91 réponses à ce sujet

[Malanek]

marshalleck wrote...

Malanek999 wrote...

marshalleck wrote...
Which is why each time I hear the 50,000 years thing in game (I think EDI says it too) or read it in an interview, I just facepalm and tell myself the writers/producer don't remember their own lore. 

Bioware should hire me as a Mass Effect lore consultant. I'm like a walking codex with this ****.

Really? Every time you have dialogue instead of the number 50000 appearing you think they should explain it exactly? If you are asked for the time do you say "twenty-one-hundred twenty-nine eighteen seconds mark" or "half past nine"? Its pretty clearly an approximation and done for the sake of not sounding stupid rather than than the writers forgetting things.

Whenever I am asked for the time I give it correctly to the minute, yes. I don't use vague generalizations. 

To the minute is a generalisation.

Modifié par Malanek999, 14 juin 2011 - 09:08 .

[marshalleck]

But not vague!

[Warkupo]

Unless you are going to give me the correct time down to a nano-second, just don't bother talking to me. I have no time for liars.

[Malanek]

Its all relative. 50,000 years is fine, to explain it fully you need to go into reasons behind the reapers decisions to accelerate the process. A single word of dialogue becomes a couple of paragraphs. This is not a plot hole.

[Vanaer]

Skilled Seeker wrote...

Alienmorph wrote...

Skilled Seeker wrote...

But then how would the Reapers deal with the iron age civilisation example I gave? Will they come back in just 3000 years to reap? Because unless they are the ones that create life, it doesn't make sense for civilisations across the galaxy to all advance during the same time interval. You should have civilisations advancing to reaping state all the time.

Every civilization not enough advanced is spared, to have a chance to grow and replace the extincted ones. We know for example that the hanar where enough advanced to remember their contacts with the protheans, but they were spared, instead of being whiped out toghether with them. This probably means that they were not enough advanced at those time to be useful for the reapers.

You missed my point. If thy spare any civ that isn't advanced enough at the time of a Reaping then you'll get some of the survivng civs advancing to reaping status before the next 50,000 years since they will be at different stages of development at any one time. Unless the Reapers destroy any civ that might advance earlier than the next time interval, in which case why be wasteful like this when they can wait say 3000 years for them to advance to reaping status and then reap them.

That seems very likely.  It only says that most civilizations disappear roughly every 50,000 years. They keep Reapers behind to check on the progress. It's why Sovereign stayed behind: to keep a check on the progress.

[Skilled Seeker Reanimated]

But why is it roughly every 50,000 years? My point is they should be reaping all the time because given the abundunce of life in the ME universe, some species somewhere in the galaxy should be advancing to reaping state at any given time. UNLESS the reapers are the ones that create life and so they create a new batch of lifeforms that will all evolve to reaping state at the same time. But we don't have evidence for this.

Modifié par Skilled Seeker Reanimated, 14 juin 2011 - 09:38 .

[HunterX6]

Skilled Seeker wrote...

In ME1 we learned that the Reapers have a cycle of reapings and the last time they reaped was 50,000 years ago. We also found out that they come to reap once a civilisation is sufficiently advanced enough to use the mass relay system but before they are too advanced to become a threat. It was not said in ME1 that the time difference between reapings was always the same. People assumed it was every 50,000 years just because that was how long ago the last reaping took place. Now in ME2, Bioware has ran along with this.


This does not make sense!

Civilisations would advance at different speeds. They would be at different levels of development if the Reapers come to reap every 50,000 years. They might be underdeveloped or overdeveloped. Why did the writers choose arbitrarily to have the Reapers reap every 50,000 years? I believe this is a major flaw in the storyline.

Discuss.

it is explained by vigil in ilos that soverign would periodically awake to see the status of civilazation, the general reapers in dark space usually wait about 50,000 years. But the protheans change things up for the reapers and for the current civilazation.

