159 réponses à ce sujet

[Kataphrut94]

I think their needed to be some explanation - the mechanics behind the Reaper cycles suggest a deeper purpose to their actions than simple malice. As Johnny Illusive said, if they wanted to wipe us all out, they could do it. There would be no need for the mass relays or giving each civilisation the time and tools to advance.

I personally think the existing motivation is serviceable, but too limited. I'd want to take the underlying idea behind 'synthetics v organics' - that power corrupts - and extend it to everyone. Make it less about 'destroying you so you don't destroy yourselves' and more about 'destroy you so you don't destroy the ones that can't fight back'. Let the organic races advance until they become a danger to the unwitting primitive species of the galaxy, then exterminate them before they can do anything about it. Between Prothean imperialism, salarian uplift, turian militarism, asari corruption, human expansion and the krogan, batarians and vorcha in general, it's not hard to argue how the advanced races are guilty of this.

[Auld Wulf]

@OP

I respect your opinion but I don't agree. We don't know the motivations of the Space Invaders in the game of the same name, but does that mean that Space Invaders technically has a better story (general BSN snark aside)? We have a lot of unexplained foes in gaming, that BioWare actually had the nads to flesh out the story of the Reapers was exemplary and novel.

[spockjedi]

Troxa wrote...

Thanks for sharing! That's very interesting. Maybe the whole ending controversy would never have happened if they made the ending like that.

Troxa wrote...
They fear that they will be rivaled by something more powerful than they are (that this cycle will create AI that can topple the reapers). This implies they are merely fearful for their own survival and that is why they purge all life but they convince themselves they are protecting us.

This is the best explanation. No Dark Energy, no Tech Singularity, no Reproduction/Processing...

[Alien Number Six]

I agree with Wulf. The fact that the Reapers were simply the husks of the first cycle harvested was a staggering realization. Also how much pain and suffering went on for the Al to consider the Reapers the best solution to the problem at hand. The fact that the AI chooses a reoccuring vision from Shepard's PTSD to present itself shows it still dosen't have a solid understanding of the minds of organics. It chose a form it considered friendly and non-threatning to Shepard when the boy in her dreams began to be a symbol of all of the people who fell to the Reapers. Shepard can't wrap her brain around the AI's logic. This shows organics will never truly understand machines. To the AI what is going on is completly logical. The Reaper's motivations and the final scene underline the reasons for the conflict.

[Astartes Marine]

Yes it would have been better.  The Reapers took some inspiration from Lovecraftian horrors and part of what make those work so well is that by definition they are literally beyond the understanding of mortal creatures.  Now I know that the Reapers are far from gods, but the way they were presented in ME1 as completely alien and unknowable was pretty close to Lovecraft.  Having all that mystery and intrigue burned away to reveal such a shoddy and contrived motive...was pretty disappointing to say the least.

If there HAD to be some explanation, it should have been kept to a minimum with much of it being speculation.  They're supposed to be ABOVE us and BEYOND us.  Time and time again we were told their existence was "not something that you can comprehend" and yet we completely comprehend it, it was just offensively primitive of a motive.

Armass81 wrote...
Did the alien queen cheapen the aliens?

No...but Prometheus sure did!  Or the AvP series if you want to delve into that universe's explanation for the Xenomorph existence.  There's also Alien Resurrection and the implied xeno-human relations between the Queen and Brad Dourif's character...not to mention the "newborn".

The Alien queen from Aliens was a natural reveal and was done in a way that lost none of the fear factor.

[David7204]

What worked for Lovecraft would never work for Mass Effect.

[Eryri]

AlanC9 wrote...

The problem with the harvests being for Reaper reproduction is the horrible inefficiency of the process.

If you simply want organics for reproduction, exterminating them and waiting for new ones to develop technology makes no sense. Something like the Goa'uld operation would give you much better and sustainable yields.

 And if you need new species for some reason, 50,000 years is still far too long to wait. The Reapers should have given out agriculture and so forth to cavemen, caveasari, etc. the moment they finished off the protheans. Though I guess we could handwave that away easily enough -- the Reapers did give agriculture to the other Citadel races, but Humans Are Special, and we did in 10,000 years what took the asari 50,000 to accomplish.

