229 réponses à ce sujet

[Steelcan]

absolutely not

 

they were introduced as an eldritch abomination and they should have stayed that way.  Cerberus was teh villain we were supposed to understand

[Vortex13]

In organic vs organic conflict nothing is lost, the victor remains organic.
Organic vs synthetic (creators vs created) has the potential to wipe one of the sides out.
The victor will usually be the synthetics, because they are better in just about every way when it comes to a fight.


Quick sidenote: the Reapers preserve both synthetic life as well as organic. (don't ask me HOW they preserve synthetic life. Preserving organics by means of preserving their essence aka DNA I can somewhat wrap my head around.. the equivalent of this with synthetics is beyond me)

 

 

So one organic species dominating all other organic species is okay according to the Catalyst?

 

It would be rather funny to see the Reapers return to the galaxy after an organic species like the Tyranids had killed off all other organic and synthetic life in the Milky Way, and striped all habitable worlds of even their atmospheres, leaving nothing but barren asteroids everywhere.

[Farangbaa]

So one organic species dominating all other organic species is okay according to the Catalyst?

The Catalyst doesn't care about the right thing, or what is 'ok'.
It's merely trying to keep both lifeforms (organic and synthetic) alive instead of one of them being the victor.

The victor will ALWAYS be Synthetics, ultimately. Organics can win one war against synthetics, they can win two, they can even win a hundred. But when they lose, they're gone. This doesn't apply to organic vs organics and is therefore outside of the scope of the problem the Catalyst is trying to solve.

Organics create synthetics
Synthetics do not create organics.

[Steelcan]

The Catalyst doesn't care about the right thing, or what is 'ok'.
It's merely trying to keep both lifeforms (organic and synthetic) alive instead of one of them being the victor.

The victor will ALWAYS be Synthetics, ultimately. Organics can win one war against synthetics, they can win two, they can even win a hundred. But when they lose, they're gone. This doesn't apply to organic vs organics and is therefore outside of the scope of the problem the Catalyst is trying to solve.

Organics create synthetics
Synthetics do not create organics.

yeah yeah... like when the reapers wiped out the leviathans... oh wait... or the protheans... oh wait....

 

"We will survive, we will overcome, because that's what humans do"

[Hello!I'mTheDoctor]

absolutely not

 

they were introduced as an eldritch abomination and they should have stayed that way.  Cerberus was teh villain we were supposed to understand

 

Look at how I said the Reapers should have been. Their motive wouldn't be inscrutable, but their logic would be.

 

Cerberus, or at least TIM, were too complex to call a clear antagonist. Granted, I suppose you can understand their purpose and logic as well. For me, they're anti-villains.

[General TSAR]

Noble? That's quite subjective.

 

I would have preferred if their ultimate plan was entirely ambiguous.

[GreyLycanTrope]

absolutely not

 

they were introduced as an eldritch abomination and they should have stayed that way.  Cerberus was teh villain we were supposed to understand

Basically this. Even if they did end up having noble ideals that concept would have been largely lost after seeing them melt people in ME2.....which is largely what ended up happening.

[Hello!I'mTheDoctor]

Basically this. Even if they did end up having noble ideals that concept would have been largely lost after seeing them melt people in ME2.....which is largely what ended up happening.

 

I disagree. If it was for a valuable enough outcome that was all but guaranteed, I'd still find their goal to be noble. Then again, I do buy into a bit of consequentialism (though I'd say my philosophy is largely my own to an extent, dabbling into a bit of other philosophies), so if the goal was noble enough IMO, it wouldn't matter how you got there, so long as you did.

[GreyLycanTrope]

I don't think there's a goal out there noble or valuable enough to have melting people come off as a understandable.

[SlottsMachine]

I don't think there's a goal out there noble or valuable enough to have melting people come off as a understandable.

 

Well unless they just wanted to stop everyone from strip mining the galaxy, oh wait Shepard was the only one doing that....

[Hello!I'mTheDoctor]

I don't think there's a goal out there noble or valuable enough to have melting people come off as a understandable.

 

I do. It also depends on how you view your fellow man. I have no aversion or empathy for seeing them suffer for the most part. It's beyond my scope of caring.

[GreyLycanTrope]

I'm of a very different mind frame in that case.

