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[Valmar]

 

But maybe the reapers worship the Catalyst as their god who has "no beginning and no end. It just is." Because it said so, and the reapers are just machines programmed to do as they're told. They are simply advanced VIs controlled by the Intelligence. The goop is dead and stored in the shell - is hamburger alive? No. What Legion experienced when connected to Sovereign was a connection to the Catalyst - the collective consciousness of all reapers which is why it saw so many minds.

 

Wrong on all accounts. I won't bother explaining why, which would be essentially pointing out all the moments in the lore that disprove your assertions with wiki and video evidence, because I doubt you'd care any and wouldn't let it change your mind about anything.

 

 

I'm pretty sure all the information Reapers collect during harvests is transferred (or backed up) somewhere (most likely at the Citadel so Catalyst can add new data to his calculations). They won't risk losing all information on a race if a Reaper is destroyed, because as we saw, it's quite likely. 

 

Possible though remember generally speaking the reapers are not used to taking such losses. Traditionally they storm the Citadel first and lock off the mass relays, trapping everyone within their systems and then systematically harvesting them one by one. No other cycle has been able to put up as much of a resistance as we have.

[Vazgen]

Possible though remember generally speaking the reapers are not used to taking such losses. Traditionally they storm the Citadel first and lock off the mass relays, trapping everyone within their systems and then systematically harvesting them one by one. No other cycle has been able to put up as much of a resistance as we have.

Yes, but losing even a one would've been a huge risk for them to take if that was not the case. The Leviathan of Dis was killed, as was the derelict Reaper we board in ME2. Their tactics of overpowering resistance with their sheer might speaks of not being concerned much about the loss of 1-2 units.

[Valmar]

Yes, but losing even a one would've been a huge risk for them to take if that was not the case. The Leviathan of Dis was killed, as was the derelict Reaper we board in ME2. Their tactics of overpowering resistance with their sheer might speaks of not being concerned much about the loss of 1-2 units.

 

It would be a risk, definitely. However we do not really see any evidence that suggests that losses are common in the harvest. "There is no war, there is only the harvest." We only found the two dead reapers, afterall. Plus look at all the fire power it took to take down Sovereign. Its possible that these losses, while a possibility, are statically uncommon in their usual tactics.

 

If it was that hard to take down sovereign imagine how difficult it would be to take out a reaper if it isn't just one but the ENTIRE armada. You know, when you're isolated in your system and unable to ally up or come together as a single fighting force. Not having the relays is kinda a big deal, a huge crippling blow to the defending armies - or whats left of them.

"Our numbers will darken the skies of every world."

 

Plus the reapers do use those eye drone things and other non-living ships (Collectors) so its not unfeasible that they have thralls to act as ship canon-fodder. Similar to their use of the geth ships. 

[ArabianIGoggles]

It would be a risk, definitely. However we do not really see any evidence that suggests that losses are common in the harvest. "There is no war, there is only the harvest." We only found the two dead reapers, afterall. Plus look at all the fire power it took to take down Sovereign. Its possible that these losses, while a possibility, are statically uncommon in their usual tactics.

 

If it was that hard to take down sovereign imagine how difficult it would be to take out a reaper if it isn't just one but the ENTIRE armada. You know, when you're isolated in your system and unable to ally up or come together as a single fighting force. Not having the relays is kinda a big deal, a huge crippling blow to the defending armies - or whats left of them.

"Our numbers will darken the skies of every world."

 

Plus the reapers do use those eye drone things and other non-living ships (Collectors) so its not unfeasible that they have thralls to act as ship canon-fodder. Similar to their use of the geth ships. 

The Protheans lasted a long while against them.  And that darken the skies quote came from an arrogant reaper that was overstating and flat out lying about their power.  No beginning and infinite.  They aren't gods.  Even the loss of one reaper would be unacceptable unless there is a backup system in place, which I think is likely.  

[SilJeff]

According to the lore the genetic material is in itself what stores all the knowledge, memory and experiences of the people. In Mass Effect your memories, knowledge, experience (essentially everything that makes you who you are) are all genetic markers that can be read and stored to hardware. The very 'essence' of the species is saved. Stuff like this goes back as far as the first game.

 

It reminds me so much of the philosopher's stone in Fullmetal Alchemist. Those people that made up the stone could never return to the forms they originally had, just like the harvested can't return to their original forms after becoming the grey goo. As such, most people consider them killed even though they technically aren't dead [even if you have to squint to not see them as dead]. The people's knowledge, memories, and experiences was there in the stone as well as in a reaper.

[KaiserShep]

The Protheans lasted a long while against them.  And that darken the skies quote came from an arrogant reaper that was overstating and flat out lying about their power.  No beginning and infinite.  They aren't gods.  Even the loss of one reaper would be unacceptable unless there is a backup system in place, which I think is likely.  

