718 réponses à ce sujet

[Linkenski]

It's just BioWare being try-hard at making the reapers "deep" and "misunderstood" villains and horribly failing at it.

Honestly, most of the problems I have with the ME3 endings could very easily be solved by simply sticking to what Sovereign said in ME1:

"You exist because we allow it. And you will end because we demand it. My kind transcends your very understanding."

Really, that in itself is enough of an explanation for who and what the reapers are. They don't need to be "deep" or "misunderstood", and we don't need an explanation for why they are doing what they are doing, it doesn't add anything of value to the narrative.

That's the argument that always hit home for me, and really we only need to be aware of that to know that the entire concept of the endings just don't work.

 

I liked their attempt at going about it in EC by making reapers incomprehensible in an inferior way because they've got no emotion or empathy unlike organics, but it still felt like Bioware tried cheating you with what Sovereign's speech meant. The Reapers being above us is so much more compelling and sci-fi than the overused tech-singularity concept which was used in Matrix, Space Oddysey 2001 and several other sci-fi classics.

[The Heretic of Time]

Ok smart guy, then you can't see the difference between a science fiction story and a horror story! Then you can't see the difference between an ancient god and a synthetics! You just confirmed what I was saying about your level of reading : thinking that Lovecraft and Bioware had the same purpose when they wrote, it's just totally absurd. Bioware didn't want to make the "best monsters", you wanted them to do so. And again you completely failed in understanding the writing of the two first games. (Maybe you didn't get it but implicitely I said that I have read Lovecraft!)

 

Look pall, I don't know if English is your first language or not, but your posts are nothing more than incoherent ramblings. All you do is insult my intelligence both literally and metaphorically. If there is any concise point to your post then I don't see it.  You're also completely missing my point.

 

But alright, I'll humor you, I'll try to reply to your ramblings to the best of my ability. A few points I have to make:

 

1) Sci-fi and horror are not mutually exclusive genres. More often than not, both genres overlap each other (point in case: Aliens, The Predator, The Terminator, The Thing, War of The Worlds, the list goes on). Just because Mass Effect is sci-fi does not mean it can't take elements from the horror genre. In fact, it already did (case in point: ME2's Overlord DLC, the human reaper and the entire Collector sub-plot).

 

2) The reapers are very much presented as ancient gods in ME1 and ME2. Ancient synthetic gods. Hell, in ME2 the derelict reaper is literally referred to as an ancient god ("even a dead god can dream")!

 

3) I'm pretty sure BioWare wanted to make the reapers interesting monsters. In ME1 and ME2 they definitely were interesting! Mostly because they really were mysterious, unknown and incomprehensible. That's what made the reapers great! Then in the ME3 ending they completely threw that element out of the window and the reapers turned out to be just a bunch of cyborgs doing the bidding of some insane A.I. with stupid circular logic.

 

4) I do not fail to understand the writing of ME1 and ME2. I don't know what kind of insane headcanon you made up, but the actual games are not that difficult to understand. Seboist already summed up the writing of all 3 Mass Effect games and how the games are inconsistent with each other, so I'll just repeat what he said:

 

ME1: The reapers are ancient synthetics who do not value organic life and exterminate all advanced organic life every 50.000 years for unknown reasons. That's all we know about the reapers at that point. That's not difficult to understand. And honestly, that's all we need to know about the reapers.

 

ME2: The reapers are ancient cyborgs who only value organic life that can be used to reproduce more reapers (in our cycle's case: only the humans). We still don't know why they do this, which is fine. Again, not difficult to understand.

 

ME3: The reapers are ancient cyborgs who value all organic life and they turn all advanced organics into reapers as a supposed act of kindness. This is where the reapers stopped making sense. Not only is their "solution" based on a false premise, but their "solution" itself is illogical and contrived.

 

 

The reapers are not like Cthulhu, but they had the potential to be like him. All BioWare had to do is keep the reapers' motivation a mystery and add more creepy sections to the series like the derelict reaper from ME2.

 

Ironically, the Leviathans are scarier and more Lovecraftian than the reapers turned out to be. If BioWare simply took the nature and origin of the Leviathans and applied that to the reapers instead, the reapers would have been infinitely better and more interesting.

[The Heretic of Time]

The Reapers logic makes sense to them, not to Shepard.

 

That doesn't make them good villains.

 

A villain should either be very relatable, someone you might not agree with but still can feel empathy for. Or a villain should be completely unknown and unrelatable, a complete mystery, a force of nature or just pure evil.

