150 réponses à ce sujet

[Mr. Gogeta34]

One thing to keep in mind about the Reapers is that they aren't a singular entity. Each one has its own personality.



Sovereign may have been the more stoic of the two while Harbinger was more talkative. They all seem to maintain a high-minded view about things though.

[Ieldra]

Mr. Gogeta34 wrote...
One thing to keep in mind about the Reapers is that they aren't a singular entity. Each one has its own personality.

Sovereign may have been the more stoic of the two while Harbinger was more talkative. They all seem to maintain a high-minded view about things though.

That doesn't change that a Reaper shouldn't come across like a two-bit human villain. And a stupid one at that.

[Killjoy Cutter]

Ieldra2 wrote...

Mr. Gogeta34 wrote...
One thing to keep in mind about the Reapers is that they aren't a singular entity. Each one has its own personality.

Sovereign may have been the more stoic of the two while Harbinger was more talkative. They all seem to maintain a high-minded view about things though.

That doesn't change that a Reaper shouldn't come across like a two-bit human villain. And a stupid one at that.

They both came across as melodrama villains to me. 

[Ieldra]

Killjoy Cutter wrote...

Ieldra2 wrote...

Mr. Gogeta34 wrote...
One thing to keep in mind about the Reapers is that they aren't a singular entity. Each one has its own personality.

Sovereign may have been the more stoic of the two while Harbinger was more talkative. They all seem to maintain a high-minded view about things though.

That doesn't change that a Reaper shouldn't come across like a two-bit human villain. And a stupid one at that.

They both came across as melodrama villains to me. 

You already said that. And Nightwriter answered better than I could:

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.

Harbinger talks your ear off, proving that the more words you throw at us, the cheaper each word becomes.

Modifié par Ieldra2, 22 octobre 2010 - 09:05 .

[RiouHotaru]

Who said it was easy?

[Killjoy Cutter]

Ieldra2 wrote...

Killjoy Cutter wrote...

Ieldra2 wrote...

Mr. Gogeta34 wrote...
One thing to keep in mind about the Reapers is that they aren't a singular entity. Each one has its own personality.

Sovereign may have been the more stoic of the two while Harbinger was more talkative. They all seem to maintain a high-minded view about things though.

That doesn't change that a Reaper shouldn't come across like a two-bit human villain. And a stupid one at that.

They both came across as melodrama villains to me. 

You already said that. And Nightwriter answered better than I could:

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.

Harbinger talks your ear off, proving that the more words you throw at us, the cheaper each word becomes.

As I said at some point, as soon as Sovereign opens his mouth in ME1, he starts becoming just another blowhard self-important comicbook villain.

[Aurica]

Ieldra2 wrote...

Killjoy Cutter wrote...

Ieldra2 wrote...

Mr. Gogeta34 wrote...
One thing to keep in mind about the Reapers is that they aren't a singular entity. Each one has its own personality.

Sovereign may have been the more stoic of the two while Harbinger was more talkative. They all seem to maintain a high-minded view about things though.

That doesn't change that a Reaper shouldn't come across like a two-bit human villain. And a stupid one at that.

They both came across as melodrama villains to me. 

You already said that. And Nightwriter answered better than I could:

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.

Harbinger talks your ear off, proving that the more words you throw at us, the cheaper each word becomes.

Yea, there are some people who seldom speak, but when they do.  Their words carry greater weight.

Then there are those who yaps your ears off, nags incessantly at you like a broken track recorder.   The more you hear it... the more you get tired at it.  And it starts to ring hollow and loses its significance.

Modifié par Aurica, 23 octobre 2010 - 01:27 .

[Jedi Master of Orion]

No idea is going to make everyone happy.

[Warikz]

Mr. Gogeta34 wrote...

One thing to keep in mind about the Reapers is that they aren't a singular entity. Each one has its own personality.

Sovereign may have been the more stoic of the two while Harbinger was more talkative. They all seem to maintain a high-minded view about things though.

Whilst that is true to a point the latest book release goes to great pains to make it known the Reapers are also linked to one another in some fundamental way. Grayson often mentions how he can feel them (using terms to show it such as 'they' 'them' and the plural ReaperS) as a collective through the connection. As opposed to it being just an individual controlling him (ala Sovereign or Harbinger) it is the Reapers as a collective doing so through one force of will.

