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[Armass81]

iakus wrote...

AlanC9 wrote...

iakus wrote...

Which is why the Crucible, its functions, and the Catalyst rampage through the Mass Effect's structure like a bull in a china shop.  That the galaxy sinks it resources into a "Prothean weapon" with a completely unknown function (let alone three completely unknown function)s is beyond stupid.  And comparing it to the atomic bomb was facepalminly bad, as at least they knew they were working on a bomb.

I'm not sure how you're using "stupid" there. Any chance beats zero chance. (And the three functions are irrelevant since nobody knows about them)

Stupid as in foolish, naive, credulous, overly trusting.

The problem is:  the "chance" the Crucible provided was unquantifiable for the entirety of the game.  It may very well have been zero chance and it was an exercise in futility.  Or worse, It may have been a Reaper trap.  Odds were just as good as it being a Reaper "off" switch.  Or a "Summon Bigger Fish" spell.  There was literally no way to know.  Even as it was being built, no one knew what it was supposed to do.  

Its still better than no chance, which conventional warfare pretty much guarantees as the reapers will bleed the galaxy dry. They have the power and patience to do it. Desperation was the motivator here to build the crucible, if there was even a small chance it could do the impossible. 

Also at the middle point they had a vague idea what it does.

Modifié par Armass81, 17 décembre 2013 - 07:30 .

[Wayning_Star]

nah, the reaperships have the catalyst to 'limit' their bleeding the galaxy dry. Overall the crucible was left with the task of being the ultimate weapon against the reapership problem. More Power as it were. That was the only hint to it's viability as helpful in the supposed war with the reapers. The whole time, it was with ourselves...lol Typical.

Modifié par Wayning_Star, 17 décembre 2013 - 07:36 .

[Iakus]

Armass81 wrote...

Its still better than no chance, which conventional warfare pretty much guarantees as the reapers will bleed the galaxy dry. They have the power and patience to do it. Desperation was the motive here to build the crucible, if there was even a small chance it could do the impossible. 

Only because:
 
Bioware decided to invoke We Have Reserves by creating endless waves of Reapers and destroyers

The galaxy held the idiot ball until the Reapers were literally on their doorstep.  The batarians even tried to fight the Reapers alone without telling the rest of the galaxy!

Zero prep work was done by anyone save Garrus, Wrex, and maybe Legion.  Heck Rana Thanoptis at least tried to study indoctrination and find a way to prevent it!  Even if she failed.

Bioware decided that control of the relay network was not, in fact, important to the Reapers

In other words, the galaxy had no chance with a conventional victory because Bioware stacked the deck that way.  To foolish proportions. 

"The Reaperscontrol our development along certain paths by making us dependant on their technology.  Let's stop them by being totally dependant on this mysterious piece of alien technology"

how does that make any sense at all?

Modifié par iakus, 17 décembre 2013 - 07:37 .

[Armass81]

Instead of crucible i would have used 2 things to make galaxy stand ona more even ground with the reapers.

1. Their long trip from dark space has forced them to use vast amounts of energy which they normally dont have to, thus making them weaker this time.

2. Theres some prothean and collector tech solution which can be weaponized and used to disturb their functions. You find these during ME 2. Also instead of a sightseeing tour, the galaxy(at least on the councils side) actually starts to take the threat seriously and you begin creating alliances with some of the races in this game too. Mainly by stopping a citadel/terminus war thats ultimately manipulated by the collectors.

There you go, now both games have some kind of purpose in making the reapers weaker. Instead we get impotent buffoon Council and the pointless middle part, and then they conjure up a super weapon conveniently.

Modifié par Armass81, 17 décembre 2013 - 07:45 .

[Wayning_Star]

I'm thinking that's why, technically, that the crucible designers remain illusive. They could actually be the ones in the next game that we're faced with 'dealing with' and their respective henchmen (there are always henchmen

[Armass81]

iakus wrote...

Armass81 wrote...

Its still better than no chance, which conventional warfare pretty much guarantees as the reapers will bleed the galaxy dry. They have the power and patience to do it. Desperation was the motive here to build the crucible, if there was even a small chance it could do the impossible. 

Only because:
 
Bioware decided to invoke We Have Reserves by creating endless waves of Reapers and destroyers

The galaxy held the idiot ball until the Reapers were literally on their doorstep.  The batarians even tried to fight the Reapers alone without telling the rest of the galaxy!

Zero prep work was done by anyone save Garrus, Wrex, and maybe Legion.  Heck Rana Thanoptis at least tried to study indoctrination and find a way to prevent it!  Even if she failed.

Bioware decided that control of the relay network was not, in fact, important to the Reapers

In other words, the galaxy had no chance with a conventional victory because Bioware stacked the deck that way.  To foolish proportions. 

"The Reaperscontrol our development along certain paths by making us dependant on their technology.  Let's stop them by being totally dependant on this mysterious piece of alien technology"

how does that make any sense at all?

