How Will Shepard Beat the Reapers? (Minor Mass Effect Spoilers)

[Worgen]

She will find a big red button that says don't push and she will push it and all the reapers will become subservient and work at mcdonalds for the next 50k years.

Really I dont see anyway this is going to end other then finding a magic mcguffen and it somehow beating all the reapers, with the setup the 3rd game has. Really the game should be about organizing the races into a fleet and finding a way into deep space to kill most of them while they are still sleeping, have a few wake up before they are wiped out and have that be the epic final battle, where it takes most of the fleets to deal with a few reapers and one of those reapers is infiltrated and taken down by Shepard's team, while the others are either taken down by similar infiltration teams or blown to hell by dreadnoughts.

I think that is exactly what the game WILL be about. Think about the allies we have (possibly) been recruiting. The Krogan, the Quarians, the Geth, the Rachni. All of those but the Quarians are renowned for terrestrial combat prowess (good for boarding reapers, for example), and all of them but the Krogans are renowned for strong fleets (hell, the Quarians have the largest one in the known galaxy, and the Geth fleet that followed Saren was only about 5% of the total Geth strength). And that's to say nothing of what a you could do with the Citadel and Alliance Fleets when they fight the Reapers at full strength and while not surprised.

I bet Mass Effect 3 will mostly be spent making sure that those allies are at full strength. Convincing the Quarians and Geth to make peace (or choosing between them, which Keelah knows I don't want to do), convincing the Salarians to lift the Genophage, scouting the Reapers so that the big fleets are not taken by surprise, etc.

Few things to keep in mind.

1. We've come to find out, more or less, that not all reapers are the BIG, capital ships Sovereign was. Granted, there are prolly alot of them big ships, but in general, it's not a fleet of "Sovereigns" like it's been made out to be.

2. Sovereign was taken down, more or less, but one wing, or fleet of earth ships, not the whole earth navy, and what was left of a suprise attack on the citidal that started with them knocking out communations so they couldn't call for help. There were alot more reinforcments to be had, if they'd known they were under attack in the first place.

3. The reapers are burning ALOT of resorces and fuel to make the trip to the cidital. Not only did they have to come back from dark space, but once the alpha relay was blown, that added possible up to a years worth more FTL travel, which has to be taxing.

So i think there's a SLIGHT misconception as to how powerful the reaper fleet really is, IE, they aren't all Sovereigns, and are buring ALOT of resorces right now, and we aren't as WEAK as we seemed. It was a suprise attack, and a fraction of the galaxies full milatery might. A head on fight, with the WHOLE galaxie, as in, EVERYONE, might be more then the reapers can handle.

After all, all reapers invasions START with a sneak attack that cripples interstaller travel. where they can pick apart picemeal resistince one system at a time. That won't be the case this time. It's going to be a head on fight, after a long exidos, with a unitifed galaxie (once i'm done with them). Something they may well have NEVER faced before.

And of course, there may be a magic Maguffin. That can always happen to if the writers get lazy... >.>

On that subject, we've been told that there is one set piece in ME3 wherein a Thresher Maw fights a Reaper, so they really all better NOT be Sovereign's size, or else Sci Fi Writers Have No Sense OF Scale.

No, unfortinatly according to everything I have seen about the game so far, it starts out with the reapers invading and attacking earth and Shepard is able to escape and tries to round up allies to counter attack but each race is involved with its own stupid shit, like the quarians have decided to retake the homeworld.
This is the trailer.
If it wasn't for the space ships you would think it was a cod clone.
So ME3 has the reapers already here and that should be bad ending, I mean unless they retcon the reapers to suck, I don't see how they are saving earth.

According to the Game Informer article on ME3 from a few months ago, part of the game involves solving a conflict between the Salarians and the Krogan (that was just one example given), which to me smacks of gathering allies in the sense of entire armies and fleets, not just his squad. Also keep in mind, if the events of ME2 are any indication, the Reapers will want live humans, so they'll probably be on Earth for a while after actually winning the battle there. That extends the time frame immensely.

As I see it, Shep is at Earth answering for the events of Arrival, and then the Reapers invade. Act 1 will be fighting to get off Earth. Act 2 (i.e, the Act in every Bioware game where you choose where to go) will be gathering Armies and Fleets of allies (by, for example, convincing the Salarians to lift the Genophage, or making peace between the Geth and Quarians [or helping one side win]), that sort of thing. Then Act 3 will be taking all of your allies and either trying to take back Earth or else attacking wherever the Reapers are at that point.

Which is why the plot will be bad or the reapers will have to be retconned to hell since so far its been established that we are using tech that they control, mainly the gates which are the key to intergalactic travel, the only one they don't control is that lil one that links the promethium world to the citadel, all they need to do is either shut down the gate to sol, station a fleet outside the gate so they can nuke anything that comes though or just blow or just blow up the gate and then nothing is getting though. Not to mention that the reapers have been doing this awhile so they know pretty much how the tech of the races will work and where species will be and since they have spies they will even know fleet size and such, really the only reason this invasion is different is because they weren't woken up by the keepers since the promethians managed to stop them from being able to send a message this time.
The only plot that really would make sense is to attack them in deep space, any other way of fighting them seems doomed, without the plot going wacky.

I think you misunderstood. Talk to Vigil on Ilos again. They only controlled all the Relays in the other invasions because they took over the Citadel first thing, and the Citadel gave them that control (along with census records and such). Since you stopped them from using the Citadel Relay, they are at a MASSIVE disadvantage, since they cannot control our fleet movements anymore. Add to that the fact that, for the first time ever, there will be an entire galaxy already aware of them and amassed to fight them and it won't even take a retcon.

Since they shut down the relays in the past, they only ever had to fight small forces at once (i.e, whatever forces would have been stationed at individual systems). Moreover, they had records of which fleets were where, so they could always attack in overwhelming strength. Their control of the Citadel was always their single largest advantage, and without that, they're just a fleet (possibly an enormous one, but we don't really know) of very tough ships; a hard target, to be sure, but we have giant fleets too.

