The Reapers were supposed to have been completely alien and unknowable, both in there nature and there goals. At least that's how I understood it from ME1. Not how it turned out that there nature and goals were very easy to understand, they couldn't be any simpler to understand.
Sovereign deceived you then. He told you what he wanted you to believe, not what was the truth. Why would a highly-advanced, sentient machine tell you its purpose and its origins just because you asked? You don't believe Sovereign was capable of embellishing, if not outright lying? Why would you trust the enemy to fully explain to you his motives? He looked down on organics and saw no value in their opinion.
Well sure. I don't find that very interesting though. Or very good writing. And really any back story would not have lived up to the Reapers power in my opinion, BioWare stepped in it when they created the Reapers in the first place. All I'm saying is that I would've preferred they remain a mystery than give us some hamfisted reasoning, which really was the only option they had other than to do nothing.
Sovereign deceived you then. He told you what he wanted you to believe, not what was the truth. Why would a highly-advanced, sentient machine tell you its purpose and its origins just because you asked? You don't believe Sovereign was capable of embellishing, if not outright lying? Why would you trust the enemy to fully explain to you his motives? He looked down on organics and saw no value in their opinion.
Why should a highly advanced sentient machine deceive or be capable of deception in the first place? It was far more intimidating when we thought Sovereign didn't bother embellishing because the simple fact of the matter was that what he said was accurate. It was hardcore. It was scary. It was awesome.
Then we ended up with Harbinger never shutting up, the Arnold Schwarzenegger baby boss fight, and way more information on Reapers than I believe was necessary.
Then ME3 came round where Harbinger didn't talk enough and the game blew the lid off of Reapers anyway;putting them there with any other villain in media instead of an unknowable force.
Zaalbar, Giantdeathrobot, pdusen et 5 autres aiment ceci
Well sure. I don't find that very interesting though. Or very good writing. And really any back story would not have lived up to the Reapers power in my opinion, BioWare stepped in it when they created the Reapers in the first place. All I'm saying is that I would've preferred they remain a mystery than give us some hamfisted reasoning, which really was the only option they had other than to do nothing.
I think that would have accomplished more harm than good. I think ME3 would have been even more controversial if BioWare just avoided explaining what the reapers were. That, in my opinion, would have been one of the most underwhelming and disappointing endings a game could have. You literally build up this one mysterious antagonist for three games just to do absolutely nothing with it. Personally, I'm glad BioWare did not take that route. I would have rather the reapers never have been created if BioWare did not plan to explain them.
Grieving Natashina, Naphtali et Gunsomber aiment ceci
Why should a highly advanced sentient machine deceive or be capable of deception in the first place? It was far more intimidating when we thought Sovereign didn't bother embellishing because the simple fact of the matter was that what he said was accurate. It was hardcore. It was scary. It was awesome.
Then we ended up with Harbinger never shutting up, the Arnold Schwarzenegger baby boss fight, and way more information on Reapers than I believe was necessary.
Then ME3 came round where Harbinger didn't talk enough and the game blew the lid off of Reapers anyway;putting them there with any other villain in media instead of an unknowable force.
Clearly, you didn't like ME2 or ME3 and you did not like how BioWare treated the reapers. I understand that. However, there were plenty of people who were, at least, just fine with the reapers having their motives explained. People may not have liked the catalyst and necessarily all of those components related to the leviathans, but they certainly enjoyed finding the truth. There are times when it is appropriate to leave something a mystery and let the audience discuss what could have been. This was not one of them.
We'll have to agree to disagree then. I'll always maintain The Reapers being unknowable was a far better element of the plot than having everything about them explained to us.
That is the beautiful about Bioware games, they are like "choose your own adventure" book. U just read the book and choose some outcomes but u need to deal that the over all story is someone else work.
We'll have to agree to disagree then. I'll always maintain The Reapers being unknowable was a far better element of the plot than having everything about them explained to us.
I agree wholeheartedly with this, and I'm someone who did like ME2 and ME3.
Why should a highly advanced sentient machine deceive or be capable of deception in the first place? It was far more intimidating when we thought Sovereign didn't bother embellishing because the simple fact of the matter was that what he said was accurate. It was hardcore. It was scary. It was awesome.
Then we ended up with Harbinger never shutting up, the Arnold Schwarzenegger baby boss fight, and way more information on Reapers than I believe was necessary.
Then ME3 came round where Harbinger didn't talk enough and the game blew the lid off of Reapers anyway;putting them there with any other villain in media instead of an unknowable force.
Yeah, I also prefer the Reapers as an unknowable, overwhelming force. Sure as hell beats them being a buggy AI's glorified attack drones.
I'd also argue a lot of ME3's plot problems begin in ME2, the installment that barely advanced the overarcing plot at all, and whose ''dream team'' we pretty much ditch in the next game.
Not quite certain what this has to do with DLC however.
Oh, and speaking of DLC, Pillars of Eternity's is pretty great. I urge anyone who got that game to check out White March.
Yeah, I also prefer the Reapers as an unknowable, overwhelming force. Sure as hell beats them being a buggy AI's glorified attack drones.
