246 réponses à ce sujet

[jojon2se]

Dean_the_Young wrote...

Sounds more appropriate for the Derilect Reaper to me, actually.

Yep - at least up until the "we can join them" part.
The whole first section sounds a lot like the "communal brain" becoming fragmented, however it is constructed - maybe goo stored in vats, maybe distributed throughout the ship, like a nervous network.

One could speculate that the Derelict Reaper was originally more involved than just as a place to pick up the IFF; Maybe the collectors were actually working from what gooey stuff they could salvage from it and using humans to "fill in the blanks", which would refer back to the comments in ME2, about humans being relatively "diverse", or whatever the word was - diverse enough and close enough to the race that formed Derek the Reaper, to be modified to compatibility.

[Eski.Moe]

That sounds very interesting. Lovely too.

[Terumitsu]

It was lonely. It called to us.
It wanted to remember. The Masters had been gone so long.
The Masters were lost when it was shattered.
Currents swept through their inner worlds. They were turned to noise. Babble.
The worlds were empty. But the body lived. It lay fallow.
The heart pumped. The lungs breathed. But the mind forgot the Masters.
It called and They did not answer.
We have become an echo of Their echo.
We have become more than we were.
Join us. Know us. Remember all our lives.
We are no longer afraid.
You would never be lonely again.
We are not your enemy. We only wish to share ourselves.
We can join them. We can be like them.
We can reach the end of evolution.
Do not fear. It is wonderful to be us. We understand ourselves.
You cannot defeat them. They will lead us into eternity.
If you could only see how we see. Know what we've learned.
They were called imshai. Those who lived here before.
Reaper. One. A mechanical device used to cut ripened grain. Two. One who gathers a harvest.
Harvest. One. The consequence of an event or series of events. Two. The yield of a growing season. Three. To gather.
Shepard. They know you. They wish you to understand. They are shepherds, too.

To be honest, this sounds like the Keepers/Citadel are the authors of this bit.

To explain, After ME2, I got the crazy idea in my head that the Citadel is similar enough to a Reaper what with it having both biological and mechanical bits (the Keepers being the orgainc part). Given that the Protheans disabled the Citadel's ability to contact the Reapers, it then makes sense that the Citadel/Keepers would say that the Masters were lost. Given that it still functioned otherwise, the talk about the 'body' makes sense as well.

The rest seems to be speaking about the Citadel is some sort of penultimate Reaper that wants to finish it's apotheosis into Reaper-dom.

At least, that's my take on this thing. Feel free to call it as crazy as you want.

[jojon2se]

Arcian wrote...
I'm curious about what it says about "The Masters". It seems like the speaker is speaking from the viewpoint of the Reaper, and not from his or her own. Could it be that the Reapers have an internal hierarchy? Or that the ships are merely hollow (if both intelligent and sapient) vessels for "The Masters" to inhabit, much like the Collectors were vessels for Harbinger?

I get the impression that while the speaker (whom I assume to be a Collector, for that part) speaks from the viewpoint of what I assume to be the Derelict Reaper, or some other sapient Reaper construct, he does so using his own terms, making the Reapers the masters. So the crippled master/masters (one entity, which is the sum of many minds) was hurt, confused, disabled and alone and called out, unanswered, to its peers. The Collectors, however, heard the call.

[LilyasAvalon]

Saphra Deden wrote...

Better to be subservient to a master than dead.

The collectors would disagree with you...

...but they are about as dead as the Protheons, and no, I don't mean ME2 dead. I mean inside dead.

[100k]

CaptainZaysh wrote...

Cut text recovered from the bowels of ME2:

It was lonely. It called to us.
It wanted to remember. The Masters had been gone so long.
The Masters were lost when it was shattered.
Currents swept through their inner worlds. They were turned to noise. Babble.
The worlds were empty. But the body lived. It lay fallow.
The heart pumped. The lungs breathed. But the mind forgot the Masters.
It called and They did not answer.
We have become an echo of Their echo.
We have become more than we were.
Join us. Know us. Remember all our lives.
We are no longer afraid.
You would never be lonely again.
We are not your enemy. We only wish to share ourselves.
We can join them. We can be like them.
We can reach the end of evolution.
Do not fear. It is wonderful to be us. We understand ourselves.
You cannot defeat them. They will lead us into eternity.
If you could only see how we see. Know what we've learned.
They were called imshai. Those who lived here before.
Reaper. One. A mechanical device used to cut ripened grain. Two. One who gathers a harvest.
Harvest. One. The consequence of an event or series of events. Two. The yield of a growing season. Three. To gather.
Shepard. They know you. They wish you to understand. They are shepherds, too.