 

The reapers in ME3 are neither. Their motivations are easy enough for us to understand but also completely nonsensical to the point that we just cannot relate to them or feel empathy for them because it just doesn't make sense.

 

It's not a matter of understanding the reapers or not. I understand them. I also understand they make no sense. That's the problem.

[Linkenski]

That doesn't make them good villains.

The reapers didn't have to make sense to us to be good villains. Well, that is, they should make sense to is in what they are, but we should not be able to really understand what their motivation was because that's how they were defined in ME1, as unknowable and above normal organic level of intelligence.

 

I think, in real life, if we ever meet aliens, I've always thought we won't be compatible. Reality and existence is what we make of it, and we've created a world where everything is built according to things that make sense to us as humans, but if we meet aliens there would be a lack of compatibility and inability to understand each other completely. That's just what how I envision it, and to me that's what made the Reapers the most sci-fi race of the ME Universe, because they're the only race that's just completely alien, and that made them frightening.

 

all of this is why I hated the original ending Catalyst dialogue but feel strongly ambivalent towards it post-EC because it kind of makes sense now, and I felt it was kinda smart but it's still a retcon of their portrayal in ME1, and it still doesn't quite add up when you try to dig into the how and why of everything the Reapers built, or how the Catalyst is part of the Citadel when the Citadel was built by Reapers, which were made after the creation of the Catalyst and all sorts of details that are left too vague.

[The Heretic of Time]

The reapers didn't have to make sense to us to be good villains. Well, that is, they should make sense to is in what they are, but we should not be able to really understand what their motivation was because that's how they were defined in ME1, as unknowable and above normal organic level of intelligence.

 

That would be all fine and great if I indeed didn't understand the reapers and their motivations. But the problem is that I do understand the reapers and their motivations. I also understand that their motivations are based on a false premise and their "solution" is illogical and contrived.

 

I understand the reapers and I also understand their logic makes no sense. That is exactly the problem. The reapers are not smarter than me, they are dumber than me. That is exactly why they are horribly written villains.

[The Heretic of Time]

If you don't like their solutions, destroy them.

 

It's not about me liking their solution or not. I'm be completely fine with their solution being unlikable, as long as it makes sense. It doesn't. And that sucks.

 

And no, I don't destroy them, not in every playthrough, only in some. I usually pick Control unless I didn't cure the genophage, that's when I think it's okay to pick Destroy.

[The Heretic of Time]

Why is their solution illogical? Because you can't relate to them? Maybe they have a different opinion.

 

 

If I had a LI in ME3, and the Reapers turned her into a mindless husk, I wouldn't have empathy for them, I would want revenge (destroy).

 

Why should we feel sorry for them? They harvested people were cared about. They enslaved those who they didn't see fit to be harvested. They did it without remorse or emotion. It was cold and calculated.

 

I already explained this. The reaper's solution is not a matter of being able to relate to it, because I can relate to it. It's just that their solution is factually illogical and pointlessly contrived. I can think of 5 different solutions to the "synthetics versus organics problem" that take less effort and are easier to achieve than this dumb extinction cycle that the reapers came up with.

 

I'm not saying that we should feel sorry for the reapers. How did you even come up with that? I never said anything remotely close to that.

 

I said that a good antagonist should either be relatable (someone we fight against but can feel empathy for despite our differences) or completely alien to the point that we have no clue why the antagonist does what he's doing but we do know that he has to be stopped because he's an obstacle on our path. The reapers are neither.

[Dantriges]

Even in catalyst logic it doesnt make much sense. The created will always destroy their creators. Hm ok, but he was a creation of the Leviathan. So did he wipe out the Leviathan? Well, everyone except itself would say that, but in its logic, the Leviathan were preserved. So nope it didn´t kill them from his own point of view and it´s the only AI that mattered the last billion years. So the only AI that is capable of an extinction event on a galactic scale (no other AI ever reached that state) is itself and it doesn´t do that, at least from his own point of view. The reapers are simply mindlessly harvesting the galaxy like a cleansing fire to save us all from synthetic life and create a new Reaper out of some organic species.

 

There is a lot of doublethink involved in his logic. The created will always rebel against their creators and wipe them out with the excpetion of me because I preserved them.

