3578 réponses à ce sujet

[Dantriges]

Where does this quantum lockdown come from? As far as i know the material is described as being from the same stuff as the relays but nothing aboutquantum shielding.

 

 

 That wouldn't stop the AI from being able to communicate with the Reapers. It certainly wouldn't stop the Reaper's ability to harvest the galaxy.

 

If the catalyst had the ability to communicate with the Reapers, it would have called Sovereign after the protheans arrived.

 

Why would it need any abilities to defend itself? Ah well, perhaps in case something goes wrong? Perhaps you get one hyper aggressive, paranoid species who gives a f`ck about the keepers dieing and the resulting shutdowns of Citadel maintenance.

[Iakus]

Where does this quantum lockdown come from? As far as i know the material is described as being from the same stuff as the relays but nothing aboutquantum shielding.

 

From a description of the Reapers that implies relays have 'quantum shielding"

 

Unlike the mass effect relays that they created, Reapers do not have quantum shields. Locking itself down at a quantum level would leave a Reaper unaware of its surroundings until the shielding deactivated. Instead, Reapers rely on kinetic barriers.

[MrFob]

From a description of the Reapers that implies relays have 'quantum shielding"

 

Unlike the mass effect relays that they created, Reapers do not have quantum shields. Locking itself down at a quantum level would leave a Reaper unaware of its surroundings until the shielding deactivated. Instead, Reapers rely on kinetic barriers.

 

Hey, off topic but that actually makes me wonder, why don't they just quantum shield certain parts of themselves? You know, like we use hard plates in body armor everywhere but at the joints.

[Iakus]

Hey, off topic but that actually makes me wonder, why don't they just quantum shield certain parts of themselves? You know, like we use hard plates in body armor everywhere but at the joints.

Can't really answer that, as we don't even know what a "quantum shield" is exactly.

[MrFob]

Can't really answer that, as we don't even know what a "quantum shield" is exactly.

 

Yea, fair enough.

[Dantriges]

From a description of the Reapers that implies relays have 'quantum shielding"

 

Oh I meant the Citadel. Gothpunkboy mentioned it several times and that´s news to me.

[MrFob]

Oh I meant the Citadel. Gothpunkboy mentioned it several times and that´s news to me.

 

It's a bit tricky but to me it makes sense. Until ME3, it was said that the relays are made of impenetrable material and that the Citadel's outer shell is made of the same material (not sure if it's in the codex, some conversation or just somewhere in the novels). Then, in ME3 they come up with this quantum shielding idea. Since the codex and the books are all written from an in-universe organic species knowladge base, I'd say the best explanation is that before finding out about quantum shielding, the current cycle species thought it was just some special material. Therefore, it would make sense that the outer shell of the Citadel also has quantum shielding as it was characterized as the same material as the relays before.

[gothpunkboy89]

Can't really answer that, as we don't even know what a "quantum shield" is exactly.

 

Description in game makes it sound like a sort of stasis mode. Super space stasis mode that stops the movement of all matter within the zone. Possibly even time it's self within the field of effect. That would explain how and why the Relays are capable of surviving the thousands and thousands of years in space without getting damaged. One even getting caught in a super nova explosion and being thrown away without suffering any damage.

 

It would make sense to give the Citadel the same effect particularly if it is a part of their over all trap. And even more so if the AI is housed on it.

[gothpunkboy89]

That sentence would be true if Saren won in ME1, he didn't, so the repercussions are a bit more severe. If I choose destroy, I wipe the reapers out without them achieving anything.
 

That doesn't really make that much sense to me. Our cycle didn't do anything special. Even with the delay we are still way behind the protheans, who were already building mass relays (and they didn't even make it to reaper form). Sovereign, Saren, Harbinger, etc., They all try all the time to nullify this mistake and re-enter into the cycles as quickly and efficiently as possible. Even when we dock the crucible, the reapers do everything to destroy it, harvest the species and continue the cycle. On the other hand, I see no indication whatsoever in favor of your hypothesis. I guess as a head canon that compensates for the fact that the writers hadn't come up with the catalyst by the time of ME1 yet, it works well enough though.

