146 réponses à ce sujet

[ardias89]

Well i didnt think i would ever be told after what Sovereign told us in ME1. However it was like they tried to hint at it through the entire series (not meaning that i think the ending was justified).

[Reorte]

Not particularly. I was pretty convinced that whatever their motivation was it was seriously flawed so I wasn't too bothered unless it turned out to be something really clever. It wasn't.

[Ziggeh]

I thought it was the central question. "Stop them reaping" was the guiding motivation for three games and the immediate corollary to that is why the heck they were at it in the first place.

"Beyond comprehension" is basically foreshadowing. This isn't some complex psychodrama befitting of an unknowable ancient fiend. It's not even the kind of deep sci fi that would have been aided by a vague and uncertain ending. Mass Effect was an action science fiction epic. It had all the subtlety of a housebrick. And that was fine, it made for an excellent game narrative, with heavy, broad strokes and punchy (often literally) details.

So yes, I did care. For such a heavy handed plot to have raised questions, especially within the main thrust of it's plot, without the intent of answering would have been clumsy, wierd and deeply unsatisfying.

[elitesalt]

Carlthestrange wrote...

Reapers gonna Reap.

Seemed simple enough to me.

you stole my comment!

*strangles*

[tobiasks]

No actually not, I liked the mystery and us not being able to comprehend and all that, even though it might seem like a lazy way to do it, I liked it.

[sergio71785]

I wanted to know. But after that ending, I wish I never found out.

[CapnManx]

Everyone has reasons for what they do; but you can bet that someone you are trying to kill will consider your reasons to be pretty irrelevant. No, I didn't really care why the Reapers were doing their thing; wouldn't have changed anything, whatever they were.

[Ownedbacon]

It should have just been for basic means of survival. Reapers created more Reapers from organic material and they would "reproduce" by wiping out civilizations and increase their numbers. The cycle would be a means to maintain a resource to to harvest and since the development of organic races can be chaotic and unpredictable they would tempt these organics to use Reaper technology through the mass relays. They would bring order to this chaos by wiping them out before they became a threat. For the salvation through destruction motto, they could just see themselves as saving these races by making them become Reapers which they see as the pinnacle of evolution and all powerful beings.

I would have preferred it stay a mystery but since they went into how Reapers were created I felt this fit better than the Catalyst plot.

Modifié par Ownedbacon, 11 avril 2012 - 08:44 .

[Jassu1979]

[Echo_V]

I never really thought about the reason and I didn't feel the need to.
Sovereigns speech is still in my mind:
        
            "You exist because we allow it, and you will end because we demand it."

I never questioned their motive, so no, I did not care why the reapers reaped.
They feel less dangerous after the reveal of the space kid...

[Midwat]

Ziggeh wrote...

I thought it was the central question. "Stop them reaping" was the guiding motivation for three games and the immediate corollary to that is why the heck they were at it in the first place.

"Beyond comprehension" is basically foreshadowing. This isn't some complex psychodrama befitting of an unknowable ancient fiend. It's not even the kind of deep sci fi that would have been aided by a vague and uncertain ending. Mass Effect was an action science fiction epic. It had all the subtlety of a housebrick. And that was fine, it made for an excellent game narrative, with heavy, broad strokes and punchy (often literally) details.

So yes, I did care. For such a heavy handed plot to have raised questions, especially within the main thrust of it's plot, without the intent of answering would have been clumsy, wierd and deeply unsatisfying.

Going to disagree here.

The Reapers seem to be inspired by Lovecraftian themes - that is, an unknowable, incomprehensible alienness. A good deal of the horror the Reapers inspire is because they do gruesome things for reasons we literally cannot understand.

So, actually giving them a comprehensible reason for doing what they do robs them of much of their power and menace. They aren't completely alien to us after all, and things that are understandable are far less scary.

To serve as antagonists, the Reapers didn't really need a spelled-out motivation, just a goal.

[Theta Thetis]

i1.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/268/700/f95.jpg

This explains it perfectly.