Ehh, not exactly, I mean if they need the Citadel to control the relays then they should really attack the citadel first, if they no longer have way to control the relays then they could either just blockade the relay or just destroy it. I mean they might not have control over them but they still know exactly where a counter attack will come from and its not like they are really bound by time, I mean they could just knock out a relay, wipe out the system then travel though standard space to the next and it would be almost impossible to know where they would hit next.

Also we aren't sure how unified the galaxy is against them, I mean assuming the council or whatever was telling the truth at the start of ME2, then they still don't really believe that the reapers are out there. I'm going to assume that they don't really believe the reaper threat since you have to help the races though their drama before they help you, if they knew there was a giant intergalactic threat coming then they probably wouldn't be doing stupid shit right before it.

 

[SamuelT]

Shepard will be exposing his massive nads on Earth, letting all the reapers gather there. And then he'll blow up the sun.

Stragglers will be shot on sight.

 

[Mestraal]

A massive great hug with lots of love and music and possibly flowers and heart shaped chocolates? Paragon FTW!

But seriously, probably the dark matter/energy already brought up x amount of times in this thread. They had Tali and co. banging on about it for a reason.

 

[Avalanche91]

I really hope it won't be a mcguffin. please don't let it be a mcguffin.

Use the mass relays as improv giant rail guns, blow up entire systems, sacrifice earth, but please no mcguffins.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

Hey wait a minute, I just remembered one thing in arrival, why didn't Shepard wait a little bit with smashing the relay, if the reapers got close enough when it exploded, good bye, no more reapers.

I have a better idea. Why did Shepard have to destroy the Relay in the first place if the Citadel is in control of them? They could just lock the relay.

 

[hermes]

He will use a mass effect weapon that creates a mass effect field that reverses the polarity of the mass effect generators in the reapers fleet; creating an effect on them, massively...

 

[Shadowkire]

Towards the end of the game Shep will find a way to access the Reaper's AI code, but in a limited fashion. This will leave Shep with 2 options:

Paragon: Reprogram the Reapers to give up their cycles of galactic genocide and leave forever. Thus preserving the remnants of past species, which were revealed earlier in the game to somehow still retain some amount of sentience.

Renegade: Reprogram the Reapers to identify each other as enemies, causing them to tear each other apart before the combine fleets of the major galactic races move in to mop up the remaining Reapers. This kills the remaining species within each Reaper, so they can't be saved and restored.

 

[Newbonomicon]

There are a number of points that will scrape together a victory in the end.

1) Shepard will unite most if not all civilizations across the entire galaxy to concentrate their efforts.

2) Shepard's actions will somehow allow for the creation of superpowerful dark matter weaponry.

3) The multiplayer heroes will also be badasses.

4) Reapers will be quietly nerfed just enough for victory to be plausible.

 

[Arina Love]

shoot them a bunch of times then shoot some more.

 

[Lim3]

Deus Ex Machina:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deus_ex_machina

A plot device "whereby a seemingly inextricable problem is suddenly and abruptly solved with the contrived and unexpected intervention of some new event, character, ability, or object."

In other words he'll find a reaper buster, or the humans will come up with some kind of device where they can kill all of them by killing one or some kind of reprogramming.

What I'm looking forward to is seeing what shapes all the reapers take.

 

[Siegfried Raybrandt]

Well thinking about it, Sovereign was destroyed by the combined effort of the Alliance and all the other groups, as well as the death of Saren Arterius. Now while not every Reaper has a Saren of their own (excluding Harbinger who had the Collectors) they must all still be capable of being killed. Now, based on Shepard's actions in ME2 regarding the Collector base, this may prove easier. Otherwise, its gonna take a helluva lotta ships and guns.

 

[Slash Joel]

EDI has anti reaper tech that involves attacking there network loading them with junk data and virses which brings down their defenses, the reaper were u find legion was taken out my a mass acceration weapon which is a blast like what happens in arrival only focused and shot a from half way across the galaxy but cerberus has the weapon though, and the fact shepard is ralling a army.

 

[Avatar Roku]

The Reapers have been killing of advanced civilizations for millions if not billions of years. The Protheans, a civilization way more advanced than the current batch, managed to replicate Reaper technology and they were STILL "killed off" with little to no effort by the Reapers. Plus, it took an entire fucking fleet to destroy just ONE Reaper and the only reason that happened was because Sovereign was stupid enough to pour all of its energy into Saren, losing its shields in the process. It's also been made clear that the technology used by Council races is extensively based on Reaper technology which means the Reapers would have at least SOME form of protection against it.

tl;dr: It would be fucking stupid if the Galaxy survived the Reaper onslaught.

Mass Effect 2 sort of ruined the overarching plot. The Reapers were willing to sacrifice both the Collectors and Sovereign in order to return when they could have just as easily reached the galaxy by using their goddamn fucking engines, in less than two fucking months? That's just ridiculous and stupid. At the very least Mass Effect 2 made sense but the shit they pulled in ME2 was just plain silly. It's sad seeing such a detailed and interesting world go to waste.

The Battle of the Citadel was not as much of a precedent as people think. True, he poured a lot of strength into Saren (which he had to do or Shep would have maintained control and Sovereign would have lost anyway), but keep in mind, he attacked a small fraction of the fighting power of the galaxy and, at that, had surprise on his side. Surprise was the most important part; he destroyed so much because he caught everyone but Shep with their pants down.

How do you think the Reapers will be defeated, considering one of them managed to demolish half a fleet before going down?

Here is my theory: Dark Matter. I've been playing through both games over the past few weeks, and I've noticed quite a few references to dark matter that have no other context in the story. Namely on Tali's recruitment mission and a few galactic newscasts. I feel that somehow, dark matter is going to be weaponized in the game as a means of combating the Reapers with superpowerful weapons.

So that's my pitch, what do you guys think is going to happen?

The poetic way would be to trick them into destroying themselves. But more than likely, here's my theory:

A central theme of the whole series has been the factionalization of the races. This division has been causing wars and problems all along. The Reapers seem to "reproduce" by taking the best traits of the current living races and integrating them into their whole. They represent the greatest strengths of the greatest races ever to exist.

In order to defeat them, all races will have to band together in some way and create their own "best of." It will no longer be about humans asserting dominance or krogans taking over or whatever. Everyone will band together or die. Probably the best way to do this would be the construction of a superweapon or super-ship (with superweapons) that represents the best contributions of each race.

