235 réponses à ce sujet

[Hadeedak]

Machines. Maybe I just read too much Asimov as a kid or something, but I have a hard time really hating them. Sympathizing with them? Not really. But the Catalyst is in a situation he can't resolve, so he finds a solution (which sucks, by the by). As far as it understands, it seems to be entirely logical. Until it doesn't work.

And the Reapers are byproducts -- an attempt to archive organic civilizations instead of destroying them entirely. Yeah. They're broken. They're horrible. Whatever.

[Enhanced]

M25105 wrote...

I would've thought everyone and their grandmother viewed the Reapers as evil and the kid as a monster, but it seems that either I'm seeing things wrong or there are people on this board who are actually sympathetic to thr genocidal flying cuttlefish robots and the space emperor ghost kid from Contact.

Please tell me this ain't true.

If Bioware didn't intend for some players to be more open minded, they wouldn't have written the ending that way and created additional content that supported it (EC and Leviathan DLC).

[Morlath]

Hadeedak wrote...

Machines. Maybe I just read too much Asimov as a kid or something, but I have a hard time really hating them. Sympathizing with them? Not really. But the Catalyst is in a situation he can't resolve, so he finds a solution (which sucks, by the by). As far as it understands, it seems to be entirely logical. Until it doesn't work.

And the Reapers are byproducts -- an attempt to archive organic civilizations instead of destroying them entirely. Yeah. They're broken. They're horrible. Whatever.

I agree. I've probably read far too much sciience fiction or fantasy with synthetics in them to hate any of the machines in the game.

I can't remember who it was or which thread on the Catalyst it was but someone brought up a great point that seems to get overlooked. Machine programing - Garbage In, Garbage Out.

[dreamgazer]

Enhanced wrote...

If Bioware didn't intend for some players to be more open minded, they wouldn't have written the ending that way and created additional content that supported it (EC and Leviathan DLC).

Idealistic would probably be a better word than open-minded.  

Don't assume that those who see this through a different lens than yours are any less open to alternatives. 

[The Night Mammoth]

It's not necessary to think the villain is evil, or hate them, to want to stop them. I don't have a problem with the idea that the Reapers aren't wholly bad and their actions are based on a motive which is actually quite compelling, but I don't really like the idea that they're any less villains because of it.

Sure, they're doing what they do because the Catalyst was created to make sure organic life doesn't get wiped out, and that's something I'd support, but it still does that by killing and torturing billions of people in a cycle of genocide.

[Hadeedak]

The Night Mammoth wrote...

It's not necessary to think the villain is evil, or hate them, to want to stop them. I don't have a problem with the idea that the Reapers aren't wholly bad and their actions are based on a motive which is actually quite compelling, but I don't really like the idea that they're any less villains because of it.

Sure, they're doing what they do because the Catalyst was created to make sure organic life doesn't get wiped out, and that's something I'd support, but it still does that by killing and torturing billions of people in a cycle of genocide.

Seconded! 

[N7Gold]

To the Reapers, the end justifies the means, the same thing Cerberus believes, although the Reapers are actually trying to make the galaxy ripe for the Leviathans to control all life.

[blueumi]

lots of fans are split on this all I know is that to me they are evil and the only choice is to destroy them

[PsyrenY]

M25105 wrote...

I mean if you picked green just for the giggles and how silly it was, sure ok, I get that.
But if you pick it cause you think the Reapers are right, then what the hell? What about all those people dead, don't they matter?

Where's © None of the above? 

Modifié par Optimystic_X, 14 mai 2013 - 06:56 .

[Kataphrut94]

I'm pretty sure the people on this board who think the Reapers are right are in the vast minority. You don't have to choose Destroy to disagree with them.

Also, is it really worth mentioning at this point that the chap you speak with at the end of Mass Effect 3 isn't actually a kid, brat or any star-related variation thereof? It would be more accurate to say 'the Catalyst', 'the Intelligence' or even 'the Citadel'.

[Bill Casey]

The Night Mammoth wrote...

It's not necessary to think the villain is evil, or hate them, to want to stop them. I don't have a problem with the idea that the Reapers aren't wholly bad and their actions are based on a motive which is actually quite compelling, but I don't really like the idea that they're any less villains because of it.

