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[somecthemes]

Okay, I just read through another thread about best reations to the council once the reapers arrive, typically something involving a "bite me" statement towards one or more of the councilors. After reading throught them, I went ahead and replayed ME 1 & 2 and tried to see things from the council's perspective, though mentally switching the word "Reaper" to "Galaxy-threatening Potato" really helped solidify the council's reactions as more realistic.
Essentially, Shepard starts sounding like a one-off hero who starts to see a horrible conspiracy behind every job. He can't visit any random planet in ME1 without running into another Cerberus nightmare and can't move much further in ME 2 without finding another slim piece of evidence that could be loosely linked to the reapers. It'd be a lot like that wonderful person in your office who excels at work and always does a great job, but who is always trying to make it seem like the world is just on the edge of collapse and they're personally holding back the chaos. You appreciate the person, but learn to avoid the after-job report where the "fantasy" comes to life.
Shep is almost hurting due to his successes, since he might have come in with a few clues and evinced some trepedations about the threat, but instead he walks in with a encyclopedia of galactic history and says look for the patterns, and a reasonable person would say that such a pattern could be percieved where there is no pattern, that later is more likely than a repeating cycle of destruction. Unless they have seen one, the reapers seem like dieties, with them literally wiping away all life in a cycle that's been going on for millions of years.
So, I'm kinda of the opinion that there's at least one councilor, the salarian, even the asari helped, who should be praised in ME 3 for maintaining Shep's relationship with the council and keeping him around even when he started to sound really, really crazy.

Any similar thoughts?

[Asenza]

Nope.

The council accepted the existence of the Reapers at the end of Mass Effect 1. They only got stupid in ME2 because the plot demanded they hold the stupid ball (because Shepard had to be TEH ONLI 1 to know the truth).

Not believing Shepard is one thing, having evidence to the contrary of their claims is something else entirely.

When Shepard says, "Teh Reparz wipped out teh Proteans 50,000 yearz ago!" The council should have said, "Well we have other evidence that suggests... (evidence)". Same goes with everything else, the geth, the... uhh, hardsuit recordings, the testimony of everyone on the ship, Vigil mysteriously being no longer functional... the body of Sovereign...

It would have far better if the council was just mistaken in good faith, that they had come to their decisions and rejected Shepard's based on investigations and research of their own (could be murky evidence, could be evidence the Reapers planted), as opposed to just being derisive and blindly dismissive.

So yeah. I don't think much of the council one way or the other after they became idiots just because Mass Effect 2: Teh Dark Chapta had to have Shepard going it alone. They're no longer characters of their universe to me.

They're dancing like little marionettes, and in ME2 I saw the writer's hands.

Modifié par Asenza, 23 décembre 2011 - 03:30 .

[somecthemes]

I kinda felt the same way, but it just seemed like if my best friend had come back after two years of being only mostly dead, and was once again saying a galaxy wide threat was back, only this time in a new guise, then I can accept their hesitancy to accept Shep. Pissed as I was, I could see how they would have no support from their own people once they stepped on that ledge with Shepard and agreed that the Reapers were real. It'd be like a if Jesus popped up in front of the council and declared himself the son of god. While the whole "popping in" thing and him being who he is would lend him a lot of credence, the sheer enormity of his assertion would make supporting him a automatic reason to be replaced by their respective government.
Now that'd be a good reason to keep Shep on a back burner until the reapers actually show up and can no longer be denied, to keep themselves availible to assist Shepard when the time comes. It just seems a slightly more likely scenario from ME2 that the councilors would just assume Shep was being manipulated much like the VS accused, it's obviously inaccurate but easier to believe than the truth, right?
Since the council would have to concider this line of thought, I saw their reactions in ME 2, excepting the turian councilor's reaction, as pretty accepting and agreeable to the extreme notion.