Perhaps Shepard will have to undertake missions for each race to secure their support, provide them resources, and ultimately collect their contribution to the superweapon:

Asari: Some major biotic offensive/defensive widget
Turians: long-range firepower
Krogans: some type of super-armor (that can probably also be used to ram things)
Salarians: some type of major tech weapon (or something similar to the genophage)
Quarians: likely a super-engine of some kind (or perhaps a shield based on their suit tech)
Drell: Maybe an even-more-advanced cloaking tech?
Elcor, Hanar, and Volus: Probably donating resources, or something -- dark matter, maybe?
Batarians / Vorcha: No clue. Maybe just manpower.

And I suspect the possibility of a contribution from the Rachni (provided they are still alive) that involves tactical planning via collective intelligence.

Other prediction: EDI will occupy the body of a Reaper at some point, and will continue to exist beyond the ending of the game.

I love this idea. Thematically, it fits so well.

The Krogan, the Quarians, the Geth, the Rachni... all of them but the Krogans are renowned for strong fleets (hell, the Quarians have the largest one in the known galaxy

The Quarians have a large-ish fleet, but its a bunch of ramshackle ships that barely function and have virtually no fighting capabilities... Did you mean the Turians?

Not jsut Large-ish. In ME2, it was explicitly called the largest fleet in the known galaxy. And given that some portion of the Quarian leadership thinks they actually have a chance against the Geth, I would think they have at least some combat capability.

And I tend to lump the Turians in with the Citadel Fleet.

She will find a big red button that says don't push and she will push it and all the reapers will become subservient and work at mcdonalds for the next 50k years.

Really I dont see anyway this is going to end other then finding a magic mcguffen and it somehow beating all the reapers, with the setup the 3rd game has. Really the game should be about organizing the races into a fleet and finding a way into deep space to kill most of them while they are still sleeping, have a few wake up before they are wiped out and have that be the epic final battle, where it takes most of the fleets to deal with a few reapers and one of those reapers is infiltrated and taken down by Shepard's team, while the others are either taken down by similar infiltration teams or blown to hell by dreadnoughts.

I think that is exactly what the game WILL be about. Think about the allies we have (possibly) been recruiting. The Krogan, the Quarians, the Geth, the Rachni. All of those but the Quarians are renowned for terrestrial combat prowess (good for boarding reapers, for example), and all of them but the Krogans are renowned for strong fleets (hell, the Quarians have the largest one in the known galaxy, and the Geth fleet that followed Saren was only about 5% of the total Geth strength). And that's to say nothing of what a you could do with the Citadel and Alliance Fleets when they fight the Reapers at full strength and while not surprised.

I bet Mass Effect 3 will mostly be spent making sure that those allies are at full strength. Convincing the Quarians and Geth to make peace (or choosing between them, which Keelah knows I don't want to do), convincing the Salarians to lift the Genophage, scouting the Reapers so that the big fleets are not taken by surprise, etc.

Few things to keep in mind.

1. We've come to find out, more or less, that not all reapers are the BIG, capital ships Sovereign was. Granted, there are prolly alot of them big ships, but in general, it's not a fleet of "Sovereigns" like it's been made out to be.

2. Sovereign was taken down, more or less, but one wing, or fleet of earth ships, not the whole earth navy, and what was left of a suprise attack on the citidal that started with them knocking out communations so they couldn't call for help. There were alot more reinforcments to be had, if they'd known they were under attack in the first place.

3. The reapers are burning ALOT of resorces and fuel to make the trip to the cidital. Not only did they have to come back from dark space, but once the alpha relay was blown, that added possible up to a years worth more FTL travel, which has to be taxing.

So i think there's a SLIGHT misconception as to how powerful the reaper fleet really is, IE, they aren't all Sovereigns, and are buring ALOT of resorces right now, and we aren't as WEAK as we seemed. It was a suprise attack, and a fraction of the galaxies full milatery might. A head on fight, with the WHOLE galaxie, as in, EVERYONE, might be more then the reapers can handle.

After all, all reapers invasions START with a sneak attack that cripples interstaller travel. where they can pick apart picemeal resistince one system at a time. That won't be the case this time. It's going to be a head on fight, after a long exidos, with a unitifed galaxie (once i'm done with them). Something they may well have NEVER faced before.

And of course, there may be a magic Maguffin. That can always happen to if the writers get lazy... >.>

On that subject, we've been told that there is one set piece in ME3 wherein a Thresher Maw fights a Reaper, so they really all better NOT be Sovereign's size, or else Sci Fi Writers Have No Sense OF Scale.

No, unfortinatly according to everything I have seen about the game so far, it starts out with the reapers invading and attacking earth and Shepard is able to escape and tries to round up allies to counter attack but each race is involved with its own stupid shit, like the quarians have decided to retake the homeworld.
This is the trailer.
If it wasn't for the space ships you would think it was a cod clone.
So ME3 has the reapers already here and that should be bad ending, I mean unless they retcon the reapers to suck, I don't see how they are saving earth.

According to the Game Informer article on ME3 from a few months ago, part of the game involves solving a conflict between the Salarians and the Krogan (that was just one example given), which to me smacks of gathering allies in the sense of entire armies and fleets, not just his squad. Also keep in mind, if the events of ME2 are any indication, the Reapers will want live humans, so they'll probably be on Earth for a while after actually winning the battle there. That extends the time frame immensely.

As I see it, Shep is at Earth answering for the events of Arrival, and then the Reapers invade. Act 1 will be fighting to get off Earth. Act 2 (i.e, the Act in every Bioware game where you choose where to go) will be gathering Armies and Fleets of allies (by, for example, convincing the Salarians to lift the Genophage, or making peace between the Geth and Quarians [or helping one side win]), that sort of thing. Then Act 3 will be taking all of your allies and either trying to take back Earth or else attacking wherever the Reapers are at that point.

