257 réponses à ce sujet

[Cainhurst Crow]

StarcloudSWG wrote...

N7Gold wrote...

This idea suddenly popped into my head when I was driving to work last night. Okay, we all know that the Crucible wasn't specifically built by the Proteans, but by unknown races from all cycles the Reapers have already harvested, right? Would it creep you out if I said that's true, but not in the manner we assumed?

The Reapers harvest everything they need to know about organics to be born as a new Reaper. Each Reaper holds extensive knowledge about the moral beliefs and style of technology from the civilizations they harvest every 50,000 years? My point is the technology that the Reapers have made, the mass relays, Citadel, everything, the knowledge is stolen. The Reapers pooled the technological advancements from every race they harvested in order to create a brand new type of technology that is completely "user friendly", even to new generations of organic life like humans, asari, turians, salarians, quarians and such. And also they gained full emotional understanding of all organic life.
...
The Reapers try to use our compassion against us.
The Reapers employ everything they know about organics against Shepard and the others during ME3.
...
Previous cycles unwillingly took part in the Reapers' test, but they all failed, and as a result, they were harvested, and the Reapers gained  new Reaper allies, each who have extensive knowledge on the civilization that has been harvested, expanding the Catalyst's "intelligence" on the nature of organic life in order to manipulate them in the most subtle way possible into choosing the ideal solution. The only way to defeat such an intelligent enemy is making a decision most paragon natured people would be afraid of choosing. For example, using the Crucible to destroy the Reapers even though it does kill off the Geth and other synthetic life as well.

You mean it wasn't obvious?

Of course they did that. Of course Synthesis is a lie of an ending; the Reapers already understand organic life, despite being a synthetic race.

Of course the Catalyst's goal is to harvest life and preserve it for the Leviathans. Starting with the Leviathans themselves.

Of course the Catalyst conceals, misdirects, and fails to provide full explanations. It doesn't want to be permanently shut down.

The only true solution is to destroy the Reapers and the Catalyst.

Using your logic, isn;t destroy just as much of a lie as all the other options? He gives it to you, he tells you what it does, his power is what generates the wave, it's connected to him, same as control or synthesis. How do you know the reapers don't just pop back up after they fall down for a few minutes? It's just as likely as all the other bad crap everyone says about the other endings following the "catalyst lies about everything" train of thought.

[Cainhurst Crow]

crimzontearz wrote...

StreetMagic wrote...

crimzontearz wrote...

disturbing revelation....you are reading too much into it

Mac tried to pull a Nolan, possibly in the attempt to torch the franchise and run


it failed


Someone at EA is likely still laughing at his attempt

So I'm not alone in thinking this. Good.

you are not, it fits every facet of the trope

Torching the franchise and running. That's why he's sticking around to make another game? And didn't try to leave at all? If you want to blame someone, I'd say look to the person who had worked with the dev team, who did have input on high-level plot and story plannng, and who left before mass effect 3 came out to focus on his novels.

Modifié par Darth Brotarian, 01 juillet 2013 - 05:41 .

[Coyotebay]

It's really impossible for Shepard to rationalize any of his "options" given to him by starbrat.  None of these choices has any context for him to draw upon for his final decision, and he is forced to just take starbrat's word for it.  As a player it's galling because the flaws in starbrat's "logic" are so obvious.  The idea of "protecting" organics by committing genocide against them is ludicrous.  His whole premise for doing so is unfounded.  He presents no evidence that if allowed to evolve, organics will create synthetics that will destory the organics with certainty.  That was just a conclusion he cooked up millions of years before when the Leviathans were simply looking for a way to maintain a balance between organics and synthetics.  Events in Mass Effect's timeframe demonstrate how whacked this conclusion is.  His so-called solution also guaranteed that organic civilizations could never evolve beyond  a certain point before being snuffed out, and that all organic civilizations were doomed to a hideous, nightmarish end.  That's helping organics?  With the Reapers so all-powerful, why couldn't their prime directive simply have been to mitigate synthetic-organic conflicts, instead of this lame scorched galaxy policy?

