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[Linkenski]

Since Shepard even asks them. Was there even a reason?

[God]

I get the distinct feeling that it was a dropped plot point. It's a part of ME3 where the seams from the patchwork of the story glared through. Something bigger was hinted at, but ultimately never developed.

[Excella Gionne]

Well, obviously, they were there to kill the krogan female, Eve, so that the krogan-turian alliance would be impossible. Since Cerberus has many agents in the alliance, and on the citadel(including Udina), they have a strong network of agents that could have pin pointed the next stop Shepard was going to make after rescuing Victus. 

[Jukaga]

But that goes against their interests. It works very well for them to have Shepard scoring successes against the Reapers to keep them focused on Shepard. TiM even says something like this later on to Kai Leng. Unless TiM has made post-war Krogan extinction a priority I see it as a baffling waste of resources and stirring up hornets nests. Why would Cerberus attract attention from the STG for no gain?

[The Heretic of Time]

Cerberus is to Mass Effect 3 what Cobra is to G.I. Joe. Whenever G.I. Joe/Shepard is on a mission you can bet your sweet cheeks that Cobra/Cerberus will show up to ruin the day.

Yes, I'm comparing Cerberus to a Saturday-morning cartoon villain because that's what Cerberus has been reduced to in ME3.

[Seboist]

Cerberus in ME3 serves no purpose other than to provide you with human enemies to pew pew at. Nothing they do in the game even makes the control ending possible and some of the missions they're involved with have zero impact on the story as a whole and could just have well have been deleted, like the "citadel coup" mission where even if Kai Leng kills the Salarian councilor nothing changes.

[The Heretic of Time]

Cerberus in ME3 serves no purpose other than to provide you with human enemies to pew pew at. Nothing they do in the game even makes the control ending possible and some of the missions they're involved with have zero impact on the story as a whole and could just have well have been deleted, like the "citadel coup" mission where even if Kai Leng kills the Salarian nothing changes.

 

Yeah, Cerberus is just there to add more variety to Shepard's cannon fodder. They absolutely serve no other purpose in ME3. They're absolutely insignificant to the plot of ME3 and in fact the plot of ME3 would probably have been better without them.

[Jukaga]

Would it have been better if Destroy/Control was only possible by doing mutually exclusive quest outcomes for Hackett/TiM? I think so, rather than Cerberus going full mustache twirling evil for no reason other than lol! intoctrinated.

[ImaginaryMatter]

Would it have been better if Destroy/Control was only possible by doing mutually exclusive quest outcomes for Hackett/TiM? I think so, rather than Cerberus going full mustache twirling evil for no reason other than lol! intoctrinated.

 

I think it would have been interesting if it turned out TIM wasn't Indoctrinated, that he basically played the part of mook captain all for the chance to Control the Reapers. It would have maybe made for an actually interesting dilemma at the end for Control. But no, Cerberus instead had to serve the most basic of video game antagonist roles: provide enough warm bodies for the player character to mow through.

 

Cerberus in ME3 serves no purpose other than to provide you with human enemies to pew pew at. Nothing they do in the game even makes the control ending possible and some of the missions they're involved with have zero impact on the story as a whole and could just have well have been deleted, like the "citadel coup" mission where even if Kai Leng kills the Salarian councilor nothing changes.

 

That's why I find the comments from the art book (the ones about how they didn't make TIM a giant tentacle video game monster, because it would have been "too video gamey") so strange. Essentially, that is exactly the role Cerberus plays in ME3.

[Jukaga]

It would have been better to face Reaper troops more often, and make the human/sapient alien enemies indoctrinated soldiers from the various space forces and armies of the galaxy. Then Cerberus and the Alliance 'compete' for Shepard's favor (she/he went private after ME2 in this scenario) as a freelance problem solver then instead of the catalyst ai (let's just toss him out entirely) the choices you have made over the trilogy (Collector base being a huge one, making it very difficult to 'Destroy' the reapers if you saved the base and vise versa) combined with what agenda you support 'chooses' your ending for you. That's right, no last minute 'what door do you choose' reprieve you have to live with your choices.