This is true, but the cycle also makes no sense for the stated goal of preventing the formation of a runaway AI singularity. Civilisations develop unpredictibly. The Mayans developed astronomical calendars, mathematics and vast and magnificent cities, yet for some reason they never got around to inventing the wheel. If we judge a civilisation by the quality of its plumbing, then Europe regressed after the Roman Empire fell.

Suppose there were some species with a bronze age culture that fell under the Reaper's radar. If the Reapers bocome aware of them at all, they might deem them too primitive to bother with for now, but make a mental note to check on them next cycle. However this species, through some quirk of genetics, proves to be very intellectually precocious and develops very rapidly (as indeed we did following the industrial revolution). Suppose they have little cultural interest in colonising space, so never discover any of the Reaper's mass effect technology (so never develop along "the paths they desire"), and put all their efforts into improving life for themselves on their own world. They might view radio waves as a curiosity, and instead skip straight to fibre optics, thereby giving no easily detectable clue as to how advanced they are. They might quietly develop recursively self-improving AI at an early point during the cycle, while most of the Reapers are still hibernating. The Vanguard left behind to keep an eye on things also spends much of its time asleep, and could not be expected to keep a close eye on every single world in the galaxy. 

This AI could be very dangerous if it's of the "replicator" type, (to use another bit of Stargate terminology). It might consume its creators and every resource on its homeworld, and decide to expand. Cut to 25,000 to 40,000 years later when the Reapers arrive to find half the galaxy under the control of an AI empire even more powerful than them.

If the Reapers really are attempting to police the development of runaway synthetic life, or act as cosmic gamekeepers, then they should never leave the galaxy. It's where all the energy and resources are anyway, so its pointless hiding out in the dark and cold of intergalactic space when you could just deploy some solar panels near a sun and stay active. They should just keep patroling the galaxy to nip this kind of singularity in the bud whenever it occurs. A good shepherd doesn't leave his flock unattended, so to speak. 

Modifié par Eryri, 04 mai 2013 - 03:43 .

[Goneaviking]

I still think that the best explanation would have been: every 50 000 years they go into mating season.

The end.

[Goneaviking]

AlanC9 wrote...

The problem with the harvests being for Reaper reproduction is the horrible inefficiency of the process.

If you simply want organics for reproduction, exterminating them and waiting for new ones to develop technology makes no sense. Something like the Goa'uld operation would give you much better and sustainable yields.

 And if you need new species for some reason, 50,000 years is still far too long to wait. The Reapers should have given out agriculture and so forth to cavemen, caveasari, etc. the moment they finished off the protheans. Though I guess we could handwave that away easily enough -- the Reapers did give agriculture to the other Citadel races, but Humans Are Special, and we did in 10,000 years what took the asari 50,000 to accomplish.

No see, you're looking at it the wrong way.

All the crazy indoctrination, huskification nonsense... that's foreplay.

It puts a little spice into the baby making and makes a nice break after 50 000 years working in an office for your father-in-law.

[Robhuzz]

3DandBeyond wrote...

Robhuzz wrote...

Yougotcarved1 wrote...

iakus wrote...

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

No I mean ignoring comparisons to what we got (anything else would come out favourable) if you were just playing it through for the first time, and it was a good ending where you defeated the Reapers but the plot never touched on where they came from or why they do what they do, would you be satisfied with that?

I definitely would be satisfied with that. As Vigil said in ME1 you don't need to understand them. You just have to stop them. I would've preferred it if they had just dropped a few hints but left the true origins and motivations of the Reapers unexplained. I could even do without the hints.

That's the thing.  Once the endings were created there was always going to be a rift.  There are always those who stick up for devs no matter what, always those who complain for no reason no matter what, and then there are those in between.  This game had a lot more well thought out opposition than just some random complaining.  Had the endings been some variety of win, lose, sacrifice, or screw it all up and get your team killed, "cheesy", and very very sad, even if it wasn't the greatest ending ever made, it would have satisfied most people.  Even those that now say they wouldn't ever want any other ending but what they have now.  But, changing it after the fact, the idea of changing it, got a lot of people's tighty whiteys in a bunch because they didn't want to see other people happy.  It's a fact because some even said they'd never want it changed even if they never had to see new content. 

