77 réponses à ce sujet

[Uncle Jo]

I can only this of this reason:

 

[HarbingerCollector]

What Cerberus was doing on Surkesh?
That's easy...nothing....consistent.Just horrible writing,seriously.
same reason why Udina betrayed the council,because people hated Udina and Bioware indulging into the trope said 

"let's make him betray the council so he can be killed,it's a jerk so instead of making him a likable jerk,make him a bad guy,because all jerks are evil".
For the same reason The illusive man still gets the human reaper remains if you destroyed the collector base.
For the same reason ME2 squadmates have a ridicolous excuse to not join your team.

We are never given a proper reason,plot lines remained unresolved and left with speculation and questions.

The real answer is that originally Cerberus was supposed to be working with the Reapers,and you can see it in the demo and the leaked script of November 2011 and if they worked for the reapers,they'd sabotage our efforts.

Shepard (ME3 demo Surkesh):"They're indoctrinated,they're not responsible for their actions"

What the game failed to explain is how cerberus got there and why they did that,they just left it open with no explanation,this is what i call bad writing.
Who is the traitor? Who in the STG would betray their own people to snitch the information to a human extremist organization

This is a part of the Supermac writing,make cerberus all knowing,all powerful,better than any other race at anything and gets to something always before others and overshadow the reapers.Doesn't matter if Reapers are the villians,make a Sith empire-like Cerberus gone retard is much better to focus on 60% of the game,it's cooler.

The plot could have made more sense,but they cut it out.
 

[ExoGeniVI]

His name is Jack Harper not "TIM"

[MrStoob]

TIM couldn't have possibly known about the true nature of the Citadel until he had Vendetta (though it's interesting to note that Vendetta would shut down in the presence of the indoctrinated so how did TIM get the data?), so at that time, hindering Shepard would have been to his advantage.

[MrStoob]

His name is Jack Harper not "TIM"

AKA, TIM.

[Dantriges]

TIM couldn't have possibly known about the true nature of the Citadel until he had Vendetta (though it's interesting to note that Vendetta would shut down in the presence of the indoctrinated so how did TIM get the data?), so at that time, hindering Shepard would have been to his advantage.

 

Vendetta said that the indoctrinated forces broke down his security protocols when he starts to talk with you.

[rasblak]

Now, for any Computer Scientist, that ought to be laughable.

Did Cerberus bother to reprogram Vendetta to *explain to us* that his security protocols have been broken, or did the Protheans waste time programming Vendetta to detect when his security protocols have been broken instead of working on making said protocols more solid? :-)

 

Seriously, Humanity has Cerberus and Cerberus has virtually limitless resources, Cerberus is omniscient and gets a hold of stuff a 109-year old Asari misses.
Yet, apparently, Humanity is considered second grade and struggles to have a say by the side of the races who have a place on the Citadel council:

- the Turians who can't handle a bunch of husks around a comm tower,

- the Salarians who "lose ground" on their own turf against one pro-human organization,

- the Asari who can't defend their High Command's highest prized secret against one lone annoyingly clichéd human

 

Somebody please tell me why these three are considered super-powers of the Galaxy again?

[Dantriges]

That´s what he said. I thought it´s part  of the VI programming. Perhaps it doesn´t make sense now, but it´s 170 years in the future, this virtual intelligence thing must be good for something after all. Comparing it to current computer tech is probably like comparing the Normandy with the space shuttle. That´s what bothers you? Cerberus speedhacks touchyfeely prothean computers, prothean programs can reprogram ancient Citadel protocols are probably better examples and I have no idea how Kai Leng could download a VI from a system that´s based on prothean imprint tech. Into his omnitool...

 

Ah well Cerberus, if they show up, it´s shutdown your brain time.

[Linkenski]

His name is Jack Harper not "TIM"

TIM = The Illusive Man and not a first name, and not everyone has read the external material that reveals his actual name.

 

At the end of the day nothing adds up. I just replayed Sanctuary as part of my quick low-ems playthrough today, and again, it goes something like this.

