149 réponses à ce sujet

[DRUNK_CANADIAN]

AlanC9 wrote...

Sure, the ending is sprung out of nowhere. However, note that the solution being pushed throughout ME3 is always to use an unimaginably advanced alien device whose powers and function aren't understood by anyone, even the Protheans. (Unless you figure TIM understood the device, which is conceivable)

Bioware did set up that something strange was going to happen if you ever got to use the device.

Ya the conventional argument doesn't work, especially based on how strong the Reapers were appearing to be. Bioware set it up such that only a deus ex machina would be the solution, I'm fine with that, although I thought they could have made the catalyst a little more like the reapers.

[Alerithon]

This is one of the highlights of the poor writing that went into ME3.

ME: The Reapers don't exist. Ooops, except they do, and here comes one now...

ME2: Assaulting the Collector base is a suicide mission...you won't be coming back from it. Ooops, except Shepherd manages to destroy/capture the Collector base and lives to tell about it.

ME3: The Reapers cannot be stopped by conventional means...

The Mass Effect series has been all about doing the impossible. Doing what characters in the game tell you OVER and OVER that you can't do...and then you prove them wrong. Except when it comes to ME3, when the writers decided that NOW would be a good time to remind everyone that in real life, the hero doesn't get to do the impossible. After setting up a series with a character that not only escapes the no win scenario, he literally cheats death, the writers thought that the proper ending to such a story would be to show that, hey, you know what, Shepherd is just a man after all, and he can't do the impossible.

Except he CAN, and we know he can because the writers showed us that he can, and created the expectation in us that he can.

[TheLostGenius]

Winning with missiles. Certainly the Reapers had more than WGD up their tentacle sleeves. (Weapon Of Galatic Destruction)

[Rolenka]

Thoughts_My_Aim wrote...

The Reapers simply aren't consistent. They have whatever abilities they are required to have, and whatever numbers they are required to have.

The question therefore should not be "can the Reapers be beaten conventionally" but "would a conventional victory over the reapers be a satisfying ending."

Haha, they're the Borg.

Anyway, story needs aside, I guess the reapers could theoretically be defeated with conventional weapons if the galaxy had several hundred times the fleets that it does.

[EHondaMashButton]

As someone pointed out earlier, the reapers are a comic book villain: They're exactly as menacing as the writers need them to be.

ME1 reapers seemed were vastly intelligent, powerful, superior without being recklessly overconfident, and only defeated because sovereign take one for the team as he tried to focus on activating the citadel.

ME2 reapers became pure evil, arrogant trolls

ME3 reapers became incompetent. Forgetting to shut down the relays, guard the relays, moving the conduit and the citadel to enemy territory, not stationing any forces inside the citadel, etc.

Now we throw in macguffins, deus ex machinas, we can suddenly have massive ships on planet surfaces, and nobody seems to be using the thanix cannons on either side

With this kind of consistency, anything is possible.  I just wish the crucible weakened them instead of being 1 hit ko

Modifié par EHondaMashButton, 16 avril 2012 - 06:49 .

[fealhach]

I hate to admit it, but it does seem like the odds of defeating the Reapers conventionally does seem insurmountable. However, if the fight was so one-sided, how did the galactic forces manage to deliver the Crucible undamaged to the Catalyst? Surely it would have been more efficient to destroy a large, slow-moving target surrounded by an inconsequential enemy fleet than preventing an elite insertion force from entering the Citidel from the surface.

I didn't like the idea of the Galactic Superweapon - it's like having the Death Star built by the Rebel Alliance - but it does seem to be the only way to defeat an eons-old impossible foe. Unless someone comes up with a cunning plan...

Modifié par fealhach, 16 avril 2012 - 06:51 .

[Nathan Redgrave]

Obi-Wan Old Ben Kenobi wrote...

You all have fair points but what about the Reapers that get decimated at the beginning of the battle to take back Earth, I figure that was proof we could have ignored the crucible entirely and still won.

The Reapers didn't get decimated during the battle to take back Earth. What happened there is a little thing called concentrated fire; rather than spreading their efforts out uniform across the enemy fleet, the people in charge of the allied forces directed their ships to gang up on various Reapers at the start of the fight. By that point in the game, anyone who's bothered to read the Codex entries about the Reaper War knows that it has been possible to kill Reapers during the fighting, with enough ships, firepower, and tactical finesse to cover the difference in raw power. The fleet would achieve nothing if it fought on a purely one-to-one basis, so instead it has multiple ships focus on one Reaper at a time, to at least ensure that Reaper numbers go down along with allied numbers.

