168 réponses à ce sujet

[Iakus]

I think that's revealed as the big limiting factor of the Reapers' plans: Citadel Records play a huge part in how they go about determining what systems to cull. It does leave more open uninhabited planets as a more viable option however. 

Part of their plan, yeah, but likely not all.

 

The ME3 codex mentions that Reapers were seen passing through and relays that had not been unlocked yet.  It's entirely possible that they check up on worlds they noted in previous cycles as possibly having intelligent life.  The Protheans deliberately pulled back from the worlds they were observing (like Thessia and Earth) in hopes that the Reapers wouldn't notice them

[Iakus]

So why assume they didn't? Surely the Catalyst was aware of the likelihood of organic life in other galaxies, so why not harvest the Milky Way for a few centuries, spend a few centuries flying to Andromeda, harvest there, take a few more centuries to fly to Triangulum, harvest, etc. (not forgetting the dwarf galaxies), THEN finally take a nap.

Or...

 

They go to another galaxy and harvest life there, building one or more Reapers, and return (or go to another galaxy)  The new Reapers stay behind and set up their own cycle, adding to their numbers each time.  And continue from there.

 

Each galaxy has its own brood of Reapers to harvest life, like ants or cicadas or bees.  Without having to visit other galaxies beyond initial establishment.  

 

Reapers are already essentially self-replicating spacecraft

[Cheviot]

There's nothing in the Shepard trilogy to suggest that the Reapers acted anywhere other than in the Milky Way.

[Il Divo]

Part of their plan, yeah, but likely not all.

 

The ME3 codex mentions that Reapers were seen passing through and relays that had not been unlocked yet.  It's entirely possible that they check up on worlds they noted in previous cycles as possibly having intelligent life.  The Protheans deliberately pulled back from the worlds they were observing (like Thessia and Earth) in hopes that the Reapers wouldn't notice them

 

But the point is the ability of the Reapers to scour every last inch of every last planet, both populated and unpopulated, is utterly impossible. If they could, we wouldn't have the Leviathans, the Crucible plans, Ilos, multiple Prothean beacons, and you know the rest, etc. 

 

It's not enough just to theorize that the Reapers probably check other systems. Yes, they probably do have some back up measures in place. But it's a far cry from that to saying they will automatically discover the remains of any derelict ship as a result. That's where chance comes in. 

[Iakus]

But the point is the ability of the Reapers to scour every last inch of every last planet, both populated and unpopulated, is utterly impossible. If they could, we wouldn't have the Leviathans, the Crucible plans, Ilos, multiple Prothean beacons, and you know the rest, etc. 

 

It's not enough just to theorize that the Reapers probably check other systems. Yes, they probably do have some back up measures in place. But it's a far cry from that to saying they will automatically discover the remains of any derelict ship as a result. That's where chance comes in. 

Obviously, they do make mistakes.  But given how successful they have been overall in the billion years or so they have been around, they don't seem to make a whole lot of them.

 

And these are immortal machines, with all the time in the world.  They can be pretty thorough.

[Il Divo]

Obviously, they do make mistakes.  But given how successful they have been overall in the billion years or so they have been around, they don't seem to make a whole lot of them.

 

And these are immortal machines, with all the time in the world.  They can be pretty thorough.

 

A whole lot of them?  That's hard to say. But they do make them. Which coincidentally, always seems to work out in the Protagonist's favor exactly how he needs to. I already count up almost 10 contrived instances of Shepard somehow finding technology or civilizations which the Reapers have gone out of their way to eliminate. 

 

And again, we have Ilos escaping entirely unscathed merely because it wasn't listed in Citadel Records, despite the Reapers being aware of past civilizations colonizing it. It's either a huge ME1 plot hole that they missed a giant research facility or finding another derelict ship (or something similar) isn't a problem. I can't see how both positions are defensible. 

[Display Name Owner]

They could possibly have done, but the Catalyst's directive was centred on the Milky Way. I guess that doesn't mean it couldn't have gone on to try to deal with "the problem" on a universal scale by building up the Reapers and spreading their influence over the millennia... so who knows?

[BioWareAre****s]

Didn't the Leviathans specifically direct the Catalyst to find ways of preserving organic life in the galaxy? The Catalyst is, however advanced it may be, just a machine and will stick rigidly to it's directives. If the Leviathans instructed it to specifically target the Milky Way, then that is all it will do.

[Display Name Owner]

Didn't the Leviathans specifically direct the Catalyst to find ways of preserving organic life in the galaxy? The Catalyst is, however advanced it may be, just a machine and will stick rigidly to it's directives. If the Leviathans instructed it to specifically target the Milky Way, then that is all it will do.

