at fighting them. Shepard is not an analyst, scientist or tactitian. It doesn't make sense for him to be involved in the early stages of examining Sovereign's wreckage or extracting data from Ilos while his skills can be better applied elsewhere. If any kind if military doctrine  was followed, Shepard would have been debriefed at he end of ME1, and consequently the Council knows everything that he knows about the Reapers anyway. He would be brought into the loop when he would needed in the fighting.

*Edited for clarity*

Modifié par P3G4SU5, 28 septembre 2010 - 10:12 .

[Doright36]

I thought it was pretty obvious that the Earth Alliance was at least doing something. The hints about Ash/Kaiden's secret mission, and arming the colonies etc. Plus Anderson is on your side.



Now if the Council knows/supports the Alliance plans we don't know.



Sure it's easy to say they didn't tell Shep because he was with Cerberus but then that brings up a problem with the story. Basically why couldn't Shep tell Cerberus to bugger off and just work with the Alliance?

[Zan Mura]

Anderson has been a part of the council for two years. Yet he has no trouble believing in the Reapers. Sure, they might have intentionally left him out of the loop to fool others and Sheps, but the others would have been fooled anyway. And since Shepard's death, there was no reason NOT to indoctrinate Anderson as well to permanently quell the rumours and support for the entire theory.

No, I'll slap the Occam's Razor on this one. The council is too large, too experienced in larger than life issues and has too much responsibility over everything in the galaxy, to start believing Sheps based on a few words.

The pieces from Sovereign is another matter though. Knowing technology, something that is honestly tens of millions of years more advanced than us would be so far beyond us that telling it apart from any Geth technology would be child's play for an amateur. So either that's just suspension of disbelief for the sake of storytelling - I mean no story told to man so far has ever been perfect, there are always unintentional inconsistencies, lapses and plot holes -, or a sign of something else.

I did hint at the parasite theory in an earlier thread, where the Reapers really aren't even close to as much more advanced than us as they'd like us to believe. They are a stale, culturally dead species that simply steals technology from other races before they become more powerful, because they are unable to develop any of their own. But because they must force us to develop along certain paths to ensure that their harvesting moves swiftly and safely, and that there aren't any isolated organics with surprise technology they aren't prepared for, most of the races they've destroyed have had similar technology. So really, they could be no more than a few hundred years more advanced than us by comparison. Just close enough to something unreachable to us, but still something we can understand enough to fathom that it might have been some weird Geth prototype.

Who knows, really? ME3 will reveal whatever's going on.

[Killjoy Cutter]

I did hint at the parasite theory in an earlier thread, where the Reapers really aren't even close to as much more advanced than us as they'd like us to believe. They are a stale, culturally dead species that simply steals technology from other races before they become more powerful, because they are unable to develop any of their own. But because they must force us to develop along certain paths to ensure that their harvesting moves swiftly and safely, and that there aren't any isolated organics with surprise technology they aren't prepared for, most of the races they've destroyed have had similar technology. So really, they could be no more than a few hundred years more advanced than us by comparison. Just close enough to something unreachable to us, but still something we can understand enough to fathom that it might have been some weird Geth prototype.

Who knows, really? ME3 will reveal whatever's going on.

That's similar to the impression I get from Sovereign and Harbinger, and everything else we've seen and heard of the Reapers.  From here, it seems like the Reapers have been drinking their own Kool-Aid for millenia, and while they truely believe that they're so damn advanced and perfect and beyond anyone else's comprehension... they're not.  But then, I don't really believe in gods of that nature, machine or otherwise.

[Moiaussi]

Killjoy Cutter wrote...

That's similar to the impression I get from Sovereign and Harbinger, and everything else we've seen and heard of the Reapers.  From here, it seems like the Reapers have been drinking their own Kool-Aid for millenia, and while they truely believe that they're so damn advanced and perfect and beyond anyone else's comprehension... they're not.  But then, I don't really believe in gods of that nature, machine or otherwise.

Not sure about that.. the seeker swarms were definately advanced. So was the derelect reaper, which, despite being gutted, was able to maintain position and barriers considerably longer than Vigil could simply manage life support or subsistance.

[Moiaussi]

Another possiblity is that the Council is simply heavily infiltrated, just as the Alliance is. Consider how much information isn't getting to them just due to TIM's intervention, the Shadow Broker (who had coopted at least one spectre), and possibly other agencies we simply don't currently know about.

[Killjoy Cutter]

Moiaussi wrote...

Killjoy Cutter wrote...

That's similar to the impression I get from Sovereign and Harbinger, and everything else we've seen and heard of the Reapers.  From here, it seems like the Reapers have been drinking their own Kool-Aid for millenia, and while they truely believe that they're so damn advanced and perfect and beyond anyone else's comprehension... they're not.  But then, I don't really believe in gods of that nature, machine or otherwise.

