151 réponses à ce sujet

[X Equestris]

Can you find this Codex entry? Because I've read the whole codex multiple times and I can't remember it. I tried to find it on the ME wiki, and similarly came up with nothing. I do, however, remember the codex stating it's supposed invulnerability.
Drone posted a pic of it being destroyed after the Crucible blows. Sure, except it is the most powerful device the galaxy had ever seen, strong enough to wipe all the Reapers out and spread across the entire galaxy. So I don't think that is really comparable.

The fact that the Codex which states its supposed impregnablility is from ME1 is telling. Do you really think it could stand up to hundreds of Reapers bombarding it for days on end? The mass relays were supposed to be indestructible too, until an asteroid was rammed into one.

[CrutchCricket]

Besides the gaping plothole of the Reapers not taking the Citadel and shutting down the relay network you also have to wonder about the relays themselves.

 

ME2 gives us the Omega 4 relay for which you need the IFF, because otherwise it's too inaccurate and throws you into debris. When you start the invasion, why not modify each relay similarly at the local level? I think it's the height of stupidity that the Reapers wouldn't be able to interface with a relay and locally reprogram it or shut it down (just like the holokid not being able to control the Citadel), but even if you accept this, you can still recreate the Omega 4 situation by simply moving a debris field next to each relay. Reapers can still use them, everyone else gets shredded. Boom, war over, we're screwed.

 

Or if even that's too much trouble, just station a damn Reaper at the relay. A capital ship Reaper can take on multiple fleets by itself. I know we don't visit every possible system or even cluster in known space but are there more than 1000 relays being used by this cycle? I don't think so. Have a Reaper stand watch and shred everything that comes through. When enough ships have bitten the space dust, there's your debris field to shred the rest.

 

Finally the Reapers don't need to blitz everyone anyway.  Blockade one or two clusters at a time, harvest it, move on to the next. There's precisely dick the rest of the galaxy can do about it, and given their insanely moronic apathy and stagnation when they're not personally being liquified, it's likely they'll just grab a pint and hope all of this blows over. The Reapers don't need to rush. What, are they missing their sitcoms?

[Daemul]

The Reapers took the Citadel just fine at the end of ME3, so they clearly could have taken it early on if they wanted, nothing was stopping them. Bioware just made them dumb because the game would have been over within the first 5 minutes otherwise. 

[LexXxich]

Another question that never made sense to me is how did the Citadel move from it's original position to Earth's orbit? Even if one can launch something of it's size and mass though a mass relay (a set of them from there to Sol system), how did reapers move it close to the relay and from relay to Earth? It doesn't have any propulsion engines, AFAIK. Did they duct tape a thousand reaper ships to it to push it?

 

Or even better question, why move it at all? Citadel captured by reapers equals control of relay network equals reaper victory.

[MrObnoxiousUK]

Actually, the asari held a better fight than the humans did against the reapers. Both Thessia and Illium were better defended, and the reapers had a harder time deploying ground troops, due to the fact that a race primarily comprised of biotics makes the population more difficult to control and overwhelm. 

The Asari and Turians were hit by a much smaller fleet,while Earth got pounded flat by the entire Reaper armada.

[Torgette]

The Reapers took the Citadel just fine at the end of ME3, so they clearly could have taken it early on if they wanted, nothing was stopping them. Bioware just made them dumb because the game would have been over within the first 5 minutes otherwise. 

 

Yeah, on the one hand having the Reaper invasion start at the beginning of ME3 adds drama and drives the plot forward, on the flip side if you structured the game like the Arrival DLC where it's a countdown to the invasion and the Reapers invade in the last 1/3 of the game and thus are given all the freedom to be a destructive and smart as possible - the whole story likely would've been better off.

 

Another question that never made sense to me is how did the Citadel move from it's original position to Earth's orbit? Even if one can launch something of it's size and mass though a mass relay (a set of them from there to Sol system), how did reapers move it close to the relay and from relay to Earth? It doesn't have any propulsion engines, AFAIK. Did they duct tape a thousand reaper ships to it to push it?

 

Or even better question, why move it at all? Citadel captured by reapers equals control of relay network equals reaper victory.

