I haven't played ME1 in a while, but during the course of that game didn't we hear that Cerberus started off as an Alliance black-ops team that went rogue a few months before the events of ME1? This was corroborated by the marines guarding the entrance to the war room on the Normandy (the black-ops part, not the when part).
Now all of the sudden ME Evolution comes along and we're now told Cerberus was conceived during the First Contact War.
So which is it? Or am I mis-remembering ME1 chats?
Admiral Kahoku finds that Cerberus was an Alliance black ops unit. That could either be true, or a false information to deceive anyone who came looking after them.
Nevertheless, I think the first contact war only gave birth to the idea that Cerberus stands for, the organization came much later (as the Illusive Man is already his older self with grey hair in the comic's epilogue), maybe when he gained considerable influence and took over said black ops unit and they went rogue.
Could be that TIM turned a whole black-ops team over to his side and utilized them, and thus his plans, that he'd been putting into motion for years, could truly begin?
Frankly I like how the game deals Cerberus with bits and pieces. And with limited perspective from Shepard, you're not sure what is right and what is outright lies.
In ME Evolution, Jack Harper have his own idea about Cerberus and after being exposed to reaper artifact, he still retain his sanity for several decades. I think he's kinda like Shepard in the beginning, he wanted humanity to be prepared to the eventual reaper invasion and he amassed an army for it. But he views the reapers as potential to further his ideals about humanity's advancement, embrace their tech, try to learn what they are and he wanted humanity to extend what it could achieve on its own through the millennial worth of knowledge from the reapers. In that essence, he is ambitious but he desire to be the omnipotent father of humanity, .
Within Cerberus, there's political, science and military division. It was likely that the military division is an off-shoot of Alliance Systems who didn't want to play nice with the alien races especially after the war and they simply siphon off the Alliance military in all the years. The best portrayal of this is in The Expanse' fourth book, Nemesis Game.
The science division is something that was particularly interesting to me. Almost every Cerberus scientist you met have a skewed morality and ethics and they're well-aware of the risk and limitation but do it anyway even if it results mass death.. kinda like attitude among certain scientific community during the world war and even us right now with dealing with embryonic stem cells. Unfortunately, the game doesn't explore much about how things works and it was simply easy enough to wave space magic (especially Shepard's reconstruction). But in the game, I do think it was neat that certain companies like Binary Helix and even ExoGeni have connections directly to Cerberus. And the Akuze background show that Cerberus was well aware of who Shepard was and the experiment done on Corporal Toombs was about making him into a super soldier which mirrored what Cerberus done to Shepard in ME2. So it wasn't that odd for me to assume Cerberus have monitored Shepard almost the entirety of her career to be able to reconstruct in two years... heck I still have my undergrad friends who haven't finish their Masters yet since 2011, science doesn't happen in a snap.
As for the political faction, you could assume Udina was secretly supported by Cerberus from the start. Which kinda make sense why he make his move to try to get the alien councilors killed. And I always assume Miranda's father was always supporting Cerberus from the beginning as his desire to expand his legacy through science is very Cerberus-ey. And I canoned that he knew all along where she is and she was doing exactly what her father and TIM expected from her except that she kept her sister away from Cerberus knowledge until she use her Cerberus connection to keep her sister safe.
Either way, I have no trouble with how the game portrayed Cerberus as whatever. And I recommend reading the Expanse series, the current tv series season only deals with half the first book so the good bits was in season 2.
Frankly I like how the game deals Cerberus with bits and pieces. And with limited perspective from Shepard, you're not sure what is right and what is outright lies.
In ME Evolution, Jack Harper have his own idea about Cerberus and after being exposed to reaper artifact, he still retain his sanity for several decades. I think he's kinda like Shepard in the beginning, he wanted humanity to be prepared to the eventual reaper invasion and he amassed an army for it. But he views the reapers as potential to further his ideals about humanity's advancement, embrace their tech, try to learn what they are and he wanted humanity to extend what it could achieve on its own through the millennial worth of knowledge from the reapers. In that essence, he is ambitious but he desire to be the omnipotent father of humanity, .
Within Cerberus, there's political, science and military division. It was likely that the military division is an off-shoot of Alliance Systems who didn't want to play nice with the alien races especially after the war and they simply siphon off the Alliance military in all the years. The best portrayal of this is in The Expanse' fourth book, Nemesis Game.
The science division is something that was particularly interesting to me. Almost every Cerberus scientist you met have a skewed morality and ethics and they're well-aware of the risk and limitation but do it anyway even if it results mass death.. kinda like attitude among certain scientific community during the world war and even us right now with dealing with embryonic stem cells. Unfortunately, the game doesn't explore much about how things works and it was simply easy enough to wave space magic (especially Shepard's reconstruction). But in the game, I do think it was neat that certain companies like Binary Helix and even ExoGeni have connections directly to Cerberus. And the Akuze background show that Cerberus was well aware of who Shepard was and the experiment done on Corporal Toombs was about making him into a super soldier which mirrored what Cerberus done to Shepard in ME2. So it wasn't that odd for me to assume Cerberus have monitored Shepard almost the entirety of her career to be able to reconstruct in two years... heck I still have my undergrad friends who haven't finish their Masters yet since 2011, science doesn't happen in a snap.
As for the political faction, you could assume Udina was secretly supported by Cerberus from the start. Which kinda make sense why he make his move to try to get the alien councilors killed. And I always assume Miranda's father was always supporting Cerberus from the beginning as his desire to expand his legacy through science is very Cerberus-ey. And I canoned that he knew all along where she is and she was doing exactly what her father and TIM expected from her except that she kept her sister away from Cerberus knowledge until she use her Cerberus connection to keep her sister safe.
Either way, I have no trouble with how the game portrayed Cerberus as whatever. And I recommend reading the Expanse series, the current tv series season only deals with half the first book so the good bits was in season 2.
You could say that for Saren too. They both start off with somewhat...good intentions. I only say somewhat though, because they want their cake and to eat it too. They want to keep or use Reaper tech.
I kind of thought Cerberus was retconned a bit, but I guess it works to blend both stories together too. I remember Hudson saying that they were originally just throway mooks in the first game, meant to fill some spaces. But maybe Drew K and Walters always had something more in mind.
It's both and they are not, intuitively at least, consistent with each other. The Cerberus in ME2, based off the Codex, is not an unknown group: it's original manifesto was posted on the internet, it was covered by the media, and is publicly acknowledged to exist (none of this narrative makes sense if the group was supposed to be some sort of secret military group). ME1 makes it sound like it was supposed to be completely secret with a name that wasn't available on Space Wikipedia (it wasn't available as a Codex entry in ME1 which reflected this).
In ME3 the door soldiers seem to be unaware of all the previous explanations.
All you need to know is that Cerberus is stupid post-ME1, not that it's anything special during ME1 either.
I still think TIM is cool.
The basic gist of Cerberus remains the same throughout though. That works for me. They have a knack for turning their experiments on their own people.. in the name of some greater good.
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