Which is why the plot will be bad or the reapers will have to be retconned to hell since so far its been established that we are using tech that they control, mainly the gates which are the key to intergalactic travel, the only one they don't control is that lil one that links the promethium world to the citadel, all they need to do is either shut down the gate to sol, station a fleet outside the gate so they can nuke anything that comes though or just blow or just blow up the gate and then nothing is getting though. Not to mention that the reapers have been doing this awhile so they know pretty much how the tech of the races will work and where species will be and since they have spies they will even know fleet size and such, really the only reason this invasion is different is because they weren't woken up by the keepers since the promethians managed to stop them from being able to send a message this time.
The only plot that really would make sense is to attack them in deep space, any other way of fighting them seems doomed, without the plot going wacky.

I think you misunderstood. Talk to Vigil on Ilos again. They only controlled all the Relays in the other invasions because they took over the Citadel first thing, and the Citadel gave them that control (along with census records and such). Since you stopped them from using the Citadel Relay, they are at a MASSIVE disadvantage, since they cannot control our fleet movements anymore. Add to that the fact that, for the first time ever, there will be an entire galaxy already aware of them and amassed to fight them and it won't even take a retcon.

Since they shut down the relays in the past, they only ever had to fight small forces at once (i.e, whatever forces would have been stationed at individual systems). Moreover, they had records of which fleets were where, so they could always attack in overwhelming strength. Their control of the Citadel was always their single largest advantage, and without that, they're just a fleet (possibly an enormous one, but we don't really know) of very tough ships; a hard target, to be sure, but we have giant fleets too.

Ehh, not exactly, I mean if they need the Citadel to control the relays then they should really attack the citadel first, if they no longer have way to control the relays then they could either just blockade the relay or just destroy it. I mean they might not have control over them but they still know exactly where a counter attack will come from and its not like they are really bound by time, I mean they could just knock out a relay, wipe out the system then travel though standard space to the next and it would be almost impossible to know where they would hit next.

Also we aren't sure how unified the galaxy is against them, I mean assuming the council or whatever was telling the truth at the start of ME2, then they still don't really believe that the reapers are out there. I'm going to assume that they don't really believe the reaper threat since you have to help the races though their drama before they help you, if they knew there was a giant intergalactic threat coming then they probably wouldn't be doing stupid shit right before it.

Well, as another poster (quoted below) pointed out, they might simply be attacking Earth because Sol is the only system they can get to. From there, they can use the Relay to attack the Citadel. See the aforementioned quoted post below this, he explains better.

snip

Right, the reapers don't just automaticly control our tech, or tech is based on there's and that's to our disadvantage, but it isn't a matter of them just willing our stuff to stop working. I also think that's a reason the geth will or could be a key allie...

The gates, the cidial controls that. Not the reapers, and that's the linchpin to there plan. Catch EVERYONE with their pants down and take over. If you'll notice, in the first game, the reaper didn't just automaticlly get control. He was hacking in.

They attack earth first for ONE simple reason. No, not story convience, but because earth, as far as i can tell for the two games galixie maps, is the closest relay to the aplha relay, which was the way they were coming. It's the closet gate, it's the first target, and it's a gate we won't BLOW on them... it makes since. Honestly, if we can shut the gate down soon enough in the game, we can make earth the frount line, more or less, for the battle...

While the reapers still have a siginifent advantage, and this is going to be a BRUTEL war, they are most differently not unbeatable, and have been hit with some substantiual setbacks. It's a winable fight... at GREAT cost. I get the feeling there's going to be LOTS of death, and even the "good" ending will be bitter sweet. I'm really looking forward to see if Bioware can pull it off as well as i hope they can.

Good post. Hope you don't mind me using it to prove the above point.

Hey wait a minute, I just remembered one thing in arrival, why didn't Shepard wait a little bit with smashing the relay, if the reapers got close enough when it exploded, good bye, no more reapers.

I have a better idea. Why did Shepard have to destroy the Relay in the first place if the Citadel is in control of them? They could just lock the relay.

Because:
a)he had about a half hour before their Arrival by the end and
b)The council would not have believed him. Anderson probably would have, but the rest of the council would just see the idea as provocation to the Batarians. Anderson wouldn't be able to change their minds, certainly not within the aforesaid time limit.

 

[Zetatrain]

She will find a big red button that says don't push and she will push it and all the reapers will become subservient and work at mcdonalds for the next 50k years.

Really I dont see anyway this is going to end other then finding a magic mcguffen and it somehow beating all the reapers, with the setup the 3rd game has. Really the game should be about organizing the races into a fleet and finding a way into deep space to kill most of them while they are still sleeping, have a few wake up before they are wiped out and have that be the epic final battle, where it takes most of the fleets to deal with a few reapers and one of those reapers is infiltrated and taken down by Shepard's team, while the others are either taken down by similar infiltration teams or blown to hell by dreadnoughts.

I think that is exactly what the game WILL be about. Think about the allies we have (possibly) been recruiting. The Krogan, the Quarians, the Geth, the Rachni. All of those but the Quarians are renowned for terrestrial combat prowess (good for boarding reapers, for example), and all of them but the Krogans are renowned for strong fleets (hell, the Quarians have the largest one in the known galaxy, and the Geth fleet that followed Saren was only about 5% of the total Geth strength). And that's to say nothing of what a you could do with the Citadel and Alliance Fleets when they fight the Reapers at full strength and while not surprised.

I bet Mass Effect 3 will mostly be spent making sure that those allies are at full strength. Convincing the Quarians and Geth to make peace (or choosing between them, which Keelah knows I don't want to do), convincing the Salarians to lift the Genophage, scouting the Reapers so that the big fleets are not taken by surprise, etc.

Few things to keep in mind.

1. We've come to find out, more or less, that not all reapers are the BIG, capital ships Sovereign was. Granted, there are prolly alot of them big ships, but in general, it's not a fleet of "Sovereigns" like it's been made out to be.

2. Sovereign was taken down, more or less, but one wing, or fleet of earth ships, not the whole earth navy, and what was left of a suprise attack on the citidal that started with them knocking out communations so they couldn't call for help. There were alot more reinforcments to be had, if they'd known they were under attack in the first place.

3. The reapers are burning ALOT of resorces and fuel to make the trip to the cidital. Not only did they have to come back from dark space, but once the alpha relay was blown, that added possible up to a years worth more FTL travel, which has to be taxing.