It could be a case of many personalities, one will. Maybe the Reaper takes on the characteristics of the race that was harvested to create it? The Reapers seem to be a mix and have as much concept of the whole as the individual though.

Modifié par Warikz, 23 octobre 2010 - 11:16 .

[Mr. Gogeta34]

Warikz wrote...

Whilst that is true to a point the latest book release goes to great pains to make it known the Reapers are also linked to one another in some fundamental way. Grayson often mentions how he can feel them (using terms to show it such as 'they' 'them' and the plural ReaperS) as a collective through the connection. As opposed to it being just an individual controlling him (ala Sovereign or Harbinger) it is the Reapers as a collective doing so through one force of will.

It could be a case of many personalities, one will. Maybe the Reaper takes on the characteristics of the race that was harvested to create it? The Reapers seem to be a mix and have as much concept of the whole as the individual though.

Sovereign explains this by saying each individual Reaper is a "nation" unto itself. 

[SSV Enterprise]

Paul Grayson didn't know anything about the Reapers aside from what TIM let him know. His perception of "the Reapers" may have been just that- his perception. Sovereign's explanation of the Reapers being "a nation" and Legion's elaboration that each Reaper is a conglomeration of many AI programs, like geth, may explain how a single Reaper controlling Grayson feels like many entities.

In response to the OP's gripes- first of all, I would not say the mystery about the Reapers disappears in ME2. All we have is the guesses, mostly by EDI and Mordin, that the Reapers use human DNA in reproduction because human DNA has so much variety. But that's guessing. The actual dialogue from Harbinger himself alludes to a greater purpose: "We are the harbinger of their perfection. Prepare these units for ascension." "Your species has the attention of those infinitely your better. That which you know as Reapers are your salvation through destruction". Then there's the lines from Reaper!Grayson in Retribution: "We seek salvation, both yours and ours." Plenty of mystery to endlessly theorize about.

If I had to guess, I would say that the Reapers are trying to embody the very essence of humanity, with all its genetic variations, into a single Reaper, thus elevating the species to  "godhood", so to speak. The "salvation" bit indicates there is much more going than reproduction. Is there some greater threat than the Reapers? Is there some reason why ascending to being a Reaper is good for humanity? Why is this important to the Reapers beyond simple reproduction? We don't know, and therein lies the mystery.

Modifié par SSV Enterprise, 24 octobre 2010 - 12:21 .

[Ieldra]

SSV Enterprise wrote...
In response to the OP's gripes- first of all, I would not say the mystery about the Reapers disappears in ME2. All we have is the guesses, mostly by EDI and Mordin, that the Reapers use human DNA in reproduction because human DNA has so much variety. But that's guessing. The actual dialogue from Harbinger himself alludes to a greater purpose: "We are the harbinger of their perfection. Prepare these units for ascension." "Your species has the attention of those infinitely your better. That which you know as Reapers are your salvation through destruction". Then there's the lines from Reaper!Grayson in Retribution: "We seek salvation, both yours and ours." Plenty of mystery to endlessly theorize about.

If I had to guess, I would say that the Reapers are trying to embody the very essence of humanity, with all its genetic variations, into a single Reaper, thus elevating the species to  "godhood", so to speak. The "salvation" bit indicates there is much more going than reproduction. Is there some greater threat than the Reapers? Is there some reason why ascending to being a Reaper is good for humanity? Why is this important to the Reapers beyond simple reproduction? We don't know, and therein lies the mystery.

Actually, I agree with you. The mysterious is still there. I've also been speculating along the same lines as you in your second paragraph regarding the Reapers' motivations. That's not what I was complaining about. My point was that all this interesting stuff is buried under cheap B-movie horror effects with no function except to evoke disgust and cardboard-villain lines, so much that I find it hard to take the whole thing seriously.