 

Yeah, this is what I was trying to remember. Well, not really trying, I couldn't be bothered to Youtube it or anything, but I'm fairly sure the Catalyst was programmed to deal with the Milky Way and so that's all it would ever do. If I'm mistaken and it was just ordered to deal with Synthetic life in general it might've been planning to go on to other galaxies.

[Iakus]

A whole lot of them?  That's hard to say. But they do make them. Which coincidentally, always seems to work out in the Protagonist's favor exactly how he needs to. I already count up almost 10 contrived instances of Shepard somehow finding technology or civilizations which the Reapers have gone out of their way to eliminate. 

 

And again, we have Ilos escaping entirely unscathed merely because it wasn't listed in Citadel Records, despite the Reapers being aware of past civilizations colonizing it. It's either a huge ME1 plot hole that they missed a giant research facility or finding another derelict ship (or something similar) isn't a problem. I can't see how both positions are defensible. 

Because if it happens too often it becomes contrived.  Heck it had already become contrived.

 

Didn't the Leviathans specifically direct the Catalyst to find ways of preserving organic life in the galaxy? The Catalyst is, however advanced it may be, just a machine and will stick rigidly to it's directives. If the Leviathans instructed it to specifically target the Milky Way, then that is all it will do.

 

The Leviathan:

 

"To solve this problem, we created an intelligence with the mandate to preserve life at any cost."

"The intelligence has one purpose: preservation of life"

 

The Catalyst:

 

"Without us to stop it, synthetics would destroy all organics"

"Organics create synthetics to improve their own existence, but those improvements have limits. To exceed those limits, synthetics must be allowed to evolve. They must by definition surpass their creators. The result is conflict, destruction, chaos. It is inevitable. Reapers harvest all life. Organic and synthetic, preserving them before they are forever lost to this conflict."

 

Nowhere is it ever stated that the Reapers are constrained to to this galaxy by its logic or programming.

[Display Name Owner]

Oh. Hmm.. Well I suppose that could explain why everything in Andromeda isn't thousands of years more developed than the Milky Way races, but on the other hand it could've been interesting to bump into at least one race that was that advanced.

[Il Divo]

Because if it happens too often it becomes contrived.  Heck it had already become contrived.

 

Which would be fine if we didn't already have a billion different contrived examples to go by. As I said, we have about 10 different instances of the Reapers failing to clean up after themselves effectively. The whole "it's contrived" point was lost a while ago for us. 

 

Unless you're suggesting that the Reapers quite literally scour and dig through every last inch of every planet? Which (if they did) we wouldn't have the Thorian, Prothean Beacons, or Ilos in the first place. It certainly doesn't help in this instance that we don't have any active evidence of how the Reapers track Organics beyond Citadel Records. Everything else is ultimately speculation. 

[In Exile]

The Leviathan:

 

"To solve this problem, we created an intelligence with the mandate to preserve life at any cost."

"The intelligence has one purpose: preservation of life"

 

The Catalyst:

 

"Without us to stop it, synthetics would destroy all organics"

"Organics create synthetics to improve their own existence, but those improvements have limits. To exceed those limits, synthetics must be allowed to evolve. They must by definition surpass their creators. The result is conflict, destruction, chaos. It is inevitable. Reapers harvest all life. Organic and synthetic, preserving them before they are forever lost to this conflict."

 

Nowhere is it ever stated that the Reapers are constrained to to this galaxy by its logic or programming.

 

But, again, this is nonsense gibberish. "Life" includes the intestinal bacteria that's responsible for you having gas when you eat milk products. But you don't see the Catalyst wax poetically about eradicating all sentient life to preserve - for all time and the entirety of the universe - the fart bacteria existing in the colon of every mamalian species on Earth. Think about it! Trillions and trillions of fart bacteria, in the intestines of all these animals. 

 

Just exterminate a few thousand sentients every time one crops up, and suddenly, you'll never get synthetics! Life exists forever! Wooo. 

 

More importantly, by definition, synthetics are life. The very idea of stopping them is stupid, incomprehensible, and illogical if your sole goal is "preserve life". 

 

Pretending life these words are anything more than faux philosophical gibberish by a group of writers so in over their heads that it's almost laughable is silly. It's the equivalent of a bunch of teenagers getting high for the first time and thinking they've uncovered the meaning of all life, ever, man. 

 

To make sense of the reapers we have to impose a lot of internal limits, read in without any justification, that's a post-hoc explanation for their behaviour. 

