293 réponses à ce sujet

[Brovikk Rasputin]

RavenEyry wrote...

Brovikk Rasputin wrote...

RavenEyry wrote...

Brovikk Rasputin wrote...

One word: No.

A question wasn't asked, so, ah, what are you answering?

The thread title. The OP is clearly wrong. 

Since it appears you have dismissed the entire thread based on it's title without even reading the post, it seems rather difficult for you to add anything valuable to the discussion, so why do you bother?

Well, when the title alone is wrong, that's a pretty bad sign. 

[DistantUtopia]

Brovikk Rasputin wrote...

RavenEyry wrote...

Brovikk Rasputin wrote...

RavenEyry wrote...

Brovikk Rasputin wrote...

One word: No.

A question wasn't asked, so, ah, what are you answering?

The thread title. The OP is clearly wrong. 

Since it appears you have dismissed the entire thread based on it's title without even reading the post, it seems rather difficult for you to add anything valuable to the discussion, so why do you bother?

Well, when the title alone is wrong, that's a pretty bad sign. 

Please elaborate.  Seems like based on the OPs initial post, the thread title makes sense.

[MetioricTest]

lillitheris wrote...

MetioricTest wrote...

Just my thoughts. In my "headcannon" or whatever (I don't like that term for some reason) defeating the Reapers was always possible.

Try ‘headcanon’, the correct spelling?

…

There’s some narrative truth to this. However, part of me has always liked inevitabilities.

So, rather than “if the Council had acted 2 years ago, we could have won”, you have “if the Council had acted 2 years ago, we might have saved billions of lives by preparing better”.

If the Reapers will kill them anyway they didn't save billions of lives. They prolonged the agonzing death of billions of lives.

One word: No.

That's 3 words.

The way I see it, conventional victory was never possible. The point of
ME 1 was to introduce the setting, galaxy, story and so on. The
beginning of Mass Effect 2, shows that the Reapers saw and acknowleged
as a threat and they decided to take him out. Shepard was seen by the
Illusive Man as the only hope for humanity.

Then it's a terrible, pointless and boring couple of games that have pointless tension, drama and missions/plots that are irrelevant and I gain nothing from playing them nor understand why the characters act the way they do.

As for
destroying the Collectors that was necessary because they were abducting
humans, making the Human Reaper. Even before the Illusive Man knew they
worked with the Reapers, he knew they had advanced technology; either
way, TIM wanted to get his hands on it. Remember, Shepard is skeptical
about working for Cerberus, but once the Collector are confirmed to be
working for the Reapers, he decides to work with them. So the reason
Shepard destroys the Collectors is because they were the only lead he
had on the Reapers' activities in the galaxy and he chooses to persue
it.

But why does Shepard care about the human Reaper if victory is impossible? Only a few thousand humans are going byebye in a universe of billions. 

Shepard would just say no and go home. Enjoy the last year of his life. Tell TIM that if he loved humans so much he should have used all that money to either help billions of them or build an army to find that Reaper tech.

The reason is because Shepard blatantly thinks victory is possible and TIM blatantly thinks control is possible (with Shepard as the key) Throw those out the window and the actions become pointless.

Things like the council denial, the collector base, who lives and who dies, what sub-quests you do... They all only matter and have meaning if they make a difference. Even if it's only a therotical difference.

If the Council acceptance/rejection of Reapers means and changes nothing because no matter what they will come and kill us easily and there is nothing we can do about it... Then why the **** is it presented as such a big deal and designed to enrage Shepard and the fans? 

If this is the last Rachni queen and it's survivial would within decades bring about the return a hugely powerful race... Why the **** does it matter whether it lives or dies because it will die in 2/3 years when the Reapers turn up.

Why does Shepard constantly tell the Reapers that they will defeat them and continue to fight back?

It's clearly directly designed to show and display that the Reapers could be defeated if only... Take that away and you're left with a largely meaningless story which uses drama and tension in the most bizarre and asinine ways along with giving a terrible introduction to the crucible.

I don't get anything from such a story. You're saying all this time we were relying on someone to stumble upon finding a "device which will stop the reapers" to defeat them...But yet nobody was for 2 years? 

