Another ME3 thread, if I may...

Grimh

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Feb 11, 2009
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Well obviously the Reaper, sophisticated death machine that it is, felt killing the helpless civilians would perfectly underscore the absolutely fantastic music.

All for the sake of drama...
God bless that purple genocide factory!
*sniff*
 

NinjaDeathSlap

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Feb 20, 2011
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DVS BSTrD said:
Irridium said:
DoPo said:
I don't know, it seemed to me that the Reaper just lashed out at the closest moving thing. A bit like a cat. It was going on about its business destroying stuff just by shooting here and there and suddenly two spots moved from the area the Reaper watched. Pretty instinctive response to attack them immediately. Shepard was a bit further away than the two other vessels.

That's how it seemed to me, though.

And people only complained about the ending? Sheesh, the dialogue near the beginning came off so cheesy and... strange? Unnatural? I don't know how to call it. I just had to groan. Well, rant over. Just venting here.
Yeah, the beginning pissed me off.

"This war isn't about strategy or tactics, it's about survival. WE FIGHT OR WE DIE!"

Um... when faced with a stupidly powerful enemy, strategy and tactics are what you NEED in order to have a chance at winning, Shepard. And "We fight or we die"? Seriously? That line is beyond stupid. It's like if the Normandy ran out of food, Joker said "Shepard, we're out of food", and Shepard replies "WE EAT OR WE STARVE!" Just so... stupid.

And I didn't like Shepard going on auto-pilot when speaking. That really annoyed me.
It made more sense to given Shepard's history with bureaucrats. Through-out the series, his real obstacle has been the inaction of those in power. He's putting himself on their level "You guys DO realize we ALL have to fight this thing right? We clear on this? Sending me in on a covert mission isn't going to work this time. The official term for this situation is, I believe, an 'actual fucking war'. This means EVERYONE has to fight"

Besides Shepard's past tactics against the Reapers was never really amounted to anything more than "Shot this mutha-fucka" So I doubt he had any real strategy in mind for the Reaper invasion
http://puresophistry.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/hold-the-line.png
What really bugs ME is how fast the Reapers got through to Earth. I mean seriously, Garrus CAN'T be the only one who knows how to install the Thanix Canon. He'd been out of the military for AT LEAST two years by the time you recruited him. And just HOW long has it been since Shepard came back before the Reapers attacked? Even IF the alliance didn't believe the Reapers were a threat, reverse engineering newly acquired assets (like I don't know, EVERY FUCKING UPGRADE SHEPARD HAD INSTALLED ON THE NORMANDY) is standard procedure for any military worth a shit. With the entire fucking fleet in orbit, Don't expect me to believe nobody had the time to send a distress signal before the Reapers landed.
I'd assume that at least some of the Alliance ships were upgraded, but the Normandy is just one (very small) ship, that was already half Turian in design. Taking those upgrades and applying them to whole fleets of larger vessels using different designs would take a lot more time than the 1 year that the Alliance had the SR2 for. That's without even considering the cost.
 

RJ 17

The Sound of Silence
Nov 27, 2011
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Looks to me like the Reaper is simply in "Engage the nearest target" mode. It's also likely that with Normandy's defensive upgrades, the Reaper determined that it would take too long to bring the ship down (and it might not even succeed) allowing the smaller targets to get away.

DVS BSTrD said:
What really bugs ME is how fast the Reapers got through to Earth. I mean seriously, Garrus CAN'T be the only one who knows how to install the Thanix Canon. He'd been out of the military for AT LEAST two years by the time you recruited him. And just HOW long has it been since Shepard came back before the Reapers attacked? Even IF the alliance didn't believe the Reapers were a threat, reverse engineering newly acquired assets (like I don't know, EVERY FUCKING UPGRADE SHEPARD HAD INSTALLED ON THE NORMANDY) is standard procedure for any military worth a shit. With the entire fucking fleet in orbit, Don't expect me to believe nobody had the time to send a distress signal before the Reapers landed.
One thing you have to keep in mind about the upgrades is cost. The codex description for the upgraded hull armor has diamond particles fused into it making it ridiculously expensive. The Cyclonic Shield Projector is a tradeoff. I forget the details but I recall that it was a lot better than standard shields at some types of enemy fire but it was never designed for sustained combat or something and collapses sooner than standard shields (or something like that).

