OH GOD BIOWARE WHAT THE FUCK HAVE YOU DONE

[Kim]

I *finally* realized why it's called the Collector's Edition...

[Ryong]

Originally Posted by Liz

I *finally* realized why it's called the Collector's Edition...

*ba dum tish*

[Overcast]

Gonna drop by for half a second for Eden Prime, Saren, and shooting friends in the head. Note that the Beacon was on Eden Prime, Saren had arrived to take use and destroy via large scale force, and along the way would sink the colony itself masking it as a geth attack. This would assure he would be the only one to use the Beacon, and that it could never EVER be traced back to him. The Normandy's arrival was an unknown due to its fantastic stealth systems. When Nihlus is spotted Saren isn't about to change his plan, he killed him on the assumption he was the largest threat to the plan going off without a hitch. In his mind everyone on this colony was doomed to die anyway, and Nihlus was just one more body that had to be accounted for.

[Marc v4.0]

On that note, poking back through ME1 it clearly spells out why Sovie has to launch a direct attack on the Citadel. The Protheans fucked with it, so he couldn't remotely activate the relay anymore, and had to do an on-site override.

[Karrrrrrrrrrrresche]

Originally Posted by Marc v4.0

On that note, poking back through ME1 it clearly spells out why Sovie has to launch a direct attack on the Citadel. The Protheans fucked with it, so he couldn't remotely activate the relay anymore, and had to do an on-site override.

When did we talk about why he had to do a direct attack?
The closest thing I can think of to that is when we talked about why he didn't just do a direct attack to begin with rather than fucking around with beacons, ciphers and conduits.

[Marc v4.0]

It is the reason he had to fuck around with beacons, ciphers and conduits. To figure out why the fuck it wasn't working, and to determine if there was a way around it that didn't involve launching a direct attack. It is directly related to why he didn't just do one thing over another. This isn't a huge logical leap, I shouldn't have to spell it all out.

[Karrrrrrrrrrrresche]

Originally Posted by Marc v4.0

It is the reason he had to fuck around with beacons, ciphers and conduits. To figure out why the fuck it wasn't working, and to determine if there was a way around it that didn't involve launching a direct attack.

So he didn't actually know what was wrong with it until that point... and thus on an extremely intuitive guess decided that he should seek out a Prothean beacon, which would point him to the exact planet he needed?

But even if this is the case, nothing on the planet indicated that Sovereign gained anything. He didn't find a code to undo what had been done, he didn't understand the Protheans any better than he had before. After Saren found the conduit He busted in to the Citadel and assumed direct control directly without a single problem. But in doing all of the stuff that he had before, in seeking out the beacon (Which allowed Shepard to activate it) and pursuing the Cipher (Which allowed Shepard to find it) and going to the planet he alerted the entire Galaxy to the fact that Saren was up to something and directly caused his own defeat by causing Shepard to be aware of the plan and around to stop it. Which leads slightly less directly into Shepard getting murdered by Collectors, getting revived and then fucking around for a bit before leading even more directly than previously imaginable to Shepard inevitably stopping the unstoppable, touching the untouchable and defeating the undefeatable when ME3 rolls around.

Originally Posted by Marc v4.0

It is directly related to why he didn't just do one thing over another. This isn't a huge logical leap, I shouldn't have to spell it all out.

It's a leap to be sure but it's not a logical one.
From the start he had the power, capacity and will to attack the Citadel. In fact, at the start he had more power to do so because Shepard had yet to blow massive chunks out of several of his geth, destroy his Krogan army factory and beat the shit out of more than one Asari.
When you have a massive tactical advantage over the enemy you don't screw around like Sovereign did. You don't throw away time, resources and troops on tertiary objectives.

Whether Sovereign could have activated the relay immediately is in my mind pretty irrelevant. The reapers could get from Dark Space to our galaxy in a matter of years to begin with, so if Sovereign could personally deliver the ass kicking to kick it off all by himself anyway, why didn't he? Why not just call his buddies and have them come the slow way if he was so worried about the off chance of being exploded by the vastly inferior organics fleets?

For that matter, why didn't he bring the also vastly superior technologically Collectors along if he felt like he was in that much trouble if he had to go toe to toe with the fleets of the Galaxy?

[Marc v4.0]

Yes, because that is how the plot goes.

There is a lot of background story between Saren and Sovie that occurs in the 'expanded universe' that accounts for a great deal of work done to try and determine what was going on. They eventually figured out that the Protheans had to have done something, and sought out the information to determine what, exactly, it was.

Not huge leaps, like I said.

[Karrrrrrrrrrrresche]

Originally Posted by Marc v4.0

Yes, because that is how the plot goes.

There is a lot of background story between Saren and Sovie that occurs in the 'expanded universe' that accounts for a great deal of work done to try and determine what was going on. They eventually figured out that the Protheans had to have done something, and sought out the information to determine what, exactly, it was.

Not huge leaps, like I said.

Why.
Why did it matter what the Protheans did? What did it matter that the Citadel didn't work for them anymore? What, at any point before Sovie irreparably linked himself with Saren and became ripe for the murdering could anyone have done about the Reapers plot?

[Arcanum]

Originally Posted by "Half Assed" Karesh

Why.
Why did it matter what the Protheans did? What did it matter that the Citadel didn't work for them anymore? What, at any point before Sovie irreparably linked himself with Saren and became ripe for the murdering could anyone have done about the Reapers plot?

Better question: Why are you getting so worked up about this? Why do you need the plot to a video game to be airtight and make perfect sense?