225 réponses à ce sujet

[batlin]

Here's my take

It's clear that the Reapers only target species advanced enough to have invented interstellar travel since they use the mass relays as a way to find them.

So the first question we must answer is this: Why kill advanced races? One reason could be that they can't have any species become more advanced than themselves. Why is that? Well, what kind of technology may be beyond species of humans, asari, turians, etc that isn't beyond the Reapers? Well mass effect technology, of course.

So why do the Reapers want to prevent any species from developing this technology? Because if abused, mass effect technology could cause universal catastrophe, such as a reverse big bang, thermal death of the universe, the destruction of the laws of physics, etc etc etc. Some kind of disaster with implications that reach far beyond just one galaxy.

So the Reapers were the first lifeforms in the universe to have discovered the mass effect, learned of what kind of damage it could cause if abused, and concluded that it was only a matter of time before other species in the universe discovered this same technology. The Reapers couldn't trust anyone else with the fate of the entire universe in their hands, so they took it upon themselves to become the custodians of their known universe, with each galaxy being tended to by a fleet of Reapers that wipe out all life every 50k years; what they estimate is about the time it takes for a species to become advanced enough to be dangerous, but not advanced enough to be a threat the the Reapers themselves.

Add your own explanation for the reapers' plan and feel free to criticize mine

[joejoe099]

The reapers are actually giant flowers. but instead of sun light, they suck the life and dna out of every living being. the smarter they are, the more tasty the dna.

[Nejeli]

I like the theory proposed in the second game - that the Reapers harvest advanced civilizations for breeding and evolution. A cycle of 50,000 years assures that there will be at least one species advanced enough to be useful, and leaving being technology 'blueprints' assures they progress in a way that will be beneficial to the Reapers.

[batlin]

Nejeli wrote...

I like the theory proposed in the second game - that the Reapers harvest advanced civilizations for breeding and evolution. A cycle of 50,000 years assures that there will be at least one species advanced enough to be useful, and leaving being technology 'blueprints' assures they progress in a way that will be beneficial to the Reapers.

Yeah, I'm really curious why they didn't just stick with that.

Likely because they needed some bs "twist" for ME3.

[Authweight]

The reapers were the ultimate creation of an incredibly powerful species of organics. They took millions of their elderly and terminally ill, and poured their DNA and memories into powerful synthetic creatures. The goal was to preserve the collective memories of their race for all time. However, what they did not expect was that, like all living things, these new creations desired to grow, to reproduce, to expand and build. They wanted to impose order upon the cosmos, and not any order: their own order.

The new synthetic creatures rose up in fierce rebellion against their creators, and after a period of warfare, they had taken all those left and incorporated them into new reapers. They had a problem though: they could not reproduce without new advanced organic life to harvest. They were stagnant, uncreative. They wished to grow, to become something more, but they had reached a plateau. Without new blood, there is no innovation, no growth.

Hence the cycle. They carefully laid in place the Mass Relays in order to control galactic evolution. Their goal was to wait in dark space for new advanced civilizations to develop. With the new blood of another species added to their collective, they could grow and reproduce and become something more. They did not intend for this to be a cycle. They felt they were only a harvest away from transcending the bounds of space-time and becoming perfect.

Their plan had a fatal flaw though. By controlling the flow of galactic progress, they were choking the new blood they so desperately wanted. Limited by their own failure to understand this key concept, they could not understand why their plan failed each cycle. After untold eons, the cycle continues to fail, and will always fail. Ironically, the very problem they are attempting to solve, an inability to innovate, is the very reason they are doomed to failure.

[Shaun2406]

The Reapers were originally a galaxy spanning civilization that reached its zenith, and found itself stagnating. This civilisation had long synthetically enhanced itself, and ultimately decided that they had accomplished all they could in their current state of existence. Much like the Geth, they desired to become something more, thus they merged themselves into massive synthetic/organic hybrid constructs and attained an entirely new plane of existence.

The Reapers then left the galaxy, retreating to dark space contemplate their new existence in the ‘silence’ of space. A sentient being is to a single Geth program as a Reaper is to a sentient being, a state of existence impossible to explain properly to a sentient. The Reapers marvelled at what they had become, and contemplated the various mysteries of the universe. When, after untold millennia, they turned their attention back to the galaxy, they found new civilisations had developed.