Well unless they just wanted to stop everyone from strip mining the galaxy, oh wait Shepard was the only one doing that....

Talk about taking the "give a hoot don't pollute" slogan to new extremes.

[KaiserShep]

Hmm. The interesting thing there is that the Reaper upgrades don't seem to change geth goals; we don't have much data about other personality changes. Geth just have more capabilities. Sort of like how Synthesis is supposed to upgrade organic capabilities.
Upgraded geth are no more likely to accept peace than non-upgraded geth, are they?

Considering that the quarians can be destroyed as a result, I don't think the code makes a difference as far as their perspective is concerned.

[Han Shot First]

Sorry, but that doesn't make his documented comments irrelevant in terms of the path the series was headed, which was towards a noble purpose. 

 

That's what was going on in the mind of the person who wrote the crucial part of the narrative that you're referencing, which also mentioned that they "impose order on the chaos of organic evolution", already a hook for a worthwhile agenda alongside the usage of the relays they created. 

 

While I didn't care for the original endings of Mass Effect 3, I am glad that Drew K's ideas about the story's end were never implemented. I think his idea of having the Mass Effect accelerate the rate at which the universe hurtles towards its heat death, and the Reapers trying to solve that problem, would have been worse than the endings we did get. In that scenario the Reapers are the saviors of the universe and Shepard (if a destroyer) is a luddite who dooms the galaxy to an early death.

 

The Reapers didn't need to be redefined in the last few minutes of the game. They were Mass Effect's archdemon. DA:O had a good ending because it didn't repaint the archdemon as anything other than a villian, it didn't involve the Warden becoming one with the archdemon, and it didn't involve using some sort of magic ritual to taint everyone in Thedas so that darkspawn and non-darkspan could hold hands and sing kumbaya.

[CosmicGnosis]

The Reapers didn't need to be redefined in the last few minutes of the game. They were Mass Effect's archdemon. DA:O had a good ending because it didn't repaint the archdemon as anything other than a villian, it didn't involve the Warden becoming one with the archdemon, and it didn't involve using some sort of magic ritual to taint everyone in Thedas so that darkspawn and non-darkspan could hold hands and sing kumbaya.

Well, Awakening has made the nature of the darkspawn somewhat ambiguous. There are still a lot of mysteries about the Blights and what they really mean. 

[Han Shot First]

Well, Awakening has made the nature of the darkspawn somewhat ambiguous. 

 

Not really.

 

The Architect is something different than your typical darkspawn. If you want to compare it to Mass Effect, it would be the equivalent of a Reaper that had gone rogue and no longer participated in the extinction cycles. The archdemon and darkspawn that haven't been 'awakened' through the Architect's intervention are still evil creatures that seek nothing other than killing and destruction.

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

See if they were as advanced as they said, and were doing this preservation for any real reason other than for making more reapers, they might have reintroduced the dna and created the species again. But they apparently didn't because they thought they had ascended the species to a higher form of "life." It was not something that we mere meat bags could understand. Only the blended smoothies could understand such things. You know, the ones who went around killing everyone.

 

I keep imagining that kid in the Citadel laughing and having fun every 50,000 years figuring out which kind of abomination to make out of each species during his "not war".

 

We knew you were going to create synthetics that were going to kill you, so we made a bunch of synthetics to kill you before you made a bunch of synthetics that would kill you. ....

 

Noble purpose? The Rannoch Reaper fight alone makes me want to choose destroy.... and kill the geth. Do not trust synthetics. Throw it out the airlock.

[Farangbaa]

While I didn't care for the original endings of Mass Effect 3, I am glad that Drew K's ideas about the story's end were never implemented. I think his idea of having the Mass Effect accelerate the rate at which the universe hurtles towards its heat death, and the Reapers trying to solve that problem, would have been worse than the endings we did get. In that scenario the Reapers are the saviors of the universe and Shepard (if a destroyer) is a luddite who dooms the galaxy to an early death.

You still doom the galaxy when you destroy the Reapers.

The Reapers didn't need to be redefined in the last few minutes of the game. They were Mass Effect's archdemon. DA:O had a good ending because it didn't repaint the archdemon as anything other than a villian, it didn't involve the Warden becoming one with the archdemon, and it didn't involve using some sort of magic ritual to taint everyone in Thedas so that darkspawn and non-darkspan could hold hands and sing kumbaya.