Sure, they're doing what they do because the Catalyst was created to make sure organic life doesn't get wiped out, and that's something I'd support, but it still does that by killing and torturing billions of people in a cycle of genocide.

The Reapers motive is rooted in racist fear mongering...
That synthetic life will inevitably wipe out all organic life without their help...

Their motivation makes them more detestable...

Modifié par Bill Casey, 14 mai 2013 - 08:13 .

[KaiserShep]

Enhanced wrote...
If Bioware didn't intend for some players to be more open minded, they wouldn't have written the ending that way and created additional content that supported it (EC and Leviathan DLC).

The EC pretty much supports all options, though refuse is a tough one to make a case for. None of the options make you more or less open-minded. 

[Kel Riever]

@Auld Wulf

Because board pollution instead of posting this in existing threads is big and clever. There are threads which exist which deal with whether one sympathises with the Reapers or not -- instead of posting in there, you had to create your own thread for a post that belongs in that thread, as a cry for attention, to stand out and be speshul. That invalidates any point you could make, and undermines any respect I could have for you.

To sum up: Making a new thread for a post which belongs in an existing thread doesn't make you big and speshul -- no, it just makes you look marginally obnoxious since you're filling up the forum with copycat threads

How amazing that you said the words I was going to say to you! 

ANYWAY, @OP, I attribute it to people wanting to look at their story with rose colored lenses so thick you could make a glass submarine out of them.  People often don't want to dislike something they love, and face that it became a disaster, so they justify the horrible, atrocious work, with figurative blindness and deafness, creating things that aren't there and then attributing it to the great mind of the creators believing it was meant to be that way all along.  Of course, there is one step further, and you could taket the path of Auld Wulf and then start really insulting people who don't agree with you and calling them dumber than you, etc., etc. Which, as far as I can tell, is the domain of the emotionally challenged.

SO, the Reapers yes, were monsters.  Most of the writers knew that.  The only people who didn't were Casey Hudson and Mac Walters, who bellyflopped magnificently in a barely baked attempt at a conclusion to the series.  They probably didn't really know what they were doing all along, and due to a childlike ignorance of not wanting to run what they did by someone else, they released the nonsense that is the Mass Effect 3 ending, where you are suddenly supposed accept being forced into choices that make you handwave your previous tens or hundreds of hours of gameplay.  It is incredible, really, how much destruction they caused to the series, in that none of the future DLC matters in regards to solving their lack of work, nor will any future releases, because they effectively killed the Mass Effect Universe.

TL;DR:  Yes, OP, you are right.  The Reapers are monsters.  Pay no attention to the little chickens.  Other than to make fun.

Modifié par Kel Riever, 14 mai 2013 - 03:16 .

[Auintus]

KaiserShep wrote...

Enhanced wrote...
If Bioware didn't intend for some players to be more open minded, they wouldn't have written the ending that way and created additional content that supported it (EC and Leviathan DLC).

The EC pretty much supports all options, though refuse is a tough one to make a case for. None of the options make you more or less open-minded. 

Open-minded to different things. I am open-minded to the idea that, while the Reapers methods are deplorable and they must be stopped, their intentions were "good", for a given degree of the word. However, I am completely closed-minded to the idea of sacrificing an ally to kill an enemy, at least while another option is available. Destroy requires a pattern of thought that is beyond me. On the other hand, there are those who find the Reapers so repulsive that they would rather kill the geth than allow them to live, in any form. They are open to the idea of sacrifice, but closed to the idea of peace. So each option is open and closed in different ways.

On the other hand, my personal interpretation of the final choice is:
Destroy: Synthetics are dangerous and must be destroyed.
Control: Synthetics are tools to be used.
Synthesis: Synthetics are alive and should be treated the same as organics
This places Synthesis as the most open-minded option. However, that is my interpretation. I am certain that others see the final choice differently.

[KaiserShep]

Auintus wrote...
Destroy requires a pattern of thought that is beyond me.

I'm not sure how this is. In the first Mass Effect, the reapers are quite simply ancient god-like machines that demand we go extinct. In ME2, we find out that they "reproduce" by melting swaths of unwitting victims. In 3, they start their genocidal attack on all life in the galaxy. In both cases of somehow joining or subjugating the reapers, the characters making these cases become corrupted abominations of their former selves in the end. Maybe it's not simply as cut and dried as "kill all reapers before they kill us", but it does lead me to this point:

On the other hand, my personal interpretation of the final choice is:
Destroy: Synthetics are dangerous and must be destroyed.
Control: Synthetics are tools to be used.
Synthesis: Synthetics are alive and should be treated the same as organics
This places Synthesis as the most open-minded option. However, that is my interpretation. I am certain that others see the final choice differently.

