159 réponses à ce sujet

[Iakus]

 reposted from another thread:

" Beyond our comprehension" by its very nature, is unable to be explained.  So any explanation is destined to pretty much be a letdown as far as the Reapers go.

So I'm willing to take them at their word "Fine, you're beyond my comprehension.  Comprehend this"  KABOOM!!!

[Goneaviking]

Yougotcarved1 wrote...

just wanted to see if anyone else thinks no explanation for how they were created would have been the best course.

Yes. God yes. I've been saying it since Mass Effect 2.

After all the times we were hearing that we couldn't possibly understand their motivation? The only way that could possibly ring true is if the developers never told us what the reapers were thinking.

Would've been great to just get hints, and be left to figure it out for ourselves. We could've argued for years.

[Goneaviking]

Armass81 wrote...

Did the alien queen cheapen the aliens?

The alien queen wasn't concept that seemed completely divorced from a race of insect looking aliens.

Now, I've got an apple and an orange, shall we compare them?

Modifié par Goneaviking, 01 mai 2013 - 02:53 .

[Armass81]

Goneaviking wrote...

Armass81 wrote...

Did the alien queen cheapen the aliens?

The alien queen wasn't concept that seemed completely divorced from a race of insect looking aliens.

Now, I've got an apple and an orange, shall we compare them?

K maybe a bad example but still. There is still some comparison as the catalyst is to the reapers as alien queen is to the xenomorphs. Or skynet to the terminators.

Modifié par Armass81, 01 mai 2013 - 03:03 .

[tevix]

Organic species and genocidal computers created by humanity are things we can comprehend.

The starchild was thrown in as a way to create an edgy ending intended to make no sense so we'd be talking about it long after the game was out. Which we are. It is an irrelevant and ineffectual character because it serves no purpose.

I believe the explination of the reapers should have gone as far as it did at the end of ME2, and no further. The idea that they create reapers through organics, that they think they are bringing us to a higher state of existance, is good. It gives us a general idea of what they are after but leaves a lot unexplained.

When you create an entity such as the reapers and defind their motives as incomprehensible to organics you cannot ever define their motives. If you can't understand it, how can you define it? For it to be truly beyond our understanding, it can never be explained.

[Goneaviking]

There's comparison to be made.

But it's worth keeping in mind that the existence of the alien queen and Skynet are implied by the existence of xenomorphs and terminators.

I can't see anything in retrospect that implied the existence of the catalyst.

[Armass81]

Goneaviking wrote...

There's comparison to be made.

But it's worth keeping in mind that the existence of the alien queen and Skynet are implied by the existence of xenomorphs and terminators.

I can't see anything in retrospect that implied the existence of the catalyst.

Not really. Aliens could have been just predatory species like spiders or wolves with no hivemind. Only Hudson and Ripley brings up the possibility in aliens of a queen existing who "runs the whole show".

Only thing that did it in ME3 before leviathans was Vendetta I think.

Modifié par Armass81, 01 mai 2013 - 03:18 .

[tevix]

@Armass

Redundant. When I was told that the "master" was not the reapers I expected something other than another reaper suffering from personal issues.

[Armass81]

tevix wrote...

@Armass

Redundant. When I was told that the "master" was not the reapers I expected something other than another reaper suffering from personal issues.

But you were still expecting something, right? An answer...?

Modifié par Armass81, 01 mai 2013 - 03:17 .

[tevix]

Not really. I always assumed I would be left wondering.

The reapers were supposed to be beyond comprehension. Anything more powerful and more incomprehensible than them would creep into the realm of FF final bosses.

I expected to defeat the reapers, and at most be left wondering about the possibility of a greater entity behind their existance, but never really revealed.

[AshenShug4r]

Their motivations seemed clear - they use us to reproduce. Their origins, unknowable and incomprehensible, as Sovereign said. They're horrors from the dark and they need to die, that's all I cared about really.

[Wolfva2]

Yeah, I have to agree with the OP. I would have preferred no real explanation. After all, it wasn't necessary to the story WHY they were doing what they were doing, only that they were doing it.
Frankly, I couldn't care less WHY someone is attacking me. I'm more concerned with taking them down.

Something I used to teach my officers as an FTO..."When someone is attacking you, "WHY" is the least important factor. It doesn't matter WHY they are attacking you, only that they ARE. Don't worry about WHY. WHY is for the lawyers, judges and Juries, for the doctors, to figure out. YOUR job is to end the threat as swiftly and painlessly as you can. Asking 'Why?" in the middle of an incident will only get you killed. Don't worry about it."

[Seracen]

Yes, I liked the idea of the Reapers being so alien, we literally COULD NOT understand their logic. Eating us/using us as a method of reproduction wasn't bad, and I could live with that explanation too.

Honestly, Cthulhu doesn't need much of an explanation to be creepy, I don't think Space Cthulhu needs it either.

[AlanC9]

Difficult to say what the alternate-universe me would have thought. My best guess is that not even attempting to explain the Reapers' behavior would have struck me as a horrible, lame cop-out.