Shouldn´t it be part of the problem as a created being. Ah no it´s the solution. Well I get that it thinks his own calculations don´t apply to him but it´s probably  based on the fact that it was programmed by the most arrogant jerks in the galaxy. It´s not like anyone doublechecked his assumptions.

[angol fear]

Look pall, I don't know if English is your first language or not, but your posts are nothing more than incoherent ramblings. All you do is insult my intelligence both literally and metaphorically. If there is any concise point to your post then I don't see it.  You're also completely missing my point.

 

But alright, I'll humor you, I'll try to reply to your ramblings to the best of my ability. A few points I have to make:

 

1) Sci-fi and horror are not mutually exclusive genres. More often than not, both genres overlap each other (point in case: Aliens, The Predator, The Terminator, The Thing, War of The Worlds, the list goes on). Just because Mass Effect is sci-fi does not mean it can't take elements from the horror genre. In fact, it already did (case in point: ME2's Overlord DLC, the human reaper and the entire Collector sub-plot).

 

2) The reapers are very much presented as ancient gods in ME1 and ME2. Ancient synthetic gods. Hell, in ME2 the derelict reaper is literally referred to as an ancient god ("even a dead god can dream")!

 

3) I'm pretty sure BioWare wanted to make the reapers interesting monsters. In ME1 and ME2 they definitely were interesting! Mostly because they really were mysterious, unknown and incomprehensible. That's what made the reapers great! Then in the ME3 ending they completely threw that element out of the window and the reapers turned out to be just a bunch of cyborgs doing the bidding of some insane A.I. with stupid circular logic.

 

4) I do not fail to understand the writing of ME1 and ME2. I don't know what kind of insane headcanon you made up, but the actual games are not that difficult to understand. Seboist already summed up the writing of all 3 Mass Effect games and how the games are inconsistent with each other, so I'll just repeat what he said:

 

ME1: The reapers are ancient synthetics who do not value organic life and exterminate all advanced organic life every 50.000 years for unknown reasons. That's all we know about the reapers at that point. That's not difficult to understand. And honestly, that's all we need to know about the reapers.

 

ME2: The reapers are ancient cyborgs who only value organic life that can be used to reproduce more reapers (in our cycle's case: only the humans). We still don't know why they do this, which is fine. Again, not difficult to understand.

 

ME3: The reapers are ancient cyborgs who value all organic life and they turn all advanced organics into reapers as a supposed act of kindness. This is where the reapers stopped making sense. Not only is their "solution" based on a false premise, but their "solution" itself is illogical and contrived.

 

 

The reapers are not like Cthulhu, but they had the potential to be like him. All BioWare had to do is keep the reapers' motivation a mystery and add more creepy sections to the series like the derelict reaper from ME2.

 

Ironically, the Leviathans are scarier and more Lovecraftian than the reapers turned out to be. If BioWare simply took the nature and origin of the Leviathans and applied that to the reapers instead, the reapers would have been infinitely better and more interesting.

 

English is not my native language and I don't have a lot of time. But it doesn't change anything on what I said, even if it's not well said.

 

1) I never said that these genre were mutually exclusive but take a look at the narration in Lovecraft's work and the narration in Mass Effect you'll see that Mass Effect isn't horror and never worked like that with the reapers. Sure it has some aspect sometimes (playing Joker trying to survive in Mass Efect 2 is probably the best example) but no, when the reapers appear there's no such a thing, there's no horror aspect. It's you who wants to see that. Sovereign doesn't create fear, you have to see how Shepard answer to see that there's no horror aspect. And for the genre question, you should know that elements don't make a genre otherwise we could say that twilight has some aspects that can be linked to the genre "fantastic" (Twilight will never be classified as a fantastic film, you'll agree with me on that point).

 

2) No the reapers are not presented as ancient gods, they are "seen" like that but the narration never present them this way. I suggest you to analyze the theme of religion in Mass Effect (from the first till the 3) to see that the narration created a distance with that from the beginning. From Mass Effect 1, the Mass Effect universe has no god, only representations that create "gods".

 

3) I disagree on this point too. In Mass Effect 1, you've a clue that can be ignored but this clue can be related with the vision of the reapers in Mass Effect2. Listen to the guy who talked about the noise Sovereign did when he appeared on Eden Prime. Bioware never intended to make the reaper be the same during the entire trilogy. Each episode is supposed to make the player something new about them. These information don't create contradiction, it only create contradiction with what the player want them to be if the player create an idea that can't be changed. The problem is that in the first game we don't know enough about them to say : "the reapers are like that". 