So i think there's a SLIGHT misconception as to how powerful the reaper fleet really is, IE, they aren't all Sovereigns, and are buring ALOT of resorces right now, and we aren't as WEAK as we seemed. It was a suprise attack, and a fraction of the galaxies full milatery might. A head on fight, with the WHOLE galaxie, as in, EVERYONE, might be more then the reapers can handle.

After all, all reapers invasions START with a sneak attack that cripples interstaller travel. where they can pick apart picemeal resistince one system at a time. That won't be the case this time. It's going to be a head on fight, after a long exidos, with a unitifed galaxie (once i'm done with them). Something they may well have NEVER faced before.

And of course, there may be a magic Maguffin. That can always happen to if the writers get lazy... >.>

On that subject, we've been told that there is one set piece in ME3 wherein a Thresher Maw fights a Reaper, so they really all better NOT be Sovereign's size, or else Sci Fi Writers Have No Sense OF Scale.

No, unfortinatly according to everything I have seen about the game so far, it starts out with the reapers invading and attacking earth and Shepard is able to escape and tries to round up allies to counter attack but each race is involved with its own stupid shit, like the quarians have decided to retake the homeworld.
This is the trailer.
If it wasn't for the space ships you would think it was a cod clone.
So ME3 has the reapers already here and that should be bad ending, I mean unless they retcon the reapers to suck, I don't see how they are saving earth.

According to the Game Informer article on ME3 from a few months ago, part of the game involves solving a conflict between the Salarians and the Krogan (that was just one example given), which to me smacks of gathering allies in the sense of entire armies and fleets, not just his squad. Also keep in mind, if the events of ME2 are any indication, the Reapers will want live humans, so they'll probably be on Earth for a while after actually winning the battle there. That extends the time frame immensely.

As I see it, Shep is at Earth answering for the events of Arrival, and then the Reapers invade. Act 1 will be fighting to get off Earth. Act 2 (i.e, the Act in every Bioware game where you choose where to go) will be gathering Armies and Fleets of allies (by, for example, convincing the Salarians to lift the Genophage, or making peace between the Geth and Quarians [or helping one side win]), that sort of thing. Then Act 3 will be taking all of your allies and either trying to take back Earth or else attacking wherever the Reapers are at that point.

Which is why the plot will be bad or the reapers will have to be retconned to hell since so far its been established that we are using tech that they control, mainly the gates which are the key to intergalactic travel, the only one they don't control is that lil one that links the promethium world to the citadel, all they need to do is either shut down the gate to sol, station a fleet outside the gate so they can nuke anything that comes though or just blow or just blow up the gate and then nothing is getting though. Not to mention that the reapers have been doing this awhile so they know pretty much how the tech of the races will work and where species will be and since they have spies they will even know fleet size and such, really the only reason this invasion is different is because they weren't woken up by the keepers since the promethians managed to stop them from being able to send a message this time.
The only plot that really would make sense is to attack them in deep space, any other way of fighting them seems doomed, without the plot going wacky.

I think you misunderstood. Talk to Vigil on Ilos again. They only controlled all the Relays in the other invasions because they took over the Citadel first thing, and the Citadel gave them that control (along with census records and such). Since you stopped them from using the Citadel Relay, they are at a MASSIVE disadvantage, since they cannot control our fleet movements anymore. Add to that the fact that, for the first time ever, there will be an entire galaxy already aware of them and amassed to fight them and it won't even take a retcon.

Since they shut down the relays in the past, they only ever had to fight small forces at once (i.e, whatever forces would have been stationed at individual systems). Moreover, they had records of which fleets were where, so they could always attack in overwhelming strength. Their control of the Citadel was always their single largest advantage, and without that, they're just a fleet (possibly an enormous one, but we don't really know) of very tough ships; a hard target, to be sure, but we have giant fleets too.

Ehh, not exactly, I mean if they need the Citadel to control the relays then they should really attack the citadel first, if they no longer have way to control the relays then they could either just blockade the relay or just destroy it. I mean they might not have control over them but they still know exactly where a counter attack will come from and its not like they are really bound by time, I mean they could just knock out a relay, wipe out the system then travel though standard space to the next and it would be almost impossible to know where they would hit next.

Also we aren't sure how unified the galaxy is against them, I mean assuming the council or whatever was telling the truth at the start of ME2, then they still don't really believe that the reapers are out there. I'm going to assume that they don't really believe the reaper threat since you have to help the races though their drama before they help you, if they knew there was a giant intergalactic threat coming then they probably wouldn't be doing stupid shit right before it.

While you are right that they could just blow up a mass relay and destroy a the systems in the area there are a few problems with them doing that. The reapers most likely do not have an infinite source of energy and just traveling all the way out from dark space probably ate up much of their energy. Based on what vigil said the reapers strip planets of their natural resources probably because they need it for fuel/energy.

If they blow up the mass relays along with all the star systems and their life forms then the Reapers lose valuable resources and the means to travel over a great distance without using up too much energy. It should also be noted that the mass relays are a vital part of the Reaper's technology that allowed the growth and expansion of multiple civilizations, such as the Protheans, to reach the point where the Reapers would harvest them.

While the reapers could attack the citadel directly they would probably not have the luxury of using the mass relays and therefore would have to spend much time and energy to get there which they may not have. As a result they would have to stop at nearby planets to harvest them in order to refuel.

And true, the galaxy isn't exactly united at the moment, hell there is basically a war brewing between the humans and batarians. Still once the massive reaper fleet starts blowing shit up maybe the galaxy will decide to unite against a common enemy, as long as the reapers aren't on the Citadel's doorstep by then.

 

[Alexias_Sandar]

Transports will be used to drop small suicide strike teams on Reaper's. The same will fight there way through to the core of each Reaper, and take out their shields. They will then be blown to bits by the rest of the fleets rallied against them. The various races, if Shepherd isn't an idiot, will fight together and fulfill a useful role. Geth, Rachni, Turians, Quarians, Asari, Krogans, Hanar, Drell, Volus, Elcor? They'll all do their part, once idiot Turian Councilor is shot in the head, having been discovered to be Saren in disguise, still indoctrinated.

 

[Worgen]

She will find a big red button that says don't push and she will push it and all the reapers will become subservient and work at mcdonalds for the next 50k years.

