265 réponses à ce sujet

[Wulfram]

marshalleck wrote...

Bull****. If that were the case, why can't they admit it in private with Shepard, and say that's why they're publicly denying the Reapers?

Shepard has suddenly appeared after two years working with Cerberus.  Why should they confide in him?

[aridor1570]

sael_feman wrote...

It is true TIM (The Illusive man) knows about the reapers, if he is in league with them is yet to be seen....he could be.

The Shadow Broker also knew about the reapers....with Liara as the new Shadow Broker hopefully in ME3 evidence could be sent to the Council.

Evidence? the Reapers already started the invasion on earth, hell the the council are there in sheps trial when the invasion begins, they'll probably see it by themselves, they won't need anymore evidence than that.

[Dean_the_Young]

Wulfram, because he's primarily working with Cerberus because Cerberus is working against the Reapers while the Council has not.

Hence, if the Council really wanted Shepard to stop working with Cerberus, the single best way to do that would be to give Shepard the legitimate alternative to what he's fixated on... which the Council is already doing.

Modifié par Dean_the_Young, 20 juillet 2011 - 12:47 .

[Mystranna Kelteel]

Even Anderson says that the Council is denying it. He doesn't say they're covering it up; he says they're not doing anything.

So unless you want to try and argue that the human Councilor is "left out of the loop" then you can't really claim that the Council is denying the reapers for the sake of the public. That's not supported by any of the evidence.

[SerraAdvocate]

The Council also could be wary of admitting to Shepard that the Reapers are real for fear that Shepard would use a recording of that admission to try to rally public support. Shepard is a loose cannon, and he's a loose cannon who could theoretically have one of those black-box things that allows the recording of memories and can display them on a screen.

[Stormrider 15]

also the computer on illos somehow self destructed or something after shep talked to it (anderson sais it)

[Stormrider 15]

at a discussion over the e3 demo, cerberus is supposedly indoctrinated (does that mean the ENTIRE organization?)

Modifié par Stormrider 15, 20 juillet 2011 - 12:56 .

[mineralica]

First, about radiocarbon dating - in fact, about any radioactive isotope dating. It's based on comparison of normal to radioactive isotopes ratio between the system with external input of radioactive isotope and the isolated one, where the radioactive isotope is constantly depleted. Kniowing the half-life time, it's possible to find out how many time passed since the moment when investigated system stopped to refill its supplies of radioactive isotope.
______

So in case of Reapers we have several problems here:

- we don't know the isotope composition of the initial system to compare it with existing one

- it's unknown if Reapers gain more matter during their "life" - this includes reparations, refilling supplies, etc.

- if it's long enough time after the stop of refilling the radioactive isotope, its concentration will become "too low for detection" and will remain so. That's why radiocarbon method, for example, is used to dating objects not older than 60.000 years.

- several reapers' creatures decay very fast after destroying - Praetorian, for example. I doubt anyone cared to preserve samples during after the ME1 final battle.
______

About Council not believing in Reapers - we had dismissed that claim. Sorry. In this question I agree with "they only want to preserve their political power, so no other people are allowed to gain real influence" theory

[Wulfram]

Dean_the_Young wrote...

Wulfram, because he's primarily working with Cerberus because Cerberus is working against the Reapers while the Council has not.

Hence, if the Council really wanted Shepard to stop working with Cerberus, the single best way to do that would be to give Shepard the legitimate alternative to what he's fixated on... which the Council is already doing.

Why would the Council want Shepard to stop working with Cerberus?  They want deniability, and they don't want to provoke the Terminus systems.  So Shepard angrily complaining about the Council not listening and ignoring the threat suits them perfectly.

If they actually had a problem with what Shepard was doing, they could easily have arrested him and seized the Normandy.

[Bogsnot1]

Lotion Soronnar wrote...
Lol.
Pretty much anything can be dated. There are multiple methods to date things and any scientist worth a penny could do it.
It's just bad writing. Very bad writing.

So, you're saying because it hasnt been directly stated as being dated, noone dated it? 

There was a CDN report on a scientist who had dated space-dust collected from the surfaces of Mass Relays and by dating it he/she said the Mass Relays predated the Protheans. Citadel "experts" laughed off her claims and said she was mistaken/nuts. This would be linked to the same reasoning as to why dating evidence for Sovereign hasnt been released. The panic induced by Ancient Psychopaths hellbent on destroying galactic civilisation.

Technologies and designs share certain properties. Tehre's no way you'll not be able to tel la human ship form an asari ship unpon closer inspection. And yet you assume repars and geth cna't be told apart? This is redicolous at hte most basic logical level. Two things that do not share the same properties cannot be the same. It's as simple as that.
Not to mention that you do run into geth trough whole on ME1 and ME2, so you kinda know what geth tech looks like.
Again, bad writing.

Normany SR1 case in point. Take it into Geth space, have it blown it to bits and what will the Geth discover. Some bits look Turian, some look human. Which, exactly, is it?

Wut? IT's a computer. The data in it is not magicly gone just because power runs out.
And since when can only Sheppard understand it? Vigil was speaking in a format all your team members understood.