I dont think anyone can deny Bioware made some bad decisions in how to handle the reaper threat. There was absolutely no direction and it shows. Now it all just conveniently comes together, because handwave. A wizard did it. Heres a super weapon, you go to the catalyst, chat, and you press a button, SOMETHING AWESOME has to happen!

And this is the major gripe I have with this series, if there was a clear direction, if we actually got that and many of the plot threads led to somewhere, if they didnt change the ideas and writers around so much, it would all have been so good, almost perfect. But alas... we have this disjointed mess, which while beatiful and good only remains solid if you dont dig too deep under the surface.  And regarding the EC and leviathan I have to say that even if you polish a cracked vase, unfortunately in the end its still a cracked vase Bioware.

Still it could have been worse. A LOT WORSE.

Modifié par Armass81, 17 décembre 2013 - 08:17 .

[Wayning_Star]

the "idea" is the culmination of technology and evolution, how tech speeds up(or can) evolution. The catalyst, who happens to be pure technology even controls evolution, or attempts to do it. The funny part is that organics built it and as it's a contraption, leaves the fact that organics actually control evolution as a tool, like any other and another aspect of evolution as it evolves.

(you know you've evolved if your brain melts for any reason.. or not

[durasteel]

AlanC9 wrote...
How is Priority: Earth different from those other missions, really? Too long? Too ugly? The last fight's reasonably hard, but shouldn't it be!

Definately not too long--I would have loved for the rest of the game to have had twice as many missions. Wasn't too ugly, because I enjoyed Tuchanka. Wasn't too hard, at all. The two banshee fight with the hulks running around at the same time was only a pain because I was hell bent on killing everything instead of just hitting the missile button.

No, what made it different was the lack of connection or immediacy, and the silly factor. We were fighting on Earth, humanity's home turf, but I felt a stronger connection to misisons in alien territory. The why of the mission on Earth remained pretty abstract at all times. While the length wasn't a problem, the pacing was not great, and action sequences were sometimes completely random. For example, you have time for liesurely conversation, then suddenly you are in a turret minigame, then back to liesurely convo time.

Also, for me, the resistance movement seemed like it dodn't make a lot of sense. The reapers knew where we were, and sent waves of husks, but never bothered to send even a destroyer to the place where the last violent hold-outs were preparing to launch their final assault. The strength demonstrated already by the reaper forces did not seem to match up with the resistance's ability to get everyone together in an above-ground location to regroup, recover, and prepare for the push to the beam in relative safety.

Maybe the best way to put it is that the Earth sequence seemed like one even after another, which while they were basically fine individually did not come together as a cohesive chain. In some ways the Omega DLC was the same, just a series of fight-rest-fight-rest segments that did not convey the sense of cohesion and progress that Rannoch, Tuchanka, or even Mars had.

[BaladasDemnevanni]

iakus wrote...

Only because:
 
Bioware decided to invoke We Have Reserves by creating endless waves of Reapers and destroyers

how does that make any sense at all?

You're getting things mixed up here. Yes, we didn't know the exact count on the number of Reapers until ME2's ending. But in the context of ME3, building the Crucible isn't idiotic given what we learn once they arrive. Desperate, maybe. But every character makes vividly clear that conventional victory isn't happening. Which means an unconventional victory is needed.

[AlanC9]

How many Reapers do we see at the end of ME2? Before ME3 retconned some of them down to destroyer class it looked pretty overwhelming to me.

[DarthSliver]

Well my issue with the crucible was that it didn't just go boom and destroy the Reapers like it should've. In the moment we were to destroy the Reapers we pass out and meet some random computer entity giving us a choice. I personally found ME3 to be spectacular up until the final moments in the game. Final moments being when we were at the console about to active the Crucible to rid the galaxy of the Reapers. I choose Destroy ending because its what my Shepard set out to do, it was disheartening to destroy the now sentient Geth with the Reapers, because the Geth had come so far since we first saw them in ME1.

With the next ME game I heard everything is getting wiped and the METrilogy is becoming just a fictional story for our characters to ponder, don't know how true that is but its what I heard lol.

[Iakus]

AlanC9 wrote...

How many Reapers do we see at the end of ME2? Before ME3 retconned some of them down to destroyer class it looked pretty overwhelming to me.

ME2 established that:

One Reaper is made per cycle

Not every cycle gets a Reaper

The Reapers do at times lose one of their own.

ME3 establishes that every race not "suitable" to become a Sovereign-class Reaper becaomes a destroyer.  That increases their numbers by orders of magnitude, if the number of spacefaring races in the ME universe is any indication.  Rather than maybe getting one Reaper per cycle (and possibly losing one or more in the process), they can potentially get a dozen or more Reapers every single cycle.

So rather than dealing with maybe a thousand Reapers, perhaps less.  We have tens of thousands of them.  

Modifié par iakus, 18 décembre 2013 - 12:46 .

[BaladasDemnevanni]

DarthSliver wrote...

Well my issue with the crucible was that it didn't just go boom and destroy the Reapers like it should've.

