Mass Effect 3

[Herkimer Jitty]

Yeah, except organic life is an accident and Sovereign was all-machine, baby.

Urg, I hate retcons. Why couldn't the Reapers have just been like space-Cthulu or something?

[Skywalker]

How do you know it was a retcon? Do you have copies of the Mass Effect bible and a binder containing Drew Karpyshyn's story notes for ME1?

If so, GIMME!

[Jax]

We don't know that reapers all pure machine, they must of had some organic origins. They can't live forever what ever they might state and I love the idea they might actually use organic material to create machine bodies for themselves.

EVIL bastards

[Skywalker]

My theory is that the first Reaper was created by a very early spacefaring species that was dying out for some reason or another, so to preserve their species' genetic heritage rather than letting it decay and be forgotten, they built the first Reaper shell and liquefied themselves to give it life. Then they decided to do the same for other worthy species in the future, preserving each one in a new Reaper shell.

[-Brett-]

I'd be surprised if ME3 did anything with the Reaper's origins. It's so far in the past that there are probably no clues left behind. The Reapers themselves may not know their origins anymore, leading to the belief that they don't have any.

[Saquist]

A JaxMas Carol wrote:

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I got a little theory on this, the Reapers are OLD as we know and I don't care how advance they are...they have to feel the effects of that age. I wonder if at the end of every cycle or certain cycles they need to create themselves literally new bodies or ships to us. There essential machines but they must have some sort of biological parts too them and maybe they just pick the strongest species to them or the one easiest to create there next generatinon of bodies/ships.

It might explain why Earth is one of the first targets.

A JaxMas Carol wrote:

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I wanna touch back on my little theory that the human reaper is what will be there next form as they use species from their cycles to renew themselves into new bodies...I was listening to what Harbinger said at the end of Mass Effect 2...

Seems pretty clear to me we are going to be used as the next evolution of the reaper, which makes ME2 ending a lot better IMO.

[QUOTE=TheGodBen;4592876]

Reverend wrote:

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My personal suspicion is that saving the base will (among other things) lead to that "all hail our human overlords" ending I predicted earlier. The other things probably being having a human dominated council, supporting Terra Firma and basically doing anything pro-human.

Even better. Cerberus would rule the galaxy, and if there's anything I know about the Illusive Man it's that he made a great President in The West Wing. The galaxy would be thankful to have him in charge instead of Quark, the bland Asari and Mr Airquotes.

Actually, they're dead in that playthrough, that pimp from Requiem For a Dream is running things. He's still better than Mr Airquotes though.

5 LeadHead Rings wrote:

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As far as I can tell, the Reapers are kind of like the Borg but with a very exclusive membership process. They were turning humans into a Reaper because it's like their assimilation process, which is why the Reaper fleet could be seen to have multiple types of ships. The Reapers may view themselves as gods of a sort, but that doesn't mean they see us as being entirely beneath them, they're actually looking for species that are worthy for the process of ascension. The galactic extinction cycle is their form of procreation.

At least, that's what I think they're up to.

A JaxMas Carol wrote:

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We don't know that reapers all pure machine, they must of had some organic origins.

"Rudimentary creatures of blood and flesh"
"Organic life is nothing but a genetic mutation. An Accident. You lives are measured in years and decades, you wither and die"
"We are eternal. The pinnacle of evolution and existence. You are nothing."
Sovereign calls the Mass Relays the Legacy of his "Kind"

Kaiden say" They're harvesting us allowing us to advance to the level that they need and then wiping us out" Don't ask me how he came to that conclusion.


Sovereign: "We are each a nation. Independent, free of all weakness. We have no beginning and no end. We are infinte."

That's the big contradiction.
No begnning and no end. Everything Biological has a begnning and an end...if the limits of biological life spans are what make us inferrior then what do you need with Human Juicer?

My theory before ME2 was that they used their technology to motivate our technology and they REAP that tech and add it to they're own harvesting our knowledge once we reach our zenith.

