OH GOD BIOWARE WHAT THE FUCK HAVE YOU DONE

[Krylo]

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?

Because if they had completely removed the ability to shut off the Mass Relays it means that ME3 was happening whether or not Sovereign attacked immediately.

In other words, the reapers had never ever ever before had to actually fight a galactic civilization on equal or even near equal footing. They've always just shut down all the mass relays, left all of galactic civilization cut off from reinforcements or even communication and then murdered them one system at a time with an entire reaper armada.

If Sovereign couldn't shut down the mass relays at all the reapers would have to be told that, hey, we can't do what we normally do, we need to think of something else.

FURTHER: It's pretty obvious that Sovereign DID tell his buddies out in dark space exactly what was going down, as that Harbinger knew about the whole thing despite the whole 'dark space is quite a ways away and the collectors never really communicate with anyone' things.

Further to the urther, a few years is a LONG TIME to gear up for a war. If the galaxy had actually listened to Shepard and gone full on military economy to prepare for this do you have any idea how many war ships we could have created? How unreasonably big the guns we could have made? A lot and very, respectively. Letting galactic civilization know that reapers exist before the rest of them got here would be terrible. It happened anyway, but it happened because Shepard is ridiculous.

Basically what it comes down to is that if Sovereign had called all the reapers in and just hid, then yeah they'd probably be in a better position, BUT:

A) They didn't have an advantage over galactic civilization with JUST Sovereign and the Geth. Note: That fighting force that was capable of fighting the Geth on more or less equal footing was the Citadel's defense fleet (not an actual military fleet) and ONE human fleet. There's a shit ton more human ships than showed up there and the turians and the asari. The Geth + Sovereign + Saren by themselves would have lost. They might have taken a system or two in the initial blitzkrieg but they'd have lost and there was no reason for Sovereign to just assume galactic civilization would go HERP DERP REAPERS WHAT? afterward like it did.

B) Calling in the full reaper force could probably pull off a win but it would most likely result in multiple reaper ships going down. Considering they make like one new reaper every cycle IF THAT, and that the Geth, Krogan and Saren were all considered completely expendable, this was considered an unconscionable loss when. . .

C) If they could figure out what happened to the Citadel and fix it they could call in the entire reaper force all at once, while simultaneously eliminating any real means of communication or ability to get reinforcements between systems allowing them to drop the entire body of the reapers on each system one by one and ensure a complete wipe of galactic civilization with minimal, if any, risk to reaper 'life'.

And D) Until Saren could figure out what the protheans did (which involved all these 'tertiary' objectives) they had no idea how to fix what had been done.

ME1 wasn't a super complicated/hard to understand game. I just don't even get how you're having this much trouble understanding it.

[Ramary]

Originally Posted by Arcanum

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?

Cause it's a video game by a company that is known for it's "stealer writing"?

Just a guess.

[Marc v4.0]

I wrote up a whole thing, but I realized it is all neatly spelled out in the Mass Effect wiki article for Sovie, citing game sources and books. Most of the concerns you present are covered in the game itself, so maybe you should replay it or play it for the first time, either one.

http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Nazara

There.


One thing, I got some of the events incorrect. He had already figured out that the Protheans had used something called The Conduit in order to alter the Citadel not to respond. He didn't know what The Conduit was and needed Saren (Or some other Organic) to do the legwork for him and find out. It was only a backdoor, but it would allow almost direct access to where they needed to be, and they could flood Geth troops through it to cause panic and confusion.

[Solid Snake]

One of the things I'll compliment about ME1 -- and remember, I really like ME1, and still do -- was how ME1 built you up on this false narrative, propagated by Sovereign, that the Reapers were totally unstoppable emissaries of doom. Even Sheperd believes in it, and the narrative's blatantly designed to instill you (the gamer) with abject fear of all that the Reapers are capable of. This interpretation is reinforced when characters like the Turian Council Member and the unlikable human politician totally belittle the Reapers, and you just know that all literary conventions are calling for a huge comeuppance.