So Shepard gets spoon-fed the nonsense of these choices and must make a decision in a matter of moments when he is exhuasted, badly wounded, and has just watched his father figure die before him.  Destroy really is the only logical choice for him to make, because he has absolutely no information to go on with regard to synthesis, just starbrat's sunshine and rainbows pitch for it.  And he has no assurance that he really would be able to control the Reapers, or if he could, that he could maintain it.  If the writers had worked toward this conclusion properly, the Alliance would have figured out what the crucible does while they were building it.  Then, Shepard would have been armed with the information he needed to make a real choice, and trusted in the outcome of that choice.  No starbrat needed.

Modifié par Coyotebay, 01 juillet 2013 - 05:58 .

[AlanC9]

Darth Brotarian wrote...


Using your logic, isn;t destroy just as much of a lie as all the other options? He gives it to you, he tells you what it does, his power is what generates the wave, it's connected to him, same as control or synthesis. How do you know the reapers don't just pop back up after they fall down for a few minutes? It's just as likely as all the other bad crap everyone says about the other endings following the "catalyst lies about everything" train of thought.

If he's going to lie about anything, he'd start with Destroy.

It would have been hilarious if shooting the pipe disabled the Crucible and led to the Refuse outcome.

[AlanC9]

Coyotebay wrote...
Destroy really is the only logical choice for him to make, because he has absolutely no information to go on with regard to synthesis, just starbrat's sunshine and rainbows pitch for it.  And he has no assurance that he really would be able to control the Reapers, or if he could, that he could maintain it.  

He has no assurance that Destroy works, either.

If the writers had worked toward this conclusion properly, the Alliance would have figured out what the crucible does while they were building it.  Then, Shepard would have been armed with the information he needed to make a real choice, and trusted in the outcome of that choice.  No starbrat needed.

Wouldn't Shepard have been given specific orders, then? Of course, I suppose he could just disobey them once he's at the panel.

[remydat]

Coyote,

You are ignoring the concept of time. The Catalyst is trying to preserve organic life essentially the entire life of the universe. That is billions of years. The fact it does so by killing advanced organics in a given cycle is pretty inconsequential when measured against the timescale of billions of years and when killing say trillions allows gazillions to live. His decision is no different than Shep sacrificing 300k batarians to save trillions in the galaxy.

And events in the ME timeframe demonstrate nothing. If the Catalyst observed that the synthetic race that can legitimately threaten organic life arises every 70k years then that is precisely why the Reapers come to harvest every 50k years so such a synthetic race is never created or allowed to evolve. The Geth are only 300-400 years old. That is very different than if they were allowed to evolve for another 20k years.

And Shep is spoon fed destroy. If you are going to doubt the Catalyst then you have no reason to believe he has told you the truth about destroy. For all we know he lied and the option he described as destroy is actually synthesis. So if we are going to assume the Catalyst is trying to deceive or trick you then not sure why you would believe anything he says about Destroy.

Modifié par remydat, 01 juillet 2013 - 07:27 .

[DirtySHISN0]

AlanC9 wrote...

DirtySHISN0 wrote...

All guesswork at what may happen, shepard was our point of view so i don't think anything outside of that can be confirmed truth. Obviously we have to see things outside of that for cinematic effect and narrative progression, but still you can head canon a reason to come to he same conclusions.

Wait.... so things from outside Shepard's POV can't be trusted because Shepard's the usual POV? When you saw Saren and Benezia plotting in ME1 you thought the game might be lying to us?

Really?

No, its cinematic effect, you can't build a villain if you dont see him until the end.

Does it even matter that we see saren and benezia plotting? No, because we get that from multiple sources anyway - via shepard playing detective.

If you roleplay the game, should you take anything outside of shepards POV as fact?

Modifié par DirtySHISN0, 01 juillet 2013 - 07:45 .

[Coyotebay]

He has no assurance that Destroy works, either.

Wouldn't Shepard have been given specific orders, then? Of course, I suppose he could just disobey them once he's at the panel.

That's right, he has no assurance any of the choices will work, they all come from starbrat.

He probably would have been given orders.  That's what would have made the ending work, because now it's a real choice to exercise your paragon or renegade role play.  And I would have chucked synthesis altogether and made it just a choice between destroy (as symbolized by Anderson) and control (as symbolized by TIM).  And neither would have required his suicide.  The whole premise of joining TIM to control the Reapers versus staying loyal to Anderson and destroying the Reapers has been there since ME2.

You are ignoring the concept of time. The Catalyst is trying to preserve organic life essentially the entire life of the universe. That is billions of years. The fact it does so by killing advanced organics in a given cycle is pretty inconsequential when measured against the timescale of billions of years and when killing say trillions allows gazillions to live.

