184 réponses à ce sujet

[Obadiah]

@Ieldra2
What indication do you have that, in Synthesis, the Reaper/Catalyst relationship (the version of control you described, or any other) has changed?

[Ieldra]

Obadiah wrote...
@Ieldra2
What indication do you have that, in Synthesis, the Reaper/Catalyst relationship (the version of control you described, or any other) has changed?

The Catalyst is gone. The Citadel, the core of its consciousness, is destroyed.

(Also, it would be thematically inappropriate but this is a weak argument considering how much other thematically inappropriate stuff there is in ME3).

Modifié par Ieldra2, 15 janvier 2014 - 05:57 .

[CrutchCricket]

The Reapers are just tools. It still pains me to say that, given what they started out as, but they've since been reduced to mere killbots. You want to blame and judge someone, blame the thing in charge (holokid) and those that created it (Leviathan). The former ceases to exist in all three endings. It's destroyed in Destroy (duh) and overwritten in Control. It's less obvious in synthesis. I don't think the destruction of the Citadel alone does it. Interestingly, synthesis is the only time we don't see it disappear. Shoot the pipe or grab the rods, it's right behind you and fizzles out once the reaction starts. Jump in the beam, it's still back at the elevator and gives no indication it's going anywhere. But I think it ceases to exist anyway for the very simple reason that it's only a broken AI, but one whose purpose is complete. There is no reason left for it to exist so it shuts down.

Now the Leviathans on the other hand don't visibly get theirs in any ending. So it's up to us individually to envision their fate. Personally I agree it's more about survival and fundamentally different goals and perspectives than trying to impose the limited human morality and perspective on things far greater (or at least vastly different) from us. I wouldn't go after the Leviathans to try and get them in a court (and can you imagine what a farce that'd be? They would technically require a defense). I'd go after them because I know they'll be a threat now that there's nothing keeping them in check and stopping them from re-establishing their empire.

[Obadiah]

Ieldra2 wrote...

Obadiah wrote...
@Ieldra2
What indication do you have that, in Synthesis, the Reaper/Catalyst relationship (the version of control you described, or any other) has changed?

The Catalyst is gone. The Citadel, the core of its consciousness, is destroyed.

(Also, it would be thematically inappropriate but this is a weak argument considering how much other thematically inappropriate stuff there is in ME3).

I didn't realise the Citadel was destroyed in Synthesis (still not sure it is after watching that video). In any case, if indeed the Reapers are as controlled as you describe, I would not assume the newly Catalyst-free beings would be substantially different than the ones that existed for the previous millions of years. There would need to be some sort accounting for their actions, and some sense of regret.

Modifié par Obadiah, 15 janvier 2014 - 07:45 .

[Ieldra]

Obadiah wrote...

Ieldra2 wrote...

Obadiah wrote...
@Ieldra2
What indication do you have that, in Synthesis, the Reaper/Catalyst relationship (the version of control you described, or any other) has changed?

The Catalyst is gone. The Citadel, the core of its consciousness, is destroyed.

(Also, it would be thematically inappropriate but this is a weak argument considering how much other thematically inappropriate stuff there is in ME3).

I didn't realise the Citadel was destroyed in Synthesis. In any case, if indeed the Reapers are as controlled as you describe, I would not assume the newly Catalyst-free beings would be substantially different than the ones that existed for the previous millions of years. There would need to be some sort accounting for their actions, and some sense of regret.

I think there would be a sense of regret by some. You see, my reasoning is that if the Reapers consist of the conjoined minds of billions of individuals from the Reaperized species of old cycles, as Legion tells us in ME2, then most of them wouldn't have done what they did without being coerced, since they'd be as much victims of the cycle as those they are sent to destroy or transform. Reapers made of minds of those species who had a sense of empathy would have a sense of regret for if they hadn't, they wouldn't be valid remnants of the Reaperized species. That would be most of them, since it appears plausible to me that only an organic species social enough for large-scale collaboration (like humans) would be able to create a technological civilization. Unless it's a hive-mind species, but we haven't seen many of those. 

I don't see the need for an accounting, though, if they had been mind-controlled since they aren't responsible for what they did.

