226 réponses à ce sujet

[Kingthlayer]

Amanda Kenson. Having someone be indoctrinated into an almost cult-like veneration of the Reapers, as opposed to what we saw from Saren or TIM, was a good idea, but then she has some borderline Let Me Explain My Evil Plan Before I Kill You moments to move the plot along.

 

1) If she wants the invasion to proceed, she shouldn't tell the batarians or Shepard *anything* about the Reapers. The batarians were likely unaware of the Alpha Relay's significance, and all Shepard has to go on is Hackett's message. Even if Shepard succeeds at finding her, she should stall for time, claim that what she found was a batarian hoax, or do something other than tell Shepard the whole story.

 

2) She should have backup standing by to hit Shepard with Overload, Stasis, and any other non-lethal attack the second the Object Rho vision subsides, instead of calling for help *after* Shepard starts to fight back.

 

3) Once Shepard is knocked out, she should put Shepard on a ship headed for as far from the Bahak system as possible. Instead, Shepard gets left in the one location where (s)he can, and does, foil the invasion plan. It would be like capturing a terrorist who has a nuclear weapon, knocking him out, and leaving him lying unconscious right next to the "red button."

 

All those points have more to do with just how bad Arrival is.

 

As for the topic, it's quite difficult to answer, since I and nobody else on the forum(except BioWare lurkers) have any idea what the original concept of the characters were before being put into the game.

 

I guess the only one is Leng, who was legit in the Drew book, but at some point from the book to the game, he lost everything he had going for him.  Leng could have been the Garrus of a Cerberus loyal Shepard if BioWare didn't decide to forget Mass Effect 2 when they made Mass Effect 3.

[FlyingSquirrel]

I'm aware of the limitations of the Orbs number. I know that there are likely going to more hidden out in the galaxy. I'm suggesting destroying any of the ones given to us or used by us to mitigate the risk as much as possible.

 

I'm guessing once the war is over, a general directive goes out through any functioning communication systems informing everyone what a Leviathan sphere looks like and mandating that they be smashed, blown up, or otherwise shattered into as many little pieces as possible whenever they're discovered. Heck, maybe they'd even tell ordinary civilians and soldiers that *before* it's over so as to make sure nobody but the enthrallment teams is messing with them.

 

If the Leviathans, even after most of them were harvested, retained the capacity to enthrall an entire cycle's worth of living beings, I'd be surprised if they didn't already try it at some point in order to force everyone to prepare to fight the Reapers. (Or maybe they did try it and failed, and they lost most of their spheres in the process.) It seems that there aren't that many Leviathans left and that they were mostly using the spheres to observe and make sure they weren't being detected. I'm assuming that a single Leviathan cannot, for example, simultaneously enthrall several billion people with a comparatively small number of spheres, or they'd have likely just ASSUMED DIRECT CONTROL back when they were in power instead of creating the Catalyst to try to help them stop the organic-synthetic conflicts.

[ImaginaryMatter]

I'm still not even sure why Wrex was demanding a full cure. He himself admitted in ME1 that the problem was never the Genophage itself but rather the psychological reaction of the Krogan to it because they falsely believed it to be a species-wide death sentence.

 

Given the strategy he employed in ME2 to rise to power, the most logical course of action would have been to simply ask for a slight raise in fertility rates. Going from a 0.01% fertility rate to even 0.05% would ensure that the species would have a manageable population boom that averts extinction but doesn't risk overpopulation. Hell, it would even give the Krogan their much needed boost in morale.

 

The entire Genophage arc in ME3 reeks of the writers desperately trying to write a (false) binary dilemma with the stupid caveat that not curing the Genophage will somehow guarantee Krogan extinction.

 

Unfortunately the series has quite a few of those.

 

P.S. As for Eve and the Krogan woman, I thought they had some sort of Woman's Union where they basically controlled sex. That seems like a pretty strong incentive for listening to them if I was a red-blooded (or whatever) Krogan man.

[Bob from Accounting]

Any krogan leader in charge would have to be a complete idiot to agree to anything less than a cure.

 

The krogan will never get a chance like this again. Ever. The turians need them. This is their one moment where they hold all the leverage.

 

And frankly, the idea that the krogan are supposed to be happy and satisfied because now only 95 out of 100 kids die instead of 99 is really just silly.

[DeinonSlayer]

Any krogan leader in charge would have to be a complete idiot to agree to anything less than a cure.

