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[Wayning_Star]

Even the harvested deserve a day at the beach....

[ruggly]

Obadiah wrote...

ruggly wrote...

Shepard VI on the Citadel, sounds 75% more accurate than the other models. Make sure you clean the soda off of it though.

And yeah, it's real crappy that the only ending that you can survive is where you have to kill the Geth and EDI (and the reapers, depending on how you view them). Would have been great just have been able to kill the catalyst, reapers are free, and then they go wherever they want to go. Spread information, go hide somewhere, lounge in the pool, whatever.

Lounging Reaper at the beach:


One of Seival's images from the Control thread. Couldn't help it

The fact that this even exists as I was joking is...oddly funny.

[Indy_S]

Optimystic_X wrote...

Mass Hysteria woud require us to have the same limited intellect/capacity for understanding we currently do. I didn't get that impression from EDI's narrative.

If we suddenly had group empathy/telepathy and had no understanding of what was going on, you'd be right. But if we all knew, perfectly and instantly? I'd say that would be different.

That would make a difference. Hmm. I don't believe that's what Synthesis offers, I don't interpret EDI's words that way, but I can understand that. I don't agree, but I empathise.

[Wayning_Star]

Indy_S wrote...

Optimystic_X wrote...

Mass Hysteria woud require us to have the same limited intellect/capacity for understanding we currently do. I didn't get that impression from EDI's narrative.

If we suddenly had group empathy/telepathy and had no understanding of what was going on, you'd be right. But if we all knew, perfectly and instantly? I'd say that would be different.

That would make a difference. Hmm. I don't believe that's what Synthesis offers, I don't interpret EDI's words that way, but I can understand that. I don't agree, but I empathise.

So, you're already there? (empathy) Humans are so smart, makes'em often look silly.

(ESP, is another matter,but it's a question of just how much we 'want' to communicate globally/extraspacially, and mostly, WHY/why not evolution at work?

[Indy_S]

Wayning_Star wrote...

Indy_S wrote...

That would make a difference. Hmm. I don't believe that's what Synthesis offers, I don't interpret EDI's words that way, but I can understand that. I don't agree, but I empathise.

So, you're already there? (empathy) Humans are so smart, makes'em often look silly.

I know right? Imagine reaching empathy without Synthesis. In fact, I absolutely, undeniably, categorically, emphatically believe that Synthesis is necessary". Absolutely.

[ruggly]

Empathy would make me more of a blubbering mess than I already am. I move faster than I ever thought I could when I see Sarah McLachlan on the TV. I don't really want that.

[Auld Wulf]

Wayning_Star wrote...

Even the harvested deserve a day at the beach....

This is how I feel about things. I get depressed when I hear sentiments like 'because X (which is me) is so different than Y (which is them), I don't think they deserve the same rights, or even want them.' Though often, Y would be very interested in X and how they live, and might share some interests. I actually see no issues with a lounging Reaper.

The Reapers were only abominations because of the Catalyst's mind control. In Synthesis, all we see is a strong sense of them wanting to atone, to make things right, to make things better. They're free, now. And they're also a peoples; a strange, frightening peoples maybe, but still a peoples. As such, as a peoples, they deserve the same chance as anyone else. Another thing that makes me sad is because so many people are caught up in the abomination word (which is lame, HYR 2.0 is right about that), they can't see the potential of the Reapers as a peoples.

That's depressing, you know? It makes me wonder how we'd handle it if we ever did encounter a race of people that were actually two kilometre high robots. If they only showed intentions of ethics and friendliness, they'd likely still receive a lot of hate for looking so different from the baseline. That's the problem with the Reapers and human mentality -- if A looks inhuman, then A must be far more inhuman in attitude than looks. The whole Abomination Law thing, y'know? That's depressing. It limits imagination.

Personally, I dig that picture of a Reaper lounging on the beach, because why the hell not? I don't hate them, and my imagination is back enough to understand why they might want to. They're still partly organic, after all, and they might have a lot of memories of lying on a beach under a warm star. So what's wrong with them doing that? Plus, with the Reapers harvesting organic species, their wants, desires, and attitudes might be closer to home than we think.