 

I'm guessing with the majority of the Reaper fleet being at Earth it made sense it would be more secure there than exposed to attacks by organics, on the other hand by having that Conduit beam they basically exposed it anyways. Harbinger flying away was also one giant "attack the weak point for massive damage" video game moment.

[themikefest]

Another question that never made sense to me is how did the Citadel move from it's original position to Earth's orbit? Even if one can launch something of it's size and mass though a mass relay (a set of them from there to Sol system), how did reapers move it close to the relay and from relay to Earth? It doesn't have any propulsion engines, AFAIK. Did they duct tape a thousand reaper ships to it to push it?

 

Or even better question, why move it at all? Citadel captured by reapers equals control of relay network equals reaper victory.

According to Barla Von, the Citadel has engines

https://youtu.be/VrSYhSnmkoQ?t=6m15s

[Former_Fiend]

...You guys know it's 2015, right?

[DaemionMoadrin]

...You guys know it's 2015, right?

 

Are you saying it's too late to talk about the politics of 2183?

[Chealec]

The most stupid race is the Reapers. They have to be, otherwise ME3 would last about 3 minutes.

 

... and despite their abject stupidity they still "win" unless Shepard finds the off switch (or picks the refuse to choose ending).

 

So you have to question whether the purpose of the Reapers was to reset the balance between synthetic and organic life ... or to reset the balance between synthetic and organic life only until it's no longer necessary; whether Shepard (and by proxy, humanity) had met some kind of arbitrary criteria that allowed the experiment to reach it's conclusion - the Reapers weren't trying to win, they're not really truly self-aware AI, just space brat's mechanical arms while it tinkers with the parameters of the experiment *shrugs*

[Former_Fiend]

Are you saying it's too late to talk about the politics of 2183?

 

I'm saying this is a discussion for the mass effect 3 forums, and one that I would be utterly shocked to learn hasn't happened yet.

[Vortex13]

The Krogan hold the galaxy hostage until their cure is ready, despite knowing that everyone will die if the Reapers win. In fairness, it probably was their only opportunity at ever getting a cure and they were going to die either way if they didn't.

 

I don't really buy that. Wrex says that only by curing the Genophage will he be able to unite his people ME 3, but that goes completely contrary to what he said in ME 2. In the second game, he says that the only way that clan Urdnot was in power was because he was able to leverage control of the viable females.

 

If the Genophage is cured, then all that power structure is gone. Why should the other clans listen to Wrex if they have their own fertile females to bargain with? Why would a Krogan warlord even bother with the alliance with the galaxy once his females have been restored? One might say that Krogan clans going against the alliance is stupid, but Wrex was perfectly willing to go to war with Humanity in the middle of the Reaper invasion when he discovers the cure has been sabotaged so it's not like that sentiment is unfounded.

 

Putting a full stop to the war so that the Genophage can be cured, is no way to garner allies or goodwill. Holding the galaxy at gunpoint, causing the deaths of millions of people a day, because of some 2,000 year old grudge is moronic, and the narrative doesn't even let the player call Wrex/Wreave out on it. Working with the galaxy, having 'the Shepard' put in a good word to the Council races, etc would have been far more effective, and could have potentially even brought the Salarians around in support of the cure. 

 

I don't particularly care for hypocrites or bullies, and the Krogan are both throughout the trilogy, especially in the third game (IMO).

 

 

The geth acknowledge the threat and pledge to help, but subsequently spend their time building a useless Dyson sphere which gets blown up by the quarians, then they actually go and ally with the damn Reapers. 

 

Yeah, the Geth's actions between ME 2 & 3 have me scratching my head. Legion says that the Geth will aid Shepard in the fight against the Reapers, but it also says that the Geth are building a structure so that 'No Geth will ever be alone'.

 

A Dyson sphere is an immobile ball surrounding a star; forgetting the impracticability it would be to actually build one around a main sequence star like Rannoch's sun, or the irreparable damage that blocking out the light and heat would do to Rannoch itself, what did the Geth actually hope to accomplish with their grand project? A Dyson sphere can't move, and by the way Legion was talking every single Geth program was going to upload to it, meaning that there would be nothing left to control the various platforms or ships that it promised us in ME 2; sounds more like the Geth were planning on hiding than anything.