[Il Divo]

But, again, this is nonsense gibberish. "Life" includes the intestinal bacteria that's responsible for you having gas when you eat milk. But you don't see the Catalyst wax poetically about eradicating all sentient life to preserve - for all time and the entirety of the universe - the fart bacteria existing in the colon of every mamalian species on Earth. Think about it! Trillions and trillions of fart bacteria, in the intestines of all these animals. 

 

Just exterminate a few thousand sentients every time one crops up, and suddenly, you'll never get synthetics! Life exists forever! Wooo. 

 

More importantly, by definition, synthetics are life. The very idea of stopping them is stupid. 

 

Pretending life these words are anything more than faux philosophical gibberish by a group of writers so in over their heads that it's almost laughable is silly. It's the equivalent of a bunch of teenagers getting high for the first time and thinking they've uncovered the meaning of all life, ever, man. 

 

In essence: it's the same gibberish Sovereign tries to sell us how they "have no beginning and have no end", etc. 

[In Exile]

In essence: it's the same gibberish Sovereign tries to sell us how they "have no beginning and have no end", etc. 

 

Yeah.To make sense of their giiberish, we have to read stuff in. In ME1, that was stuff like "e.g. maybe the reapers are war machines gone mad" or "maybe this is a universe where what we think of as 'synthethic' life evolves naturally, and the reapers are the apex of self-design" or "some race transfered its mind to a machine form to live forever, and now just went Bond villain nuts". 

 

In ME3, it has to be stuff like "when they say life, it means sapient organic life that thinks similar to humanity and is more or less bidepal in form, except for the hanar, that aren't bipedal but think exactly the same as humans, because reasons". Adding in "but also only in the Milky Way" isn't any different or special.  

[Cheviot]

But, again, this is nonsense gibberish. "Life" includes the intestinal bacteria that's responsible for you having gas when you eat milk products. But you don't see the Catalyst wax poetically about eradicating all sentient life to preserve - for all time and the entirety of the universe - the fart bacteria existing in the colon of every mamalian species on Earth. Think about it! Trillions and trillions of fart bacteria, in the intestines of all these animals. 

 

Just exterminate a few thousand sentients every time one crops up, and suddenly, you'll never get synthetics! Life exists forever! Wooo. 

 

More importantly, by definition, synthetics are life. The very idea of stopping them is stupid, incomprehensible, and illogical if your sole goal is "preserve life". 

 

Pretending life these words are anything more than faux philosophical gibberish by a group of writers so in over their heads that it's almost laughable is silly. It's the equivalent of a bunch of teenagers getting high for the first time and thinking they've uncovered the meaning of all life, ever, man. 

 

To make sense of the reapers we have to impose a lot of internal limits, read in without any justification, that's a post-hoc explanation for their behaviour. 

Well, this is a bit silly. 

 

The catalyst not mentioning fart bacteria is the same as it not mentioning skin cells or the act of breath. The use of the word "life" is made on the principle that it's listeners are aware (if only implicitly) of the basic concept of metonymy.  "Life" used here is a cover-all for it's functions and the process that sustains sentient life.

 

Also, you miss the implication of synthetics also counting as "life," but that will have to wait.

[Arcian]

So why assume they didn't? Surely the Catalyst was aware of the likelihood of organic life in other galaxies, so why not harvest the Milky Way for a few centuries, spend a few centuries flying to Andromeda, harvest there, take a few more centuries to fly to Triangulum, harvest, etc. (not forgetting the dwarf galaxies), THEN finally take a nap.

You say this like it's the simplest thing in the world. Crossing an intergalactic void isn't like strolling down the street, not even for a race as powerful as the Reapers. 

[Sidney]

<<<<<<<<<<()>>>>>>>>>>
 
I believe the Catalyst (ie: Star Child) makes the offer because the Catalyst's 50k cycle solution was proven wrong by Shep's reaching the Citadel.
 
A interesting point is that The Citadel+Crucible is now located near the Earth. Setting off the Crucible would destroy the Citadel and Catalyst and the Earth. The weapon itself is suppoed to be "..immensily powerful of uninmaniginable destruction..", according to Dr. T'Soni. I can't wrap my mind around what exactly it would do to destroy the Reapers, "located all over the galaxy". Nevertheless, without the Catalyst to control them would the Reapers:
 
1. stop and go dormant?
2. Continue with their harvesting as per their last order?
3. Never re-awaken after #2 is completed?
4. The Crucible Just destroys the Reapers + Relays?
 
All of these questions just confirms, to me, that Casey Hudson's ending was a hurried solution (with no real clarity on how it would play out)  in order to meet a game launch deadline.