As for the Citadel, the Synthesis ending is open to the interpretation that the Citadel can be rebuilt like in Destroy, but as opposed to the Destroy epilogue, we only see its destruction when the Crucible fires (the scenes are identical in Destroy and Synthesis, while Control is different - you see the Citadel close again, intact, after the Crucible has fired). Also, the original Synthesis and Destroy ending destroyed the Citadel for good, but only the Destroy epilogue makes any hint of rebuilding it. So I think it's safe to say that the most plausible interpretation is that it's destroyed in Synthesis with no need of being rebuilt.

Modifié par Ieldra2, 15 janvier 2014 - 07:55 .

[FlyingSquirrel]

AlanC9 wrote...
He's got a point, though, considering the way Reaoers reproduce. Though it's not at all clear they would have a reproductive instinct the way naturally-evolving species do.

I don't think they would need to reproduce, since they apparently don't die unless destroyed in combat. Harbinger is supposedly the first Reaper and he's still around. They might need resources to keep their synthetic parts functioning, but I don't see why that would require killing anybody.

[MyChemicalBromance]

I don't really see justice, nor do I see a need for it.

The Reaper genocide was just as morally grey as anything else in the ending; if it weren't for their actions, we'd all be slaves to the Protheans or someone like them (taking DLC into account; the Leviathans).

I don't see it being that clear-cut because everything we like about this cycle only exists because the Reapers built it that way. I did the math in another thread, but I believe if we go by a conservative interpretation of the Fermi Paradox, Earth would have been visited and potentially enslaved/destroyed over 500 times since the Derelect Reaper was destroyed (not even the beginning of the cycle) (and that's assuming Eezo and ME fields don't exist).

It's similar to people today that live in countries where the chronological "natives" were conquered by genocide. Yeah, you can condemn it all you want, but it's disingenous to automatically assume you'd still have the life you do if it never happened.

[AlanC9]

Obadiah wrote...

@Ieldra2
What indication do you have that, in Synthesis, the Reaper/Catalyst relationship (the version of control you described, or any other) has changed?

Since the Catalyst's directive is no longer relevant, would this mean anything one way or the other?

[Comrade Wakizashi]

Br3ad wrote...

Comrade Wakizashi wrote...

Dean_the_Young wrote...

Obadiah wrote...

Ieldra2...
...
Apart from that, I find it inappropriate to apply human ideas of justice to entities so clearly non-human, so clearly not made as a social species. According to Legion in ME2, this is racist...

This is ridiculous. Being an alien does not make the Reapers unaccountable for their actions or beyond judgement. It just makes their motives alien. It is not racist to judge and alien species that is committing a crime against you, especially one that understands us enough to know that we would think that what it is doing is a gross violation of ourselves and a crime.

I think you missed the 'mind controlled slaves' part.

But sure, let's play the moral absolutism. Why is your morality the standard for it? Are you a murderer for killing ants, even though behavioral analysis can show that ants do not appreciate being killed?

Are you a murderer for killing ants, you ask. In fact, according to the definition of murder, you actually are.
The fact that the Reapers keep doing their genocidal work and will never stop by themselves makes it even worse. Wether or not they have free will doesn't matter. They are built and created for destruction, and the threat persists as long as they exist. The only logical solution for when you want to be sure is total destruction.

I agree with most of this, but that's not the definition of murder.
noun

• 1.the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another.

The verb is the act of doing this. 

Damn, I didn't know the word murder was that human-centered. What, was it defined by Cerberus?

[CrutchCricket]

Without the cycles many of the species that were its victims would not even exist. You can't commit a crime against something that doesn't exist.

[Obadiah]

AlanC9 wrote...

Obadiah wrote...

@Ieldra2
What indication do you have that, in Synthesis, the Reaper/Catalyst relationship (the version of control you described, or any other) has changed?

Since the Catalyst's directive is no longer relevant, would this mean anything one way or the other?

It depends on how the Catalyst controlled the Reapers, and if the Reapers could still be considered the same beings that they were pre-synthesis under Catalyst control. I still think they are, so some sort of accounting is required.

[AlanC9]

Required by what?

Edit: oh, wait..... justice, right?

Modifié par AlanC9, 15 janvier 2014 - 08:36 .

[Obadiah]

AlanC9 wrote...

Required by what?

...any human or Council race sense of justice.

[Invisible Man]

Obadiah wrote...

AlanC9 wrote...

Obadiah wrote...

@Ieldra2
What indication do you have that, in Synthesis, the Reaper/Catalyst relationship (the version of control you described, or any other) has changed?

