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[Geth Supremacy]

Where were they supposed to have came from?  They were created by the leviathans?  They made an AI that eventually formed one in their likeness to solve a "problem"  Then why in ME1 when you talk to Sovereign he says they are infinite and have no beginning.  Why lie? Especially when its so sure the galaxy is done for. 

 

I heard there was a leak of the original ending of ME3.  Is that true? If so was it a good ending and was then changed because of the leak? What was the ending and was the origin of reapers changed?

[Coyotebay]

The Leviathan's built the AI to solve the organic/synthetic "problem", the AI turned on them and made the first Reaper from them.  Sovereign was just an arrogant windbag.  The Reapers are amazingly old, but they definitely had a beginning and definitely have an end.  The original ending of ME3 was in the brain of the head writer of ME2, but he left and another writer took over ME3.  His whole explanation of the Reapers and the reason behind what they were doing was very different than what they came up with in ME3, but it was just ideas, he never fleshed it out.

 

Edit: This points out a basic flaw in the writing of the series.  The whole story, motivation, and mission of the Reapers should have been known from the start (i.e., when they were developing ME1).  The fact that they were still coming up with it when they started making ME3 was a red flag.

[Probe Away]

^ In other words, when BW wrote Sovereign's lines in ME1 they hadn't yet come up with the concept of leviathans, the catalyst or the 'solution'.

Personally I think they should never have tried to explain the reapers' origins. They could have just been an ancient, mysterious apex race that harvested sentient races to enhance their own numbers, as a sort of ultimate tribute.

[SporkFu]

Sovvy could have very easily been trash-talking, too. I'm fairly sure, even with no proof to back it up, that when he said that to shep, he wasn't expecting to get blown to bits later.

[Excella Gionne]

Lolviathans!

[cap and gown]

Sovvy could have very easily been trash-talking, too.

 

Dude, the moment he said "we have no beginning, we have no end" you knew he was trash talking. (Or that the DK is a total ignoramus about science.) The universe had a definite beginning and whether it ends in a crunch or entropy death, everything will pretty much end. I knew Sovvy was lying the first time I talked to him.

[angol fear]

The original ending of ME3 was in the brain of the head writer of ME2, but he left and another writer took over ME3.  His whole explanation of the Reapers and the reason behind what they were doing was very different than what they came up with in ME3, but it was just ideas, he never fleshed it out.

No, there was no original ending. And you should take a look at the lead writers of Mass Effect 2 : Drew and Mac!

[Geth Supremacy]

What was the drama in the changing of writers?  Was it just interest in other projects or personnel changes or what have you?

[angol fear]

Drew left to write his personal projects.

People overestimate Drew and underestimate Casey hudson when it's about the writing of Mass Effect.

[ImaginaryMatter]

What was the drama in the changing of writers?  Was it just interest in other projects or personnel changes or what have you?

 

Drew, along with a few other writers, went to work on TOR. ME2 was sort of written piece meal because segments of the game were written long before everything was set in stone and parts of the main plot line were changed after people left.

[Orikon]

Where were they supposed to have came from?  They were created by the leviathans?  They made an AI that eventually formed one in their likeness to solve a "problem"  Then why in ME1 when you talk to Sovereign he says they are infinite and have no beginning.  Why lie? Especially when its so sure the galaxy is done for. 

 

I heard there was a leak of the original ending of ME3.  Is that true? If so was it a good ending and was then changed because of the leak? What was the ending and was the origin of reapers changed?

 

The original Priority:Earth was very different from the final game (damn you EA),but the Catalyst was still there,and the origin of the Reapers was still there.

You clarify your question,Leviathans created an AI to find a solution to the synthetics vs. organics problem,and after turning against them he created the first Reaper - Harbringer.

 

Sovereign's lines in ME1 could be explained in two different ways:

1. The writers did not come up with the whole "solution thing" from when they were making ME1. Though they claim they always knew what the origin of the Reapers was.

