718 réponses à ce sujet

[txgoldrush]

An issue was raised about how Shepard was needed to initiate an ending and why was TIM even there.  Well let me ask this.

 

During the ME series we learned that in previous cycles the Reapers first attacked and took control of the Citadel.  The keepers were used to trigger the process.  From the Citadel the Reapers could turn on and off various mass relays to isolate systems so the reapers could attack them one by one.  In ME1 we also learned that Saren was needed because the keepers no longer responded to commands.

 

So my question is this.  When TIM goes to the Citadel in it's original location the Reapers decide to close up the Citadel and move it to Earth.  This naturally leads to a few questions and observations:

 

1) TIM was clearly needed to close the arms just as Saren was.  So another data point that shows the Reapers and/or catalyst can't do things without outside help.

2) Now the big hole.  The Reapers (with or without the catalyst) clearly has control over the Citadel.  So why didn't the Reapers shut down the other mass relays like they did in previous cycles preventing the crucible from ever getting there?

 

Just even more space magic.  But I'm OK with space magic.

Not a plot hole....2 things.

 

The Illusive Man is in control of the Citadel and he needs the Crucible to go with his plan. Remember TIM is at the controls and he has some resistance of his indoctrination.

 

Second, the Reapers are engaged in battles on other worlds, such as Tuchanka and Sur'Kesh and are approaching Rannoch, so cutting their own supply lines may not be the best idea. Prothean cycle was divide and conquer, current cycle was a blitz.

[themikefest]

The Illusive Man is in control of the Citadel and he needs the Crucible to go with his plan. Remember TIM is at the controls and he has some resistance of his indoctrination.

How is TIM controlling the Citadel if the catalyst controls him? Didn't the catalyst say, 'we already controlled him'?

[dorktainian]

Yes TIM is indoctrinated, it's flagged much earlier in the game.

 

FWIW I love the original ending.  It's the ending Bioware wanted to show us.  The relays destroyed.  Galactic civilisation in chaos.  Play it right and you still get the breath scene.  Very Bittersweet.  The EC is rubbish.

[Rhaenyss]

How is TIM controlling the Citadel if the catalyst controls him? Didn't the catalyst say, 'we already controlled him'?

 

He probably meant "control" as in physically push couple of buttons to open/close Citadel, etc. Like a proxy who is physically on the Citadel, since the Catalyst/the reapers can't do it.

[Dantriges]

Yeah that totally makes sense. The Reapers designed the Citdel deliberately as a honeypot with a trapdoor to dark space and relay network controls, then the Catalyst said "nice place I make camp there for the next billion years" and they totally forgot give him administrator rights or at least to install the reaper version of Back Orifice.

 

But yeah that´s actually what we saw.

 

The Citadel wasn´t Leviathan design. No one, Reapers, Catalyst or Leviathans ever said something like that and if the Leviathan knew where the Catalyst was stting around without defenses, they would have probably paid him a visit. Or tell Shepard "BTW dear thrall, eh I mean ally, this thing you hang out in, is actually the intelligence´s hiding place."

Besides the station isn´t really suitable for them. Even if the Citadel could hold water instead of air above the wards, 7 meters is just enough for a Leviathan to put their feet/tentacles in.

[Goodmongo]

Not a plot hole....2 things.

 

The Illusive Man is in control of the Citadel and he needs the Crucible to go with his plan. Remember TIM is at the controls and he has some resistance of his indoctrination.

 

Second, the Reapers are engaged in battles on other worlds, such as Tuchanka and Sur'Kesh and are approaching Rannoch, so cutting their own supply lines may not be the best idea. Prothean cycle was divide and conquer, current cycle was a blitz.

 

Anytime you have to come up with a change that means it's a plot hole.  Point is very simple.  The Reapers control the Citadel.  The Citadel controls turning off and on the mass relays.  So why don't they do it????

 

Move the citadel to a system and turn off that relay.  If some Reapers have to get there then turn it on for them.  Sorry but you did not explain it at all.

[Goodmongo]

How is TIM controlling the Citadel if the catalyst controls him? Didn't the catalyst say, 'we already controlled him'?

 

Let me rephrase.  TIM pushes the buttons just like Saren did.  The catalyst and Reapers tell TIM what buttons to push just like they told Saren and the keepers before him.  Clear now?

 

 Drag something new out only at the time it's needed, well, that's really bad.

 

Oh you mean like the dead army?  BTW LoTR also had their indoctrination going on.

[GreyLycanTrope]

Not a plot hole....2 things.

The Illusive Man is in control of the Citadel and he needs the Crucible to go with his plan. Remember TIM is at the controls and he has some resistance of his indoctrination.

Second, the Reapers are engaged in battles on other worlds, such as Tuchanka and Sur'Kesh and are approaching Rannoch, so cutting their own supply lines may not be the best idea. Prothean cycle was divide and conquer, current cycle was a blitz.

The Reapers are in control which is why they moved it to earth and closed the arms to begin with. TIM's plan would require the arms to be opened for it to work something his indoctrination is preventing him from doing.

Reapers have been known to not have supply lines, which is one of the reasons they're so though to fight. They show up harvest and move on elsewhere. Plus disabling the network never really hurt their mobility in the past it's very likely they just disabled to use of the relays to anyone who wasn't themselves, similarly to how the Omega relay was guarded by a specific IFF. And before you say anything about the fleet having the Reaper IFFs cause of the Normandy the odds of the Reapers not altering the specifics of that signal are pretty slim.

[Reorte]

 

Oh you mean like the dead army?  BTW LoTR also had their indoctrination going on.

Possibly, it depends how plausible you feel it is in-universe. It's impact on the overall story is pretty low though.

[KaiserShep]

Yes TIM is indoctrinated, it's flagged much earlier in the game.