I'd have rather had the reapers be a total mystery, defeatable even if it took extreme measures, and merely a malevolent lifeform much as the Predator really was in the first Predator movie.  To explain them and to be all about their motivations (they really lacked any since the kid controlled them), ended up diminishing them.  The story always was about the people and what they did to fight the enemy and the enemy could have been killer puppies for all that it mattered.

I agree, well apart from the killer puppies part (though it would've been fun to see). To me what made the Reapers such great and terrifying villians was that we knew nothing about them. We didn't know what they wanted but we knew it was bad for us and that was all that we needed to know. We didn't know why, where they'd come from, who built them or even how many of them there were and we only had sovereign for comparison so we didn't know how strong they really were. But we knew (from Vigil) they had wiped out the Protheans' galaxy spanning empire without much effort and thousands of civilisations before them. We were fighting a great unknown. 'Explaining' (and I put it between quotations because the star kid's doesn't seem like an explanation - just some quickly made up nonsense that was downright insulting) them diminished them greatly.

[S.A.K]

This would have been a better ending...

[Mastone]

Armass81 wrote...

No, not explaining would have pissed fans off too. Just look at the original ending. They were demanding answers on what happened.

They got pissed because the ending did not fit the ME universe ..not even remotely.


With regards to the statement of the OP, I think it would be best if the reapers were understandable only to the extend  where it would have kept your interest in them and still fear them and at the end you still wonder about them.
In essence no full monty just a little peep to keep you interested
I also would like to have seen more missions where you would have to artifacts in ruins of ancient civilizations for clues/knowledge on the reapers instead of the brainless hogwash we were shoved with.

[Auld Wulf]

Alien Number Six wrote...

I agree with Wulf. The fact that the Reapers were simply the husks of the first cycle harvested was a staggering realization. Also how much pain and suffering went on for the Al to consider the Reapers the best solution to the problem at hand. The fact that the AI chooses a reoccuring vision from Shepard's PTSD to present itself shows it still dosen't have a solid understanding of the minds of organics. It chose a form it considered friendly and non-threatning to Shepard when the boy in her dreams began to be a symbol of all of the people who fell to the Reapers. Shepard can't wrap her brain around the AI's logic. This shows organics will never truly understand machines. To the AI what is going on is completly logical. The Reaper's motivations and the final scene underline the reasons for the conflict.

Oh my, this is a delight. I'm more than happy to reply to this. This is cool.

Okay, the thing with the Catalyst that you might have realised and not many others have? It's a child. Everything, when it is first conceived, is a child. Be it an AI or an organic. This has been true from the beginning of fiction -- Arthur C. Clarke pointed it out many times in his works, as have other authors. Until we see an AI that contradicts that, it's the common belief. The Geth, when first activated, were but babies following 'instincts' (core programming). The Catalyst isn't a lot different.

If you were to leave a baby with a stack of books and no supervision, how well would that work? Also, how would bad parenting affect an AI? Now, yes, an AI is better equipped than a baby, but an information dump (the equivalent of books) isn't the same as actually experiencing anything. The Leviathans were bad parents, because they forced their ideologies on the Catalyst as an infodump, and told the Catalyst to--essentially--make the galaxy perfect for them.

The Catalyst had actually had no hands-on experience. Every youth needs hands-on experience to grow. This is why the Catalyst doesn't understand much beyond the infodump the Leviathans originally gave it. It hasn't grown at all, and the Catalyst is still a child. It has no clue what organics are about really besides the basest, most clinical information. It's not experienced interacting with organics, it hasn't spoken with organics, it hasn't interacted with them beyond harvesting them. There has been no room for growth.

What little growth it did have drove it to want to try another solution -- Synthesis. But the Catalyst just wasn't aware enough of how organics work in order to actually make it succeed. It required the reprogramming of the Crucible redesigners to actually become capable of creating a successful Synthesis event. Even then, however, it had trouble wrapping its mind around how to explain what the Crucible had done to it, it was stumbling over itself in a confused way.

Consider, the Crucible allows the Catalyst to think more freely than it had, then the Catalyst is able to interact with an organic (Shepard) for the first time.

The story of the Reapers, the Catalyst, and the Leviathans is an interesting one, to me. BioWare at their best.

[Mastone]

Troxa wrote...

pastebin.com/LXUd4BU1
www.giantbomb.com/mass-effect-3/3030-29935/forums/supposed-true-endings-according-to-guy-on-gamefaqs-539248/

Still a ridiculous ending and not so varied I would be interested in replaying this.
It replaces starbrat with Harbinger which is a huge plus of course.