Hell **** the Collectors. Once we stopped Saren we should have employed every single person we could and just sat in labs for two years trying to create various bizarre devices that would stop the Reapers. Screw trying to build an army. Let's hunt down every scrap of information we have and design are super-weapons.


The Council denial makes for a great story-piece and a really important parts of the ark... If it's one of the key things that makes the crucible necessary out of desperation.

If it changes nothing and means nothing... Then it's a pretty pointless story-piece that wastes a lot of time and is presented in a very peculiar way for both games.

I'll take the good storytelling over the bad one.

Modifié par MetioricTest, 17 juillet 2012 - 04:20 .

[bowery tuff]

JBPBRC wrote...

MetioricTest wrote...

As opposed to:
"Never had a chance. Good thing Liara found those plans 5 minutes ago."

...

I find that to be a much more powerful and moral story than "We were always ****ed but then we discovered the Death Star."

And this is why the Crucible is forever despised.

Hell, the giant gun that one-shotted a Sovereign (which was obviously a massive Cain, but I digress) didn't get looked into at all. Good thing we found what we think is a Prothean superweapon. Yup yup.

This is a very good point if you're referring to the weapon that took out the derelict Reaper from ME2. I think the Crucible would have worked better if that thing had at least been looked at. I mean when Hackett mentions it took nearly the entire fleet to take down just one Reaper, you'd think Shepard would say, "Wait! A past civilization managed to take one out with a mega cannon. Let's go look at it!" Granted, that civilization still died, but still definitely worth a look.

[gert56nom]

I hate to use the Star Trek comparison with the borg but in Next Generation they encounter the Borg, realize there on there way & when they finally turn up starfleet has exactly nothing at all ready to even try against them

[sth128]

bowery tuff wrote...

This is a very good point if you're referring to the weapon that took out the derelict Reaper from ME2. I think the Crucible would have worked better if that thing had at least been looked at. I mean when Hackett mentions it took nearly the entire fleet to take down just one Reaper, you'd think Shepard would say, "Wait! A past civilization managed to take one out with a mega cannon. Let's go look at it!" Granted, that civilization still died, but still definitely worth a look.

Why replace one death star with another?

We should have added the mega cannon to the Crucible. The Crucible is capable of releasing unquantifiable amounts of energy. The Mega Cannon is capable of focusing unquantifiable amounts of energy in the form of a KAPOW!

Combine the two and you have a Death Star with unlimited ammo!

(Maybe that's how the next Cycle defeated the Reapers if you chose Refusal)

[Galenwolf]

I love it "a conventional victory is not possible"

Really... in a fictional universe where you make the plot up as you go along?

I'm pretty sure it was impossible for Voyager to take on an entire borg fleet - until the writers who make the story up as they go along had a future Janeway upgrade Voyager with future tech that could one shot a borg cube and could withstand an entire fleet of borg shooting it.

Even if right now with the current forces a "current cycle Vs Reapers" isn't winnable doesn't mean you couldn't alter something to allow a "current cycle + alteration Vs reapers" to be winnable.

Right now with the rumours of a rogue reaper there is a very possible way to make a war winnable. Get mister rogue reaper to alter the crucible to make half the reapers go rogue for the same reason he did. Boom, now its winnable.

Just borrow the story from Babylon 5 with the Vorlons + Shadows Vs young races when the young races recruited every other Ancient race to balance out the fight.

Modifié par Galenwolf, 17 juillet 2012 - 04:46 .

[Doctor_Jackstraw]

lol at people who think some billions of soldiers and millions of barely large spaceships are as strong as a massive armada gigantic ancient superships with psychic powers.

rallying everyone would help abit but yo dude, they're still THE REAPERS.

yo
yo dude
reapers
****

you know how strong one of those is?
Remember how many were at the epilogue of me2?
also destroyers arent reapers they're miniature constructs created to just help out the real ones yo. Like a tank that has some infantry helping it out.

