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[angol fear]

Virtually every enemy you face in the series was being controlled by someone or something else.  Even the geth in the first game.  The idea of synthetics vs organics as the central theme is a theory that could be supported largely by the events of the first game, that is, until you consider that the geth were being controlled by the Reapers and Saren, who himself was being controlled by Sovereign, and all their actions were at the behest of the Reapers.  Consider that the geth hadn't been seen beyond the veil in centuries, and the sole reason they ventured out and attacked Eden Prime or anywhere else is that they were being controlled by the Reapers.  Even Saren's Krogan weren't acting of their own free will. 

 

In ME2, the Collectors weren't acting of their own freewill either, they were thralls of the Reapers, twisted into tools for their use. 

 

And in ME3, most of the races of the galaxy got the same treatment and were turned loose as Reaper ground forces under their control. 

 

The idea of free will vs determinism permeates the entire series.  All synthetic vs organic conflicts in the series, aside from the conflict with the Reapers themselves, were manifestations of the freewill vs determinism conflict.

 

The ending, as presented, was based on circular logic, to solve a problem that, through three games, was proven to actually not be a problem.

Ok, thanks for your explanation. I disagree with you but now I understand why some people say that.

[AlanC9]

Virtually every enemy you face in the series was being controlled by someone or something else.  Even the geth in the first game.  The idea of synthetics vs organics as the central theme is a theory that could be supported largely by the events of the first game, that is, until you consider that the geth were being controlled by the Reapers and Saren, who himself was being controlled by Sovereign, and all their actions were at the behest of the Reapers.  Consider that the geth hadn't been seen beyond the veil in centuries, and the sole reason they ventured out and attacked Eden Prime or anywhere else is that they were being controlled by the Reapers.  Even Saren's Krogan weren't acting of their own free will. 

 

In ME2, the Collectors weren't acting of their own freewill either, they were thralls of the Reapers, twisted into tools for their use. 

 

And in ME3, most of the races of the galaxy got the same treatment and were turned loose as Reaper ground forces under their control. .

 

You forgot to mention the Reapers themselves, who are also under control.

[Quarian Master Race]

Huh? The Borg ideology and goals are hardly vague.

I didn't say they were. I said their origin was. I described their ideology and goals as "alien" as in unfathomable/incomprehensible to other species/ races.

Though I could easily make the argument that their "perfection" ideology is vauge if I were to sift through Voyager and pick out all the inconsistencies in their behavior.

[Reorte]

You forgot to mention the Reapers themselves, who are also under control.

That's debatable. I've said it before but it makes far more sense if they've got free will but just completely accept what the Catalyst says (in the same was as some people just accept whatever the tabloids, a bloke in the pub, or the guy in the funny robes says). In the Reapers' case they would've been built that way but IMO it's still free will if they are sapient and aren't wanting to act differently but are being forced to comply.

[ImaginaryMatter]

That's debatable. I've said it before but it makes far more sense if they've got free will but just completely accept what the Catalyst says (in the same was as some people just accept whatever the tabloids, a bloke in the pub, or the guy in the funny robes says). In the Reapers' case they would've been built that way but IMO it's still free will if they are sapient and aren't wanting to act differently but are being forced to comply.

 

I'm under the impression that the Reapers are no more sentient than something like a VI.

[teh DRUMPf!!]

 See, when I read the title I thought it was referring to the Rannoch Reaper's dialogue.

 

ME3 really did not change anything in regards to the Reapers "imposing order on chaos." And ME2 just put forward more details on the nature of their harvesting. Only question left by ME3 was: why are they doing this?

 

ME3's reveal to this question was fine. It's just an ideological difference between us and them. The Catalyst is using the Reapers and cycles to deal with some supposed problem that no one in our cycle has seen firsthand. In some ways, this fits the idea that the Reapers are acting on some motives very alien to us. Nothing wrong with this general idea. Only, the execution/articulation of this development could have been a lot better.

[ImaginaryMatter]

 

ME3 really did not change anything in regards to the Reapers "imposing order on chaos." And ME2 just put forward more details on the nature of their harvesting. Only question left by ME3 was: why are they doing this?