If  I had the possibility to change the endgame after entering the beam only I would at least convert everything as follows;

You talk with Harbinger and it basically comes down at them fearing the rise of a greater force then they are, presenting you with 4 choices

-Fight until the end where your choices and assets determine who comes out on top: player or the reapers..shepard dies/lives depending on choices.
I would especially like the choice between a high risk mission and an easier one where one of the crewmembers would say  let one of us take the lead on the hard mission you have done enough, if you do the hard one you will die, if you pick the other one a couple of your crewmates die and leaves you with survivorsguilt and you only turn up to relieve the crewmates which are still alive and finish the hard mission.

-A truce between player and reapers where your actions and choices in past games and choices during the negotiations determine who ends up on top, if the reapers have the upper hand Shepard will have to come with them and they take away al long living and AI species and convine our moving space( reservations).
If the player has the upper hand the reapers leave, we get knowledge/technology to repel  reapers from our system, if you have resolved the Geth/Quarian conflict the Geth will analyze the data and remove the back door virus the reapers had in it and make it an effective shield.
Shepard dies of old age
if you have not resolved the Geth Quarian conflict the reapers return when Shepard is old and wipe away everything.

- Surrender. if you have made all the right choices and have all assets  the Reapers will leave with you and your crew turning you into a reaper and agree to spare a select few to rebuild.
If you haven't got any bargaining power, depending on your EMS/choices they will either lie to you when they say they"ll spare a select few and turn you into a reaper or don't even bother lying and take you and your crew with them.

- Flee with your crew while the rest of civilisation gets wiped out.
Depending on your influence with crew mates in past games you will have 2 outcomes;
the Good outcome:
Everyone is agreeable if not somewhat reluctant you will reach the planet safely and start an enclave you will also meet a human like race there which might turn into the next apex race and you educate them about the reapers essentially preparing them.
Everyone ends up relatively happy
the Bad outcome:
A fight breaks out , which Liara is leading against you urging you to turn back and fight, you either knock her out or kill her subdueing the rest.
After you land you split up and each of you dies by the elements in the new world in the end either Liara commits suicide after living for nearly 800 years in solitude after seeing a reaper appear at the horizon, or if Liara got shot , EDI turning herself of.

This would make it a lot more ME like in my opinion and make it a more realistic approach to an ending of a warstory.

[AlanC9]

Astartes Marine wrote...

Yes it would have been better.  The Reapers took some inspiration from Lovecraftian horrors and part of what make those work so well is that by definition they are literally beyond the understanding of mortal creatures.  Now I know that the Reapers are far from gods, but the way they were presented in ME1 as completely alien and unknowable was pretty close to Lovecraft.  Having all that mystery and intrigue burned away to reveal such a shoddy and contrived motive...was pretty disappointing to say the least.

In retrospect, mixing inexplicable Lovecraftian horror and sci-fi was a mistake from the start. In sci-fi the universe is explicable. I said upthread that leaving the Reapers unexplained would have been a lame cop-out for me; I didn't mention that Sovereign's Virmire speech struck me as pretentious villain b.s. Nothing wrong with pretentious villain b.s. as long as you eventually get to see through it.

So if you wanted the Lovecraftian aspect played straight.... well, we just wanted different things from the game.

Modifié par AlanC9, 04 mai 2013 - 04:04 .

[sharkboy421]

MrFob wrote...

I think the reapers do deserve at least a partial explanation. My preferred way is to provide one that is so vast in concept that it is tough to wrap your head around. Their motivations have to come from their perspective, which is s alien to us that we cannot relate but at least we should be able to get a glimmer of what's going on and have that supported by the plot.

That was the big fallacy of the original ending. It provided a very specific, well defined reasoning that is not supported by the rest of the plot. I read in another thread that one of the main problems with the explanation is that it is told to us but not shown. If you make peace between the quarians and the geth, in fact, the opposite is shown. That's what causes a lot of disconnect and that's what's wrong with it (apart from the fact that this exposition is given by an utterly untrustworthy source).
For my personal preference, I also very much dislike the fact that the writers chose to diminish the reapers by making them thralls of the catalyst but that's just me.

