338 réponses à ce sujet

[Uriko128]

I agree with the OP. Although Starchild said Sheppard achieved more than anyone before, so we can think this cycle was the best prepared in the war against the reapers. However, I also think the galaxy couldn't win with conventional means. It's just simple logic:

Best strategy: we have not.
Best resources: we have not.
Best army? Of course we have not.
And with love and hope and humanity you can't win against the reapers. They are better in every aspect. And although they are not perfect or invincible, it's just not a possibility for us to face them in war, because it would mean we are utterly anihilated.

[Athro]

Uriko128 wrote...

I agree with the OP. Although Starchild said Sheppard achieved more than anyone before, so we can think this cycle was the best prepared in the war against the reapers. However, I also think the galaxy couldn't win with conventional means. It's just simple logic:

Best strategy: we have not.
Best resources: we have not.
Best army? Of course we have not.
And with love and hope and humanity you can't win against the reapers. They are better in every aspect. And although they are not perfect or invincible, it's just not a possibility for us to face them in war, because it would mean we are utterly anihilated.

Well none of this is known for certain. That's kind of the thing. The Reapers hide behind legend and misdirection. If they are so outright superior in a straight up fight, why then are all their tactics built around lurking in the shadows and destabilising governments and civilisations through mind control and subterfuge before they make their strike?

Based on their tactics, their bluster and the fact that we have seen plenty of reapers get taken down by conventional weapons along with not-so-conventional but primitive weapons - we can say with a degree of certainty that they are not better in every aspect.

Their war against the Protheans took centuries. Javik was born during the battle and Reapers were being destroyed by the Protheans during that war. And that was when the Reapers had all the aces.

They had a perfect strategy, but Shepard forced them into an open confrontation.

The only reason to think there was no way to win the war was because Hackett says so - but every Reaper win in the game has been through writer fiat. Actions and weapons that don't work on them in one scene do in another and vice versa. Frankly, the only reason they can't be beaten in a conventional war isn't because of anything outlined in the setting - just that the writers decided that the Reapers shouldn't be able to be beaten because if they could be, then the whole "final choice" tone they wanted to go for wouldn't have worked. Unfortunately for them it doesn't work anyway because in order to have a rocking action sci-fi game... they had to show Reapers being beaten.

The fact of the matter is - the Reapers are able to be beaten. The writers just copped out in favour of a macguffin and a sloppy ending once they realised that they had written themselves into a situation they couldn't write themselves out of. (Although I have been able to come up with over a dozen ways that they could have gotten out of that mess in the first place as have a lot of other people on these and other forums.)

[Tony208]

But beating the impossible is what Shepard DOES, in ME1 and ME2.

Coming out of a suicide mission with no deaths? Cmon that's doing the impossible.

So why do we have to accept defeat in ME3?

Modifié par Tony208, 03 avril 2012 - 02:11 .

[Joccaren]

Baring the fact that this has never happened before, and we are actually the first Galaxy to stand 100% united against the Reapers not caught by surprise. Lets assume you are correct though, other cycles have done this before.
I bring before you the last thing the Reapers need: Attrition. Every cycle that did the same thing we have done would have wiped out a number of Reapers. Not just one or two, but a fair few. As such, the Reaper numbers are nowhere near the 2000 you theorise, but actually far less, as little as 1000 spread around the galaxy. At Earth, there may be something in the order of 300 Reapers - the largest fleet the sent anywhere in our cycle. Now count up our ships against that. Human, Salarian, Turian, Geth, Quarian (Notice how all end in 'an' [except Geth, but that is countermanded by Krogan]. WTF). I'd estimate in the order of 10,000 ships. At a 4-1 ratio, we absolutely kick Reaper ass. At a 10-1 Ratio, we still kick Reaper ass. It would require a 30-1 ratio for us to be on even footing, and then due to the significant amount of firepower lost by one Reaper death against minor firepower lost from 1 Sword death, we would still win.
The Reapers are outgunned in this scenario. There is honestly no way we can't defeat them conventionally.