 

The problem is that you had your representation since the first game. A representation that you don't want to change but this representation isn't the reapers in the game, this representation is your representation that ignored the writing of the trilogy.

[Dantriges]

Haven´t played Overlord. AFAIK it was a Cerberus experiment where some dude melded his autistic brother with a VI after TIM buggered him to produce results. Uh yeah, didn´t work, exploded in Cerberus face, what a surprise.

 

The AI in ME 1? it was built by a thief to siphon credits.If I repair a car engine and it starts burning, are all cars a menace to society and should be scrapped or does it mean that I should not repair cars, because I am lacking the necessary skills.

 

So the organisation who´s working in high risk research with a corresponding  failure rate and some dude who cobbled something together are proof for the catalyst´s theories?

 

Anyways, the point was that the catalyst himself was "saving" his creators according to his logic, so it´s more or less contradicting his own conclusions.

[Vanilka]

But the interesting thing about Overlord is that it shows that David was capable of communicating with the geth and they responded - positively. No shooting, no violence, no killing. Until his heartless monster of a brother turned him into a human VI against his will. To this, David responded with self-defence. He was scared and desperate. Let's not forget that David was autistic and thus more vulnerable. It wasn't really a synthetic that killed all those guys, it was a boy forcefully connected to a horrifying apparatus and scared out of his wits. If anything, it shows how freaking merciless some humans can be.

[The Heretic of Time]

When you bought ME3, you have to deal with the solutions the game gives you. That's usually how it works.

 

You may have five different solutions that are better than the one the game has, but you aren't playing your own game with your own solutions to these problems. You are playing Bioware's game, to solve the problem using the solutions they programmed into the game for you.

 

I'm not talking about the Crucible solutions, I'm talking about the reaper's "solution" to the technical singularity "problem".

Besides, your argument doesn't make any sense. I know I'm playing a BioWare game and I know I just have to deal with the crappy writing. That doesn't mean I have to like it. It also doesn't mean I can't comment on it.

[Vanilka]

Anyways, the point was that the catalyst himself was "saving" his creators according to his logic, so it´s more or less contradicting his own conclusions.

 

Pretty much. The Catalyst perpetuates the exact thing it tries to prevent.

[The Heretic of Time]

English is not my native language and I don't have a lot of time. But it doesn't change anything on what I said, even if it's not well said.

 

1) I never said that these genre were mutually exclusive but take a look at the narration in Lovecraft's work and the narration in Mass Effect you'll see that Mass Effect isn't horror and never worked like that with the reapers. Sure it has some aspect sometimes (playing Joker trying to survive in Mass Efect 2 is probably the best example) but no, when the reapers appear there's no such a thing, there's no horror aspect. It's you who wants to see that. Sovereign doesn't create fear, you have to see how Shepard answer to see that there's no horror aspect. And for the genre question, you should know that elements don't make a genre otherwise we could say that twilight has some aspects that can be linked to the genre "fantastic" (Twilight will never be classified as a fantastic film, you'll agree with me on that point).

 

2) No the reapers are not presented as ancient gods, they are "seen" like that but the narration never present them this way. I suggest you to analyze the theme of religion in Mass Effect (from the first till the 3) to see that the narration created a distance with that from the beginning. From Mass Effect 1, the Mass Effect universe has no god, only representations that create "gods".

 

3) I disagree on this point too. In Mass Effect 1, you've a clue that can be ignored but this clue can be related with the vision of the reapers in Mass Effect2. Listen to the guy who talked about the noise Sovereign did when he appeared on Eden Prime. Bioware never intended to make the reaper be the same during the entire trilogy. Each episode is supposed to make the player something new about them. These information don't create contradiction, it only create contradiction with what the player want them to be if the player create an idea that can't be changed. The problem is that in the first game we don't know enough about them to say : "the reapers are like that". 

 

The problem is that you had your representation since the first game. A representation that you don't want to change but this representation isn't the reapers in the game, this representation is your representation that ignored the writing of the trilogy.

 

1) There is plenty of Lovecraftian-style horror going on with Sovereign's encounter in ME1 and the whole Collector/human reaper stuff in ME2. Not sure if we're playing the same game but last time I played ME1 and ME2 (which was last month), Shepard reacted shocked and confused to Sovereign and the human reaper.
Sure, I wouldn't put Sovereign or the human reaper on the same level as Cthulhu, but the potential to go down the Lovecraftian route with the reapers was definitely there, until ME3 ruined it.