Regarding the making of Reapers, the thing is that it's extremely implausible that it's primarily genetic material the Collectors need to make a new Reaper (except if the Collectors and their masters were kings of ineffiency and stupidity), a fact that should have been immediately apparent to anyone with a high-school level of knowledge in biology. Also, there is no biological "essence" of a species, a species isn't a closed-off group, we share genetic traits with a lot of other species. And third: reducing a species' "identity" to static factors like genetics won't capture what that species is, especially not for a social species where so much of what we are is determined by how we interact with others. There are biological roots for that, yes, for instance, we are biologically wired to make moral judgments about human behaviour, but which judgments we do make depends on culture and upbringing. Even if you can grow a human from a complete genome, you can't capture "all that's human" in DNA.

[SSV Enterprise]

You can capture all that humanity can become in DNA. And that's what the Reapers may have been trying to do- make humanity into the greatest thing it can become.

[Vagula]

SSV Enterprise wrote...

You can capture all that humanity can become in DNA. And that's what the Reapers may have been trying to do- make humanity into the greatest thing it can become.

Why didnt they just start a interstellar dental care service or steal some DNA databanks from the citadel? No need to start killing people if all you want is some DNA.

[Ieldra]

Vagula wrote...

SSV Enterprise wrote...

You can capture all that humanity can become in DNA. And that's what the Reapers may have been trying to do- make humanity into the greatest thing it can become.

Why didnt they just start a interstellar dental care service or steal some DNA databanks from the citadel? No need to start killing people if all you want is some DNA.

Exactly that. As I said in the OP: taking a few million samples and cloning them is not exactly easy either, but it's a lot easier than abducting millions of humans. And it can be done in secret without anyone knowing until it's too late. From that, I draw the conclusion that the Reapers need something else, something you can only get from grown humans and not from just their DNA, nor from anything that could be grown from that DNA in isolation, else they would've done that and grown their own raw material. In that case, the kind of processing the abducted colonists seemingly undergo must be something else than it appears, for if you just grind down the meat, so to speak, you won't get anything except those chemical components you could've cloned or grown.

Which brings me back to my second complaint: that the kind of processing the colonists undergo is implausible, a completely gratuitous horror effect that doesn't even do it's job, for it makes me laugh rather than shudder. 

Modifié par Ieldra2, 24 octobre 2010 - 10:26 .

[Warikz]

There must be a fundamental link between the Reapers. Afterall ME2 established that even the Geth have differeing opinions. That the Reapers to our knowledge are so together hints at something for sure, possibly some hard coded purpose? Who knows?

As for the genetic material, if the Collectors had attacked Earth, they'd have been able to take almost ten billion people, that is enough that Harbinger could pick and choose which of the Human genetic stock he wanted to use, and he would still have high enough numbers that he could say with pretty high percentage of certainty that he had most of Humanities genetic variations, could he not? I only have a basic level of understanding in Biology myself, however.

O and why be subtle? The council and the Alliance never caught on after 2 years of the Collectors abducting colonists. Shepard, the only threat the Reapers percieved was dead also and they had no idea Cerberus would resurrect him/her. Even if the Collectors had targetted Earth do you honestly think the Council and the Alliance would have made the connection between the Collectors and the Reapers? They practice willful ignorance of the Reapers, and no amount of convincing, even Sovereign being right infront of them changed their minds. Cerberus were the ones who caught on to it all and decided to actually investigate as opposed to just putting it down to Batarian Slavers like the Alliance. So why be subtle when you can hit people with a sledgehammer and still have them deny you even exist?

Also to bare in mind: Even if the Alliance and the Council went after the Collectors, what could they have done? We all know what happens when you travel through the Omega 4 Relay without a Reaper IFF.

Modifié par Warikz, 24 octobre 2010 - 12:03 .

[Ieldra]

Warikz wrote...
O and why be subtle? The council and the Alliance never caught on after 2 years of the Collectors abducting colonists.

Why be subtle....because it makes strategic sense? Because it makes economic sense? Why be unsubtle, is the more interesting question, if it uses up more resources and leaves you open to some discerning mind deciphering what you're up to? Which is, if I may remind you, exactly what happened. Subtlely would've cost the Collectors nothing, and being unsubtle had disadvantages, so if they're rational *and* if genetic material was all they were after , they wouldn't have acted as they did. Which leaves the conclusion that either there was something else they needed from the collected humans, not just their DNA, or they didn't act in a rational and purposeful way. I don't believe the latter.