The very fact that this tactic is required to even keep the battle from spiralling out of control speaks volumes toward how difficult a conventional victory might be. Every Reaper capital ship, on average, is worth three dreadnoughts. That's problematic.

[Nathan Redgrave]

EHondaMashButton wrote...

and nobody seems to be using the thanix cannons on either side

Er... the Reapers aren't using Thanix cannons because their main guns are already superior to them, being the original technology from which Thanix cannons were derived. And I'm pretty sure the Codex does mention allied forces using Thanix cannons at some point, although I grant that not all fleets may have had sufficient time to retrofit Thanix cannons onto enough ships for that to make as much difference as it could.

[Nathan Redgrave]

fealhach wrote...

I hate to admit it, but it does seem like the odds of defeating the Reapers conventionally does seem insurmountable. However, if the fight was so one-sided, how did the galactic forces manage to deliver the Crucible undamaged to the Catalyst? Surely it would have been more efficient to destroy a large, slow-moving target surrounded by an inconsequential enemy fleet than preventing an elite insertion force from entering the Citidel from the surface.

I didn't like the idea of the Galactic Superweapon - it's like having the Death Star built by the Rebel Alliance - but it does seem to be the only way to defeat an eons-old impossible foe. Unless someone comes up with a cunning plan...

This is part of the reason that the War Assets have an impact on what happens during the ending. The larger the guard around the Crucible as it approaches the Citadel, and the more scientific assets are given the Crucible project itself, the better the Crucible situation at the end of the game. Depending on your war asset status, you could be limited to just the one ending rather than two or three, and the "destroy" option might be rendered so unstable as to backfire and vaporize all of the forces fighting for Earth.

Unfortunately the endings don't exactly represent this aspect very well at all.

[Han Shot First]

Having the Reapers be destroyed by a superweapon could have worked, so long as it was something that was foreshadowed with little hints here and there throughout the series, and not an @ss pull in the last few minutes.
In that respect I don't think it was executed well in Mass Effect 3, but that doesn't mean that the writers should have scrapped the idea for a superweapon alltogether.

Anyway, I don't want to turn this into yet another thread bashing the endings. But having a superweapon as the means to defeating the Reapers is not necessarily a bad plot device, or even a deus ex machina. It just needs to be explained properly, work well within the story and be believable, and be properly foreshadowed in previous chapters so that when it is finally revealed how the superweapon works, the player should have a, "Oh yeah...now Haestrom makes sense" moment.

[Gibb_Shepard]

I was personally hoping that the Crucible would take down their shields and then our EMS determined how the battle played out. But no.

[UnstableMongoose]

You're going to have to deal with it. It's the only logical conclusion that can be reached.

[Clayless]

Anyone want to know how much Reapers there are?

Assuming each cycle produces a maximum of 1 Sovereign class and 3 destroyer class (this limit is arbitrarily placed), there may be upwards of 20,000 Sovereign class Reapers and 60,000 destroyers.

Of course, if each cycle produces more than one Sovereign, then that number could balloon even more. Basically there are enough Reapers to "darken the sky of every world".

We know the Reapers are at least 1 billion years old, and we know it takes tens of thousands (possibly hundreds of thousands, but was it really hundreds of thousands of humans that went missing during ME2? That seems a bit high) to make about half of a Sovereign class Reaper. So lets be generous and bump it up to 20 million to make a full Reaper, because hey why not. That means harvesting 11 billion Humans on Earth would make 550 Sovereign class Reapers.

Lets say each cycle only managed to harvest 1 billion species, that means each cycle would produce 50 Sovereign class Reapers, that would mean there's 50 billion Sovereign class Reapers.

We also know that the Destroyers "in astounding numbers, make up the bulk of the Reaper fleet" so lets just times them by 3. That's 150 billion Destroyers. That doesn't count all the Oculus, which I presume are made from the materials from the destroyed ships(?)