Since the Catalyst's directive is no longer relevant, would this mean anything one way or the other?

It depends on how the Catalyst controlled the Reapers, and if the Reapers could still be considered the same beings that they were pre-synthesis under Catalyst control. I still think they are, so some sort of accounting is required.

aren't reaper mind's basically composed of billions of individual minds form a lesser race? they'd have to be controlled from an outside source for them to put together a single cohesive thought, or so I would think. just what happens to those minds once reaper control is broken? i don't even want to think about it.

Modifié par Invisible Man, 15 janvier 2014 - 08:41 .

[AlanC9]

Well, maybe you just don't get "justice" in those endings. Quotes there because blaming mind-controlled beings for the effects of the mind control is morally incoherent.

[Reorte]

Invisible Man wrote...

aren't reaper mind's basically composed of billions of individual minds form a lesser race? they'd have to be controlled from an outside source for them to put together a single cohesive thought, or so I would think. just what happens to those minds once reaper control is broken? i don't even want to think about it.

Unlikely. It wouldn't make much sense to build something like that and have to exercise constant direct control over it. The most logical conclusion about the Reapers is that they were built to act as they do, no coercion required (why create something that could turn on you?)

[Zso_Zso]

BTW, the whole concept of holokid / catalyst controlling all the Reapers directly contradicts the main story of Mass Effect #1, i.e. Vigil on Ilos explains that Sovereign + Saren needs to take manual control of the Citadel to be able to open the relay and let the Reaper fleet jump in from dark space, because the keepers no longer respond to the remote signal sent by Sovereign due to Prothean tinkering.

If Catalyst / holokid is the main controlling force who resides in the Citadel, then it could open the mass relay directly and would not need Sovereign (who is just a tool) to send the signal to the keepers in the first place or to take manual control when the keepers don't act.

Sorry if this seems OT, but if we are talking about Reaper responsibility and free-will versusu being a controlled tool, we also need to consider Sovereign's actions. Were those actions also controlled by the Catalist ? If yes, what was the point doing things in such a convoluted and complicated way instead of Catalist taking direct control of the Citadel ?

[Invisible Man]

Reorte wrote...

Invisible Man wrote...

aren't reaper mind's basically composed of billions of individual minds form a lesser race? they'd have to be controlled from an outside source for them to put together a single cohesive thought, or so I would think. just what happens to those minds once reaper control is broken? i don't even want to think about it.

Unlikely. It wouldn't make much sense to build something like that and have to exercise constant direct control over it. The most logical conclusion about the Reapers is that they were built to act as they do, no coercion required (why create something that could turn on you?)

the cat didn't make a whole lot of sense to begin with, why should it start now. more seriously though,  perhaps the catalyst's programing didn't give it a plausible alternative?

[Comrade Wakizashi]

Zso_Zso wrote...

BTW, the whole concept of holokid / catalyst controlling all the Reapers directly contradicts the main story of Mass Effect #1, i.e. Vigil on Ilos explains that Sovereign + Saren needs to take manual control of the Citadel to be able to open the relay and let the Reaper fleet jump in from dark space, because the keepers no longer respond to the remote signal sent by Sovereign due to Prothean tinkering.

If Catalyst / holokid is the main controlling force who resides in the Citadel, then it could open the mass relay directly and would not need Sovereign (who is just a tool) to send the signal to the keepers in the first place or to take manual control when the keepers don't act.

Sorry if this seems OT, but if we are talking about Reaper responsibility and free-will versusu being a controlled tool, we also need to consider Sovereign's actions. Were those actions also controlled by the Catalist ? If yes, what was the point doing things in such a convoluted and complicated way instead of Catalist taking direct control of the Citadel ?

I think the Catalyst cannot physically act in any way. It has no physical appearance. The child form in ME3 is just a hologram, I think. Holograms cannot physically interact with their surroundings. Also, the Catalyst has no direct ontrol over the Citadel itself. This is made apparent by the fact that the Reaper fleet needed to transport the Citadel to Earth (although it is never actually explained how this happens as far as I know). I don't think the Catalyst can do much itself without employing tools such as the Reapers

[KaiserShep]

Meh, justice doesn't matter when dealing with the reapers. You simply neutralize them so galactic civilization can move on.

[Invisible Man]

Comrade Wakizashi wrote...

