58 réponses à ce sujet

[N7 Banshee Bait]

 Harvesting a civilization creates 1 Reaper. The first Reaper was Harbinger & he was created by harvesting the Leviathans. So if the first Reaper was created AFTER harvesting the Leviathans, then what was powerful enough to harvest the Leviathans in the first place??? As soon as the intelligence turned on the Leviathans they should have been able to easily shut it down. There were no Reapers to stop them. But the game just lets you assume the Leviathans got harvested by a billion Reapers. You have to stop yourself & remember that there were no Reapers for the first harvest.

 

Has this ever been explained? Or is it a massive plot hole that makes the entire series totally pointless?

 

I always see people going in circles over the endings & getting absolutely nowhere. Most of the arguments about the endings are caused by people that didn't pay attention to the dialogue. Or simply forgot important details from it. But I've never seen anybody discuss the very beginning, the first harvest. I'm sure it has been discussed but I've never seen it mentioned.

 

This is the only thing bugging me. I'm fine with the endings, I LOVE the control ending. My problem with the series is the beginning, not the end.

[von uber]

 

Stop asking awkward questions.

[Excella Gionne]

Perhaps the Catalyst hacked the Leviathans' technology and killed them with it?

[SporkFu]

@von uber: As shep's LI (or Liara) says in the citadel DLC, "Nice outfit." 

 

The reapers pick one species per cycle to make a sovereign-class reaper out of it, but that doesn't stop them from using other species to do their dirty work. The Leviathan weren't the only beings of their cycle. 

[Jukaga]

IIRC it's mentioned that their army of thralls and warbots did it. They 'perfected' the design with the first Reaper.

[N7 Banshee Bait]

IIRC it's mentioned that their army of thralls and warbots did it. 

 

Yeah, I remember something about that mentioned in the Leviathan DLC. I just don't see how that could work. In Leviathan nobody could even get near them. And since they started the whole mind control/indoctrination thing, if the intelligence tried to use that on them they would just do it back & it would be a stalemate.

 

And seeing as how they ran, hid & survived you'd think most of their species did the same thing & the intelligence couldn't get enough of them to create Harbinger. They managed to hide from the Reapers for billions of years, countless cycles.

[SporkFu]

Maybe the reapers poisoned the water, or the atmosphere, or whatever other environments the Leviathan lived in. Maybe they bombed the Leviathans planets from orbit, and picked them off while they were weak and trying to leave a suddenly uninhabitable planet. 

[N7 Banshee Bait]

Did the Leviathans fly through space on their own or did they use space ships? And do they need to live in water? I'm still not totally clear on this. I think it said something about them adapting so they'll be able to survive on their own in deep space or in water but the dialogue is really vague. I'm trying to sort out the details. Hopefully I missed or forgot something.

[Excella Gionne]

I don't think the Leviathans speak. I believe they're telepathic.

[JasonShepard]

Everything about that era was rather vague. (Especially the "are they aquatic, are they space-travellers?" thing. I mean, they apparently made it to Dis, which is nowhere near Despoina, but they're clearly organic and organic flesh... doesn't do well in a vacuum. Do they have space-suits?) I'm not too worried about that, since it was aeons ago. It'd be a plot-hole if we did understand everything from 1 billion+ years ago.

 

But, the first harvest? It's stated that the Catalyst had an army of drones, for the purposes of gathering data from various civilisations throughout the galaxy. These drones would presumably have been Leviathan tech, so the Leviathans would have been somewhat susceptible to them. (Like a gun is more effective than a flint-axe if you're fighting modern day soldiers, and a mass-accelerator-gun would work better against ME-level tech than a modern ballistic weapon.) So, with the advantage of surprise, Leviathans' own technology and an army of drones... I can see the Catalyst winning that fight.

[Larry-3]

A Reaper indoctrinated a Leviathan and made him choose the Control option to which he became a Reaper. They both made everyone else pick the Control option on the Citadel. After seeing the ending it aggravated all of them off to the point that they waged a galactic war, after that they used Dragon's Teeth on people. When they found out the humans were going to pick Synthesis they stole the Citadel back from everybody and let Mr. Illusive persuade Shepard into picking the Control ending, it did not work.

[themikefest]

Its not who harvested them, but what harvested them

 

Spoiler

    

[DeinonSlayer]

The Catalyst's prawns.

[ZipZap2000]

Not sure if I read it in the codex but the scientists in MEU were theorising that they had thralls build them massive ships. They seemed to have left it as an in game mystery that would likely be too difficult to solve without asking them directly.

[DeinonSlayer]

Not sure if I read it in the codex but the scientists in MEU were theorising that they had thralls build them massive ships. They seemed to have left it as an in game mystery that would likely be too difficult to solve without asking them directly.

