138 réponses à ce sujet

[Reorte]

The Reapers were hilariously overpowered and poorly written. That's how they're a joke. It turns into a game-breaker.

Making them so old is the problem. They'd have had to be hilariously overpowered to have survived until this cycle being so ancient, which makes it just about impossible to convincingly have them do anything other than curbstomp this cycle too ("we're so much better this time" being both very unconvincing and very arrogant).

Have half a dozen cycles, information left from the Protheans, and time to study the remains of Sovereign and perhaps it wouldn't have all seemed so far-fetched.

[TheOneTrueBioticGod]

There is no evidence saying that more than one capital-class Reaper is made each cycle. And they obviously lose a lot, 
 

 

 

This ploy used the Reapers' size against them--because they could turn faster, the turian dreadnoughts locked targets first, and their concentrated firepower downed several Reaper capital ships

Reaper numbers are in the hundreds. 

[dreamgazer]

That's assuming the best out of the previous cycles, though.  If that were the case, then the Reapers would've been finished in the first cycle or two. 

 

Most aren't going to have any luck against the Reapers, especially with the Citadel sneak attack and data gathering. 

[DeathScepter]

So, OP, you been hearing any hums recently and having dreams of burning kids with oily shadows and stuff????

 

 

 

don't remind. I still have those dreams. and orghen is in them.

[AlanC9]

There is no evidence saying that more than one capital-class Reaper is made each cycle. And they obviously lose a lot, 
 
Reaper numbers are in the hundreds.

How many Reapers actually got killed in our cycle? Maybe a dozen out of hundreds? And our cycle is doing exceptionally well.

[Cainhurst Crow]

Yeah, as if making them so massively overpowered wasn't bad enough.

 

An enemy with 20,000+ warships of any kind plus support  could conquer the galaxy even without being Eldritch Abominations.

 

This, though, was like creating a Blight where every darkspawn was an archdemon.

 

Its why I choose the analogy of the sun, because its something capable of wiping out an entire solar system that we can't possibly fight as of yet.

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

How many Reapers actually got killed in our cycle? Maybe a dozen out of hundreds? And our cycle is doing exceptionally well.

 

And we are so primitive! 

 

It is said that the reapers make one capital ship out of each selected race for their prize reaper each cycle. This means that if they lose 1 reaper per cycle they're just treading water.... er space... whatever. If they lose more than that they're losing ground. The cycle isn't sustainable. The reapers don't make any sense. These stories do fine until you start to think about them. Once that happens they fall apart. Don't think. Don't think.

[KaiserShep]

Catalyst: You!

Shepard: Ok...?

Catalyst: You killed like a million years worth of reapers!

Shepard: Shoulda thought of that before you turned your libraries into battleships.

Catalyst:...

Shepard:...

Catalyst:....

Shepard:...

Catalyst: kill me.

[General TSAR]

Exactly, we should have let them genocide'd the Galaxy. 

 

Embrace Extinction.

[Little Princess Peach]

a joke ? Come on we needed the crucible to defeat them. It was the only way to defeat the reapers. The only way ! We were lucky that we found plans for the crucible. Shepard mentioned that also.

and hopw long did it take for the Organics to find the darn thing? come on it was right under there noises and throughout the game no one knew what it was even when Liara explained it

aaaannnnd once they got there hands on the giant microphone they strill had no idea what did would do

[dreamgazer]

and hopw long did it take for the Organics to find the darn thing? come on it was right under there noises and throughout the game no one knew what it was even when Liara explained it

aaaannnnd once they got there hands on the giant microphone they strill had no idea what did would do

 

Wouldn't be the first time that us primitives jumped headlong into Prothean technology without knowing what it actually does.

 

And we had an idea: it's destructive against the Reapers, and it held the key to controlling the Reapers. That much was made obvious.

[78stonewobble]

Making them so old is the problem. They'd have had to be hilariously overpowered to have survived until this cycle being so ancient, which makes it just about impossible to convincingly have them do anything other than curbstomp this cycle too ("we're so much better this time" being both very unconvincing and very arrogant).

