146 réponses à ce sujet

[Ziggeh]

Midwat wrote...
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.

While the Reapers themselves were certainly Lovecraftian, do you think the rest of the story could be described as such? It's a very positive, even hopeful story about unity and agency and I'm not sure sentinels of permenant dispair translate as well to such a set of themes.

And while yes, shattering the mystery would have robbed them of the power that entailed, their purpose should have given them different power. Look at the Borg. Their alien implacability is no less terrifying for understanding their grim purpose (though they were subject to some of the most powerful vilain decay in television history, but thats unrelated). Their monstrosity should have been altered, but need not have been lost.

[Serp86]

I don't really care why i care for where the hell did you guys come from , who made you . Its pretty obvious they are faulty AI's i don't need to understand their flawed logic i don't care i just wanna know how they came to be.

Modifié par Serp86, 11 avril 2012 - 09:05 .

[Gorwyn87]

zakaryzb wrote...

I thought the idea of "we cannot comprehend them" was really creepy and different. They were an evil that we could never understand but we knew wither way we needed to stop them for our survival. Their END was much more important than the WHY for me.

Exactly my thoughts.
Although I would've been fine with the "nations fusing together for the greater good" plot.

[TJX2045]

 I wanted to know, but in the end it wouldn't have mattered because I would've killed them anyways unless they actually were trying to save organic life from a horrific fate (similar to the original dark energy ending).

When the paradox came up I was like, "Ok...I see what you're saying thought it still doesn't make any sense, and I'mma let you finish, but I'm still gonna destroy you." *Kanye Shrug*

Modifié par TJX2045, 11 avril 2012 - 09:08 .

[Hudathan]

I was interested in finding out more because none of the villains in the series have been simply evil in the traditional sense. Even Sovereign was mysterious because his dialogue suggested more to the Reapers than a simply need for violence. 'Salvation through destruction' wasn't just interesting because it sounded like an eloquent threat, it was interesting precisely because it evoked our sense of curiosity regarding an antagonist who was more than meets the eye.

What made Mass Effect interesting as a story is the concept of conflicting ideologies. Every single antagonist has been revealed to have a higher purpose than to simply be bad guys. So after hearing about their mysterious purpose over the course of three games, I definitely expected a reveal at the end.

[Legbiter]

I liked the Reapers as inscrutable space cthulus.

[Midwat]

Ziggeh wrote...
While the Reapers themselves were certainly Lovecraftian, do you think the rest of the story could be described as such? It's a very positive, even hopeful story about unity and agency and I'm not sure sentinels of permenant dispair translate as well to such a set of themes.

And while yes, shattering the mystery would have robbed them of the power that entailed, their purpose should have given them different power. Look at the Borg. Their alien implacability is no less terrifying for understanding their grim purpose (though they were subject to some of the most powerful vilain decay in television history, but thats unrelated). Their monstrosity should have been altered, but need not have been lost.

It's not completely out of place for space operas (or other stories with similar tones) to have never-fully-explained bad guys.

The Sith in Star Wars are basically jerks "just because." The Joker is a murdering psychopath because he's a murdering psychopath. Those enemies have retained their power through countless creative works because they're mysterious.

The Borg (I think) were best when their motivations were completely obscure. They got worse as the writers tried to add to the Borg mythos (adding a individulistic queen, for example, changed them from a faceless, implacable enemy to... bees in space). 

[MizterBizkits]

It would have been cool if they made the reapers like Iago from Othello, give us plenty of reasons to speculate on, but never actually tell us their true motivation

[Quietness]

They were sh** inducing terrifying... than they got turned into Consuela.

[calvinocious]

The Reapers reap because they reap. It is not a thing we can comprehend. Maybe millions and millions of years ago their AI was developed by an organic race and they wiped out the organics, then realized that more organics would evolve to challenge them. Maybe they figured out the way to stop future organics from challenging them by railroading them with the mass relays, creating a false sense of galactic dominance that they could exploit to harvest the organics. That way, they achieve two goals at once: self-preservation and ever-increasing knowledge/power/intelligence/whatever.

