152 réponses à ce sujet

[Bob from Accounting]

It's no accident that the plot of both ME3 and DA:O is to unify all the different factions against a common foe; at the end of the day, it doesn't much matter what that foe is, what matters is the way in which we overcome the various obstacles to achieving the requisite unity to fight them.

 

The same could be said for pretty much any and every big evil foe in existence. From orcs to aliens to Russians to demons. In that, yes, they ultimately exist to enunciate the values and strengths of the heroes.
 

[durasteel]

Didn't buy that the virus would work against the aliens in Independence Day, and I really can't buy that the million-year-old Reapers couldn't react to that kind of stun technology in Mass Effect. I could see the tactic working against some of the Reapers, maybe, during that downtime.  But all, or even more than half? In my opinion, that's a bit more preposterous than a Heavy Overload wave that can't discern between types of Reaper-infused synthetics.

 

The Reapers aren't creative or adaptive, though. In the Mass Effect narrative, they were given a task and they carry it out, repeating every 50,000 years unto infinity. That would suggest that indoctrination is a leviathan technology, which the reapers themselves do not alter or adapt beyond their programming. Furthermore, in order to adapt to the threat of the crucible, the reapers would have had to experience it previously. If they could block a reversal of indoctrination, they could just as easily shield against a big red "heavy overload wave." They are as likely to be forewarned and forearmed against one as the other. Also, the mechanism of indoctrination is obviously a bi-directional carrier signal of some sort, so presumably it should be possible to reverse engineer a hack to hijack that signal with the right kind of feedback. Nothing before the last moments of the end would lead anyone to think that the reapers would be vulnerable to your big red "heavy overload wave."

 

Indoctrination was the iconic tool of the reapers. Saren and TIM, hordes of mechano-zombies that used to be us, and "assuming direct control." To me, making the ultimate resolution of the conflict focus on the indoctrination thing was set up from the beginning, so I was surprised when it didn't go that way.

[dreamgazer]

It's not quite accurate to say that Saren's mindset operates around the Reapers' agenda; rather, his mindset serves their agenda. He doesn't think the way they think. He thinks the way they want him to think so that he'll serve their ends.

Sorry, but: po-ta-toe, po-tah-toe. Indoctrination is indoctrination, and the Reaper agenda is the Reaper agenda.
 

The other thing is this: Precisely what I argued a few posts ago is that the Reapers' aren't the core antagonists of the series; they're the pretext to bring the real antagonists to the forefront, which is partly why we spend way more time dealing with political and personal problems than dealing with them. As I see it, the core conceit of the series is the need to break free of one's history. The idea of a history that somehow binds or constricts us underwrites almost all of the games conflicts (the genophage, the Geth/Quarian conflict, the ME2 crew's various personal issues, etc.).

What you're describing is a thematic subtext that the game purports as an option, not the primary antagonist. Everything, from Saren and Noveria/Feros/Virmire to the purpose of Shepard's resurrection and the Collectors, comes back to the Reapers and their influence. BioWare likely dealt with the Reaper threat tangentially because they didn't know what the hell to do with them otherwise leading into ME2. Thus, the Dirty Dozen and their personal issues, along with "Ah yes, Reapers" in Shepard's contrived absence despite the end of ME1. Thing is, the Reapers never disappeared, and the threat of their impending invasion remained.
 

Even the relays play into this. From my point of view, the whole business about the relays having been built by the Reapers is just another sign pointing to the way in which we are bound by the past, rather than some pointer to some existential mystery of the universe grasped only by the Reapers. This is probably why the writers felt the need to blow them all up and give us some new beginning/Garden of Eden imagery in the ending.

To me, the Reapers sustaining the tech-cutoff cycles and being the architects of the Citadel and the mass relay system (and its subsequent technology) resonates much stronger than that. It's why there's such an emphasis placed on Vigil's info-dump at the end of ME1.
 

The Reapers aren't creative or adaptive, though.

After millions of years of existence and experience against advanced civilizations (and the cycle's "essence" crammed into 'em), I don't agree with this. Especially against indoctrination.
 

