101 réponses à ce sujet

[condiments1]

I think it would have far more of a stretch of logic for them to accept the reapers. I mean, the only evidence they actually have is from sovereign is pieces of the thing, and most of that was salvaged during the chaos or whisked away by the keepers. It was almost too cheesy how easily shepard accepted the reaper threat in the original game.

I mean how they even go explaining that to the mass public with the evidence they have? "Yeah well, there are these hordes of evil sentient machines that come to the galatic for whatever....oh and all the technology we've based our society on, its actually not prothean, its the REAPERS! They do it so they develop along the paths they desire for their EVIL NEFARIOUS SCHEMES. Oh yeah, and the citadel, the epicenter of galactic commune...ITS A TRAP! They travel from dark space doing whatever, and blow up all galactic government in a single blow and then they eat us over centuries before returning to dark space. So...yeah."

There would be a mass exodus from the citadel, panics, riots, etc. If council actually BELIEVES shepard, and that is a big IF, they're keeping it under wraps.

Modifié par condiments1, 04 mars 2010 - 07:10 .

[Terraneaux]

condiments1 wrote...
There would be a mass exodus from the citadel, panics, riots, etc. If council actually BELIEVES shepard, and that is a big IF, they're keeping it under wraps.

They don't have to tell the public, but they could at least tell you.

[condiments1]

Terraneaux wrote...

condiments1 wrote...
There would be a mass exodus from the citadel, panics, riots, etc. If council actually BELIEVES shepard, and that is a big IF, they're keeping it under wraps.

They don't have to tell the public, but they could at least tell you.

Trust a formely DEAD spectre now working for pro human terrorist organization? In a real life situation this would be incredibly idiotic move. Regardless of debt they owe to shepard for saving them, it would be foolish to divulge deeply critical information while he is tied to cerberus. Giving Shepard spectre status was the best solution for both parties. It gives Shepard fully authority to deal with the reaper threat, and the council to focus on rebuilding efforts.

Modifié par condiments1, 04 mars 2010 - 07:22 .

[Terraneaux]

condiments1 wrote...

Trust a formely DEAD spectre now working for pro human terrorist organization? In a real life situation this would be incredibly idiotic move. Regardless of debt they owe to shepard for saving them, it would be foolish to divulge deeply critical information while he is tied to cerberus. Giving Shepard spectre status was the best solution for both parties. It gives Shepard fully authority to deal with the reaper threat, and the council to focus on rebuilding efforts.

Why do you have to be working with Cerberus in the first place?  Why can't you hijack Miranda's shuttle straight to Council Space after the first space station?  Oh, right, someone on the writing team  has a hardon for Cerberus and needs to make everyone else in the setting look terminally stupid to make a pathologically evil organization look good by comparison.

[condiments1]

Terraneaux wrote...

condiments1 wrote...

Trust a formely DEAD spectre now working for pro human terrorist organization? In a real life situation this would be incredibly idiotic move. Regardless of debt they owe to shepard for saving them, it would be foolish to divulge deeply critical information while he is tied to cerberus. Giving Shepard spectre status was the best solution for both parties. It gives Shepard fully authority to deal with the reaper threat, and the council to focus on rebuilding efforts.

Why do you have to be working with Cerberus in the first place?  Why can't you hijack Miranda's shuttle straight to Council Space after the first space station?  Oh, right, someone on the writing team  has a hardon for Cerberus and needs to make everyone else in the setting look terminally stupid to make a pathologically evil organization look good by comparison.

*hijack shuttle*

*show up to citadel in a cerberus shuttle with multiple corpes laying on the floor*
Oh so you can barge into the citadel and go, "HEY GUYZ I DIED BUT GOT BETTER, GIMME SHIPZ AND REZOURCES TO INVESTIGATE MISSING HUMAN COLONIES IN THE TERMINUS SYSTEMS!"
"Wait...how the hell did you come back to life?"
"Cerberus spent billions of credits reviving me, and then I hijacked their shuttle when they tried to get me to work for them."
"Waitaminute....what? Take this guy to the medical bay...he thinks he is shepard."

