225 réponses à ce sujet

[l7986]

They got nothing better to do with their time.

[atheelogos]

If they had stuck with the dark energy reason it would have made sense.

[survivor_686]

Do they need a motivation? They used to be a shining example of cthulesque horror. It just exists and there is nothing you can do about it.

If we had to give a reason: I'd go with reproduction/self evolution.

Or the Reapers seek to impose their will on all galaxies (more than just the Milky Way) and by harvesting organics they hope to hit upon the right idea.

[Richard 060]

Rather than me make something half-assed up, let's instead have a word from our sponsor - take it away, Sovereign!




"Your civilization is based on the technology of the mass relays, our technology. By using it, your society develops along the paths we desire. We impose order on the chaos of organic evolution. You exist because we allow it, and you will end because we demand it.

We have no beginning. We have no end. We are infinite. Millions of years after your civilization has been eradicated and forgotten, we will endure."




So there you have it, folks - in a brilliant display of ruthless machine logic, the Reapers seek to control what they perceive as the 'chaos' of organic life and organic evolution. Civilisation is carefully channelled along lines they deem 'acceptable', then harvested as soon as it reaches it's peak.

Hence the nickname 'Reapers' - they are to us what a farmer is to his crops. We're cultivated, refined, then hacked down to the roots and collected up as a resource - lather, rinse, repeat.




( ^ video clip of the pertinent conversation in ME1)

Modifié par Richard 060, 04 avril 2012 - 03:02 .

[Ice Cold J]

Probably already in here SOMEWHERE, but here's my original opinion.

The Reapers were the culmination of the first "cycle," created by the most advanced civilization as the ultimate warring machine.

Eventually, they became sapient and realized that they could command the galaxy. They turned on their creators and began eradicating all organic life in the galaxy.

In time, however, their reliance on logic and myopic scope began to underlie their prodigious strength. The organic races were developing new technologies to use against them. In time, however, they overpowered their enemies.

Realizing that organics had the creativie ability they lacked, they devised the plan of helping them along to a certain point and then attacking them; harvesting their genetic coding to create new "Reapers" and taking their advanced technology as their own. As the cycles continued, this is how they gained all of their incredible technology: advanced use of mass effect fields, ridiculous firepower and shield strength, and, of course, indoctrination.

Cycle after cycle they repeat this in an effort to become as close to "omnipotent forces" as they can: a clear, logical goal that a sapient synthetic would accept. It was all going smoothly until the Protheans laid the foundation for the next xyxle to give them the boot.

EDIT: I would recommend that anyone here who does NOT have a weak stomach read, or at least look up, "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream," a short story that might closely parallel the way The Reapers look at organic life.

Modifié par Ice Cold J, 04 avril 2012 - 03:13 .

[kaff33nd]

Can I just chime in with my 2 cents and say that the entire series' plot has been largely misunderstood, in that most believe the series is about humanity (or all sentient organics) struggling against an "evil" machine race. It is not. The Aesop here is that true apotheosis is achievable only through networking. The series is trying to open our minds (as people/players) to the concept that an evolutionary divergence is coming. Throughout the 3 games the overall themes are basically:

1) Networking strengthens the super-organism
2) Humanity is genetically diverse
3) Collective consciousness is an advanced species trait (manifested in the Asari and Rachni)
4) Emotions have a debilitating effect on growth

That's how it seems to me. There was also warning after warning after warning that "you can't stop it. Nobody can stop the coming darkness".

Above all the one thing that stands out to me in all 3 games is that "we are the harbinger of their perfection. Prepare these humans for ascension". And "we are the pinnacle of organic evolution". "We are your salvation through destruction".

Thane's words to Shepard reinforce this. "In order to survive the afterlife we must let go of our hold on land" (or something like that). Oceans and afterlife, anyway.

[Richard 060]

Ice Cold J wrote...

< SNIP, for the sake of space! >

Heck, you could even twist some of the Catalyst's reasoning in there:

The Reapers overcame and destroyed the organics that created them, but realised that any further conflict would easily result in the total destruction of organic life. Indeed, organics left unchecked could even render themselves extinct.

With this realisation, and again, ruthless, emotionless machine logic, they decided to initiate a cycle of control, destruction and renewal, involving the relays and the Citadel. Civilisation is given a chance to flourish and prosper, and is then destroyed for the sake of preserving order, and allowing the next 'generation' to take over - for a time...

Unfortunately, the Reapers 'lost sight' of this over the eons, and eventually, the cycle would exist for it's own sake - the Reapers existing to control, and organics existing to BE controlled (in their perspective). And so it continues - until now, when Shepard stands precariously close to ending the cycle for good.


This could be the agency needed for the final choice for the ending, too:

- Destroy. Kill the Reapers and deactivate (NOT blow up!) the Relay network. Civilisation is saved, and while technological advancement and space travel has been set back indefinitely, life is free to exercise true self-determination and free will, without being slaves to the cycle.