In the Mass Effect narrative, they were given a task and they carry it out, repeating every 50,000 years unto infinity. That would suggest that indoctrination is a leviathan technology, which the reapers themselves do not alter or adapt beyond their programming. Furthermore, in order to adapt to the threat of the crucible, the reapers would have had to experience it previously. If they could block a reversal of indoctrination, they could just as easily shield against a big red "heavy overload wave." They are as likely to be forewarned and forearmed against one as the other. Also, the mechanism of indoctrination is obviously a bi-directional carrier signal of some sort, so presumably it should be possible to reverse engineer a hack to hijack that signal with the right kind of feedback. Nothing before the last moments of the end would lead anyone to think that the reapers would be vulnerable to your big red "heavy overload wave."

Except for the way the narrative is orchestrated, how this cycle has placed faith in the technology of their priors, an the pre-established effects of things like a Heavy Overload wipe. We've found a way to tap into that tech; we don't know jack squat about combating indoctrination. Nothing before the last moments would lead anyone to think that they'd be vulnerable to reverse-engineering their indoctrination, either, let alone that using indoctrination ourselves wouldn't impact the rest of the galaxy.

All told, I think they could feasibly be vulnerable to both with the right technobabble bullshit, but the wave is an instantaneous measure instead of one that the Reapers' advanced tech and experience with indoctrination itself could react to following the hit. Just like the aliens and Goldblum's magic virus.

[durasteel]

...
Except for the way the narrative is orchestrated, how this cycle has placed faith in the technology of their priors, an the pre-established effects of things like a Heavy Overload wipe. We've found a way to tap into that tech; we don't know jack squat about combating indoctrination. Nothing before the last moments would lead anyone to think that they'd be vulnerable to reverse-engineering their indoctrination, either, let alone that using indoctrination ourselves wouldn't impact the rest of the galaxy.

All told, I think they could feasibly be vulnerable to both with the right technobabble bullshit, but the wave is an instantaneous measure instead of one that the Reapers' advanced tech and experience with indoctrination itself could react to following the hit. Just like the aliens and Goldblum's magic virus.

 

Actually, the concept was kind of telegraphed by the way smashing Robo-Saren while he was interfaced with Sovereign scrambled the reaper and left it vulnerable to attack.

 

We don't know who designed the Crucible. Presumably the Leviathan's contemporaries had civilizations and technology that were far more advanced than those that arose within the 50,000 year constraints, and if indoctrination was a Leviathan tech, it stands to reason that some of their subjugated races would be interested in overcoming it. The initial reaping that lead to the creation of Harbinger was probably a much slower conquest than more recent cycles, and probably left its victims more time to begin work on mega-weapons.

[AlanC9]

Actually, the concept was kind of telegraphed by the way smashing Robo-Saren while he was interfaced with Sovereign scrambled the reaper and left it vulnerable to attack.

 

The incredible lameness of that fight renders it hard for some of us to remember it, I guess

[Jukaga]

The incredible lameness of that fight renders it hard for some of us to remember it, I guess

Lift-shoot-lift-shoot-lift-shoot x1000

[Steelcan]

IT wannabe thread 1/10 for effort

[dreamgazer]

The incredible lameness of that fight renders it hard for some of us to remember it, I guess

In so many words, yeah, on top of the fact that it didn't make much sense and really didn't jibe with the way thralldom had been handled across the rest of the game.

[KaiserShep]

The incredible lameness of that fight renders it hard for some of us to remember it, I guess

Yeah, they really should've just had the fleets kill Sovereign once you're done dealing with Saren. I guess they really wanted to have Shepard be the one to personally disable it.

[Jorji Costava]

@dreamgazer:

Still not quite sure how to split quotes with this new forum, so I'll just address your points in order.

RE: Indoctrination: Just don't see how this works at all. In ME3, an indoctrinated TIM believes that he can control the Reapers. Does this mean that the Reaper agenda is to fall under the control of TIM, or is it simply that having him believe this serves their interests? I'm inclined to think the latter, and I see no reason why it should be different with Saren.