Given the resources of cerberus TIM could easily make your life hell. I mean you were officially declared dead!

The motivations of paragon shepard are simple, you are using cerberus as a means to end(TIM for information regarding collectors, and ships, recruits)

For renegades, he is right up your alley.

[Terraneaux]

condiments1 wrote...

*hijack shuttle*

*show up to citadel in a cerberus shuttle with multiple corpes laying on the floor*
Oh so you can barge into the citadel and go, "HEY GUYZ I DIED BUT GOT BETTER, GIMME SHIPZ AND REZOURCES TO INVESTIGATE MISSING HUMAN COLONIES IN THE TERMINUS SYSTEMS!"
"Wait...how the hell did you come back to life?"
"Cerberus spent billions of credits reviving me, and then I hijacked their shuttle when they tried to get me to work for them."
"Waitaminute....what? Take this guy to the medical bay...he thinks he is shepard."

Given the resources of cerberus TIM could easily make your life hell. I mean you were officially declared dead!

The motivations of paragon shepard are simple, you are using cerberus as a means to end(TIM for information regarding collectors, and ships, recruits)

For renegades, he is right up your alley.

There are any of a number of ways that could go.  The council was willing to assume Saren was not a traitor in the face of ridiculously damning evidence, they have a history of trusting Spectres.  Except for Shepard, apparently, because if they gave you the respect due your station, that would make the game harder for some people to write, it seems.  Setting fail.  

[RobertM5252]

Proellx wrote...

The council has been treated with complete destruction before, the rachini, and the Korgan rebellions. They whole stance on the reaper threat changed completely.

the Asari Councilor goes on to say; " You saved not just our lives, but the lives of billions from Soveregin and the Reapers"

Source:www.youtube.com/watch   @ 11:22

Also Anderson speech at the end about driving the Reapers back into space.  I can't see that a galatic goverment could been so dense as to not see a threat or so two faced as to forget all the events that transipred. I would like to think there is more to uncover behind their change.

Yeah, I would like to believe there was a good explanation for this. For example, that the Council has been under the manipulation of the Reapers since ME1. They were just a little too dense in ME1 and I was flabbergasted at how moronic Bioware made them in ME2.

Sadly, there are a couple of reasons the Council was so stupid in ME2. First, it allowed Shepard to work for Cerberus. (Why (s)he needed to do that, I don’t know, but that’s what Bioware wanted, I guess.) If the Council still embraced Shepard, Paragon Shepards would obviously be Spectres rather than working for Cerberus. In fact, as a Paragon, the first thing I did in ME2 when I was free was go to the Citadel to see if I could reunite with the legitimate authorities of the ME universe: the Council in general and, as a human, the Alliance in particular. After all, that’s who I was running with before I died, right? But, no, of course not. Oy.

Second, it allows Bioware to use that awesome plot device “the hero(es) know what’s up and [the Authorities] are full of witless morons.” It’s rampant. In action movie, the witless authority is often the government, the Pentagon, or the Police Chief. Maybe it’s Star Trek and the witless authority is Starfleet Command, which is apparently only filled with admirals who were promoted there by “not understanding what it’s like out here.” Anyway, the point is that it gives the hero(es) license to do whatever they want without being responsible to anyone for it.

Frankly, I’m tired of it as a plot device. Make bureaucrats indecisive or uninformed, sure. Make them make decisions you don’t agree with, fine. But to be completely blind morons? It’s just lazy. Furthermore, there’s nothing quite like a big, obvious threat to unite people into decisive action. For better or worse. An attitude of “We’re with you Shepard!” wouldn’t’ve been completely farfetched and would still have allowed Shep to do whatever (s)he wanted anyway.

Modifié par RobertM5252, 04 mars 2010 - 07:51 .