As written, I'm not sure how much I would've enjoyed this. Given how often Hackett+company emphasizes that we do not know what the Crucible would be capable of, simply destroying the Reapers feels anticlimactic. If that was to be the single exclusive function of the Crucible, I think it would have been better to technobabble that explanation right off the bat, instead of emphasizing that it has some unforeseen function.

[ImaginaryMatter]

What I always found weird about all the characters saying the war couldn't be won conventionally, is that the missions and Codex entries suggest otherwise. The Reapers are fairly easy prey to guerilla type tactics, the Reapers ain't that smart.

[BaladasDemnevanni]

ImaginaryMatter wrote...

What I always found weird about all the characters saying the war couldn't be won conventionally, is that the missions and Codex entries suggest otherwise. The Reapers are fairly easy prey to guerilla type tactics, the Reapers ain't that smart.

Which ones in particular? It's been a while since I've touched ME3.

[AlanC9]

iakus wrote...

AlanC9 wrote...
How many Reapers do we see at the end of ME2? Before ME3 retconned some of them down to destroyer class it looked pretty overwhelming to me.

ME2 established that:

One Reaper is made per cycle

Not every cycle gets a Reaper
The Reapers do at times lose one of their own.

This still leaves thousands of Sovereign-class Reapers unless your fudge factors "not every cycle" and "at times lose" are very large. Anyway, I was only talking about what we see on the screen, not the theoretical maximum. 

BTW, We Have Reserves is the wrong trope.

Modifié par AlanC9, 18 décembre 2013 - 12:51 .

[ImaginaryMatter]

Codex Entries: Miracle on Palaven (ground troops smuggle bombs into Reapers), Desperate Measures (destroying Reapers with exploding relays and objects at FTL speeds can one shot Reapers), also the Battle of Palaven suggests that going on the offensive could work (as an aside, the Turian hierarchy has to be the most competent group in the galaxy).

As for the missions (this could just be me) there seems to be a rising feeling of hope that things are growing less and less desperate -- at least until Thessia, which I think is one of the reasons why I find it so jarring.

[ImaginaryMatter]

Speaking of Dark Energy have any of you seen the MEEM (Mass Effect Ending Mod) created by the same guy who did the MEHEM? (The male and female variations are listed here in that order: , )

This mod covers a dark energy ending.

[AlanC9]

ImaginaryMatter wrote...
 Desperate Measures (destroying Reapers with exploding relays and objects at FTL speeds can one shot Reapers), also the Battle of Palaven suggests that going on the offensive could work (as an aside, the Turian hierarchy has to be the most competent group in the galaxy).

They didn't actually manage to crash anything into a Reaper at FTL speeds. And blowing up relays wouldn't destroy Reapers without getting really lucky, and was never attempted. You sure you read that entry?

And Palaven wasn't a victory. Stalemate, maybe.

As for the missions (this could just be me) there seems to be a rising feeling of hope that things are growing less and less desperate -- at least until Thessia, which I think is one of the reasons why I find it so jarring.

I'm sure that's intentional. Thessia reminds you what the situation really is.

Modifié par AlanC9, 18 décembre 2013 - 01:53 .

[Iakus]

AlanC9 wrote...

This still leaves thousands of Sovereign-class Reapers unless your fudge factors "not every cycle" and "at times lose" are very large. Anyway, I was only talking about what we see on the screen, not the theoretical maximum. 

BTW, We Have Reserves is the wrong trope.

It could easily have been under a thousand.  Few enough that every Reaper destroyed is a loss they feel.

And yeah it doesnt' fit 10%, but it gets the point across that destroying one, ten or a hundred Reapers is inconsequential.  

Do they even have a trope to describe the Infinite Army of Infinity?

[David7204]

I think people here might need to be reminded that it makes utterly no difference what could be accomplished from an -in-story viewpoint if the ideas are ridiculous from a narrative viewpoint.

Which these are. 'We defeated all the Reapers by smuggling bombs into them' would be a incredibly poor narrative.

Modifié par David7204, 18 décembre 2013 - 01:53 .

[Mr.House]

David7204 wrote...

I think people here might need to be reminded that it makes utterly no difference what could be accomplished from an -in-story viewpoint if the ideas are ridiculous from a narrative viewpoint.

Which these are. 'We defeated all the Reapers by smuggling bombs into them' would be a incredibly poor narrative.

Because *we wasted  time and resources on a machine we have no clue what it does to beat the Reapers" is SOOOOOOOOOOO much better.

Modifié par Mr.House, 18 décembre 2013 - 02:01 .

[David7204]

I don't accept garbage, House, and I don't really care what it compares against. It's still garbage.

[AlanC9]

iakus wrote...
It could easily have been under a thousand.  Few enough that every Reaper destroyed is a loss they feel.

  A thousand Sovereign class Reapers? The war wouldn't have lasted a month. Even a hundred would be invincible.

I'll let you have the "easily" there since the fudge factors are arbitrary.

Do they even have a trope to describe the Infinite Army of Infinity?

I don't recall one. Possibly because the good guys being vastly outnumbered is a precursor for other tropes rather than a trope in itself?

Modifié par AlanC9, 18 décembre 2013 - 02:55 .