The Reapers wished to share their gift, and desired the integration of new civilisations and perspectives into their conglomerate, so they returned to the galaxy to offer transcendence to the new civilisations. These civilisations, however, whether out of fear of the magnificence of the Reapers, or disgust, attacked the Reapers and attempted to destroy them. These civilisations had the technology to pursue the Reapers into dark space, and so the Reapers, not originally warlike, were forced to turn to war to survive.

Ultimately, the Reapers prevailed, though due to the hostile civilisations mastery of mass effect technology, the war was long and bloody. While the Reapers could not leave the remnants of the hostile civilisations to be for fear of reprisals, they were not vindictive, and rather than destroy them, merged the remnants into new Reapers. Despite the individuals opposition due to their inability to comprehend the form in which the Reapers existed, once transcended and able to comprehend infinitely more than before, they embraced their new existence, and joined the Reaper fleet.

The Reapers then created the Citadel and the Mass Relays, to allow them to monitor organic civilisations, and to prevent a civilisation from developing its own forms of mass effect transport. This meant the Reapers could, if necessary, cut off sectors of the galaxy from each other (Sovereigns plan in ME1), and avoid the sort of losses incurred in their first war.

Many times the Reapers returned to offer their gift to civilisations advanced enough to be worth transcending, but not advanced enough to have developed their own mass effect transport and thus severely threaten the Reapers once the Relays were disabled. All of them, out of fear, or an inability to comprehend, turned on the Reapers, but all, once transcended and able to comprehend the beauty of the new plane of intelligence the Reapers had achieved, readily joined the Reaper fleet.

In time, the Reapers decided that offering the gift to organics was pointless, it merely allowed the organics to incur additional losses in the Reaper fleet due to forewarning, so, secure in the knowledge that once able to understand Reaper existence, all organics thus far encountered embraced it, they adopted their current strategy (forcing transcendence on organic civilisations).

Modifié par Shaun2406, 26 mars 2012 - 04:46 .

[Vaeir09]

They're jerks and do it for the giggles.

[xFlamexOfxHellx]

Reapers live forever so they would "harvest" the top species and turn them into Reapers to remember what they did while adding to their numbers.

[I am KROGAN]

Obviously, the Reapers wanna be the only Synthetic life capable of annihilating organic life and that's why they kill advanced organic life: to prevent any possible synthetics to challenge them for the titles of masters of the universe.

"Yea, I'm a Reaper, I'm gonna reap, wanna fight about it?"
-anonymous reaper

[Nejeli]

batlin wrote...

Nejeli wrote...

I like the theory proposed in the second game - that the Reapers harvest advanced civilizations for breeding and evolution. A cycle of 50,000 years assures that there will be at least one species advanced enough to be useful, and leaving being technology 'blueprints' assures they progress in a way that will be beneficial to the Reapers.

Yeah, I'm really curious why they didn't just stick with that.

Likely because they needed some bs "twist" for ME3.

Yeah, I dunno. It went from 'you can't comprehend our intentions' to 'we're going to use you to advance ourselves in this really horrific way' to 'we need to protect you from something that might or might not happen.'

[vortex2000]

Nejeli wrote...

I like the theory proposed in the second game - that the Reapers harvest advanced civilizations for breeding and evolution. A cycle of 50,000 years assures that there will be at least one species advanced enough to be useful, and leaving being technology 'blueprints' assures they progress in a way that will be beneficial to the Reapers.

Exactly, I've no idea why they abandoned this idea - on the contrary, they should have expanded upon it in ME3.

Modifié par vortex2000, 26 mars 2012 - 05:09 .

[vortex2000]

Shaun2406 wrote...

The Reapers were originally a galaxy spanning civilization that reached its zenith, and found itself stagnating. This civilisation had long synthetically enhanced itself, and ultimately decided that they had accomplished all they could in their current state of existence. Much like the Geth, they desired to become something more, thus they merged themselves into massive synthetic/organic hybrid constructs and attained an entirely new plane of existence.