But it is consequential.  It took one billion years of organic evolution for intelligent life to emerge on Earth.  If we become extinct, it could be another billion years before an intelligent race rises again.  In a single Reaper cycle, they exterminate ALL advanced intelligent life in the galaxy.  The idea that 50,000 years later you would even have one new advanced race emerge is pretty outrageous.  You would have to assume that the galaxy is bursting with planets where advanced forms of life dwell in order for this 50,000 year cycle to be plausible.

Modifié par Coyotebay, 01 juillet 2013 - 08:11 .

[KaiserShep]

remydat wrote...

Coyote,

You are ignoring the concept of time. The Catalyst is trying to preserve organic life essentially the entire life of the universe. That is billions of years. The fact it does so by killing advanced organics in a given cycle is pretty inconsequential when measured against the timescale of billions of years and when killing say trillions allows gazillions to live. His decision is no different than Shep sacrificing 300k batarians to save trillions in the galaxy.

I guess that's the problem: all of this is ridiculously illogical, which is why it's so widely rejected. What good is "saving" organic life in general, if each species is pegged to die a horrible screaming death just the same? 

And events in the ME timeframe demonstrate nothing. If the Catalyst observed that the synthetic race that can legitimately threaten organic life arises every 70k years then that is precisely why the Reapers come to harvest every 50k years so such a synthetic race is never created or allowed to evolve. The Geth are only 300-400 years old. That is very different than if they were allowed to evolve for another 20k years.

The Catalyst is not an oracle that can see into the future, and it cannot determine every variable. The funny part is that the geth defy the reapers' assumptions, once we learn what the geth truly want. The geth even prod and poke at organic life,  experimenting to gain better understanding of how we behave, as we can see from Legion's mention of leaking false information on the extranet. Problem is, the Catalyst has no interest in their intentions, or the possibility of peace (which it cannot determine to be absolutely impossible), as we can observe from Sovereign's actions acquiring support from the geth heretics. Holding onto this phoney-baloney mandate while instigating full on war with organics through hijacked synthetics seems as though they're actively trying to fulfill their own prophesy. It's like claiming that my neighbors will never be friends, and playing pranks on each blaming it on either one to make sure this always stays true. 

And Shep is spoon fed destroy. If you are going to doubt the Catalyst then you have no reason to believe he has told you the truth about destroy. For all we know he lied and the option he described as destroy is actually synthesis. So if we are going to assume the Catalyst is trying to deceive or trick you then not sure why you would believe anything he says about Destroy.

This I can agree with, though it's still doesn't feel satisfying. If the Catalyst was capable of lying to you, it wouldn't really have to give you 3 options at all. It could just tell you that the Crucible is actually a means to synthesize all life, and you have no other choice. What is Shepard going to do, refuse? Either way the Catalyst would survive for at least another cycle or so. 

All in all, another problem I have is with the concept of wiping out entire species in the trillions and believing that life will just pop up and flourish every single time. It's not as if the reapers reset each planet's ecosystem so life can just freely evolve and suddenly the galaxy is teeming with life again. At some point, the reapers are going to exhaust organic life's ability to bounce back after so many mass extinctions if they were to keep going. Hell, 50 thousand years is not a huge leap in time geologically. Many species would take a lot longer than that to evolve, and if the reapers were to wipe out each sentient, space-faring race in these intervals, eventually they will find that sentient life is not popping up as quickly anymore, or at all. Perhaps the Catalyst is not technically capable of being insane, but it sure comes damn close. I can't help but apply some reality to this, because there's only so much fictional hokum a story can feed you until it completely breaks suspension of disbelief. 

Modifié par KaiserShep, 01 juillet 2013 - 08:15 .

[remydat]

Coyotebay wrote...

But it is consequential.  It took one billion years of organic evolution for intelligent life to emerge on Earth.  If we become extinct, it could be another billion years before an intelligent race rises again.  In a single Reaper cycle, they exterminate ALL advanced intelligent life in the galaxy.  The idea that 50,000 years later you would even have one new advanced race emerge is pretty outrageous.  You would have to assume that the galaxy is bursting with planets where advanced forms of life dwell in order for this 50,000 year cycle to be plausible.