[ZLurps]

Sepharih wrote...

ZLurps wrote...

Sepharih wrote...

ZLurps wrote...

Sepharih wrote...

 I do not care how advanced the reapers are, or what the tecnical readouts of the galactic alliance ships are.  I do not care what lore can be cited to explain how it's impossible for us to defeat them conventionally...because new lore can be established and/or old lore hand waved away at any moment the writer wants to.
All I care about is what the story calls for.

..snip...

This approach resulted the endings which make no damn sense. We get to know form ME artbook and FinalHours that final confrontation with TIM was supposed to happen in Cerberus base. Hudson and Walters decided to change it to happen in Citadel because it felt more dramatic. Same goes for exploding citadel over London, story demanded it, so let's do it. Only that those pieces fall to Earth...

The reason the ending sucks is because of the Catalyst and everything around him.  TIM being in the citadel and the citadel being at earth above london are minor plot contrivances for the sake of drama.  On their own, they are minor nitpicks at best.

Falling pieces causing helluva destruction on Earth, minor nitpick?

The destruction of the Citadel and any/all damage it causes has nothing to do with having it as part of the dramatic backdrop on earth...it has to do with the stupidity of the catalyst forcing it and the relay's destruction.

ZLurps wrote... 
Not mentioning the whole moving Citadel that causes following issue:
If Reapers were went to Citadel first and shut down the relays, and in general used the strategy they have used to this cycle, they were won. Or to put it other way around, Reapers only lost because of bad writing.

No wonder we get experiments like RGB ending, if almost, almost all kind of bs is acceptable.

A plothole like the sudden inability of the reaper's to shut down the relay network is only a plothole because an explination is not given or established (or maybe not even thought up), because it's more important to see that fleet in all it's glory jump into the sol system in full force.
The RGB ending is a result of completely ignoring the entire themes of the series.

You can argue that both are a result of bad/poor writing, but one is a nitpicky plothole that can be handwaved for drama's sake and could be solved with five minutes of dialogue, and the other is a complete betrayal of the series.

For drama's sake... You really can't see that we get into this mess because producers and lead writer started to pull stuff for drama's sake. It were been perfectly possible to have consistent story and Shepard to have the key winning over Reapers without nerfing the Reapers or using Star child. All with allready established lore.

I can understand why there are people who liked to have space battle victory, for myself it weren't worked with given settings. Victory in space were been like writers telling me: "Uups. sorry we wrote ourselves in the corner, but you win anyway because we simply want you to win." All the build up from previous games were been for nothing. If you were been okay with that, fine, for me, I don't see it much better than what we got.

Every time you nerf your enemy, you also nerf the hero of the story. For example in ME3. If BioWare were made conventional victory possible people would be asking. "Wait, where was Shepard needed really?".

Again, we could had easily have it like in ME1 which world and story was consistent, yet the story was dramatic and eding delivered. What comes to ME3, everything to have consistent world, story and satisfying ending without trivialising your enemy and your hero was in lore established in previous products.

[Billabong2011]

I don't understand...your argument oscillates between being reasons as to why they are superior and we are inferior and vice versa. For example;

You say the Reapers are advanced at least 50,000 years ahead of us, and yet your analysis of humans and our exponential technological development proves that as being reason for them to 'exterminate organics because they develop too quickly' and these ideas seem...... directly contradictory, if I'm being honest.

Modifié par Billabong2011, 03 avril 2012 - 08:52 .

[Hy0ga]

It's no easy task. No doubt. But it's not impossible!

The Turians pulled off the Palaven's Miracle! Unconventional strategy with conventional weapons and they kicked the Reapers out.

We killed one with a TRASHER MAW, for crying out loud. It can be done.

I think someone else suggested here; we could pulled an Arrival move here; blow a mass relay with the Armarda inside the System.

Of course we could not beat then in a all-out assault, but the moment you see one Reaper blowing up and dying for good you realize; they can be defeated.