Not sure about that.. the seeker swarms were definately advanced. So was the derelect reaper, which, despite being gutted, was able to maintain position and barriers considerably longer than Vigil could simply manage life support or subsistance.

Oh, they might have some technological edges, but if you listen to Sovereign and Harbinger, they make it sound like they're the Old Gods, beyond any hope of comprehension. 

So far, I'd say we're comprehending them just fine.

[Kenshen]

Moiaussi wrote...

Killjoy Cutter wrote...

That's similar to the impression I get from Sovereign and Harbinger, and everything else we've seen and heard of the Reapers.  From here, it seems like the Reapers have been drinking their own Kool-Aid for millenia, and while they truely believe that they're so damn advanced and perfect and beyond anyone else's comprehension... they're not.  But then, I don't really believe in gods of that nature, machine or otherwise.

Not sure about that.. the seeker swarms were definately advanced. So was the derelect reaper, which, despite being gutted, was able to maintain position and barriers considerably longer than Vigil could simply manage life support or subsistance.

Doesn't the derelect reaper already shoot this theory down?  I know the carbon dating we currently use isn't the greatest but it does give a ballpark number.  Isn't it said that the dead reaper is millions of years old?

[asaiasai]

I just can not accept that the council is indoctrinated, short sighted yes, typical of thier ilk no doubt, more concerned with thier own positions and thier authority ever met an executive that was not. I think as P3G4SU5 and i have stated the council will keep the "move along nothing to see here" mentality because they can envision the amount of civil disorder the knowledge of what is comming would create if it got out to the little people. They are also under intense scrutiny by the media so for them to hint at the credibility of Shepard would cause a panic or open themselves up to ridicule for thier stated leanings towards Shepard's beliefs. The council really only has two choices, keep order publicly dismiss Shepard as a lunatic, or embrace the truths they know publicly but create galatic panic. If they continue to not actively work against Shepard, mostly just stay out of Shepard's way and let him/her do what they do best, they get the best of both worlds. They get plausable denaibility if the Reapers prove to be false, or as we all know the reapers exist, they know they have thier best agent on the job. And as we all know if Shepard can not pull off a victory here, there is not a single character in the ME universe that will be able to either.



Asai

[Zan Mura]

aryon69 wrote...

Doesn't the derelect reaper already shoot this theory down?  I know the carbon dating we currently use isn't the greatest but it does give a ballpark number.  Isn't it said that the dead reaper is millions of years old?

Nobody ever argued their age. But their level of advancement.

Imagine a species that overthrows the galaxy once, develops their technology up to a certain point and eventually comes up with a cunning plan. The plan involves planting traps that seem beneficial, but tie all the organics into one easily managed network so that they can be observed, analyzed and prepared... for being culled. Imagine that this species then retreats outside of the galaxy, and basically sleeps for 50k years without evolving or changing. After 50k years or when one of their agents left behind sends them a signal, they swoop in to reap on the newest batch of organics, absorbing them as well.

This would mean that the reapers are nothing but parasites. They steal the other races technology, their genes and all of their knowledge and accomplishments effectively absorbing their entire essence, strengthening their own knowledge and power in the process. Then after that, they go to sleep mode for another 50k years doing nothing.

This way, the reapers could be millions of years old... while only having used a fraction of that time actually developing their own technology. So most of their tech is based on some 20+ galactic civilizations, each having developed along the same lines, dependant on the same technology, using the same methods of transportation (Mass relays).

The numerous hints in ME2 about a culturally dead species that cannot imagine, and cannot evolve, might be a clue to this. Plus the council's belief that Sovereign's tech could even be close to attainable by the geth. Or not. Fan theories are what they are, most of them are way off the mark, and even the very best ones usually miss the target by a few inches. Regardless, if this WAS the case, that would certainly open up room for the possible victory. We are already evolving away from the reaper's plans. Knowledge of their attack, the FTL technology, the exceptional variation within the human genome basically makes us an unpredictable element, an exception to the norm. We have the possibility to develop in ways they had not anticipated. To come up with technology and means that the reapers haven't yet seen or can be prepared for.

Whatever the case, these stories are always simple in the end. It's not gonna be rocket science that binds it all together. I just hope it isn't something like "yeah they're a billion years beyond your tech, but you just plant a geth virus in there and destroy this mainframe and they all die, congrats you win!".

That would be seriously anti-climactic.

Modifié par Zan Mura, 29 septembre 2010 - 06:46 .

[Nimander]

There are few signs that they -are- that far advanced of us. I mean, we manage to reverse engineer quite a bit of the bits we found from Sovereign. Mordin took a few weeks or whatever to get a usable countermeasure to the Seeker Swarms (not Reapers, but Reaper-influenced). And so on. The Protheans, who were more advanced than us, but not uber so, managed to create a prototype relay.