 

FWIW I love the original ending.  It's the ending Bioware wanted to show us.  The relays destroyed.  Galactic civilisation in chaos.  Play it right and you still get the breath scene.  Very Bittersweet.  The EC is rubbish.

 

Eh, the ending they "wanted" to show us just seemed like really abrupt, slapdash nonsense, like they ran out of time and just had to put something together to just wrap it up. It had the distinct flavor of a quick and seemingly thoughtless torching of the entire setting with no real rhyme or reason how anyone got anywhere. The biggest one is the Normandy itself. I mean, they're supposed to meet at a rendezvous point with the rest of the fleet when they fall back, yet somehow, the fastest ship in the Alliance fleet utterly fails to do this? C'mon. The EC's greatest weakness, to me, is that it bothered to retain any of this stuff at all, and even tried to reconcile the teleporting companions with the evac scene. 

[dorktainian]

Somebody should post Smudboys ending vids on here.  They are Epic.

 

Bioware should have stuck to it's guns.  The relays destroyed, The universe screwed (but still there are survivors).  With as huge a threat as the reapers making them just 'go away' was and still is lame.

[Reorte]

Somebody should post Smudboys ending vids on here.  They are Epic.

 

Bioware should have stuck to it's guns.  The relays destroyed, The universe screwed (but still there are survivors).  With as huge a threat as the reapers making them just 'go away' was and still is lame.

And that would make it any less lame? It's the sort of thing that might well be the endpiece of a long drawn-out campaign against the Reapers, but as it is it's still just making them go away, just with everything else being gone to hell. Entirely arbitrary. Just because it would've (possibly) been a plausible outcome for an enemy that the galaxy could only just defeat doesn't make it a plausible one for what we got, so all we're left with with it is "I prefer things to be a mess", which I find rather weird.

[Goodmongo]

I don't think the Reapers would go away and leave the galaxy alone just because Shepard told them so.

 

 

So what part of control is not understood?  If Shepard controls the reapers then that means they follow his orders.  otherwise that ending would be renamed to "Shepard tries to tell the reapers what to do and they ignore him" ending.

[Reorte]

So what part of control is not understood?  If Shepard controls the reapers then that means they follow his orders.  otherwise that ending would be renamed to "Shepard tries to tell the reapers what to do and they ignore him" ending.

Although it does fall foul of the "destroy with no consequences" question, i.e. why not chose Control and order the Reapers straight into the nearest star.

[Rhaenyss]

Although it does fall foul of the "destroy with no consequences" question, i.e. why not chose Control and order the Reapers straight into the nearest star.

 

Who says she doesn't? It's up to you to headcanon fixing the galaxy with the reapers, then driving them straight into stars. I know that the speech at the end implies that she keeps watch, but it's up to you tbh.

[MrFob]

Who says she doesn't? It's up to you to headcanon fixing the galaxy with the reapers, then driving them straight into stars. I know that the speech at the end implies that she keeps watch, but it's up to you tbh.

 

Well, the EC epilogue puts a bit of a dent into that though, doesn't it? It outright tells us that the Shep AI will stay around and rule, either with a benign or an iron fist, depending on you paragon/renegade points.

Unless of course, you are willing to ignore that epilogue in favor of your head cannon (in which case I recommend starting the practice earlier than the epilogues ).

[KaiserShep]

Somebody should post Smudboys ending vids on here. They are Epic.

Bioware should have stuck to it's guns. The relays destroyed, The universe screwed (but still there are survivors). With as huge a threat as the reapers making them just 'go away' was and still is lame.

Simply blowing up the relays doesn't really make much sense, since it was established that doing so obliterates the systems they're in. But the relays are still inoperable in destroy anyway, just without totally detonating, so I'm not sure what the issue is, since to that end, the senseless nonsense was removed. We don't really see anyone even attempting to fix them. The most you could do is imagine it.

Not sure why the galaxy being screwed is better, but I keep forgetting that downer endings are like a thing with people these days. You can still technically make that happen though, so like, we can embrace options and whatnot.

[themikefest]

I've posted a couple of time that for me to choose control, I want Shepard, in the epilogue. mention she will help rebuild the galaxy and when that's done, fly the reapers into the nearest sun with a slide showing that happening. Since the extended cut doesn't have that, I will stick with destroy.

[Dantriges]

I don't think the Reapers would go away and leave the galaxy alone just because Shepard told them so.

 

Why not? The Catalyst already acknowledged that his soultion, the harvest doesn´t work anymore because of reasons and one of the three options "destroy" wouldn´t solve the organic-synthetic problem, which he conjured up out of his holographic butt, anyways.

 

Shepalyst doesnt really sound like Shepard anymore. You could conjure up headcanon that  it´s actually the Catalyst using a new visual image and the memories  from the idiot who loaded themselves up.

[Rhaenyss]

Well, she does say over and over again "I will...", which implies a promise, and not something that must happen, or did happen. So for me there's nothing that goes against my headcanons. I actually like the Control for that reason as well, you can have a lot of variations in your own personal headcanons, like Dantriges with his "Catalyst using a new visual image and the memories from the idiot who loaded themselves up.", as well as variations in the speech for paragons and renegades.

[Dantriges]

It´s not my personal headcanon. Just an example what could be possible if we the see slideshow as polite suggestions. According to Shep AIs speech the old Shep is dead and it has a broader perspective and keeps the Reapers around as guardians or an army that none shall dare oppose. Yeah it could be that "and then after we made one final photo with Reapers and Citadel, I totally flew them all into nearby stars." Theoretically.

[fraggle]

Aaand that's the beauty of the ending! Speculations Headcanons for everyone!

[Dantriges]

I want a headcannon.

[fraggle]

Now that's messed up