 

/ramble mode off

[fraggle]

I took it that TIM does everything he can to stop Shepard from finishing the Crucible and from forging alliances with other races. We had a discussion going on a while back about exactly this topic (it starts at the end of this post and continues on the next page).

To me, TIM would not risk that Shepard uses the Crucible plans to destroy the Reapers, as he wants to control them. That's why they are poking around in everything that is of interest to Shepard. Another conclusion was that since TIM was indoctrinated it's also possible that the Reapers are trying to find ways to stop Shepard while letting TIM think he still has the upper hand and is doing it on his own accord.

I guess it both ties in with what happens in the game and makes sense to me.

[Dantriges]

Same could be said for ME2. Main enemy was Collectors, but you also fought a ton of mercs as well as some other enemies.

 

In ME1, main enemy was Saren, but you fought Geth, Krogan, pirates as well as some Asari.

 

ME3, you've got Cerberus, Geth, and Reapers (incl. their foot soldiers). As well as those mercs from Citadel, but that's outside the main game (DLC).

 

In ME 1 the Geth and Krogan were part of Saren´s troops, the Asari belonged to Benezia´s entourage who was working for Saren and they were indoctrinated as well. So also his troops.

 

Yeah there were a ton of mercs in ME2. It´s actually one of the bigger complaints I heard here, that you spent so much of the game fighting anybody but the Collectors. It looked more like you were on a personal crusade against the three companies.

[Vazgen]

Well, krogan without the genophage are a pretty powerful force. Maybe TIM figured that he'd rather not have them running around while he controls the Reapers. 

Or maybe his indoctrination didn't fully kick in at that point and he was still thinking of "human dominance". Can't have human dominance when there are krogan breeding in 1000s.

[aoibhealfae]

It seems like they wanted Eve. To kidnap and develop their own Krogan army? but maybe just to sabotage Shepard.. as usual.

 

But husk-Cerberus troopers in ME3 does made more sense and acceptable as canon fodders than killing mercs in ME2... its like.. oh hey, if you're not dead now, in six months, Aria will make you join my team. facepalm...

[Sundance31us]

The Salarians were being cooperative and Shepard needed someone to shoot.

[God]

Would it have been better if Destroy/Control was only possible by doing mutually exclusive quest outcomes for Hackett/TiM? I think so, rather than Cerberus going full mustache twirling evil for no reason other than lol! intoctrinated.

 

This would be rather effective I think, with Humanity being placed in a more dominant sphere of the galaxy as a consequence. I'd probably go for it more if that were the case.

[AlanC9]

I took it that TIM does everything he can to stop Shepard from finishing the Crucible and from forging alliances with other races. We had a discussion going on a while back about exactly this topic (it starts at the end of this post and continues on the next page).
To me, TIM would not risk that Shepard uses the Crucible plans to destroy the Reapers, as he wants to control them. That's why they are poking around in everything that is of interest to Shepard. Another conclusion was that since TIM was indoctrinated it's also possible that the Reapers are trying to find ways to stop Shepard while letting TIM think he still has the upper hand and is doing it on his own accord.
I guess it both ties in with what happens in the game and makes sense to me.

Yeah, this is how I saw it. TIM's pretty clear about his priorities on Mars. They're crazy priorities, but we knew that already.

[KaiserShep]

I wonder how people would feel about the Sur'Kesh mission if instead of Cerberus, we fought a splinter group of STG that opposed the cure so much that they'd try to kill Shepard & co.. 

[Dantriges]

Would be interesting.

[ImaginaryMatter]

I wonder how people would feel about the Sur'Kesh mission if instead of Cerberus, we fought a splinter group of STG that opposed the cure so much that they'd try to kill Shepard & co.. 

 

I think that would have been more interesting as well. My idea was that while on the base Shepard would discover that the Salarians have been studying Reaper devices, while at the same time discovering there is one or multiple moles trying to undermine the project from the inside. At that point the mission wouldn't involve much shooting but instead be a sort of spy mission where you have to find the moles. At the end when you find the main guy he gives his motivations for stopping the genophage (rather rational ones) and at the end you wouldn't know if he was really Indoctrinated or if he naturally believed in stopping the Genophage cure that much.