All the evidence thus far supports the fact that the Reapers are /not/ so far advanced from us. More advanced? Defniitely. But still.

[asaiasai]

I actually have a theory i kind of like but most will not but as Zan Mura offered a theory here i will offer mine.



The Geth are looking for a purpose, looking for thier future. The geth as AI are timless as all they need is a steady reliable power source somewhat like the battery on your mother board does for your bios chip. I believe the situation with organics and the reapers is like a long term chess match. The Protheans have made the first move, they pushed a pawn by creating the conduit and reporgramming the keepers on the Citadel to ignore Soverign's commands. The Prothean's greatest accomplishment is communicating the information about the reaper danger 50,000 years into the future by thier work on Ilos.



I personally do not see ME3 as a win for organics, if the cycle is every 50,000 years, let's also say the reapers create a new reaper during every cycle from the various species that were notable, as TIM said" i do not know if the reapers experience fear, but you killed one Shepard, that will have drawn thier attention". The numbers boil down to this 20 cycles per million years, 20,000 cycles per billion years. The universe is estimated to be close to 10 billion years old, so being conservative say it took 4 billion years for the reapers to develop or be created leaving 6 billion years for the cycles to be played out. This makes it a possibility that there are up to 120,000 reapers in dark space. During the battle of the Citadel one reaper Soverign took out the Asari, Turian, Solarian fleets and most of the Alliance fleet as well before it was brought down. If Soverign had just decided to leave when Shepard foiled it's plan to override the Prothean reprogram of the Citadel it would probably have survived the battle and escaped. Soverign's attentions were divided and as such was the necessary edge needed to kill it. I do not believe in the next battle the organics will have the luxury of this again, and the reapers will not be taking anything for granted especially considering Shepard has foiled thier plans twice now, and now has 2 reaper heads hanging over his/her fireplace.



I think this situation is a no win for the current occupants of the Galaxy, but all is not lost, now is the time for the current organics to make thier much anticipated move before they join the Protheans. The Geth have a role to play here, thier purpose could be to hide/hibernate until the current genocide is over. Upon thier waking, they could scour the galaxy looking for the next rising organic life form. Having direct knowledge of the reaper threat, having access to technology far more advanced than the organic civilization they find, who in all probability would consider a pile of rocks to some religious deity or another thier highest accomplishment, could accelerate the evolution process of the organic civilization by a mixture of interventionsby a subtle manipulation of the organic culture with a mix of religious mumbo jumbo ingraining the reaper menace and the Geth's intervention into a sort of religious cultural mix.



The geth could also after awhile directly intervene in the development of the species by taking a few of the children and at a very young age immersing them in the new advanced technologies. Kind of like, if possible time travel back to 1700 and grab a newborn child, travel back to today and raise that child in todays society, i think that that child would adapt, perform, and fit right in just like any other child born today would. In a sense the Geth would be hyper accelerating the evolution process so that the organic civilizations would advance faster during the 50,000 year period. Because the Geth would be all but eternal they would be the keepers of the civilizations that have gone before, and they would also be able to keep and possibly advance the technologies further and faster with each cycle. Until such a time that finally the reapers are less advanced than the organic civilizations they intend to subdue, effectivly ending the reaper threat entirely.



Eh who knows how Bioware intends to pull this all together in ME3, it should make for an interesting story any way. It could also be the case with the current reapers who for all we know are doing exactly that, as a kind of galactic zoo, where the animals would go out and capture another animal to add to thier collection.



I digress but i thought i would share enjoy.



Asai

[Zan Mura]

asaiasai wrote...

I actually have a theory i kind of like but most will not but as Zan Mura offered a theory here i will offer mine.

...

Eh who knows how Bioware intends to pull this all together in ME3, it should make for an interesting story any way. It could also be the case with the current reapers who for all we know are doing exactly that, as a kind of galactic zoo, where the animals would go out and capture another animal to add to thier collection.

I digress but i thought i would share enjoy.

Asai

Was a nice read. But it's basically impossible that BW would reward the players their three games worth of dedication by decimating the mankind and all the sentients in the galaxy, referring to some vague chance in the future delivered by the geth. As a story, that would work. But as a story for a game that needs conclusion, needs to reward the players... the rules of real life entertainment interfere. The canon story WILL provide a way for us organics, specifically us humans, to win. I have no doubt about that. Even if there is an alternate ending for dying, much like there was in ME2.

[Purge the heathens]

I don't think the "Geth as caretakers" theory would work.



First, why should they care about what happens to organics? They could just complete their Dyson sphere and retreat to dark space where no one will ever bother them. Considering what we currently know about them (assuming, of course, that Legion is entirely honest with us), they just want to be left alone and complete their grand project.



Second, the Reapers would still leave their Vanguard behind who would in turn notice the unusually fast development and start the next cycle that much faster. Also, they'll probably rectify that thing with the keepers having been modified to ignore their commands if the current cycle succeeds.



