150 réponses à ce sujet

[FireEye]

crooked wrote...

The dialogue at the end of ME1 makes it pretty clear that there is no stalemate, even if you take away the dialogue, how can you be sure there is only one vanguard or that the reapers won't come anyway? No, a stalemate and the reapers in the same sentence doesn't work for me

I apologize.  I didn't mean to imply that ME1 ended in a stalemate, only that I prefer ending it there unless something major in ME3 changes my mind (such as: the Reapers finally show up at the very end and win, no contest).

Otherwise, I'm happy with the short-term, optimistic, "I'm gonna find a way to stop them!" against a background of "Wow.  We are so screwed!"  :innocent:

[Foolsfolly]

Ragnarok521 wrote...

 I felt that the reapers had been taken down a notch on the "creepy and eerie menace from the void of space" scale, which I believe is an effect of how they were presented. Let me start this off by comparing dialogue between the two prominent reapers of the series so far.

ME1-Sovereign"Rudimentary creatures of blood and flesh, you touch my mind, fumbling in ignorance, incapable of understanding.There is a realm of existence, so far beyond your own you cannot even imagine it. I, am beyond your comprehension. I, am Sovereign."

ME2-Harbinger
"Human, you have changed nothing. Your species has the attention of those infinitely greater. That which you know as Reapers are your salvation through destruction."


Now first,  I liked how impersonal and indifferent Sovereign was the entire time.  That really helped sell the "Cold and heartless machine" vibe. The problem with Harbinger in my opinion was that he was too personal with Shepard ("You will know pain, Shepard", "This hurts you.", etc.) , which goes against how unfeeling and indifferent to organics the Reapers were  in ME1 .  If you ask me, the smack talk to Shepard should be coming from a servant of the Reapers like Saren, someone who is at Shepard's level instead of the Reapers themselves. I would have preferred to keep the Reapers (or in Harbinger's case, Reaper) in the background, and never coming out to a direct confrontation unless they're really in trouble. All the fights up to that point would be between Shepard and his team against the Reapers' proxy.

As the Illusive Man continues to tell you, you killed a Reaper and they're interested in Shepard. Before we killed Sovie the Reapers couldn't have cared less about us. But now....maybe we are equals with the Reapers. They clearly die and they can clearly be beaten.

FireEye wrote...

Epic777 wrote...

One thing I
will mention: The reapers will need to show they are vulnerable and
have weaknesses. Why? Unless they cannot be beaten, stopping them will
feel very Deus Ex like when they are beaten.

I would
prefer that we can't beat the Reapers, and at best we merely stalemate
them.

Admittedly, I understand that what I want out of the story
is (I highly suspect) not what most people want out of the story, so I
concede that I may simply have to play ME1 over and over again while
other folks get to add ME2 and ME3 to that and be equally happy.  And
I'm fine with that - ME1 makes me very happy indeed.  [smilie]../../../images/forum/emoticons/joyful.png[/smilie]

A stalemate makes no sense. Whatever the reason, the Reapers destroy all life in the galaxy in cycles. That's what they've done for who knows how long. Why would they stop now just because we can kill a few? The Derelict Reapers shows that other races could take down Reapers but even they lost in the end.

We're interesting to them now but we're not unique until we definatively stopped them for good. Any other ending would reek of stupid. You can't leave the Reapers to plan and muster their forces. They are the enemy of all life.

[Nightwriter]

Guys, let's talk about these people who are saying "we've never fought Harbinger".

Well... yeah, we have.

If I fight your avatar online, I say I fought you. Your behavior - and yes, combat dialogue - during that fight all tell me about you.

No, we have not fought Harbinger in Reaper form, but we have fought Harbinger the Avatar enough to know the person it belongs to is an annoying trash-talking broken record, and if we fought Harbinger face to face we'd just be fighting a giant ship machine housing the consciousness of an annoying trash-talking broken record.

[Foolsfolly]

Harbinger may be stronger when it's not so filtered though.



As is, Harbinger possesses the Collector General who possesses a Collector Drone.



I can't believe that all its strength would transfer so far down; it's likely it's like making a copy of a copy.



I'm not saying we haven't fought him, we totally fought him many times, but we haven't really experienced the potential of his power.

[Nightwriter]

I think you're right. But his strength and combat formidability are not the only issues.

It also has a lot to do with his personality. Sovereign was stoic and powerful. Harbinger was chatty and annoying.

Chatty and powerful would be a big improvement, but it's still not as good as stoic and powerful.