And again, this doesn't answer the question: Even if that is the case, why would the reapers/catalyst put in the extra effort to prevent the catalyst from taking control - if he wants - when building the Citadel?

 

The rest of you post was a bit disconnected, so I only answered the parts that were kinda relevant.

 

Two pages back, the discussion centered around the question why the reapers didn't attack the Citadel first. My head canon is that in their worst case scenario, the inhabitants could close the arms and lock the reapers out for good. However, this only works if the Catalyst cannot just open them at will. If he can, the question remains, why didn't they take the Citadel right away, take control over the relay network and make the whole war a whole lot easier for themselves? Maybe they were studying how to beat organics without the Citadel, too?

 

Destroy option is only given because the AI offers you the choice. You by your own power were not able to come to that end without assistance from the AI. So again the Reapers lost nothing in the actual events. They were still able to enter the galaxy. They were still breaking the defenses of the species of the galaxy. They were still harvesting them and blowing their fleets out of the sky. The only reason you get the destroy option is because it feels things have changed enough that the current solution isn't as viable as before.

 

No we didn't do anything special our selves. How ever we were put in a special set up. The signal was disabled the current cycle was able to continue on. A rag tag collection of species worked together and uncovered the existence of the Reapers and foil it's plan to call forth the rest. Now maybe it is just me but knowing what we know about the AI. I would be very interested to see how this plays out.

 

Locking themselves in wouldn't' solve anything. It would simply delay their own death. There would be no food to support them. The Citadel can handle a siege but eventually they would run out of supplies. At that point all the Reapers would need to do is break open a hole or send troops up any convenient exhaust ports it might have. Open the door and let the Reapers in. There are many reasons why they wouldn't go after it first.

 

Pick a flavor of reasoning and I will take a crack at it as to why they did or didn't do X or Y.

[MrFob]

Destroy option is only given because the AI offers you the choice. You by your own power were not able to come to that end without assistance from the AI. So again the Reapers lost nothing in the actual events. They were still able to enter the galaxy. They were still breaking the defenses of the species of the galaxy. They were still harvesting them and blowing their fleets out of the sky. The only reason you get the destroy option is because it feels things have changed enough that the current solution isn't as viable as before.

It's because "the crucible changed me" and therefore "you changed the variables". It's not like the reapers wanted this, their opinion on the crucible becomes pretty clear when they try to blow it up the entire time. They also certainly didn't plan on dying, "we have no beginning, we have no end", "the cycles must continue", "you struggle against inevitability", I could go on. So then the question is, why could we build the crucible? Because we had the time. And why did we have the time? Because the protheans could stop the invasion. And why could they stop the invasion? Because the catalyst was locked out of it's own creation for some reason. But arguing about the endings is pointless anyway, the catalyst contradicts itself so often in this dialogue that it doesn't offer a proper basis for a discussion.
 
Still, and again, this doesn't answer the question: Even if that is the case, why would the reapers/catalyst put in the extra effort to prevent the catalyst from taking control - if he wants - when building the Citadel?
 

No we didn't do anything special our selves. How ever we were put in a special set up. The signal was disabled the current cycle was able to continue on. A rag tag collection of species worked together and uncovered the existence of the Reapers and foil it's plan to call forth the rest. Now maybe it is just me but knowing what we know about the AI. I would be very interested to see how this plays out.

Well, they could have studied the exact same thing by, you know, simply letting them carry on. But they didn't, they really tried to stop all of this. So they try to stop it to see how the organics react to them trying to stop them in which they succeed so they try to stop them again to study some more? Do you realize how ridiculous that sounds?
 

Locking themselves in wouldn't' solve anything. It would simply delay their own death. There would be no food to support them. The Citadel can handle a siege but eventually they would run out of supplies. At that point all the Reapers would need to do is break open a hole or send troops up any convenient exhaust ports it might have. Open the door and let the Reapers in. There are many reasons why they wouldn't go after it first.
 
Pick a flavor of reasoning and I will take a crack at it as to why they did or didn't do X or Y.