RE: The Reapers: Leaving aside the question of how a thematic subtext can be 'optional,' I'll just say this. You could look at DA:O and note that the plot events all come back to the threat of the blight; it's why you're going to Orzammar, the Brecilian Forest, etc. But again, there's a deeper level on which the Blight just isn't that big a deal. Further, I find it exceptionally hard to believe that if you regard X as embodying the core ideas behind your series, you will put X on the back burner for an entire game. This would be akin to making only the most tangential of references to the force and the Empire in The Empire Strikes Back.

RE: Vigil: Vigil's infodump is mostly about how the Protheans were able to build their own relay. Again, it's about the idea of making your own future instead of being bound to the past: The Protheans' greatest victory was to be able to do on your own what you had been relying on others to do. It's been a while since I've played through this, but I remember very little in the way of speculation as to why the Reapers built the relays in the first place. If this conversation were primarily about the mysteries of the Reapers, that's exactly what we'd expect to see.

Last thing: I'm going to engage in a bit of heresy. In my humble opinion, the Reapers were not great antagonists, and that there would be no satisfying resolution to questions like, "Why are they doing this?" and "How do we stop them?" is something that should have been completely foreseeable all the way back in ME1. To begin with, it was probably a mistake to extensively appeal to Lovecraftian imagery in the context of a game that's fundamentally a power fantasy.

Further, the destruction of all intelligent life every 50,000 years is just kind of a dumb thing to want, particularly if you're going to try to pass off the Reapers' agenda as anything other than pure self-interest. Part of the reason why I didn't want to know much about the motivations of the Reapers is that I knew that the writers didn't have a good starting point; whatever they came up with, it would probably not be very compelling. I wasn't disappointed in this expectation.

[KaiserShep]

I like to think that the reapers would simply have reduced the galaxy to a menagerie of non-sapient biota that never develops technology if they were to keep going, because 50,000 years is a very short period of time on a geologic timescale, and life is finite in the galaxy.

[dreamgazer]

@dreamgazer:

Still not quite sure how to split quotes with this new forum, so I'll just address your points in order.

Click the little light-switch gray thing in the top-left corner of the posting box. It breaks the posting apparatus down into standard text/coding.
 

RE: Indoctrination: Just don't see how this works at all. In ME3, an indoctrinated TIM believes that he can control the Reapers. Does this mean that the Reaper agenda is to fall under the control of TIM, or is it simply that having him believe this serves their interests? I'm inclined to think the latter, and I see no reason why it should be different with Saren.

So we're to disregard all of Saren's dialogue as not being attached to the Reaper agenda? I don't buy that for a second, sorry.
 

RE: The Reapers: Leaving aside the question of how a thematic subtext can be 'optional,' I'll just say this. You could look at DA:O and note that the plot events all come back to the threat of the blight; it's why you're going to Orzammar, the Brecilian Forest, etc. But again, there's a deeper level on which the Blight just isn't that big a deal. Further, I find it exceptionally hard to believe that if you regard X as embodying the core ideas behind your series, you will put X on the back burner for an entire game. This would be akin to making only the most tangential of references to the force and the Empire in The Empire Strikes Back.

Hence why ME2 is an exceptionally shoddy sequel to ME1, even though the Reaper presence is still there as the series' driving force. Everything comes back to the Reapers.
 

RE: Vigil: Vigil's infodump is mostly about how the Protheans were able to build their own relay. Again, it's about the idea of making your own future instead of being bound to the past: The Protheans' greatest victory was to be able to do on your own what you had been relying on others to do. It's been a while since I've played through this, but I remember very little in the way of speculation as to why the Reapers built the relays in the first place. If this conversation were primarily about the mysteries of the Reapers, that's exactly what we'd expect to see.

Guided evolution, remember?

Anyway, Vigil's info-dump (just played it the other night) was primarily about the desperation of their cycle's final moments, the keepers and their link to the Citadel, and some speculation on the Reapers' motives about the cycles ... not so much about the prototype relay's cultural significance.
 

Last thing: I'm going to engage in a bit of heresy. In my humble opinion, the Reapers were not great antagonists, and that there would be no satisfying resolution to questions like, "Why are they doing this?" and "How do we stop them?" is something that should have been completely foreseeable all the way back in ME1. To begin with, it was probably a mistake to extensively appeal to Lovecraftian imagery in the context of a game that's fundamentally a power fantasy.

