232 réponses à ce sujet

[Aesieru]

Icinix wrote...

Aesieru wrote...

Icinix wrote...

Aesieru wrote...

With the use of that override protocol? Yes, but that's more like a new boss getting the programmer out of stasis and telling him to debug the program that he made or to change a few variables.

It's not like you with an xbox controller directly controlling everything they do (which would be boring when they sleep).

---

I think the reapers relegate themselves as tools but they don't realize it and believe they are acting of their own accord for reasons they no longer think about.

Yeah. I still think the whole Guardian thing was unnecessary and takes a bit away from the Reapers, but thats not as bad as what I thought it was. Are the Reapers aware of the Guardian?

A failsafe / overwatch / watchdog protocol makes sense when dealing with caretakers of the galaxy.

As for whether they themselves are aware? I don't think we'll learn that, we don't get to talk to Harbinger this time around.

Meh, Harbinger was a pompus fruitcake anyway.

So does the Guardian have the capacity to overide the Reapers without the Crucible? If the Guardian was installed as caretaker / watchdog / failsafe etc - it would seem silly not to give them that power to stop the Reapers if they did lose control a little bit?

I don't think it works like that, this wasn't the type of thing you release with an "oops" button. I imagine these were designed meticulously or at least by something that is meticulous.

I miss the Reaper voice.

[Patriota125]

Legion said that in ME2 if you talked to him enough. He said the Reapers are trascended flesh. They were not created by other species. So the OP is wrong. They were created by themselves. They are a fusion between organics and synthetics. "Organic" being it's essence and the mind and the body being synthetic. It's said that a Reaper requieres millions of organics lives to be created. Remember the final boss of ME? They were injecting humans into the reaper, creating the mind or essence of the reaper. How that works is beyond me, I hope Bioware does explain that tho.

[Patriota125]

Icinix wrote...


By the end of ME3 - they're no longer the fearsome enemy they were created to be - rather just another robot enemy with a questionable / contradictory reason for existence..

That's because we didn't knew a thing about them. We fear the unknown. The Reapers were unknown in ME1.

[GracefulChicken]

Actually, this information (which is new to me) makes these endings actually pretty good imho. This makes enough sense for me to support it, depending on how it's written. It's actually a really interesting idea.

[Aesieru]

Patriota125 wrote...

Legion said that in ME2 if you talked to him enough. He said the Reapers are trascended flesh. They were not created by other species. So the OP is wrong. They were created by themselves. They are a fusion between organics and synthetics. "Organic" being it's essence and the mind and the body being synthetic. It's said that a Reaper requieres millions of organics lives to be created. Remember the final boss of ME? They were injecting humans into the reaper, creating the mind or essence of the reaper. How that works is beyond me, I hope Bioware does explain that tho.

Patriot, the game very much says you're wrong, the ending even tells you that.

The Reapers only know a part of their history, they probably don't even know who built them.

---

The Guardian basically confirms this:

The Reapers are caretakers using a system--the mass relays, to force our level and understanding of technology to follow their path, thus assuring that we proceed in a way that they can always counter. They come after levels of technology are in their prime or a concern of advanced civilizations is afoot and they destroy everything, remove as much of the technology and culture of those races, repair their damage if they suffered any, and generally incorporate some of those alien species that are compatible into their form to make a new reaper, this results in a propagation which allows for further caretaking in the future. They first build a genetic-synthetic/organic embryo which develops in some form and then build the iconic reaper shell around it, it then is filled in some form with the programs which are each a nation. During this stage they may also utilize resources in the galaxy or alien species to do their will if need be, and as time went on they developed better ways to fulfill their duties.

Finally, they leave, and then come back after their vanguard summons them through the relays.

So long as the relays exist they have no reason to look for a better way of transportation and so long as they are molecularly shielded they can not be modified or destroyed (usually). Better yet, the technology will always result from reverse engineering things from the relays or understanding that technology and things related to it and so they will never develop in unexpected ways that might be a threat.

Ultimately, the purpose of this is to prevent artificial intelligence or synthetic lifeforms from developing to a point that they reach a "singularity" or point of not being able to be understood rationally by others and thinking in entirely different means, at this point that artificial race would become the prime, would be the most powerful and would start expanding and using up all resources in an attempt to grow and develop itself (look at what the Geth are starting to do with their planets... talk about strip mining) and this would leave the galaxy desolate.

Incidentally, Sovereign manipulated this race to serve its purposes until it ideally could reactivat the citadel relay.

Modifié par Aesieru, 03 mars 2012 - 04:47 .

[Patriota125]

Aesieru wrote...

The Reapers only know a part of their history, they probably don't even know who built them.

How do you know that?

And you can't tie up the ending because you haven't played the whole game.