 

"Impose order on chaos" is a vague enough statement to practically apply to any sort of motive; however, the context of the Sovereign conversation -- with the Reaper's disdain towards organic life and talks of 'extinguishing' and 'ending' -- is very different than Harbinger's and the Catalyst's talk of 'ascension'. I'm assuming most players didn't walk out of the room on Virmire with the thought that most of Sovereign's speech was some sort of red herring and that the Reapers in some cosmic sense were actually saviors. Wasn't one of the complaints about Harbinger and the Reaper baby in ME2 that they undermined the ME1 depiction of Reapers?

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

"Impose order on chaos" is a vague enough statement to practically apply to any sort of motive; however, the context of the Sovereign conversation -- with the Reaper's disdain towards organic life and talks of 'extinguishing' and 'ending' -- is very different than Harbinger's and the Catalyst's talk of 'ascension'. I'm assuming most players didn't walk out of the room on Virmire with the thought that most of Sovereign's speech was some sort of red herring and that the Reapers in some cosmic sense were actually saviors. Wasn't one of the complaints about Harbinger and the Reaper baby in ME2 that they undermined the ME1 depiction of Reapers?

 

You're not supposed to think about that stuff. If you do the entire plot falls into a huge pit.

 

 

EDIT: This is why I've always said that Mass Effect was never about plot. It was about the characters, because if you think about the plot it was horrid. The characters carried the entire story.

[Karlone123]

You're not supposed to think about that stuff. If you do the entire plot falls into a huge pit.

 

 

EDIT: This is why I've always said that Mass Effect was never about plot. It was about the characters, because if you think about the plot it was horrid. The characters carried the entire story.

 

Yeah, forgot about the plot and think more about Vega doing pull-ups. That's more important then the story.

[ImaginaryMatter]

You're not supposed to think about that stuff. If you do the entire plot falls into a huge pit.

 

 

EDIT: This is why I've always said that Mass Effect was never about plot. It was about the characters, because if you think about the plot it was horrid. The characters carried the entire story.

 

Can't I ask for more from my video game stories?

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

Of course you can, but will we get it? That's the big question.

[ZipZap2000]

It's debateable as to wether or not Harbinger changes the view of the reapers in ME2 Sovereign was vague enough for it to fit. I honestly thought 'Impose order on the chaos' and 'Salvation through destruction' were about preventing organic life from destroying itself. Look around at the world we live in now every 5 years the middle east has a war, the African continent in a perpetual state of conflict, NATO and their allies can't seem to go 5-10 years without bombing someone into oblivion, Famine, disease, pollution, oppression, crime. 

 

Chaos.

 

It only really starts getting murky when we start talking to the reaper on Rannoch and he hints at things that don't seem to have anything to do with it in the end.  'Harbinger speaks of you' implying Shep is somewhat special, which seems to tie in with the collectors wanting his body (I'd presumed this was to control the Reaper but that doesn't make sense after ME3), then Leviathan says something along the lines of 'you are unique' it's almost as if the reapers want him/her for something specific, as if deadshep or shepalive is something they've been searching for all this time. Only we find out the problem doesn't actually exist and all anyone needed to do was visit the citadel and talk to the catalyst about synthetics and we all know where it goes from there.

[dreamgazer]

I'm assuming most players didn't walk out of the room on Virmire with the thought that most of Sovereign's speech was some sort of red herring and that the Reapers in some cosmic sense were actually saviors.

I did, and I had a strong feeling that it was hinged on preventing self-destruction of some kind when he started on with patterns, evolution and advancement, and the chaos of organics. Drew K.'s writing wasn't very discreet with how he "borrowed" from Battlestar Galactica, after all (and Babylon 5 and Farscape). The Reapers' creation of the Citadel and the mass relays to accelerate their advancement certainly didn't weaken that impression, though that's always been a bunch of convoluted, cyclical nonsense anyway.

[100k]

In my rewrite I maintain that the Reapers' best moral grounds are that they preserved galactic life through the cycle. 