This is why I still don't get the hate for the Reapers. Yes, I'm a Reaper sympathiser, but only because I understand now that they've never had a chance to think, talk, or act for themselves. In Synthesis, their motives become clear. And really? With actual, present threats like the leviathans and their army of thralls out there? I want the Reapers around. For all I know, the leviathans are space-capable with something similar to biotics, they even managed to down a Reaper ship. The leviathans and their desire to enslave and control could be the biggest threat the galaxy's ever seen. I know I'd want a few friendly Reapers around if we had to face that.

But yeah, I figured I'd voice my thoughts here. There seems to be a little more open-mindedness here. I don't get the hate, and it depresses me to think that the hate they get is down to how they look, or what they did when mind controlled (which wasn't their fault, at all). It depresses me to think that most humans might actually be so small minded and incapable of looking beyond base, first instinctive responses. "Ugh. Big. Big ugly. Big thing did hurt um. Fear big thing. Kill big thing!" Tell me that's not depressing.

I like Mass Effect though because people in that Universe are able to get over their differences. People got over the reactions of the turians (in most cases), and people seemed to have gotten over what the Reapers were mind controlled to do. It's a better future for everyone.

Besides. To me and my imagination, there's artistic power in seeing something so different that isn't out to kill or hurt us for a change. So I really dig that lounging Reaper.

Edit: I guess when it comes down to it a lot of my perspective is that I have a hard time seeing anything as physically ugly. I'm just not wired that way, it's true. All the permutations of humans out there, animals, spiders, you name it. It's all beautiful in its own way. I only tend to find personalities ugly, when they're full of hate and fear. Gerrel is a good example of that, what with his Space Aryan philosophies. But I tend to judge things on personality and actions, rather than a reflex reaction to how something looks.

I guess this is why "abomination aesthetics" just don't work on me.

Modifié par Auld Wulf, 09 avril 2013 - 02:54 .

[Ieldra]

@Auld Wulf:
Just to play devil's advocate here: I agree with everything you've said, yet there is one little problem: for almost three full games, the Reapers and most specifically their minions were presented as entities whose appearance matched their actions in our minds. For three full games, it's almost as if the writers wanted to condition us to hate them - by appearance, by action, by talk if applicable. Those pieces of information that told us there might be more to them were carefully hidden in dialogue almost nobody gets and in one case even changed into generic mysticism that said nothing.

So - if now people are unwilling to accept a change of perspective so radical as to making the Reapers primarily victims of the cycle rather than its perpetrators, Bioware is as much to blame for that. I recall that before the leaked script appeared, I was totally convinced that there wouldn't be an option for ending the cycle without utterly destroying the Reapers and everything they stood for, because that's what the story appeared to tell me. I hated that, and I hated that the writers had chosen to write yet another boring "kill the evil abominations and go home" story, but hate it as I might, nonetheless that's what I saw.

Synthesis is my favorite ending, but it's actually much more work to fit it to the story that came before than it is to fit Destroy. Nonetheless, more people might have gone along with the radical change in perspective, had not the ending choices been presented by the entity responsible for the cycle.

I've seen many people here on BSN who said they like the concept of Synthesis, but say "It feels out of place in this story." Given the story that came before, the horribly flawed exposition and the identity of the one who gives us that exposition, I can't say I blame them.

Modifié par Ieldra2, 09 avril 2013 - 05:15 .

[Xilizhra]

I've seen many people here on BSN who said they like the concept of Synthesis, but say "It feels out of place in this story." Given the story that came before, the horribly flawed exposition and the identity of the one who gives us that exposition, I can't say I blame them.

This is true, with one other thing: if the Reapers retain the characteristics of the races they were made from, some could well be implacably hostile even without the Catalyst. Imagine a krogan or Prothean Reaper. Control gives a better chance to assess them as individuals and see which ones can be freed.

[Taboo]

@ Ieldra

It's a very shoddy framing technique that authors use. Are you aware of the Romero Zombie films? In one film they essentially made the zombies out to be victims and it caused a massive uproar. People have spent...forty years watching these things lumbering about eating people and suddenly...BLAM, they tried to make them sympathetic

I had the same reaction to the Reapers being that way. It doesn't change my ending choice but it frustrates me to see it that way.

It also bothers me that people still dismiss The Collectors. They're still a race, and you still wipe them out. Where is the criticism of that? They're mostly machine now? At what point does the argument become fallacious?