 

Early campaign: You learn TIM is hatching a scheme to control the reapers, and he's using Eva Core to download the blueprints for the Crucible and fails.

Mid-early Campaign: TIM sends Cerberus to attack Shepard during his quest for Krogan/Turian support, for unstated reasons.

Mid-campaign: Cerberus tries to overtake the Citadel. At this point we have no clue why, but at the end we learn the Reapers needed the station to move it to Earth, which implies Cerberus is indoctrinated here.

Late-campaign: You learn that Sanctuary was a trap used by Cerberus to study reapers. They managed to create artificial reaper-husks, try to find out how to apply what they learned to the Reapers themselves to control them, gets attacked by the Reapers. Apparently TIM is still not under real indoctrination here, as the Reapers didn't stop him from finding their weakness.

End campaign: TIM is now fully indoctrinated and insane. He says the Crucible can control the Reapers.

 

It's true that he could just be out to get rid of Shepard on Sur'Kesh after probably learning about Shepard's whereabouts, but considering he needs the Crucible and knows that from the start, it amazes me that he's trying to get rid of the guy who's most likely capable to gain the support needed to make the damn thing.

 

Also, the whole indoctrination-Cerberus aspect is terrible because it makes no sense to me that TIM is indoctrinated so he starts trying to control the Reapers only to get attacked by them and then controlled so much that he can't actually control them.

 

I loved how Saren was handled because the indoctrination made him think a synthetic merger was the only way for organics to survive, until Shepard shook him enough to realize that he was choosing to succumb due to the indoctrination. Any part of the whole control-plan as a result of indoctrination seemed weird and didn't go anywhere.

 

Let's also not forget that an early E3 version of Sur'Kesh outright makes Shepard say "They're indoctrinated!" and an even earlier version was "Cerberus is working with the Reapers", just like James talking about Cerberus working with the Collectors, implying they were also indoctrinated in ME2.

 

It's also why I think Control is the most meh option at the end because outside of using it as an uncertain means to an end to stop the Reapers, what's the ****** point? Even in the first place and if he wasn't indoctrinated, what was the point of controlling Reapers?

 

Like everything in ME3, it seems Cerberus was just the victim of a mess of iterations. Mac Walters came up with a plot that wasn't good enough so the other writers probably went "well, this doesn't work." and they iterated but couldn't keep track of the various motivations and plot logics and ended up with this giant mess of constantly changing plots for both Cerberus and the Reapers.

[fraggle]

Early campaign: You learn TIM is hatching a scheme to control the reapers, and he's using Eva Core to download the blueprints for the Crucible and fails.

Mid-early Campaign: TIM sends Cerberus to attack Shepard during his quest for Krogan/Turian support, for unstated reasons.

Mid-campaign: Cerberus tries to overtake the Citadel. At this point we have no clue why, but at the end we learn the Reapers needed the station to move it to Earth, which implies Cerberus is indoctrinated here.

Late-campaign: You learn that Sanctuary was a trap used by Cerberus to study reapers. They managed to create artificial reaper-husks, try to find out how to apply what they learned to the Reapers themselves to control them, gets attacked by the Reapers. Apparently TIM is still not under real indoctrination here, as the Reapers didn't stop him from finding their weakness.

End campaign: TIM is now fully indoctrinated and insane. He says the Crucible can control the Reapers.

 

It's true that he could just be out to get rid of Shepard on Sur'Kesh after probably learning about Shepard's whereabouts, but considering he needs the Crucible and knows that from the start, it amazes me that he's trying to get rid of the guy who's most likely capable to gain the support needed to make the damn thing.

 

Also, the whole indoctrination-Cerberus aspect is terrible because it makes no sense to me that TIM is indoctrinated so he starts trying to control the Reapers only to get attacked by them and then controlled so much that he can't actually control them.

 

I suggest you play Sur'Kesh again, one of the Cerberus soldiers states explicitly that they are here to take out the female krogan (iirc it's the scene when fighting them over two levels, when your 2nd squadmate comments that there are more Cerberus soldiers up the stairs).