Modifié par Hy0ga, 03 avril 2012 - 09:03 .

[Zolt51]

Thornne wrote...

Extremely unlikely? Sure. Impossible? No.

We've seen Reapers destroyed several times. There was nothing special about killing them. It is difficult, but not impossible.

We've seen 3 reapers destroyed. 
- Sovereign: Took a large portion of the turian and human fleets to destroy him, plus some Asari for good measures. And he wasn't even actively fighting them: It was focused on activating the Citadel. And it still destroyed about 1/3rd of the assembled forces. They still haven't recovered 3 years later.
- Tuchanka reaper: OK, gotta respect that Tresher maw. Too bad we can't send it to fight in space.
- Rannoch reaper: Took the whole Quarian fleet in concentrated fire for several minutes, while it was busy standing still and trying to hit that silly little man with a laser. Also they had to have Shepard aim for them or else they were barely even scratching it. That was just 1 "sitting duck" reaper with no support forces.

At EMS 7000 you've assembled every scrap of fighting force the galaxy has left. But they're far from optimal capacity. The Turian, Asari and Human fleet have all been battered while defending their homeworlds. They have, optimistically, maybe half their original numbers. Same goes for the Quarian and the Geth, both sides took heavy losses. With that you could *maybe* take on a dozen reapers. On a very good day.

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

Okay here's our tactic. Remember on earth how the reapers went after the nuclear silos pretty quickly? They're vulnerable. But there's an intergalactic convention against using nukes. However the reapers aren't signatories on this, so f*** 'em. Arm the fighters with guided rockets w/ 38 KT warheads. Okay, so there's a bit of radiation. They'll kill reapers. And unfortunately it'll probably be a one way trip for the pilots, but even without this it was a one way trip anyway. You guys have to think like Krogan. But no. No nukes. We gotta play nice. You can't tell me that even a proximity blast wouldn't take out a reaper, especially if you have enough of them. Thanix cannons are nice and powerful and all that but the radiation raises havoc with the shields.

Then you know how fast the geth can crank out ships. They don't need to sleep or eat. They can crank out "glass cannons". The reapers can't replace their losses. Of course you realize we'd have to give them a section of the galaxy and a seat on the council afterward.

I think nukes could handle the reaper capital ships.

[Jadebaby]

IntoTheDarkness wrote...

6. conclusion.

I wrote all these to explain that reapers are most likely much more advanced than we are. This may not make them invincible, but defeating them conventionally is just ridiculs because that kind of challenges have failed in the past cycles over and over again.

2,000 cycles in the past. the reapers won all of them.

You could just say this and save everyone a lot of time.

At full strength I do agree, they aren't defeatable. But if their shields/barriers can be taken down, I believe they're defeatable. Remember Sovereign only ever got owned because it put itself in Saren's cybernetic parts.. So when that got killed it overloaded Sovereigns shields and it got aced. Apply that concept to all Reapers, they're defeatable conventionally.

[Zolt51]

sH0tgUn jUliA wrote...

Okay here's our tactic. Remember on earth how the reapers went after the nuclear silos pretty quickly? They're vulnerable. But there's an intergalactic convention against using nukes. However the reapers aren't signatories on this, so f*** 'em. Arm the fighters with guided rockets w/ 38 KT warheads. Okay, so there's a bit of radiation. They'll kill reapers. And unfortunately it'll probably be a one way trip for the pilots, but even without this it was a one way trip anyway. You guys have to think like Krogan. But no. No nukes. We gotta play nice. You can't tell me that even a proximity blast wouldn't take out a reaper, especially if you have enough of them. Thanix cannons are nice and powerful and all that but the radiation raises havoc with the shields.

Then you know how fast the geth can crank out ships. They don't need to sleep or eat. They can crank out "glass cannons". The reapers can't replace their losses. Of course you realize we'd have to give them a section of the galaxy and a seat on the council afterward.

I think nukes could handle the reaper capital ships.

