Mass Effect plot discussion (spoilers)

[shadow skill]

First off the only reason I made another Mass Effect thread is because I wanted to avoid introducing plot spoilers into my other thread and screw it up for people who have not beat or played the game at all.


Good game the end area was better than most shooters I have played by leaps and bounds. But am I the only one who thinks that Sovereign and the other Reapers are morons? They go through all the trouble to create the Mass Relay system in an effort to guide the evolution of all organic species that reach the level of spacefaring, but they somehow forget that organic life can evolve in unexpected ways if left to its own devices and then decided to leave organics in charge of maintaining the Citadel thereby fucking themselves when the Keepers evolved to only respond to signals directly from the Citadel.... I mean come on that retard Sovereign goes on and on about how omnipotent he and the rest of the Repears are yet they use such an illogical plan of attack that whoever they leave behind to open the door again could easily get screwed if everything does not go perfectly.

I can't even fathom why they did not just genetically modify organics directly if they wanted to engineer galactic evolution, it also begs the question of why the Mass Relays are even needed in the first place since the Reapers would have had to get to the Milky Way using more conventional means if they came from outside of the Galaxy which means that at no point do they actually need the Mass Relays in order to invade it just makes it slightly easier to do a Blitzkrieg. However Vigil states that the Prothean extinction took centuries to complete which seems to imply that the use of the Mass Relays are really only good for the initial Blitz to kill the leadership after that they pretty much have to do things the hard way.

Personally it would make more sense to just indroctrinate people and have them kill or beome key leaders and start a galactic war then move on in after the galaxy has beaten itself silly and would be too wesk to defend itself from the reapers even if they were just moving around using regular FTL drives. Instead they use a plan that leaves so many things to chance and now its finally gone bad yet Sovereign talks so much shit when you meet him on Virmire.



My character was female and I had to choose between Kaiden and Liara and I chose the Can't I have you both option and Kaiden refuses.....WTF is wrong with Kaiden how does any man reject a threesome??? How honestly his character is basically useless after you get Liara and he expects to get exsclusive rights to Shepard's pants? I left his sorry ass to die on Virmire.

Mass Effect 2 needs to hurry up and come out...

 

[beoweasel]

Well, the easy answer is the one the Promethian VI tells you on Ilos:

"They are truly Alien, in the end, you do not need to understand them, only to defeat them."

Also, the Mass Relays make it far easier to travel than conventional means of FTL travel (which not only takes a lot longer and requires a lot more energy, also it helps in that whole 'guiding organics down their evolutionary path.')

I think the Mass Relays were necessary to commit to galactic extinction because otherwise, it would have probably taken thousands of years, instead of centuries. Remember, that the Milky Way is comprised of BILLIONS of worlds, and even if the Reaper Fleet is comprised of millions of the enormous bastards, it would still take them awhile to fully wipe out an empire that spans such a distance. After they were done, only TWELVE promethians were left alive, out of who knows how many.

And the Keepers didn't necessarily evolve, they were changed by those surviving promethians who used the Conduit to get to the Citadel.

I really want to see how everything we've learned from the first ME will effect the galaxy in the second. I mean, we now know that everything we've originally revered the promethians for doing, was actually the work of a bunch of psychotic, alien AIs that seem to have a thing for wiping out all life when it gets to a certain point. And know that we know that the Citadel is secretly a deathtrap, is it REALLY a good idea to stick around on it? Finally, (I was true paragon at the end of the game) what will be the ramifications of letting humans join the Council?

 

[shadow skill]

We have to stick around on the Citadel it is the hub of the Mass Relay network and therefore the hub of galactic communication. But a trap is only good if you do not know it is there in the first place and now everyone knows it is there. My guess is that more reapers are hiding in the Perseus Veil which would explain why the Geth knew about them and came to worship them as gods.

In reality the Reapers were lucky that the power reserves on Ilos failed otherwise the Protheans could have rebuilt themselves, finished working on their own version of Mass Relays and been around to tell any civilizations that got smart enough to find and utilize Element Zero about the Reaper threat. I wonder if the Protheans might have even been able to simply supplant the Mass Relay system entirely leaving them free to destroy them all along with the Citadel, which would have completely removed the Blitzkrieg option for the Reapers.

The fact that the Protheans were able to even resist the Reapers from the grave means that the plan had already failed miserably it just took 50k years to bite them in the ass. Knowing the motivations of your enemy gives you insight into how your enemy will move against you or your allies. It is an integral part of being able to defeat them so in this respect I think that Vigil got it wrong.


As for humans on the council, I would imagine that such an appointment although clearly warranted by the events at the end of Mass Effect will pave the way for a war between the four great races. The apostates on the council and probably a good number of the galaxy fear the rise of mankind. Our millitary is only three percent of our total population (Including colonies.) and we were able to fight off Turians. Our race came out of nowhere and punched one of the three great races in the mouth, we kicked the Batarians back into their home systems after they tried to engage us in asymmetrical warfare; imagine how that affects the galactic community at large.

I would posit that once the Repears appear to be dealt with various political movements will occur that will all but ensure that the council will collapse and the systems will be plunged into a galactic civil war simply because of the presence of humans on the galactic stage so quickly compared to other races. Then there are the Earth-first retards who even now seek to gain political power in the Alliance should they be able to do so it would probably stress the council even further.

