Killjoy Cutter wrote...
It appears to have slowed down their production of one new Reaper. A nice victory, big to the people who won't be kidnapped for it, not so big on the full scale of the Reaper invasion, from what we've been shown.
I think the problem here is that the whole thing was given very little context. The pieces are there, but it's left to the player to put them together.
See, apart from saving thousands of lives (a worthy effort), in the grand scheme of things the game never made it clear:
Why the hell was stopping the Collectors so important, anyway?The importance of the Collectors is that they can do things Reapers can't, like interacting with and studying organics up-close. They're like the Reaper STG in a way, the way they gather, observe, and influence. Their trades, technology for unique organic specimens, accomplish two things--they give Reaper tech to advanced civilizations along the lines their masters desire, and they are able to experiment on and select from different sapient species which ones are optimal for modification, control, and "ascension."
Now, consider what would happen if the Collectors had not been stopped:
1. Human abductions on fringe worlds would continue, forcing the Alliance's hand and drawing attention away from Earth.
2. Construction of the Human Reaper would continue, furthering the Reapers' goals of whatever-the-hell they plan on doing, speeding up the process of their shady agenda and bolstering their ranks.
3. The Omega Plague, which wipes out all sapient organic life apart from humans and the primitive vorcha, could be dropped on densely-populated alien worlds. Since the Reapers, for some reason or another, have deemed these races unworthy, this is an acceptable loss. Additionally, consider the difficulty of fighting a war when most of your population is either sick or dead.
4. The Collectors' resources, although comparatively limited, would be utilized in the invasion. Their ship is fast, stealthy, and packs a helluva punch--perfect for hunting down specific targets. The Seekers can immobilize entire settlements at a time, making them much easier to harvest.
In effect, taking out the Collectors was to the Reaper invasion as taking out the CIA would be to an American military offensive. While replaceable and non-essential, the Collectors were still a helpful tool of the Reapers, depriving them of research, reconaissance, and a small but capable fighting force. But as I said before, that was never made apparent
in game, stripping the core plot of a lot of depth.
There is a delicate balance in storytelling; one can't spoonfeed the plot and all its details to the audience, but it's not smart to leave everything for them to figure out themselves. When there's a mystery to be solved, you want to leave enough clues, guide the audience in the right direction just enough that they think they arrived at the right conclusion all by themselves. ME2, to me at least, seemed to leave all sorts of clues, but failed to provide that little pinch of guidance. In fact, there was little hint that there was a mystery to be solved at all thanks to TIM's "go here and do that," nor were the stakes ever raised to heighten tension.
Additionally, there was no "a ha!" moment, no dramtic revealing of the completed puzzle (well, there was, but it sort of flopped due to lack of foreshadowing) that either showed how smart or how horribly wrong you were. However, because this is the second act in a trilogy, it's impossible to tell, at least at the moment, whether this is best left for part three or should have been included in part two.
See, this is what made Mass Effect (1) good from a storytelling standpoint: You have a goal (stop Saren), but you don't know how to accomplish it. There are several mysteries to be solved, such as "What is the Conduit?", "Who are the Reapers?", and "What happened to the protheans?", that all eventually come together in the end. As the situation becomes more apparent, the cost of failure rises and the urgency increases. Saren goes from a human-hating madman to the puppet of a machine-god with an elaborate plot to wipe out all intelligent life in the galaxy. The climax is a high-intensity battle that ends in a glorious victory, but doom is still on the horizon and several questions are left unanswered, wrapping up the story at hand while elegantly setting up for a sequel.
Granted, ME1 had all sorts of other flaws which I'll save for another thread, but this is a classical and almost foolproof setup for a heroic adventure. Maybe it's because they'd just done it that the Bioware team decided to deviate from it so strongly. Maybe they were willing to risk story integrity for the sake of trying something new, as to not do the same damn thing twice in a row.
(Wow, that was longer than expected.)
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reason oftentimes plays no role.