- Control. You agree with the Reaper logic, and the premise that it's better to let the cycle continue than risk organics destroying themselves left unchecked. However, (i.e., with a high enough reputation score), you might just be able to force them to call off this generation's attack - for now. You've spared civilisation for who-knows-how-long - a reprieve, from the eventual and inevitable end, as 'logic' would dictate.


Makes sense, no?



[ EDIT ] - added a 'quote' at the top, just so it's clear to everyone which post I was replying to. Sorry for the confusion, folks!

Modifié par Richard 060, 04 avril 2012 - 04:11 .

[NewUszi]

The problem I have with assuming that the Reapers intentions are some how for the benefit of Organics is just how insidious their methods are.

Using mind control to turn friends and family members against each other is evil. Using hate spikes to impale people alive and turn them into robozombies is even worse. Doing things like that made sense when they were Lovecraftian Machine Gods filled with hate. Those tactics don't make sense if the Reapers are supposed to be stewards of some kind.

[Richard 060]

NewUszi wrote...

The problem I have with assuming that the Reapers intentions are some how for the benefit of Organics is just how insidious their methods are.

Using mind control to turn friends and family members against each other is evil. Using hate spikes to impale people alive and turn them into robozombies is even worse. Doing things like that made sense when they were Lovecraftian Machine Gods filled with hate. Those tactics don't make sense if the Reapers are supposed to be stewards of some kind.

Yeah - going over Sovereign and Harbinger's grandiose speeches again, one does notice a hell of a lot of MALICE in them.

Certainly, you get the impression that they aren't impassive machines of pure logic - there's an unhealthy degree of megalomania. We are slaves, they are the slavemasters. We live and die at their command, and they revel in that notion.

Let's not forget that these are VILLAINS, backed up by their own hubris which they themselves make no bones about.

To suddenly try and ret-con them as some kind of 'misunderstood force for the greater good' at the last minute is an insult to the core story of Mass Effect, as originally projected in ME1.

[kaff33nd]

@Richard - If you were directing that retcon thing at me, I'm afraid I have to disagree with you. It isn't a retcon if it's mentioned before the story is told (mistold?). here I gave what I thought at the time to be a perfectly viable scenario. That whole thread was in fact pointing to the Reapers as being (deliberately) misunderstood "saviors". Elsewhere I tentatively proposed that the Reapers were in fact arks. During those forum discussions quite a few people mentioned that the Reapers may actually be our saviors. Last posts were a couple years ago, by the way.

[Richard 060]

kaff33nd wrote...

@Richard - If you were directing that retcon thing at me, I'm afraid I have to disagree with you. It isn't a retcon if it's mentioned before the story is told (mistold?). here I gave what I thought at the time to be a perfectly viable scenario. That whole thread was in fact pointing to the Reapers as being (deliberately) misunderstood "saviors". Elsewhere I tentatively proposed that the Reapers were in fact arks. During those forum discussions quite a few people mentioned that the Reapers may actually be our saviors. Last posts were a couple years ago, by the way.

Sorry - was actually following on from Ice Cold J's post (added a token quote to the original post).

In fairness, though, I stand by my follow-up statement - the Reapers display far too much malice, and seem to 'enjoy' the control they impose over life. Certainly, I can't really reconcile that with some notion that they might be working out of some sense of a 'greater good' either self-imposed or embedded in them by whoever created them.

[finc.loki]

I always felt that there was some sort of tie-in or facsimile of the Quarians and the Geth to that of the Reapers and the ones that made them.
At least that is what it felt like playing ME 1.

These "Reapers" that were machines/synthetics that was serving their organic masters gained self-awareness and rebelled, they won and wiped out their creators. Similar to Geth and Quarians.

They use organic life to sustain themselves (hence the harvesting and not just killing ) they keep doing this on regular intervals to keep themselves going and also to stop any organic civilization to ever become too advanced and powerful to ever pose a threat to them again.

Over time they developed the citadel and mass effect relays to better control and steer where the organic "evolution" takes place and how far they come along, also to better keep track where they are etc.

They evolve themselves and gain better processing power and advance themselves each cycle by harvesting organic life, perhaps also the knowledge gained during these cycles.They logically wouldn't kill off ALL life in the galaxy cause then there is nothing left for them to use when harvesting.


The sheer length of how long this has been going on and how they advance, also explain their arrogance and how they view us as insignificant etc.

Like how Sovereign says;
"you exist cause we allow it, you'll end cause we demand it", and the "impose order on chaotic organic life" is because they are opposite, they are structured, machine like and there is no "chance" in their evolution cause they control it themselves. They ironically see us as a chaotic danger, partly because organic life made them and then tried to destroy them.

