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[Garnavis]

So they had two years to study this massive reaper.  The Turians reverse-engineered its main gun to create the Thanix Cannon.  Chorban was able to determine that the Keepers are actually Reaper technology.  Apparently the Illusive Man's ocular implants are Reaper technology as well.  So clearly they studied this thing.

Now at the end of Mass Effect 2, the BIG REVEAL is that Reapers use organic stuff.  The Human-Reaper was using millions of humans worth of people-paste, and it was still an embryo.  Imagine how much pure genetic material must have been used in Sovereign.

So nobody noticed that?  That's like, a lot of organic goo.  Whether it was used in the hull metal itself, as fuel, as lubricant, whatever, that **** had to be in Sovereign somewhere.  And with all of those people studying it and cleaning it up, apparently, nobody noticed that there was a rather significant amount of organic material in Sovereign.

Seems like kind of a big oversight, considering how important this revelation was at the end of the game.

[capn233]

EDI knew that reapers where bio-mechanical constructs somehow. Perhaps it is known to specific intelligence entities.

[BentOrgy]

It is an oversight. One that makes me wonder if Bioware had that planned from the beginning, or if they were at a meeting one day, and remembered, "Aw damn, we gotta come up with a reason why the Reapers come back every 50,000 years!" and that was the best they could come up with.

Especially when Sovereign himself (Itself, whatever.) stated quite clearly in ME1 that organic life was a "Mutation, an accident." and that they were "Free of all weakness." Which heavily implies, if not declares completely, that the Reapers (At least in ME1) were completely synthetic, not some half-cocked demigod cyborg jabberwocky.

[darkhorsedan]

Well in ME2 they do their best to explain away the fact the alliance and the council never really got time to study the reaper technology with all the clean up after the battle of the Citadel. Admittedly it isn't that believable that they wouldn't have studied it properly.

You can bet the Illusive man knew that the Reapers were bio-mechanical constructs though as Cerberus salvaged a lot of the tech, but he's the kind of guy who keeps his cards close to his chest and never reveals something unless absolutely necessary.

As for Chorban, he's not really aware of all the details and is much in the dark about the Reapers as most other civilians are, he just notices that the Keepers rely on some sort of signal that was last used 50,000 years ago around the time the Protheans went extinct. In the email he sends to Shepard in ME2 he says no one is wanting to take his research seriously anyway.

But yeah, the Thanix canon tech shows someone from the Citadel would have been looking at it.

Modifié par darkhorsedan, 13 septembre 2011 - 10:00 .

[Siegdrifa]

BentOrgy wrote...

It is an oversight. One that makes me wonder if Bioware had that planned from the beginning, or if they were at a meeting one day, and remembered, "Aw damn, we gotta come up with a reason why the Reapers come back every 50,000 years!" and that was the best they could come up with.

Especially when Sovereign himself (Itself, whatever.) stated quite clearly in ME1 that organic life was a "Mutation, an accident." and that they were "Free of all weakness." Which heavily implies, if not declares completely, that the Reapers (At least in ME1) were completely synthetic, not some half-cocked demigod cyborg jabberwocky.

Something more troubeling is "we have no begining and no end".
In a way it's mean that building a reaper from a race is not his birth (or it shouldn't from what sovereign said).
May be they "build" reapers to get new shell to transfer their concious inside.

[Sgt Stryker]

Has anyone considered the possibility that it's only the "core" that contains this organic goo, and that this core was so completely destroyed that was nothing left of it to analyze? That was a pretty big explosion, after all.

[BentOrgy]

Sgt Stryker wrote...

Has anyone considered the possibility that it's only the "core" that contains this organic goo, and that this core was so completely destroyed that was nothing left of it to analyze? That was a pretty big explosion, after all.

That's entirely possible, and it does make sense, but as Sieg and I have noted, the fact that they're organic at all is very questionable.

[swenson]

What, and you don't think Sovereign's capable of lying? If you're a big bad race of sentient machines, are you really going to reveal that you secretly need organic life to continue? No, you're going to try to deny it, both to them and to yourselves. You're going to pretend that you don't need organics at all. I think he was just lying to Shepard, to be honest. Half of the Reaper shtick relies on people simply not working out that they can be stopped, after all.

