Mass Effect 3

[Tale]

I can't believe you guys are still overthinking this stuff. It's just a game, yo.

Overthinking keeps your brain fresh! It's a learning exercise.

 

Analyzing the plot and game are helping me to better understand plot and game structure in general. Even if it is just potshots against a non-moving target. For instance, I now hold new and detailed opinions on tutorial design. I hope it'll enable me to provide better feedback on games. And better appreciation for games that do it well.

[BobSmith101]

 

Oh, I.. snip-snip-snip.

 

---

 

Ahem, well, yeah, okay, long version, the Reapers.. Or just Sovereign are definitely broken machines, erm, AI's. The only reason the Alliance fleet were able to beat Sovereign, as Virumor also mentioned, was because it had a moment of weakness, when it assumed control of Saren, was beaten and left itself vulnerable to attack.. Seems a bit weird that this AI is so slow, stupid and single-threaded.. Only capable of controlling one entity at a time and with a massive delay in context switcing.. Huh?! I though Legion said that each Reaper was like a nation of millions of independent programs, maybe they need 50.000 years to process them all, before they can return.. Okay, erm.. that's.. just.. Silly. I guess in that light it might be quite possible that the Reapers got some pretty simple conditional statements for event handling. I just hope that Shepard finds a Div By Zero command to beat the reapers.. Hehe.

 

I think, that the Reapers need advanced civilizations that have evolved using Reaper technology to ensure compatibility of the raw materials that the Reapers need to grow as 'individual' nations.. The Reapers, being machines and all, have some obvious limitations for growth.. They need Mass Effect fuel and resources or they begin to rust or something..

 

Maybe that piece of Mass Effect technology that was discovered on Mars was just a Mass Effect seed that the Reapers had planted, thus waiting for Earth to advance to such a level that they would know how to use it, care for it, and in by doing so, they are now part of the menu, humanity is food, because it's spiced up with Reaper Tech. The ME seed has turned into a nice little flower.. So when someone says that they consume all organic life, they just mean any Mass Effect powered civilizations who has reached that level of technological advancement that the Reapers need, I presume.

 

There is a lot of things that doesn't make sense in Biowares tale like the 50.000 year cycle. I wonder if Bioware assumes that 50.000 years is plenty of time for any microbe to evolve into a space-faring nation.. Unless the Reapers sow new humans or other forms of life our civilization will be lost forever.. Just like the Protheans.. Aha.. I guess the Reapers don't sow anyone.. That's why they look like erm, some omnivorous insect.. They just plant that ME seed and wait for someone to make it grow and then they swoop in and scoop it all up and put a big X on the planet and move on. Well.. hm.. The part of infinite space where this game takes place must be a cornucopia of organic sentient lifeforms, because otherwise I think it would have been depleted by now.. Space would be littered with galaxies full of old and forgotten Mass Relays and Citadels.. It would take billions of years before there would be life on earth again and it's more likely that the sun will go nova and obliterate it all before that happens, I guess, but I wasn't paying as much attention in Biology and Geology as I should have so I could easily be wrong of course.. It's also a bit weird that 'lesser' civilizations who hasn't found the ME seed yet haven't been scooped up by other slawe-trading races like the Batarians.. Maybe the Mass Relay to the milkyway or just Earth needs to be activated by the ME seed, before it's ready.

 

My head hurts.

 

It may just be possible that all those people who get turned into goo are those millions of voices inside the Reaper. That kind of makes sense if you take legions words of in the context of a machines thought process and understanding. Perhaps that what Harbinger means by salvation through destruction, the goo exists in a state similiar to those inside Sin in FFX.

For anyone unfamiliar with FFX. Sin is giant shell that contains the "ghosts" of a 1000 year old civilization which continues along as though nothing had actually happened to them. In reality there were completely wiped out and exist in the dream of the original high summoner. Each Reaper would be like a living record of every society that had ever been reaped.

 

Being organic goo might not be so bad after all.

 

The Reapers definately need organics because they only reap those above a certain tech level. Unless ME is set in a "fantasy" universe, then humans would have been around 50k years ago.

