I'm not sure the cut scene wasn't simply to demonstrate the extent of the Reaper fleet. Particularly when you consider it's logical to assume that each of those Reaper ships could easily be the size of Sovereign, which individually took the combined efforts of the Citadel fleet to take down. (I know that Sovereign was accompanied by smaller vessels in ME1, I tended to think those were Geth ships developed to mirror Sovereign in appearance, rather than true Reapers).
Some thoughts;
- Sovereign was a vanguard. A Reaper who didn't return to dark space with the rest. Therefore it was possible for Sovereign to act in known galactic space when it awoke.
- The rest of the Reapers require activation of the Citadel's mass effect relay to enable their return from dark space.
- The Reapers (potentially) need the organic matter from these developed civilizations in order to develop and to create new Reapers.
That provides an explanation for the construction of the Human-Reaper. The Collector homebase is still connected to the known galaxy, and the Reapers are still trapped in dark space. They still require the activation of the Citadel mass relay to allow their return. Given the destruction of Sovereign, they obviously need another Reaper that can access the known galaxy, activate the Citadel and allow their return as Sovereign had intended to do.
Sovereign was destroyed in large part due to the actions of the human race. Presumably Sovereign transmitted data on Shepard and the humans back to the rest of the Reapers. Hence why the Collectors were directed to start harvesting humans, rather than other species, both due to their wider vulnerability (just recently colonizing new worlds in the Terminus systems), and also because of the "wild card" aspect of their influence on galactic civilization. They were also directed to kill Shepard.
As the Collectors have failed, and the in-construction Human-Reaper is destroyed, what next for the Reapers?
I can guess that they are on a reasonably lengthy timescale. Sovereign hung out for 50,000 years waiting for the best time to act against galactic civilization. The two years they spent working on construction of the Human-Reaper seems minimal in that context. So clearly potential for them to spend another couple of years at least in addressing another option, unless they've been provoked into anger or reckless action.
But how do they get back to real space from dark space? If they just fly there then it seems a bit of a fudge, because it undermines most of their backstory. As well as being effectively impossible based on what has been explained of the ME universe.
Suggestion seems to be that the Collectors were their only long standing organic link (and the Omega 4 relay the only unknown mass relay), which they've now lost. That seems to preclude the idea of them building another reaper (which would be a bit repetitive in story terms anyway).
They could work at manipulating another race into aiding them. This was clearly presaged with Shepard's message from the Rachni Queen in ME2, explaining how the Rachni were manipulated into war by the Reapers. I couldn't work out *why* the Reapers would do this, as there seemed to be no particular benefit to them. I suppose one option might be that the Reapers themselves want to discourage the activation of dormant mass relays (why was banned after the Rachni wars), because they have another non-Citadel option of returning to normal space in a more convoluted way. They might also be looking for an opportunity of using a mass relay that has moved - as the Mu Relay did when it was caught in a supernova.
I suppose they could also try and provoke a careless civilization into building a new mass relay. It's something the Protheans managed in miniature. Particularly an inquisitive and reckless race like...humans. Even more possible when you consider a) the reliance on existing mass relays can be seen as one of the sources of the "geth" attack that was Sovereign and
the council and the Alliance largely either hide or refuse to believe in the Reapers.Anyway, that's my random thoughts on the Reapers and what's next...
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