 

"We impose order on the chaos of organic life"

 

Rahkana. Tuchanka. Kar'Shan. Entire worlds ecologically ruined because advanced organic life ALWAYS consumes beyond its means. Always. Even the asari, though they're better at hiding it. It doesn't matter what short term solutions life advanced agriculture or colonization occur. Organics, particularly advanced organics, are tied to their life cycle of consume, mate, consume, mate.

 

When garden worlds are reduced to technology hubs millions of lesser species die along the way. Eventually, even if all war was avoided and a galactic spanning republic was established, the problem would just become too prevalent. Over population. Over consumption. 

 

The Reapers know that by giving advanced organics time to advance, explore, and see the universe, then wiping them out, they are giving everyone a chance to enjoy their apex, then "reap" them like crops. To the Reapers, organics are like children playing in sandboxes. Everyone gets a turn, and everyone gets removed after a while to preserve the longevity of the play area.

 

In the Reapers' eyes, the ultimate example of negative organic chaos is the destruction of the Bahak System. Shepard destroyed the mass relay with the goal of preserving advanced organic life. But what Shepard failed to see in his haste for self preservation was the implications of a SUPER NOVA in a star system -- or galaxy at large. 

 

Yes, Shepard sacrificed 300,000 to save trillions. But he destroyed a star system that would have endured long past the trillions of saved individuals, or their family trees. He destroyed planets that could have housed dozens of civilizations in the future, not just on the batarian world, but the other worlds as well. He destroyed a sun that gave life for endless eons. Shepard blotted out the potential for life, just as, unwittingly, most advanced civilizations do when they rise up on habitable worlds.

 

I can explain it, but even as I do I know that I cannot truly comprehend the fullest implications of what I have written. It would be like looking up at the sky and saying that I see most of the universe, when I truly am seeing a tiny limited sliver of the milky way. It IS an alien concept that only Harbinger and Sovereign and company would truly understand. It IS beyond Shepard's comprehension. 

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

And then the reapers come in and reduce the garden worlds to rubble... like Feros, Ilos, and there's hardly anything left on them. They harvest the people and all the resources from them. Their objective is to preserve organic life by wiping out organic life before it wipes out organic life.

 

Shepard didn't destroy a sun. The radiation from the destruction of the relay was similar to a supernova and it wiped out life on a planet that was barely able to support life. It was being terraformed by the Batarians so that it could support life.

 

See trying to explain the reaper's motives isn't going to change the way I deal with them. We destroy them or they destroy us.

[SporkFu]

And then the reapers come in and reduce the garden worlds to rubble... like Feros, Ilos, and there's hardly anything left on them. They harvest the people and all the resources from them. Their objective is to preserve organic life by wiping out organic life before it wipes out organic life.

 

Shepard didn't destroy a sun. The radiation from the destruction of the relay was similar to a supernova and it wiped out life on a planet that was barely able to support life. It was being terraformed by the Batarians so that it could support life.

 

See trying to explain the reaper's motives isn't going to change the way I deal with them. We destroy them or they destroy us.

That's the thing. See... I've come to think that if you don't destroy the reapers the potential threat will always remain. The reaper on Rannoch says, "the battle for Rannoch disproves [shep's] assertion [that synthetics and organics can't get along]." ...but it is wrong; it's totally possible to make peace.

 

So... destroy the reapers, and when some species eventually creates A.I. again in the future, we deal with it differently, without fear and suspicion, and see if we can co-exist right from the start... and then maybe someday reach the pinnacle of evolution -- synthesis -- on our own. 

[100k]

 

 

Ilos and Feros haven't been reduced to rubble. The civilizations that existed there were reduced to rubble. Feros has life on it, though sparse from the original prothean civilization and harvest. Ilos is a quiet garden world attempting to revive itself from the Reaper assault. Civilized worlds are of course going to suffer from the Reaper harvest. Some may never recover. But so long as organics don't spread further and further into the galaxy, the sacrifice of a few worlds life (for a few hundred thousand years) is okay. Once again, look at Rahkana and Tuchanka. What hope for galactic recovery would there have been if other races performed nuclear war, over population, ground wars, resource sapping, etc on the scale that the drell and krogan did? Look at Earth before the Charon Relay. Without ME technology we would have destroyed our 4 billion year old world in the span of 3000 years. The discovery of relays and mass effect technology only slows and directs this inevitability. 