No you are confused.  In the Prothean Cyle, humans, asari, elcor, turians, salarians, volus, batarians, vorcha, yahg, etc. were all spared.  Those races have actually been around for several cycles but were allowed to develop.

So in our current cycle, there are likely several races that are say just barely out of their cave man stage that are spared during the current harvest.  We just don't see them because they are irrelevant to the story.  However, in 50,000 years they will have already went from being cave men to potentially finding the mass relays and hence be subject to the harvest.

And obviously the game's fundamental premise is that the galaxy is bursting with life.  We have like 15-20 species in the current game.  99% of the galaxy remains unexplored.

[AlanC9]

DirtySHISN0 wrote...

AlanC9 wrote...

DirtySHISN0 wrote...
All guesswork at what may happen, shepard was our point of view so i don't think anything outside of that can be confirmed truth. Obviously we have to see things outside of that for cinematic effect and narrative progression, but still you can head canon a reason to come to he same conclusions.

Wait.... so things from outside Shepard's POV can't be trusted because Shepard's the usual POV? When you saw Saren and Benezia plotting in ME1 you thought the game might be lying to us?

Really?

No, its cinematic effect, you can't build a villain if you dont see him until the end.

Does it even matter that we see saren and benezia plotting? No, because we get that from multiple sources anyway - via shepard playing detective.

If you roleplay the game, should you take anything outside of shepards POV as fact?

That's why such scenes can be problems; they give me information that make my first playthrough harder to roleplay since I know stuff my character doesn't. Though ME1 isn't as bad an offender as some of Bio's other games. (BG2, for instance)

In any event, scenes from outside the PC's POV are true, yep. That's my point.

Modifié par AlanC9, 01 juillet 2013 - 08:50 .

[remydat]

KaiserShep wrote...

I guess that's the problem: all of this is ridiculously illogical, which is why it's so widely rejected. What good is "saving" organic life in general, if each species is pegged to die a horrible screaming death just the same? 

The Catalyst is not an oracle that can see into the future, and it cannot determine every variable. The funny part is that the geth defy the reapers' assumptions, once we learn what the geth truly want. The geth even prod and poke at organic life,  experimenting to gain better understanding of how we behave, as we can see from Legion's mention of leaking false information on the extranet. Problem is, the Catalyst has no interest in their intentions, or the possibility of peace (which it cannot determine to be absolutely impossible), as we can observe from Sovereign's actions acquiring support from the geth heretics. Holding onto this phoney-baloney mandate while instigating full on war with organics through hijacked synthetics seems as though they're actively trying to fulfill their own prophesy. It's like claiming that my neighbors will never be friends, and playing pranks on each blaming it on either one to make sure this always stays true. 

This I can agree with, though it's still doesn't feel satisfying. If the Catalyst was capable of lying to you, it wouldn't really have to give you 3 options at all. It could just tell you that the Crucible is actually a means to synthesize all life, and you have no other choice. What is Shepard going to do, refuse? Either way the Catalyst would survive for at least another cycle or so. 

All in all, another problem I have is with the concept of wiping out entire species in the trillions and believing that life will just pop up and flourish every single time. It's not as if the reapers reset each planet's ecosystem so life can just freely evolve and suddenly the galaxy is teeming with life again. At some point, the reapers are going to exhaust organic life's ability to bounce back after so many mass extinctions if they were to keep going. Hell, 50 thousand years is not a huge leap in time geologically. Many species would take a lot longer than that to evolve, and if the reapers were to wipe out each sentient, space-faring race in these intervals, eventually they will find that sentient life is not popping up as quickly anymore, or at all. Perhaps the Catalyst is not technically capable of being insane, but it sure comes damn close. I can't help but apply some reality to this, because there's only so much fictional hokum a story can feed you until it completely breaks suspension of disbelief. 

Again, you are ignoring time.  The oldest stars in the Milky Way are around 13 billion years old.  So if we imagine the Leviathan evolved on a planet orbiting one of those early stars then lets say they evolved after 5 billion years.  That means they have been around for 8 billion years.  Now let's be conservative and say the Intelligence was created after 1 billion years.  And let's say the organic synthetic conflict it witnessed was observed for 1 billion years before the Reapers were created.  That puts the first harvest at 6 billion years ago.  