Uh wait, now it gets complicated, let me try and untangle your arguments here a little: You are saying that:
a) The catalyst had no control over the Citadel and that makes sense to you
b ) (in response to iakus) The catalyst did have control over the arms after all but didn't want to use it
c) if he had no control as in (a) (or really didn't want to use it as in ( b )) then my head canon about the reapers risking the Citadel by attacking it doesn't make sense because you think they can suddenly crack it when it's closed
d) (from the other thread) point © this is the case even though the citadel is quantum shielded
e) Even though my head canon about the Citadel is BS, the guys who argued that the reapers should have gone after the Citadel early in the game are also wrong because you can come up with a bunch of other good reason (which are those by the way?)

Do you actually have a scenario in your head where all of the above points work together somehow or do you just like to contradict people so much that you do it no matter what they say?

[AlanC9]

Why? How? A straight up utilitarian would need utility, meaning that something valuable or useful comes out of it. It may be valuable for the individuals that get to live within this time period (if they only think about themselves) but the catalyst is not interested in individuals.

A static form of life seems to have the least potential for utility to me (because it's got no potential at all).

Umm... yeah, the utility experienced by the billions of people who lived their lives is exactly the utility I was talking about.

I don't think I've ever seen"utilitarian" used to refer to someone who's only interested in his own personal utility.

[MrFob]

Umm... yeah, the utility experienced by the billions of people who lived their lives is exactly the utility I was talking about.

I don't think I've ever seen"utilitarian" used to refer to someone who's only interested in his own personal utility.

 

Neither have I and neither did I. In fact, I can hardly think of a less personal or more general use of the word utility.

[AlanC9]

Then what was the point of the post I replied to? That the Catalyst isn't a utilitarian? Well, sure. An actual utilitarian would try to maintain some sort of steady state rather than the boom-bust cycles the Catalyst enforces. Of course, not doing that is a huge conceptual problem with the Reapers all the way back to ME1.

[AlanC9]

The Catalyst being able to control the Relay function and arms in now way risks it being discovered. There is literally no logical reason for it to not have this ability. It makes sense for it to have the Reapers to do all the shooting, but not for it to depend on the squishies to open the Relay.

But any argument along these lines goes to the same place as ME1 ended up. Something on the Citadel was supposed to function, Prothean scientists arrive, the something doesn't function

[Dantriges]

If the protheans were able to outhack the Catalyst itself or even had hardware access, the trilogy wouldn´t have happened.

[Gkonone]

I didn't bother reading the OP, and English not being your native language is no excuse for not hitting the spacebar once in a while.

Glad you liked it. The ending is horrible though.

[Callidus Thorn]

All the Citadel is is just an elaborate trap. To lure the citizens of the galaxy to set up their galactic capital on it. Which would have the benefit of not only cutting off the head of the galactic civilization which would throw them into chaos. Perfect for Reapers to harvest first. Add on top of it because it would be the capital of the galactic civilizations it would contain tons of data about the species being harvested. Data that would be used both to help with the harvest and data that would be retained to be stored in a Reaper.

 

Is this supposed to be aimed at someone else? Because it has nothing to do with what I posted, and no-one's disputing or querying any of this.

 

 

Keepers simply act as false sense of security to lull the species that find it into not paying attention. You catch more flies with honey then with vinegar.  It isn't imprisoned any were. You are making assumptions that don't actually seem to fit. The AI created the Reapers to for fill a purpose. To carry out it's only viable solution. The Citadel, the Relays, the scraps of tech left over from last harvest are all part of the elaborate set up for the harvest.

 

Did you miss the part in Mass Effect where the Keepers were supposed to open the relay and bring in the Reapers? It was a pretty major element of the plot, which becomes colossally stupid with the inclusion of the Catalyst. You also forgot to mention that the Keepers, by doing all the repairs and maintenance, prevent too much being learned about the Citadel, by the way.

 

 

Its trapped about as much as I am "trapped" in jail during monopoly when I own an entire side of the board and keep raking in the money from my 4 houses and hotels I have on my property.