I don't really disagree with you here, but considering the circumstances, the output of their motivations was better than what was potentially served (dark energy). Let alone a conventional / military victory that would have obliterated suspension of disbelief to service said power-fantasy.
 

Further, the destruction of all intelligent life every 50,000 years is just kind of a dumb thing to want, particularly if you're going to try to pass off the Reapers' agenda as anything other than pure self-interest. Part of the reason why I didn't want to know much about the motivations of the Reapers is that I knew that the writers didn't have a good starting point; whatever they came up with, it would probably not be very compelling. I wasn't disappointed in this expectation.

I don't really disagree with you here either, but that's the hand Karpyshyn dealt the series: systematic extermination every 50k years, pinnacle of evolution, imposing order on chaos, and organics and synthetics.

[Jorji Costava]

So we're to disregard all of Saren's dialogue as not being attached to the Reaper agenda? I don't buy that for a second, sorry.

It might be very loosely related, but even that's being generous in my view. It's only on the most willful misuse of words, for instance, that anyone would suppose that harvesting organics constitutes forging an "alliance" (Saren's words) between synthetics and organics. Further, the original conversation a few pages back concerned whether or not Saren's words were an indication as to the core themes or ideas of the series. Considering that pretty much every response you can make to Saren's dialogue is some variation of "You're nuts!", I would absolutely not take any of Saren's lines to be a reliable guide in this regard.
 

Hence why ME2 is an exceptionally shoddy sequel to ME1, even though the Reaper presence is still there as the series' driving force. Everything comes back to the Reapers.

I'm not trying to evaluate ME2 as a sequel; I'm simply taking it as evidence that you and the developers had very different ideas as to what was most central to the series as a whole.

Anyway, Vigil's info-dump (just played it the other night) was primarily about the desperation of their cycle's final moments, the keepers and their link to the Citadel, and some speculation on the Reapers' motives about the cycles ... not so much about the prototype relay's cultural significance.

 
Fair enough on Vigil, but I would make a couple of points here. First, Vigil is an emotionless VI, so it stands to reason that it wouldn't have a lot of dialogue celebrating how awesome the creation of the conduit was. Secondly, the fact that finding the Conduit is the actual point of the entire Ilos mission as a whole is why I take the reveal about its purpose to be of outsize importance in relation to some of the other things you can ask Vigil via investigate options.

I don't really disagree with you here, but considering the circumstances, the output of their motivations was better than what was potentially served (dark energy). Let alone a conventional / military victory that would have obliterated suspension of disbelief to service said power-fantasy.

The Dark Energy rumors sounded terrible, but I prefer to evaluate what we got on its own merits rather than in comparison with some potentially worse ideas we didn't get. One of my favorite films that no one else seems to like is Malick's The Thin Red Line; when my friends tell me it bored them to tears, I'm not going to change their minds by pointing out that at least it was better than the original seven-hour cut of the film.

As far as conventional victory goes, I've always felt that the most elegant solution was to just have there be way fewer of the darn things; it's either that or the MacGuffin Device, and I'm not a huge fan of the latter.

[dreamgazer]

It might be very loosely related, but even that's being generous in my view. It's only on the most willful misuse of words, for instance, that anyone would suppose that harvesting organics constitutes forging an "alliance" (Saren's words) between synthetics and organics. Further, the original conversation a few pages back concerned whether or not Saren's words were an indication as to the core themes or ideas of the series. Considering that pretty much every response you can make to Saren's dialogue is some variation of "You're nuts!", I would absolutely not take any of Saren's lines to be a reliable guide in this regard.

I don't really agree. Saren's mentality was warped and the Reapers were still villainous, yes, but it's still built on the same principles of cutting off advanced civilizations for getting too advanced and too chaotic.
 

I'm not trying to evaluate ME2 as a sequel; I'm simply taking it as evidence that you and the developers had very different ideas as to what was most central to the series as a whole.