I know that metal gear solid and halo have taught you that one dude is totally strong enough to beat a tank all by himself but....well....you cant really. because its a tank.

now multiply that by like a billion and you have a reaper, and there are a ton of those.

every time i see someone go "conventional victory should have been possible" i go GUGH you dont GET IT.

me1's ending was shepard leaving to find a way to stop the reapers. it should have lead into a story about the crucible. finding the crucible data archived at the collector homeworld would have been really ****in cool and actually made the game not only matter but fit in seemlessly with the arc of the overall threat. Find data on a superweapon that can defeat the reapers in the climax of ME2, making the suicide mission and the sacrifices made to get it mean something to the overall story, instead of ME2 being about beating up a threat that opens up and resolves itself within that one storyline. The collectors left no presense after you beat them and its a shame that something wasnt done to bridge that.even just finding encrypted data on the location of the crucible (later feeding into normandy being dry docked on earth with liara sent by hackett to recover the artifact on mars) would have been something. It would have meant that the collectors' plans to harvest earth would be about more than building a reaper, but assaulting mars to recover and destroy the crucible plans. This would have changed everything about what ME2 meant and how ME3 picked up from it in a more natural way to the overall arc of the trilogy.

but no me2 was about bein badass and commin together to beat the bads and make the player feel like the mass effect series was about making a big army bad enough to beat the reapers. weh :|

[MetioricTest]

^ I highly doubt anymore DLC will affect the ending

[fr33stylez]

Mr.House wrote...

Not to mention if ME2 was not a waste of time and we in fact got people ready for the invasion, got all ships with thanix canons, made sure we had alot of dreadnaughts ready and the council where not complete utter morons then it would have been possible. ME2 hurt the main story arc ALOT because of it doing nothing.

But the Bug People! They're taking humans all of a sudden!

Save us Space Jesus!

Modifié par fr33stylez, 17 juillet 2012 - 04:44 .

[bowery tuff]

sth128 wrote...

bowery tuff wrote...

This is a very good point if you're referring to the weapon that took out the derelict Reaper from ME2. I think the Crucible would have worked better if that thing had at least been looked at. I mean when Hackett mentions it took nearly the entire fleet to take down just one Reaper, you'd think Shepard would say, "Wait! A past civilization managed to take one out with a mega cannon. Let's go look at it!" Granted, that civilization still died, but still definitely worth a look.

Why replace one death star with another?

We should have added the mega cannon to the Crucible. The Crucible is capable of releasing unquantifiable amounts of energy. The Mega Cannon is capable of focusing unquantifiable amounts of energy in the form of a KAPOW!

Combine the two and you have a Death Star with unlimited ammo!

(Maybe that's how the next Cycle defeated the Reapers if you chose Refusal)

That's kind of where I was trying to go with it. My point wasn't the cannon should've necessarily been used instead of the Crucible, just that it was worth a look, even if they found it's recreation was impossible. When I got to that point in ME2, my thought was, "Well that kind of weapon could sure come in handy later on." I just wish that at some point during the gathering of resources for the Crucible, someone would have brought that up. Could've been a big help. Or not at all. Still ...

[Subject M]

I think the main problem is that there was no "way out" from the clutches of the Reapers that sufficiently reflected the achievements of your Shepard and the achievements of the galactic community. I am perfectly fine with the Reapers being unbeatable in confrontation though, as a military victory is just the standard type of ending. Cheap and pointlessly shallow.

Sometimes I think it does one well to learn that not all battles can be won in open confrontation, but what could have been done was to add

1) A "survival" ending. That is, what you and the fleet is doing is to buy civilians and key personnel time to evacuate to a hidden and safe location.

2) A ending where the Reapers and catalyst realize that the galaxy has come together like never before and that the synthetic-organic conflict cycle might be broken, so they state that they will leave but monitor the situation closely.


They should never have nerfed the Reapers to the point that people actually think that they can be defeated conventionaly. Instead of having a couple of Turian dreadnoughts destroy a Reapert capital ship, they should have had 5 Turian dreadnoughts with fighter support managing to force a Reaper capital ship to retreat (at the cost of 3 destroyed and 2 crippled dreadnoughts ). 

Modifié par Subject M, 17 juillet 2012 - 05:14 .

[MetioricTest]

Subject M wrote...

I think the main problem is that there was no "way out" from the clutches of the Reapers that sufficiently reflected the achievements of your Shepard and the achievements of the galactic community. I am perfectly fine with the Reapers being unbeatable in confrontation though, as a military victory is just the standard type of ending. Cheap and pointlessly shallow.

Sometimes I think it does one well to learn that not all battles can be won in open confrontation, but what could have been done was to add

1) A "survival" ending. That is, what you and the fleet is doing is to buy civilians and key personnel time to evacuate to a hidden and safe location.