The Reapers then left the galaxy, retreating to dark space contemplate their new existence in the ‘silence’ of space. A sentient being is to a single Geth program as a Reaper is to a sentient being, a state of existence impossible to explain properly to a sentient. The Reapers marvelled at what they had become, and contemplated the various mysteries of the universe. When, after untold millennia, they turned their attention back to the galaxy, they found new civilisations had developed.

The Reapers wished to share their gift, and desired the integration of new civilisations and perspectives into their conglomerate, so they returned to the galaxy to offer transcendence to the new civilisations. These civilisations, however, whether out of fear of the magnificence of the Reapers, or disgust, attacked the Reapers and attempted to destroy them. These civilisations had the technology to pursue the Reapers into dark space, and so the Reapers, not originally warlike, were forced to turn to war to survive.

Ultimately, the Reapers prevailed, though due to the hostile civilisations mastery of mass effect technology, the war was long and bloody. While the Reapers could not leave the remnants of the hostile civilisations to be for fear of reprisals, they were not vindictive, and rather than destroy them, merged the remnants into new Reapers. Despite the individuals opposition due to their inability to comprehend the form in which the Reapers existed, once transcended and able to comprehend infinitely more than before, they embraced their new existence, and joined the Reaper fleet.

The Reapers then created the Citadel and the Mass Relays, to allow them to monitor organic civilisations, and to prevent a civilisation from developing its own forms of mass effect transport. This meant the Reapers could, if necessary, cut off sectors of the galaxy from each other (Sovereigns plan in ME1), and avoid the sort of losses incurred in their first war.

Many times the Reapers returned to offer their gift to civilisations advanced enough to be worth transcending, but not advanced enough to have developed their own mass effect transport and thus severely threaten the Reapers once the Relays were disabled. All of them, out of fear, or an inability to comprehend, turned on the Reapers, but all, once transcended and able to comprehend the beauty of the new plane of intelligence the Reapers had achieved, readily joined the Reaper fleet.

In time, the Reapers decided that offering the gift to organics was pointless, it merely allowed the organics to incur additional losses in the Reaper fleet due to forewarning, so, secure in the knowledge that once able to understand Reaper existence, all organics thus far encountered embraced it, they adopted their current strategy (forcing transcendence on organic civilisations).

Love this idea, with a bit more development it could really work.

For example, it would be interesting if the original motivations of the Reapers had been lost or gradually re-interpreted over millenia somehow, which would explain the Reapers current hostility and malevolence. Perhaps they continue to serve up the "you cannot comprehend" excuse because they no longer fully comprehend it themselves? Perhaps, if Shepard were to somehow discover the Repears origins, there might be a way to *save* them?

Now *that* would be an interesting ending...

Modifié par vortex2000, 26 mars 2012 - 05:16 .

[PaddlePop]

The Reapers were once forum trolls, but the lack of sunlight resulted in them mutating. Subsequent generations became progressively... insect-like... and larger. How they left their respective planets is Space Magic.

Modifié par PaddlePop, 26 mars 2012 - 05:11 .

[BeefoTheBold]

Given the similarities of the Mass Effect series to the Star Control series at times, I half expected the goals of the Reapers to be the same as those of the Eternal Ones from Star Control 3.

[fwc577]

In response to the title of the thread:

Let's all come up with reasons for the Reapers' cycle that make SENSE!

Without causing any plot holes and actually being in-line with the Mass Effect story.

We cannot comprehend the reasons behind the Reapers motivations.

This makes particular sense when you think of the fact that other organic life in the galaxy (I think Krogans are max) live a maximum of a couple thousand years yet the Reapers have by all accounts been around for billions of years.

Regardless of intellect level, look at the sheer size of Reapers, to them, we are merely a smart cancer that needs a dose of chemo every 50,000 years.

This is how the story should have been kept. There is no reason we should be able to understand the motivations behind something of far superior intelligence and life span. The Reapers are essentially a race of evil god-like beings. Look at modern religion, a common phrase is "God works in mysterious ways" the same logic applies, in comparison to the universe, humanity is a smudge on the window of the universe. Does a smudge need to understand why I get some Windex and wipe it off?