The series' central strength, which has always been its character writing, isn't the same as the series' core antagonist. And it's clear that both were central to the series as a whole, else they would have left the Reapers in Darkspace at the end of ME1 instead of killing and resurrecting Shepard to fight 'em.
 

Fair enough on Vigil, but I would make a couple of points here. First, Vigil is an emotionless VI, so it stands to reason that it wouldn't have a lot of dialogue celebrating how awesome the creation of the conduit was. Secondly, the fact that finding the Conduit is the actual point of the entire Ilos mission as a whole is why I take the reveal about its purpose to be of outsize importance in relation to some of the other things you can ask Vigil via investigate options.

Yet you have no idea why you're going to Ilos, since the Conduit is a MacGuffin all the way until that point. All that's known is that it helps Saren's goal in bringing the Reapers back from Darkspace. The fact that it was a conjured backdoor teleportation device onto the Citadel (which bends the lore behind relays like crazy) was a plot contrivance at best, though it's still worth appreciating that the Protheans were attempting to grasp the nature of the Reapers' technology.
 

The Dark Energy rumors sounded terrible, but I prefer to evaluate what we got on its own merits rather than in comparison with some potentially worse ideas we didn't get. One of my favorite films that no one else seems to like is Malick's The Thin Red Line; when my friends tell me it bored them to tears, I'm not going to change their minds by pointing out that at least it was better than the original seven-hour cut of the film.

Malick's hit and miss with general audiences period, though, because of his focus on poetic cinematography and leisurely pacing. Not really a fair comparison, and I do think it's worth considering one of the ideas originally conceptualized by the series' initial writer, since he's the origin of this thematic infrastructure you're referring to.

I adore The Thin Red Line, by the way, as well as Badlands and Days of Heaven.
 

As far as conventional victory goes, I've always felt that the most elegant solution was to just have there be way fewer of the darn things; it's either that or the MacGuffin Device, and I'm not a huge fan of the latter.

They darken the skies of every world and have been successful for millions of years and countless cycles. I'm not a huge fans of conventional means since that devalues the intellectual, cultural, and industrial prowess of every single cycle beforehand.

Anyway, it's not really a MacGuffin, since you know it's going to defeat the Reapers, at least by means of destruction. It's closer to a Sword of Plot Advancement than anything else.  Given the way the Reapers have been presented across the entire series to this point, I prefer that method. 

[Jorji Costava]

We've gone back and forth quite a bit about this, and I don't think we're going to change each other's minds, so this is the last thing I'll post about this:
 

I don't really agree. Saren's mentality was warped and the Reapers were still villainous, yes, but it's still built on the same principles of cutting off advanced civilizations for getting too advanced and too chaotic.

Honestly, I didn't notice any particular principles behind Reaper ideology in ME1, beyond self-interest and contempt for us squishy organics (see Sovereign's speech on Virmire; superior beings that are trying to save organics from themselves or from the universe would probably not boast about how much we suck). Sure, the Reapers want to cut civilizations off from getting too advanced, but I saw little indication that there was anything to this beyond the trivial fact that more advanced civilizations would be better able to fight them.

The series' central strength, which has always been its character writing, isn't the same as the series' core antagonist. And it's clear that both were central to the series as a whole, else they would have left the Reapers in Darkspace at the end of ME1 instead of killing and resurrecting Shepard to fight 'em.

I'm not claiming that the Reapers aren't important to the story, but what I've argued consistently is that their primary importance lies in their function as a plot device to advance the other conflicts of the story. Ultimately, everything plot-wise in DAO comes back to the Blight, but I was not expecting to have a conversation with the Archdemon at the end of DAO in which he gives me the answers to the universe. Same with ME as far as I'm concerned.
 

Yet you have no idea why you're going to Ilos, since the Conduit is a MacGuffin all the way until that point. All that's known is that it helps Saren's goal in bringing the Reapers back from Darkspace. The fact that it was a conjured backdoor teleportation device onto the Citadel (which bends the lore behind relays like crazy) was a plot contrivance at best, though it's still worth appreciating that the Protheans were attempting to grasp the nature of the Reapers' technology.

You'll have to forgive me here; I'm actually rather confused as to how this is supposed to contradict anything I said, so I'm going to skip it.
 