[sirjimmus86]

This was the one thing that I think they actually tried to tell us (i made synthetics to kill organics so they dont get killed by synthetics etc.) that I was happy not to know, the reapers exist because they exist, we existed because they allowed it and we were supposed to end because they demanded it it BUT that last bit is where Shep came in

[goose2989]

Spectre-00N7 wrote...

If organic cannot comprehend their logic, why did they explain it to us then make us choose the next course of action?

Exactly. If their logic is "beyond [our] comprehension," why can the Catalyst explain it in about 2 minutes? I didn't actually want to know what made the Reapers tick. They were a simple villain; they didn't need to have any complex motivations. Instead, they turn out to be tools for the Catalyst, and it completely ruins the Reapers as villains

[Lookout1390]

Yes

Until I found out about the Star-Child

Then I wished I never found it.

[Nauks]

Revealing their reason for reaping at all is one thing.

Chosing such a lame, over used theme on the other hand, unforgivable.
There's still hope though, the fat lady hasn't sung quite yet.

[Theta Thetis]

I'd rather have an army of mecha-Cthulu wiping out and mindraping everything in the galaxy over a bunch of metallic cuttlefish that a glowing kid plays with.

[nopantsisabela]

I thought they were a more compelling and frightening foe when they were so far above us that we couldn't quite understand their motivations. They used to be creepily alien and their victory felt almost inevitable. I used to think their motivation was something along the lines of them having some sickeningly logical desire to counteract the increasing entropy/chaos that individual sentient species caused, and to provide themselves with a means for "reproduction." They allowed a cycle to evolve, reach a certain level of intelligence, and then harvested that evolutionary progress for the good of all. Perhaps they did this thinking they were sparing us all from self-annihilation? Maybe they considered that outcome to be an unacceptable loss of evolutionary progress? 

The bottom line is that their motivation was some sort of perverse outcome of groupthink logic. They weren't right or wrong... just horrifying.

I thought this was way more frightening than Bioware's final explanation.

Modifié par nopantsisabela, 11 avril 2012 - 08:54 .

[EugeneBi]

No. I also do not care what motives Hitler had.

[Hogge87]

Yes, it's been a mystery throughout the entire trilogy, I was hoping ME3 would give some answers.

And of course, finally getting to know how old they really are, who created them would be a big bonus.

[arnoldfriend]

I didn't really care about the Reapers. They hardly had a voice anyway. I always considered them a backdrop for much more interesting stories in the mass effect universe. I would have been fine if Bioware just ripped off the motivation of the Borg from Star Trek.

[eddieoctane]

Does anyone care why Cthulhu does his Cthulhu thing? Nope. Why should Mecha-Cthulhu be any different? Seemingly ageless space squids were alien enough for H. P. Lovecraft to consider them unknowable. Make them part robot only makes them further from anything we could understand. It should have been left that way.

[dorktainian]

it was for our protection you know!!!!

[The Charnel Expanse]

I wanted to know how they came to exist, because I thought knowing this would be an advantage against them. Didn't care one way or the other why they did the whole genocide thing.

[KingNothing125]

If that internal document (read: skribbled notepad) showed that they were aiming for "lots of speculation from everyone", what better topic to endlessly speculate over than the Reapers motivation? Do they do it to reproduce? Are they saving us from Dark Energy or whatever? Are they just lovecraftian ancient evil space lobsters?

That would have been a much better topic for speculation than:

"where was Joker going?"
"how did all my friends get on the Normandy when they were in London?"
"why did the Catalyst take the form of the kid that died in Vancouver?"
"will everyone starve to death?"
"how will galactic civilization feasibly continue without the relays?"
"why did the Catalyst need Sovereign and Saren at all?"

Leave out the Spacebrat, and you get totally coherent, enjoyable debate about the Reapers origins and motivations and other topics of interest. Put in the Spacebrat and his 14 lines of exposition and you get a trainwreck of dumb logic and plotholes. We could have done without that, methinks.