I don't see it as quite that simple. All of these options leave me with a lot of unanswered questions, so the thing that makes the biggest difference is: which ones leave me with more? I certainly did not want EDI and the geth to die, and I probably would continue to fight like hell to keep them alive, but in order to save them, I must defy some fairly strong personal beliefs. I do not believe in controlling the reapers at all. I strongly believe that my humanity is inextricably bound to my mortality, and that my mind and sense of morality and how it relates to my logical side would become severely diluted over time, or worse, instantaneously. My willingness to do "good" would probably become skewed by the prospect of immortality, because my former perspective may be lost. There's no way to know for sure, but I do know that this isn't something I'd be willing to die for to find out, not with the stakes this high. This is something I had to apply to my Shepard's character. Synthesis presents the same dilemma. There's a litany of questions about the nature of this big change, with none of the guarantee that it will make a lick of difference. All the while, the reapers continue to exist, with the dark cloud of uncertainty that this newfound "utopia" may collapse. Losing EDI and the geth is regrettable, and if Shepard losing sleep over them also means the galaxy is finally left to evolve without further interference from the reapers, then so be it. Sure, the narrative of the EC attempts to negate these concerns, but I don't believe in these resolutions either. Besides, I refuse to believe that the galaxy can't exist with relative peace on its own terms without further intervention of the reapers. 

Modifié par KaiserShep, 14 mai 2013 - 05:17 .

[SpamBot2000]

The Reapers are posited as transcended beings at the end of the game, and the player is pressed to accept their program as their own in exchange for game completion. Obviously some weak-minded individuals are going to get really confused.

[Bill Casey]

Synthesis asserts there's something fundamentally wrong with synthetics and organics that needs to be changed. It treats sapient beings as your personal science experiment...

It's pure hate disguised as love...

It is also the only option that is more unethical than the cycle...
Somehow, they managed to make Shepard worse than the reapers...
It's the sickest ****ing thing I've ever seen...

Modifié par Bill Casey, 14 mai 2013 - 06:31 .

[Auld Wulf]

Hadeedak wrote...

And the Reapers are byproducts -- an attempt to archive organic civilizations instead of destroying them entirely. Yeah. They're broken. They're horrible. Whatever.

My problem with this is that it's not their fault that they're horrible, to me it just reminds me of demagogic hatreds in general, where it's more fuelled by a desire to be part of a bigger whole of circlejerkish hatred rather than actually having a good reason for hating them. Yes -- they might be ugly, bizarre, unearthly things, and that much might be entirely true, but the demagogic hatred levvied upon them is unfair.

Why do I call it demagogic? It's because it's a recursive circlejerk of hate, it's almost a reverb at this point which no one can really justify. It's the hatred of them that bothers me, because the Reapers have done nothing to deserve it. The Leviathans? Yes, they've done everything to deserve it (and they continue to). The Catalyst? It depends upon how free-willed he is, but I could understand it there. The Reapers, however? They're mind-controlled slaves.

They are deserving of my sympathy because they've been victims since day one. I don't want to hate or destroy them, I want to help them back to becoming something of what they once were -- maybe even restoring the civilisations within, if that's possible. I've pointed this out time and again, but I'll point it out once more -- the Borg, the Cybermen, and so many similar villains are villainous not by their own choice, they're all victims, they were forced to become what they are, and forced to convert.

Star Trek: Voyager acknowledged this with the Borg. It had numerous episodes which dealt with the Collective, and one coup de grâce where many were freed from their Borg slavery. And that was a very interesting episode, since Captain Janeway didn't blame the Borg for those whom they'd assimilated under the Queen's influence. The Reapers share much in common with the Borg, almost being a carbon copy in some respects -- they are a hive of slaves to their resepctive overmind, the Catalyst is their Queen, so to speak.