2) A ending where the Reapers and catalyst realize that the galaxy has come together like never before and that the synthetic-organic conflict cycle might be broken, so they state that they will leave but monitor the situation closely.

As I said in literally the first sentence. I'm not saying there has to be an ending where we defeat Reapers in open confrontation.

I'm saying if we accept that it was always impossible to do so right from the start. Most of ME1 and ME2 become absolutely meaningless.

It's better to assume we could have defeated the Reapers but thanks to poor choices, arrogance and folly we failed. And now we have to fall back on the crucible as our last, best hope for peace.

^ If we accept that then it keeps the crucible as a fine plot-device and doesn't tarnish the first two games.

[Samtheman63]

Not for me, always thought they couldn't be defeated conventionally after seeing what soveriegn did.

Assumed ME3 would involve us finding/building "something" that would kill/weaken the reapers

[MetioricTest]

Samtheman63 wrote...

Not for me, always thought they couldn't be defeated conventionally after seeing what soveriegn did.

Assumed ME3 would involve us finding/building "something" that would kill/weaken the reapers

Don't you find that it rendered some if not most of the plot points of ME1 and ME2 completely meaningless?

[gert56nom]

the suposed shock EA & bioware show at the end of ME3 is that the ultra powerful, ultra smart reapers are in fact just a bunch of dummies following the orders of one single AI, the starkid

instead of attacking one reaper at a time ignore the reapers & attack the control, the starkid is ultimitly only an AI which are vunerable to any technological attack, cut the power, re-program it, erase it, or just blow up the computer its within

[Subject M]

MetioricTest wrote...

Subject M wrote...

I think the main problem is that there was no "way out" from the clutches of the Reapers that sufficiently reflected the achievements of your Shepard and the achievements of the galactic community. I am perfectly fine with the Reapers being unbeatable in confrontation though, as a military victory is just the standard type of ending. Cheap and pointlessly shallow.

Sometimes I think it does one well to learn that not all battles can be won in open confrontation, but what could have been done was to add

1) A "survival" ending. That is, what you and the fleet is doing is to buy civilians and key personnel time to evacuate to a hidden and safe location.

2) A ending where the Reapers and catalyst realize that the galaxy has come together like never before and that the synthetic-organic conflict cycle might be broken, so they state that they will leave but monitor the situation closely.

As I said in literally the first sentence. I'm not saying there has to be an ending where we defeat Reapers in open confrontation.

I'm saying if we accept that it was always impossible to do so right from the start. Most of ME1 and ME2 become absolutely meaningless.

It's better to assume we could have defeated the Reapers but thanks to poor choices, arrogance and folly we failed. And now we have to fall back on the crucible as our last, best hope for peace.

^ If we accept that then it keeps the crucible as a fine plot-device and doesn't tarnish the first two games.

No, it does not make them meaningless. ME1 was about discovering the threat. ME2 was about assessing the threat and trying to stop the collectors and get more Intel in order to find some way to stop them and their masters from harvesting everyone.

Modifié par Subject M, 17 juillet 2012 - 05:28 .

[Samtheman63]

MetioricTest wrote...

Samtheman63 wrote...

Not for me, always thought they couldn't be defeated conventionally after seeing what soveriegn did.

Assumed ME3 would involve us finding/building "something" that would kill/weaken the reapers

Don't you find that it rendered some if not most of the plot points of ME1 and ME2 completely meaningless?

not really, if we hadnt of stopped the reapers in me1/2 we would have been wiped out.  constantly delaying them bought us time, time bought us the crucible, which bought us victory

[MetioricTest]

Samtheman63 wrote...

MetioricTest wrote...

Samtheman63 wrote...

Not for me, always thought they couldn't be defeated conventionally after seeing what soveriegn did.

Assumed ME3 would involve us finding/building "something" that would kill/weaken the reapers

Don't you find that it rendered some if not most of the plot points of ME1 and ME2 completely meaningless?

not really, if we hadnt of stopped the reapers in me1/2 we would have been wiped out.  constantly delaying them bought us time, time bought us the crucible, which bought us victory

We didn't stop or delay the Reapers in ME2 outside of Arrival. (Which Shepard doesn't have to be involved with at all)

And the time we bought didn't find us the Crucible. Liara didn't start looking through the Prothean database until the start of ME3 after screwing around for 2 years with Feron and Shepard's body. TIM even comments on this himself.