Zso_Zso wrote...

BTW, the whole concept of holokid / catalyst controlling all the Reapers directly contradicts the main story of Mass Effect #1, i.e. Vigil on Ilos explains that Sovereign + Saren needs to take manual control of the Citadel to be able to open the relay and let the Reaper fleet jump in from dark space, because the keepers no longer respond to the remote signal sent by Sovereign due to Prothean tinkering.

If Catalyst / holokid is the main controlling force who resides in the Citadel, then it could open the mass relay directly and would not need Sovereign (who is just a tool) to send the signal to the keepers in the first place or to take manual control when the keepers don't act.

Sorry if this seems OT, but if we are talking about Reaper responsibility and free-will versusu being a controlled tool, we also need to consider Sovereign's actions. Were those actions also controlled by the Catalist ? If yes, what was the point doing things in such a convoluted and complicated way instead of Catalist taking direct control of the Citadel ?

I think the Catalyst cannot physically act in any way. It has no physical appearance. The child form in ME3 is just a hologram, I think. Holograms cannot physically interact with their surroundings. Also, the Catalyst has no direct ontrol over the Citadel itself. This is made apparent by the fact that the Reaper fleet needed to transport the Citadel to Earth (although it is never actually explained how this happens as far as I know). I don't think the Catalyst can do much itself without employing tools such as the Reapers

those seem more like assumptions to me, i don't see vary many, if any supporting facts there.

[KaiserShep]

It wouldn't make much sense that the catalyst could not physically do anything on its own, especially considering that at some point, it had to act against the leviathan without reapers to control. At the very least, it was capable of creating thralls of its own to do this. This is why the catalyst entity should never have existed. If the Citadel was truly housing the combined intelligences of the reapers, there should have been no way that it would allow itself to be sabotaged by a paltry few prothean scientists, nor be separate from the physical controls of the Citadel's systems (being able to randomly close the arms and trap everyone inside when the time was right seems like a really useful feature).

[Obadiah]

AlanC9 wrote...

Well, maybe you just don't get "justice" in those endings. Quotes there because blaming mind-controlled beings for the effects of the mind control is morally incoherent.

Mind "control" is... interesting. There are kinds people can come up with that lead to culpabilty of the individual I am sure (an interest in carrying out the will of the collective even if they disagree, etc..), it's just difficult to discuss when it isn't explicitly defined.

[CosmicGnosis]

MyChemicalBromance wrote...

I don't really see justice, nor do I see a need for it.

The Reaper genocide was just as morally grey as anything else in the ending; if it weren't for their actions, we'd all be slaves to the Protheans or someone like them (taking DLC into account; the Leviathans).

I don't see it being that clear-cut because everything we like about this cycle only exists because the Reapers built it that way. I did the math in another thread, but I believe if we go by a conservative interpretation of the Fermi Paradox, Earth would have been visited and potentially enslaved/destroyed over 500 times since the Derelect Reaper was destroyed (not even the beginning of the cycle) (and that's assuming Eezo and ME fields don't exist).

It's similar to people today that live in countries where the chronological "natives" were conquered by genocide. Yeah, you can condemn it all you want, but it's disingenous to automatically assume you'd still have the life you do if it never happened.

This is probably the single greatest thing about the ending. I like the moral ambiguity of the Reapers and what you should do with them. It's important to note that Karpyhyn's ending, one of several that BioWare considered but the only one that we have details about, was even more ambiguous. You could either destroy the Reapers and hope that the galaxy would find some other solution to the dark energy problem, or allow the Reapers to reap humanity.

Some people like to say that this ending is better than the current one. I laugh at those people. At least the current ending stops the cycle no matter what. That other ending, however, allows you to make a choice that not only renders the entire trilogy utterly meaningless, but also allows you to declare that the Reapers were indeed right.

Everyone should also realize that BioWare likely always intended to give the Reapers a "noble" purpose, one that has a more cosmic perspective than a human perspective.

Modifié par CosmicGnosis, 15 janvier 2014 - 10:11 .

[Daemul]

Justice? For what? Without the Reapers the races in the current cycle probably wouldn't exist. The cycles had a benefit, they gave the younger races the chance to grow and fully reach their potential, an opportunity they would never have had without the Reapers. I see no need to kill them for that.

I wish that the writers had focused more on this instead of the Synthetic vs Organic stuff.