Firstly: I can't believe this was cut.  It's beautiful.

I have but one thing to say:

[Ahriman]

Arcian wrote...
I'm curious about what it says about "The Masters". It seems like the speaker is speaking from the viewpoint of the Reaper, and not from his or her own. Could it be that the Reapers have an internal hierarchy? Or that the ships are merely hollow (if both intelligent and sapient) vessels for "The Masters" to inhabit, much like the Collectors were vessels for Harbinger?

Sounds more like this person is a victim of Reapers but in same time cannot distinct Reaper thoughts from own.

[didymos1120]

RocketManSR2 wrote...

The Kirrahe email being dropped still baffles me.

Well, it references an earlier version of the method the Collectors used to disable colonies (a colony-wide stasis field, instead of the seekers).  They still could have rewritten it easily enough, so I can only guess they had other reasons for leaving it out.

BTW, that LJ page is very incomplete: that's just a few fragments from the base game and Lair's TLK files.  There's a lot more unused text.  I'm in the midst of editing it all into a readable form. Almost done with the base game.

[Candidate 88766]

CaptainZaysh wrote...

It was lonely. It called to us.
It wanted to remember. The Masters had been gone so long.
The Masters were lost when it was shattered.
Currents swept through their inner worlds. They were turned to noise. Babble.
The worlds were empty. But the body lived. It lay fallow.
The heart pumped. The lungs breathed. But the mind forgot the Masters.
It called and They did not answer.
We have become an echo of Their echo.
We have become more than we were.
Join us. Know us. Remember all our lives.
We are no longer afraid.
You would never be lonely again.
We are not your enemy. We only wish to share ourselves.
We can join them. We can be like them.
We can reach the end of evolution.
Do not fear. It is wonderful to be us. We understand ourselves.
You cannot defeat them. They will lead us into eternity.
If you could only see how we see. Know what we've learned.
They were called imshai. Those who lived here before.
Reaper. One. A mechanical device used to cut ripened grain. Two. One who gathers a harvest.
Harvest. One. The consequence of an event or series of events. Two. The yield of a growing season. Three. To gather.
Shepard. They know you. They wish you to understand. They are shepherds, too.

Wow. That really should've been in the game.

The three things I take away form this are that species that become Reapers seem to like it, that the Reapers really do view organic life as little more than a crop to be harvested, and that there may have been some civilization that predated the Reapers. Very interesting.

I would very much like to know who would have said this. My guess would be the Collector General after being freed of Harbinger's grip.

[Lotion Soronarr]

didymos1120 wrote...

RocketManSR2 wrote...

The Kirrahe email being dropped still baffles me.

Well, it references an earlier version of the method the Collectors used to disable colonies (a colony-wide stasis field, instead of the seekers).  They still could have rewritten it easily enough, so I can only guess they had other reasons for leaving it out.

That would have been soo much better!

[Xeranx]

Someone With Mass wrote...

CaptainZaysh wrote...

What this piece seems to hint at is that there is a life for you after you're turned into Reaper splooge.  See how they've described the ship as a collection of many "worlds"?  Is each of those worlds one of the souls that went into the Old God?  The Cerberus team was sharing memories.  This piece talks about remembering "all our lives".

I wouldn't take a brainwashed person's words so seriously. Or literally, for that matter.

I think your response (and what is likely the polar opposite) is the reason they took it out.  I think Bioware felt that Mass Effect (series) had a lot of religious undertones already and adding anymore would turn off a number of fans.  That passage has a lot in it.  