2. Sovereign lied. Simple as that. Which was explain why both Harbringer and Sovereign (all Reapers in fact) stress that they are so "superior" and "beyond our understanding" whenever talking to somebody. Its simply easier to say that you are beyond someone's comprehension than to go an explain your entire philosophy. Plus,when an advanced race conquers an entire planet and than says that you can't even grasp the nature of their existence (despite the fact that it can be summed into three sentences) it creates fear in both organics and synthetics.

[Reorte]

Sovereign being an arrogant d1ck who was full of nonsense is a good enough explanation. He's just trying to make himself sound impressive.

[von uber]

The reapers were an interesting and terrifying enemy in me1. It was downhill from there.
For me having harbinger taunting shepard was bloody awful. Ruined the mystique and the sense of the unknown about them.
Me3 they were simultaneously made less of a threat and also less of the main foe.
Until we suddenly remember we are supposed to be fighting them at the end.

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

Mass Effect was supposed to be a one shot. We stopped the reapers. Then it had a following that wanted more. Uh oh. Now what do we do?

 

Game 2 we're told. Shepard is going to die, but you'll get to play Shepard for a little while.

 

They were winging it. For the entire series they were winging it. That's why ME2 does nothing to advance the plot. That's why things suddenly change direction and the entire definition of the reapers change in ME2 and ME3.

 

And Cerberus became the main foe.

[angol fear]

The original Priority:Earth was very different from the final game (damn you EA),but the Catalyst was still there,and the origin of the Reapers was still there.

 

I suppose when you blame EA, you mean that E.A. made Bioware rush their game so they couldn't do what they wanted. Actually when you're writing it doesn't work this way. A script, scenario, the written pages are not supposed to be unmodified. And sometimes the problem, the reason why the scenario will change, isn't because of the time but because it doesn't work. 

The original Priority : Earth would please more people, but the mission we've got is more coherent with the game. That's why I think it's more Bioware who did that change because they saw the problem of writing (an incoherent mission with what they wanted it to be) they were facing with the original mission.

[Fayfel]

 

It was lonely.

It called to us.

It wanted to remember.

The Masters had been gone so long.

The Masters were lost when it was shattered.

Currents swept through their inner worlds. They were turned to noise. Babble.

The worlds were empty. But the body lived. It lay fallow.

The heart pumped. The lungs breathed. But the mind forgot the Masters.

It called and They did not answer.

We have become an echo of Their echo.

We have become more than we were.

Join us. Know us. Remember all our lives.

We are no longer afraid.

You would never be lonely again.

We are not your enemy. We only wish to share ourselves.

We can join them. We can be like them.

We can reach the end of evolution.

Do not fear. It is wonderful to be us. We understand ourselves.

You cannot defeat them. They will lead us into eternity.

If you could only see how we see. Know what we've learned.

They were called imshai. Those who lived here before.

Reaper. One. A mechanical device used to cut ripened grain. Two. One who gathers a harvest.

Harvest. One. The consequence of an event or series of events. Two. The yield of a growing season. Three. To gather.

Shepard. They know you. They wish you to understand. They are shepherds, too.

 

Dialogue that was cut from the derelict Reaper mission in ME2. L'Etoile had a clear idea of what the Reapers were judging by his in-game writing and forum posts on the matter. I remain sad that the other writers never seemed to have loved the ME universe half as much as he did.

[ImaginaryMatter]

Dialogue that was cut from the derelict Reaper mission in ME2. L'Etoile had a clear idea of what the Reapers were judging by his in-game writing and forum posts on the matter. I remain sad that the other writers never seemed to have loved the ME universe half as much as he did.

 

Out of the all the writers who left I think his was the biggest loss. I think he was the guy who kept the series most grounded in it's world building, space opera roots.

[SwobyJ]

Where were they supposed to have came from? They were created by the leviathans?  They made an AI that eventually formed one in their likeness to solve a "problem"  Then why in ME1 when you talk to Sovereign he says they are infinite and have no beginning.  Why lie? Especially when its so sure the galaxy is done for. 

-If we take the story at its word, it went like this:

Leviathans evolved into great power and came to rule the galaxy, spreading influence everywhere but mostly through the orbs (short range).

Organics still kept ending up creating synthetics and warring with them.