But this Human blender thing just doesn't fit in at all. It seems just a horror story plot device. Earth is endanger and now we have to stop them.

It maybe that the Human Reaper Idea was only a Collector addition and it had nothing to do with actual Reapers. The Reapers like messing around with DNA well perhaps this was supposed to aide the development of the Collectors. Perhaps that's how the Collectors were created.

[Reverend]

I think people get too hung up on the physical Reaper and neglect to take into account their minds. As we learned in ME2 they're more like Geth in a lot of ways in that their bodies are only shells that house a mass of individual consciousnesses (or programs) though while the Geth programs seek consensus from differing viewpoints, the Reapers are at the same time many minds and one; "We are each a nation. Independent, free of all weakness."

For a being like this the body is just a shell, it's the mind that matters. Remember that the Reapers' greatest weapon isn't that molten metal gun or it's barriers, it's indoctrination. A weapon of the mind and even a dead Reaper can continue to indoctrinate. How this all ties into injecting their young with human paste, but I suspect it's something along the lines of imbuing the new Reaper with the collective minds of the species they're "ascending." There's probably more to it than that, but I think that's about the shape of it.

[TheGodBen]

Saquist wrote:

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Rudimentary creatures of blood and flesh
Organic life is nothing but a genetic mutation. An Accident.

This doesn't mean that all organic life is unintentional, merely that the Reapers view themselves as special and they don't feel that organic life is special. It's pretty much the exact same crap you'll hear a creationist say in a poor attempt to discredit evolution, and they say it for the same reason that the Reapers do; they don't want to view themselves as being the same as what they consider to be lower forms of life.

We are eternal. The pinnacle of evolution and existence.

Which is a contradiction itself as you cannot be eternal and evolve.

Sovereign/Nazara is grandstanding, it views itself as superior to us, but that doesn't mean that it actually is and it certainly doesn't mean that we should believe it. It had an agenda, its agenda at that time was to kill us, what possible reason do we have to trust it?

My theory before ME2 was that they used their technology to motivate our technology and they REAP that tech and add it to they're own harvesting our knowledge once we reach our zenith.

I thought that the Reapers drove our technological advancement in a certain direction and any adjustments we make to their tech is relatively minor. I always considered the galaxy in ME to be in a state of technological stagnation, which is how humanity caught up with the other races in a relatively small time-frame. The Asari should be almost 3,000 years ahead of humans technologically, but instead they appear to be barely more advanced at all.

[Reverend]

I thought that the Reapers drove our technological advancement in a certain direction and any adjustments we make to their tech is relatively minor. I always considered the galaxy in ME to be in a state of technological stagnation, which is how humanity caught up with the other races in a relatively small time-frame. The Asari should be almost 3,000 years ahead of humans technologically, but instead they appear to be barely more advanced at all.

^That's more or less how I see it. The Reapers are billions of years old and have reached the pinnacle of what technology can do; they don't need or want more toys, especially not cheep knock-offs of their own stuff.
As to what they ARE after exactly , it's still a little unclear but as I said above, it seams to have something to do with whatever make a race unique. I suppose you could call them soul stealers and you'd probably have the basic shape of it, though that's probably still not quite the right terminology....but close enough.

As for the Asari, while I'd certainly agree they're resting on their laurels a bit, it should be noted that because they're so long lived, they've "only" been on the Citadel for what amounts to a couple of Asari lifetimes. That really isn't a very long time from a cultural standpoint. Human civilisations have certainly gone more or less unchaged for (relatively) longer without completely stagnating.
Mind you, apply that logic to the Salarians and it's a wonder they make any progress at all!

[Saquist]

Reverend wrote:

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^That's more or less how I see it. The Reapers are billions of years old and have reached the pinnacle of what technology can do; they don't need or want more toys, especially not cheep knock-offs of their own stuff.
As to what they ARE after exactly , it's still a little unclear but as I said above, it seams to have something to do with whatever make a race unique. I suppose you could call them soul stealers and you'd probably have the basic shape of it, though that's probably still not quite the right terminology....but close enough.