 

And finally, its what the series revolves around. Krogan vs rachni. Krogan vs council.  Geth vs quarians. Geth vs council. Drell vs overpopulation. Vorcha vs vorcha. Humans vs batarians. What happens when conflicts like these are repeated endlessly within a single 50,000 year period? The galaxy suffers hugely. The Reapers semi control these conflicts in a way that the lesser races can't.  

 

The point of the Reaper conflict should be that yes, maybe they are right. Maybe conflicts may destroy the galaxy. But that's a bridge for organics to cross. Shepard should choose to fight for organic freedom to make poor choices, rather than be subject to alien gods deciding to run things better. Shepard fights for the tiny ray of hope that organics will change some day in the future. The Reapers fight with the overwhelming evidence that organics never change. 

 

The relationship between synthetics and Reapers should have been that Reapers destroy synthetics because they are not part of a mass effect technological route, and are therefore too hard to anticipate. 

[Excella Gionne]

That's the thing. See... I've come to think that if you don't destroy the reapers the potential threat will always remain. The reaper on Rannoch says, "the battle for Rannoch disproves [shep's] assertion [that synthetics and organics can't get along]." ...but it is wrong; it's totally possible to make peace.

 

So... destroy the reapers, and when some species eventually creates A.I. again in the future, we deal with it differently, without fear and suspicion, and see if we can co-exist right from the start... and then maybe someday reach the pinnacle of evolution -- synthesis -- on our own. 

Synthesis seems to be an evolution that can't be achieved without some sort of SPACE MAGIC! 

 

I agree that synthetics and organics can get along and that peace is actually possible, but there will come a day when there is that one person who disagrees. That person will eventually become a threat to the synthetic and organic unity. 

[100k]

Remember that leaked unused Reaper message Shepard was supposed to find within the derelict ME2 reaper? It was a poem or something that the Reapers made. It hinted that the Reapers were "shepherds too". The galaxy is their flock. They see all life, not just advanced life, as their responsibility.

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

And I see it as my duty to destroy them.

[100k]

And I see it as my duty to destroy them.

Of course. Its ultimately you or them.

 

There shouldn't be an option to side with them, no matter how good their reasons, as organics and reapers are on two different plains of reasoning. 

[SporkFu]

Synthesis seems to be an evolution that can't be achieved without some sort of SPACE MAGIC! 

 

I agree that synthetics and organics can get along and that peace is actually possible, but there will come a day when there is that one person who disagrees. That person will eventually become a threat to the synthetic and organic unity. 

Like the prothean VI says on Thessia, "trillions of lives are always at risk." ... that's never gonna change. There will always be someone or something threatening all life as we know it. The trick is to deal with potential threats and problems without letting them escalate to galactic or genocidal proportions.... also to not repeat past mistakes.  Maybe it can be done, maybe it can't, but we should be given the opportunity to put what we've learned in surviving the reaper menace to use and find out for ourselves.

[Excella Gionne]

Like the prothean VI says on Thessia, "trillions of lives are always at risk." ... that's never gonna change. There will always be someone or something threatening all life as we know it. The trick is to deal with potential threats and problems without letting them escalate to galactic or genocidal proportions.... also to not repeat past mistakes.  Maybe it can be done, maybe it can't, but we should be given the opportunity to put what we've learned in surviving the reaper menace to use and find out for ourselves.

True, although suspicion will start to rise when those who threaten the synthetic and organic unity start to mysteriously disappear.

[SporkFu]

True, although suspicion will start to rise when those who threaten the synthetic and organic unity start to mysteriously disappear.

That would make a cool game. Start out as someone tasked to eliminate a threat to unity, and throughout the game come upon situations where you have to decide whether unity is actually a good thing or not. Hmm...