Malick's hit and miss with general audiences period, though, because of his focus on poetic cinematography and leisurely pacing. Not really a fair comparison, and I do think it's worth considering one of the ideas originally conceptualized by the series' initial writer, since he's the origin of this thematic infrastructure you're referring to.

I actually think it's a fairly apt comparison, seeing as it's pretty clear that the original ending, thick with religious and abstract imagery, is going for something pretty avant-garde and a bit outside the tastes of popular audiences.
 

They darken the skies of every world and have been successful for millions of years and countless cycles. I'm not a huge fans of conventional means since that devalues the intellectual, cultural, and industrial prowess of every single cycle beforehand.

There's only so much you can do here. At a certain point, the only way not to devalue every previous cycle is to just make it not possible to win the game. No matter what plot device you use, there will always be the question, "Why didn't the previous cycle figure out how to construct this plot device?"

Having said that, I think my proposed scenario has a neat solution to this. With only a relatively small number of Reapers, you have a clear rationale for why they shut down the relays--it allows them to overwhelm each system individually, without ever having to worry about reinforcements from anywhere else. When shutting down the relays is no longer an option after ME1, they become more vulnerable. So the plot device you need was already provided in ME1.

/night

EDIT: Fixed formatting

[Kabooooom]

No offense but you missed a lot that was directly explained in the game.

1. Like you said, it wasn't easy as before. Why? 'Cause the station can close itself into an impenetrable shell, as explained in ME1. That's why Sovereign needed the 'inside man' Saren to keep the station open.

This is my preferred explanation for the "why didn't they take the Citadel ASAP" question, and I have posted about it in these forums before. It seems to be, hands down, the best explanation. People often overlook that travel through the relay network is not instantaneous. Relay to relay travel is, but it takes time to travel between relays in the same system in FTL. The galaxy map makes this time seem instantaneous for gameplay purposes, but in ME1 it took the Normandy 15 hours to reach the Citadel from Eden Prime. FTL speed is crazy fast, so I always figured this time discrepancy was because there are actually far more relays in the network that need to be traversed than are shown in the game - again for simplicity. Plus we know from the description of the relay network that this is the case.

That fact, taken with the observation that relay traffic is easily monitored, leads one to conclude that the Citadel would know in advance by hours that the Reapers were heading their way. We don't know how they eventually took the Citadel, but Javik tells you that in his cycle the Reapers allowed refugees to gather - both for easier harvesting later, and to sneak in indoctrinated agents to take them down from the inside. That is most likely exactly what happened with the Citadel in ME3.

[KaiserShep]

Having said that, I think my proposed scenario has a neat solution to this. With only a relatively small number of Reapers, you have a clear rationale for why they shut down the relays--it allows them to overwhelm each system individually, without ever having to worry about reinforcements from anywhere else. When shutting down the relays is no longer an option after ME1, they become more vulnerable. So the plot device you need was already provided in ME1.

 

I like this route, and I'm not entirely certain why they didn't bother to go this way, since ME1 planted the idea that Sovereign couldn't simply attack because it would be too vulnerable. I guess a big problem comes right at the end, where suddenly, Sovereign can basically take on all of the fleets by itself, and Shepard was lucky that Sovereign was dumb enough to turn Saren into an I WIN button.

[I Tsunayoshi I]

I like this route, and I'm not entirely certain why they didn't bother to go this way, since ME1 planted the idea that Sovereign couldn't simply attack because it would be too vulnerable. I guess a big problem comes right at the end, where suddenly, Sovereign can basically take on all of the fleets by itself, and Shepard was lucky that Sovereign was dumb enough to turn Saren into an I WIN button.

 

I think the point was that Sovereign couldnt solo the entire Citadel Fleet

[Excella Gionne]

So much contradictions, I mean, Sovereign could have just ram through the entire fleets and get it over with, but yeah, Saren getting his sh*t together at the end was too cheesy. Good thing Wrex put a bullet in his head, because that's what he wanted anyways! 

[Kabooooom]

I think the point was that Sovereign couldnt solo the entire Citadel Fleet

Exactly. And the geth drew significant fire. If the fleet focused their guns on Sovereign, he would be toast.