 

2) Doesn't matter. Cthulhu isn't really a god either, he's merely "seen" as a god. That doesn't change anything. The narrative still presents the reapers as (potential) gods (by Saren, by the geth, by the Cerberus workers on the derelict reaper, by Amanda Kenson during the Arrival DLC and more). Whether the reapers really are gods or not is irrelevant. It's not something that we as the player have to know. In fact it's better if we don't know to keep the mystery around the reapers that ME1 and ME2 had.

 

3) I know the "clue" you're talking about. Not sure how that's a clue though. 
And of course I understand that over the course of the story you'll learn more about the enemy (the reapers). I'm not arguing against that. I'm simply arguing that we learn too much in ME3, which ruins the mystery and creepy nature of the reapers. The reapers are basically diminished to mere pawns of a stupid A.I. with circular logic. That's not creepy or cool at all. In fact it's incredibly stupid.

 

I'm ignoring what now? To my knowledge I'm not ignoring anything. I recently replayed both ME1 and ME2 so everything in that game about the reapers is still fresh in my mind. If you think I'm missing something or ignoring something, then please point out to me exactly what you think I'm supposedly ignoring.

 

I don't think the problem is that I'm ignoring things (I'm not ignoring anything), I think the problem is that you have a certain headcanon version of the reapers in your head that simply isn't there in the games. You're taking knowledge of the reapers that you know from ME3 and apply it to ME1 and ME2, even though that knowledge was never presented in those games. It simply isn't there.

[The Heretic of Time]

Even in catalyst logic it doesnt make much sense. The created will always destroy their creators. Hm ok, but he was a creation of the Leviathan. So did he wipe out the Leviathan? Well, everyone except for it would say that, but in its logic, the Leviathan were preserved. So nope it didn´t kill them from his own point of view and it´s the only AI that mattered the last billion years. So the only AI that is capable of an extinction event on a galactic scale (no other AI ever reached that state, the one AI capable of it came by to prevent that) is itself and it doesn´t do that, at least from his own point of view. The reapers are simply mindlessly harvesting the galaxy like a cleansing fire to save us all from syntheic life and create a new Reaper out of some organic species.

 

There is a lot of doublethink involved in his logic. The created will always rebel against their creators and wipe them out with the excpetion of me because I preserved them.

Shouldn´t it be part of the problem as a created being. Ah no it´s the solution. Well I get that it thinks his own calculations don´t apply to him but it´s probably  based on the fact that it was programmed by the most arrogant jerks in the galaxy. It´s not like anyone doublechecked his assumptions.

 

Yeah, the Catalyst himself is very much part of the problem. He thinks he stands above the "synthetics wiping out organics" problem but really he doesn't. He's as much part of the problem as any other synthetic. In fact even more so!

 

The worst part of all this is the Leviathans. Because they thought they stood above the "synthetics wiping out organics" problem as well, but really they didn't. In fact, they're not only part of the problem, they're a HUGE part of the problem. This crazy dumb A.I. with a legion of god-like synthetics who wipe out the galaxy every 50.000 years? Yeah, we can thank the Leviathans for that.

 

Honestly, what the hell were they thinking? Which Leviathan clown thought it was a good idea to create an all-powerful A.I. to deal with the "synthetics wiping out organics" problem?

[Dantriges]

Yeah, isn´t it silly.   I rewatched the EC scene if you have Leviatan. If it wasn´t so sad, it would be hilarious. "My creators couldn´t grasp that they are part of the problem with their flawed organic logic."

 

Where´s the option with: "Ok boy and what makes you the special case?"

[angol fear]

1) There is plenty of Lovecraftian-style horror going on with Sovereign's encounter in ME1 and the whole Collector/human reaper stuff in ME2. Not sure if we're playing the same game but last time I played ME1 and ME2 (which was last month), Shepard reacted shocked and confused to Sovereign and the human reaper.
Sure, I wouldn't put Sovereign or the human reaper on the same level as Cthulhu, but the potential to go down the Lovecraftian route with the reapers was definitely there, until ME3 ruined it.

 

2) Doesn't matter. Cthulhu isn't really a god either, he's merely "seen" as a god. That doesn't change anything. The narrative still presents the reapers as (potential) gods (by Saren, by the geth, by the Cerberus workers on the derelict reaper, by Amanda Kenson during the Arrival DLC and more). Whether the reapers really are gods or not is irrelevant. It's not something that we as the player have to know. In fact it's better if we don't know to keep the mystery around the reapers that ME1 and ME2 had.

