150 réponses à ce sujet

[hooahguy]

Comparing the reapers to Darkseid and Galactus? No, the latter two are too cheesy.

[Foolsfolly]

The Reapers are cheesy.

Cheesy doesn't mean bad. You can have good cheesy. Like Galactus, Darkseid, and Reapers. I love them all! Big stupid grandstanding cosmic destroyers that they are!

Modifié par Foolsfolly, 20 octobre 2010 - 02:56 .

[Foolsfolly]

I. Am. The. New. God. All is one in Darkseid. This mighty body is my church. When I command your surrender, I speak with three billion voices. When I make a fist to crush your resistance. It is with three billion hands. When I stare into your eyes and shatter your dreams. And break your heart. It is with six billion eyes! Nothing like Darkseid has ever come among you: Nothing will again. I will take you to a hell without exit or end. And there I will murder your souls! And make you crawl and beg! And die! Die! Die for Darkseid!

See what I have made! Imagine what is yet to come! I take away their confusion and give them obedience. I take away their fear of themselves and give them fear of Darkseid. I have liberated them from the chaos and indecision! I have given one straight path! One clear purpose! One goal: To die for Darkseid!

No, seriously. The Reapers are those old cheesy and wonderful cosmic comic book villains. They're great! I love their grandstanding, I love their false sense of superiority, I love how when it really hits they can hit hard. Galactus and Darkseid are cheesy but you still don't want to fight them. They're strong and neigh unstoppable but the hero always wins out.



They're the Reapers. I love these guys. I can't wait to fight them.

[hooahguy]

The difference between Darkseid (and his ilk) and the Reapers is that Darkseid was always stopped.

The Reapers, on the other hand, while still somewhat cheesy, nowhere near the same level of cheesiness. I mean, who names the villain as obviously bad as "Darkseid"?

But the Reapers, while their name signals villain-ness, its not one person that can be taken down. You saw the last scene in ME2: there were hundreds of Reapers coming out of hibernation.

Darkseid was one man, with many minions who were relatively weak compared to the protagonist. With the Reapers, they are all very strong while the protagonist is nowhere near as strong.

[Foolsfolly]

Darkseid, Galactus and the like were only stopped when they started telling stories with those guys. They all proclaimed to be unbeatable previous to meeting the heroes. It's the same with the Reapers who professed to be unstoppable and then were stopped twice. And they'll be stopped again.



Jack Kirby named the villain Darkseid. And Sovereign and Harbinger are both obvious names too.



Typically in any story heroes are outnumbered and out gunned. If they had the advantage then the battles would mean less. I really doubt the Reapers are going to wipe out all life in the universe again. It may cost the heroes something to defeat them but they'll be stopped. That was always going to happen otherwise there'd be no more sequels or books.

[hooahguy]

Theres a difference to actually being unbeatable and proclaiming they are unbeatable. The Reapers were unbeatable until Shep, hence the Protheans.
Darkseid, never truly unbeatable.
And I know that Jack Kirby made up Darkseid. Ive read Vol. 3 of his compilation of comics. Interesting stuff, but I couldnt get hooked on it. Too many different people all fighting against the same few people, no one or two main characters though all were fighting the same villain.

Modifié par hooahguy, 20 octobre 2010 - 03:42 .

[Foolsfolly]

Except for that whole derelict Reaper totally being owned by someone once.



They're not unbeatable. Sovie's actions prove this when he ran straight for the the Citadel and closed its arms to hide. Joker says that Sovie can pull turns that would shear other ships in half. It's fast, its shields are strong, and it's maneuverable. The Citadel fleet was caught off guard and were apparently devastated. All Sovie had to do was fight in that battle and destroy the fleet and there'd be no stopping him.



He hid because Reapers are not unstoppable. They're full of hot air. They use other races as and hide.

[Killjoy Cutter]

I like this human, he understands.



(OK, I couldn't resist using that line just the one time...)

[AntenDS]

The Reapers know they aren't indestructible and that is why they just don't bum rush the current organic species. They have a plan that was successful for a unknown about of times until ME1 with the help of the Prothiens from their last culling. So now that the Reapers lost their "Plan A" and maybe "Plan B" they need to rethink their strategy. It is also unknown if they even had this much trouble before.

[Killjoy Cutter]

AntenDS wrote...

