20 réponses à ce sujet

[ZerebusPrime]

A while back I put two and two together about a couple semi-obscure elements.  The first is a codex entry about the Reapers' Harvesting techniques.

 

Even with all the Reapers' power, harvesting every sapient species in an entire galaxy can take decades or even centuries. The most time-consuming part of the process is gathering DNA from the population. To accelerate the effort, the Reapers follow a consistent procedure.

 

Victims who cooperate, surrender, or are captured by husks are sorted into camps. It is believed the husks possess receptors that allow them to analyze a victim's DNA through sight, smell, or touch. Victims that meet their standards are herded from the camps into processor ships. Those the husks deem insufficient are either turned into husks themselves or indoctrinated to serve as slave labor. The Reapers use this last option to give their victims false hope -- many captives who would otherwise fight back become docile when they see members of their own kind obey and survive.

 

Yet, late in Mass Effect 3 EDI will comment on news reports coming out of these camps.  She confirms that prisoners who report other prisoners' escape plans/attempts get stays of execution, however...

 

EDI: Ninety percent refused to report their fellow prisoners. Indoctrination should have reduced that number to zero.

 

Shepard: Maybe word got out on how indoctrination worked. And they made a decision.

 

Yeah!   Or.......

 

The husks are picking their victims based on their genetic resistance to indoctrination.  I mean, really?  Ninety percent?  We're not all steel-willed Shepards.  We've seen scores of humans indoctrinated over the course of the series.  A 90% resistance rate in the processing camps seems impossible to me unless it is either intentional on the Reapers' part (somehow focus indoctrination on only 1/10th of the prisoners so as not to spoil the brains of the flock) or if the Reapers are deliberately seeking to make their next big Reaper ship entirely out of individuals with high natural resistance.

 

So what do you think?  What would the implications be of a Control-ending Shepard taking the helm of a Reaper made entirely out of such people?  Would such individuals lend a Reaper ship resistance to Leviathan mental control?  Or is this simply what the Reapers have always done, cycle after cycle?  Zombie-Husk Emily Wong wants to know!

[SwobyJ]

"What would the implications be of a Control-ending Shepard taking the helm of a Reaper made entirely out of such people?"

 

The implications of Awesome, that's what.

 

Really though, you just explained some things that I barely could.

 

"This Cycle is different!"

[Nightwriter]

I don't really understand Shepard's response.

[ZerebusPrime]

I don't really understand Shepard's response.

 

I probably shouldn't have included it in this context.  I can't really comment on it properly without wearing a tinfoil hat, either.

[Nightwriter]

Oh, go on.

[SwobyJ]

Leviathan DLC somewhat expands information on indoctrination in both overt and subtle ways. I suggest a look there Nightwriter.

 

What I don't think indoc/huskification is, is just a 'ooo you're evil!' (that's so ME1), or 'oh no, you're well meaning but brainwashed!' (that's so ME2). No, there's a 'communication' between Reaper and the indoc subject

[ZerebusPrime]

Oh, go on.

 

Short version without derailing the thread topic, and this is my opinion as an avid DESTROYER OF REAPERS: Shepard is saying that the prisoners decided to oppose the Reapers in every way possible, even to the death.  They drive out the whispers of the Reapers by committing themselves solely to the Reapers' destruction, no matter how good those other offers are or how much they agree with the mental logic of other paths later (because they can't trust their own minds when the Reapers are involved).

[teh DRUMPf!!]

Yeah!   Or.......

 

The husks are picking their victims based on their genetic resistance to indoctrination.  I mean, really?  Ninety percent?  We're not all steel-willed Shepards.  We've seen scores of humans indoctrinated over the course of the series.  A 90% resistance rate in the processing camps seems impossible to me unless it is either intentional on the Reapers' part (somehow focus indoctrination on only 1/10th of the prisoners so as not to spoil the brains of the flock) or if the Reapers are deliberately seeking to make their next big Reaper ship entirely out of individuals with high natural resistance.

 

So what do you think?  What would the implications be of a Control-ending Shepard taking the helm of a Reaper made entirely out of such people?  Would such individuals lend a Reaper ship resistance to Leviathan mental control?  Or is this simply what the Reapers have always done, cycle after cycle?  Zombie-Husk Emily Wong wants to know!

