Mass Effect 3

[Angel4576]

Re Cerberus, and specifically TIM, was it really necessary to turn him into a Scooby Doo pantomime villain?

[HotRod]

http://www.youtube.com/embed/dZqwuHFIgIA

My God.....

[Reverend]

^Yay, Harby has something to do finally! I missed his ominous taunting. It's just not Mass Effect without some primordial cyber-organic starship haranguing you about being an insignificant mote of dust in the stellar winds. Here's the details. Interesting stuff. Love the environmental effects. Should add some extra variety to the tired old maps.

[Angel4576]

According to Derek Hollan, Harbinger is just for the trailer.

[Hartzilla2007]

HotRod wrote:

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http://www.youtube.com/embed/dZqwuHFIgIA

My God.....

Damn, I though I got them all in Mass Effect 2.

[Reverend]

Angel4576 wrote:

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According to Derek Hollan, Harbinger is just for the trailer.

It's actual Reaper shell self, sure, but I'm pretty sure he'll still be doing his "assuming direct control" shtick with the collectors.

[Hartzilla2007]

Reverend wrote:

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It's actual Reaper shell self, sure, but I' pretty sure he'll still be doing his "assuming direct control" shtick with the collectors.

Especially seeing as its part of the overall Collector experience.

[Angel4576]

Yeah he'll probably do that. People were getting their hopes up that they'd actually be able to take on Harbinger in his true form though - like you wouldn't get your ass handed to you!

Lots of speculation that both the Collectors and Harbinger will now figure in the Omega SP DLC somehow.

[Reverend]

I suspect they'll show up in SP DLC at some point or another--though technically I suppose they already have--Bioware have always been consistent when it comes to re-using in-game assets.

The Omega DLC is a pretty obvious candidate given the significance of the Omega 4 relay. Personally I'm more curious if the Omega DLC will re-introduce the excised/trimmed-back "Cerberus are indoctrinated" sub-plot. By which I mean where a large number of TIM's troops were full-on indoctrinated by the reapers, as opposed to indoctrinated by TIM using reaper tech. It'd make sense that ground zero for this would be the collector base/remains there of.

[Crazy Eddie]

Jar Jar Binks wrote:

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Yeah, Cerberus became really ridiculous in ME3. Maybe if the gap between it and ME2 had been like five years, or if BioWare had done a better job of setting them up in ME1 (IIRC, at that that Cerberus was just a cool side thing they'd added in, and it wasn't until ME2 that they decided to make Cerberus a major player).

You think so?

The same Cerverus that, YEARS ago, performed horrific and lethal experiments on children with the goal of creating a super-biotic?

The same Cerberus who intentionally fed the entire Akuze colony to thresher maws just to see what would happen?

The same Cerberus who tried to breed an army of Rachnii and Thorian creepers as living bioweapons?

The same Cerberus that recovered Commander Shephard's frozen corpse from Alchea and spent two years reanimating him with the most advanced technology imaginable?

The same Cerberus that managed to build and upgrade the most advanced Alliance warship ever designed?

The same Cerberus that performed horrific experiments on an autistic savant with the intention of controlling the Geth?

Are you not seeing a pattern here? Nothing Cerberus did in ME3 is in any way different from what they've been known to do in the previous too games. Their fundamental priority is and has always been to build an army that would be able to fight on mankind's behalf, under the exclusive control of the Illusive Man; the use of reaper technology and indoctrination finally allowed the Illusive Man to do this in an effective way, and by the time the Reapers invaded he had thousands of peons under his thumb to do this.

It also has to be pointed out that Cerberus is constantly kidnapping and converting people throughout ME3 (probably ME2 as well, which would explain why the Alliance thought they might be behind the colony abductions). As at least one in-game example: if you don't save Grissom Academy from Cerberus, by the end of the game you wind up having to fight Jack as a Phantom (and it's implied that Rodriguez will end up being converted into a Nemesis).

Why do you think the Illusive Man is so obsessed with controlling the reapers? Because he's spent the last thirty years trying to figure out how to control EVERYTHING ELSE. He's like sci-fi's Mitt Romney: master of the hostile takeover.

[Reverend]

^I think what he meant was that in ME1, Cerberus was portrayed as an Alliance black-ops cell gone very very rogue, not some massive secret quasi-terrorist organization masterminded by a Bond villain from his secret space station of doom.

[Crazy Eddie]

And except for the absence of the Illusive Man they were EXACTLY that in Mass Effect 1. That is, to the extent that you could tell any two missions apart, but that's Mass Effect for you.

[Hartzilla2007]

newtype_alpha wrote:

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. He's like sci-fi's Mitt Romney: master of the hostile takeover.

Nah, the Illusive Man is much better at playing at affably evil and has more personality than Mitt Romney.

[Reverend]

newtype_alpha wrote:

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And except for the absence of the Illusive Man they were EXACTLY that in Mass Effect 1. That is, to the extent that you could tell any two missions apart, but that's Mass Effect for you.

No it's not. All we saw of Cerberus is a handful of VERY SMALL outposts scattered over a few isolated planets. We don't even know if Cerberus built them for purpose or just co-opted some abandoned survey stations.

In ME2 & 3 we see them with at least large space stations, one of which is equipped with drydock facilities, several VERY LARGE and purpose built facilities with their logo slapped on just about every wall and door. In terms of assets and manpower it's several orders of magnitude greater.

[Crazy Eddie]

Reverend wrote:

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No it's not. All we saw of Cerberus is a handful of VERY SMALL outposts scattered over a few isolated planets.

Which, as I said, is about as much as we saw of anything in ME1. The same battle map slightly redecorated stands for a Cerberus facility, a Geth fortress, a crime boss' headquarters and an illegal ExoGeni lab.

ALL the side missions were this way; Shepard could have knocked over Fort Knox and it would exactly like the underground bunkers on Luna.

In ME2 & 3 we see them with at least large space stations, one of which is equipped with drydock facilities, several VERY LARGE and purpose built facilities with their logo slapped on just about every wall and door. In terms of assets and manpower it's several orders of magnitude greater.

Again, much like everything else in the Mass Effect universe. Even the side missions in ME2 are better developed; the stranded freighters you keep boarding are suspiciously large for vessels that are supposed to have only one level.

Imagine if they'd done ME3 the same way they did ME1. The Noveria fighter base would look exactly like the Cerberus reaper lab, except the fighter base has this one room with a door on the ceiling and some fighters lying around and the reaper lab has some generic alien artifact in the middle of it.