 

Unless their construct was going to be armed with the destructive firepower of entire Reaper fleets I don't see how it in anyway could have helped contribute to the fight.

 

The quarians acknowledge the threat and pledge to help, but then send their shiny newly armed fleet against the geth instead. In fairness, they wanted a place to offload their civilians so their ships could actually be useful in the fight, and Rannoch's the only place that would work for that.

 

The Quarians' decision makes more sense than the Geth's, but all the secrecy and lone wolf tactics was their major problem (IMO). The Admiralty should have told the other species what they were planning. Even if Shepard was unable to convince the Council to send aid, at least the galaxy would have known that the Quarians weren't abandoning them to die while they flew away in their Migrant Fleet.

 

If the player sides with the Quarians, he/she has to spend time after Rannoch trying to smooth over relations between them and the rest of the galaxy (the interview with Diana Allers, etc.). Not as much as the Geth obviously, but enough time and effort that could have been used for something else if their leadership had just been upfront about the whole thing. 

 

At least the Quarians made a choice that was reasonable, they didn't try and hide from the Reapers like the Geth or Leviathans, nor did they try and hold the galaxy hostage to try and get concessions out of the other species like the Krogan.

Batarians get predictably annihilated offscreen for being a comical isolationist pariah state.

 

It would have been nice to actually see the Batarians in a light that wasn't racist, slaver, jerk-hole for the entire trilogy, though the fall of Karshan at least made sense in terms of the established lore. Indoctrinated high ranking officials throwing the military into disarray just as the Reapers invaded; cold and effective, a perfect example of the dangers posed by Reaper influence.

Leviathan sit in their goddamn ocean trench until someone comes along to tell them what a bunch of idiots they are for creating the whole mess by being the worst AI programmers in the universe.

 

Very true, their whole reasoning behind the creation of the Catalyst was face/palm inducing, but the survivors' actions in hiding from the Reapers every cycle had worked just fine up until this point. I can at least understand their inaction from that perspective. "If something's not broke, why try and fix it?"

Only the Rachni really commit and then don't do anything but prepare, but they get destroyed and their queen enslaved offscreen.

 

The Rachni are the only species to wholeheartedly agree to aid Shepard throughout the trilogy, and they are thanked even less for their help than the Asari or Krogan, who both actively derailed the galaxy's efforts to defeat the Reapers.    The narrative railroading that saw them wiped out off camera is mind numbingly moronic (IMO) compared to what we are shown of them in the first two games.

 

We are supposed to believe that a species who knew of the threat posed by the Reapers and devoted themselves to stopping them, a species that had survived two galactic wide attempts at genocide (the Protheans, and the Council), a species that had started with one Queen and two years later was executing rescue operations with Rachni built spacecraft, a species that could survive on some of the most hostile planets of the galaxy, far out of sight from any prying eyes, a species that is capable of producing combat capable soldiers in a matter of weeks and has been doing nothing but that for over two years (if the player spared the Queen) is completely taken out and utterly defeated before the third game even begins? 

 

That doesn't make sense, the Queen was smart, she knew that avoiding detection until the galaxy was ready to fight back was the best method of survival all the way back in ME 1, I don't see how she could have been discovered so easily when she took great pains to ensure her secrecy. The only way I can justify that writer fiat is if the Reapers knew the threat posed by the Rachni. How they over any other species in the galaxy; even Mary Sue humans; needed to be taken out first and they sent their entire armada scouring systems until they located the Rachni and overwhelmed them with sheer numbers. 

[Vortex13]

Sure, I can buy the "Humans are special" BS to a point but to have humans within a few decades be a match to species that have been gathering resources and expanding their populations for centuries breaks the suspension of belief factor when the premise of the series is humans being very new to galactic society. The thing that attracted me and many others to the ME series was not the thought of humans dominating everything, it was the well designed and thought out aliens and their respective strengths and cultures.

 

It was the T.V. spotlights on Asari Biotics and Salarian intelligence that caught my attention. The ME2-3 human worship that gave humans more fire power than established species and Biotics rivaling the naturally Biotic Asari really crush the premise and fantasy of the series. What is the point of creating all of these unique alien cultures and abilities if humans are going to be automatically better than them? Human worship is something that needs to be left behind in Andromeda.