 

 

If Shepard's speculation is correct, then the Reapers' "false hope" tactic of displaying their thralls' survival won't fool the prisoners -- the prisoners would see through it and realize that they're all equally screwed until and unless they can break out. It would also make them aware (if not paranoid) of their gradual inclinations toward to helping the Reapers and less likely to be tempted. This would probably be more effective in a normal cycle, where both communication and transportation both are severed, and indoctrination is unheard of.

 

So yeah, I'd say Shep's guess is pretty sound.

 

There's also the fact that indoctrination takes days-to-weeks to set in, so that affords the prisoners some time to resist helping their captors, and it's unlikely that any given prisoner sits around these camps very long before the Reapers decide what to do with them.

[Nightwriter]

Short version without derailing the thread topic, and this is my opinion as an avid DESTROYER OF REAPERS: Shepard is saying that the prisoners decided to oppose the Reapers in every way possible, even to the death.  They drive out the whispers of the Reapers by committing themselves solely to the Reapers' destruction, no matter how good those other offers are or how much they agree with the mental logic of other paths later (because they can't trust their own minds when the Reapers are involved).

 

So, "they made a decision" meaning "they decided to kill themselves rather than wait around for indoctrination to turn them against each other"?

 

Weird EDI didn't say "90% killed themselves" rather than "90% refused", then.

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

Hell, I thought they just herded them into processing centers and ground 'em right up. Gotta get that reaper built so they can wipe out the rest of the planet. The Collectors didn't seem to be very choosy, did they? Oh that was so ME2. I think that the BW writers pulled this indoctrination ratio out their asses. It's all about Marmalade Theory. Grind 'em up and preserve 'em in a metal shell. They don't want them indoctrinated so that they do exactly what the starbrat tells them to do. Right. Makes all the sense in the world. They want to indoctrinate the collective mind.

 

Look they're ****ing dead. They're ground up. They're dead. It's DNA. It's not resistant DNA. It's human DNA. It's ground up meat. It's not alive. It can't think. It's no more alive than the raspberry preserves in a jar. The thinking part is the AI construct. Legion was an idiot and saw a bunch of different computer programs and was impressed. Deal with it. -- Marmalade Theory. It works.

 

I always wondered... why London? Was it because Anderson was born there? Or was there another reason? Why not Tokyo? That was on an island, too, and the Japanese probably had a lot of synthetics. Or did they watch a lot of Godzilla movies and feel sorry for them and just decide to wipe them out? 

[CrutchCricket]

So what do you think?  What would the implications be of a Control-ending Shepard taking the helm of a Reaper made entirely out of such people?  Would such individuals lend a Reaper ship resistance to Leviathan mental control?  Or is this simply what the Reapers have always done, cycle after cycle?  Zombie-Husk Emily Wong wants to know!

 

Nothing different than what already happens. Differences between Reapers go out the window as soon as the holokid rears its empty head.

 

As to the 90%... I'd chalk it up to inconsistency before anything else. Certainly larger errors have been made. In this case that whole thing about Reaper deals should be moot because, you guessed it, indoctrination.

 

Reapers wouldn't worry about potential escape plans and there'd be zero reason to have to lie to their captives by "offering incentives". Indoctrinate the lot of them that harvesting leads to the land of happiness and chocolates and that's all she wrote. If anything the POV from ground-side civilians "resisting" or otherwise not yet indoctrinated would be something like the sum of the 2005 remake of War of the Worlds- utter hopelessness in the face of unstoppable alien invasion. Minus the lolnoimmunesystem thing (and Dakota Fanning), obviously.

 

EDI's prison story was written in the vein of the stereotypical "when everything is stripped away, people do more than just survive" tale. Like the one where prisoners who actually attempt to socialize last longer than those who keep their heads down and only sleep and work. There's probably a word or trope describing it but it escapes me at the moment. Anyway, it's a nice sentiment but the details would be against it here.

[Jukaga]

I think the London setting may be a shout out to the movie Lifeforce, especially the beam linked to the Citadel.

