Aucune réponse à ce sujet

[FlyingSquirrel]

I've mentioned a few times that perhaps the Mass Effect series might have actually been better if it had focused on smaller conflicts instead of putting a threat to the entire galaxy at the center of the narrative, and I thought I'd share a few ideas for how it could have been done. With, of course, the caution that hindsight is 20/20 and I"m not saying I'd have done a better job than Bioware if I'd been in their place.

The main problem with the Reaper plot, IMO, is that one of the strongest points of Mass Effect is that it creates this wonderfully complex and detailed galactic society with lots of interesting characters, but then it tells you just a few hours into the series that it's all about to be destroyed. So what if that only became clear much more gradually, and in a way that didn't make you feel like you might be wasting valuable time exploring other situations and storylines?

ME1 could start out pretty much the same way it already does - Shepard is in line to become a Spectre, Eden Prime is attacked, Nihlus is killed, and you have to prove to the Council that Saren was responsible. However, Tali's data and the recording of Saren and Benezia don't say anything about Reapers - Saren, Benezia, the geth, and the Conduit are the only leads. Shepard is appointed a Spectre and told to go investigate Saren and figure out what he's up to, and the main missions proceed pretty much as before.

Shepard learns about indoctrination in the course of the missions, but it's unclear whether it's anything more than highly advanced geth technology. The conversation with Sovereign on Virmire is much shorter - he makes a brief derogatory comment about how much more powerful he is than any organic species and then cuts off the conversation. Shepard and the crew aren't sure who or what they just saw, but something about it reminds Shepard of the vision on Eden Prime. Saren is similarly oblique when confronted about his motivations, though he does hint that he's not doing this for the sake of his own power and that something much bigger is going on.

It's not until Ilos and talking to Vigil that the word "Reaper" is first heard, though Vigil is badly damaged and still has less information than we actually got in ME1. In the confrontation on the Citadel, Saren appears about to admit that the Reapers are real, but then his indoctrination (which the crew still don't really understand) kicks in.  When the battle's over, everyone's still unsure what Saren's real plan was. Was he just a puppet of the geth all along, and if so, why did they initiate hostilities? Was all this just an excuse for his own ambition? Had he simply gone crazy? So you have the big epic conclusion where you save the Citadel, but whether this was really a battle for the entire galaxy is left unclear.

In ME2, Shepard is out investigating Prothean ruins and geth activity to try to shed some further light on all this when the Normandy is attacked by the Collectors. When Shepard is resurrected by Cerberus, TIM instead presents an alternative theory: the Collectors were in fact the ones pulling the strings with the geth *and* with Saren and that their primary motive is gaining a free hand to conduct their genetic experiments. Since the Council and a good proportion of the Citadel species' fleets survived the geth attack, they've gone back to operating covertly and abducting humans. He's never heard of "Reapers" and doesn't take much stock in the story when Shepard recounts it, suggesting that Vigil was planted there as Collector propaganda. It's not until they find the human Reaper on board the Collector Base that Shepard and the crew realize the truth: the Reapers *are* real, and they - not Saren, not the geth, not the Collectors - have been the real threat all along.

When ME3 begins, the destruction of the Alpha Relay (whether by Shepard or by other Alliance personnel, depending on your import) has in fact screwed up the Reapers' plans to some extent, so they're just making trouble along the outskirts rather than the full-on assaults on Earth and Palaven that we see at the beginning. Still, most of the galaxy is convinced that this is the prelude to a larger invasion, and so Shepard is sent to gather resources and allies by curing the genophage, resolving the quarian/geth conflict, dealing with Cerberus's treachery, etc. The Rannoch Reaper would have some of the dialogue that Sovereign and Harbinger would have had in ME1/2, and the Crucible plans and a more detailed history about the Reapers are recovered when Javik is found on Eden Prime. The full invasion would start after Rannoch, with Palaven and Thessia hit first and Earth a little later, when the turian and asari militaries have to evacuate and meet up with the Alliance fleet in the Sol system.

So what do you all think? Would a "more politics and exploration, less Reapers" approach have improved the Mass Effect trilogy?