Keep in mind this is still before the Earh was even formed.  So if the harvest occurs every 50,000 years then there have been 300,000 cycles.  If we assume that say 1 trillion people are alive during a given cycle (advanced and primitive life) then that is 300,000 times 1 trillion people that have lived from some period of time after the Leviathan age.

Now, from the Intelligence's point of view let's say it allowed an immortal synthetic race to evolve for 1 billion years.  How much more advance would that synthetic race be compared to the 300 year old Geth that basically within a few years of its creation was capable of exterminating their creators?  It doesn't matter if they start the conflict or organics do, the fact is that from the time they were born the Geth were capable of eradicating their creators.  So what happens when you let them evolve for 1 billion years more?  And let's say an AI like the Geth was created during the Leviathan age and was allwed to evolve for a billion years after which they decided to spend the next 1 billion years trying to wipe out all organic life. 

Keep in mind that while this immortal synthetic race is evolving over a billion years, any advanced organic life is likely dying out because they are not immortal and they likely can't sustain their populations for such a long time given the resource needs of an ever growing organic civilization.  So by the time these synthetics have accumulated 1 billion years of knowledge, the organics they will fight are likely new organic races since the ones that existed when the synthetics started their evolution have long since perished.  In any event, that would mean all organic life would have been completely exterminated before the Earth was even formed at around 6 billion years ago.  So those 300,000 cycles with a trillion people each would never have existed.  

To finish it off, there are 100-400 billion stars in our galaxy alone and at least as many planets.  The game basically shows us what a hundred of them?  From the MEU perspective, the galaxy has to be teeming with life.  Life that would have ended 6 billion years ago if not for the Intelligence at least from its immortal perspective.  It doesn't matter if Earth's ecosystem is not reset because again there are billions of planets out there and some of them have life that is just now becoming sentient life.

Modifié par remydat, 01 juillet 2013 - 09:18 .

[KaiserShep]

remydat wrote...
No you are confused.  In the Prothean Cyle, humans, asari, elcor, turians, salarians, volus, batarians, vorcha, yahg, etc. were all spared.  Those races have actually been around for several cycles but were allowed to develop.

So in our current cycle, there are likely several races that are say just barely out of their cave man stage that are spared during the current harvest.  We just don't see them because they are irrelevant to the story.  However, in 50,000 years they will have already went from being cave men to potentially finding the mass relays and hence be subject to the harvest.

And obviously the game's fundamental premise is that the galaxy is bursting with life.  We have like 15-20 species in the current game.  99% of the galaxy remains unexplored.

I guess the problem I see with this is that without any details, I could just as well assume that the vast majority of the galaxy that remains unexplored may not have many habitable planets, or any planets at all. Some star systems are going supernova, some are just forming. Some may just develop life that will never evolve into a space-faring species. On an evolutionary time scale, 50 thousand years is actually rather short. Heck, ****** sapiens, compared to many other species on our planet, are evolutionary newborns, relatively speaking. With how short the intervals are, and the finite number of habitable worlds that can support life that has the capacity to evolve into an advanced space-faring civilization, the reapers would ultimately exhaust their supply of sentient life, and all life that's left would be microbial and basic animal life. Their system would come to a close. 

I am not ignoring time. I am pointing out the logical problem of having 50 thousand year intervals for massive extinction of all advanced civilizations under the wholly hokey premise of "preserving life". It doesn't matter how many stars there are in the galaxy, or how many planets. It doesn't matter how old the reapers are, or how old the galaxy is. If this system were to work constantly, you WILL eventually run out of life that has the capacity to evolve in such a fashion. 

This would all make sense, if the reapers' ultimate goal was to reduce the galaxy's ability to produce any kind of advanced civilizations at all. 

Modifié par KaiserShep, 01 juillet 2013 - 09:17 .

[katamuro]

Unless of course they also manipulate life to be created in a general form that evolves and creates the society along the general rules they have set down.

As to OP I understand the idea and yeah upgrading themselves with possibly unique technology created by each new race is one possible way of reaper advancement. The other thing is of course that the reapers were created by Leviathan race in their own image, considering the Leviathans themselves can actually do many things reapers can I imagine they were more or less created exactly as they are unchanging for millions of years. And considering that they told us reapers were just pawns of the starchild then I just dont see how they would upgrade themselves. Once their cycle was perfected they would just continue with the most efficient thing. Anyway I chose destroy not just because that would prevent reapers from reaping ever again but also freeing all the countless species harvested and stored in the reapers from eternal twilight. No death or freedom just years and years of death and destruction.