The Borg can be perceived as hideous and inhuman, but if you had the chance to free a bunch of Borg drones, would you free them or kill them? What I find repugnant is that people actually have hate for the Reapers that goes beyond their character -- and this is what I argue against. If one could perceivably argue passionately for the destruction of creatures they could otherwise free, then I call that demagogic. There's no logic or reason, there, no justification. It's just playing to old prejudices and fear-laden mindsets.

And the people who tend to push these arguments most passionately are demagogues.

So, yes, the Reapers are misunderstood. Yes, the Reapers deserve sympathy. No, it doesn't matter whether one finds them repugnant or not, as that  shouldn't even be a consideration. What your charater does is irrelevant, what you feel about the matter is important, as it says a lot about you. It says whether you buy into the "abomination aesthetic" or not, and whether you believe that's justification to kill, because that just means you're buying into demagogic nonsense.

I find this an interesting philosophical and intellectual discussion, and I'd like to think that it helps us understand how we'd react if we were to ever meet alien life. And my point continues to be that finding something repugnant isn't justification enough for unethical acts on one's own part.

The Reapers are nothing more than victims of a very insidious form of mind and body rape, as I've pointed out before. This is an objective truth. A peoples had their minds and bodies taken away from them to be transferred into a Reaper which the Catalyst could have total control over. I strongly believe that this is something that constitutes rape. Ultimately, what the Reapers are? They don't deserve hatred, they deserve our pity and our understanding -- it's a tragic situation, but one that might be fixable, to a certain extent.

I don't believe though, again, that just because the situation is tragic that we should resolve it with 'kill it with fire.'

[Hadeedak]

Hence the whatever. Though I tend to approach the Reapers less as potential individuals than I read you as doing. I tend to see them more as.... well, machines. And data archives. Less as individuals in the same way our characters are.

[KingZayd]

Auld Wulf wrote...

Hadeedak wrote...

And the Reapers are byproducts -- an attempt to archive organic civilizations instead of destroying them entirely. Yeah. They're broken. They're horrible. Whatever.

My problem with this is that it's not their fault that they're horrible, to me it just reminds me of demagogic hatreds in general, where it's more fuelled by a desire to be part of a bigger whole of circlejerkish hatred rather than actually having a good reason for hating them. Yes -- they might be ugly, bizarre, unearthly things, and that much might be entirely true, but the demagogic hatred levvied upon them is unfair.

Why do I call it demagogic? It's because it's a recursive circlejerk of hate, it's almost a reverb at this point which no one can really justify. It's the hatred of them that bothers me, because the Reapers have done nothing to deserve it. The Leviathans? Yes, they've done everything to deserve it (and they continue to). The Catalyst? It depends upon how free-willed he is, but I could understand it there. The Reapers, however? They're mind-controlled slaves.

They are deserving of my sympathy because they've been victims since day one. I don't want to hate or destroy them, I want to help them back to becoming something of what they once were -- maybe even restoring the civilisations within, if that's possible. I've pointed this out time and again, but I'll point it out once more -- the Borg, the Cybermen, and so many similar villains are villainous not by their own choice, they're all victims, they were forced to become what they are, and forced to convert.

Star Trek: Voyager acknowledged this with the Borg. It had numerous episodes which dealt with the Collective, and one coup de grâce where many were freed from their Borg slavery. And that was a very interesting episode, since Captain Janeway didn't blame the Borg for those whom they'd assimilated under the Queen's influence. The Reapers share much in common with the Borg, almost being a carbon copy in some respects -- they are a hive of slaves to their resepctive overmind, the Catalyst is their Queen, so to speak.

The Borg can be perceived as hideous and inhuman, but if you had the chance to free a bunch of Borg drones, would you free them or kill them? What I find repugnant is that people actually have hate for the Reapers that goes beyond their character -- and this is what I argue against. If one could perceivably argue passionately for the destruction of creatures they could otherwise free, then I call that demagogic. There's no logic or reason, there, no justification. It's just playing to old prejudices and fear-laden mindsets.

And the people who tend to push these arguments most passionately are demagogues.

So, yes, the Reapers are misunderstood. Yes, the Reapers deserve sympathy. No, it doesn't matter whether one finds them repugnant or not, as that  shouldn't even be a consideration. What your charater does is irrelevant, what you feel about the matter is important, as it says a lot about you. It says whether you buy into the "abomination aesthetic" or not, and whether you believe that's justification to kill, because that just means you're buying into demagogic nonsense.