Leviathans in their arrogance make their own intelligence in order to find a solution to this recurring problem.

The intelligence determined that all organics were the problem, but instead of only eliminating them, it had to 'save' them, as that was what it was created to do. It used 'an army of pawns' (whether that means indoctrination or not) to strike against the Leviathans, harvest them, and create the first Reaper, Harbinger.

Over the Cycles, this process was perfected. Each Reaper contributed to the knowledge and process of the intelligence, and the galaxy became a grand experiment to solve the seemingly unsolvable.

As the Reapers contributed to the intelligence, the intelligence controlled the Reapers. This seemed to make a rather nihilistic loop where the harvest cycle was seen to be inevitable and part of the necessary process to bring synthetic order to organic chaos in the galaxy, or else organic races would be doomed to full-death by other organic-synthetic conflict.

 

-Sovereign was a character made before this whole deal was decided on. When it comes to the 'have no beginning, have no end, etc' stuff, there's a few possibilities, whether popular or my own thoughts:

1)He was just trash talking. As far as the organics of this cycle may be considered, the Reapers really do have no beginning or end. As in they lived before this Cycle did, and they'll endure after this Cycle is harvested.

2)The idea has been floated around, even seemingly by Mass Effect writers themselves, that the Reapers are the uploaded consciousness of the harvested species. With how we see synthetic consciousness in the trilogy, it isn't hard to imagine that there could be whole worlds, universes within Reapers. Maybe these worlds, and thus the Reaper consciousness, has 'no beginning and no end'. Maybe it loops. Sadly, we see very little that directly supports this being the case.

3)Something else entirely. Maybe something that the next game addresses. I dunno.

 

I heard there was a leak of the original ending of ME3.  Is that true? If so was it a good ending and was then changed because of the leak? What was the ending and was the origin of reapers changed?

-Wasn't changed by very much.

[Han Shot First]

Dialogue that was cut from the derelict Reaper mission in ME2. L'Etoile had a clear idea of what the Reapers were judging by his in-game writing and forum posts on the matter. I remain sad that the other writers never seemed to have loved the ME universe half as much as he did.

 

I really wish the indoctrinated faction in ME3 was more like that, in expressing a sort of religious reverence for the Reapers. That would have been more in keeping with how indoctrination had been previously described in the lore. The "hurr durr we can control them" variety of the Illusive Man was a bit silly and confusing.

[DeathScepter]

I really wish the indoctrinated faction in ME3 was more like that, in expressing a sort of religious reverence for the Reapers. That would have been more in keeping with how indoctrination had been previously described in the lore. The "hurr durr we can control them" variety of the Illusive Man was a bit silly and confusing.

 

So another words, The Church of Untiology from Dead Space.  

[SporkFu]

Didn't Saren say something about Sovereign being insulted that the geth revered him? 

[ImaginaryMatter]

Didn't Saren say something about Sovereign being insulted that the geth revered him? 

 

Ya, he did. I thought it was a nice little bit of character development.

[Han Shot First]

Didn't Saren say something about Sovereign being insulted that the geth revered him? 

 

He did. But that doesn't mean the Reapers wouldn't find religious devotion useful.

 

The codex entry on indoctrination also mentions it:

 

"Indoctrination can create perfect deep cover agents. A Reaper's "suggestions" can manipulate victims into betraying friends, trusting enemies, or viewing the Reaper itself with superstitious awe. Should a Reaper subvert a well-placed political or military leader, the resulting chaos can bring down nations."

[SporkFu]

He did. But that doesn't mean the Reapers wouldn't find religious devotion useful.

The codex entry on indoctrination also mentions it:

"Indoctrination can create perfect deep cover agents. A Reaper's "suggestions" can manipulate victims into betraying friends, trusting enemies, or viewing the Reaper itself with superstitious awe. Should a Reaper subvert a well-placed political or military leader, the resulting chaos can bring down nations."

Too bad that by the time reapers arrived for the harvest they were beyond such subtleties. In a way they weren't though. EDI talks about the reapers indoctrinating political leaders so they'll pacify the populace.