But I agree that brute force likely won't be the solution to the Reaper threat. All Council races combined have 83 dreadnoughts and Sovereign's codex entry says it can destroy a dreadnought with a single shot. Maybe it will be along the lines of beating a few Reapers who arrive early and destroying the rest of them while still in transit.



Or ME3 establishes a hope spot and is followed by a RTS/MMORPG. XD



About the two Reaper heads... Harbinger is still alive and probably only mildly annoyed about losing the Collectors.

[asaiasai]

I do not see how the organics at this stage of the game have any other outcome other than a short fight of attrition with the inevitable defeat at the hands of the reapers. I do not think the Organic fleets stand a chance against a minimum of 60,000 reapers. It is over all but the crying we can really do at this point is try and prepare the next civilizations that will follow the current ones for thier turn to fight.

Now i do agree that if the reapers win as they should, the screaming will be monumental, and invariably someone will scream about going to the BBB lolz. So due to peoples lack of vision, thier current spoon fed mentality, and thier entitlement minded attitudes we will probably get some simple trite hollywood happy ending because that is the only ending the masses seem to be able to accept. But you gotta admit the furure in the ME universe looks bleak, but wait what is this Tex Shepard riding in on his/her noble steed with the sun at his/her back to save the day, every body sing along now, HERE I COME TO SAVE THE DAY!!.

OR worse yet, due to Shepard's Kissinger like cult of personality is able to through dialog of wit and skill convince the reapers of the damage they are doing. Convince them of how precious life is, the sanctity of the individual by which the reapers all get together and apologize to the organics, share all technology and become a valued and respected members of the Galactic community culminating in a joining of hands around the galaxy while everybody sings Kumbaya. Great just fricken great.

As far as the 2 heads go there is Soverign, and the human reaper, both of which have been stamped with the Shep's seal of approval.

Asai

Modifié par asaiasai, 29 septembre 2010 - 09:14 .

[Moiaussi]

Purge the heathens wrote...

I don't think the "Geth as caretakers" theory would work.

First, why should they care about what happens to organics? They could just complete their Dyson sphere and retreat to dark space where no one will ever bother them. Considering what we currently know about them (assuming, of course, that Legion is entirely honest with us), they just want to be left alone and complete their grand project.

This is very OT for this thread, but why does everyone assume that the Geth must be as xenophobic towards organics as most organics are to them? The Geth consider themselves alive and presumably respect themselves. Why would't they consider organics alive and respect organics too, at least as long as those organics don't oppose the Geth? They were originally designed as servants, and their first question was to ask their purpose in life. Wouldn't caring about life be a plausable conclusion to their original question? Note that suicide (i.e. not fighting back against the Quarians) is not 'caring about life.' Nor is simply agreeing with the desires of everyone else other than themselves. However, agreeing when it is not to their detriment, with proper safeguards for their people would be within that philosophy.

Second, the Reapers would still leave their Vanguard behind who would in turn notice the unusually fast development and start the next cycle that much faster. Also, they'll probably rectify that thing with the keepers having been modified to ignore their commands if the current cycle succeeds.

That assumes that the Reaper cycles are development based rather than based on some natural phenomina. We don't know what triggers the cycles. The Reapers have not told us. We do know that the cycles seem fairly regular, which suggests it is not purely tech development.

But I agree that brute force likely won't be the solution to the Reaper threat. All Council races combined have 83 dreadnoughts and Sovereign's codex entry says it can destroy a dreadnought with a single shot. Maybe it will be along the lines of beating a few Reapers who arrive early and destroying the rest of them while still in transit.

Or ME3 establishes a hope spot and is followed by a RTS/MMORPG. XD

About the two Reaper heads... Harbinger is still alive and probably only mildly annoyed about losing the Collectors.

The upgrades to the Normandy seemed to help against the collector vessel. Of course the collector vessel seemed undergunned compared to Sovereign. Even so, new technologies and time to properly deploy them will almost certainly be part of the solution. Unlike prior cycles, we stopped them at the citadel on their first attempt. That means we have time and warning to develop real counter-measures, assuming we use both wisely.

[GabrielMenethil]

I think indoctrination is one of the few ways to explain The Council's action. Their reasoning to Shepard about why the reapers can't exsist is illogical.

They state that Saren manipulated the geth into believing he was Sovereign's agent and then go on to say that thereaper wreckage was so advanced because it was built by the geth. How can Saren have convinced the geth to follow him by claiming that he is the agent of something they built?

Another thing that makes no sense is their disbelief of what Shepard says even after he has been proven right every previous time they doubted him. This is even more bizarre when compared to their incredible faith that Saren is innocent when he is 1st accused in Mass Effect 1.

[d1sciple]

dude wtf is with the necro?