Now you can argue numbers all you want, but no matter how you try to downplay this you need to remember that even if they never managed to managed to make a Sovereign class Reaper every cycle they most definately managed to make a lot of Destroyers (they can use any race for them and they're smaller than Sovereign Reapers) and even if you change the numbers around, to fit what you think is the right amount to make a Sovereign class Reaper, the numbers are still increidbly high.

So no, conventional victory isn't possibe.

Modifié par Our_Last_Scene, 17 avril 2012 - 03:55 .

[Facialmatters]

Agreed, conventional victory isn't possible. Three solutions, possible without deus ex machinas...

1. Where are the lasorsz? Go straight through kinetic barriers, and ablative armour is only so useful against a massive lazor mounted on a cruiser or dreadnought. Only drawback is close range, but the final battle was a knifefight anyway.

2. Massed kamikaze. The Reapers might have faced this tactic before, but never from a united, coordinated galactic fleet that can engage the bulk of their forces simultaneously. Conversely, they may have never come across a spacefaring race willing to make this an official plan.

3. Nukes. Sure, in space there's no shockwave, but you are birthing a miniature sun with temperatures in the millions of degrees. Can Reapers fly into the sun without melting? If not, then they're liquified toast. Fire these 20th century badboys from a mass acclerator or in massed torpedos strikes and watch them save the galaxy.

Also: firing mass accelerators at Rannoch fails to cause an extinction event or even kill Shepard; somehow cruisers and the Normandy are now able to follow a Reaper down on a high grav world (ie. Earth); and the Reapers somehow forget about the Citadel's integral ability to shut down all the mass relays and thus doom everyone.
Plot Holes!

[Drone223]

The reason why I think they can't be beaten in a head on fight is that, there are too many unknown's to consider

-Have the Reaper's been in this situation before?
-How many Reaper's are there?
-Will they adapt to our tactic's?
-What are their other capabilities?

Also during the counter attack on Earth, there are still a lot of Reaper's outside of the Sol system so the combined fleet isn't attacking the entire Reaper fleet just a portion of it, so if the Reaper's need reinforcements they can just reassign Reaper's in other system's to help the Reaper's defend the Citadel, while the combined galaxy fleet has no reinforcements to fall back on it just no retreat for them. Even if they beat the Reaper fleet defending the Citadel in a head on fight that still leave's the other system's under Reaper control, the Reaper's will quickly regroup and destroy whats left of the fleet   

[Madmoe77]

What I find hilarious is that you gather the greatest minds in the galaxy and their resources then they all sit around an IKEA assembly manual scratching their heads yet no one suggested hey let's build a massive thanix canon! Or not one made the revelation of using a Mass Effect relay to hurl massive objects at the reapers. It is like suddenly intelligence was limited only to the classroom with no teachers; we're all students here folks-pull out your workbooks.

Enemies do not come with an instruction manual and neither should your combative solutions. 

Modifié par Madmoe77, 17 avril 2012 - 04:43 .

[Ahglock]

SalsaDMA wrote...

Which was basicly what they did, as far as I am aware.

I personally feel they could have made it quite plausible for a conventional victory (given the difference in the cycle compared to previous cycles of the galaxy having not only delayed the harvest, but also foiled the initial splintering and actually being aware of the enemies capabilities and tactical experiences as well as being able to communicate between and organize forces), and I think it would have been far more satisfying as well.

A couple poins as I agree with Salsa.

1.  Yeah the things that happen in ME3 where they try to prove that you can't defeat the reapers in a coventional fashion will in fact show that they can't be defeated in a conventional fashion.   So yeah hanks to ME3 it takes 3 capital ships to defeat a reaper, and capital ships are in short supply.  But this is kind of pointless since I don't think the primary argument is that ME3 is wrong when they tell you that.  It is more that here is no reason after the events of ME 1 and 2 that ME3 had to describe things in that way.  Don't get me wrong I see that there is also the argument that even how things are described in ME3 enough things are light on the details so that they still could have gone for a conventional means story line.  But I thinkk the point is more that given how loose things are in the universe they could have made the alliance fleets much bigger, or had the thanix cannons be in large supply and hit hard etc.  