 

 

This, especially the bolded part. Why bother creating species like the Rachni, Thorian, Volus, etc. if you are going to just ignore them, or make them utterly pointless compared to us? I mean, if species like the Elcor and Hanar are only there to be background pieces or joke/meme races then why even waste the effort of making them in the first place? 

 

 

Even the grim darkness of Warhammer: 40K has more diversity and depth to it's alien races (Matt Ward shenanigans notwithstanding) and the humans in that setting have an actual god-like being leading them and an entire army of Mary Sues (Ultra Marines) running around.

[Catastrophy]

The Asari are like:

 

"Ohh please valiant hero of the Alliance! Save us from deletion and we will be sooo grateful!!!" (All Asari nod and assume sexy pose)

 

Meanwhile the matriarchs watch the events unfold: "Hahaha! Look at all these alien monkeys springing into action! They are dying by the thousands for some alien love! Soon we will rule them all!"

[In Exile]

Besides the gaping plothole of the Reapers not taking the Citadel and shutting down the relay network you also have to wonder about the relays themselves.

 

ME2 gives us the Omega 4 relay for which you need the IFF, because otherwise it's too inaccurate and throws you into debris. When you start the invasion, why not modify each relay similarly at the local level? I think it's the height of stupidity that the Reapers wouldn't be able to interface with a relay and locally reprogram it or shut it down (just like the holokid not being able to control the Citadel), but even if you accept this, you can still recreate the Omega 4 situation by simply moving a debris field next to each relay. Reapers can still use them, everyone else gets shredded. Boom, war over, we're screwed.

 

Or if even that's too much trouble, just station a damn Reaper at the relay. A capital ship Reaper can take on multiple fleets by itself. I know we don't visit every possible system or even cluster in known space but are there more than 1000 relays being used by this cycle? I don't think so. Have a Reaper stand watch and shred everything that comes through. When enough ships have bitten the space dust, there's your debris field to shred the rest.

 

Finally the Reapers don't need to blitz everyone anyway.  Blockade one or two clusters at a time, harvest it, move on to the next. There's precisely dick the rest of the galaxy can do about it, and given their insanely moronic apathy and stagnation when they're not personally being liquified, it's likely they'll just grab a pint and hope all of this blows over. The Reapers don't need to rush. What, are they missing their sitcoms?

 

The ME3 reapers don't make sense because Bioware set up their invasion in a way that required them to clutch the idiot ball tighter than ever to fail. ME1-ME2 seemed to be building up to an idea that the reapers - having to travel physically to the galaxy rather than via the Citadel Relay, and without cutting off communications - would be substantially weaker and, therefore, potentially able to be defeated in a stand-up fight. 

 

ME3 drops that notion entirely - the reapers are unstoppable engines of genocidal death - so to then the plot requires them to act in ways that are totally idiotic to move the plot forward. Like not dedicating two capital ships to protect the Geth, etc. 

[In Exile]

This, especially the bolded part. Why bother creating species like the Rachni, Thorian, Volus, etc. if you are going to just ignore them, or make them utterly pointless compared to us? I mean, if species like the Elcor and Hanar are only there to be background pieces or joke/meme races then why even waste the effort of making them in the first place? 

 

 

Even the grim darkness of Warhammer: 40K has more diversity and depth to it's alien races (Matt Ward shenanigans notwithstanding) and the humans in that setting have an actual god-like being leading them and an entire army of Mary Sues (Ultra Marines) running around.

 

The point of the series was always that humans are special. But it was going to be that we're special vs. other races because we're clever. In ME1, the highlight of that was that (1) we were really good at BS (we projected a lot more power than we had, and the rest of the Citadel didn't wise up yet) and (2) we were unconventional in how we approached problems (we developed aircraft carries). 

 

That was our planet of hats tropes. The turians had a superior military society, the volus were better at organizing an economic, the asari were better diplomats and had biotics... and we were really good at making adjustments. 

 

Then that got dropped for a far weirder humans are special trope in ME2, but humanity also got totally put on a bus both in ME2 and especially in ME3. So I don't get where all this humans are special complaining is coming from. By ME3, there wasn't much to it. 