Actually you don't need nukes. You've got FTL drives. 1 normandy size ship hitting at 10x light speed will produce more energy than all the uranium on earth fissioning. And you can't even dodge it since by definition you can't *see* something that's coming at you faster than light.

[Hy0ga]

sH0tgUn jUliA wrote...

Okay here's our tactic. Remember on earth how the reapers went after the nuclear silos pretty quickly? They're vulnerable. But there's an intergalactic convention against using nukes. However the reapers aren't signatories on this, so f*** 'em. Arm the fighters with guided rockets w/ 38 KT warheads. Okay, so there's a bit of radiation. They'll kill reapers. And unfortunately it'll probably be a one way trip for the pilots, but even without this it was a one way trip anyway. You guys have to think like Krogan. But no. No nukes. We gotta play nice. You can't tell me that even a proximity blast wouldn't take out a reaper, especially if you have enough of them. Thanix cannons are nice and powerful and all that but the radiation raises havoc with the shields.

Then you know how fast the geth can crank out ships. They don't need to sleep or eat. They can crank out "glass cannons". The reapers can't replace their losses. Of course you realize we'd have to give them a section of the galaxy and a seat on the council afterward.

I think nukes could handle the reaper capital ships.

Amen! The Turians pulled off something like that in Palaven (it's in the Codex). Nuke the sh*t out of the Reapers. If we take the fight to a conventional space battle, your fleet vs my fleet, yeah...we are f****d. 

[xiaoassassin]

There are a bunch of plausible ways to easily end the Reaper threat, it just wouldn't be very interesting. Though they could have definitely done alot better than the retarded ending we got.

[D.I.Y_Death]

I believe the ONLY thing stopping organics from winning vs Reapers via this cycle with conventional warfare is some of the key players weren't playing ball fast enough.

The Quarians were STUPID enough to attack the Geth. Look at the mess that turned into.
The Asari withheld information and crutial forces in the beginning when it would have helped.
For God's sake you have to cure or pretend to cure the Krogan just to stall the reapers on Palivian (sp?).

Modifié par D.I.Y_Death, 03 avril 2012 - 09:30 .

[Aimi]

Athro wrote...

Well none of this is known for certain. That's kind of the thing. The Reapers hide behind legend and misdirection. If they are so outright superior in a straight up fight, why then are all their tactics built around lurking in the shadows and destabilising governments and civilisations through mind control and subterfuge before they make their strike?

Based on their tactics, their bluster and the fact that we have seen plenty of reapers get taken down by conventional weapons along with not-so-conventional but primitive weapons - we can say with a degree of certainty that they are not better in every aspect.

You're using the wrong metric to judge Reaper success. Time efficiency is irrelevant. There is no advantage that accrues to the Reapers from a rapid victory; time is, in fact, one of the resources they possess in infinite amounts. They can spend as much time as they want to do anything they want with no ill effects on their ability to win. Their chief concern is Reaper efficiency, minimizing relevant casualties. This does not even mean "suffering zero casualties"; clearly, individual Reapers can be and have been destroyed, albeit at significant cost. Since Reapers replenish their numbers by some amount each cycle - almost certainly greater than one per cycle if necessary, considering some millions of humans would be required to complete the Collectors' Human-Reaper, while there are several billion humans in the galaxy - they can afford to send individual Reaper destroyers off on high-payoff, medium-risk missions like assisting the geth against the quarians in the Tikkun system or preventing a krogan-turian alliance by meddling in the Aralakh system. They can even afford to lose a few dreadnoughts here and there, as is implied - but not openly stated - to have happened during the much-touted Miracle on Palaven.

There is no doubt in my mind that they can win any conventional space naval confrontation with the forces of the galaxy, based on a sheer numbers game: they possess at least 400 extremely high-quality dreadnoughts, and probably significantly more, in addition to all of their destroyers, while Citadel forces plus the geth and quarians possess 120 dreadnoughts of lower quality than those of the Reapers at the outset of the Reaper War, and many of these dreadnoughts are destroyed in the first few engagements between Reaper forces and those of organic galactic civilization. This isn't Cortes against the Aztecs, it's the Germans against the Hereros and Namaquas, a numerically superior and vastly technologically dominant force annihilating a much smaller and less technologically capable force.