2.  As sated the reapers could not warp into and shu down the mass relays.  Thing is this had more effects than fast transit for the good guys.
    2a.   The forces are more united than in previous cycles.
    2b.   Remember ME2 when you were flying between point A & point B without a relay, well used up fuel.  The reapers just flew from outside of the galaxy and had to use up a crap ton of fuel.  They coud have easily starte dup ME3 with the reapers greatly weakened and had them take heavy losses as they aquired resources to refule.  Which then could have been the conventional battle wait to long and you have the invincible super reapers, go to ealry and your forces ar enot strong enough to defeat the weakneed reapers, get it just right and you win.
   3.  Reaper numbers:  As many reapers as we saw at the end of ME2 it was still a fairly finite ammount and there is no reason why cictidel fleets could not have been bumped up over the years outside of them wanting to force a really bad ending onto people.  So yeah there were a bunch of reapers but we saw what 100 in that cutscene, and not all of them had to be giant sovereignh types.  A hundred is a lot when talking about reapers but every losss is a big deal to them. 
   4:  I had one honest, but it slipped away in mai tai dreams.  

[fealhach]

Regarding the capital ships, you'd have to consider that a larger number of cruisers, frigates and destroyers could combine their efforts to match that amount of firepower. Also, calculating the number of Reapers gained per cycle doesn't factor in losses the Reapers may have sustained from past resistance. Some of these extinct races may have been highly effective at destroying Reapers before finally succumbing to their onslaught.

Think they could have made the Rachni and the Reaper-tech Geth more of a big deal too.

I don't know much about this dark energy thing, but could that have been used as some kind of anti-Reaper plot device?

Modifié par fealhach, 17 avril 2012 - 06:51 .

[Alistair Theirin]

Tocquevillain wrote...

Alistair Theirin wrote...

I just wish they would stop using the word 'conventionally'.

Every time a character used it I could tell that someone didn't have access to a thesaurus.

Conventional is a word that is used to describe straight forward combat in the real world, it fits perfectly in Mass Effect. 

I know its definition, and I understand its relevance to the plot. I think you missed my point entirely.

But that doesn't mean they needed to use it any time someone mentioned how tough the reapers are.

Hacket: "We can't win this conventionally".

Liara: "We won't beat them conventionally".

Garrus: "You know we can't beat them conventionally".

Etc.

Modifié par Alistair Theirin, 17 avril 2012 - 07:02 .

[Tocquevillain]

Alerithon wrote...

ME3: The Reapers cannot be stopped by conventional means...

The Mass Effect series has been all about doing the impossible. Doing what characters in the game tell you OVER and OVER that you can't do...and then you prove them wrong. Except when it comes to ME3, when the writers decided that NOW would be a good time to remind everyone that in real life, the hero doesn't get to do the impossible.

It was always "the Reapers can't be stopped." Only in ME3 was it "by conventional means".

Stopping the Reapers by any means is the impossible, because it hasn't happened in tens of millions of years, and you want it done a specific way? I'll take the Crucible any day.

[Tocquevillain]

Madmoe77 wrote...

What I find hilarious is that you gather the greatest minds in the galaxy and their resources then they all sit around an IKEA assembly manual scratching their heads yet no one suggested hey let's build a massive thanix canon! Or not one made the revelation of using a Mass Effect relay to hurl massive objects at the reapers. It is like suddenly intelligence was limited only to the classroom with no teachers; we're all students here folks-pull out your workbooks.

Enemies do not come with an instruction manual and neither should your combative solutions. 

Mass Effect relays can't be controlled afaik. They orient automatically towards the paired relay when a ship wants to use the relays. I didn't play Arrival or read the books, is there something there?

 

[Matchy Pointy]

Obi-Wan Old Ben Kenobi wrote...

 Please explain to me what the hell this is then! BEATEN CONVENTIONALLY

That was a whole fleet against one reaper, and it took out a good part of the fleet...

[GODzilla]

Obi-Wan Old Ben Kenobi wrote...

 Please explain to me what the hell this is then! BEATEN CONVENTIONALLY

Proof enough that you did not understand the ME1 ending, which makes a pretty bad basis for a discussion. Neeeext.

[jojon2se]

Neither here nor there, but I never could forgive ME1 for the ridicolous kill-Sovvie's-remote-controlled-zombie-to-incapacitate-him concept.

It was necessary for gameplay reasons, so that you got to beat the big guy mono a mono - I realise this, but still...

[redplague]

What an ending!