I'd also argue a lot of ME3's plot problems begin in ME2, the installment that barely advanced the overarcing plot at all, and whose ''dream team'' we pretty much ditch in the next game.
Not quite certain what this has to do with DLC however.
Oh, and speaking of DLC, Pillars of Eternity's is pretty great. I urge anyone who got that game to check out White March.
Spawned off of some talk of the ME3 Leviathan DLC which opened up on the Reapers and explained them.
Bioware and EA are just shady corporations in comparison to glorious CDPR which has become my favourite dev. God bless Poland.
Maybe CDPR is the most gamer-friendly studio (it's all marketing though), but most people don't know how they treat their employees. I remember a questionnaire for employees about polish game studios (we have plenty of them) and CDPR took all last positions in every section (stress, crunch times, payment, overtimes, work comfort). These reviews aren't very positive too (link) (compare this to other studio's reviews)
Sorry for this little off-topic, but despite my love for TW, I really want some people to realize the true nature of studio that get so much praise.
SurelyForth, SNascimento et blahblahblah aiment ceci
The Reapers were supposed to have been completely alien and unknowable, both in there nature and there goals. At least that's how I understood it from ME1. Not how it turned out that there nature and goals were very easy to understand, they couldn't be any simpler to understand.
They were totally knowable. Just because Sovereign rants about it doesn't mean their motives are incomprehensible. If you want your Space Cthulu to be incomprehensible, don't let us have a chat with it.
^That was my issue with Sovereign too. Great dialogue, in a completely non-sensical package. The fact that he was bothering to talk to Shepard at all in that context to a great extent subverts what should have been an alien/unknowable force.
A lot of times, people talk about Harbinger ruining the Reapers. What worked against Harbinger was weak/repetitive dialogue, the gameplay mechanic, and we have no real interactions with him. But he didn't suddenly change the nature of the Reapers - Sovereign did that by his lonesome, imo.
^That was my issue with Sovereign too. Great dialogue, in a completely non-sensical package. The fact that he was bothering to talk to Shepard at all in that context to a great extent subverts what should have been an alien/unknowable force.
A lot of times, people talk about Harbinger ruining the Reapers. What worked against Harbinger was weak/repetitive dialogue, the gameplay mechanic, and we have no real interactions with him. But he didn't suddenly change the nature of the Reapers - Sovereign did that by his lonesome, imo.
We needed that chat with Sovereign to establish who/what are enemies were. Beforehand we thought Sovereign was a Reaper ship. Only until speaking to him do we come to realize he's an actual reaper.
Had we not spoken to Sovereign we would not have learned that Reapers were the ships themselves. We'd probably end up thinking that whatever came out of the ships were Reapers(so the husks, then). It would've been confusing.
Sovereign's chat with us helped explain JUST enough for us to know that we don't really know anything other than what are enemy looks like and what they planned to do. Harbinger was just around to pester us throughout the second game for no real need. And in ME3, when we actually could've used a good chat from Harbinger, we didn't get it.
In ME1, the Reapers thru Sovereign looked like some cthulu eldritch nightmare race of gigantic ships bent on wiping out civilization every 50,000 years for a reason that our minds didn't have the capacity to understand.
In ME3, the Reapers thru the franchise looked like a group of super machines lead by an AI to endlessly wipe things out based on faulty logic with more holes than swiss cheese.
If I'm gonna be sold on a villain's motives being incomprehensible and beyond my understanding, I'd like their motives to remain that way so I can believe it. Having to explain everything makes Sovereign's speech seem like just a whole lot of hot air, and it deflates the amazing feeling of that incredible interaction.
In ME1, the Reapers thru Sovereign looked like some cthulu eldritch nightmare race of gigantic ships bent on wiping out civilization every 50,000 years for a reason that our minds didn't have the capacity to understand.
Ultimately, It was Bond-villain gloating, which is about as opposite as Cthulhu-esque incomprehensible horror as it gets.
Yes, we needed a way to identify who the villain of the Mass Effect trilogy was going to be. But that doesn't negate that the method of introduction pretty much defies all sense of what Sovereign was supposed to be, with regard to the Cthulhu mythos. His speech, awesome as it is, is basically "we're so much better than you, we're so much smarter than you, and we're gonna kill you" in a nutshell.
Ultimately, It was Bond-villain gloating, which is about as opposite as Cthulhu-esque incomprehensible horror as it gets.
Yes, we needed a way to identify who the villain of the Mass Effect trilogy was going to be. But that doesn't negate that the method of introduction pretty much defies all sense of what Sovereign was supposed to be, with regard to the Cthulhu mythos. His speech, awesome as it is, is basically "we're so much better than you, we're so much smarter than you, and we're gonna kill you" in a nutshell.
I don't see it that way. That sounds like the sort of bragging a human or alien would do. In Sovereign's case it seemed more along the lines of just stating a matter of fact.
I don't see it that way. That sounds like the sort of bragging a human or alien would do. In Sovereign's case it seemed more along the lines of just stating a matter of fact.