[BentOrgy]

swenson wrote...

What, and you don't think Sovereign's capable of lying? If you're a big bad race of sentient machines, are you really going to reveal that you secretly need organic life to continue? No, you're going to try to deny it, both to them and to yourselves. You're going to pretend that you don't need organics at all. I think he was just lying to Shepard, to be honest. Half of the Reaper shtick relies on people simply not working out that they can be stopped, after all.

While I can't deny the possibility; if I was a seemingly omnipotent badass like Sovereign and the rest of his creepy crawly brothers, I wouldn't feel compelled to lie. The Reapers view themselves as Gods, beings whose origins, beliefs, and motives far surpass any organic's comprehension. I think they'd view lying as a pedestrian, organic thing to do, they'd see no point to it, it'd be a waste of time. Sovereign (As far as we know.) Never lied once during his entire run in the story, and was more than happy to recount details to both Saren, and Shepard.

What would be the purpose of lying to something you're going to obliterate so soon afterwards? Especially about your motives. It'd make more sense to lie about what you were doing to throw your enemy off the trail, rather than why you were doing it.

[Lapis Lazuli]

^^

I agree. it's a common writing device; villainous arrogance demands that the big bad guy be fearlessly truthful... for expository purposes.

[BentOrgy]

Lapis Lazuli wrote...

^^

I agree. it's a common writing device; villainous arrogance demands that the big bad guy be fearlessly truthful... for expository purposes.

Now I can't stop picturing Sovereign with Doctor Evil's voice. What have you done?!

Modifié par BentOrgy, 14 septembre 2011 - 03:19 .

[d1sciple]

i never believed a word it said, it's fully just bull****ting shep. from logical deduction the reapers weren't the first species and aren't as infinite as it makes out. i think as much as i'm constantly reminding people how powerful the reapers are and to stop coming up with ridiculous theories based on some idea that they're just an average bad guy and follow the 'rules', that they're actually a little worried about this current cycle and possibly scared of shep, hence the bull****ting and the collector instructions to find his body and destroy his crew.

[JanisaryJames]

d1sciple wrote...

i never believed a word it said, it's fully just bull****ting shep. from logical deduction the reapers weren't the first species and aren't as infinite as it makes out. i think as much as i'm constantly reminding people how powerful the reapers are and to stop coming up with ridiculous theories based on some idea that they're just an average bad guy and follow the 'rules', that they're actually a little worried about this current cycle and possibly scared of shep, hence the bull****ting and the collector instructions to find his body and destroy his crew.

^^This^^

We've all played Mass Effect and one reason we love it so much is because it breaks the mold. To say that The core antagonist in the series follows conventional bad guy expository writing goes against that fact. Villianous arrogance should not have any bearing on the decisions a machine makes anyways. They're machines, they make cold, calculated decisions and don't have emotions like arrogance. And lying for a super computer isn't a waste of time. Compared to the 30 seconds it would take to make any explaination, truth or fictional, the nanosecond it would take to decide on the best story and to fabricate said story is next to nil in comparison. If lying would be the best course ofaction, then Soveriegn would lie until he was blue in his big metal face.

The way I see it, Reapers lie, Cerberus definitely lies, and the Alliance (being a government agency) lies just as much. Chances are that everyone in power knows what the Reapers are made of, but clearly no one wants to admit it for one reason or another.

[Fata Morgana]

I'm surprised anyone believed it when Soverign said "We have no beginning. We have no end." From the moment Soverign said that, I wondered who he thought he was fooling. I assume it was an intimidation tactic.

[swenson]

Yeah, Reapers cannot be infinite. That's simply not possible. They are machines, even they admit that, and machines must be built by someone somewhere. Even if they're just like Cybermen from Doctor Who (in that they were once organics who just kept adding machine parts to themselves until they were [almost] fully machine), they still had to start out somewhere.