That or they didn't have an answer, and slapped in a variation of "it is not a thing you can comprehend" as a placeholder to keep things mysterious.

[Coming0fShadows]

But, the first harvest? It's stated that the Catalyst had an army of drones, for the purposes of gathering data from various civilisations throughout the galaxy. These drones would presumably have been Leviathan tech, so the Leviathans would have been somewhat susceptible to them. (Like a gun is more effective than a flint-axe if you're fighting modern day soldiers, and a mass-accelerator-gun would work better against ME-level tech than a modern ballistic weapon.) So, with the advantage of surprise, Leviathans' own technology and an army of drones... I can see the Catalyst winning that fight.

Okay maybe that makes sense..

I know they arent the same kind of drone you are talking about... But all i can picture is an army of Tali's little purple drones tasing essentially a giant reaper to death. (leviathan whatever)

"Go get 'em, Chatika!"

[themikefest]

That or they didn't have an answer, and slapped in a variation of "it is not a thing you can comprehend" to keep things mysterious.

Its the same answer the Catalyst gives you about the Crucible. You do not know them and there's not enough time to explain it.

[ImaginaryMatter]

From the conversation with Leviathan: "It created an army of pawns that searched the galaxy, gathering this data. There was no warning, no reason given when they turned against us"

 

I'm assuming they were some sort of robotic type drones. So, the Catalyst did already have an army, although that army does raise a lot more questions. I guess that's a consequence of creating DLC story content that's sole purpose is to prop up the ending.

[Han Shot First]

It is possible that the Catalyst could have provoked a rebellion among one or more of the Leviathan's client races as well. Some of those pawns could have been people who were manipulated into thinking that they were fighting for their liberation.

[KaiserShep]

 

Stop asking awkward questions.

 

The club can't handle that dress right now.

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

You guys are thinking too much.

 

[Farangbaa]

It's pawns.

Who probably looked exactly the same as the Reapers do, but were pure synthetic constructs instead of oranic-synthetic hybrids.

As for the Leviathan being able to travel across space: I think this is explained in game somewhere in a Codex entry. It is assumed the Leviathan came from a planet with at least one other, terrestrial intelligent species which they then dominated and made them build the necessary equipment.

I've always understood the Leviathan to basically do just one thing: dominate. They need other species to be anything more than cuttlefish.

[SporkFu]

The Leviathan shep meets on 2181 Despoina is an incredibly small sample size of the Leviathan society during their 'cycle'. Hell, any description of life-back-then that it gives you is based on, what...passed down memories?

And the conversation with shep is mainly about the reapers and the catalyst, so we never really learn anything concrete about Leviathan. It's ALL open to speculation, heh.

[Kabooooom]

Did the Leviathans fly through space on their own or did they use space ships? And do they need to live in water? I'm still not totally clear on this. I think it said something about them adapting so they'll be able to survive on their own in deep space or in water but the dialogue is really vague. I'm trying to sort out the details. Hopefully I missed or forgot something.

They are aquatic organisms, that much is perfectly clear and unambiguous.

As for how they got to space - honestly, and bear with me here because it initially sounds ridiculous: I always envisioned them as having external armored exosuits that are powered by element zero and capable of FTL travel. Externally, they would basically resemble a Reaper while wearing the exosuit.

Why is this practical and plausible? Because think of the alternative: to create an actual spaceship for an aquatic organism of that size, you would need a massive ship filled entirely with water. A frigate for a species like that would probably be equivalent to a dreadnought in size. The amount of resources required to transport a number of them en masse would be enormous. And they could never enter atmosphere and land on a planet. And orbit to ground transport presents the same problem- it's impractical. Which leaves pretty much one solution: individual exosuits capable of space travel.

And if that's the case, then it also explains why the cave painting of Leviathan looks more similar to Reaper (albeit still different) than it does like an organic being.

It's also likely, as the Codex suggests, that they initially just explored space via dominating the terrestrial sapient species on their homeworld. This would be safe, efficient, and require minimal resources. And certainly this would be the ONLY option available to them prior to the discovery of the mass effect.

Eventually, I imagine, they wanted to explore space for themselves instead of experiencing it through the eyes of a thrall race. Of course, it's also possible that they simply decided to become spacefaring solely for survival purposes and practicality: existing on a single world means extinction is inevitable.

Which is also, as a side note, why we as humans should leave Earth. Curiosity is important, but survival is even more important.

[PunMaster]

The AI definitely had the drones/ships to carry the first harvest out (As stated by other people in this thread) but also keep in mind that the AI had the element of surprise. It was mentioned that none of the Leviathans had expected the AI to turn against them as part of the solution. So it'd be pretty easy to place drones in strategic positions and voila, harvest done.

 

Then if I was going to go to purely guess work, the drones probably helped with subsequent harvests until they were all wiped out, at which point there were enough Reapers to continue.