[Warkupo]

The Reapers make the tech that propels the advancement of a civilization. Anderson mentions this very early into the game, he just mistakenly believes that tech was created by the Protheans, which we now understand that it was not. Once we have discovered the Mass Relay's and the Citadel, we have discovered the 'end' of what the Reapers are going to give us. At that point, our ability to grow our technologies are very difficult. Advancement beyond that point WILL happen at a much slower rate, meaning the Reapers have quite a bit of time before the next Reaping.

For the hedge cases, like the protheans reversing the mass relay, or... Well, Shepard, the Reapers have scouts like Sovereign that can speed up the invasion process when necessary.

[Skilled Seeker Reanimated]

You're still missing my point dudes. There should be civilisations reaching reaping state all the time! Not every 50,000 years or so. Please read my above post.

[Dannyboy9876]

Sovereign "wakes up" every thousand years or so, which is how they monitor life.

[Thrombin]

Skilled Seeker Reanimated wrote...

You're still missing my point dudes. There should be civilisations reaching reaping state all the time! Not every 50,000 years or so. Please read my above post.

Not if everything is reduced down to microbes after every reaping. It will take a certain amount of time for life to emerge from the primordial slime.

Most people think it took millions of years for life to evolve, never mind 50,000.

I think life probably is programmed to take about 50,000 years to mature based on genetic material that is probably seeded by the Reapers.

The evolution could take 40000 years or so, leaving 10,000 for technology to emerge and achieve space travel.

If it all starts off at the same time it should all start maturing about the same time. As soon as they hit space they encounter Reaper tech and that pushes them in the direction which will cause them to mature at around the 50,000 mark.

Obviously some are more advanced than others, initially, but none are as advanced as Reaper Tech so as soon as the relays bring everyone together they all get the tech from each other and the technology level normalizes at around the same point.

Sovereign sits around to fine tune things and kicks the reaping off at the appropriate time.

[Hennex]

Dannyboy9876 wrote...

Sovereign "wakes up" every thousand years or so, which is how they monitor life.

Very true.  Remember what happened with the Rachni? the Reapers corrupted their songs, causing them to go to war.  Sovereign used Saren to control the Geth and tried to create a Krogan army.  The Keepers, originally programed to open the portal to Dark Space so the Reapers could attack the unsuspecting galaxy (although the Protheans managed to terminate the link between the Keepers and the Reapers).

And let's not forget about the fate of the Protheans.  Not only wiped out but the Reapers changed them into the Collectors, who were experimenting on the current species of the galaxy for the Reapers.  They even tried to build a new Reaper.

Looking at all of this makes me think the Reapers may have been doing the same things during every 50,000 years, so it's not like they just sat back, relaxed, and decided to harvest the galaxy of all life.  They would always try to gain the upper hand.

[Pride Demon]

Il Divo wrote...

Skilled Seeker wrote...

Totally serious. Why do you doubt my conviction?

Two reasons.

1) Your use of the Chewbacca defense image. 

2) Your designation of the 50k time span as a 'major flaw' of the storyline. I'm not saying it's not an error on the writers' parts, but it doesn't quite break the universe, in my opinion. 

Edit: As a separate point, who in ME2 says the cycle takes place every 50k years?

The various bombarded worlds, when dated, are all roughly dated by multiples of 50000...
If you helped Chorban in ME1, he'll write you a mail in ME2 saying the signal that activates the Keepers comes at regular intervals, the last was during the supposed Prothean extinction 50000 years ago and the next should be "right about now"...

[Dreadwing 67]

Skilled Seeker Reanimated wrote...

You're still missing my point dudes. There should be civilisations reaching reaping state all the time! Not every 50,000 years or so. Please read my above post.

It took how many years of human civilization just to make a light bulb.   Though the amount and quality of technology nowadays is increasing exponentially, it still will take quite awhile before we even consider making space travel common.

In regards to 50,000 years being a plot hole, its hard to really agree with that. Nothing in life is certain. NFL runingbacks may have an average 40-yard dash time of 4.2 seconds. It's incredibly difficult to run a 40 exactly 4.2 s every time. There is the plus or minus factor.