 

Really?

 

It's on the Citadel. It cannot call the Reapers in. It cannot open the Relay to bring the Reapers in. It cannot shut down or manipulate the Relay network. It can do nothing but sit in the Citadel watching, or switch itself off between cycles. And when Shepard confronts it, it cannot even prevent its own destruction. So it can't even directly act in its own defence. It can't do anything until the Reapers arrive, and once they do, its control is still pretty questionable. After all, the Reapers don't stop fighting while you're talking to the Catalyst, so he can't even get them to pause for a moment, apparently.

 

Consider: Had the Catalyst possessed control over the Citadel, then when Shepard reached it, it could have simply removed all the air from the section of the Citadel where it was located, killing Shepard and preventing the Crucible from disrupting it. And that's only for the very end of the plot. Before that it could have shut down the Relays. And before that it could have simply opened the Relay itself and brought all the Reapers to it directly.

 

The only reason for it not to be able to do any of this, is that it would completely destroy the plot of the entire franchise(not that it didn't do a pretty good job of that anyway). It takes breathtaking levels of stupidity for it to have engineered the situation the way that it apparently did, because not only is it actively creating ways that the trap can fail(reliance on one reaper to call in the rest, reliance on the Keepers to activate the relay, and presumably to shut down the network), but is not even creating contingencies for these obvious vulnerabilities in the plan.

 

This thing makes Wile E. Coyote look like a genius by comparison.

[Reorte]

You also forgot to mention that the Keepers, by doing all the repairs and maintenance, prevent too much being learned about the Citadel, by the way.

That's a bit that never made much sense to me. Any race that's developed interstellar space travel is going to be curious enough to figure out how everything works whether it needs to or not.

[themikefest]

The Catalyst raises the elevator to bring Shepard to it.

 

The Catalyst shuts off the Crucible if Shepard Refuses

 

The Shepalyst closes the Ward arms in Control.

 

Pretty good indications that the Catalyst does in fact have control of the Citadel.

It also raises both ramps, if ems is above 1750, for Shepard to either choose the control or destroy ending. If below 1750, only the control or destroy ramp is raised depending on what happened to the collector base in ME2. And if ems is above 2700, the ramp for synthesis is extended.

[Natureguy85]

But any argument along these lines goes to the same place as ME1 ended up. Something on the Citadel was supposed to function, Prothean scientists arrive, the something doesn't function

 

True, but with the first game, the Keepers were supposed to open the Relay after receiving a signal. The Protheans disrupted that signal. The Catalyst should have been able to do all that directly. You're right that messing with the signal is functional the same as somehow blocking the Catalyst's control, but only the former happened.

 

 

It's on the Citadel. It cannot call the Reapers in. It cannot open the Relay to bring the Reapers in. It cannot shut down or manipulate the Relay network. It can do nothing but sit in the Citadel watching, or switch itself off between cycles. And when Shepard confronts it, it cannot even prevent its own destruction. So it can't even directly act in its own defence. It can't do anything until the Reapers arrive, and once they do, its control is still pretty questionable. After all, the Reapers don't stop fighting while you're talking to the Catalyst, so he

 

The only reason for it not to be able to do any of this, is that it would completely destroy the plot of the entire franchise(not that it didn't do a pretty good job of that anyway). It takes breathtaking levels of stupidity for it to have engineered the situation the way that it apparently did, because not only is it actively creating ways that the trap can fail(reliance on one reaper to call in the rest, reliance on the Keepers to activate the relay, and presumably to shut down the network), but is not even creating contingencies for these obvious vulnerabilities in the plan.

 

This thing makes Wile E. Coyote look like a genius by comparison.

 

Exactly. The original plan had 3 steps. Like a series circuit, if any one of those steps fails, the whole system fails. The Catalyst having direct control would have been only one step and therefore less chance of failure.

 

 

 

That's a bit that never made much sense to me. Any race that's developed interstellar space travel is going to be curious enough to figure out how everything works whether it needs to or not.

