187 réponses à ce sujet

[Sovereign330]

I prefer a mix. dark energy can still fit into indoctrination theory. How? Child lies to shepard about the reason for the reapers by saying the organic vs. synthetic explanation but in reality, the dark energy explanation is why the reapers truly exist.

[Exodus2000]

TBH neither...if they made some slight adjustments to DE theory then maybe..

If I had to choose tho DE then....

[Freyzer]

They could have done both. Try to indoctrinate sheppard.  If he breaks free, then he gets to hear about the reaper's true purpose....or something.

[Sovereign330]

bear with me for a moment. suppose from harbinger attacking onwards was a dream/indoctrination attempt. harbinger would be lying to shepard about their true purpose for whatever reason. so the reapers make up an illogical excuse like the organic synthetic idea. while they do believe synthetics are dangerous, it's not their main reason for harvesting life. there's something bigger. when shepard wakes up, he/she finds out the dark energy issue and we go from there. needs more thought but its a start

[The Bastus]

Why not both? An elaborate hallucination devised by the reapers in order to make Shepard sabotage his own plan. However if Shep can fight off the Reaper influence *insert Dark energy ending*.

[Flexed Acid]

Can someone explain how reapers prevent dark energy from destroying the universe by harvesting civilizations and how a human reaper can help end it all?

[Silasqtx]

Am I the only one that thinks that the "Unknown Lovecraftian Horror" works best with the Reapers?

You wipe them out, ok, but you will never know why did they reap every 50k years.

(LOTS OF SPECULATION)

[AllThatJazz]

If the Dark Energy idea had been woven in to the whole of ME3, then it would have been alright. But just slapping it in at the end after barely a mention (was there a mention?) throughout ME3 seems almost as arbitrary as what we ended up with. So, if they aren't going to rewrite the whole game, then indoc theory.

Also, eh, I'm not a massive fan of the lovecraftian eldritch unknowable unbeatable villain idea, particularly not in SF, maybe works better in horror. Tbh, if Bioware had gone down this route, I wouldn't have seen it as massively less of a literary copout than the kid.

Modifié par AllThatJazz, 25 mars 2012 - 09:20 .

[Cuddieee]

The problem with any plotline that reveals the Reaper's "true" intentions is the fact that every Reaper you encounter always tells you that their purpose "is beyond anything you can comprehend."

Collective intelligence to solve Dark Energy problem? Organics don't get along with synthetics? This is all very easy to comprehend. They were probably originally written to be just evil dudes that want to reap for the sake of reaping. That, or they just like being enigmatic dicks. Eh.

[karek]

 Indoc theory really really is not at all good. It's your generic conspiracy theory based on irrelevant points with added meaning, things like tIM eyes suddenly meaning indoctrination or handwaving because they actually used reflective light on eyes.

So, Dark Energy, at least that sticks with the canon.

[ERk314]

TheNevincer wrote...

1. Modify the current ending into an indoctrination attempt/hallucination
2. Continue the fight on Earth against Harbinger
3. Give us a real ending where it's revealed the Reaper's function was to prevent the spread of Dark Energy
4. Give us choices that means a damn, and doesn't neccessarily include destruction of all Mass Relays
5. ?????
6. PROFIT! You've fixed the game and won back most of your fans.

If only this were what they'd do.

[chester013]

evil-pineapples wrote...

Dark energy ending can be found here: http://www.strategyi...ffect-3-endings

Frankly, indoc theory is a sad attempt to polish a turd. If true, it offers even less closure than the current ending, which is a feat. It would feel like another stupid "twist" ending just for the sake of it.

The dark energy ending is more consistent with the feel of Mass Effect (especially when it comes to the final choice, a true Paragon/Renegade option) as well as more satisfying on an intellectual and emotional level.

Polishing a turd is correct, the dark energy ending may have been better had BW not already taken a big steamy dump and showed it to me. We may not be able to clean up the turd but we can make it presentable. No use dabating what never was.

[BeefoTheBold]

Both ideas suck horribly. The Dark Energy one is the lesser of two awful evils.

[Prism]

Dark energy ending sounds.. plausible, at least. But it doesn't really explain all the secrecy from Sovereign and the others. "Why do you want to kill us?" "You cannot understand, die!"

[Akka le Vil]

Silasqtx wrote...

Am I the only one that thinks that the "Unknown Lovecraftian Horror" works best with the Reapers?

You wipe them out, ok, but you will never know why did they reap every 50k years.

(LOTS OF SPECULATION)

Lovecraftian horror works great with unknown cosmic forces.
But artificial entities ? Not at all. They are artificial, which means they were built at some time. As such they are not "outside the realm of understanding", nor "from the unknown reaches of space". They are constructs, their mechanism is knownable, they don't have the mystique necessary for cosmic horrors.

[Iwillbeback]

For dark energy we need extra missions.

[Eudaemonium]

Silasqtx wrote...

Am I the only one that thinks that the "Unknown Lovecraftian Horror" works best with the Reapers?