Really I dont see anyway this is going to end other then finding a magic mcguffen and it somehow beating all the reapers, with the setup the 3rd game has. Really the game should be about organizing the races into a fleet and finding a way into deep space to kill most of them while they are still sleeping, have a few wake up before they are wiped out and have that be the epic final battle, where it takes most of the fleets to deal with a few reapers and one of those reapers is infiltrated and taken down by Shepard's team, while the others are either taken down by similar infiltration teams or blown to hell by dreadnoughts.

I think that is exactly what the game WILL be about. Think about the allies we have (possibly) been recruiting. The Krogan, the Quarians, the Geth, the Rachni. All of those but the Quarians are renowned for terrestrial combat prowess (good for boarding reapers, for example), and all of them but the Krogans are renowned for strong fleets (hell, the Quarians have the largest one in the known galaxy, and the Geth fleet that followed Saren was only about 5% of the total Geth strength). And that's to say nothing of what a you could do with the Citadel and Alliance Fleets when they fight the Reapers at full strength and while not surprised.

I bet Mass Effect 3 will mostly be spent making sure that those allies are at full strength. Convincing the Quarians and Geth to make peace (or choosing between them, which Keelah knows I don't want to do), convincing the Salarians to lift the Genophage, scouting the Reapers so that the big fleets are not taken by surprise, etc.

Few things to keep in mind.

1. We've come to find out, more or less, that not all reapers are the BIG, capital ships Sovereign was. Granted, there are prolly alot of them big ships, but in general, it's not a fleet of "Sovereigns" like it's been made out to be.

2. Sovereign was taken down, more or less, but one wing, or fleet of earth ships, not the whole earth navy, and what was left of a suprise attack on the citidal that started with them knocking out communations so they couldn't call for help. There were alot more reinforcments to be had, if they'd known they were under attack in the first place.

3. The reapers are burning ALOT of resorces and fuel to make the trip to the cidital. Not only did they have to come back from dark space, but once the alpha relay was blown, that added possible up to a years worth more FTL travel, which has to be taxing.

So i think there's a SLIGHT misconception as to how powerful the reaper fleet really is, IE, they aren't all Sovereigns, and are buring ALOT of resorces right now, and we aren't as WEAK as we seemed. It was a suprise attack, and a fraction of the galaxies full milatery might. A head on fight, with the WHOLE galaxie, as in, EVERYONE, might be more then the reapers can handle.

After all, all reapers invasions START with a sneak attack that cripples interstaller travel. where they can pick apart picemeal resistince one system at a time. That won't be the case this time. It's going to be a head on fight, after a long exidos, with a unitifed galaxie (once i'm done with them). Something they may well have NEVER faced before.

And of course, there may be a magic Maguffin. That can always happen to if the writers get lazy... >.>

On that subject, we've been told that there is one set piece in ME3 wherein a Thresher Maw fights a Reaper, so they really all better NOT be Sovereign's size, or else Sci Fi Writers Have No Sense OF Scale.

No, unfortinatly according to everything I have seen about the game so far, it starts out with the reapers invading and attacking earth and Shepard is able to escape and tries to round up allies to counter attack but each race is involved with its own stupid shit, like the quarians have decided to retake the homeworld.
This is the trailer.
If it wasn't for the space ships you would think it was a cod clone.
So ME3 has the reapers already here and that should be bad ending, I mean unless they retcon the reapers to suck, I don't see how they are saving earth.

According to the Game Informer article on ME3 from a few months ago, part of the game involves solving a conflict between the Salarians and the Krogan (that was just one example given), which to me smacks of gathering allies in the sense of entire armies and fleets, not just his squad. Also keep in mind, if the events of ME2 are any indication, the Reapers will want live humans, so they'll probably be on Earth for a while after actually winning the battle there. That extends the time frame immensely.

As I see it, Shep is at Earth answering for the events of Arrival, and then the Reapers invade. Act 1 will be fighting to get off Earth. Act 2 (i.e, the Act in every Bioware game where you choose where to go) will be gathering Armies and Fleets of allies (by, for example, convincing the Salarians to lift the Genophage, or making peace between the Geth and Quarians [or helping one side win]), that sort of thing. Then Act 3 will be taking all of your allies and either trying to take back Earth or else attacking wherever the Reapers are at that point.

Which is why the plot will be bad or the reapers will have to be retconned to hell since so far its been established that we are using tech that they control, mainly the gates which are the key to intergalactic travel, the only one they don't control is that lil one that links the promethium world to the citadel, all they need to do is either shut down the gate to sol, station a fleet outside the gate so they can nuke anything that comes though or just blow or just blow up the gate and then nothing is getting though. Not to mention that the reapers have been doing this awhile so they know pretty much how the tech of the races will work and where species will be and since they have spies they will even know fleet size and such, really the only reason this invasion is different is because they weren't woken up by the keepers since the promethians managed to stop them from being able to send a message this time.
The only plot that really would make sense is to attack them in deep space, any other way of fighting them seems doomed, without the plot going wacky.

I think you misunderstood. Talk to Vigil on Ilos again. They only controlled all the Relays in the other invasions because they took over the Citadel first thing, and the Citadel gave them that control (along with census records and such). Since you stopped them from using the Citadel Relay, they are at a MASSIVE disadvantage, since they cannot control our fleet movements anymore. Add to that the fact that, for the first time ever, there will be an entire galaxy already aware of them and amassed to fight them and it won't even take a retcon.

Since they shut down the relays in the past, they only ever had to fight small forces at once (i.e, whatever forces would have been stationed at individual systems). Moreover, they had records of which fleets were where, so they could always attack in overwhelming strength. Their control of the Citadel was always their single largest advantage, and without that, they're just a fleet (possibly an enormous one, but we don't really know) of very tough ships; a hard target, to be sure, but we have giant fleets too.

Ehh, not exactly, I mean if they need the Citadel to control the relays then they should really attack the citadel first, if they no longer have way to control the relays then they could either just blockade the relay or just destroy it. I mean they might not have control over them but they still know exactly where a counter attack will come from and its not like they are really bound by time, I mean they could just knock out a relay, wipe out the system then travel though standard space to the next and it would be almost impossible to know where they would hit next.