[CrutchCricket]

 ME1-ME2 seemed to be building up to an idea that the reapers - having to travel physically to the galaxy rather than via the Citadel Relay, and without cutting off communications - would be substantially weaker and, therefore, potentially able to be defeated in a stand-up fight. 

I don't think that's what they were building up to, it was always about delaying them long enough to prepare.

 

Not that the idea doesn't have merit. Reapers ambush every cycle for millennia. You don't generally bother with ambushes if you can just walk up to someone and curb-stomp them.

 

On the other hand Sovereign comes across as a nigh-cosmic horror from the start. I don't think it would be satisfying if he were just talking trash. Actually I know that's not satisfying because that's what ended up happening.

 

I think the real meat of the problem is we have a cosmic horror story overshadowing a power fantasy/space adventure.  We can go on ad nauseum about the endings and the idiot balls that preceded it but at the core, this is the issue. A mishmash of genres and stories they wanted to tell that results in unstoppable force vs immovable object. Stupidity on one or both sides is the only thing that can follow.

[Torgette]

The point of the series was always that humans are special. But it was going to be that we're special vs. other races because we're clever. In ME1, the highlight of that was that (1) we were really good at BS (we projected a lot more power than we had, and the rest of the Citadel didn't wise up yet) and (2) we were unconventional in how we approached problems (we developed aircraft carries). 

 

That was our planet of hats tropes. The turians had a superior military society, the volus were better at organizing an economic, the asari were better diplomats and had biotics... and we were really good at making adjustments. 

 

Then that got dropped for a far weirder humans are special trope in ME2, but humanity also got totally put on a bus both in ME2 and especially in ME3. So I don't get where all this humans are special complaining is coming from. By ME3, there wasn't much to it. 

 

The Reapers liked us because we create chaos, to them we're just a more capable Rachni and therefore worthy of corrupting and ascending. We're still not defeating the Reapers on our own, that much is for certain.

[In Exile]

I don't think that's what they were building up to, it was always about delaying them long enough to prepare.

 

Not that the idea doesn't have merit. Reapers ambush every cycle for millennia. You don't generally bother with ambushes if you can just walk up to someone and curb-stomp them.

 

On the other hand Sovereign comes across as a nigh-cosmic horror from the start. I don't think it would be satisfying if he were just talking trash. Actually I know that's not satisfying because that's what ended up happening.

 

I think the real meat of the problem is we have a cosmic horror story overshadowing a power fantasy/space adventure.  We can go on ad nauseum about the endings and the idiot balls that preceded it but at the core, this is the issue. A mishmash of genres and stories they wanted to tell that results in unstoppable force vs immovable object. Stupidity on one or both sides is the only thing that can follow.

Yeah, absolutely. But the problem goes deeper than that. In the space power fantasy, you can just handwave away why "this cycle" is special and can kick reaper ass. Some people would complain, but most knew what they signed up for setting-wise. The bigger problem comes in when you get all this global Holocaust imagery - and Bioware went wild with creating more horrid genocide/body-horrir in ME2-ME3 - and then you try an add a veneer of hopeless sacrifice to the whole ordeal while making each individual mission an unparalleled triumph. This is why moments like Thessia get a huge WTF from the playerbase. Because everything comes down to winning, when you're the protagonist. Take Rannoch. The reapers pillage the galaxy... and our Crowning Moment of Awesome ™ is nuking one from orbit so that Shepard can throw some one-liners at it. 

[Master Warder Z_]

Well if we go by the various depictions of the Alliance navy in its showings across the series from ME1-3 and take in statistical loss ratio from the codex's in ME 3 the Alliance at its peak of power pre ME 1 contained within it roughly 9 fleets worth of forces each broken down into individual flotillas.

The composition of the flotilla being 4 to 6 Frigates per Cruiser.

So if we go by our modern numerical placing into Flotilla with 3 being assigned per squadron of the fleet and there being 8 squadrons per fleet we make a rough guess at the navy's total size which is 144 frigates per fleet, 24 cruisers per fleet and a undetermined amount of carriers, support craft and etc per fleet.