Ever had a power outage while working on a computer? Anything stored in the swap file that had not yet been writen to disk, as well as anything stored in RAM gets wiped.
Any and all connection to said computer, wouldhave had marknigs written in the Prothean language, and while there would have been experts available to read it, they would have only a general grasp of it, the same way even our experts only have a general grasp of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics.

True, I cna understand removing the most interesting bits and getting a head start...But with hte Reapears coming, you'd think taht convincing hte galaxy of hte reaper threat would be more importnat.
Cerberus got hte idiot ball (again) because of bad writing.

Humans saved the day the first time, and got a lot of respect and authority from the deal. Save the day again, with bigger and better weaponry, and get lots more respoect, and possibly control of the galactic government.

Now, as for why the Council wont admit to Shep that they know about the Reapers, could well be linked to the fact that when you first meet the Council in ME2, its normally done before Horizon, which means you have at least one untrusted (by the Council) squadmate with you at the time, and thus they cannot or will not release sensitive information in their presence.
Should Bioware have written a special dialogue specifically for if you had waited until you got Garrus and Tali, both of whom already knew about the Reapers, before going to see the council? Assuming the Council still trusts you, irrespective of the fact you are now working for a known terrorist organisation, yes, they should have.

Now, the bigger question is, why should the Council trust a man/woman who was declared dead, only to appear 2 years later seemingly in the employ of Cerberus?

Is there bad writing in the series? Hell yes. Does that mean all of ME1 was a plot hole. Hell no.

[ryoldschool]

Orkboy wrote...

It'll probably end up that they denied the Reapers in order to get Shep to run around like a headless chicken to divert the Reapers attention from their secret anti-reaper research project.

Then right at the end of ME3 just as the end looks bleakest, the Turian counsellor pops up, air quotes and says " Ah yes, Reapers.... SURPRISE MOTH** *******! " and blows them away with a big anti-reaper cannon.

^ Now this is funny.   Its worth saving the council in ME1 just to get the air quotes line.

[Powgow]

Carbon dating only works on earth and on living, organic stuff.

If you dont know the origin, you cant date it (well). You need a known thing to be able to compare age with.

Maybe they could look at the half-life of the metals or other compounds, if they are known and if they know the half-lives of these components. Anyways, its true that the whole " we dont believe its reapers" thing is rediculous. Unless....

THE COUNCIL MEMBERS ARE THEMSELVES INDOCTRINATED!

Now that would be a smart ruse and good plot twist, but no, they probably wont.

[CyberDirectorFreedom]

I like how in ME1 the Council honestly believes the reapers are something that Saren made up to throw you off track. But then why would he talk about it with Matriarch Benezia while he's alone with her. He can't have possibly known that Shepard or anyone else would hear that. Stupid Council.

[Jenaimarre]

Pretty sure this has been said before. The council told Shepard that they found nothing to suggest that Sovereign could not have been built by the Geth. Whether they lied to Shepard or not remains to be seen, and I am certain we will find out in ME3.

[didymos1120]

Bogsnot1 wrote...

Gee, I dunno, maybe they didnt find any bits that contained any carbon?

Not to mention, even if Sovvy was carbon-rich, radiocarbon dating would be utterly useless anyway.  It's based on the rate of C14 production in Earth's atmosphere (which in turn is dependent on Earth's atmospheric composition) and the fact that uptake rates in plants cause their levels of the isotope to more or less match atmospheric levels.  I'm sure you can spot some of the problems w/ carbon dating Sovvy (a few of these have already been touched on):

Was the carbon taken from a planet?  Multiple planets?  Did they even have biospheres?  What were the rates of C14 production on these worlds?  How exactly was the C14 getting into these biospheres, if indeed they existed?  Did any of those organisms have some biochemical quirk that skewed their C14 ratio way up or way down compared to typically expected levels on those worlds? What amount of variation in C14 levels over time exists on these worlds?  What about variations due to location at any specific time? What, if any, factors in the manufacturing processes involved in the creation of Sovereign could affect C14 levels? So on, So forth.

Many similar concerns deriving from the unknown provenance of the materials and ignorance of the manufacturing techniques also make dating via other radioisotopes more than a little problematic.

[HunterX6]

Lotion Soronnar wrote...

In the ME series asa whole?

amnely, that no one excpet Cerberus belives in Reapers.
The Council races have the remains of Sovereign and they are so utterly dumb that tehy consider it geth? What...did they forgot how to do basic carbon dating? Soverign is supposed ot be far older than the geth race. That shouldn't be hard ot figurew out.
Not to mention that  it should be pretty obvious that it's not geth, as all geth share some similarities and it should have been more than obvious after studying the remain, that the ship is FAR more advanced than anytihng the geth ever demonstrated, and it has different design and tech.


The nwe have the whole Ilos thing...the VI interfact? The prothean hybernation tubes? Waht, I know the VI lost power, but since when does loosing power destroy a a computer? Dont' tell me one can't recover any data from the hardware at all?

