5087 réponses à ce sujet

[KitaSaturnyne]

delta_vee wrote...

You see, I read it as having exactly the opposite priorities. I got the distinct impression the Citadel was primarily there for transport into and out of dark space and controlling the relay network, with the tendency for organics to use the Citadel as a seat of government (with the attendant concentration of leadership and  a useful secondary benefit. Likewise, the value of a sneak attack seems to fall into the "nice, but not strictly necessary" category, seeing as how the Reapers in ME3 don't hit the Citadel right away.

Perhaps it speaks to the Reapers' intents and confidence? Maybe they weren't there to fight a war, they were just there to harvest what they needed and get out. Perhaps they knew that they didn't need to hit the Citadel first, as in their perspective, all members of all advanced races were going to be harvested anyway, just like the several thousand times that came before this.

[Hawk227]

delta_vee wrote...

Hawk227 wrote...

The significance of the Citadel wasn't that it was a door back into the Milky Way, but a hugely important tactical tool to "cut the head off the snake", if you will. The Citadel is always the seat of government, and by returning directly there, the Reapers can effectively end any organized resistance before the rest of the Galaxy knows what happened. By the time of Sovereign's attack at the end of ME1 Shepard and Saren were the only ones that even acknowledged the Reapers were real, the trap was still set. When that failed, the sneak attack was lost and they had to do it the old fashioned way, but we see in ME3 (where the Reapers lose quite a few ships) that the old fashioned way against an organized opposition is not as effective. So the backdoor through the Citadel was worth waiting for.

You see, I read it as having exactly the opposite priorities. I got the distinct impression the Citadel was primarily there for transport into and out of dark space and controlling the relay network, with the tendency for organics to use the Citadel as a seat of government (with the attendant concentration of leadership and  a useful secondary benefit. Likewise, the value of a sneak attack seems to fall into the "nice, but not strictly necessary" category, seeing as how the Reapers in ME3 don't hit the Citadel right away.

I didn't say it was strictly necessary. Obviously it wasn't, but I think the events of ME3 show how valuable an advantage it is and that it's worth waiting around for if you can pull it off. Keep in mind that from the Citadel they can control the Relay network and isolate every system. Vigil makes it pretty clear that the Protheans were effectively beat before they knew what happened. The Reapers had access to all their records and thus knew everything about their civilization.

delta_vee wrote...

Plus, the Rachni Wars seemed to be more about straight-up territory and conquest, not the kind of skulduggery Sovereign used Saren and the geth for.

I agree with this. I'm just arguing that the game effectively tells us the Rachni were indoctrinated. I'm not saying it makes explicit sense within the history. I think it was a revisionist effort to make the Rachni more sympathetic (since the bulk of the info came in ME2) and make the player feel they made the right choice.

[delta_vee]

edisnooM wrote...

Possibly for the same reason the Catalyst didn't help Sovereign, and Sovereign didn't alert the Reapers in dark space (I mean he could've flown there himself in what, a decade?). I'm beginning to think it probably isn't a good idea to look too closely at Mass Effect, down that path lies madness.

I really, really didn't want to have to apply Bellisario's Maxim to Mass Effect... ( tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BellisariosMaxim )

[edisnooM]

Hawk227 wrote...

delta_vee wrote...

Hawk227 wrote...

The significance of the Citadel wasn't that it was a door back into the Milky Way, but a hugely important tactical tool to "cut the head off the snake", if you will. The Citadel is always the seat of government, and by returning directly there, the Reapers can effectively end any organized resistance before the rest of the Galaxy knows what happened. By the time of Sovereign's attack at the end of ME1 Shepard and Saren were the only ones that even acknowledged the Reapers were real, the trap was still set. When that failed, the sneak attack was lost and they had to do it the old fashioned way, but we see in ME3 (where the Reapers lose quite a few ships) that the old fashioned way against an organized opposition is not as effective. So the backdoor through the Citadel was worth waiting for.

You see, I read it as having exactly the opposite priorities. I got the distinct impression the Citadel was primarily there for transport into and out of dark space and controlling the relay network, with the tendency for organics to use the Citadel as a seat of government (with the attendant concentration of leadership and  a useful secondary benefit. Likewise, the value of a sneak attack seems to fall into the "nice, but not strictly necessary" category, seeing as how the Reapers in ME3 don't hit the Citadel right away.

I didn't say it was strictly necessary. Obviously it wasn't, but I think the events of ME3 show how valuable an advantage it is and that it's worth waiting around for if you can pull it off. Keep in mind that from the Citadel they can control the Relay network and isolate every system. Vigil makes it pretty clear that the Protheans were effectively beat before they knew what happened. The Reapers had access to all their records and thus knew everything about their civilization.