[Terraneaux]

RobertM5252 wrote...
Frankly, I’m tired of it as a plot device. Make bureaucrats indecisive or uninformed, sure. Make them make decisions you don’t agree with, fine. But to be completely blind morons? It’s just lazy. Furthermore, there’s nothing quite like a big, obvious threat to unite people into decisive action. For better or worse. An attitude of “We’re with you Shepard!” wouldn’t’ve been completely farfetched and would still have allowed Shep to do whatever (s)he wanted anyway.

It's doubly frustrating when there's this TIM character who seemingly knows everything, and toys with the main character.  Seriously, if we don't get to feed TIM to a thresher maw in ME3 I'm going to head up to Canada and have a sit-down chat with Mac Walters, just to let him know how I feel.

[Mallissin]

ME1 = working for Council, they're in your face and on your side KINDA

ME2 = working for Cerberus, they're in your face and on your side KINDA

ME3 = working for yourself, everyone's in your face and on your side KINDA

[tertium organum]

SurfaceBeneath wrote...


The Mantra of "bad writing" appears far too often on these forums and some people are so utterly convinced that Bioware did a bad job that they will purposely ignore facts to justify it to themselves.

I wonder if there is some kind of indoctrination involved... hmm...

Kind of like you're doing? Inventing indoctrination to account for the terrible way Bioware has dealt with the council.  The fact that people have had to go this far to make it sensible only proves the point: it's ridiculous. Your "theory" has no reference in the game, no point and only opens up more holes. When pushed into a corner ( why don't they just indoctrinat everyone and let themselves in), you theorize that indoctrination is so subtle that the only thing it  explains is why the council are such blubbering idiots. Great. That is not evidence of bad writing at all.You're determined to explain this away instead of acknowledging something that's simply ridiculous. Instead of being a sophist, take your head out of ME2's rear end for a little bit. The game is great but the story horribly flawed.  This is just one aspect of a litany of issues.

[RobertM5252]

Terraneaux wrote...
It's doubly frustrating when there's this TIM character who seemingly knows everything, and toys with the main character.

Yeah, I'm not a big fan of the "corporation with limitless power, influence, and information" plot device, either. I seriously find it hard to believe that neither the Citadel nor the Alliance would be onto Cerberus and be taking them down. They're one seriously omnipotent organization.

I'm also not sure I'm entirely comfortable with the whole, "Cerberus is better than a government because there's less red tape and they get stuff done!" idea floating around in ME2. Sure, if this perspective is supposed to represent that Renegade perspective, that's cool. Adds character to the game. (Though I still find Cerberus' power and influence hard to believe—terrorist-paramilitary-corporations of that size couldn't really fly under the radar like Cerberus does.) But if you combine that oft-repeated sentiment with the extreme stupidity of the Council, it seems to be suggesting that the writers themselves, not just some of the characters, truly believe that only illegitimate, rogue institutions ever know "what's up" and we should all trust them rather than governments to take care of everything for us. Just like how in Star Trek Starfleet Command/the Federation was always full of total imbecils and we needed Captain Kirk/Picard/Sisko out there flauting their directives and doing whatever he felt was right in order for justice to be served, the Council is similarly stupid and we need Shepard out there doing whatever (s)he wants in order for the right thing to be done. I guess that means that here in the real world, we can't trust governments (which are at least somewhat responsible to their constituents... in theory) to do anything and we need heroes to go out doing whatever they think is right in order for the greatest good to be achieved. Brave individuals who are willing to die for the cause that they believe in and no one else gets...

...if you know what I mean. It's the terrorist mindset: I know better than the rest of society and I'm going to drag society kicking and screaming to the better future I know will come about through my actions that people will condemn now and praise later.

OTOH, it is a video game and in order for the game to be epic and to allow the player to have moral choices that have major consequences, the character needs to have their agency affect the course of events in the galaxy rather than simply carrying out the orders of "legitimate authorities."  It's an unfortunate hallmark of epic stories that the hero is, in essence, a fascist dictator or a quasi-terrorist who just so happens to be a benevolent one. (Well, Paragon Shepard is, in the case of Mass Effect.) If the Council wasn't retarded, Paragon Shep would just be running missions for them and his/her actions wouldn't really be the ultimate cause of events in the ME universe.