[MrGPhantome]

Here's the thing about the cycle;

It makes sense if the main motivation behind didn't involve organics MAKING synthetics. The whole organics are chaos can run on it's own without a convoluted and polarizing motivation of synthetics that completely breaks it.

If the catalyst said that the reapers destroy organics because otherwise they would destroy themselves (via nuclear war or manmade famine, etc), then we wouldn't have to discuss this. The whole "killing organics because they make synthetics" is such bull**** that no one should have to swallow that concept.

[vortex2000]

Modifié par vortex2000, 26 mars 2012 - 05:15 .

[tetrisblock4x1]

Let's all come up with reasons for the Reapers' cycle

How about no. They had no reason in the first ME and it's supposed to be the best of the trilogy.

[BeefoTheBold]

tetrisblock4x1 wrote...

Let's all come up with reasons for the Reapers' cycle

How about no. They had no reason in the first ME and it's supposed to be the best of the trilogy.

Fixed it for ya! :innocent:

[Alyka]

Nejeli wrote...

I like the theory proposed in the second game - that the Reapers harvest advanced civilizations for breeding and evolution. A cycle of 50,000 years assures that there will be at least one species advanced enough to be useful, and leaving being technology 'blueprints' assures they progress in a way that will be beneficial to the Reapers.

And they kill off or repurpose other species to cover up their tracks and/or build an army.

We already know that the Reapers set up the relay system so that species would advance along the paths that they choose.
But another one my theories is that the Reapers harvest/destroy organic life so that there is Eezo left over on other planets so the next species can use it for their spaceships.And the cycle is guaranteed to continue.

I also think that there is an advanced species (let's call them AS) in another galaxy and they created the Reapers to keep everything contained in the Milky Way.The AS doesn't want anything to advance to their level because they're afraid another species will travel to their galaxy and kill the AS.Either that or the AS are using the Milky Way as a testing ground of sorts; creating new lifeforms to see if one species will exceed their expectations and advance without resorting to warfare.Only then will the species be worthy enough to travel to the galaxy where the AS live.

Modifié par Alyka, 26 mars 2012 - 05:24 .

[Zakatak757]

Here's my non-sarcastic take.

Organics had a problem with brutally murdering eachother in the past, for reasons like greed/power/petty hate. So somebody built the Reapers. Their purpose, was to, ultimately, stop this cycle of destruction. The idea was that every time the Reapers came, everyone dropped what they were doing and united together to stand against an enemy they couldn't possibly hope to defeat. And every time, the Reapers won, and thus, failed. Organics were unable to work together, but the species who tried to stop the Reaper menace were absorbed into a Reaper body to preserve their soul. These species would be able to understand the meaning of the cycle, and assist in the next cleansing.

The age humanity was born in was the age that... well... either lost or won depending if you succumbed to indoctrination (the blue choices at the end). By destroying the Reapers, both organics and synthetics had succeeded. Organics had proven they were able to unite against something greater then their own petty needs, and had overcome it.

[FlashedMyDrive]

If Reapers (or whoever created them) had the technology to merge synthetics with organics, why didn't they just do it in the beginning instead of killing everyone?

20-20 hindsight, eh?

Modifié par FlashedMyDrive, 26 mars 2012 - 05:42 .

[TomHark]

I really don't understand why this is necessary. I don't like the logic that they have, but I don't have a problem with them having that logic. What makes sense to eons old machines is not likely to make sense to individual organics (as promised by the first two games) and if it had made sense (and wasn't beard-strokingly evil) then at least half my Sheps would have had to stop and let them finish reaping "for the greater good". Personally, I'm glad I didn't have that problem!

[Jayce]

What I thought might be their motivation before Starboy came along:

That the Reapers began as a super advanced race that figured they could achieve transcendence by converting themselves into a synthetic life form.... only to realize they'd accidentally sent themselves down an evolutionary dead end and thus, through sheer passage of time, other civilizations would rise to surpass them.

Wanting to remain top dogs, they set about destroying any civilization that might one day challenge them. Hence their particular interest in humans as they perceived us to be their biggest threat.

Boy how wrong was I.....

Modifié par Jayce F, 26 mars 2012 - 05:51 .