What it did was it felt like it was setting off some sort of EMP-ish thing based off the power of the relays because the animation shows the relays not exploding like the on in Arrival but more...discharging.

As to what happens without the catalyst, yeah not sure. The catalyst discussion makes it sound like the reapers are under his control whereas when we run into them in other games they feel less puppet-ish and more independent (at least within the confines of their programming).

[Fade9wayz]

Oh. Hmm.. Well I suppose that could explain why everything in Andromeda isn't thousands of years more developed than the Milky Way races, but on the other hand it could've been interesting to bump into at least one race that was that advanced.

It isn't stated they are constrained to the MW, but it doesn't mean they aren't. It wouldn't even be ret-conning

 

1) I doubt the Reapers, or Leviathan would reveal the finer points of their programming in the 20 mn conversation they both had with Shepard, who was only interested in the fate of the MW anyway. That would have been irrelevant to the conversation. imagine this:

 

The Leviathan:

 

"To solve this problem, we created an intelligence with the mandate to preserve life at any cost."

"The intelligence has one purpose: preservation of life"

"But don't worry, we didn't forget to preclude any other galaxy from their programming, so you could, you know, flee there instead of fighting them? Damn! Wished we'd remembered to preclude ourselves from any stupid preservation attempt..."

 

The Catalyst:

 

"Without us to stop it, synthetics would destroy all organics"

"Organics create synthetics to improve their own existence, but those improvements have limits. To exceed those limits, synthetics must be allowed to evolve. They must by definition surpass their creators. The result is conflict, destruction, chaos. It is inevitable. Reapers harvest all life. Organic and synthetic, preserving them before they are forever lost to this conflict."

"By the way, we are constrained to the MW, so we have no idea how our current problem has been handled in other galaxies, and that's why RGB is inevitable for you. So now, what's your choice? Do you want cookies to make it sweeter?"

 

2) At the cost of repeating myself. Assuming they actually went to Andromeda, it doesn't mean they were able to invade it and establish a new cycle. Reapers don't have wormhole tech. Assuming again they can FTL all the way there, they would all need to move there for a first invasion. Andromeda is bigger, has more stars and possible habitable worlds than the MW, and they don't have the advantage of controlling the resident civilisations there. So that means a large scale invasion like our own Reaper war. Such invasion could only be successful if the local species are too less advanced to fight back. But we know the Remnants were super-advanced. They might have well beaten the Reapers so badly that their survivors fled back to the MW and realized that losing too many of them was actually contradictory to their mandate. However, that opens the question of why didn't the Remnants chase the Reapers here and finish them off? If the Reapers can use FTL between two galaxies, chances are the Remnants can too. Maybe they were lazy.

 

However, I'm pretty sure they have the same discharge limitations than our ships, they just maybe don't have to discharge as often since their engine are more efficient. Without this limitation, invading the Milky way wouldn't have taken them so long, I would think.

If they can't FTL their first travel to Andromeda, it would mean they leave the MW alone during at least 2 500 000 years with relativistic near-light speed travel, which far exceeds their average 500 000 years cycle. And this is assuming they have the tech to build intergalactic mass relays to cut off the return time. Otherwise we're looking at a 5 000 000 years of complete freedom for the MW. They would violate their mandate just by not being there to harvest the MW civilisations flourishing during their absence.

 

Maybe the Reapers went to Andromeda, maybe they didn't. We can find as many reasons for their presence or their absence in the next game. We don't know the reason of the Remnants disappearance, anything other than the Reapers could have caused it. So far we don't have any evidence to affirm anything. 

[In Exile]

What it did was it felt like it was setting off some sort of EMP-ish thing based off the power of the relays because the animation shows the relays not exploding like the on in Arrival but more...discharging.

As to what happens without the catalyst, yeah not sure. The catalyst discussion makes it sound like the reapers are under his control whereas when we run into them in other games they feel less puppet-ish and more independent (at least within the confines of their programming).

 

It also doesn't even add up internally with what the reapers are supposed to be ("preserving" the past species"). If they're just some really shoddy and shacked AI - because that's what they'd really have to be, for the Catalyst to "control them" - then they can't really preserve much of anything.

[In Exile]

Well, this is a bit silly. 

 

The catalyst not mentioning fart bacteria is the same as it not mentioning skin cells or the act of breath. The use of the word "life" is made on the principle that it's listeners are aware (if only implicitly) of the basic concept of metonymy.  "Life" used here is a cover-all for it's functions and the process that sustains sentient life.