As for the Thanix, I'm actually pretty sure most of the fleets do have Thanix cannons at this point. Just because a Thanix absolutely sodomized the Collector ship doesn't mean it can do the same against a Reaper.

As for how they got to Earth so soon, it was the VAST majority of the Reaper fleet heading towards Earth where as Palaven, for instance, only appears to have had a handful of Sovereign-class Reapers in orbit around it. That and it's very likely the Reapers didn't slowly push the human fleet back to earth, more likely they came out of the relay and just made a b-line straight for Earth. As seen at the end of the first game, a Sovereign-class Reaper can just plow straight through a dreadnaught as though it were made of paper machete. They probably came out of the relay and just kept going, shooting/running through things that were directly in their path but otherwise ignoring the human fleet.
 

Freechoice

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Zachary Amaranth said:
idarkphoenixi said:
Theres also some crap about it all being indoctrination I guess. So maybe the entire game was just a dream (or nightmare).
Coming soon: Mass Effect 3: No, we're serious this time.
I lol'd.

OP: It's not because no story. It's because bad storytellers.
 

RJ 17

The Sound of Silence
Nov 27, 2011
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DVS BSTrD said:
Most effective during opening volleys. But the thing is, most ships aren't actually designed for sustained space combat any way. Only hit and run attacks. Besides afterwards it's still as good as a standard shield.

As for the Thalix cannon, it's design was actually based on Sovereign's main gun. I'm not saying it should be a knock-out punch (No Alliance ship has as much power as a capital Reaper) but it should at least slow them down. And They've had three years to upgrade it into the fleet fleet especially if they we'rent already rebuilding it after the attack on the Citadel (they won't be in my story)

And I refuse to believe the Reapers could have reached Earth from the Mass Relay before SOMEBODY though to send a signal. Even at light speed it would still take them more than five and a half hours and the Alliance has the technology to have real time conversations from across the galaxy! Too much realism sacrificed for drama and it wasn't even necessary.
:p There's still the matter of cost, my friend. Just because you have the technology doesn't mean you have the money to integrate said technology into every ship in your fleet. As I mentioned before, I believe in the War Assets codex it actually does mention that a lot of ships now rock out with a Thanix. And also as I mentioned, while the Thanix was proven to be the bane of the Collector ship, we really don't know how effective it is against a Sovereign-class Reaper whose technical specs can only be described as "Holy shit this thing is nigh indestructible." I mean hell, Sovereign himself had the remains of 2 fleets and the majority of a fresh fleet focus-firing on it and the only reason it died was because it's consciousness was currently inhabiting Saren's corpse and so when said corpse was destroyed, it stunned Sovereign just enough to lower its shields and open it to attack. At least that's what my interpretation of the ending of Mass Effect is. :p

As for the time between the relay and Earth, I'm actually pretty certain that they DO receive distress signals every step of the way...I don't remember exactly how the opening sequence's dialogue goes, but I'm pretty sure everyone's in "OH SHIT!" mode and wanting to talk to Shepard specifically BECAUSE they got word that the Reapers are pouring through the relay and are now fast-tracking it to earth.
 

370999

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May 17, 2010
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I always assumed that the Reaper was just killing anything near it. So it didn't shoot at Shepherd because the A)the Normandy wasn't actively engaging it and B) as long as it was killing shit it was happy camper.

That said, yes the no story, need to make Reapers evil, etc is the actual reason.
 

Idsertian

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Apr 8, 2011
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Tanakh said:
-ASSUMING snip CONTROL-
Thanks for that, was really weird how everywhere seemed to be bugged in regards to that article.

floppylobster said:
Any way, the biggest surprise of the video you posted - Shepard's a dude!? Mind blown.
I know, right? I was like: Wow! Total uber-mega-twist! Seriously though, I just grabbed the first video YouTube spat out at me.

Please continue with the debate(s) folks, it's all very interesting. :)