Also we aren't sure how unified the galaxy is against them, I mean assuming the council or whatever was telling the truth at the start of ME2, then they still don't really believe that the reapers are out there. I'm going to assume that they don't really believe the reaper threat since you have to help the races though their drama before they help you, if they knew there was a giant intergalactic threat coming then they probably wouldn't be doing stupid shit right before it.

While you are right that they could just blow up a mass relay and destroy a the systems in the area there are a few problems with them doing that. The reapers most likely do not have an infinite source of energy and just traveling all the way out from dark space probably ate up much of their energy. Based on what vigil said the reapers strip planets of their natural resources probably because they need it for fuel/energy.

If they blow up the mass relays along with all the star systems and their life forms then the Reapers lose valuable resources and the means to travel over a great distance without using up too much energy. It should also be noted that the mass relays are a vital part of the Reaper's technology that allowed the growth and expansion of multiple civilizations, such as the Protheans, to reach the point where the Reapers would harvest them.

While the reapers could attack the citadel directly they would probably not have the luxury of using the mass relays and therefore would have to spend much time and energy to get there which they may not have. As a result they would have to stop at nearby planets to harvest them in order to refuel.

And true, the galaxy isn't exactly united at the moment, hell there is basically a war brewing between the humans and batarians. Still once the massive reaper fleet starts blowing shit up maybe the galaxy will decide to unite against a common enemy, as long as the reapers aren't on the Citadel's doorstep by then.

It really doesn't matter how united anyone is if the reapers manage to take control of the gates, since they could just shut down all fast interstellar travel and pick apart races one by one, really the stupidest thing they could do is announce their presents by attacking a home world and not going for the lynch-pin at the start. But if energy is a worry they could just go to systems without gates and harvest as much as they like, I mean I'm assuming that's how they got back into the galaxy anyway since the gate they used, the citadel wasn't opened.... really why are they able to attack earth at all, I mean shouldn't it take them at least 200 years to get back into the galaxy and by then their Shepard problem has already solved itself.

 

[Newbonomicon]

They'll all do their part, once idiot Turian Councilor is shot in the head, having been discovered to be Saren in disguise, still indoctrinated.

What, are you saying they're the same because all turians look alike? You humans are all racist!

 

[Princess Rose]

How do you think the Reapers will be defeated, considering one of them managed to demolish half a fleet before going down?

Here is my theory: Dark Matter. I've been playing through both games over the past few weeks, and I've noticed quite a few references to dark matter that have no other context in the story. Namely on Tali's recruitment mission and a few galactic newscasts. I feel that somehow, dark matter is going to be weaponized in the game as a means of combating the Reapers with superpowerful weapons.

So that's my pitch, what do you guys think is going to happen?

I'm guessing two options:

Option 1) Blow up Earth's Mass Relay while they're all at Earth, destroying the entire solar system, Earth, and the Reaper Fleet.

Option 2) Recruit a truly massive fleet, plus other interesting weaponry and knick-knacks, and retake Earth by force, getting millions (if not billions) killed, but saving the seat of Humanity.

 

[Avatar Roku]

She will find a big red button that says don't push and she will push it and all the reapers will become subservient and work at mcdonalds for the next 50k years.

Really I dont see anyway this is going to end other then finding a magic mcguffen and it somehow beating all the reapers, with the setup the 3rd game has. Really the game should be about organizing the races into a fleet and finding a way into deep space to kill most of them while they are still sleeping, have a few wake up before they are wiped out and have that be the epic final battle, where it takes most of the fleets to deal with a few reapers and one of those reapers is infiltrated and taken down by Shepard's team, while the others are either taken down by similar infiltration teams or blown to hell by dreadnoughts.

I think that is exactly what the game WILL be about. Think about the allies we have (possibly) been recruiting. The Krogan, the Quarians, the Geth, the Rachni. All of those but the Quarians are renowned for terrestrial combat prowess (good for boarding reapers, for example), and all of them but the Krogans are renowned for strong fleets (hell, the Quarians have the largest one in the known galaxy, and the Geth fleet that followed Saren was only about 5% of the total Geth strength). And that's to say nothing of what a you could do with the Citadel and Alliance Fleets when they fight the Reapers at full strength and while not surprised.

I bet Mass Effect 3 will mostly be spent making sure that those allies are at full strength. Convincing the Quarians and Geth to make peace (or choosing between them, which Keelah knows I don't want to do), convincing the Salarians to lift the Genophage, scouting the Reapers so that the big fleets are not taken by surprise, etc.

Few things to keep in mind.

1. We've come to find out, more or less, that not all reapers are the BIG, capital ships Sovereign was. Granted, there are prolly alot of them big ships, but in general, it's not a fleet of "Sovereigns" like it's been made out to be.

2. Sovereign was taken down, more or less, but one wing, or fleet of earth ships, not the whole earth navy, and what was left of a suprise attack on the citidal that started with them knocking out communations so they couldn't call for help. There were alot more reinforcments to be had, if they'd known they were under attack in the first place.

3. The reapers are burning ALOT of resorces and fuel to make the trip to the cidital. Not only did they have to come back from dark space, but once the alpha relay was blown, that added possible up to a years worth more FTL travel, which has to be taxing.

So i think there's a SLIGHT misconception as to how powerful the reaper fleet really is, IE, they aren't all Sovereigns, and are buring ALOT of resorces right now, and we aren't as WEAK as we seemed. It was a suprise attack, and a fraction of the galaxies full milatery might. A head on fight, with the WHOLE galaxie, as in, EVERYONE, might be more then the reapers can handle.

After all, all reapers invasions START with a sneak attack that cripples interstaller travel. where they can pick apart picemeal resistince one system at a time. That won't be the case this time. It's going to be a head on fight, after a long exidos, with a unitifed galaxie (once i'm done with them). Something they may well have NEVER faced before.

And of course, there may be a magic Maguffin. That can always happen to if the writers get lazy... >.>

On that subject, we've been told that there is one set piece in ME3 wherein a Thresher Maw fights a Reaper, so they really all better NOT be Sovereign's size, or else Sci Fi Writers Have No Sense OF Scale.