I know this has been mentioned before, but considering how easily they seem to have taken the Citadel at the end, why didn't they just do that first instead of attacking all the homeworlds? It would have effectively won them the war.

[KitaSaturnyne]

Hawk227 wrote...

I agree with this. I'm just arguing that the game effectively tells us the Rachni were indoctrinated. I'm not saying it makes explicit sense within the history. I think it was a revisionist effort to make the Rachni more sympathetic (since the bulk of the info came in ME2) and make the player feel they made the right choice.

Makes sense. I still prefer that it was the fault of the Protheans though. Makes more sense to me.

That said, I was under the impression that Sovereign found out that the Keeper signal was sabotaged only shortly before ME1 began. Was it sooner than that?

[KitaSaturnyne]

edisnooM wrote...

I know this has been mentioned before, but considering how easily they seem to have taken the Citadel at the end, why didn't they just do that first instead of attacking all the homeworlds? It would have effectively won them the war.

Storywise, couldn't tell you. The only answer is not very entertaining: It would have made ME3 a very short game.

[edisnooM]

delta_vee wrote...

edisnooM wrote...

Possibly for the same reason the Catalyst didn't help Sovereign, and Sovereign didn't alert the Reapers in dark space (I mean he could've flown there himself in what, a decade?). I'm beginning to think it probably isn't a good idea to look too closely at Mass Effect, down that path lies madness.

I really, really didn't want to have to apply Bellisario's Maxim to Mass Effect... ( tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BellisariosMaxim )

Wow, I really hope BioWare doesn't end up saying something along those lines. I think that would actually cause me to give up on them.

[From Tuchanka with Love]

Why does your lit professor sound like an angsty undergrad?

[edisnooM]

KitaSaturnyne wrote...

edisnooM wrote...

I know this has been mentioned before, but considering how easily they seem to have taken the Citadel at the end, why didn't they just do that first instead of attacking all the homeworlds? It would have effectively won them the war.

Storywise, couldn't tell you. The only answer is not very entertaining: It would have made ME3 a very short game.

Yeah I can understand for purposes of the plot. But it's like watching old Transformers episodes, where in one episode Megatron or Optimus Prime are all powerful and unbeatable, and the next they're taken out by the weakest of opponents.

[delta_vee]

 

KitaSaturnyne wrote...

Perhaps it speaks to the Reapers' intents and confidence? Maybe they weren't there to fight a war, they were just there to harvest what they needed and get out. Perhaps they knew that they didn't need to hit the Citadel first, as in their perspective, all members of all advanced races were going to be harvested anyway, just like the several thousand times that came before this.

It's another thing added to the ever-growing pile of things which don't make as much sense as they should. As CGGirl said upthread, we (the audience) let them get away with murder detail-wise until they destroy our investment.

Funny how much can unravel when one is given cause to tug the threads...

Hawk227 wrote...

I agree with this. I'm just arguing that the game effectively tells us the Rachni were indoctrinated. I'm not saying it makes explicit sense within the history. I think it was a revisionist effort to make the Rachni more sympathetic (since the bulk of the info came in ME2) and make the player feel they made the right choice.

As a dedicated renegon, I kinda wish they'd let the rachni be a threat.

[Hawk227]

edisnooM wrote...

I know this has been mentioned before, but considering how easily they seem to have taken the Citadel at the end, why didn't they just do that first instead of attacking all the homeworlds? It would have effectively won them the war.

This goes back to your post from last page, don't look too closely, you might not like what you find.

I actually think the story stays reasonably consistent through ME1, ME2, and most of ME3. It falls apart with the Reapers taking the Citadel to Earth (It's the key to a superweapon and you're going to take it to reaper central and provide a beam to the controls?) and with the Catalyst (who genuinely makes ME1 irrelevant. Why didn't he just activate the relay?).

KitaSaturnyne wrote...

That said, I was under the impression that Sovereign found out that the
Keeper signal was sabotaged only shortly before ME1 began. Was it sooner
than that?

We're never really told. Vigil says that Sovereign is likely a Vanguard and he could spend the years making little moves here and there to soften up the galaxy for the Reapers (like with the rachni), but we're never really told when Sovereign figured out about the signal. I assumed it was some point between the Rachni War and the events of ME1, but when in that 2000 years I have no idea.

delta_vee wrote...

As a dedicated renegon, I kinda wish they'd let the rachni be a threat.