[Coyotebay]

remydat wrote...

No you are confused.  In the Prothean Cyle, humans, asari, elcor, turians, salarians, volus, batarians, vorcha, yahg, etc. were all spared.  Those races have actually been around for several cycles but were allowed to develop.

So in our current cycle, there are likely several races that are say just barely out of their cave man stage that are spared during the current harvest.  We just don't see them because they are irrelevant to the story.  However, in 50,000 years they will have already went from being cave men to potentially finding the mass relays and hence be subject to the harvest.

And obviously the game's fundamental premise is that the galaxy is bursting with life.  We have like 15-20 species in the current game.  99% of the galaxy remains unexplored.

Not confused.  You have to accept the premise that there are hundreds if not thousands of planets in the galaxy with emerging intelligent life and that this happens all the time, which requires a huge suspension of disbelief.  You also have to ignore the fact that while it only took 50,000 years to go from cave man to adbvanced race, it took hundreds of millions of years of evolution to produce the first cave man.  Also, while 99% of the galaxy remains unexplored, with the detection technology of the different races in the ME universe coupled with the ability to zip to different places all over the galaxy, one would think that they have identifed a large chunk of all the planets currently supporting life of some form in the galaxy. 

Yes, for any science fiction story where you have all these species at about the same technological level, you are already doing a lot of suspending of disbelief so you can enjoy the story.  That's fine.  But the whole Reaper purge of advanced organics takes it to another level.  The writers assume that the players accept this as a plausible explanation, when it is an insane proposition.  It just assumes way too much - that synthetic destruction of organics is inevitable, that they would never want to be like us or merge with us in some way.  The idea is also preposterous even if you accept that synthetics would destroy all advanced organics.  So it's better to let them exist for a short time before destroying them anyway in a horrifying purge?  For what, so that the Reapers can store information about these civilizations that will never benefit anyone, since anyone who could benefit will always be exterminated by the Reapers?  It's an insane argument.

[KaiserShep]

katamuro wrote...

Unless of course they also manipulate life to be created in a general form that evolves and creates the society along the general rules they have set down.

If they did that, it would only further illustrate how broken their logic is. It would be the equivalent of me insisting that pit bulls are good for nothing but fighting and killing each other, but then I turn around and breed them specifically to fight and kill each other.

[remydat]

KaiserShep wrote...

I guess the problem I see with this is that without any details, I could just as well assume that the vast majority of the galaxy that remains unexplored may not have many habitable planets, or any planets at all. Some star systems are going supernova, some are just forming. Some may just develop life that will never evolve into a space-faring species. On an evolutionary time scale, 50 thousand years is actually rather short. Heck, ****** sapiens, compared to many other species on our planet, are evolutionary newborns, relatively speaking. With how short the intervals are, and the finite number of habitable worlds that can support life that has the capacity to evolve into an advanced space-faring civilization, the reapers would ultimately exhaust their supply of sentient life, and all life that's left would be microbial and basic animal life. Their system would come to a close. 

I am not ignoring time. I am pointing out the logical problem of having 50 thousand year intervals for massive extinction of all advanced civilizations under the wholly hokey premise of "preserving life". It doesn't matter how many stars there are in the galaxy, or how many planets. It doesn't matter how old the reapers are, or how old the galaxy is. If this system were to work constantly, you WILL eventually run out of life that has the capacity to evolve in such a fashion. 

This would all make sense, if the reapers' ultimate goal was to reduce the galaxy's ability to produce any kind of advanced civilizations at all. 

No you can't really make that assumption.  There are 100-400 billion stars in the galaxy and at least as many planets.  The only logical conclusion given how much life we see from a fraction of those 100-400 billion stars is that the MEU galaxy is teeming with life.

And you seem to be getting confused by the 50k years.  The Reapers come every 50k years but the organic life they are harvesting has already lived for much longer.  As you noted, it took Earth 4-5 billion years to produce humans.  As I said in an earlier post, a synthetic race created during the Leviathan age and allowed to evolve for 1 billion years and to exterminate organic life over another 1 billion years would have already succeeded in doing so before Earth was even formed.  Hence, if they stumbled upon earth any time in the 4-5 billion years before humans evolved they could simply have made it unsuitable for organic life back long before a sentient species ever evolved on Earth.  Humans would never have come to exist.