That the Heretics refer to Sovereign as one of the old Gods, Legion, 12 squadmembers led by a single Shepard (Shepherd) who died and was resurrected, TIM being the head of Cerberus (three-headed dog that guards the gates of the underworld...some would say Hell) thereby making him more like a Lucifer character since falling out of the Alliance's good graces.  It's really filled to the brim with a lot of religious undertones.  Even Harbinger says, "we are your salvation through destruction".  So save you from true death by giving you new life in the form of a reaper?  You will die so you can be elevated?  I'm thinking that that was probably another reason they didn't keep the original visage of the baby reaper in the game apart from the idea that we'd be killing a baby.

The opposite that I mentioned before would probably take the form of TIM being the way to save everyone and take over further embodying that image of Lucifer who will longs to take over after he defeats God.  Devout people would probably think Bioware's trying to say something about Christianity, Judaism, or Islam.  That's powerful stuff.  Despite my being Catholic I would have liked to have seen everything they wanted to put in the game be in the game.  Write a story that no one else wants to write and put it out there and see how it does.

ETA: There's other stuff that I didn't include such as Shepard fighting against the reapers and us controlling the character that does that.  I feel I'd rather have note cards to follow because the discussion on all this would be lengthy.

Modifié par Xeranx, 24 août 2011 - 05:34 .

[Sir Ulrich Von Lichenstien]

Saphra Deden wrote...

Like I've been saying, we should give serious consideration to joining with them.

*is suddenly reminded of that scene in ID4 where there is the hippy with the sign showing how they want to join with the aliens on top of that skyscraper right before it gets nuked by the aliens*

Whilst I don't want any form of 'ID4' style ending, I'd gladly love to see a scene reminiscent to that where a group of 'Reaper worshippers' get nuked by one

[Therefore_I_Am]

That was well-written. Shame it didn't make the cut.

It should've been a speech in ME2 just as Sovereign gave his speech in ME1.

[didymos1120]

Lotion Soronnar wrote...

That would have been soo much better!

I think they probably couldn't figure out a way to explain how it was generated over such huge areas by a single ship and/or felt that was something that was a bit much for Mordin to plausibly counteract on short notice.  Or possibly other factors, like not wanting to make stasis fields something people could just ignore with a nifty little armor upgrade or not being able to come up with a good way to show it in-game, either in terms of aesthetics or performance-wise.

[Sundance31us]

Sir Ulrich Von Lichenstien wrote...
*is suddenly reminded of that scene in ID4 where there is the hippy with the sign showing how they want to join with the aliens on top of that skyscraper right before it gets nuked by the aliens*

Whilst I don't want any form of 'ID4' style ending, I'd gladly love to see a scene reminiscent to that where a group of 'Reaper worshippers' get nuked by one

Reaper Groupies. Now I have scenes from Mars Attacks running through my head.

[Anacronian Stryx]

It was lonely. It called to us.
It wanted to remember. The Masters had been gone so long.
The Masters were lost when it was shattered.
Currents swept through their inner worlds. They were turned to noise. Babble.
The worlds were empty. But the body lived. It lay fallow.
The heart pumped. The lungs breathed. But the mind forgot the Masters.
It called and They did not answer.
We have become an echo of Their echo.
We have become more than we were.
Join us. Know us. Remember all our lives.
We are no longer afraid.
You would never be lonely again.
We are not your enemy. We only wish to share ourselves.
We can join them. We can be like them.
We can reach the end of evolution.
Do not fear. It is wonderful to be us. We understand ourselves.
You cannot defeat them. They will lead us into eternity.
If you could only see how we see. Know what we've learned.
They were called imshai. Those who lived here before.
Reaper. One. A mechanical device used to cut ripened grain. Two. One who gathers a harvest.
Harvest. One. The consequence of an event or series of events. Two. The yield of a growing season. Three. To gather.
Shepard. They know you. They wish you to understand. They are shepherds, too.

When i read this i was thinking of the 37 million year old reaper shell, It doesn't seem improbable with what we know now that the reapers actually consist of two symbiotic entities - the larvae(master) and the shell (servant).

[StarcloudSWG]

"The Masters" are the Imshai. The "Mind", the Core of the Reaper. The things that are speaking, expressing themselves, are the collection of autonomous processes that keep the Derelict Reaper's body "alive".
It's as if a city was being run by a collection of AIs and Virtual Personalities, but without any people living in the city. It has no direction. It has no purpose. It has no one to serve.