Things aren't always what they seem. That's not a bad thing.

And how would you not want to know why the Reapers do what they do and where they come from? Honestly, this is beyond me.

We're not talking about some mega machines that come around for the first, second or fifth time to harvest the galaxy, or beings that do so incidentally. No, it's at least the 20.000th time in a 1.000.000.000 years. They've been doing this since pretty much forever, and that is something I feel cannot be left unexplained.

[CosmicGnosis]

I sympathize with those of you who wanted the Reapers to remain as Lovecraftian horrors with an unfathomable purpose. However, you might be forgetting something important. A crucial element of Lovecraft's stories is that humanity is incapable of understanding the true reality of their existence. But if we could discover the true purpose, it would drive us to madness. The implication is that the path to knowledge will ultimately lead us to ruin. Knowledge of our universe can only lead to despair and misery. Ignorance is preferable to knowledge.

 

This is what ME3 toys with at the very end. We discover that the Reapers are, to some degree, necessary. But the Lovecraftian philosophy is also subverted; the Reapers can be defeated, and organic life many not be doomed to obscurity. It can be argued, though, that every choice leads to the end of pure organic life. No matter what happens, synthetic life will always be better equipped to survive in the universe. Thus, the only choice that gives any kind of organic life a chance is Synthesis. Why? Because organics become more like synthetics. Once you accept that pure organic life is doomed no matter what, Synthesis is easier to swallow. And this choice subverts Lovecraft in the grandest way: the path to knowledge leads to prosperity. 

 

People don't want to believe that this is true, so they immediately hate it. Of course, BioWare failed at clearly conveying their point, so they are to blame as well. 

[Han Shot First]

You still doom the galaxy when you destroy the Reapers.
 

 

How so? 

 

 

And how would you not want to know why the Reapers do what they do and where they come from? Honestly, this is beyond me.

We're not talking about some mega machines that come around for the first, second or fifth time to harvest the galaxy, or beings that do so incidentally. No, it's at least the 20.000th time in a 1.000.000.000 years. They've been doing this since pretty much forever, and that is something I feel cannot be left unexplained.

 

I didn't say that I wanted the Reapers' motives to remain unexplained. I wouldn't have minded if they remained mysterious, but I don't have a preference between that and having their motives revealed. I just wouldn't care for any explanation that turns them from villains to misunderstood saviors in the last 10 minutes of the game.

[Farangbaa]

*snip*
People don't want to believe that this is true, so they immediately hate it.
*snip*

This.

[Farangbaa]

How so?

Because the Catalyst is right in the MEU.
  

I didn't say that I wanted the Reapers' motives to remain unexplained. I just wouldn't care for any explanation that turns them from villains to misunderstood saviors in the last 10 minutes of the game.

People don't want to believe that this is true, so they immediately hate it.

[grey_wind]

I think a good middle ground would have been to get conflicting and contradictory ideas about what the Reapers' true purpose was.

For example, you could have Harbinger boasting that their true purpose was simply organic ascension. But then you could get the Rannoch Reaper claiming they do it to save organic life from a technological singularity. You could have the Geth speculating that the Reapers' true purpose is to perhaps create a "super-hive mind" by linking all their neural networks. You could have the characters finding Prothean recordings hypothesizing that the Reapers exist to prevent any advanced species from subjugating and dominating lesser species for too long.

Ultimately, it could be left to the player to decide which goal is most likely, or if any of them are believable at all.

[shodiswe]

Noble? I'm not sure how anyone is surprised, they might have been genociding the galaxy for billions of years but it's hardly surprising they did it for what they thought was best.

If you look at historically genocidal villains (if we call them that) they were trying to accomplish something they thought would be wonderful, beautiful or better for everyone. A new paradise. It's just that their path there was horrible. Not everyone would agree that their idea of wonderful would be that wonderful.

The problem is that people tend to think they have a right to enforce their ideas or wants and needs on other people.

[SporkFu]

I don't follow this. Every time I play, the geth either get upgraded or get destroyed. There's no maybe about it.

Is this a hypothetical about different quarian leadership?

Not at all. When Shep and crew first arrive on the scene, and Gerrel was describing the situation, to me it seemed the quarians were on their way to winning the war until the geth turned to the reapers for help. Without the upgrades the geth would have lost the war.