The Reapers know they aren't indestructible and that is why they just don't bum rush the current organic species. They have a plan that was successful for a unknown about of times until ME1 with the help of the Prothiens from their last culling. So now that the Reapers lost their "Plan A" and maybe "Plan B" they need to rethink their strategy. It is also unknown if they even had this much trouble before.

They had at least one moment of very serious trouble at Klendagen (sp).

[Foolsfolly]

And likely another moment when they tried to make the second Reaper.



You know an entire galaxy of life against one lone Reaper. That had to be a tough fight for its life.

[Lilitv]

My biggest problem is the shift from mysterious techno-gods to robotic jars of goo. Sovereign gave us the impression that the Reapers detest organics and suddenly they have organic material inside them. Either poor Sovereign is blissfully ignorant or in denial.

[TuringPoint]

How is it that you guys get the idea the Reapers were described as robotic jars of goo?  I never even had that thought occur to me.  They don't go through explaining the process of making a Reaper in any more precise detail than they could show us visually and through dialogue.  In any case, it makes the game more fun if I can pretend that the Reapers are processed from genetic material to machine form that has some sort of consciousness and awareness that goes beyond our own.  (Actually, I thought that's exactly how the process was described) I find that intriguing.  It's just, well, you have to think about it yourself.  You can't assume Bioware is going to spoonfeed everything to you.

I don't understand why you'd say they had to retcon anything.  Bioware outlined the main plotline of all three games before they made the first game.  Besides that,  Sovereign didn't ever say what he was.  He said more or less, "behold, I am awesome" and played mind games with you.  It was an awesome conversation.  He said he was more than a machine.  Are the Reapers of ME2 more than a machine?  Umm... yep.  And there's still quite a bit about them which is mysterious and threatening.

If we have that one conversation with Sovereign, we have an entire level wherein indoctrination is given further depth in some very interesting ways in Mass Effect 2.  I find having an arch-nemesis to be sort of cheesy and artificial, but it can be interesting to many people.  Why do they have to have an avatar?  I find them much more sinister as a presence that finds any means it can to influence what happens. 

Maybe  you feel let down because it's not enough that they harvest humans to make a Reaper or Reaper-like structure?  Is that what it is?  They're a defeatable enemy?  What about defeating the Reaper at the end of ME1, when it had possessed Saren's corpse?  Wasn't that a little cheesy?

Modifié par Alocormin, 20 octobre 2010 - 07:16 .

[Mr. Gogeta34]

AntiChri5 wrote...

A big difference is that in ME 1, you fight Sovereign once. While it is easy to use broken abilities to make the battle a joke it is still a serious fight.

Harbinger? You fight a dozen times on every Collector mission (all THREE of them) and he is never a serious threat.

When Sovereign "assumed direct control" i was stunned, and afraid.

When Harbinger does it, i am annoyed and irritated.

You've never fought Harbinger.  You really did fight Sovereign in Saren's body, you never fought Harbinger the same way.  He seems to be the main villain of ME3.

[TuringPoint]

It is my understanding we didn't fight Harbinger in the same sense we fought Sovereign.  The fight against Sovereign was the climax of the first game; it was not the climax of the second game.  That is the difference.

I really do see it as a flaw that Harbinger was basically as weak as he was, but that's going into the flaws of the ME2 combat system also.


In any case, comparing Harbinger and Sovereign seems rather narrow-minded. They really did not play the same role, and it's definitely arguable that making Harbinger the focus of the second game would be more original than making Harbinger's servants the clear threat.  The Reapers are more of a presence than an arch-nemesis.

Something to consider:  Sovereign needed foot troops to use.  Harbinger did too. 

Modifié par Alocormin, 20 octobre 2010 - 07:15 .

[Ieldra]

Sepewrath wrote...
And TC just to let you know, cloning genetic material on that scale is about as feasible as making a sun in your garage.

Maybe it is if all you have is a garage. But you think what Miranda's father did for a few humans, and Okeer did for a few hundred cloned krogan, Reaper technology couldn't do for a few million with all the resources of the Collector base? If they needed variety, why not collect a few million cell samples - not exactly easy as well, but beats collecting the humans themselves. But no, that would actually have been subtle, can't have that in a game, can we?
 

Also Shepard is dumb for not just randomly coming up with ideas for why they need humans?

No, he is dumb for jumping to the conclusion "What do they want with our genetic material?" If that's all they were after, they could've had that a lot easier. It takes about two seconds to conclude that this can't be their primary purpose. And EDI makes it even worse with her comment about a species' "essence". We're not in a fantasy game, damn it. Perhaps Bioware should remind themselves of that more often.