Here you have your reason why they attacked. They are not after Shepard, they are after preventing the krogan/turian alliance, just like they try with the bomb.

 

Then for the Citadel Coup, I've also only seen this recently, this was Udina's doing. There's a codex entry about it.

Citadel Coup was originally supposed to be after Thessia and tied in with the Crucible story more, but they didn't have time, as with so much.

Wiki: "Eventually, Udina's desperation leads him to a deal with Cerberus to instigate a bloodless coup of the Citadel, arrest the Council and force them to grant him the emergency power necessary to order all Citadel forces to Earth."

 

And about indoctrination. We know that this is subtle, you can still feel like you are yourself, pursuing your own goals. I don't see anything wrong with what happens with TIM. Or the Reapers attacking Sanctuary once they find out what Lawson accomplished there.

According to Saren's research, indoctrinated agents are more useful to the Reapers when they don't control them as much.

[Dantriges]

Perhaps it´s not the alliance but the genophage cure. It will be hard for humanity to be top dog of the galaxy if the krogans are cured. OTOH this sounds more like a contingency plan if the Reapers can´t be controlled only destroyed. If Cerberus is sure that they get the Reapers under their control, there isn´t much the krogans can do, even when cured. probably his indoctrination plays a role, too but hard to pinpoint the degree of control the Reapers have over TIM at this point. He is still working at stuff that isn´t in the Reaper´s interest after all.

[fraggle]

Perhaps it´s not the alliance but the genophage cure.

 

Well both are tied together, so I think it's both

Either way, it benefits both TIM and the Reapers if they had succeeded.

[Linkenski]

I think in the final version though they say Udina "moves vast sums of money" probably to Cerberus, 

 

I get how indoctrination works and that it's not an on-off switch but something that starts subtle and continues until the victim is completely subjugated to the Reapers' will, but I won't be apologetic about how they used it here, because the only purpose I felt it had was making events happen in convenient ways. Cerberus being your enemy felt like it needed indoctrination as an excuse rather than the cause.

 

In ME3 it feels like Cerberus needed to be the enemy, so they had to excuse that because "oh, indoctrination", but in ME1 the reason Saren and the Geth were the bad guys was because they were indoctrinated by being part of Sovereign's plan. There's no specific plan by the Reapers in how they used Cerberus. They tried to address this in the game by saying it was the Reapers going "divide and conquer" but remember, just to make Cerberus the enemy in the first place Bioware needed to stretch the identity of Cerberus from 100 people to the clone army from Star Wars. Indoctrination on top of this feels almost unnecessary especially because the Reapers aren't using Cerberus for anything specific.

 

And ME2 felt like half the game was trying to show you how Cerberus wasn't all bad but it was kind of wishy washy. In ME3 they tried to make me feel like Cerberus was just using me throughout ME2 via those video logs at the end and James's story about his squad, but I just didn't feel very convinced that this had been this way. I didn't feel the betrayal. All I felt was Bioware trying to retroactively make ME2 seem like a different story.

 

You know that awful feeling you get when you're playing a game with a good story (or movie/book for that matter) and you're intrigued but then suddenly the characters start to come to conclusions that seem completely illogical to you? That's how I felt when Liara asks Shepard if Cerberus "could be working with the Reapers" and Shepard just aknowledges the possibility. That's just the start of several basic writing-related things in ME3 that are never defined properly. How can someone "work with the Reapers"? How are we "at war" with the Reapers, when there's no power involved (Reapers are just stomping us like ants. They're not opposing us like a regular foe) and why the hell would Cerberus have anything to do with them?

 

The tension and rivalry between Shepard and TIM is so painfully disappointing to me. It could've been interesting but instead Bioware went with the idea of TIM being "insane" so all dialogue exchanges between Shepard and TIM become pointless because Shepard is talking to a lunatic and it doesn't help that their arguments are one-sided. "We have to control them!" and Shepard goes "No we have to destroy them" and they just keep talking about right and wrong but controlling the reapers seems like a stretch and destroying them seems like a stretch too, because WE DON'T KNOW HOW TO DO EITHER.