 

[beoweasel]

We hardly punched the Turians in the mouth. The underestimated us in assuming the survey fleet they destroyed was the bulk of our navy. After we kicked them out, they were gearing up for total war, with a far larger fleet they would have wiped the floor with us. We got lucky because everybody ELSE took notice of the Turians' sudden shifting and preparation for mass war on humanity and insight thats a good thing.

Given that humans now have a seat on the council, I see civil war as less likely, and a greater confrontation with the Terminus Sector all the more possible. And a galactic civil war would be the worse for everyone, because the Reapers, while dormant, are still a present threat, and having a great big war between us, will really bite us in the ass, when the Reapers come back and find everything is now easy pickings.

And I'm sure while this plan failed, the reapers have back-ups just in case their single agent got toasted. Remember, these guys have been around millions of years, and even if they do have enormous egos, they'd still have contingency back-up plans. Sure they might not be able to use the same trick of porting in their fleet from the Citadel, but I'm betting they have a few more tricks up their sleeves.

 

[shadow skill]

Sure the Turians would have owned the humans if they had got the chance to bring the full brunt of their army to bear but there are only two races currently with enough power to actually take on the Turians and have a snow ball's chance in hell of actually living. It says quite a bit to be able to get a superpower to want to bring its full military force to bear. To be able to kick them out is still an accomplishment and a source of worry for the galactic community because the alliance is only going to become more powerful over time. Mass Effect pretty much states that the war potential of the human race is greater than that of any of the other races because the amount of power they hold is enough for people to take notice, even though the alliance is the smallest military force at this time.

Through out the game there is an unmistakable impression that the established races like the Volus are somewhat resentful of the status of humans at large considering how they have not been a part of the club for very long if at all. The humans are upsetting the balance of power that had been so carefully crafted over the centuries, they will push further into the Terminus systems destabilizing things further because there will have to be a series of wars to deal with the pirates and dictators who run around out there. Which probably means that the Alliance military will have to expand in order to effectively conquer the Terminus systems.

What needs to be understood about the politics of the council is that at no time are they really rewarding humans by giving them positions like Spectre or a seat on the council, what they are doing is trying to cover their own asses by keeping a potential enemy even closer. I just don't see it as a realistic expectation that public opinion will remain with the humans after the Reapers are dealt with; just look at what happened with the Krogan. Do you think the humans trust that they will not be targeted by a genophage like weapon when their existence is no longer profitable for the great races? Right now it is quite obvious that they need the massive war potential of humans on their side one hundred percent if they want to deal with the Reapers so it is very logical to put a human on the council to grease the wheels so to speak.

 

[RickDarko]

Botton line, the reapers are comming, the cant use the mass relay in the citadel cause the proteans took care of that with the conduit, but still the reapers are comming using normal space, so the thing is, how long is going to take the reapers to get to the milky way, and how the humans are going to be prepared for that. If you want to read the plot so far here it is:

"Two years after Commander Shepard defeated Saren and Sovereign, Collectors begin attacking human colonies and abducting their populations. Cerberus determined that the Reapers were behind this and planned to have Shepard thwart this latest Reaper threat to humanity. Over time, Shepard uncovered disturbing facts regarding the nature of the Reaper connection to the Collectors. Apparently, because humanity is a race of great genetic diversity and was the race who defeated Sovereign, it was enough to gather the Reapers' attention. It is revealed that the Collectors were originally Protheans who were captured by the Reapers and genetically refitted to suit the purposes of the Reapers.
Lilith, a colonist from Horizon, being processed into an organic liquid metal as material for the Human-Reaper

The Collectors were working under the direct supervision of Harbinger, who was having the Collectors travel through the outer rim of the Terminus Systems and abduct humans in an attempt to build a new Reaper; a Human-Reaper. This process, speculated by EDI to possibly be a facilitation of Reaper reproduction, required that the captive humans be liquefied into an organic metal and pumped directly into the Human-Reaper's frame housed at the center of the Collector base.
The incomplete Human-Reaper made entirely of liquefied colonists

When discovered by Shepard, the incomplete Human-Reaper was composed of facsimiles of the skull (with three eyes), arms and ribcage of a human with its lower spine and torso still under construction. At this stage, it was still over 100 feet in total height, perhaps more. EDI concluded that tens of thousands of humans had already been processed. Shepard was able to stop the process and destroy the Human-Reaper.

With the Human-Reaper destroyed and the Collectors defeated, along with the earlier defeat of the Sovereign, the Reapers lost any chance of using the Citadel mass relay to quickly return to the Milky Way. Harbinger and the rest of the Reapers awaken from hibernation, and begin emerging from dark space and start their long journey towards the Milky Way, setting the stage for Mass Effect 3.


Upon speculation, it's possible that the victim's memories are transferred to the Reaper when their liquefied form is injected into the frame due to the fact that Reapers are sapient, self aware constructs and contain a multitude of A.I. programs. Furthermore, Reapers seem to have an unlimited amount of knowledge at their disposal, which could also justify the memories of liquefied humans being transferred upon being injected into the new Reaper. Since the people are processed into an organic metal, it's probable that the synapses that store thoughts and memories are kept intact when liquefied. As quoted by Legion in reference to Sovereign, "one ship, one will, many minds". Additionally, when Harbinger took control of one of his drones on Horizon just prior to the abduction of the colonists, he stated that the Reapers are "the harbinger of their perfection".