BTW, I could live with the nonsense here - it's not Bioware's first epic biology fail, one gets used to it - except that it makes the horror effects even more cheesy and gratuitous than they already are. Those B-move effects aren't horrific, they're just silly. I expected a story about a conflict between mysterious techno-gods and galactic civilization, not Resident Evil in space.

Modifié par Ieldra2, 20 octobre 2010 - 07:30 .

[Ieldra]

Nightwriter wrote...
To me, a scary villain is one who is silent but shows clear and obvious signs of vast intelligence. It can speak, but chooses not to.

That is sort of how Sovereign came across to me in ME1. Sovereign really only says a handful of things to you, and every line was spoken with a casual indifference, as if the exchange was meaningless to it.

Exactly, and Sovereign backed that up by action in the final battle, ramming those turian warships out of the way without changing course or speed as if they didn't exist, and coming out of it completely unharmed. That scene brought home what we're up against like nothing else. Granted, in ME2 we only fought the Reapers' servants, but at least verbally Harbinger should have been on the same level as Sovereign, instead of spouting lines indicating the intelligence and maturity of a six-year-old.

Modifié par Ieldra2, 20 octobre 2010 - 07:31 .

[Breakdown Boy]

I really don't understand the point of this thread. From the beginning I understood the Reapers as being both biological and machine. I kind of guessed around the middle of my first play through that the colonists were most likely being used for this purpose in some form or another.



The reaper threat was not lessened by ME2, I do think the human reaper was a bit unoriginal but then again, it is a machine design based on the human form, it makes sense for a machine to copy existing forms instead of drawing inspiration from it and creating something different.



About the whole Sov vs. Harb descussion, I will say this. In a franchise the first exposure to a main enemy is always the best as the memory inflates the actual experience, the saying 'You never forget your first" comes to bear in this discussion.



Also Harbinger's constant verbal ranting could be an attempt to penetrate or attack Shepard's psycke, I mean how would you feel if the most dangerous enemy in the galaxy was singling you out personally for destruction? Or was stalking you personally, Meanwhile belittling your companions as genetically inferior? I guess the reapers found an article on battle propaganda on the extranet and gave it a try...seeing as Sovereign's silence didn't work out that well for him/ it.

[freeslayer89]

Sovereign's indifference made him sound more powerful, more elevated.

Though his dialogue also sounded a bit like bombastic rhetoric, it still worked for him. After the Sovereign encounter I was thinking Shepherd and his crew had just got verbally raped.



Harbinger's one-liners sounded like he was more trying to convince himself of his supremacy, before Sheperd blasted him out of the way for the 20th time.



All I'm saying is that the Reaper's in ME3 need to be more like Sov and less like Harb. They need to get creative in how we encounter the Reapers, instead of just having them commune with us through collector husks.

[NYG1991]

I think understanding their motives makes them better villains so I don't mind harbingers smack talk or sovereign. Thinking of them as just AI robots who take a nap, kill, then go back to their room, no matter how tough they are just doesn't get a rise out of me. I'd like to know why they're trying to kill me. As they have their own intelligence and motivation for accomplishing their goal, it makes them more of a threat. They're not just robots that are programmed to do something. They're sentient beings that concluded they need to wipe out organic life and will adapt their tactics and methods to achieve this. They're thinkers ad well as killers.

[Moiaussi]

Sepewrath wrote...

And TC just to let you know, cloning genetic material on that scale is about as feasible as making a sun in your garage. Also Shepard is dumb for not just randomly coming up with ideas for why they need humans? well maybe they wanted human reproductive organs, maybe they wanted germ cells, maybe they wanted keratin, lymphocytes, maybe they wanted their funny bone to grow a sense a humor. There are a ton of reasons you can come up with for why they needed human bodies, to say that Shepard is dumb for not sitting there and going through the dozens of possibilities would equally as dumb as your making Shepard out to be.

1) Cloning on the industrial scale that would be needed would almost certainly be more practical than trying to move billions of people to feed the slushie machine, particularly when you consider the reality in game that medigel exists. if wounds can be healed nigh instantly and nigh perfectly, then presumably the new tissue needed to do so could be regrown nigh instantly and nigh perfectly. Since the material would be used as slushies anyway, it wouldn't even have to be grown perfectly.