I don't want to know the details, and I don't need to know the details. They're an evil blight on the galaxy and they need to be stopped. That's good enough for me.

[zakaryzb]

KingNothing125 wrote...

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.

Totaly agree.  I would have loved to have had that conversation with my friends after the obvious "how sweet was it to kick the **** out of Harbinger in the ending".  Perfect form of speculation.  What we got however... 

Edit: But seriously, why go through all three games (convo with reaper on rannoch in ME3) and continue to state that we will never understand them, only to get and UNBELIEVIBLY simplistic explanation.

Modifié par zakaryzb, 11 avril 2012 - 09:21 .

[MegaSovereign]

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?

Organics are naturally biased with their survival instincts. They would never give in to the demands of the Reapers no matter how accurate or right their logic is.

Modifié par MegaSovereign, 11 avril 2012 - 09:17 .

[TJX2045]

Quietness wrote...

They were sh** inducing terrifying... than they got turned into Consuela.

"I reap now?"

ROFLMAO

[SimplePlan2k8]

Nah I was happy with the Reapers being a race of sentient starships with a past that even they don't know. They simply reap because they are. Would have been better to keep it that way

[TJX2045]

SimplePlan2k8 wrote...

Nah I was happy with the Reapers being a race of sentient starships with a past that even they don't know. They simply reap because they are. Would have been better to keep it that way

I liked the idea of them being sentient because, like with Sovereign and Harbinger, you had no clue what some of them would do or what they were capable of.  For all we know, the Reapers could've been making Reapers for each and every single race alongside the human one.

And THAT is what freaked me out.  While I'm out here killing Collectors in ME2, there's another group of extinct races or thralls harvesting other races to make a Turian Reaper, Asari Reaper, Batarian Reaper, Krogan Reaper, Drell Reaper, etc...

Modifié par TJX2045, 11 avril 2012 - 09:21 .

[Dendio1]

Bob Walker wrote...

IMO, if the endings were satisfying, the Reapers could remain a mistery to be exploited in another game / series / media.

Agreed

[xefiroEA]

I'm not a big fan of "we cannot comprehend them" as an explanation, but we were hit with it at the very beginning and I accepted it. You can still make a good story out of it, and it avoids the pitfall of giving the villain a really stupid motivation that would be more effectively achieved differently.

They should have stuck to their guns with the inscrutable evil thing. Once you set the antagonist up that way, you can't back down. If they can be explained away in 14 lines, they weren't so alien after all, were they? Which just ruins everything that came before because now everyone who assumed they were inscrutable is painted as a fool.

[Dendio1]

M.Erik.Sal wrote...

Nope. Did not care, not important.

Anyone saying otherwise is wrong. Notice how throughout the entire Trilogy the question of "Why are the Reapers doing this?" is rarely asked? The primary question we and the characters ask is; "How will we defeat the reapers?" All our dialogue decisions generally hinge on what Shepard is willing to do to defeat the Reapers.

From a purely narrative view point the reason for the Cycle is so unimportant it's laughable. It was a bad answer to a question that wasn't actually being asked; the smart answer is to let the fandom come up with as many possible explanations as they want. If they wanted speculation it should have been around that.

The originally planned Dark Energy Endng is only marginally better than what we actually got because it commits the same mistake; it tries to humanize a force that has been consistently portrayed as beyond comprehension or at least much more advanced.

Agree with this as well.

They should have focused on this cycle and our characters, just like they did for 90 percent of the series. The problem was shifting focus from shepard and his crew to organic life in general. Some people would gladly hand the galaxy over to the reapers if they could get their blue babies and house on rannoch.

That shows how much bioware misunderstood the focus of the player. We wanted to kill the reapers and save our current civilizations. We dont give a damn about the cycle crap.