We have not seen "plenty of Reapers" taken down. We have seen one Reaper destroyer neutralized - not necessarily destroyed - by Kalros on Tuchanka. We have seen one Reaper destroyer killed by the sustained fire of the largest fleet in the galaxy, the Migrant Fleet, on Rannoch. We have seen one Reaper destroyer killed by a lucky Thanix missile shot, combined with sustained and heavy ground fire, on Earth. We have also seen several 'lesser' Reapers, such as the Hades Cannons, killed by Cain fire or other expedients. The Codex states that Reaper destroyers and processing ships were destroyed by the suicide attacks during the Miracle at Palaven. In addition, there are suggestive hints that Reaper dreadnoughts were destroyed or otherwise neutralized, most notably from footage over Earth during Sword's initial attack (one Reaper dreadnought is visibly heavily damaged, although it is able to fire back and is never shown being destroyed) and from the Codex's description of the second engagement between turian forces and the Reapers during the first Palaven campaign, after the destruction of the turians' two carriers in the initial stages of the fight.

Every casualty that we have seen the Reapers take in the games a) barely adds up to a scratch on the paint, much less a dent in their numbers, and is purchased at the cost of exorbitantly high amounts of allied forces. This is consistent with the lore and with previous games: as far back as the first game, it took a large chunk of the Citadel fleets, suffering significant casualties, to destroy a single Reaper dreadnought - a dreadnought that was a sitting duck on the Citadel, and a sitting duck because its shields were severely damaged by Shepard's defeat of the Saren-avatar. Reapers can be destroyed, yes, and their destruction is consistent with a sense of accomplishment in the game, but that sense of accomplishment is also invariably tempered by the casualties suffered to purchase such a victory and the immensity and impossibility of the task remaining.

I would have thought that it was a fairly successful method of getting the point across while still rewarding gamers with good feelings after a tactical victory - we can win individual battles against isolated Reapers, but we'll never win the war without the Crucible - but then again, I have a background in military history and an elementary understanding of the game's lore.

Athro wrote...

Their war against the Protheans took centuries. Javik was born during the battle and Reapers were being destroyed by the Protheans during that war. And that was when the Reapers had all the aces.

Gonna have to slap a big "citation needed" on that, chief. There is no recorded instance of a Reaper being destroyed by the organics of any cycle before the current one, except for the Reaper dreadnought destroyed twenty-odd million years ago in the atmosphere of Mnemosyne (and therefore not by the Protheans). There is no evidence that the Protheans ever managed to destroy a Reaper, no allegations by Javik of any Prothean tactical victories over the Reapers, and a good deal of circumstantial evidence that the Protheans were too weak to even try - the statement that there was "no final battle", the description of the empire as "smashed into pieces", the successful execution by the Reapers of their plan to behead the government of galactic civilization at a stroke. Javik's story is one of failure and destruction, of lives spent profligately in a vain effort to buy time for those left to do something, anything - but they never managed to even do that.

Modifié par daqs, 03 avril 2012 - 09:30 .

[Joccaren]

Zolt51 wrote...

Actually you don't need nukes. You've got FTL drives. 1 normandy size ship hitting at 10x light speed will produce more energy than all the uranium on earth fissioning. And you can't even dodge it since by definition you can't *see* something that's coming at you faster than light.

It is explained in the Codex that this is not possible.
It is hinted at that the Reapers designed the first FTL drives, and in all FTL drives regardless is a safety measure. If anything is detected ahead of the drive - which can somehow detect things at FTL too - of a significant size and Mass [Aka a Reaper] - then the drive shuts itself down. It is impossible to ram the Reapers at FTL, it is explained in the 'Reaper Tactics' Codex entry in ME3, unlocked after Rannoch I believe.