I find this an interesting philosophical and intellectual discussion, and I'd like to think that it helps us understand how we'd react if we were to ever meet alien life. And my point continues to be that finding something repugnant isn't justification enough for unethical acts on one's own part.

The Reapers are nothing more than victims of a very insidious form of mind and body rape, as I've pointed out before. This is an objective truth. A peoples had their minds and bodies taken away from them to be transferred into a Reaper which the Catalyst could have total control over. I strongly believe that this is something that constitutes rape. Ultimately, what the Reapers are? They don't deserve hatred, they deserve our pity and our understanding -- it's a tragic situation, but one that might be fixable, to a certain extent.

I don't believe though, again, that just because the situation is tragic that we should resolve it with 'kill it with fire.'

What they once were? The Reapers were created to be what they are.  Giant killing machines containing organic goop.

[4stringwizard]

The same cuttlefish robots that kill an unprecedented amount of lives based on faulty logic? Nope, not sympathetic in the least.

[His Name was HYR!!]

Bill Casey wrote...

Synthesis asserts there's something fundamentally wrong with synthetics and organics that needs to be changed. It treats sapient beings as your personal science experiment...

It's pure hate disguised as love...

It is also the only option that is more unethical than the cycle...
Somehow, they managed to make Shepard worse than the reapers...
It's the sickest ****ing thing I've ever seen...

Nobody picks Sync because they thing anything is "wrong" with life, so quit labeling those of us who don't share your fundamentalism. 'Only thing wrong in the world are extremists who -- thankfully -- have no hand in the decision.

At least, I can speak for my own play.

Your posts are hate, disguised as moral-righteousness.

Modifié par HYR 2.0, 14 mai 2013 - 08:20 .

[Steelcan]

@HYR 2.0,

You may not pick Synthesis because of that, but the Catalyst certainly presents it that way. According to the Catalyst we are just little dimwits who will always **** everything up and get ourselves killed in the process.

Synthesis corrects this by making us on par with what we create, or y connecting all life to the Leviathans, depending on your view :-P.

[KaiserShep]

No matter why anyone picks synthesis, the catalyst's reason for presenting this option is clear: organic life is doomed if left to its own devices. There's really no way around this. It asserts that if left unchecked, it will create an AI that will surpass it, and eradicate it, while ignoring the horrible irony of it all, and really does not present any reasonable examples to support it, other than itself.  The geth sure aren't a good case, because they were hardly a huge galactic threat, at least not until the reaper vanguard decided to intervene. 

So I have to decide whether or not I actually have faith in the community I'm familiar with to actually learn its lesson and change for the better. 

If someone wants to pity the reapers, that's cool, but to pass it off as "objective truth" is misleading. There's nothing objective about the idea that the reapers themselves are victims of rape. The borg collective is not the victim; the individuals that comprise it are. Anything regarding the reapers themselves being unwitting slaves that don't actually want to do what they're doing is pure head-canon. 

As for the Borg themselves, at least freeing the individuals is easy, since the Borg don't melt people down and turn them into a genetic slurry for the reaper erector set. But there's no saying that the individuals trapped in them are not in an everlasting hellish nightmare either. I imagine if your mind was left intact while being melted down and then turned into something that would systematically eradicate whole worlds, you'd probably welcome oblivion at that point. I know I would. 

Modifié par KaiserShep, 14 mai 2013 - 08:35 .

[His Name was HYR!!]

Steelcan wrote...

@HYR 2.0,

You may not pick Synthesis because of that, but the Catalyst certainly presents it that way. According to the Catalyst we are just little dimwits who will always **** everything up and get ourselves killed in the process.

He tells us what it is/what it will do, and then: (1) it's the ideal solution, (2) it is inevitable, (3) it requires readiness, (4) the cycle will end and all preserved civilizations (Reapers) will join the organic-synthetic connection.

There's no "you need this" anywhere. There *is* that message in Low EMS, the way the catalyst talks about organic life and all, but Sync is High EMS-only, in which case he sings a different tune about us and them.

In any case, I get that some people would look at it differently. Obviously, the ones who choose it are more optimisitc in their POV than those who don't. The guy I'm responding to is just out to make labels.

It's no different than the "neo-luddite" labeling that was going on against people who *don't* choose Sync.