[Ieldra]

Xilizhra wrote...

I've seen many people here on BSN who said they like the concept of Synthesis, but say "It feels out of place in this story." Given the story that came before, the horribly flawed exposition and the identity of the one who gives us that exposition, I can't say I blame them.

This is true, with one other thing: if the Reapers retain the characteristics of the races they were made from, some could well be implacably hostile even without the Catalyst. Imagine a krogan or Prothean Reaper. Control gives a better chance to assess them as individuals and see which ones can be freed.

On the other hand, you might get as many powerful and knowledgeable allies as hostile entities. I agree that Control is the safer choice, but Synthesis may well be worth the risk.

@Taboo:
I don't know those films, but being conditioned by well-established tropes and being conditioned by earlier parts of the same story is not quite the same. I'm usually very appreciative of seeing conventional tropes subverted, but things established in the same story need very good plotting and logic to make a radical change believable to the players/viewers/readers in the end. Bioware largely failed in that.

Modifié par Ieldra2, 09 avril 2013 - 07:12 .

[New Display Name]

It would be smart for a Control Shepard to always be one step ahead of the galaxy in terms of technology, lest they advance enough to pose a threat. I think that's a real issue with Control - if somehow those reaper thralls are disposed of in some way, there's little stopping the organics from creating synthetic servants that would rebel and slaughter their creators, as had happened in every cycle.

[ruggly]

I wonder now that the reapers are free in Synthesis, what are the more hostile ones (Harbinger especially) going to do? I don't think Harbinger will stop seeing everyone else as being below him. Whether or not he'll do anything is one thing, and everyone will probably keep an eye out on the hostile ones.

As for control, as HJF mentioned, there is always the possibility of the galaxy eventually outclassing the reapers in technology, and perhaps one day overthrowing them for reasons x, y, z. Or hostile synthetics making a comback, if the harvest is still coded into the shepalyst/reapers, will they follow through with it?

Destroy comes with its own set of problems that I won't reiterate.

I know a lot of people prefer to head canon those possibilities out, but they still remain as well, possibilities.

[Xilizhra]

On the other hand, you might get as many powerful and knowledgeable allies as hostile entities. I agree that Control is the safer choice, but Synthesis may well be worth the risk.

What about Synthesis would make it explicitly more worth the risk than Control?

[Seival]

Xilizhra wrote...

On the other hand, you might get as many powerful and knowledgeable allies as hostile entities. I agree that Control is the safer choice, but Synthesis may well be worth the risk.

What about Synthesis would make it explicitly more worth the risk than Control?

Just want to remind that Controlled Synthesis (Synthesis applied in very careful manner long after choosing Control) is also a valid option. For me personally it's the only way to go.

Modifié par Seival, 09 avril 2013 - 08:29 .

[ruggly]

Ieldra2 wrote...
snip snip

but things established in the same story need very good plotting and logic to make a radical change believable to the players/viewers/readers in the end. Bioware largely failed in that.

So just out of curiosity, would something like this have worked for you.  It still plays a bit of the victim card, and includes a bit of a re-worked synthesis ending.  That is sorry, no hyper-advanced civilizations and hybrids, but it allows you to free the reapers and they can therefore share their knowledge, allowing you to reach that stage without having to force it.  But I think it fits better with ME1 and 2 (yeah, that's a bit of a biased statement).

[JasonShepard]

ruggly wrote...

I wonder now that the reapers are free in Synthesis, what are the more hostile ones (Harbinger especially) going to do? I don't think Harbinger will stop seeing everyone else as being below him. Whether or not he'll do anything is one thing, and everyone will probably keep an eye out on the hostile ones.

I've been thinking about this for a while - the ideas play into a post-Control fic that I'm writing. The Catalyst presumably controlled the Reapers via a form of indoctrination.

Indoctrination (usually) worked by convincing the subject to follow a set of beliefs - Saren believed the only way to survive the Reapers was to prove our worth, TIM believed that Control was the only acceptable  option, that Big Stupid Jellyfish believed the Reapers were the gods of the Enkindlers - you get the idea.  Worryingly, the longer one has been indoctrinated, the more set in this belief they are. And the Reapers have been indoctrinated for a long  time.
(Indoctrination also degraded the mind of the subject - but notably this doesn't seem to be the case with the Reapers...)
(I'm not quite sure how Benezia fits into this, since she seemed to suffering from something closer to Domination than Indoctrination.)