As a dedicated Paragade I'm glad they didn't. I rather liked that conversation on Illium. Redemption for everyone (but the Reapers).

Modifié par Hawk227, 09 mai 2012 - 10:30 .

[KitaSaturnyne]

@delta_vee

Agreed, especially since the Reapers don't follow their MO one bit in the entirety of ME3. They've been doing this for a billion years or more. Why wouldn't they hit the Citadel this time? It would unravel the entire galaxy if its central government were destroyed. And in the end, the Reapers could just build a new Citadel if it were destroyed. I'm sure they have a copy of the blueprints somewhere.

[TheMarshal]

delta_vee wrote...

Hawk227 wrote...

I agree with this. I'm just arguing that the game effectively tells us the Rachni were indoctrinated. I'm not saying it makes explicit sense within the history. I think it was a revisionist effort to make the Rachni more sympathetic (since the bulk of the info came in ME2) and make the player feel they made the right choice.

As a dedicated renegon, I kinda wish they'd let the rachni be a threat.

I agree that they should have posed a threat.  Say, you saved the queen (twice) and brought them to Earth for the fight against the Reapers, but wound up having too low an EMS.  Maybe they would still be succeptible to indoctrination and some of them would wind up turning against your forces.  Same thing if you rewrote the geth heretics, although that may not work since all the geth are "individuals" now...

But yeah, some negatives for choosing the paragon path would have been nice/interesting to see.

[edisnooM]

delta_vee wrote...

 

KitaSaturnyne wrote...

Perhaps it speaks to the Reapers' intents and confidence? Maybe they weren't there to fight a war, they were just there to harvest what they needed and get out. Perhaps they knew that they didn't need to hit the Citadel first, as in their perspective, all members of all advanced races were going to be harvested anyway, just like the several thousand times that came before this.

It's another thing added to the ever-growing pile of things which don't make as much sense as they should. As CGGirl said upthread, we (the audience) let them get away with murder detail-wise until they destroy our investment.

Funny how much can unravel when one is given cause to tug the threads...

Hawk227 wrote...

I agree with this. I'm just arguing that the game effectively tells us the Rachni were indoctrinated. I'm not saying it makes explicit sense within the history. I think it was a revisionist effort to make the Rachni more sympathetic (since the bulk of the info came in ME2) and make the player feel they made the right choice.

As a dedicated renegon, I kinda wish they'd let the rachni be a threat.

I wish the Rachni mattered at all.

I let the Queen live on Noveria, was told in ME2 that she will join the war, only to have to make the same choice as ME1 again in ME3.

And if you do kill her in ME1, Boom, fake Queen. I know she ends up betraying you if you let her live, but it happens off screen.

And after that mission with Grunt the only Rachni we see are Ravagers. There really seems to be a lack of impact from these choices we made.

[KitaSaturnyne]

Hawk227 wrote...

I actually think the story stays reasonably consistent through ME1, ME2, and most of ME3. It falls apart with the Reapers taking the Citadel to Earth (It's the key to a superweapon and you're going to take it to reaper central and provide a beam to the controls?) and with the Catalyst (who genuinely makes ME1 irrelevant. Why didn't he just activate the relay?).

Yeah, no kidding. You'd think the Reaper boss would be there to make sure his employees showed up for work on time.

[Hawk227]

TheMarshal wrote...

delta_vee wrote...

Hawk227 wrote...

I agree with this. I'm just arguing that the game effectively tells us the Rachni were indoctrinated. I'm not saying it makes explicit sense within the history. I think it was a revisionist effort to make the Rachni more sympathetic (since the bulk of the info came in ME2) and make the player feel they made the right choice.

As a dedicated renegon, I kinda wish they'd let the rachni be a threat.

I agree that they should have posed a threat.  Say, you saved the queen (twice) and brought them to Earth for the fight against the Reapers, but wound up having too low an EMS.  Maybe they would still be succeptible to indoctrination and some of them would wind up turning against your forces.  Same thing if you rewrote the geth heretics, although that may not work since all the geth are "individuals" now...

But yeah, some negatives for choosing the paragon path would have been nice/interesting to see.

Actually, in this light that would have been cool if they Rachni were re-indoctrinated on Earth. Also, there were some negatives to the Paragon path, though they were primarily small ones involving "support a side" stuff. You could do a lot of damage to the Citadel Defense forces if you were strictly paragon in your approach.

[Hawk227]

edisnooM wrote...

I wish the Rachni mattered at all.

I let the Queen live on Noveria, was told in ME2 that she will join the war, only to have to make the same choice as ME1 again in ME3.