[Badpie]

In ME1 I could somewhat understand the reluctance of the Council to jump at the first cry of "Reapers!" by Shepard. Like they said, their decisions affect billions so without actual hard evidence it's tough for them to justify mobilizing billions of credits and hundreds of thousands of man power for what could very well be a myth or simply a tactic used by Saren to control the geth.

After Sovereign however, I feel like they shouldn't have been able to ignore it. To me, this was a case of convenient writing. Like Bioware said "well we kind of need to be at square one for this so we'll just say that parts of Sovereign disappeared and Vigil is broken and Shepard once again looks like a big herp derp." I kind of hated that. On the other hand if you can overlook that, I suppose you can believe that NO ONE believes in the Reapers again, but I still just.... eh....That was one of my gripes about the writing from a meta standpoint, not from a story standpoint on the Council.

[BatmanPWNS]

You know I hope that the council somehow save Shep's life that it will be p**s off all the Council haters.

[somecthemes]

Yeah, I have the feeling that a minor rewrite would've fixed a lot of the irritation at them. It ultimately comes down to whether the council's investigators could look at the remains of Soverign and think the geth could've possibly designed it. Now, since going through ME2, we know both the interiors of geth installations and what a reaper looks like on the inside, and any comparisons would only help highlight their disparity. Organic v. synthetic, cavernous v. austier, pretty plain differences.

I guess story wise, they had to lead the councilors to a point where they refused to lend any direct aid to Shep, or major concluding elements would've been introduced in ME2, I've just read enough of the councilor reaction threads of what people what to say or do the council once the reapers show up, and I personally can't see anything more than a "SSDD, now on to work" kind of reaction.

Still, since the whole ignorance of the reapers seems to be the major point of contention, to the point that a person only needs to say "reapers", with quotes and all, to get extreme irritation from a person, how should they have kept the council in the dark for the big reveal in ME3 without making the player feel like a idiot talking to a wall with a big "no contendre" sign on it in ME2?.

[Tonymac]

Badpie wrote...

In ME1 I could somewhat understand the reluctance of the Council to jump at the first cry of "Reapers!" by Shepard. Like they said, their decisions affect billions so without actual hard evidence it's tough for them to justify mobilizing billions of credits and hundreds of thousands of man power for what could very well be a myth or simply a tactic used by Saren to control the geth.

After Sovereign however, I feel like they shouldn't have been able to ignore it. To me, this was a case of convenient writing. Like Bioware said "well we kind of need to be at square one for this so we'll just say that parts of Sovereign disappeared and Vigil is broken and Shepard once again looks like a big herp derp." I kind of hated that. On the other hand if you can overlook that, I suppose you can believe that NO ONE believes in the Reapers again, but I still just.... eh....That was one of my gripes about the writing from a meta standpoint, not from a story standpoint on the Council.

  I suppose that the writers had to make the story generic enough to fit for paragon and renegade, council alive or not - all of that mess.  In my run-throughs I even made Anderson a council member.  I hate Udina, and would feed him to the dogs first chance I got.  

  I believe that the writing is not that good, until you consider all of the bases they had to cover, and then (as you said) make us the only ones who know the real truth.  Keeping that in mind, we end up in a more desperate situation, totally unprepared for the Reapers - with an "I told you so" attitude.

  I think for ME3 that we need to be in a desperate situation.  We need the fight to be epic - the Rebellion against the Death Star - one last chance before our light is extinguised forever.  If we were prepared for the Reapers, had the mass relays all shut down, and went into dark space and gave them all the pillow trick while they slept; it would be no challenge, no fun!

[somecthemes]

I think we could've had just as enjoyable a experience if the council was behind us the whole way. We've been told over two games how only the combined might of the galaxy will win us the war, so the inclusion and acceptance of the council would only legitimize Shep's efforts to form a armada, not render the issue mute with overwhelming support. So either way could easily work, I'm kinda hoping now that there's at least some sign that the possibility we were right wasn't totally ignored, like we'll find out that the council had developed a secret small fleet, just on the possibility that our Shep was right.
That way the council could be partially forgiven for it's obstinancy, as the complete ignorance to the issue, just because it seemed unlikely, would be for me a fantasy-breaking moment. Politicians not planning ahead for even the worst contingency, that just reeks of writer's assumptions.