 

The logic falls appart if you consider the time required for something to go from organism to evolved lifeform. But maybe the Reapers use some sort of fertalizer as well as leaving behind technology.

When you look at it like that, they are really not so bad. Not so different from human farmers breeding and then killing livestock.

 

Thats quite a scary scenerio because the Reapers are not evil as such and by killing one you are commiting the genocide of an entire speices and everything that it was.

Edited February 17, 2012 by BobSmith101

[Meshugger]

...or maybe the Reapers are simply stupid.

[Maria Caliban]

I pre-ordered the Collector's Edition from Best Buy to be shipped to my house. As it's Best Buy, there's a one in four chance they send me the regular edition and a one in six chance they send me the regular edition while charging me for the collector's edition.

[Drowsy Emperor]

Judging by this topic, the mass effect stories must really be captivating.

When is the third massive defect coming out?

[Tale]

Judging by this topic, the mass effect stories must really be captivating.

When is the third massive defect coming out?

It's coming out in under a month.

[Janmanden]

It may just be possible that all those people who get turned into goo are those millions of voices inside the Reaper. That kind of makes sense if you take legions words of in the context of a machines thought process and understanding. Perhaps that what Harbinger means by salvation through destruction, the goo exists in a state similiar to those inside Sin in FFX.

For anyone unfamiliar with FFX. Sin is giant shell that contains the "ghosts" of a 1000 year old civilization which continues along as though nothing had actually happened to them. In reality there were completely wiped out and exist in the dream of the original high summoner. Each Reaper would be like a living record of every society that had ever been reaped.

 

Being organic goo might not be so bad after all.

 

The Reapers definately need organics because they only reap those above a certain tech level. Unless ME is set in a "fantasy" universe, then humans would have been around 50k years ago.

 

The logic falls appart if you consider the time required for something to go from organism to evolved lifeform. But maybe the Reapers use some sort of fertalizer as well as leaving behind technology.

When you look at it like that, they are really not so bad. Not so different from human farmers breeding and then killing livestock.

 

Thats quite a scary scenerio because the Reapers are not evil as such and by killing one you are commiting the genocide of an entire speices and everything that it was.

 

I have been thinking along the same lines that each Reaper may be a nation of individual AI's. A self-contained cyberworld like the Matrix, but without the deception and delusional state of being. Maybe the Reapers have a way to suck the brain patterns, thoughts and memories out of the fleshy shell, maybe the spikes used to create husks are actually a kind of conversion tool, but one that apparently sucks out the intelligence and leaves the body as a lobomotized shell comparable to an animal.. or a headless zombie-chicken.. which would partially explain their erratic movements and attack patterns. Maybe the process of indoctrination is actually a two-way street.. People lose their minds and the Reapers gain it.

 

But I have also been thinking that maybe Legion is a bit too literal in that he could be including utilities, basic functions and essential programs in the total count of programs in his body.. Consider the human body for instance and how many programs a complete cybernetic conversion would require.. Typing this, applying pressure, bending fingers, coordination, brain activity.. well, barely except when I don't need it.. It's like the saying that you should 'listen' to your body.. My stomach just growls.. The difference for a cybernetic being would be that it would be conscious about every process and movement of the body.. unless it was some really shoddy programming.. I wonder if the Reapers are 32 bit constructs.. and what OS they run.. Judging by Sovereign the hardware must have been quite old and defective. Upgrading must be a bitch.. But they haven't made any demands for memory circuits, storage or processors.. But maybe they use organics for storage.. Genetic memory.

 

I don't think the Reapers are evil per se, but they are above us on the food chain. They are definitely flawed or maybe that was just Sovereign, maybe that's why he.. she.. it was left behind and ultimately failed.

 

The Reapers.. According to the news flashes they all seem to be quite uniform, of the same 'bug' design and quite alien, which just makes the Reaper that the Collectors were making even more crazy in every way. Haven't seen any Prothean Reapers.. Not sure what a Prothean looks like, but some of the statues on Ilos look more like Illithids.

