In Exile, if you want to respond to this, please do so in a separate thread.. I think we have gotten rather a ways off topic. That said, this is all typed so.....
[quote]In Exile wrote...
I don't think you understand what the word plausible means, i.e. can be reasonable explained, i.e. involves not appealing to things that are effectively fictional until you can provide some small measure of proof for them.
After the battle of the Citadel, we can conclude Sovereign was an incredibly powerful dreadnought. Based on the evidence, the theory that Sovereign is a geth warship (when their technology is unknown) is perfectly plausible. Why would we introduce some third party?
And if we do introduce a third party, why should it be the reapers? Saren chased after Prothean ruins and beacons. For all the Council knew at the time Sovereign was just a prothean superweapon.
That's still a more plausible explanation that Shepard's crazy theory.[/quote]
Plausabiltiy does not require proof. Proof takes it beyond plausable. You have not given a reasonable explaination why the Geth wouldn't have done weapons refits to their other ships, given the Thanix cannon was refitted in the field with no shipyard or special facilities.
You also completely dismiss the concept that Shepard not only had provided an explaination for that difference, but also had a plausable source, namely the Prothean beacon, which obviously did contain some sort of information. Saren also mentions the reapers in his communication with the Geth. It isn't merely that they dismissed Shepard, but the Council simply assumed that it was all a ploy on the part of Saren with no evidence thereof. Note futher that Shepard hadn't talked to Saren at all until the trial, so how is it that both he and Saren have the same name for this 'fictional' race, despite Shepard having no way to have gotten that from Saren?
[quote]That's her theory, that she has no evidence for. She says this. At best, she can argue there is scant evidence that 100,000 years ago, there was a civlization on a world. But we can't say that whatever ruins were left simply didn't decay from the dramatic environmental catastrophe that seems to have destroyed those worlds. [/quote]
She has no smoking gun prior to meeting Shepard, but she does have evidence. Yes there are other explainations, but hers is consistant with Shepard's. And again, Shepard and Liara had this information independantly, just as Shepard and Saren had consistant information independantly.
[quote]I'm aware of his dramatic failure there. But what does your point have to do with anything? At the citadel they saw Sovereign was a warship. Shepard says the reapers are superadvanced AI. What did the Council see that could demarcate between Sovereign the not-reaper warship and Sovereign the reaper warship? Give me one piece of evidence that could distinguish the two from the POV of the Council.[/quote]
The degree of the advancement, including the fact that Sovereign's shields collapsed precisely when mecha-Saren collapsed. Not to mention mecha-saren in the first place....
[quote]''Hey Guys! The Citadel was attacked by a race of hyper intelligent machines from dark space. Now, we don't have any actual evidence of this, but there was this massive warship there. Well, it turns out that thing is alive, there are thousands of them out there, and they will come to exterminate us all unless we get that army going. So hop to it!''
You'll have quite rational people point out the Council has exactly no evidence to back up their insane claim, their political enemies will point out how insane their claim is to run them out of office and take power, and all their achieve is political instability. [/quote]
Hey, guys! We just defeated this hyper powerful warship, far more advanced than anything we faced and far more advanced than anything the rest of the enemy vessels accompanying it, that was somehow tied directly into the consciousness of a techno-organic being, which we were warned about, dismissed, but turned out to exist anyway, and which we are not officially able to study because noone is actually studying its origins.
But there is obviously no further threat! Trust us! There is no point even investigating because we know there is no threat!
[quote]This is exactly what happens in game. Unless you think Shepard is having secret conversations that the player doesn't see. This is exactly what makes a plothole. Now if you want to invent secret content that resolves them for you, good for you.[/quote]
Please provide details of exactly where it is in game that we get to know exactly what Hackett is thinking. My explaination is plausable. Yours seems to rely on 'anything we are not expressly told cannot exist.'
[quote]As for the rachni wars - what are you talking about? The only ''proof'' for this is Shepard's word. The rachni queen totally told him it wasn't the rachni's fault when Shepard had a giant vat of acid over her head and was ready to turn her into a fine melty pase. She certainly had no incentive to lie there at all.