And if you do kill her in ME1, Boom, fake Queen. I know she ends up betraying you if you let her live, but it happens off screen.

And after that mission with Grunt the only Rachni we see are Ravagers. There really seems to be a lack of impact from these choices we made.

I agree completely. I wish that if you killed the Queen, you didn't even get that mission with Grunt (and instead met him on Tuchanka) and there were no Ravagers. It made sense for my playthrough to have all that, but I was pretty annoyed when I learned that there was little difference if you killed her on Noveria.

[TheMarshal]

Hawk227 wrote...

Actually, in this light that would have been cool if they Rachni were re-indoctrinated on Earth. Also, there were some negatives to the Paragon path, though they were primarily small ones involving "support a side" stuff. You could do a lot of damage to the Citadel Defense forces if you were strictly paragon in your approach.

True enough.  I guess I meant visible changes other than an increase or decrease to a number.  Imagine eeing an epic ground battle with rachni swarming amongst the ranks of the ground forces.  A Reaper destroyer lands nearby and blasts out their vuvuzela.  Several of the rachni stumble, then turn on their allies.  All because you told that C-Sec officer to prosecute pickpockets instead of focusing on the war!  You monster!

[edisnooM]

I was just thinking how cool it would've been to see the Krogan and the Rachni fighting side by side on Earth. Arguably the two most unstoppable races in the Galaxy hacking away at Reaper forces.

Really, a scene with all the races we've gathered in one massive offensive on the ground would have been incredible.

Modifié par edisnooM, 09 mai 2012 - 10:42 .

[edisnooM]

TheMarshal wrote...

Hawk227 wrote...

Actually, in this light that would have been cool if they Rachni were re-indoctrinated on Earth. Also, there were some negatives to the Paragon path, though they were primarily small ones involving "support a side" stuff. You could do a lot of damage to the Citadel Defense forces if you were strictly paragon in your approach.

True enough.  I guess I meant visible changes other than an increase or decrease to a number.  Imagine eeing an epic ground battle with rachni swarming amongst the ranks of the ground forces.  A Reaper destroyer lands nearby and blasts out their vuvuzela.  Several of the rachni stumble, then turn on their allies.  All because you told that C-Sec officer to prosecute pickpockets instead of focusing on the war!  You monster!

But, but, they needed a sense of normalcy.

[delta_vee]

Setting aside our Could-Have-Been-King and his army of Never-Weres, I have something of a serious question. (Drayfish, RollaWarden, other lurking academics, your professional opinion as well as your personal one would be welcomed.)

When examining a work from a critical perspective, at what point can we fairly penalize said work for its unrealized potential? The audience, of course, is free to do so at any point (and we have, repeatedly), but criticism is generally expected to maintain a level of rigor. The more closely I examine ME3, the more I watch it unravel, but so much of that is believing that for every narrative tradeoff made in service of their story, there were better alternatives available.

I don't know if that's truly...fair...of me.

Modifié par delta_vee, 09 mai 2012 - 11:25 .

[Dean_the_Young]

Given that there are near infinite ways to re-do things in various ways, there is no fair way to penalize for what a work doesn't do: you can only penalize it for what it does do. Otherwise, the penalty becomes meaningless because you can always find different views on the 'should have beens', and then the 'should have been' variations on that should-have been.

To take an example: I believe that Bioware missed a great opportunity to make a Miranda an unrepentent, sincere Cerberus Loyalist who has been merely playing the tsundere and 'changed' to gain our trust. I would have applauded it as brilliance had Miranda been faking a split with Cerberus and pursuing her sister, only for it to be revealed that if you give her access to Alliance resources you really just gave Cerberus critical data about the Crucible, to some serious effect.

Miranda being a committed Cerberus agent only playing being flipped by Cerberus is a missed opportunity. Personally, I would be fine if she never apologized for it. Others might accept it so long as she was sincerely in love and guilt-torn if romanced by Shepard. Others still would disagree with this route entirely, and want a different route.

Take this, and make it exponential. There are far too many mutually exclusive alterntives to credibly condemn a story for what path it doesn't take.


That said, you can of course criticize the weaknesses of the path it did take.

Modifié par Dean_the_Young, 10 mai 2012 - 01:04 .

[delta_vee]

A fine answer, and duly considered.

That said, and if I may play Lucifer's lawyer for a moment, I can't shake the idea that to claim an element of a work is lacking, implying it could be better, requires at least a cursory examination of more credible alternatives. Perhaps it's simply a lack of practice on my part, or perhaps it's an overlap of criticism with construction which I should make an effort to disentangle.