Sorry, that was quite a rant...

[AdamBoozer]

There doing halanx.

[RobertM5252]

Terraneaux wrote...
Why do you have to be working with Cerberus in the first place?  Why can't you hijack Miranda's shuttle straight to Council Space after the first space station?  Oh, right, someone on the writing team  has a hardon for Cerberus and needs to make everyone else in the setting look terminally stupid to make a pathologically evil organization look good by comparison.

Hehe. Well put.

I figure that it could be a good setup for ME3, wherein...

ME1: you worked as a Spectre and the legitimate authorities of the galaxy.
ME2: you worked with Cerberus and one of the illegitimate authorities of the galaxy.
ME3: You choose whether to work with the Citadel as a Spectre (Paragon) or you choose to work with Cerberus (Renegade).

Because let's face it, Cerberus is a good backer for Renegade Shepard.

Not that it totally explains why Paragon-Shepard needed to spend all of ME2 working for Cerberus in order for that to be a potential option in ME3.

Sadly, in all likelihood, I predict you'll either be working with Cerberus (Renegade) in ME3 or being rogue (Paragon). It seems as if Bioware wants to limit the divergence in the storylines in order to save themselves the headache of writing two essentially different games at once. Because if Shep had been working for the Citadel, you likely would not have hooked up with any of the squadmates you had in ME2 besides Garrus and Tali. (And maybe Legion, of course.)

[HTTP 404]

RobertM5252 wrote...

Terraneaux wrote...
Why do you have to be working with Cerberus in the first place?  Why can't you hijack Miranda's shuttle straight to Council Space after the first space station?  Oh, right, someone on the writing team  has a hardon for Cerberus and needs to make everyone else in the setting look terminally stupid to make a pathologically evil organization look good by comparison.

Hehe. Well put.

I figure that it could be a good setup for ME3, wherein...

ME1: you worked as a Spectre and the legitimate authorities of the galaxy.
ME2: you worked with Cerberus and one of the illegitimate authorities of the galaxy.
ME3: You choose whether to work with the Citadel as a Spectre (Paragon) or you choose to work with Cerberus (Renegade).

Because let's face it, Cerberus is a good backer for Renegade Shepard.

Not that it totally explains why Paragon-Shepard needed to spend all of ME2 working for Cerberus in order for that to be a potential option in ME3.

Sadly, in all likelihood, I predict you'll either be working with Cerberus (Renegade) in ME3 or being rogue (Paragon). It seems as if Bioware wants to limit the divergence in the storylines in order to save themselves the headache of writing two essentially different games at once. Because if Shep had been working for the Citadel, you likely would not have hooked up with any of the squadmates you had in ME2 besides Garrus and Tali. (And maybe Legion, of course.)

They can still diverge it.  Renegade Shephard and Paragon Shephard are working towards the same thing.  The levels can all be the same just who funds you and who you talk to ala illusive man between missions.  For example mission one is over 50000 creds funded by Cerebrus report to illusive man.  Same mission done, 50000 creds funded by Citadel report to the council.  Its possible! but I dont think its likely.

[Cascadus]

How about the fact that Shepard keeps declaring 'THE REAPERS ARE REAL' and 'IT'S TRUE AND YOU'RE STUPID FOR NOT BELIEVING ME', essentially. Shepard comes up with very little evidence pertaining the existence of the Reapers and no government would be stupid enough to start mobilizing against a threat that may not even be real and based on the word of one person who can't even provide the evidence to support his/her claim.
It's like if the US government decided to invest billions of dollars on the crazy dude who claims he got abducted by aliens and demands that action for defense against those invaders be taken.

Modifié par Cascadus, 05 mars 2010 - 06:55 .

[zer0netgain]

Proellx wrote...