2) By the time of ME, building a fusion generator (essentially a small contained sun) in your garage might wll be feasable.

[Moiaussi]

Mr. Gogeta34 wrote...

You've never fought Harbinger.  You really did fight Sovereign in Saren's body, you never fought Harbinger the same way.  He seems to be the main villain of ME3.

Agreed. I always got the impression it was the Collector General 'assuming direct control.' The general may or may not have been controlled directly in turn by harbinger, but there didn't seem anything clear either way there.

[Breakdown Boy]

1) Cloning on the industrial scale that would be needed would almost certainly be more practical than trying to move billions of people to feed the slushie machine, particularly when you consider the reality in game that medigel exists. if wounds can be healed nigh instantly and nigh perfectly, then presumably the new tissue needed to do so could be regrown nigh instantly and nigh perfectly. Since the material would be used as slushies anyway, it wouldn't even have to be grown perfectly.

2) By the time of ME, building a fusion generator (essentially a small contained sun) in your garage might wll be feasable.

This is kind of stupid angle of argument.

If the Reapers wanted or could do cloning on that scale then they would have, so the fact that they didn't is a statement in it's own.

Stop arguing against the entire plot. The Reapers create new reapers using the genetic material from alive biological species of their choosing. Why? We don't know! We speculate and ask stupid question like, "why didn't they clone?"

And I find it odd that people think Harbinger is not powerfull? I mean he instantly upgrades a normal Collector into a uber biotic collector from darkspace!!! Shepard's signal can't even get past a couple of bugs, Harbinger sends a signal accross billions of light years in mere seconds!!! That is pretty scary.

Also I have no problem against the husks, scions are also quite impressive and I thought the beatle monster (can't remember the name) were cool too. Sorry just don't see the issue. Using your enemie's dead as weapons sounds like good psycological warfare. 

Modifié par Breakdown Boy, 20 octobre 2010 - 09:23 .

[Spectre_907]

I already knew the Reapers would be synthetic/organic hybrids long before ME2 was released from Saren's dialogue just before you fight him or persuade him to kill himself on the Citadel and from the husks. Saren speaks of how he "understands that the Reapers need organics" and that "the relationship is symbiotic" and how this is the evolution of organic life. I thought it was obvious that Sovereign was talking through Saren and it was preaching how merging organics with Reaper tech would be some kind of ascension. It seemed obvious to me that the Reapers use organics for something and destroy those they deemed "impure."

[Ieldra]

NYG1991 wrote...
I think understanding their motives makes them better villains so I don't mind harbingers smack talk or sovereign.

I disagree. An opponent whose motives you do not understand evokes more fear than one you understand. And if its motives are something as mundane as reproduction, that downsizes them to the human level, where before they were something akin to gods.

There's also the problem of scale: in an SF epic like Mass Effect, I do not want an enemy I can hate, for we only hate things our own size. The Reapers are too big to hate, they should be something to fear. For that, they have to be more distant, more akin to a natural disaster or, well, a mysterious techno-god. Someone spouting cheap moustache-twirling villain lines is about as counterproductive as things can get.

For the same reason, the body horror is also counterproductive. If a human-sized villain does such things, they're repulsive exactly because the villain is human-sized and can be expected to share human-sized concerns. For the Reapers, human sized concerns are beneath them. They can be *expected* not to care about how the "processing" feels to their victims, so the way they do it absolutely must serve a convincing function for them to remain believable. If the reasoning is not convincing, then it cheapens the whole concept of the Reapers.

They're not just robots that are programmed to do something. They're sentient beings that concluded they need to wipe out organic life and will adapt their tactics and methods to achieve this. They're thinkers ad well as killers.

You're assuming that artificial life cannot be sapient. That's wrong. The geth are AIs, and they are sapient. The Reapers are like the geth in that regard. There is no reason they must have an organic part in order to be what they are. Also, they have not "concluded that they need to wipe out organic life", it's simply what they do. They see it as part of their purpose, of their reason for existing and/or their lifecycle, though I hope very much that's not all there is to it. And there may be a values dissonance: they speak of "ascension", of "salvation through destruction". What if there is something real behind these concepts? That we can't intuitively connect to such concepts is exactly why the Reapers are interesting. They shouldn't have motives we can emotionally connect to. We don't fight them because they're villains, we fight them for survival.

Modifié par Ieldra2, 20 octobre 2010 - 09:35 .