...But what's interesting is how cohesively ME1's narrative holds up once you realize that Sovereign was actually arguably acting out of desperation -- for decades if not centuries -- after the Protheans completely fucked up its original plans. Like, every action Sovereign takes in ME1 has this dual meaning; originally you just view it all as "FFUUCCCKK WE'RE DOOMED" but after everything's said and done you actually realize that despite all of Sovereign's gloating the Reapers were arguably stymied for a bit there and Sovereign had to totally break traditional protocol and belittle the Reapers' entire ideology by aligning itself with an organic -- yeah sure Saren's manipulated, but still, for a Reaper this has to be a stunning insult of sorts -- because Sovereign was in a position where overtly revealing its presence would have legitimately resulted in the combined fleets of the galaxy wrecking its shit up.

I guess I just like how the Reapers are this 'Big Bad,' and you are supposed to fret about them, but at the same time it bucks a few stereotypes and presents the Reapers as fallible and with weaknesses. At the same time, though, Sovereign's smart enough to use its esoteric and mysterious nature to its advantage, and makes sure the Reapers are presented as Gods.

It almost disappoints me more that the Prothean character is DLC because I'd prefer a Prothean as a major character in this story -- like the Protheans have really done so much to ensure this (potential) victory over the Reapers that their presence in the final battle is merited, but there's just so much I want to learn about Prothean culture and civilization and history and we're just not going to digest all that in a DLC. Whether you think the character is voiced well or not, its presence is infinitely more sensible than EDI's. It even makes sense that the survival of a Prothean Shepard wasn't disclosed to Shepard earlier, like when he's speaking to the Prothean artifact thingy whose name I've forgotten at the end of ME1.
(Why reveal that information before the Reapers attack, when there's a chance the Reapers could learn that the Protheans deliberately preserved their best super-soldier for the upcoming cycle's final battle and eliminate the threat before it was time?)


uuuuuugggghhhhh, mentioning EDI, now I've depressed myself over ME3 again. wwwwwhhhhyyyy

EDIT: And note that I still, despite conceding all this, think that the notion that a 'Big Momma Worm whose Children the Mako's Cannon can Decimate' defeating a Reaper is still hogwash. There's a marked difference between saying that a presumably infallible immortal enemy is actually slightly less infallible than initially presented, and stripping the Reapers of so much power that a primordial beast can waste its ass. Though in retrospect what irks me far more than the mere existence of one of those Thresher Maws or even its capability to rip Reapers to shreds is the fact that it wasn't foreshadowed, like, at all. If a beast exists with that kind of power, toss in a few references in ME1 and ME2 and all would be forgiven because it'd be clear Bioware planned their shit out in advance.

As is, the lackadaisical and happenstance introduction of a 'Momma Thresher Maw' out of thin air just carries a foul stench of the Bioware writers all thinking aloud about "What would look cool in ME3" and one raises his hand and is like, "Oooh! I know! Let's crib some notes off Dune and have some angry Thresher Maw kick a Reaper's ass! That'd look awesome!" And the one remotely competent Bioware writer in the room's like "But Thresher Maws aren't that powerful." And so instead of realizing it was a shoddy idea the first writer's like, "Okay, maybe a normal Thresher Maw can't...so let's make an EVEN BIGGER Thresher Maw who CAN!" And the competent writer decided it was totally his/her day off and was like "Eh, fine, whatevs."

And yet if at any point even the dictionary apparatus in ME1/ME2 that you can reference included a note in the Thresher Maw section that named this 'Momma' and described it and its importance in Krogan legend or some shit, or there's some random dialogue where a Krogan in ME2 who you meet in Omega's like "Man, you know the Queen of the Thresher Maws? You hear that story?" We'd all be like "this was really well foreshadowed!" Because then it'd be well foreshadowed.

[Krylo]

Obviously they built EDI a body so Joker would stop sticking his dick in the drive core.

[Solid Snake]

Also, am I the only one who thought that the Council and the Alliance's dismissal of the Reaper threat in the aftermath of ME1 was, like, totally appropriate? And Shepard actually arguably dug himself/herself a bigger hole by buying into the full extent of Sovereign's scary God speech and acting like the Reapers were gonna kill everyone when he totally could have ditched Cerberus and spent the entirety of ME2 -- which was, y'know, a fair deal of time given that Shepard could just wander the galaxy recruiting folks and the Reapers weren't around aside from Harbinger, and Shepard was dead for a while there, too -- actually like maintaining good relations with the Council and the Alliance and working quietly behind the scenes to build a cohesive and believable case.