 

In fairness, if the reaper trap operated as planned, the reapers could invest all of their resources in attacking systems individually, and they really could litter the skies with ships and rain down on them with huskified remains of their comrades.

[fhs33721]

The Protheans lasted a long while against them.  And that darken the skies quote came from an arrogant reaper that was overstating and flat out lying about their power.  No beginning and infinite.  They aren't gods.  Even the loss of one reaper would be unacceptable unless there is a backup system in place, which I think is likely.  

Every cyle "lasted" a long while against the Reapers, if you want to call it like that. It takes them a few hundred years to harvest everyone. Lasting long is no accomplishment. They still never even had the slightest chance of victory.

I'd say losses must have been indeed almost non existent for the reapers in previous cycles. They still might have some sort of backup though.

[von uber]

No losses over all of the cycles, with at least one capital ship and unknown numbers of destroyers being created per cycle means that me3 should have been a 5 minute kerb stomp for the reapers.

Reaper strength changes to the requirements of the plot.

[fhs33721]

No losses over all of the cycles, with at least one capital ship and unknown numbers of destroyers being created per cycle means that me3 should have been a 5 minute kerb stomp for the reapers.

Reaper strength changes to the requirements of the plot.

No argument there.

The only realistic ending to the trilogy would have been for the Reapers to easily kill everyone because frankly everything else is nonsense given the established lore of the MEU. But Bioware doesn't really do hopless horror games where everyone dies.

[SporkFu]

I dunno why. The protheans fought the reapers for centuries and they had a much worse start to their war harvest than our cycle did. Our war harvest wasn't even a year old by the time it ended.

[ImaginaryMatter]

No losses over all of the cycles, with at least one capital ship and unknown numbers of destroyers being created per cycle means that me3 should have been a 5 minute kerb stomp for the reapers.

Reaper strength changes to the requirements of the plot.

 

The Reapers did take a major nerf in ME3.

 

It was so blatant I did think they were setting the plot up for a conventional victory and the big twist would be that the Crucible was useless.

[Valmar]

The Protheans lasted a long while against them.  And that darken the skies quote came from an arrogant reaper that was overstating and flat out lying about their power.  No beginning and infinite.  They aren't gods.  Even the loss of one reaper would be unacceptable unless there is a backup system in place, which I think is likely.  

 

The protheans lasted a long time because the reapers allowed them to last a long time. The reapers took their time in the harvest. They isolated the protheans, they cut them off from one another. They were each stranded in their individual systems. Also there is no reason to think the reaper was lying about its numbers. If you took ALL the reaper ships and put then over the world it very likely would darken the skies. They have a huge number of ships do not be fooled by Mass Effect 3. Remember that the situation in the Mass Effect cycle is vastly different from other cycles. The reaper's usual plan of attack is to take over the citadel and cut us all off and leave us stranded. They systematically harvest us system-y-system. In ME3 they're scattered out everywhere. This is very different from how they usually handle things.

 

I had an interesting conversation with Vazgen about the 'reaper backup' concept which I will share part of it here.

 

"The reapers harvest us, turn us into goo and pump us into giant reaper forms. If they can just make a digital backup copy of all this and store it someplace else  it makes me question why they bother going through all that effort in the first place for the original copy. What importance is it to store our genetic material and make organic-synthetic reapers if the knowledge that organic paste allegedly holds is something that can be stored like normal data? Reapers would not have to be part organic, they could just copy the data from the organic stuff and port it over to full-synthetic bodies.

 

See my biggest issue with reapers just being backed up is the fact that they're partly organic. That organic bit is important, it represents the harvested species used to create the reaper. When a reaper is destroyed this organic matter is lost. If everything a reaper was can just be uploaded to pure hardware then it takes away the significance of that organic material. Which makes this less 'harvesting' and 'preserving' us and more just archiving our knowledge."

 

We did come to a rather satisfying compromise, imo.

 

"How about a compromise between the two beliefs that might work well together? The harvested maintain a sense of awareness, all those minds linking together to form one. For this to happen the organic paste has to be kept 'alive' as it is the very essence of the species that make up the reaper. Able to come up with new ideas, to think and live. However if it dies the memories and knowledge that it had are saved to catalyst. So while it will maintain all the knowledge it knew, the 'life' is gone forever because the organic material that gave it life is no longer there. It goes from being a sentient reaper to being just information."

 

I certainly don't expect many to share this perspective, though. Too many people are too emotionally-driven and refuse to view the reapers as anything more than giant killing machines. Lol.

[Daemul]

No argument there.