[Baryonic-Member]

I stopped reading when you claimed 2000*50000=10^9

[Singu]

My take on the entire reaper technology base is that they never had the ability to invent, adapt or evolve on their own. They absorb cycles, and fit their knowledge to their own. They also have a criteria for when they intervene. It's either every 50.000 year - or whenever their picket ship, in our cycle Sovereign, deem that synthetic like the Geths have been let loose on the galaxy and an intervention in the form of a reaping is ordered regardless if it's been 50.000 years since the last. So, there has been at least 20.000 cycles of harvesting from what we know, maybe a lot more. Because evolution is not predictable and linear as we know from experience and from the game.

So, Reapers are advanced, but not more than just over the horizon advanced for any species that just evolved sentient machines. We're beyond that in our cycle. And I think we honestly stand a chance to beat the reapers conventionally by Biowares own lore and ingame events.

Allied forces are holding their ground and pushing the reapers back all over the galaxy IS a scenario if you get your readiness high enough. The journal says that the reapers are to a certain degree a bit daft and can be outmanouvered with conventional weapons but with unorthodox strategies - like the victory at Palaven.

And in the end, where does it say how many reaper dreadnought's there are? Sure, we have only got a hundred dreadnoughts at the max, but certainly we have thousands of frigates and cruisers. And the reapers have no medium sized ships, only those small Oculi we see.

I think the game makes the storytelling fallacy of making both a convincing argument that conventional victory is possible, and that we need a miracle like the Crucible. Or, it's no fallacy, but another way to enable us to do it in multiple ways in the end( oh, if only it was so).

Modifié par Singu, 03 avril 2012 - 09:48 .

[Elyiia]

We know the various species use antimatter for fuel and use it for weapons on a station above a planet which I can't remember the name of right now.

It takes approximately 110g of antimatter to provide the same firepower of four dreadnoughts over 30 seconds.

Outfit all ships with antimatter ammunition.
Barrage the Reaper fleets.
????
Profit.

[Joccaren]

Baryonic-Member wrote...

I stopped reading when you claimed 2000*50000=10^9

Yeah. Miscalculation there. 20,000 * 50,000 is correct, so 20,000 cycles.

[ZLurps]

Joccaren wrote...

Zolt51 wrote...

Actually you don't need nukes. You've got FTL drives. 1 normandy size ship hitting at 10x light speed will produce more energy than all the uranium on earth fissioning. And you can't even dodge it since by definition you can't *see* something that's coming at you faster than light.

It is explained in the Codex that this is not possible.
It is hinted at that the Reapers designed the first FTL drives, and in all FTL drives regardless is a safety measure. If anything is detected ahead of the drive - which can somehow detect things at FTL too - of a significant size and Mass [Aka a Reaper] - then the drive shuts itself down. It is impossible to ram the Reapers at FTL, it is explained in the 'Reaper Tactics' Codex entry in ME3, unlocked after Rannoch I believe.

It wouldn't work even without fail safe. Mass effect engines idea is accelerating ships by reducing their mass. Hitting something with zero mass isn't going to do anything.

[Sepharih]

ZLurps wrote...
For drama's sake... You really can't see that we get into this mess because producers and lead writer started to pull stuff for drama's sake.

No, I don't see that because pulling stuff for drama's sake isn't the problem.  It's when you pull something out that contradicts the core themes of your entire story that it becomes a problem.

ZLurps wrote... 
It were been perfectly possible to have consistent story and Shepard to have the key winning over Reapers without nerfing the Reapers or using Star child. All with allready established lore.

I can understand why there are people who liked to have space battle victory, for myself it weren't worked with given settings. Victory in space were been like writers telling me: "Uups. sorry we wrote ourselves in the corner, but you win anyway because we simply want you to win." All the build up from previous games were been for nothing. If you were been okay with that, fine, for me, I don't see it much better than what we got.