[Raithe]

For the potential Spoiler...

 

 

 

There's a fairly good possibility.. that there will be a Prothean rescued from stasis that becomes a squadmate..

 

 

[HoonDing]

ME3 should end like Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Choose which button to press to end the game. Press A to destroy Reapers, press B to control Reapers, press C to join Reapers.

[BobSmith101]

Ironically the Protheans look like humoids with squid tentacles, kind of like a mind flayer or Cthulu. The Reapers are more squid like than bug it's in the shape of the head/body especailly if you see them from the front. When they are wandering around in the demo , they are actually walking on the "tentacles".

 

When I first saw the invasion Eather stuff I thought it would be funny if the "Reaper Killing Mcguffin" turned out to be R'lyeh. And Cthulu turns out to be a Prothean.

Edited February 17, 2012 by BobSmith101

[Janmanden]

They might as well make it like that to play it.. Press P to watch it played as a Paragorn Shepard, press R to watch it played as a Renegade Shepard, Press Any Key to actually play it and get the chance to choose 4 gamebreaking dialogue options with a left or right click during an open window with a 0.3 seconds countdown, that will severely cripple your progress and have dire ramification for ME4 during the next 36 hours of unstoppable, uninterruptable, unescapeable, unsafeable play with no zapping of cutscenes.. Welcome to hell.

 

Joining the Reapers could be fun, but it sounds more like a multiplayer option. --- Or something Saren would choose.

Edited February 17, 2012 by Janmanden

[Malcador]

Maybe we'll get to destroy all the mass relays as part of some device to kill the reapers, a nice dark age ending.

[HoonDing]

Ironically the Protheans look like humoids with squid tentacles, kind of like a mind flayer or Cthulu. The Reapers are more squid like than bug it's in the shape of the head/body especailly if you see them from the front. When they are wandering around in the demo , they are actually walking on the "tentacles".

 

When I first saw the invasion Eather stuff I thought it would be funny if the "Reaper Killing Mcguffin" turned out to be R'lyeh. And Cthulu turns out to be a Prothean.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eK99_T61alc

 

Edited February 17, 2012 by virumor

[Morgoth]

The Reapers.. According to the news flashes they all seem to be quite uniform, of the same 'bug' design and quite alien, which just makes the Reaper that the Collectors were making even more crazy in every way. Haven't seen any Prothean Reapers.. Not sure what a Prothean looks like, but some of the statues on Ilos look more like Illithids.

Speaking of the Reapers design, I swear I saw those same crab killing machines in Universe at War. They look basically identical.

 

Petroglyph should sue BioWare for plagiarism.

[Tale]

That's considered by some to still be a spoiler.

[Meshugger]

Ironically the Protheans look like humoids with squid tentacles, kind of like a mind flayer or Cthulu. The Reapers are more squid like than bug it's in the shape of the head/body especailly if you see them from the front. When they are wandering around in the demo , they are actually walking on the "tentacles".

 

When I first saw the invasion Eather stuff I thought it would be funny if the "Reaper Killing Mcguffin" turned out to be R'lyeh. And Cthulu turns out to be a Prothean.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eK99_T61alc

 

 

Rastafarian. Close enough.

[Meshugger]

Original:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5gLcVdn1k0&feature=player_embedded

Edited February 17, 2012 by Meshugger

[Maria Caliban]

There is a lot of things that doesn't make sense in Biowares tale like the 50.000 year cycle. I wonder if Bioware assumes that 50.000 years is plenty of time for any microbe to evolve into a space-faring nation..

They don't harvest non-advanced organic life. Ape chilling on the savanna? Ignored. Heck, humans in 1940 were probably not advanced enough to get harvested.

[BobSmith101]

Ironically the Protheans look like humoids with squid tentacles, kind of like a mind flayer or Cthulu. The Reapers are more squid like than bug it's in the shape of the head/body especailly if you see them from the front. When they are wandering around in the demo , they are actually walking on the "tentacles".