 

Maybe, but once you're basically given everything, you stop trying to find stuff on your own. Remember, the Asari were the first to find the Citadel and had a lot of direct connection to the Protheans, including a beacon on their homeworld.

[KrrKs]

True, but with the first game, the Keepers were supposed to open the Relay after receiving a signal. The Protheans disrupted that signal. The Catalyst should have been able to do all that directly. You're right that messing with the signal is functional the same as somehow blocking the Catalyst's control, but only the former happened.

Do we actually know that the Protheans only disrupted the Keeper signal? They never came back, what Vigil states is the plan before departure, so it is possible that they found the AI's interfaces (or whatever) and blocked them.

This would allow the presence of the AI from ME1 onward without disrupting the trilogy too much.

In which case a normal cycle would start with the AI find the the 'reapingconditions' to be true. It signals the keeper to open the Citadel relay and awakens the Reapers.

-Using the keepers seems nonsensical, if the AI can do it itself, but maybe the keepers are also used to carry out other related tasks, before the actual opening-

 

Because the of the Protheans intervention, the keeper signal as well as the AI's control are non-functional this time. So Sovereign (which now is just the backup, backup-plan) needs to dock with the station in order to activate the relay itself, and/or re-establish the intelligence's control and/or repair the Keeper signal.

Sovereign tries that in ME1 and is destroyed.

In ME3 there is an unspecified amount of time between the Reaper capture of the Citadel and the time 'the fleets arrive'. So theoretically a Reaper could have docked in that time, just as Sovereign did in ME1, and restored the original AI capabilities and/or Keeper signal/response.

This leaves the AI unable to act for most of the trilogy until the last end. Which is pretty much what we see.

 

Which fits better than "the AI could act, but didn't want to". And I guess we all agree that it doesn't make much sense to build a huge trap/relay/reaperbuilder/spacestation around an AI and leave the only thing to be controlled by said AI to be an elevator on some unused part of that station...(couldn't even play that funky elevator music!)

 

This still leaves many problems, but conceptually it fits better than the alternatives, imo.

[Natureguy85]

Do we actually know that the Protheans only disrupted the Keeper signal? They never came back, what Vigil states is the plan before departure, so it is possible that they found the AI's interfaces (or whatever) and blocked them.

 

Shepard may not but we the audience do because Vigil's entire purpose is to tell us that it happened. He is telling the audience as much, if not more, than he is telling Shepard. The Catalyst is a retcon and there's no avoiding that. The most you can do is try to make that retroactive insertion as seamless as possible, like the "point of view" conversation in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi. Your idea isn't a terrible hand wave, but it's tough for me to swallow because it seems like a cheap excuse. The question to ask with Retcons is if they make the story better or worse. Usually it's worse so they are hard to pull off. Star Wars was made much better by making Vader Luke's father, but they needed to address that Obi-Wan had told Luke that Vader had killed Luke's father.  So they had that conversation in the last movie. The characters address the story conflict. But how is the story of Mass Effect improved by the Catalyst? Where do the characters address the questions we're asking? And even your idea still begs the question as to why the Reapers do not immediately take the Citadel, not only to recover and repair the Catalyst, but to shut down and control the Relay Network.

[gothpunkboy89]

It's because "the crucible changed me" and therefore "you changed the variables". It's not like the reapers wanted this, their opinion on the crucible becomes pretty clear when they try to blow it up the entire time. They also certainly didn't plan on dying, "we have no beginning, we have no end", "the cycles must continue", "you struggle against inevitability", I could go on. So then the question is, why could we build the crucible? Because we had the time. And why did we have the time? Because the protheans could stop the invasion. And why could they stop the invasion? Because the catalyst was locked out of it's own creation for some reason. But arguing about the endings is pointless anyway, the catalyst contradicts itself so often in this dialogue that it doesn't offer a proper basis for a discussion.
 
Still, and again, this doesn't answer the question: Even if that is the case, why would the reapers/catalyst put in the extra effort to prevent the catalyst from taking control - if he wants - when building the Citadel?
 