Have half a dozen cycles, information left from the Protheans, and time to study the remains of Sovereign and perhaps it wouldn't have all seemed so far-fetched.

 

Njyarf.... I don't think that longevity, by itself, is necessarily a proof of power or military capability.

 

To make humans nigh immortal would only require some microscopic changes that allows us our allready existing selfrepair systems to function indefinately (maybe, I'm not a doctor/neurospecialist/chemist/phycisist/biologist).

 

It could give us the ability to survive billions of years on earth, barring unforseen consequences like large asteroids dropping on our heads. Beyond that change it would require no new technology or other increase in capability to do so.  

 

It wouldn't make us stronger, it wouldn't make us smarter beyond exceptional amounts of not necessarily relevant experience and it wouldn't magically give us a fleet of op interplanetary warships with op guns on them. 

[Farangbaa]

To make humans nigh immortal would only require some microscopic changes that allows us our allready existing selfrepair systems to function indefinately (maybe, I'm not a doctor/neurospecialist/chemist/phycisist/biologist).

 

 

In a really oversimplified scenario: yes.

 

 

SENS Research Foundation subdivide their efforts into seven research strands which correspond to seven categories of cellular damage which accumulate with age: accumulated side effects of metabolism which are eventually fatal.[2]

Seven types of aging damage and SENS research strands:

1: Cell loss and cell atrophy — Stem cells and tissue engineering [3]

2: Nuclear [epi]mutations — WILT, short for "Whole-body Interdiction of Lengthening of Telomeres" [4]

3: Mitochondrial mutations — Allotopic expression of 13 proteins [5]

4: Death-resistant cells — Targeted removal [6]

5: Extracellular crosslinks — AGE-breaking molecules and tissue engineering [7]

6: Extracellular aggregates — Stimulating of the immune system to clear out the aggregates [8]

7: ntracellular aggregates — Equipping the lysosome with enzymes capable of degrading the aggregates [9]

[TopTrog]

....

 

Galactic tensions between the terminus and council space, new species being discovered, breakdowns in relationships between species, reaper inspired conspiracies, all of these could offer as thrilling a story as mass effect 3 did, without removing one of the largest and more powerful influences in the setting, the force of death and change in the galaxy.

 

Here's hoping they can pick up the pieces in the next game, but in my opinion, by having a war with the reapers, they essentially blew a perfectly good story telling element in the series.

I do not mind that the Reaper threat is likely not going to be a factor in the next ME, but I share your concerns. I hope that the writers resist the urge to come up with an even bigger / over-the-top scope of threat for the next game just to keep a feeling of constant extinction danger.

 

I think that the ME Universe offers a lot of possibilities to tell great stories that are truly "Mass Effect" without the need for another doomsday-to-come-soon scenario. I don´t have any brilliant ideas for this myself, but I do remember one game series that actually pulled this off quite nicely.

 

Maybe some of you remember the "Wing Commander" series from the 90s ? It was nowhere near the scope of ME, but it also took three games to finally and conclusively defeat the main alien antagonists (by blowing up their home planet, also raising some interesting moral issues, but I digress). The fourth installment then had no alien antagonists or threats at all, the main conflict was a political one by nature. Sounds terribly boring in comparison to "life-or-death war vs. evil aliens", but it actually made for an even more engaging story. If they could do it back then, I´m sure Bioware can do it now, and in a much richer game universe. So I´m optimistic that there will be a good story to the next game.  

[78stonewobble]

 

In a really oversimplified scenario: yes.

 

Very simplified yes  

 

My point was just that it wouldn't make humanity OP, by itself. The only benefit it would have, would be the ability to create an extremely large population, which might be as much a detriment as it would be a benefit. 

[Farangbaa]

Very simplified yes

 

My point was just that it wouldn't make humanity OP, by itself. The only benefit it would have, would be the ability to create an extremely large population, which might be as much a detriment as it would be a benefit. 

 

Meh, find some random demographic statistics for the world. Compare expected age to both amount of children and age of parents at first born.