[Linkenski]

I get the distinct feeling that it was a dropped plot point. It's a part of ME3 where the seams from the patchwork of the story glared through. Something bigger was hinted at, but ultimately never developed.

This is also how I've seen it as of late as I've played the game. It has moments of foreshadowing that goes nowhere. I was also a bit more open-minded about the kid's dream sequences this time around, thinking that maybe they had an alternative idea than what ended up happening. We all know that a prothean and not necessarily Javik was originally thought to be an integral part of the story, and actually the Catalyst (though, not the actual Starchild Catalyst) and that in an interview in august 2011 Martin Sheen (TIM's actor) said "The script has just been postponed because it wasn't ready" so **** went down, and my optimistic self says they might've had a much better idea in there that never came into fruition but honestly I think it was just the result of Mac Walters not being very good in the first place.

 

Also, guy above brought up an interesting point that I've also been thinking about as of late.

 

It seemed that in the past, before Mass Effect 2, Bioware games were designed so the gameplay served the story, but ever since EA and Bioware starting to mimic more "competent" AAA games it's been the other way around. I swear the main reason why Cerberus is so big in ME3 is because they were first made to be an enemy force with their own unique AI and classes and therefore they ended up being everywhere in the story because developing several other factions with unique AI would've been too much work or something, thus we ended up having Geth, Cerberus and Reapers.

 

Granted, I liked them all gameplay-wise, but I did actually miss the mercenaries from ME2 and I thought it was a missed opportunity to not have combatable Salarians on Sur'Kesh for example.

[Goodmongo]

No one can predict the future. Cerberus/TIM wants to control the reapers.  The alliance/Shepard wants to destroy them.

 

Anything that TIM can do to lower the chances for the alliance to destroy the reapers is motivation enough.  So it makes perfect sense for Cerberus to try and kill off the female Krogans.  It means the alliance will have a harder time defeating the reapers and TIM really doesn't care about Krogans or Turians so it fits his desire to keep them at odds against each other.

 

In fact if you look at almost every single Cerberus mission it falls into one of two categories.  First to hinder the alliance and their chances to defeat the reapers.  Or the second, research into how they may be able to control the reapers.

 

You know Occams Razor really does explain most things.

[GreyLycanTrope]

I'd just go with Cerberus being against the genophage being cured for ideological reasons. I mean they probably aren't fans of a Turian Krogan alliance but the potential of the Krogan overrunning the galaxy is something they're probably worried about. Though with the whole reaper crisis going on that motivation seems like a bit of a moot point to me.

 

I get the distinct feeling that it was a dropped plot point. It's a part of ME3 where the seams from the patchwork of the story glared through. Something bigger was hinted at, but ultimately never developed.

I remember reading somewhere there was an entire subplot with an indoctrinated mole being dropped.

 

No one can predict the future. Cerberus/TIM wants to control the reapers.  The alliance/Shepard wants to destroy them.

 

Anything that TIM can do to lower the chances for the alliance to destroy the reapers is motivation enough.  So it makes perfect sense for Cerberus to try and kill off the female Krogans.  It means the alliance will have a harder time defeating the reapers and TIM really doesn't care about Krogans or Turians so it fits his desire to keep them at odds against each other.

 

In fact if you look at almost every single Cerberus mission it falls into one of two categories.  First to hinder the alliance and their chances to defeat the reapers.  Or the second, research into how they may be able to control the reapers.

 

You know Occams Razor really does explain most things.

Their own scheme hinges on the Alliance actually finishing and deploying the crucible for their control scheme to even have a chance of working though, which is why he was trying to steal the plans back on Mars to begin with. Trying to hinder the alliance seems counter-productive to this.

[KaiserShep]

That still kind of makes their plan kind of silly. Like, even if TIM believed with all his likely augmented heart that controlling the reapers was the key to solving the reaper problem, attacking everyone everywhere only seemed to make things harder for them. But anyway, whatevs. Indoctrination is a hell of a drug, and TIM was hitting the reaper madness pretty hard anyway.