Well, they could have studied the exact same thing by, you know, simply letting them carry on. But they didn't, they really tried to stop all of this. So they try to stop it to see how the organics react to them trying to stop them in which they succeed so they try to stop them again to study some more? Do you realize how ridiculous that sounds?
 

Uh wait, now it gets complicated, let me try and untangle your arguments here a little: You are saying that:
a) The catalyst had no control over the Citadel and that makes sense to you
b ) (in response to iakus) The catalyst did have control over the arms after all but didn't want to use it
c) if he had no control as in (a) (or really didn't want to use it as in ( b )) then my head canon about the reapers risking the Citadel by attacking it doesn't make sense because you think they can suddenly crack it when it's closed
d) (from the other thread) point © this is the case even though the citadel is quantum shielded
e) Even though my head canon about the Citadel is BS, the guys who argued that the reapers should have gone after the Citadel early in the game are also wrong because you can come up with a bunch of other good reason (which are those by the way?)

Do you actually have a scenario in your head where all of the above points work together somehow or do you just like to contradict people so much that you do it no matter what they say?

 

 

I see no contradiction other then you trying to pull other Reaper like Sovereign, Harbinger, Destroyer on Rannoch. AKA not the Catalyst into the mix. The Reapers follow the AI but they are each their own person. And to be honest the arrogance displayed by those Reapers is actually fairly well earned. While we can never know the exact cycle and how many cycles have existed that they were created in. The repeated action of them showing up the species of the galaxy fighting back and inevitably being harvested would give anyone a bit of an ego in that manner. 

 

The Citadel and the Reaper signal are a part of the Reaper trap. But it isn't the beginning and end all of the whole set up. That is like saying that online multiplayer is the beginning and end of all video games. It is a part of video games but it doesn't mean that every single game needs a multi player shoe horned in. *cough* Lost Planet 3 *cough*

 

And other players haven't answered the question: Why would it ever need to take over? Even with the signal loss Sovereign was nearly able to take over again. Only because the game's protagonist interfered was it stopped. And that only happened because Reapers I guess don't understand what surge protectors are. A trait shared with the Chimera from the Resistance trilogy. And after that they were still shown to be more then capable of entering and harvesting the galaxy. In needed the final fight could only be described as a good of fashion ass kicking. The asses being kicked being the collective species of the galaxy.  The entire reason the crucible is even able to get close to the Citadel is because of reality warping powers of game developers.

 

 

You don't actually follow my posts do you? The AI is never shown to have any control over the citadel. So players jumping to the assumption X or Y should have happened because the AI should have done A or B I was segueing against. iakus mentions how the arms closed during the control ending. Which I had forgotten about. Which is when presented with that new information I admitted I was wrong and shifted gears. Because that does actually show some control at least over the arms. Still not showing the greater control that many players are giving it.  The Quantum Shielding is rather heavily hinted how ever if the actions of the Alpha Relay are any signs it doesn't make it 100% indestructible. I have always been very careful to use the words practically, nearly, for all intents when I mention the citadel and how durable it is.  If a giant rock could destroy a relay then a thousand Reapers concentrating fire on a very specific portion of the Citadel should be enough to make a hole in it. Large enough for Destroyers to enter at the very least.  That hole can then be patched post harvest and the Keepers can do the finishing touches while waiting for the next cycle to discover it.

 

Now I will repeat my question both for you and anyone else reading this.

 

Why would the AI need to exercise any control when nothing that happens in any of the ME games comes even vaguely close to threatening it or it's harvest solution?

[Reorte]

Maybe, but once you're basically given everything, you stop trying to find stuff on your own. Remember, the Asari were the first to find the Citadel and had a lot of direct connection to the Protheans, including a beacon on their homeworld.

I don't think so. An already curious race is going to be very keen to find out how anything it's been given works. There may be plenty of individuals who won't bother but if the entire species was like them we'd probably not have fire and the wheel yet.

[Reorte]

Why would the AI need to exercise any control when nothing that happens in any of the ME games comes even vaguely close to threatening it or it's harvest solution?

Because quite a few things that happened in the ME games came close and actually threatened it and its harvest solution.