As for the Council sticking its collective head into the sand as much as it does, that's unbelievably contrived in the first place, a piece of luck for the Reapers they couldn't have expected, and even if they did suspect, they wouldn't have depended on it for their strategy, especially if a less resource-intensive way of proceeding was available.

[Warikz]

Ieldra2 wrote...

Warikz wrote...
O and why be subtle? The council and the Alliance never caught on after 2 years of the Collectors abducting colonists.

Why be subtle....because it makes strategic sense? Because it makes economic sense? Why be unsubtle, is the more interesting question, if it uses up more resources and leaves you open to some discerning mind deciphering what you're up to? Which is, if I may remind you, exactly what happened. Subtlely would've cost the Collectors nothing, and being unsubtle had disadvantages, so if they're rational *and* if genetic material was all they were after , they wouldn't have acted as they did. Which leaves the conclusion that either there was something else they needed from the collected humans, not just their DNA, or they didn't act in a rational and purposeful way. I don't believe the latter.

You are assuming the Reapers give a toss about resources, or have an annual budget. A discerning mind like the Illusive Man? Even he could have done nothing about it if it wasn't for Shepard, and as far as Harbinger knew, Shepard had been killed by the Collectors. Also bare in mind numbers, if they need hundreds of millions of full Humans to create a Human Reaper, think how long it would take them to get the genetic material if they subtley snuck into Human bedrooms and pulled hairs off combs, or snuck into dental surgeries etc etc.

Harbingers plans were pretty robust, and took most eventualities into account. I see no need for subtlety, they had the protection of a pretty superior ship to 99% of the known types. They were hidden behind the Omerga 4 Relay. They had seeker swarms to disable any forces that might try to fight back either on board the ship/base or on the colonies. He foresaw the need for the IFF, and implanted a virus in it that Shepard and the team were lucky to escape from. That and there wasn't any real evidence for Reapers to be found even if the plan failed, sure you had the Human Reaper, but how many would have known it was a Reaper? Most would have assumed the Collectors were the masterminds of it all, and not just the tools they were.

I agree with them needing something more than genetic material, but I do not see how they needed to be subtle about anything they did. They seem to be in a rush though I have to admit. You wait 50,000 years so why the rush now? unless again there is some imperative compelling them to act and act quickly...something behind the Reapers maybe. We never saw Harbingers end game either, he was creating a Human Reaper, but we do not know what would have happened once the Human Reaper was completed.

As for the Council sticking its collective head into the sand as much as it does, that's unbelievably contrived in the first place, a piece of luck for the Reapers they couldn't have expected, and even if they did suspect, they wouldn't have depended on it for their strategy, especially if a less resource-intensive way of proceeding was available.

Not so much a piece of luck, as specifically engineered by the Reapers. They deliberately wipe out all traces of themselves and cover their tracks well to keep their existance hidden. Shepard knows different, but without any 'proof' the Council just thinks Shepard is stark raving mad. All the evidence Shepard presents is circumstantial at best (I mean, visions and beacons on Ilos that are now missing, would you believe it?). If you had no knowledge of the Reapers as the player, what would you be more likely to believe? that Sovereign was part of some mythological race of extremely powerful machines bent on culling all life in the Galaxy, or that Sovereign was just the Geth flagship? The evidence available points to the latter. Even the recovery of some of the wreckage proves nothing if the wreckage was simply pieces of metal.

Modifié par Warikz, 24 octobre 2010 - 08:59 .

[Killjoy Cutter]

I don't think it's just about "genetic material". I think it's getting into some quasi-spiritual territory. The new Reaper has to include the "essence" of the people used to make it.



I can't point to any one statement in the game, but when Harbinger says things like "the dead are of no use to us!", and lots of other little things add up, that's the impression I get.

[Inquisitor Recon]

SSV Enterprise wrote...
You can capture all that humanity can become in DNA. And that's what the Reapers may have been trying to do- make humanity into the greatest thing it can become.

How kind of them... I guess you can thank Saren for screwing up the turian's chances of being turned into some abomination too.
Thankfully Shepard refuses their offer, and by refuse I mean kill all of the collectors. He is a good diplomat.