 

The krogan will never get a chance like this again. Ever. The turians need them. This is their one moment where they hold all the leverage.

 

And frankly, the idea that the krogan are supposed to be happy and satisfied because now only 95 out of 100 kids die instead of 99 is really just silly.

The cure itself isn't in question. The question is whether Wrex should be spreading it to the wind, empowering his enemies and setting himself up for a fall. There's a whole lot of other Krogan out there with very different ideas about what to do with their new numbers. Wrex's entire power structure was built by gathering the fertile females to his banner, and curing the entire population of Tuchanka all at once completely undermines that.

 

I know how ugly that sounds, keeping the cure for Urdnot and their allies, making its distribution to others conditional. It's simply the reality of the situation. As cold-hearted as that might seem on its surface, for Wrex to potentially keep a leash on the cure, this is about ensuring his and Eve's reforms survive; it's about rebuilding the species as something capable of eventually integrating into the larger galactic community. A spontaneous population explosion is going to be a major shock to their society, requiring a lengthy period of adjustment. The alternative is to quarantine the entire system and potentially watch them tear themselves apart.

 

Personally, I think it'd have been ideal if the cure had, instead of going from 99 to 95 out of 100 dead as you say, reduced the number of eggs in a clutch to 10 or so, but eliminated stillbirths altogether. It removes the psychologically damaging impact of all those deaths, while at the same time not saddling them with more offspring than they can responsibly raise. The days of "nest attrition" and culling their own young would be over.

[eyezonlyii]

The problem of the forced decisions I think comes from the fact this this is ther perfect ime for new players to jump into the series....therefore something has to tbe the "good"decision and the other the "bad" one. All context of those decisions is lost to the first two installments, but it doesn't matter because the game is now accessable to everyone!

[Bob from Accounting]

First of all, given the dispersal of the cure, it doesn't look to be like it's something to be 'contained' at all. It's probably reproduced and transmitted by the krogan themselves. Which means all it would take would be for a rival krogan to bribe or capture a single cured krogan and the quarantine is over and done with. 

 

Secondly, if this 'ideal' were practical, it seems to be the salarians would have just done that a thousand years ago instead of going for the stillbirth route.

 

Thirdly, Wrex or any other krogan leader is really not a position to withhold the cure. What's he going to do if they refuse? Go have Urdnot fight the Reapers alone while all the other billions of krogan sit it out?

[Bob from Accounting]

The problem of the forced decisions I think comes from the fact this this is ther perfect ime for new players to jump into the series....therefore something has to tbe the "good"decision and the other the "bad" one. All context of those decisions is lost to the first two installments, but it doesn't matter because the game is now accessable to everyone!

 

Boy, I don't even know where to begin with the ignorance in this post.

[MassivelyEffective0730]

Boy, I don't even know where to begin with the ignorance in this post.

 

You can start with the ignorance in yours.

[eyezonlyii]

Boy, I don't even know where to begin with the ignorance in this post.

 

Wherever you would like. I'm all eyez...

[DeinonSlayer]

First of all, given the dispersal of the cure, it doesn't look to be like it's something to be 'contained' at all. It's probably reproduced and transmitted by the krogan themselves. Which means all it would take would be for a rival krogan to bribe or capture a single cured krogan and the quarantine is over and done with. 
 
Secondly, if this 'ideal' were practical, it seems to be the salarians would have just done that a thousand years ago instead of going for the stillbirth route.
 
Thirdly, Wrex or any other krogan leader is really not a position to withhold the cure. What's he going to do if they refuse? Go have Urdnot fight the Reapers alone while all the other billions of krogan sit it out?

Seems to me the Turians and Salarians really didn't give a damn what happened to the Krogan so long as they weren't dropping asteroids on other people's colonies anymore. Exhibit A: Tuchanka bomb. The "ideal" cure isn't achievable in the timeframe available, but that's not to say it couldn't have been done.
 
I admit, you do have a valid point in your first paragraph, as ugly as the implications are. The idea is that in order to receive the cure, they would have to ally themselves with Urdnot and agree to certain terms. Several clans have already done this by the time Wrex approaches the Salarians, but others have not.
 
Honestly, the future I see for the Krogan post-war involves being quarantined to their home system and whatever colonies the galactic community awards them with for several centuries until their society reaches some kind of equilibrium. A difficult task, but not an insurmountable one. Anything else will result in the application of another genophage or a war which could potentially end their species.