[Goneaviking]

Armass81 wrote...

Goneaviking wrote...

There's comparison to be made.

But it's worth keeping in mind that the existence of the alien queen and Skynet are implied by the existence of xenomorphs and terminators.

I can't see anything in retrospect that implied the existence of the catalyst.

Not really. Aliens could have been just predatory species like spiders or wolves with no hivemind. Only Hudson and Ripley brings up the possibility in aliens of a queen existing who "runs the whole show".

Only thing that did it in ME3 before leviathans was Vendetta I think.

Except that something clearly laid the eggs, and they were much too large to have come from the aliens we'd seen prior to the reveal of the queen.

The insect queen is a concept that most watchers were well aware of from our understanding of bees and ants.

[GimmeDaGun]

Yestare7 wrote...



The reapers become puppets of some stupid mis-programmed AI.

It cheapens them immensely.

Mayhaps NO explanation would have been better.

They were cheap and generic from day one. I mean big ass, ancient sentient squid-shaped starships with menacing voices and mind-controll ability which have no other aim but to destroy every living thing for reasons "you wouldn't comprehend"... aha.. maybe a 10 year old gets excited about that. 

Now at least they have an actual back story and motivation, no matter how cliched they are. The reapers are only a sci-fi-ish plot devise for ancient apocalyptic evil which endangers all things that we know of, spiced up with a few things. 

I'm fine with the explanation for them. It's good enough for a B-category sci-fi story, which the ME trilogy is. Letting them stay big all powerful metal bugs howering and devouring people without explanation would have been so very cheap.

[CDR David Shepard]

People were upset that bioware was ambiguous about Shepard living during the breathe scene...

...and you think it would be a good idea to leave the Reapers ambiguous?

I can bet that if they left the Reapers unexplained...the title of this thread would indeed be "WTF, why were the Reapers not explained?"

[Mangalores]

Armass81 wrote...

Goneaviking wrote...

Armass81 wrote...

Did the alien queen cheapen the aliens?

The alien queen wasn't concept that seemed completely divorced from a race of insect looking aliens.

Now, I've got an apple and an orange, shall we compare them?

K maybe a bad example but still. There is still some comparison as the catalyst is to the reapers as alien queen is to the xenomorphs. Or skynet to the terminators.

the alien queen does not subvert the aliens. It's simply a bigger, meaner version of where the already scary nasty things come from. The Catalyst subverts the Reapers since it invalidates everything we knew from Sovereign and Harbinger. 

[Vortex13]

Yes I would have prefered no explanation, or rather only vague hints at the outline of an explanation "Give us the outline of the monster, don't shine a spotlight on it."

The Reapers worked best in the shadows from both an in game perspective and as villians of the series. Killing us for reproduction? For food? Simple and effective. Killing us because they are trying to save us? Conveluted and cheapens the Reapers overall.

Ideally, I would have prefered an orange/blue morality to the Reapers, and their motivations, but monsters in the dark works as well, which is essentially what they were in games 1 & 2. Really, from my experience, the more powerful the villian the more simple the explanation.

Look at the Joker in the Dark Knight, no explanation. Or for a Sci-Fi video game comparison, look at the Bretheran Moons of Dead Space, they are monsters in the dark that only want to eat us, but they are (IMO) far more effective as villians then the Catalyst controlled Reapers are.

Really it comes down to how easily the villian is sumed up, the easier it is, the better the villian.

Reapers/Catalyst: We are preserving organic and synthetic life, by killing and harvesting it to make way for new life."

VS.

Bretheren Moons: "They are hungry. They are coming."

[Eryri]

Personally I think the Reaper's true motivations should only have been given the most subtle of hints, if at all. That would be the kind of thing that the fan community might actually have enjoyed speculating about.

The unknown is always more terrifying. Every decent horror film-maker knows that sometime less is more. Monsters cease to be terrifying when you can see them clearly. Something similar is true here. The motivation we have for them is just too mundane and cliché to be interesting.

[Kel Riever]

iakus wrote...

Well, I'd rather have no explanation than the one we got, so yeah...

Basically, that.

[Display Name Owner]

In theory I'd have liked the Reaper's motivations to remain unlearned, but the truth is I don't think I or many of us would have actually been satisfied with that.

I'd say what would have been best is hints and partial discovery, with a lot of stuff kept hidden. I also don't think they should have had any one simple reason, but it should have been a range of things involving, dark energy, population and resource management, order vs. chaos, reproducing, and their idea of 'uplifting' species to the pinnacle.

[KingZayd]

No. But it would be better than getting the Starchild.

[KaiserShep]

I would've been wondering why the reapers even concern themselves with this galaxy anymore. Something that can survive in dark space for 50 thousand years could probably just move on without hesitation, so why bother? In any case, I felt that the Leviathan was better as an explanation than the catalyst.

Modifié par KaiserShep, 01 mai 2013 - 03:02 .