That breaks down roughly assuming all fleets share the same bare bones composition to over 1200 frigates and over 200 cruisers.

So...Humanity being a major military power comes as no surprise if you apply mathematics

[Vortex13]

The point of the series was always that humans are special. But it was going to be that we're special vs. other races because we're clever. In ME1, the highlight of that was that (1) we were really good at BS (we projected a lot more power than we had, and the rest of the Citadel didn't wise up yet) and (2) we were unconventional in how we approached problems (we developed aircraft carries). 

 

That was our planet of hats tropes. The turians had a superior military society, the volus were better at organizing an economic, the asari were better diplomats and had biotics... and we were really good at making adjustments. 

 

Then that got dropped for a far weirder humans are special trope in ME2, but humanity also got totally put on a bus both in ME2 and especially in ME3. So I don't get where all this humans are special complaining is coming from. By ME3, there wasn't much to it. 

 

 

The "Humans are special" trope was still very much alive in ME 3. Even if we ignore the Reapers' interest in us because of our superior genetic diversity, we are still left with the game's focus on taking back Earth.

 

Earth, a planet that up until the last 30 minutes of the game had no tactical significance to the war. Earth, a planet completely under Reaper control, instead of hotly contested like Thessia, or Palavan. Earth a planet smack dab in the middle of enemy territory. And yet the first or second thing out of Shepard's or the military commanders' mouth when going to recruit aid for the galactic alliance was (in essence): "I need you to drop what you are doing and come help me Take Back Earth." Forget the fact that the Turian home world was suffering far more damage than ours because they were holding their ground, or that they actually still had some semblance of supply lines; no Earth is more important. The only reason why we go enlist the aid of the Krogan is so that the Turians can leave their defendable position to try and push into Reaper central, for no other reason than "It's Earth yo."

 

There is also the part about Admiral Hackett being the de-facto leader of the assembled fleets. Why is he in charge again? Here is a man that, in his own words, "has been in charge of the most devastating losses in human history" and yet the galaxy is deferring to his orders. I'm not saying that he was incompetent, but the Turian Admirals seemed to be doing a better job at holding the Reapers at bay that he was doing; in fact all Hackett was really doing was watching over the construction of the Crucible.

 

 

Speaking of the Crucible, you would think that it would be the sole reason why the alliance was needed; and in some cases the dialog reflects that; but in other places, like when Shepard meets with Primarch Vicctus, or is talking with Wrex; the Krogan leader; or Tali; a high ranking general in the Quarian fleet; etc. its all about how "We need to take back Earth". Luckily the Reapers got the memo about the importance of humanity's home world in time and was able to move the MacGuffin there for the end of the game, because if they didn't, it would have looked really, really stupid for the allied galaxy to go charging towards a lost cause with absolutely no significance to the war at large. 

[Master Warder Z_]

Well Harbinger was at earth too whom was presumably the top Reaper pre ending/ Leviathan

[Ahriman]

There is also the part about Admiral Hackett being the de-facto leader of the assembled fleets. Why is he in charge again? Here is a man that, in his own words, "has been in charge of the most devastating losses in human history" and yet the galaxy is deferring to his orders. I'm not saying that he was incompetent, but the Turian Admirals seemed to be doing a better job at holding the Reapers at bay that he was doing; in fact all Hackett was really doing was watching over the construction of the Crucible.

Good thing you are not asking why Shepard was commanding united fleet.

"Be ready on my signal. Fire." ironically it perfectly shows his level of knowledge in space combat.

[Seboist]

Good thing you are not asking why Shepard was commanding united fleet.

"Be ready on my signal. Fire." ironically it perfectly shows his level of knowledge in space combat.

 

ME2 showed how clueless Shepard was at space combat when he orders a thannix equipped SR-2 to get in close to fire again at the collector vessel.

 

The guy is a glorified corporal that has the ability to order the ship around.

[Tyrannosaurus Rex]

ME2 showed how clueless Shepard was at space combat when he orders a thannix equipped SR-2 to get in close to fire again at the collector vessel.

 

The guy is a glorified corporal that has the ability to order the ship around.

 

I like how the non-upgraded version of the space duel has Joker actually showing off his piloting skils.

 

That Thane dies is good too.