It also raises the question that why was 0 effort put into trying to find/research such a solution all this time? All Shepard and the gang are ever seen trying to do is build armies and prepare defenses. Not pull in scientists trying to design EM Pulses to save the day.

Also as I stated what about the Racni and The Council denial and to a lesser extent Toombs and Lieutenant Forzan. Where's the relevance? They're all about to die in a few years regardless. The Racni don't even have time to reproduce to a relevant extent. These decisions and dramas are rendered meaningless.

Why does it matter that the Galaxy won't unify it's fleets to save Earth? That's a GOOD thing, the unified fleet would be crushed by the superior Reapers.

This is boring and bad storytelling.  (IMO anyway)

The stronger story is the one where if the council had accepted and begun to prepare, if the races had unified and shared knowledge, if TIM hadn't be so obsessed with power and just listened, if the Batarian fleet rolled with us etc... We would have won.

The Reaper strength in both ME1 and ME2 was revealed to be from surprise and indoctrination. They eliminated leaders through the Citadel and attacked before races know what hit them. Then they would turn half of what's left against the other half. In this cycle that never happened.

But because of arrogance and folly of men and women... We still failed and have to fall back on the crucible.

Don't you think that's a stronger story and one with more morals than "Damned if we do and damned if we don't?" which renders the drama, tension and decisions/consequences of the first two game utterly irrelevant? I'll repeat what I said earlier in the topic:


Here are three stories:

#1: Long ago, a storm was heading toward the city of Quin'lat. The people sought protection within the walls. All except one man who remained outside. I went and asked what he was doing. He replied "I am not afraid, I will not hide my face behind stone and mortar. I will stand before the wind  and make it respect me." I honored his choice and went inside. The next  day, the storm came and the man was killed. The wind does not respect a fool.

#2: Long ago, a storm was heading toward the city of Quin'lat. The people sought protection within the walls. All except one man who remained outside. I  went and asked what he was doing. He replied "I am not afraid, I will not hide my face behind stone and mortar. I will stand before the wind  and make it respect me." I honored his choice and went inside. But the  wind broke the walls and we all died anyway.

#3: Long ago, a storm was heading toward the city of Quin'lat. The people sought protection within the walls. All except one man who remained outside. I went and asked what he was doing. He replied "I am not afraid, I will not hide my face behind stone and mortar. I will stand before the wind  and make it respect me." I honored his choice and went inside. But the  wind broke the walls and most of us died but luckily I found a "Stop the wind" device on the floor that saved some of us.

Which do you think is the strongest story? 

Modifié par MetioricTest, 17 juillet 2012 - 05:39 .

[Pitznik]

I agree with you 100%, dear OP. Possibility of conventional victory was never properly explored, but I can easily imagine an ME3 game, where the Council didn't wait until the last second and instead took the warning seriously, and we have completely different situation at the start of ME3, and completely differnt game. Who knows, maybe we could even attack the Reapers, instead of waiting for them.

[Vox Draco]

Mr.House wrote...

Miracle of Palavan and Rannoch. Sure it was not the entire Reaper force, but if the united fleet used those tactics and where not idiots during the battle of Sol a conventional victory, while costly is indeed possible. Also the Reapers have one massive flaw. They can't replenish their numbers, only their foot soldiers. If you keep destroying so many dreadnaughts it will hurt the reapers in the long run because it takes to long to make Reapers. Also if you have the geth and rachni alive, they can build ships between clusters, and if you cured the genophage you will have unlimited krogan krogan troops at your hand(see krogan rebellions of why it ended with a bio weapon)

Not to mention if ME2 was not a waste of time and we in fact got people ready for the invasion, got all ships with thanix canons, made sure we had alot of dreadnaughts ready and the council where not complete utter morons then it would have been possible. ME2 hurt the main story arc ALOT because of it doing nothing.

I support you on this. Conventioanl victory had made one point be true that was adressed in the very first spoken lines of ME1. Shepard is the wo/man for this job, achiving the impossible. More impossible than stopping the Reapers? Uniting the entire galaxy to fight them, together, as one, for one common goal? I guess that message was too cheesy for Bioware, to cliche? Synthesis and singularities are so much better, I guess...