A good explanation for the reapers would have been more vague with more room to maneuver, grander in scale and - most importantly - referenced seemingly unimportant little pieces of information that we got all throughout the trilogy.

Giving no explanation at all is a bit unsatisfactory, especially for paragon characters IMO. After all, if you just defeat the reapers without understanding them, you didn't really solve the problem, you just got lucky and exterminated the unkoen threat. It reminds me of Starship Troopers. Who cares what the bugs are, really, as long as we can stomp them into the muck.

I am late to the thread but MrFob you did a great job of summing up my thoughts.

The Reapers have a reason for doing what they do.  But their pespective on the universe and life and time and all that is so vast and so alien to our own that we really cannot understand it.  We would get bits and pieces of it, but overall there is just a vaguness about it that leaves a lot of room for interpretation.

That is what I was hoping for at least.

[Iakus]

AlanC9 wrote...

Astartes Marine wrote...

Yes it would have been better.  The Reapers took some inspiration from Lovecraftian horrors and part of what make those work so well is that by definition they are literally beyond the understanding of mortal creatures.  Now I know that the Reapers are far from gods, but the way they were presented in ME1 as completely alien and unknowable was pretty close to Lovecraft.  Having all that mystery and intrigue burned away to reveal such a shoddy and contrived motive...was pretty disappointing to say the least.

In retrospect, mixing inexplicable Lovecraftian horror and sci-fi was a mistake from the start. In sci-fi the universe is explicable. I said upthread that leaving the Reapers unexplained would have been a lame cop-out for me; I didn't mention that Sovereign's Virmire speech struck me as pretentious villain b.s. Nothing wrong with pretentious villain b.s. as long as you eventually get to see through it.

So if you wanted the Lovecraftian aspect played straight.... well, we just wanted different things from the game.

I say split the difference.

Don't fully explain things, just drop hints so there can be "lots of speculation for everyone"

[AlanC9]

Eryri wrote...
This is true, but the cycle also makes no sense for the stated goal of preventing the formation of a runaway AI singularity. Civilisations develop unpredictibly. The Mayans developed astronomical calendars, mathematics and vast and magnificent cities, yet for some reason they never got around to inventing the wheel. If we judge a civilisation by the quality of its plumbing, then Europe regressed after the Roman Empire fell.

My understanding was that both those things are considered explicable in terms of their particular situations. The wheel isn't all that useful for a civilization without draft animals, and the economic organization that made Roman plumbing practical had collapsed (though I don't know why central heating is supposed to have been forgotten too). Meanwhile, agriculture had incentive to improve after the fall of Rome, since throwing more slave labor at the problem was no longer an option.

Presumably the Mayans would have gotten around to the wheel eventually. I believe there's a race in the Hitchiker's Guide series that developed aerosol deodorants before the wheel, but that was because they had 50 arms each.

If the Reapers really are attempting to police the development of runaway synthetic life, or act as cosmic gamekeepers, then they should never leave the galaxy. It's where all the energy and resources are anyway, so its pointless hiding out in the dark and cold of intergalactic space when you could just deploy some solar panels near a sun and stay active. They should just keep patroling the galaxy to nip this kind of singularity in the bud whenever it occurs. A good shepherd doesn't leave his flock unattended, so to speak.

Yep. But ME1 was what it was, and we have to live with it.

[Benchpress610]

The reapers were awesome killing machines from a remote past bent on absolute destruction. Their unknowable unflinching resolve on total extermination made them the stuff of nightmares. They couldn’t be reason or bargain with. They absolutely wouldn’t stop until we were all dead.

By trying to explain them away, the Catalyst (read the writers) cheapens the terrifying threat the reapers represented. It just waters down and dissolves that awesomeness and the cataclysmic anticipation for the final resolution of the plot

I would’ve like some kind of inside into their motivations, but as MrFob very well puts it “Their motivations have to come from their perspective, which is s alien to us that we cannot relate but at least we should be able to get a glimmer of what's going on and have that supported by the plot.” …lacking that and given the alternative, The reapers were the perfect enemy and didn’t need to be explained away. IMO the cop out is what we got.

[Eryri]

iakus wrote...

AlanC9 wrote...

Astartes Marine wrote...