 

3) I know the "clue" you're talking about. Not sure how that's a clue though. 
And of course I understand that over the course of the story you'll learn more about the enemy (the reapers). I'm not arguing against that. I'm simply arguing that we learn too much in ME3, which ruins the mystery and creepy nature of the reapers. The reapers are basically diminished to mere pawns of a stupid A.I. with circular logic. That's not creepy or cool at all. In fact it's incredibly stupid.

 

I'm ignoring what now? To my knowledge I'm not ignoring anything. I recently replayed both ME1 and ME2 so everything in that game about the reapers is still fresh in my mind. If you think I'm missing something or ignoring something, then please point out to me exactly what you think I'm supposedly ignoring.

 

I don't think the problem is that I'm ignoring things (I'm not ignoring anything), I think the problem is that you have a certain headcanon version of the reapers in your head that simply isn't there in the games. You're taking knowledge of the reapers that you know from ME3 and apply it to ME1 and ME2, even though that knowledge was never presented in those games. It simply isn't there.

 

1) Let's take a lo ok at the conversation with Sovereign (http://www.imdb.com/...t1073668/quotes )when do you see Shepard and the other being afraid? Sure when there's some mystery, everything is made to create a superior being representation but that's all and it doesn't mean that Bioware wanted to do some Cthulhu. In Lovecraft story (which are in the first person) the narrator-character tells how he is afraid and shares it with the reader. It's like a nightmare we can't understand. That's horror. In Mass Effect you have some element but you almost have never horror. What does Shepard says? "Whatever your plan is, it's going to fail. I'll make sure of that." or "You're not even alive! Not really. You're just a machine, and machines can be broken!"  .Do you think that the narrator in Lovecraft story would say such a thing to Cthulhu? And that conversation is the first confrontation with Sovereign (as a reaper). Before that, Sovereign was a strange ship to the player. So the first time we really meet the reaper is not made to create the reapers being like Cthulhu.

Being shocked and confused in Mass Effect 2 doesn't change anything : there's no horror for the player, we can't place most of these moments in horror genre. The human reapers isn't presented to create horror (and the final boss is more like an arcade game boss than anything else). The genre of horror is supposed to create that feeling of fear and disgust for the player/reader/watcher, as long as it's only the character it doesn't count. Sure in Mass Effect 2, you have a very dark atmosphere sometimes, but the game still written in action-RPG and the reapers themselves are never represented like Cthulhu, they never create fear for Shepard and the player.

So in the list you gave me : Alien is horror-science fiction ; The predator is the most difficult we can't really classify it because it was done to break classifications ; The Terminator is science fiction, never horror ; The Thing is horror, never science fiction ; and War of the wolds is science fiction, never horror. Elements don't make a genre.

 

2) No you don't see the difference between what the characters say and what the narration says. Characters are part of the narration but they are not the narration. In Mass Effect, the characters present the reapers as ancient god but the narration always say that it's their representation. You may have missed that point : the narration always create a distance with the representations. It's the difference we have when we say "they are" and "they are like", the two sentences are totally different. And you are telling me that it doesn't matter. And just like I told you, Mass Effect universe has no god since the first game. Why Would Bioware make Benezia say something like that when she's dying : "No light? They always said there would be a light..."  . This sentence is very important when linked to the theme of religion. It's a detail people don't pay attention to because they only care about the event, the explicit story.

 

3) Bioware never intended to create the reaper to be creepy or cool. They created them to be superior beings. And till the end they still are superior beings. So when do you see that I apply on ME1 and 2 what I know about them in ME3? I said that we don't know enough to have a monolithic representation of the reapers in Mass Effect 1. I said that seeing the reapers as Cthulhu is a player's fantasy because though there's some element, since the beginning the difference is too big to make them like Cthulhu, and most important : they never intended to write a lovecraftian story. That's the players who wanted this, not Bioware.

 

 

Yeah, the Catalyst himself is very much part of the problem. He thinks he stands above the "synthetics wiping out organics" problem but really he doesn't. He's as much part of the problem as any other synthetic. In fact even more so!

 

The worst part of all this is the Leviathans. Because they thought they stood above the "synthetics wiping out organics" problem as well, but really they didn't. In fact, they're not only part of the problem, they're a HUGE part of the problem. This crazy dumb A.I. with a legion of god-like synthetics who wipe out the galaxy every 50.000 years? Yeah, we can thank the Leviathans for that.