[Wulfram]

Not believing in the Reapers is fine, not doing anything about the possibility of the Reapers existing is problematic.

Horizon is an important moment, because the presence of husks there confirms if not the Reapers, then at least a connection between the Geth, Sovereign and the Collectors, which should be enough to make them realise that there is a very serious threat to the Galaxy out there. Of course, we do get indications that the Council races are taking notice of Horizon, whether or not it's at the prompting of the Council themselves.

It is worth remembering that the Council doesn't tell you everything. They could have quieted some of Udina's ranting my mentioning the activities of their STG regiments, instead they keep quiet until it becomes necessary to inform Shepard.

[IElitePredatorI]

Ah yes! "Reapers"...
They dont have to believe Shepard to know their screwed!

Modifié par IElitePredatorI, 23 décembre 2011 - 06:55 .

[euromellows]

The Council's obstruction is not to hard to believe when you consider today's debates about Global Warming. Switch 'Reapers' to mean 'Global Warming' and you'll soon see what I'm talking about. Despite the slow acceptance and the appearance of momentum at the end of ME1, everyone soon resorts to type when it becomes clear just how expensive it would be to actually do something meaningful about the reapers. Everyone baulks when it comes to more taxes or spending.

[mauro2222]

^ Ah yes! Capitalism...

[OdanUrr]

As of late, I've been wondering if we can take anything the Council has said at face value. After all, they're politicians first, so what they've told Shepard may not necessarily be what they know, or at least what some of them might know. Think about it, the Council has far more resources than Cerberus or the Alliance could ever dream of having, and the Salarians in particular pride themselves on having superb Intelligence Services. It is difficult to believe they (the Council) have found no evidence to support Shepard's claims regarding the Reapers. This evidence could be Prothean in origin certainly, but it could also be from even older civilizations, or from an actual (derelict) Reaper itself.

Naturally, there's an ages-old reason why any of the Councilors would want to keep that information from the others: knowledge is power. In ME1 Shepard himself asks Anderson why they decided to share the beacon's (Eden Prime) discovery with the Council. If the Turians, Asari, or Salarians, actually found any piece of technology that might point to the Reapers' existence they'd probably keep it under wraps until they had had ample time to study it. After all, it might all be just a human ploy to get the Council races to share advance technology with them.

Case in point: The Alliance didn't share the information on Object Rho with the Council (as far as we know). Shepard himself would have been none the wiser if not for Admiral Hackett who requested his help as a personal favour.

So, yes, we've seen the Council play the dumb card, but that doesn't necessarily imply they're oblivious to the threat. Who knows, they might have gambled on ignoring the Collector threat in ME2 in the hopes the Reapers would feel confident enough to delay their attack. If a single man says the Reapers are coming and they don't come, sooner or later he'll be discredited. The Councilors might be thinking a million different things, cross-examining them with their own little pieces of the puzzle and making decisions based on their own personal aspirations (or on what they believe is best for the galaxy).

I hope that at least one of them had an ulterior motive to play dumb. If they were actually sincere and forthcoming in what they told Shepard, then they're so ineffectual that it stretches credulity.

Modifié par OdanUrr, 24 décembre 2011 - 05:51 .

[Quething]

Trouble is, any argument that says "the Council is hiding things from Shepard" has to also agree that the Council is ether also hiding things from one of their own (Anderson) or that Anderson himself is flatly lying to Shepard's face.

I'll admit that a long enough look at Horizon makes Anderson start to seem a bit sketchy, but I'm still pretty sure we're not meant to believe he'd lie to Shep's face.