And ME2...*sigh* ... yes, in context of the entire trilogy, a total waste of time, and almost nothing done there has much relevance for ME3, you might even skip part 2 and miss nothing at all. But ME3 is supposed to be the best part to begin the ME-experience, isn't it? Guess this is true, skip ME2 and all you miss is Miranda's firm behind...

Last but not least: The last five minutes is what kills the entire franchise with one single blow. There have been some weird decisions along the way to this point, but a conventional victory, a TRUE victory on shepard's and our terms, not granted by the genocidal catalyst and this weakly implemented plot-device that is the crucible, could have saved the franchise...because killing Reapers is how we win this, and no player ever cared if some characters or people on this board point out how it is not possible...

Possible is everything if the writers had wanted it, and it was still possible up to the last five minutes I say, but the writers went a different route that lead them and their game totally astray....

[SuperVulcan]

Then it's a terrible, pointless and boring couple of games that have pointless tension, drama and missions/plots that are irrelevant and I gain nothing from playing them nor understand why the characters act the way they do. 

 
I guess it depends on  the way you look at it.

But why does Shepard care about the human Reaper if victory is impossible? Only a few thousand humans are going byebye in a universe of billions. 

Shepard would just say no and go home. Enjoy the last year of his life. Tell TIM that if he loved humans so much he should have used all that money to either help billions of them or build an army to find that Reaper tech.

 
Even though I think conventional victory is imopssible Shepard may think it is, and even if he/she didn't why would Shepard give up? The way you put it, why should Shepard try to stop Sovereign? He saw the visions in the Prothean beacon, he witnessed the destruction of the Protheans. Shepard, like Hackett tells him in Mass Effect 3, had no good reason to believe he could actually stop Sovereign, but he tried anyways.

The reason is because Shepard blatantly thinks victory is possible and TIM blatantly thinks control is possible (with Shepard as the key) Throw those out the window and the actions become pointless.

I see no evidence that points that TIM could control the Reapers through Shepard. I don't think anyone knows what TIM intended to do with Shepard after ME 2, but it is clear that he wants him/her to stay out of his way.

the council denial, the collector base, who lives and who dies, what sub-quests you do... They all only matter and have meaning if they make a difference. Even if it's only a therotical difference.

In the end, these things do matter. Not the council denial, but the state of the Collector base, and everything else you mentioned does. However, they only change the effectiveness of the Crucible, which is the key to victory. 

If the Council acceptance/rejection of Reapers means and changes nothing because no matter what they will come and kill us easily and there is nothing we can do about it... Then why the **** is it presented as such a big deal and designed to enrage Shepard and the fans? 

If this is the last Rachni queen and it's survivial would within decades bring about the return a hugely powerful race... Why the **** does it matter whether it lives or dies because it will die in 2/3 years when the Reapers turn up.

The Citadel Council tells you time and again that it cannot act upon the Reaper threat because their action affect the lives of trillions. In the end, maybe they were incompetent, but Shepard never gave the, any solid proof that the Reapers would show up until they eventually did. I don't understand the Rachni part, I never said Shepard thought that victory was impossible.

Why does Shepard constantly tell the Reapers that they will defeat them and continue to fight back?

It's clearly directly designed to show and display that the Reapers could be defeated if only... Take that away and you're left with a largely meaningless story which uses drama and tension in the most bizarre and asinine ways along with giving a terrible introduction to the crucible.

You are forgetting the fact that through the first and second Mass Effect games that no one knew for sure when the Reapers would actually show up. After the events of Arrival, the Alliance took steps to 'prepare'. With Liara looking through the Mars archives. For the time being we do not know of any other place with extensive amounts of Prothean data, except for the beacon on Thessia, which was confidential. Ultimately, as I've stated before, it all depends on the way you look at things. I think you forgot how situational the trilogy is. The Reaper invasion was inevitable, yes. But there was no way to when it was going to happen or how it was going to go down. Which is why the first two games where not so focused on the invasion itself.

I don't get anything from such a story. You're saying all this time we were relying on someone to stumble upon finding a "device which will stop the reapers" to defeat them...But yet nobody was for 2 years? 

