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[nerdimus_maximus_the_decimal-ator]

I've been looking through the various threads for a while, but haven't seriouly trolled all the way back through the hundreds of posts that are out there, and I've noticed more than a fair share of threads that are centered around narrow subjects such as "let's complain about how this game is terrible, but it's still sucked away countless hours of my life" or "I love {insert character name} and this is why {insert fanboyish fanaticism}".

What I'm concerned with, and I will happily be corrected if I have missed something back in the annals of the monster that is this forum, are simple observations of what Bioware has given us in the core gameplay experience of ME1 and ME2, along with extended universe content such as the Iphone game and novels. I'm not trying to make judgments on whether what the give us are good or bad--there are more than enough threads out there trying to do that--simply making an account of story and background elements that we as the consumer and fans of Mass Effect in all its forms can glean from what Bioware has released.

1. Apparently the Reapers come back every 50,000 years not to wipe out galactic civilizations, but rather to try and harvest them for viable embryonic Reapers that will grow to maturity with the injection of millions and billions and trillions of individuals of a particular race broken down to their genetic constituents. Harbinger as the controlled collector says it several times, "We are your genetic destiny", "We are the harbingers of your destiny", and again at the very end of the game where he says the the Reapers return is Humnans' salvation, not their destruction.

2. Geth are not as evil as was once believed, and though 'what's-his-face' vas Qwib-Qwib is a dick, he may have a point that Geth should be re-evaluated. I really think this may be Bioware's attempt to broach the subject of the evolution of technology to a point where they may be considered to have a soul, which seems to be the main argument against them in the first place. They certainly have intelligence, they're AI's in the full sense of the word. However without souls, or that "something else" that people naturally look for in a person that they don't see in machines, they can't be called "alive".

3. Shepard is now almost Borg-like thanks to the Lazuras project and the necessary cybernetic implants that came along with the package. I will speculate that this could come to bite him in the butt if he foregoes his alliance with the Illusive Man as there may be some fail-safe built in that would allow Cerberus to exact some form of remote control on Shepard, or shut down the implants altogether. That would certainly make for an ice-breaker in ME3 and an intense, dramatic moment like what Bioware is so fond of.

4. Speaking of Cerberus, apparently they aren't as bad as was once thought. As Samara so poignently said, curiosity is not a good thing sometimes, "If you have to kill a man, do you really want to know that he is a devoted father?". Certainly they have done some bad things as you found out in ME1, but then again you yourself may have done worse if you were renegade, such as genocide (rachni) or murder of neglect (letting the council die).

5. The council is a bunch of ignorant douchebags who can't see beyond their noses/faceplates/bugeyes. Extrapolating from the ending of ME2 with the massive picture of Reapers coming en masse I think its a fair guess that much of ME3 will revolve around much of what Dragon Age did, gaining the loyalty of various factions and resolving disputes of every kind so as to unite the people against the oncoming horde. Of course this is where your personal decisions will play a huge part, as to who is fighting with you, how prepared they are, etc.

6. If you think about it, the final picture of the Reaper fleet coming in out of dark space may give a hint at the age of the galaxy, the Reapers coming back in 50,000 year cycles to, as mentioned in point #1, procreate. Now the Reapers couldn't have always existed as they do now--they aren't God--which means that they evolved themselves and came to the conclusion of their current gameplan at some point in the galaxies past, building the mass relays and then quietly slipping out the back door of the Citadel. They then enacted their plan and have been doing so nearly flawlessly until, at least, the last two times with the Protheans and now Shepard. Since they create new Reapers with the genetic material of the galactic races that have grown up to discover and use the Citadel and the mass relays each time, then their numbers would grow each time, though it wouldn't necessarily be a fixed number since there would be different numbers of races that had gotten to that particular point in evolution and technology and only certain ones prove to be viable, as is exemplified by the Protheans-turned-Collectors. Therefore one could count the number of Reapers and make some sort of estimation for the age of the galaxy, or at least how long ago it was when the Reapers started doing what they're doing.

7. Tali's dad was apparently the Quarian equivalent of Capt. Kirk, minus the interspecies-erotica (as far as we know).

8. There are only two known Reapers to ever have been destroyed/killed (depending on whether you view them as people or things) and there are a lot more on the way, and the majority of the galaxy is blissfully unaware and still overly concerned with their own problems. That's a lot of work for one man and his ragtag group of soldiers, vigilantes, biotic superheroes, and tech wizards.

[Sursion]

Point #3
Just wanted to point out that Miranda says she wanted to put a control device in you, but the Illusive Man refused.

But still a good read.

Modifié par Sursion, 14 février 2010 - 07:26 .

[nerdimus_maximus_the_decimal-ator]

Oh, and just remembered something. The Illusive Man is all about this three dot thing, in his eyes, as a button for his suit, as cufflinks. If you look at Shepard's eyes as he is going renegade, you actually an inversion of those three dots except red. Possible connection that could reveal something about the Illusive Man? Da, da, dum....

[DeMoNxDaVe]

Very Astute. . . Get the reference? It's a dialogue option you can use when talking to Samara. Yeah don't ask why and or how I remembered that. But anyways that's a pretty good break down of the story as a whole.

[addiction21]

FYI The Reapers are not on a strict 50,000 year time table. That is just the time since their last visit to the galaxy. Sovereigns job was to monitor life and to start the invasion when the "organics" reached a certain level of technological advancement.

[Methany]

You make good points, but I have a problem with #6. There are many unknown variables. Assuming that the only way for reapers to produce more units is from harvesting organics ( It`s not clear for me if the human-reaper thing was only a special project or not... EDI says they failed with the Protheans), we can prsume there are wildly different population sizes in the galaxy each time the reapers come around... so variance in the number of reapers produce each time would be very high, and time estimates too innacurate.

Additionally, we have no reliable data on the number of reapers destroyed over so much time. Also, is it reasonable to assume the milky way is the only galaxy they harvest? 50.000 years is a long time to stand idly by, especially for synthetics no?

Another thing: I'm pretty sure Miranda says at some point that Shepard is clean of control devices. I believe her because she says that if she led the project, she would implement such devices.