[Ieldra]

Killjoy Cutter wrote...
I don't think it's just about "genetic material". I think it's getting into some quasi-spiritual territory. The new Reaper has to include the "essence" of the people used to make it.

I can't point to any one statement in the game, but when Harbinger says things like "the dead are of no use to us!", and lots of other little things add up, that's the impression I get.

That would be even more annoying. The supernatural doesn't belong in an SF game. I think what they want may have something to do with capturing thought processes in order to make a collective mind - "Each of us is a nation" - out of individual human minds. That would give a meaning to the term "ascension". Only that in that case, the "grinding-down-to-paste" part makes no sense. Which brings me, yet again, to say I don't like those gratuitous horror effects, and I don't want to play Resident Evil in space.

[Vagula]

Ieldra2 wrote...

Killjoy Cutter wrote...
I don't think it's just about "genetic material". I think it's getting into some quasi-spiritual territory. The new Reaper has to include the "essence" of the people used to make it.

I can't point to any one statement in the game, but when Harbinger says things like "the dead are of no use to us!", and lots of other little things add up, that's the impression I get.

That would be even more annoying. The supernatural doesn't belong in an SF game. I think what they want may have something to do with capturing thought processes in order to make a collective mind - "Each of us is a nation" - out of individual human minds. That would give a meaning to the term "ascension". Only that in that case, the "grinding-down-to-paste" part makes no sense. Which brings me, yet again, to say I don't like those gratuitous horror effects, and I don't want to play Resident Evil in space.

Maybe the mind uploading is done before the "grinding-down-to-paste" part. Maybe the whole human sphagetti thing is just some completly trivial recycling thing that has actually nothing to do with anything and the reapers just want to be environmental and put the paste to good use as bioenergy (it wouldnt be much, but every little bit helps I guess).

Modifié par Vagula, 25 octobre 2010 - 09:30 .

[Ieldra]

Vagula wrote...

Ieldra2 wrote...

Killjoy Cutter wrote...
I don't think it's just about "genetic material". I think it's getting into some quasi-spiritual territory. The new Reaper has to include the "essence" of the people used to make it.

I can't point to any one statement in the game, but when Harbinger says things like "the dead are of no use to us!", and lots of other little things add up, that's the impression I get.

That would be even more annoying. The supernatural doesn't belong in an SF game. I think what they want may have something to do with capturing thought processes in order to make a collective mind - "Each of us is a nation" - out of individual human minds. That would give a meaning to the term "ascension". Only that in that case, the "grinding-down-to-paste" part makes no sense. Which brings me, yet again, to say I don't like those gratuitous horror effects, and I don't want to play Resident Evil in space.

Maybe the mind uploading is done before the "grinding-down-to-paste" part. Maybe the whole human sphagetti thing is just some completly trivial recycling thing that has actually nothing to do with anything and the reapers just want to be environmental and put the paste to good use as bioenergy (it wouldnt be much, but every little bit helps I guess).

That's a rationalization better than nothing. SInce Reapers are cybernetic constructs they might use the stuff as basic building material. It's certainly not good for anything else except that or cloning.

That doesn't change the basic cause of annoyance, though: the profligate use of drastic imagery to evoke emotions without regard to functionality. See Overlord, for instance. As if it wasn't bad enough to use David for painful experiments without his consent, no, they had to hook him up to that implausible contraption. Teltin: of course any non-consensual experiments involving biotics have to involve torture. Scions are built from human bodies - as if there weren't about a million more effective ways to construct a cybernetic fighting machine. And so on, and so on. The point is: if it looks gratuitous, it doesn't work on me. It doesn't evoke any emotion, since I can't accept it as real. It just feels silly, and in the case of the "grinding-down-to-paste", more so than usual because the Reapers are supposed to be a hyper-advanced species. Bioware shouldn't even try to make them evoke the same kind of reaction we'd have to a regular human villain. That downsizes them to human villain standards.

Modifié par Ieldra2, 26 octobre 2010 - 11:28 .

[Mr. Gogeta34]

Modifié par Mr. Gogeta34, 27 octobre 2010 - 04:15 .