Once a synthetic race destroys all advanced organic life in the cycle they started their attack, all organic life is doomed because they can then make every planet they come across in the galaxy unsuitable for organic life.

[katamuro]

i know, the whole premise was stupid from the get go. There is no way an AI as smart as that would get stuck in a stupid loop like that. Eventually they would have called quits on exterminating them every so often and would have tried to actually teach them not to use AI's or give them better rules or something.

[remydat]

Coyotebay wrote...

Not confused.  You have to accept the premise that there are hundreds if not thousands of planets in the galaxy with emerging intelligent life and that this happens all the time, which requires a huge suspension of disbelief.  You also have to ignore the fact that while it only took 50,000 years to go from cave man to adbvanced race, it took hundreds of millions of years of evolution to produce the first cave man.  Also, while 99% of the galaxy remains unexplored, with the detection technology of the different races in the ME universe coupled with the ability to zip to different places all over the galaxy, one would think that they have identifed a large chunk of all the planets currently supporting life of some form in the galaxy. 

Yes, for any science fiction story where you have all these species at about the same technological level, you are already doing a lot of suspending of disbelief so you can enjoy the story.  That's fine.  But the whole Reaper purge of advanced organics takes it to another level.  The writers assume that the players accept this as a plausible explanation, when it is an insane proposition.  It just assumes way too much - that synthetic destruction of organics is inevitable, that they would never want to be like us or merge with us in some way.  The idea is also preposterous even if you accept that synthetics would destroy all advanced organics.  So it's better to let them exist for a short time before destroying them anyway in a horrifying purge?  For what, so that the Reapers can store information about these civilizations that will never benefit anyone, since anyone who could benefit will always be exterminated by the Reapers?  It's an insane argument.

You already suspended belief when you accepted that the couple hundred planets we see out of the 100-400 billion in the Milky Way was contained like 15 different sentient species.  There is no logical reason to imagine these couple hundred planets we see represent all organic life especially when the game makes a point of noting that non-space faring species like the Yahg exist.

Further, while it takes hundreds of millions of years if not billions of years for organic life to evolve on a planet to a sentient level, once again there are 100-400 billion planets in the galaxy.  The planets that for example were the very first ones to be harvested if we assume the havest started say 8 billion years ago would already have potentially created new life that is evolving.  So it would be a continuing cycle of evolution, harvest, and evolution.

And what do you mean let them exist for a short time.  We just agreed that organic life is basically allowed to evolve over hundreds of millions of years.  That is not a short time.  If a synthetic would have destroyed all organic life during the Leviathan age then humans would not have evolved period.  Life on earth would have been destroyed before we got a chance to evolve from our primate cousins.

[Coyotebay]

Well the other assumption here that gets lost in the mix is that synthetic life will naturally become all-powerful and god-like, and that they would not evolve a conscience.  It also assumes that all synthetics would have a like mind, that there would never be conflict amongst themselves, that they would remain immortal.  That they would never empathize with organics on any level.  Such could not be further from the truth.  It assumes that the evolution of life in the galaxy can only continue under the control of these sapient robot gods, when everything we know about the universe tells us that nothing can control it, and that life finds a way.

I'll concede to remydat that there could be billions of planets in the Milky Way that support some form of life or other.  But say that there are, and say that there are currently a million planets out there with intelligent life on them.  That again argues against the case for the Reapers, because the Reapers - with all their forces - had enough to handle wiping out a dozen worlds while sustaining losses in the process.  There is no way they would have the resources to handle a million, or even a thousand, if you accept that the ME universe is teaming with intelligent life.  There is really no argument that supports the Reapers making any sense whatsoever, or that a millions-years-old AI does not have the wisdom to recognize this.

remydat, you are mixing up life with specifically intelligent life when I say "short time".  Intelligent life has been here on Earth a short time.

Modifié par Coyotebay, 01 juillet 2013 - 09:48 .

[katamuro]

And considering intelligent space faring life could be something like Arachnids from Starship Troopers or something like the planet from Solaris. Intelligent life might create advanced society but never develop AI's or robots. Rachni for example, if they did not get wiped out by krogans they would never really create artificial life. And who knows what the Hanar would have become if not for interference from protheans.