If Reapers were reaping when the dinosaurs roamed the earth, thats millions of years ago, I would say that 50,000 might be a fairly good estimate for a cycle.

Even if a society had 50,000 years to develope, they would be decimated on the first day and subsequently wiped off. By all accounts the Reapers are damn good at what they do. I would think they could afford to let a couple civilizations live.

Modifié par Dreadwing 67, 14 juin 2011 - 10:26 .

[Spectreshadow]

This is just nitpicking. +/- a few dozen or hundred years or so is really nothing in the span of 50,000

[Stardusk78]

blothulfur wrote...

The reapers are called forth by a discordant sound that reaches a climax every fifty thousand years, yes it's more cowbell than anyone ever dreamed could be in existence (except for Christopher walken).

Blue Oyster Cult for ME3 theme tune.

Thetta er skemtilegt...

[TyDurden13]

I always find it amusing when fans of an IP begin to take every word written in it as absolute literal fact. Where does the every 50K thing come from? Is that Liara's or the Vigil's speculation? Is so, then it's a somewhat unreliable narrator working from piecemeal knowledge. I very much doubt it's exactly every 50K years on the dot. It's been about 50K years since the last one, though. But there's no real reason to believe that it's every 50K years like clockwork.

Also I think it's stated in ME1 that the reapers monitor the advances of galactic civilization and return once society reaches a certain threshold.

Finally, of course species advance at different rates. The asari reached the citadel like 2000 years before humans did (and humans were around 50,000 years ago, so you can't say the asari simply evolved first).

[salomi7]

I haven’t read all the post’s so I apologize if this has been mentioned. But yes it is +/- 50,000 years plus technology is based off the mass relay’s which were created (supposedly) by the Reapers anyway so they would know how long it would take a civilization to be get advanced enough to harvest.

[MajorStranger]

They are said to have done it for over a million years. Make sense the Reapers developed a pattern of 50 000 years after such a long time.

[Ianamus]

It's probably just like Mass Effect 1 telling us that the Protheans created the citadel/relay's. The people of the universe have no clue of the exact dates the reapers invaded, so they just assume it is every 50'000 years. We're only really being told what they believe, not nececerally the whole truth.

That, or because it's a simple way of quickly explaining the story to people who joined at Mass Effect 2.

Either way, I wouldn't look too deeply into it. If it bothers you that much, just assume that it's an oversimplification, and go with what other sources in the games tell us (that they come when they believe civilisation is ready)

[Gill Kaiser]

I don't see what the problem is. Considering the number of systems in the galaxy, and the fact that, if Earth is anything to go by, Reapers don't reap species that have yet to achieve space flight, it's more than likely that there will be new galactic civilisations every 50,000 years.

Modifié par Gill Kaiser, 15 juin 2011 - 10:36 .

[Schneidend]

Part of Sovereign's job was to watch the development of spacefaring species. If the scenarios the OP mentions came up, Sov would simply not signal the invasion or signal it early. Simple.

You're over-analyzing, even when the game already gave you the answer.

[Bocks]

"[The Protheans] did not forge the mass relays. They merely found them, the legacy of my kind."
"Your civilization is based on the technology of the mass relays, our technology. By using it, your society develops along the paths we desire."
- Sovereign

Can we lock this thread now?

[Hatchetman77]

Skilled Seeker wrote...
The designation of the 50k time span is a major flaw to me as the story of ME revolves around the Reapers and their reapings.

I'm not sure how this at all affects the story.  Can you please explain it to me.

Modifié par Hatchetman77, 15 juin 2011 - 10:43 .

[marshalleck]

Bocks wrote...

"[The Protheans] did not forge the mass relays. They merely found them, the legacy of my kind."
"Your civilization is based on the technology of the mass relays, our technology. By using it, your society develops along the paths we desire."
- Sovereign

Can we lock this thread now?

What has that got to do with the thread?