The thing is - the Reapers were presumably indoctrinated to believe in the Catalyst's solution: ie, that they were necessary for galactic order. The speech on Rannoch supports this. (Also, judging by Sovereign's speech, the Catalyst presumably made them believe that they'd existed forever, that they were the ultimate form of evolution, and that organic life was far beneath them. I don't know why it made them believe those things - maybe just for giggles...)

Take away the Catalyst and the Indoctrination signal, but the belief itself will still remain. The younger Reapers may be able to shake off the effect of their indoctrination, but the older Reapers - and definitely Harbinger - could be a problem. I doubt that they'd still believe in perpetuating the cycles: Synthesis solved the Synthetic/Organic problem, after all, so even by their indoctrinated beliefs, the cycles are unnecessary. However, the superiority complex that most of them had - that could be a problem.

So in a Synthesized galaxy, I can definitely see Harbinger making a play for galactic domination. Whether or not he'd succeed is a different question - after all, the galaxy as a whole just got an upgrade, many Reapers would be allied with the galaxy, and I doubt indoctrination still works after Synthesis, taking away one of Harby's best weapons. We'd probably also get a number of rogue Reapers working on their own (and, of course, the Leviathans are still out there - but that's a whole other problem)...

Honestly, and people say a post-Synthesis galaxy is boring *sigh* 


(Off-topic: Ieldra2 - did you ever finish that Mass Effect 3 playthrough thread you were doing a few weeks back?)

Modifié par JasonShepard, 09 avril 2013 - 11:00 .

[ruggly]

JasonShepard wrote...
Honestly, and people say a post-Synthesis galaxy is boring *sigh* 

I do really like the concept behind synthesis, but it's as Ieldra said, I don't think it belongs, and I really dislike the way it plays out.   They wanted to keep religion out of Mass Effect, and then they slap Christianity and Jesus right into it.  I don't find that appealing (not to offend those who do), but it makes me roll my eyes at it.

[JasonShepard]

ruggly wrote...

JasonShepard wrote...
Honestly, and people say a post-Synthesis galaxy is boring *sigh* 

I do really like the concept behind synthesis, but it's as Ieldra said, I don't think it belongs, and I really dislike the way it plays out.   They wanted to keep religion out of Mass Effect, and then they slap Christianity and Jesus right into it.  I don't find that appealing (not to offend those who do), but it makes me roll my eyes at it.

That line wasn't directed at you, don't worry. It was directed at those that put away Synthesis on account of "evolutionary stagnation", or of it being all sunshine and rainbows.

And yeah, the implementation leaves a LOT to be desired. It's why I run with Control, and headcanon the galaxy reaching Synthesis on its own, gradually over time. The tech would probably evolve out of how the Geth and Quarians are already interacting. (I also find the Control ending to be the one that makes the most 'physical' sense - Synthesis has far too much symbolism, and Destroy has you shooting a pipe for no good reason. At least Control's destructive-full-body-scan makes sense...)

[ruggly]

Not to mention Shepard walking INTO the explosion. I mean, really...a seasoned soldier and you walk into the explosion.

[Obadiah]

ruggly wrote...

Not to mention Shepard walking INTO the explosion. I mean, really...a seasoned soldier and you walk into the explosion.

Shep wanted to make sure the bullet hit proper.

[New Display Name]

I don't understand. What does Synthesis have to do in particular with Christianity and Jesus? No matter what, Shepard is the "savior" of the galaxy..

[ruggly]

Messiah. Dies for your sins. Swan dives into the beam.

[jacob taylor416]

HJF4 wrote...

I don't understand. What does Synthesis have to do in particular with Christianity and Jesus? No matter what, Shepard is the "savior" of the galaxy..

Really?  His name is "Shepard"!!!

[Taboo]

HJF4 wrote...

I don't understand. What does Synthesis have to do in particular with Christianity and Jesus? No matter what, Shepard is the "savior" of the galaxy..

In the Stargazer scene they replace the "a" with an "e"

"The Sheperd."

Modifié par Taboo-XX, 10 avril 2013 - 02:20 .