I mean Shepard just kind of expects the Council and the Alliance and all these alien politicians to buy into his/her spiels, but really, given that Shepard's zeal on the subject is most reminiscent of a certain other Spectre who really became a problem, I can't blame them for a tad of wariness? And it simply made sense for most in the Citadel to buy into the notion that it was Saren and the Geth attacking, not a 'Reaper,' whatever the hell those are.

And like, in the scheme of things, the attack wasn't really that bad! I mean yeah insofar as it's an attack on the Citadel of all places, it's at least a symbolic blow to the security of the galaxy, but in terms of actual casualties, I'm pretty sure I remember being genuinely shocked at how few people died when Shepard rattles off the casualty list to the asshole reporter.

Like, in the scheme of things, we've had battles on Earth this past century that seemed more destructive and encompassed a greater loss of life. The Turians lose...lemme check...20 Cruisers, with 300 crew each. 6,000 people in combat. If you let the Council ship be destroyed, that's 10,000 people.

The Alliance lost 8 Cruisers which is...less than the Turians? (And that's in the choice you make where you sacrifice more humans to save the Asari ship.) If the crews were compatible, humanity -- which now numbers considerably more than 7 billion people because it's the future -- has lost an infinitesimally small percentage of its numbers. I mean, every loss of life is tragic, but think about this: the U.S. has probably as many people, if not more, fighting over the last decade in Iraq, overall, than humanity lost in that battle. America's got like 250 million people? And despite our political objections to the war, I think we all have to concede that it hasn't impacted life in the United States on a grand scale outside of those lives directly (and unfortunately) impacted firsthand. If anything most of us are far too oblivious in our daily lives about what's gone on in Afghanistan or Iraq.

That's why like, I actually feel empathy for the Turian Council Member and that annoying human politician you're supposed to hate. Because from their perspectives, the war between the Turians and humanity was considerably more costly politically than whatever Shepard's droning on about. Sovereign's attack was just an isolated incident, comparable at best in contemporary terms to September 11th, and despite how terrible 9/11 was, it wasn't the first stage in Osama bin Laden's unprecedented Terrorist Invasion of the United States.

And to top it all off, Shepard completely nullifies any validity whatsoever in his/her arguments by joining Cerberus, a terrorist organization, in his effort to fight a nonexistent species with a fervor that's comparable to Saren's in the worst possible ways. Really, I'd find it less believable if the Council was just totally on board with all this shit, no matter how much 'mysterious technological findings' were discovered in Sovereign's wreckage and no matter how unfortunate the Collector issue might have become for humanity.

I mean yeah, sure, Shepard's privy to additional information and he/she is ultimately 'right.' But damn, for a renowned and beloved Hero of the Galaxy, Shepard sure does botch any opportunity to handle the situation of knowing unbelievable intelligence diplomatically and actually convincing important people of what's truly at stake. If Shepard had like, taken a few political science classes or something or maybe even just tried to recruit a few charismatic politicians in addition to the militaristic crew in ME2 he/she might have been able to make inroads. I'm kind of confused as to why Shepard was mucking about in the outer rim (before death) in the beginning of ME2 instead of like, working behind the scenes with Liara / Garrus / Tali to arrange meetings with Asari / Turian / Quarian officials and work up the ranks and make some friends and press a case. I guess that's what Sovereign wanted to achieve, though; make sure Shepard's so afraid that his/her paranoia decommissions him/her long enough for the Collectors to start making inroads, so the Collectors can then distract Shepard long enough for the Reapers to finally show up.

EDIT: Better yet, Shepard should have totally said: "Hey, Wrex? You respect my unparalleled abilities in combat, right? Here's what I'll do. I'll totally help you develop a cohesive strategy to unite the Krogan under your tribe and we'll even find a cure for the genophage or some shit if we can. I'll fight alongside you and wreck the enemies but make sure you hoard the credit and steal the limelight because the Krogans might feel awkward about a human mucking about. Maybe I'll even go solo and you can just provide me a list of targets or objectives that I'll accomplish as a rogue actor, unaffiliated with your tribe. In exchange for my efforts during this time period, once the Krogan are united, you'll totally enlist the entire Krogan army to help me fight the Reapers if the Reapers do show up. This is win-win for you, because you have more reason than most to believe the Reapers do exist, having accompanied me for so long. But IF THEY DON'T exist, you just gained my help and lost absolutely nothing in return. If they DO, they'd threaten the entire galaxy, so you'd have no choice but to fight them anyway. Deal? Deal."