 

When I first saw the invasion Eather stuff I thought it would be funny if the "Reaper Killing Mcguffin" turned out to be R'lyeh. And Cthulu turns out to be a Prothean.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eK99_T61alc

 

 

I'm not going to click it but I guess that means I was close?

[Janmanden]

Well.. something I missed. Beware nittpicking ahead.

 

"blah-blah-blah.. This allows them to survive the thousands and thousands of years it takes for organic civilizations to rebuild itself.. and blah-blah-blah"

 

Hmm, the magic keyword here being 'rebuild' itself.. Rebuild, as in the same people building the same things all over again.. ?!

 

Maybe that's the period, as suggested somewhere else, that Bioware assumes is the timespan for evolution or maybe the Reapers keep some organics in stock in stasis to begin evolution anew.. Like a fresh batch of chilling apes, but I sincerely doubt chilling apes would ever evolve into anything else.. They are an evolutionary dead end, I think. And the missing link has been long gone. I also suggested that the Reapers only harvest Mass Effect powered civilizations and that's why Earth and Humanity has been left alone until now.. I wonder if the Reapers also harvest Pigs, Cows and Chickens.. Maybe they do, because the enslaved ones apparently starved to death after the Reapers disappeared into dark space again.. Maybe they were just to busy harvesting resources to feed the pets.. Whatever.

 

-- Edit : Missed the missing link --

Edited February 17, 2012 by Janmanden

[Tale]

ME1 presented evidence about Protheans and humans not only living at the same time, but having interacted in the past. And the entire setup for their plan was to make races reliant on the Citadel and Mass Relays. The easy conclusion is that they only harvested the technologically advanced ones.

[BobSmith101]

I think what Janamden is getting at is that the Reapers would run out of civilisations rather quickly if they were to hit the same area every 50k years. Unless they do leave behind some "seeds" or use some sort of fertilizer to kick start new evolution.

[HoonDing]

I don't think they hit the same area every time, it's mentioned in ME1 codex that less than 1% of the galaxy is explored.

 

They just sprinkled the entire galaxy with mass relays in every star system with planets suitable for organic life, so that an eventual spacefaring race would find the technology, use it and eventually end up at the Citadel.

Edited February 17, 2012 by virumor

[Janmanden]

I should really spend more time writing less more accurate and concise, but those pesky mischievous words they keep leading me astray. Thanks for clearing up my point BobSmith101.

 

Sorry Virumor. Haven't read any codexes, that's too spoilerish for me. I just relate to intel gathered from the games.

 

I thus assume that it's not actually the Mass Relays that enable the use of Mass Effect technology.. Apparently it was a Prothean data cache, that enabled humanity to make these advances.. Or maybe it was just assumed that it was of Prothean origins.. In the first dialogue with Cpt. Anderson he says that it was the Prothean ruins on Mars that triggered the scientific revolution and it's also mentioned in the rolling text at the onset of ME1. "Explorers on Mars discovered the remains of an ancient spacefaring civilization".. If that was a ruse, it's a bit more dark and sinister than just planting a 'seed'.. The first and last sign of Reapers being intelligent.. But apparently that was 50.000 years ago..

[Maria Caliban]

Well.. something I missed. Beware nittpicking ahead.

 

"blah-blah-blah.. This allows them to survive the thousands and thousands of years it takes for organic civilizations to rebuild itself.. and blah-blah-blah"

 

Hmm, the magic keyword here being 'rebuild' itself.. Rebuild, as in the same people building the same things all over again.. ?!

 

Organic civilization isn't a specific group of species but any advanced organic life forms. In the time of the Protheans, they were organic civilization. In the time of the games, humanity, asari, turian, korgan, and such are organic civilization. If Shepard failed and the Reapers win, there are likely other organisms living at a pre-industrial level that will become space faring and discover the Citadel in the next 50,000 years.

 

To use a metaphor, imagine an alien race comes to earth and wipes out all existing civilization, sending humanity back to the stone age but somehow leaving all the natural resource intact. When I say 'human civilization will rebuild itself' I'm not saying that China, Russia, and India will reappear, I'm saying that some form of civilization will arise over time.