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[Pride Demon]

Looking around the forum I often happen to notice how Harbinger tends to be received...

A lot of people seem to consider him (often using Sovereign as a counter) a very badly flashed out villain, dubbing him more an annoyance than an actual threat; he is also generally mocked for his antics in battle and the way he supposedly "reduced the reapers to comedic enemies" instead of the detached, haughty and dangerous creatures Sovereign painted them as...

But the question is: Is Harbinger really that bad as a villain?

My answer is a drastic "No", in fact it's my opinion Harbinger is one of the most competent and practical enemies shown so far. Let's recount his achievements shall we:

- First and foremost, he already KILLED Shepard once, and he did so without having to even show himself since he used the Collectors for the job. This alone is more than anyone in the series can claim to have done. Unlike many villains he didn't waste time in long winded intros, or even in saying who he was (think Elanos Haliat, or even Sovereign): he sent the Collectors there and utterly crushed the Normandy! Just like that!

Unlike Sovereign (I love him as a char but I need him as an example, sorry Sovvie) he didn't need mysterious and cryptic threats, he just sent his minions and dealt with the problem, clean and fast...
Had it not been for the Lazarus Project, the galaxy would have bought it right there when Shep died...

- He wanted Shepard body recovered even if he/she was probably dead.
His main reason is still unknown, but he also probably wanted to be sure Shep was dead and out of the way forever. A mere "No one could survive that!" type of villain (keep thinking Elanos Haliat) would have let the matter drop, Harbinger is smart and Genre Savvy and wants to SEE Shep’s body before classifying him/her as a corpse.

- He taunts you constantly during fights. Many people think this makes him a joke, rather I say Harbinger is employing psychological warfare. In battle the most important thing is keeping one's eyes peeled and staying cool: given the odds, a distracted Shep is a dead Shep and Harbinger knows this...

What can distract you more than an enemy CONSTANTLY spouting taunts at you? So the constant speaking everyone mocks harbinger for is actually a wonderfully thought out way to make Shep (or his/her allies) more susceptible to mistakes...

The very fact so many people find him unbelievably annoying for his taunts is just a testament to how good Harbinger is at doing what he does!

- He never allows you to gain any kind of REAL advantage against him. Everyone says Harbinger is somewhat of a joke also for the way he constantly appears only to be killed again and again. Everyone however seems to forget that a dead collector is not a big problem, they are constantly replenished in numbers via constant cloning in the CB. And as Harby says himself, in the end "you only hurt the vessel".

Harbinger obviously does not care how many possessed Collectors you destroy, the ONLY one that matters is his avatar, the General, the others are just proxies. Did you even fight the general? No, because unlike Sovvie's sloppy final attempt at killing you (he was desperate however so he is excused) he is careful about keeping the General out of harm’s way and releases control when it's clear the General will die.

Given all this, I'd say Harby is a pretty well made villain; an extremely dangerous, savvy and competent villain, in fact...

Are you just unhappy because he doesn't have some badass monologue like Sovvie? No problem, one can easily be crafted from his in game dialogue... Here you go...

"I will direct this personally…
ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL!

Shepard… YOU have changed NOTHING…
WE are Harbinger! WE are THE Harbinger of YOUR perfection!

All this seems like a victory to you,
But even now your greatest civilizations are doomed to fall,

YOUR leaders will beg to serve us,
YOUR people will beg to be harvested…

YOU CAN NOT STOP US!

YOU do not yet comprehend your place in things:

YOU are irrelevant;
The forces of the universe bend to ME…

MY attacks will tear you apart;
YOU can not sustain your attack…

YOU are pitiful;
OUR power is unmatched…

YOU are bacteria;
WE are your genetic destiny… 

YOU are ignorant;
WE are knowing…

YOUR form is fragile, I know YOU feel this;
WE fight as one: there is NO pain, there is NO fear…

This hurts YOU;
YOU just hurt the vessel…

YOU fight against inevitability!
YOU are dust, struggling against COSMIC wind!

Know THIS as you die in vain:
Your species has the attention of those infinitely your greater!
That which you know as Reapers are your salvation through destruction!
Your time WILL come, your species WILL fall!

Your worlds will be our laboratories!
You will surrender your potential against the growing VOID!
Your species will be raised to harmony with our own!

Prepare yourselves for the ARRIVAL!
Prepare yourselves for our COMING!

WE return…
And YOU will rise…

THIS is what YOU face…

RELEASING CONTROL!"

Now you even have the monologue, so tell me seriously: Is Harbinger really that bad as a villain? Discuss...
 
EDIT: Made away with a lot of glaring mistakes… Sorry everyone, was a bit too tired to properly spell check when I posted this… Hopefully it should be a bit better now… :/

Modifié par Pride Demon, 06 juin 2011 - 06:38 .

[Someone With Mass]

He could've been a tad better. With all that rambling, he's never going to top Sovereign. Sovereign pretty much just said: "Your ass is grass, and I got the weed whacker." and then went straight for the Citadel. No taunting that became old after the tenth time, no empty threats, nothing.

It may have something to do with the fact that the Reapers were a unknown threat at the time, but still.

Harbinger should just shut up and attack.

[Collider]

Harbinger is a like a trashtalker on a multiplayer game. Sure, he's annoying, but you can't really take him seriously.
Harbinger has nothing interesting to say. He just taunts, taunts, taunts. It makes the reapers look less mysterious and more comical.

[Pride Demon]

Someone With Mass wrote...