And Legion said that in the game, i'm not making it up. He said they are trascended flesh, which implies they were organics fused into a synthetic immortal body.

Modifié par Patriota125, 03 mars 2012 - 04:41 .

[Aesieru]

Patriota125 wrote...

Aesieru wrote...

The Reapers only know a part of their history, they probably don't even know who built them.

How do you know that?

And you can't tie up the ending because you haven't played the whole game.


And Legion said that in the game, i'm not making it up. He said they are trascended flesh, which implies they were organics fused into a synthetic immortal body.

I have just made a post that explains what ME3 states about the Reapers and what the Guardian confirms and what can also be understood by them. Understanding their molecular, infrastructure, or construction methods does not mean anything regarding their purpose or what they actually are.

They are the white blood cells that bombard the galaxy (body) when an infection is present or showing signs.

---

The spoilers from people who've played copies of the game are already confirmed and out there, even on this forum by people with the space editions.

Modifié par Aesieru, 03 mars 2012 - 04:47 .

[Icinix]

Patriota125 wrote...

Icinix wrote...


By the end of ME3 - they're no longer the fearsome enemy they were created to be - rather just another robot enemy with a questionable / contradictory reason for existence..

That's because we didn't knew a thing about them. We fear the unknown. The Reapers were unknown in ME1.

Although this conversation ran its course already - I find the fear of the Reapers from their methods - not the unknown.

[Aesieru]

Icinix wrote...

Patriota125 wrote...

Icinix wrote...


By the end of ME3 - they're no longer the fearsome enemy they were created to be - rather just another robot enemy with a questionable / contradictory reason for existence..

That's because we didn't knew a thing about them. We fear the unknown. The Reapers were unknown in ME1.

Although this conversation ran its course already - I find the fear of the Reapers from their methods - not the unknown.

You rightfully fear them because of their usage of indoctrination, genetic manipulation, brainwashing, myths, and lack of any feeling or mercy.

---

Sovereign was the Vanguard of our destruction. We existed because they allowed it (this is true), and we will die because they demand it (this is also designed to be true).

Modifié par Aesieru, 03 mars 2012 - 04:49 .

[Icinix]

Aesieru wrote...

Icinix wrote...

Patriota125 wrote...

Icinix wrote...


By the end of ME3 - they're no longer the fearsome enemy they were created to be - rather just another robot enemy with a questionable / contradictory reason for existence..

That's because we didn't knew a thing about them. We fear the unknown. The Reapers were unknown in ME1.

Although this conversation ran its course already - I find the fear of the Reapers from their methods - not the unknown.

You rightfully fear them because of their usage of indoctrination, genetic manipulation, brainwashing, myths, and lack of any feeling or mercy.

---

Sovereign was the Vanguard of our destruction. We existed because they allowed it (this is true), and we will die because they demand it (this is also designed to be true).

Yep - the indoctrination, the creating of war between Krogan and Rachni, thousands of years planning to manipulate technology. The reapers methods are manipulative and horrible when working from the shadows and downright horrific when they're in your face.

[Bomb In My Pants]

NovemEnuma wrote...

I love BioWare, but, I'm becoming somewhat disappointed in their products as of late; I do plan to buy the Mass Effect 3 C.E. though. We'll see where my relationship with BioWare will carry after that.

Their products........which haven't been released yet.......makes complete sense. I think you only have maybe half the story/ complete BS story.

[xtorma]

Aesieru wrote...

Actually it makes perfect sense. To prevent the expansion and over-advancement of technology, the use of radically different technologies, and the use of all resources in the galaxy, each race is destroyed at their prime, then some new ones come and things happen.

By providing the relays they make certain people don't develop means to leave the boundaries of their current space or explore dark space and that they also don't go to other galaxies outside the Reapers reach. They also make certain that they progress along a certain path they can always counter.

It doesn't make any sense. why don't the reapers just destroy a civilization once it shows sentience? Wouldn't it be easier than letting them advance to a level where they may cause you a threat?

In order for the plan to work , they would have to know where it was possible for any form of sentient life to manifest, so they could install a relay and make sure the species finds the citidel. Otherwise they risk a civilization in some place developing outside thier influence, and creating the singularity.

[Loreshield]

is what this thread is.

Modifié par Loreshield, 03 mars 2012 - 06:38 .

[Shahadem]

Aesieru wrote...

Actually it makes perfect sense. To prevent the expansion and over-advancement of technology, the use of radically different technologies, and the use of all resources in the galaxy, each race is destroyed at their prime, then some new ones come and things happen.

Actually it is complete nonsense.

If a species was allowed to continue to develop its technology far enough there is the possiblity it would develop a technology that negates the need to consume additional resources, and even if no such technology was created, there is no reason why a species would not be able to start, you know, recycling.