[BentOrgy]

I once kicked around the idea that the Reapers were constructed by a long-since dead race, and that said race built the Reapers for a specific purpose, and could have programmed them to believe that they actually were Gods; hence having no real beginning, and no end. To what purpose? I came up with a few, but in the end it was just an interesting twist that floated on by in this maelstrom I call a brain.

The idea behind it was that perhaps said ancient race was being devastated by war, one that they probably started themselves, and came to the conclusion that it was due to their advancements that the war had started. Things like ego, jealousy, avarice, etc. Things that, when combined with the incredible technology that they (And the galaxy as of Mass Effect's timeline.) possessed, could only mean galactic wide devastation was imminent.

So they created a race of beings, one that would, once galactic life reached a certain point, send civilization back to the stone age, thus preventing another catastrophe like they one they endured. By programming the Reapers to believe themselves to be omnipotent, godlike creatures, they ensured that their cycle wouldn't be questioned, and that it was their "Divine," purpose, they're "Raison d'être" to do so.

"We impose order on the chaos of organic life."

So in that respect, Sovereign wouldn't have thought he was lying at all.

Buuuuut, Mass Effect 2 had to come along and kind of crushed that idea. "We are your genetic destiny." and whatnot. Oh well.

And when I said it was a waste of time, I wasn't referring to it being "time consuming" but, for reasons I've already stated, they wouldn't see the point; it'd be more logical to lie about what they were doing, yet Sovereign (As far as we know.) didn't. And they are A.I, not V.I (Again, as far as we know.) hence they are perfectly capable (In theory) of developing emotions, if they haven't already.

Modifié par BentOrgy, 16 septembre 2011 - 12:11 .

[d1sciple]

exactly. maybe it just believes it is, i mean they've been doing this for millions of years without any real conflict or competition and we can safely assume as much because they are here doing it now, an army of them, so they can't of had too much trouble doing what they do for the last few hundred millennia.
it probably believes in it's own superiority, which ultimately led to it's downfall as possibly believing itself unstoppable is the exact thing that got it killed. it put too much in the keepers, in saren and the collectors, in reality the only weak links in the chain of harvesting.
as far as it's arrogance and lying when you look at it like that it's obvious why it's done so and using the argument that it's a machine is ridiculous because it's not really, it's an intelligence and just like the geth who were assumed to be one unit we now know they can actually have a conflict of ideals and perspective, so even simple machines have the ability to be 'wrong'.
the reapers are gods and believe themselves so but they also know that there is more than them, they are scared and are looking for something and though i'm constantly reminding people that all these little things they are picking out are irrelevant, the reapers are unstoppable, they do have a weakness and the 'beings of light' legend is just the beginning.
basically as far as believing anything it says is just foolish. i argued with someone in another thread about the wording it uses when talking about wiping out ALL organic life. it's a false statement. in truth they only harvest spacefaring species, ones that have evolved along their plan and we know this because the protheans influenced the hannar and studied us, which would've meant we should of been harvested as we are organic and evolved beyond monkeys at the time of the last harvest, but we weren't and therefore it lied.
no arguments about semantics here, i don't for one second believe it made an error, it specifically told shep ALL organic life, so it straight up lied. hence everything else it says is up for questioning.

[Lapis Lazuli]

JanisaryJames wrote...



We've all played Mass Effect and one reason we love it so much is because it breaks the mold.

In many things it breaks the mold, in other things it doesn't.

JanisaryJames wrote...

To say that The core antagonist in the series follows conventional bad guy expository writing goes against that fact. Villianous arrogance should not have any bearing on the decisions a machine makes anyways. They're machines, they make cold, calculated decisions and don't have emotions like arrogance.

Decisions without emotion would be conventional...like Terminator. These are sentient machines.


sen·tience n.1. The quality or state of being sentient; consciousness.
2. Feeling as distinguished from perception or thought.

Modifié par Lapis Lazuli, 16 septembre 2011 - 12:55 .

[Lapis Lazuli]

Fata Morgana wrote...

I'm surprised anyone believed it when Soverign said "We have no beginning. We have no end." From the moment Soverign said that, I wondered who he thought he was fooling. I assume it was an intimidation tactic.