 

See that it wouldn't be that much of a problem. 

[KaiserShep]

Regarding the OP's original point, I'm reminded of Ashley Williams' commentary on the Normandy should she survive Virmire, which points out the very problematic design of the reapers themselves in a shooter.

 

"I don't plan to lie down and die, skipper! Don't worry about that, but I'm infantry. My rifle may as well fire spitballs. I won't have a place in this war. That was pisses me off! Not being able to shoot back!"

[fhs33721]

Am I the only one that actually liked the Reaper plot? It was a classical cheesy as hell story about a hero that defied impossible odds and defeated an invincible bad guy by as*pulling some sort magical/technological/or otherwise overly convenient nonsense.

 

Just like Luke in Star Wars somehow blowing up an entire, planet destroying Space station with one hit.

Or Frodo ultimately defeating Sauron and his vast armies by melting his jewelery.

Or Harry Potter defeating Voldemort only because the latter used a wand that trough a convoluted series of events magically was on Harrys side. Or in the movie Version he won because Neville killed a snake.

Or, to make another Bioware comparison, the Warden only being able to defat the Archdemon because he conveniently landed on the top of Fort Drakon with damaged wings and none of the Soldiers there killing the Archdemon first.

 

There is nothing wrong with overpowered antagonists in stories. They can still be very enjoyable and I consider the Mass Effect plot to be exactly that.

[Dabrikishaw]

It's less "We shouldn't have fought the reapers" and more, "We should have thought out our sci-fi universe better".

[Iakus]

There is no evidence saying that more than one capital-class Reaper is made each cycle. And they obviously lose a lot, 
 

Reaper numbers are in the hundreds. 

 

Depends on who you talk to.  A couple hundred Reapers might have been better.  Every Reaper downed can feel like a real victory. 

 

But if they really have been Reaping for a billion+ years, there's tens of thousands of Sovereign-class Reapers alone.

 

Now multiply that by an order of magnitude and you have an approximate number of Destroyers.

 

The numbers are well past stupid-overpowered proportions.

 

"Shepard, you killed three Reapers just in the last few months?  On foot, no less?

 

Well, that's nice... :mellow:"

[dreamgazer]

Every triumph over a Reaper ship still felt like a victory, since every one downed by the military resistance meant an extension in the galaxy's life while the Crucible was being built. Especially the handful taken down by Shepard.

[Iakus]

Every triumph over a Reaper ship still felt like a victory, since every one downed by the military resistance meant an extension in the galaxy's life while the Crucible was being built. Especially the handful taken down by Shepard.

Not really, as it simply showed how stupidly the Reapers fought.

 

They could have taken a thousand Reapers to each homeworld, a few hundred to take the Citadel, and spend the rest of the game mopping up with the extra fifty thousand or so Reapers running around.

 

.  The galaxy never had a chance.

[dreamgazer]

Not without the Crucible, they didn't. Which entirely makes sense given the trilogy's exposition from the beginning.

[Iakus]

Not without the Crucible, they didn't. Which entirely makes sense given the trilogy's exposition from the beginning.

 

Except by all rights, Palaven, Tuchanka, Sur'Kesh, Thessia, etc should have fallen as fast as Earth did.

 

There should have been no Citadel hub.  No fleets to come together.  Everyone should have been up to their ears (or whatever) in Reapers right out of the gate. 

 

THe Reapers were super-advanced and outnumbered everyone's fleets combined.  By a lot.

[themikefest]

We have no idea how many reaper capital ships there are. I also wonder if any were left in dark space that we may not know about. Whatever.

 

In this cycle Shepard, with help, destroyed 5 if you  count the capital ship that had 2 legs blown off its "body". And also the Battle of Palaven with the Turians destroying several capital ships. That could mean 6-12 reapers destroyed. Its unfortunate the General didn't continue doing that would've/could've led to more reapers being destroyed.

 

If one capital ship is destroyed each cycle, the reapers break even and if by chance more than 1 is destroyed, they would be losing and eventually would be defeated in a future cycle.