If they integrated Sovereign into the citadel then based on the effects of the reaper husk from the IFF mission, council’s minds could be manipulated. Though the effects could be less noticeable, the reaper husk was whole and corrupted the minds of small team of Cerberus operatives within somewhat lengthy period while on the citadel there is a large population over a larger area and less of reaper remains. The keepers could have attempted to revive the fragments of Sovereign or integrated them into the citadel systems for repairs or for keeping their creator “alive”, which could dampen the effects of the “mind control” properties of a reaper.

That is an interesting idea.  What I'm suspecting could be done in ME3 (and it's believeable) is that the council was always working on an armada to take on the Reapers in secret and were giving Sheppard the cold shoulder.

This makes sense for the following reasons:

1.  You'd not advertise your war plans openly.
2.  Sheppard was the lone person talking about the Reapers.  Council decided to make war preps in secret, but he was a loose end they had to tolerate.  Didn't feel he had a "need to know" about the plans they were making.  After he died, it was a perfect reason to totally deconstruct the threat publicly and take all preparations underground from public view.
3.  When Sheppard comes back, he's with Cerberus, who they don't trust.  Why would they admit anything?  Even Anderson wouldn't tell Sheppard something that is on a strictly "need to know" basis.
4.  Considering that Soverign was able to monitor goings on in the Galaxy and you have entities like the Shadow Broker, operating in the open to prepare for a Reaper invasion might be a good way to tip your hand to your enemy.

I got this theory from a joke on the ME2 diagloge spoof thread, but it made sense for the Council to cover up anything they are doing to prepare for the coming Reapers.  After all, until the time to fight is at hand, would the Galaxy actually be able to handle the truth?  Would it not be just as easy to prepare for a war against "Geth" without creating a panic about galaxy-wide extinction?  As far as building a new fleet of superships, the need to replace the decimated Turian and Asari fleets should give plausible deniability as to what is being done by the Council.

[eternalnightmare13]

It's not uncommon for people to ignore or dismiss a problem until it shows up on their proverbial doorstep.  The USA didn't get directly involved in WWII until Pearl Harbor.  Despite the aggression of Japan and Hitler's Germany.  There are plenty other examples of the ''isolationist'' mindset in government. 

The OP has a fun theory and I like speculation.  It's far more interesting regardless of it proves to be true then reading 20 posts about LIs or etc.

Modifié par eternalnightmare13, 05 mars 2010 - 07:36 .

[RobertM5252]

eternalnightmare13 wrote...

It's not uncommon for people to ignore or dismiss a problem until it shows up on their proverbial doorstep.  The USA didn't get directly involved in WWII until Pearl Harbor.  Despite the aggression of Japan and Hitler's Germany.  There are plenty other examples of the ''isolationist'' mindset in government.

Umm... exactly what else would you call Sovereign's attack on the Citadel analagous to other than the attack on Pearl Harbor?

Don't get me wrong, I totally buy that people are willing to bury their heads in the sand about stuff they're afraid of. But two years is not long enough for people to dismiss the threat of the Reapers or the guy/woman who totally saved their asses from said threat. (We weren't "over" al-Qaida by 2003. In fact, that's when the US invaded Iraq.) Even if the hologram on Illos wasn't working, IMO Sovereign itself would've been enough to clearly demonstrate that it was not just some massive super-Geth ship. Especially with the Indoctrination effects it exhibited.

Regardless, we have the Council themselves saying that they believe the Reapers are a real threat at the end of ME1 in the Paragon ending. (Someone linked it above.) Bioware retconned it, plain and simple. They felt like they needed Shepard in with Cerberus rather than being a Spectre (for some reason) and they weren't going to let simple logic stand in the way of that. <_<

Modifié par RobertM5252, 05 mars 2010 - 09:31 .

[adembroski11]

You know, for all the assertions and conjecture you find in fiction, let alone Mass Effect, to think that a group of politicians would ignore a threat and throw away a trusted ally when it's politically expedient didn't even phase me as the least bit strange.

[HTTP 404]

adembroski11 wrote...