[KaiserShep]

Exactly. And the geth drew significant fire. If the fleet focused their guns on Sovereign, he would be toast.

From the looks of it, had Sovereign not bothered with puppet Saren, it would have likely wiped out the entirety of the ships that were focused on it, provided it didn't just open the relay before then. It seemed like they were ineffectively firing at its shields while it easily tore through all of theirs.

[TurianRebel212]

Jesus ******, another thread about the endings. C'mon now. Just deal with it, damn. 

 

And this is coming from a blatant hater of the the "high level stuff" and the "artistic integrity" of the endings of Overlord Hudson and his minion Walters. 

 

You just gotta get over it. It's been awhile. 

[dreamgazer]

Having said that, I think my proposed scenario has a neat solution to this. With only a relatively small number of Reapers, you have a clear rationale for why they shut down the relays--it allows them to overwhelm each system individually, without ever having to worry about reinforcements from anywhere else. When shutting down the relays is no longer an option after ME1, they become more vulnerable. So the plot device you need was already provided in ME1.

 
My problem with the above idea is this: out of millions of years of advanced cycles, some likely more advanced than the Protheans, none of this hasn't happened before. It also assumes that the Reapers don't have an adaptable Plan B for their only job (that they've been successful at since time immemorial), and that Sovereign was not just partly full of crap during his initial speech in ME1, he was entirely full of crap.
 

I'm not claiming that the Reapers aren't important to the story, but what I've argued consistently is that their primary importance lies in their function as a plot device to advance the other conflicts of the story. Ultimately, everything plot-wise in DAO comes back to the Blight, but I was not expecting to have a conversation with the Archdemon at the end of DAO in which he gives me the answers to the universe. Same with ME as far as I'm concerned.

That's your prerogative, but the Reaper narrative in ME1 is far more fleshed out and bound to the galaxy's infrastructure than the mustache-twirling Blight.
 

You'll have to forgive me here; I'm actually rather confused as to how this is supposed to contradict anything I said, so I'm going to skip it.

You're championing the break from history as the heart and soul of Vigil's revelations about the Conduit, when that's not really the case at all. If anything, the core was more about the Protheans' desperation in their last days against the Reapers, bringing the point back that the Reapers are the central antagonist and their cycle/mass relay purposes as the central conceit.
 

I actually think it's a fairly apt comparison, seeing as it's pretty clear that the original ending, thick with religious and abstract imagery, is going for something pretty avant-garde and a bit outside the tastes of popular audiences.

And I'd argue that flipping Shepard into the true antagonist of the series, the Reapers into literal galaxy-saving good guys (more so than with the debatable conflict between organics and synthetics), and forcing Shepard to either sacrifice humanity or let the galaxy eventually die because of a lack of solution to techno-space magic is just as avant-garde, if not more so. Point being: this style of ending was where Mass Effect was always headed, which has more to it than one director's shorter and longer cuts of the same movie. 

[Farangbaa]

From the looks of it, had Sovereign not bothered with puppet Saren, it would have likely wiped out the entirety of the ships that were focused on it, provided it didn't just open the relay before then. It seemed like they were ineffectively firing at its shields while it easily tore through all of theirs.

 

This. How people even get the faintest idea that Sovereign could be taken down there without taking control of Saren... I have no idea.

 

Then again, cutscenes in ME (entire series) are kinda ridiculous.

[FreshRevenge]

People still discussing the ending to ME3?   I know the first time I played through ME3 and I thought it was a great game, but the ending was an initial blow to my gut. I was left with these three choices that I wanted to say screw this!

 

I had no desire to control reapers

I had no desire to make a new species

I had no desire to destroy synthetics including the Geth and Edi.Especially after making peace between the Geth and Quarians.

 

All I wanted was to destroy the reapers but no I never got that ending.

 

Even after the extended cut dlc I was still left with the same choices. With the added choice of shooting the starbrat. A pretty much a FU for all the hours I spent getting to that point. I just wished that the end didn't make me regret it.

 

Why I couldn't I get my destroy the reapers and destroy the catalyst ending without being force to make those horrible illogical decisions.