But by killing off all the galatic species every 50,000 years the Reapers actually insure that all resources can will be consumed as more and more species are continuously sending more and more materials into space where they are made permanently unavailable to future generations. And when each species is killed off all the crap it send into space is lost forever.

You are also failing to consider the point of letting a species have resources to use to evolve if it is just going to be killed off in 50,000 years. It is much worse to continuously kill off every spacefaring civilazation every 50,000 years than to let one species evolve to the maximal extent possible. Especially since there is hope that the one species would come to the point where they stop wasting resrouces. But by killing off space faring species every 50,000 years you guarantee that resources will be wasted and lost forever.

The only reason why the Reapers have to attack every 50,000 years is because there is a very large probability that if they let them develop any further then the Reapers would not be able to kill off every space faring civilization and might be wiped out themselves. There is the strong implication at the end of Mass Effect 2 that galatic civilization is already reaching that point thanks to Sovereign having been blown up and leaving all those pieces lying around for everyone to reverse engineer weapons with.

Think about it, the Normandy SR2 is used to destroy the Collectors who were using Reaper technology. An entire fleet of Normandy SR2s could probably take out a lot of Reapers, and a large number of fleets of Normandy SR2s could defeat all of the Reapers.

[Shahadem]

Icinix wrote...

Nathan Redgrave wrote...

Icinix wrote...

I think I'm not making myself clear

Then the fault is mine for not making my own point plain enough. My point was that the Reapers can't be considered awesome or poorly concieved until we find out what the "unknown" stuff is in the first place, regardless of how appealing that "unknown" seemed in the beginning. I was always apathetic toward the Reapers up to this point because we didn't know nearly enough about them to draw credible conclusions; it's only now, in ME3, that we find out enough to decide whether or not we like them or not.

Liking or disliking the Reapers in ME1 or ME2 is like forming an opinion on your latest Christmas present before you've finished taking all the wrapping off. This is the primary reason why other antagonist characters such as Saren Arterius and the Illusive Man exist: to give us something more defined to focus on during the time where the Reapers are an unknown quantity in terms of character development and motivation.

I understand what you're saying - but its not the motivation that concerns me (although its kind of meh), but the fact that the character development of the Reapers led them to being - remote controlled.

They could have retained their awesomeness by simply still being independant powerful creatures - following the original reason for their existence. The second the Guardian or any concept of Reaper leadership came about - it undid the whole "each of us is a nation" etc that was built up. You can continue to debate the point that we didn't know enough about them so they could have always been like that from ME1, BUT - it does seem to be a recent story development tailored for ME3.

Yes and it runs counter to what we learn in Mass Effect 1 and 2.

Our contact with Sovereign demonstrates that Sovereign has free will and acts under its own auspices for its own ends which just happen to coincide with the other Reapers.

In discussion with Legion concerning Geth discussions with Sovereign we learn that each Reaper is made up of individual minds acting together not too dissimilarly from the Geth. There is the very strong implication that the Reapers act together because advancing the interests of the group leads to the advancement of the individual Reaper nation states. The Reapers view turning other species into Reapers who will join their group as a boon for both them and the species being Reaperfied as they gain another member and the members of the species gain immortality.

Personally I think the writers sort of dug themselves into a whole when creating the Reapers in the first place. It would be like Anselm first thinking he proved that god must exist because god is something that is greater than that which can be imagined and anything which doesn't exist would be greater by existing and then going on to describe god in detail.

It is easy to create an image of something that is beyond imagination which makes that thing impossible to describe because the very act of describing it forces limitations that run counter to original description as a thing beyond description.

Modifié par Shahadem, 03 mars 2012 - 07:22 .

[Eradyn]

Obviously the Singularity already happened long ago. It just took this long for a character like Shepard to rise up and put a stop to it.

[CerberusSoldier]

hhh89 wrote...

CerberusSoldier wrote...

The reapers are cyborgs. a poor man's wanna be Borg from Star Trek rip off

We know from ME2 that the Reapers are a mixture of organics and synthetics. The problem is the reason for their creation.
Though it's still better than the space magic transformation in the Merge ending.

   


anything is better than dumb space magic at the end of this Sh**

[Unseelie Sluagh]

I guess we'll never know the actual origins of the Reapers as in who originally built them, where they actually came from and who or why they assigned themselves to this cycle. I guess there are some mysteries that they intend to never be answered.

[Kusy]

Depleting the galaxy? This is silly. Why would a super advanced race deplete the galaxy of it's resources if even the Geth don't have to do it.

It does not make sense, the more advanced you are the less resources you use. Wiping a whole galaxy of organic life is just ridiculous. Why not develop technology further so you do not have to friggin nuke everything?