That's how I looked at it too after this game but...logically it doesn't make any sense for machines to be Reaping flesh if they are eternal, view as inferrior and they have always had existed. Everything about their actions is contradictory after ME2.

That's the best I could do to put it together.

TheGodBen wrote:

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This doesn't mean that all organic life is unintentional, merely that the Reapers view themselves as special and they don't feel that organic life is special. It's pretty much the exact same crap you'll hear a creationist say in a poor attempt to discredit evolution, and they say it for the same reason that the Reapers do; they don't want to view themselves as being the same as what they consider to be lower forms of life.

He said Organic life is nothing but a mutation....Nothing but.
That means it's all unintentional unless they manipulate it.

Which is a contradiction itself as you cannot be eternal and evolve.

Why not..their not antithesis to each other they mean different things. One means length of time the other means change.

Sovereign/Nazara is grandstanding, it views itself as superior to us, but that doesn't mean that it actually is and it certainly doesn't mean that we should believe it. It had an agenda, its agenda at that time was to kill us, what possible reason do we have to trust it?

I guess...

I thought that the Reapers drove our technological advancement in a certain direction and any adjustments we make to their tech is relatively minor. I always considered the galaxy in ME to be in a state of technological stagnation, which is how humanity caught up with the other races in a relatively small time-frame. The Asari should be almost 3,000 years ahead of humans technologically, but instead they appear to be barely more advanced at all.

The Reapers didn't have Stealth or Cloak.
The Reapers didn't have Asari abilities
The Reapers didn't have Normandy's powerful Turian canon that broke the back of a vessel that was 20 times larger and powerful.

I think they are reaping just before the galactic tech becomes enough to truly overwhelm their technology but just enough for their to be advancement. I think the reapers lack a certain creativity and imagination. Perhaps that is the concept behind the Human form Reaper.

[Skywalker]

The concept behind the human Reaper is that it was just the core of what would be a new, full-sized Reaper with a normal Reaper shell. Concept art has already proven this. They weren't going to have a giant metal human flying around like Superman.

[PsychoPere]

I don't see how the story can be called "contradictory" when we only have 2/3rds of it so far.

[Skywalker]

Agreed. It's not contradictory, it's just not going in the direction some people expected/wanted it to go.

Personally, I still think they're just preserving worthy species and exterminating the rest, and using whatever technology the galaxy had developed to maintain their own functionality during the long 50,000 year gaps between harvests. Maybe they started out doing this for a specific reason, but have since forgotten in the millions of years since the cycle first began.

[Saquist]

Hanukkah Solo wrote:

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The concept behind the human Reaper is that it was just the core of what would be a new, full-sized Reaper with a normal Reaper shell. Concept art has already proven this. They weren't going to have a giant metal human flying around like Superman.

Hanukkah Solo wrote:

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Agreed. It's not contradictory, it's just not going in the direction some people expected/wanted it to go.

Personally, I still think they're just preserving worthy species and exterminating the rest, and using whatever technology the galaxy had developed to maintain their own functionality during the long 50,000 year gaps between harvests. Maybe they started out doing this for a specific reason, but have since forgotten in the millions of years since the cycle first began.

That's great you guys agree with each other. But that doesn't explain the contradiction of GOD machines that have always existed that view the organic as inferior and yet need organic material to exist.

IF that was true they would have found that in Sovereign, but they didn't and said it was merely Geth Tech. Are we watching the same game and reading the same quotes because I'm seeing full contradictions across the board. (or close to it)


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Just saw the ME3 preview....
"Is it normal for your balls to catch on fire while watching this?" I know mine did...


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZGFjBmD41Q

[PsychoPere]

Yeah, a link to the VGA trailer was already posted.

As for the "contradictions," again, you're seeing "contradictions" in a story that isn't even finished yet.