You wipe them out, ok, but you will never know why did they reap every 50k years.

(LOTS OF SPECULATION)

No, I am very much in this camp. I don't think we should ever have found out their reasons, or even if they have reasons.

As for the question, I actually dislike both of them. I mean, I like indoc. theory, but I don't really think Bioware should go with it. And the DE theory is almost as bad as the current ending. It just seems cliched.

[zsom]

Indoc theory is full of plot holes and just reeks of bad fanfic. However dark energy isn't really explained very well either. I like the current ending, but would like to see it explained a bit (actually a lot) better.

[Thalador]

While the Dark Enery Decision would've had a lot of weight and would've led to a more compelling ending, dark energy being the reason for the cycle and harvestings wouldn't have made much sense either, imo - others have already pointed out the issues with it.

Personally, I'd still have incorporated dark energy and the anomaly of Dholen, similarly to how Akka and FreakinJesus presented it:

ItsFreakinJesus wrote...

The
whole "Dark Energy" thing should've just been used to explain the
Reapers harvesting stars to either power themselves or to create Mass
Relay power sources so they can have more Relays in more
systems.

Akka le Vil wrote... 

 Well, in fact I thought that the Dark Energy thing was going to be the breakthrough necessary to make a weapon to fight the Reapers. It would have been unoriginal, but at least grounded in the game with a bit of foreshadowing and certainly much less stupid and cliché than the miracle-weapon-from-a-hat that we got.

Akka le Vil wrote... 

In this scenario, I thought that the Reapers would simply have been programmed IA with a flaw in their fundamental routine - like the Third Law of the Robotic that would have had a loophole allowing for it to bypass the two others. Would have prefered this to the two other stupid possibilities.

In summary, the Reapers use dark energy to leech power from the stars in order to preserve and recharge themselves, but at the cost of dark energy buildup inside stars, leading to the star's premature supernova state, followed by its "death." (BW could've drawn from their past by making such an allusion to the Star Forge).

And at the same time, after Sovereign's destruction and the various races and organisations studying Nazara's remains, some folks could've realised that there was much potential in dark energy (also, some of them might have heeded Shepard's warning about the Reapers) and started researching it. Hence why Gianna Parasini tells us on Illium that her superiors are concerned about some people interested in dark energy. This could've been continued in ME3, where, for instance, dark energy could've become an effective way to combat the Reapers.

Also, if I had been in BW's place, I wouldn't have explained the true motivations of the Reapers, aside from the general concept of preserving and propagating themselves. If you remember Vigil's report on the Reaper invasion, he tells us that the Reapers stripped the Prothean planets bare of all resources, using indoctrinated servants as work force.

Sovereign makes it perfectly clear that "his kind transcends our very understanding" and that "we cannot even grasp the nature of their existence." It should've been left at that. If people had really wanted an explanation, personally I'd have gone with the Reapers travelling from galaxy to galaxy, staying in one for billions of years until the cycles led to the "ascension" of all organic civilisations throughout the eons, while the rest of the galaxy became a barren wasteland, its planets stripped of all resources and void of life, and its stars either dead or dying.

P.S.: Oh, almost forgot. Indoctrination Theory is possibly the only way to salvage the crap that is the current ending, and give us real closures where our choices matter.

Modifié par Thalador, 25 mars 2012 - 11:05 .

[Thalador]

Doublepost, please delete.

Modifié par Thalador, 25 mars 2012 - 11:04 .

[da mighty rEAper]

i like dark energy ending, its described here, along with some thoughts



indoc theory is very good, considering all the buildup that exists in the game(with nightmares and kid)
Was it planned or not, they could use it and get out of this retardism

[Swordfishtrombone]

I like the dark energy ending better because it at least puts some sense into an open question posed by events in ME2  (tali's investigation of the star that was heating up).

However, the "humans are extraordinarily genetically diverse" just rubbed me the wrong way - when compared to, for example, our closest relatives on the Earth, the chimps, humans are remarkably genetically uniform. Our lack of genetic diversity points to a bottle neck situation some hundreds of thousands of years ago, where humanity was reduced to maybe only thousands of individuals.

There's no indication whatsoever that humanity is especially genetically adaptive either. Not more or less genetically adaptive than any other large mammal. I don't see any reason at all why evolution would have produced any less genetically adaptive species on other planets; why the process would not have found quite as good solutions elsewhere.

Perhaps if the Reapers were working towards some extremely long term goal towards "godhood" that involved gaining control over dark energy, with their harvesting cycle being a way to seek new "insight" and ability brought by an evolutionary process, and their heating up of the star being a part of their experimenting with dark energy, in their quest with the ultimate goal of total control over the universe, and "godlike" ability to shape it.

Maybe the crucible would then have had a mechanism by which it, using the mass relays, somehow slightly affected dark energy; and the reapers themselves having some dark energy component. Thus activating the crucible would cripple the reapers enough to allow them to be defeated with conventional warfare.

[Aurica]

Both are still better than any official endings...