Come on, they invented artificial gravity, they invented a galaxy wide network of highways, they can combine a whole race into one "being" that can endure thousand of years without using any energy... and the best way of preserving all organic life is to wipe the slate clean every now and then?

It's like killing someone with cancer and saying he's cured... because yeah, the cancer can't develop in a dead body.

[push2play]

Mr.Kusy wrote...

It's like killing someone with cancer and saying he's cured... because yeah, the cancer can't develop in a dead body.

But that is it, exactly. As Reapers see it, the only way to prevent, however remote, possibility that a Singularity will ocurr is to wipe out sufficiently advanced organic life in its entirety, while preserving some simbiont of it through a new Reaper (it seems Reaper morality deals in absolutes - since the possibility is there, it must be prevented at all costs). However unimagineably cruel that may be to us, it seems perfectly rational to them. I mean, we do it all the time with wildlife, for similiar reasons (overpopulation leading to scarcity of food and thus extinction).

Modifié par push2play, 03 mars 2012 - 10:50 .

[Aesieru]

xtorma wrote...

Aesieru wrote...

Actually it makes perfect sense. To prevent the expansion and over-advancement of technology, the use of radically different technologies, and the use of all resources in the galaxy, each race is destroyed at their prime, then some new ones come and things happen.

By providing the relays they make certain people don't develop means to leave the boundaries of their current space or explore dark space and that they also don't go to other galaxies outside the Reapers reach. They also make certain that they progress along a certain path they can always counter.

It doesn't make any sense. why don't the reapers just destroy a civilization once it shows sentience? Wouldn't it be easier than letting them advance to a level where they may cause you a threat?

In order for the plan to work , they would have to know where it was possible for any form of sentient life to manifest, so they could install a relay and make sure the species finds the citidel. Otherwise they risk a civilization in some place developing outside thier influence, and creating the singularity.

The creation of a reaper seems to be a preservation method of that races identity. THeir intent isn't to be evil or kill everyone, but it's to stop it when things get too far, the Reapers only get called in by Sovereign when there's a danger.

---

When life gets to a sufficiently advanced level they will expand, the difference is that an Artificial Intelligence really only has one thing to do and that's to expand and grow smarter, and at the rate the Geth were doing it, they were indeed beginning to deplete planets entirely, not by mining but by literally leaving them voids, such as the one near Haestrom. Over time, perhaps hundreds of thousands of years (far less than the amount of time the Reapers have been doing their job) they would render the galaxy uninhabitable and organic life would have been overrided / destroyed / removed. Intelligence would get to a "singularity" point that would no longer be understandable by organic life and thus they would be rendered removed.

---

To prevent that, they take an extreme, and while it's a "cruel" extreme for those who think in terms of mercy, it's a rational one albeit an absolute one.

Modifié par Aesieru, 03 mars 2012 - 03:26 .

[SirRengeti]

So Sovereign says: "Organic live is a genetic mutation, an accident." But all of a sudden the reapers are here to preserve the identity of all races?
He goes on "Your extinction is inevitable ...". Doesn't sound like preserving to me.
Right now, this reaper/guardian thing makes no sense to me. Maybe the game will explain it better.

[Aesieru]

SirRengeti wrote...

So Sovereign says: "Organic live is a genetic mutation, an accident." But all of a sudden the reapers are here to preserve the identity of all races?
He goes on "Your extinction is inevitable ...". Doesn't sound like preserving to me.
Right now, this reaper/guardian thing makes no sense to me. Maybe the game will explain it better.

I'll try and explain simplistically:

Sovereign in that statement is giving the indication that he has a purpose, he even goes so far as to say that their reasons for doing things are beyond the grasp of Humanity (and needing to be eradicated so as to prevent a singularity is a pretty complex theory and that's also probably not going to be accepted by Humanity, so yes it is outside their grasp) and other sentients. 

He indicates that organic life has an inevitable extinction based on the way they advance, their focus, and how they have finite lives.

He postulates that artificial intelligence and constructs are not random and are not finite.

He tells us that he is the Vanguard of destruction, we exist because they allow it (until a point) and we will die because they demand it (as dictated by their mandate to keep the galaxy clean of a Technological Singularity).

[Georgiano]

Now the paths become clear, I'm going to explain it so people who didn't understood (which I'm almost sure it's less than 1%)

Reapers where created by an advanced race to protect future organic races from their own technology.
Reapers as being purposed for that, they purge the galaxy every 50,000 years to stop a tech singularity from happening and to (just my idea) preserve at least part of the species of that purge, they harvest them and "upload" their genetic material into a new reaper platform assuring that the genetic diversity of the species doesn't goes wasted.

In resume: Reapers are  DNA "ark" ships with big hull and guns

My theory makes sense though if you hear what harbinger has to say sometimes, but that doesn't  means there couldn't  be a "rogue" reaper.