He could've been a tad better. With all that rambling, he's never going to top Sovereign. Sovereign pretty much just said: "Your ass is grass, and I got the weed whacker." and then went straight for the Citadel. No taunting that became old after the tenth time, no empty threats, nothing.

It may have something to do with the fact that the Reapers were a unknown threat at the time, but still.

Harbinger should just shut up and attack.

He did when he destroyed the Normandy and killed Shep...

If when he shuts up he is THAT effective, I'd rather he keep talking...
Sovereign, however ended up failing spectacularly at the Citadel when he tried the same ("shutting up" and attacking Shep)...

[DoNotIngest]

Sovereign has the badassery & scare-your-pants-off bases covered already. However, having a pissed-off Harbinger descending while a few thousand friends have his back is giving my Shepard a really bad day. From what you see of Harby at the end of the game, it seems like he'll be at least equal to Sovereign in difficulty to kill, if not greater. And he has friends to help him out.


EDIT: I *will* say, you'd think that a vastly superiour Reaper would want you to think it had much better things to do than taunt an "insignificant vessel of blood and flesh" all day. I mean, I know they're just floating around in Dark Space doing nothing, but Sovereign sure made it seem like you weren't worth a husk's ass.

Modifié par DoNotIngest, 05 juin 2011 - 10:38 .

[Sebby]

The issue with Harbinger isn't so much the character itself but the fact that Shepard and co have Steven Seagal invicible hero syndrome and go through countless missions without so much a scratch. It would be like a Friday the 13th or Nightmare on Elm Street where nobody died, the villain wouldn't be taken seriously as a menace. Sovereign had the same problem as Harbinger but it wasn't made as blatantly obvious as you only interacted with him twice and fought a possessed avatar of his at the very end.

Personally, I much prefer Harbinger over Sovereign as he's far more entertaining and I like how he's a master puppeteer manipulating events behind the scenes like a Reaper version of TIM.

[CajNatalie]

The only issue I really have with Harbinger... is the voice.
Just... the voice...

But the fact I cannot escape is that if Harbinger had an awesome a voice as Sovereign, then it would be an instant spoiler when you get to Horizon and you hear the General speaking.
So ultimately... I know I must DEAL WITH IT.

I like how you offered a new take on the battle taunting... on Insanity mode combined with Harby's constant taunts it really can get to me... I just can't get a quiet moment to fully focus.
So it looks like he's doing psychological warfare right.

Modifié par CajNatalie, 05 juin 2011 - 11:13 .

[zerox505]

lol so many nostalgic ****gots who like sovereign more than harbinger, you know if harbinger was introduced in mass effect instead of sovereign, people will be all over him.

[IceTrey1987]

None of Harbinger's dialogue really stacked up to the conversation between Shepard and Sovereign on Virmire. That scene is burned into my mind with the very best moments of video game history. I think that Harbinger was a worthy successor to Sovereign as a villain, I just think that he was underutilized, especially in ME3. I think the real problem is that in 3, the reapers are at the last minute made to appear to not be innately evil, but every time Sovereign or Harbinger showed up, they were painted as pretty freaking evil. In 2, Harbinger was pretty good, but in 3, there's really just one reaper Shepard has dialogue with and it's pretty inconsequential. "The reaper threat" is made out to be the villain, rather than any reaper in particular. In the end though, it just added to my decision that the reapers are not actual beings, they're just machines with a singular purpose and they must be destroyed completely at any cost, even with my paragon shepard.

[PsiFive]

^ This. And it remains my biggest complaint about ME3. They made Sovereign this incredible, magnificent bastard, chthonic villain whose motives were just beyond understanding. It's not that Harbinger is a mediocre villain as such, it's just that the Reapers were dumbed down from their "realm of existence beyond your comprehension" stuff to being the Starbrat's self aware farming equipment in order to give them motives human players could understand. Once the writers decided to go that way in ME2 it was going to be hard to get Sov's successor to measure up, though I feel they could have gone back to that in ME3 because all the discussion about the human Reaper construction was speculative - EDI says as much. Instead, Starbrat pulling Harbinger's and the Reapers' strings while The Delusive Man with his plot armoured sidekick and near infinite mook army got centre stage for much of the game..... *sigh* I suppose we could always headcanon it so that Sovereign was a narcissist and all that stuff about being beyond your puny organic understanding was bull**** and arrogance. Makes Sovereign a bit of a tool but at least fits 2 and especially 3 better. It would also explain why the other Reapers chose him to be the lookout for 50 thousand years - maybe they all thought he was a tool as well. :-D

[Staff Cdr Alenko]

^ Good point in general, but...

Why headcanon something about the very awesome ME1 and ME2, when you can headcanon entire ME3? What's ME3, anyway? ME3 was never made. You see, I don't have it under my avatar, and neither do you. All is well .

[Obadiah]

Is this the depiction villains get in other video games - basically a boss enemy that attacks and taunts the player?

The main reason I did not like Harbinger is that there was no ability to interact with it. It would have been nice if there was a Virmire-type mission where we could do that. Instead, we had to buy the last ME2 DLC. That is an interesting monolgue that you put together though.

Modifié par Obadiah, 01 septembre 2012 - 03:11 .

[PsiFive]

Staff Lt Alenko wrote...

^ Good point in general, but...

Why headcanon something about the very awesome ME1 and ME2, when you can headcanon entire ME3? What's ME3, anyway? ME3 was never made. You see, I don't have it under my avatar, and neither do you. All is well .

Yeah, I have headcanoned ME3, and if you're familiar with Chinese classic literature and/or early 70s Japanese TV adaptations it's basically The Water Margin. Except in space with mass effect fields and krogan.