And it's not even like it would have had to change the game much to have the Council believe you. I mean, if they're alive (or a new all-human group): "Shepard, so glad you're alive! We've been looking into the Reapers, but we haven't found much, certainly nothing you could actually call useful. As a Spectre and the person with the most experience and highest success rate against them, we hereby therefore authorize you to use whatever resources you can get your hands on to do your own investigation."

Cue TIM popping up all "told you they wouldn't help" and the plot proceeds as normal, except maybe you could get yet another unvoiced email after Horizon and the Collector Ship from Udina or Anderson, reflecting the Council's support and assuring you of their continued efforts.

If they're dead, of course, no love for you. Choices with consequences? How revolutionary!

Modifié par Quething, 24 décembre 2011 - 09:45 .

[OdanUrr]

Quething wrote...

Trouble is, any argument that says "the Council is hiding things from Shepard" has to also agree that the Council is ether also hiding things from one of their own (Anderson) or that Anderson himself is flatly lying to Shepard's face.

I readily concede that the Council members are hiding things from Anderson, probably even from each other. They might all have their own piece of the puzzle and want to exploit it for their own benefit.

[CARL_DF90]

I just want to say "Ah, yes 'Reapers'!" to the Turian counselor in ME3 and rub it in his face! 

[Dean_the_Young]

More annoying than the dropped Reaper acknowledgement was the abandonment of the Geth, and then the marginalization thereof.

Whether they believe the Reapers or not, the Geth War could have easily been the basis for a galactic arms buildup. There are who knows how many Geth and geth-factories churning out more geth behind the Perseus Veil. There has never been any attempt by any Geth faction to declare a peace. The proven threat is still there.

And then it's dropped and forgotten. A galaxy mobilized for war against the Geth would be almost as good as one against the Reapers outright, what with Sovereign being a Geth Dreadnaught and all.


Rather than 'we don't believe there's any threat', ME2's marginalization of the Alliance/Council could have been 'we're too busy with the Geth war to worry about the Terminus.'

[CARL_DF90]

Yeah, I hear ya' there. Still, I have a feeling those nagging plot holes will be filled all in due time. Example, in the codex in ME2 the description of the Veil the Geth territory is behind mentions a "War budget" made against the Geth. We'll probably get more on that later on.

[Viking Stoner]

The council are douche bags...which is why i let the original die in my main game D: So you don't wanna believe me the first few times? THEN DIE! ......sweet vengeance.

Modifié par Viking Stoner, 24 décembre 2011 - 10:34 .

[CARL_DF90]

Not a surprise, but still kind of sad.

[BlueMagitek]

Dean_the_Young wrote...

More annoying than the dropped Reaper acknowledgement was the abandonment of the Geth, and then the marginalization thereof.

Whether they believe the Reapers or not, the Geth War could have easily been the basis for a galactic arms buildup. There are who knows how many Geth and geth-factories churning out more geth behind the Perseus Veil. There has never been any attempt by any Geth faction to declare a peace. The proven threat is still there.

And then it's dropped and forgotten. A galaxy mobilized for war against the Geth would be almost as good as one against the Reapers outright, what with Sovereign being a Geth Dreadnaught and all.


Rather than 'we don't believe there's any threat', ME2's marginalization of the Alliance/Council could have been 'we're too busy with the Geth war to worry about the Terminus.'

I actually came in to say something along these lines.

Even if they don't believe in the Reapers, they saw firsthand what Sovereign did; they can't cover up that damage.  It's a completely legitimate concern that there could be more of them out there.  They only managed to push the Geth outside of the Council Space; there's no mention of the Perseus Veil. 

They have access to someone who was a Spectre, has access to the Terminus Systems without starting a war, and firsthand experience with the Geth (and their super Dreadnaught).  They don't even try to use him.  The Council doesn't know the Geth numbers, they don't know about the heretics or the orthodox Geth.  They're throwing away (and possibly insulting) something they could easily turn into an asset.

[Homebound]

Their apprehension is understandable. But when a Reaper knocks on your front door and blows up your Dreadnaught, you dont call it a Geth.