The only realistic ending to the trilogy would have been for the Reapers to easily kill everyone because frankly everything else is nonsense given the established lore of the MEU. But Bioware doesn't really do hopless horror games where everyone dies.

 

Then they shouldn't have made the Reapers so powerful to start with, because now the plot required outrageous amounts of coincidences and contrivances for it to even work. Btw, I'm still waiting for my Reapers win ending Bioware, and no, Refuse is not it. 

[SilJeff]

Then they shouldn't have made the Reapers so powerful to start with, because now the plot required outrageous amounts of coincidences and contrivances for it to even work. Btw, I'm still waiting for my Reapers win ending Bioware, and no, Refuse is not it. 

 

But ME1's story is perfect, remember!

[KaiserShep]

No argument there.

The only realistic ending to the trilogy would have been for the Reapers to easily kill everyone because frankly everything else is nonsense given the established lore of the MEU. But Bioware doesn't really do hopless horror games where everyone dies.

I can't imagine that I'd enjoy playing a 30+ hour death throe.

[KaiserShep]

I certainly don't expect many to share this perspective, though. Too many people are too emotionally-driven and refuse to view the reapers as anything more than giant killing machines. Lol.

 

This goes to the logic of reaper design. I consider their primary purpose to be killing machines, with the genetic repository function being secondary. I think this because with the consolidation of these purposes into a single, combat-ready platform, creates a conflict. Each reuse increases the risk of being destroyed, losing the entirety of that civilization's information. I guess having them be made of people serves as a big dramatic reveal for the story, but it does make me wonder if the Catalyst is capable of metabolizing red sand.

Of course, it's never really clear what good having this information does in the first place. The Catalyst strikes me as being similar to Brainiac, simply getting the information it wants and then destroying the civilization after it's done. If the information is valuable enough to preserve for all time, it would probably have been a better idea to create a structure designed specifically to do this in the safety of dark space where the chances of it being discovered or destroyed are much lower.

[themikefest]

If the reapers have 20 000 capital ships, one being created per cycle over 1 billion years, they would have no problem with the harvest for this cycle. Unless they left a large number of them in dark space, the create one reaper every 50 000 years is crap. We have no idea how many cycles happened from the time Harbinger was created to when the every 50 000 years cycle started after the relay network was built.

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

I'm pretty sure all the information Reapers collect during harvests is transferred (or backed up) somewhere (most likely at the Citadel so Catalyst can add new data to his calculations). They won't risk losing all information on a race if a Reaper is destroyed, because as we saw, it's quite likely. 

 

But Patrick Weekes, or was it one of the others, said that the reapers didn't lose any in previous cycles.

 

Harbinger: Uh, I don't think this is such a good idea.

Intelligence: Don't worry about it Harby. What are the odds? We've never lost any before. Just sweep in from the Alpha Relay.

Harbinger: The other cycles didn't have Shepard.

Intelligence: Shepard Shmepard! This cycle is primitive.The protheans put up a hell of a fight and we kicked their asses. This cycle wouldn't even know about us if you guys didn't leave that GoPro camera from that raver you threw after you finished.

Harbinger: Sorry. But I still don't think it's a good idea.

Intelligence: You have no choice. I control you. Now go. Bip!

Harbinger: But.... *nnnggg* okay, okay! I'm going! Jeez! Don't say I didn't warn you.

[KaiserShep]

But Patrick Weekes, or was it one of the others, said that the reapers didn't lose any in previous cycles.

 

I guess I got the deluxe version of Mass Effect where past reapers were destroyed by a giant cannon or the Leviathan.

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

I guess I got the deluxe version of Mass Effect where past reapers were destroyed by a giant cannon or the Leviathan.

 

I did, too. But ... those reapers really weren't dead. The derelict reaper still indoctrinated the Cerberus team, and the Leviathan of Dis still indoctrinated the Batarians who worked on it. They were disabled.

[ImaginaryMatter]

If the reapers have 20 000 capital ships, one being created per cycle over 1 billion years, they would have no problem with the harvest for this cycle. Unless they left a large number of them in dark space, the create one reaper every 50 000 years is crap. We have no idea how many cycles happened from the time Harbinger was created to when the every 50 000 years cycle started after the relay network was built.

 

Reaper ships must have been destroyed fairly often in past cycles. The tactics utilized by this cycle like smuggling in nukes, guerrilla tactics, and 15 minute plans aren't strategies that need the foresight the current cycle had. And from what Javik tells us about the Prothean cycle they must have been somewhat successful in combating the Reapers. Add in all the 'super weapons' the other cycles must have occasionally had like the Klendagon weapon (given all the iterations probably more than one cycle had such a thing) and it's hard for me to imagine that the Reaping is an efficient process in terms of a Reaper net gain.