 

Also, you miss the implication of synthetics also counting as "life," but that will have to wait.

 

The use of the word "life" doesn't work as a stand in for "sapient" life (more, accurate than sentient life, given what we know today about particular animals). This is because AI is equally sapient life. There's no distinction, unless you assume that being made out of meat is special. And, in fact, the catalyst has to assume that being made out of meat is special because otherwise there's no reason to preserve meat-based "life" in preference to AI.

 

The argument that the Catalyst wants to preserve any "unique" species doesn't work, because the cycles are based on eradicating it ("preserving it in reaper form" isn't the same as preserving it, because even if you somehow assume that there's anything still "alive" left, it's not alive in the same way as the civlization that was eradicated to make it; a human reaper isn't Shepard or Ashley anymore, or even recognizably human; even if all human minds are uploaded to it and exist in a kind of virtual space, life isn't human; there are huge questions about whether that would, for example, just be an AI that thinks it's human). 

 

All of this is to say that life can't mean "sapience" because the reapers are predicated on wholly eradicating each individual's sapience in a cycle. Whether by the torture they inflict on them to create husks (which wipes them out of existnece) or the torturous process used to make reapers, "sapience" isn't preserved at all. That can't be what the reapers mean. 

 

The other big problem with saying that the catalysts counts synthetics as "alive" is that it doesn't preserve them. In fact, it would be comically easy to preserve software. But it doesn't do that. It eradicates it (e.g. metacons) or modifies it in a way that's wholly unrecognizable (the geth, with the reaper code). There's no equivalent of making reapers out of synthethics. 

[Sidney]

Because if it happens too often it becomes contrived.  Heck it had already become contrived.
 

 
The Leviathan:
 
"To solve this problem, we created an intelligence with the mandate to preserve life at any cost."
"The intelligence has one purpose: preservation of life"
 
The Catalyst:
 
"Without us to stop it, synthetics would destroy all organics"
"Organics create synthetics to improve their own existence, but those improvements have limits. To exceed those limits, synthetics must be allowed to evolve. They must by definition surpass their creators. The result is conflict, destruction, chaos. It is inevitable. Reapers harvest all life. Organic and synthetic, preserving them before they are forever lost to this conflict."
 
Nowhere is it ever stated that the Reapers are constrained to to this galaxy by its logic or programming.

They are built to keep tribute flowing to the Levianthan. The Levianthan didn't have a universal empire, merely a galactic one. Their mission wasn't a mission of altruism gone awry, they were basically doctors designed to make sure the slaves didn't get sick and die. Constraint on their realm of activity would seems to fit from the mission -- of course any species that left out a line of "don't kill us code" might not be that smart.

[Nethershadow]

They are built to keep tribute flowing to the Levianthan. The Levianthan didn't have a universal empire, merely a galactic one. Their mission wasn't a mission of altruism gone awry, they were basically doctors designed to make sure the slaves didn't get sick and die. Constraint on their realm of activity would seems to fit from the mission -- of course any species that left out a line of "don't kill us code" might not be that smart.

The Leviathans might not have had a universal empire as far as we know, but they also probably didn't limit themselves to boundaries. If that was their ideal then why stop it at the edge of the MW? Thats assuming though they actually can travel to another galaxy in the first place, but we already know the Reapers can travel outside of the MW, so it's becoming less of a stretch to think they could. But until the new game comes out to explain how we got to Andromeda, short of a super secret rare wormhole never ever discovered in millions of years used to get to Andromeda it would be most likely that the Leviathans / Reapers would have discovered or have the tech to do so.

 

They forgetting to add "don't kill us code" we don't know why that is as far as i know it's never said, and it could be plausible that any species with animosity towards them that learned / knew about the Leviathans agenda could try to sabotage it. It actually would make more sense to me to assume something along that lines then to think the highly evolved Leviathans just had a major brain fart and forgot. I also doubt they build the Reapers over night, which would mean they had time to think about all aspects of it as you don't want to leave anything out when creating something so very dangerous.

[Iakus]

You say this like it's the simplest thing in the world. Crossing an intergalactic void isn't like strolling down the street, not even for a race as powerful as the Reapers. 

Which makes those in the current cycle able to get there kinda laughable.

 

Because if we can do it, there's no reason why the Reapers couldn't, and have done it a lot sooner.

[Drone223]

Which makes those in the current cycle able to get there kinda laughable.

 

Because if we can do it, there's no reason why the Reapers couldn't, and have done it a lot sooner.

Exactly something like traveling to another galaxy would require decades of planning (it can't be done in a few months) and even then there is no way to account for the unexpected.