[KaiserShep]

Well, if it's any consolation, anything the krogan try to do in the future is nothing compared to what the reapers tried to. If that ends with their extinction, then so be it.

 

I'm not sure where Wrex gets the idea that they'd win this time, especially since a lot has changed since the rebellions.

[Bob from Accounting]

If they 'didn't give a damn' they would have exterminated them altogether. Or used the bomb.

 

The point is here is that this 'third option' is not an option at all.

[MassivelyEffective0730]

Well, if it's any consolation, anything the krogan try to do in the future is nothing compared to what the reapers tried to. If that ends with their extinction, then so be it.

 

I'm not sure where Wrex gets the idea that they'd win this time, especially since a lot has changed since the rebellions.

 

No fleet, no force projection capability, no macro scale weaponry. The Krogan aren't going to be a massive threat.

[Bob from Accounting]

It's true. Whatever the krogan do or don't do after the war is something that can be handled.

[CronoDragoon]

Gonna respectfully disagree with a few points of Manc4life7's:

 

I fully realize that this will probably get me shouted off the boards, but.......

 

 

 

 

.........Javik.

 

I have never really been able to fully flesh out why, but Javik didn't resonate with me like he (apparently) did with nearly everyone else.  The idea of finding the last Prothean, and having him be something of a warrior-philosopher sounds awesome.  But then some guy with with a Caribbean accent (so strange) shows up, and he has this odd "communication through touch" space magic ability, and....I don't know, but I just have trouble really getting into the character as it is presented.[/quote]

 

Well, the communication through touch is exactly what the beacons are, so it makes sense and is no more space magic-y than the Protheans have always been.

 

In my humble opinion they should have made him more "alien", more cold and calculating - not so outspoken and passionate.  The Protheans were always portrayed as this hyper-advanced race (even by the standards of the current cycle's races) that conquered the known galaxy like no other race before or since, so I would expect them to be more cerebral and less prone to outward displays of emotion.

 

I'd imagine he would be cold and calculating under normal circumstances. Between the death of his race and waking up surrounded by primitives I think we're seeing him quite out of his element. Besides that, his philosophy of "the strong deserve whatever they can get" is pretty cold and calculating. Not to mention his story about killing his former team. Also, dat glare:

 

[KaiserShep]

No fleet, no force projection capability, no macro scale weaponry. The Krogan aren't going to be a massive threat.

 

Pretty much. The likeliest outcome after the reconstruction is a civil war if/when the rival clans decide that they don't have to answer to clan Urdnot anymore since the female clans are no longer a viable bargaining chip. If anything, that should keep their population in check for a while. Even if other clans still want to take action against the turians and salarians, who's going to sell them ships and weapons? The only ones who probably would for the lulz are the batarians, and we know how they're doing.

[Derpy]

See. Javik is da bawmb srsly.

[SwobyJ]

From my understanding:

 

-Original genophage was to a higher level and caused stillborns

-Krogan more recently started to adapt to it

-Mordin's modification reinforced the genophage to a more steady rate, and removed the stillborn aspect (became only about sterility)

-Mordin's modifications and the Reaper war result in one of these outcomes...

 

a)We cure the Genophage with Wrex and Eve, Krogan have hope and are inspired by other species

b)We cure the Genophage with Wrex, Krogan have hope but may not be tempered by Eve's leadership now

c)We cure the Genophage with Wreav and Eve, Krogan have hope but inspired to breed aggressively, but may be tempered by Eve

d)We cure the Genophage with Wreav, Krogan have hope but inspired to breed and expand aggressively

e)We sabotage the Cure with Wreav, he's none the wiser, the Krogan are gimped but with a grudge

d)We sabotage the Cure with Wrex, Wrex goes after us and dies, Krogan outcome seems most hopeless, the more benevolent 'Control' Mordin placed on them years ago, no longer enough to ensure their survival

 

Correct?

 

Looks like two main states. They're cured and on our side, or cured/sabotaged and not on our side. The middle outcomes are more ambiguous, but anything with Wreav spells trouble.

[SwobyJ]

Abandons thread.

[CronoDragoon]

Sorry. I'm done now.

[MassivelyEffective0730]

We're so going to get banned for this.

[DeinonSlayer]

Yeah, I'm done too.

[Jorji Costava]

This pretty much sums up my reaction to this thread.