Modifié par Nightwriter, 21 octobre 2010 - 04:06 .

[Ryzaki]

Nightwriter wrote...

I think you're right. But his strength and combat formidableness are not the only issues.

It also has a lot to do with his personality. Sovereign was stoic and powerful. Harbinger was chatty and annoying.

Chatty and powerful would be a big improvement, but it's still not as good as stoic and powerful.

...Harbinger could have been better though. He keeps taunting me when I'm kicking the mess out of his stupid worker drones. They could've thrown some frustration in there along with the arrogance. 

Frankly I would've liked a "Why don't you just DIE!" 

Not really. I'd preferred him a bit more in the background as well. Maybe only showing up for the end conversation with the collector general. 

Darn Opera with it's lack of Spell check! *shakes fist*

[Inquisitor Recon]

Nightwriter wrote...
Sovereign was stoic and powerful. Harbinger was chatty and annoying.

Yeah, but remember when Sovereign started getting worried? He started yelling and acting much like Harbinger does.

[Giggles_Manically]

Harbinger is PATHETIC as a foe in combat.

He just pops up and starts flashing.



Honestly even on Insanity he almost never takes cover and just stands out in the open waiting to get shot in the head.



He is not scary only very annoying, but only when he possess someone I was about to kill.

[Mr. Gogeta34]

Nightwriter wrote...

Guys, let's talk about these people who are saying "we've never fought Harbinger".

Well... yeah, we have.

If I fight your avatar online, I say I fought you. Your behavior - and yes, combat dialogue - during that fight all tell me about you.

No, we have not fought Harbinger in Reaper form, but we have fought Harbinger the Avatar enough to know the person it belongs to is an annoying trash-talking broken record, and if we fought Harbinger face to face we'd just be fighting a giant ship machine housing the consciousness of an annoying trash-talking broken record.

We have not fought Harbinger in the same way we fought Sovereign.  The Collector's main weapon were the seeker swarms while Harbinger directed foot soldiers through yet another Collector General.

We never faced a true avatar of Harbinger in the way that we fought a true avatar of Sovereign.  Saren was upgraded specifically for Sovereign's purpose of taking the Citadel and letting his gang through.  Harbinger assumed control of a General who controlled the drones...

So it's not fair to say we fought Harbinger or his avatar, we haven't.  We fought his avatar's avatar though

Modifié par Mr. Gogeta34, 21 octobre 2010 - 04:38 .

[Nightwriter]

It doesn't really matter. No matter how far down the chain the extension is, it's still him, he's still controlling things, he's still saying those things.

Pump up his ME2 combat effectiveness, make him say nothing, turn him into an in-your-face wrecking ball on the battlefield that tosses squaddies around like ragdolls, and then I might start to see him like an actual Reaper.

[fongiel24]

Giggles_Manically wrote...

Harbinger is PATHETIC as a foe in combat.
He just pops up and starts flashing.

Honestly even on Insanity he almost never takes cover and just stands out in the open waiting to get shot in the head.

He is not scary only very annoying, but only when he possess someone I was about to kill.

I don't think I've ever seen Harbinger take cover. If Harbinger is representative of most Reapers, I fear ME3 won't be nearly as epic as we're all hoping it will be.

I wish BW had really pumped up Harbinger's combat capabilities and just had him show up two or three times as a level boss. They could have him show up once at the end of Horizon, once on the "abandoned" Collector cruiser, and a final time in the Collector base. IMO that would have made him far less annoying and instead inspired the dread a Reaper is supposed to convey.

[Nightwriter]

Indeed, turning Harbinger into a level boss with a cutscene intro would've been much better for me.

[Ieldra]

Nightwriter wrote...
Indeed, turning Harbinger into a level boss with a cutscene intro would've been much better for me.

Yes, but only if they'd changed what Harbinger says as well. Those stupid lines are what breaks the mood much more than the combat disablity, which could be explained by the fragility of the host to some degree. Harbinger should say nothing after an introductory speech.

[Nightwriter]

Well, I have to say, the ridiculousness of Harbinger's lines does have a lot to do with his total combat impotence.

So, if they made him more powerful and changed the atmosphere, I might feel differently about the lines. I can't say.

[Jabarai]

Ieldra2 wrote...

Nightwriter wrote...
Indeed, turning Harbinger into a level boss with a cutscene intro would've been much better for me.