Modifié par Dendio1, 11 avril 2012 - 09:25 .

[Steve2911]

Yes, I cared. I cared about knowing why more than I cared about the resolution. I cared about giving the Reapers context other than 'the big bad', but I knew that the revelation had to wait until the very end, so that they could maintain their mystery and menace.

I was really worried that they'd leave the mystery unsolved, since Sovereign was so insistent that their motivations couldn't be comprehended by humans.

I really don't understand why so few people were intruigued about their motivations and origins.

[babies8mydingo]

I was perfectly happy with Sovereign's speech in ME1 (I love that speech - I have a fondness for cold robot voices!), that was all I really needed to know "You exist because we allow it, you will die because we demand it."

They were a great foe when they were powerful and mysterious - personally I would've prefered them kept that way (I also feel they shouldn't have "revealed" Tali), especially when you're a sci-fi fan it's not hard to fill in the blanks with some probable answers. It certainly doesn't help that what they did come up with destroyed the Reapers mystique and made them idiot puppets.

Modifié par babies8mydingo, 11 avril 2012 - 09:28 .

[RogueBot]

I didn't want to know because I knew Bioware couldn't live up to Sovereign's hype.

But I never guessed their attempt at explanation would fail so badly.

Modifié par RogueBot, 11 avril 2012 - 09:29 .

[Peranor]

There was many many things that I wanted more closure for or explained more in detail in the ending.
But im not so sure that the "why do the reapers reap" question was one of them.

To me they felt more creepy, scary and evil when the explanation was just "beyond your comprehension".

Sovereign has the most badass ~3 minutes of dialogue in the game in my opinion. Harbinger aint got sh*t on him =)

After his speach I knew all I nedded to know about the reapers. They are evil and needs to be destroyed no matter what!

Modifié par anorling, 11 avril 2012 - 09:34 .

[EndrinAmtrum]

 I always just assumed Reapers "reaped" to reproduce or feed.  I was satisfied with that answer.  The Reapers were more of the driving force of Shepard's actions, I didn't really care about their motives anymore than I would have cared about the motives of a flood.  They were portrayed as so powerful and inevitable that I looked at them as a natural disaster.  

[Ziggeh]

Midwat wrote...
It's not completely out of place for space operas (or other stories with similar tones) to have never-fully-explained bad guys.

The Sith in Star Wars are basically jerks "just because." The Joker is a murdering psychopath because he's a murdering psychopath. Those enemies have retained their power through countless creative works because they're mysterious.

The Borg (I think) were best when their motivations were completely obscure. They got worse as the writers tried to add to the Borg mythos (adding a individulistic queen, for example, changed them from a faceless, implacable enemy to... bees in space). 

Leaving aside the clear awesomeness of Space Bees, The Sith and Joker actually have a fairly complex motivation, though you probably need to read a little more into it than the original films/comics intend, in which I agree they're basically Black Hats. I think that's very fitting particularly of the kind of Saturday Matinee serial the Star Wars films were meant to emulate.

But ME was a far more active experience. The players response to the questions and morality was a major part of the way in which they function and engage. Everything in it's universe is created with this same purpose, and while I can see the argument for having a dark, imposing antagonist sit outside of this I feel it would be a touch incongruous.

I also feel that with the importance of the Cycle in the mythology, it needed to be rejected more than broken. It needed a heavy handed coming of age metaphor. Robbing them of the power of mystery should have been the victory.

[Midwat]

Steve2911 wrote...
I really don't understand why so few people were intruigued about their motivations and origins.

MANY people were intrigued about their motivations and origins. That's why they were so disappointed at the actual reveal.

Bioware wrote themselves into a corner on the Reapers. They had built up the mystery of the Reapers so much in the first two games that pretty much anything short of mind-blowing would disappoint.

That's why so many people wish the motivation had been left blank; whatever we mentally filled in would always be better than what we got.