Every time you nerf your enemy, you also nerf the hero of the story. For example in ME3. If BioWare were made conventional victory possible people would be asking. "Wait, where was Shepard needed really?".

Again, we could had easily have it like in ME1 which world and story was consistent, yet the story was dramatic and eding delivered. What comes to ME3, everything to have consistent world, story and satisfying ending without trivialising your enemy and your hero was in lore established in previous products.

Shepard is necessary to the story in a version with a conventional victory because he and the player are the ones responsible for uniting the galaxy and this fleet togehter.  A conventional victory from a storytelling persepective is litterally Shepard witnessing an army and galaxy of his own making achieve the impossible and would be the culmination of everything he had worked towards for the totality of all 3 games.  That to me sounds beautifully cathartic.

Modifié par Sepharih, 03 avril 2012 - 05:07 .

[ZLurps]

Sepharih wrote...

ZLurps wrote...
For drama's sake... You really can't see that we get into this mess because producers and lead writer started to pull stuff for drama's sake.

No, I don't see that because pulling stuff for drama's sake isn't the problem.  It's when you pull something out that contradicts the core themes of your entire story that it becomes a problem.

We are running in circles here. I agree to disagree.

Sepharih wrote...

ZLurps wrote... 
It were been perfectly possible to have consistent story and Shepard to have the key winning over Reapers without nerfing the Reapers or using Star child. All with allready established lore.

I can understand why there are people who liked to have space battle victory, for myself it weren't worked with given settings. Victory in space were been like writers telling me: "Uups. sorry we wrote ourselves in the corner, but you win anyway because we simply want you to win." All the build up from previous games were been for nothing. If you were been okay with that, fine, for me, I don't see it much better than what we got.

Every time you nerf your enemy, you also nerf the hero of the story. For example in ME3. If BioWare were made conventional victory possible people would be asking. "Wait, where was Shepard needed really?".

Again, we could had easily have it like in ME1 which world and story was consistent, yet the story was dramatic and eding delivered. What comes to ME3, everything to have consistent world, story and satisfying ending without trivialising your enemy and your hero was in lore established in previous products.

Shepard is necessary to the story in a version with a conventional victory because he and the player are the ones responsible for uniting the galaxy and this fleet togehter.  A conventional victory from a storytelling persepective is litterally Shepard witnessing an army and galaxy of his own making achieve the impossible and would be the culmination of everything he had worked towards for the totality of all 3 games.  That to me sounds beautifully cathartic.

Yes, he is responsible for that, I expected that being very important part of Shepard's role in ME3. However, being errand boy for diplomats who can't get their crap toghether is hardly what I concider as climatic ending. Those mission Shepard did were very important, they were engaging adventures, but what comes to end game Shepard, squad and Normandy were built for something far more daring and unique.

Modifié par ZLurps, 03 avril 2012 - 06:47 .

[moater boat]

At the end of ME2 it would not have been impossible, however with the way ME3 is written it would be impossible. I think a lot of the people who say that a conventional victory should have been possible are saying that ME3 could have been written without the Dues Ex Machina of the crucible and still maintained the continuity of ME1 and ME2.  It wasn't until the horrible writting of ME3 that a conventional victory was ruled out.

In ME1 it was made very clear that the sneak attack on the citadel was the greatest strategic advantage the reapers had. This was foiled by the prothean scientists who reprogrammed the keepers. Now here is the crux of the issue. Why would the reapers use that tactic if it was completely unnecessary? Why would they rely on the keepers, a plan with obvious flaws, when they could just FTL for 3 years, swarm the galaxy, and win anyway? The only logical explanation for them using this convulted strategy is because they NEED to in order to insure victory. There is no indication in ME1 or ME2 that the reapers are simply invincible, quite the opposite in fact. Had ME3 been written from the beginning based on a conventional victory ending, no one would complaining it was unrealistic.

[Laurencio]

I've killed a couple of reapers with my fairly limited squad and a small under-equipped fleet. You're telling me I can't take on a dozen reapers in each system with the might of the Turian and Asari fleet?