.

 

What I mean to show with all this is just that I don't think despite their attempts that BIoware managed to sell me on the idea of Cerberus's role in this game. It's way too muddled in between inconsistencies and vagueness that I think is a clear result of Bioware having too weak a foundation for ME3's plot and having to iterate so much that they ended up with a bit of a mess. Furthermore, I think the point here is that indoctrinating Cerberus from a writer's POV seemed like a complete waste of potential, when TIM could've become a grey character with moral ambiguity and not a one-sided nemesis. Technically they scrapped Harbinger to make TIM the main antagonist of the game.

 

A lot of my bulletpoints here is why I shudder to see so many people say "Mass Effect 3 was 95% perfect". No it isn't. ME2 may have had "no plot" but at least it didn't fall as hard when it didn't have a lot going for it in the first place, whereas ME3 has a ton of stuff going for it, but almost every aspect (minus genophage arc and smaller character subplots) falls apart to some extent and it's not all thanks to the ending but rather just as much due to a weak and shaky foundation (Crucible, and Cerberus)

[von uber]

Even the genophage is flawed, it plays far too much to the emotional gallery rather than logic.
Remember the krogan themselves were the problem, not the genophage. That's the whole basis of wrex's power.

[fraggle]

And ME2 felt like half the game was trying to show you how Cerberus wasn't all bad but it was kind of wishy washy. In ME3 they tried to make me feel like Cerberus was just using me throughout ME2 via those video logs at the end and James's story about his squad, but I just didn't feel very convinced that this had been this way. I didn't feel the betrayal. All I felt was Bioware trying to retroactively make ME2 seem like a different story.

 

TIM did lie to you and use you throughout ME2. How could you still consider trusting this guy? Maybe that's your problem because I never did for one second. Thus, there wasn't a "betrayal" theme for me at the end of ME3, but it just showed me once more how I was right to not trust him.

TIM is not loyal to anyone but himself. The second someone isn't useful to him anymore he will get rid of that person.

 

You know that awful feeling you get when you're playing a game with a good story (or movie/book for that matter) and you're intrigued but then suddenly the characters start to come to conclusions that seem completely illogical to you? That's how I felt when Liara asks Shepard if Cerberus "could be working with the Reapers" and Shepard just aknowledges the possibility. That's just the start of several basic writing-related things in ME3 that are never defined properly. How can someone "work with the Reapers"? How are we "at war" with the Reapers, when there's no power involved (Reapers are just stomping us like ants. They're not opposing us like a regular foe) and why the hell would Cerberus have anything to do with them?

 

Because TIM doesn't want to destroy the Reapers? Because he wants to preserve them and is practically on their side, they share the same goals? The Catalyst only has a problem with Shepard wanting to destroy the Reapers, that is pretty clear. Control is way more accepted, on top of the Catalyst knowing TIM actually can't control the Reapers because of the indoctrination. So using him to fight Shepard and the Alliance, who state multiple times throughout ME3 they want the Reapers gone/destroyed, might just be a good enough reason to use TIM to oppose Shepard.

[Linkenski]

TIM was certainly "elusive" in ME2. It was always clear that he was hiding something, but I didn't expect him to become the bad guy in the most banal possible way.

[fraggle]

TIM was certainly "elusive" in ME2. It was always clear that he was hiding something, but I didn't expect him to become the bad guy in the most banal possible way.

 

I don't really see TIM as the "bad guy" in the traditional sense. Just a man that goes very far for his goals, too far. So far that he totally looses it, but I guess I can understand why that is. He's ruthless, but not completely evil, imo.

I actually like his character a lot from the outside perspective, he's very interesting, but as Shepard, nope.