No, unfortinatly according to everything I have seen about the game so far, it starts out with the reapers invading and attacking earth and Shepard is able to escape and tries to round up allies to counter attack but each race is involved with its own stupid shit, like the quarians have decided to retake the homeworld.
This is the trailer.
If it wasn't for the space ships you would think it was a cod clone.
So ME3 has the reapers already here and that should be bad ending, I mean unless they retcon the reapers to suck, I don't see how they are saving earth.

According to the Game Informer article on ME3 from a few months ago, part of the game involves solving a conflict between the Salarians and the Krogan (that was just one example given), which to me smacks of gathering allies in the sense of entire armies and fleets, not just his squad. Also keep in mind, if the events of ME2 are any indication, the Reapers will want live humans, so they'll probably be on Earth for a while after actually winning the battle there. That extends the time frame immensely.

As I see it, Shep is at Earth answering for the events of Arrival, and then the Reapers invade. Act 1 will be fighting to get off Earth. Act 2 (i.e, the Act in every Bioware game where you choose where to go) will be gathering Armies and Fleets of allies (by, for example, convincing the Salarians to lift the Genophage, or making peace between the Geth and Quarians [or helping one side win]), that sort of thing. Then Act 3 will be taking all of your allies and either trying to take back Earth or else attacking wherever the Reapers are at that point.

Which is why the plot will be bad or the reapers will have to be retconned to hell since so far its been established that we are using tech that they control, mainly the gates which are the key to intergalactic travel, the only one they don't control is that lil one that links the promethium world to the citadel, all they need to do is either shut down the gate to sol, station a fleet outside the gate so they can nuke anything that comes though or just blow or just blow up the gate and then nothing is getting though. Not to mention that the reapers have been doing this awhile so they know pretty much how the tech of the races will work and where species will be and since they have spies they will even know fleet size and such, really the only reason this invasion is different is because they weren't woken up by the keepers since the promethians managed to stop them from being able to send a message this time.
The only plot that really would make sense is to attack them in deep space, any other way of fighting them seems doomed, without the plot going wacky.

I think you misunderstood. Talk to Vigil on Ilos again. They only controlled all the Relays in the other invasions because they took over the Citadel first thing, and the Citadel gave them that control (along with census records and such). Since you stopped them from using the Citadel Relay, they are at a MASSIVE disadvantage, since they cannot control our fleet movements anymore. Add to that the fact that, for the first time ever, there will be an entire galaxy already aware of them and amassed to fight them and it won't even take a retcon.

Since they shut down the relays in the past, they only ever had to fight small forces at once (i.e, whatever forces would have been stationed at individual systems). Moreover, they had records of which fleets were where, so they could always attack in overwhelming strength. Their control of the Citadel was always their single largest advantage, and without that, they're just a fleet (possibly an enormous one, but we don't really know) of very tough ships; a hard target, to be sure, but we have giant fleets too.

Ehh, not exactly, I mean if they need the Citadel to control the relays then they should really attack the citadel first, if they no longer have way to control the relays then they could either just blockade the relay or just destroy it. I mean they might not have control over them but they still know exactly where a counter attack will come from and its not like they are really bound by time, I mean they could just knock out a relay, wipe out the system then travel though standard space to the next and it would be almost impossible to know where they would hit next.

Also we aren't sure how unified the galaxy is against them, I mean assuming the council or whatever was telling the truth at the start of ME2, then they still don't really believe that the reapers are out there. I'm going to assume that they don't really believe the reaper threat since you have to help the races though their drama before they help you, if they knew there was a giant intergalactic threat coming then they probably wouldn't be doing stupid shit right before it.

While you are right that they could just blow up a mass relay and destroy a the systems in the area there are a few problems with them doing that. The reapers most likely do not have an infinite source of energy and just traveling all the way out from dark space probably ate up much of their energy. Based on what vigil said the reapers strip planets of their natural resources probably because they need it for fuel/energy.

If they blow up the mass relays along with all the star systems and their life forms then the Reapers lose valuable resources and the means to travel over a great distance without using up too much energy. It should also be noted that the mass relays are a vital part of the Reaper's technology that allowed the growth and expansion of multiple civilizations, such as the Protheans, to reach the point where the Reapers would harvest them.

While the reapers could attack the citadel directly they would probably not have the luxury of using the mass relays and therefore would have to spend much time and energy to get there which they may not have. As a result they would have to stop at nearby planets to harvest them in order to refuel.

And true, the galaxy isn't exactly united at the moment, hell there is basically a war brewing between the humans and batarians. Still once the massive reaper fleet starts blowing shit up maybe the galaxy will decide to unite against a common enemy, as long as the reapers aren't on the Citadel's doorstep by then.

It really doesn't matter how united anyone is if the reapers manage to take control of the gates, since they could just shut down all fast interstellar travel and pick apart races one by one, really the stupidest thing they could do is announce their presents by attacking a home world and not going for the lynch-pin at the start. But if energy is a worry they could just go to systems without gates and harvest as much as they like, I mean I'm assuming that's how they got back into the galaxy anyway since the gate they used, the citadel wasn't opened.... really why are they able to attack earth at all, I mean shouldn't it take them at least 200 years to get back into the galaxy and by then their Shepard problem has already solved itself.

But they can't just take control of the lynch pin yet because the Alpha Relay was destroyed. It seems, judging by our in-game galaxy map (which, being fair, is lacking in detail) that the Local Cluster (in which Earth is) is the closest to the one where the Alpha Relay was. They're gonna have to go through Sol if they want to get to the Citadel in a timely manner (and possibly before running out of fuel), so they may as well kill two birds with one stone and take out Earth at the same time.

As for your other point, it seems that the Reapers are really fucking fast, even compared to normal ships (which travel at roughly 4000 times the speed of light when going FTL between systems without Mass Relays). I mean, in 2 years, they went from waaaaaaaay out in Dark Space to the Outer Rim, which means they can really book it. Obviously Relays are faster, but their normal FTL (wasteful of resources as it probably is) can still get the job done.

However, if given a choice between a Relay or none, they are obviously going to choose a Relay. I bet FTL for them is very wasteful and, comparatively fast as their FTL is, it's still gonna take them months if not years to go from the system which formerly housed the Alpha Relay to the Citadel.