Again - we know that's true. But the Council has no evidence of this.[/quote]
I'd say you can't be that dense, but you just went off into the blue about the supernatural once being considered plausable. I wasn't talking about Noveria. I was talking about the Rachni war. You know the one that happened before the Turians joined the council? The one that nearly wiped out the Asari and Salarians? A previously unknown hostile race being suddenly discovered and nearly wiping out all civilization?
The fact that it happened before should be proof that it can happen again. It increases the plausability. Not taking the potential threat seriously, not even investigating the possibility is irresponsible.
[quote]The reapers can do this. We know this from Vigil. What we don't know is whether the Council can do this. Certainly if they could lock Mass Relays at will there would be no concern over war anywhere - they could just isolate whatever particular system was unruly and solve their problem then and there. [/quote]
You completely misunderstood what I said (not surprised). If you flip an off switch, you don't normally need to keep your hand on the switch for the power to stay off. You seem to be suggesting that merely interrupting the Reaper's signal would in and of itself turn the relays back on.
[quote]Oh, so they just had to be stupid and believe something that they knew the old Council couldn't do, relying on a program they didn't know existed. Well, that makes sense.[/quote]
They would have debriefed the other squad members while looking for Shepard, so they would have known about the program. Oh wait, unless someone specificly tells you that something exists, your postion is that it cannot exist.
[quote]No, we don't. But the idea that humanity is the single greatest military power in the galaxy, strong enough to subdue a three part war with a population that greatly outnumbers its own, is silly.
In ME1 Anderson tells you outright humanity lacks the political allies, economic and military might to stand up to the Council. So even with the Citadel fleet broken, I'm not seeing how humanity suddenly gains a leg up for their coup d'etat. [/quote]
I agree that it is silly. What chance do you think Germany really had of world conquest? Or France under Napoleon? It being unlikely or impossible or even outright silly hasn't stopped nations before.
Udina never seems to be portrayed as a brilliant strategist.
[quote]Oh, right, so Shepard and the crews word, which the Council totally don't believe when they ground you prior to Ilos, suddenly makes a difference?
The speech and the whole support comes after the battle. There is no Ilos. There is no ''we know Shepard can speak Prothean''.
These are plausible as to how the Council could learn about the reapers in the intervening months (but ME2 answers these objections later on). But as to what they could know right after the battle, these are absolutely not evidence. Because they've either rejected it already or don't know about it yet.[/quote]
Again, the crew would have been debriefed while they searched for Shepard. Most of them were with the Normandy and the fleet anyway, and would have been debriefed before even reaching the battlefield.
Furthermore, there is a fade to black between Shepard being recovered and the final scene. They are on a non-burning deck, and regardless of paragon or renegade, Udina is present, so contrary to your opinion, it was not literally immediately after the battle. Oh wait.. no time is allowed to pass during a fade scene, since you are not expressly told so. Again, what you keep calling plot holes is simply everything not being expressly spelt out for you.
The fact that Saren, Sovereign and the Geth were indeed the threat that the Shepard declared them to be would also have lent credence to their opinions generally. After all, that was also considered far fetched. For that matter, if the Normandy hadn't been diverted to the citadel, Shepard might have gotten to the conduit first and shut the plan down on the ground, or at least ensured there was proper warning and the fleets were on full alert rather than caught off guard. Even if he had buried the other end of the conduit and simply come through it himself before the demo charges went off, proving the threat had been real, it would have saved countless lives.
[quote]But no one knows this! That's the whole damn point. From what everyone can see, Sovereign is just a ship. Shepard and his crew are the only ones who experience anything different, and they have no proof. [/quote]
Assuming there are no cameras on the presidium (despite it being the public presentation area), and that there are no recordings, and that there is no forensic information available at all....
Not to mention the fact that if debriefed properly, i.e. independantly, the crew members who were with Shepard would have had exactly the same story as Shepard.
Retour en haut
), and even that didn't include the 3rd squadmate, who just seemed to be along for the ride. The only one who acknowledges the 3rd squadmate is the Shadow Broker. 
I personally didnt feel attached to these characters like I did with the ME1 characters. I cannot tell you how annoyed I was with Garrus telling me he was calibrating the battery and did not want to talk. Garrus and Tali should have had the most dialogue because they had an established relationship with Shepard already.