Yes, but only if they'd changed what Harbinger says as well. Those stupid lines are what breaks the mood much more than the combat disablity, which could be explained by the fragility of the host to some degree.....

I think you cut to the chase pretty well. It's quite clear there's not a way for the indoctrinated collectors to start spouting energy blasts or anything of that sort. Harbinger can only obtain the command over the individual, which is flesh and bones with a bit of biotic potential.

As for never getting behind cover... I would've thought it might've looked silly and weak if he did that. If anything, the steady advance of an extremely well shielded individual - added to the fact that if you kill him, he'll just port to another collector combatant - is what makes these battles challenging for Shepard's team.

Harbinger should say nothing after an introductory speech.

I agree, to a point. While the lines wouldn't have felt so awkward if they'd just been uttered once or twice, replaying them certainly weakens the effect.

However, the problem isn't anything a keen imagination can't overcome. I simply imagine Harbinger's taking over the general has made him less invincible and god-like. Having puppeteered small bipeds for a long time and having to adapt to the restrictions must've left him somewhat lessened. 

Come on, why don't we help out the kind folk at Bioware for once!!

[Ieldra]

Jabarai wrote...
Come on, why don't we help out the kind folk at Bioware for once!!

That's what I'm trying to do with this thread:
(1) Bioware, please make the Reapers something to fear again in ME3, instead of something to laugh at!
(2) And tone down the body horror, it does a lot to spoil the mood!

[Mr. Gogeta34]

The reason Harbinger wasn't taking cover when you fight him in Mass Effect 2... is because that's not Harbinger.



He's using dime-a-dozen crownies not fit for high-level combat while telling you how futile it all is... and it was futile (in and of itself, he can take over any collector drone so there was no need to play it safe and pass up a chance to be epic). Harbinger himself is still coming.

[Spectre_907]

Ieldra2 wrote...
Really? I feel nothing of the sort. First, whenever I hear the term "abominable" I know I most likely don't share the user's preconceptions - the production method may be bad, but it's just a special lifeform, nothing more. I also don't feel the Reapers mock humanity because they're beyond the need to mock, and I don't want to destroy the thing, I want to study it (BTW, do NOT assume that the wish to study it is equivalent with the wish to build one - that's a mistake often made by people).

Yes. Seeing your own crew liquified and then made part of a Reaper-human hybrid that possesses the demonic look of a human would indeed be abominable and would push one to want to stop the Collectors once and for all.

However, I do not think that studying the Collector base would lead to the production of reapers. I myself am in favor of preserving it for study but see it as a necessary evil both in having to give it to Cerberus and in having to use the deaths of the colonists for the greater good.

Like I said in my other post, it wasn't a surprise or a disappointment to me when I learned that the Reapers were partially synthetic, or at the very least used organics in hybridization and destroyed the rest, since I could see the foreshadowing in ME long before ME2 came out. Even without that, after Vigil speaks of the Reapers failure of their plan to herd organics to their doom by use of the Keepers, I got the sense that the Reapers were not gods that look down at organics as ants. They were mortal, fallible, and desperate. Any fear of them was turned into hope that they can be defeated. As Foolsfolly said, if ME was intended to be a horror story, the Reapers as space Cthulhu would make sense.

[Mr. Gogeta34]

I don't see studying the base in the wake of their deaths as a bad thing. If anything I'd say it's more honorable that you find out about this enemy that could well finish the job after they've won. It's their sacrifice that got Shepard and co. as far as they've come...

Not doing anything with the opportunity those innocent people were partially responsible for would be more of a shame to their memory to me.

It's like everything they went through didn't matter in the broad scheme of things... it brought no new leads and the galaxy wouldn't be any closer to stopping the Reapers.

Modifié par Mr. Gogeta34, 22 octobre 2010 - 02:01 .

[dangeraardvark01]

Ieldra2 wrote...

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.

Exactly.  Mass Effect 2 makes it seem like the Reapers kidnapped the humans so they could grind them into sausage meat and fill up a giant metal statue with it.  But DNA is information.  There are much simpler ways to go about collecting it.  No sausage meat needed.

Also, if Reapers reproduce by making species into sausage meat and injecting them into giant metal versions of the species, why have all reapers thus far looked like gigantic crawfish even though they've supposedly repeated the process with innumerable other species?

[Mr. Gogeta34]

We're unique, would explain why they want to make a Reaper out of us.

They could also feasably be a monument to each race who ever killed a Reaper... how's that for a scary thought.

Modifié par Mr. Gogeta34, 22 octobre 2010 - 03:58 .