You know, for all the assertions and conjecture you find in fiction, let alone Mass Effect, to think that a group of politicians would ignore a threat and throw away a trusted ally when it's politically expedient didn't even phase me as the least bit strange.

the mayor did it to the ghostbusters

[Terraneaux]

adembroski11 wrote...

You know, for all the assertions and conjecture you find in fiction, let alone Mass Effect, to think that a group of politicians would ignore a threat and throw away a trusted ally when it's politically expedient didn't even phase me as the least bit strange.

Ah, the 'politicians are all terminally stupid' theory, we have dismissed this claim.

[Knoll Argonar]

zer0netgain wrote...

Proellx wrote...

If they integrated Sovereign into the citadel then based on the effects of the reaper husk from the IFF mission, council’s minds could be manipulated. Though the effects could be less noticeable, the reaper husk was whole and corrupted the minds of small team of Cerberus operatives within somewhat lengthy period while on the citadel there is a large population over a larger area and less of reaper remains. The keepers could have attempted to revive the fragments of Sovereign or integrated them into the citadel systems for repairs or for keeping their creator “alive”, which could dampen the effects of the “mind control” properties of a reaper.

That is an interesting idea.  What I'm suspecting could be done in ME3 (and it's believeable) is that the council was always working on an armada to take on the Reapers in secret and were giving Sheppard the cold shoulder.

This makes sense for the following reasons:

1.  You'd not advertise your war plans openly.
2.  Sheppard was the lone person talking about the Reapers.  Council decided to make war preps in secret, but he was a loose end they had to tolerate.  Didn't feel he had a "need to know" about the plans they were making.  After he died, it was a perfect reason to totally deconstruct the threat publicly and take all preparations underground from public view.
3.  When Sheppard comes back, he's with Cerberus, who they don't trust.  Why would they admit anything?  Even Anderson wouldn't tell Sheppard something that is on a strictly "need to know" basis.
4.  Considering that Soverign was able to monitor goings on in the Galaxy and you have entities like the Shadow Broker, operating in the open to prepare for a Reaper invasion might be a good way to tip your hand to your enemy.

I got this theory from a joke on the ME2 diagloge spoof thread, but it made sense for the Council to cover up anything they are doing to prepare for the coming Reapers.  After all, until the time to fight is at hand, would the Galaxy actually be able to handle the truth?  Would it not be just as easy to prepare for a war against "Geth" without creating a panic about galaxy-wide extinction?  As far as building a new fleet of superships, the need to replace the decimated Turian and Asari fleets should give plausible deniability as to what is being done by the Council.

This mostly.

I'm with you thinking that the Council just covered the reaper thread so they could build their army in secret, keep political and economical stability and don't go against a war with no one.

But, I would even add more: they knew that probably the collectors were after the human colonies, but didn't want to involve in a war with the Terminus Systems. Therefore my theory is that actually when they discovered Shepard AND working with Cerberus against the collectors they decided that the best way to deal with it was to let Shepard do the job, but with Cerberus monetary suport.

How to do that? denying that they believed in the Reaper Thread BUT not fully hunt you as the Council would IF THEY KNEW SOME OF THEIR SPECTRES WAS WORKING FOR/WITH AN ANTI-COUNCIL ORGANIZATION. They even tell you that you can become an Specter again as long as you keep the collector thread in Terminus Systems.

That way they just won the game: they keep economy and society stability, create an army to fight the reapers (maybe not so much, but could be done), keep that army SECRET by even tell your spectre that they believed that was false, send a spectre to fight against the collector thread on the terminus, but not publicaly involving themselves in that mission, and even grant Cerberus support to Shepard, and Shepard recieving only money from Cerberus, weakening the Enemy.

I'm pretty confident about the fact that the Council acted that way for their own convenience but not fully disbelieving the Reaper Thread, though i'm not so sure about them building an army.

[sandman7431]

They're politicians.  Politicians will not support an idea that won't help them get re-elected.  They probably realized that pushing this would hurt their popularity as people were already stressed by the attack so they conveniently found a way around it.

[tvai]

Ah yes, Reapers.