For the other bragging humans and aliens, they often think of it as a matter of fact too. We see Kai Leng engage in this kind of stuff too- although in his case with much cheesier dialogue-but he's a great parallel for Sovereign's role, from an interaction stand point.
I'd go so far as to say that the most Cthulhu-esque aspects of the Reapers wasn't from any of our interactions with them. It was from seeing how other people were affected by them (the Indoctrination prisoners on Virmire, the research team in the ME2 Reaper corpse).
Cthulhu-esque horror and its impact is typically far more indirect, hence the Bond Villain Comparisons. Sovereign seems to view us as ants; but I don't typically spend extended periods of time telling the ants how pointless they are. That's where the Sovereign concept runs into trouble: the dichotomy between what he's supposed to be, a Cthulhu-horror, and what we see in-game.
For the other bragging humans and aliens, they often think of it as a matter of fact too. We see Kai Leng engage in this kind of stuff too- although in his case with much cheesier dialogue-but he's a great parallel for Sovereign's role, from an interaction stand point.
I'd go so far as to say that the most Cthulhu-esque aspects of the Reapers wasn't from any of our interactions with them. It was from seeing how other people were affected by them (the Indoctrination prisoners on Virmire, the research team in the ME2 Reaper corpse).
Cthulhu-esque horror and its impact is typically far more indirect, hence the Bond Villain Comparisons. Sovereign seems to view us as ants; but I don't typically spend extended periods of time telling the ants how pointless they are. That's where the Sovereign concept runs into trouble: the dichotomy between what he's supposed to be, a Cthulhu-horror, and what we see in-game.
But he didn't spend extended periods of time telling us that. He told us once briefly. If anything it was Harbinger in ME2 who was guilty of all that nonsense.
ME DLCs were awesome, far better than any other DLCs I have played (including Witcher's in the OP). ME team is different that the DA team, no? I have nothing to worry about then, bar character DLC but BW said they won't be making those anymore.
We needed that chat with Sovereign to establish who/what are enemies were. Beforehand we thought Sovereign was a Reaper ship. Only until speaking to him do we come to realize he's an actual reaper.
Had we not spoken to Sovereign we would not have learned that Reapers were the ships themselves. We'd probably end up thinking that whatever came out of the ships were Reapers(so the husks, then). It would've been confusing.
Sovereign's chat with us helped explain JUST enough for us to know that we don't really know anything other than what are enemy looks like and what they planned to do. Harbinger was just around to pester us throughout the second game for no real need. And in ME3, when we actually could've used a good chat from Harbinger, we didn't get it.
In ME1, the Reapers thru Sovereign looked like some cthulu eldritch nightmare race of gigantic ships bent on wiping out civilization every 50,000 years for a reason that our minds didn't have the capacity to understand.
In ME3, the Reapers thru the franchise looked like a group of super machines lead by an AI to endlessly wipe things out based on faulty logic with more holes than swiss cheese.
If I'm gonna be sold on a villain's motives being incomprehensible and beyond my understanding, I'd like their motives to remain that way so I can believe it. Having to explain everything makes Sovereign's speech seem like just a whole lot of hot air, and it deflates the amazing feeling of that incredible interaction.
You don't need a chat with Cthulu to learn about it. Liara is an archeology expert. ME wants to pretend like its a bit of an RPG. We can explore the origins of the Repears and piece together the truth of their existence. Saren can reveal it to us while broken down and blubbering about the effects of indoctrination, showing he was totally broken and cast aside by Sovereign.
If Bioware wanted to make the Reapers terrifying there was an easy way to do it. They made a stupid bond villain instead.
But he didn't spend extended periods of time telling us that. He told us once briefly. If anything it was Harbinger in ME2 who was guilty of all that nonsense.
For a being who's intended to be beyond our comprehension, spending 4-6 minutes gloating about how he's going to kill us is pretty bad form, more so given the context of this being what Bond villains are often criticized for doing.
I mentioned earlier that Harbinger was bland, but that doesn't bring Sovereign any closer to being a Cthulhu-horror. Cthulhu horror is heavily related to how we interact with these beings and learn about their existence; direct/prolonged/explicit conversation about our doom is not typically one of them. As an example, Cthulhu villains don't say "Listen guy, I'm so far beyond your existence that you can't possibly understand me" with taunting language; they just go about their business, while casually infecting people with madness. That's why I mentioned the best examples of Cthulhu horror being the indoctrinated Virmire servants as well as the ME2 Reaper ship.
Even if you look at In Exile's examples, that's a more accurate depiction of the style where we typically learn about the other-worldly force via more indirect/secondary sources and dialogue; people who have "straddled the line" so to speak between our reality and Cthulhu's madness. There's an issue there that's fundamental to the Cthulhu-presentation and it's why Sovereign is far closer to Bond Villain on the spectrum; because outlining how they're going to kill us and we don't stand a chance is typically what Bond villains do - he just does it with much better dialogue/malice than Harbinger. But his approach is far too direct to ever line up with the concept of a Lovecraftian horror. It's quite literally in direct contradiction with the concept.
In Exile, Dean_the_Young et JamesFaith aiment ceci
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