[Seijin8]

Regarding Reaper war strategies, I think a cursory explanation (riddled with holes, but possibly workable) would be that Plan A was to incite perpetual wars and distrust to weaken the Citadel races, then seize the Citadel, shut down the relay network, and commence mop-up operations, striking faster than non-Reaper FTL news could travel.

By and large, this seems to be a valid plan.

The Arrival showed that Plan B was to use the Alpha relay. Makes sense to have redundant ways to carry out the task.

With a human thwarting two successive attempts at invasion, and killing one and a half reapers already, striking Earth - humanity's main population center and Shep's current location - became the priority. The Batarians may have been first simply due to proximity, or because they were the weakest and most isolated race to generate cannon fodder from.

Why leave the Citadel, and thus the relays open? This may have to do with limited numbers. Reaper fleet estimates from this thread...
http://social.biowar...2127/1#11762127
... make a good case for "a couple thousand at most". We don't know if the shutdown of the relays has a deleterious effect on the Reaper's own use of the relay network. They may need the relays to stay open just to shuffle their own forces around.

It seems odd to think of the "unstoppable Reaper juggernaut" as needing to adopt maneuver warfare principles (http://en.wikipedia....aneuver_warfare), but that may be the case. Or, they may see it as preferential to strict attrition warfare. It may also be that the Reapers do not excell at wars of attrition, though they undoubtedly have the means to succeed in one.

We have to keep in mind that this invasion has *not* gone off without a hitch. While the Reapers have the ability to turn a race against itself through indoctrination and husks, this seems an unreliable tactic for rapid domination. Only the Reaper capital ships themselves have the true civilization demolishing capabilities. Husks cannot do that.

Further, the Reapers may be diverting an unkown number of forces to check on a multitude of species that don't yet have access to relay technology. If their true goal is what the Catalyst says it is, then an industrial-age civilization that has not yet reached the stars might well be an indomitable force given 50K years to evolve and grow.

As for the Catalyst being able to manipulate the Citadel directly, we have no evidence that starkid can do so, and no evidence that the Reapers even know about starbrat. Assuming they do know about starkid, the Reapers may be like a workforce with an ambivalent relationship to upper management. They get the job done, but want to just do the job without micromanagement. It is possible that the Reapers prefer to circumvent the Catalyst and see it as an irrational force that needs to have its own way.

And in that, we and the Reapers agree.

Modifié par Seijin8, 10 mai 2012 - 04:53 .

[Hawk227]

Seijin8 wrote...

Regarding Reaper war strategies, I think a cursory explanation (riddled with holes, but possibly workable) would be that Plan A was to incite perpetual wars and distrust to weaken the Citadel races, then seize the Citadel, shut down the relay network, and commence mop-up operations, striking faster than non-Reaper FTL news could travel....

After the long conversation today about the Rachni, I spent some time trying to figure how a Reaper instigated Rachni War fit into the history. So the following is my guess, and ties in with your quote above:

The Reapers, for all their power are not invincible. Their true advantage lies in their cunning and ruthless tactics. In a normal cycle, they take the Citadel first, destroy the seat of government and cut off all systems from eachother. Within hours of the initial attack, the galaxy is at their mercy. They then spend the next however many years mopping up, cleansing the galaxy system by system.

So how do the Rachni fit in? Perhaps the Reapers also prefer to soften up the opposition by inciting wars that drain resources, allowing the Reapers to come through with the opposition reeling. Perhaps Sovereign indoctrinated the Rachni and forced them into war (The convo with the Asari on Illium pretty much says he did), knowing that the Citadel relay would soon open to Dark space. Except the relay never opened, the Salarians uplifted the Krogan, who defeated the Rachni and Sovereign was left to figure out what went wrong and forge a new plan. The Citadel trap was still set but he needed a proxy to spring it. Considering the advantage it endows the Reapers, it was worth waiting centuries until the pieces were perfectly in place. Enter the Geth and Saren. Saren could open/close the citadel arms himself, but to actually take and hold the Citadel he needed an army and he needed a way of getting them inside. The Conduit was the key, not because it allowed Saren inside (he could do that anyway) but because it allowed the Geth inside.

Shepard ultimately thwarts this plan, and the Reapers turn to plan B: The Alpha Relay, on the edge of Dark Space provides access to every single Relay in the Galaxy. With it the Reapers can attack anywhere and everywhere in one fell swoop, but Shepard thwarts that plan as well. They are left with only one choice, fly in through FTL to the Batarian systems, picking up ground troops in the process and moving on to Earth, Palaven, etc. and engaging in a war they wished to avoid. One that wasn't won in the initial blow.