...And then Shepard would be infinitely more productive!

...this is what happens when Snake is in a Wall of Text mood.

[Krylo]

Udina gets no compassion what so ever, because he attempted to make life harder on everyone at every turn and was honestly a completely fucking terrible politician, yelling bloody murder at the council instead of attempting to, you know, actually negotiate any kind of reparations or any method of going after Saren for attacking human colonies. It was Anderson and the Asari/Salarian councillors who had to come up with the idea of letting Shepard go after Saren.

He also locks down Shepard's ship despite the fact that Spectres are supposed to be allowed to go out and do 'illegal' shit like going to the outer rim after Saren based on their gut instincts. That's their ENTIRE POINT. Even if Udina and the council don't believe Saren is as big a threat as Shepard does it's their job to let him do his/her job and go out there and look into it if s/he believes it to be a threat because the whole point of spectres is that they're often privy to things, by virtue of ACTUALLY BEING THERE that the council isn't + being able to do things that a military force can't.

In other words denying shepard a fleet? That's fine. Locking Shepard in port? That's a total dick move that goes against the entire point of the spectres in the first place.

As for the council: They get a pass for being doubtful in ME1. But after a giant monster made out of a bio-mechanical compound they've never seen before blows up all over the citadel, and, I mean, come on, there's not a single security camera in the council chamber when Saren flat out admits that he was doing what Shepard said he was doing?

I mean, by ME2 there's actual honest to god proof that the reapers exist. After ME2 going into ME3, Shepard has shit from the collector database proving their existence, bet the council is still being dicks about accepting the evidence, though.

Like, there's a strong overtone throughout that the Council doesn't not believe what Shepard is saying because his/her proof isn't strong enough, or because Shepard is being too zealous about it, or any of that stuff (which itself doesn't hold up when you consider he has an entire crew of well trained military personnel who the council and human military have no reason to suspect are crazy, all completely agreeing with his assessment--one person making crazy claims? Okay, yeah, whatever, but an entire ship's crew? That's a little more ridiculous to just hand wave, ESPECIALLY AFTER THE ATTACK ON THE CITADEL).

Instead it's made pretty clear through subtext that the Council doesn't believe because they are scared of the implications. Basically their entire reason for not believing comes down to "we're all dead? Nope. That's dumb."

Edit: ME1 needed a response at the end that was just "Anyone but Udina, this guy is just fucking shit at his job."

[Karrrrrrrrrrrresche]

Originally Posted by Arcanum

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?

I don't get why I have to be worked up for me to be posting these things, and I think I've mentioned I loved ME 1 and 2. I just think some of the stuff in the plot was silly.

Originally Posted by Krylo

Because if they had completely removed the ability to shut off the Mass Relays it means that ME3 was happening whether or not Sovereign attacked immediately.

In other words, the reapers had never ever ever before had to actually fight a galactic civilization on equal or even near equal footing. They've always just shut down all the mass relays, left all of galactic civilization cut off from reinforcements or even communication and then murdered them one system at a time with an entire reaper armada.

They'd fought civilizations that were suffering under the disadvantages of being completely surprised and still did more damage than the entirety of the Citadel defense fleets were currently capable of. Considering the Asari put their absolute best battleship on defending the Citadel I think it's a pretty safe bet the other races followed foot. The Protheans killed at least one Reaper with a very large mass driver. I don't think anything the Civilizations of the galaxy pre-sovereign attack could have one shotted a Reaper. Ever.

If Sovereign couldn't shut down the mass relays at all the reapers would have to be told that, hey, we can't do what we normally do, we need to think of something else. FURTHER: It's pretty obvious that Sovereign DID tell his buddies out in dark space exactly what was going down, as that Harbinger knew about the whole thing despite the whole 'dark space is quite a ways away and the collectors never really communicate with anyone' things.