[FlyingSquirrel]

My pet theory, which I've shared before, is that the Dalatrass actually gave TIM the location and said that Cerberus was welcome to steal any scientific data or technology they found there as long as they don't let on where they got it, in return for expending the manpower on sabotaging the cure. If she's devious enough to do such a thing (and I think she is), Cerberus makes for an effective "plausibly deniable" tool in these circumstances - should someone within Cerberus be captured and admit the whole scheme, she can just deny it and most of the galaxy would probably believe her before they'd believe TIM. Plus, TIM probably wouldn't tell the troops about the deal in the first place, especially if they're all already indoctrinated.

 

Also, I think TIM benefits from the galaxy being generally divided and chaotic. He's more likely to be able to pull off something like Sanctuary and generally implement his control plans if everyone else is barely hanging on against the Reapers. Plus, if his endgame was to have all of humanity "upgraded" with Reaper technology in some way, he'd probably face less resistance if the war appears to be going badly and other options don't seem plausible.

[Sifr]

I'd say that Cerberus want humanity to be the only race standing when the dust settles, having the Turians still around and the Krogan cured from the genophage means they've got competition down the road.

 

After failing to kill Eve, then Cerberus tries to interfere with the Turian-Krogan alliance by unearthing and attempting to detonate the old Turian bomb on Tuchanka from the Krogan Rebellions, knowing that it'd both wipe out a huge amount of Krogan in the Kelphic Valley, as well as sour relations with the Turians which have only just started to turn around.

[GalacticWolf5]

Haven't you noticed the pattern yet? Literally everything TIM does in ME3 doesn't help us win against the Reapers, it brings us down. All of Cerberus was indoctrinated. I think you can connect the dots. He was manipulated by the Reapers all along. He was a sleeper agent.

[Linkenski]

I'm not questioning what Cerberus does or why it happens, I'm questioning whether it was the right call to make from writing standpoint, which I don't think it was, considering they had the potential to be so much more substantial in how their role played out than yet another BIoware Mindcontrolled faction. They even used arbitrary mind-control in DA:I for a villain faction which is lame and lazy writing.

 

I do understand there's probably game/combat design decisions involved too, but maybe that's the problem. Instead of basing gameplay on what the story dictates it's the gameplay that dictates the story into directions that make the plot seem thin and arbitrary. Reapers can indoctrinate, good we see some of that, but the way Bioware decided to show it lacked substance. (Look at Saren, that worked. TIM? Nope, it doesn't have the same impact whatsoever)

[themikefest]

They were there because they heard Sur'Kesh was a nice vacation spot.

[txgoldrush]

Haven't you noticed the pattern yet? Literally everything TIM does in ME3 doesn't help us win against the Reapers, it brings us down. All of Cerberus was indoctrinated. I think you can connect the dots. He was manipulated by the Reapers all along. He was a sleeper agent.

More of a replay of the thread in general.

 

The grand flaw in the Cerberus plan is that they thought THEY DON'T NEED THE CRUCIBLE, until its too late when they need it. That and the indoctrination.

 

People once again are NOT paying attention to the narrative.

 

TIM keeps saying that destroying the Reapers would be the biggest mistake humanity has made. Of course, Cerberus will try to oppose Shepard bringing alliances together. The reason why Cerberus tries to kill Eve......DUH
 

Second, look through the vids in Cerberus HQ again. It tells what TIM was trying to do. He was trying to find a proof of concept to control the Reapers, found on Sanctuary, while determining the nature of the Catalyst. This leads to his downfall when he implants himself with Reaper tech, thinking that will control the Reapers, making him more indoctrinated, and then realizing, probably from Vendetta, that he needs the Crucible. At this point, Shepard and TIMs strategy would intersect, but because he is indoctrinated, can't go through with his plan.

[txgoldrush]

TIM was certainly "elusive" in ME2. It was always clear that he was hiding something, but I didn't expect him to become the bad guy in the most banal possible way.

You might want to watch the most Renegade save the base ending to ME2....if the look on his face doesn't say "I am the bad guy"...I don;t know what does.

[Asharad Hett]

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

 

They were picking up their lunch order.