Yes it would have been better.  The Reapers took some inspiration from Lovecraftian horrors and part of what make those work so well is that by definition they are literally beyond the understanding of mortal creatures.  Now I know that the Reapers are far from gods, but the way they were presented in ME1 as completely alien and unknowable was pretty close to Lovecraft.  Having all that mystery and intrigue burned away to reveal such a shoddy and contrived motive...was pretty disappointing to say the least.

In retrospect, mixing inexplicable Lovecraftian horror and sci-fi was a mistake from the start. In sci-fi the universe is explicable. I said upthread that leaving the Reapers unexplained would have been a lame cop-out for me; I didn't mention that Sovereign's Virmire speech struck me as pretentious villain b.s. Nothing wrong with pretentious villain b.s. as long as you eventually get to see through it.

So if you wanted the Lovecraftian aspect played straight.... well, we just wanted different things from the game.

I say split the difference.

Don't fully explain things, just drop hints so there can be "lots of speculation for everyone"

I think that would be the best course of action. To take the example of Battlestar Galactica; "Head Six" as she was known, who seemed to inhabit Baltar's imagination, was far more mysterious and terrifying when you didn't know what she was. Was she a Cylon program running on a chip in his brain? Was she just his psychosis? Was she some sort of demon? Or some completely alien entity? You were only ever given tantalising little clues that you were free to interpret in whatever way you saw fit until...

SPOILERS

... in the final season you find out she's really just an obedient little angel, working to enact the will of a very conventional, monotheistic conception of God. The mystery was solved and the fascination ebbed away. In truth it's very hard to create a satisfying resolution to these sorts of fictional mysteries. It's perhaps best to keep certain aspects vague enough for people to draw their own conclusions

[Cainhurst Crow]

No. These things aren't an eldric horror and they are no monolith from 2001 space oddesy.

They are machines who we have beaten twice, and who we have had face to face conversations with, both of which negate the reapers from the status being allowed to not explain themselves or why they do anything at all.

It's like someone who got their ass kicked in two big fights in a row bragging about how they're the best that's ever been.

[AlanC9]

Benchpress610 wrote...

The reapers were awesome killing machines from a remote past bent on absolute destruction. Their unknowable unflinching resolve on total extermination made them the stuff of nightmares. They couldn’t be reason or bargain with. They absolutely wouldn’t stop until we were all dead.

And yet they've organized their whole civilzation around something pointless. Or at least they give the appearance of doing so.  One of the few alternative explanations I ever liked is that the known galaxy is a Reaper hunting preserve. They find wars against organics fun, so they've organized this part of the galaxy to let them happen. Sovereign's merely a gamekeeper who got himself gored by a feral pig. 

And we're the deer and pigs.

Modifié par AlanC9, 04 mai 2013 - 06:12 .

[AlanC9]

Eryri wrote...

I think that would be the best course of action. To take the example of Battlestar Galactica; "Head Six" as she was known, who seemed to inhabit Baltar's imagination, was far more mysterious and terrifying when you didn't know what she was. Was she a Cylon program running on a chip in his brain? Was she just his psychosis? Was she some sort of demon? Or some completely alien entity? You were only ever given tantalising little clues that you were free to interpret in whatever way you saw fit until...

SPOILERS

... in the final season you find out she's really just an obedient little angel, working to enact the will of a very conventional, monotheistic conception of God. The mystery was solved and the fascination ebbed away. In truth it's very hard to create a satisfying resolution to these sorts of fictional mysteries. It's perhaps best to keep certain aspects vague enough for people to draw their own conclusions

BSG is an example of the writers doing what ME did. Do you have an example of leaving stuff unexplained that did satisfy people? Edit: a sci-fi example, that is.

IIRC Lost manages to get itself attacked for both the stuff it did explain and for the stuff it didn't explain, which is quite a feat. OTOH, I'm not really prepared to put Lost in the sci-fi category anyway. Speculative fiction is maybe more apt.

Modifié par AlanC9, 04 mai 2013 - 06:15 .

[Archonsg]

What of Babylon 5?
Taking into consideration that JMS' hand was forced when he thought that he would be cut short at season 4 instead of his planned 5 seasons and technically ended B5 with "Deconstruction of Falling Stars" only to find that season 5 was approved and thus able to give full closure to the series, isn't it a good example of how to craft a series that had continuity in narrative and story with proper closure at the end?

[AlanC9]

What of Babylon 5? Are you saying it's an example of leaving stuff mysterious? I don't see it.