I might be remembering what I said wrong but whatever I did say I didn't mean to call whether or not he contacted them into question, just why they didn't actually do anything if he had contacted them.
Harbinger and the rest sat around doing nothing while Sovereign struggled on his own. I think there were several years between him discovering the problem with the Citadel and the actual events of Mass Effect, so shouldn't they have at least tried to help? Or, had he failed utterly as he did, they could have at least been close enough to do something about it.
If Sovereign had succeeded in his attack then shutting down the mass relays would be it. The reapers could approach from any direction and crush everything because they'd have the sole ability to travel and communicate.

Further to the urther, a few years is a LONG TIME to gear up for a war. If the galaxy had actually listened to Shepard and gone full on military economy to prepare for this do you have any idea how many war ships we could have created? How unreasonably big the guns we could have made? A lot and very, respectively. Letting galactic civilization know that reapers exist before the rest of them got here would be terrible. It happened anyway, but it happened because Shepard is ridiculous.

Which is why I think it was ridiculous of Sovereign to risk detection so casually. If he was worried that the Galaxy would become aware of his existence and do something about it then it was weird of him to personally arrive on Eden Prime and start screwing stuff up. He apparently had enough awareness that nobody would do anything about an Earth colony being attacked, but had no idea that the Galaxy would collectively shove its fingers in its ears and go lalala.

Basically what it comes down to is that if Sovereign had called all the reapers in and just hid, then yeah they'd probably be in a better position, BUT:

A) They didn't have an advantage over galactic civilization with JUST Sovereign and the Geth. Note: That fighting force that was capable of fighting the Geth on more or less equal footing was the Citadel's defense fleet (not an actual military fleet) and ONE human fleet. There's a shit ton more human ships than showed up there and the turians and the asari. The Geth + Sovereign + Saren by themselves would have lost. They might have taken a system or two in the initial blitzkrieg but they'd have lost and there was no reason for Sovereign to just assume galactic civilization would go HERP DERP REAPERS WHAT? afterward like it did.

I'm not so sure about that though. Sovereign doesn't seem to even have a problem in the battle against the Earth Fleet. He absolutely wrecks them until his direct link to Saren is destroyed and he loses concentration or whatever the hell happened. While arguably in a battle against the entirety of the galaxy he might have been in trouble, Sovereign camped on top of the Citadel control tower, stationary, and blasted everything that came near him without ever feeling threatened or any need to dodge.

B) Calling in the full reaper force could probably pull off a win but it would most likely result in multiple reaper ships going down. Considering they make like one new reaper every cycle IF THAT, and that the Geth, Krogan and Saren were all considered completely expendable, this was considered an unconscionable loss when. . .

Why does it have to be one Reaper per cycle? With the Prothean cycle there was only one race, but with the new species of the Citadel we have dozens and dozens of densely populated civilizations.

C) If they could figure out what happened to the Citadel and fix it they could call in the entire reaper force all at once, while simultaneously eliminating any real means of communication or ability to get reinforcements between systems allowing them to drop the entire body of the reapers on each system one by one and ensure a complete wipe of galactic civilization with minimal, if any, risk to reaper 'life'
And D) Until Saren could figure out what the protheans did (which involved all these 'tertiary' objectives) they had no idea how to fix what had been done.

I don't see why having the entirety of the Reaper fleet attack at once removes the possibility of them from trying this though. During the years Sovereign was travelling about looking to fix the problem they could have moved into a reasonable distance to be of aid to him when he needed it. If Sovereign could not fix the problem with the Citadel, then the Reapers would have to attack anyway. If he could, they could just as easily begin their extermination from outside the Galaxy. The big advantage of having the attack begin at the Citadel was the destruction of the center of Government, and the control over the intersection of many different Relay routes. Launching their attack from there and then sorting their problem with controling the relays out would have been a much smarter move.

ME1 wasn't a super complicated/hard to understand game. I just don't even get how you're having this much trouble understanding it.

I don't misunderstand it, I just think there's stupid parts to the plot.
It's not a bad game and it's not a bad plot most of the time, but there's stupid stuff going on to make it a game.

[Azisien]

That crushing feel when you know you won't have time to play through ME1 and ME2 again before ME3 is out so you'll have to fall back on old saves you've kind of forgotten about.

[Marc v4.0]

Originally Posted by "Half Assed" Karesh

The Protheans killed at least one Reaper with a very large mass driver.

That wasn't the Protheans. TIM notes to you that the technology was either Millions or Billions, can't recall which, years old and irreparably damaged anyway.