Reading through this, I get the impression you forgotten what the situation was before Mass Effect 3. You need to understand that at one point, we didn't know how this trilogy would end. I did make a mistake however, I used to think conventional victory was possible until I played through Mass Effect 3. You need to remeber that the galaxy did not know that the Reapers were coming.

After the events of Arrival, Hackett understood that the Reapers were coming. Which is why he had Liara go through the Prothean archives on Mars, and found the Crucible. It was luck. Bad writing if you see it that way. But Hackett felt that the Crucible was the only way to win, he was Shepard's boss, so Shepard went with it, I feel that Hackett was right.

Hell **** the Collectors. Once we stopped Saren we should have employed every single person we could and just sat in labs for two years trying to create various bizarre devices that would stop the Reapers. Screw trying to build an army. Let's hunt down every scrap of information we have and design are super-weapons.

Like I said before, some knew the Reapers were coming, but not the galaxy at large. Without overwelming proof of a future Reaper invasion, do you really think the masses could be convinced to take the steps that were necessary to get ready for something like th Reapers? I certainly do not think so.

The Council denial makes for a great story-piece and a really important parts of the ark... If it's one of the key things that makes the crucible necessary out of desperation.

If it changes nothing and means nothing... Then it's a pretty pointless story-piece that wastes a lot of time and is presented in a very peculiar way for both games.

I'll take the good storytelling over the bad one.

It's only like that if you see it that way. I consider playing through the trilogy again, if you can. If you do, focus on the game your playing. I am playing through again. The ending doesn't really bother me, but if it bothers you...well I have two suggestions while you are playing:
1. Try to forget about it.
2. Accept it and move on.

[Sajuro]

sth128 wrote...

MetioricTest wrote...

The entire trilogy and ME3 especially is so much stronger if:
"We could have beaten the Reapers If only.... The council listened two years ago."
"We could have beaten the Reapers if only.... We would unify our fleets, even at the cost of our homeworld's security."
"We could have beaten the Reapers if only.... The Asari had shared knowledge of the prothean beacon."
"We could have beaten the Reapers if only.... The Batarians had been more cooperative."
"We could have beaten the Reapers if only.... Miranda's butt was distracting the admirals."
"We could have beaten the Reapers if only.... TIM's obsession didn't lead him toindoctrination and he had worked with us."
Etc.
And now we have to fall back on this desperate crucible plan because of the folly of man.

No no you got it backwards. It's more like this:

If the Council listened two years ago............................... Reapers still win because conventional victory not possible.
If we unified our fleets...................................................... Reapers still win because conventional victory not possible.
If the Asari shared Prothean knowledge........................... Reapers still win because conventional victory not possible.
If the Batarians cooperated............................................... Reapers still win because conventional victory not possible.
If Miranda distracted everyone with her behind.................. Reapers still win because conventional victory not possible.
If TIM devoted all his resources to actually help Shepard... Reapers still win because conventional victory not possible.

Nothing we do or not do will EVER change the outcome of the war. Because Reapers cannot be defeated by any means except the Crucible, which contains space magic powered by artistic integrity.

All our decisions, choices, and love interests (and there are so many of them) DO NOT MATTER... Reapers still win because conventional victory is not possible. It is NEVER possible.

A war of extermination is not conventional, there will not be a cease fire, it is kill all the reapers or be killed.

[RiouHotaru]

You know, the only reason anyone believed they might have been able to beat the reapers is because no-one had seen one in action outside of Sovereign, and look at the damage he did. And that was just one. Increase that exponentially and you're looking at a LOT of damage.

It makes perfectly sense that conventionally you're boned. Hell the Reapers probably time the cycle so they strike before a civilization becomes badass enough to do any significant damage.

[RiouHotaru]

MetioricTest wrote...

As I said in literally the first sentence. I'm not saying there has to be an ending where we defeat Reapers in open confrontation.

I'm saying if we accept that it was always impossible to do so right from the start. Most of ME1 and ME2 become absolutely meaningless.

It's better to assume we could have defeated the Reapers but thanks to poor choices, arrogance and folly we failed. And now we have to fall back on the crucible as our last, best hope for peace.

^ If we accept that then it keeps the crucible as a fine plot-device and doesn't tarnish the first two games.

I guess foreshadowing and character development are meaningless then?