While that does go to impeach his testimony, that one thing doesn't mean we are to throw it completely out. One of the hallmarks of expository villain speeches is that they tell the truth but they also boast.

[BentOrgy]

Lapis Lazuli wrote...

In many things it breaks the mold, in other things it doesn't.

I felt compelled (Now that I'm in a talkative mood.) to quote this, so that I can say how much I agree with it;

Mass Effect's story has been lauded, for some time now, as one of the greatest (For gaming atleast.) stories in recent memory.

I fail to see why;

Mass Effect 1's story is essentially about a space marine that discovers a plot by a race of ancient sentient machines to destroy all life in the galaxy, and that it will not have been the first time, but rather another brick in a wall that has survived for over 37 million years. (Date referenced from the Derelict Reaper.) And after he/she discovers said plot, follows a rouge soldier (Now an avatar for the Sentient Machines) through the galaxy to hopefully find a way of stopping them from returning.

Mass Effect 2's story is even more tame, the general consensus being; gather a group of misfits and specialists to stop a throw-away race from abducting humans for some nefarious purpose. This is due to the fact that (In addition toit just being, well.... Wrong.) this nefarious purpose is somehow linked to the afformentioned Machine Race from beyond the veil.

As you can see, when stripped down to its core elements, Mass Effect's story is hardly groundbreaking in any way, except for one:

How its told.

That is why I think Bioware has managed to obtain such a strong following, and a foothold in the industry; their stories might have one, maybe two, twists along the way (You're actually Revan! Bwahaha!) but in the end, its their grasp of pacing, foreshadowing, and sense of drama that makes their stories interesting, not really the story themselves.

That being said, they have yet to come anywhere close to producing a story, or the emtions invoked by it, similar to another truly groundbreaking series, on that got its start way back in the 80's; Metal Gear, who's story was expertly weaved across 50 ingame years, involving dozens of characters, all most all of whom were deep, engaging, complex, and human. Who's story involved so many undertones, secret agendas, overreaching goals and cloak and dagger espionage and conspiracis, that it still staggers me. (Hotcoldman and the CIA, Volgin and the Boss, Big Boss, Les Enfant Terribles, G.W and the Patriots in general, Ocelot and his seemingly random loyalties, etc.)

So in the end (And I might have to apologise for this post's wordyness later.) I say again; Mass Effect's story was good, and who knows, maybe, maybe, Bioware can wow us one more time before the curtain falls, but for now, it seems that their real strength lies in telling their stories, not the story itself.

Which is a talent itself I suppose.

Modifié par BentOrgy, 16 septembre 2011 - 02:38 .

[d1sciple]

hmmm, not sure about metal gear being the pinnacle of story in gaming. i think a better comparison would be with a game like the witcher, which is able to make use of the convo tree/moral type gameplay but has a much more complex story. i think this is only possible because the convo tree is so simplified, any more complex and the story has to become simpler. you can only get such strong character development and connection if you can control that aspect of the game and that's what ME has got totally right, otherwise you just end up with hours of text breaks every ten seconds, masses and masses of diary/journal/notes needing to be read and in the end still feeling disconnected with the world.
i like the simple story in ME. it's easily accessible, easily understood, and classically recognisable. it's really linear but i don't think that's a bad thing, too much freedom and you lose your connection to the story. a simple story can be excellent if told well, which is where i think ME gets it's popularity.
as for metal gear they hold absolute legend status in my mind, but that still doesn't save me from the frustration of huge text reading sessions every ten seconds, not to mention the hour long cutscenes around every corner and the general 'true soldier' ideal and morality being shoved down your throat the whole time. even though i love them i still can't figure out how no one, not even snake, could figure out who anyone really was, what they were really doing and what it all meant. we just kept getting railroaded in to even more complex plotlines and even more overly dramatic events.
but hey, i'm the kind of guy that loves star wars but also loves telling people how a parsec is a unit of length and not time, what a bastard huh.

oh and after that rave in response to lapis though taking one part of it's speech is going to far when accusing it of lying, most of what it states it's not only factually wrong but the way it's said also hints at it's intentions. it has no problem mocking sheps existence using a lie to do so, what does that say about it?