A simpler premise for the destruction would have sufficed, something like they need a lot of organic matter to replenish themselves or procreate, and they were a cybernetic remnants of the species that were dying out from some plague that destroys or corrupts organic matter so to live they need to replenish it. There was really no need to go through the "Evil AI control" thing and synthetics vs organics bit was just tagged on.

[KaiserShep]

I guess they wanted to go with a deeper concept, but the problem is that it was not well thought out. There's no reconciling the logical issues of culling species with each cycle. No matter what you do, no matter how many you spare each time, you will only reduce the number of species in the galaxy.

This all requires that I fully accept the idea that this can take place and maintain equilibrium. Nothing I've seen thus far can convince me to do so. 

Modifié par KaiserShep, 01 juillet 2013 - 10:03 .

[remydat]

Coyote,

The Geth were created and again within a year or two of their creation, they had the ability to exterminate their creators who spent hundreds of millions of years arriving at that level through the evolutionary process on Rannoch.

The fundamental problem here is that organic life requires hundreds of millions of years to go from single celled organisms to sentient species. They then need thousands of years after becoming sentient to achieve space flight. By contrast, from the moment a synthetic is created, they are basically created with the ability to obtain all the knowledge their creator possesses and the ability to retain that knowledge 100% as well as the ability to potentially never die.

Since we have never encountered in real life a species that is virtually immortal with the ability to retain 100% perfect knowledge and also who are born already possessing the level of technology of its creator, you can't say the universe tells us nothing can control it.

And the Reapers desire is not to destroy all life. The only reason they have as many losses as they do is because they have to harvest. If you told them to just kill all organic life then they would simply drop nukes on planets or run asteroids into planets without ever committing ground forces to harvest a planet. The Reapers could easily destroy all organic life in this cycel from space. Once they destroyed all the advanced races, how do you propose the remaining species that haven't even entered the Bronze Age are going to defend themselves from Reaper attacks from space?

Intelligent life has been on earth say 250k-500k years. That is a pretty long time relative to human life spans. Further that is 250-500k years that we would not have had if a synthetic race had stumbled upon earth during the time of the dinosaurs when humans had yet to exist. Do you think the dinosaurs would have been able to defeat a synthetic race intent on ensuring intelligent life never exists on Earth?

[remydat]

katamuro wrote...

And considering intelligent space faring life could be something like Arachnids from Starship Troopers or something like the planet from Solaris. Intelligent life might create advanced society but never develop AI's or robots. Rachni for example, if they did not get wiped out by krogans they would never really create artificial life. And who knows what the Hanar would have become if not for interference from protheans.

A simpler premise for the destruction would have sufficed, something like they need a lot of organic matter to replenish themselves or procreate, and they were a cybernetic remnants of the species that were dying out from some plague that destroys or corrupts organic matter so to live they need to replenish it. There was really no need to go through the "Evil AI control" thing and synthetics vs organics bit was just tagged on.

Even if an individual species here or there does not create AI, as long as one does and as long as that AI is allowed to evolve for thousands if not millions of years, it is logical to assume its ability to retain knowledge and never die will eventually allow it to surpass organics with finite lives and a limited ability to retain knowledge.

If the Rachni never got wiped out by the Krogans, then the Salarians or Asari may have created a synthetic army to try and stop them.

So I think you have it backwards.  You are acting like in 100% of the cases in which an organic species exists that organic species must create synthetics in order for the Catalyst to be correct.  The reality is as long as it is conceivable for a single organic race out of the millions or billions that exist over the course of the life of the galaxy to create synthetics then the Catalyst has reason to consider synthetics a threat to organic life.

[KaiserShep]

This is assuming that the remaining species have the capacity to reach a "Bronze Age".

I wonder what the reapers would do if no race creates an AI in the next 50K years. Would they just sit it out? Would they then question the validity of their plan? I guess it's just another example of "You can trust me, I'm just your friendly genocidal tour guide." 

remydat wrote...

So I think you have it backwards.  You are acting like in 100% of the cases in which an organic species exists that organic species must create synthetics in order for the Catalyst to be correct.  The reality is as long as it is conceivable for a single organic race out of the millions or billions that exist over the course of the life of the galaxy to create synthetics then the Catalyst has reason to consider synthetics a threat to organic life.

And this is why I destroy them. Their logic is idiotic, and they deserve to be deleted. 

Modifié par KaiserShep, 01 juillet 2013 - 10:15 .