They could have kept it as simple as that and our goal in our cycle as commander Shepard and the rest, is to finally defeat them and rid ourselves of these Reapers.
They could've made good satisfactory ending from that, cliched perhaps but still make you feel good and overall have enjoyed the experience to play the trilogy.

I'm even OK with the endings as long as they would have explained it further and not have so many plot-holes that didn't make sense.
They could have alos made them satisfactory by if chosing the right ending you get everyone is happy ending ala Star wars celebration at the end of the Return of the jedi type deal.
They could also have bitter sweet endings if need be. It just rubs me the wrong way how things are introduced at the end that NEEDS futher explanation and sense needs to be made.  No wonder the "indoctination theory" arose by some.

It felt like rushed, I mean REALLY RUSHED at the end like they ran out of money. It made no sense but I could see how you COULD make sense of it with futher fleshing out of the end.

Modifié par finc.loki, 04 avril 2012 - 04:51 .

[ile_1979]

Let's reconsider the reaper's notion of"order" again. Chaos or entropy is the state of the least energy possible for a system. For a complex system of organic and inorganic matter, the greater the chaos component the lower the level of organisation of matter is. So organic matter is higher on the level of "order" then inorganic, it takes more energy to sustain its presence. By extension, life is on the higher order the lifelessness. Sapient life on the higher order then non-sapient life. Technologically advanced species on higher order then primitive sapient species. The entire evolution of matter->life->intelligence is a process of reducing chaos and increasing order. Even artificial intelligence falls into this category. AI's are the higher level of order then organics. And then Sovereign comes along and states that their(reaper) goal is to impose order on the chaos of organic evolution. This kind of contradicts everything about chaos and order as we define it. By removing advanced life from the galaxy, the reapers actually increase the entropy of the galaxy not the order of it. So we must conclude that one of three things are in place here.
1. The big squid was not telling the truth.
2. The reapers notion of order and chaos is either reverse or completely misaligned with ours.
3. The universal translator malfunctioned.

[aberdash]

The fact the reapers are the most advanced synthetics in the galaxy and are trying to save organics, in their own special way at least, only proves the assertion that synthetics will always try to wipe out organics false. Apparently Mac thought he could cover up bad writing with "we are beyond your comprehension".

edit: I should probably say that my point was that no matter how you twist the logic you can not make sense of it.

Modifié par aberdash, 04 avril 2012 - 09:39 .

[tetrisblock4x1]

I can't be the only one who realized that the Reapers were full of **** and that Sovereigns speech in ME1 was nothing but hot air and hyperbole can I? It's like people take him literally when he said that the Reapers have been around since forever and that they had no beginning and that they're incomprehensible...

[Valkyre4]

Sometimes I think I have been playing a different game all these years...

It is funny for people to try and make sense of what the Reapers are thinking when in fact the games themselves from the very beggining (Your beloved ME1 with its super awesome story nobody complianed about) the Repears provide and explain their motives as simply

"because we can"... or "because *** you that's why"....

Even when you talk with Viginl on Ilos he pretty much says to Shepard that trying to think the way and advanced sythetic lifeform does will make no sense to him.

As if that wasnt enough to make people understand that human logic has nothing to do with synthetic logic, we also have the Geth and Legion in ME2 speak to us in DETAIL that synthetic reasoning is completely different than human one.

Really was I the only one paying attention to Legion's mission or his conversations, or the reasons why the Geth followed Saren or the reasons why the Geth asked for Reapers help in ME3?

Trying to explain why the Reapers are doing what they are doing, trying to find logic by human standards or any kind of standard is beyond POINTLESS.

Lets have some quotes from Sovereign in Mass Effect 1 shall we?

- "Rundamentary creatures of blood and flesh. You touch my mind, fumbling in ignorance, INCAPABLE OF UNDERSTANDING"

- "I am beyond your COMPREHENSION, I am Sovereign!"

-" We simply ARE"

-"My kind TRANSCENDS your understanding" (how much more obvious do they have to make it really??)

- "You cannot even GRASP the nature of our existence"

Yeah... good luck hoping to find the reasoning and logic behind these guys's actions! It only took 2 games trying to convince you that trying to explain synthetic reasoning via human logic is impossible yet now you feel the need to make sense out of it. You should have complained not just now with ME3, but ME1 and ME2 as well, the entire trilogy. But nobody complained then, now they do.

human logic....

Modifié par Valkyre4, 04 avril 2012 - 01:06 .

[Prosarian]

It would have been much better if the motivations of the reapers were hinted at, but not explained. Not knowing anything about their goals or aims made them far more intimidating. We all share a fear of the unknown, Bioware should have used this to make them so much more scary, instead they're now our benevolent space daddies.

[spacehamsterZH]

BECAUSE THEY CAN. That's all the explanation I ever needed.

[Shelled]

http://robotgeek.co....28-yodawgme.jpg

Modifié par Shelled, 04 avril 2012 - 01:14 .