[Ieldra]

Mr. Gogeta34 wrote...
We're unique, would explain why they want to make a Reaper out of us.

As unique as all the other species they have already made Reapers from?

This is not my point, BTW. I have no problems accepting that the Reapers need humans for, well, something that includes making a new Reaper. But they must be after something more than "genetic material", and Shepard should be able to see this in two seconds. Whatever they need, grinding humans into paste is a particularly good way to destroy anything useful, so that element comes across as completely gratuitous, good for nothing more than evoking disgust - or a laugh. It turns the Reaper plot into "Resident Evil in space".

Then that talk about the "essence of the species". What is this, a throwback to 18th century biology? To have it said by an AI only makes it worse.

[Jabarai]

Ieldra2 wrote...
Then that talk about the "essence of the species". What is this, a throwback to 18th century biology? To have it said by an AI only makes it worse.

The essence of the species might've been a clumsy way to explain something that EDI itself doesn't understand to someone who doesn't understand it any better in a way that the necessary part of the message might go through.

The reason why for example humans act like they do might lie further than genetic codes or molecyles. Or even quarks. We don't know, but the Reapers might, who knows?

Then there's one other explanation. The reapers might be inclined to "religious" beliefs, too, yes?

I'm sorry to say this but perhaps you're expecting too much from a science fiction story, especially if you're not ready to fill out some of the smaller holes yourself. To me helping Bioware is putting forth suggestions on how to plug the dripping pipes, even if they're designed to do that. Don't get me wrong, I like your way, too, but prefer mine. :happy:

[Jebel Krong]

the fact that harbinger can filter it's consciousness through not 1, but 2 further bodies, speaks much for the reaper's potential as a threat. just because it's then beatable in reduced/limited "collector form" does not make it any less so. the fact that harbinger likes to smack talk also makes little difference - often the tone and meaning is the same as what sovereign said - the difference being sovereign was more isolated, and may have been more reticent to communicate as a result.

[Warikz]

Humans are always more frightened of the unknown. By extension we as players would feel the unknown quantity of the Reapers from ME1 is better compared to when all is revealed.

That said, Harbinger was controlling Drones through a three way connection based on his possession of the Collector General. That and how the drones disintegrated maybe proves that Harbinger was inbueing them with just enough power to keep them together, and that inbueing a collector with his full power was not possible.

Also, if we take the theory that the Reaper centre to the screen on the ingame cinematic was Harbinger, it is possible he wasn't fully awake throughout. We know the Reapers retreat to dark space because they are vulnerable when they power down to rest. We also see that even 'dead' Reapers have a pretty sizable amount of power, so is it a stretch to assume a slumbering Reaper would have the ability to possess the Collector General? On top of this we do not know if the abilities used were those of Harbinger or those of the Collector General that Harbinger had possessed. I am willing to believe Harbinger was not stretching himself overly, and was using the powers the Collector General already had at his disposal, and not any powers of his own other than his ability to possess said General, and use the Generals ability to possess a Drone.

Other than that we have to consider that Harbinger might not have taken the threat posed that seriously until it was too late. The invulnerability of the Collector base, the lack of a full defense against Seeker swarms most colonists had might of made him complacent. The Reapers have proven to be overly confident of their superiority throughout the games and the books. There is a lot to consider.

EDIT: Also, we have no idea what the paste those robots created out of Humans consisted of. Say if the robots just dissolved the Humans form whilst keeping the genetic material intact, converting it into said paste? We have no idea how that relates to the creation of a Reaper, only that it in some way does. The Reapers motives and technology is so far above and beyond our current understanding that trying to apply real world 21st century science to it is impossible. That, and its a game, as said.

As for why a Human Reaper when all the others look the same...I like to think that to the Reapers 'ascension' is a big deal. They might only allow the races they feel worthy to be used for the creation of new reapers. Maybe once race in the past was so powerful that they used alot of their genetic material, or maybe the crayfish shape is a sign of what their creators actually looked like.

Maybe the cycle of extinction is done for the sole reason of allowing 'worthy' races to develop? The Reapers come through the Citadel Mass Relay, and then check for worthy races, if none are worthy they wipe them all out. Why? in order for new races to develop into the vacuum left who might be more worthy of ascension. We know the Reapers considered the Protheans worthy of ascension, yet somehow the Protheans DNA made them incompatible. Who knows?

Modifié par Warikz, 22 octobre 2010 - 12:17 .