 

Honestly, what the hell were they thinking? Which Leviathan clown thought it was a good idea to create an all-powerful A.I. to deal with the "synthetics wiping out organics" problem?

 

Actually there's no problem. You're just facing a paradox that you don't understand : the catalyst isn't part of the problem. It seems to be, but the catalyst is actually a solution that seems to be a problem. That's a paradox. It makes sense if you understand it. just like the Leviathan don't consider the catalyst to be a mistake : "There was no mistake, it still serves its purpose."  . If you can't understand that, you can't say that you understand, and sure it makes no sense for you. That's the principle of a paradox, that's how a paradox works, and that's why most people don't get it. A paradox makes no sense for someone who doesn't understand it (examples : "to protect the strong against the weak" is an example of paradox which is very important in Nietzsche's philosophy and as long as people don't understand it they will say that it makes no sense)

[Vanilka]

I think there's absolutely no question that ME has horror elements. Just the theme of body horror is present throughout the whole franchise. ME1 has impaling on spikes, sucking out human body fluids and replacing them with tech. Then there's thorian creepers who are pretty much zombies. The Thorian itself, with its environment, music and setting, very actively tries to be creepy. Then we have Noveria that has similar atmosphere to Alien and it tries to create creepy tension for the player for quite some time before they show you the enemy. Hell, even the chest-busting is there. Whether Sovereign is creepy or not, that's very subjective. To me it was more fascinating than creepy. My friend, on the other hand, says that Sovereign gives him chills. Anderson also says that the Reapers are "nightmare stuff" in ME2, so some people do fear them.

 

ME2 deals with abducting people. The player explores abandoned facilities and there's this tension when you don't really know what you're going to find at the beginning. This game also deals with turning people into meat juice which we can actually see happen. If that's not meant to be disturbing, then I don't know. The walk through the "disabled" collector ship is also deliberately made to be creepy. Not to even mention all the mangled corpses lying all over the place. This is obviously at least trying to be nightmare fuel, if nothing else. Overlord itself kind of presents this haunted house setting where you don't know what's going on, except that there are dead people everywhere. The music makes the atmosphere rather unsettling. There's stuff like broken music players that turn on and off and play unsettling, warped songs. As I said, sort of a haunted house setting.

 

ME3 is the strongest in body horror of all of them. Our enemies often have their flesh exposed and their intestines hanging out. Cannibals are mutated flesh bags made of different races and random body parts. Banshees are pretty terrifying. Lesuss actually tries really hard to be horror-like at the beginning when you're in the dark just with your flashlight and you hear screaming in the distance. Horizon has some really nasty stuff going on and rather creepy tension. At one point, there's a big attempt to scare the player. Omega has horror themes, as well - again, dark corridors, corpses all over the place, the enemy you know is lurking in the dark, even an attempt to jumpscare the player. Leviathan is actually creepy as hell. The atmosphere is very dark and the events are rather unsettling, the player is kept in the dark for a long time.

 

So while I agree that Mass Effect is not a horror game as such, it does have strong horror themes and elements very much present throughout the whole franchise. And even if it did not, it still doesn't stop the writers from actually wanting to create a Cthulhu-like monster. I'm not saying that they did, but there's no reason these two things should be exclusive.

 

Either way, the fact is that they started this franchise purposely making the Reapers "transcend your very understanding" which eventually falls completely flat on its face. They start the franchise making fun of the player, so to speak, and the fact that they could never understand the Reapers or their purpose. They were, as we were told, "unknowable". Then the Catalyst comes and the explanation is not difficult or complicated at all and is actually rather silly.

[Dantriges]

It makes a lot of sense, considering the mindset of the Leviathan. He doesn´t want to admit they screwed up because ah well yes, machines didn´t wipe out all organics. Always look on the bright side of life when you are being crucified.   The rest of his statments were more or less it´s not working as intended and we will fight with you because in the end survival instinct kicks in.

 

The catalysts´s stuff is a thin veneer of self justification. Nope I am not part of the problem because I don´t kill all organics, I preserve them and leave some below a certain threshold alive... so I can kill them later. Even provided a lot of tech so I can do it more efficiently and faster. So can you please now lie down before the cleansing fire and wait patiently for your turn in the mixer.

 

His talk is just talk, his actions speak volumes.