[SporkFu]

In that conversation EDI has with Shepard about the high resistance rate among prisoners, isn't she referring to one single internment camp, as an example of not submitting in order to survive? I don't think resistance is 90% across the board, though it may very well be.

[SwobyJ]

I think the London setting may be a shout out to the movie Lifeforce, especially the beam linked to the Citadel.

 

You mean the Conduit? Because that's what EDI calls it.

[SwobyJ]

In that conversation EDI has with Shepard about the high resistance rate among prisoners, isn't she referring to one single internment camp, as an example of not submitting in order to survive? I don't think resistance is 90% across the board, though it may very well be.

 

It's 90% for those who understood how indoctrination works.

 

We might want to try to as well.

[Farangbaa]

Hell, I thought they just herded them into processing centers and ground 'em right up. Gotta get that reaper built so they can wipe out the rest of the planet. The Collectors didn't seem to be very choosy, did they? Oh that was so ME2. I think that the BW writers pulled this indoctrination ratio out their asses. It's all about Marmalade Theory. Grind 'em up and preserve 'em in a metal shell. They don't want them indoctrinated so that they do exactly what the starbrat tells them to do. Right. Makes all the sense in the world. They want to indoctrinate the collective mind.

 

Look they're ****ing dead. They're ground up. They're dead. It's DNA. It's not resistant DNA. It's human DNA. It's ground up meat. It's not alive. It can't think. It's no more alive than the raspberry preserves in a jar. The thinking part is the AI construct. Legion was an idiot and saw a bunch of different computer programs and was impressed. Deal with it. -- Marmalade Theory. It works.

 

I always wondered... why London? Was it because Anderson was born there? Or was there another reason? Why not Tokyo? That was on an island, too, and the Japanese probably had a lot of synthetics. Or did they watch a lot of Godzilla movies and feel sorry for them and just decide to wipe them out? 

 

It's London because Anderson was born there... twice.

[ZerebusPrime]

I think the London setting may be a shout out to the movie Lifeforce, especially the beam linked to the Citadel.

 

........space vampires are bad.

 

 

 

In that conversation EDI has with Shepard about the high resistance rate among prisoners, isn't she referring to one single internment camp, as an example of not submitting in order to survive? I don't think resistance is 90% across the board, though it may very well be.

 

Fair point, but I have to work with what information the game gives me.

 

 

 

Zombie Husk Emily Wong thanks you for your responses.  Keep em' coming!

[CrutchCricket]

Zombie Husk Emily Wong

 

This hurts me.

[ZerebusPrime]

Yeah, turns out she ditched her QEC in a hover vehicle set on crash-course autopilot after leaving the Reapers a misleading message*.  

 

And then got captured and huskified anyway.  But that's ok, because YAY SYNTHESIS!  Makeup is a bit of a nonstarter, though.  

 

 

 

*I mean really, who tweets their own death?  They wouldn't tweet it.  They'd just *do* it.  Obvious exceptions should include Joseph of Arimathea.

[Gervaise]

_{I think what they are looking for are specimens with as near perfect DNA as possible.   For example, I have an inverted chromozone which can lead to abnormalities in foetus so I imagine they would reject my DNA.  Likewise most hereditary conditions, which is why the banshees exist, since even they wanted an Asari Reaper, these are abnormal ones.     I must admit the way the Reapers are able to play fast and loose with DNA and it is meant to make any appreciable difference to the final result of their synthetic hybrid is something that I find hardest to accept.   Similarly with the Synthesis ending and the entire galaxy DNA being rewritten so that everyone now has light bulbs for eyes and electrodes throughout their skin.  So I wouldn't make too much of the codex entries.}

 

_{As for the comment about 90% resistance, the main point of the conversation, I seem to recall, was that EDI was considering changing her programming from pure survival, presumably so that she could be more like the organics she knew, in particular humans since the two people she has the closest emotion bond with, Joker and Shepard, are both human.   So the writers probably put more importance on the context for EDI and less on consistency with previous law but covered themselves by making EDI surprised at what she had discovered.    Shepard's response in some way goes to explain why none of the Normandy's crew ever becomes indoctrinated or Hackett or Anderson for that matter - once you are aware of indoctrination and know its effects, you are much better able to resist it.}

[SwobyJ]

"..and they made a choice."