Or the "dead" reaper the Cerberus stumbled upon. Why keep it secret? There's the perfect proof of repaers right there!

The more I look into hte ME universe, the more holes I keep finding.
Bioware, Y U ruin this?????

To be honest the council might actually be indoctrinated, they kept refusing you all the way from the first game, like they wanted to keep ot hidden. I actually have something to say about that which I will make a topic in a bit.

[Unpleasant Implications]

marshalleck wrote...

Fredvdp wrote...

Mordin says the council denies the Reaper threat to avoid panic, not because they don't believe it.

Which explains why they deny it to Shepard's face in the privacy of the ambassador/councilor quarters, over channels that are surely secured.

/sarcasm

It's not a plot hole though. It's just more bad writing. Bioware wanted the player to feel cut-off from their allies in ME2, to make it more grimdark. So they passed the Council the idiot ball and rolled back all the progress players could have made with them in ME1. 

Well what would you expect for them to say? "Shepard, you're totally right about the Reapers, but there's no way in hell we're letting the public believe sentient starships erase all races every 50,000 years. That would cause Galaxy wide panic and chaos. But you have our "Go for it" in stopping them anyway you can. Good luck."

That came out alot longer than I thought but my point still stands. They need to make sure that Shepard won't try to spread anything about Reapers by completely dismissing them and making him/her believe no one will believe them. That's my stance anyway.

[aftohsix]

OP and those who agree with him:   See my sig for explanation.

[Core_Commander]

I like the "Council doesn't trust you" defense. It's a nice and believable way of solving the situation, although it's tempting to just say it's bad writing and Shepard is THE SAVIOR so he must be misunderstood.

It kind of makes sense - Shepard is a known loose cannon, supposedly died, reappeared two years later bearing terrorist colors... Sure the Council could decide to keep him on "good terms", but leave out of the loop. Him being right once doesn't mean he is to be blindly believed... or, considering his "affair" with Cerberus, trusted. It's not like he's the only Spectre and Council's only resource. He's not even granted an audience "in person" this time, shows how little he's trusted. Hell, he could as well be indoctrinated out of his ass, for all they know. Maybe he's not, so they put him on a long leash, tell him "keep away from Council Space, we'll cheer for you" and leave him be in case he's up to something good after all.

There are tensions between the human Councillor and the rest, seen even in those short interactions in ME2. The Councillor himself is keeping secrets from you. Don't expect that everyone will spill their guts for you just because you saved them once or twice, and because you're THE PROTAGONIST.

Modifié par Core_Commander, 20 juillet 2011 - 02:41 .

[Meshaber]

*Ahem*

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence"
-Carl Sagan

[RyuGuitarFreak]

Wulfram wrote...

Dean_the_Young wrote...

Wulfram, because he's primarily working with Cerberus because Cerberus is working against the Reapers while the Council has not.

Hence, if the Council really wanted Shepard to stop working with Cerberus, the single best way to do that would be to give Shepard the legitimate alternative to what he's fixated on... which the Council is already doing.

Why would the Council want Shepard to stop working with Cerberus?  They want deniability, and they don't want to provoke the Terminus systems.  So Shepard angrily complaining about the Council not listening and ignoring the threat suits them perfectly.

If they actually had a problem with what Shepard was doing, they could easily have arrested him and seized the Normandy.

Not true. Shepard has some credibility with them. That's why they didn't arrest and reinstated his Spectre status which gave him power to investigate the Collectors in the Terminus and still work with Cerberus. They don't have a problem because he's a Spectre his work was fit to what a Spectre would do, i.e. if you followed that path, which I did.

aftohsix wrote...

OP and those who agree with him:   See my sig for explanation.

Thisactually fits with the OP. Why is it so hard to believe that Sovereing was tore up to useless bits and that they found no evidence in Ilos?
Why is it so hard to believe that Cerberus likes to keep secrecy of their works and experiments? It's not like they weren't doing anything on the dead reaper and it was there for everyone to see it and have a happy smile.

Modifié par RyuGuitarFreak, 20 juillet 2011 - 02:42 .

[Drasill]

Mass Effect 2 basically ruined everything.

[Medhia Nox]

I agree marshalleck, but for slightly different reasons (or those he did not state).

Good writing does not leave this much room open to interpretation. Good writing cannot be so easily argued on the interwebs - where, everything can be argued.

That isn't to say that the "meaning" of a story - or the "character" of the Protagonist could not be argued about endlessly... but the dialogue should be concise, to the point, and reveal the truth behind the NPCs' thoughts (which we cannot know).

[DadeLeviathan]

Yeah, as much as I love the series, Mass Effect has a massive amount of plot holes. However, many of those plot holes can be explained as, "Without that plot hole, we wouldn't have a story." So I am content to overlook most of them to a certain extent.

[aftohsix]

Drasill wrote...

Mass Effect 2 basically ruined everything.

If you feel this way why not simply not play Mass Effect 3 and get off the forums?  Spend time reading a good book or playing any number of other games that fit the magical criteria of "good game" that some of you seem to hold.